October 29, 1963, near the village of Le Coeur, in the south Vietnam Mekong Delta region.
The planned assault was simple.
Unfortunately, it fell apart in the worst way possible.
In the wee hours of the morning, a three company operation trekked from the Tan Phu militia
post about 5 miles (eight kilometers) northwest to the village of Le Coeur.
They planned to attack at daybreak, driving out Vietcong (VC) guerillas that had taken
over.
This would secure the area and hopefully generate goodwill with the locals.
A trio of American soldiers supported the South Vietnamese troops--intelligence advisor
Captain Humbert “Rocky’ Versace, Sergeant Daniel L. Pitzer, and the South Vietnamese
Special Forces detachment, First Lieutenant 25-year-old James Nicholas “Nick” Rowe.
The US was not yet at war with North Vietnam, but merely sending military advisors to aid
the south.
It was unusual for advisors to observe battle at ground level, but Rocky was newly arrived
in the country and wanted to see how operations were run.
When the South Vietnamese troops attacked, the Vietcong pushed back hard.
There were far more VC troops than noted by intel, and they had stronger firepower than
anticipated.
Nick, Rocky, and several South Vietnamese troops found themselves pinned down in a canal,
crouched low in muddy water, bullets tearing over their heads.
That’s when the VC started using mortars.
Nick pulled out his handset and called for backup--but the VC jammed their broadcast
frequency.
Lieutenant Trinh made his way over to Nick to deliver some bad news--the VC had ambushed
First company, they wouldn’t be coming to help.
Nick and several other soldiers retreated down a path near the canal, the VC pursued.
Suddenly Rocky screamed and fell, grabbing his knee.
It was spurting bright red blood.
Nick wasn’t about to leave him behind.
He grabbed Rocky and dragged him off the path into a thick clump of reeds.
Nick was helping Rocky stop the bleeding when from behind, came a sharp command.
Some VC soldiers had guns pointed at Nick.
He slowly stood and put his hands up.
They quickly tied his arms behind his back, at both the elbows and the wrists.
Nick was marched through the village, forced to step over the mangled bodies of South Vietnamese
soldiers.
Many of the dead had been stripped of their weapons and clothes.
Eventually, Nick and his captors arrived at VC troop encampment.
Many of the soldiers carried Mossin-Nagant rifles and K–50 submachine guns.
Nick realized their intel had been bad.
They had gone up against a VC Main Force unit.
Guerilla VC weren’t as well trained and didn’t have access to such weapons.
The soldiers took Nick’s boots, socks, and camouflage hat, fighting over who got what.
Later Nick was moved to a hut and reunited with Dan and Rocky.
Over the next few days, US aircraft flew missions overhead, searching for the missing Americans
and bombing the VC.
Again and again, the prisoners were moved from camp to village to outpost.
Eventually, the prisoners were taken to a camp in the forest.
Guards brought Nick and Dan before three cadres of the National Liberation Front (NLF).
In careful English one of the men said to them “We are representatives of the Liberation
Front and come to see to your needs.
Do you have any demands of the Front?”
Dan asked about medical treatment for Rocky and was assured that he was being treated
for his wounds.
The prisoners were forced to take several propaganda pictures.
In one case, Nick and Dan were seated at a table with a cadre in a sharp khaki uniform
with a 9mm automatic pistol prominently displayed on his belt.
He offered them beer and soda as the photographer snapped away.
When the photo shoot was over, the drinks were taken away.
Nick and Dan were returned to their cage.
In November, the prisoners were moved to a newly built prison camp deep in the forest
of Rung U Minh, the legendary “Forest of Darkness.”
Nick and Dan were assigned to share a prisoner hut.
Rocky, who spoke fluent Vietnamese and had argued with the guards, was deemed a troublemaker
and isolated in a hut by himself.
The prisoners spent most of their time caged.
Each was issued gray pajamas and an aluminum cup, plate, and spoon.
For meals, prisoners received a small portion of boiled rice with nuoc mam, or Vietnamese
fish sauce.
They all rapidly lost weight.
Nick struggled with dysentery due to drinking river water.
Whenever US aircraft flew over, the prisoners were taken out of camp and hidden.
The NLF requested that the prisoners write letters to their families stating that they
were in good health, being well treated, and thanking the NLF for its lenient treatment.
Nick and Dan worried about the NLF possibly using their signatures on forged “confessions”.
Ultimately they decided to write a single letter to the International Red Cross.
The NLF insisted they write individual letters so Nick wrote a short note providing his name,
rank, serial number, date of capture and requesting the Red Cross inform his family that he was
alive.
Dan did the same.
About a week later, the cadre informed them that the Front could not get the messages
through but would try again.
So began the mind games.
For “processing purposes” the NLF wanted them to fill out an invasive form that asked
about their background and military training.
The cadre was pissed when Nick and Dan refused, saying that they had already provided all
the info needed under the Geneva convention.
The prisoners were lectured on the goals of the Front and how Americans were invading
capitalist oppressors.
During a lecture, one of the cadre told Nick and Dan that the US President Kennedy had
been assassinated.
Nick assumed it was a psychological ploy.
It would be many months before a newly arrived POW would confirm President Kennedy’s fate.
In January 1964, Dan and Rocky were removed from camp.
Nick hated that they were being split up.
The cadre assured Nick that Dan and Rocky would be safe saying that “It is the policy
of the Front that you will not be mistreated, tortured or put to shame.”
That’s a phrase Nick would hear several times over the next few years.
Nick was also told that the ultimate goal of the NLF was to help him to correct his
errors and become a better person.
During the long hours spent in his cage, to keep himself sharp, Nick practiced Vietnamese
and told himself aloud stories from movies he’d seen or books he’d read.
He also made up a baseball game with pebbles and did stretching exercises.
Weeks later, Rocky and Dan returned to the camp.
The three men were isolated, each to his own cage and not allowed to communicate.
Nick and Dan managed to create a dead drop near the latrine.
They left each other small notes, comparing lectures, thus breaking NLF attempts to play
one prisoner against the other.
One night Nick and Dan heard Rocky shouting.
The next morning for the first time Nick was allowed to walk to the kitchen to get his
morning meal of rice, instead of the guards bringing it to him.
He had to pass Rocky’s hut to get there.
The hut was damaged as if a big struggle had taken place and on the ground were Rocky’s
bloody pajamas.
Later one of the cadre told Nick that it was unfortunate that the Front had been forced
to take drastic action with Rocky, but they had been
left no other choice because of his bad attitude.
Nick and Dan assumed that Rocky was dead.
Nick was prodded into writing a report about his life.
He made up a fake background about being a military engineer who worked on civilian projects.
He had no knowledge of the highly specialized workings of the military.
The cadre was really happy with Nick’s progress until they received Nick’s report back from
the Central Committee.
It was incomplete because Nick didn’t repent.
Nick argued about admitting to something he felt no guilt for.
Finally, he ended up writing that he was sorry if any innocent Vietnamese civilians had suffered
because of him, but he was glad to bring medical programs, schools, and technical advances
to rural areas of the country.
Suspicious that Dan and Nick were somehow communicating, the guards changed Dan’s
latrine so he and Nick could no longer pass notes.
One day, some guards talked to Nick about a lecture, saying that the Front treated POWs
well.
When Nick questioned them about Rocky’s death one of the guards accidentally blurted
out that no one was dead.
Eventually, Nick figured out that Rocky’s death had been faked using eel blood and he
had been moved somewhere else.
The months wore on.
Prisoners came and went, some dying, some shipped to other camps.
The prisoners struggled with malnutrition, fungal infections, and various other ailments.They
received rudimentary medical care.
At different times various prisoners tried to escape.
They rarely made it far, due to physical weakness and disorientation as to where they were.
Sometimes all the prisoners were punished for the escape attempt of one.
From a newly arrived POW Nick and the other prisoners learned that in March of 1965, America
formally declared war on Vietnam.
On September 25, 1965 the guards allowed the special treat of listening to the radio.
The prisoners hoped to hear music.
Instead, the guards tuned into the news on Radio Hanoi.
It was announced that Captain Humbert Roque Versace and Sergeant Kenneth M. Roarbach had
been executed in retaliation for the murder of three patriots by order of the High Command
of the Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam.
The prisoners were shaken.
In October 1967, high ranking cadre arrived at the camp and told three POWs, Jim, John
and Dan that they were to be released.
Nick was told that he had shown a bad attitude and could not be released until he understood
the just cause of the revolution and repented for his misdeeds.
Although happy for them, Nic was depressed once the other POWs were gone.
He was now the only prisoner in the camp.
For comfort, Nick turned to prayer.
He also obtained a few animals as companions including a stray puppy and an injured dove.
Nick was allowed to spend more time outside his hut and supplement his diet by fishing
and scavenging for plants.
Sometimes the NLF had Nick listen to radio news reports on the racial violence and the
growing anti war movement in the US as a tactic to make him question his faith in America.
A few times Nick tried to escape but didn’t make it very far.
He ended up being punished.
The Front also punished him for refusing to write an essay confessing his misdeeds.
His punishments were never formal torture, nevertheless they were deeply abusive.
To punish him for not writing, the guards “lost” his pajamas in the wash and took
his mosquito netting for a few nights.
This resulted in Nick being painfully stung by hundreds of insects and not being able
to sleep.
One morning Nick was called to a meeting in the guards’ mess hall.
A representative from the Central Committee had arrived to speak with him.
What the leader said shocked Nick to the core.
He was accused of lying about being a military engineer.
An allied organization in the US, the South Vietnam Front for National Liberation had
told the Front all about Nick’s background, including how he was in the Special Forces.
Also, they knew where his parents lived and that their names were Lee and Florence.
They ordered Nick back to his hut.
Nick was distraught to know that an American anti-war protester had ratted him out.
He also worried about punishment.
Surprisingly, a punishment didn’t come.
Allegedly, one of the cadre interceded for Nick with the Central Committee and managed
to smooth things over by referencing progress Nick had made over the past few months as
evidence of his new attitude.
Periodically, Nick slipped into the guards’ sleeping hut and rifled through their paperwork
while they were eating at the mess hall.
Not long after Nick was confronted, he snooped through the guards’ papers and found paperwork
for him to be transferred to Enemy and Civilian Proselyting Section at Zone.
These high-up leaders controlled decisions regarding prisoner life and death.
Likely, Nick had been marked for execution.
Nick knew he had to escape, and began planning for it.
But unfortunately, he was moved to an even more isolated new camp before he could do
so.
A few days later on December 11, 1968, B-52 bombers heavily bombed the new camp.
The cadre, guards, and Nick escaped into the forest.
They spent several days on the run, with the US aircraft constantly circling overhead,
performing airstrikes.
Group discipline disintegrated as the guards started to lose faith in the cadre who were
confused on what to do.
Nick was able to talk his main guard into leaving the group by convincing him that he
knew US aircraft patterns and the two of them would be safer on their own.
The guard, whose nickname was Porky, and Nick struck out on their own, slogging through
a canal.
Nick tried to alert some helicopters by surreptitiously waving his white mosquito net whenever he
could.
Nick also managed to make Porky lose the magazine for his submachine gun, thereby disarming
his main weapon.
Then Nick picked up a branch and waited for the perfect moment where Porky was walking
ahead of him.
The sharp blow cracked across the base of Porky’s skull and he dropped immediately.
Nick hit him twice more with his hand to make sure he would stay down.
Nick ran out into a clearing and tried to wave down a Cobra flying overhead.
He was exuberant when the Cobra banked, they had seen him.
However, up in the Cobra, the pilot was preparing to make a firing pass and gun Nick down.
But then the flight commander coordinating the attack radioed the pilot, telling him
to wait, he wanted a VC prisoner.
He ordered the pilots to cover his Huey, he was going down to take the VC hostage.
As the Huey approached Nick, the door gunners kept their fingers on the triggers of their
M–60 machine guns, ready for action in case this was some sort of trap.
But then one of them spotted Nick’s wild beard and realized the thin man in the dusty
black pajamas wasn’t Vietnamese.
The shout went out over the radio that it was an American.
Nick’s thick facial hair had helped to save his life.
The helicopter landed in the clearing.
Nick ran slipping and stumbling to dive into its metal belly.
It was December 31, 1968.
Nick had spent 62 months in captivity.
Nick made a complete recovery.
He had been promoted to major while he was missing in action.
He also was awarded a Bronze star for his actions while a POW.
Later Nick developed a training course for maintaining survival in captivity, based on
his experience as a POW.
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) is now a requirement for graduation
from the U.S. Army Special Forces Qualification Course.
Navy, Air Force and Marine Special Operations personnel also attend variations of Nick’s
course.
Unfortunately, North Korea tends to isolate and suppress its citizens.
But some make a run for it.
Click here for insane true escape stories from North Korea:
Ever hear of the amazing Nicky Barr?
This Australian fighter pilot was captured as a World War II POW but escaped and was
recaptured 3 times!
Thankfully his fourth escape was his last.