The Disturbing Stories of POWs in Vietnam’s Jungle Camps

When Americans think of Vietnam prisoners of war, they picture the Hanoi Hilton, concrete cells, organized resistance, torture rooms with names like the meat hook. But there was another prison system, one with no cells, no walls, no record of who was inside. Deep in the jungles of South Vietnam, roughly 263 Americans were held in bamboo cages under triple canopy forest.

 The death rate in these camps reached 50% twice as high as any prison in Hanoi. The prisoners who survived gave these places names like Auschwitz and the Everglades. This is their story. The Vietnam War produced two completely different prisoner experiences. In the north, American pilots shot down over Hanoi were held in French-built concrete prisons.

 They had roofs over their heads. They received two meals a day. They communicated through walls using tap code. In the south, things were different. Army soldiers, special forces operators, and helicopter crews captured by the Viet Cong simply vanished into the jungle. Dr. Floyd Kushner was an Army flight surgeon who spent five and a half years as a prisoner.

 He survived both systems, and he said something that tells you everything you need to know about the difference. Kushner was transferred from the jungle camps to Hanoi in 1971. And in interviews after the war, he explained that in Hanoi, he actually got better treatment. Two meals a day. The food was terrible, soup and bread and two cups of water, but it was better than the jungle. When Dr.

 Kushner says Hanoi was better, understand what that means. The Hanoi Hilton was a place where men were hung from hooks, beaten for hours, and locked in solitary confinement for years. And he considered it an improvement. The jungle camps had no infrastructure, no supply lines, no accountability. Guards and prisoners alike starved together when monsoons washed out trails.

 The Disease killed more men than any guard ever did. The numbers tell the story. In the Viet Cong jungle camps, roughly 263 Americans were held. The death rate ranged from 20 to 25% overall. In the Mekong Delta region, it reached 50%. Compare that to Hanoi. Roughly 472 Americans were held there. The death rate was around 5%.

 But here is what makes these numbers even more disturbing. Of 34 successful escapes during the entire war, all but two happened in the south. The jungle should have been easier to escape from than concrete walls. It was not because the jungle itself was the prison. Nick Rowe was a special forces lieutenant captured in October 1963.

He would spend the next five years in a place called the U Minh forest. The Vietnamese called it the forest of darkness. His cage measured roughly 3 ft by 4 ft by 6 ft. Bamboo bars. A mud floor that turned to soup during monsoon season. Rowe later described these camps in his memoir, Five Years to Full Freedom.

 There was no central command, no permanent structures. When American aircraft flew overhead, guards would force prisoners to move through the swamp for days, sometimes weeks, until the threat passed. The prisoners gave their camps nicknames. The Mangrove Motel, Mosquito Junction, Auschwitz. Each name tells you something about what they endured.

 Ken Wallingford was captured in 1972 near Loc Ninh. He spent 10 months chained by the ankle inside a structure the guards called a tiger cage. The dimensions were 5 ft by 6 ft. Mark Smith was captured alongside Wallingford. His cell was even worse, an underground earthen pit. When he was finally repatriated, doctors found he was carrying two strains of malaria simultaneously.

 They told him he should not have survived, but perhaps nothing captures the reality of these camps better than the daily routine of survival. Prisoners received two to three coffee cups worth of rice per day, often spoiled, often filled with weevils and maggots. Protein was almost non-existent. Dr. Kushner, the flight surgeon, watched his fellow prisoners waste away from malnutrition.

 One prisoner, Russ Grissit, dropped from 190 lbs to roughly 125 lbs. And Kushner, despite being a trained physician, was forbidden from treating his patients. The guards had one rule. He could only help a man who was 30 minutes from dying. In Kushner’s camp, 10 Americans died in his arms from diseases he could have treated with basic medicine.

 Not everyone accepted captivity quietly. Captain Rocky Versace was captured alongside Nick Rowe in October 1963. He spoke fluent Vietnamese, French, and English, and he used every language to debate his captors on communist ideology. The Vietnamese eventually stopped using those languages around him. He was winning the arguments.

Versace attempted escape four times, each time with wounded legs, each time recaptured, each time punished more severely. By early 1965, witnesses reported his hair had turned completely white. He was placed in an isolation box, shackled, put on a starvation diet. On September 26th, 1965, Radio Liberation announced his execution, retaliation for South Vietnam executing three Viet Cong agents.

 The last thing his fellow prisoners heard was Rocky Versace singing God Bless America from his isolation cage. His remains have never been recovered. In 2002, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first Army dude in Vietnam to receive that distinction. Nick Rowe survived through a different kind of resistance, deception.

 For 5 years, he convinced his captors he was a drafted civil engineer who built schools and civic projects, not a special forces intelligence officer, not someone who knew anything worth torturing out of him. He kept a secret diary in coded multilingual script. He built imaginary resorts in his mind to maintain sanity.

He planned escapes constantly, attempting three before finally succeeding. Then American anti-war activists leaked his real identity to the North Vietnamese. The Viet Cong were furious. After 5 years of deception, they ordered his execution. On December 31st, 1968, Nick Rowe was being marched to his death when helicop- -ter gunships appeared overhead.

 In the confusion, he overpowered his guard, ran into a clearing wearing black Viet Cong pajamas, and waved a white mosquito net at the pilots. Major David Thompson, the flight commander, almost ordered his crew to fire on what looked like a surrendering enemy soldier. Then he saw Rowe’s beard, 5 years of growth. No Vietnamese soldier would have that.

 Rowe was rescued after 62 months in captivity. He later created the Army’s SERE program, the training that teaches soldiers how to survive exactly what he went through. Not everyone made it out. Colonel Donald Cook was a Marine captured in 1964. In the jungle camps, he gave his food to sicker prisoners. He gave his penicillin to men who needed it more.

 When malaria finally took him on December 8th, 1967, he had lost his night vision from malnutrition. He could not see to walk the jungle trails. When guards threatened him at gunpoint, Cook reportedly said, “You cannot kill me. Only God can decide when I die.” He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the only Marine to receive that honor for actions as a POW.

 Colonel Jim Thompson holds a different record. America’s longest-held POW, 3,278 days, nearly 9 years. Thompson was captured in March 1964. He was held in at least 12 different jungle camps before finally being transferred to Hanoi in mid-1967. For nearly 5 years, he went without speaking to another American. He was beaten, hung by his thumbs, his elbows were tied behind his back, and he was suspended from rafters.

 He attempted escape at least five times. When he returned during Operation Homecoming in March 1973, witnesses described him as terribly emaciated. But, some deaths carried messages. Bobby Sherman tried to escape from a jungle camp. He was beaten so severely that, according to fellow prisoners, he lost his mind and never recovered. He died shortly after.

 Orin Walker also attempted escape. His punishment was 1 year in a solitary cage. Afterward, the guards deliberately starved him to death. The message was clear. The jungle was the only guard they needed. So, how did anyone survive? In the Kushner camp, prisoners developed what Dr. Kushner called collective mutual care.

 They nursed each other, cleaned each other, fed each other when hands shook too badly to hold a cup. On American holidays, they sang patriotic songs. July 4th, Thanksgiving, Christmas. The guards thought they were crazy. They were staying alive. Colonel Donald Cook established a standard, the big four and nothing more.

 Name, rank, service number, date of birth. Give them nothing else. Nick Rowe approached survival scientifically. Strict personal routines, constant mental exercises, problem-solving to maintain cognitive function. After his rescue, Rowe took everything he learned and built it into the SERE program.

 Today, that training is taught at the Colonel James Nick Rowe Training Compound at Camp McCall, North Carolina. Every special forces soldier, every pilot in high-risk positions learns what Nick Rowe learned in the forest of darkness, how to survive when survival seems impossible. But here is the thing about these stories, they almost disappeared completely.

 The men held in jungle camps came home to a different America than the one that sent them. Some returned weighing less than 100 lb. Some struggled to walk. Some never spoke about what happened. In Kushner’s camp, only 12 of 27 prisoners made it to the end. 10 died. Five were released early by the Viet Cong for propaganda purposes.

 These men did not have concrete walls to tap code through. They did not have organized resistance chains or ranks of fellow officers. They had mud floors, bamboo cages, and each other. Some of them are still alive today. Dr. Kushner still practices medicine. The Rowe Training Compound still teaches what Nick Rowe learned.

 If you want to understand more about what American soldiers faced in Vietnam, the video on screen goes deeper into the conflict’s most devastating battles. And if you made it this far, hit subscribe. We cover the stories that deserve to be remembered.