P.O. W.'s Felt Their Mission Was to Resist
Article revs public comments of nearly 100 returned Amer POWs about their experiences as POWs; several dozen men int in depth; repts of torture seem genuine, but physical brutality played a small part in the lives of many inmates, particularly those shot down more recently; it is still uncertain how POWs' commitment to resist enemy has colored their accounts of prison life; men captured in the North were often kept in old French prisons and sometimes spent yrs in the same cell; those captured in S Vietnam lived mainly in jungle camps and were moved constantly as captors moved; southern POWs were seldom able to communicate or organize among thesmelves; northern camps were organized, with the sr officers taking command; usually prisoners in N Vietnam presented a united front, but a few opposed the war and defied the authority of their srs in the name of 'conscience'; N Vietnamese were furious at US pilots who bombed their country; Amers were outraged at being captured by a backward, Communist country they considered inferior in all ways and habitually referred to their captors as 'sleazy gooks' and worse; initial mistreatment they got aggravated their animosity and brought them to point where they consciously 'forced' the N Vietnamese to be 'brutal' to them before they would obey any directives; an essential element of the POWs resistance struggle was a process one POW called 'reverse brainwashing,' whereby the reaction against anti-Amer indoctrination sessions by the Communists was to make the patriotism of the POWs even stronger; comment in ints by Lt Col A Lurie, Comdr C Clower, Lt Col J E Hiteshew, Lt D Rehmann, Rear Adm J A Denton and Lt Col L Shattuck; Denton, Rehmann and Shattuck illus
