LYNN – The American Heritage Museum in Hudson is hosting Lynn native, Air Force veteran and award-winning author George Hayward for a discussion of his book “The Party Dolls: The True, Tragic Story of Two Americans’ Attempted Escape from a 1969 Hanoi POW Camp” on Saturday.
“The Party Dolls” is the first book to detail a failed 1969 prisoner escape, code-named “the party,” from the perspectives of the men involved. U.S. Air Force captains John Dramesi and Ed Atterberry escaped from a brutal North Vietnamese prison after a year of meticulous planning with their fellow prisoners. They were recaptured the next day and every prisoner in the camp was tortured horribly. Atterberry died from the torture.
“There was very little out there about it,” Hayward said. “When I talk about the book, I always start out saying, ‘On May 10, 1969, two American POWs named John Dramesi and Ed Atterberry escaped from a Hanoi prison after a year of careful planning. They were recaptured the next day. Atterberry died in torture, and if you look up the story in history books, what I just told you was about everything you would ever find out – until I wrote this book.’”
Hayward continued, “I was the first person to go back and find all the POWs involved who were still alive and interview them and piece together the entire escape, the run up to it, how it happened and then the aftermath (of) what happened, too. Before that, it was pretty much an untold story.”
He said this is a “very controversial” story that explores the murky, gray area in between black and white thinking. Hayward explained that American POWs are expected to uphold a code of conduct of six articles, but this situation caused confusion on whether to prioritize Article 3 or Article 4.
“Article 3 says, ‘I will make every effort to escape and resist my captors, and I will aid my fellow prisoners in doing the same.’ Article 4, in part, says, ‘I will take no action that will bring harm to my fellow prisoners.’ So when you’ve got nine guys in a cell in Hanoi, and one guy is saying, ‘We’re obligated to escape. I’m going to escape. You are obligated to help me,’ and the other eight guys are saying, ‘If you try to escape, every single one of us is going to be tortured horribly,’ who’s right? That’s the conflict of the story,” Hayward said.
He later mentioned that this situation caused some wording changes to the code of conduct to allow for more leniency in Article 3.
Hayward wrote the book from interviews with every surviving American involved, chronicling the events leading up to, during and after the escape. One of those POWs was retired Air Force Lt. Col. Lauren Lengyel, who is from Lynnfield and died in 2022.
Hayward said it’s “extremely meaningful to me” to be able to tell this previously untold story because “people tend to see the world in black and white, and this story illustrates that quite often there’s a lot of gray. Nothing is clear cut. Nothing is concrete. The story is incredibly heroic.”
“I don’t want their experiences to be forgotten because I think there’s a lot that people can learn from it. In fact, I wrote ‘The Party Dolls’ during COVID, and I point out: People were concerned about being isolated or locked in their own home. Imagine these guys. These guys lived exactly that,” Hayward said. “There’s not a lot in life that is black and white and clear cut, and this was a prime example.
“You read Article 3 of the code of conduct, (and) John Dramesi is 100% right. He was obligated to escape, and they all should have been helping him, and they were in the wrong militarily for not doing so. (But) you read Article 4, and he almost got his fellow prisoners killed.”
The American Heritage Museum event runs from 1-2:30 p.m. Saturday at the museum, 568 Main Street in Hudson. For ticket information, visit americanheritagemuseum.org.
“It’s just a fascinating story, and I think it deserves to be told,” Hayward said. “I feel very honored to be the person who has told the story.”
