1973 U.S. NAVY TRAINING FILM

[Music] [Music] in the spring of 1973 473 American fighting newly released prisoners of war came home from Hanoi these men would agree that this film might be one of the most important you'll ever see you notice how they carry themselves reply with confidence with self-respect they experienced a mental and physical ordeal few are required to face and they survived largely because of the basic elements of the code of conduct they used it they live by it to a man they consider its tenants as major ingredients of their ethical and spiritual lives what is this code this document that evokes such positive response the code which was first introduced in 1955 reads like this I am an American fighting man I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life I am prepared to give my life in their defense I will never surrender of my own free will if in command I will never surrender my men while they still have the means to resist if I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy if I become a prisoner of war I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades if I am senior I will take the command if not I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way when questioned should I become a prisoner of war I'm required to give name rank service number and date of birth I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies are harmful to their cause I will never forget that I am an American fighting man responsible for my actions and dedicated to the principles which made my country free I will trust in my God and the United States of America you got any heartburn with that you find anything you can't live with probably not in fact in the next few minutes we're going to show you how the code will help you and what it will mean to you in your continuing career as a member of the United States Armed Forces the code works but you don't have to take my word for it we asked some of those men you saw earlier the ones released from the Vietnamese prison camps to tell you what the code meant to them each man is a little different each man comes from a different background regional racial cultural there were different uniforms there's a variety of ranks and ages some are retired some still in active duty they have different ambitions and goals but they all have one thing in common the code worked for them you carry in common with those men not only the code of conduct but also an oath made it your swearing in to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States you're not alone and out of either everyone from the President on down shares that oath with you our first president General Washington in his farewell address to the youthful Republic described us Americans and how our heritage is the Morton upholds the wall together he said with slight shades of difference you have the same religion manners habits and political principles you have in common cause thought and triumph together the independence and Liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts of common dangers sufferings and successes courage is not a virtue confined to the Revolutionary patriot or the world war 2 marine at Iwo Jima it is a not uncommon commodity Bob Fant is a former POWs and a retired navy radar intercept officer who's been an instructor in a Navy survival school system we asked Bob about this quality called courage courage is a very complex quality there are various forms of courage and levels of courage basically I think courage is doing the right thing when you know the risk of pain personal injury and even death is high but you go ahead and you do this thing because you know it's right you know it's your mission your job you know that the success or survival of your whole operation your company your platoon or your aircraft or ship's mission depends upon you carrying out your end of the bargain it's a job you've been trained to do all the flak in the world is not going to stop you nothing's going to turn you back you've got to be willing to risk death another thing to remember you could be killed in the process of evading being captured attempting an escape or during the interrogation process it's damned dangerous to be in the military during wartime fred cherry was an f-105 pilot he was on his third deployment to Southeast Asia on a SAM suppression mission plane was shot down Fred's retired now a management consultant he recalls how important the organization and communications were first after becoming a prisoner and after getting in contact with the other prisoners through our communication system everyone helped to refresh your memory of the code of conduct of the uniformed service man the code of conduct was our Bible except for very few exceptions we live by and we lived up to it it got us through the toughest times and we had tremendous respect for each other we were still uniformed servicemen and we intended to maintain the honor and the dignity that goes with that uniform when a new prisoner came in he was reminded of his responsibilities to the Cote commander Tim Sullivan was a radar observer and an f4 phantom flying from a carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin while attacking a railroad bridge in North Vietnam his airplane was hit and he ejected into the waiting arms of the enemy Tim Sullivan has related his experiences to members of the US Navy going through survival training when you become a Pio w you've lost control of what happens to you physically if you give in to the enemy and help them out they're gonna use you just like any other tool they might capture they're only interested in what they can get out of you in most cases when you're first captured it's just you in the enemy you won't have the camp organization to help you yet you'll have to figure it out for yourself the code of conduct works but only because of everything else that works in our society family religion patriotism it's a set of basics that will get you through when it's just you in the enemy you have to reach down and rely on your training what your background is what your ideals are if you don't have these tools you're up the creek they'll take you for all you're worth captain Stan Newell US Army was a 19 year old efore when he was captured during a firefight in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam he talks about how they dealt with Article two of the code which deals with surrender the battle lasted for about four hours and maybe up until the last hour or 45 minutes the thought of surrender or defeat never crossed anyone's mind not mine anyway the assumption was everyone believed that help was on the way but then the last hour when things started looking bad and we hadn't had any contact with our higher units for quite a while we begin to wonder and to worry there was a staff sergeant with us Staff Sergeant Montgomery he died that day there was he and I and maybe two others left and someone asked him what are we going to do sergeant and he said without hesitation there's no question of what we're going to do we're going to stay here and fight and that was all that really needed to be said we were surrounded all of us were wounded and could be overrun at any minute there was no way to evade capture but we would resist the enemy until whatever the end was Sergeant Montgomery was like a god to us and we responded to his leadership it takes a certain kind of person to be a career soldier in a professional like Sergeant Montgomery he had some very strong feelings about his country about what was right and what was wrong and he was willing to put his life on the line for what he believed well so far we've heard about courage integrity of the group how important things like the family religion patriotism are to making it in trying to evade capture or in a captive situation all those you've heard from so far were directly injected into a combat situation even if you're not a combat soldier you could go a fluke or an accident find yourself in enemy hands it happened to one 19-year old sailor Doug peg doll was just six months in the Navy and was serving as a clerk aboard ship when the guns on his ship opened up on enemy coastal positions the concussion and the surprise caused him to lose his footing and he fell overboard he kept the float for six hours but unfortunately he was picked up by a North Vietnam fishing vessel and soon he was languishing in the Hanoi Hilton Doug Henkel today it's a civilian instructor the Navy's survival school in San Diego yeah I see the cold was never designed to be a law if you want to compare the code to something I would compare it to uh say the ten commandments you know we all know none of us have kept every commandment but that doesn't mean all the theologians get together in a conference and decide to to water down make it liveable for all of us no it's not supposed to be easy to live with the same with a code of conduct if some moral code and if you keep to the to the spear of the code that's what's expected of you if you keep to the letter of the law so to speak well that's great but your country realizes that you know they can bring great pressure to bear and they can trip you and make you break maybe the wording of the code of conduct but they can't make you break the spirit of the code lieutenant-colonel necro never set foot in the Hanoi Hilton he spent more than five years in a number of prison camps in the jungles of the South he was and is a Special Forces officer he was captured when his team was overrun by the Vietcong and on his fourth attempt successfully escaped indecision is one of the major problems that you'll face as a prisoner of war the enemy is going to force you to make decisions and it's up to you to decide what is right and what is wrong and you have to know the difference if what you do is right and you know it's right you take a hit for it then it's worth it the code is our guide and we teach it as a guide it is there when nothing is black or white but simply shades of gray now the code is a guide it's not there to hurt you the Uniform Code of Military Justice is the law there is a difference Lieutenant Colonel Gerry Driscoll an Air Force fighter pilot when he was shot down spent nearly seven years as a Pio W within a few hours of a shoot down he was under intensive interrogation I quickly realized that one of two things was going to happen one they're going to beat me to death or two they were gonna end up getting some information that they really wanted in the early 60s the training people said that the code of conduct had to be followed absolutely word-for-word no ifs ands or buts this was due primarily to a lack of understanding as to why the code came about and how it was to be used in Vietnam we found ourselves with a situation where you could not follow that policy absolutely if you tried to you were dead if the Vietnamese wanted some information badly enough they stood a good chance of getting something that they could really use but it was your job to make sure that they didn't get anything very good just remember article 5 you must evade answering further questions to the utmost of your ability this is navy commander Ralph Gaither he was on a low-level mission over the North when his NEFT up ground fire and came apart he ejected and landed in the middle of a farmer's field and was captured within three minutes after he hit the ground his seven years as a powa made a profound impact on him you'll hear what they want you to hear and you'll feel what they want you to feel you'll be as clean or dirty as they want you to be you'll breathe the air that they want you to breathe but you've got to remember this that you've never lost as long as you keep fighting and what's up here is what's important many as a day I stood stark naked out in the middle of the courtyard while they searched through all my worldly possessions looking for some secret rocket fuel formula I'm supposed to have but they could not take what I had up here it's the little victories that really count it you can you can steal what you have a right to have you can communicate with your buddies what what you have a right to communicate you can work together and strive together as a team and through these little victories you're gonna come out of it alive I'll commander gather didn't have a chance to evade capture some downed Airmen did successfully avoid falling into enemy hands one of those who evaded capture for more than three weeks was Lieutenant Colonel Roger Locker he's been a member of the air force headquarters staff at the Pentagon on 10 May 1972 I was in an f4 phantom and our flight of four f4 is engaged eleven mig-21s fifty miles north-northwest of Hanoi in less than one minutes time our flight shot down three mig-21 and I'm myself shot down being shot down as one of the last things that you have in your mind whenever you go out to fly on a combat sortie as I was in the parachute I had a bitter and sweet feeling the bitter wasn't the fact that due to my geographical location evasion scene and almost impossibility and sweeten the fact that I was still alive as I went down through the trees I began my 23 days of evasion in North Vietnam [Music] you really don't know what situation you're gonna end up in some people tend to get their act together and move out smartly some people tend to forget most of their training and of course there's the variances in-between of all denominations so you really can't predict a hundred percent of how you're gonna act in in that particular position I used to go pheasant hunting or cow honey as far as the pheasant aspect is setting tight until they step on you before you make your position known if at all and as far as being deceptive a lot of that came from cow hunting when that type animal that was very smart would always have the upper hand it would always be in the position where they could see you they would always be downwind from you and they pretty much call the shots I definitely wasn't trained as good as as the Navy SEALs the Army Special Forces our Air Force rescue forces however I had a little bit to keep me going not to compare it to the to the professionals who make their living doing this kind of a job I was able to do a small portion of it there is only so much you think he can take of sleeping on the ground getting bitten by mosquitoes and leeches day in and day out being hungry not being able to make as many miles in a day's time as you'd wish there were times when it go through your mind that maybe it's not worth it maybe I should blunder on out and get caught that's not the way the last 10 days that I spent on a Ridgeline behind the village that I had almost evaded into where I had time to collect my thoughts on how am I going to get across this large River Valley that has a high population density you think of four or five different ways of how you might be able to get at and then realize that the probability is very very small I never let myself give up I never got myself in a position feeling that I shouldn't walk down into the village with my hands up and get myself up on the 22nd day I got radio contact with American forces and a search and rescue effort was initiated I can't begin to say enough with my respect for the rescue forces at the United States Armed Forces has by all rights and purposes I should have been a powr 11 months I would emphasize the evasion is better than captivity if it takes you six months to go around that Valley you will be free every day of those six months the seven years and four months I was a captive I could have done a hell of a lot of evading you have to have a twist of luck in the first place if you land in the middle of a town or a farmers feel you're not going to get out you need training and how to survive off the land and most important you have to have a tremendous will to live you've got to say I'm not going to die and there's nothing around me that's going to make me die Terry you llamo was an airforce rf4 pilot when he was shot down he had a very hard time convincing his captors who he was this japanese-american and Ord the confusion the enemy had regarding his identity his conduct soon revealed that he was an American fighting man there are many problems you have to face during the initial throes of captivity you're feeling great pain from the injuries from open festering wounds from additional pain inflicted by the enemy hunger thirst worries about your family they not knowing whether you're alive or dead deep self-recrimination over the loss of your backseater these and many more both mental and physical at this juncture you need something to cling to something that will keep both your thoughts and actions in line name rank serial number date of birth resist resist with all your powers honor your fellow prisoners out of yourself the code help me get these things together always tried to abide by the code I sometimes fell short but I always knew what I had to do and it helped me get through the long long hard days we were American fighting men we were in a hostile hateful environment and our only logical and appropriate response was to resist all their efforts to defeat us you must know exactly what you're going to do when you try to escape we tried to escape from our jungle camps in South Vietnam we wanted to be home by Thanksgiving so we took action we really didn't plan we thought it would be easy I guess we had no shoes we didn't plan on how we were going to carry food or water we didn't even wait for our wounds to heal oh we thought about it for a few days but we didn't think about the repercussions the only real planning we did was to smuggle a rock into our hooch to hit the guard with we just didn't plan and as a result we recaptured in just a few minutes needless to say the treatment got a heck of a lot worse after that that's the trouble with escapes you've got to plan them from A to Z in North Vietnam getting out of the camps could be relatively easy name a night and we could organize it so that almost all of us would be running around the streets of Hanoi but where do you go from there you just can't fade into the population you're too different it was frustrating even in World War two when there were many more prisoners and we look like everybody outside the percentage of successful escapes was small but under the command of the senior ranking officer the organization is there to take advantage of any opportunity to escape or to help others to escape the key to any successful escape is very good planning former Vietnam POWs and the evader you've seen here our graduates of the toughest kind of training school for the fighting man's code of conduct they could talk to you for hours on a how to live by the code and how to live up to it of course we don't have that kind of time here but I do want to share some parting shots with you I assume everything the enemy does to you is a technique some kind of a trick you might be able to force you into doing something but he's not gonna be able to trick you into something if you assume as a technique in the first place if the enemy wants a picture of you or a propaganda statement they're gonna try hard to get it you must resist to the utmost of your ability the code requires that the code doesn't require you to die at the hands of a torturer or become permanently physically maimed it requires you to stick in there with the physical pain till you just can't take it anymore that's all any man can ask of you and that's all your government ask the enemy wants a willing and a compliant prisoner of war don't let that be you fight him make him work for everything he gets survive from day to day and you'll make it through it takes inner strength to adequately prepare yourself for combat and evasion in captivity I think everyone has that inner strength the problem is to be able to find it and use it when you need it good training will certainly help you survive but a great deal depends on the individual and his functioning inner strength and his dedication to survive with honor there is nothing new in the code nothing revolutionary or even divinely inspired all they did was go back after the Korean War and examine all the past POWs situations and review what you will do and what you won't do and put them into an easily understood and easy to remember set of guidelines acting honorably in combat and in captivity has been a true principle of the American military for over 200 years [Music] confidence in your leaders and trust in one another prepares you for combat all captivity that is a reasonable demand on any situation the cold is central to that kind of conduct I am back to your lives I can live with myself I feel good about myself I feel good about my fellow prisoners who helped me to maintain my self-respect you can't do it alone the preamble of the code says America will make every effort to obtain the early release of its prisoners and promises that the laws of this land will care for their families while they're away the guy on a battlefield or in a prison camp must know that America loves him and is taking care of his loved ones you cannot imagine the desperation a man would feel the guilt if he hadn't prepared for the powa anybody who might even remotely be subject to captivity should take all legal and official steps available to provide for his family we Americans have grown up with a set of basic moral principles it's in our history it's what Americans stand for is not taught in the military but everybody knows it you went through school learning about the early settlers who fought for their freedom first against nature and then against British rule the moving West growing the pioneering the people who fought in our great Wars and paid an enormous price for the freedom that we enjoy today we're all part of that heritage those of us in the military especially have played a leading role in protecting for all Americans a way of life and a political system that can't be beat anywhere on this earth [Music]