Playboy Interview: Robert Garwood

In early 1979, six years after the North Vietnamese officially released the remaining American prisoners of war, the State Department received word from a Scandinavian economist who had recently visited Hanoi that he had seen and spoken with a man who had told him, "I am an American. Are you interested?" The economist, a Finnish banker, also produced a note nervously scribbled by a tall, dark-haired man who had given his name, rank and a Marine Corps serial number.

The man was Private First Class Robert Garwood, missing from his unit since 1965 and, by most accounts, presumed dead. The note sparked an international diplomatic furor that resulted in the return to American hands of a man the Marine Corps felt was perhaps its most notorious turncoat of the Vietnam war.

The accusations against Robert Garwood included leading Viet Cong troops in combat against American soldiers, propagandizing them with a bullhorn, verbally and physically abusing U. S. prisoners held by the enemy, desertion, writing antiwar leaflets and various other charges that, had he been convicted of the most serious of them, might have put him before the firing squad.

The man who two months later stepped off the plane and into the waiting hands of the Marine Corps was hardly everyone's idea of a typical traitor--if such a character exists. Gaunt and confused, Garwood, then turning 33 and slightly balding, faced microphones, television lights and flashing cameras and said with a noticeable Vietnamese accent, "I'm glad to be home."

Garwood was something of an enigma then, as he remains today--not only to those who have followed his internationally reported trial but to himself as well.

One of the oldest in a family of nine children, Garwood grew up on what might be described as the wrong side of the tracks in a small Indiana town. As a youngster, he lived a fairly ordinary life playing the usual pranks but occasionally getting into trouble for them. He did not do well in school, except to show an aptitude for foreign languages; but by the time he was 17, he was considered a problem child by his father, a printer, and was turned over to authorities. While he was living in a juvenile detention center, he encountered a Marine Corps recruiter who persuaded him to enlist. That was in 1963, before the war in Vietnam had assumed major proportions for the United States.

Garwood's tour in the Marine Corps wasn't exactly exemplary, but it wasn't that bad, either. He was busted once for being absent without leave and wound up as a jeep driver with an outfit stationed on Okinawa. Shortly before his tour of duty was up, he was shipped out to Da Nang, Vietnam, to join his division headquarters' motor-pool section. It was there that Garwood disappeared one day, only a few days before he was due to be shipped back to the States and released from active duty. He says he was captured by Viet Cong troops while on assignment to pick up an officer in the field. The Marine Corps alleged that he had been absent without leave and suggested he had been visiting a whorehouse when he was taken prisoner. In any case, a few weeks after he was reported missing, Viet Cong propaganda leaflets signed by Garwood began turning up. The Marine Corps still carried him on its books as missing and, although several times over the years, as more information came in about him, it tried to have his status changed to that of deserter, he was not officially charged with that crime until he was released by the North Vietnamese in 1979.

The Marine Corps case against Garwood was a touchy and disagreeable matter from the beginning. Years after a war everyone would have preferred to forget, the Corps was faced with the prospect of court-martialing a man for events that had occurred a decade earlier. Furthermore, the general feeling among civilians who responded to news stories of Garwood's release seemed to be that he had "suffered enough" and should be left alone.

On the other hand, there had been a lot of publicity about the case; and some of the allegations against Garwood--especially that he had carried arms for the enemy in a time of war--were so serious that the Corps was afraid of the precedent that might be set if he were simply let go. A board of inquiry was appointed by the commandant of the huge Marine base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where Garwood had been assigned after his return. The witnesses who could be found were interviewed, and gradually a case was built against him. Many of the original accusations, however, were never substantiated--particularly the ones pertaining to Garwood's having led Viet Cong troops against American forces; and the charge of desertion was subsequently dismissed by the military judge at the trial. However, the Marine Corps felt it had enough evidence to warrant a court-martial; based on testimony by former American POWs that Garwood had, over an 18-month period ending in late 1969, collaborated with the enemy while he was in a POW camp deep in the jungles of Vietnam.

The specific allegations were that Garwood had lived outside the compound where the other POWs were held, fraternized with the North Vietnamese guards, propagandized the POWs, interpreted for the North Vietnamese, worn a North Vietnamese uniform, carried a weapon and guarded American POWs. At one point, he is supposed to have struck an American POW with his hand and told another, "I spit on you!"

Garwood was eventually represented by John Lowe, an established trial attorney in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Vaughan Taylor, a former military lawyer. They decided not to attack the Government's prima-facie case against Garwood but to rely solely on the psychiatric defense of insanity brought on by the "coercive persuasion" (once called brainwashing) of his North Vietnamese captors.

To prove their case at the courtmartial, Lowe and Taylor put several well-known psychiatrists on the stand, each of whom testified that Garwood, because of his traumatizing experience, lacked the capacity to realize that his collaboration with the Communists was wrong. But the Marine Corps prosecutors put on psychiatrists of their own to counter that testimony and Garwood was convicted on February 5, 1981, by a court of five officers of collaborating with the enemy and of assaulting a POW by hitting him with his hand. The other charges were dismissed. The sentence Garwood received was relatively light: a dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps and forfeiture of his pay and allowances from the time of conviction. In dispute presently is the matter of more than $120,000 in back pay covering the 14 years Garwood spent in Vietnam, and a special military board has been set up to adjudicate that matter.

Because he never took the witness stand at his trial, Garwood's version of his experience has never been told. To get this exclusive story of Garwood's 14-year odyssey, Playboy asked novelist Winston Groom ("Better Times Than These," "As Summers Die"), who served as an Army officer in Vietnam, to conduct the interview. Groom files these impressions:

"I first met Bobby Garwood in the summer of 1979, a few months after he had been returned to America. It was an odd place for a meeting arranged by his lawyer at the Larchmont Yacht Club, a fancy establishment in a small community half an hour from New York City. The incongruity of the setting still strikes me: Here was a man who had spent almost all of his adult life under primal conditions in Southeast Asia, and he was walking around with me past the tennis courts and ritzy suburban trappings in one of New York's fashionable playgrounds. We had lunch on a terrace under the trees and ordered from a menu that included elaborate salads and Veal Piccata. Bobby ordered a cheeseburger.

"He spoke then with a heavy Oriental accent, with a glottal diction in which the tongue is pressed against the roof of the mouth to form the variations of Vietnamese syllables. In our subsequent meetings, I have noticed that his speech patterns have become much more Americanized--except when he is under stress, and then he returns to the Asian style.

"We talked for several hours and then we walked under some trees because it was a hot day. He squatted down, Oriental style, and explained, 'This position is very restful if you can get used to it.'

"I next met with him at Camp Lejeune, a sprawling Marine Corps training center and, I might add, one of the most unattractive military bases I have ever seen. It was in the spring of 1980 and we had some long sessions with the tape recorder. Bobby was still waiting for the court-martial to begin, and it was obvious the strain was taking its toll. In the intervening time since we had last met, he had been befriended by a local family--the Longs--and was heavily involved with them. A few months before, Dale Long had been killed by a drunken driver; and Bobby was spending a lot of time with Donna and her children. He had also purchased an automobile--a red 1957 Chevrolet--in which he had installed a tape deck, with music straight out of the Fifties and early Sixties.

"I interviewed Bobby again not long ago: The court-martial was over and he seemed more relaxed and relieved. He is currently undergoing psychiatric care at a Virginia institution and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life."

[Q] Playboy: What was your reaction to the verdict in your court-martial?

[A] Garwood: Well, basically, I guess I was relieved that it was over. Sixteen years of fighting for your life, you know?

[Q] Playboy: At the trial, you had to listen to the testimony of the witnesses against you. Didn't you have an urge to get on the stand yourself to tell your side of the story?

[A] Garwood: Yes, I did. I had the urge, but at the same time, I just wasn't sure I could come across right.

[Q] Playboy: Were you following the advice of your lawyers in not testifying?

[A] Garwood: No, not entirely. It was mostly my decision; those were times that are not easy to talk about. I just wasn't sure I could hold up. I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself, you know, or break down emotionally, or physically, or whatever, on the stand. Trying to recall those years, the questions that could be fired at me--it was just too many bad memories for me.

[Q] Playboy: You hadn't seen the witnesses--your fellow prisoners--in 13 or 14 years, since you had been in Vietnam together. What was your reaction to seeing them again?

[A] Garwood: Actually, a lot of compassion. I was very happy to see them, because one of the things that ran through my mind all those years was, How many of us made it out? I was very saddened that a lot of my good friends didn't make it out. I felt a lot of compassion toward those who did survive like me, they were just forced to relive the whole thing all over again. And that's very hard, very hard to do.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think they understood your situation when you were over there?

[A] Garwood: No, not entirely. I don't think they even understood their own situation.

[Q] Playboy: What about the court? Do you think the officers were fair in their judgment?

[A] Garwood: I asked myself that many times. I try to put myself in their place, though it's difficult, because of, well, their intelligence, their background, their schooling--but just as a layman or, you know, a Marine, I think they had to weigh their sympathy and compassion against their professional responsibility. I think it was a very tough decision for them to make. But because they were career officers and Marines, even though they had sympathy and compassion for me, there was just no way that they could neglect the professional responsibilities. And knowing that, it was much easier for me to accept.

[Q] Playboy: Now that the court-martial is over, you're undergoing psychiatric care for a while. Do you feel that you need it?

[A] Garwood: Definitely so. Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Garwood: I find it very hard to adapt and communicate with the world now. That's been true in the last couple of years. I tend to lock myself out from the world. There are times when I've been places or I've said things or done things that I don't remember. It just makes me realize more and more that I'm just not as well as I thought I was. I don't have a life now, really. That's one of the biggest bridges I have to cross--getting psychiatric help to find out who I am and just what I can do with my life.

[Q] Playboy: As an accused collaborator, did you encounter a lot of hostility during these past two years?

[A] Garwood: You say "a lot"--no.

[Q] Playboy: Some?

[A] Garwood: The mail, for example--I'd say close to 90 percent of the mail I received was not only favorable but very, very sympathetic and supportive. It came from doctors, lawyers, preachers, Vietnam vets, ex-POWs--I mean, every walk of life in the United States. The only ones I got that you'd call bad mail were from people who didn't really condemn me, but they said they felt I could have been stronger than I was.

[Q] Playboy: When you returned, it must have been something like Rip van Winkle. What was your reaction? How had America changed in 14 years?

[A] Garwood: It shocked me. It shocked the shit out of me.

[Q] Playboy: What in particular?

[A] Garwood: Everything, almost. Everything seemed so alien to me: the dress, the speech--the frankness of speech, really. Back 15, 20 years ago, a person speaking to another guarded his speech so no four-letter words came out. It was more like an etiquette kind of thing, you were more careful about that then. And the attitude about what you'd show, it was limited, so to speak. And now it's--I don't know how to say it, but I noticed that there is a lack of caution. In things like dressing--dressing and speech, and in attitude. Especially the little things, I don't think you'd notice them as much as I have.

[Q] Playboy: Such as?

[A] Garwood: Well, one of the first things that freaked me out, the first thing I focused on, was the girls. Their hair, you know, it wasn't taken care of like it was way back then. I mean, it looks like somebody stuck their finger in a light socket. And all the girls are in pants. There aren't dresses.

At first, it was a real hassle. You really had to look very close to distinguish between a man and a woman. And usually the only way you could tell that was by the ... bust. Or the way they walked. And sometimes even by the way they walked you couldn't tell. Yeah. That was really weird to me.

[Q] Playboy: Who was the first female, aside from family, whom you talked with when you came back? Even a casual encounter.

[A] Garwood: Casual encounter? When I went to the hospital. Yeah, that was the hospital at Great Lakes Naval Station.

[Q] Playboy: Nurses?

[A] Garwood: Yeah, nurses. Actually, later I dated one of the nurses that took care of me. She came to my home town and dated me. She was the first American girl I dated.

[Q] Playboy: How long had it been since you'd seen a Caucasian woman?

[A] Garwood: Since North Vietnam.

[Q] Playboy: We're asking about this because about a year ago, while you were waiting for your court-martial to begin, you were charged by the state of North Carolina with molesting a seven-year-old girl. The incident took place, according to reports, when you were driving the girl home from church. We realize that the case has not yet been resolved, but what can you tell us about it?

[A] Garwood: I can't say much, because my lawyers don't want me to comment before it's settled. But I can say this: There was never any misconduct by me toward the girl. I had known her family for four or five months before the charges were made. And right up until they made those charges against me, her father was scheduled to be a character witness for me in my court-martial trial. I'm one of the oldest in a family of nine myself, and I've always been very protective of young children. I don't have any idea why she would make those untrue allegations against me.

[Q] Playboy: And that's all you can say?

[A] Garwood: At this time.

[Q] Playboy: Your life has obviously been chaotic since you returned; did you know you were going to be accused of collaboration when you came back to the U. S.?

[A] Garwood: You talking about before I left Vietnam? Before I left Vietnam, no, I had no awareness at all.

[Q] Playboy: When did you realize you were in trouble with the U. S. military?

[A] Garwood: When they read me Article 31. In Bangkok. Instead of receiving a handshake or a "Welcome home," immediately it was Article 31, and I "had the right to remain silent" and all that. And I said, "Wait a minute, what the hell's going on?" I had arrived in Bangkok on the Air France plane. It was funny, you see, because when the Air France plane picked me up in Saigon, the French people, they really welcomed me--God, I mean, it was something. They really welcomed me, with champagne and the whole bit.

[Q] Playboy: This was the crew of the Air France plane?

[A] Garwood: Yeah, the French crew. And I really felt free. I'd fought for so long, and the day had actually come, and still I couldn't believe it. Believe me, it was a great sharing. Then we landed in Bangkok and the U. S. Ambassador came on the plane, and introduced himself, and told me that I had to come with him, and there was the guys with military security and the reporters and everything. I more or less expected the reporters to make a big thing out of it--that I spent 14 years in Vietnam and got back, that I was probably unique and all that.

[Q] Playboy: What was your reaction when they read you your rights the first time?

[A] Garwood: At that time, I had no lawyer, or at least I didn't know I had one. Actually, there was a Marine lawyer there, but I didn't understand that. But the charges--it shocked hell out of me. Goddamn. It was kind of a deep emotional thing. I was shocked and then I figured, Oh, well, maybe it's just like a security precaution. Hell, they don't know.... Maybe they think I was brainwashed or some shit and they're just being careful. And then I was just so goddamned happy to be out of that country. I guess the overwhelming happiness of my own situation just overruled the disappointment. I thought, What the hell, I've been in a foreign land, there's been a war, 14 damn years, and I'm still alive.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about those 14 years and go back to the beginning, to the day you were captured. What happened that day?

[A] Garwood: It was September 28, 1965. Tuesday. I'll never forget it for the rest of my life. That's when my heartaches began. It was like the world exploded in front of me.

[Q] Playboy: How old were you then?

[A] Garwood: Nineteen.

[Q] Playboy: Where were you? What time of day was it?

[A] Garwood: It was in late afternoon. That morning, I went on my usual jeep run for G-2 [the battalion intelligence section]. I was at Third Marine Division Headquarters on the direct perimeter of the Da Nang area. It was near a village they called Dogpatch. That's what we called it, anyway. My company went there as an advance unit.

[Q] Playboy: How many Marines were there at that point?

[A] Garwood: In the Da Nang area, not that many, maybe 20,000, I'm not sure. They'd only been there a few months.

[Q] Playboy: Where did you drive the jeep that day? And what did you do?

[A] Garwood: Well, the dispatcher called on the squawk box and said G-2 wanted a driver. So I reported to G-2, and I didn't even get a chance to get out of my vehicle. An officer came right down to me. He said, "Report to recon at Marble Mountain and pick up an officer. He's gotta go home on emergency leave; plan to take off very shortly. He'll be waiting for you at Marble Mountain."

[Q] Playboy: What was Marble Mountain?

[A] Garwood: There was fighting over there. Sort of like we ruled it by day, they ruled it by night. It was about five miles away.

[Q] Playboy: How were you to identify the officer?

[A] Garwood: He'd be waiting for me. This recon unit had just arrived there.

[Q] Playboy: So you set off for Marble Mountain about what time?

[A] Garwood: If I remember, it was probably about four o'clock.

[Q] Playboy: Go on.

[A] Garwood: All right. Marble Mountain had a kind of reputation, especially with recon units, which usually went where the action was. I was kind of worried. I thought, Damn, I'm a short-timer, you know? Getting ready to go home--that's all I was thinking on my way there. All I needed was to get wiped out now, get blown up by a mine or some shit, and it's going to be my damned luck. I only had a few days to go. I was kind of scared ... probably a whole lot of scared, a lot more than I would admit, really. When you're getting short, you don't want to do nothing, go nowhere. When you first get there, you're gung ho, but when you get down to them last days, man, I mean, you count every day and every hour. You hear a firecracker go off, man, you hit the first foxhole you see. You just get so close to the ground, man, you're smaller than the grass is. It's paranoid. So I started going out, and I asked for directions on the way.

[Q] Playboy: Whom did you ask?

[A] Garwood: Marines along the route. I'd stop and yell, "Hey, where's the recon at?" And they'd say, "What recon? We've got all kinds of recon units out here. Which one do you want?" And I said, "Oh, shit. That's all I need."

I stopped another guy and asked, "Where're they at?" He just pointed toward Marble Mountain. "Just go that direction, you'll find them. And if you don't find them, they'll find you." So I kept going and going, and got to a bridge right there on Route One. And there was a Marine and an ARVN [a South Vietnamese soldier] posted as sentries on the bridge. They told me there were a couple of recon units in the area, including one across the bridge.

Well, I still had a couple of hours of daylight, so I figured I'd go ahead and check the one across the bridge. There was no way I was going over there, on the other side, when it started nightfall, you know? Windshields make mighty big targets.

Time was very precious. About the time I hit the bridge, it was 4:30. And I said, "Well, what the hell." So I shot across the bridge, and I remember the guard told me, he said, "Hey, man, don't be caught over there. In about another hour or two, it's going to be dark."

So after I crossed the bridge, I didn't see nothing. I didn't see no goddamned recon units or nothing.

[Q] Playboy: What was the terrain like?

[A] Garwood: Palm trees and a village. Fishing village was what it was. I went down the road and then the road started breaking up and it became, like--sand. I was going pretty slow, pretty cautious, and I see no friendly military, but there was villages and everything. Then I came to a stretch where, hell, there was nothing, no people. I mean, there were signs of life--you could see the smoke coming out of the little hootches and everything--but you couldn't see a damn thing. So I took the road that veered off toward the beach, because under the palm trees, banana trees and the coconut trees and all that, it was getting kind of dark, and it was kind of scaring me, so I wanted to go out toward the beach, where it was light. I figured I'd be safe there. But then the road just played out entirely, just stopped in a little clearing.

It got kind of scary. You know, the sun was going down, there was no people. I was getting scared shitless, so I turned the jeep around and was going to head back toward our lines. I'd seen there was a lot of gunnery placements on the beach. And, uh, just as I turned the jeep around, this old man came out.

[Q] Playboy: A Vietnamese?

[A] Garwood: Yeah, a Vietnamese. He was an old man, with a beard, and he was waving to me, saying something in French and Vietnamese. I just stopped and looked at him. He just smiled. Then he came over to the jeep and he pointed to my weapon, like he was asking for my damn .45, you know. I said to myself, This guy must be nuts. He's crazy. I told him to go away.

[Q] Playboy: Who did you think he was? Viet Cong?

[A] Garwood: At that point, I wasn't even sure what a V.C. was. I'd had no contact with the V.C. before. I wasn't in combat status. I was a driver. Then the ARVN and the V.C. look sort of alike, you know. And all of a sudden, they, like, came out of nowhere. They had camouflage, and they wore shorts, black shorts, and, uh, well, at first, you know, when I first saw them, man, it was like a sigh of relief, I thought it was an ARVN patrol.

Most of them had their weapons pointed down at a 45-degree angle, but this one kid had his weapon pointed directly at me. Then I started looking at the weapons. Man, those weapons were not American weapons. And the ARVNs, usually they were outfitted with M-1 carbines or Thompsons or M-14s, but these weapons, man, these were real weird weapons. Some were long, some were short. I never seen them before.

I just kept looking and they didn't say nothing. I looked around and I was completely encircled.

Something just clicked in my mind, just instant fear. I thought to myself, Oh, shit. Something's wrong. It ain't what's supposed to be. They weren't smiling. They were very, very serious.

[Q] Playboy: What'd you do then?

[A] Garwood: I dropped my hand down and released the holster. I wasn't really that familiar with .45s, other than that I knew how to fire it, how to load it. When I put my hand down, that one kid saw me--I swear to God, the rifle he had was longer than he was. He looked as if he was going to fire it, so I dove.

[Q] Playboy: You dived out of the jeep?

[A] Garwood: Well, it was like a dive and a crawl, because I had to go across the seat. And when I did that, man, all hell broke loose. I mean, shit, automatic weapons and everything. I hit that sand and I tried to bury my head, and then it kind of ceased. When it ceased, I remember one guy came charging up with a bayonet or something, with a bloodcurdling scream.

I think I closed my eyes and I just shot the damned .45 at him with both hands. I figured if I missed him, hell, it was over, anyway. But I didn't, I hit him, and there were two loud screams. I fired again, and then immediately after I fired the second shot, there was a burst of automatic fire. At first, I didn't feel any pain, I felt just like going to the dentist and you know how they shoot you with this stuff and your whole mouth is numbed up. That's how my arm felt. Then I saw the blood and I rolled under the jeep----

[Q] Playboy: Where were you hit?

[A] Garwood: It was right here. Twice, right here. [Indicates right arm above the wrist] And I just commenced saying the Lord's Prayer. But they grabbed me by the boots, pulled me out. I think they wanted to kill me right there, but one of them--he looked like he was a little older--said something, and so they laid off. They told me to take my clothes off.

When I started taking my uniform off, way off in the distance, in the ocean, there were one or two helicopters, they were coming in toward land. The Vietnamese saw this, and they started talking jibber-jabber and motioned me to stop taking off the clothes, and they took me--half dragged me and I half ran. I was scared shitless. I couldn't see in front of me. I stumbled and fell--there was all kinds of commotion.

[Q] Playboy: Where did they take you?

[A] Garwood: Into the village. I vaguely remember hearing the engine of the jeep. Somebody was driving it away or something. And I remained there when the helicopters went over. They made me lie face down, pointed a gun to my head. About five, ten minutes later, they took off my uniform and my boots and tied my hands in the back. The old people came up and were shaking their fists and pointing at the guns, and they pointed at the planes--I mean, they were really angry. Damn--I thought I would get a public execution or something. I was in my white skivvy shorts and shirt.

They took me away maybe about an hour from there. Everywhere we went, the people were waving at me and spitting on me and throwing rocks.

[Q] Playboy: Where were they taking you?

[A] Garwood: West, toward the mountains. I remember when we crossed Route One, at night, because there was a cross fire. We were caught right in the middle of it.

[Q] Playboy: Cross fire? Between whom?

[A] Garwood: Evidently, the ARVNs or Americans had some V. C., because we got right in the middle of this rice paddy and just all hell broke loose. Tracers and all. Well, I plopped down, and the V. C. just laughed their asses off, because I was scared. It was worse than the obstacle training back in the States. Scarier than hell.

[Q] Playboy: Did you keep going all night?

[A] Garwood: Yeah, we went all night. It rained; I was very cold. I was hungry, I was tired, and everywhere I went, especially that night, every time we come to a village or somewhere, there was a group of people, they'd bring lanterns and they pinched me, they'd feel my hair and feel my body--it was real weird.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have anything to eat?

[A] Garwood: At that point, no, they didn't give me nothing. They didn't give me nothing to eat till the next morning. The next morning, they brought me a small bag of cookies and a soda. They was like Vietnamese cookies and they tasted like shit. They kept me in a little boarded hootch-type thing. And that's when the guards brought me the soda and cookies.

[Q] Playboy: You were staying put during the day and moving at night?

[A] Garwood: That's pretty much the way it worked. They tried to interrogate me and everything, but no one spoke English--they speak French and some phonetic English. But I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

[Q] Playboy: Did you speak any Vietnamese at that point?

[A] Garwood: A little. Very little. I didn't let them know that I did.

[Q] Playboy: Go on.

[A] Garwood: They took me in boats, down rivers, across rice paddies, sometimes where there was fire or artillery, and I was going right in front of it. I mean, I was scared out of my wits.

[Q] Playboy: How many days were you on the move before you reached the first prison camp?

[A] Garwood: About a week or ten days.

[Q] Playboy: How far do you suppose that was from where you were captured?

[A] Garwood: Maybe ten, fifteen miles.

[Q] Playboy: Were you in the mountains at that point?

[A] Garwood: We just kept going up and up and around and around and up and up. Finally got to a compound, sort of. There was a little bamboo cage with metal bolted into it, a large chicken coop, I'd say. Or something like you'd keep a wild animal in. So they put me in this. There wasn't no roof on it, so they got some leaves and they put them over it like a cover.

[Q] Playboy: What did they do then? Did they try to interrogate you or did they just leave you alone?

[A] Garwood: No, not at this time. I was very worn out and I had leech bites all over me. I was very tired, and I was weak, because I didn't eat much. I lost a lot of blood. They took care of my wounds. I mean, they bandaged them, wrapped them up the second day. They didn't really take care of them until the third day, when they cleaned them out with alcohol. Raw alcohol. When they did that, the wounds started bleeding again, but a guy who spoke half English said if it starts bleeding again, that's good, because the infection will come out. They wrapped it in a dirty bandage. Later, it got infected. That's why it's such a big scar [holds up arm].

[Q] Playboy: What did they give you to eat?

[A] Garwood: Cookies and soda pop. They thought all Americans ate was junk food. Finally, I got across what I really wanted, I guess. They tried to feed me rice, but when they give me that other damn stuff----

[Q] Playboy:Nuoc mam [a potent sauce made from fermented fish]?

[A] Garwood: Yeah, nuoc mam; I'm going to throw up. Well, I thought it was some kind of poison; I'll be damned if I was going to eat this shit.

[Q] Playboy: How long were you in that cage?

[A] Garwood: Until we left the camp. They never really built a hootch for me. I slept on strips of bamboo. Nobody ever spoke to me. I was there maybe five, six weeks.

[Q] Playboy: Did you still think that they were going to execute you?

[A] Garwood: Yeah, I really did, because they always made a point to show me their weapons. It was constantly like they was just going to blow me away, but they just weren't ready to do it yet. I felt strongly I was going to die. I mean, I was completely convinced of that.

[Q] Playboy: You say nobody made any attempt to communicate with you, but wasn't it at that first camp that they tried to get you to sign some leaflets for propaganda?

[A] Garwood: About the second or third week I was there, there was a dude--just appeared out of nowhere--whose name was Mr. Ho. He showed up with a couple of bodyguards and proclaimed himself to be a professor of English, which I believe, because he spoke English better than I could.

[Q] Playboy: Was Ho a political officer?

[A] Garwood: Well, all he told me was that he was a radical socialist. He said he wasn't a Communist and he wasn't a capitalist but that he was against what the U. S. was doing to Vietnam. He was very sophisticated. Very clean.

[Q] Playboy: Was he a North Vietnamese?

[A] Garwood: No. He had South Vietnamese looks. Wore black pajamas.

[Q] Playboy: What did he say to you?

[A] Garwood: He introduced himself and said that we'd be talking later, and he went out. The next day, he asked me how I had been treated since I had been captured. Actually, I was afraid to tell him that I was treated badly, so I said that, uh, under the circumstances, all right. And he didn't press the situation, torture me or anything like that.

[Q] Playboy: What did he want to know?

[A] Garwood: I think he was just trying to get to know me.

[Q] Playboy: He wasn't interested in anything military?

[A] Garwood: Nope, just to get to know me. He was feeling me out. Yeah. And, uh, he asked me how long I had been in Vietnam. I can't remember it at all. I mean, I was trying to answer him, but I wasn't. And he sensed it right away. And he told me, "All the questions I'm asking you, I know the answers already, so it won't do you any good to avoid it." He said, "You either talk to me or you can talk to someone else. And the someone else who comes to talk to you may not be so nice as I am." So he got his point across. I was trying to make him understand that I'm a Marine, and I'm an American military man, that I was sworn to do certain things and that I can't say anything that I'm not supposed to.

He said, "Yes, I know all about your code of honor, but it doesn't do you any good here in Vietnam. You invaded our country, so, therefore, we consider you a criminal. If you do your best to be a friend to the Vietnamese people, then we'll treat you as a friend; but if you do your best to be an enemy, then we'll treat you as such."

[Q] Playboy: Was he interrogating you in your cage?

[A] Garwood: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: What else did he want?

[A] Garwood: Well, actually, not much. He said, "I'm not going to press you too much today, give you time to think about it, to remember you're in the jungle, we have captured you, you're our prisoner and we can do with you what we want." He was there for about a week and I talked to him every day. He kept persisting, persisting, so I figured, in the end, I'm going to have to tell him some kind of story, or he's going to start turning the screws. So I made up a bullshit story that I was a general's aide, told him my family was very rich back in the States. I tried to build up that I was very important, so they'd maybe try to get some ransom or they wouldn't kill me.

[Q] Playboy: How did he react to that?

[A] Garwood: He was very crude about the whole thing. He said, "Because of people like you, your capitalist family, thousands upon thousands of Vietnamese are being killed every day." I mean, man, he cut me down bad.

[Q] Playboy: When did he urge you to sign leaflets?

[A] Garwood: Just before I left. He told me that he'd just got a report back from the guerrilla unit that captured me. First he asked, "What religion are you?" I said, "I'm Baptist." He said, "All right, if you're Baptist, then you know your Bible says, 'an eye for an eye,' right?" I said yeah. He said, "Well, I'm told you have killed two Vietnamese. What do you think about that?"

I said, "They were shooting me, and I shot back in self-defense." He said, "You cannot claim self-defense, you invaded our country. You killed our people. Now, if you had killed someone in the United States, what would have been your punishment?" I said, "Well, you go to jail and, possibly, execution." He said, "What makes you think that we shouldn't do the same?"

[Q] Playboy: He was trying to scare you.

[A] Garwood: He didn't try; shit, he succeeded.

[Q] Playboy: To what purpose? Why do you think he was trying to scare you?

[A] Garwood: At that point, I don't know. I was very, very confused. I was scared 'cause I thought they was trying to prepare me for what eventually was going to happen. Later on, I felt that I really screwed up. I thought, Oh, shit, I throwed up to them that my parents and my family was really important. Man, they're going to make it out, and make a damned public execution and broadcast it all over the world. Got rid of one more big capitalist and all that shit. By that time, I was thinking, Why didn't I just come out and tell them that my father was a worker?

[Q] Playboy: What did your father do?

[A] Garwood: He was a printer. My whole family was workers. I'm poor as hell.

[Q] Playboy: But you did, finally, sign some propaganda leaflets, didn't you?

[A] Garwood: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Garwood: Well, first, Ho didn't tell me anything about any leaflets; he wanted me to write what they called my autobiography. I told him that I couldn't do that, that I was sworn by code of conduct not to give him anything more than my name, rank and serial number. He said, "I'm going to flat-out tell you now: We do not recognize the Geneva agreements. The United States has not declared war on Vietnam, so the Geneva Accords--and your code of conduct--do not apply." He got very angry when he said that. And he told me, "If you don't write it now, then you'll write it later."

[Q] Playboy: So you wrote the autobiography?

[A] Garwood: I stuck to a bullshit story and wrote the autobiography. Actually, I told him I was a chaplain's aide.

[Q] Playboy: Chaplain's aide?

[A] Garwood: Oh, he got me for that, too. Because he came back and said, "Do you know what a chaplain's aide is? A chaplain is actually the biggest CIA agent that your Government has. His job is to counsel troops when their morale is very low, to get them to fight."

[Q] Playboy: What about the leaflets?

[A] Garwood: He had made out this document that said "Fellow Soldiers Appeal." He wrote it and then asked me what I thought about it. I said, "I'm sorry, I can't sign it." He said, "Well, do you think the military's going to come in here and save you? Do you think the Marine Corps's going to remember you, after you're dead and buried?" He kept playing on it like that. "Nobody gives a shit about you. As far as the Marine Corps goes, you're just cannon fodder, and you're going to be buried in the sand with thousands of other cannon fodder, and nobody's going to know your name, or remember you." He kept playing this spiel, his spiel. I said, "I'm sorry, whether it's true or not, I've got my own conscience I've got to live with." So he didn't force his hand then. He said, "I'll give you time to think about it and I'll be back here very shortly."

But then I developed dysentery real bad. And they wouldn't give me any medicine. They said they didn't have any. It was hard for me to converse with them, anyway, and I got real sick. I was going to the latrine up to maybe 15, 20 times a day. Blood was coming out and I couldn't eat. I was very weak. Ho came back about a week later and he pulled this sympathy act, you know. But I got even worse, until I really thought I was going crazy. I started going to the state where--I don't know--I accepted the fact I was going to die.

[Q] Playboy: Go on.

[A] Garwood: Well, Ho came down and gave this big spiel, and showed me a leaflet where he said two Army dudes had been captured, and been released, and they had signed, and they had written these leaflets. He said, "See, these people now are back in the States with their families, and nothing has happened to them." He said, "You have nothing but your own survival." He said, "You're not going to be hurting anybody."

[Q] Playboy: Then you signed your leaflet?

[A] Garwood: Eventually, I signed it. It was just so much propaganda. I knew, as an American, nobody would pick it up, except as a damn souvenir or something, nothing serious, anyway.

[Q] Playboy: You mean they'd think it was a joke or wouldn't be persuaded by it?

[A] Garwood: Well, yeah, because nobody knows an American like the Americans do. It was a bunch of bullshit. You don't think somebody's going to cross over for their damned leaflet.

[Q] Playboy: So you thought it would be obvious that you had signed it under duress.

[A] Garwood: Right, because right on the leaflet, it said, POW, prisoner of war, and my name. So, automatically, when Americans saw that "prisoner of war," they assumed you had to sign it, you know, you were forced to. Meantime, I figured, There's still some chance; if I get some of my health back, I'll be able to escape.

[Q] Playboy: Did you really think that by signing that leaflet they might release you and send you back to the States?

[A] Garwood: No. It was just like a stay of prosecution.

[Q] Playboy: You mean a stay of execution.

[A] Garwood: Execution, prosecution....

[Q] Playboy: So you signed one leaflet?

[A] Garwood: Yeah. That's right.

[Q] Playboy: How long was that after you were captured?

[A] Garwood: Pretty close to two months, I guess.

[Q] Playboy: And you were still living in the cage?

[A] Garwood: Immediately upon signing this, they got the medicine and give it to me, because my health was just about to the point where I could barely walk around. Then I was moved to the second camp.

[Q] Playboy: During those first couple of months, did you try to escape?

[A] Garwood: Yeah, about a week after I was captured. We were traveling along the riverbank, toward the mountains. And the guards that were on me----

[Q] Playboy: How many were there?

[A] Garwood: At times there was as many as ten, and at other times there was only two or three, including one small guy.

[Q] Playboy: Were you tied up?

[A] Garwood: My hands were tied behind my back and there was a rope around my neck, which one of the guards had in his hands. We traveled all day and half the night. Well, one day, we got to this pagoda with steps that led down to the river.

We were resting on these steps and it was about midnight. It was cold and they told me to lie down on the steps to get some rest, but I didn't sleep. The small guard, who was maybe 14 or 15 years old, was six or seven steps above me. The other guard went away and I didn't have the rope around my neck, all I had was my hands tied. The little guy eventually dozed off to sleep. So I rolled down one step and waited for his reaction, because, usually, if I even moved, he said something. He didn't say nothing, so I rolled down another step. I was right near the water's edge and he was still in the same position. I just rolled from step to step and rolled into the water, and went downstream, along the bank.

I kept listening, but I never heard anything from the guards. I don't know when they found out I was gone. I moved pretty fast. My hand hurt bad, my arm was swollen. I was gone quite a distance. It was hard for me to keep track of the time, but I speculate it was maybe four or five in the morning, because I remember the roosters were crowing, but it wasn't light yet. And I was feeling my way along the bank and trying to find somewhere to hide during the day. I thought the river would go back in the direction we came from, to Da Nang, or, if nothing else, out to the ocean. You know, there was American river patrols, all kinds of stuff like that. I figured I'd run into somebody.

Well, I was feeling my way around the bank and I bumped into something, a goddamned sampan, or a boat, and it's got these Vietnamese in there, and it woke them up, and they shined a flashlight and saw me and started yelling and screaming. I was recaptured instantly.

[Q] Playboy: Were they V. C. or just villagers?

[A] Garwood: I think they were guerrillas, because they had weapons. The guys in the sampan, I don't think they knew where I came from. A lot of jibber-jabbering going on--like they thought they'd been the ones who captured me, that maybe I'd parachuted or something. I don't think they knew that I was actually captured and had escaped.

Anyway, I was a prize possession, just sitting around, and, God, then there was people coming out of nowhere. And then I saw this little guard, he showed up again. And he was jumping up and down, wanting to kill me. He said he was going to blow my brains away or something. The other guerrillas, they were laughing about it. And then four or five other guys clothed in black--strong, muscular, looked like weight builders, you know--they escorted me. They pushed and shoved and they pointed rifles, like I should be shot for what I tried to do, and shit like that.

[Q] Playboy: All right, let's move forward again to Ho and the autobiography.

[A] Garwood: Wait, there's something else. Before I got dysentery, and before Ho left, they took me back down the mountain to the plains. There was a village surrounded by rice paddies. There must have been 100 people, if not more. Regular villagers, people working in rice paddies. They were carrying rice up the mountain. And they'd point at me, and they'd laugh at me and say, "Ooo Ess"--Ooo Ess was U. S.--and stuff like that. I found out they had brought me to make a movie.

[Q] Playboy: A movie?

[A] Garwood: Yeah. A re-enactment of the capture. At the camp with Ho, this girl came in who could speak English fairly well. She told me that she was going to make a movie. She said they wanted a re-enactment of the capture. First, I kind of laughed at her, and she got really pissed and she screamed, "You laugh at the people?" I said no. So they took me out in the middle of the damned rice paddy, put me in the middle of it, surrounded it by V. C. guerrillas, and they shot up in the air and all kinds of bullshit, and then the V. C. came in the middle of the rice paddy, got me by the arms and dragged me out of the rice paddy. And that was the end of the movie.

[Q] Playboy: Then what happened?

[A] Garwood: They gave me something to eat and took me back to the mountain again. The next day or the day after that was when I started to develop the dysentery.

[Q] Playboy: And then Ho came back?

[A] Garwood: That's when he got me to sign the leaflet. As soon as I signed it, he left. And then they gave me medicine.

[Q] Playboy: Did the medicine clear up the dysentery?

[A] Garwood: It did after about a week. It didn't stop altogether. It was down to where I was going about twice a day, maybe three times a day, but I could eat. I was able to eat rice, you know, and they gave me some brown sugar and I was getting a little of my strength back. It was up to the point where I was able to walk, but I didn't let them know. That's when I decided to try to escape again. See, dysentery is a very, very fatal disease. They're scared shitless of it. I noticed that every time I had to go to the latrine, they'd always stay a distance from me. They'd never get close to me. And there were certain guards that wouldn't even follow me, except just to the edge of the path, that was maybe 40 feet to the latrine well.

When I started getting better, I didn't let the Vietnamese know I was getting better. Every time I went to the latrine, I tried to stay as long as I could, to see how long it took before they called me. Sometimes, with certain guards, they would call me periodically about every five or ten minutes. Then there was this one guard who didn't call me at all. And I was getting my strength back.

[Q] Playboy: What were they calling you, by the way?

[A] Garwood: Bo. Bo.

[Q] Playboy: For Bob?

[A] Garwood: Yeah, and a lot of them called me Me--"Hey, Me, Me, Me." For American.

[Q] Playboy: So, at some point, you decided you were going to use that as a way to escape.

[A] Garwood: Right. The longest I stayed there was about a half hour, and the guard never even called me. And so I was hoping a half hour would give me enough time to get down the damn mountain. I was getting scared that they were going to use me, and when they weren't going to use me no more, they was just going to get rid of me. So I figured, Man, my time's getting shorter and shorter, and what the hell if I'm shot now or later? And there still was a chance. Some kind of a slim chance.

There was a creek behind the latrine and I thought the creek must've led down to the plains where they took me and filmed this movie thing. So maybe, just maybe I could work my way, because at night there was artillery from Da Nang. And if I just followed that direction, just maybe I could come upon one of the patrols or something. Maybe I'd just luck out, you know. My damn luck had been so rotten so long and, goddamn, it couldn't be that way all the way. It was a big chance, but I was really desperate.

Well, it was in the evening, it had started to get dark and I went to the latrine, and I lucked out with that guard. Actually, I hadn't planned it just then, not until I saw who the guard was, and it was like a split-second decision right there. I'll try it now or might never get the chance again. So I went to the latrine like I usually do. The stream was right behind me, so I just started following it. I tried to run, and I stumbled, and it was daylight but getting dark, so you could just barely see your way. And I stumbled and fell on the rocks and I was gone maybe for better than a half hour.

[Q] Playboy: Down the mountain?

[A] Garwood: I mean, it seemed like forever to me. And I heard shots ring out--bang!--bang! I heard voices and shouts--it looks like they found out I'm gone. So I tried to go faster. Anyway, this damn stream went around down the mountain--it was nothing but rocks and slippery--I fell several times and busted my ass. I had no shoes, I was barefoot. Cut my feet. I went all night like this, and it was getting on to the morning, and I knew I was going down, because I could look up and I couldn't see the top of the mountain. I found a big rock, a big overhang, and got under it. I wasn't even at the base of the damned mountain yet and I was going all fucking night!

It was just light enough so you could see where you were going, and then they found me. They started raising hell and everything else. I didn't say nothing, I just curled up under that rock like a porcupine or something and figured I'd get beat to death. They was yelling and screaming. They'd been waiting for me at the base of the damned mountain. Because they went down the path and I went down the stream. Down the path was probably a very short distance, and down the stream, you zigzag. I was weak, anyway, and then they hit me and all that shit. I had bumps and bruises and there was some blood, and I felt real sure that I was going to be executed. But they put me back in the cage and didn't give me nothing to eat the next day.

Then it wasn't long after, about five, six days, they moved me.

[Q] Playboy: What direction did they move you in? Did you have any idea?

[A] Garwood: North. It was at night. I could see the lights were flashing against the skyline. I guess it was Da Nang Air Base. A couple of weeks, moving north.

[Q] Playboy: That would have been when--in December 1965?

[A] Garwood: Or late November.

[Q] Playboy: When was it that you saw your first fellow American?

[A] Garwood: I'd arrived at the second camp about two, maybe three weeks before I saw my first American. That's when they brought Ike [Eisenbraun] in.

[Q] Playboy: How had he been captured?

[A] Garwood: He was a Special Forces captain in the Pleiku region. His outpost was overrun by the V.C. The guy was in bad shape. He'd been captured about five, six months. Yeah, Ike came in and he was pitiful. I was so damn happy--he was a godsend. I mean, I wanted to talk to somebody, just to have somebody to confide in, somebody I could turn to, because I never had been in a situation like this before. And I was really lost.

[Q] Playboy: You said he was in bad shape; how bad?

[A] Garwood: He was sick; his feet were swollen. He had--what do you call it?--nutrition edema; and he had diarrhea.

[Q] Playboy: Did they put you in the same hootch?

[A] Garwood: Yeah. And he was always sick. I had to care for him, wash him, like that.

[Q] Playboy: Did the two of you get along?

[A] Garwood: He was the best. But he was just on the verge of death then. We remained together until he died about a year and a half later.

[Q] Playboy: What went on in that second camp?

[A] Garwood: Not much. The guards made us go and get wood for their kitchen, but Ike couldn't go, so I carried the wood for both of us. There were also some ARVN prisoners there, and they released about 20 of them.

[Q] Playboy: Why did they release them?

[A] Garwood: Because they had become "liberated." They would say the progressive stuff or whatever, that they were going back to fight for the "people's cause" and shit. I remember giving one of the ARVN prisoners my dog tag before he left.

[Q] Playboy: Hoping the dog tag would make its way back to American lines?

[A] Garwood: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: Did it?

[A] Garwood: Yeah. I read it in one of the newspaper articles when I got back to the U. S.

[Q] Playboy: So then they moved you to a third camp, right? Were you still going north?

[A] Garwood: I don't know. It was triple-canopy jungle and deep in the mountains. You couldn't tell which direction.

[Q] Playboy: How did they move Ike? By litter?

[A] Garwood: No, he was able to walk, because I cared for him. I washed for him and bathed him and--I give him almost half my ration and his strength was able to build him up.

[Q] Playboy: What was your ration at that point?

[A] Garwood: Twice a day, one big bowl of rice, with some kind of jungle vegetables. Something they called vegetables; we called it weeds.

[Q] Playboy: What was the next camp like?

[A] Garwood: It wasn't very big. It looked like it had just been built. There were some ARVN prisoners. This camp was high in the mountains and under the canopy of the trees. They put us in a hootch.

[Q] Playboy: For the record, would you describe what you mean by a hootch?

[A] Garwood: It's a kind of a shed. There are bamboo walls and a bamboo roof. About 15 feet wide and maybe 40 feet long.

[Q] Playboy: And how many guards were there?

[A] Garwood: About 15, 20, maybe.

[Q] Playboy: How long did you stay there?

[A] Garwood: Pretty close to a year, I guess.

[Q] Playboy: Was Ike with you?

[A] Garwood: Yes. And then, in July or August, Russ come. Russ Grissett. He was a corporal in the Marines. He was in recon, too.

[Q] Playboy: During that time, did they do anything to you? Did they try to get you to sign leaflets or propagandize you?

[A] Garwood: They propagandized--yeah. They had an English interpreter there, too. He came from North Vietnam.

[Q] Playboy: What was his name?

[A] Garwood: His name was Hum. He spoke English, so you could understand him if you listened real careful.

[Q] Playboy: What did he do?

[A] Garwood: He brought a radio down and we listened to the Hanoi broadcasts. And be brought different leaflets and books and pamphlets that were printed by the V. C. and the North Vietnamese. Propaganda books.

[Q] Playboy: Did they make you read them or did they just leave them with you?

[A] Garwood: They were the only thing to read, really.

[Q] Playboy: Did you consider escaping again?

[A] Garwood: Yes, we both did. But we talked to the ARVN. Ike talked Vietnamese. We tried to size up our chances and we felt that we had about maybe a 25 percent chance of escaping. I'd tried it twice--Ike had already tried it twice, too. And we both failed. But Ike kept persisting that he wanted to do it again. But it got down to his health--we just couldn't make no time. I mean, first he was almost blind. He had lost his glasses. But what really bothered me was his health. He could hardly breathe at all and I could walk faster than he could run. I told him, "Ike, it's suicide. We don't know where the hell we are, and as far as surviving, that's not good odds." And I'll tell you, in my own mind at that time, I was just so afraid of being alone ... I was afraid that he was going to escape and that he would die on the way or he'd be killed. Because Ike, goddamn it, he fought, he went down fighting. He never gave up. That's what I would say about him. I had a lot of respect for him.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds as if you were discouraging him from escaping.

[A] Garwood: At that point, I was young, I was real young, and when I was first captured, I was alone all the time. I was so afraid of losing Ike, so afraid of being alone again. Plus they told us that if we tried to escape one more time, that it would be automatic execution when they captured us. So I discouraged Ike almost every way I could about the possibility of trying to escape.

[Q] Playboy: So you languished in that camp for almost a year, reading the enemy propaganda. Then what happened?

[A] Garwood: They moved us again, because we were bombed. It was a B-52 strike. They had just showed us a propaganda film from North Vietnam. Right after the film, the damn camp was bombed.

[Q] Playboy: It was just you, Ike and Russ?

[A] Garwood: And the ARVN. The ARVN prisoners left before us. The next camp was a long way away.

[Q] Playboy: And it was at that camp, the fourth one, that you left the American compound and began living with the Viet Cong.

[A] Garwood: Well, not. ... I guess you could put it that way, but I'd like to say what happened.

[Q] Playboy: Go ahead.

[A] Garwood: After we'd been in this camp a little while, Ho arrived.

[Q] Playboy: The same Ho you had dealt with before?

[A] Garwood: Right. And he proposed a deal. He came over with this big propaganda bullshit about the solidarity of progressive peoples, that there were such people in the United States and that they were considering releasing some of our POWs and, uh, thanks to the solidarity, they were considering me.

[Q] Playboy: By the "solidarity," do you mean the antiwar movement back in the United States?

[A] Garwood: Right. And, actually, I was kind of thrilled, but I was kind of disturbed, too. Just the thought of returning to America--returning to American control, American Armies, was something beyond my grasp. It was something that everybody hungered for. Just the thought of it, being able to be free--under any circumstances. So Ho proposed the deal that, uh, he called a liberation. He said they would release me. All that would be required of me in return for my liberation was that they would announce that I had now become a "friend of the Vietnamese," and I would be taken to some villages where they would hold meetings, and I would tell these villagers that the American working class were actually in solidarity with the Vietnamese working class, that we weren't enemies and that it was only the capitalists that were waging war, and all that propaganda bullshit.

Well, I didn't agree right away. I told him that I would think about it, and I went back to Ike and I told him what happened. Russ, he didn't like it at all. Russ said more or less that it was against the Code of Conduct. So we discussed it and Ike said, "Hell, we've already signed statements and everything and, hell, nobody knows we're alive. And if just one of us can get out, then, if nothing else, they'll know we're still alive, that we're here, and they'll come looking for us." He said if it had been him, he would do it. And if it had been Russ, he would have ordered him to go. He said, "Since it's you, go. Do whatever you have to do to get out of here. Just get word out somehow that we're still alive."

I don't know, it kind of disturbed me. I had a small argument with Ike at that point. I said I'd rather that we all got out of there together, and maybe we could make some deal with them, where they'd release us all--you know, we'd cooperate with them in some way. Ike said no, they were not going to accept that. He said, "They've focused their attention on you. Just use it to the best advantage." I thought about it, and I thought about it, so I finally agreed.

It was like a mark, liberation, but it wasn't really liberation. I got up and gave a speech on friendship and said we're all together. Ho wrote it for me.

[Q] Playboy: Was that in the camp itself?

[A] Garwood: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Who was the audience?

[A] Garwood: Ike and Russ and the ARVN POWs. Ho was there. They made a tape recording of it. It was like a preliminary. Actually, then I was not really liberated. But there was an announcement that I was now being considered a friend, and not the enemy anymore, as long as I cooperated. And so I was taken out of the compound, away from Ike and Russ. They built a small hootch for me. And I lived there.

[Q] Playboy: Doing what?

[A] Garwood: They used me. They used me like a pawn or a propaganda tool. Every time a new POW would come in, they'd point to me and say, you know, that I'd been progressive, and we'll let him go, he'll be released soon. They'd say, "Bob is a progressive American, and if you want to be like him, you have to abide by the camp rules, be a hard worker and probe your solidarity with the working class of America."

[Q] Playboy: Did you continue your contacts with Ike?

[A] Garwood: Yes, I did, several times.

[Q] Playboy: Only several times?

[A] Garwood: That was right after I was separated from Ike and Russ. But then Ike was separated from Russ. They put Ike in a hammock, right outside the compound.

[Q] Playboy: Did they think he was too weak to escape?

[A] Garwood: Possibly, but also, they told me that they were considering releasing Ike, too, because Ike by then was being much more cooperative. And I talked to Ike about it. He told me, "I don't think they're going to release me. But a little help, a little help, and they'd eventually maybe release one of us." So I told him, "They're using me as a damn tool, a propaganda tool." I asked him how far he thought they was going to go. He said, "Well, I don't know, but since we've stepped out a little, we'll have to step out all the way." Either they were going to release me or they were going to put me back in the damned POW compound. But Ike felt they wouldn't put me back in the POW compound, because this would only show the other POWs they were lying, that it was a bunch of bullshit. He said, "If anything, they will take you out of the camp and tell us that you've been liberated. But right now, whatever they tell you to do, do it. Because if you don't, then it's going to be worse on the other POWs."

[Q] Playboy: Did you see Ike whenever you wanted to?

[A] Garwood: No, I had to ask permission.

[Q] Playboy: All right, so you were living in the hootch by yourself. How far was that from the compound where the other Americans were kept?

[A] Garwood: About 50 or 75 feet. I was wedged between the guard hootch and the camp commander's hootch.

[Q] Playboy: But you weren't in a cage or restrained in any way?

[A] Garwood: Ah, no. Directly in a cage, no. To leave this hootch and go anywhere, I had to ask permission.

[Q] Playboy: How did you eat?

[A] Garwood: They brought my meals to me. My only duties at that point were to go get firewood for the guard kitchen.

[Q] Playboy: Were you guarded when you gathered wood?

[A] Garwood: I was guarded, yes.

[Q] Playboy: When did Ike die?

[A] Garwood: He didn't die until September [1967]. Actually, right after Ike died, that's when they took me away. They told me that he'd fallen out of his hammock and broke a couple of his rib-cage bones and punctured his lung.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that was true?

[A] Garwood: No.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think happened?

[A] Garwood: See, I was going down to see Ike a lot. And they watched every move I made, because the only time I could see him was during the daylight. But toward August, I was getting frustrated and I was more persistent.

[Q] Playboy: Persistent to see Ike?

[A] Garwood: No, not to see Ike, persistent as to why I wasn't being released. I was more or less on hold right there. Wasn't allowed to go anywhere or do anything, except to gather firewood and manioc [a yamlike vegetable]. And I was really frustrated. They'd first told me I'd be released in about a month. And it had been four months already. I'd ask the interpreter, and he'd tell me, "Well, I don't really know, but I think that the front is waiting for an opportune time so that you may be turned over to an American peace committee. They'll probably come over to Vietnam and they'll turn you back over then, rather than turn you over to the CIA or the military."

Anyway, the day I heard about Ike dying, I asked to go down to the POW compound, and they let me. I talked to Russ. He just said that Ike fell out of his hammock and ruptured his lung.

[Q] Playboy: What did they do with his body?

[A] Garwood: The ARVN POWs went out and cut some bamboo and wrapped it around his body like a makeshift coffin and carried it to the clearing. There was myself and Russ and two other American prisoners, Luis Ortiz-Rivera and a Marine named Bob Sherman. We insisted on digging the grave. But the guards got kind of angry when I started digging the grave; they told me I wasn't--you know--

[Q] Playboy: You weren't supposed to dig a grave?

[A] Garwood: No. They got kind of pissed about it. So Russ and Ortiz more or less dug it. Ortiz was the strongest, he was built like an ox. And Ortiz dug most of the grave. It was shallow, it wasn't real deep.

[Q] Playboy: What was your relationship with Russ at that point?

[A] Garwood: Russ Grissett. I wasn't overwhelmed with what a great guy he was.

[Q] Playboy: You mean he didn't like the idea of your going off to be liberated?

[A] Garwood: No. He thought if there was going to be a release, we all should be released together.

[Q] Playboy: When you went down to the compound, did you talk to him?

[A] Garwood: Yeah, I talked to him.

[Q] Playboy: How did he react?

[A] Garwood: I don't think he liked it too much.

[Q] Playboy: So after Ike died, they moved you to a fifth camp?

[A] Garwood: Right. It was just another prisoner camp. I thought they was going to release me then, but they didn't. They put me in a hootch right next to the kitchen--not in the POW compound. And very shortly afterward, they brought Weatherman in.

[Q] Playboy: Who was Weatherman? An American?

[A] Garwood: Yes; the V.C. told me he was a crossover, supposedly. I don't know. They introduced me to him as a member of the Solidarity Committee of the American People. Said he was drafted and immediately upon arriving in Vietnam, he came over to the people. So they said.

[Q] Playboy: What was his rank?

[A] Garwood: Private--Pfc., maybe.

[Q] Playboy: What happened to Weatherman?

[A] Garwood: They took him away. Right after Christmas. They treated Weatherman much better than they treated me; I mean, they give him new clothes and food, cigarettes--he was free to move about the camp.

[Q] Playboy: Is he still alive?

[A] Garwood: He's dead.

[Q] Playboy: How long was it before the next American POWs arrived?

[A] Garwood: Well, after about a month, there was Burns and then Corporal Zaltachy and Lance Corporal Hammond.

[Q] Playboy: Where were they imprisoned?

[A] Garwood: In the compound.

[Q] Playboy: And you were living outside the compound, right?

[A] Garwood: Right. But the week after Zaltachy and Hammond arrived, we all started out for the new camp.

[Q] Playboy: How long did it take you to get there?

[A] Garwood: A little better than a week. On the way to the camp, we met with two black American POWs.

[Q] Playboy: Who were they?

[A] Garwood: Willie Watkins, I believe was one, and Tom Davis. I'm not really sure. That was when I had my first contact with a weapon. We were going along, and I was carrying all the gear, rice and cooking utensils. There were four or five guards and one of them had one of these little machine-gun-type things--I think it was Chinese--and he stripped it down, took the ammo and the firing pin out and told me to carry it.

It about freaked me out. At first, I wasn't going to carry it, because I thought that if we met some V.C. along the way, they'd think I was an American on patrol and blow me away. But the guards just laughed and said no, no way. I was scared shitless. But they thought it was hilarious.

[Q] Playboy: So you met Watkins and Davis. Did they see you carrying a weapon?

[A] Garwood: Yeah. They saw the weapon. The guards took the weapon from me, but I think it freaked the Americans out when they saw it. They asked me about it. I told them the guard told me to carry it, and I carried it. But they didn't like the idea, they thought I shouldn't have carried it. So I said, "What the fuck am I going to do, you know? I mean, hell, they're going to tell me what to do and I'm going to do it. I have no choice."

[Q] Playboy: When did you arrive at the next camp?

[A] Garwood: About the middle of February '68.

[Q] Playboy: Who was in the camp when you got there?

[A] Garwood: There was a lot of POWs--

[Q] Playboy: All American POWs?

[A] Garwood: Right.

[Q] Playboy: Was that the camp in which most of the court-martial charges against you arose?

[A] Garwood: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: What was the physical condition of the other Americans? Were they in good shape?

[A] Garwood: This was right after the Tet offensive. A couple of them had been shot up, but overall, their condition was pretty good.

[Q] Playboy: What were you doing then?

[A] Garwood: Nothing, really. When I arrived there, they showed me which hootch to live in, told me to stay there, let the camp commander come down and talk to me. After the evening meal--which they brought to me--the camp commander came down and told me that the situation was much different than it was before and that any time I wanted to talk to any of the Americans, I would have to let him know personally.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of fellow was he?

[A] Garwood: The camp commander? He was hard-line, but he never got what you'd call ferocious. Just strict. Reasonable. I mean, he'd listen to you, but you'd better not get smart with him.

[Q] Playboy: When were you able to talk freely with the other Americans in the compound?

[A] Garwood: After about a month, I was actually allowed to go down there by myself. All the time I was there with the prisoners, there was always a guard, he'd come popping in and out, or he was standing right there.

[Q] Playboy: Were you helping to conduct interrogations?

[A] Garwood: Well, there was a first interrogation of a prisoner by the interpreter. Then there was a second interrogation, which included the interpreter and the camp commander, and sometimes I was ordered to be there.

[Q] Playboy: What were they trying to find out?

[A] Garwood: Mainly, besides name, rank, serial number, they would ask if the prisoner had a family, what state he lived in, when he joined the Service, when he came to Vietnam, what unit he was with.

[Q] Playboy: What was the purpose of that interrogation? What did they really want to know?

[A] Garwood: Actually, nothing the POWs could have told them would have been of any value, as far as battlefield situations, because most of them had been prisoners for two months or more. And anything that had to do with the battlefield situation would have changed drastically in a month--I mean, it changed from day to day. So, really, the only purpose of the interrogation itself was to find out who the hard-core people were, who were the easy ones, so they could segregate them and break them down.

[Q] Playboy: What was the attitude of the other American prisoners toward you? At least one soldier, named Port, had called you a traitor by then, isn't that right?

[A] Garwood: He did. He called me that. But Port was delirious.

[Q] Playboy:Did you consider yourself a traitor?

[A] Garwood: At that point, no. It disturbed me, yeah. And even when he said it, I looked toward the other Americans and nobody said anything. But then we all just continued talking.

[Q] Playboy: During that period, did you still have the feeling that they might release you?

[A] Garwood: There was a slight hope--it was the only hope that I had. At that point, there was nobody I could turn to anymore. Ike wasn't there anymore--I used to be able to turn to Ike, but I couldn't turn to him no more.

[Q] Playboy: How about Grissett?

[A] Garwood: Grissett--Russ, he was getting really uptight. His mental stability was bad. He came to me several times to see if I had any influence at all, to try to get him out of the compound; he was going crazy.

[Q] Playboy: One of the charges you were convicted of is that you physically abused a fellow prisoner. When did that occur?

[A] Garwood: Well, it wasn't really physical abuse. David Harker himself acknowledged that.

[Q] Playboy: Harker was the prisoner?

[A] Garwood: Yes. He testified at my courtmartial that he didn't consider it anything other than an insult or something.

[Q] Playboy: What were the events leading up to the incident?

[A] Garwood: Well, Russ was taking the brunt of a beating by the Communists for killing a cat, the camp cat.

[Q] Playboy: Did they kill it to eat it?

[A] Garwood: Yes. And Russ had been singled out to take the brunt of the punishment in which--well, two weeks later, he died from it. But, anyway, when I saw this--and I'm trying to picture in my mind what happened; I can't really remember exactly, you know--but I just went crazy when I saw Russ getting beaten, and I rushed into the compound and there was nothing I could do. Harker was standing in the doorway of one of the hootches. I brushed him aside with the back of my hand, which he said amounted to a slap, to his rib cage or his stomach. I went inside and said, "How the hell can you guys call yourselves Americans? Russ is out there getting beat. If you guys had stuck together, nothing would have happened." And we just stared at each other, and there was silence, and I left. And two weeks later, Russ died.

[Q] Playboy: What about the charge that you verbally abused a Sergeant Buck Williams during one of the propaganda sessions?

[A] Garwood: Williams was a career man. He'd served in the Korean War. He was tough. I guess the propaganda session you're talking about was when he referred to the South Vietnamese soldiers as ARVN. You weren't supposed to call them ARVN. You were supposed to call them puppets.

So Ho decided to make an example out of Williams. Ho told me that for the good of the class, everybody was going to have to criticize Williams. Otherwise, they would discontinue the class and everybody would be in the doghouse. So they reconvened the class and everybody started criticizing Williams. Then Ho said something like that Williams had been completely brainwashed by the capitalistic system and that he was hoping someday to retire on the blood of the Vietnamese people and stuff like that. Then Ho asked me, "Bobby, do you agree with that?" I said, "Yeah." Then he made me repeat it to Williams, too. But I apologized to him for it later. When Ho asked if you agreed with him, you'd better the hell agree.

[Q] Playboy: Despite your explanations, you've been convicted of collaborating. Why do you think the other prisoners didn't collaborate--or do you think they did? Was your case special somehow?

[A] Garwood: Yes, I think my case was kind of special, because the Communists didn't release me in 1973. If they'd released me with all the other POWs, there would never have been a court-martial, I'm sure of that.

[Q] Playboy: Why? Do you think other prisoners collaborated but weren't singled out as you were for political--or other--reasons?

[A] Garwood: I don't know the real reason behind that, other than what I've heard and I've read. But I do know for a fact that there was a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps who came back in 1973--I'm not going to give his name; it's on record--but he had charges brought against him for mutiny, and several other very serious charges, more serious than mine. But his charges were dropped, and since then, he retired from the Marine Corps and he's living a very respectable life, somewhere out in the West. There were numerous incidents like that.

[Q] Playboy: One of the witnesses against you at your court-martial described you as the "white Vietnamese," referring to your personal habits while you were in the prison camp--the way you walked, laughed, squatted down in Oriental style. Is that true?

[A] Garwood: It's probably pretty accurate. The psychiatrists who testified for me said it was part of my mental illness; that I unconsciously identified with the enemy, although I didn't realize it at the time.

[Q] Playboy: When stories began appearing a couple of years ago that you were still alive, but before you were released from Vietnam, several men claimed you had led Viet Cong troops in combat against American forces. What about that?

[A] Garwood: It's totally untrue. And none of those accusations was ever made against me formally--at the court-martial--or even brought up in charges. One guy, for instance, stated he had seen me leading a band of Viet Cong or something--but the man he described had blond hair and blue eyes. As you can see, I'm certainly not blond and my eyes are brown. Besides, in all of those alleged "sightings," I couldn't have been where they said I was, because I was in the prison camp.

[Q] Playboy: To what do you attribute those allegations?

[A] Garwood: The frustrations of war, I guess. I suppose they wanted to see somebody and I was a likely culprit. I don't think there was ever any American who led Viet Cong. If there had been, I probably would have heard about it through the jungle grapevine.

[Q] Playboy: There was another charge made against you at the court-martial that you had gone out with the Viet Cong and used a bullhorn to urge American troops to lay down their arms.

[A] Garwood: That was totally untrue, too. Those charges were made, but only because somebody allegedly said they overheard me saying it to somebody else, or something like that. The only time I came into contact with a bullhorn was when they [the Viet Cong] had one of them and it didn't work and they told me to repair it. I looked at it and it was corroded and I told them to clean it up and it would probably work. All those charges were thrown out, but, damn, to hear some people tell it, I might have been running a bullhorn factory over there.

[Q] Playboy: Going back to the charge that you carried a weapon, you said earlier you'd carried a dismantled, unarmed weapon once; but how many times, exactly, did you carry a weapon?

[A] Garwood: I don't remember exactly--maybe five times.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Garwood: They told me to. At that point, I did pretty much whatever they told me to. If I'd refused, they'd have starved me to death or worse. That was the way it was.

[Q] Playboy: What about the charge that you used a weapon to guard American prisoners?

[A] Garwood: That was the times they gave me the weapon and told me to carry it. It was a different weapon each time and it was never loaded. I didn't realize what they were doing then, but they would give me the weapon and take me out on a trail and all of a sudden, we'd meet up with some new prisoners and the V.C. would say something like, "This is Bobby Garwood--see, if you'll be like him, you can get privileges," stuff like that. They always took the weapon away afterward. They were using me, but I didn't realize how much at the time. They were just using me.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you ever consider that it was wrong, or treasonous, to carry a weapon belonging to the enemy?

[A] Garwood: No. I was trying to live. Besides, it wasn't hurting anybody. It wasn't even loaded.

[Q] Playboy: What about the charge that you served as an interrogator for the Viet Cong against your fellow Americans?

[A] Garwood: That wasn't true, either. I did some interpreting, which means that I was a translator. I never interrogated anybody. Whenever the regular interpreter wasn't there, they'd get me to translate for them. Most of the time, it was just simple stuff--somebody would go to the prison compound and want to ask a question and I'd translate it. I think I actually helped the guys in the compound, because I would translate the questions and answers fairly--Vietnamese isn't an easy language, you know, and if somebody does it wrong, somebody could get in a lot of trouble. I always tried to make it sound the best it could--translating American to Vietnamese.

[Q] Playboy: Were the other POWs aware of that?

[A] Garwood: Not all the time. I don't know. Some people blame me because I learned the language. Hell, Ike taught it to me, and a couple of times I tried to teach it to the other POWs. You had to know the damned language to survive, I figured. Why is that such a crime?

[Q] Playboy: Another of the allegations against you was that you wore a Viet Gong uniform. What about that?

[A] Garwood: I didn't wear any Viet Cong uniform. I wore what they gave me to wear, because when I was captured, they stripped me to my skivvies. I had to wear something. So did everybody else. There was one accusation that I wore a badge, a "Ho Chi Minh pin," which they gave out to commemorate something--Liberation Day or something like that--but they gave them to everyone. Sure, I kept it, and wore it on my clothes, because I used the pin part, the sharp part, to take stickers out of my fingers and stuff like that. It was like a tool, a needle--there was a lot of bamboo around there and I kept getting slivers in my fingers.

[Q] Playboy: You say you kept cooperating with the Viet Cong because they were going to release you. When they didn't, why didn't you rejoin the other American prisoners in the compound? Did you even consider that?

[A] Garwood: Yes, I did. I got very frustrated and very lonely. Especially the way they used me--kept making promises and kept evading my questions--the Communists did. Every time I'd bring up the prospect of being released, they gave me excuses: "We'll report to our superiors," "I'm sure it won't be long," "It may be in progress," even--stuff like that. And I was getting very depressed and very lonely, especially by what I saw down the camp--the life and the environmental conditions of the other Americans. It was getting really bad. The POWs were at each other's throats and----

[Q] Playboy: There were approximately 15 prisoners, correct? Of the 15 prisoners in that camp; how many died?

[A] Garwood: Approximately two thirds of them.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Garwood: The Vietnamese let them die. Of malnutrition and disease.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the Vietnamese could have prevented that if they had given them better food and better medicine?

[A] Garwood: I feel that they could've, yes.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the Vietnamese saw that those people were ill and that they were dying?

[A] Garwood: Definitely. You just didn't die overnight from that kind of thing. A week, two weeks or more--months. The Vietnamese always had excuses, you know. Saying it's so easy to die if a man wants to die, so let him die.

[Q] Playboy: It's the weak who die?

[A] Garwood: Yes, they said it's just so easy to die, here in the jungle.

[Q] Playboy: So they didn't seem concerned about the health of the prisoners?

[A] Garwood: Not to any extent. And this got to me. Because I visualized myself back in that compound and, damn, I could have gotten some illness and, like the other POWs, the same damn thing would happen to me. A lot of POWs were being put in the ground. It could have been me.

[Q] Playboy: Were you getting better food, living where you were?

[A] Garwood: No, I was getting about the same ration as the other Americans. But at certain times, I did--not from the guards or from the camp but because of my ability with the language; I was able to ask the montagnards when they came by. I could plead with them, beg them, trade them for anything like sugar cane or a banana or something like that, and sometimes they'd give it to me.

[Q] Playboy: And were you able to steal from the guards?

[A] Garwood: Many times.

[Q] Playboy: Such as?

[A] Garwood: Eggs, a chicken, anything. I would have stolen anything.

[Q] Playboy: Were you allowed to leave the camp?

[A] Garwood: Well, there was one instance when they took me into a village. They gathered the village people and gave a big speech--it was on a Vietnamese holiday. And they had me read a slogan saying the American people are in solidarity with proletariat Vietnamese people. Something like that. Then they ho'd three times and that was it.

[Q] Playboy: They did what three times?

(continued on page 180)Robert Garwood(continued from page 96)

[A] Garwood: They ho'd three times. Ho, ho, ho. For Ho Chi Minh, you know; it sounds like when we go hooray, hooray, hooray.

[Q] Playboy: What other times did you leave the camp?

[A] Garwood: I was on rice runs.

[Q] Playboy: When did you leave that camp for the final time?

[A] Garwood: I was gone for about two weeks on a rice run and then was ordered hack to the camp, and the camp commander called me up and told me I would be relocated. I asked him why and he said that he didn't know but that I had made a lot of mistakes and I should think a lot and have some answers.

[Q] Playboy: What were the mistakes, did he say?

[A] Garwood: No.

[Q] Playboy: Did you know?

[A] Garwood: Well, I'd been stealing from the Vietnamese medics and guards. I'd steal from one guard's pack, put it in another guard's pack to create a disturbance among themselves. So when I'd steal something from the kitchen, the guards would suspect themselves.

[Q] Playboy: So they considered you a troublemaker?

[A] Garwood: Yeah, but they said it in harsher terms than just a troublemaker. Then this guy from the MCR-5--what they call the propaganda office--come down. His name, I believe, was Mic, and he started throwing a bunch of questions at me, asking if I didn't think I'd really pulled the wool over their eyes, shit like that. Then he said, "We know everything you've tried to do, but it didn't work." He said, "I don't know if you know it or not, but the other Americans, they distrust you very much, they really hate your guts--you don't think you've really accomplished anything, do you?" I tried to act innocent. But he told me to think about making a self-criticism. Then they moved me again. Uphill, very close to the propaganda headquarters.

[Q] Playboy: Were there any other Americans there?

[A] Garwood: Not that I could see. That day was the last time I saw Americans. It was late in 1969, September or October.

[Q] Playboy: How long did you stay in that camp?

[A] Garwood: Until 1970.

[Q] Playboy: What was your function?

[A] Garwood: Nothing, really. I didn't do a damn thing. Different people would come in and ask me questions--about the American POWs, who was their leader, who put me up to it----

[Q] Playboy: Put you up to what?

[A] Garwood: To stealing. And, also, what kind of information had I relayed to the other Americans? They wanted to know what kind of structure the American POWs had. They thought that there would have been a structure built and that I was aiding in the structure--by stealing and giving information.

[Q] Playboy: What did you tell them?

[A] Garwood: I told them that if there was any structure at all, I didn't know about it. Then Ho came and told me in straightout English that since the day I was captured, they suspected I was working for the CIA. So he says, "You think we're very stupid, don't you? You were captured driving a brand-new jeep, brand-new clothes, with a .45, and you're trying to say you're a Pfc. in the Marine Corps! We have your trip ticket. We know what a trip ticket is and we know what G-2 is."

And I just laughed and said, "I'm sorry, I think you're mistaken." And he says, "You slipped up the first time you talked to me--you said you were a chaplain's aide, and a chaplain is nothing more than a cover-up, a front, for CIA."

[Q] Playboy: What did they do with you then?

[A] Garwood: Nothin', really. I was there until the middle of 1970, when the whole damn area was bombed by B-52s. I was wounded. I think practically all the damned camp was killed or wounded. I was unconscious--when I woke up, I was in, like, the dispensary. I had no clothes on at all and I was lying on the table, and they were bandaging my head and my back. The bomb fragments were in my back and in my head. I didn't even know the bomb hit, just like a big blam! I didn't see nothing else. I was deaf and I was almost blind. My sight was real blurry, but if you got close to me, I could make out, like, a face.

After three weeks to a month, my vision started coming hack. They gave me injections to strengthen my eyes. But my hearing was bad and there was pus coming out of my ears. My wounds were starting to heal a little, but my body still hurt a lot. There were North Vietnamese troops in the dispensary, and when they saw me there, they started getting disgruntled and making complaints, saying they felt that it was wrong that they should have to receive the same medical aid and other things as an American--that's who they were fighting against.

So they moved me about 500 feet from the dispensary to a really small hootch. I couldn't move. That was about the smallest thing they ever put me in. Then one day, they came to get me. It had been decided that I would be moved to North Vietnam, where there would be better medical care. I didn't say nothing, really. Whatever they said, I did.

[Q] Playboy: What was your feeling at that point about the possibility of your release?

[A] Garwood: Zilch.

[Q] Playboy: So you went to North Vietnam in 1970. Did you travel on the Ho Chi Minh Trail?

[A] Garwood: I don't know what the damn trail was. We called it the Ho Chi Minh Trail, they didn't. They called it the Strategic Trail or some shit.

[Q] Playboy: How long did it take you to get there?

[A] Garwood: Three months. Three months walking.

[Q] Playboy: What happened on the way?

[A] Garwood: My back was still banged up pretty bad, it had started getting infected and stuff, and they gave me some vitamin B12 injections along the way. One thing I noticed was they never let me rest at any of what they called the way stations. They always made me rest at either a montagnard village or a C.P. compound. Three months, walking all the way. My eyesight got a little bit better, but my ears, my hearing--you almost had to shout to me--I had a ringing sound like an ocean rushing and my ears were clogged up.

[Q] Playboy: When you got to North Vietnam, what happened?

[A] Garwood: They put me in a bus and moved me to a camp where I rested one day, and they put me in a military truck and took me to an army hospital. I remember the hospital was number five. They cleared out what looked like a damn storeroom--I'm sure that's what it was. They wouldn't put me on a ward, they put me in a storeroom. And put a bed in there. And they started treating my wounds. Eyes, ears, dysentery, back-- I had a gut infection, all kinds of shit wrong with me.

[Q] Playboy: How long were you there?

[A] Garwood: About three or four months. Then they transferred me to the army hospital in Hanoi. Army hospital 108. Again, I was put in a small room--it looked like a damn prison section, but it's the ward where they keep all the people who have dangerous diseases-- liver problems and chronic malaria, cholera, hepatitis--real diseases, I mean, killer diseases. They told me not to leave the room and not to talk to any of the patients. Every now and then, you'd wake up during the night, somebody was screaming--"Aaagh!"--they were going to die. It scared the hell out of me.

I was there till March 1971. When I got out, they came and picked me up in a Chinese-type jeep and took me to a house--like one of those old houses way back that the Vietnamese landlords used to own. It had a brick wall built all the way around it. They put me on the upstairs floor and I remained there for about five or six months.

[Q] Playboy: Doing what?

[A] Garwood: Nothing. They just fed me.

[Q] Playboy: Did you go out and walk around?

[A] Garwood: Only in the back yard--it was really small.

[Q] Playboy: Was anyone else there?

[A] Garwood: There was an interpreter and a nurse and two security guards and one officer.

[Q] Playboy: What did they interpret? Did anybody try to interrogate you?

[A] Garwood: No, there were some officers who came down periodically and just checked on my health. I told them I was getting along fine. They brought a doctor about twice a month. He checked my ears and my eyes and my nose. I was in solitary there for about five or six months, and then a truck came up and they moved me to another location.

[Q] Playboy: Who was there?

[A] Garwood: Myself and the same people that was in the first house, the guards and the nurse. It was a house converted into a prison and all I did, I just sat around and listened to Hanoi radio. Just sat around on my ass.

Then my health came back pretty good. This was after almost a year in North Vietnam, and one day a jeep with two officers came up and I was moved to a camp at Sontay.

[Q] Playboy: Sontay was where the U. S. military launched a raid to free POWs, wasn't it? The Sontay raid?

[A] Garwood: Yeah. It was close by where I was. It was pointed out to me by the Vietnamese. They told me it was a very stupid American act.

[Q] Playboy: Did they put you in prison in Sontay?

[A] Garwood: No, they didn't--not actually in the prison. They put me about a mile away in the back of a mountain. They took me right through the city and, you know, as far as I was concerned, I didn't care if it was North Vietnam or not. It was the first civilization I'd seen in about six years and it flipped me out. I stayed in Sontay for a little more than three years.

[Q] Playboy: Doing what?

[A] Garwood: We had to grow our own vegetables.

[Q] Playboy: You say we--who are we?

[A] Garwood: Myself and the guards. We planted our own garden. That's what we did every day, just worked in the garden.

[Q] Playboy: That brings you up to about 1974, right?

[A] Garwood: Right.

[Q] Playboy: By that time, there had already been the prisoner exchange. Did you know anything about that?

[A] Garwood: Yes, a little bit.

[Q] Playboy: How did you find out?

[A] Garwood: Radio--Radio Hanoi.

[Q] Playboy: What was your reaction? Didn't you think you were supposed to be released, too?

[A] Garwood: I discussed it with the officer in charge when it first came up. This was before it actually happened. And they kept saying to me, "Nothing's been signed--wait until after the signing," always until after the signing. It was made known that there would be three groups--all prisoners would be released in three different time periods--A, B and C. And I finally came out and asked, "What group am I in?" and the officer, he just smiled and said, "You're not in any of them."

[Q] Playboy: Did you ask why?

[A] Garwood: He said, "I don't know. You ought to ask somebody else." He said, "You ought to ask my superiors."

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever have a chance to ask his superiors?

[A] Garwood: Yes, I did. It was just before the last release of the POWs. They came to see me and the camp commander came over from the big camp. He asked what my opinion was about the release and then told me, "This is a big cover-up by the U. S. Government. You don't think we're going to fall for any of the U. S. Government's tricks? We're not that stupid." He kind of had me baffled there for a minute. I couldn't figure it out. I'd heard it on the radio, there was going to be the exchange of prisoners. But now this guy is saying there wasn't. They would give names over the radio of the people, the POWs, so I asked him again, "When am I going to be released?" Well, he says, "You're in a different category." I asked what kind of category. He said, "We do not consider you a POW that has been captured." So I was a prisoner, a prisoner who was really not a prisoner--but I was.

[Q] Playboy: Did he say what they considered you?

[A] Garwood: He said they were still considering me some kind of spy, and they had not determined my status.

[Q] Playboy: That was 1973? And you stayed there in that little camp for--what?-- another two years? After all the other American POWs had been released?

[A] Garwood: Yes. And then, when they began closing in on Saigon, about midnight one night, a jeep came again and took me away, and I--wound up in Yenbay Province.

[Q] Playboy: Where is that?

[A] Garwood: That is way up north, near the Chinese border. It was very different. I was put into a very, very big POW camp.

[Q] Playboy: Who were the other POWs?

[A] Garwood: ARVN, Thais and Laotians.

[Q] Playboy: Did they set you to work doing anything?

[A] Garwood: Not at that point. After the fall of Saigon, the prisoners really started pouring in, thousands a day--every day. And then, right across the street, they started building this new camp and it was unique. They brought in bricks. They were building a damned house-- like a house where the king would live. They built a wall around it and everything else and they built a watchtower like a miniature Alcatraz. And then they brought in dogs and I asked them, "Goddamn, what's going on over there?" They said, "Some very special prisoners are coming." A couple of weeks later, I was sitting there, just sunning myself, when three trucks pulled up and people started getting out and they all wore civilian clothes.

[Q] Playboy: Vietnamese people?

[A] Garwood: Yes. And they had suitcases and duffel bags and all kinds of shit. Some even had radios. I thought it was as weird as hell. I kept looking and then a couple of guards got friendly and we were talking and they pointed out that one over there is General Thi and that one is General Lam, and so on. I asked them, "General of what?" They said, "The puppet army. We captured them in Saigon when we overtook the palace and we're bringing them here for reeducation." Then they took everything away from them. They confiscated everything, the radios, suitcases and all, and they issued their clothing like the clothing that they issued me.

[Q] Playboy: Did you stay there in that camp?

[A] Garwood: Yeah. It was getting close to 1976 now. I was beginning to think, you know, What the fuck am I going to do with the rest of my life? I might end up in Vietnam forever. What the hell am I going to do with myself, stay in this damned prison camp the rest of my life here in Vietnam or what? I had been there at the camp going on two years and it got to the point where they got a little relaxed. Once, I started talking to some of the villagers and I found out that this was the French prison camp from Dien Bien Phu and that the last French prisoners were not released until 1970--200 of them from that very camp. They were Moroccans, from the French Foreign Legion. Some of them even had families in the prison. They had married prostitutes. They were finally released in 1970.

[Q] Playboy: So because of that, you didn't think your prospects at that point were so good.

[A] Garwood: Exactly. I started thinking, you know, Jesus Christ, they'd been there since 1954 and not released until 1970--shit, that's almost 20 years. I figured if I've got to live this way, I might as well try to make my life easier. I'm just making my life harder this way. There was no way out.

[Q] Playboy: You'd been captured for 11 years at that point?

[A] Garwood: Right. Eleven years. I told myself, Jesus Christ, there is a possibility I'd be there 20 years or more, maybe the rest of my life. So I just thought to myself, Fuck it. The Americans have pulled out of here. I haven't seen no damned negotiations going on to find out if anybody is here or not, me included, and nobody has come to ask me, and I just felt completely deserted. I mean, wholehearted, totally, completely deserted. And my morale was low. So that is when I decided I would do anything I could to try to make my life easier in the camp, try to make it more comfortable.

[Q] Playboy: What was your life like? Were you still guarded?

[A] Garwood: Well, there were only two gates going in and out, but inside the camp itself, I was allowed to move freely as long as I didn't go within any of the small camps. I could move from my hootch to anywhere in the camp as long as I didn't go into any building without permission.

[Q] Playboy: How did you eat at that point?

[A] Garwood: I ate exactly what the guards ate.

[Q] Playboy: Was there a mess hall?

[A] Garwood: They issued me a mess kit and what I did was go down to the kitchen and I would give them my mess kit and they would fill it full of food and I went back to my hootch and I ate it.

[Q] Playboy: How did you spend the evenings?

[A] Garwood: The evenings? I'd sing to myself or play cards with the guards. They played, like, a Vietnamese poker-- and solitaire.

[Q] Playboy: Did they give you anything to read?

[A] Garwood: They gave me some Cuban, Russian newspapers.

[Q] Playboy: How about women?

[A] Garwood: Taboo.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever manage to get around the taboo?

[A] Garwood: I tried to and I got in a lot of trouble. It was back in '74, at the Sontay prison camp. The officer in charge of me had a wife. She was coming to visit her husband. She was in the army. Hell, all I did back then was masturbate. She came there quite often and she seemed to have a lot of sympathy for me. I could tell the way she talked to me and everything. She used to bring me candy. Her husband got on her case for it a couple of times. He was a lieutenant.

She was young, about 24. Well, I immediately focused my attention on her. You see, at night, there was a couple of times I was left in that camp by myself with her, because her husband would go to meetings almost every night. I don't know what the hell the meetings were about. And the guards, a lot of times at night, they would take flashlights and they would go along the creek bank and catch fish and frogs and what have you, to cook in the soup, like a goulash.

The first night that we were left alone, I was scared. I wanted to, but I was scared. I knew all she had to do was just go up and tell somebody and they would blow my ass away or something. Then she made the first advance, she started talking, asked me about American women, you know, how American women kiss and how they make love, a bunch of stuff like that.

So I kind of got the idea what she was getting on to, but that first time I did not even attempt anything. But the second time, she was lying in the hammock and she took off her blouse, and then one thing led to another. I mean, hell, even if they blew me away, there was no way I could control myself. It was the first time in nine years I'd had a woman.

[Q] Playboy: It must have been a strange feeling.

[A] Garwood: Yeah. I went instantly. It was almost like a blink of an eye, really.

[Q] Playboy: Did you see her again?

[A] Garwood: Yes. When her husband came back, I was scared, because if he found out, he would blow me away in a second. Through all them years up until 1979, I was always scared, somehow he was going to find out and he was going to come back for me. But in 1975, I was transferred to the Yenbay camp and I never saw him again.

[Q] Playboy: How else did you spend your time? Any sports?

[A] Garwood: No, no sports at all. Basically, I just amused myself by trying to learn the Vietnamese language and culture so I could understand them better, so I could understand just what was coming down on me. It was one of those things that kept me from going really crazy.

[Q] Playboy: Just how Vietnamized do you think you finally became?

[A] Garwood: I always slept on a mat on the floor, I ate off the floor, squatted down like they did, drank out of old tin cups or bamboo shoots. When I started sitting in chairs again in the last couple of years, I'd get a backache.

[Q] Playboy: At this point in the narrative, you were up north in that camp. How did you get back down to Hanoi?

[A] Garwood: OK, it started in 1977. It had been two years since I'd seen any kind of civilization, so I just kept demanding, demanding, saying I would really like to go to Hanoi for just any holiday, so I could see some people, see some kind of civilization, you know. And they kept telling me that the security wasn't good enough, that it was very dangerous, that if anybody found out I was American-- because the Vietnamese hate the Americans very much--my life would be in great danger.

This was always the excuse they gave me. Then, in '77, I got a real bad stomach ailment. They took me to the hospital in Hanoi, but I couldn't get in, they wouldn't check me in the hospital, and I had to stay in a house. It was about 20 kilometers from the hospital. I don't know how they found the house. I never inquired about it.

[Q] Playboy: Who got the house? Whom were you with?

[A] Garwood: Guards and an officer. Then they finally admitted me to the hospital in a special room that was away from the other people and I was treated. But I became very acquainted with these guards. They had never been in any kind of battle or anything and they came from pretty well-to-do families in North Vietnam. Just out of curiosity, they asked me, they said, "It would probably be pretty easy for you to walk into a hotel and nobody would ask you anything. You look like a Russian or a Cuban." Anyway, close to Christmas, they brought me to Hanoi and the officers, one lieutenant colonel, his name was Han, took me to a tourist hotel in downtown Hanoi for Christmas dinner--which about flipped me out. And I found out, because I looked at the slip they had on the table, that it was a hotel just for foreign guests. I mean, they didn't have my nationality, nothing down there. Just foreign guest and the waitress joked with me like I was a damned Russian or Cuban or something. They explained that, you know, it was appreciation of the work I did and that I kept the machine running and all of that. They said, "Due to your progress, we have decided to treat you to a Christmas dinner." That was the first Christmas, anything close to Christmas, I had known in 13 years.

Anyway, I excused myself and I went out. I went out among the other foreigners and nobody noticed me or anything and I just kind of wandered around and I stayed out maybe five minutes, then I came back in. That's how easy it was. And I started getting a little brave. And so I got back with my guards and told them I was walking around all over the damned place and nobody said anything.

So we started talking and that's when the deal come up. One of the guards was a jeep driver. He was not actually a guard, he was a jeep driver and he says, "When you have the chance, do you like to drink beer?"

God, I hadn't had a beer in 13 fucking years. "Do you like to drink beer?" I flipped out! I said yeah. He says, "Well, it's very dangerous, but we can do it if you cooperate." And, immediately, they were getting real friendly, buddy-buddy, so I just played along. The goddamned black-market racket was all it was.

The deal was they would take me to Hanoi, give me the money, I would go in the hotel and buy liquor, cigarettes and candy. On the black market, those were the most called for, and very, very high-priced. In return, they would give me enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes and drink one or two beers.

So I played sick a lot and they'd take me to Hanoi and there were always the same guards when I played sick. They wouldn't admit me to the hospital, they would just give me medicine and I stayed in the same place about 24 hours and then I'd hop in the vehicle with the guards and go to the hotel and start buying shit. This went on until the time I got out of Vietnam. That is how I was able to pass the note.

[Q] Playboy: The note that got you released. What happened that particular day?

[A] Garwood: It had got to the point they were pretty relaxed. I think they thought that I wasn't so stupid as to try anything. Well, we went to the Victoria Hotel to buy the same commodities. As I walked in, there were four people sitting there eating their evening meal and I heard one man saying, "I'll be returning to Washington...." It distinctly caught my attention, so I sat down at the first table. I listened to him talk. They had given me the money in an envelope and I took it out and on the back of it I wrote down, "I am an American. Are you interested?" And I wadded it up and I asked the guy for a cigarette and I dropped it in his lap.

[Q] Playboy: You didn't say that you were a prisoner?

[A] Garwood: At that point, I only said, "I'm an American. Are you interested? "And he got up and started to come over to my table and I got up the same time and motioned him over to the corner and he asked me some questions: "Are you afraid to return to the United States?" And I looked at him like he's some kind of a dumb shit or something. I said, "Are you crazy? Why should I be afraid to return to my own country?" So he didn't pursue that any further. He said, "What exactly do you want me to do?" I said, "I would like you to contact any American embassy or our U. S. military establishment and give them this note." At that point, he gave me back the note and I wrote down my name, rank and serial number and U.S.M.C. I said, "Just give them this and they'll know what to do." He says, "Where are you staying now? Are you staying here in Hanoi?" I said, "No, I'm not. I'm in a forced-labor camp 100 miles from here."

[Q] Playboy: Who was he? Do you know?

[A] Garwood: I know now. His name is Ossi Rahkonen. He is a Finnish banker or something, working for the World Bank.

[Q] Playboy: How long was it after that episode that you heard you might be released?

[A] Garwood: Approximately six weeks to two months. But almost as soon as I went back to camp, things started to change. Security got real tight, they wouldn't let me leave or anything. I figured, Oh, I screwed up. They found out. I'm in real trouble. My rations had been cut and conditions started really to become like they was in the mountains.

[Q] Playboy: What was going through your mind about what might happen if they found out about the note you had passed? What were the worst possibilities?

[A] Garwood: Well, I figured it would probably be a long, dragged-out interrogation--I don't know. It wouldn't be good, I was sure of that.

[Q] Playboy: But, ultimately, the risk paid off. They let you go. How did that come about?

[A] Garwood: They just come in one night and said to me, "You're going to Hanoi." They took me to Hanoi and put me in this little apartment, with four beds and a tiny table, and said, "You'll be meeting our commander soon." And the next day, they outfitted me with some new clothes--a damned tailor-made suit. I couldn't believe it. There seemed to be a lot of chickenshit stuff going on for the next few days, but the next thing I know, I'm getting on the Air France plane.

[Q] Playboy: Stepping back from it all, how do you remember those 14 years in Vietnam?

[A] Garwood: They ripped my guts out. Actually, if you talk about human existence, there's not much of that left in me right now. They did that to me. They took 14 years of my life away from me, and I've got no compensation for that. Even that I'm back in the United States, it seems like everyone's trying to put the brunt of the whole Vietnam war on my shoulders--not on Ho Chi Minh and all the Communists, or whoever the hell was responsible for it. All I know is I spent 14 years in Communist prisons, and I would have gladly exchanged triple that time for any American prison, I'll tell you. And what did I do wrong besides putting on that uniform and going to 'Nam and trying to uphold what this Government told me to do? My life has been destroyed, my family's life has been torn apart. It's just going to be nightmares until the day I die.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about the Vietnamese people themselves now? What is your gut reaction?

[A] Garwood: I'll tell you something. My heart, my soul burns, it aches. I'm more mature now, but still I cannot look at an Oriental without picturing myself trying to strangle or kill him or torture him in some way.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about the Marine Corps at this point?

[A] Garwood: I have no animosity toward them.

[Q] Playboy: And you really feel you did nothing wrong?

[A] Garwood: The only thing I really regret is that I might have thought about the other person more. I was young and there was a lot of confusion, but I wasn't ready to lay myself on the line-- not to the extent where I thought I would be killed. To this day, it bothers me. Maybe I could have helped more, even if it had meant putting my ass on the line. I was in a better position than the other POWs, so I might have helped.

[Q] Playboy: Aside from legalities, just looking at it morally, do you feel you've done anything that you should be ashamed of?

[A] Garwood: No, I don't. But that's something that I'll probably be asking myself the rest of my life: Could I have done more? I saw 11 Americans die over there and it disturbed me, because I always felt that I could have been one of them. When I think back on it, this business about me deserting, or crossing over--it was a mixture of fear, revenge, survival, complete frustration. I had no one to turn to, no one to seek advice from. It was a situation that I never thought I could be in, and suddenly I was in very deeply and I didn't know how to get out. I was just trying to survive.

[Q] Playboy: How will you survive for the rest of your life, now that the court-martial is over and you've been dishonorably discharged?

[A] Garwood: I went through so much shit in the past 16 years that sometimes I want to give up and say the hell with it, you know. Just out of total frustration, isolation. When I was there, there was nobody to turn to, nobody I could talk to, nobody to give me advice, tell me what to do. I was completely cut off from the outside world and the years were just going by, and it seemed like there was no end. I was like some damned vegetable or a tree. They didn't give a shit. Every now and then, they'd water me and that was about it.

So, right now, I actually feel very fortunate, because I am still alive to this day, when I could very well have been dead. I'm 35 years old. You know, how many more years have I got in my life? I have no foundation. I have no wife or children. No job experience, career to look forward to. I guess there's still a few years left in my life before I reach 40. Maybe I can get some schooling, try to get some kind of a profession. You know, the first thing I did when I returned to the States was to get a haircut and put on a Marine uniform. I didn't carry no placards, no antiwar demonstrations. I was very proud that I was accepted by the Marine Corps. And I have no animosity whatsoever toward the Corps. Whatever happened during the past 16 years was just a sequence of circumstances that were unavoidable. I thank God that I'm still alive to tell about it.

"I just wasn't sure I could hold up. I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself, you know."

"I was kind of scared ... probably a whole lot of scared, a lot more than I would admit, really."

"There was a little bamboo cage with metal bolted into it, a large chicken coop, I'd say."

"My hands were tied behind my back and there was a rope around my neck, which one of the guards had in his hands."

"I just went crazy when I saw Russ getting beaten, and I rushed into the compound and there was nothing I could do."

"Some people blame me because I learned the language. Hell, you had to know the damned language to survive, I figured. Why is that such a crime?"

"The bomb fragments were in my back and in my head. I was deaf and I was almost blind."