Problematic Hero, Lt Robert Frishman, USNR

Life as the liberals like to remind us is 'complex'. Sometimes they are right. The following is a rough account of Lt Robert Frishman's rough journey through combat and captivity in North Viet Nam. Combat aviators , what say you.

September 27, 1970, Section E, Page 2 WASHINGTON — “The worst part of captivity is the isolation.

“You talk to the rats, you talk to the wall. After six months you don't know if you're crazy. You say, ‘I'm in a Communist prison camp,’ and you've heard about brainwashing and you wonder if that's what's happened to you.

“I'd save some crumbs from my, bread and put them in a corner and when a rat or a mouse came in I'd stuff the blanket under the door and I'd take my shoe and try to hit it. I figure I had nine kills, four probables and three possibles.

“They could have beaten me every day if they'd let me get together with the rest of the bunch.”

Navy Lieut. Robert Frishman is a former prisoner of war in North Vietnam. He is 29 years old and now lives in San Diego, Calif. He is very thin — 150 pounds on a 6‐foot‐2‐inch frame. His eyes are burning bright and in repose he has the introspective air of a man who fasts on pur pose, to lift his mind to God.

Once he weighed 203 pounds and he will weigh it again. Once he played basketball and golf, and he'll not do that again for he has a plastic elbow in his right arm, the first plastic elbow ever installed. It does not work well and he was in Washington last week to get another. Lieutenant Frishman's visit to Washington coincided with a special report to Congress on P.O.W.'s. Frank Borman, the former astronaut who recently completed a 25‐day world trip as President Nixon's representative on prisoners, told a joint ses sion of Congress last Tuesday that the North Vietnamese hold at least 457 American prisoners, perhaps hundreds more. Some have been held for more than six years, the longest Americans have been imprisoned in any war. Mr. Borman had nothing hopeful to offer on possible re lease of the prisoners.

Only nine have been released and Lieutenant Frishman is one, presumably for medical reasons. He was a prisoner for 22 months, from October of 1967 to August of 1969.

“I went down on Oct. 24, 1967,” he recalled in an interview last week. “That afternoon we got Phucyen as a goal, a MIG base outside Hanoi. They shot nine surface‐to‐air missiles at me. It was clear, and looking down it was like Cape Canaveral —a bust of white smoke and like a telegraph pole coming slowly up. You can dodge one or two, but you can't dodge nine. Shrapnel hit my arm and the plane started to spin.”

He jumped and landed in a village outside Hanoi and was surrounded by some 30 surprised villagers.

“I got hit by a few old women and then they took me off and locked me up,” he said. “Every 30 minutes they'd take me out and beat me up. Then they took me blindfolded on a tour of the missile bases where they were having victory celebrations. It was like a war movie, only I was participating.”

He was critically weak from loss of blood, and Hanoi surgeons removed his elbow and saved his life. He was sent to a 10‐by‐10 brick unheated cell in a prison compound, his wound still open. Each night he wrapped his arm in a single blanket and each morning when he pulled it off the wound ripped open. It took six months to heal.

He was Interrogated—told that his cause was unpopular through out the world—and beaten.

The beatings and the interro gations stopped. In the next 20 months, he would be punished severely twice—by being forced to sit on a stool without rising.

“I ate my meals sitting on that stool,” he said. “I sat there night and day. After two days my legs swelled up with edema and after two more days I passed out and fell off the stool.”

Some prisoners were punished more brutally—their arms tied to their legs in back, they were hung face down from the ceil ings of their cells. A man with an untreated broken leg was dragged through the corridors. But the crushing punishment for most was boredom.

“They'd wake me at 5:30 A.M. with a gong—a piece of metal they'd beat on—bong, bong, b0000000ng,’ like that,” he said. “In the summer it was very hot, 130 in the day cooling to 110. I had a bucket and a blanket, a toothbrush and a cup. I had one of those ceramic pots for water and a mosquito net and a set of those black pajamas.

“Between 5:30 and 6 I'd get 20 seconds to go out and empty my bucket. At 6 I had to listen to Hanoi Hannah for half an hour. She'd say that four women had captured an entire battalion of men down south. We heard all bad news—about the assassi nations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, about the moratoriums. I believed about Kennedy and King but mostly figured she was exaggerating. Still I got depressed.

“At 10 you got your first meal —pumpkin soup, some pig fat, bread and water. Occasionally you got rice and fish heads, that was a delicacy. The boiled pig fat had hair in it and at first I just swallowed it down as fast as I could, but it was the only thing that had any taste so I started chewing it. I was even eying those rats. “At 12 we were allowed to nap until 2. At 4 we had our second meal, same thing. At 8 we had to listen to Hanoi Hannah again and after that we could go to sleep. It was like that day after day.

“Once every three days I got a bath in a little room with a cistern. I could pour the water over myself with my cup. I was always covered with salt from the sweat. I had 20 minutes to wash.

“After I'd been there a while they began giving us three cig arettes a day. I hadn't smoked before, but having a cigarette got to be a very big thing. When they stopped, It really got to you. They would tell us our bombs had hit the truck carry ing them. The part of the cigar ette I didn't smoke I'd chew and eat. I heard this would cure worms. I don't know if it is true or not, but I did it. I had worms when I got back home anyway.”

Lieutenant Frishman was re leased in August of 1969. He be lieves he was selected because pictures showing his great ema ciation and his shriveled arm had aroused indignation and some pressure from the West.

Robert Frishman was interned as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam after he was shot down on October 24, 1967 and was held until he accepted an EARLY RELEASE on August 5, 1969.

GENERAL ORDERS: CITATION: The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Flying Cross to Lieutenant Robert Franchot Frishman (NSN: 0-6934339/642530), United States Navy, for heroism and extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight on 24 October 1967 as a Pilot in Fighter Squadron ONE HUNDRED FIFTY ONE (VF-151), embarked in U.S.S. CORAL SEA (CVA-43). Lieutenant Frishman was the wingman in a division of four F-4B aircraft assigned as fighter protection for a major air-wing strike against the highly strategic and heavily defended Phuc Yen air field near Hanoi, North Vietnam.

When the lead aircraft in his division was hit by a surface-to-air missile, Lieutenant Frishman immediately joined on his leader's wing while calmly advising him of the extensive damage to his aircraft and the danger from fire. In the face of constant and unrelenting enemy anti-aircraft fire along with the threat from airborne enemy aircraft, Lieutenant Frishman remained with his stricken leader, rendering all possible assistance as well as keeping search and rescue forces advised of the nature and extent of the emergency. His exceptional courage and devotion to duty in the face of grave personal danger were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Perhaps the most publicized release was that of Lieutenant Robert F. Frishman, USNR, elong with Captain Wesley L.. Huwiblep 1JSPV, and Seamen Douglas B. 'Hegdahl on August 5,1969.

These last three had been imprisoned for 15 to ?6 months. six other rpleasees, these POWs probably displayed sympathy'to the Communist cause during their captivity and were expected to protest the war. Instead, Frishman wrote an article in The Reader's D telling of his bad treatment in Hanoi and explaining why he had cooperated with the enemy.40 But worse than the fact that these men had apparently cooperated with the enemy was the terrible effect of their release upon the morale of the remsining POWs, some of whom had been prisoners since

1964. These early releasees were treated as heroes in the United States whereas General John Flynn and the rmmaining Hanoi POWs were appalled att their actions.h4 The Hanoi POWs had a mutual understanding that all POWs would be released by date of shoot-down or capture, with the earliest captured being released first, except for the critically sick or injured or those honorably expelled by the North Vietnamese. These nine had refused to abide by these conditions.

U.S. Army Code of Conduct Training! Let the P0OW Tell Their _Siories- 4 G. S. Moakley, MAJ, USA U.S. Army Co"mand and General Staff College Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027

In a 1077 interview with People Magazine Oriana Fallaci recalls Lt Frishman in a very unpositive way:

Only that I’ve sometimes been too kind. When I fall in love with a character, as I did with Indira, I have reasons to regret. But then she wasn’t a dictator yet. Then there was that American Lieutenant [Robert] Frishman of the U.S. Navy, whom I interviewed in Hanoi. He was acting so cowardly in front of the North Vietnamese. It makes me crazy to see a man in chains, humiliated, so I was very good to him. Then he came home the hero. He pretended not to recognize me, and I got furious.

In her memoir 'The Rage and the Pride', 2001 on pages 158-60 she is even more negative, virtually calling Lt Frishman a Quisling. I have to admit Ms. Fallaci seems to be in a perpetual rage over everything. Perhaps it was a form of PTSD considering her life history.

2 posted on 10/23/2019 3:24:00 PM PDT by Don Corleone (The truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth)

John Kerry (he served 92 days in Vietnam, don’t you know!) went to Paris and directly negotiated with the Communists.

And Teddy Kennedy with Moscow.

And Pelosi today with Syria.

And other democrat with the Sandinstas against the US.

It was not only Jane Fonda who fought against the US.

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