July 2, 2025 • 44 mins
Shot down over Vietnam, Bud Day escaped from a prison camp and ran barefoot and wounded through the jungle. What happened to him over the next five long years is a brutal testament to his strength and heroism. And what his wife did while she waited for his return is proof of the power of hope– and love.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Pushkin dusk was falling in the Jungles of North Vietnam.
It was late August nineteen sixty seven. An Air Force
Colonel Bud Day was lying in a muddy pit about
the size of a coffin. He had been there for days.
(00:29):
One of his arms was broken in three places, his
left knee was badly damaged, and he couldn't see out
of his right eye. Bud Day had been captured in
enemy territory. He was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese Army,
but he wasn't in a prison. This was a little
militia camp in the middle of the wilderness. His guards
(00:53):
were a couple of teenage boys with rifles, and like
most teenage boys, they were getting bored. In the short
amount of time that Bud had been in the camp,
he had already been tortured again and again. But he
followed a code of conduct, the same code of conduct
that the US military required of every person who becomes
(01:17):
a prisoner of war. Give away no information except no
special favors from the enemy, and make every effort to escape.
Bud hadn't told his captors anything, even when they strung
him up by his ankles, and he could feel the
bones in his broken arm stretch further apart. Special favors
(01:43):
certainly didn't seem forthcoming, not that he would have accepted any.
His sense of honor would never allow it. But then
there was a part of the code about escape that
Bud thought was something he had to try. Darkness crept closer.
The two kids who were supposed to be watching him
(02:04):
wandered a little further from the pit, chatting and laughing
about something. Using his good hand, Bud worked away at
the rope that was wound around his legs. He had
convinced his captors that he was unable to walk, so
the rope was only tied in granty knots, easy to
get out of even with one arm. Bud knew this
(02:28):
would be his only chance. They were planning to move
him to a real prison, and that would be impossible
to escape. He quickly untied one knot, and then another
and another. He loosened the ropes around his legs, and
he listened to the boy's distant laughter. His mind flashed
(02:50):
to his wife, Dorry, and four little kids waiting back
in Arizona. He sent a silent help me father up
to heaven, and then Bud Day crawled out of the
bunker and into the night. I'm Jr. Martinez, and this
(03:11):
is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage. The Medal of
Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States,
awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat at the risk
of life, above and beyond the call of duty. Each
candidate must be approved all the way up the chain
of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to
(03:34):
the White House. This show is about those heroes, what
they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell
us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Bud Day
would be the only American serviceman ever to escape from
a North Vietnamese prison and make it all the way
(03:55):
to South Vietnam. He would stumble for days through the
jungle with no shoes, no food, and terrible injuries, passing
within inches of enemy soldiers, knowing all the while that
if he were captured again, he would have to fight
like hell to stay alive and to keep the code
(04:17):
of conduct. Bud's story is one of toughness and grit
and fortitude, the kind of fortitude that can only come
from a deep set faith in country and family and
in the concept of honor. While this episode is about
that stoic silence in the face of brutal enemy pressure,
(04:41):
it's also about the power of speaking out. Because while
Bud stayed mute to protect his fellow aviators, his wife
Dory was shouting from the rooftops, using her voice to
win freedom for prisoners of war. As Americans we take
(05:02):
free speech for granted. How Bud and Dory Day used
their voices, frankly, how this whole country used their voices
during the Vietnam War proves just how powerful that right
really is. The morning of August twenty sixth, nineteen sixty
(05:35):
seven started as usual for Bud Day. He woke up
at the Air Force base in Fukat, just south of
the demilitarized zone in South Vietnam. The day would have
been hot and muggy. As always, he recorded a message
to be sent to Dory and the kids. The couple
had two boys and two girls, three of them under
(05:58):
the age of five. At four am, but had breakfast
and then he got ready to fly. But had been
flying over North Vietnam for several months, one of the
most dangerous and top secret missions of the entire war.
He was commander of a team of supersonic jet pilots
(06:22):
flying over territory dotted with anti aircraft artillery. Here he
is talking about it.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
It was Arali Harry mission because probably sixty percent of
the time that you were in the north you were
getting shot at, and so I lost forty two percent
of my airplanes in the first six months we operated.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
He had been born to a poor, hard scrabble family
in Iowa and grown up during the worst of the
Great Depression. He served in World War Two, then Korea.
One time he built out of an airplane and his
parachute didn't open, but he survived. He finished seven years
(07:06):
of schooling college plus a law degree in only four years.
He was just tough and discipline and driven beyond belief.
So to him, this morning in August was nothing special.
He sized up his aircraft, not his favorite. The harness
(07:28):
in the back was wonky. He settled at the controls
in the back of the plane, and a pilot named
Kip was at the front. Bud was older than Kip,
but then he was old for Vietnam. He had volunteered
to go at the age of forty one. A farewell
tour at the end of a long career, one more
(07:50):
round before he hung up his flight suit for good.
He'd initially been assigned to the three hundred and nine
Squadron of their motto return with Honor, but pretty quickly
he'd been given this insanely treacherous, top secret mission. As commander,
(08:12):
it was up to Bud to pick the code name.
Other units were called things like gun Smoke or Typhoon
or Tiger, not Buds.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Our callsign was a Misty. That was a song I liked,
and so that was our call sign.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And in case this doesn't ring a bell for you,
Misty is a romantic ballad by the crooner Johnny Mathis.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Look at me, I'm as helpless, fast.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Hippy the tree, as helpless as a kitten up a tree.
It doesn't quite scream We're gonna shoot you out of
the sky, does it, But it totally works. Maybe it's
because Bud was an older guy a classic, or because
(09:08):
he missed his wife, or maybe it just goes to
prove when you're as famously tough as Bud day, you
can call your unit anything you want. Soon, Kip and
Bud were ripping through the sky over North Vietnam, at
almost five hundred miles per hour. But when they were
(09:30):
about a mile away from their planned target, explosions ripped
through the air. Bud couldn't remember when he'd seen so
much anti aircraft artillery. It was like the sky was
on fire. They made it through the barrage somehow without
being hit. Bud told Kip to take another pass over
(09:50):
the target, so they flew over it one more time.
Their plane was hammered with explosions again and again. Still
it looked like they were gonna make it out, and
then Bud saw the missile. He knew what was coming.
The aircraft took a direct hit. Every warning light on
(10:13):
the instrument panel lit up, and Bud yelled eject, eject, eject.
They parachuted down. They were deep in enemy territory, falling
into the jungle. Bud blacked out during the fall, but
he came to with a jolt of searing pain.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Mus factored damaged by name. The marsh mask didn't separate
right and hipp any eye and damaged my eyes. So
I wound up on the ground.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Bud broke his arm in three places, a bone was
sticking through his skin. He had dislocated his knee, and
he couldn't see out of his right eye.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Just got my radio off and got a call off
and told him I was on the ground alive, and
young Adam just popped to the bush and captured me.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
His message had gotten through just in time. Help was
on the way. But he was surrounded by teenage boys
with rifles, and they pulled him further into the jungle,
further away from where his parachute was left, further away
from Kip, whom they hadn't spotted a.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Few minutes later, or was ever moving. A lot helicopter
came in and tried to rescue us, and I was gone.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
The chopper got so close that he could see Kip
in its doorway, but the boys had their rifles trained
on Bud. He couldn't go anywhere. He watched as the
helicopter dipped then lifted away. The teens were euphoric. They
had their prize. Bud was heartsick. He had been paraded
(11:58):
into a village that had been destroyed by American bombardments.
From there, into the makeshift militia camp that you met
him in, he could see rice patties and just beyond
a dense expanse of jungle. He was pushed into a
muddy bunker, just a hole in the ground, really barely
(12:19):
larger than his wiry five foot nine inch frame. His
captors tied him up with a rope, and Bud started
coming up with that escape plan almost immediately.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So I decided because it was obvious my eye was
all bloodshot, I was blind, and my knee was pretty big,
and of course my arm was bustard, and so they
concluded I was not throughout. And when I tried to
get me to move around or do anything, I faked it.
(12:54):
I couldn't move at all, and I began to buy the.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
A doctor arrived and set his arm in a makeshift cast,
but Bud could tell the bones weren't properly aligned. Things
got progressively worse from there. The soldiers wanted him to talk,
to give them intel. They beat him with rifle butts.
They staged a mock execution, holding a gun to his head.
(13:22):
They hung him from his ankles for hours. To them,
he wasn't an enemy combatant protected by the rules of war.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The Vietnamese never recognized as Geneva convention, so their possession
was that you were a criminal. They could do anything
to you they wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Bud knew the torture would get worse when the real
soldiers arrived, and they were coming soon. One of his
jailers had drawn a jeep in the mud and said
a word that Bud understood Hanoi, the capital city of
North Vietnam. So he decided he had to run that night,
(14:09):
loosening the rope on his leg, waiting for his teenage
guards to look the other way.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
First time, both of them were facing a different direction.
I slipped out of this hole over the price patty.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
He was dressed in only his undershorts, He had no shoes,
and he was weak from hunger. He ran towards the jungle,
his bare feet, sliding on the mud.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
My foot hit the bottom of that silt, just like
stopping on a banana piil. My feet went out from
under men. I lighted ride on the bus arm and
I'd almost bet my tongue off. I came from screaming
when I hit the deck because I couldn't wave it
and hear it. Wait at about a minute, a minute
(14:53):
half and nothing, so I thought, I got up and
headed south.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
He would have to travel roughly thirty miles to get
to South Vietnam and safety. He was just beginning to
pick his way through the jungle when a shrieking sound
cut the air. American B fifty twos were soaring overhead,
not to look for Bud, but to drop bombs on
(15:20):
the enemy encampments. One landed one hundred yards from Bud.
He was hit with shrapnel. Now his bare feet were
lacerated and bleeding. The next day brought another bomb, and
his ear drums were ruptured. Still he pressed on.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I survived basically on water because there was no food.
The best I could do was capture a couple of
these frogs.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I ate him.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
That's not a good deal.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
After several days in the jungle, he made it to
the river that separated North and South Vietnam. He crept
down the bank and lowered himself into the water, fighting
the current to make it to the other side. His
fingers touched the far bank. Unbelievably, he had reached South Vietnam.
(16:15):
By then, he was so starving that he was delusional.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I lost track of time and lost my ability to
start things out.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
He saw two Marine Corps helicopters in the sky not
too far away. There were replenishing supplies. It could only
mean one thing. A base was nearby. He could get there,
he knew it. He got closer and closer, hobbling and stumbling.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I was so left done about a while of Marine
Corps base at Coten when some of the yes popped
out of the brush.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
At this point, Bud Day could barely walk, but he
was also Bud Day.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I just said to myself, I'd come this far to
surrender to these last years. So I took off front.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
He ran as best as he could, but the NVA
fired at him. Bud took a bullet in the left
eye and the left hand, and he collapsed. His escape
was over. He was going back to North Vietnam. He
had been close to freedom. He wouldn't be that close
(17:29):
again for five and a half years. It was nineteen
(17:49):
sixty nine, two years since Bud's capture. He had been
moved from prison camp to prison camp, beaten and starved,
his broken army rebroken, and time and time again interrogated,
he refused to give any information other than what the
(18:10):
Code of Conduct stipulated, his name, his rank, his date
of birth, and his serial number.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
They really tortured me, Hungman by the arms and crippled
me pretty badly. Both my hands were curled up. I
couldn't feed myself, I couldn't do anything.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
He told himself he had to keep the faith he
couldn't break. It was better to die than to say something,
even the name of his unit, Misty, that might harm
the aviators that were still flying over Vietnam. He remembered
the motto of his first squadron, return with honor. He
(18:51):
was determined to do just that. Every night he prayed
for strength, and he prayed for Dory and the kids
he hold. They knew he was still alive. Bud spent
most of his time in a prison in Hanoi, nicknamed
the Hanoi Hilton. It housed hundreds of POWs and it
(19:12):
was miserable.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It was just absolute twelfth you know, lats all over
the place and and rat droppings and there. So everybody
had dysentery and I reta. We were at about seven
other calories a day, so you're all eva shaded and
big stomachs and big sunken eyes, and your health was
very precaratives. So the lovely conditions were just really at
(19:37):
the bottom.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
The prison was a series of long interconnected brick buildings.
The windows were covered with batting so light barely crept
in the air was trapped and steel the heat was unbearable.
Bud spent months in solitary confinement as punishment for not talking,
(20:01):
and those cells were as small as six by six feet.
When he wasn't in solitary, he shared his cell with
the young John McCain. Bud and another pilot had nurse
McCain back to health when he first arrived in prison,
broken and close to death. That was one of the
(20:22):
ways prisoners resisted their terrible situation. They took care of
each other. Another way was by being organized. The prison
guards forbade organization of any kind, but the men in
the Hanoi Hilton were military pilots. Hierarchy gave them a
(20:42):
sense of normalcy, and because of his rank, Bud was
a commander within the prison. This meant he was dealt
even harsher punishments. The first to feel the wrath of
the guards. Second problem, to get organized, you have to
be able to communicate. But the POWs weren't allowed to
(21:05):
talk between cells, and to disobey meant torture, so they
developed a tap code. It's kind of like a Morse code.
Each letter of the alphabet except K was given a
short set of two taps. They would spell out words
letter by pains, taking letter. It was life's blood for
(21:27):
the POWs.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
So despite where they might have you, unless I had
you so wrapped up in irons that you absolutely could
not move, while you could communicate, you could tap, and
so you always know what was going on.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Every Sunday morning, Bud, as commander of his prison unit,
used his knuckles to tap out CC, which stood for
Church Call. That same tap would be sent down the
whole line of cells in his section. Then the men
stood in their cells, said the Pledge of Allegiance, the
(22:05):
Lord's Prayer, and prayed for the safety of their fellow POWs.
But and his men had to keep the faith somehow.
At the Hanoi Hilton there was a total lack of
contact with the outside world. They had no way of
knowing what was happening in the war or how close
they might be to freedom.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I believed that the country was going to come and
get me. I ever came to the conclosure that my
country has just got to dump me.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Like some years to Ammo. The only news in prison
came from a steady stream of propaganda piped in over
a loudspeaker. The POWs called it CBS, short for you
ready for this camp bullshit system. There was no way
for the prisoners to sort fact from fiction. CBS reported
(22:59):
on devas station natural disasters in America and on implausible
triumphs in the North Vietnamese army. And it reported that
back in the US, while Bud was keeping his mouth
shut and being tortured for it, countless others were speaking
out against the war, but thought it was lies, just
(23:21):
one more thing the prison guards made up in order
to torment the POWs.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
As we started hearing about the Hiptis and Leanna war demonstrations,
all that stuff, I basically discotted all of that. What
else could the commists tell you? Would hurt you more,
would be more moralizing than for you to thank the
back on the home front. No one's supporting you.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
That, of course, was far from the truth. But because
more and more Americans were starting to question the war,
the government was trying to keep the plight of the
POW's a secret. They worried it would add more fuel
to the anti warfire, and so the military ordered the
(24:05):
wives of POWs to observe a code of conduct similar
to Bud's. Keep to yourself, don't speak to the press,
don't ask too many questions about where your husband was
or what was being done to rescue him. They called
it the keep quiet policy. So back in Arizona, Dorry
(24:31):
was living in a kind of a nightmarish limbo. She
knew Bud had been shot down. She knew he had
survived his initial crash, but that's it. Because North Vietnam
refused to officially acknowledge holding any POWs, it was impossible
to know for certain if Bud was still alive or
(24:52):
where he was. Dorry and Bud had been together at
that point for decades. They had met as teenagers in Iowa.
She was the little sister of one of his friends.
Her family was Norwegian, so Bud nicknamed her the Viking.
The two had started writing letters back when he had
(25:14):
gone off to World War II. Dorry told him she
was waiting for him and praying for him to be safe.
Now she couldn't write to Bud. She couldn't do anything
but keep praying, just wait and hope exactly what Bud
was doing.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
I didn't intend to die in a chrome place if
I could avoid.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
It, But the prison guards didn't make survival easy. In
the summer of sixty nine, the torture got worse. They
introduced something called the fan belt, a four foot long
rubber strip cut from a tire.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
That's some absolutely brutal torture sessions, and two or three times, frankly,
I would have preferred to die. I was in black
irons and never made me with a fan belt. I
can remember counting until three hundred struck, and I just said, why,
my wife's did my time counting? Here? They're gonna kill me,
(26:17):
you know, and I hope they don't.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Here's what Bud Day didn't just tell you that intensive
beating lasted more than six days. By the end he
was close to death. Bud believed that if he managed
to live, his physical suffering would stop eventually, but his
(26:42):
mental anguish would never end if he gave up even
a scrap of important information to his tormentors. That was Bud.
Back in the States, Dory had reached a totally different conclusion.
The Viking decided she had to start talking. Dorry was
(27:23):
through with keeping quiet. She wanted to feel like she
was maybe making a difference, she began to fight by
speaking out. Her friend Mike Newhouse remembers how hard the
Viking fought for her husband.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
I thought Modday was the bravest, toughest, most determined sobey
I'd ever met until I met Doris.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
We've been calling her Dory, but her name was Doris,
as in Doris Day, not that Doris Day, the famous actress,
which is why the king went by Dory.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
She was an absolute tiger in the State Department. After
her continued and persistent please pretty much told her to
go home, do your living and kind of stay out
of our ear. And she wasn't about to accept that.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
She banded together with other POW and Missing in Action
wives to form the National League of Families. The public
believed that any prisoners of war were being treated according
to the Geneva Convention, but the wives had learned the
truth about the torture, so they defied. To keep quiet
(28:45):
policy and the hopes of putting pressure on Washington. They
spoke to the press and gave speeches, sometimes being heckled
by people who hated this war and believed, as the
NVA prison guards did, that these men weren't POWs, but
criminals around the country. Wives pleaded on behalf of their husbands,
(29:09):
asking for the world to pay attention. Their activism worked.
For the first time, the United States publicly listed the
number of men it believed to be held prisoner. Millions
across the nation, including many who opposed the war, bought
metal bracelets with the names of American prisoners as a
(29:32):
show of support. President Nixon promised the wise that he
would hold North Vietnam accountable for the POW's treatment, regardless
of what was happening in the conflict itself.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
What I have assured these very courageous women is this
government will do everything that it possibly can to separate
out the prisoner issue and have it handled as it
should be, as a separate issue on a humane basis.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Dory was working NonStop writing letters to the North Vietnamese government,
speaking passionately to the press. She had the governor of
Arizona on speed dial. She bought a plane ticket to
the Paris Peace Talks to confront the North Vietnamese diplomatic mission.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
She collared everybody, ours, theirs, anybody associated with the talks,
and just said, damn it, bring my husband hold.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
She and other wives brought thousands of letters to give
to the North Vietnamese delegation, all from citizens pleading for
the humane treatment and return of the POWs. The public
pressure embarrassed the North Vietnamese, and all the way over
in Hanoi, Bud could feel something starting to shift. Some
(30:56):
of the worst torture abated, and after years of no
kind contact at all, Dorry was able to send a
package of photographs to Bud. He pored over the pictures
of his children growing up without him. Their oldest Stephen
was a teenager, not a kid anymore. Bud's hands still
(31:19):
didn't work. The whippings had left him stooped, barely able
to walk, but he remained unbroken. He hadn't said a
word to his captors that he was ashamed of. By
nineteen seventy, three years into his captivity, Bud was moved
to Room seven. It held the prisoners considered to be
(31:42):
the hardest cases, the ones who were most defiant. James
Stockdale was there you might remember him as Ross Perrot's
running mate during his nineteen ninety two presidential campaign. And
a pilot named Robbie Reisner who had been a pod
since nineteen sixty five, and John McCain.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Of course, you live was somebody for as long as
we did. You build up a kind of a relationship
that is just undescribable. But I know more about John
than his mother, his father, and his wives and total.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
One day in February of seventy one, Robbie Reisner decided
he was going to give a church service for the
men in that room. The guards forbaded, but it's hard
to forbid something to men who've got little to lose.
They were midway through the service when the guards came
storming in. They seized Reisner and led him off to
(32:46):
a torture session. Bud jumped on one of the concrete bunks.
He waved his hands in the air and started singing
the star Spangled banner. The other men in the room
turned to look at him, and at first they were stunned, silent,
and then they joined in. They sang at the top
(33:11):
of their lungs. The melody traveled through the dank, filthy building,
and soon all of the POWs, hundreds of them, were singing.
They sang every song they knew, one after the other.
The guards were stemy, they couldn't punish all of them.
(33:33):
Eventually they lined them up at the point of Bayonets.
It made an impression on John McCain.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Witness I was saying with national anthem, the responds to
having one rifle pointed at the space, Well, that was something.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
To behold by. Now. Bud was forty six. He had
been a prisoner for four and a half years, but
his defiance and his silence stayed true, not just for
himself before his men in even worse shape than he was,
(34:11):
Like McCain, they made me beg me.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
There's maybe encouraging and ordered me back to life, but
more than that, but.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Show me how to second one self respect in my honor,
and that is a debt I can.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Never repay it.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Dorry, meanwhile, was telling her story in even wider circles.
After Paris, she went to Switzerland to speak to the
Red Cross, and Sweden to the North Vietnamese Embassy, and
she kept but alive for her kids, playing home movies,
telling stories, making sure they believed, really believed that someday
(34:54):
he could make it home. By Christmas of seventy two,
five and a half years after Bud had been captured,
that homecoming felt within reach. The prisoners at the Hilton
heard bombs, screaming close, then closer. American B fifty two's
(35:14):
were bombing Hanoi.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Suddenly nine o'clock I led literally hundreds of bombers or
over annoy dropping bombs, and it was just the earth
was fibrating.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
The ground began to shake, debris started to fall off
the ceiling. But Bud was elated.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
But that was a wonderful sound. Afraid of My people
were just astatic.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Everybody knew. Three we started getting released.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
In February of nineteen Subney three.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Bud and John McCain were together on the plane to
Clark Airbase in the Philippines. Bud had been imprisoned for
five and a half years. He had just turned forty
eight years old. His teeth were broken, he was death
in one ear. His arm was permanently bent, but he
(36:07):
left the medical facility at Clark with his uniform pressed
and his backstraight. He was returning with honor. A plane
took him to California. He was told that as the
most senior officer in the group, he would need to
give a speech. Bud stood in the doorway of the airplane,
(36:29):
scanning the crowd for the faces of his family. He
walked down the steps, saluted the officers waiting there, and
stepped to the microphone. He started by thanking God, his country,
and President Nixon, and then he heard the click of
heels racing across the tarmac. It was the Viking. There's
(36:54):
a photo of what happened next. I can't show it
to you, but I swear if you want to know
what pure elation looks like, you should look it up.
It was like an orchestra was playing that only they
could hear, just like Bud's favorite song with its beautiful,
super romantic lyrics, My Way and a thousand violins begin
(37:24):
to hear. When I see the photo, even I get misty.
Dorry rushing forward, arms out, Bud in a crouch, railed thin,
stretching out his hands to catch her, a wide eyed,
radiant years in the making smile on his face.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
I get, Misty, the moment you're need.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
When Bud and Dorry got back home to Arizona, they
renew their way vowels. They had been married for twenty
four years. Bud worked tirelessly on behalf of the men
who had been POW's along with him, riding them up
for medals, helping them get back to work to a
somewhat normal life. He spoke about his experiences. Mostly he
(38:20):
just wanted to fly again.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Soon.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
He was the vice commander of a fighter wing. That's
where he was when he learned he would receive the
Medal of Honor. He was awarded it in nineteen seventy
six from President Gerald Ford.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
I felt quite humble. I had seen enough combat to
know if there were certainly a lot of acts of
courage that probably far exceeded with you, sorry yourself doom.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
He retired in early seventy seven and went to work
as a lawyer, representing pilots that had bumped up against
Air Force bureaucracy. He helped POWs, including his old roommate
James Stockdale, received disability payments. He was in and out
of the hospital himself. Some of his pain faded, though
(39:15):
his sense of defiance did not. After the Hanoi Hilton
was torn down, Bud got his hands on some of
the bricks. He mounted them in his garage.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
I thought, that's kind of a all of my triumph.
You know, they got no jail and I got the bracks.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
In the summer of nineteen ninety five, Bud saw a
news story that made him, for lack of a better word, furious.
It said that the US government was no longer allowing
military retirees over the age of sixty five into military hospitals.
They would have to rely on Medicare, which meant that
(39:57):
they would have to pay for part of their healthcare.
Bud was seventy years old, he was disabled, and when
he signed up for the military back in nineteen forty two,
he had been told that if he served twenty years,
he'd have free lifetime medical benefits. He'd kept the code
(40:17):
of conduct, but had the government kept up with their
end of the bargain, he didn't think so. He'd loved
his country, he loved it, but this was wrong, and
as an American he had the right to speak out
to fight for what he believed. So Bud Day decided
(40:39):
to sue the government. That battle would take five years.
He appeared in courthouse after courthouse. He stood on the
Capitol steps in the rain. He got John McCain by
that point, a senator from Arizona and a future presidential
candidate involved. He wouldn't let it go, and finally, in
(41:02):
two thousand, his advocacy paid off with the passage of
the Tricare for Life Bill, military veterans would be able
to use military and civilian hospitals for their care and
have access to low cost prescriptions for as long as
they lived. Bud and his persistence made it happen. He
(41:25):
took care of his squad once again. Over his military career,
Bud Day received seventy medals for his service, but until
the end of his life. When asked what he was
proudest of, Bud invariably answered my wife. Bud died at
(41:47):
the age of eighty eight. Dorey lived to ninety five.
She passed earlier this year. Theirs was a marriage of equals,
the Viking and the commander. They were strong together and
just as strong a part because they shared a core
belief and duty to others and honor. They were tireless
(42:11):
and defiant. No wonder they made such a difference, and
no wonder they were so much in love. I am
too misty and too much in love.
Speaker 5 (42:33):
Me.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Medal of Honor Stories of Courage as written by Meredith
Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane. Our
editor is Ben Nadolf Hoffrey. Sound design and additional music
by Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer is Constanza Gayarto. Fact
checking by Arthur Gombert's original music by Eric Phillips. Production
(43:12):
support by Suzanne Gabber. Special thanks to the Congressional Medal
of Honor Society, the Brigadier General Bud and Doris Day
Interpretive Center in South Sioux City, Nebraska, and the film
The Keep Quiet Policy, How Vietnam Pow wives were silenced
by the American Story. If you want to learn more
(43:33):
about this story, take a look at our show notes,
where we have some of the resources we use to
put together this episode. We want to hear from you.
Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone
else's bravery. You might hear your stories on future episodes
of Medal of Honor or see them on our social channels.
(43:53):
Just email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin dot FM.
I'm your host, JR. Martinez
Pushkin dusk was falling in the Jungles of North Vietnam.
It was late August nineteen sixty seven. An Air Force
Colonel Bud Day was lying in a muddy pit about
the size of a coffin. He had been there for days.
(00:29):
One of his arms was broken in three places, his
left knee was badly damaged, and he couldn't see out
of his right eye. Bud Day had been captured in
enemy territory. He was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese Army,
but he wasn't in a prison. This was a little
militia camp in the middle of the wilderness. His guards
(00:53):
were a couple of teenage boys with rifles, and like
most teenage boys, they were getting bored. In the short
amount of time that Bud had been in the camp,
he had already been tortured again and again. But he
followed a code of conduct, the same code of conduct
that the US military required of every person who becomes
(01:17):
a prisoner of war. Give away no information except no
special favors from the enemy, and make every effort to escape.
Bud hadn't told his captors anything, even when they strung
him up by his ankles, and he could feel the
bones in his broken arm stretch further apart. Special favors
(01:43):
certainly didn't seem forthcoming, not that he would have accepted any.
His sense of honor would never allow it. But then
there was a part of the code about escape that
Bud thought was something he had to try. Darkness crept closer.
The two kids who were supposed to be watching him
(02:04):
wandered a little further from the pit, chatting and laughing
about something. Using his good hand, Bud worked away at
the rope that was wound around his legs. He had
convinced his captors that he was unable to walk, so
the rope was only tied in granty knots, easy to
get out of even with one arm. Bud knew this
(02:28):
would be his only chance. They were planning to move
him to a real prison, and that would be impossible
to escape. He quickly untied one knot, and then another
and another. He loosened the ropes around his legs, and
he listened to the boy's distant laughter. His mind flashed
(02:50):
to his wife, Dorry, and four little kids waiting back
in Arizona. He sent a silent help me father up
to heaven, and then Bud Day crawled out of the
bunker and into the night. I'm Jr. Martinez, and this
(03:11):
is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage. The Medal of
Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States,
awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat at the risk
of life, above and beyond the call of duty. Each
candidate must be approved all the way up the chain
of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to
(03:34):
the White House. This show is about those heroes, what
they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell
us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Bud Day
would be the only American serviceman ever to escape from
a North Vietnamese prison and make it all the way
(03:55):
to South Vietnam. He would stumble for days through the
jungle with no shoes, no food, and terrible injuries, passing
within inches of enemy soldiers, knowing all the while that
if he were captured again, he would have to fight
like hell to stay alive and to keep the code
(04:17):
of conduct. Bud's story is one of toughness and grit
and fortitude, the kind of fortitude that can only come
from a deep set faith in country and family and
in the concept of honor. While this episode is about
that stoic silence in the face of brutal enemy pressure,
(04:41):
it's also about the power of speaking out. Because while
Bud stayed mute to protect his fellow aviators, his wife
Dory was shouting from the rooftops, using her voice to
win freedom for prisoners of war. As Americans we take
(05:02):
free speech for granted. How Bud and Dory Day used
their voices, frankly, how this whole country used their voices
during the Vietnam War proves just how powerful that right
really is. The morning of August twenty sixth, nineteen sixty
(05:35):
seven started as usual for Bud Day. He woke up
at the Air Force base in Fukat, just south of
the demilitarized zone in South Vietnam. The day would have
been hot and muggy. As always, he recorded a message
to be sent to Dory and the kids. The couple
had two boys and two girls, three of them under
(05:58):
the age of five. At four am, but had breakfast
and then he got ready to fly. But had been
flying over North Vietnam for several months, one of the
most dangerous and top secret missions of the entire war.
He was commander of a team of supersonic jet pilots
(06:22):
flying over territory dotted with anti aircraft artillery. Here he
is talking about it.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
It was Arali Harry mission because probably sixty percent of
the time that you were in the north you were
getting shot at, and so I lost forty two percent
of my airplanes in the first six months we operated.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
He had been born to a poor, hard scrabble family
in Iowa and grown up during the worst of the
Great Depression. He served in World War Two, then Korea.
One time he built out of an airplane and his
parachute didn't open, but he survived. He finished seven years
(07:06):
of schooling college plus a law degree in only four years.
He was just tough and discipline and driven beyond belief.
So to him, this morning in August was nothing special.
He sized up his aircraft, not his favorite. The harness
(07:28):
in the back was wonky. He settled at the controls
in the back of the plane, and a pilot named
Kip was at the front. Bud was older than Kip,
but then he was old for Vietnam. He had volunteered
to go at the age of forty one. A farewell
tour at the end of a long career, one more
(07:50):
round before he hung up his flight suit for good.
He'd initially been assigned to the three hundred and nine
Squadron of their motto return with Honor, but pretty quickly
he'd been given this insanely treacherous, top secret mission. As commander,
(08:12):
it was up to Bud to pick the code name.
Other units were called things like gun Smoke or Typhoon
or Tiger, not Buds.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Our callsign was a Misty. That was a song I liked,
and so that was our call sign.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And in case this doesn't ring a bell for you,
Misty is a romantic ballad by the crooner Johnny Mathis.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Look at me, I'm as helpless, fast.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Hippy the tree, as helpless as a kitten up a tree.
It doesn't quite scream We're gonna shoot you out of
the sky, does it, But it totally works. Maybe it's
because Bud was an older guy a classic, or because
(09:08):
he missed his wife, or maybe it just goes to
prove when you're as famously tough as Bud day, you
can call your unit anything you want. Soon, Kip and
Bud were ripping through the sky over North Vietnam, at
almost five hundred miles per hour. But when they were
(09:30):
about a mile away from their planned target, explosions ripped
through the air. Bud couldn't remember when he'd seen so
much anti aircraft artillery. It was like the sky was
on fire. They made it through the barrage somehow without
being hit. Bud told Kip to take another pass over
(09:50):
the target, so they flew over it one more time.
Their plane was hammered with explosions again and again. Still
it looked like they were gonna make it out, and
then Bud saw the missile. He knew what was coming.
The aircraft took a direct hit. Every warning light on
(10:13):
the instrument panel lit up, and Bud yelled eject, eject, eject.
They parachuted down. They were deep in enemy territory, falling
into the jungle. Bud blacked out during the fall, but
he came to with a jolt of searing pain.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Mus factored damaged by name. The marsh mask didn't separate
right and hipp any eye and damaged my eyes. So
I wound up on the ground.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Bud broke his arm in three places, a bone was
sticking through his skin. He had dislocated his knee, and
he couldn't see out of his right eye.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Just got my radio off and got a call off
and told him I was on the ground alive, and
young Adam just popped to the bush and captured me.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
His message had gotten through just in time. Help was
on the way. But he was surrounded by teenage boys
with rifles, and they pulled him further into the jungle,
further away from where his parachute was left, further away
from Kip, whom they hadn't spotted a.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Few minutes later, or was ever moving. A lot helicopter
came in and tried to rescue us, and I was gone.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
The chopper got so close that he could see Kip
in its doorway, but the boys had their rifles trained
on Bud. He couldn't go anywhere. He watched as the
helicopter dipped then lifted away. The teens were euphoric. They
had their prize. Bud was heartsick. He had been paraded
(11:58):
into a village that had been destroyed by American bombardments.
From there, into the makeshift militia camp that you met
him in, he could see rice patties and just beyond
a dense expanse of jungle. He was pushed into a
muddy bunker, just a hole in the ground, really barely
(12:19):
larger than his wiry five foot nine inch frame. His
captors tied him up with a rope, and Bud started
coming up with that escape plan almost immediately.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So I decided because it was obvious my eye was
all bloodshot, I was blind, and my knee was pretty big,
and of course my arm was bustard, and so they
concluded I was not throughout. And when I tried to
get me to move around or do anything, I faked it.
(12:54):
I couldn't move at all, and I began to buy the.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
A doctor arrived and set his arm in a makeshift cast,
but Bud could tell the bones weren't properly aligned. Things
got progressively worse from there. The soldiers wanted him to talk,
to give them intel. They beat him with rifle butts.
They staged a mock execution, holding a gun to his head.
(13:22):
They hung him from his ankles for hours. To them,
he wasn't an enemy combatant protected by the rules of war.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The Vietnamese never recognized as Geneva convention, so their possession
was that you were a criminal. They could do anything
to you they wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Bud knew the torture would get worse when the real
soldiers arrived, and they were coming soon. One of his
jailers had drawn a jeep in the mud and said
a word that Bud understood Hanoi, the capital city of
North Vietnam. So he decided he had to run that night,
(14:09):
loosening the rope on his leg, waiting for his teenage
guards to look the other way.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
First time, both of them were facing a different direction.
I slipped out of this hole over the price patty.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
He was dressed in only his undershorts, He had no shoes,
and he was weak from hunger. He ran towards the jungle,
his bare feet, sliding on the mud.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
My foot hit the bottom of that silt, just like
stopping on a banana piil. My feet went out from
under men. I lighted ride on the bus arm and
I'd almost bet my tongue off. I came from screaming
when I hit the deck because I couldn't wave it
and hear it. Wait at about a minute, a minute
(14:53):
half and nothing, so I thought, I got up and
headed south.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
He would have to travel roughly thirty miles to get
to South Vietnam and safety. He was just beginning to
pick his way through the jungle when a shrieking sound
cut the air. American B fifty twos were soaring overhead,
not to look for Bud, but to drop bombs on
(15:20):
the enemy encampments. One landed one hundred yards from Bud.
He was hit with shrapnel. Now his bare feet were
lacerated and bleeding. The next day brought another bomb, and
his ear drums were ruptured. Still he pressed on.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I survived basically on water because there was no food.
The best I could do was capture a couple of
these frogs.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I ate him.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
That's not a good deal.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
After several days in the jungle, he made it to
the river that separated North and South Vietnam. He crept
down the bank and lowered himself into the water, fighting
the current to make it to the other side. His
fingers touched the far bank. Unbelievably, he had reached South Vietnam.
(16:15):
By then, he was so starving that he was delusional.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I lost track of time and lost my ability to
start things out.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
He saw two Marine Corps helicopters in the sky not
too far away. There were replenishing supplies. It could only
mean one thing. A base was nearby. He could get there,
he knew it. He got closer and closer, hobbling and stumbling.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I was so left done about a while of Marine
Corps base at Coten when some of the yes popped
out of the brush.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
At this point, Bud Day could barely walk, but he
was also Bud Day.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I just said to myself, I'd come this far to
surrender to these last years. So I took off front.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
He ran as best as he could, but the NVA
fired at him. Bud took a bullet in the left
eye and the left hand, and he collapsed. His escape
was over. He was going back to North Vietnam. He
had been close to freedom. He wouldn't be that close
(17:29):
again for five and a half years. It was nineteen
(17:49):
sixty nine, two years since Bud's capture. He had been
moved from prison camp to prison camp, beaten and starved,
his broken army rebroken, and time and time again interrogated,
he refused to give any information other than what the
(18:10):
Code of Conduct stipulated, his name, his rank, his date
of birth, and his serial number.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
They really tortured me, Hungman by the arms and crippled
me pretty badly. Both my hands were curled up. I
couldn't feed myself, I couldn't do anything.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
He told himself he had to keep the faith he
couldn't break. It was better to die than to say something,
even the name of his unit, Misty, that might harm
the aviators that were still flying over Vietnam. He remembered
the motto of his first squadron, return with honor. He
(18:51):
was determined to do just that. Every night he prayed
for strength, and he prayed for Dory and the kids
he hold. They knew he was still alive. Bud spent
most of his time in a prison in Hanoi, nicknamed
the Hanoi Hilton. It housed hundreds of POWs and it
(19:12):
was miserable.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It was just absolute twelfth you know, lats all over
the place and and rat droppings and there. So everybody
had dysentery and I reta. We were at about seven
other calories a day, so you're all eva shaded and
big stomachs and big sunken eyes, and your health was
very precaratives. So the lovely conditions were just really at
(19:37):
the bottom.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
The prison was a series of long interconnected brick buildings.
The windows were covered with batting so light barely crept
in the air was trapped and steel the heat was unbearable.
Bud spent months in solitary confinement as punishment for not talking,
(20:01):
and those cells were as small as six by six feet.
When he wasn't in solitary, he shared his cell with
the young John McCain. Bud and another pilot had nurse
McCain back to health when he first arrived in prison,
broken and close to death. That was one of the
(20:22):
ways prisoners resisted their terrible situation. They took care of
each other. Another way was by being organized. The prison
guards forbade organization of any kind, but the men in
the Hanoi Hilton were military pilots. Hierarchy gave them a
(20:42):
sense of normalcy, and because of his rank, Bud was
a commander within the prison. This meant he was dealt
even harsher punishments. The first to feel the wrath of
the guards. Second problem, to get organized, you have to
be able to communicate. But the POWs weren't allowed to
(21:05):
talk between cells, and to disobey meant torture, so they
developed a tap code. It's kind of like a Morse code.
Each letter of the alphabet except K was given a
short set of two taps. They would spell out words
letter by pains, taking letter. It was life's blood for
(21:27):
the POWs.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
So despite where they might have you, unless I had
you so wrapped up in irons that you absolutely could
not move, while you could communicate, you could tap, and
so you always know what was going on.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Every Sunday morning, Bud, as commander of his prison unit,
used his knuckles to tap out CC, which stood for
Church Call. That same tap would be sent down the
whole line of cells in his section. Then the men
stood in their cells, said the Pledge of Allegiance, the
(22:05):
Lord's Prayer, and prayed for the safety of their fellow POWs.
But and his men had to keep the faith somehow.
At the Hanoi Hilton there was a total lack of
contact with the outside world. They had no way of
knowing what was happening in the war or how close
they might be to freedom.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I believed that the country was going to come and
get me. I ever came to the conclosure that my
country has just got to dump me.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Like some years to Ammo. The only news in prison
came from a steady stream of propaganda piped in over
a loudspeaker. The POWs called it CBS, short for you
ready for this camp bullshit system. There was no way
for the prisoners to sort fact from fiction. CBS reported
(22:59):
on devas station natural disasters in America and on implausible
triumphs in the North Vietnamese army. And it reported that
back in the US, while Bud was keeping his mouth
shut and being tortured for it, countless others were speaking
out against the war, but thought it was lies, just
(23:21):
one more thing the prison guards made up in order
to torment the POWs.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
As we started hearing about the Hiptis and Leanna war demonstrations,
all that stuff, I basically discotted all of that. What
else could the commists tell you? Would hurt you more,
would be more moralizing than for you to thank the
back on the home front. No one's supporting you.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
That, of course, was far from the truth. But because
more and more Americans were starting to question the war,
the government was trying to keep the plight of the
POW's a secret. They worried it would add more fuel
to the anti warfire, and so the military ordered the
(24:05):
wives of POWs to observe a code of conduct similar
to Bud's. Keep to yourself, don't speak to the press,
don't ask too many questions about where your husband was
or what was being done to rescue him. They called
it the keep quiet policy. So back in Arizona, Dorry
(24:31):
was living in a kind of a nightmarish limbo. She
knew Bud had been shot down. She knew he had
survived his initial crash, but that's it. Because North Vietnam
refused to officially acknowledge holding any POWs, it was impossible
to know for certain if Bud was still alive or
(24:52):
where he was. Dorry and Bud had been together at
that point for decades. They had met as teenagers in Iowa.
She was the little sister of one of his friends.
Her family was Norwegian, so Bud nicknamed her the Viking.
The two had started writing letters back when he had
(25:14):
gone off to World War II. Dorry told him she
was waiting for him and praying for him to be safe.
Now she couldn't write to Bud. She couldn't do anything
but keep praying, just wait and hope exactly what Bud
was doing.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
I didn't intend to die in a chrome place if
I could avoid.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
It, But the prison guards didn't make survival easy. In
the summer of sixty nine, the torture got worse. They
introduced something called the fan belt, a four foot long
rubber strip cut from a tire.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
That's some absolutely brutal torture sessions, and two or three times, frankly,
I would have preferred to die. I was in black
irons and never made me with a fan belt. I
can remember counting until three hundred struck, and I just said, why,
my wife's did my time counting? Here? They're gonna kill me,
(26:17):
you know, and I hope they don't.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Here's what Bud Day didn't just tell you that intensive
beating lasted more than six days. By the end he
was close to death. Bud believed that if he managed
to live, his physical suffering would stop eventually, but his
(26:42):
mental anguish would never end if he gave up even
a scrap of important information to his tormentors. That was Bud.
Back in the States, Dory had reached a totally different conclusion.
The Viking decided she had to start talking. Dorry was
(27:23):
through with keeping quiet. She wanted to feel like she
was maybe making a difference, she began to fight by
speaking out. Her friend Mike Newhouse remembers how hard the
Viking fought for her husband.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
I thought Modday was the bravest, toughest, most determined sobey
I'd ever met until I met Doris.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
We've been calling her Dory, but her name was Doris,
as in Doris Day, not that Doris Day, the famous actress,
which is why the king went by Dory.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
She was an absolute tiger in the State Department. After
her continued and persistent please pretty much told her to
go home, do your living and kind of stay out
of our ear. And she wasn't about to accept that.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
She banded together with other POW and Missing in Action
wives to form the National League of Families. The public
believed that any prisoners of war were being treated according
to the Geneva Convention, but the wives had learned the
truth about the torture, so they defied. To keep quiet
(28:45):
policy and the hopes of putting pressure on Washington. They
spoke to the press and gave speeches, sometimes being heckled
by people who hated this war and believed, as the
NVA prison guards did, that these men weren't POWs, but
criminals around the country. Wives pleaded on behalf of their husbands,
(29:09):
asking for the world to pay attention. Their activism worked.
For the first time, the United States publicly listed the
number of men it believed to be held prisoner. Millions
across the nation, including many who opposed the war, bought
metal bracelets with the names of American prisoners as a
(29:32):
show of support. President Nixon promised the wise that he
would hold North Vietnam accountable for the POW's treatment, regardless
of what was happening in the conflict itself.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
What I have assured these very courageous women is this
government will do everything that it possibly can to separate
out the prisoner issue and have it handled as it
should be, as a separate issue on a humane basis.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Dory was working NonStop writing letters to the North Vietnamese government,
speaking passionately to the press. She had the governor of
Arizona on speed dial. She bought a plane ticket to
the Paris Peace Talks to confront the North Vietnamese diplomatic mission.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
She collared everybody, ours, theirs, anybody associated with the talks,
and just said, damn it, bring my husband hold.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
She and other wives brought thousands of letters to give
to the North Vietnamese delegation, all from citizens pleading for
the humane treatment and return of the POWs. The public
pressure embarrassed the North Vietnamese, and all the way over
in Hanoi, Bud could feel something starting to shift. Some
(30:56):
of the worst torture abated, and after years of no
kind contact at all, Dorry was able to send a
package of photographs to Bud. He pored over the pictures
of his children growing up without him. Their oldest Stephen
was a teenager, not a kid anymore. Bud's hands still
(31:19):
didn't work. The whippings had left him stooped, barely able
to walk, but he remained unbroken. He hadn't said a
word to his captors that he was ashamed of. By
nineteen seventy, three years into his captivity, Bud was moved
to Room seven. It held the prisoners considered to be
(31:42):
the hardest cases, the ones who were most defiant. James
Stockdale was there you might remember him as Ross Perrot's
running mate during his nineteen ninety two presidential campaign. And
a pilot named Robbie Reisner who had been a pod
since nineteen sixty five, and John McCain.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Of course, you live was somebody for as long as
we did. You build up a kind of a relationship
that is just undescribable. But I know more about John
than his mother, his father, and his wives and total.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
One day in February of seventy one, Robbie Reisner decided
he was going to give a church service for the
men in that room. The guards forbaded, but it's hard
to forbid something to men who've got little to lose.
They were midway through the service when the guards came
storming in. They seized Reisner and led him off to
(32:46):
a torture session. Bud jumped on one of the concrete bunks.
He waved his hands in the air and started singing
the star Spangled banner. The other men in the room
turned to look at him, and at first they were stunned, silent,
and then they joined in. They sang at the top
(33:11):
of their lungs. The melody traveled through the dank, filthy building,
and soon all of the POWs, hundreds of them, were singing.
They sang every song they knew, one after the other.
The guards were stemy, they couldn't punish all of them.
(33:33):
Eventually they lined them up at the point of Bayonets.
It made an impression on John McCain.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Witness I was saying with national anthem, the responds to
having one rifle pointed at the space, Well, that was something.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
To behold by. Now. Bud was forty six. He had
been a prisoner for four and a half years, but
his defiance and his silence stayed true, not just for
himself before his men in even worse shape than he was,
(34:11):
Like McCain, they made me beg me.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
There's maybe encouraging and ordered me back to life, but
more than that, but.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Show me how to second one self respect in my honor,
and that is a debt I can.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Never repay it.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Dorry, meanwhile, was telling her story in even wider circles.
After Paris, she went to Switzerland to speak to the
Red Cross, and Sweden to the North Vietnamese Embassy, and
she kept but alive for her kids, playing home movies,
telling stories, making sure they believed, really believed that someday
(34:54):
he could make it home. By Christmas of seventy two,
five and a half years after Bud had been captured,
that homecoming felt within reach. The prisoners at the Hilton
heard bombs, screaming close, then closer. American B fifty two's
(35:14):
were bombing Hanoi.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Suddenly nine o'clock I led literally hundreds of bombers or
over annoy dropping bombs, and it was just the earth
was fibrating.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
The ground began to shake, debris started to fall off
the ceiling. But Bud was elated.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
But that was a wonderful sound. Afraid of My people
were just astatic.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Everybody knew. Three we started getting released.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
In February of nineteen Subney three.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Bud and John McCain were together on the plane to
Clark Airbase in the Philippines. Bud had been imprisoned for
five and a half years. He had just turned forty
eight years old. His teeth were broken, he was death
in one ear. His arm was permanently bent, but he
(36:07):
left the medical facility at Clark with his uniform pressed
and his backstraight. He was returning with honor. A plane
took him to California. He was told that as the
most senior officer in the group, he would need to
give a speech. Bud stood in the doorway of the airplane,
(36:29):
scanning the crowd for the faces of his family. He
walked down the steps, saluted the officers waiting there, and
stepped to the microphone. He started by thanking God, his country,
and President Nixon, and then he heard the click of
heels racing across the tarmac. It was the Viking. There's
(36:54):
a photo of what happened next. I can't show it
to you, but I swear if you want to know
what pure elation looks like, you should look it up.
It was like an orchestra was playing that only they
could hear, just like Bud's favorite song with its beautiful,
super romantic lyrics, My Way and a thousand violins begin
(37:24):
to hear. When I see the photo, even I get misty.
Dorry rushing forward, arms out, Bud in a crouch, railed thin,
stretching out his hands to catch her, a wide eyed,
radiant years in the making smile on his face.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
I get, Misty, the moment you're need.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
When Bud and Dorry got back home to Arizona, they
renew their way vowels. They had been married for twenty
four years. Bud worked tirelessly on behalf of the men
who had been POW's along with him, riding them up
for medals, helping them get back to work to a
somewhat normal life. He spoke about his experiences. Mostly he
(38:20):
just wanted to fly again.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Soon.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
He was the vice commander of a fighter wing. That's
where he was when he learned he would receive the
Medal of Honor. He was awarded it in nineteen seventy
six from President Gerald Ford.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
I felt quite humble. I had seen enough combat to
know if there were certainly a lot of acts of
courage that probably far exceeded with you, sorry yourself doom.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
He retired in early seventy seven and went to work
as a lawyer, representing pilots that had bumped up against
Air Force bureaucracy. He helped POWs, including his old roommate
James Stockdale, received disability payments. He was in and out
of the hospital himself. Some of his pain faded, though
(39:15):
his sense of defiance did not. After the Hanoi Hilton
was torn down, Bud got his hands on some of
the bricks. He mounted them in his garage.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
I thought, that's kind of a all of my triumph.
You know, they got no jail and I got the bracks.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
In the summer of nineteen ninety five, Bud saw a
news story that made him, for lack of a better word, furious.
It said that the US government was no longer allowing
military retirees over the age of sixty five into military hospitals.
They would have to rely on Medicare, which meant that
(39:57):
they would have to pay for part of their healthcare.
Bud was seventy years old, he was disabled, and when
he signed up for the military back in nineteen forty two,
he had been told that if he served twenty years,
he'd have free lifetime medical benefits. He'd kept the code
(40:17):
of conduct, but had the government kept up with their
end of the bargain, he didn't think so. He'd loved
his country, he loved it, but this was wrong, and
as an American he had the right to speak out
to fight for what he believed. So Bud Day decided
(40:39):
to sue the government. That battle would take five years.
He appeared in courthouse after courthouse. He stood on the
Capitol steps in the rain. He got John McCain by
that point, a senator from Arizona and a future presidential
candidate involved. He wouldn't let it go, and finally, in
(41:02):
two thousand, his advocacy paid off with the passage of
the Tricare for Life Bill, military veterans would be able
to use military and civilian hospitals for their care and
have access to low cost prescriptions for as long as
they lived. Bud and his persistence made it happen. He
(41:25):
took care of his squad once again. Over his military career,
Bud Day received seventy medals for his service, but until
the end of his life. When asked what he was
proudest of, Bud invariably answered my wife. Bud died at
(41:47):
the age of eighty eight. Dorey lived to ninety five.
She passed earlier this year. Theirs was a marriage of equals,
the Viking and the commander. They were strong together and
just as strong a part because they shared a core
belief and duty to others and honor. They were tireless
(42:11):
and defiant. No wonder they made such a difference, and
no wonder they were so much in love. I am
too misty and too much in love.
Speaker 5 (42:33):
Me.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Medal of Honor Stories of Courage as written by Meredith
Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane. Our
editor is Ben Nadolf Hoffrey. Sound design and additional music
by Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer is Constanza Gayarto. Fact
checking by Arthur Gombert's original music by Eric Phillips. Production
(43:12):
support by Suzanne Gabber. Special thanks to the Congressional Medal
of Honor Society, the Brigadier General Bud and Doris Day
Interpretive Center in South Sioux City, Nebraska, and the film
The Keep Quiet Policy, How Vietnam Pow wives were silenced
by the American Story. If you want to learn more
(43:33):
about this story, take a look at our show notes,
where we have some of the resources we use to
put together this episode. We want to hear from you.
Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone
else's bravery. You might hear your stories on future episodes
of Medal of Honor or see them on our social channels.
(43:53):
Just email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin dot FM.
I'm your host, JR. Martinez
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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