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17 COUNTDOWN THE FRANTIC WAIL OF AIR RAID SIRENS AND THE VOLLEYS of distant flak tipped us off to a resumption of the bombing in mid-April. Overjoyed, we cheered like football fans when a new outfit arrived at the Zoo to take up anti-aircraft positions. I was elated and joined in the enthusiastic cries. "This is it, baby! Nixon's gonna get 'em this time! Get 'em boy! Get 'em!" we yelled. The vast majority of us believed the only way we were going to get out of the POW camps was by pounding the North without mercy. The Paris Peace Talks were a farce. As far as we were concerned, they could talk until kingdom come but the communists would never be persuaded at the conference table. They would budge only if the U.S. showed it had the will to use its air power as it should have done years back. In June, they trucked us back to the Hanoi Hilton, probably as a security measure. It was actually a blessing in disguise because now I shared a room with some three dozen Americans. Though they tried to seal off each group from the other we managed to keep in continuous contact. Much of this was done verballyand we could even see into the other rooms because the barriers were mere straw mats strung between bamboo supports. Sometimes I wasamong those who got into arguments with the few among us opposed to the bombing. Mark Gartley was one of them. He betrayed us, in violating the Plums later that year, by accepting early release when his mother came to Hanoi for him. After a couple of spats, I realized it didn't help to argue. We all had to live together in the same room. Even though I had taken up the gauntlet several times, the more prudent course for the good of everybody in our room was to avoid verbal clashes. With Tangee recessed into the deepest folds of my memory, I no longer worried anxiously about the passage of time and did not hunger for liberation. I had no wife to rush home to, nor children to dote on. The return to single status gave me a peace of mind I had not experienced in all my years of 245 246 CHAINED EAGLE bondage. I had the benefit of time to plan leisurely for my future. Eight years in chains had changed me into a more patient person, so that like many people of the East, I cared little for the movement of the hands on a clock. I had become like the craftsmen of old, to whom time was nothing but a change of seasons. I knew, in the ninth summer of my confinement, that I could hold out for many more if need be. Tangee had been my Achilles heel. Now that she was gone from my life I had no weak spot. I had the will and the stamina to ride out this war, no matter how long it took. If the new round of bombing hastened that end, so much the better. The wide, unshuttered windows gave us an occasional view of flak or missiles streaking up to their targets. And occasionally an unmanned reconnaisance drone came right over the prison. But the bombing was, for the most part, infrequent in our vicinity. Sometimes we heard the A6s screaming in on night raids and saw the sky lit up with flashes and flickering fires from burning targets. When the giant B52s rolled in, the ground shook and rumbled as their deadly cargo struck home. There were some close calls and once a stray bomb hit something across the street from us. We were supplied with mahogany planks, about ten feet long and one-and-a-half feet wide, which we propped at angles against the walls then sat under for protective cover in the event one of the steel tresses or tiled roofs crashed down during a bombing raid. Wave after wave of day and night air raids took their toll on the morale of the AAA units, which were equipped mostly with ineffective light weapons and machine guns. Towards the latter part of the year they were exhausted, moaning and groaning about the futility of their tasks and showing every sign that they no longer wanted to man their posts. It was heartening to see the proof of our belief that only massive use of air power would make...

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