NORRINGTON, GILES RODERICK

Name: Giles Roderick Norrington
Rank/Branch: O3/United States Navy, pilot
Unit: RVAH 1
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record: Springfield OH
Date of Loss: 05 May 1968
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 181800 N 1053800 E
Status (in 1973): Returnee
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: RA5C
Missions: 22
Other Personnel in Incident: Richard Tangeman, Returnee

Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK April 1997 from one or more of the
following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with
POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.

REMARKS: 730314 RELEASED BY DRV

SOURCE: WE CAME HOME copyright 1977
Captain and Mrs. Frederic A Wyatt (USNR Ret), Barbara Powers Wyatt, Editor
P.O.W. Publications, 10250 Moorpark St., Toluca Lake, CA 91602
Text is reproduced as found in the original publication (including date and
spelling errors).

GILES R. NORRINGTON
Lieutenant Commander- United States Navy
Shot Down: May 5, 1968
Released: March 14, 1973

An open letter to my fellow Americans:

For almost five years I dreamed of looking at a horizon. I prayed for the day
when we would all feel a fresh wind on our faces and feel the indescribable
sensation of freedom. I have read a great deal of material written by people
who asked, "Why Vietnam?" I would ask in return, "Why Lexington? Why Concord?
Why Okinawa?" Since its birth as a nation our United States has realized its
international responsibility, and we have demonstrated time and time again
that we are a nation of people who care. We care about the filth in which
millions live; we care about the lack of medical care from which so many
suffer; we care about children whose life expectancy is measured in months
rather than years; and we care about spiritual and political freedom ...
that's why Vietnam! All of us who have served in this conflict are grateful
for having had the chance to do so. And those of us who were prisoners of war
are the fortunate ones. We came home. It remains for us to continue our work.
We must have an accurate accounting of our missing brothers-in-arms. We must
not forget Vietnam, or Laos, or Cambodia, or anywhere men fight for the right
to govern themselves in Freedom.

My personal experiences in Vietnam are typical. I gained strength through my
God and my fellow prisoners of war. They are giants among men, and I am
privileged to have served with them. I have seen that beautiful horizon and
now look forward to a full, happy life as a citizen of a free and responsible
nation.

God Bless America . . . and preserve us as a Nation.

December 1996
Giles Norrington retired from the United States Navy as a Captain. He and
his wife Eileen reside in Virginia.

------------------------------------
Memories of Vietnam
Club Honors Ex-POW on Anniversary of His Release
By Lan Nguyen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27 1997; Page V01
The Washington Post

Navy Lt. Giles Norrington was making his 22nd reconnaissance flight into
North Vietnamese territory when communist rebels shot off the right wing of
his RA-5C Vigilante. The plane erupted into a fireball. As Norrington and
his navigator, Richard Tangeman, tried to escape, Norrington thought, "It's
taking a long time to die."

Forty-five minutes later, after dodging bullets on the parachute down,
nursing two severely burned hands and -- under the cover of a bushy gully --
communicating with U.S. pilots in a desperate bid to arrange his rescue,
Norrington was captured by armed communist peasants. The 33-year-old pilot
from Ohio would spend the next four years, 10 months and nine days in
barren, dank cells with little more than two blankets and a tin cup to hold
water.

Norrington, now 61 and living in Arlandria, was one of more than 500
American prisoners of the Vietnam War. Last week, the Baileys Crossroads
Rotary Club honored him with a surprise "welcome home" party to mark the
24th anniversary of his March 14, 1973, release. Norrington has been a
member of the nonprofit service group for more than seven years.

The Baileys Crossroads club, which also was celebrating its 20th
anniversary, reunited Norrington with his navigator and with Norman
McDaniel, a fellow POW who lives in Fort Washington. During the ceremony,
Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.) praised the POWS and spoke about current
efforts to determine how many POWs were captured during the war.

"These guys paid a very heavy price," said John Hotzclaw, the Rotary Club's
president-elect. "When they came back . . . they were never given any kind
of public recognition like this. It's important that generations today learn
what happened and never forget. It seems like in every generation, we make
the same mistakes."

Norrington said he has been able to put the years of torment behind him. Yet
he remembers vivid details, from the iron shackle that chained his feet to
the facial expressions of a particularly brutal camp official who bound and
beat U.S. soldiers for military information.

"One of the things that has helped me to heal a lot is that I've been
willing to talk about it," said Norrington, who has given speeches to
students and community groups about his experience. "I'd like very much to
go back. I think it'd be interesting to go back."

Communist officials moved Norrington to five camps during his captivity,
including the so-called Hanoi Hilton, where John McCain, now a Republican
senator from Arizona, was among his fellow prisoners. POWs dubbed the place
Camp Unity, because it was the only place where U.S. soldiers and officers
were allowed to stay in large cellblocks and communicate freely. Using the
concrete floor as a chalkboard and pieces of bricks to write with, they
bided their time teaching one another foreign languages, math, even sailing,
Norrington recalled.

The POWs were given two sets of uniforms: a roughly sewn pair of shorts and
a short-sleeved shirt for summer and a long-sleeved shirt and pants for
winter. Their most prized possessions were their toothbrushes, toothpaste
and tin cups to hold water. They created a sign language to communicate and
formed secret committees to organize escapes, though none tried after a
failed attempt by two soldiers, one of whom was pummeled to death after
being recaptured.

Meals consisted mostly of what loosely could be called soup: boiled water
with pumpkin, cabbage or what the POWs dubbed "sewer greens," a foul-tasting
vegetable.

Norrington said he went through a range of emotions during his captivity.
The dominant one was guilt "about being shot down . . . and leaving my wife
and children," he said. "I felt very alone, especially during the early
period of time. Then it was a matter of realizing if I was going to survive
emotionally, I would have to quit beating myself up."

He spent the rest of his career with the Navy, retiring in 1988 as a captain
and policy director stationed at the Navy Annex off Columbia Pike. That
year, he married his second wife, Eileen O'Hickey, the Navy's first female
chaplain. Now he volunteers with the Salvation Army and is active with the
Rotary Club.

Initially, Norrington opposed the U.S. policy of normalization with Vietnam,
but he accepts it now.

"It took me a long time to get to that point," he said. "It takes time to
heal the wounds.

"We are the largest superpower on the planet. If we cannot forgive an old
enemy, there's something wrong with our system."

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