Not necessarily.
***** Winter Soldier Investigation Testimony given in Detroit, Michigan, on January 31, 1971, February 1 and 2, 1971 Sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc.
PRISONER OF WAR PANEL Part I
MODERATOR. Good morning. This morning the first panel relates to the issue of prisoners of war. Yesterday, we heard some testimony, or quite a bit of testimony, some of it very repetitive, relating to the treatment of prisoners, Vietnamese prisoners, in the hands of Americans. Today we are going to talk about the treatment of Americans in the hands of the Vietnamese. It's an emotional issue, and it's one certainly causing terrible discussion in this country right now. It seems like the whole war issue has centered around the prisoner of war issue...
MODERATOR. You were taken captive. What specifically, you know, did they do. What were your feelings? How did they treat you at that specific moment?
SMITH. During the excitement of battle of course they were a little rougher than they were later on, but they didn't mistreat us terribly bad at the time, and I was sure that we were going to be shot, because all the stories that I had heard at Fort Bragg and after coming into Vietnam was that they didn't take prisoners, and if they did, that they tortured and eventually killed them, if not immediately....
MODERATOR. Quite apparently, you weren't shot, what did happen?
SMITH. After they had rounded up all the equipment, the ammunition, weapons in the camp, they took us out over the barbed wire apron surrounding the camp through Madame Nhu's sugar cane field that we were guarding, to a small village on the Oriental River.
MODERATOR. What were your feelings as you were being led away from this camp at that time?
SMITH. I thought they were taking us to another place to execute us. And I was worrying about that along with the air strike that we were under by that time. The South Vietnamese Air Force was attacking the cane field and burned down a lot of sugar cane. I thought they might accidentally drop something on us. But other than that there was no immediate fear, 'cause the guards seemed to have relaxed once we left the camp.
MODERATOR. What did happen in the village?
SMITH. When we arrived in the village, everybody sat down, lit up a cigarette, offered us one, gave us some bananas to eat, patted us and reassured us that everything was going to be all right. That they had no intentions toward us.
MODERATOR. And the next step?
SMITH. After they took their, sort of their break after the battle, we crossed the river and went farther into the Delta area. We traveled for about three or four days until we finally reached a place where we met up with Rohrback and McClure, who were also at our camp and had been captured. This was the first we had seen of them. After we met these two people, the four of us were taken in those little boats that they have through the canal system down into what is probably the Plain of Reeds, the swamp region, and we stayed on a little island there. They constructed a small shack just big enough for the four of us; they slept out in hammocks in the water. And they allowed McClure's foot wound to heal so he would be able to travel at a later time.
MODERATOR. What kind of medical attention did they provide for McClure?
SMITH. They provided immediate attention for him when he was captured. He told me that they dressed his wounds the best they could. He had a fragmentation wound of the foot which was extremely painful for him it turned out. It was difficult for him to walk. They treated it the best they could.
MODERATOR. How about in the swamp?
SMITH. In the swamp then they had time to do things and they got a medic from someplace and he was quite a good medic; he was well-trained; he had penicillin; he had the instruments to probe the foot and find if there were any foreign objects in it. Soon McClure's foot did heal quickly enough that we were able to move out in about ten days, I think.
MODERATOR. So, apparently what you're saying is, is that this stopover at the island was specifically for the purpose of taking care of McClure's foot for future movement.
SMITH. Right, I think it was sort of to allow us time to recover from the initial shock of being captured and for McClure's foot to heal so we could be transported....
MODERATOR. By this point you seemed to have the feeling you were not going to be tortured or executed but you had made reference to that. Why, specifically, did you think you were going to be tortured or executed?
SMITH. Well, that was what I would call common knowledge among the Special Forces people that if any of us were captured in South Vietnam, that we'd had it. They certainly hated us very much, and they would surely do everything to us, at least as much to us as we did to them, and that was kind of frightening from the stories that I heard in Vietnam.
MODERATOR. Did you ever think about the way you'd been treating prisoners before you were taken prisoner yourself? How your camp was treating prisoners?
SMITH. Oh, certainly, I was sure that I would be subjected to at least that bad a treatment, the beatings and living in barbed-wire cages, and probably much worse than that because they were reputed to have chopped heads off and tortured prisoners by any means that you could imagine....
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