The role of the Navy spouse often is legitimately touted as a vital component to a sailor’s success. For most, it is a matter of “keeping the home fires burning” under less-than-ideal conditions, raising children and running the home alone while his or her sailor is far away serving the nation in other ways.
One Navy spouse did those things for nearly eight continuous years while her husband was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. That in itself gives one pause, evoking both sympathy and admiration. But, like her husband—who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his courageous leadership as a POW—Sybil Stockdale went “above and beyond” in her support of her husband and her family, as well as the families of the many others who endured captivity during those very trying times.
On 9 September 1965, while flying from USS Oriskany (CV-34) on a mission over North Vietnam, James B. Stockdale’s A-4 Skyhawk was hit by enemy fire, forcing him to eject. So began his stay as a prisoner of war in the Hoa Lo prison—better known to Americans as the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.”
In the book In Love and War that she and her husband coauthored after the war, Sybil wrote that in the first years of Jim’s captivity, she and the other wives were told by government representatives that it was believed “the men being held were well treated” and “if I kept quiet, the Navy felt the Communists would continue to treat the men in a humane and civilized way.”
But as time went on, it became clear—partly because Sybil herself had worked with government officials to smuggle information in and out of the Hanoi Hilton—that the POWs were not being treated humanely. Solitary confinement, torture, and other violations of the Geneva Conventions were the norm. It was becoming increasingly clear that the “keep quiet” policy was not achieving its declared purpose and was instead abetting the enemy by allowing enemy sympathizers to keep that myth alive.
On one not atypical occasion, Sybil received a letter from a man who had recently gone to North Vietnam to get the “truth” from his Communist hosts (!). In it, he reported, “For what comfort it might be to you, I might say that those of us who have been able to see prisoners in North Vietnam have concluded that their treatment has been good.”
Increasingly frustrated, Sybil decided to take action, and she and many of the other POW wives formed the National League of Families of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia. They began to speak out and eventually were joined by the U.S. government, which openly acknowledged the mistreatment of POWs by the North Vietnamese. Sybil later wrote that “one official in the Defense Department told me they knew they’d better join us or we were going to mop up the floor with them. That was exactly how I wanted them to feel.”
Years after the war ended and the surviving POWs returned home, two framed citations hung on the wall in the Stockdale home. One was for the Medal of Honor awarded to James Bond Stockdale. The other was Sybil’s for the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award and included these words:
Her actions and her indomitable spirit in the face of many adversities contributed immeasurably to the successful safe return of American prisoners, gave hope, support, and solace to their families in a time of need and reflected the finest traditions of the Naval Service and of the United States of America.
Sybil Stockdale is the only wife of an active-duty officer ever to have been so honored.