Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (33 page)

Note passed to rescue helicopter pilot Skip Cowell identifying the man rescued at a river in southern Laos on July 20, 1966.
Family photograph.

Cowell immediately radioed the identity of their passenger to
Crown
, who cleared him to proceed directly to Da Nang.

As soon as Cowell found out he was carrying a
Ranger
Spad pilot who went down in February over Laos, it “all clicked together.” Cowell had piloted the helicopter that had hovered over Dieter’s wreckage the day after his crash. It had been his crewman who was lowered to the ground to search the scene. That mission Cowell had flown from the Royal Thai Air Force Base at Udorn, where he had been stationed before being assigned to start up a new rescue helicopter unit south of the DMZ.

Now, six months later, he was bringing out of the Laotian jungle—nearly 100 miles from that crash site—
Ranger
’s missing Spad pilot.

Ranger’s C1A carrier onboard delivery (COD) aircraft,
Gray Eagle 057
, was on final approach to the carrier shortly after 4:00
P.M
. on July 21, 1966. By far
Ranger
’s most popular plane—it delivered bags of mail and parcels from home during long periods at sea in the South China Sea—the COD was carrying a passenger who was about to receive the welcome of a lifetime.

For Dieter, the last twenty-four hours had been a blur. From his bed at the Naval Support Facility Hospital at the eastern end of the Da Nang Air Base—and through the examinations, blood samples, tests, transfusions, and injections; a hot bath and shave; and “many tears”—Dieter kept wanting to know when he would be taken back to his ship to see his buddies. One of the first messages he received came from his squadron mates:

That same day, July 20, Dieter was also handed a confidential message from the commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet:

Dieter was allowed to send one message of his own, addressed to Marina Adamich of Belmont, California:

When he was admitted to the hospital, Dieter weighed ninety-eight pounds. He was found to have two types of malaria, intestinal worms, fungus, jaundice, and hepatitis. Doctors said he was so malnourished that if he hadn’t been picked up when he was, he would have “died that day or the next.” His condition was listed as fair, with the “prognosis good” for a full recovery, although it would take medical supervision, time, and rest. Dieter, with a bone-deep hunger, did his part by eating everything placed in front of him.

During his first day at Da Nang, Dieter had been questioned by naval intelligence officers, who reported that the former POW “tired very easily during [the] interview.” When Dieter described Duane’s death, he broke down and had to be given time to recover. He named the other prisoners who had escaped with him. Shown a map, he found the village of Ban Hoeui Het, and said the camp was a walk of two hours or so to the west. He told how Gene and Y.C. planned to hide out on a ridge to the south, awaiting rescue. Dieter was assured that an aerial search would be started immediately. He was surprised to realize that after three weeks of walking in
the jungle he had been picked up only thirteen miles from the prison camp, and that at one point he and Duane had circled back to within two miles of the camp! Although he had walked eighty-five miles from the site of his crash to the prison camp from which he escaped, he and Duane, in their weakened state, never could have hiked to freedom: from where he was picked up it was 100 miles to Thailand and thirty-five miles to the coast of North Vietnam, with a sizable mountain range in between.

Dieter in the hospital in Da Nang, South Vietnam, on the day of his rescue, July 20, 1966. He weighed ninety-eight pounds.
U.S. Navy.

The rescue at the river may have been routine for the experienced helicopter crew used to “hotter pickups” in the face of enemy gunfire, but for Dieter it had been terrifying. After the helicopter’s first pass, he heard a single shot echo down the canyon, and feared an enemy patrol was closing in. When there was a large explosion nearby, Dieter thought the helicopter was bombing him—only when he smelled the fuel did he realize that the pilot had dropped the external tanks. With that familiar whiff of aviation gas, he knew for sure that the Spads and the helicopter overhead were not a hallucination. As the helicopter hovered and lowered the penetrator, Dieter heard more shots. When he was finally able to unfold one paddle of the
penetrator, he straddled the bar and waved, not bothering with the safety belt. Praying he could keep his “death grip” on the cable, he was hoisted by winch—spinning round and round like a top—above the jungle that had nearly killed him.

The U.S. Navy had been eager to get Dieter out of Da Nang. There had as yet been no public announcement concerning his escape and rescue. Even the officers who were personally notifying Dieter’s mother in Germany and his brother in California of his survival were instructed to ask them to keep the news “within [the] family” for the time being. The fact that Dieter had also been interviewed by a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer in Da Nang did not sit well with the navy higher-ups, either—chalk it up to interservice rivalry. A matter of more serious concern was that when Dieter had arrived aboard the Jolly Green Giant, a congressional party visiting from Ohio—with the press in tow—happened to be touring the airfield. After a story appeared stateside about their day at Da Nang, mentioning an unnamed pilot having been rescued near the Laotian border, members of the party were advised that the rescue was classified. The next leak came out of Saigon, where one of the “gruffest of the growling pack” of war correspondents, Joe Fried of the New York
Daily News
, had sniffed out the details—including Dieter’s name—and filed a story. The military, however, was able to kill this story, reportedly citing security reasons to Fried’s bosses in New York.

Why the tight lid on the breaking news of a navy pilot’s successful escape from a POW camp? First, there was concern about the welfare of the prisoners who had escaped with him—no one wanted information released that might aid the communists guerrillas who could still be hunting them. Also, there was the highly sensitive subject of where Dieter had been shot down. Although the entire world knew about the war in North and South Vietnam, the public had not been told about the secret war in Laos. The overall commander in the Pacific (CINCPAC) instructed all commands: “No public announcement about [Dengler’s] escape and disposition, or meeting with press authorized until further notice.” However, in the face of “considerable bitterness [by] media representatives that higher authority [was] unwilling to release details” after the teaser that had appeared in the published story about the Ohio delegation, it would be only a few days be
fore an assistant secretary of defense in Washington, D.C., issued an official if terse announcement about the escape, naming Dieter.

Close to midnight on July 21, CINCPAC granted authority to the commander of the Seventh Fleet “to retain Dengler in order to obtain information”—most immediately, information that might prove of “value in escape and evasion procedures to aircrews flying over North Vietnam and Laos”—and thereafter to “expedite his movement” stateside, where he was to be admitted to the naval hospital in San Diego and where his “formal debrief” was to be conducted. That high-level authority set in motion Dieter’s imminent return to his ship and buddies. The commander of the Seventh Fleet immediately wired the naval support command at Da Nang to “send Ltjg Dengler to RANGER.” In the morning, the commander of Carrier Air Wing 14 aboard
Ranger
notified Da Nang: “My C1A,
Gray Eagle 057
, to Da Nang to pick up Ltjg Dengler for return to
Ranger
.” Early that afternoon, Dieter had been driven by ambulance to the operations office at the Da Nang airfield, where his rescuer, the helicopter pilot Skip Cowell, happened to be passing through. He saw Dieter, covered with a blanket, lying on a couch waiting for his departing flight. Dieter was in the company of a navy doctor and a two-star admiral. It occurred to Cowell that he had never before seen a “junior naval officer escorted by an admiral.”

Waiting on
Ranger
’s flight deck for the COD to land that drizzly day in the Gulf of Tonkin was Lieutenant ( j.g.) Robert Montgomery, twenty-four, of Sacramento, California. As the ship’s air transfer officer, he planned the incoming and outgoing loads of personnel and mail for the CODs—
Ranger
’s own as well as land-based C1As that flew supplies to the aircraft carriers operating in the South China Sea—and supervised the loading and unloading. He was aware that
Gray Eagle 057
had been sent to Da Nang to pick up Dieter Dengler, and was now returning “the hero to his ship.” Montgomery was in an ideal position to be the first on
Ranger
to greet Dieter, and he intended to do just that.

After the COD caught the wire and was being directed off to one side of the flight deck, and while it was “still coasting to a stop,” Montgomery ran alongside, opened the door on the side of the plane, and hopped in. The interior of the small plane was cramped and dark, and its limited headroom
required anyone entering to bend at the waist. The first person he saw was a smiling navy doctor. All but one of the rear-facing passenger seats—in single rows on either side of a narrow aisle—had been removed to make room for a metal-wire litter, upon which lay Dieter, who had on a khaki officer’s shirt several sizes too big for him. Montgomery’s first thought was that the former POW “didn’t look like a caveman,” and had obviously been “barbered and cleaned up.” Then he saw the color of the pilot’s skin and realized that “jaundice really
does
make you turn yellow.”

Dieter in
Ranger
’s sickbay, July 21, 1966. Norm “Lizard” Lessard of VA-145 on right.
U.S. Navy.

“Welcome aboard,” Montgomery said.

Dieter returned the greeting with a faint smile.

The COD was rolled onto an elevator, which went down to the hangar deck. There, Dieter’s squadron mates, along with hundreds of expectant shipmates, were waiting. When the plane stopped and its wheels were chocked, someone rolled a length of red carpet up to the door.

The red carpet was only the beginning. Dieter would soon be shown to his quarters in the admiral’s stateroom, recently vacated when Rear Admiral Weisner and his staff rotated back to San Diego, and a new admiral
began flying his flag on another Yankee Station carrier set to relieve
Ranger
, which was due to depart for home in only two weeks.

A grinning Lizard, who couldn’t have asked for a better gift for his twenty-fourth birthday the next day, Bummy, Farky, Hal Griffith, and other VA-145 pilots crowded inside the cabin. “Marina’s fine, just fine,” someone assured Dieter. They brought him out in their arms. When Dieter’s weary but joyful face appeared in the doorway, a thunderous roar filled the cavernous hangar bay, followed by hoots, whistles, and clapping.

Against all odds, one of their lost pilots had returned.

The former Spad pilot Spook Johns had always wanted to see Alaska, the only state he had not visited. Embracing the independence of his new civilian life, he loaded up his International Scout with camping gear, and set out from his Detroit home, crossing Canada on the Alaska Highway.