Carlsbad resident recalls experience as Vietnam POW

By: BARBARA BRILL - For the North County Times | Wednesday, November 26, 2003 9:52 PM PST ∞

CARLSBAD ---- The year was 1965. The year Winston Churchill died. The year the Medicare bill was signed into law. The year Martin Luther King Jr. led the 50-mile march for freedom from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. The year of SpaghettiOs and "Hogan's Heroes." The year the first American combat troops in South Vietnam landed at Da Nang.

And it was the year that Neil Black, then a 20-year-old Air Force Airman 3rd Class, began his 7 1/2 years in captivity in North Vietnam, just five days before he was scheduled to rotate back to the U.S.

Black, a Carlsbad resident and a member of the Rotary Club of Carlsbad, spends some of his time nowadays telling his story of captivity to service clubs.

It's a harrowing tale.

Trained as a para-rescue team member, Black was riding in the helicopter that took off from Thailand on Sept. 20, 1965, to rescue a downed pilot in North Vietnam.

"I was on my seventh rescue mission when we were shot down," said Black, adding that two trees helped break their fall before they crashed on the hilly mountainside behind enemy lines.

"We could hear the Vietnamese behind us. Our M-16s were useless. They were jammed with mud, and it was hopeless to pull out our '.38' pistols, since 20 or 30 were coming at us armed with AK 47s. There was no way we could fight our way out, so we buried our guns before we were captured."

For the next seven days, Black and his team were blindfolded, beaten and interrogated as they marched 200 miles north to Hanoi, to Hoa Lo Prison, which was dubbed the Hanoi Hilton.

Black was put in Heartbreak Hotel, one of the four sections of the Hanoi Hilton, and although his 6-foot-by-8-foot cell had two concrete bunks, he was alone, spending almost nine months in solitary there and in other cells, while his family back home in Pennsylvania ---- his parents and two brothers ---- presumed he was dead.

During his years as a POW, Black said he lived most of the time in "The Zoo," a separate facility just outside Hanoi. None of his four escape plans could be carried out because he was moved around so much.

"One time I used rusty nails to hack away at the makeshift wooden bars covering a window," said Black, pointing out that he was moved 44 times in 7 1/2 years.

Hell years

Black recalls that the worst years were from 1965 through 1969, when the unpopular war played out in horrific images on TV and movie screens across America.

"These years were pure hell. We were forced to watch movies showing Americans demonstrating against the war. It was so demoralizing and disheartening," said Black, who was living by the military Code of Conduct and not passing on secret information or confessing to war crimes. All he did was to give his name, rank, service number and birthday, although he admits to being a little creative when being interrogated.

"I lied and told them I was a doctor on a mission of Mercy from Da Nang, and they bought it, especially since I had medical technician training and had the answers," he said.

Black said the Vietnamese were more interested in senior ranking officers, but that nevertheless he was forced to endure incredible physical and psychological ordeals.

He was forced to sit on a concrete stool for days on end without moving, for example. He was starved and thrown into ditches. He was ratcheted in handcuffs, tied up in ropes and horsewhipped. He suffered illnesses, including what he calls a jungle malady, a form of malaria. And, he was threatened while one of the interrogators held a cocked gun to his head.

"Several times I thought I was going to be killed," he said. "One time they blindfolded me and threatened to chop me up with a machete. That's when I started making my peace."

Before he was shot down in the helicopter, he said, he "pretty much ignored" his Jewish religion."

After his capture, he said he resolved to have faith in God, country and himself.

"I prayed night and day," he said, explaining that the interrogators, many of whom maimed and killed the prisoners, were given nicknames such as Rabbit, Dum-Dum and Spot.

Tap, tap, tapping

Communication was very important to the POWs, and Black was involved in passing on the simple tap code used on the thick walls and the hand code.

"We communicated through windows, cracks in the doors and over partitions," he said. "And, we all had callouses on our knuckles."

ÝTo amuse themselves and to pass the time and to stay alert, Black made a one-string guitar from mosquito netting so he could play patriotic songs, he scratched on the floor with a pebble to keep a daily calendar, and with his imaginative and creative mind, he watched movies on his cell wall, first in black and white, then in color.

From 1970 to 1973, life got a little easier, a separate and distinct period, probably because Ho Chi Minh had died and because President Richard Nixon vowed to end the war and bring the troops home, according to Black.

ÝBut, it wasn't until January, 1973, after the Paris Peace Talks, that the POWs were notified that they would be going home.

On Feb. 12, Black joined up with 110 others in the first group to be released, meeting most of them for the first time face to face.

They marched, with honor, out the gate to the waiting buses that would take them to the airport and to the waiting C-141 transports headed for the Philippines. Black was back in the U. S. on Valentine's Day, to Andrew's Air Force Base, the closest military hospital by his hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

"There were so many changes, so many new things," he said. "The new members of my family, the nieces and nephews. The fashions, the mini-skirt and the flashing colors. The music, the cars."

Black described his days as a POW as a life-changing event.

"I had no goals before (being captured)," he said.

After receiving a direct commission to be an officer from President Nixon, Black earned his pilot wings, flew the HC-130 for Search and Rescue, instructed in jet trainers and was the operations officer for the U.S. Military Liaison Mission to the Soviet Forces in East Germany. Among his numerous decorations are the Air Force Cross, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, theÝ Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

He married his wife, Vicki, in May, 1974, and after retiring as a major with 24 years of service, he went into his family business in Pennsylvania for the next 15 years, retiring as a vice president.

The Blacks, who moved to Carlsbad in 2001, have two children: 28-year-old twins, Todd and Tracy.

Neil Black, the man who was prepared to die for his country, the man who was one of the three longest held POWs, now enjoys playing golf and volunteering as a part-time instructor at the U. S. Naval Survival School at North Island.