Navy Capt. Richard Stratton, who survived six brutal years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, was quietly laid to rest last month in his hometown of Quincy, MA. He was 93.
He was an authentic American hero right out of central casting. Born in 1931 to poor, working-class Boston Irish parents, he grew up during World War II in a neighborhood under the flight pattern of Quincy’s Squantum Naval Air Station.
As a teenager, his deep Catholic faith moved him to become a priest. But the priesthood turned out not to be his calling. So, after six years, he left the seminary, worked his way through Georgetown University, and headed off to Navy flight school.
As recounted in the late journalist Scott Blakey’s riveting and aptly titled book, Prisoner at War — the Survival of Commander Richard A. Stratton (1978), he became a self-described hot jet ace and an opinionated, loudmouthed naval aviator.
His most distinguishing feature was his nose. Dubbed “the Beak” by his squadron mates, he quipped, as the Irish would say, he had a good handle to his face. He marveled at how he squeezed his large frame into the cramped A4-E Skyhawk cockpit. He mused what would happen to his limbs in a high-speed ejection.
But that was the least of his concerns. On Jan. 5, 1967, he was shot down on an armed coastal reconnaissance mission. Ejecting a few short miles from the safety of the sea instead turned into immediate capture and 2,251 excruciating days in the capital of Hell.
Called the “mad bomber of Hanoi” by his communist captors, he endured unspeakable torture in their depraved effort to extract a forced confession to “war crimes.” It was immaterial that he never bombed Hanoi. They wanted a confession and set about sadistically to obtain it.
As Blakey recounts, after three agonizingly painful sessions spanning over several days, James Bond died in that ugly torture room. Instead, Stratton — beaten, bloody, limbs contorted and blackened — now a broken man, succumbed to a false confession.
But the humiliation of Richard Stratton was not yet complete. In what became known as the “Stratton incident,” the North Vietnamese prepared to parade him in front of the international press as proof of American bombing atrocities.
Wracked with guilt that he had betrayed his country, he devised a plan to discredit his confession and expose the shocking treatment of American POWs. When hauled in front of the cameras, his taped confession playing in the background, Beak, ordered to bow only once and leave, “boxed the compass” with deep robotic bows in cardinal directions.
The late American photojournalist Lee Lockwood was there on assignment for Life magazine. Shaken by Stratton’s appearance, Lockwood was barely able to take pictures. But with one snap of the shutter, he captured one of the most iconic photographs of the Vietnam War. And Beak — ever the prisoner at war — had turned the table. The photo and chilling article created an international uproar.
“As Hanoi had made Stratton a symbol of its charges of genocide and terror bombing,” Blakey wrote, “it had equally made him a symbol of Vietnamese cruelty, intemperance, and duplicity.”
I first met Beak at the U.S. Naval Academy in the 1980s, a mere ten years after his 1973 repatriation. His favorite libation was Irish Whisky, so we’d occasionally meet at the Officer’s Club where I mostly listened to his tales.
His wrists still bore the scars from endless days locked in manacles. With some discernment, his voice betrayed the invisible wounds of his ordeal. He, at times, seemed bemused but not angry that his captors were not held accountable for the state-sanctioned torture of American POWs.
I would see him again a few years later when he and his wife Alice, then a deputy assistant secretary of the Navy, accepted my invitation to speak at a formal squadron dinner. He spoke of Alice’s struggle to hold the family together and her courageous effort to ensure the plight of American POWs was publicized during his captivity.
But the occupational hazard of naval service intervened. Frequent moves, uprooting children from school, and long deployments tend to put friendships on hold. And so, we drifted apart, out of sight but never out of mind. I would follow at a distance his post-Navy career with deep admiration. He earned a degree in clinical social work and spent years counseling veterans struggling with addiction and trauma.
Beak’s long life lived well was marked by faith in God, devotion to family, love of country, and fidelity to traditions honoring naval service. One of those is relieving the shipboard watch. Steeped in tradition but practical in execution, it symbolizes the passing of responsibility from one sailor to another.
So, it’s fitting, even more so in death, to render a salute to one who has stood the watch: Capt. Stratton, you stand relieved of your earthly duties. Your shipmates have the watch. Well-done Beak, well-done.