America’s Greatest Prison Breaks (Part 2)

Let’s be real here for a second.  Of all the places you’d not want to be, Vietnamese POW camp had to be high on that list.  If our understanding of Hollywood representations are correct, it was the second most brutal part of the Vietnam War (next to all the collateral damage and children-murder-sprees.  Thanks for the heads up Oliver Stone!).  Plus, you know…no air conditioning.  And bugs.  Oh, and the being starved to death and living in bamboo cages and yada yada, yeah.  It was no picnic, is basically what we’re saying.

“Wow honey, you were right.  This IS the complete polar opposite of spending time in a Vietnamese POW camp.  Open mouth, insert foot, I guess!  Ha ha!  Whose kids are these?”

But the German-American Navy pilot, Dieter Dengler, had to find that out the hard way.  On February 1^st, 1966, Dengler’s aircraft was shot down in enemy territory.  His squadron mates weren’t even concerned, since Dengler had excelled at escaping from mock-POW situations during his training.  He was eventually captured by Pathet Lao guerrillas, who were loyal to North Vietnam.  He was bound and led through several villages, during which point he escaped because get that shit out of our house, commies.  He failed to signal a passing aircraft, and was captured again, this time being the recipient of some good old fashioned torturing as punishment for trying to escape.

“Stop escaping yourself, stop escaping yourself.”

Eventually, Dengler and his six fellow POWs formulated a plan to escape, slipping out of their hand and foot restraints and grabbing unattended weapons while the guards ate.  As they attacked, Dengler grabbed an M1 rifle and shot at least three of the guards, proving the theoretical existence of Rambo in the process.  Dengler spent weeks in the woods with a fellow POW, Duane Martin, who was later killed by a Vietnamese villager.  He eventually spent 23 days in the jungle before being rescued by American forces.

Having successfully escaped the hells of a Vietnamese POW camp, and of spending almost a month fending for himself in the jungle, Dengler settled down once he returned to the states.  And by “settled down” we mean “got a job as a test pilot and survived four plane crashes.”  We always get those two mixed up.

Billy Hayes Didn’t Particularly Take to Turkish Prisons

In the 1970’s, Turkey started cracking down on American students smuggling drugs out from their country.  Despite the fact that everything in Turkey is made out of drugs, the Turkish government was probably starting to get pissed off that so many damn hippies were coming over to bring drugs back to the states.  It was during this time, in 1970, that Billy Hayes made the mistake that many white Americans afraid to stuff condoms filled with drugs up their rectum make- he got caught trying to smuggle two kilos of hashish into a plane.

Hash.  Stoner’s Gold.  Brewed in tea.

Proving true the adage that we just now invented of, “If you’re not willing to stick some drugs up your butt, prepare to have your feet beaten by Turkish prison guards,” Billy Hayes did not put the drugs up his butt, and instead got his feet beaten by Turkish prison guards.  Originally sentenced to a bit more than 4 years, a few months before his sentence was set to end, Hayes was informed that his sentence had been extended to 30 years instead.

At this point, Hayes decided, “Oh, hell no,” and decided to try to escape.  After being transferred to an island prison, Hayes got in a fight with a prison guard and stole his uniform.  After hiding in a crate for a few days, he went to the harbor and stole a small rowboat, rowed back to Turkey, dyed his hair, before finally swimming across a river to get to Greece.  He was interrogated by Greece for a few weeks before finally being deported to America, where we can only assume he did, just, like so much hash to celebrate.  We’re only speculating that he made a life-sized statue of himself completely out of hash and spent the next month gnawing away at it, but we feel confident enough about that statement that we’re going to put it on Billy Hayes’ Wikipedia page.