User:Sgthansman

My name is Sgt Hans Abel Westenrieder, a dutch man and US Military.

The Handshake

At the first stab of dawn a rooster crowed. For a moment - I was back at the family farm in Clarkesville, Georgia, my wife, Anne, slumbering beside me, our five children snug in their beds down the hall. I could almost feel Anne's sturdy warmth. But as the sun pierced the tiny, barred window and forced open my eyes, I was jerked back to my true surroundings: a North Vietnamese POW camp, "home" for the three years since I'd been captured during the bloody Tet offensive in February 1968.

I eased into a sitting position on the wooden slab that was my bunk, trying to stretch out the ache in my back. My eye roamed the dingy cell. I knew every inch of it. It was all I knew. Three years of total isolation.

I received no word from home, no contact with other prisoners. I'd not even been allowed to write Anne, though in my heart I spoke to her day and night, praying God would keep her and the children safe and let them know I was surviving.

Survival. I had to keep my mind disciplined. In my thoughts I "reread" the books from my college literature classes. Oliver Twist, Crime and Punishment, Of Human Bondage. One guard reminded me a bit of Henry Fonda, and that got me projecting my favorite movies on a bright, wide internal screen. I watched My Darling Clementine again and again, slowing down and replying favorite scenes.

And I never strayed from my greatest comfort. Daily I read scripture - not that I was actually permitted a Bible. But deep in my mind I read and reread it until the pages were smudged, creased and tattered.

Still there were moments I thought I might snap. Worse than any torture, the sheer agony of solitude, of being unable to experience the simplest human contact, was what I feared would finally undo me. Somehow I think my captors knew that too.

God, I prayed that morning as I did every morning, please help ease the loneliness. Give me strength to go on.

Slipping off my bunk I began my daily routine. I was required to sweep out my cell. I relished the job. It brought order and purpose to the start of my day. As usual, I took my broom and went over every precious foot of floor. When I finished I flicked the small pile of sweepings through a four-inch gap at the bottom of my door into the passageway beyond, where some unseen camp trustee would sweep it up for collection.

Suddenly the little pile was swept briskly back into my cell.

Odd, I thought. Why would he do that?

I pushed the pile back out, thinking the trustee had made a mistake. It came right back in. This is deliberate, I realized testily.

I swept it out. Again it came back.

Now I was mad. I flicked the trash back under the door and got down on my hands and knees. As soon as the broom came toward the gap again, I reached under and grabbed it.

"Không!" the trustee hissed, Vietnamese for no. He jerked back the broom but I held on, terrier-tight. For a moment we grunted and tussled. His struggling told me he was frightened. If he was caught messing with one of the American POWs he'd be harshly dealt with.

I thought about that. He was, after all, a prisoner, like me. Why get him into any more trouble than what had already landed him here? So I turned the broom loose. That'll teach him a lesson though, I told myself.

It was curious that I didn't hear him scuffling off. I'd have thought he would have wanted to get away from the crazy American. Instead there was just his labored breathing on the other side of the door. I stayed on my knees by the opening, straining for some clue to his behavior. Finally he was silent. I wasn't even sure he was still there when, to my astonishment, the strangest thing happened: He thrust his thin hand under my cell door. I stepped back. He slapped his palm on the floor, then offered it to me in the form of a handshake.

I froze. Maybe this was a trick. But something silently whispered reassurance that the man on the other side was trying to reach out to me.

Slowly I stretched my fingers toward his, almost afraid to touch another human being again in friendship. When I lightly felt his hand he quickly pulled my fingers into his hungry grip. A kind of warm physical music played throughout me, a combustion of feelings that had been trapped for so long. I put my other hand over his, covering our grip. Then he reached under the door and did the same.

It was a dangerous moment; we let it linger as long as we could. Then quickly we both withdrew our hands.

I never encountered that trustee again, whoever he was - a North Vietnamese civilian, a South Vietnamese soldier? But for a moment we were just two human beings reaching out. In the remaining two years of my captivity I was sustained by the simple touch of a hand. It was one moment of caring human contact that I so desperately needed, that we all need, to go on.