# How to Survive...by a former POW



## jimk (May 28, 2004)

Fellow Texan Jim Ray and his story about faith and the Word.

*The Secret Of Our Survival

 I struggled upright on the damp pallet in my solitary cell to hear better. It had sounded like a whisper. 
No, I must have been hallucinating. I slumped back, wondering how long it had been since my 105 Thunderchief had been shot down as we bombed a railroad bridge on the Hanoi-China supply line. 
That was May 8, 1966. I tried to forget the weeks since, the endless interrogations, the torture that left me screaming in agony. 
Now I wished I had gone down with the plane. Anything would have been better than the desolation, the awful sense of guilt at writing a confession under torture, the aloneness. 
There! I heard it again. An unmistakable, "Hey, Buddy?" 
I scrambled flat on the floor and peered through the crack under the door. I could see I was in one of many cells facing a narrow, walled courtyard. The whisper had come from the next cell. I whispered back. He introduced himself as Bob Purcell, another Air Force man. We waited as the guard passed and then began to converse. 
Soon all the prisoners on that yard were whispering. We started by learning about one another, where we were from, our families. One day I asked Bob what church he went to. 
"Catholic," he said. "And you?" 
"Baptist." 
Bob was quiet for a moment, as if my mention of church evoked deep memories. Then he asked, "Do you know any Bible verses?" 
"Well, I know the Lord's Prayer," I answered. 
"Everyone knows that." 
"How about the Twenty-third Psalm?" 
"Only a little." 
I began whispering it. He repeated each line after me. A little later he whispered back the entire psalm. 
Other prisoners joined in, sharing verses they knew. Through these contacts a fellowship grew among us. The others said that I shouldn't feel bad about confessing under torture. "We've all done it," they assured me. I didn't feel so alone anymore. 
As the number of prisoners grew, two of us shared a cell. My first cellmate was Larry Chesley, a Mormon from Idaho. Though we had a few differences of belief, our common denominators were the Bible and Jesus Christ, and we were able to share and write down a great deal of Scripture. It became vital to our daily existence. Often racked with dysentery, weakened by the diet of rice, thin cabbage and pumpkin soup, our physical lives had shrunk within the prison walls. We spent 20 hours a day locked in our cells. And those Bible verses became rays of light, constant assurances of God's love and care. 
We made ink from brick dust and water or precious drops of medicine. We wrote verses on bits of toilet paper and slipped them to others, dropping them behind a loose brick at the toilets. 
It was dangerous to do that. Communication was forbidden and a man unlucky enough to get caught passing a note would be forced to stand with his arms up against a wall for several days, without sleep. 
But the urge to share developed inventiveness. One night I lay with my ear pressed up against the rough wooden wall of my cell to hear thump... thumpety-thump as somewhere, cells away, a fellow POW tapped out in Morse code: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help" (Psalm 121:1). 
He tapped out his name - Russ Temperly - and passed on the seven other verses in that psalm, which I scratched on the floor with a broken tile. "My help cometh from the Lord," the psalm assured us, and with that assurance came his presence, soothing us, telling us not to fear. 
By 1968, more of us were squeezed together and for two years four of us lived in an 8-by-8-foot cell. In this close proximity, even minor personality differences could flare into violent explosions. For instance, one guy liked to whistle. Talk about getting on your nerves! One verse that helped us bear with one another was: "Every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought..." (Romans 12:3) 
Only by following Christ's teachings about constant forgiveness, patience and understanding were we able to get along together. The whistler? We recommended a schedule for when he should whistle. 
Two and a half years went by before I could write Dad and Mother. A year later I was allowed to receive my first letter. In the meantime we subsisted on letters written nearly 2000 years before. 
By the early 1970s, almost all of the American POWs had been moved to Hoa Lo, the main prison in downtown Hanoi. Newspapers later called this the Hanoi Hilton; we called our part of the prison Heartbreak Hotel. 
Some 50 of us lived, ate and slept in one large room. Thanksgiving came shortly after we moved in, and we held a brief service. We were surprised to find how many of the men knew Scripture, learned from those verses passed along in whispers, on toilet paper and through wall thumpings. We immediately made plans for a Christmas service. A committee was formed and we started to work. 
Green and red thread decorated the walls, a piece of green cloth was draped like a tree. Our cr�che was made of figures carved from soap or molded from papier-m�ch� of moistened toilet paper. 
We pooled the verses we knew and made a makeshift Bible, written covertly on scraps of paper, some of it King James, some Phillips, some Revised Standard Version. It was the only Bible we had. But it served. As we sat in silence, the reader began: "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled..." As he completed this verse, a six-man choir sang "O Little Town of Bethlehem." 
He went on: "And she gave birth to her first-born son..." "Away in a manger, no crib for his bed..." sang the choir. 
I felt like a youngster in Sunday school at First Baptist Church. Time had rolled back for all of us grizzled men in prison pajamas as, with eyes shining and tears trickling through beards, we joined in the singing. Glinting in the light of the kerosene lamp was a cross made from silver foil. 
Occasionally the guards knocked on the door, ordering us not to sing, but they finally gave up. Our program continued into a Communion service led by Air Force Lt. Tom Moe. A Lutheran, he sang his church's Communion chants as Episcopalians, Methodists and men of other denominations bowed their heads. 
A Jewish prisoner told us about the Hanukkah tradition and entertained us by singing "the eight days of Hanukkah" to the tune of "The twelve days of Christmas." Amid the laughing and singing, we looked up to find the prison commander and interrogators watching. 
Later that night, after many months of asking, the commander brought us a real Bible, the first any of us had seen in prison. He said we could keep it for one hour. We made the best of it. One of us read aloud the favorite passages called out by the others. We also checked some of our handwritten Scripture. Amazingly, we weren't far off. 
We didn't see that King James Version again for several months. Finally, after continual requests, one of us was allowed to go out and copy from it for one hour each week. 
But when we started to copy, the interrogator planted his elbow on the Bible for the first 15 minutes. Then, after letting us start, he asked mundane questions to distract us. I just ignored him and wrote as fast as I could. The next week we had to return the previous week's copy work. They seemed afraid for us to keep the Scriptures, as if they sensed the spiritual help kept us from breaking. 
From that we learned a most important lesson: Bible verses on paper aren't one iota as useful as Scriptures burned into your mind, where you can draw on them for guidance and comfort. 
After five weeks we didn't see the Bible again. But that had been enough time for us to memorize collectively the Sermon on the Mount, Romans 12, First Corinthians 13, and many of the psalms. Now we had our own "living Bible" walking around the room. By this time we held Sunday worship services and Sunday school classes. Some of the "eat, drink and be merry" fighter pilots took part, contributing as much to the services as the guys who had always professed to be Christians. 
We learned to rise above our surroundings, to overcome the material with the spiritual. We constantly exercised our minds, and studied subjects, led by men experienced in various fields. These included learning Spanish, French, German and Russian. 
I particularly enjoy music and will never forget the music course. Bill Butler, the leader of this program, drew a giant-sized piano keyboard on the floor with brick dust. Then, standing on a "key," one assistant hummed it's note. Other assistants, up the keyboard, hummed each note of the chord that was being demonstrated, while Bill explained how chord progression works. 
Two years passed this way at Heartbreak Hotel, years of continuing degradation, sickness, hunger and never knowing whether we would see home again. But instead of going mad or becoming animal-like, we continued to grow as a community, sustaining one another in compassion and understanding. 
For as one of the verses I heard thumped out on the wall one night said: "Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:3). His word became our rock. 
by James E. Ray, College Station, Texas*


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## Fish&Chips (Jan 27, 2012)

Great story Jim. Amazing how powerful the Bible is.


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## atcfisherman (Oct 5, 2006)

WOW!!! I can only hope to be able to keep my faith if ever in a situation like that. Now those men were heros of the faith. Thanks for sharing. BTW, what ever happened with them? Were the rescued and if so, when?


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## jimk (May 28, 2004)

atcfisherman said:


> WOW!!! I can only hope to be able to keep my faith if ever in a situation like that. Now those men were heros of the faith. Thanks for sharing. *BTW, what ever happened with them?* Were the rescued and if so, when?


They were returned to the US in 1973. BTW, this is the same Col. Jim Ray that penned the infamous protest letter to Ladies Home Journal in 1999 about honoring Jane Fonda as one of the greatest 100 women in the last 100 years.


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## melvinrod (Dec 13, 2006)

Thanks for sharing that was good reading.


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## Hurricane77551 (Jan 3, 2007)

Wow!! That makes me think of how our troubles are so small in comparison. If These men can accomplish such devotion to Him in these horrible circumstances, we should be thankful for the wonderful life we live here. In Jesus Christ we put our trust.


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