Spitcurl Fighting back
I wrote this letter to Army times. They printed it. It went to every Times paper at every Military post, world wide. The Pen IS ?.!
----- Original Message -----
From: Gary Downing
To:
[email protected]
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 12:41 AM
Subject: Suggested revision to letter to editor
To: Keely Goss
Editorial assistant
Army Times Publishing Company
Air Force/Navy times
6883 Commercial Drive
Springfield, VA 22159
You have my total authority to edit the letter any way you wish. I just want to help. Please e-mail me on your final edit or communicate with me by phone. If I call you it costs me nothing.....850-773-0054
I have just read another report of American soldiers being convicted of "insulting, being mean, harassing, tormenting, whatever" to hostile force prisoners. If it was not for the empathy I feel for my fellow service people I could laugh heartily at the irony involved. I will explain:
Air force Survival School, Near Spokane Washington, 1966: Day one: escapement and evasion training all out doors, without any break, until sunset and fully exhausted. Well after dark, crawl through barbed wire on your belly, unbelievably tired, crawling into waiting captors, strange soldiers speaking a language no one has ever heard. This is your first opportunity for a rifle butt in the mouth. From this point you will seldom walk but you will be dragged frequently. You have a bag tied over your head and you are thrown (Not escorted, _THROWN!) against the back wall of the concrete cell that will be your home. (I am 5'-7" tall and I could not lay horizontally with my feet straight out.) You still have the bag over your head. You are told in broken English that if you manage to get the bag off you would be beaten. Some did and they were beaten. I managed to get the bag off and re-tie it in the exact knot they used but with slack and I could squeeze it over my head and quickly pull it back over my head when a guard came. Guards came and invented a game, new to me, which I always remember naming it "horizontal basket ball." The guards were very big and they picked me up and threw me against the back wall repeatedly. I was a Combat Controller and therefore, thought my butt was bullet proof. The Guards "educated" me. I was dragged out and interrogated. Unacceptable answers earned a clout on my head. Dragged back to the cell and THROWN in. Dead fish parts and rice for food.
The cell had no furniture, no blanket. I slept on the concrete floor. The only object in the cell was a tin can to carry out waste through a tiny door at the bottom of the big door. I could lay with my ear against the tiny door and hear the guards talking outside of the building. I could not tell if it was day or night. (Sensory deprivation is very effective.) Time became meaningless except for the changing of the guard. One day? night? the prisoner in the cell right across from me started screaming wildly and continuously. Guards came and took him away. He never came back.
One day the routine changed. Prisoners were taken out every day and worked. Another day a prisoner, a full Colonel, if my memory serves, began screaming at the guards about how they couldn't treat him this way because he was an officer. They made all the prisoners fall in to formation. Guards stripped the Colonel bare and turned a fire hose on him. He screamed incoherently. They dragged him away. He never returned. I doubt if he was allowed to remain in the Air Force.
I was the only prisoner in my class to escape the prison. I was rewarded with a cup of coffee later and returned into the camp as a prisoner with a (phony) beating and asked for my promise not to tell the other prisoners of my success lest they get a morale boost. I kept my word.
Now I am a much wiser Combat Controller. But why offer this narrative? Because it poses a timely question.
I love my country. I love my Service brothers and sisters. I received treatment in training that was physical and psychological torture that makes the current treatment of America's enemy internees look like a Boy Scout training exercise. The sentences our military have been given seems just a tad harsh for their treatment of people who bomb our civilians, torture at will and publicly announce that they will torture, kidnap, and use every brutal act at their disposal to hurt us.
Has our legal system invited terrorists to enjoy protection, under our constitution, that they wish to destroy?
Are we becoming a country of lunatic lawyers who want legal parity with the lowest scum of this world?
Are our troops wise to fear the foreign enemies but ignore the self aggrandizing officers and politicians who are eager to stab them in the back?
Our constitution was written by winners not whiners.
My wish: Remember the Alamo. Remember Pearl Harbor. Remember Normandy and Remember Ruby Ridge and the cruel, un-justified murder of Sarah Weaver for no reason other than the bloodlust of a government sniper. We have increasingly more difficulty identifying the enemy.
I leave you with this. I am literate. I can read the constitution. That alone should cause you to understand my idea of American heritage and American duty. I am now retired but my honor and integrity are NOT. And my will to fight has not retired. Whomsoever violates my home, the constitution, or threatens my wife or anyone under my protection will learn the meaning of words like "shot group" and "field of fire."
Why do you not feel the same responsibility toward our fighting men and women? Why do you excuse the terrorist and attack your own troops? Is it no wonder why so many citizens of foreign countries think we are out of our collective minds?
I am sad for our jailed troops. I think they have been betrayed. You could ameliorate their ruined lives if you could just tell them I'm on their side. Let me become a pen pal for them. Show me a way to help them. They were not born brutal. Brutality was thrust upon them by the nature of their mission. They are victims of the new ways of fighting a war. Confusion is inevitable.
I thank the Air Force for showing me what I would suffer if I was captured by the NVA. That brutal training gave me a thick skin. It made me a survivor.
With reserved respect, for the prosecutors and total respect for all of our service men and women I salute you.
Gary R. Downing USAF, RET, DISABLED
http://www.military.com/earlybrief/0,,,00.html