An Incredible Saga of Seaman Hegdahl - American Hero - Page 8

Doug Needs Paper, Ink and Pen

This is just as well, as Communists had murdered over 20 million "rich peasants" in their various revolutions, because those folks are unreconstructed capitalists. A little miffed at first, Doug caught on right away -- he is a quick study -- it was to his advantage to play out the poor peasant act to the bitter end. Tired of the verbal jousting the Communist cadres told him that he would have to write and anti-war statement for them. He joyously agreed. The interrogators were dumbfounded. This was the first Yankee to agree to do anything without being tortured first. They brought out the paper, ink and pens. He admired them all and then stated: "But one small thing. I can't read or write. I'm a poor peasant." This was quite credible to the Vietnamese since their poor peasants could neither read nor write. So they assigned a Vietnamese to teach him penmanship, spelling, grammar and sentence structure. Immediately his learning curve went flat.