Veterans have shown unbelievable bravery, strength and cleverness over the years.
Today we have the story of a Navy servicemember who showed what he was made of, by pretending he wasn’t brave, strong or clever.
Douglas Hegdahl was born in South Dakota and joined the US Navy as a way to see the world.
In 1967, he was serving on a cruiser in the Gulf of Tonkin.
At one point, as the ship’s guns fired, he was knocked overboard
The ship declared him lost at sea, but he had actually floated in the South China Sea for 12 hours before being spotted by Cambodian fishermen.
He was later turned over to the North Vietnamese military, who took Hegdahl to the notorious prison known as the “Hanoi Hilton.”
They tried to interrogate him, and they tried to recruit him to produce propaganda about how they were treating American prisoners well.
But Hegdahl was able to avoid all of that by pretending that he was a well-meaning dope who didn’t know anything valuable and couldn’t read or write.
The North Vietnamese started referring to him as “the incredibly stupid one.”
Convincing his captors that he wasn’t too bright ended up being a stroke of genius.
Hegdahl’s job in the POW camp was to sweep the grounds, which meant he could pretty much go anywhere, and because he was supposedly stupid, he wasn’t seen as a threat.
That meant that he could carry out sabotage, like the time he stopped five North Vietnamese tanks from running by clogging their gas tanks with dirt and leaves.
That would have been impressive on its own, but Douglas Hegdahl did even more.
Not only was he smarter than his captors thought, he had an extremely good memory.
By practicing to the tune of “Old MacDonald Had A Farm,” he taught himself the names of hundreds of American prisoners of war, servicemembers who in some cases the North Vietnamese had not reported as captured.
Servicemebers the US military didn’t know were still alive.
In 1969 the North Vietnamese decided to release three American POWs as a PR move, and Hegdahl was one of them.
He was reluctant, because the Americans had agreed among themselves that everyone would be released or no one would agree to go.
He didn’t want to dishonor his fellow prisoners or their deal.
But an officer ordered him to go, so that Hegdahl could take all that information back to American authorities, where it could do some good.
And so he went, letting the US know who was being held, where they were being held and under what conditions they were being held.
Later, Hegdahl personally presented his experience at the Paris Peace Talks, so that the world could know about the mistreatment and torture that American servicemembers had faced in captivity, in the hopes that it might keep them safer or healthier until they could come home.
Douglas Hegdahl did a remarkable service, one that lived up to the words on the flag flown across the United States for prisoners of war and those who are missing in action: “You are not forgotten.”
Lest We Forget (US Naval Institute via Archive.org)
Photo by US Navy via Wikicommons
