For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This June 1973 Classic describes how Baylor alum Maj. Charles G. Boyd returned home from war determined to reclaim the knowledge, faith, and human connection stripped from him in captivity. It’s a powerful firsthand account of endurance, faith, and the will to survive against overwhelming odds.
Maj. Charles G. Boyd has invested his first months back in the United States satisfying a deep craving for knowledge and activity that he developed during seven years as a Prisoner of War in eight camps in North Vietnam.
This zeal for life, self-exercise of mind and body, inter-action with fellow POWs and a faith in God sustained his hope for release amidst captors determined to stifle his humanity. Boyd told Baylor University News Service during a telephone interview from his home in Wichita, Kan.
He left his home in Rockwell City, Iowa, to attend Baylor from 1956 to 1959. Boyd, now 34, entered the Air Force in April, 1959. According to the Department of Air Force in Washington. D.C., he “is the only former returning POW from any branch of the service who attended Baylor University.”
Boyd and the former Millicent Sample were married in 1961, when he was just beginning to realize his boyhood dream of flying. Since returning to the states in February, Boyd has renewed both “vows.” As planned while in prison, he renewed his wedding vows with his wife. He has also expressed the desire to fly again.
Flying an F-105 on his 88th mission over North Vietnam, Boyd was shot down on April 22. 1966. near what was to have been the end of his tour in the country and one week after his 28th birthday.
During his years in seven camps near Hanoi and one on the Chinese border, Boyd spent a great deal of time isolated completely or in a small cell with one or two men, severed from all factual accounts of the homeland whose cause he believed in and still supports. Boyd said he lived with one man for more than a year.
“I got to know him as well as any man has ever got to know another human being,” Boyd said.
When the guards moved him to larger cells with several men, Boyd shared his uncertain future and the desire to preserve his mind and body with more fellow prisoners.
In every cell that Boyd said he knew of, some sort of religious service was observed every Sunday.
Like many returning POWs have reported, Boyd said a faith and trust in religion sustained life in the camps. He said no prisoner acted as an official chaplain around his cells.
“It became apparent to, I would say, most men that they needed some sort of religious outlet,” Boyd said. Because of close surveillance by guards, Boyd said the prisoners were never able to worship on a camp-wide basis.
Apparently because of instruction from North Vietnamese officials, Boyd said the guards showed less opposition to the prisoners’ worship in later years of his imprisonment. “The Vietnamese still tried to discourage us, but the policy was apparently not to categorically forbid it.” he said.
“Most everyone had some sort of private physical program to at least keep a little bit in shape,” Boyd said. “Most had some sort of mental exercise program which was absolutely vital.
“It’s pretty difficult to describe. When you live in a vacuum practically without stimulus, your mind craves this just as your body craves food and water.” The prisoners learned from each other by sharing their knowledge of poetry, languages, math, natural sciences and literature.
Enacting stories based on movies seen and books read in the United States was a favorite pastime for the prisoners. Boyd was very proud of the POW camp “Academy Award” he won in 1971 for his rendition of the novel Water of Life by Henry Martin Robinson.
A few guards seemed sympathetic to the prisoners when they were not being watched by their own supervisors, Boyd said. “If you can strip away all those years of conditioning you’re going to find some human beings,” he said. Especially the guards who worked around the same prisoners for years learned the Americans were human beings and not the monsters they had been taught to believe they were.
“More than that, they learned of our character,” Boyd said, “our resolve and beliefs. They had to respect that.”
Boyd demonstrated that resolve during a news conference shortly after his return at Sheppard Air Force Base at Wichita Falls on Feb. 28. A reporter asked him if he had ever given up hope for release. “Never,” Boyd responded. “I felt that it might take a long time, but I certainly never gave up hope that I would one day return.”
The resolve and stamina of the prisoners were also demonstrated by their reaction to the news related them by the guards. “We got a great deal of news,” Boyd said, “their self-generated news, the most outrageous form of political propaganda.
“We heard about every catastrophe, war demonstration and major race riot that occurred in the United States, all generated toward demoralizing us. The vast majority of us not only maintained our resistance,” Boyd said, “but reinforced our resolve. Their attempts really worked in the negative.”
Mrs. Boyd was reassured of her husband’s safety when she saw a propaganda photo of a North Vietnamese treating her husband’s injured arm soon after his capture. Boyd said his arm never received medical attention after the photo was taken.
Changes in the political climate and progress of the war were evidenced in the fluctuating treatment of the prisoners by the guards, Boyd said. Other clues of progress of the war could be inferred from subtleties of prison life, Boyd said. The prisoners were able to detect that the heavy bombing by the United States had increased in December. Boyd said he believes this action by the United States was the determining factor in ending the war. “They couldn’t stand any more years of that,” he said.
Since his return to Wichita, Kan., Boyd has tried to learn as much as possible about the society from which he was totally isolated for seven years. He has traveled, read and visited with many persons, including high school students. Boyd said he does not think American young people are especially critical of their country any more than his generation at their age. “I think they’re a little better informed,” he said. “They have opinions based on valid ideas.”
Although he has observed many superficial changes in society, Boyd said he thinks most fundamental aspects are about the same as when he left the country. Returning POWs expected the problem of encountering changes and were prepared, he said.
Continuing his quest for knowledge, Boyd plans to enroll in a university to study international relations, specializing in Latin American affairs.
