The Most Stupid Soldier in US History Has Something to Teach YouAnd it goes beyond the song “Old McDonald Has a Farm”April 6, 1967, Douglas Brent Hegdahl III was assigned to the 0400 watch shift at the USS Canberra, sailing down the coast of North Vietnam. At about 03:30, he left his bunk bed, and as a prudent boy from South Dakota, he safeguarded all his valuables in his locker. After, he went out to the deck to have a breath of sea breeze before starting his job.A common drill at navy training is to check if the big guns of a warship are firing before you go up on the deck. If they are, you stay inside. The USS Canberra was a powerful Boston-class guided-missile cruiser equipped with 28 guns, including six monstrous 8-inch, 55-caliber cannons.If you are at a close distance when a gun of this size fires, in the best-case scenario, you will be temporarily deaf. In the worst, the jolt will throw your body away like a toy doll.The First — and Only — Time Hegdahl Was Really StupidFor some unknown reason — likely Doug slept during that safety drill — the soldier forgot to check if the cannons were firing, and while enjoying the fresh air of the upper deck, the shaking caused by a cannon threw him out of the ship, straight into the waters of the South China sea.He was three miles from the shore, with no life preserver, no identification, no nothing. He also didn’t tell anyone else that he was going upstairs. It took two days for the crew to realize Doug was missing.The Seaman watched his ship depart on the horizon, with nobody noticing his absence. It was 03:45 in the morning. After dawn, he saw a trace of the shore — it could also be just a mirage. Doug decided his best shot was to swim in that direction, and so he did it the whole day.But he never made it to the shore. At least not by his own forces. At 18:00, a Vietnamese fishing boat rescued him and delivered him to the authorities.Doug was a tall man. Nobody believed he was a fighter pilot since he would not fit the narrow cockpits of the A4 Skyhawk airplanes. They also didn’t buy his story about slipping from his ship during a cannon blast — it sounded just too stupid.Doug faced two choices. Either the Vietnamese would think he was a spy, and therefore submit the sailor to endless torture for secrets he never knew, or he could simulate to be stupid enough to make his accident credible.That is when Doug got smart. Here is where your lessons start, dear reader.Be RelatableSoldier Hegdahl needed to look stupidSo he decided that his best play was to play the fool. Not any kind of fool, but the one with which the communists sympathized.The poor peasant.You may think that this was a simple task for a person from South Dakota. Not really. Doug’s father had nearly ten motel units, numberless vehicles, and was a landowner.He didn’t have one thing, however: water buffalo. For the Vietnamese, this was enough to qualify Doug as a humble rural resident. Doug stuck himself to his role of an impoverished peasant, the same kind of person that the communist revolution came to save from oppression.The Vietnamese saw an opportunity in using Doug as a propaganda tool, so they asked him to write an anti-war declaration. Doug accepted, to the surprise of his captivators. It was the first time an American agreed to do such without being tortured first.The prison guards brought the paper, ink, and pen, just for Doug to declare:Quote“But a small thing. I can’t read or write. I’m a poor peasant.”That sounded credible to the guards, since he was acting in the role for a time already. So they hired a Vietnamese tutor to teach him how to write.If your plan is working, double your betsDuring the classes, Doug knew if he showed any progress in learning how to write, interrogators would ask him again to write a statement against his own nation.So he played dumb even harder.The interrogators gave up, saying that he was just too dull to learn how to write.Trying to soften prisoners to use them for war propaganda against the USA, the Vietnamese would call some of them to interview rooms, and have god cop conversations. One of the most common questions was:Quote“What do you want more than anything else in the world?”The answer from most of the desperate prisoners was to go home to my family.One day, the interrogators interviewed Doug and asked this same question. His answer?Quote“I’d like a pillow, Sir.”It was not an absurd appeal. Captives in the Hanoi Hilton, as the prison was called, had no pillows. But the answer astonished the interrogators by its simple-minded nature. They got convinced that Doug was a dull, feeble peasant, and nicknamed him The Incredibly Stupid One.The new nickname was the confirmation that Doug’s plan worked.Keep Your Purpose Alive By Developing Valuable SkillsThe prison guards considered Doug too stupid to represent any harm. They gave him the job of cleaning the prison corridors during their rest.This allowed Doug to wander out of his cell and around the prison almost freely, monitored only by one sluggish guard.Doug used his freedom and, stealthily, performed acts of sabotage.He went to the prison garage, opened the gas caps of the trucks, and threw sand inside. By doing that, he took five trucks out of service.Many fighter pilots never destroyed as many enemy vehicles as Doug, a prisoner playing dumb.Besides sabotaging, he also developed skills he used later to save his colleagues.The Vietnamese put Doug in the same cell as one of the smartest prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton. Probably they thought it was a smart move: if they put two smart prisoners together, they could plan an escape or a mutiny, but not the incredibly stupid one.Doug’s cellmate was Joe Crecca, an Air Force officer who mastered mnemonics, a set of memorization techniques. Joe taught him methods to memorize 256 names of other prisoners, cross-reference them and retrieve personal details, like their pets or place of residence. Later, this helped the American government to identify and rescue soldiers that once were considered dead.Have the Goal in MindAt this point, you may ask how Doug left the prison — or if he ever escaped without revealing that he was just playing the fool.The Vietnamese often released prisoners — under media coverage and flashes so they could use this as part of their PR effort.They decided to release Doug since they thought he was too useless in the prison and too stupid to give the Americans any valuable information about the penitentiary. Haha! How little they knew.At first, Doug refused to leave, in solidarity with the other prisoners. He only accepted to be released after a superior officer told him he would be more useful outside. The information he memorized about the other prisoners would allow the US government to know that they are alive. The superior officer that ordered Doug to accept the release explained:Quote“Doug did not want to go. We finally told Doug that as long as he did not have to commit treason, he was to permit himself to be thrown out of the country. He was the most junior. He had the names. He knew first hand the torture stories behind many of the propaganda pictures and news releases. He knew the locations of many of the prisons. It was a direct order; he had no choice. I know, because I personally relayed that order to him as his immediate senior in the chain of command.”Before the release, the prison guard tried to fatten the captives with potatoes and canned meat, so to say they treated well the captives. But Doug couldn’t take it, while his fellow prisoners starved.For him, this was just not fair. Besides, if he fattened up, they would use him as a propaganda tool against his own will. But he also could just refuse the meals, so he dumped the food in the WC bucket.When he left the jail and returned to the US, he still looked skinny. But no more did he need to play stupid.ConclusionAfter his release, Doug provided to the US Authorities the names of the prisoners of war being held by the North Vietnamese and revealed the conditions of the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison.He shocked the US intelligence officials by telling them the 256 prisoners’ names he memorized using the melody of the song Old McDonald Has a Farm — a mnemonic method at full power.Later, Doug Hegdahl was sent to the Paris Peace Talks in 1970 and confronted the North Vietnamese with his first-hand information about the mistreatment of prisoners.Lessons for life from Doug Hegdahl, “The Incredibly Stupid One”:- Built empathy and be relatable to conquer others’ sympathies;- If your plan is working, double your bets;- Keep your purpose alive by developing valuable skills;- Have the goal in mind.The superior officer who ordered Doug to leave the prison and give their names to the US for rescue efforts later said:Quote“‘The Incredibly Stupid One,’ my personal hero, is the archetype of the innovative, resourceful and courageous American Sailor. These sailors are the products of the neighborhoods, churches, schools and families working together to produce individuals blessed with a sense of humor and the gift of freedom who can overcome any kind of odds. These sailors are tremendously loyal and devoted to their units and their leaders in their own private and personal ways. As long as we have the Doug’s of this world, our country will retain its freedoms.”
“But a small thing. I can’t read or write. I’m a poor peasant.”
“What do you want more than anything else in the world?”
“I’d like a pillow, Sir.”
“Doug did not want to go. We finally told Doug that as long as he did not have to commit treason, he was to permit himself to be thrown out of the country. He was the most junior. He had the names. He knew first hand the torture stories behind many of the propaganda pictures and news releases. He knew the locations of many of the prisons. It was a direct order; he had no choice. I know, because I personally relayed that order to him as his immediate senior in the chain of command.”
“‘The Incredibly Stupid One,’ my personal hero, is the archetype of the innovative, resourceful and courageous American Sailor. These sailors are the products of the neighborhoods, churches, schools and families working together to produce individuals blessed with a sense of humor and the gift of freedom who can overcome any kind of odds. These sailors are tremendously loyal and devoted to their units and their leaders in their own private and personal ways. As long as we have the Doug’s of this world, our country will retain its freedoms.”