Vietcong torture and disfigurement
Extract from Alvin Townleys book “Defiant” Well worth a read.
American PoWs gave all the guards at North Vietnamese prisons cute little nicknames like Frenchy, Greasy, Lump, Pigeye, Rabbit, Micky Mouse, Cat, Owl, Chihuahua … Pigeye was the chief torturer, he extracted more screams (as well as information and propaganda confessions!) from American PoWs in North Vietnam than anybody else.
His favorite method was the “rope trick”. It worked like this: First with the inmate’s arms behind his back, Pigeye wrapped the inmate’s wrists and arms in clothes to prevent scarring. A rope would then be wound tightly around the wrists and arms. Then Pigeye would ratchet the arms closer and closer together, causing ever increasing pain. When the elbows and upper arms touched, the pain was excruciating. If the victim thought that was the worst and still refused to cooperate, Pigeye would push the arms forward like a lever higher and higher behind victim’s back. In extreme cases, this method would dislocate both shoulders and render both arms useless. (google “strappado” if you need visual aids).
Later on, Pigeye used nylon straps taken from, oh irony irony, captured parachutes, which turned out to be a big improvement compared to the traditional ropes, inmates would submit a lot quicker.
This method also proved to be the most effective. According to the Geneva Convention, PoWs only have to divulge the Big Four: name, rank, service number, date of birth. But the Camp Authority wanted to know a lot more than that. Their interrogators had a notebook, its pages had a lot of columns listing the biographical information that they wished to obtain from the PoWs, including: name, date of birth, address, hometown, ethnicity, education, wife’s name, wife’s maiden name, parents’ names, parents’ occupations … The rows listed names of the PoWs, the first row was Everett Alvarez Jr.—the first American airman taken prisoner. And as one PoW recalled, the notebook had very few blank spaces.
Of course, many of them simply lied to stop the torture. But they were also asked to write and tape-record propaganda statement, admitting that they were war criminals who murdered civilians, that they received humane treatment and that they were now against the unjust war. Many had believed that they would never break their Code of Conduct, they would not give the Camp Authority any satisfaction, no matter how cruel the torture, how extreme the duress. But when Pigeye used his ropes (or later nylon straps) they all had to give in. Many did hold out for about as long as they could. One inmate - Lieutenant Ed Davis, upon returning to his cell after having recorded a confession, said to the man in the next cell (by tapping Morse code into the wall): I'm so sorry, now looking back I think I could have endured the torture for 5 more minutes.
Other times, a concrete-filled iron bar would be placed across an inmate’s ankles, then two camp guards would stand on the bar and roll it along the inmate’s legs, causing immense pain across his shins. Those who subjected to this method only wished that they could black out to get a little respite. But Pigeye was absolutely first-class, he knew exactly when the inmate was about to pass out and he knew how to keep inmates lucid enough to experience uninterrupted and unadulterated pain. This iron-bar techniques together with the nylon straps mentioned above earned Pigeye another nickname among American PoWs: Old Straps and Bars.
And of course, there were the less dramatic but no less damaging techniques such as *blocked text* with fists and bamboo rods, depriving sleep, unsanitary conditions, vermin-infested cell, keeping hands and legs in irons for long period of time …. In a secret letter home written on carbon paper, Jim Stockdale said “Experts in Torture Hand and Leg Irons 16 hours a day.” The irons at the North Vietnamese prison of Hoa Lo (“Hanoi Hilton”) were yet another irony. They had been made decades ago in the colonial days by the French - America’s ally - to confine Vietnamese prisoners. Now they were used on Americans. But because Americans have bigger arms and legs than Vietnamese, these irons became instruments of torture and not just confinement. More often than not, they cut into skins and stopped blood flow.
Sometimes, inmates were put into hand and leg irons and left through out the night (or nights) in contorted positions, helpless against tiny little North Vietnamese “aircraft” - the mosquitoes. All the inmates could do was to puff bursts of air, rather futilely, at the miniature blood-sucking assailants.
