... life without wrestling at some time or another with some daunting challenges. [Could someone give me an “Amen” to that?] At times, all of us will face difficult challenges. During the Vietnam War, Admiral James Stockdale was the highest-ranking U.S. officer taken as a prisoner by the Vietnamese. For eight years James Stockdale was held hostage under horrific circumstances in a P.O.W. camp where he was tortured regularly. But he did not give in or give up. In fact, he was a remarkable inspiration to ...
... noise. In every episode of captivity in recent American history, POWs and hostages have been sustained by ingeniously improvised lifelines of communication. In Vietnam, a clever tap code, in which the number of sequence of taps spelled out letters of the alphabet, became the prisoners' chief means of communication. What James Stockdale heard sitting out in that prison courtyard that day was a towel snapping out in prison code the letters GBUJS. It was a message he would never forget: "God Bless You Jim ...
... , coughing. One young prisoner pretended to take a nap each afternoon. While "asleep," he would alter his snoring pattern to communicate messages to the other men. (Listen carefully, ladies, to the snoring of your husbands. They may be communicating a secret code that says, "I love you.") When Admiral James Stockdale was being tortured by his captors for his refusal to cooperate with them, a prisoner nearby sent a message to him by snapping rhythmically with a towel. The message was "God bless you, Jim ...
... on the first day of the week, Mary, the mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene, a devoted follower of Jesus; and Salome, the mother of James and John; make their way to the tomb to finish the embalming rituals left undone in the darkness of Good Friday. As they ... the heartaches of your life roll away. Admiral Jim Stockdale was the highest ranking U.S. official held as a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton. Tortured over 20 times during his eight-year imprisonment, Stockdale, who walks now with a limp says, “I ...
5. The POW's Hope
Illustration
Michael P. Green
In 1965, naval aviator James B. Stockdale became one of the first American pilots to be shot down during the Vietnam War. As a prisoner of the ... isolation away from the other American P.O.W.s and allowed to see only his guards and interrogators. How could anyone survive seven years of such treatment? As he looked back on that time, Stockdale said that it was his hope that kept him alive. Hope of one day going home, that each day could be the day of his release. Without hope, he knew that he would die in ...
