Veteran recounts time as POW

A man who was a prisoner during the Vietnam War certainly had a captive audience last week as guest speaker at Whitepine Grange 102.

The room had a stillness of quiet for nearly 1.5 hours as Navy veteran Rod Knutson talked about his time as a POW of the North Vietnamese after his F4 Phantom jet was shot out of the sky during a bombing run in October 1965.

"There were all kinds of guns shooting at us, it was utter chaos," said Knutson, who was the radar intercept officer - the back seat position - with pilot Ralph E. Gaither. The two were part of a strike force from the USS Independence aircraft carrier on that October 17 morning.

Nearly 70 people from Heron to Paradise, including several teenagers and military veterans, attended the grange meeting last week to hear the 85-year-old Knutson talk of his harrowing experience as a prisoner of war at Hao Lo, also known as the "Hanoi Hilton," in North Vietnam. "This was the largest crowd we've had since the grange reopened four years ago, and most of the people last night were not even grange members," said Jan Manning, the grange president since 2021.

Knutson was a POW for seven and a half years - 88 months - 2,673 days - where he suffered malnutrition, injury, humiliation, boredom, and torture. He warned the crowd at the very start that what he was about to tell them was not going to be pleasant. He had their attention and kept it. Knutson had been the speaker at two other occasions, the library and the Elk's Club, since becoming a Thompson Falls resident 17 years ago. He was born and raised in Billings and at an early age enlisted in the Marine Corps, but later went to college and became a flight officer in the Navy.

Knutson gave the group background on the carrier, life aboard a carrier, the number in its crew, the number and types of aircraft on board, and the feeling of being launched from the ship. He said a catapulted plane goes from zero to 140 mph in two seconds. "When the aircraft carrier shoots you off the bow, it's a helluva Disney ride," said Knutson.

His peril didn't begin at captivity. In 1965, he was part of fighter squadron VF-84, called the "Jolly Rogers" aboard the 1,070-foot Independence in the Gulf of Tonkin. The then 27-year-old lieutenant junior grade was on his 77th combat mission. His ship was due to switch out with another carrier only days later. His inexperienced pilot had done only six or seven missions at that time. Their target was a triple A gun site (a set up of three anti-aircraft artillery guns) and bridge at a railroad yard near Hanoi. Knutson said they were traveling about 500 knots and below 3,000 feet to avoid the triple A guns from tracking them.

The entire air wing went through a triple A site some 20-25 miles from their main target. One plane was shot down and the pilot was killed. The RIO survived. Another plane was hit, lost an engine and had to return to the ship. Gaither and Knutson continued on to the target, but when they got there the triple A guns were not firing at them, which prompted them to first hit a railroad car loaded with ammunition. As they pulled off, the triple A gun that had been silent started shooting at them.

"Ralph and I started down, the gun was shooting at us. We could see the shells going by the cockpit. We expended all the rest of our rockets on that one run," he said. They got the gun site. However, during their trip back other triple A guns honed in on them. He said they were receiving fire from all sides and it was total chaos. Knutson said they were hit immediately, lost the starboard engine and while radioing in their situation, they were struck on the left side two or three times and the port engine caught fire and they had to eject. One problem for the two aviators was that they were traveling at around 575 knots, which is about 125 knots faster than the recommended speed for safely ejecting, but Knutson said they had no way to slow the aircraft down.

They both safely ejected the aircraft, but people from a nearby village were shooting at him as he parachuted to the ground. "I could see bullet holes appearing in the canopy of my parachute," said Knutson, who hit the ground hard and immediately ran for cover. He didn't know where the pilot was, but later discovered he'd been captured. Knutson hid in a clump of bushes and avoided the first two groups of people who passed him. Two men with old guns and a woman with a spear spotted him, but a soldier suddenly appeared and started shooting at him with a Russian AK-47.

"The guy was acting maniacal. He was just screaming and yelling and frustrated, so I just stood there. He dropped to one knee and brought his rifle up so I jumped back into the hole," said Knutson, who used his 38-caliber revolver to kill the man. Just then he was struck from behind and when he awoke he was tied up and laying on the ground.

It wasn't long before the Vietnamese army had him and the interrogations and torture began. The lieutenant junior grade gave them his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth, but the enemy wanted more and when he refused he was beaten, tied in agonizing and awkward positions, or placed in solitary confinement in spaces where he couldn't even change positions. He was in one such confined space for 13 days.

He also noted that his parents didn't know whether he was dead or alive or that he was a POW for over five years. It was another prisoner, an enlisted sailor that had fallen off a Navy ship and was captured, that had been released and passed on to the authorities that Knutson was a prisoner. During his time as a POW, the 17-year-old seaman memorized in alphabetical order the names of 437 POWs, which he passed on to the U.S. government after he was released.

Interrogations came all hours of the day and night. They wanted to know the name of his ship, squadron, commanding officer, aircraft ordinance, among other questions. He said he was often "totally beaten to a pulp."

"I can't tell you how long this went on. I couldn't keep track of the time, I couldn't keep track of my emotions, I literally came apart. Pretty soon I was screaming and yelling. I didn't want them to see me cry and I know I had tears coming out of my eyes, so I turned my head toward the wall and as I did so, he hit me again and I just saw a stream of blood splatter against the wall," said Knutson, who cried in pain and begged for mercy. At one point, they gave him paper for a confession and told him to write "bad things" about his country. He refused and the torture continued. He doesn't know how many times he was tortured, except it was a lot, and it wasn't always the same way.

Knutson said that he eventually talked, but it wasn't anything they wanted to hear. He gave them vague or bogus answers, such as living in "Farm District #1" in Montana, that his father was a chicken farmer with one chicken, and that his job was feeding peanuts to basketball players. "It became a game with me. Sometimes I would fail because they would catch on and the torture would start all over again, but that was the way I tried to defend myself," he said.

During his second year, he was placed in a cell with Marine Corps Capt. Harlan Chapman. It was Chapman that later introduced his niece, Shelle, to Knutson. The two have been married for 50 years.

On February 12, 1973, Knutson and other POWs from Hanoi were released. They were provided new clean clothes. "All the POWs resented that outfit. We wanted to come home in our striped pajamas looking like prisoners or else give me back my damn flight suit," he said. He was on the first planeload of POWs released. In Hanoi, he and the others were met by a U.S. Air Force officer. Knutson saluted the officer saying, "reporting my honorable return." He said the Air Force officer had tears running down his face.

He said that on board the C-141 airplane, there was no show of emotion or talk from any of the POWs until the plane was airborne. "The instant that those wheels left the runway, that airplane erupted. The guys started screaming and yelling, punching each other on the shoulder, shaking hands, hugging and kissing each other, hollering and yelling, just so overcome with emotion. We had left, we were free," he said.

The senior POW officer was the first one off the plane when it arrived at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. After that, the men left the plane in the order they were shot down. Knutson was the 13th man off the plane. He remained in the military for another 20 years and said he had a wonderful Navy career, including becoming a Navy pilot and accumulating more than 500 carrier landings and 32 years of service before retiring in 1993 with the rank of captain.

"I'm very proud of my performance as a POW. I'm very proud of the rest of the guys that were there. I'm very very proud of being an American," said Knutson. "I'm very proud of our country. I'm very happy to live in this country," he said. "Even though it has faults, it's the best one out there."

When asked how he coped with captivity, he told the crowd that they kept telling each other that they thought the war would be over soon or they would be home by Christmas, which he said they did every year. "The first week is the longest week you'll have in your life, the first month is the longest month you'll ever have in your life, the first year is the longest year you'll ever have in your life. From that point on you learned to live as a POW. It was never easy and you never knew when it was going to end and you never knew whether you would make it through the process, but it was a learning process," said Knutson.

He wanted the people in the crowd to know that he's okay and that he hasn't suffered. He feels he's a better husband and a better father because of that experience. The pilot shot down with him was released the same day, but has since passed away. "I always said that, including my time as a POW, my worst duty station was D.C."

"His presentation was superb and spellbinding," said Manning, who added that she's always looking for interesting speakers for grange presentations. The Whitepine Grange was chartered in 1938, and is one of two remaining granges in Sanders County; the other, the Nyah Grange, is located in Hot Springs. The Whitepine Grange has 90 members, including about eight when the Thompson Falls Grange closed in January. Manning said part of the grange's mission is education and entertainment of its patrons. "I have to say that Rod Knutson's program was the most captivating of any we have produced there in recent years, and I was glad to see the young people there," she said.