This Medal of Honor Recipient Was Executed for Singing “God Bless America”

When the Americans returned to South East Asia in the 1960s, their soldiers would suffer the same treatment again. The Vietnamese prisoner of war camps were notorious for their brutality. Torture, beatings, starvation and maltreatment were the norm, with future Presidential candidate John McCain, who spent four years in captivity later stating: “I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine,” after he had agreed to go on television to make anti-American statements. The POWs mantra, according to veterans, was: “Take physical torture until you are right at the edge of losing your ability to be rational. At that point, lie, do, or say whatever you must do to survive. But you first must take physical torture.”

The most notorious prison in North Vietnam was the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where McCain was held. It was situated in the city centre of the capital of North Vietnam, Hanoi, and was renowned for its harshness and brutality. The food was dreadful, it was riddled with disease and the temperatures were stifling. Captured GIs ironically named it after the famous Hilton hotel chain and even went as far as dubbing the various sections of the prison after hotels on the Las Vegas Strip – many of the airmen who found themselves in there having training at Nellis Air Force base, close to Sin City.

Prisoners could expect to be torture via methods such as cladding in irons to restrict movement, beatings, extended time without human contact, sleep deprivation and rope-binding, where they were suspended for extended periods of time with their arms behind their backs so as to induce shoulder dislocations. A large proportion of those who captured as prisoners of war in Vietnam had already been injured, especially Air Force personnel who had crash-landed behind enemy lines, and the guards and torturers were always willing to take advantage of existing medical issues to gain the information that they wanted to obtain from captured Americans.

One man who took more than his fair share was Humbert “Rocky” Versace. In fact, he took so much that the Vietcong killed him for refusing to ever give up. Versace was born in Hawaii in 1937, the son of an Army Captain, and followed his father into the forces as soon as he was able. He volunteered for Vietnam and first arrived in 1962. He stayed for a year and then extended his tour of duty by a further six months. Just a fortnight before his stay in Vietnam was due to end, he was ambushed along with South Vietnamese soldiers in the Mekong Delta and found himself spirited away to a jungle prison camp with two other Americans.

Versace, a military child and a career soldier, knew his rights and knew what he needed to do if captured. He attempted to escape on four separate occasions and, when interrogated, refused to say a word to the Vietcong. He hurled insults at them and constantly cited the Geneva Conventions, telling his captors that he had enshrined rights as a Prisoner of War. Vietnam, of course, never signed up to the Geneva Convention and was not bound by it.

They tortured Versace, but he never gave in, and was eventually taken away from the other two Americans who had been captured with him. The last they heard of Humbert Versace was him singing “America the Beautiful” at the top of his voice, in defiance of his captors. In September 1965, almost two years after he had first been taken prisoner, the Vietcong radio station announced that he had been executed.