MCAS NEW RIVER, N.C. -- “I knew that the umbilical cord that I had with my previous life was now broken and that everything would be completely different,” said Porter Halyburton, a retired U.S. Navy Commander with Fighter Squadron 84, as he recalled the moment he was taken as a prisoner of war.
On October 17, 1965, Halyburton and VF-84 pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Stan Olmstead, were shot down over North Vietnam. The crash left Olmstead dead and Halyburton as a prisoner at Hỏa Lò Prison, often referred to as the Hanoi Hilton by American prisoners of war, for the next seven years.
“A typical day was not a typical day because I was there for almost seven and a half years, and I was in eight different prisons; I’ve moved 35 times,” said Halyburton. “I’ve lived in solitary confinement, in isolation, with one other guy, two other guys, eight other guys, 40 other guys, and each one of those situations was quite different.”
Halyburton explained that each day prisoners were given two meals and three cigarettes, which came as a surprise to most prisoners, and they were allowed to shower every two weeks. Communication with other prisoners was not allowed; if they spoke to one another they were met with brutal punishment. Torture was common in this facility. When the Americans misbehaved or did not give up information outside of their code of conduct, they were beaten, starved, and paraded in the streets to be tormented by locals. The prison is said to lack routine in order to keep prisoners confused and uncomfortable, but Halyburton made one for himself.
When he was not busy washing dishes or hoeing fields, he took time to work on his mind, body, and spirit. When he was not bound to the ground by leg irons or handcuffs, he exercised. Halyburton is proud of completing over six-thousand deep knee bends while in captivity. His mind was always at work. He memorized over 350 names of people within the prison, as well as their shoot down date, airplane, service, and rank. But what his mind had a real passion for was writing poetry, stories, and songs.
“Most of the poetry was about how I was feeling at the time. The first one that I wrote was very short and explained that I was crossing a creek and all of a sudden, the creek froze, and I was locked in the ice, and I didn’t have anything to do but wait until it thawed, and I could get out,” said Halyburton. “I was attempting, I think, to explain my feelings at the time, mostly. I wrote poems about and to my wife and my daughter. I wrote lullabies to my daughter and then I wrote songs; I turned poetry into songs.”
Life at the Hanoi Hilton was mostly solitary; the men only had their imagination to help them pass the time. Sundays were a time that they could feel connected with one another through tap-code and private prayer. Lack of vocal communication prompted the prisoners to adopt a tapping code that one man, Smitty Harris, learned in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) School. Captive Americans would tap a code of letters on their wall to talk to whoever was in the cell next to them. This “tap-code” allowed messages to be passed through the prison one letter and cell at a time.
“This communication system was the most important thing. Without it things would have been very different,” said Halyburton. “The tap-code became our lifeblood; it was the only way our senior officers could communicate with the troops, issue guidance, some commands, and so on. It was the only way we could come together as a military unit, and as a family eventually.”
“On Sunday we had Church Call, and through our communication system the senior guy would signal Church Call,” said Halyburton. “So if you weren’t in leg irons or something, you would stand up and face the direction you thought the United States was, say the Pledge of Allegiance, say the Lord’s Prayer and then conduct whatever service you wanted to do yourself, because everybody was different.”
“There were many times when talking to God in prayer, I never asked for release or anything, I asked for courage, wisdom, and protection of my family and my friends,” said Halyburton.
Halyburton is a man of spiritual resilience, but that does not mean his faith stayed strong the entirety of his captivity. There were times where his lack of spirit was revived by messages he believed were sent to him by God.
“One of them was at the beginning when I was under a lot of pressure to answer questions, and I was following the Code of Conduct: name, rank, service number, date of birth,” said Halyburton. “I was given the choice of either talking to them and going to a better place, or refusing and going to a worse place. So, I went to a worse place three or four times, and each of those times I felt like I had received some kind of message from God. That he could reach into this very grim place with a message. One time it was a green leaf that poked through the shutters, and another time it was a little ray of sunshine that came through a crack in the window.”
That message led him to craft a cross out of toilet paper and glue made out of rice and place it on the wall, right where that sunshine came in. Every morning the sun would come into the cell and shine onto the cross.
“That was a pretty powerful, spiritual thing,” said Halyburton. “I had a friend that I ran into later and he said, ‘I moved into that cell right after you moved out and the next morning the sun shone through there and lit up that paper cross.’ And he said that was the most powerful, spiritual experience he ever had.”
Halyburton was good at making the best of his situation and sharing the importance of resiliency and its potential to change one’s mind with others. In captivity, Halyburton often felt fear and trepidation because he never knew what was going to happen. He believes that over time a person can adjust to any situation due to the flexibility of the human mind, body, and spirit. While held captive at the Hanoi Hilton, he and the others learned they could get used to almost anything, no matter how terrible it was, and make the best of it. But making the best of it all depended on the attitude that they had on life.
“You couldn’t ever give up, you could never fall into despair,” said Halyburton. “So I think having a spiritual side to your life helps you to retain that sort of attitude about life, that you can deal with anything.”
“God gives you freedom of choice; you have free will. And so that means that you choose what to do and what not to do. Often, we did not have the ability to choose what to do or not to do. We would refuse to talk to them or do what they wanted us to do, but the consequences of that would be severe,” said Halyburton. “So it was a choice of choosing your attitude towards a lot of things. And so you can look at life, at your situation, with despair or you can make the best out of it.”
Halyburton found that most men he was held with tried to make the best of it. As time went on, they used tap-code to host academic classes, exercise programs, games, and other activities in their cells. Towards the end of their time in captivity the prison conditions improved in small ways. Torture sessions lessened, and prisoners were given the opportunity to write to their families.
It had been five years without communication with his family when Halyburton wrote his first letter home. When he left for war in May of 1965, he left behind his wife Marty and five-day-old daughter, Dabney. Marty had been informed that when her husband’s plane had gone down, he was killed in action (KIA). The Halyburton family had a tombstone made and held a memorial service for the supposedly dead Porter Halyburton. A year and a half into his captivity at the Hanoi Hilton, Marty was informed that Porter was not KIA but a prisoner of war.
She had convinced herself that Porter was better off dead than to have been captured, and lived with terrible uncertainty and worry for the next six years. (Lisa Patterson, 2020)
Though she knew he was alive a year and a half into his captivity, her first 6-line note from Porter came to her five years after his plane went down. During his imprisonment he sent Marty fourteen notes. The most meaningful item he received from her was a photograph of his daughter Dabney at four years old.
“When I finally got a picture of her, I felt a great connection with her because I could see her image for the first time,” said Halyburton. “I feel a great deal of love for both of them. That kept me going.”
Halyburton kept going strong until the war was over, and the prisoners of Hanoi Hilton were released in 1973; shortly after President Richard Nixon won re-election and signed an agreement to end the war. After prisoners were made aware of their imminent release, they were given new clothes and sent to the courtyard to prepare for their trip home. This grouping in the courtyard allowed some prisoners to meet each other face-to-face for the first time. As excitement of the men reintroducing themselves to their once invisible friends slowed, Halyburton reflected on his time in captivity. Rather than ruminate on the hate he harbored during his time at Hanoi Hilton, in that moment he decided to forgive his captors.
“It was not a Christian act, it was self-preservation because I knew the hatred that I had to them was something I didn’t need anymore,” said Halyburton. “And I’m not going to take that home with me to my family. I’m never going to let the Vietnamese, these people, affect my life again, adversely. And the only way I could do that was to forgive them, and when I did that, all the hatred went away. That’s been the most liberating thing in my life.”
Hatred is one of the many things that poisons the soul, in Halyburton’s opinion. He thought about his freedom of choice and chose to forgive instead of hate. His life is void of hatred, which brings him comfort. Halyburton’s ability to be resilient in his mind, body, and spirit changed the way he experienced the Hanoi Hilton and how he reflects on his time there.
“The realization through my experience that you can adapt to almost anything allows me to adapt to almost anything,” said Halyburton. “No matter what kind of situation you’re in, you always have a choice. You can choose how to react to your circumstances, and you can choose to feel sorry for yourself, mope and fret about it, or you can choose to have a positive attitude about it and make the best of it.”
“Everybody faces tough situations, and if you have faith that you can, and will, get through them, then that’s a great source of strength and ability to deal with what comes along. We don’t learn a whole lot from success, we learn some things. You learn an awful lot through failure. You learn the most about things through suffering.”
Halyburton encourages people to look at suffering as an experience that can teach you more about yourself and others, than any other thing. When talking about resilience he says that it is extremely important. That if you feel like you can’t deal with tough situations, you won’t deal with them. And if you feel that you can, then you will.