Jeremiah Denton walks free in Subic Bay
Though happy and relieved to be free, when he finally arrived back in the United States, Denton was shocked by what he beheld.
“I saw the appearance of X-rated movies, adult magazines, massage parlors, the proliferation of drugs, promiscuity, premarital sex, and unwed mothers.”
This scenario, he wrote, was coupled with “the tumultuous post-war Vietnam political events, starting with Congress forfeiting our military victory, thus betraying our victorious American and allied servicemen and women, who had won the war at great cost of blood and sacrifice.”
Jeremiah Denton walks free in Subic Bay
Indeed, Denton was convinced the United States won the Vietnam War, only to throw away the victory for political reasons.
“The victory was insanely handed back to the enemy by congressional actions, motivated by political catering to the media, academic, and public antiwar activities, which tragically comprised a loud, violent, ignorant minority of our people who were swept along in the days of national dissolution,” he said in “When Hell Was In Session.”
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In his book “When Hell Was In Session,” Adm. Jeremiah Denton – who passed away Friday at age 89 – described a life-changing personal encounter he had with God while being tortured in a rodent-infested North Vietnamese prison cell:
Our resistance remained resolute, and in the middle of October, Lump [a senior prison official] demanded information from me on camp communications. He told me they knew I was inciting others to resist, and he lost his composure for the first time, threatening me with torture if I didn’t cooperate.
I refused, and a special rig was devised for me in my cell. I was placed in a sitting position on a pallet, with my hands tightly cuffed behind my back and my feet flat against the wall. Shackles were put on my ankles, with the open ends down, and an iron bar was pushed through the eyelets of the shackles. The iron bar was tied to the pallet and the shackles in such a way that when the rope was drawn over a pulley arrangement, the bar would cut into the backs of my legs, gradually turning them into a swollen, bloody mess.
I couldn’t move my legs; I couldn’t turn my ankles; I had to remain in a sitting position at all times with my legs absolutely straight. The pulley was used daily to increase the pressure, and the iron bar began to eat through the Achilles tendons on the backs of my ankles.
After five days and nights in the rig, I decided to give them something harmless, hoping that the gesture would allow them to save face and release me. I wrote that we had talked to other prisoners while pretending to talk to the guards, and had also shouted under the doors. Lump shrugged and ordered me back into the rig. He was angered by my attempt to deceive him and determined to break me.
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