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Many U.S. senior officers and uncooperative prisoners of lower rank were held in solitary confinement. Navy Captain James Mulligan was kept alone for 3½ years, Colonel Robinson Risner for 4½ years, and Air Force Colonel Fred Cherry for two years—with an unattended infected shoulder. Said Mulligan last week, "You're isolated in a small cell, with no sound, no fresh air. I was kept like an animal in a solid cage, worse than an animal. I couldn't even see out. I didn't see the moon for four years."
Fish Heads. Before 1969 food was kept at near starvation level at the more severe camps. For many prisoners, there were only two meals a day, six hours apart, and they might consist of nothing more than a bowl of watery soup, occasionally with a fish head in it. The bread was often wormy and the rice sandy. Lieut. Commander Knutson said that he and his fellow prisoners ate with one hand on their rice and the other on their soup bowl in order to keep the cockroaches from taking over.
Much of the torture was intended to force "confessions" or extract information. Often prisoners were beaten until unconscious to get them to sign statements about the "humanity" of their treatment. U.S. officials figure that as many as 95% of the P.O.W.s captured before 1970 were tortured. Almost all broke. Said Navy Captain Allen Brady: "I never met a man with whom they were not able to gain at least some of their objectives." Most felt, as did Army Major Floyd J. Thompson, that "these propaganda statements just weren't worth dying for."
There were partial victories. When interrogators put a pistol to Captain Milligan's head to force him to give some intelligence, he gambled that none of the officers present understood English and wrote nonsense after each question. Navy Captain James Stockdale never broke. Asked for information about U.S. ships, he drew a picture of an aircraft carrier with a swimming pool and 300-ft. keel. Navy Lieut. Commander John McCain III once listed the offensive line of the Green Bay Packers as the members of his squadron.
Defense Department officials believe that many of the 55 men listed as having died in captivity in North Viet Nam did so at the hands of torturers. According to several P.O.W.s, Air Force Major Edwin Atterberry, one of two prisoners who escaped and were recaptured in 1969, was beaten to death.
Although there seemed to be far fewer beatings at the hands of the Viet Cong, conditions in the South held their own horror. One prisoner was buried up to his neck for days. Another, who was suffering from dysentery, was denied medical assistance and finally suffocated in his own excrement. For those well enough to walk, there were endless work details. Army Major William Hardy, captured in 1967, figures that the Viet Cong "treated me like a slave" because he is black and "they believed all they heard about Negroes still being treated like slaves in the U.S."