Editor's note: In partnership with Leadership Anchorage, the Alaska Journal of Commerce will publish portions of conversations from Leadership Anchorage's on-stage conversations, held at the Z.J. Loussac Public Library. This year's theme is "Rising to the Occasion: Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things."
On Sept. 5, 1966 - after about 35-40 missions over North Vietnam and while flying an F-8 Crusader off the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany - Will Abbott was shot down about 35 miles south of Hanoi. With a broken leg, he was captured and taken to the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where he remained for 6 1/2 years.
Rising to the occasion in the field is different from rising to the occasion in imprisonment. There, in Vietnam, the POWs realized that parts of their code of conduct, established after the Korean War, were problematic. "It said you'll only give name, rank, serial number and date of birth, that's Geneva Convention. It says that you won't give any other information up to the point of death. Well, that's nice to say," Abbott said, "but it ain't true. You can't do it.
"The Vietnamese, first of all, wanted you to give information really for no other reason than just to prove that they could make you do it. And they did. In that first couple of days that I was in Heartbreak (the Hanoi Hilton), they proved a couple things to me: they could make me hurt bad enough to where I'd do just about anything, and they also proved to me and made it very clear that they weren't going to let me die. That wasn't an option.
"Very quickly you figure out, well, I gotta tell them something to get them off my back, or they're going to take me so far that I'll tell them anything they want to know ... So you start coming up with stories.
"Robbie Risner came out with what we called 'Risner's Rules.' He modified the Code of Conduct that's been signed by the president, passed by Congress, and this is it. Risner said, 'You'll resist, but you'll resist to the point of breaking. You'll not go to the break point. You'll stop before they get you.'
"That's leadership. That's somebody who's willing to step forward and say we got to change things, and I don't care who made the original decision back there, that's what we're going to do now.
"A crusty old NCO told me, 'Ninety percent of making a decision is making a decision. Ten percent is whether you make the right decision or not.' I would just add ... if with that 10 percent you make the wrong decision, then you'd better be prepared to go back and change it and fix it if you need to."
Imprisonment required resilience and flexibility. "We tried to keep morale up," he said. "Whatever joke you had, you told it 50 times." The POWs used a "tap code" on the walls to communicate with each other and offer support. And they kept their minds occupied by memorizing the names of everyone shot down. "When I came home in February of 1973, I had 650 names in my head. First name, last name, service, and shoot-down date."
Finally, Abbott had to rise to the occasion after imprisonment, to return to life. "I think you have a long time to take a pretty good look at yourself while you're in there ... We had amazingly few problems when we came back."
"Was I prepared for it?" Abbott wondered about his training. "No. Was I expecting it, ready for it? Yes. Not looking forward to it, but yes, I was expecting it."
In considering our own opportunities to rise to the occasion, how do we get ourselves ready?
On Oct. 10 at 7 p.m., KSKA FM 91.1 will air the series' final conversation with Abbott at the Z.J. Loussac Public Library. Programs can also be accessed at www.kska.org.
