THE SNAKE & THE ANGEL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200180006-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 23, 1999
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: September 23, 1966
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

I;I,Mt
Approved For Release 2000/08/26 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000200180006-8
S E P ; 3 1966
The Snakes & the Angel
used for target practice-tile guards 111y Ow" (eSldLlJ alit. r,uauy, i~wnb,cl
could come found an abandoned parachute, tore its
close the
h
d
y
ow
to see
ic
hitting me." Finally, three weeks aft-
c his crash, Dengler was led into a
l tmboo stockade somewhere near the
Of the 87 Americans taken prisoner
since the Viet Nam war began, only
three have managed to escape.* The
problem is not so much one of harsh
prison security, as it was for flyers
downed by the Nazis during World War
11. Rather, it is the harshness of the
country itself. An escapee from a South-
east Asian prison camp must burrow
through rotting rain forests, fight off
swarms of hugs, swim mighty, mud-
thick rivers that cut between the re-
gion's steep mountains, and find a way
to signal the U.S. rescue planes that
orbit high over the jungle. Last week
the most recent escapee told a harrow-
ing tale of his trudge back to freedom.
Ants & Water Buffalo. U.S. Navy Pi-
lot Dieter Dengler, 28, was shot down
over the Flo Chi Minh trail in Laos last
Feb. 1. Stunned by a crash landing that
sheared the wings and tail from his
Skyraider, Dengler stepped bleary-eyed
into a world of muck, vines and violence
that stood in odd contrast to his tidy,
air-conditioned stateroom on the carrier
Ranger. Abandoning his radio, .38-cal.
pistol and dehydrated rations, Dengler
ducked into the hush-hut was jumped
by Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas.
Dengler was marched at the double
along jungle trails and staked out among
mosquitoes at night with arms and legs
wide apart; when he refused to sign a
statement condemning the U.S. in Viet
Nam, his captors tied him upside down
from a tree and let ants swarm over
him. Then they dragged him into uncon-
sciousness behind a water buffalo.
Laotian Roulette. When he came to,
his guards amused themselves with Lao-
tian roulette: "I was tied to a tree and
a" Five have died in captivity, five others were
released, and many of the 303 Americans
listed as "missing in action" are probably in
Communist hands.
ootcuffs" with six other U.S. Byers.
he prisoners were fed a handful of rice
crawled through their hut. "Once,"
engler recalled, "we caught a snake
t iat had swallowed two rats. We cut it
pen and ate the rats. Then we ate the
. nakc."
41ind, but the prisoners decided to wait
oat. On June 29 they made their break.
)engler slipped his footcuffs, grabbed
our rifles and a bag of rice while the
panels into strips to form a crude SOS,
and on July 20, a full 22 days after lie
had entered the jungle, he was picked
up by a "Jolly Green" rescue helicopter.
"That angel was a beautiful sight," said
Dengler last week. "I was so far gone
that I didn't believe it was real until I
smelled the gasoline from the chopper."
Alive & Free. When the news of his
escape broke in the world press, the
Russians thought they smelled some-
thing else: a propaganda coup. Dengler
was horn in the West German town of
Calw, the son of a Luftwaffe pilot who
died in World War II. Although be
emigrated to the U.S. in 1957 and be-
came a citizen three years later, Dengler
was carrying a West German passport
when the Reds picked him up. The pass-
port, lie said, was meant to explain his
slight German accent to his captors.
f
t t
h
ac
o
e
ix of their captors in a flurried fire- Moscow quickly pounced on t
ri
"
h
"
G
W
es
mercena
erman
at
est
ght, then split into pairs in hopes of claim t
were fighting with the U.S. forces in
lt t
diff
o
icu
faking their escape route
ollow. Viet Nam.
Irate was Air Force Lieut. Duane Mar- to a jammed press conference in San
in, 26, of Denver, whose rescue hclicop- Diego, West German Foreign Minister
er had been shot down in September Gerhard Schroder was explaining to a
1 965. Twice the pair slept in aban- skeptical Bundestag that all U.S. immi-
ioned villages; !hen they built a raft grants are subject to the draft if they
nd floated downstream until an' unex- hope to achieve citizenship, and that
lected waterfall smashed their craft. the Russian claim was sheer claptrap.
Whey came upon a third village that ap- Dengler could not have cared less. Said
d with death. A mar, sprang from a but and free."
tnd hit Martin on the leg with a ma-
it Force pilot between shoulders and
lick, beheading him. Dengler fled back
into the bush.
Starving anu stupefied (he lost 59 lbs.
during his imprisonment), lie wandered'
on through the jungle. "I was hungry
and nearly out of my mind," lie said.
"But I was angry. I wanted to come
home, to fly again, but mostly to open
Approved For Release 2000/08/26 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000200180006-8