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challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
In September 1965, Jim Stockdale, a naval fighter pilot, was shot down over North Vietnam, and spent the next seven years as a prisoner of war. In this book, in alternating chapters, he and his wife Sybil recount their experiences. I found it an informative account of this aspect of the Vietnam War, but an uncomfortable read. The prisoners were tortured. Their families suffered. The politics of the Vietnam War upsets me.
I note that the portrayal of the Vietnamese captors struck me as racist. I may be over sensitive on this issue. (My father was ethnically Chinese and spoke English with an accent.) I have no sympathy for men who committed or sanctioned torture, and racism by their victims is understandable (the treatment of the American prisoners in North Vietnam was appalling). Yet still the depiction of the Vietnamese troubled me.
I note that the portrayal of the Vietnamese captors struck me as racist. I may be over sensitive on this issue. (My father was ethnically Chinese and spoke English with an accent.) I have no sympathy for men who committed or sanctioned torture, and racism by their victims is understandable (the treatment of the American prisoners in North Vietnam was appalling). Yet still the depiction of the Vietnamese troubled me.
This book is a wonderful look at the lives of two truly amazing people and the ordeal that made them an even stronger couple than they already were. Jim and Sybil Stockdale are inspirational and astonishing in their devotion to each other and to serving their country. Jim was held as a POW during the Vietnam War and Sybil working with wives groups at home to advocate for the men being held and their families. It's a great book to read if life seems overwhelming. Puts it all in perspective.
Having read about Jim Stockdale all over the place, I found my way to him and his wife’s (who had an equally compelling story) account. It’s unfortunate that this amazing book is out of print.
Both Jim & Sybil’s grounded perspectives throughout the SEVEN YEARS of imprisonment is so admirable. Their story was easy to fly through and extremely interesting. And it offers so many lessons.
Writes Stockdale:
“He suffocated in the very bed in which I had slept during my last six months of freedom, the bed from which I arose and departed into this hell. Fickle chance. ‘... the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.’”
Fickle chance. It can almost always be worse.
Both Jim & Sybil’s grounded perspectives throughout the SEVEN YEARS of imprisonment is so admirable. Their story was easy to fly through and extremely interesting. And it offers so many lessons.
Writes Stockdale:
“He suffocated in the very bed in which I had slept during my last six months of freedom, the bed from which I arose and departed into this hell. Fickle chance. ‘... the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.’”
Fickle chance. It can almost always be worse.
This was not quite what I'd expected. Having heard that it was about the correspondence between James and Sybil Stockdale during his incarceration in a prison camp, I thought it would be a collection of letters. Instead, it is a recounting of the ten years that J was in prison from the alternating perspectives of J in prison and S at home.
The whole thing was far less intense than I'd expected. There was very little drama, really. On Jim's end, the descriptions of his "quiz sessions" were very mild. On S's end, ten years read more like ten months as she raised her children and worked to get the US government to publicly denounce the inhumane treatment of the POWs.
Still, even in this (I'm assuming) highly edited version of events, Jim conveys the challenge of mentally surviving ten years of incarceration, including (years?) in solitary confinement. He also touches on the difficulty of being a veteran during the Vietnam War, a long dragging conflict with no distinct plan of action.
Sybil's account is slightly more emotional, but not really. I'd say I was close to tears perhaps twice in all 490+ pages. Considering that she raised four sons without their father for most of their childhoods, had to deal with a society that was hostile to the war her husband was fighting on such a personal level, and lacked support from the very government that demanded his sacrifice, I'd expected more. My eyes prickled at the part where she left J after an R&R visit prior to his being shot down and briefly at the end when she wrote him a letter upon learning of his release.
That being said, I as she wrote in her own story, she didn't want to be considered a "hysterical female" and maybe that's why this reads somewhat mechanically from time to time. As for tension and fear, the most frighteningly told story happened during his post war experience as president of the Citadel! Go figure! (But it was pretty alarming.)
It was a bit hard to from VIetnam: A History to this. S & J had faith in the military approach to the war throughout. She was adamantly opposed to LBJ, and all in favor of Nixon. Of course she loathed the North Vietnamese communists. But she never considered the ethics of being at war in the first place, unlike J who writes of his conflicted feeling knowing that the Tonkin Incident was fabricated. (Fascinating to read of that from his first hand experience.) He felt that more military action would have ended the war much earlier. The mining of Haiphong and the bombing of Hanoi from his perspective in prison were the undoing of the NVN. However, from other histories, it was more the loss of support of China and Russia that did them in. Military might failed to have a big impact as long as they had numbers on their side and morale was incredibly high throughout the war according to Vietnam: a History.
Her efforts to organize families and demand the support of her government for POWs were amazing. His descriptions of triumph of spirit and comeraderie in prison were also inspiring.
The most sensitively written part from JS's point of view was probably the experience of POWs who were put out to pasture in the military upon their return. It was not that he received bad treatment so much as he was handled with kid gloves. He became a symbol and not an active war fighter and his disappointment about this was palpable. To think that he could handle ten years of imprisonment and never lose hope, but was driven to tears by his own service denying him the career he devoted his life to was beyond ironic and a really harsh injustice. The ten years of lost professional development was impossible for him to overcome, unlike the shattered knee and damaged shoulder and the psyche that had him sleeping on the floor for a while upon his return to the safety and comfort of home.
I had no idea what an amazing instructor JS was. His writings on education were thoughtful and insightful. I closed this book wishing both of the Stockdales were still here to shape the character of Americans for generations to come. Their contributions were mighty and as far as I'm concerned, the world is a little worse off without them. (...even though their (particularly her) expressed politics are something I often found alarming...)
The whole thing was far less intense than I'd expected. There was very little drama, really. On Jim's end, the descriptions of his "quiz sessions" were very mild. On S's end, ten years read more like ten months as she raised her children and worked to get the US government to publicly denounce the inhumane treatment of the POWs.
Still, even in this (I'm assuming) highly edited version of events, Jim conveys the challenge of mentally surviving ten years of incarceration, including (years?) in solitary confinement. He also touches on the difficulty of being a veteran during the Vietnam War, a long dragging conflict with no distinct plan of action.
Sybil's account is slightly more emotional, but not really. I'd say I was close to tears perhaps twice in all 490+ pages. Considering that she raised four sons without their father for most of their childhoods, had to deal with a society that was hostile to the war her husband was fighting on such a personal level, and lacked support from the very government that demanded his sacrifice, I'd expected more. My eyes prickled at the part where she left J after an R&R visit prior to his being shot down and briefly at the end when she wrote him a letter upon learning of his release.
That being said, I as she wrote in her own story, she didn't want to be considered a "hysterical female" and maybe that's why this reads somewhat mechanically from time to time. As for tension and fear, the most frighteningly told story happened during his post war experience as president of the Citadel! Go figure! (But it was pretty alarming.)
It was a bit hard to from VIetnam: A History to this. S & J had faith in the military approach to the war throughout. She was adamantly opposed to LBJ, and all in favor of Nixon. Of course she loathed the North Vietnamese communists. But she never considered the ethics of being at war in the first place, unlike J who writes of his conflicted feeling knowing that the Tonkin Incident was fabricated. (Fascinating to read of that from his first hand experience.) He felt that more military action would have ended the war much earlier. The mining of Haiphong and the bombing of Hanoi from his perspective in prison were the undoing of the NVN. However, from other histories, it was more the loss of support of China and Russia that did them in. Military might failed to have a big impact as long as they had numbers on their side and morale was incredibly high throughout the war according to Vietnam: a History.
Her efforts to organize families and demand the support of her government for POWs were amazing. His descriptions of triumph of spirit and comeraderie in prison were also inspiring.
The most sensitively written part from JS's point of view was probably the experience of POWs who were put out to pasture in the military upon their return. It was not that he received bad treatment so much as he was handled with kid gloves. He became a symbol and not an active war fighter and his disappointment about this was palpable. To think that he could handle ten years of imprisonment and never lose hope, but was driven to tears by his own service denying him the career he devoted his life to was beyond ironic and a really harsh injustice. The ten years of lost professional development was impossible for him to overcome, unlike the shattered knee and damaged shoulder and the psyche that had him sleeping on the floor for a while upon his return to the safety and comfort of home.
I had no idea what an amazing instructor JS was. His writings on education were thoughtful and insightful. I closed this book wishing both of the Stockdales were still here to shape the character of Americans for generations to come. Their contributions were mighty and as far as I'm concerned, the world is a little worse off without them. (...even though their (particularly her) expressed politics are something I often found alarming...)