Nation: THE PLIGHT OF THE PRISONERS

WAN, weak and slightly bewildered, three Americans came out of North Viet Nam last week. For a total of 86 months among them, they had served in North Vietnamese prison camps; their release brought to nine the number of U.S. prisoners released by Hanoi since early 1968. The men were turned over to a four-member American peace group that had come to Hanoi to escort them home (see box). Obviously, propaganda was a major element in North Viet Nam's gesture. But whatever Hanoi's motives and however callously it toyed with the hopes harbored by the families of remaining prisoners, the release itself was a welcome occasion.

One of the freed prisoners was Lieut. Robert Francis Frishman, a 29-year-old Navy pilot, who had been shot down over Hanoi on Oct. 24, 1967, and had barely managed to eject from his stricken F-4C Phantom fighter-bomber because of a serious injury to his right arm. A second pilot, Air Force Captain Wesley L. Rumble, 26, had gone down over Quang Binh province on April 28, 1966. The third man, Seaman Douglas B. Hegdahl, 23, had been rescued and captured by North Vietnamese fishermen in the Gulf of Tonkin on April 5, 1967, after he had fallen overboard from the cruiser U.S.S. Canberra while it was shelling the coast.

From the moment they landed in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, the first stop on their way home, the men were besieged by questions. What had it been like? Had they been mistreated or brainwashed? But the prisoners said little more than that their treatment had been "adequate"—obviously out of fear that any statement might spoil the chances of release for their comrades still in North Viet Nam.

Question of Selection. Throughout his long flight home on a commercial jet, Frishman, who became the group's spokesman, wrestled with what to say to the public. To TIME Reporter Peter Babcox, who joined the flight in Zurich, Frishman recalled his first encounter with the press in Laos with a grimace: "I expected everyone to want to know how I felt or whether I was looking forward to going home, but all they wanted to know was how I had been mistreated." Clearly, he and the others were bursting to talk of their ordeal and their impressions—but they would not.

Frishman, the most talkative of the three, did not discuss the justice or injustice of the war in which he had fought. His anguish and confusion abated somewhat when, during a stop at Frankfurt, the men changed into uniform. "I went to Viet Nam a military man and I am coming out a military man," explained Frishman. "The one thing I would definitely say for the record is that I am a Navy man and proud of it. But I am small potatoes at the mouth of the dragon."

Why were these three men picked to be released? Frishman suggested an obvious factor: their injuries. His arm was beyond repair (North Vietnamese surgeons removed his elbow but managed to save his arm). Rumble suffered a debilitating back injury when he was shot down. As for Seaman Hegdahl, said Frishman, he was "Mr. Innocence himself."