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A majority of the P.O.W.s, perhaps as high as 70%, in fact, did become divorce statistics. Virginia Guttersen remembers one wife who rushed out on the tarmac to embrace her husband and found she didn't recognize him at all. A fortyish woman, the new wife of a P.O.W., confides: "There are definitely two factions here, the old and the new. You can tell the new wives: young and pretty and happy and in love."
The P.O.W.s report that dealing with civilians is still a touchy business. They either gush and coo or start asking questions the P.O.W.s don't want to answer. Or are abysmally, often hilariously ignorant. Guttersen, who has now retired and is taking courses at the University of Arizona, found his young fellow students interested. "We heard you were a P.O.W.," a girl once said to him. Gutter-sen said yes. "Where?" asked the girl. "In Hanoi," said Guttersen. "Is that in Korea?" the girl asked.
It is a difficult thing to contemplate the likelihood that one spent five years be ing tortured for nothing. As they cluster together around the Marriott's eight bars and omelet-shaped pool, the P.O.W.s seem compelled to approve of the life they found at home. Nearly all of them are confused, embarrassed or annoyed by their strange hero status. Says John McCain: "It doesn't take a helluva lot of talent to get shot down." Virginia Guttersen ex plains: "To a military man, the P.O.W. is a loser, the guy who didn't complete his mission. The Government made them heroes. It was all they had."
Sunday night: 300 "heroes" and their wives, old and new, are winding down the weekend. They have stood and cheered as Ronald Reagan declared that Americans should "never again" go to war "unless we intend to win." Magicians and stand-up comics have sought to amuse. A press release has been circulated announcing that California Governor Jerry Brown will get the "Benedict Arnold Citizenship Award" for appointing ex-antiwar Activist Tom Hayden to the state's new solar energy panel. And now Tony Bennett is closing the show with a sad, silky version of Autumn Leaves. Off to the side, watching them, one begins to sense in some measure what they have endured, and still endure. They perfectly illustrate some lines from John le Carre's The Looking Glass War: "Nothing ever bridged the gulf between the man who went and the man who stayed behind."
—James Willwerth