How to play dumb and become a hero

April 6, 1977, the USS Canberra was cruising the Gulf of Tonkin and firing at targets on shore. Unbeknownst (always wanted to use that word) to the crew, a young sailor had been blown overboard by the muzzle blast from a 5 inch gun. Douglas Brent Hegdal was from South Dakota, and had never seen an ocean (other than maybe of wheat stalks) in his life till he joined the Navy. Instantly he wound up swimming in it until picked up several hours later by a North Vietnamese fishing boat.

Then he was turned over to the North Vietnamese – and so began his incredible journey as the youngest and lowest-ranking POW at the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where Hegdahl pretended to be stupid to his captors as he secretly collected information, displaying an ingenious aptitude for memorization, observation and subterfuge.

Hegdahl memorized the names of 254 POWs, helping to reclassify 63 service members from MIA to POW – not only bringing solace to dozens of wives and families but also providing the military with key intelligence, such as the exact address of the feared prison itself.

Ironically, he wound up at the Hanoi Hilton, the only enlisted man in a camp full of officers. Where he grew up in Clark, the family hotel was nicknamed the “Hegdahl Hilton”. One suspects that after the war he may have preferred Ramada or Holiday Inn?

He was known as a playful, well-liked practical joker but didn’t apply himself at school, taking more than four years to finish high school and graduating at age 19 and a half. He was also a prime candidate for the draft as America continued its highly controversial war effort in Vietnam; his mother convinced him to join the Navy before he could be conscripted, reasoning that it would be safer than in-country combat.

Well, THAT didn’t work out, did it?

“At first, the North Vietnamese interrogators figured Doug Hegdahl for a spy who concocted a dubious tale of falling off a ship in the Tonkin Gulf,” Leepson (Author Marc Leepson, who has just released a book on Hegdahl – ed.) writes. “But he soon convinced them that he was anything but a CIA spy; that he was, in fact, a lowly enlisted man who had no knowledge about any Navy operational information that could be useful to them; and that he really was blown off the deck of his ship.

“But he also conned the North Vietnamese into believing that he was a bumbling fool by playing it dumb when they interrogated him – so much so that the guards started referring to him as ‘The Incredibly Stupid One.’”

“I had probably the most embarrassing capture in the entire Vietnam War,” Hegdahl said in a 1997 interview Leepson quotes in the book. “I found that my defense posture was just to play dumb. Let’s face it, when you fall off your boat, you have a lot to work with.”

Leepson’s book outlines how, while sweeping the yard, Hegdahl was also sabotaging North Vietnamese vehicles by surreptitiously pouring sand and gravel into gas tanks. On more than one occasion, he was taken away from the prison to support various North Vietnamese propaganda efforts, allowing him to pinpoint and memorize Hanoi Hilton’s exact location.

Hegdahl’s savviness and knack for memorization caught the attention and respect of superior officers in the POW camp – who ordered him to accept early release, which US military prisoners are forbidden from doing according to the established code of conduct.

Hegdahl refused a direct order the first time but eventually relented, and he went home in 1967 with vital information.

“He helped with the intel and, in addition to the names … [Hegdahl’s work] was part of the reason that, in the fall of 1969, the North Vietnamese, and I write about it in the book, changed the treatment of prisoners for the better,” Leepson says.

Unlike some others (koff KOFF Hanoi Jane koff koff.)

After his release, he had an unusual career:

The veteran began working as an instructor in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in San Diego Bay, where he was “especially adept at giving advice on how to survive in a POW camp,” Leepson writes.

Among his students was William J. Dougherty, a CIA officer who was held captive with 51 others at the US Embassy in Tehran during the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979.

“I will never, ever forget Doug Hegdahl,” Dougherty wrote in a 2001 book about his ordeal.  The Independent

He was ordered to accept an early release so that he could provide the names of the  POWs being held by the North Vietnamese.

Although the POWs had agreed that none would accept early release, they agreed that Hegdahl’s release should be an exception. He was ordered to accept an early release so that he could provide the names of POWs being held by the North Vietnamese and reveal the conditions to which the prisoners were being subjected.

After his discharge, Hegdahl was sent to the Paris Peace Talks in 1970 and confronted the North Vietnamese with his first-hand information about the mistreatment of prisoners. Wiki

You would think that he would have some sort of official recognition, but his rack shows a Purple Heart, POW Medal, and Combat Action ribbon.

Category: Navy, POW, Vietnam