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ISBN:

0618562109

Format:

Hardcover, 288 pages

Publish Date:

May, 2004

Publisher:

50

Other Format(s):

Paperback

Two Souls Indivisible tells the inspiring story of an amazing, unlikely friendship, formed in one of the most hideous places imaginable – a North Vietnamese POW camp that prisoners nicknamed “the Zoo.” Prisoner-of-war Fred Cherry, an Air Force pilot, was the first black officer captured by the North Vietnamese. Prisoner-of-war Porter Halyburton, a Navy pilot, was a Southern bigot. The North Vietnames threw these two incompatible individuals into the same stinking cell, convinced that their mutual animosity would lead them each to crack. But Cherry and Halyburton overcame their distrust and dislike for one another and and ended up being each other’s salvation. When Halyburton first saw him, Cherry was a wreck. One arm, damaged in his plane crash, hung uselessly at his side. He hadn’t bathed in weeks, and he could barely walk. In his own mind, Cherry was steeling himself for death. Halyburton was also weakening, emotionally battered from the interrogations and isolation that his sheltered life had not prepared him for. He had to learn how to endure, or he would become one of the incoherent wraiths who haunted the Zoo. Halyburton and Cherry became legendary among fellow POWs for the singular friendship that enabled them to overcome prodigious suffering and unspeakable torture. Author James Hirsch weaves through this account a surprising, sometimes shocking view of the toll these men’s captivity took on their loved ones. Often inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking, Two Souls Indivisible shows how trust and hope can cheat death, and how good people can achieve greatness in hellish circumstances.

This story is as inspiring as it gets, a shining example of how fellow-nationhood surpasses prejudice, and how, in certain horrible circumstances, basic acts of human decency acquire a sense of nobility. It is leadership by example, leadership by offering inspiration.