He couldn’t recall how he had gotten there — all Douglas Hegdahl could remember was leaving behind his glasses in his bunk and going up to the top deck of the cruiser Canberra to watch the ship firing its guns off the Gulf of Tonkin.
“I can’t tell you how I fell from my ship,” Hegdahl said after his release in 1969. “All I know is, I walked up on the deck. It was dark and they were firing, and the next thing I recall I was in the water.”
Picked up by a North Vietnamese fishing boat after treading water for hours, and handed over to the Viet Cong before being brought to Hỏa Lò Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.
It was there that the 20-year-old sailor from Clark, South Dakota, began one of the greatest non-combatant cons of the war.
Deemed a low-value prisoner due to his low rank, Hegdahl began to exploit this perception.
“I had probably the most embarrassing capture in the entire Vietnam War,” Hegdahl said in a 1997 interview with author and veteran Marc Leepson. “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.”
Pretending to be illiterate and suffering from a cognitive disability, Hegdahl’s ruse eventually led to his captors giving the American prisoner of war more leeway within the harsh confines of the prison, which often included regular use of severe torture and harsh interrogation.
Unlike many prisoners who were not allowed to interact with one another, Hegdahl was given more freedom to interact with POWs — which he used to his advantage.
After his initial capture in 1967, Hegdahl quietly began to collect vital information, covertly communicating with fellow POWs, memorizing the names, capture dates and personal details of approximately 256 other American prisoners, according to the Veterans Breakfast Club.
He developed mnemonic devices, including the nursery rhyme “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” and repeated the information constantly to ensure he would not forget it. He also managed to glean the exact location of the infamous camp.
Dubbed “The Incredibly Stupid One” by North Vietnamese guards, Hegdahl frequently frustrated their attempts to use him for propaganda purposes. Feigning compliance, Hegdahl would read out statements criticizing the U.S., but they were so laced with errors and the performance so flat that they were rendered unusable by his captors.
“I was so mad about their propaganda that it became a personal war to think how I could mess it up,” Hegdahl recalled in a 1972 interview.
Despite most of the American officers having a “No Go Home Early” pact, Hegdahl was released in 1969 with the support of imprisoned senior officers in order to bring back valuable intelligence to the U.S. government.
His meticulous recall of names provided a comprehensive list of POWs held in Vietnam, including the reclassification of 63 service members previously listed as missing in action to POW.
After his release from the Army, Hegdahl moved to San Diego, but never stopped serving his country. He began working as an instructor in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, school in San Diego Bay. One of his students, William J. Dougherty, a CIA officer, was among the 52 hostages held in the U.S. Embassy during the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis. Dougherty credits Hegdahl’s lectures with helping him keep his “sanity, dignity and secrets intact.”
According to Leepson, Hegdahl’s quick thinking and coolness under immense strain should be recognized.
“I think it was one of the most heroic acts not in combat during the Vietnam War,” Leepson told The Independent. “And I think that’s something that people should know.”
Claire Barrett is the Strategic Operations Editor for Sightline Media and a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
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