Retired Major General John Borling has a long list of accomplishments. The Air Force Academy graduate flew dozens of missions in the Vietnam War. He later had stints in the White House, the Pentagon and with NATO, where he was the senior American military officer in Scandinavia. Awarded numerous medals, stars and purple hearts for his service, he returned to his native Chicago where he put his energy into civic organizations, including leading the United Way of Chicago.
But perhaps the defining part of Borling’s story is what happened to him during the Vietnam War – Borling spent six and a half years as a POW. One way he endured the torture and mental strain was to write poetry in his mind.
Borling offered his story and perspective Tuesday, the eve of Veterans Day, in remarks to the Kiwanis Club of Birmingham.
Surviving the Hanoi Hilton
In 1966, Borling was shot down over North Vietnam and seriously injured. He attempted to hijack a supply truck and escape. Unbeknownst to him, that truck was carrying North Vietnamese soldiers.
“I still think about that management decision,” Borling quipped.
After being captured, Borling was taken to the prison nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton.
“We were in a room, maybe 6-by-7 for a period of three-and-a-half years in this one case, with no windows, no ventilation,” Borling told NPR in 2013. “You've got nothing, you don't get outside, maybe see the sun 20 seconds a day if you're lucky.”
Borling had a love of literature and poetry. He leaned into that to keep his mind active by composing and memorizing poems.
“The essence of the human condition is the ability to create and through creation you can create new, maybe imaginary worlds or efforts,” Borling said. “But you're doing something that keeps you sane, gives you self-worth, makes you competitive and those are all things that I needed anyway.”
He was released in 1973, but those poems lay dormant for 40 years. At the urging of fellow POW, U.S. Senator John McCain, Borling published them in a book called Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton. The title references the coded tapping the captives used to communicate with each other.
Pursuit of Purpose
The Air Force vet, who was not beyond making jokes at other military branches' expense, peppered his speech with reflections, observations and additional stories. He described a time in 1970 when he was left alone in an office and despite being restrained by ropes and leg irons, he was able to reach a desk in the room. Inside the desk he found letters written to American POWs.
He opened and read what letters he could before his captors returned. Borling said they hit him and ripped the letters from his hands. He said the last envelope they grabbed from him had a stamp depicting an American astronaut on the moon. That’s how Borling learned of the moon landing a year earlier.
Borling took that news back to the prison and tapped out a message to his fellow POWs – “We own the moon.”
“That carried us for years,” Borling said.
During his time at the White House, Borling met Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt. Borling recounted the story of the stamp to him. Schmitt gave Borling a framed picture of himself on the moon next to an American flag with the Earth in the background rising against the blackness of space. Below the picture Schmitt wrote, “I am glad that we could help.”
“That’s the deal when you’re an American,” Borling said.
The theme of service flowed through Borling’s remarks. It’s also a key part of his work having founded SOS America (Service over Self), an organization to encourage service and volunteerism.
He referenced the words from the Declaration of Independence of “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” But he suggested that Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the document, should have added a fourth item – the happy pursuit of purpose.
“We need to continually renew,” Borling said. “It's an endless task. It's exhausting. But to be an American means that your shoulder is ever on the wheel of both doing things that make sense for you individually and make sense to us collectively.”
