Want to know the price of freedom?
Ask the family member of a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine killed in war.
They know all too well.
Or ask retired Navy Cmdr. Robert Flynn, 70, a Pensacola resident.
Flynn spent 5½ years in a Chinese prison after his A-6 Intruder was shot down over North Vietnam on Aug. 21, 1967. He was released on March 15, 1973.
Of the 2,032 days he spent in captivity, 2,030 were spent in solitary confinement — longer than any U.S. military service member in history, according to the POW Network.
"The most terrible part was the solitude, the solitude, the solitude," Flynn said softly from his home in the Landfall subdivision off Gulf Beach Highway. "What do you do with all that time? All those hours? All those days and years?"
Flynn, who celebrated his 45th year of marriage to wife Kathy last month, had two young children at home when he was captured in 1967. Daughter Beth was just 3, and son Robert wasn't quite 1 year old.
What did he do with all those days and years of uncertainty and loneliness?
"I'd think of my family," he said. "I'd plan parties, birthdays, anniversaries for everyone. And I would imagine that Kathy bought some land in Alaska and gold was discovered there. And I had the biggest gold mine going. I had all kinds of people working for me — people I knew. And I ran a big imaginary corporation. That's what I did."
'An unnatural thing'
Flynn's hunting buddy and fellow POW, retired Air Force Col. George "Bud" Day, is one of the only humans on the earth who can understand, at least partially, what Flynn went through.
Day, now 83, was captured by North Vietnamese troops six days after Flynn and released one day earlier. But Day at least had some support from other U.S. troops, including Sen. John McCain with whom he once shared a cell in Hanoi.
"Solitary is a really terrible thing," said Day, a Shalimar attorney. "I spent a lot of time in solitary, and frankly I didn't like it. It's such an unnatural thing. You go into solitary, and the mind and the memories are all you have got. So you're drawing from a lot of resources to keep all your marbles in the bag."
Pilot killed
Flynn was a navigator/bombardier aboard an A-6 Intruder in the summer of 1967 when he and the pilot, Cmdr. Jimmy L. Buckley, were shot down during a bombing mission, targeting a Hanoi railroad yard.
Both men ejected, descending about 40 yards apart.
"I hit the ground, and about a second and a half later he hit the ground," Flynn said. "When I got untangled from my shoot and over to him, it was obvious that he was dead."
Flynn tried to perform CPR on Buckley.
"I couldn't do too much, my back was broken," he said. "I couldn't feel his pulse and knew was dead."
Flynn dove under a pile of brush and covered himself with dirt but soon was captured by North Vietnamese militia members. He was only 29.
"It was a bad situation, but the trick was not to make it worse," he said. "Nothing would have been gained by staying with the pilot who was dead. Myself, I wasn't worried about being dead. I was worried about being captured."
A bad picture
Flynn was driven to a military barracks. He knew immediately something was wrong with the picture — literally.
"I looked at the wall, and there was a picture of Mao Tse-Tung instead of Ho Chi Minh. I thought, 'Man, this has been a bad day, but it can't be this bad,' " Flynn recalled. "Because they were Chinese, not Vietnamese."
Flynn said U.S. intelligence had discovered Chinese troops working in North Vietnam so as to free up North Vietnamese fighters for the war with the United States.
The barracks were in North Vietnam, but soon, Chinese troops loaded Flynn onto a stretcher and then onto a truck for a journey north into China.
Eventually, Flynn arrived in Peking, now Beijing.
"I didn't think I was going to die or be murdered," he said. "I figured I'd be worth more as a hostage than a dead body."
Meanwhile, wife Kathy was back in Oak Harbor, Wash., trying to care for the children and all the time worrying about her husband.
She saw her husband on a television news program shortly after he was captured.
"I watched my husband being led through the street being beat on," she said. "It was a real dose of reality."
Flynn said he never gave into the brutal treatment or torture during his years in captivity. He held his own the best he could.
"They told me that I was one of the most reactionary prisoners in their history," he said. "And yes, that makes me proud. I was the worst case they ever had. But I was smart enough to know I didn't do it myself. I asked God to help."
Three times, Flynn endured extended handcuff torture — periods of seven, 30 and 60 days with his hands and arms twisted behind his back.
"You can't wash, and how do you eat?" he asked. "How do you wipe your butt when they give you ex-lax the day before? See, they didn't miss a trick."
Letters from home
After a year, Flynn was allowed to receive mail. He said letters — and cigarettes — from home kept him hopeful.
"The most emotional moments in my life were when I started getting the letters from Kathy," he said.
Flynn would write back, using pieces of cigarette packages as stationary, hoping that the letters would soon be replaced by a true reunion.
He figured he would spend about three years in prison.
"When three years came and went, it was a real letdown" he said. "A real depressing situation."
The brutality continued.
"They'd mess with you mentally," Flynn said. "The mental deal was you cannot be released until you are sentenced. You cannot be sentenced until you have been tried. You can't be tried unless you confess, so unless you confess your crimes, you can't get out of here. Well, I didn't have anything to confess. But it was all threats and they were always open-ended. You never had a chance to grasp the end of a proposition."
Handcuff torture
Once, while in extended 'cuff torture, Flynn was brought before 12 Chinese guards and "read the riot act."
They charged him with various crimes against the Vietnamese and Chinese people. Radio Peking was on in the background, and the guards told him that he didn't even listen to Radio Peking properly.
Just then, a song titled "The Internationale" — also called "The Communist International" — came on the radio, a favorite of Chinese communists.
Flynn started singing along. But his thrilled captors didn't realize at first that their defiant captor had written his own lyrics.
"They were happy. They said, 'You're singing our song,' " Flynn said. "Then they realized Mao Tse-Tung rhymes with dung. Twelve guys piled on me. But when 12 guys pile on you, you don't get hurt. How can they hurt you? It's just a monkey pile."
A frightened family
Back in the states, Flynn's wife and children led their everyday lives the best they could, all the while keeping hope he would someday return.
"I was so young when he was captured and didn't really have an understanding of war or being a prisoner," said his daughter, Beth Cruz, 44, who now lives in Arizona. "My mother told me all the facts, but I couldn't comprehend it. I just wanted my Daddy."
Flynn remained defiant in China, counting on his faith to guide him through.
Raised a Catholic, he repeatedly prayed to Our Lady of the Snows and recited the Serenity Prayer and the 46th Psalm.
"I figured out what I had to do to do my job," he said. "I had to remember God, duty, honor, country, family and self. Without God, there's nothing, OK? Without God, I couldn't do my duty. And if I couldn't do my duty, there was no honor. And if there was no honor, I couldn't face my country. And if I couldn't face my country, then I'm no good to my family or myself. So I worried about God and the rest fell into place."
Glimmers of hope
As the U.S. presence in Vietnam wound down in 1973, Flynn saw glimmers of hope.
"About four months before I was released, they came in and told me I needed to get shots," Flynn said. "I asked why I needed shots, and they said for a passport. I thought I might be going someplace."
Two months later, the guards told Flynn he needed to be photographed for a passport. They also told him that he would be attending a "formal releasing ceremony."
"That sounded like a good deal to me," he said. "Any releasing ceremony was a good deal."
But it wasn't for Flynn. His Chinese captors took him into a room filled with cameras.
Someone began reading charges against "the culprit Flynn" charging him with crimes against China and the "people of the world."
"They said to sign it," Flynn said. "I did an about-face and started out of there. I don't know whether it was guts or lack of brains because I was thinking I had been offered a free ride, but I screwed it up. But it wasn't for me to sign. I hadn't committed any crimes."
His captors took him back to his cell. Flynn was crushed.
But six hours later, guards told him to get ready to leave in the morning.
Flynn and another prisoner were taken to Hong Kong by his Chinese captors. Both men were released into U.S. custody on March 15, 1973.
He was transported to the Philippines for three days, then to a hospital in San Francisco, where his wife and children were waiting.
"It was tremendously exciting and fulfilling," he said. "Oh yeah, lots of tears and hugs. I rolled around the floor with the kids. Beth was so excited. Rob was a bit hold-backish, but not much. We played and it was almost too good to be true."
Finally home
Flynn would spend the next years integrating himself back into his family's life.
"I was just very proud of Kathy and the job she had done," he said. "I was trained to do what I had to do; she wasn't. But she still had to handle a tremendous load. And she did a wonderful job."
Flynn was still a Naval officer, and in 1977, he was assigned to Pensacola Naval Air Station, where he had attended flight school years earlier.
He finally retired from the Navy in 1985.
Today, Flynn still suffers from some of the physical injuries he suffered during his shoot-down and captivity. He has leg problems, skin problems, arthritis.
But he said he regrets nothing — other than getting captured in the first place.
"I wouldn't want to do it again," he said. "But it was part of the experience of my life. Life is sort of an adventure. Sometimes, the adventure gets out of hand. But they're adventures."