Look close and see a young man peering out of the doorway of a U.S. Army helicopter. One hand clinging to the edge of the door, the other clenched in a tight fist, the man is framed by a trio of straight-faced U.S. Army and South Vietnamese officials.
He's dressed in the now familiar black pajamalike uniform of the Viet Cong. It looks like he's trying to smile.
The 71-year-old Fryett lives with his wife, Donna, on a wind-swept bench not far from the small southwest Montana town of Dillon. Even now, almost four decades later, the war is never far away.
“It changed my life forever,” Fryett said. “I live with it every day. I've spent the last 45 years justifying my existence on this planet. I still wonder why I was allowed to live when so many others didn't.
“I think I had a mission to accomplish,” he said.
Fryett was a 26-year-old Army specialist 4th Class in 1961. That summer he joined about 800 other U.S. military personnel working in South Vietnam.
For the first six months, life was good.
The Helena native found the surroundings beautiful and the people friendly. A few nights a week, Fryett taught English as a second language courses down along the river's edge. Sometimes he traveled into the countryside to visit with some of the holdover French plantation owners or just to take photographs.
It was a time of relative safety for Americans and the young man took advantage of it. Fryett bicycled through the countryside - almost always alone.
The troops had been ordered to steer clear of trouble. Fryett and most others weren't allowed to carry a weapon. Most days they wore civilian clothes in an effort to be less conspicuous.
On Christmas Eve 1961, he set out mid-morning in hopes of finding a swimming pool he'd heard was just a few miles outside of Saigon.
A few days earlier, Fryett had written home to let his father know that things didn't seem quite right.
“I told him things were going to get worse there before they'd get better,” Fryett remembers. “Little did I know just how bad things were going to get.”
With a pair of camera straps crisscrossing his shoulders, Fryett pedaled out into the countryside dressed in a light shirt, Bermuda shorts and sandals. He'd passed a few isolated huts, but saw relatively few people out in the fields.
Sometime toward early afternoon, he passed a pair of bikers about 500 yards off. He didn't pay much attention to them until he heard their shouts from behind.
“They were screaming at me in Vietnamese and French,” Fryett said. “One of them passed me and rammed his bicycle into mine. I fought back, but then one pulled out a grenade.”
The next thing Fryett remembers was waking up with blood dripping down the side of his face from a large gash in the back of his head. His hands were tied behind him. A stick across his back forced his arms painfully pinioned back.
Even more disconcerting, Fryett was kneeling in what appeared to be a small village cemetery surrounded by four or five armed men.
“They were wondering what to do with me,” he said. “All I could think about were the kids taken prisoner in Korea who'd been killed. I knew I didn't want to be there.”
The men tied a leash around his neck and started what would be the first of many long forced marches. As Fryett was led into the jungle, he looked back and saw Saigon in flames.
“It was getting scarier by the minute,” he remembered.
He followed his captors farther into the jungle. Late that night, the group rested along the edge of a river. A small boat bobbed in the riffle a short ways off. Fryett had found some slack in the ropes fastened to his wrists and when his guards were distracted, he dove into the river.
“What happened next God only knows,” he said. “When I awoke, I was still tied up and I still wanted to be someplace else.”
For the next few months, Fryett was almost continually on the move from one village to the next. His captors tried a variety of means to demoralize him or pump him for information.
“I told them I didn't understand English very well,” he said. “I resisted.”
At one point, with American helicopters flying overhead, Fryett was pushed into a small hole and three Viet Cong pointed their rifles at him. Other times, they poured rubber on his hands and lit it on fire. One day, his captors handed him a shovel and told him to dig a hole in the dimensions of a grave.
“I thought that my time had come,” he said.
Near the end of his ordeal, he was led into a clearing and told to sit on a small stool in front of a table where a group of officers waited. The questioning went on for hours.
“I'll never forget it. When they were done, one officer told the others, ‘This man is either very sick, very tired or very smart.' I said to myself, ‘How (about) all three of those.' I could feel the guns pointed at me. It was just part of their efforts to break me down psychologically. I just kept telling them I didn't know anything and I didn't speak very much English.”
What Fryett didn't know was the North Vietnamese were reeling from a report by the International Control Commission that said the country was guilty of subversion and aggression toward South Vietnam. The report had enraged the Communist bloc.
The North Vietnamese decided to release Fryett in hopes of offsetting the report.
After a four-day forced march, Fryett watched an armed party of about 30 Viet Cong approach a South Vietnamese ranger patrol. The two groups talked “like old friends,” and shortly afterward a bus bound for Chan Thanh was halted. Fryett was handed a 100 piastre note ($1.40) and was escorted to the steps of the bus.
“I saw one Viet Cong put a round into this rifle and take off the safety,” he said. “I was afraid they were going to kill me and put me on top of the bus.”
Instead, he was released.
The officer that led him to the bus stopped at its door and looked into Fryett's eyes.
“It was like this James Bond moment. He knew that they had succeeded in brainwashing me,” Fryett said. “He said, ‘Good luck, George,' and I climbed up into the bus.”
When he arrived in Chan Thanh on June 24, 1962, Fryett was picked up by the U.S. helicopter and flown back to Saigon - a free man at last.
“I piled on that chopper and just wanted to get out of there,” he said. “Then they told me that I had to get back off for an official photo. By this time, I didn't trust any of the Vietnamese, not any of them, SVN uniforms or not.
“I told them if they wanted a photo, I'd stand in the doorway (and) as soon as they took it we could leave.”
Fryett didn't know it then, but his journey had really just begun.
After his release, he'd hear claims that he'd cooperated with the enemy. He'd have to fight to clear his name. Stateside, he'd have to face down uncooperative Veterans Affairs doctors, some of which questioned his status as a former prisoner of war.
“The Army just wasn't ready, they weren't prepared,” he said. “They didn't understand that when people come back home after an experience like that they were traumatized both physically and psychologically.”
It's a lesson Fryett hopes the military understands now as a whole new group of veterans comes home from Iraq faced with their own set of challenges.
Fryett has been active in both state and national former prisoner of war organizations. He takes pride in knowing that he's been able to help former POWs work their way through a system that can often be confusing.
“Sometimes, all a veteran needs is for somebody to listen,” he said. “I can look into their eyes and listen to their stories. They've told me how much it matters. I know it's true.”
Fryett learned that lesson years ago while living in Arlee.
He'd gone with a friend and his son fishing at a stream just outside town. The family had left him there sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck when a tribal game warden drove up.
“He came over to ask me what I was doing there,” Fryett said. “His eyes locked on mine and he said, ‘Oh, you belong here.' I'd waited 30 years for someone to tell me that I belonged anywhere.”
“I'll never forget that day,” he said.
Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 523-5259 or at pbackus@missoulian.com
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)