Chapter 14
Harm's first two training days were held in a classroom at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. The lead instructor had been in the backseat of an F-4 Phantom that was shot down over Hanoi in 1971 and had spent two years as a POW. The instructor explained that since the students were all aviators there was a likelihood that they could fall into the hands of the enemy. Because they were officers, they would be subjected to intense interrogation.
The instructor emphasized that the students needed to pay attention and take Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training seriously. "Never mind flight school. This is the most important training school the Navy will ever send you to," he said.
The crux of the classroom training was an in-depth review of the Code of Conduct, a list of six "articles" created after American POW's suffered at the hands of their captors during the Korean War. The POW's were all tortured in one form or another. Some were brainwashed; a few even refusing to return to the United States after the war.
At the conclusion of the first classroom session, Harm took the instructor aside and told him about his father.
That conversation would come back to haunt him.
After two days in the classroom, the class began a four-hour drive to the Navy's 12,000 acre remote training site in northwestern Maine.
When the trucks stopped the students were greeted by a group of partisans; friendly locals who welcomed them to the Peoples Republic of North America – PRONA. The partisans explained that PRONA was a Soviet satellite and that they were a small band of rebels fighting for their freedom during the Cold War.
The rebels would assist the downed aviators, and they promised to aid in their returning safely to the United States.
Harm found out later that the partisans, like everyone else in the land of PRONA, were actually a combination of local outdoors men on retainer, and DoD personnel on loan to SERE School. The partisans spoke English with thick eastern European accents. They were acting, of course, but it was believable.
The winter of 1987 was a cold one. No winter clothing was issued to the students who arrived dressed in flight suits and wearing flight jackets- exactly what they'd be wearing if they had punched out of a damaged aircraft. Harm was a big man so he retained heat more easily than the smaller men; some of whom were already suffering in the cold.
The partisans broke the class into groups of 10 and led them into the forest where they gave instruction in the basics of survival. Because they were in occupied territory, no fires were allowed. That night, Harm's group ate a cold meal of canned vegetables and stale crackers, and then huddled together to stay warm.
The temperature fell to 0 degrees Fahrenheit overnight, and by morning snow was falling. Now everyone was cold.
Harm's group was informed that the army of PRONA was in the area and that they needed to break up and attempt to evade individually. Harm spent the balance of the morning hours crouching in the forest and trying to hide (and to keep from freezing to death) from the unseen enemy. At noon, one of the partisans found him (so much for his efforts to hide) and said that the enemy threat was gone and he was to form up with the entire class to be marched to a safe place.
It was a trap- and a lesson in who not to trust while behind the lines during wartime.
Once they had been gathered together, the formation was interrupted by gunshots. The partisans disappeared into the forest and suddenly the class was surrounded by military trucks and personnel in uniform yelling in a foreign language.
Whatever training scenario context remained in the minds of the students evaporated as their captors slapped them around hard, and threw them to the snow covered ground. They were forcibly loaded into the back of the transports and driven along a winding mountain road, repeatedly told during the trip not to look out the back of the trucks or they'd be shot.
When the trucks finally stopped, Harm's group was dragged out and forced to the ground, which was frozen and as hard as concrete. Before being blindfolded, Harm got a quick glance at his surroundings: a prison camp located deep in a forest. Harm was amused that the camp looked somewhat like Stalag 13 from the old Hogan's Heroes TV show.
It would be the last time Harm found anything about the camp amusing.
Harm was roughly lead to a small cell. After sitting in the center of the cold concrete floor, a guard removed his blindfold and provided Harm with his first look at his new home.
The cell was roughly 12X10 feet with bare concrete walls and no window. What light there was came from a 100 watt bulb high up in the ceiling which could not be turned on or off from inside the cell. There was a rolled up piece of foam rubber in one corner of the cell to serve as a mattress, and Harm could guess the purpose of the plastic bucket next to it.
Harm tried to stand, but the guard shoved him back to the deck.
"Stay in position!" the guard yelled in a thick East European accent. Harm was told that he was "War Criminal Number One-Five" and that he should refer to himself as such. Then the guard pointed to a bucket in the corner and explained that it was his toilet and the he was not to use it without permission.
"No shit 'till say so," said the guard.
Harm grinned. "No shit."
The guard slammed the cell door shut and then peered through the small hatch in the door. Seeing that Harm had stood up and was not in position sitting on the floor, he promptly re-entered the cell and roughed Harm up. Harm spent the next hour holding the uncomfortable position on the floor and then standing to stretch, with the understanding that if the guard caught him it meant another beating.
As Harm sat wondering what was going to happen next, a variety of psyops stuff blared through the speaker mounted high in one corner of the small cell. A mind-numbing cacophony of an out-of-control saxophone was followed by Rudyard Kipling reciting his poem "Boots" over and over in a very haunting voice. [A/N No one who attended Navy SERE will forget "Boots."]
Occasional interruptions came through the speaker outlining the camp rules. Those in the cells were informed that they were being held as war criminals and were not prisoners of war.
At some point the guard entered Harm's cell, blindfolded him, and led him to an interview with the Camp Commandant. The Commandant was an older man with snow-white hair, and his friendly demeanor led Harm to believe this was the "soft sell" portion of the interrogation.
The Commandant asked Harm how he was feeling. Harm joked that he was hungry. The Commandant issued an order to the guard who brought Harm a warm MRE of spaghetti with meat sauce, which Harm wolfed down.
The Commandant asked Harm where he was stationed?
Harm replied that he couldn't answer that question.
Harm was asked what kind of aircraft he flew.
Once again, Harm said he couldn't answer.
After a second round of refusals, the Commandant's friendly mood shifted into anger. Saying that Harm was "insincere", he ordered the guard to take Harm to see the provost marshal for further interrogation.
Harm was blindfolded and taken to another part of the camp. Once inside the building, Harm's blindfold was removed and he saw a huge placard which read: "If it were not for the Wall Street Imperialists you would be home with your wife and family."
A guard told Harm to climb into a wooden crate, barely big enough for him to fit inside.
Once Harm had wedged himself in, the guard slammed the lid and locked it. Harm was instructed that when the guard banged on the box with a hammer he was to yell out his war criminal number. This went on for a considerable period of time. Harm didn't suffer from claustrophobia, but the confined space made his limbs go numb, and the noise inside the box from the constant hammering was deafening.
The box treatment was followed by calisthenics for Harm to loosen up, punctuated by guards slapping him around and throwing him to the floor. When Harm had regained the full use of his extremities, a guard led him to a room where a burly man with a huge blond handlebar mustache was waiting.
Mustache spoke with a heavy Slavic accent. He asked Harm a few questions about his military profile, and each time Harm didn't answer he was hit in the face with a sock filled with sand. It was painful, but left no lasting marks on the skin.
Mustache produced an American flag from his desk and threw it on the floor. He then told Harm to dance on it. Harm tried to avoid it but he was pushed and kicked and ended up stepping on the flag. As he did a photographer appeared and snapped a photograph.
After another round of questions which Harm didn't answer, Mustache decided it was time for stronger measures.
Harm was shoved to the floor and kicked in the stomach. Mustache was a large man and it was a hard kick. Harm vomited up his recently eaten spaghetti. When Harm tried to rise to his feet, Mustache shoved him back onto the floor, forcing Harm's face into his own vomit, and then he sat on Harm's shoulders.
This was a real beating, but there was no "Red Light" signal to call for a halt.
Harm couldn't breathe. He was choking for air. When he managed to turn his head just enough to gulp a breath, Mustache slammed his head onto the concrete floor and the room started spinning.
As he fought to get a breath of air, Harm managed to ask Mustache to stop by offering to tell him something. Harm hoped to employ the technique of bending, but not breaking, by throwing out some meaningless information.
Mustache dragged Harm to a wooden chair and sat him down. Harm's face was smeared with vomit, so Mustache grabbed a bucket of water and dumped it over him.
The room wasn't heated, so the cold water caused Harm to shiver.
Harm told Mustache that he was stationed in California, even though he was currently stationed in Virginia, and that he flew turbo-prop transports, even though he flew an F-14 fighter.
Mustache laughed. He called the guard back in, telling him to give Harm hot food and clean clothes because been very helpful.
It had been too easy. While being led back to the cell block, Harm regretted caving in so quickly.
As soon as Harm stepped into the cell block, the PA announced, "Attention war criminals. Lieutenant Harmon Rabb Junior has cooperated with the Peoples Republic of North America. He will now receive hot food, clean clothes, and be allowed to wash. These rewards will be given to all who join Lieutenant Rabb and cooperate."
A chorus of catcalls erupted from prisoners in the other cells.
"Traitor!"
"Pussy!"
When Harm reached his cell, a plate of hot food, a set of clean clothes- including a winter coat, and a bucket of hot water with soap and a towel were waiting for him.
Harm didn't touch any of them.
As a Naval Academy graduate, Harm should be acting as a leader, but he had made a serious error in judgement which had cost him the respect of his fellow prisoners.
Harm knew that his own father must have endured far more abuse, and he vowed to do the same.
The guard returned to the cell and removed the untouched "rewards" which Harm had earned. Harm was then blindfolded and lead back to the Commandant's office.
"You disappoint me, Lieutenant." The Commandant told Harm about a small group of captured enlisted air crewmen who had gone through worse and had refused to talk. Instead they kept screaming "Article Five!" – a reference to the Code of Conduct where it states only giving name, rank, service number, and date of birth.
"You are a graduate of your nation's Naval Academy, but enlisted men with worker's educations were stronger than you," the Commandant chided.
"You claim that we are war criminals and not POWs. Get your story straight," Harm said defiantly.
"You have demonstrated no loyalty to your nation or your comrades. You wish only to enjoy the privileges of the officer-class. What is more, you remain insincere. We have checked and discovered you told us wrong information. I am sending you back to the provost."
A chill shot through Harm. He couldn't go back there again. Something had gone horribly wrong with the training program. The interrogations were real.
Harm was blindfolded, taken out of the Commandant's office, and hustled across the compound. When his blindfold was removed, Harm found himself seated in the same wooden chair, and face to face with Mustache.
Harm steadied himself. His nation was depending on him to be strong. That's why he'd been educated at Annapolis and put through flight school. He wasn't about to let America down again...or his father.
If he died inside this room, so be it.
"You have provided false information. I ask you once more, and I expect the truth. Where are you stationed?" Mustache demanded.
"I evoke Article Five. Rabb, Harmon D Junior. Lieutenant, Junior Grade, US Navy. 989548301. Born 23 October, 1963."
"Which squadron are you assigned to?"
"Article Five does not require me to answer that question."
"What schools and hospitals have you and your squadron attacked with napalm and white phosphorus?"
"Article Five does not require me to answer that question."
"Which biological weapons have your squadron been trained to use against civilian targets?"
"Again, I evoke Article Five."
Mustache walked over to Harm and kicked the wooden chair out from under him. Once Harm was on the deck, Mustache began kicking him in the stomach, but Harm's stomach was empty so that now he could only retch.
Mustache righted the chair and sat Harm back down. "Give me the information I asked for or I will kill you."
Harm stared Mustache in the eye. "I am an American naval officer fighting in the forces which guard my country and protect our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense."
Mustache struck Harm full across the face with the sand filled sock, knocking him out of the chair and onto the floor. "You are the fascist tool of a failed society. Your education came at the expense of workers who struggle to feed themselves while you dine in your ship's wardroom on delicacies."
Harm climbed off the floor and sat back down in the chair. "I am an American naval officer fighting in the forces which guard my country and protect our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense."
Mustache struck Harm again, but this time he fought to remain upright in the chair. Harm shook off the blow, and glared at his advisory. "I've seen that sock. Now show me your pantyhose."
"I do have something to show you." Mustache went to his desk and returned with Manila envelope. "The Department of Military Intelligence of the Peoples Republic of Vietnam has provided your missing father's complete file."
"Bullshit!" Harm shouted.
"Your father was shot down in Peoples Republic of Vietnam after firebombing a children's hospital."
"Wrong. He was on an Iron Hand mission against a heavily defended SAM site."
"He was shot down by a farmer armed with a rifle. Your father is not only a war criminal, he is a careless and incompetent pilot."
"That's a lie! My father was a Blue Angel."
Mustache smiled inwardly. Harm had just given up his single weakness. "After being shot down, your father surrendered to a group of peasant-women without resisting. Your father is a coward."
"Lies. My father has two Air Medals, and a Bronze Star and a Distinguished Flying Cross, both with V for Valor."
"Your father broke down while under interrogation and confessed to his numerous crimes. He then denounced the United States as a decadent nation run by war profiteers."
"More lies. My father loves his country."
"In return for the kindness and forgiveness bestowed on him by the peace loving people of Vietnam, your father provided important technical information on American aircraft to the air force of Vietnam, and to the Peoples Republic of China and the Soviet Union."
"He would never do that!"
"Your father is alive and is still in Vietnam. He has married a Vietnamese woman and has three children by his new wife. He has repeatedly refused reparation. Your father has abandoned America, just as he abandoned you and your mother."
Mustache had expected Harm to break down, but Harm was consumed by the same rage he had felt in Laos when Bian was executed.
"You're a filthy liar!" Harm sprang out of the chair and bull-rushed Mustache, driving him across the room until they crashed into the desk. When they fell to the floor, Harm began beating Mustache, who struggled to fight him off.
Three guards rushed into the room, and it took all three to pull Harm off Mustache and then drag him out of the building. Once he was outside in the compound, Harm managed to break free and he attacked the same guard who had put him into the wooden box. The other two guards had to use their night sticks to subdue him.
When they reached the cell block, Harm was still cursing and fighting; and he continued to resist until being physically thrown into his cell.
"That guy's fucking nuts," said the guard who had been attacked, only now speaking in perfect English.
The following day, Harm was let out of solitary confinement. By now the other prisoners understood that Harm's "cooperation" had been obtained by trickery. Even so, he remained the Academy man who was too smart of his own good.
Harm joined in a work detail forced to do hard labor around the camp, including building a helicopter landing pad in the ice-covered ground – an impossible task for which the prisoners were beaten for lack of progress.
Under international law, captured commissioned officers were not required to perform manual labor, but the prisoners had been classified as war criminals and had no such rights.
During a break for "Reeducation and Enlightenment", the Commandant gathered the prisoners together. Holding a Bible aloft, he told them their beliefs were lies and that the true American house of worshiped was on Wall Street. He threw the Bible down and stomped on it, which caused some of the prisoners to react enough that the guards felt obliged to slap them and throw them to the ground.
The daily cycle of hard labor followed by "education" sessions from PRONA's propaganda machine would grind on. Nights spent in unheated cells and sleeping on thin foam mattresses, followed by hours of toiling with little food and no winter clothing caused even the strongest of the prisoners to weaken. A few men became ill and were removed from the camp. All of the prisoners were taken back to the Provost Marshal for further "interrogation"- all except for Harm.
Apparently Mustache didn't want another session with him.
By the morning of day five, morale in the camp was low. Kept in isolation it was every man for himself, but in a group the depression was infectious. The prisoners were all junior officers. Most, like Harm, were recently out of flight school, and they were without senior personnel to turn to for guidance. All memories of a training exercise were forgotten. The prisoners were sure that they were never getting out of the camp and that their lives as they knew them were over.
Harm had his own special means of holding out: My father has endured decades of this. I can keep going for as long as it takes.
As he stood in line for breakfast: a bowl of lukewarm turnip soup so tasteless and lacking in food energy that Oliver Twist wouldn't have asked for seconds, Harm heard a burst of gunfire, then a group of men rappelled over the walls of the compound. They used bullhorns announcing that they were US Special Forces, and they took the camp personnel into custody.
When the provost marshal emerged from his building while under guard, a near riot ensued. Several prisoners, including Harm, tried to attack him, and they had to be restrained.
Once order was restored, the flag of PRONA which had hung against the main guard tower was replaced by the Stars and Stripes, and the National Anthem was played over the camp PA.
There wasn't a dry eye among the prisoners as they sang along. They were Americans, and they were free again.
A mobile kitchen was hurriedly setup inside the compound and the men enjoyed their first hot meal in a week.
After the hearty breakfast, the commander of the "Special Forces" detachment came around to shake the prisoners hands. Harm was surprised to see the commander was the lead instructor from Portsmouth.
"You let them get the better of you, Rabb. Divulging information about your father was a serious mistake. You saw how easily it could be passed along and then used against you."
"I thought it was going to be a game. When it became real, I wasn't prepared."
"The game is played for keeps out here. I hope you learned that an Academy education and an officer's uniform is meaningless without the courage and commitment that goes along with them."
The two men chatted for several minutes about Harm Senior; the instructor urging Harm not to give up hope.
"Prisoners can slip through the cracks. There were men taken out of cells in Hanoi, and no one knows what became of them."
Before they parted, the instructor told Harm, "You can stand up to anything. When you get into a tight spot, you won't fail your country, or your father."
Harm lifted himself off of the living room sofa and headed for the study to clean up before going to dinner. He was convinced that if he could get through five days as a captive of the Peoples Republic of North America, he could survive tomorrows questions from Mac. As for telling her about his plan to return to active flight status, that was now off the table.
[A/N] Every naval aviator goes through SERE's, and Harmon Rabb would have certainly done so. In the episode "A Tangled Webb', had it been Harm captured and tortured, my guess is that he would have never talked. I want to thank to Lt. Commander Ward C., a former USN flight officer, for his assistance with this chapter.