This is Veterans' Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is retired US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton, a flight officer who spent seven and a half years in captivity after a forced ejection over North Vietnam. He is also the author of Reflections on Captivity, which recounts his experiences as a prisoner of war and those of many others. Commander Haliburton was born in Florida, but spent most of
his youth in Davidson, North Carolina. He told us about his education, his pursuit of military service, and finding a bride who could have had no idea what their marriage would bring in just a few short years.
I was born in Miami, Florida, but I was raised in Davidson, North Carolina, from the age of two up until I went to Swani Military Academy for last two years of high school. I came back to Davidson and attended Davidson College and graduated in nineteen sixty three with a degree in English literature. Marty and I had met
during college. She went to Queen's College and I went to Davidson and they just, you know, twenty miles apart, so she still had a semester to go, and we got married in December of nineteen sixty three while I was in pre flight and she was still in college. And so from there we went to various training bases and so on.
A desire to fly F four has led him to pursue a Navy preflight program in Pensacola, and that was just the beginning of getting prepared to serve in combat as a naval aviator.
My IT tests showed that I had twenty twenty five in one eye, and so they put me into the NFO pipeline Naval Flight Officer pipeline rather than the pilot pipeline. And make a long story short, I passed the AI test and was slated to go back to pilot training, and I don't know it never never paperwork never got to the right place. And anyway, I qualified for F
four's and so that's what I really wanted to do. Anyway, so I stayed with that, and we wound up in the rag It Replacement Air Group in the VF one oh one in Key West, Florida. And when I finished, when I finished that training, I was going to join my first squadron, which was VF eighty four in Oceana, Virginia, and Harty was eight months pregnant at the time, and so I moved her up to Miami where she had some family, and I went on to join the squadron.
But then she called as I stopped off in Davidson to see my folks, she said, I think I'm gonna have this baby. So I got emergency Lee went back to Miami and I saw my daughter for five days, and then I had to go on and until I joined the squadron. And then that was in April of nineteen sixty five.
A month later, as a brand new dad, Porter Halliburton deployed to Vietnam. He wouldn't return home for years.
In May, we deployed aboard the USS Independence for Vietnam. The Independence was the first East Coast carrier to go to the West coast operations in the South China Sea.
And of course the F four and what we've been trained to do was air to air defense, you know, we had air to air missiles and so on, and yet in Vietnam we were going to be doing lots of other things as well, and so we we sort of did some training for that in preparation for that, but it was pretty cursory and it took a month to get to Vietnam, and we began began operations in what was called Dixie Station, which was off of South Vietnam, and we flew missions for a week or so under
the control of Air Force Facts forward air controllers that were designating targets in South Vietnam, and so we we worked with that and kind of a warm up to go up to Yankee Station and began operations and rolling thunder against North Vietnam. Our operational period there was divided into three operational periods of forty.
Five days each and with.
R and R in between or going back to QB Point in the Philippines for maintenance and all of that.
Commander Haliburton gradually began experiencing misgivings about the missions he was undertaking in Vietnam. Given the high risk and frustrating rules of engagement for American pilots. He seriously doubted how effective or worthwhile these missions were in the grand scheme of the war.
I had flown over seventy missions, mostly with the pilot that I thought was the best in the squadron. His name was Lieutenant Commander stan Olmsted, and of course I'm just I think I made Lieutenant JG. While we were, you know, in operations and so on, I was becoming kind of disillusioned with what we were doing, you know, just missions that didn't seem to be worth anything, and we were risking our lives and our airplane and all of that.
And so.
We came back from R and R in Japan, and on our third line period, we were due to be back in the United States by Christmas, and so we were all looking forward to that. And then finally we got a notification that we were going to have a mission that was one of those that McNamara and Johnson controlled. Wouldn't you wouldn't normally be able to tack these missions
and so on. And it was a bridge from China to Hanoi across the river at Taiwing, and it was a rail and road bridge, and so it was a major communication between China and Vietnam and taking it out really would have disrupted their ability to supply of course, that was independent of stuff that was coming in by ship to high Fall, and I think we were pretty
frustrated with the rules of engagement. I mean, for example, we still have air to air mission protecting, you know, tar cap, bar cap, all kinds of things, but the rules of engagement said you had to have visual identification of the airplane that was not squawking, not identifying itself. Well, once you do, once you get close enough to visually identify the airplane. The two kinds of missiles that we had were not very effective, and so it was very frustrating.
Finally, Commander Halliburton was sent on a mission that he felt was worthwhile. However, a strike from an anti aircraft gun, possibly from a surface to air missile site, sent his plane down and changed the course of his life forever.
But finally we were getting a mission that I thought was worthwhile. And there were about thirty or more airplanes from our squadron, I mean from our air wing that
were involved. And we had four aircraft from our Air Force squadron and four from the other Air Force squadron, which is VIA forty one, and we were assigned flak suppression, meaning we were going to duel it out with the anti aircraft guns that protected the tiwing, and so we were flying pretty low level to avoid sam two missiles which don't operate well below three thousand feet, but it put us right in the envelope for an aircraft fire, and so standing I got hit on the way to
the target, and we took a hit right in the front cockpit, and Stan was killed, I think immediately, and my oxygen masks blown off my I had piece of metal sticking out of my hand. There were papers flying around, holes in the canopy and everything, and so I knew that I had to make a decision, you know, whether
to get out of the airplane or not. And so I decided I would, And so I ejected and very short riding the parachute and very near village that was shooting at us while we were well, I was coming down.
But there were really two decisions. The first one was whether to eject at all, which he obviously did. The second decision was how to eject.
I had two choices for ejecting. There are two ways to do it, and the primary and preferred way is handles that are up here above the seat that you pulled down and it pulls a canvas shield in front of your face to protect you from the blast of ejection. And all of that well, I reached up there to do that and I felt twisted up metal, and I pulled it down. I realized it was my kneeboard that held all of our papers and maps and everything I all twisted up. So that was the indication that we've
been hit pretty hard. And so I threw that down and decided. I didn't know whether this was damaged or what, but I made a quick decision to use the other. And there's a d ring between your legs here, and you just pull up on it and bang, there you go.
That's retired to US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton. In Just a Moment, Halliburton describes trying to avoid capture in North Vietnam, being captured and what happened next. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is Veterans Chronicles.
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This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is retired US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton. Just a moment ago, Haliburton told the story of his plane being shot down, making the decision to eject and safely parachuting to the ground. But he wouldn't be safe for long. Just like every other downed to American aviator, his first
choice was to avoid capture. He landed near the village over which his plane had been shot down, and from there began his fight to survive, and he could see his odds of avoiding capture dwindling. By the moment.
I knew there was a there was a village. There were people shooting at us, at me, uh and uh. When I landed, I got on my radio and said, you know that I've been We've been hit, I ejected, I was on the ground, I was okay all of that. I got no response from it at all.
Uh.
And so I began to try to go to the opposite direction from this village, try to get over this little hill, because I knew that the that the carrier had sent a rescue helicopter on a destroyer pretty pretty far up into Hollong Bay or Gulf of Donkey, and I knew that there was a chance that you know, that helo might get in, and so I wanted to get away from the gunfire and so on.
I never made it over the hill.
Because I just ran out of water and energyed everything. I've probably in some kind of shock, and so I had to stop and rest. And at one of the funny incidents, there was I looked for the place of best cover, which is just some kind of bushes. It wasn't much, and so I started for that, and right in front of me, a big black snake starts going for the same bush, and so I decided, well, I'll let that guy have that and I'll go somewhere else,
which was not very good cover anyway. And so anyway, the villagers came and I didn't take them long surround.
They knew pretty much where.
I was and so on. So I was captured and taken to their village. And as I was as we were walking back, the airplanes from that we're coming back. Unfortunately, they had the same track out as they came in, and so a couple more airplanes were shot down. I think three other airplanes were shot down simply because they came back exactly the same way it went in, and
the gunners are there waiting. I later I heard nothing on my radio, but I destroyed it right before I was captured, just because I didn't want the North Vietnamese to have it, because we knew that they used that to try to lure in rescue helicopters and to a trap. And so when I cut that cord to the radio.
That was I knew that was my last bit of.
Attachment to the world that I was leaving behind, and so I had no idea what lay ahead, but I knew it wouldn't be it wouldn't be good in any in any sense. But right then I determined that I was going to do everything I could to survive. And for example, in the little village, they treated me pretty well actually and allowed me to I indicated I was very thirsty.
They gave me some water, a little what.
What passed for soup for them, and rice, and I wasn't at all hungry, but I ate it out of just determination that I was going to eat everything, and I didn't want to offend these people, you know, by refusing. And so I made some decisions right there that that I kept with me throughout my captivity.
The villagers treated Halliburton fairly well. The North Vietnamese army was a different story.
I was there in that village for probably several hours, and again they I don't think they'd ever seen a Caucasian. Maybe we hadn't bombed up in that area much at all, and so they were just they were curious about all this equipment.
I had everything.
Matter of fact, I was very afraid that they were going to fool around with my seat pan, which has a life raft in it, and I thought they were you know, if they actuate that in this little room where we were, the life raft is going to you know, explode and they're going to feel like, you know, this was some kind of a booby trap or something. And so I was really trying to keep and then they had my gun, my thirty eight, and I was fully with it and went off. You know, right, he didn't
kill anybody, had it pointed up. But so anyway, they were very curious. And then after a couple of hours a jeep a ride with some military or I don't know where they were, regular military, I think they were, and I was, you know, handcuffed and blindfolded, and we went off and it took a couple of days to get the Hanoi. Even though it was only forty miles.
The road was just absolutely terrible. I mean sometimes you would just go in one or two miles an hour trying not to get and of course I'm handcuffed and blindfolded, and it was a pretty rough trip. And we stopped at a village, and that's where my first interrogations began.
And the interrogator who was civilian, I think, but he didn't speak English, but he had a phrase book, you know, and so he could write out questions and push the paper over to me with a pencil and want me to write the answers, and of course I pushed the paper back, and anyway, that became a very tense situation because that happened back and forth several times. I wound up with a guard with AK forty seven next to my temple, and I thought, well, okay, that's that's that's
the end of this. This is how it's going to end. So but they didn't want to kill me, and so they got him away anyway, and then we spent the night a couple of nights in some kind of an army army camp, army base or something. And then I wound up arriving in the morning at the Hanoi Hill. I was by this time my thirst was just overwhelming.
I just was so thirsty. And they set me down in this hallway and there was a spicket there, and I just turned that spicket on and drank, not really even thinking about the fact that you don't do that. You don't drink this water. It has to be boiled. But I never got sick from it, so I was very lucky. But this began. Then I moved into Heartbreak Hotel, where there were six other guys there, all of us having been shot down either on the seventeenth or the sixteenth, all.
From our ship.
We had four POWs from our ship, and then two that had been photo reki on five c's to take pictures before all of this operated. Of course, they got shot down, and what they missed was another SAM site that we did not know about. And I'm pretty sure that the anti aircraft fire that got us was part of that SAM site. So I'm told that the next day of the day after that, a strike specifically went in to wipe out this SAM site.
That's retired to US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton. When we come back, we'll learn how Halliburton's rigorous training for what to do if captured as a prisoner of war helped him out in some circumstances and made his life much
worse and unnecessarily so in other circumstances. He also explains how his refusal to cooperate with his interrogators led to him having worse and worse living conditions over time, but he also tells us the amazing story of how the North Vietnamese effort to put him in the worst possible situation ended up being one of the best. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is retired to
US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton. Halliburton and other American service members had been taught very clearly what they could and could not divulge to their enemy captors, and Halliburton abided by that carefully, but he says his life would have been easier if he and others could have mentioned other information that was of no value to the North Vietnamese. The strict policy complicated his time in the camp and also kept his loving wife and family in the dark about his true situation.
I had been offered opportunity to write a letter home. I said yes. I knew that we were guaranteed that by the Geneva Conventions, and I said yes, I'd like to write a letter home. And they want to know the address where I would send it, I'd take it. I didn't wear a wedding ring, no identification other.
Than you know, my.
My ID card and dog tags and so on. And they wanted to know the address that I would send the letter, and I said, I'll just send it to the US. That wasn't allowed. So I passed up the opportunity to write. And that's one of the regrets that I have, because this training that we had in Seer School was really black and white. It was just you know, name, rank, service, summer, date of birth, nothing else. You're willing to die, give
your life before anything else. In Seer School, I had been undergoing interrogation, you know, by this guy that was wearing a uniform that looked like a Soviet uniform and yet you know he's supposed to be Korean. And it was crazy. And they said, okay, here's an academic situation. You were lying on a table here and you have a bubbling chest wound. You need an immediate blood transfusion. What's your blood type? And they said, oh, start the program again.
We're alive.
What's your blood type? I said, APOSTI quick.
As I could. It's on my dog tags.
It's you know, it's on my ID card, but I wanted them to know that because I would die without a blood So I was criticized for that. It was not name, ranks, date of birth, it was blood type. So that was the error of our training in the in the code of conduct, It's not It took it away from any kind of leadership decisions, uh, analysis of what your situation is, Uh, how you are going to survive in captivity without communication with your captors over particularly
over a long period of time. And so the first until we kind of figured all this out, it was very rough time because trying to stick to the name right and service number, date of birth was very difficult. You know, ours kneel on your knees, or or in leg irons, or or.
Being beaten or threatened and all of this.
Commander Halliburton's refusal to answer questions got him moved to worse and worse locations until he eventually had to complete a stint in solitary. But it was just when he reached his darkest moment that the North Vietnamese made a critical error and ended up revitalizing Haliburton and improving his outlook.
So finally I was given a choice, and they said, if you continue to refuse to talk to us, we're going to move you to a worse place. Well, my god, I was in this little cell in Heartbreak, which is just two concrete bunks with built in leg irons and a bucket, and not a whole hell of a lot more than that. I couldn't imagine a worse place. On the other hand, if you talk to us, we'll move you to a better place, a much better place. You be with your friends, you get better food, you'll play games,
write letters. It would be wonderful, you know. And of course I wasn't going to do that. And so I refuse, used, and moved to a worst place. And so long story short, I moved to three more worst places. Each one was worse or bad in its own way, not exactly like the little cell in Heartbreak, And so I was I wound up in what I think was the worst place I had. It was a storage shed out by the back wall of this prison that we call the zoo.
I wasn't in the ann or Hilton anymore. And it was full of coal dust that had been used to store coal, and filthy it would have had every vermin rats were running in and out, and.
I was.
Very sick.
They left my food outside for the ants and the rats to get before they put it inside for me, and then I couldn't eat it. It was just really and I really thought I was going to die there. I couldn't see how I would survive. And so when I was given this same choice again, it was really it was the hardest decision I'd ever had to make in my life, aside from whether to get out of
the air plate or not. And I just I knew I couldn't see any good outfit if I said yes or no, you know, and so it was very difficult, but I finally I said no, you know, I said, well, if I'm going to die, I'm going to die, you know, without sacrificing my my integrity, honor, whatever, and letting down your your buddies, your fellow POW's was a huge motive motivation aside from your own feelings about.
Right and wrong and doing your duty and all of that. I mean, you just.
Couldn't let these guys down. You didn't, you'd be disgraceful.
You couldn't live with that.
When I said no and was blindfolded and led up to another cell block. I I had no idea what it was going to be like. And they opened the door to this cell and pushed me inside and said, you must care for Cherry. And it was plain, you know, I was going to be this guy's servant. I was gonna be caregiver. I had to take care of him and do everything for him. And it was Major Fred Cherry, a Black Air Force pilot, and he was very badly injured. He'd almost had his arm ripped off his body. He
had broken foot and all kinds of things. And in their eyes and their concept about racial relations in the United States, they thought were putting a young southern white boy in with a black man and being told to take care of him would be the worst thing that they could do to me, And of course it wasn't. I was so hungry to be with another friendly human being. I didn't care what he looked like or anything. The significant thing, though, at the time, was that up until
this time, I'd been concerned with just very basic things. Survival, doing my duty, getting home in as good as shape as I possibly could. Those are the three things that.
I was concerned with.
But now I'd been given something important to do. To try and help a man survive, and this arm business and everything wasn't it wasn't the thing that risked his life. It was the fact that they later operated on his shoulder, trying to put his arm back, because they had some idea they might send him home early, because he was the first black, first and only black at the time, that they were going to send him home as a propaganda gesture, and so they operated on him. And then
that's the thing that really really required my help. And he says, I saved his life, and I think I did, but I had no choice, and because by that time we had become such close friends, and I learned so much from him. I mean, hell, he was my senior officer, you know, he outrang me by two ranks, and I just I had never been in this kind of a position, and having something important to do change my whole outlook
on captivity and what life's all about and everything. And I realized that up until then, part of my duty was communications and memorizing the names of everybody else who was there and passing on information. But beyond that, you know, it was just we all thought the war was going to be over very soon. Now realized how important it was to build a military structure with command and eventually building a community. You know, we were all that was our family now, and so it was time with Fred.
I was with him for eight months. When we were separated, it was one of the saddest days in my life. I just I didn't know what was going to happen to him. He was still in bad shape.
After his time caring for Colonel Cherry. Commander Halliburton was once again facing these sub human conditions of Vietnamese prison alone. And the tides did not begin to turn until after the death of Hochi Minh, the North Vietnamese leader, in nineteen sixty nine.
So that's when the terrible decision was made by the Vietnamese. They sent us on the Hanoi March. And there's the other time that I thought we were going to die was in the Hanoi March.
But we survived.
And I know that they were threatening to put us on trial for war crimes and execute us. And when that was announced, President Johnson said, if you do that, I'm going to use the B fifty twos to level Hannoi. And so they did not put us on trial, but they did institute a policy of systematic torture to get what they had not been able to get before, and so this began the worst period of our captivity. I went out to another prison out in the country, very
bad place called the Briar Patch. I was back in solitary confinement and went through some really, really tough times out there.
And that period.
Lasted from the summer of nineteen sixty six until late sixty nine or seventy, when the policy was changed again for the better. Hoach you men died in late sixty nine, and so they took that opportunity to change her policy towards us, because I think even they realized that what they were doing was having a counter effect. Now the world knew that we were being tortured.
That's retired to US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton. This was part one of our conversation with Commander Halliburton. In part two, we'll learn how he learned that he had been declared killed in action, and that's how his family thought of him for a long time. We'll also discuss how that got fixed, how the famous tap code developed and kept morale as high as possible among American prisoners. And of course how he got home and what his life is
like since please join us for that. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter. We're at AVC update.
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