Captured! The G

Captured! The Great Escape! A Pete Russey adventure
The military, regardless of branch of service, builds character.
I knew as a high school senior; I was headed for the service even though the late 1960s and early 1970s were a volatile time. There was an armed conflict in Southeast Asia and widespread college student unrest. In 1968 the selective service was drawing draft numbers, including mine. The number they drew for me was 77, which meant I was going into the Army. My entry, though, was delayed until after I graduated from college.
While in college, I had opportunities to speak to Veterans who served in Southeast Asia. For many, it was hard times. Most were glad they served. Most (including a couple of my roommates) faced a great deal of disrespect from fellow students because they fought in Southeast Asia. In the spring of 1972 violent protest against the Vietnam War sprung up across the country. At my university there was weeks-long riot with over 400 students arrested. The National Guard was called to quell the riots, and the university closed down for the remainder of the term. A few months later I received a letter from my “Uncle Sam”.
“Uncle Sam” reminded me graduation was near, it was time to go to work for him, take his physical, and the job he assigned me. Rather than being sent where the Army assigned me, I signed up for a program which allowed me to select my future in the Army
I started my service in the United States Army in early January of 1973, just one month after completing my last class at college. At twenty-two, a recent college graduate, and a proud Eagle Scout, I still, though, did not have enough confidence in my own abilities. I was going to rely on the military to build that. I spent seven years in the Army and developed many lasting friendships and had many adventures. All were character builders. Some were enjoyable. Some were humorous.. Some were, well, you be the judge.
My military occupation specialty (MOS) was 42A, personnel management specialist. I would be one of many whose job was to manage all aspects of soldier and leader personnel records, actions, and programs. Naturally, the Army thought I needed to be in extraordinarily good physical condition and be able to take orders without question. Thus, the reason for Basic Training
About a month into my Basic training, my company was scheduled to have field maneuvers after PT. The Army had arranged an epic adventure for us. It was going to be an exercise in what to do if captured by the enemy. This was 1973 and the Vietnam conflict (That’s what my drill sergeant called it) had been called to an end. The Paris Peace Accords, signed in January that year, established a ceasefire and mandated withdrawal of U.S. forces. As far as I was concerned there was no reason to practice being a hostage. I was convinced no more soldiers would be sent there. So why were we doing this?…. Because we were told to do so, that’s why. And that was all we needed to know.
About 1 pm, my entire company was loaded into transport vehicles and taken somewhere in the middle of nowhere (Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri boondocks) and dropped off. Some sergeant lectured us about how to evade capture and what we were to do in the event we were stupid enough to get captured by the enemy. After the lecture, we were told to remain seated until we were dismissed. We had just become their prisoners. Each of us would be allowed to escape into the woods at a designated time. Our assignment was to evade capture and make our way to a predetermined location.
It appeared as if I was going to have my very own Pete Rusey “Great Escape”. I saw that awesome movie a decade earlier. That was what I thought about, anyway, when I heard the word “escape”.
During the field lesson, our instructors assured us they would, after our capture, follow the international laws of the Geneva Convention and treat us like the enemy are supposed to treat their POWs. They gave some examples. Extremely graphic, uncomfortable and scary, but things, hopefully, I could endure. I had, after all, volunteered for service to country. Becoming a POW could be part of it. But honestly, until that exercise, I had not really given much thought to being a prisoner of war. The job I enlisted for, I believed, would not put me in that kind of danger. I was going to have a stateside assignment.
After the lecture and more field training, we were organized into patrols and assigned a partner. That would be the person we would rely on when we escaped from our simulated prison camp. In groups of two, we were to make our way to a predetermined area called a “safe zone”. (Think Great Escape, here. I thought I was Steve McQueen’s character, Captain Virgil Hilts’ The Cooler King’, but without the motorcycle. That was my escape and that was the way I saw me in it.)
When the exercise began it was totally dark and the only equipment we had was on our back. That was our uniform. Everything else was taken from us. It was very cold February day, and the ground was frozen solid. The snow was deep and getting deeper. AND it was my birthday. Playing in the snow in the dark was not my idea of birthday fun.
Every escapee in the company was given the location of the “safe zone” and an assigned time to begin his trip through the woods to the “safe zone”. We were told it would take about ninety minutes to get there.
Don’t forget, I envisioned myself as the very macho and capable Steve McQueen. Or at least I tried to do so. “This”, I thought, “is pretend. They won’t… or can’t… treat us too badly. We’re soldiers in the US Army. They’re not really going to do to me what the Vietnamese prison camp would do to me. This shouldn’t be too bad.”
I was assigned Howard as my partner. Although Howard was in my patrol, I really didn’t know much about him. He was short, muscular, talked loud, and appeared to be a know-it-all. For whatever reason I perceived Howard as extremely confident of his abilities. So, I followed his lead. Regardless, how it turned out, the comforting thought was that I knew this was only a game and not the real thing.
I was not worried about being captured. I was an Eagle Scout. Boy Scouts don’t get lost in the woods. I had also graduated from college a couple of months before enlisting. Howard had no college education, and I was much too smart to get lost. I could use those skills, if I felt Howard didn’t meet expectations.
The pre-determined time to escape (we were told to go) had arrived. So, off we went.
About 1 min into the woods, Howard told me he knew how to do this escaping thing. “This is a piece of cake.”, he told me in his normal loud voice. “Before I joined, I used to hunt game for our family’s food. I can follow any kind of a track.” I was pretty sure, if our captors were near, they heard Howard.
“Howard,” I whispered. “Keep your voice down. Hopefully they didn’t hear you?”
Even though this training exercise happened over fifty years ago, I still remember thinking, “HUHH! We’re supposed to be escaping from a Vietnamese prison camp, you moron. What kind of track is going to be left for us by our human captors? We’re not following animal tracks………… Boy! We’re in trouble.”
Howard and I quickly and quietly began making our plans to get to the safe zone. We would still be OK. Hilts, my favorite character in the “Great Escape” movie, wouldn’t get captured. He was too cool for that. I forgot, though, he didn’t succeed in his escape attempt. Before we completed formulating our plans, we saw the enemy and tried a couple evasive maneuvers. To no avail!
As we were escorted back to the prison camp, one of them said, “You’re the first ones. Now it’s time for interrogation!” Our prison? It was the tent from which we started.
A couple hours later the exercise ended, and the entire company was gathered under the big tent for one final lesson. The company was informed that Howard and I had accomplished something special that day. We broke a long-standing record by fifteen minutes. “Boy, we must have really done something good for the CO to put Howard and me out front like that!”, I thought. He then proceeded to tell everyone we were captured after only five minutes in the field. An accomplishment I am not particularly proud of.
It’s funny what one remembers, even after half a century. I remember that in this exercise there was a young man in our platoon we all considered the weakest link and probably booted out. I think we named him “Bean”. He was scrawny, tall, and struggled with the PT exercises. He was always being screamed at by the sergeants.
We all knew he would get captured quickly and say all the wrong things when interrogated. You see, we were all told that no matter what your captors said or did to you, the only information we were to provide was “name, rank, and serial number”.
Bean was going to be the first to be captured and he was going to spill his guts. ….Or so we all believed.
Obviously, he was not the first captured. But he was captured without his partner about five minutes after Howard and me. Bean’s partner arrived twenty minutes later. Bean was the last captive to be released from interrogation. This military exercise would not end until all captives were interrogated. Before the company was dismissed from the classroom, Bean was brought up to the front of the company and identified to all of us as the exemplary soldier.
“Huhh!!! Scrawny Bean, an exemplary soldier??” We were all stunned. The training officers told us that Bean did everything right. We should all follow his exemplary behavior of a captured soldier. They divulged the information some of us provided the captors. Many of us provided more than we were supposed to. Bean, apparently, only provided “name, rank, and serial number”, no matter what they did to him. This included putting him in a barrel, closing the lid, and banging on it for several minutes.
We were proud of him. He was from our platoon. The scrawny kid made us look good in front of the whole company. Clearly an example of why one should not judge a book by its cover.
Like ‘The Cooler King‘Hilts, I was captured (sort of). But that’s where the similarity ended. I did not help in any mass escape. Nor did I have access to a motorcycle. Also, Hilts was returned to cooler with a defiant smirk. No cooler for me and definitely no defiant smirk from me.
That exercise certainly provided an excellent environment for character building. I have never forgotten it.