Surviving Hell

From Powerline, there's a new book out: Surviving Hell written by Leo Thorsness

Colonel Thorsness flew 92 Wild Weasel missions over North Vietnam. He earned the Medal of Honor for a Wild Weasel mission he flew on April 19, 1967, 11 days before being shot down. His Medal of Honor citation tells the story, but the Air Force account of his heroics makes a somewhat more readable narrative:

Unbelievably, the heroics that earned Colonel Thorsness the Medal of Honor were followed by further displays of heroism that approximate the valor he displayed on this mission. When he was shot down by an air to air missile in late April 1967, he ejected from his exploding fighter doing more than 600 miles per hour, injuring both knees and sustaining multiple fractures of his back. Like John McCain, he was "tied up" for the next six years. He was captured and held as a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton and several other North Vietnamese hellholes, including the one known as Camp Punishment, reserved for especially "difficult" cases.

It should be a good read because it has it's share of humor...

The book is also shot through wth the black humor that Thorsness and his fellow prisoners directed at their captivity. The black humor appears regularly throughout the book, but In this respect I especially commend chapters 13 ("Boredom"), 17 ("The Home Front") and 18 ("Prison Talk").

Even wives, girlfriends and the families left behind at home could become the subject of such humor. When the prisoners of war finally are allowed to receive brief letters from home, for example, they not only reread them as long as they are allowed to hold onto them, they turn them into a group activity. Thorsness recalls from memory the worst-ever letter from home received by one of his fellow prisoners, a particulary tough middle American farmboy who had survived his original captivity in Laos and deserved better:

Dear Raymond, this has been a bad year. Hail took our crops -- no insurance. Your brother-in-law borrowed your speedboat, hit a rock, it sank. Aunt Clarice died suddenly last August. Dad tipped the tractor but only broke his leg. Your 4-H heifer grew up, became a cow, but she died calving -- calf too. We think of you often. Mom and Dad.

"There was dead silence for perhaps a minute," Thorsness relates, as the assembled POWs absorbed the letter:

Finally, someone said, "Ray, read it again, maybe there's a hidden meaning." He shook his head. After more encouragement, he read it again. When he got to the part "your speedboat sank," a POW in the back could no longer hold his muffled laugh. When Ray read, "she died calving," the snickers turned into open, uncontrolled laugter.

In six years of prison, there was never a more genuine slap-your-thighs, roll-on-your-side laughter. We were in stitches and couldn't stop. Ray, bless him, realized how ridiculous, how totally inappropriate it was for family to write that letter to someone in prison. He joined in the hilarity.

Now, THAT's funny.