MARINE CORPS BASE HAWAII, Hawaii -- For thousands of years, nations around the world have taken prisoners during wartime. Some nations are kind to their prisoners while other nations aren’t. The prisoners endure many hardships from those nations, and when they return home they find it’s completely different from when they left.
On August 9, non-commissioned officers, civilian, Marines and Sailors had the opportunity to listen to retired Navy Captain Gerald Coffee as he described being a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.
In his lecture, Coffee described how faith in his family, companions, himself and religion kept him alive and from breaking under hardships endured during his internment.
His introduction to North Vietnam happened when his RA5-C “Vigilante” reconnaissance jet was hit by anti-aircraft fire.
“As we started to head back to sea, the gauges started flickering,” Coffee said. “We started spinning out of control and I yelled back to my co-pilot, ‘Eject! Eject! Eject!’”
His jet was heading toward Earth at 680 mph when Coffee finally ejected.
“All I can say is that God’s hand was on my shoulder,” he said. “All the automatic functions of the seat worked properly, and somehow I was able to release myself from the seat after it hit the water.”
After he surfaced in the water he found he was close to land and the Vietnamese were already sending ships to retrieve him and his co-pilot.
“It became very clear to me at that point that my capture was imminent,” Coffee said. “Their pontoon boats quickly reached us and they pulled us into them and stripped off all our gear.”
He told how the boats were shot by U.S. fighters and about the fate of his copilot.
“Our backup finally arrived in the form of some A1-Skyscrapers, and they started firing their 20mm guns at the boats.
They did strafing run after strafing run, and the Vietnamese were returning fire after each pass. We made our way to the shore, but as we came close to it, they brought in an A4 and blew up the boats. Somewhere in the firefight, my copilot was killed.”
Coffee was then taken to the city of Hanoi and placed in the prison camp called Hao Lo, more commonly known as the “Hanoi Hilton.”
“It took us 12 days of marching north to reach the city of Hanoi,” Coffee said. “When we finally reached the prison, they led me to my cell and put me in it.”
The cell was 3 feet wide and 6.5 feet long. It had a heavy wooden door, a bucket in the corner, a small window located near the top and a 20-inch concrete slab jutting from a wall to serve as a bed.
“The whole cell reeked of human misery from the previous occupants,” Coffee said.
The Vietnamese tried to exploit their prisoners of war for information and the prisoners had to rely on each other and their faith.
“I prayed a lot,” Coffee said. “At first I expected God to do everything for me, but when I realized that this would be my life for a while, the nature of my prayers started to change. Instead of praying, ‘Why me?’ I started to pray, ‘How can I change?’”
Coffee then explained how four aspects of his faith: faith in himself, faith in one another, faith in his country and his faith in God, kept him alive and brought him back with honor and dignity.
He first talked about faith in himself and how he used to exercise both his body and mind.
“I used to walk miles inside my cell, just shuffling back and forth,” Coffee said. “I also used my bed for both push-ups and
sit ups. It was important for me to continue exercising because I didn’t know when I was going to be released.”
“You would think that with nothing to do, your mind would become unused, but the opposite happened.” Coffee said. “The other prisoners and I found anything and everything to talk about. We picked each other’s brains for all our information, which included memorizing and composing poems.”
Coffee said it was important to keep a good sense of humor in order to survive and return home with honor.
“I remember one of the times they let us shower,” Coffee said. “It was one of the few times we were allowed to be alone. As
I was holding onto the showerhead, letting the water pore over, I looked up at the wall in front of me, and someone before me wrote a little message there. It said, ‘Smile. You’re on Candid Camera.’ And I couldn’t help but laugh at it.”
Coffee then explained how keeping faith with one another helped him overcome difficulties.
He explained how they used to talk for hours by tapping on the walls in a code.
“We needed one another in there,” he said. “Our strength lay in our unity to each other, and it was based on our trust and faith to each other.”
“There was this one guy who was chained to his bed and had his arms locked behind him,” he said. “Every night the other prisoners and I would tap on his walls ‘G B,’ which mainly meant ‘God bless,’ but also meant, ‘I’m praying for you. Hold on in there. We are with you.’”
Coffee said he had to keep faith in his country by remembering all his country’s good.
“All we heard from the Vietnamese was the bad news,” he said. “We heard about the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. We heard how our families didn’t want us anymore and how the government wasn’t going to try for us. We had to keep faith in what we had at home and in the freedoms we had there.”
Coffee then got to the last aspect of faith, his faith in God. He talked about how God was his strength during that period and how he was able to get through it.
“All those years, the Vietnamese tried to rape our spirits and our faith, but they couldn’t do it,” he said. “I was never really alone in that cell. Not with Him by my side.”
After seven years and nine days of captivity, the North Vietnamese allowed Coffee and his fellow service members to return home.
Coffee’s lecture received a standing ovation, and Col. Mark A. Dungan, commanding officer, Marine Corps Base Hawaii, presented him with a K-bar as a token of appreciation from the base.
“He shared a connected existence with everyone over there,” Dungan said. “The people with him helped him cope with the problems for seven years and nine days, and it was faith that got them through. He is probably the epitome of showing leadership under stress and had turned his adversity into an advantage.”