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Speaker 1: dusk was falling in the Jungles of North Vietnam. It
Speaker 1: was late August nineteen sixty seven. An Air Force Colonel
Speaker 1: bud Day was lying in a muddy pit about the
Speaker 1: size of a He had been there for days. One
Speaker 1: of his arms was broken in three places, his left
Speaker 1: knee was badly damaged, and he couldn't see out of
Speaker 1: his right eye. Bud Day had been captured in enemy territory.
Speaker 1: He was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese Army, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't in a prison. This was a little militia
Speaker 1: camp in the middle of the wilderness. His guards were
Speaker 1: a couple of teenage boys with rifles, and like most
Speaker 1: teenage boys, they were getting bored in the short amount
Speaker 1: of time that Bud had been in the camp, he
Speaker 1: had already been tortured again and again, but he followed
Speaker 1: a code of conduct, the same code of conduct that
Speaker 1: the US military required of every person who becomes a
Speaker 1: prisoner of war. Give away no information except no special
Speaker 1: favors from the enemy, and make every every effort to escape.
Speaker 1: Bud hadn't told his captors anything, even when they strung
Speaker 1: him up by his ankles and he could feel the
Speaker 1: bones in his broken arm stretched further apart. Special favors
Speaker 1: certainly didn't seem forthcoming, not that he would have accepted any.
Speaker 1: His sense of honor would never allow it. But then
Speaker 1: there was a part of the code about escape that
Speaker 1: Bud thought was something he had to try. Darkness crept closer.
Speaker 1: The two kids who were supposed to be watching him
Speaker 1: wandered a little further from the pit, chatting and laughing
Speaker 1: about something. Using his good hand, Bud worked away at
Speaker 1: the rope that was wound around his legs. He had
Speaker 1: convinced his captors that he was unable to walk, so
Speaker 1: the rope was only tied in grandy knots easy to
Speaker 1: get out of. Even with Bud knew this would be
Speaker 1: his only chance. They were planning to move him to
Speaker 1: a real prison, and that would be impossible to escape.
Speaker 1: He quickly untied one knot, and then another and another.
Speaker 1: He loosened the ropes around his legs, and he listened
Speaker 1: to the boy's distant laughter. His mind flashed to his wife, Dorry,
Speaker 1: and four little kids waiting back in Arizona. He sent
Speaker 1: a silent help me father up to heaven, and then
Speaker 1: Bud Day crawled out of the bunker and into the night.
Speaker 1: I'm Jr. Martinez and this is Medal of Honor Stories
Speaker 1: of Courage. The Medal of Honor is the highest military
Speaker 1: decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery
Speaker 1: and combat at the risk of life, above and beyond
Speaker 1: the call of duty. Each candidate must be approved all
Speaker 1: the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory
Speaker 1: officer in the field to the White House. This show
Speaker 1: is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant,
Speaker 1: and what their stories tell us about the nature of
Speaker 1: courage and sacrifice. Bud Day would be the only American
Speaker 1: serviceman ever to escape from a North Vietnamese prison and
Speaker 1: make it all the way to South Vietnam. He would
Speaker 1: stumble for days through the jungle with no shoes, no food,
Speaker 1: and terrible injuries, passing within inches of enemy soldiers, knowing
Speaker 1: all the while that if he were captured again, he
Speaker 1: would have to fight like hell to stay alive and
Speaker 1: to keep the code of conduct. Bud's story is one
Speaker 1: of toughness and grit and fortitude, the kind afforded two
Speaker 1: that can only come from a deep set faith in
Speaker 1: country and family and in the concept of honor. While
Speaker 1: this episode is about that stoic silence in the face
Speaker 1: of brutal enemy pressure, it's also about the power of
Speaker 1: speaking out. Because while Bud stayed mute to protect his
Speaker 1: fellow aviators, his wife Dory was shouting from the rooftops,
Speaker 1: using her voice to win freedom for prisoners of war.
Speaker 1: As Americans, we take free speech for granted. How Bud
Speaker 1: and Dory Day used their voices, frankly, how this whole
Speaker 1: country used their voices during the Vietnam War, proves just
Speaker 1: how powerful that right really is. The morning of August
Speaker 1: twenty sixth, nineteen sixty seven started as usual for Bud Day.
Speaker 1: He woke up at the Air Force base in Fukat,
Speaker 1: just south of the demilitarized zone in South Vietnam. The
Speaker 1: day would have been hot and muggy. As always, he
Speaker 1: recorded a message to be sent to Dory and the kids.
Speaker 1: The couple had two boys and two girls, three of
Speaker 1: them under the age of five. At four am, Bud
Speaker 1: had breakfast and then he got ready to fly. But
Speaker 1: had been flying over North Vietnam for several months, one
Speaker 1: of the most dangerous and top secret missions of the
Speaker 1: entire war. He was commander of a team of supersonic
Speaker 1: jet pilots flying over territory dotted with anti aircraft art artillery.
Speaker 1: Here he is talking about it.
Speaker 2: It was Arali Harry mission because probably sixty percent of
Speaker 2: the time that you were in the north you were
Speaker 2: getting shot at, and so I lost forty two percent
Speaker 2: of my airplanes in the first six months we operated.
Speaker 1: He had been born to a poor, hard scrabble family
Speaker 1: in Iowa and grown up during the worst of the
Speaker 1: Great Depression. He served in World War Two, then Korea.
Speaker 1: One time he built out of an airplane and his
Speaker 1: parachute didn't open, but he survived. He finished seven years
Speaker 1: of schooling college plus a law degree in only four years.
Speaker 1: He was just tough and discipline and driven beyond belief.
Speaker 1: So to him, this morning in August was nothing special.
Speaker 1: He sized up his aircraft, not his favorite. The hardness
Speaker 1: in the back was lonky. He settled at the controls
Speaker 1: in the back of the plane, and a pilot named
Speaker 1: Kip was at the front. Bud was older than Kip,
Speaker 1: but then he was old for Vietnam. He had volunteered
Speaker 1: to go at the age of forty one, a farewell
Speaker 1: tour at the end of a long career, one more
Speaker 1: round before he hung up his flight suit for good.
Speaker 1: He'd initially been assigned to the three hundred and nine Squadron.
Speaker 1: Bud loved their motto return with Honor, but pretty quickly
Speaker 1: he'd been given this insanely treacherous, top secret mission. As commander,
Speaker 1: it was up to Bud to pick the code name.
Speaker 1: Other units were called things like gun Smoke or Typhoon
Speaker 1: or Tiger, not Buds.
Speaker 2: Or callsign was a Misty. That was a song of life,
Speaker 2: and so that was our call sign.
Speaker 1: And in case this doesn't ring a bell for you,
Speaker 1: Misty is a romantic ballad by the crooner Johnny Mathis.
Speaker 1: Look at me, I'm as helpless as as a hippy tree,
Speaker 1: as helpless as a kitten up a tree. It doesn't
Speaker 1: quite scream We're gonna shoot you out of the sky,
Speaker 1: does it. But it totally works. Maybe it's because Bud
Speaker 1: was an older guy a classic, or because he missed
Speaker 1: his wife, or maybe it just goes to prove when
Speaker 1: you're as famously tough as Bud Day, you can call
Speaker 1: your unit anything you want. Soon, Kipp and Bud were
Speaker 1: ripping through the sky over North Vietnam at almost five
Speaker 1: hundred miles per hour, but when they were about a
Speaker 1: mile away from their planned target, explosions ripped through the air.
Speaker 1: Bud couldn't remember when he'd seen so much anti aircraft artillery.
Speaker 1: It was like the sky was on fire. They made
Speaker 1: it through the barrage somehow without being hit. Bud told
Speaker 1: Kip to take another pass over the target, so they
Speaker 1: flew over it one more time. Their plane was hammered
Speaker 1: with explosions again and again. Still it looked like they
Speaker 1: were gonna make it out, and then Bud saw the missile.
Speaker 1: He knew what was coming. The aircraft took a direct hit.
Speaker 1: Every warning light on the instrument panel lit up, and
Speaker 1: Bud yelled eject eject. They parachuted down. They were deep
Speaker 1: in enemy territory, falling into the uncle. Bud blacked out
Speaker 1: during the fall, but he came to with a jolt
Speaker 1: of searing pain.
Speaker 2: My arm was fractured, damaged by name. The Marsham mask
Speaker 2: didn't separate right and hipp any eye and damaged my eyes.
Speaker 3: So I wound up on the ground.
Speaker 1: Bud broke his arm in three places, a bone was
Speaker 1: sticking through his skin. He had dislocated his knee, and
Speaker 1: he couldn't see out of his right eye.
Speaker 2: Just got my radio off and got a call off
Speaker 2: and told him I was on the ground alive, and
Speaker 2: young Zanda May just popped to the bush and captured me.
Speaker 1: His message had gotten through just in time. Help was
Speaker 1: on the way, but he was surrounded by teenage boys
Speaker 1: with rifles, and they pulled him further into the jungle,
Speaker 1: further away from where his parachute was left, further away
Speaker 1: from Kip, whom they hadn't spotted.
Speaker 2: A few minutes later, or was there moving. A long
Speaker 2: helicopter came in and tried to rescue us, and I
Speaker 2: was gone.
Speaker 1: The chopper got so close that he could see Kip
Speaker 1: in its doorway, but the boys had their rifles trained
Speaker 1: on Bud. He couldn't go anywhere. He watched as the
Speaker 1: helicopter dipped then lifted away. The teens were euphoric. They
Speaker 1: had their prize. Bud was heartsick. He had been paraded
Speaker 1: into a village that had been destroyed by American bombardments.
Speaker 1: From there into the makeshift militia camp that you met
Speaker 1: him in, he could see rice patties, and just beyond
Speaker 1: a dense expanse of jungle, he was pushed into a
Speaker 1: muddy bunker, just a hole in the ground, really barely
Speaker 1: larger than his wiry five foot nine inch frame. His
Speaker 1: captors tied him up with a row, and Bud started
Speaker 1: coming up with that escape plan almost immediately.
Speaker 2: So I decided because it was obvious my eye was
Speaker 2: all bloodshot, I was blind, and my knee was pretty big,
Speaker 2: and of course my arm was bustard, and.
Speaker 3: So they concluded I was not throughout.
Speaker 2: And when I tried to get me to move around
Speaker 2: or do anything, I faked that I couldn't move at all,
Speaker 2: and I began to.
Speaker 1: Buy the A doctor arrived and set his arm in
Speaker 1: a makeshift cast, but Bud could tell the bones weren't
Speaker 1: properly aligned. Things got progressively worse from there. The soldiers
Speaker 1: wanted him to talk, to give them intel. They beat
Speaker 1: him with rifle butts. They staged a mock execution, holding
Speaker 1: a gun to his head. They hung him from his
Speaker 1: ankles for hours. To them, he wasn't an enemy combatant
Speaker 1: protected by the rules of war.
Speaker 2: The Vietnamese never recognized as Geneva Convention, so their possession
Speaker 2: was that you were a criminal. They could do anything
Speaker 2: to you they wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Bud knew the torture would get worse when the real
Speaker 1: soldiers arrived, and they were coming soon. One of his
Speaker 1: jailers had drawn a jeep in the mud and said
Speaker 1: a word that Bud understood. Hanoi the capital city of
Speaker 1: North Vietnam. So he decided he had to run that night,
Speaker 1: loosening the rope on his leg, waiting for his teenage
Speaker 1: guards to look the other way.
Speaker 2: First time, both of them were facing a different direction.
Speaker 2: I slept out of this hole over the price patty.
Speaker 1: He was dressed in only his undershorts, He had no shoes,
Speaker 1: and he was weak from hunger. He ran towards the jungle,
Speaker 1: his bare feet sliding on the mud.
Speaker 2: My foot hit the bottom of thatsel, just like stopping
Speaker 2: out up banana piil. My feet went out from under men.
Speaker 2: I landed right on the bus door, and I'd almost
Speaker 2: bet my tongue off. The came from screaming when I
Speaker 2: hit the deck, so I couldn't wave it and hear it.
Speaker 2: Wait at a bout a minute a minute happened nothing,
Speaker 2: so I thought. I got up and headed south.
Speaker 1: He would have to travel roughly thirty miles to get
Speaker 1: to South Vietnam and safety. He was just beginning to
Speaker 1: pick his way through the jungle when a shrieking sound
Speaker 1: cut the air. American B fifty two's were soaring overhead,
Speaker 1: not to look for Bud, but to drop bombs on
Speaker 1: the enemy encampments. One landed one hundred yards from Bud.
Speaker 1: He was hit with shrapnel. Now his bare feet were
Speaker 1: lacerated and bleeding. The next day brought another bomb and
Speaker 1: his ear drums were ruptured. Still he pressed on.
Speaker 2: I survived basically on water because there was no food.
Speaker 2: The best I could do was capture a couple of
Speaker 2: these frogs.
Speaker 3: I ate him. That's not a good deal.
Speaker 1: After several days in the jungle, he made it to
Speaker 1: the river that separated North and South Vietnam. He crept
Speaker 1: down the bank and lowered himself into the water, fighting
Speaker 1: the current to make it to the other side. His
Speaker 1: fingers touched the far bank. Unbelievably, he had reached South Vietnam.
Speaker 1: By then, he was so starving that he was delusional.
Speaker 2: I lost track of time. I lost my ability to
Speaker 2: start things out.
Speaker 1: He saw two Marine Corps helicopters in the sky not
Speaker 1: too far away. There were replenishing supplies. It could only
Speaker 1: mean one thing. A base was nearby. He could get there,
Speaker 1: he knew it. He got closer and closer, hobbling and stumbling.
Speaker 3: I was so left done.
Speaker 2: About a mile of Marine Corps base at Contens popped
Speaker 2: out of the brush.
Speaker 1: At this point bud Day could barely walk. But he
Speaker 1: was also bud Day.
Speaker 2: I just said to myself, I'd come this far and
Speaker 2: sawnd her to these last years. So I took off front.
Speaker 1: He ran as best as he could, but the NVA
Speaker 1: fired at him. Bud took a bullet in the left
Speaker 1: eye and the left hand, and he collapsed. His escape
Speaker 1: was over. He was going back to North Vietnam. He
Speaker 1: had been close to freedom. He wouldn't be that close
Speaker 1: again for five and a half years. It was nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, two years since Bud's capture. He had been
Speaker 1: moved from prison camp to prison camp, beaten and starved,
Speaker 1: his broken arm purposely rebroken, and time and time again interrogated,
Speaker 1: he refused to give any information other than what the
Speaker 1: Code of Conduct stipulated, his name, his rank, his date
Speaker 1: of birth, and his serial number.
Speaker 2: They really tortured me, hung by the arms and crippled
Speaker 2: me pretty badly. Both my hands were curled up. I
Speaker 2: can feed myself if I couldn't do anything.
Speaker 1: He told himself. He had to keep the faith he
Speaker 1: couldn't break. It was better to die than to say something,
Speaker 1: even the name of his unit Misty, that might harm
Speaker 1: the aviators that were still flying over Vietnam. He remembered
Speaker 1: the motto of his first squadron, return with honor. He
Speaker 1: was determined to do just that. Every night, he prayed
Speaker 1: for strength, and he prayed for Dorry and the kids.
Speaker 1: He hoped they knew he was still alive. Bud spent
Speaker 1: most of his time in a prison in Hanoi, nicknamed
Speaker 1: the Hanoi Hilton. It housed hundreds of POWs and it
Speaker 1: was miserable.
Speaker 2: It was just absolute twelth. You know, of lats all
Speaker 2: over the place and rat droppings and there, so everybody
Speaker 2: had dysentery. In Diarhta, we were all about seven other
Speaker 2: calories of day. So you're all eva shaded and big
Speaker 2: stomachs and big sunken eyes on your health was very
Speaker 2: precring us.
Speaker 3: The lovely conditions were just really at the bottom.
Speaker 1: The prison was a series of long, interconnected brick buildings.
Speaker 1: The windows were covered with batting, so light barely crept
Speaker 1: in the air was trapped in stale. The heat was unbearable.
Speaker 1: Bud spent months in solitary confinement as punishment for not talking,
Speaker 1: and those cells were as small as six by six feet.
Speaker 1: When he wasn't in solitary, he shared his cell with
Speaker 1: the young John McCain. Bud and another pilot had nurse
Speaker 1: McCain back to health when he first arrived in prison,
Speaker 1: broken and close to death. That was one of the
Speaker 1: ways prisoners resisted their terrible situation. They took care of
Speaker 1: each other. Another way was by being organized. The prison
Speaker 1: guards forbade organization of any kind, but the men in
Speaker 1: the Hanoi. Hilton were military pilots. Hierarchy gave them a
Speaker 1: sense of normalcy, and because of his rank, Bud was
Speaker 1: a commander within the prison. This meant he was dealt
Speaker 1: even harsher punishments. The first to feel the wrath of
Speaker 1: the guards. Second problem, to get organized, you have to
Speaker 1: be able to communicate. But the POWs weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: talk between cells, and to disobey meant torture. So they
Speaker 1: developed a tap code. It's kind of like a Morse code.
Speaker 1: Each letter of the alphabet except K was given a
Speaker 1: short set of two taps. They would spell out words
Speaker 1: letter by pains, taking letter. It was life's blood for
Speaker 1: the POWs.
Speaker 2: So despite where they might have you, unless I had
Speaker 2: you so wrapped up in irons that you absolutely could
Speaker 2: not move, while you could communicate, you could tap.
Speaker 3: That's sorry, always know what was going on.
Speaker 1: Every Sunday morning, Bud, as commander of his prison unit,
Speaker 1: used his knuckles to tap out C C, which stood
Speaker 1: for Church Call. That same tap would be sent down
Speaker 1: the whole line of cells in his section. Then the
Speaker 1: men stood in their cells, said the pledge of Allegiance,
Speaker 1: the Lord's Prayer, and prayed for the safety of their
Speaker 1: fellow POWs, Bud and his men had to keep the
Speaker 1: faith somehow. At the Hanoi Hilton, there was a total
Speaker 1: lack of contact with the outside world. They had no
Speaker 1: way of knowing what was happening in the war or
Speaker 1: how close they might be to freedom.
Speaker 3: I believed that the country was going to come and
Speaker 3: get me.
Speaker 2: I never ever came to the conclosure that my country
Speaker 2: had just got to dunk me, like some years to AMMO.
Speaker 1: The only news in prison came from a steady stream
Speaker 1: of propaganda piped in over a loudspeaker. The POWs called
Speaker 1: it CBS, short for you Ready for this camp bullshit system.
Speaker 1: There was no way for the prisoners to sort fact
Speaker 1: from fiction. CBS reported on devastating natural disasters in America
Speaker 1: and on implausible triumphs in the North Vietnamese Army. And
Speaker 1: it reported that back in the US, while Bud was
Speaker 1: keeping his mouth shut and being tortured for it, countless
Speaker 1: others were speaking out against the war but thought it
Speaker 1: was lies, just one more thing the prison guards made
Speaker 1: up in order to torment the pod.
Speaker 2: As we started hearing about the Hiptis and Leanna war demonstrations,
Speaker 2: all that stuff. I basically just gott a all of that.
Speaker 2: What else could the commedists tell you would hurt you more?
Speaker 2: Would be more moralizing than for you to thank the
Speaker 2: back on the home front, Nolan's supporting you.
Speaker 1: That, of course, was far from the truth. But because
Speaker 1: more and more Americans were starting to question the war,
Speaker 1: the government was trying to keep the plight of the
Speaker 1: POW's a secret. They worried it would add more fuel
Speaker 1: to the anti war fire, and so the military ordered
Speaker 1: the wives of POWs to observe a code of conduct
Speaker 1: similar to buds. Keep to yourself, don't speak to the press,
Speaker 1: don't ask too many questions about where your husband was
Speaker 1: or what was being done to rescue him. They called
Speaker 1: it the Quiet policy. So back in Arizona, Dorry was
Speaker 1: living in a kind of a nightmarish limbo. She knew
Speaker 1: Bud had been shot down. She knew he had survived
Speaker 1: his initial crash, but that's it. Because North Vietnam refused
Speaker 1: to officially acknowledge holding any POW's, it was impossible to
Speaker 1: know for certain if Bud was still alive or where
Speaker 1: he was. Dory and Bud had been together at that
Speaker 1: point for decades. They had met as teenagers in Iowa.
Speaker 1: She was the little sister of one of his friends.
Speaker 1: Her family was Norwegian, so Bud nicknamed her the Viking.
Speaker 1: The two had started writing letters back when he had
Speaker 1: gone off to World War II. Dorry told him she
Speaker 1: was waiting for him and praying for him to be safe.
Speaker 1: Now she couldn't write to Bud. She couldn't do anything
Speaker 1: but keep praying, just wait and hope exactly what Bud
Speaker 1: was doing.
Speaker 2: I didn't intend to die in a chrome place if
Speaker 2: I could avoid it.
Speaker 1: But the prison guards didn't make survival easy. In the
Speaker 1: summer of sixty nine, the torture got worse. They introduced
Speaker 1: something called the fan belt, a four foot long rubber
Speaker 1: strip cut from a tire.
Speaker 3: I had some.
Speaker 2: Absolutely brutal torture sessions, and two or three times, frankly,
Speaker 2: I would have preferred to die. I was in black
Speaker 2: irons and never made me with a fan belt. I
Speaker 2: can remember counting until three hundred struck, and I just said,
Speaker 2: why am I wasting my time counting?
Speaker 3: Here? They're gonna kill me, you know, and I hope
Speaker 3: they do.
Speaker 1: Here's what Bud Day didn't just tell you that intensive
Speaker 1: beating lasted more than six days. By the end, he
Speaker 1: was close to death. Bud believed that if he managed
Speaker 1: to live, his physical suffering would stop eventually, but his
Speaker 1: mental anguish would never end if he gave up even
Speaker 1: a scrap of important information to his tormentors.
Speaker 3: That was Bud.
Speaker 1: Back in the States, Dorry had reached a totally different conclusion.
Speaker 1: The Viking decided she had to start talking. Dory was
Speaker 1: through with keeping quiet. She wanted to feel like she
Speaker 1: was maybe making a difference. She began to fight by
Speaker 1: speaking out. Her friend Mike Newhouse remembers how hard the
Speaker 1: Viking fought for her husband.
Speaker 4: I thought Modday was the bravest, toughest, most determined sob
Speaker 4: I'd ever met until I met Doris.
Speaker 1: We've been calling her Dory, but her name was Doris,
Speaker 1: as in Doris Day, not that Doris Day, the famous actress,
Speaker 1: which is why the Viking went by Dorry.
Speaker 4: She was an absolute tiger, you know. The State Department,
Speaker 4: after her continued and persistent please, pretty much told her
Speaker 4: to go home, do your knitting and kind of stay
Speaker 4: out of our hair. And she wasn't about to accept that.
Speaker 1: She banded together with other POWs and missing in Action
Speaker 1: wives to form the National League of Families. The public
Speaker 1: believed that any prisoners of war were being treated according
Speaker 1: to the Geneva Convention, but the wives had learned the
Speaker 1: truth about the torture, so they defied. To keep quiet
Speaker 1: policy and the hopes of putting pressure on Washington. They
Speaker 1: spoke to the press and gave speeches, sometimes being heckled
Speaker 1: by people who hated this war and believed, as the
Speaker 1: NVA prison guards did, that these men weren't POWs but criminals.
Speaker 1: Around the country, wives pleaded on behalf of their husbands,
Speaker 1: asking for the world to pay attention. Their activism worked.
Speaker 1: For the first time, the United States publicly listed the
Speaker 1: number of men it believed to be held prisoner. Millions
Speaker 1: across the nation, including many who opposed the war, bought
Speaker 1: metal bracelets with the names of American prisoners as a
Speaker 1: show of support. President Nixon promised the wise that he
Speaker 1: would hold North Vietnam accountable for the POW's treatment, regardless
Speaker 1: of what was happening in the conflict itself.
Speaker 5: What I have assured these very courageous women is this
Speaker 5: government will do everything that it possibly can to separate
Speaker 5: out the prisoner issue. And have it handled as it
Speaker 5: should be as a separate issue on a humane basis.
Speaker 1: Dory was working NonStop, writing letters to the North Vietnamese government,
Speaker 1: speaking passionately to the press. She had the governor of
Speaker 1: Arizona on speed dial. She bought a plane ticket to
Speaker 1: the Paris Peace Talks to confront the North Vietnamese diplomatic mission.
Speaker 4: She collared, everybody, powers, players, anybody associated with the talks,
Speaker 4: and you said, damn it. Bring my husband hold.
Speaker 1: She and other wives brought thousands of letters to give
Speaker 1: to the North Vietnamese delegation, all from citizens pleading for
Speaker 1: the humane treatment and return of the POWs. The public
Speaker 1: pressure embarrassed the North Vietnamese, and all the way over
Speaker 1: in Hanoi, Bud could feel something starting to shift. Some
Speaker 1: of the worst torture abated, and after years of no
Speaker 1: contact at all, Dory was able to send a package
Speaker 1: of photographs to Bud. He pored over the pictures of
Speaker 1: his children growing up without him. Their oldest Stephen, was
Speaker 1: a teenager, not a kid anymore. Bud's hands still didn't work.
Speaker 1: The whippings had left him stooped, barely able to walk,
Speaker 1: but even he's unbroken. He hadn't said a word to
Speaker 1: his captors that he was ashamed of. By nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: three years into his captivity, Bud was moved to Room seven.
Speaker 1: It held the prisoners considered to be the hardest cases,
Speaker 1: the ones who were most defiant. James Stockdelle was there,
Speaker 1: you might remember him as Ross Perrot's running mate during
Speaker 1: his nineteen ninety two presidential campaign. And a pilot named
Speaker 1: Robbie Reisner, who had been at POW since nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: And John McCain.
Speaker 2: Of course, where you live was somebody for as long
Speaker 2: as we did. You build up a kind of a
Speaker 2: relationship that is just undescribable. But I know more about
Speaker 2: John than his mother, his father, and his wives in total.
Speaker 1: One day in February of seventy one, Rob decided he
Speaker 1: was going to give a church service for the men
Speaker 1: in that room. The guards forbaded, but it's hard to
Speaker 1: forbid something to men.
Speaker 3: Who've got little to lose.
Speaker 1: They were midway through the service when the guards came
Speaker 1: storming in. They seized Reisner and led him off to
Speaker 1: a torture session. Bud jumped on one of the concrete bunks.
Speaker 1: He waved his hands in the air and started singing
Speaker 1: the star spangled banner. The other men in the room
Speaker 1: turned to look at him, and at first they were
Speaker 1: stunned silent, and then they joined in. They sang at
Speaker 1: the top of their lungs. The melody traveled through the dank,
Speaker 1: filthy building, and soon all of the POWs, hundreds of them,
Speaker 1: were singing. They sang every song they knew, one after
Speaker 1: the other. The guards were stemy, they couldn't punish all
Speaker 1: of them. Eventually they lined them up at the point
Speaker 1: of bayonets. It made an impression on John McCain waitness
Speaker 1: I was saying the national anthem, a response to having
Speaker 1: one rifle pointed at the spage.
Speaker 3: Well, that was something to behold by.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Bud was forty six. He had been a prisoner for
Speaker 1: four and a half years. But his defiance and his
Speaker 1: silence stayed true, not just for himself before his men
Speaker 1: in even worse shape than he was, Like McCain, they
Speaker 1: made maybe beg me, there's maybe encourage men and ordered
Speaker 1: me back to life.
Speaker 3: But more than that, but show me how to second one.
Speaker 1: Self respect and my honor out as you did.
Speaker 3: I can never repay it.
Speaker 1: Dorry meanwhile, was telling her story in even wider circles.
Speaker 1: After Paris, she went to Switzerland to speak to the
Speaker 1: Red Cross, and Sweden to the North Vietnamese Embassy. And
Speaker 1: she kept Bud alive for her kids, playing home movies,
Speaker 1: telling stories, making sure they believed, really believed that someday
Speaker 1: he could make it home. By Christmas of seventy two,
Speaker 1: five and a half years after Bud had been captured,
Speaker 1: that homecoming felt within reach. The prisoners at the Hilton
Speaker 1: heard bomb screaming close than closer. American B fifty two's
Speaker 1: were bombing Hanoi.
Speaker 2: Suddenly nine o'clock I led literally hundreds of bombers or
Speaker 2: over annoy dropping bombs, and it.
Speaker 1: Was just the earth was firebright, ag the ground began
Speaker 1: to shake, debris started to fall off the ceiling. But
Speaker 1: Bud was elated.
Speaker 2: But that was a wonderful sound. Afraid of My people
Speaker 2: were just royally ecstatic. Everybody knew three we started getting released.
Speaker 2: In February of nineteen Subnets.
Speaker 1: Bud and John McCain were together on the plane to
Speaker 1: Clark Airbase in the Philippines. Bud had been imprisoned for
Speaker 1: five and a half years. He had just turned forty
Speaker 1: eight years old. His teeth were broken, he was death
Speaker 1: in one ear. His arm was permanently bent, but he
Speaker 1: left the medical facility at Clark with his uniform pressed
Speaker 1: and his backstraight. He was returning with honor. A plane
Speaker 1: took him to California. He was told that as the
Speaker 1: most senior officer in the group, he would need to
Speaker 1: give a speech. Blud stood in the doorway of the airplane,
Speaker 1: scanning the crowd for the faces of his family. He
Speaker 1: walked down the steps, saluted the officers waiting there, and
Speaker 1: stepped to the microphone. He started by thanking God, his country,
Speaker 1: and President Nixon. And then he heard the click of
Speaker 1: heels racing across the tarmac. It was the Viking. There's
Speaker 1: a photo of what happened next. I can't show it
Speaker 1: to you, but I swear if you want to know
Speaker 1: what pure elation looks like, you should look it up.
Speaker 1: It was like an orchestra was playing that only they
Speaker 1: could hear, just like Bud's favorite song with its beautiful,
Speaker 1: super romantic lyrics and a thousand violins. Begin to pay
Speaker 1: when I see the photo, even I get misty, Dorry
Speaker 1: rushing forward, arms out Bud in a crouch, rail thin,
Speaker 1: stretching out his hands to catch her, A wide eyed,
Speaker 1: radiant years in the making smile on his face.
Speaker 2: I get missed.
Speaker 1: The moment you'rely. When Bud and Dorry got back home
Speaker 1: to Arizona, they renew their wedding vowels. They had been
Speaker 1: married for twenty four years. Bud worked tirelessly on behalf
Speaker 1: of the men who had been POW's along with him,
Speaker 1: riding them up for metals, helping them get back to
Speaker 1: work to a somewhat normal life. He spoke about his experiences.
Speaker 1: Mostly he just wanted to fly again.
Speaker 3: Soon.
Speaker 1: He was the vice commander of a fighter wing. That's
Speaker 1: where he was when he learned he would receive the
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor. He was awarded it in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six from President Gerald Ford.
Speaker 3: I felt quite humble.
Speaker 2: I had seen enough combat to know if there were
Speaker 2: certainly a lot of acts of courage that probably far
Speaker 2: exceeded with you, sorry yourself doing.
Speaker 1: He retired in early seventy seven and went to work
Speaker 1: as a lawyer representing pilots that had bumped up against
Speaker 1: Air Force bureaucracy. He helped POWs, including his old roommate
Speaker 1: James Stockdale received disability payments. He was in and out
Speaker 1: of the hospital himself. Some of his pain faded, though
Speaker 1: his sense of defiance did not. After the Hanoi Hilton
Speaker 1: was torn down, Bud got his hands on some of
Speaker 1: the bricks. He mounted them in his garage.
Speaker 2: I thought, that's kind of a all of my triumph.
Speaker 2: You know, they got no jail and I got to bracks.
Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen ninety five, Bud saw a
Speaker 1: news story that made him, for lack of a better word, furious.
Speaker 1: It said that the US government was no longer allowing
Speaker 1: military retirees over the age of sixty five into military hospitals.
Speaker 1: They would have to rely on Medicare, which meant that
Speaker 1: they would have to pay for part of their healthcare.
Speaker 1: Bud was seventy years old, He was disabled, and when
Speaker 1: he signed up for the military back in nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: he had been told that if he served twenty years,
Speaker 1: he'd have free lifetime medical benefits. He'd kept the code
Speaker 1: of conduct, but had the government kept up with their
Speaker 1: end of the bargain, he didn't think so. He loved
Speaker 1: his country, he loved it, but this was wrong, and
Speaker 1: as an American he had the right to speak out
Speaker 1: to fight for what he believed, so bud Day decided
Speaker 1: to sue the government. That battle would take five years.
Speaker 1: He appeared in courthouse after courthouse. He stood on the
Speaker 1: Capitol steps in the rain. He got John McCain by
Speaker 1: that point, a senator from Arizona and a future presidential
Speaker 1: candidate involved. He wouldn't let it go, and finally, in
Speaker 1: two thousand, his advocacy paid off with the passage of
Speaker 1: the Tricare for Life Bill. Military veterans would be able
Speaker 1: to use military and civilian hospitals for their care and
Speaker 1: have access to low cost prescriptions for as long as
Speaker 1: they lived. But in his persistence made it happen. He
Speaker 1: took care theyra of his squad once again. Over his
Speaker 1: military career, bud Day received seventy medals for his service,
Speaker 1: but until the end of his life. When asked what
Speaker 1: he was proudest of, Bud invariably answered, my wife. Bud
Speaker 1: died at the age of eighty eight. Doyd lived to
Speaker 1: ninety five. She passed earlier this year. Theirs was a
Speaker 1: marriage of equals, the Viking and the commander. They were
Speaker 1: strong together and just as strong a part because they
Speaker 1: shared a core belief in duty to others and honor.
Speaker 1: They were tireless and defiant. No wonder they made such
Speaker 1: a difference, and no wonder they were so much in love.
Speaker 1: I am too misty and too much in love me.
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage is written by Meredith
Speaker 1: Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane. Our
Speaker 1: editor is Ben Nadafh Hoffrey. Sound design and additional music
Speaker 1: by Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer is Constanza Gayarto. Fact
Speaker 1: checking by Arthur Gombert's, original music by Eric Phillips. Production
Speaker 1: support by Suzanne Gabber. Special thanks to the Congressional Medal
Speaker 1: of Honor Society, the Brigadier General Bud and Doris Day
Speaker 1: Interpretive Center in South Sue City, Nebraska, and the film
Speaker 1: The Keep Quiet Pop How Vietnam Pow wives were silenced
Speaker 1: by the American story. If you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about this story, take a look at our show notes,
Speaker 1: where we have some of the resources we use to
Speaker 1: put together this episode.
Speaker 3: We want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone
Speaker 1: else's bravery. You might hear your stories on future episodes
Speaker 1: of Metal of Honor or see them on our social channels.
Speaker 1: Just email us at Metal of Honor at Pushkin dot Fm.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, JR. Martinez