Gerald Coffee

Brilliant retelling by California native Gerald Coffee of his seven year travail at the hands of the North Vietnamese after his reconnaissance plane was downed by a Surface to Air missile. Coffee, a Catholic, is adamant about preserving the memory of co-airman Robert Hanson who had perished some time during captivity but whose fate was not made known by the Vietnamese until after Coffee's release. All of the events of POW life are captured here in beautiful prose. The most written about events are included: the Hanoi March to the stadium, news of the lunar landings, Arc Light missions over Hanoi, the "quiz" sessions, the Heatbreak Hotel, the Son Tay raid, the betrayal by some of the POWs for special favors. Left out was any mention of the "Cuban" sadist who led some interrogation sessions. The most interesting was the explanation of the tap code which was covered many times before in other memoirs but never actually explained. The first twenty-one chapters cover Coffee's attempts at survival on six months increments. The last chapter is a summary of his life after being released, hence, Beyond Survival as a title. Each chapter has a brief heading of inspirational words to focus the reader on personal application of the events described in the ensuing pages. This book is meant for the reader to discover spiritual depths within themselves after all other looser self-identities have been removed either willingly or unwillingly. I found the book to be an amazing testament to the careful expression of feeling on what it means to be a human in complex circumstances.… (més)