'Two Souls Indivisible': A transcendent friendship
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When James S. Hirsch writes, "it was a wrecking ball through American society, igniting passionate protests ... tormenting political leaders, and stymieing a great military that could not subdue a peasant nation," his words could easily be a description of the current conflict in Iraq. Instead, he is writing about the Vietnam War, and his analysis deserves close inspection considering the increasing frequency with which Vietnam and Iraq are uttered in the same sentence.
Hirsch's "Two Souls Indivisible: The Friendship That Saved Two POWs in Vietnam" not only helps explain one of the traps of fighting a peasant war, it also puts a human face on a global conflict. Most Vietnam histories have focused on the war's geopolitical background, or platoon-sized combat tales, but Hirsch tells the story of the war through the eyes of two POWs: one African American, one white Southerner. Their Vietnamese captors intentionally jailed these two together, thinking that hatred and racism would destroy both men. Instead, the two forged an indelible bond that certainly saved at least one from death and forever changed both men.
The Southerner is Porter Halyburton, a Navy navigator, shot down in 1965 on a bombing mission. He came from a small North Carolina town where his forefathers had fought for the Confederacy and where segregation was the de facto status quo. The Vietnamese paired him with African-American Fred Cherry, an Air Force major from Virginia who had been seriously injured during his ejection from his plane. Cherry's condition forced Halyburton to assume a role as nursemaid, a stance that both knew would have been unheard of in the South, where the idea of a white caring for a black would have been anathema to many.
"Two Souls Indivisible" is a riveting tale, but it is also a book of sociological importance as it deftly explores the history of integration within the United States Armed Forces. Though the service began integrating after World War II, race remained a huge issue in Vietnam, and Cherry was one of the first black flyers in the Air Force. On the aircraft carrier Halyburton flew from, all the pilots were white, while African Americans were relegated to service positions as cooks and laundry workers. In their prison cell together, both men found an equality and respect from the other that rarely existed in their hometowns back in the states.
The Vietnamese delighted in having Cherry as a prisoner, hoping that by interrogating him they could force him to denounce the U.S. and score a propaganda victory. When they weren't torturing him, they repeatedly reminded him of the injustices his race had undergone, hoping to fuel his hatred. Their efforts were for naught: Cherry was one of the toughest POWs of the 800 captured during the war. Though he was held for years in horrid conditions, nearly starved and given medical care that can only be described as barbarous, he was the only POW who underwent torture and never broke. He came out of the war as a man with numerous physical scars, but his incarceration — and his time with Halyburton — also served as something of a healing of his soul.
Both Halyburton and Cherry were held for more than seven years, and they were jailed together for less than eight months of that span. Relying on extensive interviews with the men, Hirsch recounts every detail of how these months changed both men physically, emotionally and spiritually. The back-story of how incarceration affected each man's family is as fascinating as their friendship and helps make this book a page turner.
Hirsch is a skillful writer and meticulous reporter. His two previous books, one on the boxer Rubin Carter ("Hurricane") and the other on the Tulsa riots ("Riot and Remembrance"), have also focused on race as a subtext that runs through U.S. history. Yet he never lectures the reader, nor does he use this association as a platform to pursue his own political agenda.
Like the most gifted storytellers, Hirsch gets out of the way and lets this remarkable tale tell itself. As a result, "Two Souls Indivisible" joins the small list of essential tomes on the war, race, and to an even larger degree, books that define the true meaning of heroism.
Charles R. Cross is the author of "Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain."
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