Operation Thunderhead (14 page)

But the trussing of the prisoner wasn't done yet. Going back to the table, Goose returned with one of the smaller sets of shackles. The odd-looking handcuffs were connected rigidly together, and they tightened down with screws. Turning Dramesi's hands so that the backs were facing each other, Goose slipped on the shackles and screwed them down tight.

The pressure on his hands and wrists was so bad that Dramesi felt that the bones would break. And he knew what was coming next. The pressure would build in his arms, chest, and shoulders. The numbness would return to his arms and hands. The interrogators would probably go soon, leaving the bound prisoner to suffer in the room alone. This time, they would leave and not come back until the circulation in his arms had been cut off so long that they would die. This time, Dramesi would lose both his arms.

The suffering had really only begun. There were refinements to the use of the straps that Dramesi wasn't familiar with yet. Goose would quickly remedy the lack of experience on the part of the prisoner.

Tying one end of a long nylon strap to the wrist shackles, Goose took the length of webbing and pulled it over Dramesi's shoulder. The action surprised the prisoner as Goose continued to pull the webbing forward, looping it around underneath the iron bar and pulling it back across Dramesi's shoulder again. Putting one knee into the prisoner's back, Goose pulled on the webbing strap, lifting Dramesi's arms and pulling them forward. Since the arms were connected at the wrists and above the elbows, they couldn't bend to relieve the pressure. Instead, the pull of the webbing strap yanked his arms forward and up. Dramesi screamed with all his remaining strength as the agonizing pain washed over him.

The screams of his victim excited the sadistic Goose. He pulled harder on the strap and Dramesi started to struggle, to fight back at the torturer who was slowly killing him. Goose couldn't get the leverage he wanted with Dramesi struggling as hard as he was. Frustrated, the sadistic Goose dropped his end of the nylon strap, pushed Dramesi over on his side, and began kicking at the helpless prisoner's head. If he had been wearing boots, Dramesi's agony would have been over since the impact would have killed him. But Goose was still wearing the sandals that appeared too small for his feet. Every time he kicked at Dramesi's head, he hurt his own toes. That just drove the sadist further into his own madness.

Goose was making a kind of hysterical whinnying sound as he kicked at the prisoner over and over again. Bug realized that the situation was getting out of control and there was a real danger to the prisoner. Bug jumped up out of his chair and ran over to Goose. Grabbing the nearly mad Goose by the shoulder, Bug pulled him away. Then Bug turned back to where Dramesi lay on the ground in agony and shrieked at him to get up.

As soon as Dramesi had gotten up from lying on the floor, Goose was back on him. Putting his foot between the prisoner's shoulder blades, Goose pulled up on the rope, drawing Dramesi's bound arms up away from his back. The pain from Dramesi's shoulders was the most intense thing he had yet felt. He was certain that his screams could be heard all over the prison camp, if not throughout Hanoi—if that was indeed where he was being tortured.

“Will you tell me the name of your wing commander?” Bug shouted over the prisoner's screams.

“Yes!” Dramesi wailed. “Yes I will.'

But Goose continued to pull up on the strap, the pressure on Dramesi's shoulder joints continued, and the pain went on unabated.

“Yes, yes,” Dramesi said through a throat hoarse with screaming.

Goose stopped pulling up on the strap, allowing the prisoner's arms to go back down to their lowest position. Now at least Dramesi could breathe a bit in spite of the horrible pain that remained in the whole of his body. When asked about his wing commander, he answered. They already knew the name; he didn't have to try and remember a lie. More questions were asked and the cycle of torture went on; Goose pulled on the straps and Dramesi screamed.

Finally, night came and the straps around his arms were removed. The shackles on his wrists came off as well. That kind of torture could cause a prisoner to suffocate if he passed out and fell during the night. Handcuffs were placed on Dramesi's wrists but the ankle shackles and hateful iron bar remained where they were. Still sitting on the stool, Dramesi passed his first night in the Hanoi prison system.

The punishment and torture continued as Dramesi remained in the room. The routine was quickly set and didn't vary much during the ordeal. The shackles and the heavy iron bar remained on his ankles and across his feet. His arms remained handcuffed behind his back. Twice a day, food was brought to him, his only real breathing space between periods of torture, interrogation, and isolation. The food was poor, just a cup of water, some rice, and a dark-green liquid that might have had some nutritional value. It was a starvation diet at best.

The stool became his world since he was forced to remain on it constantly. The guards tried to keep their prisoner awake constantly. The lack of sleep will sap even a strong person's resolve and ability to resist. It was only during the very early morning hours when the guards were absent from the room that Dramesi was able to drift off into a pain-filled sleep.

He was interrogated on a regular basis. On the second day, he was forced to sit and listen to propaganda tapes reportedly made by other American prisoners held by the North Vietnamese. The tapes were shocking, supposedly made by prisoners whom Dramesi knew by reputation at least. As soon as he identified the people who had made the recording, he would tune out what was being said. The idea of the tapes was obvious: If these people could cooperate with the benevolent people of North Vietnam, then why couldn't Dramesi?

That logic didn't matter to John Dramesi. He was going to resist to the best of his ability and refuse that kind of cooperation, no matter what they did to him. Bug and Goose had a completely different opinion on that subject, and they well knew how to break a man through torture, isolation, lack of sleep, and malnutrition. It was what they did, and Goose in particular took an obscene kind of pleasure in his work.

Dramesi was ordered to make the same kind of tape recordings other prisoners had done, tapes denouncing the American war effort and admitting to war crimes against the North Vietnamese people. To back up the tapes, Dramesi was to sign a confession that he freely admitted to being a war criminal. And Bug wanted letters to be written by the prisoner in front of him. The letters were to be sent to other members of Dramesi's squadron back in Thailand, telling them to disobey orders and not fly missions over North Vietnam.

One particularly strange request was that Dramesi was to write a letter to U.S. senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. An early dissenting voice against the war, he held a hearing on U.S. conduct in Southeast Asia. But he probably wouldn't have even bothered to read a letter addressed to him from an Air Force officer, even if Dramesi had been willing to write it.

Besides the demands for letters and tape recordings, Dramesi had military questions put to him. What were the names of the other squadron pilots he flew with? What were the number and types of missions he had gone on? His answers were limited, when he said anything more than he didn't know or didn't remember. When the cooperation that Bug wanted didn't come, Goose would step up with his shackles, straps, and ropes.

The soundproofing in Room 18 prevented much of the tortured prisoner's agonized cries from making it past the bloodstained walls. Goose didn't lose control of himself again, but he was enthusiastic in his work. A classic sadist down to his black soul, Goose had found his true niche in life, and the general opinion of the prisoners was that he should rot in hell for it.

The cycle of torturing and questioning, day and night, went on. After a week of constant torment, Bug made a new request. The prisoner was to write out a statement about the North Vietnamese government that could be read out to the world. He was to say how the people were lenient in spite of his crimes against them, and how humane their treatment was of him and the other American prisoners being held. As he had for so many of the other requests for documentation from him, he refused. And Goose once again went to work.

Making his best effort to resist the inquisition, Dramesi had managed to give up relatively little useful information. Bug knew that he had flown an F-105D aircraft, and the name of his wing commander. That was about it in the way of actual facts. To identify members of his squadron, Dramesi had pulled out names of fliers he had known in the past. Finally, he had said that he was only a captain at the Korat base in Thailand. He didn't make up missions or assign targets. That was the responsibility of colonels and generals, not lowly captains.

But Bug refused to listen to that particular lie. He insisted that Dramesi tell him what the upcoming missions for his squadron would be, where the targets were. This was timely military information. The North Vietnamese knew that the longer they held a prisoner, the less he would be able to tell them about upcoming missions. Bug questioned and Dramesi resisted. And Goose got to enjoy himself. To finally give up something that would sound plausible to Bug, and make the torture go away for a while, Dramesi told about a mission near Hanoi. There was going to be an air attack against a barracks near Thud Ridge. The target was north of the mountain ridge and it would be destroyed. It was also a complete fabrication.

These were the little victories that helped keep Dramesi going through the long days and nights. He hadn't said anything of importance, nothing of value. And he hadn't written anything that could be used against him or his country. He hadn't filled out the biographical questionnaire that Bug kept shoving in front of him. He had even figured out a way to ease the constant pain of the shackles and bar that crushed down on his ankles and feet.

Paying attention to the guards' rotation schedule and when he would have a chance to move at night, Dramesi acted in his own behalf. Crouching down from the stool, he would slide the ankle shackles along the bar until he could reach the table in the corner. He wasn't able to move the shackles off the bar; even if he was caught without the bar on his feet, the punishment would have probably been severe. But there was something he could do to relieve the weight that caused so much pain, something simple and easy to hide.

Feeling around on the table behind him with his handcuffed hands, Dramesi found the screw cuffs that Goose used to secure his wrists together during a torture session, which were made up of wide, thick, solid shackles. Working his way back along the bar until he reached his stool, Dramesi contorted himself until he was able to place the wrist rings of the screw cuffs underneath the iron bar. With the screw cuffs between his feet and the bar resting on top of them, he finally had some relief from the pain of the bar crushing down on the tops of his feet.

There was a danger that he would be caught, but Dramesi paid attention to the sounds in the hallway outside the doors. At dawn, the guards would come down the hall, the sounds of their boot steps echoing loudly enough for Dramesi to hear their approach. He knew that once he heard the bootsteps, he had about thirty seconds before the guards would unlock the door and enter. The door was secured with a padlock and a bolt, so there was considerable noise when the guards used the key to open up.

Thirty seconds; that's the amount of time Dramesi had to get up off the stool, slip his bound arms down past his buttocks, and grab the screw cuffs up from underneath the bar. Pulling his arms back up, he could toss the cuffs in the direction of the table and the noise would be covered by the sound of the door being unlocked and the bolt drawn back. Then he would just be sitting on the stool as the guards came in and another day's cycle began.

The impact of the bar settling back onto his bruised and injured feet was excruciating. But the relief of having the weight eased even for just a few hours was worth it. These were the actions that helped keep him going, helped him maintain the fight for his personal dignity and honor in spite of the conditions he was being kept under.

To relieve himself, Dramesi had to simply pee on the floor in front of his stool a number of times. He did convince one guard to take him out of the room once late in the afternoon. It had been a long session with Bug; the guard didn't wish to foul the air in the room where he had to stand duty any worse than it already was, so he unshackled the irons from the prisoner's feet, untied his hands, and led him from the room.

It was only a short trip to another cell, but he was out of Room 18. That was a boost to Dramesi's morale. The cell he was taken to was a small crypt, only 7 by 4½ feet in size. There were no other prisoners occupying the two bunks stacked one on the other. The only other furnishing was a bucket with a lid in one corner, a filthy rag hanging from a string nearby.

The stench in the windowless room was overpowering, but so was Dramesi's need. He used the horrible bucket in spite of the smell almost knocking him out when he lifted the lid. He stretched out his use of the facility as long as he could. It was a horrible little cell, but it wasn't the room full of pain that waited for him.

His injuries were ignored, other than when Bug asked him if he wanted a doctor to examine his bullet wound. The injury was infected and getting worse. Dramesi always said that he wished to see a doctor, and his request was always denied by Bug.

The questions turned to why Dramesi had tried to escape. His answer was simply that it was a military man's duty to escape. And when a man was tortured, he would certainly try to escape. Turning things back onto Bug, Dramesi asked him if he wouldn't do the same thing, try to escape if he was being held prisoner in South Vietnam.