Via several news sources, today, we learned that Rear Admiral (Ret.) Jeremiah A. Denton, Jr. has passed away. What follows are my reflections.

In their detailed history, Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia 1961-1973, Stuart Rochester and Frederick Kiley describe in detail dozens of cases of individual courage and resistance during the Vietnam War, from Jim Stockdale, Robinson Risner, Bud Day, Nick Rowe, Ray Schrump, Donald Cook, and to Jeremiah Denton. I whole heartedly concur with the inside cover that describes the work as a tour-de-force. This history is “a compelling and important work that serves as a testament to the courage, faith, and will of Americans in captivity, as well as a reminder of the sometimes impossible demands made on U.S. servicemen under the Code of Conduct in prisoner of war situations.” RADM Jeremiah Denton’s leadership is often mentioned throughout this cherished tome.

I cannot describe to you the overwhelming sense of emotion and introspect I have when reading Honor Bound. The news of RADM Denton’s passing brings these and other more personal feelings back to the fore in my mind.

RADM Denton especially played a significant role in the leadership of the POWs early in the Vietnam War. He was principled, idealistic, and hopeful even when there was little room for hope. He served heroically, however, RADM Denton teaches us much more. He teaches us about some hard realities that every service member should reflect upon as they depart their homes and loved ones towards their unknown measure of duty in war.

He was not the first to be shot down over Vietnam, nor was he the most senior ranking (although he was the senior ranking officer briefly). Rather, RADM Denton’s utmost importance to us presently is that he was the first to taste freedom and “return with honor” on February 12, 1973.

Honor Bound describes the event:

Thin and pale, clad in drab civilian jacket and trousers issued by the North Vietnamese only the day before, the first of the returning American prisoners of war stepped through the door of the Air Force C-141 transport that had flown him and 39 fellow PWs from Hanoi to Clark Air Base in the Philippine Islands. He paused a moment to square his shoulders, descended the ramp to the flight line, saluted the admiral and general waiting to greet them, shook hands, exchanged a few words, then moved to the microphones prepared for the occasion. Navy Capt. Jeremiah Denton, senior officer among the prisoners on this first aircraft, spoke the brief message he had written during the trip from Hanoi: “We are honored to have had the opportunity to serve our country under difficult circumstances. We are profoundly grateful to our Commander in Chief and to our nation for this day. God bless America.”

RADM Denton’s example provides one much to consider in their internal accounting. The right sense of our introspect is described by Josef Pieper via the virtue of fortitude. “To be brave actually means to be able to suffer injury,” Pieper instructs, where “by injury we understand every assault upon our natural inviolability, every violation of our inner peace; everything that happens to us or is done with us against our will; thus everything in any way negative, everything painful and harmful, everything frightening and oppressive.” This introspect is important because we carry it “close at hand” as we figuratively and literally march off to do our duty.

In Honor Bound, Rochester and Kiley get to the crux of this introspect:

A practical problem for the leadership became the determination of what exactly constituted acceptable behavior and then transmitting the modified resistance policy through the camps. There evolved a fundamental set of rules, widely disseminated and understood, that directed the prisoners to resist to the point of permanent injury or loss of mental faculty, and then fall back on deceit and distortion, keeping all coerced answers and activity to a minimum. Denton, who held to a particularly strict standard, instructed his men to “die before writing anything classified,” but for personal biographies and such, “take torture and before you lose your sanity, write something harmless and ludicrous.” If broken, Denton advised, “don’t despair. Bounce back as soon as you can to the hard line.”

Even Denton made concessions to common sense and individual discretion in certain situations. Both he and Stockdale gave perfunctory nods to satisfy the Vietnamese bowing requirement so that they could save energy for resistance on more substantive issues. Evasions and stalls were permitted for the purpose of disrupting interrogation or avoiding further punishment, and improvisational techniques—mispronunciations, finger gestures, reading in monotone, blinking signals with the eyes, and other devices—were encouraged to nullify the effect of a taping or filming under duress. (The Vietnamese were so preoccupied with the content of a response, or the very act of prisoner submission, that they frequently overlooked hidden signals and telling mannerisms.) However, Denton cautioned his men not to get too cute, reminding them that any information volunteered—however seemingly innocuous or utterly false—could be taken out of context and exploited by the enemy. From his own experience, when he inadvertently supplied Dog with information on his family that subsequently went out over the Hanoi airwaves, he knew the risks of going beyond “the big four.”

In sum, then, resistance would continue to be based in principle on adherence to the rigorous requirements of the Code of Conduct, but it was understood that sticking to the “big four” was the heroic ideal and not an absolute imperative. In Stockdale’s words, the Code of Conduct remained “the star that guided us.” The realistic objective became one of holding out as long as possible, then giving as little as possible, and using the breathing spell that normally followed a period of torture to recover strength for the next bout. If everyone abided by this policy, the leaders believed, the Vietnamese would consume more and more time completing their interrogations and wresting confessions, thus frustrating the enemy’s propaganda agenda, compelling him to divert valuable personnel and other resources from the larger war effort, and gaining for the Americans precious days and weeks while the expanding PW population further taxed the enemy’s logistics and stretched out the extortion program. The latter especially would be no small accomplishment as the captors’ alleged “humane and lenient treatment” degenerated ever more savagely into cruel and unusual punishment.

Will I fail? Am I capable of “bouncing back?” What can I lean upon for hope? “If the specific character of fortitude consists in suffering injuries in the battle for the realization of the good,” Josef Pieper suggests, continuing, “then the brave man must first know what the good is, and he must be brave for the sake of the good.” This isn’t simply a matter of faith, although that is unspeakably important, imminence also matters within this introspection.

No matter the lot of duty, when going to war one must trust and know that their countrymen and leaders will always seek them out, no matter the cost, no matter the circumstances. No matter how our bodies, and perhaps subsequently, our faculties will fail — no matter the cost—our country, our brothers-and-sisters-in-arms, and our loved ones will not forsake and forget us.

There is comfort here, despite the unknowable extent of our physical and mental bravery: the measure of devotion, bounce back, return with honor.

Jeremiah Denton’s experience taught us that never being forsaken we are more capable of rejecting despair and retain hope in whatever may come.

Godspeed Rear Admiral Denton.