Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello everyone, it's Jr. In today's bonus episode, I'm
Speaker 1: excited to share a special interview with a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: He's a pilot who spent nearly six years as a
Speaker 1: pow during the Vietnam War in Asel not far from
Speaker 1: the Medal of Honor recipient, but Day Captain Charlie Plumb
Speaker 1: is a retired US Navy fighter pilot who earned his
Speaker 1: wings in nineteen sixty five. He went on to fly
Speaker 1: seventy four successful combat missions over North Vietnam, making over
Speaker 1: one hundred carrier landings. Then came his fateful seventy fifth mission.
Speaker 1: It was May nineteenth, nineteen teen sixty seven. Charlie was
Speaker 1: flying an F four Phantom Jet off the deck of
Speaker 1: the aircraft carrier USS Katie Hawk. His mission that day
Speaker 1: was a high risk alpha strike targeting a military complex
Speaker 1: south of Hanoi, known by pilots as Little Detroit. He
Speaker 1: was just five days away from his scheduled return home
Speaker 1: when he was shot down. If you listen to our
Speaker 1: last episode, you'll remember that while he was a pow,
Speaker 1: Bud Day expressed his courage through pure stoicism and steadfastness,
Speaker 1: a belief in upholding the code of conduct above all else.
Speaker 1: But Charlie is a model for another kind of courage,
Speaker 1: a model based in forgiveness and unbelievable grace. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to him to understand how a man who
Speaker 1: endured years of brutal captivity could return to Vietnam decades
Speaker 1: later and find common ground with the man who ordered
Speaker 1: his torture, something unimaginable to many, including by Day. Here's
Speaker 1: our conversation. So, Charlie, thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 1: That is such a pleasure to have you on. How
Speaker 1: are you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm doing fine, Jr. On this honor to be with you.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much. And I'd like to begin
Speaker 1: before we get into the nearly six years that you
Speaker 1: spent as a POW, I'd like to really get into
Speaker 1: why you wanted to join the military.
Speaker 2: I was a farm kid from Kansas, never been out
Speaker 2: of the four states of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, never
Speaker 2: seen the ocean, and age seventeen, I knew I needed
Speaker 2: an education. My parents were poor. We didn't have running
Speaker 2: water in the house until I was seven years old.
Speaker 2: So at age seventeen, I knew my parents couldn't afford college,
Speaker 2: and so I started looking for scholarships. I sent my
Speaker 2: application to everybody I can think of, just a shotgun
Speaker 2: aer and lo and behold, I got an appointment to Annapolis,
Speaker 2: the Naval Academy. Well I had no idea what they
Speaker 2: did in Annapolis. I really did not. And I like
Speaker 2: to tell you that I had great aspirations of being
Speaker 2: an admiral and commanding ships and squadrons around the world.
Speaker 2: That's not true. I needed an education, and this was
Speaker 2: a free one. And so got on that greyhound bussem
Speaker 2: two days later. Just like you, I was pledging to
Speaker 2: defend the Constitution United States against all enemies. That's how
Speaker 2: I got into the military.
Speaker 1: And so you joined the military. How soon after was
Speaker 1: it for you where you realized, Okay, this is not
Speaker 1: just going to be maybe a free education. There's going
Speaker 1: to be a little bit more involvement here.
Speaker 2: The day I actually showed up at Annapolis, I didn't
Speaker 2: know how to salute or march or puld my socks.
Speaker 2: You know, it was quite a transition, you know, from
Speaker 2: a farm kid from Kansas into a military uniform. I
Speaker 2: looked back on those days and they were wonderful, but
Speaker 2: they were not easy.
Speaker 1: You know, you find yourself deployed on missions seventy four
Speaker 1: missions talk us through seventy fifth.
Speaker 2: I flew seventy four combat missions trying to protect the
Speaker 2: air group from enemy fighters, and I had a couple
Speaker 2: of ground support missions. But those are very difficult flights
Speaker 2: for me because I knew I had to be accurate,
Speaker 2: and so we went lower and took more risks when
Speaker 2: we were supporting ground troops. And so I was five
Speaker 2: days from the end of my tour of duty on
Speaker 2: that seventy fifth mission. I mean, I felt like I
Speaker 2: was bulletproof, over confident probably, and felt like I really
Speaker 2: was the top gun. It was a big, big deal.
Speaker 2: It's a big strike called an Alpha strike. We had
Speaker 2: three aircraft carriers, one of which I was on, the Kittiehawk,
Speaker 2: and five air force bases on these targets in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: So I launched off the Kitty Hawk rendezvouoted twenty thousand feet,
Speaker 2: took on another three or four thousand pounds of jet
Speaker 2: fuel in an airborne tanker, and pointed the nose towards
Speaker 2: the beach. Got in just south of Hanoi, the capital city,
Speaker 2: the most heavily defended city in the world. At that
Speaker 2: time my role was fighter escort and we came up
Speaker 2: close to the target, thought we saw an enemy, and
Speaker 2: we skirted out to the side of the formation, which
Speaker 2: was my big mistake. Hit by a surface to air missile.
Speaker 2: It exploded some twelve thousand pounds of jet fuel I
Speaker 2: had in that airplane. Sent that bird a topsy turvey
Speaker 2: endover and down towards the rice patty below. I ejected,
Speaker 2: my copat had ejected, Our parachutes opened, and in ninety
Speaker 2: seconds I went from king of the skies to scum
Speaker 2: of the earth. Spent the next and three in communist
Speaker 2: prison camps.
Speaker 1: Wow, So you find yourself now as you're parachuting, What
Speaker 1: is going through your mind in that moment? Talk me
Speaker 1: through what is about to happen.
Speaker 2: I was in shock. I truly was out of body,
Speaker 2: almost watching this whole thing happen. And about that time
Speaker 2: I find myself about waist deep in a rice patty,
Speaker 2: and so my first thought was to my buddies. I
Speaker 2: was a schedules officer in the squadron, and I had
Speaker 2: a book coded for the names of all the pilots
Speaker 2: and the missions that they were going on, and that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. I did not want the enemy to
Speaker 2: get a hold of that book. I pulled the book
Speaker 2: out of my pocket and ripped up the pages eight,
Speaker 2: about half of the pages the book. I took my
Speaker 2: two way radio up because I could have called for help,
Speaker 2: but I was so far into enemy territory that I
Speaker 2: knew that any rescue would probably be disastrous for the
Speaker 2: guys in their helicopters coming in to get me. So
Speaker 2: I made one call and said, see you guys at
Speaker 2: the end of the war, Please don't try to rescue me.
Speaker 2: Tore the antenna off the radio, through it one way
Speaker 2: and through the radio the other way, and then I
Speaker 2: bowed my head and I said a prayer. I prayed
Speaker 2: for my wife that she would understand this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even imagine finding yourself in that
Speaker 1: position and yet still have the awareness to take that
Speaker 1: book and to take that radio, to throw it an
Speaker 1: opposite end, to say your prayer just one of those
Speaker 1: things that I think as myself and listeners of this
Speaker 1: podcast are just in awe. So what's transpired that has
Speaker 1: prepared you to have that type of awareness.
Speaker 2: I don't remember actually thinking logically. It was all almost automatic.
Speaker 2: Of course, I had been trained. I'd been through four
Speaker 2: different survival camps, but at the end of it, I
Speaker 2: think I learned more. In the sand is four years old,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, you don't kick saying in the
Speaker 2: other guy's face if he's bigger than you are. I mean,
Speaker 2: all those schools I don't think prepared me just as
Speaker 2: well as my upbringing. I had a very strong family.
Speaker 2: I was a very optimistic person. I felt like there
Speaker 2: was some kind of master plan that I was involved in,
Speaker 2: and I might never know exactly what it was, but
Speaker 2: I felt like that somebody or something was in more
Speaker 2: control of this than I was.
Speaker 1: So you land, how quickly did you find yourself now
Speaker 1: being taken prisoner?
Speaker 2: I ejected into a very populated area, so I was
Speaker 2: captured immediately, they were right there. I haulowed me into
Speaker 2: the prison camp, immediately interrogated, tortured for two days, and
Speaker 2: of course code of conduct. As a lot of your
Speaker 2: listeners will know, rank, scherl number, data birth, that's all
Speaker 2: you're obliged to give to the enemy. I flew the
Speaker 2: skies of Vietnam thinking I'm tough enough. I will never
Speaker 2: give more the name, ranks, serial number to data birth.
Speaker 1: I mean how old were you at this time when
Speaker 1: this is happening.
Speaker 2: I was twenty four, Okay. So after two days of
Speaker 2: the torture, they primarily a bunch of ropes and irons,
Speaker 2: and they waded us up like a human pretzel. I buckled,
Speaker 2: and I never told them anything they could use. I
Speaker 2: didn't know. I was a junior officer. They didn't tell
Speaker 2: me secrets. But I certainly went farther than I had
Speaker 2: intended to go. They tossed me into this little eight
Speaker 2: foot by eight foot prison cell, eight feet long and
Speaker 2: eight feet wide. There's no window. There's a door with
Speaker 2: a flap in the door so that a guard could
Speaker 2: come by at any moment and drop that flap and
Speaker 2: see what you were doing. And of course we were
Speaker 2: supposed to be sitting on our board bed thinking about
Speaker 2: our sins against the North Vietnamese. Inside the cell, we
Speaker 2: had a two gallon bucket he usually rusted out at
Speaker 2: the top with no top on it. Largely this was
Speaker 2: our latrine. You got to empty that bucket about every
Speaker 2: two or three days. It was very nice at all.
Speaker 2: They delivered two meals a day, about ten and two.
Speaker 2: We got a cup of rice each time, and sometimes
Speaker 2: a cup of broth, and so I was alone and scared,
Speaker 2: and I felt very guilty. Lucky for me, Well, it's
Speaker 2: more than luck. I think it was providence. A fellow
Speaker 2: two cells away passed a wire across a storeroom. The
Speaker 2: cell between us was being used as a storeroom. He
Speaker 2: passed this wire over the boxes, around the shovels, through
Speaker 2: the ropes of the storeroom, and into the little hole
Speaker 2: in my cell wall fourteen feet away. The wire scratched
Speaker 2: on my concrete floor. I thought it was a cricket
Speaker 2: at first, but I found it and I pulled on
Speaker 2: the wire and it pulled back, and then it disappeared,
Speaker 2: and man, I'm in real trouble. Now they've tricked me.
Speaker 2: The wire came back about an hour later with a
Speaker 2: note wrapped around the end of the wire. The note
Speaker 2: was written on a dirty piece of toilet paper, and
Speaker 2: just blobs on this piece of toilet paper, and I
Speaker 2: could barely make it out, but it said, memorize this code,
Speaker 2: then eat this note. Well, I'd volunteered for a lot
Speaker 2: of things in the Navy, but I didn't know it
Speaker 2: was going to come to this. So I did it.
Speaker 2: The codes of five y five matrix of the alphabet,
Speaker 2: indicating any letter would be represented by two numbers number
Speaker 2: of the line than the number of the row. So
Speaker 2: A is one one, Z is five to five. We
Speaker 2: left out K, substituted C for a K. So a
Speaker 2: very cumbersome code. But I started tugging on the wire
Speaker 2: and the guy on the other ends had designated various
Speaker 2: letters of the alphabet by certain numbers of tugs. I
Speaker 2: talked for him for a while. Bob Shoemaker passed me
Speaker 2: some very important information. He said, you will find that
Speaker 2: you've joined the finest team you'll ever play on. He said,
Speaker 2: barn None, I don't care where you go what you do.
Speaker 2: This team of American fighter pilots like Jim Stockdale Medal
Speaker 2: of Honah winner and Bud Day Medal of Vannah winner,
Speaker 2: Leo Thurstness Medal of Vannah winner. In fact, we had
Speaker 2: a total of five in that camp. Our leadership in
Speaker 2: this prison camp is the best leadership you will ever
Speaker 2: see the rest of your life. You will never see
Speaker 2: leadership like this. Some of them have been there for
Speaker 2: over two years when I showed up. Surely they know
Speaker 2: something that I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. I mean I think what I hear is
Speaker 1: when given purpose, right, we show up and respond right.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what I hear is purpose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a mission that our leadership had established
Speaker 2: for us. Everything you do, every answery you make in
Speaker 2: the torture room, everything you do has to be seen
Speaker 2: through a prism of return with honor. And Shoemaker was
Speaker 2: telling me this. I felt very ashamed. How can I
Speaker 2: ever go home and face my family, my fellow fighter pilots,
Speaker 2: the community and admit that I had failed in my
Speaker 2: mission Because I did fail in my mission, and I
Speaker 2: didn't do what I came there to do and what
Speaker 2: I was proud to do when I did it. Suddenly
Speaker 2: I am on the other side of this equation. I'm
Speaker 2: a failure. And I paced three steps one way and
Speaker 2: three steps the other in that eight foot by foot
Speaker 2: prison cell, feeling guilty about what I had done.
Speaker 1: We're gonna tell make a quick break. We're back with
Speaker 1: Captain Charlie Plumb. He's just gotten in touch with other
Speaker 1: captured US airmen in the camp, using a secret code
Speaker 1: to talk to Bob Shoemaker, and he's realizing the gravity
Speaker 1: of telling the enemy the information he has.
Speaker 2: But I was convinced that there were other fighter pilots
Speaker 2: in that prison camp, that they were all probably older
Speaker 2: and more mature, they were better fighter pilots, and they
Speaker 2: probably didn't stray from name, rank, sheryll, number, day to
Speaker 2: birth like I did. That they had accomplished their mission
Speaker 2: and I had failed. In mind, so pacing along, feeling
Speaker 2: sorry for myself and blaming everybody I could think of,
Speaker 2: I was blaming the enemy. I was blaming the guards
Speaker 2: that tortured me. I was blaming the mechanics that put
Speaker 2: the airplane together. Thinking that at the end of the war,
Speaker 2: maybe I would go to some foreign country change my
Speaker 2: name because I didn't want anybody to know how terribly
Speaker 2: i'd failed. And finally I said, Bob, I have a
Speaker 2: confession to make, and when I tell you what I did,
Speaker 2: you might not want to communicate with me anymore, because
Speaker 2: if our roles were reversed and you did what I did,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to talk to you either. He said,
Speaker 2: would you do, Plumber, there's my call sign Plumber. I said,
Speaker 2: I failed. I broke. I'm sorry to tell you this,
Speaker 2: but the torture was too great, and he tugged back
Speaker 2: on the wire through the wall. He said, Hell, everybody broke.
Speaker 2: There's not a man in his prison camp who was
Speaker 2: as strong as he wanted to be what he expected
Speaker 2: of himself. So get over it. We still have a
Speaker 2: war to fight. We're going to pursue this war till
Speaker 2: our last dying breath. I dropped the wire that somebody
Speaker 2: else had gone through this experience and falling down but
Speaker 2: then gotten right back up and pursued his mission. And
Speaker 2: just their sharing with me, how they have responded to
Speaker 2: the guilt and the pain and the misery that they
Speaker 2: were going through with a strong sense of community, that
Speaker 2: we were helping each other out. And so that was
Speaker 2: sort of the beginning of my understanding that I had
Speaker 2: to forgive myself for being so weak in the torture room.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like the opportunity to interact with
Speaker 1: the other prisoners in that particular camp is essentially what
Speaker 1: saved you. That brotherhood and that camaraderie, and how no
Speaker 1: matter where you are, no matter what the conditions are,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be together, You're gonna stick together, You're gonna
Speaker 1: show up for one another.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Once I gained communication with the other guys, we
Speaker 2: spent hours and hours on the wall, tugging on wires
Speaker 2: or tapping on walls. And I think it's a great
Speaker 2: lesson of life is lots of times we need help.
Speaker 2: And your listeners will probably be surprised that in that
Speaker 2: prison kit, I remember many times my stomach hurt from
Speaker 2: laughing so hard. There was just an awful lot of
Speaker 2: humor jokes, you know that. We would tell We even
Speaker 2: numbered our jokes and you just come up with a
Speaker 2: number of The guy knew the joke you were talking about,
Speaker 2: and then he would add a pun to the end
Speaker 2: of the joke. And when your birthday came, man, your
Speaker 2: buddies were giving you plates and plates of food and
Speaker 2: an orchestra of play. And the birthday cake was always
Speaker 2: the shape of a big aircraft carrier with girls hopping
Speaker 2: out of the aircraft carrier. It was all in our mind.
Speaker 2: It was all tapping on walls, but you always look forward.
Speaker 2: But it worked. It worked. We were saving the lives
Speaker 2: of each other, and we had a purpose in life.
Speaker 2: We had a goal and to keep that goal and
Speaker 2: foremost in your mind, regardless of what you're going through.
Speaker 1: I tell people all the time, Yes, the physical recovery
Speaker 1: was obviously challenging, and I'm not going to dismiss that
Speaker 1: overlook that, right, that's difficult. But for me personally in
Speaker 1: my recovery and what I had to navigate the mental
Speaker 1: that's where it's at, and what are some of the
Speaker 1: daily things that you're saying to yourself to remember that
Speaker 1: you're on the offensive.
Speaker 2: So Shoemaker passed along to me patriotic quotes and Bible
Speaker 2: verses and stories and jokes, and one of the little
Speaker 2: poems that he sent across really turned me around. The
Speaker 2: poem is this acid does more harm in the vessel
Speaker 2: it stored, then on the side it's poured that wire
Speaker 2: was a revelation to me the first time that a
Speaker 2: young guard couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen
Speaker 2: years old. He brought his girlfriend into my cell to
Speaker 2: show her how tough he was. He hit me with
Speaker 2: his rifle button, kicked me with his steel toed boots,
Speaker 2: and she's back in the corner of my prisons, all
Speaker 2: laughing and enjoying how tough her boyfriend was. And that
Speaker 2: was tough for me to overcome, but that I couldn't
Speaker 2: waller in this misery and pain because it wasn't doing
Speaker 2: me any good at all. In fact, it was very harmful.
Speaker 2: This acid that was within me wasn't hurting the enemy
Speaker 2: at all. It was destroying me. I thought, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do this to myself. I got to do
Speaker 2: something to make this worthwhile. I found in that prison camp.
Speaker 2: If you harbor this acid within you and you don't
Speaker 2: forgive people, you're on a downhill slope. You're not going
Speaker 2: to make it. And it's not hurting the enemy, It's
Speaker 2: gonna kill me. It's gonna be more harmful than anything
Speaker 2: I spew out towards the enemy or anybody else. I
Speaker 2: looked around that eight foot by eight foot cell, with
Speaker 2: the rats and the bugs and the filth. That wait
Speaker 2: a minute, My restriction was not the eight feet between
Speaker 2: the walls. It was the eight inches between my ears.
Speaker 2: This was a mental game. I was in this mental box.
Speaker 2: I designed this box by myself, and I recognized immediately
Speaker 2: that I had to get out of that mental box.
Speaker 2: That was the true restriction of what it was going through.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna find some value in all of this pain.
Speaker 2: And then I saw the value in forgiveness, and I
Speaker 2: found great pleasure and joy and peace in that action
Speaker 2: of forgiveness. Now just took a while, but eventually I
Speaker 2: was ready to forgive the guards the torture me. I
Speaker 2: was very forgive the camp commander. I was, and after
Speaker 2: that life became a lot easier for me.
Speaker 1: So here you are, twenty four years of life. I mean,
Speaker 1: you were in captivity for nearly six years. I mean
Speaker 1: over twenty one hundred days of doing this exercise, in
Speaker 1: this work. I mean, is that enough to get you
Speaker 1: through everything that you endured for nearly three years?
Speaker 2: So we had no books to read, the windows to
Speaker 2: look out, and no TV, telephone, we'd have any communication
Speaker 2: with the outside world at all, And so especially in
Speaker 2: solitary confinement, we were in our own heads, probably twenty
Speaker 2: hours a day. That's all we had was ourselves. So
Speaker 2: I went back through my life. I decided to try
Speaker 2: to make an autobiography from the very beginning at three
Speaker 2: and a half years old, a step by step, every day,
Speaker 2: every book I'd ever read, every movie I sin, every
Speaker 2: teacher I ever had, every girl I ever dated. How
Speaker 2: long do you think it took me to recapture every
Speaker 2: memory in my life? About three months. I felt like
Speaker 2: I had totally exhausted my entire memory database. But in
Speaker 2: going back for the twenty four years that I had lived,
Speaker 2: I tried to pick out the positive parts. Then I
Speaker 2: decided to plan the future. I started to try to
Speaker 2: figure out what I'd do, what kids my wife and
Speaker 2: I would have together, where we would live, where we
Speaker 2: would vacation, what kind of cars we would drive, all
Speaker 2: this stuff for twenty years. Well, that took another three months,
Speaker 2: and then I wasn't home. So I went back through
Speaker 2: that future and replanned. So anyway, I'm telling you all
Speaker 2: of the mental things that I came up with myself.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break, and when we're back,
Speaker 1: Charlie goes home. When you came home, you were given
Speaker 1: sort of this hero's welcome. How did that land with
Speaker 1: you after nearly six years as a pow and during
Speaker 1: everything you endured, coming home and being put up on
Speaker 1: this platform of I'm a.
Speaker 2: Hero coming home was a wonderful event. But we were
Speaker 2: sure surprised, and they had organized ticker tape praise. They
Speaker 2: gave me a brand new Ford, We got lifetime tickets
Speaker 2: to World Series, and I think we had like two
Speaker 2: hundred major gifts. One of my favorite was lazy boy
Speaker 2: gave me a recliner, a leather recliner. Readers Digest had
Speaker 2: produced a set of books called While You Were Not Here,
Speaker 2: and each one of the books was one year of
Speaker 2: things that had happened while we were there, And so
Speaker 2: I got six volumes of this from nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 2: to nineteen seventy three. It was a hero's welcome, but
Speaker 2: we didn't feel like heroes. None of us felt like
Speaker 2: heroes at all. The heroes were the guys that didn't
Speaker 2: come back. The heroes are the civilians that waited for
Speaker 2: us and prayed for us. And in a lot of cases,
Speaker 2: you know, I think my wife had it tougher than
Speaker 2: I did, but I knew I was alive every day.
Speaker 2: I knew I was coming home every day. They didn't know.
Speaker 2: And about half of us came home for divorces. My
Speaker 2: poor wife had so tough, and she found another guy,
Speaker 2: fell in love, and filed for divorce three months before
Speaker 2: I came home. And so obviously another gut punch for me.
Speaker 2: I'll never forget laying in that hospital room and Great
Speaker 2: Lakes Naval Hospital in Chicago and thinking to myself, how
Speaker 2: terrible this is, and I started blaming everybody I can
Speaker 2: think of, blame her boyfriend. And it didn't take long
Speaker 2: until I said, wait a minute, Wait a minute, you
Speaker 2: hypocrypt You know that little poem about acid within you
Speaker 2: hurts you or it hurts anybody else. Get over yourself.
Speaker 2: Got a life to live, you know, Charlie.
Speaker 1: There's something that keeps popping up to me, and I'm curious.
Speaker 1: I keep hearing the word forgiveness throughout our conversation, and
Speaker 1: forgiveness continue to be a theme over the course of
Speaker 1: your life. But there's another element of this that you
Speaker 1: had to really lean on. Talk to us about what
Speaker 1: transpired ten years ago when you went back to Vietnam.
Speaker 2: I was hounded by the guy who ran the history
Speaker 2: department of University of Hanoi. He contacted me, Hey, I
Speaker 2: want you to come back. We've got the camp commander
Speaker 2: who wants to see a prisoner of war before he dies.
Speaker 2: He was in charge of all of our torture. I
Speaker 2: was surprised that any camp commander who had been so
Speaker 2: ruthless would ever want to see me. And I try
Speaker 2: to figure this out in my mind, is this some
Speaker 2: kind of a trick? And so they pursued this because
Speaker 2: I refused to go back to Vietnam several times. In fact,
Speaker 2: this went on for like three years because I didn't
Speaker 2: see any purpose. This may be painful for me. That's
Speaker 2: a pain that I don't need. Why would ever go
Speaker 2: through this? No, thank you. And then when they inferred
Speaker 2: that he wanted to see me and that it might
Speaker 2: be because he was in his late eighties and wanted
Speaker 2: to apologize, Okay, maybe it's going to be good for him,
Speaker 2: and maybe this will be good for me. Of course,
Speaker 2: when they invited my family to go with me for
Speaker 2: a vacation, I thought that would be interesting for my
Speaker 2: kids to see the prison cell that I was in
Speaker 2: because it's a museum now, So okay, I'll go do this.
Speaker 2: But even before I met the guy, I really was
Speaker 2: confused and apprehensive. I guess about what he was going
Speaker 2: to say to me. Now, my kids, even though they
Speaker 2: know my philosophy in life, my kids thought Dad's gonna
Speaker 2: break loose and punch the guy. He talks a big story,
Speaker 2: but this forgiveness thing, maybe he doesn't really believe it,
Speaker 2: especially when he comes face to face with the guy
Speaker 2: that tortured him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine and what did you feel when
Speaker 1: you saw him?
Speaker 2: What happened? So he had a little shack who was
Speaker 2: his little retirement home on a river. So he came out.
Speaker 2: He was nervous, was as nervous as I was. I
Speaker 2: felt safe, I felt secure, but I had no I
Speaker 2: what I was walking into. The guy brought out offered
Speaker 2: me his homemade beer, and it was in a plastic
Speaker 2: pepsicola bottle, and it was pretty good beer. I talked
Speaker 2: to him for probably forty five minutes or an hour.
Speaker 2: We got to know each other, and our backgrounds were
Speaker 2: similar enough to know that he had done some things
Speaker 2: like I had done some things which we were very
Speaker 2: proud of because we thought that we were in service
Speaker 2: to our country. He had the same kind of military
Speaker 2: training I did, and he had pledged to defend his
Speaker 2: way of life just like I had. And so we
Speaker 2: meet in a conflict where we don't agree on accepting
Speaker 2: the other's way of life. But there's certain commonality with
Speaker 2: anyone you have a conflict with, if you research this thing,
Speaker 2: if you think about it enough, we're more alike than
Speaker 2: we are different. He never told me he forgave me,
Speaker 2: and I never told him that I forgave him. He
Speaker 2: never admitted any kind of mistake, but he would never
Speaker 2: admit to ever harming an American. He wanted to hug me,
Speaker 2: and I hugged him back. There was smiles and there
Speaker 2: was humor in our conversation. I mean, we didn't leave
Speaker 2: as best friends, but I think we both felt very
Speaker 2: vulnerable to military guys from opposite sides of the war.
Speaker 2: He'd fought for his country. I fought for my country.
Speaker 2: And it's so important that we connect and that we
Speaker 2: forgive and we honor the people, regardless of what they
Speaker 2: do to us, that we see value in anyone. That's
Speaker 2: kind of my attitude. That's what I live for.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's incredible. There's some components of that
Speaker 1: where I can identify with what you're saying. I mean,
Speaker 1: but Day, when he came home, he was he was angry,
Speaker 1: like a lot of service members were. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: for you to access this element of forgiveness, to go
Speaker 1: meet this camp commander, it's very noble, my friend.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks, certainly. I respect Bud Day, not just for
Speaker 2: what he flew with the misties, but when we came
Speaker 2: home and he fought for us and other veterans with
Speaker 2: our healthcare. So it wasn't just his military experience. He
Speaker 2: served well after he came home.
Speaker 1: People deal with the different ways, right. You know, you
Speaker 1: agreeing to come on and have this conversation with me,
Speaker 1: this is still an extension of service.
Speaker 2: I know you're a humble man, Jr. And I got
Speaker 2: to throw the bouquet back to you because the challenge
Speaker 2: that you faced, those years of hospitalization and all of
Speaker 2: the surgery and all this stuff that he went through,
Speaker 2: you found a purpose. I think that's vital in all
Speaker 2: of our lives, military or civilian. If you can't figure
Speaker 2: out what your purpose is, you better try to find it.
Speaker 2: I think that's just vital and not just survival, but
Speaker 2: even success in all that we do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is so true, and thank you for that.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of service members, a lot of
Speaker 1: veterans who are navigating, you know, the transition back home
Speaker 1: that are having a difficult time. For those veterans who
Speaker 1: are listening right now, who feel like they've lost the connection,
Speaker 1: the purpose, the mission, if you will, and struggle on
Speaker 1: a daily basis on showing up as someone who has
Speaker 1: navigated a lot and has been around a lot of
Speaker 1: individuals that have had to equally navigate those things. What
Speaker 1: is some advice that you can offer to those individuals
Speaker 1: that are listening.
Speaker 2: Adversity is a horrible thing to waste. You take the
Speaker 2: little struggles in life and you can make positive conclusions
Speaker 2: out of anything. Ninety percent of the POWs and Vietnam
Speaker 2: stayed in the military, went back to flying airplanes and
Speaker 2: commanding fleets around the world. Five hundred and ninety one
Speaker 2: guys came home. So far, we have seventeen generals and
Speaker 2: seven admirals, most of us retired as senior grade military officers.
Speaker 2: We have doctors and lawyers, and preachers and teachers and
Speaker 2: bishops and judges, and we have two ambassadors, two United
Speaker 2: States senators, a vice president are candidate, and a president
Speaker 2: are candidate. All from five hundred and nine to one men.
Speaker 2: Is because of the leadership we had and the team
Speaker 2: that they put together and the direction the purpose that
Speaker 2: we found in that prison. And I'm not just talking
Speaker 2: about military stuff. I'm talking about going through a divorce
Speaker 2: or losing your job. Even today in my life, I'm
Speaker 2: eighty two years old, and I continue whenever I get
Speaker 2: upset about something, I think it's a puzzle. I know
Speaker 2: there's some value that if I work hard enough, I
Speaker 2: can figure out what the advantage is in this adversity.
Speaker 2: I've sort of become the poster boy for PTG post
Speaker 2: traumatic growth, the whole idea that you can go through
Speaker 2: it challenging experience and come out better. How do you
Speaker 2: do this well. It's part of an organization called Boulder Crest.
Speaker 2: It's a free process for any veteran, any first responder.
Speaker 2: I can go to one of three different ranches in
Speaker 2: Texas and Arizona and Virginia and go through this process
Speaker 2: or turning PTSD into PTG. You have to decide on
Speaker 2: your own. I'm gonna make this work. I'm going to
Speaker 2: find some value in my adversity. And it may take
Speaker 2: a while, it may take months or even years. Then
Speaker 2: it becomes a whole lot easier. Find a support group
Speaker 2: and it might be the guys at the VFW, it
Speaker 2: might be a PTA. Find people that you can talk
Speaker 2: to and listen to that have the same kind of
Speaker 2: experiences that you do. Because nothing would replace the little community,
Speaker 2: the podebic community that we had through very difficult communication,
Speaker 2: but it was vital in my existence. To know that
Speaker 2: I was not alone.
Speaker 1: Captain Charlie Plum, thank you for your service. Thank you
Speaker 1: for continuing to serve, not only in the nearly six
Speaker 1: years you spent as a POW, but the years after
Speaker 1: you were a POW and were released, and you continue
Speaker 1: to tell your story and the story of the individuals
Speaker 1: that you served with. What we've learned about a lot
Speaker 1: of these Metal of Hoanna recipients is they loved being
Speaker 1: a part of something. And that's the beautiful thing about life,
Speaker 1: is not isolating yourself and still finding ways to connect
Speaker 1: and find that connection and find ways to show up.
Speaker 1: And so I thank you, sir for this incredible conversation.
Speaker 2: J R. I respect you immensely and what you've been
Speaker 2: through and your journey even today in telling not only
Speaker 2: your story but my story.
Speaker 1: Captain Plum, thank you again. I love you, sir. To
Speaker 1: keep up with Captain Charlie Plum, you can pick up
Speaker 1: his book I'm No Hero or visit his website Charlie
Speaker 1: Plum dot com. If you write him, he'll answer your
Speaker 1: email himself. If you're curious to learn more about post
Speaker 1: dramatic growth, check out the website Bouldercress dot org. That's
Speaker 1: Boulder with a You after the Oh and for more
Speaker 1: on that prison, you can check out our episode about
Speaker 1: Bud Day. Thanks for listening. This episode of Metal of
Speaker 1: Honor Stories of Courage was produced by Jesse Shane. Our
Speaker 1: editor is Ben Nadaf Hoffrey, Sound design and additional music
Speaker 1: by Jake Gorsky. This episode was mixed by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Constant. The fact checking by Arthur
Speaker 1: Gomperts and original music by Eric Phillips. Don't forget. We
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. Send us your personal story
Speaker 1: of courage or highlight someone else's bravery. Email us at
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor at Pushkin dot fm. You might hear
Speaker 1: your stories on future episodes of Metal of Honor, or
Speaker 1: see them on our social channels at Pushkin Pods. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, JR. Martinez