Operation Thunderhead (15 page)

That answer set Bug off again on how Dramesi had such a bad attitude. Then the questions went back to military subjects. If Bug had learned about the Thud Ridge barracks mission being a fabrication, he didn't show it. But when Dramesi continued to refuse to answer the military questions, Bug went back to asking about the escape. Then the cycle of Goose and the ropes would begin again, with the occasional beating thrown in for variety.

THE DUNGEON

On the eighth day of Dramesi's extended torture session at the Hanoi Hilton, Bug and Goose came into the room and astonished him. The heavy irons on his feet and ankles were removed, and his hands were untied. It appeared that he was being released, at least from his interrogation period in Room 18.

The joy Dramesi felt was strong. He thought he had made it, that he had gone through the crucible and gotten out the other side with his honor intact. He wanted to cheer but held himself back. The fact was, he could barely walk. He went out of that particular chamber of horrors on his own, walking slowly and stiffly on legs that ached and feet that could barely bend. But he walked nonetheless.

Led through the complex by Bug and Goose, Dramesi made mental notes on the interior layout of the building. The group went down three steps into the garden area that Dramesi had caught just a glimpse of earlier. Crossing the garden, they went through a pair of double steel doors, down another corridor, and through another secured door.

The group was in a dark, dank hallway, not much above what might have been found in a medieval dungeon. Lining the walls of the shadowy hall were eight doors, four to a side. Like a scene from another bad old movie, the sound of the lock turning in one of the doors echoed loudly through the hallway. The rusted hinges squealed with the metallic sound of neglected metal on metal as the door was drawn open. Written in black above the door was the number “2.”

Shoved into what was little more than a crypt, Dramesi looked about the dreary interior. What he saw was nothing more than a storage place for bodies that weren't quite dead yet. The room was barely the size of a root cellar in an old house back in the States, only a cellar would have smelled a lot better than this cubicle. The bucket in the corner established at least one likely source of the smell. Instead of having two bunks stacked on top of one another, this cell had flat wooden bunks along opposite walls. There was barely a foot distance along the middle of the chamber separating the two sleeping platforms. At the foot end of the bunks, nearest the door to the cell, were a set of wooden and iron stocks, the kind seen in an old movie where the prisoners in the dungeon would have their legs secured.

The stocks were solidly secured to the wood of the bunks. The wooden base of the device had two curved depressions cut into it to accept the prisoner's ankles. A flat iron bar was hinged at one end and could be locked down across the top of the stocks with a padlock. It was another horrible device in a place filled with such things, and Dramesi had a feeling he was going to become intimately familiar with it.

Goose and Bug set the prisoner down on one of the bunks. Shoving his prisoner over, Goose put his legs into the wooden stocks. Then he slammed the iron bar down across Dramesi's already injured ankles and locked the bar in place. The slots in the wooden part of the stocks were small, too small to easily accept the thicker ankles of an American. Bringing the iron crossbar down hard made sure that the stocks could be locked shut. The agony was another plus to the sadistic Goose.

But the binding of the prisoner wasn't completed yet. Grabbing Dramesi's left wrist, Goose put one end of a pair of handcuffs on it. Pulling the prisoner forward, Goose locked the other end of the cuff around the iron bar of the stocks where it went across Dramesi's right ankle. Bent forward to where he could barely breathe, Dramesi only had his left arm free. The screeching squeal of the door's hinges was the prelude to it slamming shut. The lock clicked and the footsteps of Bug and Goose diminished as they walked down the hall. Dramesi was alone in the dingy cell with his misery.

The elation he had felt just a short time earlier was gone. It was apparent that all he had managed to do was survive the torture chamber just to be chained in a dungeon. All he needed was a sweating, muscular, misshaped dwarf to come lurching in with a whip in his hand to make the medieval image complete. Then again, the shuffling insanity of Goose filled that role fairly exactly. Depression and gloom settled across his back like a thick, suffocating cloud.

The question of whether the torture was ever going to end kept running through Dramesi's mind. Bent over the way he was, he couldn't sleep, couldn't rest, and he wasn't even let out of his bonds in order to relieve himself. For twenty-four hours a day, Dramesi remained in that bent-over position. Inevitably, when he soiled himself Goose would arrive to punish the prisoner, pounding Dramesi's head against the cell wall.

The poor food he was given kept him going, but at what cost? Dramesi wondered if death would be the only release from his tortures that allowed him to keep his sense of honor intact. He wasn't even being questioned, just punished.

Before very long, the blood-starved tissues in the feet started to swell. The stocks were so tight that circulation was restricted. There wasn't anything he could do about the itching that continued unabated on his feet; he couldn't reach the point of irritation in order to scratch it.

The only things that were benefiting from Dramesi's position were the insects in the room. Swarms of mosquitoes flourished on his blood, feeding until they were so bloated they couldn't fly. Infection spread from his ankles, and the bullet wound on his thigh remained untreated. He started to wonder not if he would lose a foot or leg, but when it would happen.

Physical escape was pretty much out of the question considering that he couldn't even move off his bunk. Escaping into his mind was possible, but that road would eventually lead to madness. He had to remain rooted in reality. To aid in staying in the here and now, he began to minutely examine the room he was in, or at least as much of it as he could see. Within the reach of his left hand, he found a small bent nail. Just a V-shaped bit of metal, but it fit into the key slot of his handcuffs, and that gave him something constructive to do.

For several days, Dramesi probed and twisted with his pathetic little tool, trying to pick the lock on his cuffs. His physical deterioration was bad enough that even this little activity tired him quickly, and his level of frustration was quick to discourage him. Still, his lock-smithing project was all he had to do, and if he succeeded, the reward would be great.

He had been secured in his bent-over position for more than a week. The torture had gone on nonstop for over half a month. For more than two days his world was centered on trying to pick the lock on his handcuffs. Failure and attempt, failure and attempt, try something different, and once again fail. On the third day of his trying, the point of the nail pressed on the proper spot within the mechanism. The new series of probes and movements with the bent nail—that golden key—proved themselves when the cuffs simply fell open.

Astonished, and then flooded with joy, Dramesi was free! Or at least he could straighten his back and sit up. It was a form of freedom, and one that felt good, indescribably good.

Slowly, he straightened his posture, leaned back, and stretched his cramped back. For a moment, the numerous aches, pains, and cramps in his body went away as he luxuriated in just being able to lie back on his bunk. The unpadded boards felt amazingly comfortable for that moment. Then something warned him.

Reacting as quickly as he could, Dramesi sat back up and bent forward into the position he had held for so many days. Grabbing the handcuff with his left hand, he slipped it around his right wrist. Just as he returned to the same appearance he had been showing ever since he had entered cell #2, the cover over the peephole in his door was moved.

An eye showed at the peephole as the guard looked in; all he would see was the prisoner in the same position. The cover slid back and Dramesi breathed a little easier. He had hidden his victory over the handcuffs; that little bit of freedom was still his. Then the keys rattled in the lock on his cell door.

To cover the clicking sound of the handcuff being closed, Dramesi coughed loudly. Sounding sick was pretty easy then, but still the guard came into the cell with a suspicious look. He examined the bound prisoner, found nothing particularly out of the ordinary—just a stinking wretch bound to a board. He turned and left, locking the door behind him.

But the stinking wretch still held the means of his victory. The golden key was still in Dramesi's possession. With it, he was able to open the lock on his handcuffs at will. After some practice—he didn't have a great deal else to do—Dramesi was able to open the handcuffs in only a few seconds.

Paying careful attention to the daily goings-on of the prison helped Dramesi time his periods of freedom from the handcuffs. Sounds of the early morning work by people outside his cell gave him the sign that it was about four in the morning. He could unlock his cuffs and lean back for a blessed few hours of relief. His morning check wouldn't take place until the peephole cover was slid back at about seven. He could quickly blot out the world he was in, the view of his deteriorating feet and legs went away, while he escaped into near unconsciousness.

In spite of being apparently oblivious to the world, a piece of Dramesi's mind remained on alert. He would find himself sitting up and back into his bound position automatically when there was a warning sound in the hallway outside. The shuffling walk of Goose and the sound of the outer hallway door opening was enough to pull Dramesi up and into position by reflex. His body and mind were protecting themselves as best they could.

But his body continued to suffer as Dramesi remained locked in the stocks. His feet swelled up until his toes stuck up like the nails on an elephant's foot. The hot days and scorching nights combined with the filthy conditions to make his physical state continue to deteriorate. His weight dropped and the pain of his infected bullet wound grew.

The only ally he had assisting him was a rat that went through his cell to gain access to the hall beyond. There was enough room under the door for the rodent to scurry into the hallway, but it always stopped at the door to sense if the way beyond was safe. One evening as Dramesi was preparing to lay back, the rat suddenly turned from the doorway and scampered back the way it had come. Dramesi quickly returned to his bound position and picked up the handcuffs, just as the peephole cover slid back. His rodent sentinel had kept him from being discovered.

It was just over a month since Dramesi had been shot down when Goose and Bug came back into his cell. Unlocking the iron bar on top of his stocks, Goose lifted it away, freeing Dramesi's ankles for the first time since he had come into the room nearly two weeks earlier. When he was ordered by Bug to turn and sit on the bed, Dramesi found that he couldn't lift his legs out of the stocks. The flesh of his ankles was stuck to the wood by dried blood and swollen tissues. He was too weak to pull the legs up himself, but Goose was available to assist.

Yanking the prisoner's legs up, Goose tore the corrupted flesh of Dramesi's ankles as he pulled them free of the stocks. Dropping them to the side, Goose was satisfied that he had “helped” the prisoner to follow the orders of the camp commander. His legs bleeding, the stunned prisoner sat staring at Bug, not certain what would come next.

Another writing period followed, or at least one of Bug ordering the prisoner to write. Dramesi was to detail his missions over North Vietnam. When the prisoner looked at Bug with defiance, he was threatened with going right back into the stocks.

There was no question that Dramesi didn't want to go back into the stocks, but he also wasn't going to write down anything. Playing for time, he agreed to Bug's demands. After shoving ink, paper, and a pen into their prisoner's hands, Bug and Goose left the cell. Dramesi was left with the writing materials and a concern for just what was going to happen next. He was out of the stocks for the moment, but another demand that he couldn't accept had been made of him.

The next morning Dramesi still hadn't written anything, but there was a new guard who came into his cell. The guard was wearing the standard pith helmet that was part of the North Vietnamese military uniform. Either to decorate the bland headgear, or to have an unusual form of camouflage, the guard had tied strands of cloth on his helmet to look like flowers and bits of plants.

The amusing attempt at camouflage caused Dramesi to name the guard Ferdinand, after the flower-loving bull in a children's story. The situation quickly stopped being amusing when Ferdinand ordered Dramesi to clean up his cell.

That amount of exertion was almost impossible for the abused prisoner. As Ferdinand looked on, Dramesi swung his legs off the bunk and to the floor. That was about the only movement he could make, as the pain of putting any weight on his tortured feet and ankles washed through his body like a red flame. Walking was out of the question; Dramesi was barely able to move. His weakness was as obvious as his wounds as he tried to just lift the unused toilet bucket. His injuries left a trail of blood across the floor and he moved across the room in an agonizing shuffle.

His new guard only watched the prisoner for a short time before leaving the cell. It was plain that Dramesi wasn't faking, and that he was barely able to take care of himself, let alone clean his room. It may have been due to the new guard—certainly not because of some change of heart on the part of Goose or Bug—but some type of medical personnel showed up at cell #2 later on that same day.

After an examination of his injured feet and ankles, the “doctor” gave Dramesi a shot of antibiotics. Bandages were secured around his ankles but the doctor left before paying any attention to the bullet wound in Dramesi's leg.