Vietnam vet, POW shares accounts of perseverance

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Brittain Crolley
  • 4th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
SEYMOUR JOHNSON AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. --  In the 4th Fighter Wing's latest installment of its Leadership Lecture Series, Feb. 4, the wing welcomed retired Lt. Col. Barry Bridger, a Vietnam veteran, prisoner of war, and former member of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, to speak about his trials and tribulations during his more than six years of captivity.

Bridger shared with Airmen the grim details of what happened to him and other POWs while imprisoned at the Hanoi Hilton prison camp and how he overcame years of torture and abuse by sticking to his values.

A native of Bladenboro, North Carolina, Bridger attended the University of North Carolina and earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics. Inspired by his brother, who was a pilot in World War II, Bridger decided to commission through the school's ROTC program.

"[He was a] whale of an aviator," Bridger said of his brother. "It was very much an inspiration for me to follow in his footsteps."

After pilot training, Bridger's focus was on tallying up as many flying hours as possible. He said he would have preferred to go back to the training program to be an instructor, but the Air Force decided his skill set was needed in the fighter world, so he was assigned to the F-4 Phantom.

Bridger spent the next couple of years in the skies of Vietnam, accumulating more than 200 combat flying hours and completing more than 70 combat missions over North Vietnam.

Following the success of a deception-based mission known as Operation Bolo, which placed fighter aircraft in the role of bombers and productively shot down seven enemy MiG-21s, U.S. strategists decided to employ the same scheme again, thinking the North Vietnamese again wouldn't be expecting it. Bridger was selected for round two.

Disastrously, the mission was not afforded the same success as the first. On Jan. 23, 1967, Bridger was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that blew off the tail, right wing and part of the left wing of his F-4. The damage sent him and his wingman into a fiery spiral. He was left no other option than to eject behind enemy lines.

"My backseater was a big guy and he descended faster in his parachute than I did," Bridger joked. "He was in fact being interrogated when I was still floating down to the ground.

"But we were going through all these cloud decks and you couldn't see a thing when you went in one until eventually I came out and I'm about 100 feet above the ground for the last deck and they shot at me. You could feel all of those bullets going by, but I was so low to the ground they didn't have much of a chance to hit anything, and then I hit the ground."

When he hit the ground, Bridger said he just so happened to land in downtown Hanoi, just a few miles outside the prison camp, in the middle of 100 enemy combatants. He was quickly captured and transported to the camp he would call home for the next six years or his life.

Despite the rights owed to him by the Geneva Convention, Bridger and other POWs were severely mistreated. Going without food and water for days on end was common practice in the camp. Physical bondage and torture were a way of life for those noncompliant to the rules. Medical treatment was nonexistent.

In the summer, the 6x6 cells absorbed the sun's heat, creating a sauna-like effect that kept the temperature well into triple digits. The winters were no better. The cold was encased in the brick-and-mortar structures and chilled the rooms below freezing at night. The one thin blanket they were provided was rarely enough.

The sweltering days and the frigid nights were punctuated by torture sessions. American prisoners were beaten excessively, contorted by ropes and chains into tendon-tearing positions, and forced to stay awake for weeks at a time.

"Beginning in 1967, they created a period of what we described as programmed exploitation of the POWs," Bridger said. "They wanted to know our military secrets, extract propaganda, and they wanted us to 'repent our war crimes,' and they would use anything they could to get it out of us."

To combat their captor's attempts to break their spirits, Bridger and the POWs created their own sense of culture, family and laws and committed to a set of values that they refused to violate. They communicated through code to talk about plans of escape, sabotage, and even academic subjects ranging from construction to thermodynamics.

Bridger said their minds were their only toy and they knew how to use them.

"We spent endless hours sharing information on every topic you can imagine," he said. "At the end of the conflict, we had people coming out of the dungeons of North Vietnam returning to the universities all across America, taking the final exams in courses that expanded the sciences, humanities and the arts. All of which they learned by placing their ear against a 3-foot thick concrete wall and tapping to each other. Never underestimate the power of knowledge."

Taking care of each other and bettering themselves is what Bridger said gave them hope throughout their time at the prison.

Their release finally came in March 1973 and the prisoners were returned to U.S. soil and reunited with their families.

Bridger wasted no time getting back to what he loved most. Two weeks following his return, which was mostly filled with medical appointments and debriefs, he returned to the air in the same aircraft he was shot down in.

He was stationed at Seymour Johnson AFB and flew with the 334th and 335th Fighter Squadrons during his 4-year stay. He even served as an instructor pilot for a couple years as he originally wanted to a decade ago.

Bridger retired in October of 1984 after 22 years of service. His awards and decorations include two Purple Heart medals, the Bronze Star with Valor Medal, and the Prisoner of War Medal. In his retirement, he continues to serve by delivering his message of perseverance to today's service members.

"You have two choices by which to live your life," Bridger explained. "You can seek a life of prosperity, and if you do, we can measure how well you're doing by the clothes you wear, the car you drive, or how much money you have in your bank account. On the other hand, you can pursue a life of abundance, which cannot be measured by what you acquire, but rather by what you give, and what you give will be determined by what you value about life, about living, about being."