Within ten hours of my capture, I was en route to Hanoi. At a pontoon bridge, I was taken out of a truck and jammed into a narrow ditch. The soldiers who were guarding the bridge took turns to see who could hit my face the hardest. After the contest, they tried to force dog dung through my teeth, bounced rocks off my chest, jabbed me with their gun barrels, and bounced the back of my head off the rocks that lay in the bottom of the ditch.
I said my final prayers that night, because I was sure I would not reach Hanoi alive.
Immediately after my arrival in Hanoi, I was taken to the New Guy Village, a section of the Hanoi Hilton, where new arrivals were tortured and interrogated. I was denied medical treatment because I would not give any information other than my name, rank, serial number and date of birth - the only information required by international law.
I was delirious with pain. I was suffering from a badly dislocated and fractured left arm, two fractured vertebrae and a fractured left knee. The Vietnamese dislocated both my right shoulder and right elbow in the manner shown in the drawing.
I wished I could die! When the Vietnamese threatened to shoot me, I begged them to do it, Their answer was, "No, you are a criminal. You haven't suffered enough."