A former Air Force general who was held captive in North Vietnam for six years said he’s not sure specifically what he’s going to talk about when he speaks to the Catholic Men’s Luncheon Club on Friday, Nov. 4, but he knows what his theme will be.
“Resilience is always the main message in my talks,” said retired Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier, 80, a member of Columbus St. Andrew Church. “When things don’t go the way you want them, then adapt to deal with what you have. That was a key to getting through my time as a prisoner in the ‘Hanoi Hilton.’”
Mechenbier said he won’t know the specifics of his PowerPoint presentation until he sees the audience. “I don’t have a standard lecture,” he said. “My talks vary depending on the group I’m speaking to, but resilience is the central subject.”
The talk, titled “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Vietnamese Prison,” will follow the 11:45 a.m. Mass at Columbus St. Patrick Church, 280 S. Grant Ave.
“People don’t think they could endure the torture and the isolation you go through in a prison camp, but I think they sell themselves short,” Mechenbier said. “We all face situations where we say, ‘I couldn’t do that,’ then we find ourselves in that position and we get through it.
“I never thought I’d make it through six years as a prisoner of war, but I did and so did the other guys in there with me. There were no supermen there. We were just ordinary guys doing our job and learning how to cope.”
Mechenbier, an Air Force Academy graduate who had served in the Air Force for three years and held the rank of captain at the time, was on his 113th combat mission and 80th over North Vietnam when a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II interceptor carrying him and radar operator Kevin McManus was shot down on June 14, 1967. The engine exploded and the two men ejected.
He carried a .38-caliber revolver but knew he was in no position to put up a fight, so he threw the pistol away before he landed and was surrounded by North Vietnamese troops. He and McManus were taken to Hoa Lo Prison, known to Americans as the “Hanoi Hilton.”
“We were beaten pretty steadily for the first two or three weeks there because the prison guards were trying to get us to the point where we would say and do anything they wanted,” Mechenbier said. “The military code of conduct says a prisoner should give only his name, rank, serial number and date of birth. It also says, ‘I will evade answering further questions to the best of my ability.’
“The guards wanted answers, so we gave them answers. Nobody said they had to be the right answers,” Mechenbier said. “I’d say I was in a squadron with people like Clark Kent, Jimmy Doolittle, Eddie Rickenbacker and Abraham Lincoln, and the guards would be happy with that. We knew we were joking, but the guards were happy with that and with other gibberish we would talk if they heard words like ‘crime,’ ‘criminal’ and ‘guilty’ once in a while.
“We endured abuse before making these ‘confessions’ because we knew the guards would be suspicious if it didn’t seem they were beating the information out of us, but we never told them anything of use to them.”
Mechenbier said the punishment let up for a time after North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh died in 1969 but resumed after a few weeks. He said he and McManus endured the situation by telling all the stories they could think of and communicating with POWs in other cells through tapping on the walls or placing an ear next to a cup held against the wall.
Eventually, all the American prisoners in North Vietnam were moved to the “Hanoi Hilton,” and a communal living area for them was created. That made it much easier for them because they could play cards and other games, sing, tell stories and pass the time together.
“Food was soup made from seaweed, turnip tops or pumpkins, with moldy bread and rice that had bits of rock in it, so you had to endure that, but we did have each other for support,” he said.
Mechenbier was released in February 1973 after nearly six years of captivity. On his release, he weighed 133 pounds, 65 pounds less than when he was imprisoned. He was flown to the Philippines to recuperate.
“I spent most of my time there in the dentist’s chair,” he said. “My teeth were in such bad shape that I had 13 root canals.”
Upon his return to the United States, Mechenbier was assigned to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base northeast of Dayton. He remained in Ohio for the rest of his 44-year Air Force career, either at Wright-Patterson or at the Ohio Air National Guard base at the Springfield airport.
He rose through the ranks over the years and became a brigadier general in 1997 and a major general two years later. When he retired in 2004, he was mobilization assistant to the commander at the Air Force Materiel Command headquarters at Wright-Patterson.
In retirement, he has been a consultant to defense contractors and serves on the board of the Wright “B” Flyer Aircraft Museum in Miamisburg. He also is a volunteer at the Marion Correctional Institution, where he tries to encourage prisoners by talking to them about what they are going through and discussing his own prison experience with them.
“I play golf every morning and do what I want to in the afternoon. It’s a great life,” he said.
Mechenbier was born in West Virginia, graduated from high school in Dayton and “probably lived in 20 different places while growing up,” he said. “I was a construction worker’s child, but my experience was much like that of a military family with the constant moving.”
He is the recipient of a number of military medals honoring his service. These include the Silver Star with oak leaf cluster and the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster for his resistance to demands by the North Vietnamese for information, confessions and propaganda material.
He also received a Bronze Star with “V” device for his efforts to conduct himself strictly in accordance with the code of conduct for war prisoners. His other decorations include the Purple Heart and the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with palm.