GV crowd hears Medal of Honor winner’s survival tale

Retired Air Force colonel and Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Leo K. Thorsness, 75, shared some of the survival tactics he employed as a prisoner of war for six years in the “Hanoi Hilton” with an overflow crowd at Desert Hills Lutheran Church Monday night.

The Vietnam war hero’s 34-minute talk on “Getting Through Tough Times” was a benefit event for the Friends of the University of Arizona Cancer Research Department.

Tom Maher of Green Valley, a U.S. Air Force veteran who served with Thorsness during the Vietnam War, introduced the man he called “my former boss and best friend from my military career.”

Maher noted that there are fewer than 135 living Congressional Medal of Honor winners, “the highest and rarely awarded decoration in the United States for conspicuous gallantry.”

“Forty years ago tomorrow is the anniversary of Leo’s 93rd mission. He was honored for protecting a doomed wingman and crew who had been shot down,” putting Thorsness’ own life in jeopardy,” Maher said.

Thorsness commanded the Wild Weasel aircrews flying F-105s, who had a dangerous mission, Maher told the audience, which included dignitaries from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and troops soon to be deployed to Iraq.

“The Wild Weasels were the first in and the last out. Their mission was to tease the missile, dodge the missile, then go in and kill the missile site,” Maher explained.

To protect the downed crew, Thorsness attacked four MIG-17 aircraft, damaging one and driving the others away from the rescue site.

But his plane was later shot down. Thorsness and his backseater, Capt. Harold Johnson, ejected at speeds estimated at 690 mph. Both were badly injured in the fall, taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese, held captive for six years and brutally tortured.

Thorsness said as he was parachuting down to a mountainous jungle clearing, he experienced “a terrible feeling of failure and fear that my family would never find out what happened to me.”

Moments later, he said, he experienced “some form of spirituality” in the form of a voice which kept repeating, “Leo, you are going to make it.”

Before he got to Hanoi, Thorsness thought about the fact that other U.S. pilots had also been taken prisoner.

“I thought if they can hack it, so can I. I developed a five-word mantra: Do what’s right; help others,” he said.

In prison, Thorsness’ back was broken twice and his shoulder dislocated several times during torture sessions. Other pain came in the form of hearing the cries of fellow POWs being tortured.

Immediately after his capture Thorsness was subjected to an 18-day, 18-night interrogation session, during which he finally broke.

Thorsness said he experienced terrible thoughts of “failure and felt I was not worthy to live.”

Later, a fellow POW told him: “Either you died or you broke and some did both.”

“I was elated to find out I was average,” Thorsness said.

To keep up their morale and to keep communicating, the POWs devised a tap code which allowed them to send 15 words a minute to fellow prisoners.

Thorsness said it helped him to set goals, such as walking a set number of miles a day in a 5 1/2 by 6 foot cell in solitary confinement, using a primitive tape measure to estimate the distance.

“You did what you had to do to keep going,” he said.

He and another POW practiced their Spanish and worked with other prisoners to keep teaching and learning.

One POW found an old dirty handkerchief outside the prison walls. Using bits of blue medicine, red scraps and a bamboo stick, he painstakingly fashioned a primitive American flag—“The prettiest flag I’ve ever seen,” Thorsness related, noting that the POW was severely punished for this “outstanding display of raw leadership.”

Thorsness said he learned many lessons as a POW which he summarized:

“The will to survive is really strong. Don’t give up.”

Take it a day at a time. While being tortured Thorsness told himself he could “hold on for another two minutes, another minute, a few more heartbeats.”

Love for fellow human beings.

Let people in need know you care. “It was bad to watch friends being tortured, but just your being there and letting them know you cared was enough,” he said.

The importance of spirituality and humor.

“The best lesson I learned is that since I got out of prison I can say, truthfully, I’ve never had a bad day. Its all relative. It shouldn’t take six years to learn that lesson,” he said.

Asked if he felt any animosity toward his North Vietnamese captors, Thorsness said that most of the guards were just doing their jobs, but a few seemed to enjoy torturing POWs.

“It’s hard to forgive those, but we have to try,” he said.

After retiring from the military, Thorsness ran for the U.S. Senate in North Dakota, lost two races, later served as a Washington State senator and subsequently moved to Southern Arizona in 2000.

Davis Monthan Air Force Base named its 355th Wing headquarters after Thorsness in 1997.

kengle@gvnews.com| 547-9732