Surviving a Pathet Lao Prison | No Man Left Behind

Unassisted, Vietnam cannot produce the military formations essential to it. News is just breaking: a United States plane has been shot down over [Music] La.

When they caught me, I took everything [Music] away, but you've got something that they can't get — what's in your mind. A good bit of the time in there, I spent walking, 'cause my leg had been banged up pretty good, and I was trying to get it back into shape. So I would walk from one corner of the room over to the other, into the far corner and then back again. I had paced it off and back and forth across the room. It took 300 and something times to make a mile. I'd keep track of it and walk a mile and mark it on the back of the door, and I think in the time that I was in there, I had close to 300 marks on the wall.

It gets kind of difficult at times. CU, it's the same thing over and over every day. You know, at times you think about home, but you try not to think about that too much — just TR and think about things that you've done in the past, things that you'd like to do. Run that through your mind and try and keep your mind active; you didn't want to just go around thinking of nothing.

I spent a lot of time doing math problems. I wasn't that fond of math, but it was something to do, and I didn't need anything else to do it. So, I would just scratch in the dirt and make up problems and solve them. You think about things that you did a long time ago and would be like to be home again, and just tried to think about pleasant things.

I did a lot of dreaming about food — just a good hunk of meat, a steak or something like that. The worst thing you can do in a situation like that is sit around and feel sorry for yourself, so the best thing to do is keep yourself occupied — something to do, plan ahead for whatever you think might happen, and of course, always sing: "How am I going to get out of here?"