You've probably seen the bumper sticker somewhere
along the road. It depicts an American Flag, accompanied by
the words "These colors don't run." I'm always glad to see this,
because it reminds me of an incident from my confinement in
North Vietnam at the Hao Lo POW Camp, or the "Hanoi Hilton,"
as it became known. Then a Major in the U.S. Air Force, I had
been captured and imprisoned from 1967-1973. Our treatment
had been frequently brutal. After three years, however, the
beatings and torture became less frequent.
During the last year, we were allowed outside most
days for a couple of minutes to bathe. We showered by drawing
water from a concrete tank with a homemade bucket. One day as
we all stood by the tank, stripped of our clothes, a young Naval
pilot named Mike Christian found the remnants of a handkerchief
in a gutter that ran under the prison wall. Mike managed to sneak
the grimy rag into our cell and began fashioning it into a flag.
Over time we all loaned him a little soap, and he spent
days cleaning the material. We helped by scrounging and
stealing bits and pieces of anything he could use. At night, under
his mosquito net, Mike worked on the flag. He made red and blue
from ground-up roof tiles and tiny amounts of ink and painted
the colors onto the cloth with watery rice glue. Using thread
from his own blanket and a homemade bamboo needle, he sewed
on stars.
Early in the morning a few days later, when the guards
were not alert, he whispered loudly from the back of our cell, "Hey
gang, look here." He proudly held up this tattered piece of cloth,
waving it as if in a breeze. If you used your imagination, you could
tell it was supposed to be an American flag. When he raised that
smudgy fabric, we automatically stood straight and saluted, our
chests puffing out, and more than a few eyes had tears.
About once a week the guards would strip us, run us
outside and go through our clothing. During one of those
shakedowns, they found Mike's flag. We all knew what would
happen. That night they came for him.
Night interrogations were always the worst. They
opened the cell door and pulled Mike out. We could hear the
beginning of the torture before they even had him in the torture
cell. They beat him most of the night.
About daylight they pushed what was left of him back
through the cell door. He was badly broken; even his voice was
gone. Within two weeks, despite the danger, Mike scrounged
another piece of cloth and began another flag. The Stars and
Stripes, our national symbol, was worth the sacrifice to him. Now
whenever I see the flag, I think of Mike and the morning he first
waved that tattered emblem of a nation. It was then, thousands
of miles from home in a lonely prison cell, that he showed us
what it is to be truly free.