November, 1963   Lieutenant Nick Rowe shifted uncomfortably in the 4x6 foot bamboo cage that had been his prison cell now for nearly two months.  In that time he had seen or heard little of his two friends, but he knew that like himself, all of them had suffered unbelievable torture and treatment at the hands of their enemies. After their capture the previous October, the men had been stripped of their boots and socks, blindfolded with their hands bound behind them, and moved under cover of darkness to a small grass hut.  In the early hours of that first long night, they could hear the nearby cries of the badly wounded Captain Versace:  "Bac si!  Bac si!....(doctor)".   A few hours later the Americans had been placed in a sampan and transported to a makeshift camp within the forest, surrounded by knee-deep mud and heavy vegetation.  There, the three men were placed together into a small cage made of mangrove logs nailed and tied together with barbed wire.  Just large enough to contain the three of them, it was a cramped and uncomfortable prison for three men, all of whom were wounded.  Captain Versace's leg left him groaning in great pain.  One of the BAR rounds appeared to have penetrated the bone near the knee.  Versace also suffered from two wounds in his back. Lieutenant Rowe was still hurting from the wounds inflicted by the grenade, and SFC Pitzer had done his best to set his own broken ankle.  He pleaded for the enemy to allow him to treat Captain Versace's leg, but not until the next day was any medical attention allowed.  After a breakfast of rice and canned fish none of the Americans could eat, a medic cleansed Versace's wounds and gave him a shot of penicillin.  Four days later the VC took Rocky away to a makeshift hospital. After about a week, Rowe and Pitzer were taken from their cage, blindfolded, and transported by sampan to what appeared to be a VC training camp deep within the U Minh Forest.  When their blindfolds were removed, they were marched around the camp by the youngest and smallest of the Viet Cong soldiers, while a photographer captured the indignity on film for propaganda purposes.  After several pictures were taken, Captain Versace was brought out of the makeshift hospital, and all three Green Beret prisoners were photographed again, in cleverly arranged settings.  For the most part, it would be the last time either of the men would actually SEE Captain Versace, though they certainly heard from him. As a Captain and the ranking prisoner, Versace had assumed responsibility for the small prison population.  Held in his own cage out of view of Rowe and Pitzer.  Daniel Pitzer later wrote that some of the worst punishment the three men endured as at night.  Guards would come to the cages, tell the prisoners "Under the lenient policy of the National Liberation Front, we're going to wash your mosquito net...and we want your pajamas too." With a wicked smile, the enemy would thus leave their prisoners naked and totally exposed to the elements.  "I've seen mosquitoes so thick on my ankles that I thought I had black socks on," Pitzer later noted in the book To Bear Any Burden by Al Santoli.  During those horrible nights, Captain Versace often sang messages to the other prisoners, interlaced in popular songs of the day.  When not using his voice thus to communicate with his fellow Green Berets, he could often be heard arguing loudly with the enemy.  "Rocky stood toe to toe with them.  He told them to go to hell in Vietnamese, French and English," Pitzer continued in Santoli's book.

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Three weeks after the fateful battle outside Le Coeur, Rocky Versace made his first escape attempt.  Still recovering in the makeshift field hospital, he dragged himself outside and crawled into the dense jungle of the U Minh Forest.  Still suffering from his wounds, even crawling was almost impossible, but crawl he did.  At the slow pace, dragging his body through the jungle, it didn't take the Viet Cong long to recapture him.  Rocky was returned to the camp, placed in leg irons, and received no further treatment for his festering leg wounds.  Placed on a starvation diet of rice and salt, he was beaten and tortured but refused to break.  His Viet Cong jailors told the other American POWs that Versace remained unbroken, even when on at least one occasion, his tormentors had attempted to coerce him into cooperation by twisting his wounded and infected leg. Because they could not break Versace, the Viet Cong labeled him "reactionary" and "unrepentant" (for his war crimes against the Vietnamese people).  They isolated him from the other prisoners, shackling him on his back in irons.  He was confined to a hot isolation box measuring 6 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 3 feet high.  To quiet him, many nights his mouth was gagged.  When the gag was removed, Rocky Versace would again defy his tormentors in all three languages he spoke. The Defense Prisoner and Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) reported:  "CPT Versace demonstrated exceptional leadership by communicating positively to his fellow prisoners.  He lifted morale when he passed messages by singing them into the popular songs of the day.  When he used his Vietnamese language skills to protest improper treatment to the guards, CPT Versace was again put into leg irons and gagged.  Unyielding, he steadfastly continued to berate the guards for their inhuman treatment.  The communist guards simply elected harsher treatment by placing him in an isolation box, to put him out of earshot and to keep him away from the other US POWs for the remainder of his stay in camp.  However CPT Versace continued to leave notes in the latrine for his fellow inmates, and continued to sing even louder." His escape attempt shortly after his capture, despite its futility, also would not deter him.  The unbreakable Rocky Versace is known to have attempted escape at least three times more, each again with futility, and every attempt followed by beatings and torture.  Still, he never gave up, and never quit trying.

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February 19, 1964 As two months stretched into four months, all four American prisoners had wasted away, suffering from a meager diet, disease, and their mistreatment at the hands of the enemy.  Captain Versace seemed to suffer the worst.  Whatever the Viet Cong tried to do to him, he resisted.  Rocky lived the the Code of Conduct, refusing to tell the enemy more than his name, rank, serial number and date of birth.  He lived valiantly and heroically by the West Point motto:  Duty, Honor, Country. Shortly after the capture of the three men, Lieutenant Rowe had concocted a cover story that appeared to be working in his favor.  Realizing that if the Viet Cong recognized him as a Special Forces officer they would do everything in their power, including torture, to make him reveal important information about American operations in Vietnam.  Rowe had told the enemy that he was NOT a soldier, but a civilian engineer under the employ of the U.S. Army and therefore had little military knowledge.  The story had held together, and spared him to this point. Captain Versace's own resistance became the primary focus of the enemy, shifting attention away from the other prisoners and focusing the efforts and anger of the Viet Cong on himself.  It was a cross the young soldier bore with dignity. More recently, the VC had begun a program of indoctrination for their American POWs, a litany of re-education sessions of Vietnamese history, Communist propaganda, and accusations of American aggression against the people of Vietnam.   Rowe and Pitzer adopted what they called a sit and listen attitude to these session, accepting the fact that they were forced to be present for the tirade of enemy propaganda.  They quietly tuned it out, knowing to argue or otherwise respond, would be fruitless and would only result in harsher treatment.  Not so Rocky Versace. Promised better food and better treatment if only he would:      1)  Quit arguing with his indoctrinators, and      2)  Accept their propaganda.... Captain Versace still would not bend.  Time and again during the sessions, from a distance, Rowe and Pitzer could hear Rocky arguing with the re-educators, rebutting their philosophies in their own language. On this night late in February, Lieutenant Rowe could hear the re-educators arguing once again as they tried to break the unbreakable.  It had taken TWO guards just to force the intrepid Green Beret to attend the classes.  Across the darkness of the camp, he could hear the voice of Captain Humbert R. Versace loudly proclaim: "You can make me come to this class, but I am an officer in the United States Army.  You can make me listen, you can force me to sit here, but I don't believe a word of what you are saying." Writing about that night in his subsequent book, Lieutenant Rowe said of that night while he was sitting alone in the darkness listening to the exchange:  "I felt my back straighten and my face grow warm with a feeling of pride."

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April 8, 1964 Nick Rowe stirred uncomfortably in his cramped bamboo cage as he heard the commotion in the darkness, coming from the distant vicinity of Rocky Versace's prison cage.  Nick was weak, suffering from frequent bouts with dysentery, and wasted away to mere skin and bones.  Sergeant Pitzer was in no better shape but, despite their own deplorable condition, neither of the men were as bad off as was Captain Versace.   Rising above the commotion, he could hear the voice of Rocky, still defying his captors.  In full resistance, Rocky filled the darkness of the U Minh Forest with a song that echoed the beliefs of his valiant spirit. The following morning Nick was released from his leg irons and cage long enough to walk to the camp kitchen for his meager ration of rice.  As he walked past the area where Captain Versace had been held, all that remained was a twisted piece of aluminum that had been Rocky's cup and pan, and a pile of bloody rags...what remained of Rocky's gray POW pajamas.  The cage itself was wrecked, and Lieutenant Rowe quickly deduced that his comrade must have sustained a horrible beating during the previous night, and was perhaps dead.  That night one of the guards came to Lieutenant Rowe's cage and told him that the National Liberation Front had been forced to take drastic action against Captain Versace because he continued to be opposed to the Front. Indeed, that was the last night Lieutenant Rowe or any other American would ever hear the voice of Captain Rocky Versace.  Nick Rowe would never forget the valiant warriors last words, sung defiantly into the darkness: God Bless America, Land that I Love. Stand beside her, and guide her, Through the night with the light from Above. From the Mountains, To the Prairies, To the Oceans...White with foam. God Bless America...My Home Sweet Home. God Bless America...My Home Sweet Home.

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