Beyond Survival. Gerald Coffee

begin to pop in my clavicle and my sternum and in the joints in my shoulders. Then, dragging me by the rope and the scruff of my shirt, they pulled me up toward a tree that was growing on the slope of the drainage ditch, threw the remaining rope over a low limb, and hoisted me up taut against the trunk of the tree until the tips of my toes were all that touched the ground. One of the guards secured the rope around the trunk of the tree, leaving me there in a semi-hanging position, my toes barely able to absorb the weight of my body. The administrator, who had been watching all this with his arms folded in front of him, moved closer, his face in front of mine, and said, “We will see. We will see.” Then he strode back into the hut.

      Except for the two guards the courtyard was empty now. One of them checked the tightness of the knot around the tree trunk, said something to the other as they looked at me, made a joke, then they too left. I was alone with my pain.

      Now I longed for the dull, gnawing ache that had been my constant companion the past few days. Compared to this, it would have been blessed relief. I couldn’t comprehend how they could leave me like this. The worst pain I had ever known until now was the tearing of cartilage and the twisting of ligaments in my knee while playing football: I had crumpled to the ground instantly, clutching my knee tightly to my chest while almost blacking out. But the pain had dissipated rapidly and continuously from that first blinding, wrenching instant. Now there was the same sharp, hot wrenching pain but no dissipation. It was constant, and getting worse.

      Driven by the raw need for relief, my mind raced and contrived ways to alleviate the pain. I tried maneuvering my arms behind me, raising them up to get some slack in the rope. It worked a little bit, but I could only stay that way for a few seconds because I was barely touching the ground with my toes. I tried working my feet back up against the base of the tree trunk itself, hoping there might be some roots growing from the trunk on which I could stand to elevate my body and take the weight off my arms. That proved to be futile as well.

      I could no longer concentrate on an intellectual solution. There was increased pain in my arms from the lack of circulation. My left arm—the good arm—began to throb and hurt as much as my broken arm. The pain was coursing through my arms in waves now, crashing against my consciousness. The muscles in my thighs and calves began to burn as I strained to be on tiptoe. As long as I could keep pressure on my toes, the pressure on my arms was less intense. But I couldn’t stay focused. As my mind became more and more enmeshed with my pain, I seemed to be less and less aware of the world around me. The pain was blanking out the courtyard, the tree with the bleeding bullet hole across the way, the softness of the morning air. From somewhere came the guttural sounds of a wounded animal, grunts and whines and sobs. It was me.

      The pain was all-consuming. I lifted my head to the sky. “Oh, God!” I implored. I realized that by raising my head and taking the pressure off my shoulders it helped to alleviate the pain in my arm. I stood as straight as I could and held my head as high as possible. It was the only way I could tolerate it.

      Finally, the two guards came back, apparently with new orders. I guessed I’d been there twenty or thirty minutes, I couldn’t be sure. Apparently, the administrator was becoming impatient, so the guards began their fun and games.

      The tree was on the slope of the drainage ditch, and the side of the trunk that I was tied to and standing on was the high side. The guards began pushing me around the back side of the trunk so my feet couldn’t touch the ground. I cried out. I cursed and I yelled and I tried to kick at them. The administrator appeared in the doorway a few feet away with the filthy rag that had been my blindfold. He held it out to them and said something. One of them retrieved it and began stuffing it into my mouth as a gag. I tried to twist my head away, but the other one held me by the hair and the ears while his companion shoved the rag into my mouth. I’m sure he was afraid I would bite him, so as soon as he got it in part of the way, he poked the rest of it in with the barrel of his rifle. On the final thrust of the barrel, I heard a crack and felt the sharp stinging pain of half of one of my front teeth breaking off.

      Again I tried to reach them with a roundhouse kick, but that only made the pressure on my arms all the worse. I was so furious and demoralized and I was hurting so badly. My shouts and cries were nothing more than growls and gurgles lost in the wad of cloth.

      My tormentors just followed through on the momentum of my kicks now and had a pretty good rhythm going. Down and around the downhill side of the tree with no ground beneath me, roll around to the uphill side of the trunk, touch my toes briefly, then they’d push me with the rifle butt back down around the far side of the tree again, just like a tetherball in slow motion.

      My thoughts were fragmented: pain . . . Code of Conduct . . . aircraft carrier . . . type of aircraft . . . pain . . . name, rank, serial number . . . Bob—dead or alive? . . . pain . . . and more pain.

      Oh, God, please help me to do what I need to do here. Help me to be strong. Help me to get through this, Lord. Please!

      How would they even know if I wanted to give up? They didn’t even seem to care. They just kept playing with me, laughing, taunting. The bastards really seemed to be enjoying what they were doing. I was soaked with sweat. My shirt and trousers were sopping wet.

      Below where the ropes were tied, my arms were on fire. My shoulders seemed to be coming apart, and time stood still. I was consumed by the pain, aware of nothing else. The faces of the guards, the leaves of the tree that made the canopy over the courtyard, the smoothly swept dirt, the huts of the village, the hamlets, the sweep of the rice paddies as I swung across the downhill arc of the tree—it all became just a swirling manifestation of my pain.

      Suddenly during one of those straining moments with my toes stretched as far down as possible and my head lifted to the sky, I became aware of the blurry face of my inquisitor standing in front of me. He grabbed my hair and pulled my face down toward him. The sweat stung my eyes. As it splashed off, I noticed a couple of spots on the shoulder of his shirt. The pain was causing me to gray out, like when pulling too many Gs in an airplane and peripheral vision narrows to a small, constricting hole. All I could see was his flushed and contorted face framed by the gray fog of my pain.

      Somehow I was able to grunt my desperation and readiness to him; or perhaps he read it in my eyes. He pressed his palm against my sweaty forehead and pushed my head back against the trunk of the tree. He picked gingerly at the rag that had been stuffed in my mouth, unraveled it, and dropped it at his feet.

      The relief was instant. I hadn’t even realized how suffocating the gag had been, and how much it was contributing to my desperation. Instantly the tip of my tongue found the spot where the rest of my tooth should have been, but I was gasping for air and the pain made my broken tooth insignificant.

      “Well?” he said. His eyes narrowed. I was shaking my head “no” as I heard a reluctant, raspy voice whisper. “RA-5C. Kitty Hawk.” The voice was my own.

      When the rope was untied from the trunk of the tree and I was able to stand on my feet again, the relief of solid ground was immediate. But as soon as the ropes were untied from my arms and my circulation resumed, the pain came back with a rush. In the future I would find that this was always the worst part: the end of the ropes instead of the ropes themselves. It was a devilish twist: the relief couldn’t come without the rush of excruciating pain first.

      I was hardly aware of being led back to the little stable in which I’d spent my previous nights. The guards led me gently, not binding my arms behind and not blindfolding me again. I marveled at how they could be turned on and off. I plopped down on my little pile of straw totally exhausted. It had to be near noon by now. The pain in my battered arm had tapered off but remained at a high-level ache. I was given some water and a bowl of soup and then left alone. I couldn’t eat.

      My conscience began to work on me now. I was ashamed for not having stuck to my name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. I always thought I would be able to. It was such innocuous information I’d given them, I rationalized. But still, they shouldn’t have gotten it from me. Had I given in because I really didn’t think it was important information or was I just weak? Surely by now they would know what type of aircraft I was flying, the aircraft carrier from which I had been flying. Surely they would know the information from