Alum Visits Davidson to Recount his Time as a Prisoner of War

When Porter Halyburton ‘63 graduated from Davidson, he was met with a choice: enlist voluntarily or face the draft. Determined to fly an F-4, Halyburton — a newlywed with an English degree in tow — entered flight school. In February of 1964, he left his wife, Marty, and their five day old daughter for Vietnam. He would fly 75 missions and endure seven and a half years of captivity as a prisoner of war (POW) before seeing them again.

Halyburton’s imprisonment began after his plane was shot down on Oct. 17, 1965. Previous to this flight, he was frustrated by the lack of consequence of his missions on the progress of the war.

“I was pretty disillusioned with what we were doing because we weren’t doing what we needed to do if we wanted to win the war militarily. Political considerations took precedence,” Halyburton said. “When we got this mission on October 17th, we knew that this was a big deal. It was a major communication link from China to Hanoi. Take out the bridge, railroad, all that — that was our mission.”

Flying at treetop level over a valley, Halyburton’s plane was hit in the front cockpit. The pilot was killed, but Halyburton was able to eject from the vessel before it hit a mountain and exploded. He was listed as killed in action, a status that his family wouldn’t be aware was incorrect for 16 months. His wife Marty, their daughter and his other loved ones memorialized him with a tombstone, grieving his tragically unknown fate.

Meanwhile, Halyburton began life as a captive at the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison. Over the course of his captivity, Halyburton was moved thirty times and housed in eight different prisons. He endured torture and was placed in solitary confinement, as well as life with one to fifty cellmates. Along the way, he withstood hours and hours of interrogation, was nearly killed by locals on a march through Hanoi, and suffered dysentery and starvation. Throughout these conditions, Halyburton pledged to remain true to his duty.

“I said, ‘I’m going to do everything I can to survive and not give in. Initially, that was my whole focus: I’m going to stay as healthy as I can, I’m going to eat everything, I’m going to exercise as much as possible. I’m going to keep my mind and spiritual life active,” Halyburton said. “I also learned pretty quickly that our covert communication system was so important.”

The prisoners developed a tap code for communicating between walls in cell blocks. By utilizing American phrasing and attempting to be discrete, they were able to keep their Vietnamese captors largely in the dark.

“It was important to say, ‘I just went to a quiz and here’s what they asked me, here’s the kind of pressure they put on me and here’s the punishment that I got.’ Chances were somebody else from our cellblock would go through the same kind of interrogation,” Halyburton said. “It was very important to keep everybody up to date on a day to day basis, and if you had a new name of a POW. We spend a lot of time keeping our list of names up to date.”

Despite hours of interrogation and continually worsening conditions, Halyburton continually refused to divulge information to his captors. In an attempt to push him over the edge, they boarded him with — and ordered him to be caretaker for — a Black prisoner.