Ghosts of Arlington Podcast
Ghosts of Arlington Podcast
#99: A POW MIA's Five Years to Freedom, Part V
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As Lieutenant Nick Rowe's time in captivity moves into its thrid year, it becomes more difficult for him and his American colleagues to stave off the illness and disease that comes with extreme malnutrician, which will claim its first victims in this episode.
We will also see what happens to Captain Rocky Versace after the Vietcong realize that he is insusceptible to their propaganda efforts and will never be broken.
The introduction and transition music heard on the podcast is composed and recorded by the eldest Ghosts of Arlington, Jr. While the rest of his catalogue is quite different from what he's performed for me, you can find his music on bandcamp.com under the names Caladrius and Bloodfeather.
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Episode 99: A Vietnam POW’s Five Years to Freedom, Part V
Welcome back to Ghosts of Arlington and thank you for joining me for Episode 99 – A Vietnam POW’s Five Years to Freedom, Part V.
Last time, we saw Lieutenant Nick Rowe attempt to escape from his Vietcong captors with fellow prisoner Sergeant Len Tadios. The attempt failed and the punishment was harsh – but it was even worse for Tadios for whom this was a second escape attempt. After a week of corrective punishment, where both were confined to individual cages and kept in irons except to eat, the prisoners promised to not attempt another escape (full disclosure – they had their fingers crossed behind their backs) and a short time later, they were reunited with fellow American POWs Sergeant Dan Pitzer and Master Sergeant Ed Johnson.
Though they were together again for the first time in months, it wasn’t a joyous reunion – sure, they were glad to see that everyone was still alive, but each was still dealing with various physical and psychological damage caused by their captivity. Rowe and Pitzer were also concerned about the third American taken prisoner with them – Captain Rocky Versace – who had been judged a lost cause by the Vietcong and separated from the other Americans.
About two weeks after Rowe and Tadios were moved back to the camp housing Pitzer and Johnson, on September 20, Rowe noticed a curious anxiety among the guards, but had no way of knowing the cause. On September 26, the guards brought a radio to the cage and told the prisoners they were going to listen to Radio Hanoi – that was something different. Apparently, there was a news bulletin that the senior cadre wanted the prisoners to hear.
The signal was poor, but as the guard dialed in the station, Rowe “caught the phrase, ‘the execution was carried out at ten o’clock,’ then statice and again, ‘in retaliation for the murder of three patriots in Danang,’ static, ‘Captain Humbert Roque Versace.’ Static, ‘Coraback.’ [Nick] sat stunned, the rest of the broadcast a blur of meaningless sound.” The broadcast had come in broken but the message was crystal clear. Versace had been killed. And unlike last time, when it was a rouse to get the other prisoners to cooperate, this time it was real – this time it was being broadcast for the world to hear.
In his memoir, Rowe wrote, “There was silence in our hut as the realization grew: Rocky was dead. They had executed him, murdered him. It couldn’t be! Rocky and death didn’t fit. He was too alive, too vibrantly alive to be dead just like that. [Johnson] broke the silence. ‘Was that the Versace that was with you?’ I wanted to say no. Rocky wasn’t just with us, he was one of us! [Tadios] looked questioningly at me, his dark eyes serious and concerned. I nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, that was Rocky.’
“The questions flashed through my mind, seeking a shred of logic in what had happened to him. What did he have to do with Danang? How could he be held responsible for the deaths of three terrorists? Rocky was a prisoner of war, a noncombatant, unable to protect himself, and they had killed him.
“Tumbling flashed of thought fragments whirled through my consciousness; Rocky at Tan Phu, the day he got off the chopper, the baseball cap canted to the side of his head, the relaxed, happy grin; then his anguished face right after he’d been hit on the operation, his endurance and spirit under physical and mental stress, he desire only to go back to his family, his faith that remained strong; and the most tragic of all, Rocky, back in the first [prison] camp as he looked up with that open, warm smile [after his wounds had been treated] and said, “Aren’t these wonderful people!”
The next day, the guards returned with the radio to make sure the prisoners had heard the broadcast. “Even with the accompanying static the broadcast was clear enough for us to hear the report of the executions of Captain Humbert Roque Versace and Sergeant Kenneth M. Coraback, carried out at ten o’clock in the morning, in retaliation for the execution of three “patriots” in Danang, by order of the High Command of the Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam. “Coraback” was a mispronunciation of Ken Roarback, a member of our Special Forces brother team, who had been captured at Hiep Hoa post less than a month after our capture in 1963. We had lost two friends and two good soldiers. I wondered why they would take a prisoner on the battlefield, grant him his life and demand gratitude for the act, and then take his life from him as a prisoner.”
The head guard, who was nicknamed Carpenter “hung on every word as I told him we had learned of Rocky’s execution. He immediately asked what we thought, the question bursting forth, as if he had been waiting for days to ask. Dan nailed him on the spot by saying we expected the same fate since the Front’s policy obviously allowed the murder of prisoners. Carpenter was shaken and retorted that Versace had been a criminal and had been punished for his crimes. I countered that we were equally guilty of the crimes of which Rocky had been accused and therefore could expect the same fate. John winced as he understood what I had said. Carpenter found his question had gotten him in a hole and began to tell us that the Front regarded us not as criminals, but as misguided individuals. He assured us that the Front had no intention of killing us and we should continue to “progress” so we could be released to return to our families. He was smiling, an ingratiating expression that fitted the hollow assurances.
“I glanced at Dave, seeing in his eyes the reflection of the last months in the punishment camp, the slow death there, the near summary execution [when they had been recaptured], and now this. It was a tightening vise that left a man no place to turn, no hope for maintaining the shreds of individuality, self-esteem, beliefs without paying with your life for that privilege.
“The second year [of captivity] ended on 29 October 1965.” On November 9, the prisoners were moved back to where they had been a few camps earlier, back to the camp with the schoolhouse where they had received their indoctrination lessons. Rowe and is dysentery, fungal infection, and beri-beri, and Johnson, who was recovering from a bout of pneumonia, where considered the healthier of the four prisoners and were made to walk to the new camp, while lugging lumber along with them. Pitzer and Tadios, who were even worse off physically, were allowed to travel by boat. That Rowe and Johnson were “considered the ‘healthiest Americans’ was evidence” of how far everyone had slid since their capture.
The camp had been redesigned and when they returned, Rowe and Pitzer were placed in a hut with no bars on the walls, and Johnson and Tadios were placed in about twenty-five feet (or five meters) away. In between the huts was cage, smaller than the huts they were in, but about half again as large as the cages they had been in during their time at the punishment camp.
Major Bay, the commandant of their original round of instruction returned for round two and was almost cordial in his welcome of the prisoners, “stating that [they] were here for an extended series of classes designed to give [them] a clear picture of the situation here in Vietnam so that [they] might be able to realize their mistakes and thus be released to return home.” I guess the old saying is true – the more things change, they more they stay the same.
The prisoners entered a familiar cycle of being treated well, which lead to indoctrination sessions, which lead to demands to sign declarations repenting of their misdeeds against the people of Vietnam and denouncing US involvement in the country. At times they would be moved from the camp into the jungle. They never knew why. Maybe US forces were getting near, maybe it was something else. At other times, they would change camps all together, back to ones with bars on the walls. Eventually, other American POWs were brought to join them and would stay in the smaller hut /slash/ cage.
The first one brought in was Army Captain Orien Walker, Jr. – the first new American they had met since Tadios joined them a year earlier. Before his capture, Walker had stood six feet 2 inches tall and weighed 225 pounds (or 188 centimeters tall and 102 kilograms). He was now down to 130 pounds (about 60 kilograms) and was so stooped that Rowe, who stood 5 feet eight, (or about 170 centimeters) and could look Walker in the eye. He had a fungal infection that was far worse than Rowe and the others knew he would not last long. They did what they could to help their comrade, but he seemed to have lost the will to live. He stopped eating. A month later he was dead.
The next American to join them, was Army Staff Sergeant Ben Wilkes, who had also been kept in an all-Vietnamese prison like Walker had been and had been given the same rations as his South Vietnamese counterparts – rations that were more substantial than those given to American POWs. To the emaciated prisoners, this affable, quiet African American Soldier looked almost fat, and they were worried what the reduced rations available at this camp would do to him. Wilkes had been captured on his first operation in country, also a year earlier.
Wilkes arrival marked the beginning of Len Tadios’s decline. It was almost as though Walker had shown him a way out of the terrible situation he was living in. Illness struck Tadios and he was soon immobile. Not long after that, he simply stopped eating. As they had done for Walker, the others tried to care for their friend, but he died on March 20, the second POW death in two months.
Unlike Walker, whose arrival and period of decline as been so rapid that he seemed transient, Tadios had been part of the group and his death caused the group moral to plummet to lower depths than ever before. This man had been strong enough that he attempted escape twice and withstood the punishment for such action twice. But in the end, he reached his physical and psychological breaking point and slipped away.
Following Tadios’s death, Rowe spent long nights analyzing his thoughts and reactions. He felt a bitterness and hatred building, feeding off of constant frustration and anxiety. He knew that such negative emotions could break him and lead to his demise, so he did the only thing he knew how at this point – he turned to the one positive force his captors couldn’t challenge, his faith in God.
Returning to Rowe’s own words: “My religious background included Sunday schools, vacation Bible schools and church attendance as a youngster. I had never questioned religion nor had I ever really accepted it. It was something I lived with because that’s the way things were done. There had never been a time of trial serious enough to make me consciously depend on a Supreme Being except when I felt some interest of mine was beyond my direct influence. Once I achieved what I had set out to do, God was given a pragmatic “thank you” and forgotten until my next need arose. My closest association with the development of faith came at West Point. Four years of compulsory chapel each Sunday, the idea of “having to go,” failed to diminish a growing sense of peace and communication I discovered within the quiet majesty that was the interior of the Cadet Chapel. In the stillness of the Chapel I began to look at faith, not in terms of ritual and sectarian dogma, but as a very personal communication between one man and his God. After graduation, I had no time to develop that which I had begun, but evidently the foundation was still there.
“I found myself returning to and drawing from that foundation in this situation where I was stripped of all material assets, leaving only the intangibles which form the core of our existence: faith, ethics, morals, beliefs. It had become a test of whatever inner strengths I possessed against the total physical control exercised by my captors. Were I to survive with my spirit intact, I could only turn to faith in the Power I believed to be so far greater than that which imprisoned me. For the first time in my life the words of the Twenty-third Psalm were a source of strength and consolation. From the loss of Dave on, I began to believe: ‘The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.’”
On July 21, the prisoners were visited by the first member of the Vietcong to purport to be a doctor and began treating them. During this visit, Dr. Hai began discussing the possibility of a prisoner exchange, which, got the American’s hopes up. I mean, why else would a full-blown doctor be treating them if they weren’t going to be exchanged. The next few days and talk of going home would be the high point of 1966. By mid-August, after no action toward release had taken place, and demands for signed denunciations returned, moral fell.
On August 13, a recently captured Special Forces medic, Jim Jackson was brought to the camp. Pitzer immediately recognized him – they had attended a medial course together back in the States. Just as Wilkes had been, Jackson was initially isolated from the other prisoners so the cadre could try to win him over to their way of thinking before the other Americans could corrupt him against the Vietcong, but they were too slow. Jackson almost choked on his first bite of rice in the camp. He missed the note the others had smuggled to him.
When Jackson was eventually allowed to move in with the others, he was able to give them all an update on the truth about what was going on in Vietnam – of all the US ground divisions that had been deployed to the country by President Johnson, to not just advise, but to directly engage Viet Minh and Vietcong forces, and that much of what their captors said about the imminent final victory of the Front was nowhere near the done deal the guards would have them believe. “The attempts by the cadre to create a picture of hopelessness for the Government of South Vietnam and U.S. efforts had been fruitless to begin with, but this exposure of the basic element of deceit had wiped out any chance they might have had to create doubt in [the prisoners’] minds about the military situation.
Not long after Jackson arrived, Wilkes began his own irreversible decline. After beig held with South Vietnamese POWs for a year, in conditions much favorable to those Rowe and his American compatriots, Wilkes was never able to adjust to the new conditions he was forced into. He had a very difficult time with his new and greatly reduced diet, and quickly found his physical condition diminished. He couldn’t mentally bring himself to eat the same terrible food day after day and often refused to eat anything at all. He becan suffering from a variety a serious illnesses and on January 1, 1967, he died of serious malnutrician after nearly two years in captivity, but less than one year of treatment as an American POW.
Before I end today, I would like to eulogize the service members lost in this week’s episode. Orien Walker, Jr. was born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 27, 1933. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in February 1951 and was honorably discharged in September 1954. After the Korean War, he attended the University of New Hampshire and enrolled in the Army ROTC program, where he was commissioned an infantry second lieutenant in January 1957; He entered active duty in May of that year. After attending the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, he spent time at Fort Riley, Kansas, and West Germany, before his promotion to captain when he was sent to Fort Hood, Texas to take command of Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment. After company command, he volunteered to be a military advisor to South Vietnam. He arrived in country in November 1964 and was captured on May 23, 1965 in a Vietcong ambush. Walker spent 258 days in captivity, 230 of which were spent as the lone American in a prison camp holding South Vietnamese POWs. The final 28 days of his life were spent in the camp where Rowe, Pitzer, Johnson, and Tadios were also being held. While in captivity, he was promoted to major.
Major Orien Judson Walker, Jr. died in captivity of malnutrition and illness on February 4, 1966. His remains were never recovered. Today, his name is located on Panel 1E, Line 124 on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, DC. It is also inscribed in the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Oahu, Hawaii. A memorial marker for Major Walker was also placed in the Contoocook Village Cemetery in Contoocook, New Hampshire. He was 31 years old.
In his book, Five Years to Freedom, which was published in 1971 while the US was still involved in the Vietnam War, author Nick Rowe refers to Walker as Captain Tim Barker to protect his identity and respect his family’s privacy.
Leonard Tadois was born on January 9, 1936, in Lanai, Hawaii. He enlisted in the US Army Infantry in 1952 and served in the Korean War, where he was wounded in May 1953. Rising to the rank of sergeant, Tadios remained in the army after the war and deployed to South Vietnam in 1964, where he served as a light weapons infantry advisor until he was captured by the Vietcong on December 11, 1964. Not long after his capture, he was moved to the prison camp where Rowe, Pitzer, and Johnson were being held.
SGT Tadios escaped in June 1965 and managed to evade the enemy for three days before being recaptured. He escaped again in October 1965 with Lieutenant Rowe, but was recaptured the next morning. After 463 days in captivity, Tadios died of extreme malnutrition on March 18, 1966. He was officially listed as missing in action until the end of the war and was promoted to staff sergeant before being declared dead after the war ended. His remains were never recovered.
Today, Staff Sergeant Leonard Masayon Tadios’s name is located on Panel 1E, Line 76 on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, DC. It is also inscribed in the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Oahu, Hawaii. He was 32 years old.
In his book, Five Years to Freedom, which was published in 1971 while the US was still involved in the Vietnam War, author Nick Rowe refers to Tadios as Sergeant Dave Davila to protect his identity and respect his family’s privacy.
Given that Rowe used alises for other POWs who died in Vietcong custody, I assume that Ben Wilkes was also an alies, but unlike with Walker and Tadios, I have not been able to find Wilkes true identity. The Department of Defense has an amazing organization called the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency or DPAA. I believe I have mentioned DPAA before; it is the agency who identified Air Force First Lieutenant Michael Blassie – the individual initially buried at Arlington as the unknown soldier for the Vietnam War. DPAA has a database accessible online that contains the names and other information about all unaccounted-for service US service members in Vietnam. There are currently 1584 names on that list, including Walker and Tadios, but no Ben Wilkes.
I wish I could tell you more about him. I do hope that he is listed in the Courts of the Missing in Hawaii.
I introduced Rocky Versace back in episode 95, the first of this current story arc. After he was taken away from Rowe and Pitzer because the Vietcong decided almost immediately that his man could not be broken – and they were right. Versace tried to escape captivity four times, but was unable to get away. Regardless, he continued to resist the Vietcong by insulting them in fluent Vietnamese during indoctrination sessions and quoting the Geneva Convention when they tortured him.
The prisoners he was housed near during his final days said the last time they heard his voice was when he was led away to his execution. He was singing “God Bless America” at the top of his lungs.
After learning of their son’s death, Colonel Versace and his wife Marie, tried to find out what they could about the circumstances. Marie went to Paris in the late 1960s but was unsuccessful in gaining an audience with the North Vietnamese delegation there for the peace talks.
In 1969, Versace was initially nominated for the Medal of Honor but he was ultimately awarded a posthumous Silver Star. In 1999, Versace’s nomination was reexamined and in 2002, his Silver Star was upgraded.
On July 8, 2002, during a White House ceremony, Versace was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President George W. Bush for his heroism, the first time an Army POW was awarded the nation’s highest honor for actions in captivity. His surviving siblings, brothers Stephen and Richard and sister Trilby, were present at the ceremony.
His Medal of Honor citation reads in part: “He stubbornly resisted capture with the last full measure of his strength and ammunition. Taken Prisoner by the Viet Cong, he demonstrated exceptional leadership resolute adhearance to the tenets to the Code of Conduct from the time he entered into a prisoner of war status. Captain Versace assumed command of his fellow American prisoners, and despite being kept lock in irons in an isolation box, raised their morale by singing popular songs of the day, and leaving inspiring messages at the latrine. Within three weeks of captivity, and despite the severity of his untreated wounds, he attempted the first of four escape attempts by dragging himself on his hands and knees out of the camp through dense swamp and forbidding vegetation to freedom.
“Crawling at a very slow pace due to his weakened condition, the guards quickly discovered him outside the camp and recaptured him. Captain Versace scorned the enemy's exhaustive interrogation and indoctrination efforts, and inspired his fellow prisoners to resist to the best of their ability. When he used his Vietnamese language skills to protest improper treatment of the American prisoners by the guards, he was put into leg irons and gagged to keep his protestations out of earshot of the other American prisoners in the camp. The last time that any of his fellow prisoners heard from him, Captain Versace was singing God Bless America at the top of his voice from his isolation box. Unable to break his indomitable will, his faith in God, and his trust in the United States of America and his fellow prisoners, Captain Versace was executed by the Viet Cong on September 26, 1965. Captain Versace's extraordinary heroism, self-sacrifice, and personal bravery involving conspicuous risk of life above and beyond the call of duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Army, and reflect great credit to himself and the U.S. Armed Forces.”
While Versace’s remains have not been found, there is a marker in his Honor at Arlington National Cemetery. A memorial marker for Captain Humbert Roque “Rocky” Versace stands over an empty grave in Memorial Section MG, Site 108.
Additionally, Versace’s name is inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall on Panel 1E, Row 33. On July 6, 2002, Rocky Versace Memorial Plaza was dedicated in his honor in Alexandria, Virginia. A statue of Versace in the plaza was made possible by a donation of $125,000 by the citizens of Alexandria. This memorial is only a few miles of the Ghosts of Arlington home office and I plan on visiting to pay my respects in the very near future. When I do, I’ll post some pictures on the podcast’s social media feeds.
On July 9, 2002, the day after his Medal of Honor ceremony, Secretary of the Army Thomas White and Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki inducted Versace into the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes. In 2003, he was inducted into the Miltiary Intelligence Hall of Fame at Fort Huachuca, AZ.
On Memorial Day 2007, his name was engraved in El Monumento de la Recordación (the Monumento of Remembrance), dedicated to Puerto Rico’s fallen military members, located in from of the Capitol building in San Juan.
Finally, Versace’s name and Medal of Honor citation are memorialized in a plaque on the side of MacArthur Barracks at the United States Miltiary Academy in West Point, NY. Similar plaques around the building honor academy graduates who also received the Medal of Honor in the Pacific Theater of Operation during World War II.
Next week, we will return to the story of Lieutenant Nick Rowe, who, after watching other prisoners starve to death while being unable to do anything about it, has to find the mental fortitude to believe he will not suffer the same fate, because he has seen first-hand that giving into dispare leads down a path of no return.
If you need more Ghosts of Arlington content in your life, there are pictures related to every episode on the website www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com. You can help others learn about the podcast by leaving a 5-star rating and review at Apple Podcast or wherever you listen. If you really want to make my day, refer the show to a friend. And remember, fear not death, for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.
https://readerslibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/Five-Years-to-Freedom.pdf (pg 167)
Rowe’s poem about Versace (pg 143)
https://www.pownetwork.org/bios/w/w100.htm
https://www.axpow.org/vietnamescapes.pdf
https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/54153/ORIEN-J-WALKER-JR/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/135295842/orien-judson-walker
(Punchbowl)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/93830988/orien-judson-walker
(New Hampshire)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/61031307/leonard-masayon-tadios
(Punchbowl)
https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/50901/LEONARD-M-TADIOS/
https://www.dpaa.mil/Portals/85/VietnamAccounting/pmsea_una_ALL_20220211.pdf
https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/53643/HUMBERT-R-VERSACE/page/10/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7531924/humbert-roque-versace
https://www.dpaa.mil/