written and photographed by Mary L. Peachin
Jan 2000, Vol. 4 No. 4
I entered the tiny, airless, yet musty, cube with trepidation. During the Vietnam War, my friend Colonel Bob Barnett, an American fighter pilot, had spent five years in this small prison cell. I looked at the set of rusty shackles, still bolted to a cement bunk in an unlit cell, and wondered if they had held Bob’s legs. Was that the bucket he used as a latrine? A separate cell was empty save another bucket-the shower? A small table holding a single cup appeared to be the dining cell. As I walked through the “Hanoi Hilton,” the infamous Vietnam War POW prison, I marveled at how such a horrendous place had been converted into a museum. And I tried to weave the stories of Bob’s imprisonment into what lay before me.