The Hanoi Hilton

Matt Soergel: Byron Fuller dreamed of the houses he would build, counted the number of 2-by-4s he would need, counted each and every nail he would use.

Dick Stratton repeated the names of the hundreds of tormented souls with him, so they would never be forgotten.

Hal Kushner mourned for the men who'd died in his arms, men he could have saved, and wondered if his newborn child back home was a boy or a girl, healthy or sick.

Pete Schoeffel wrote poems, tales of home and hope and despair that, for years, existed only in his head.

Toward the end, he was able to scratch them out on the insides of cigarette packs. He wrote them with a pen of bamboo, with ink of brick dust or ashes, and he hid the poems down the front of his shorts as he carried them to freedom.

Thirty-five years ago this month, the gates opened for them at Hoa Lo, known to the world by its bitter nickname, the Hanoi Hilton. And the survivors of that damp, fetid place in Vietnam among them a Naval lieutenant named John McCain headed to waiting airplanes pointed for the Philippines, then America.