 I'm here today with Captain Charlie Plum, United States Navy retired. He's a fellow Midwestern farm kid. Unlike me, Captain Plum had a dream of becoming an aviator and he lived his dream in the Navy. After graduating from the Naval Academy, he reported to Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego where he flew the first adversarial flights in the development of what would become the Navy Fighter Weapons School, which we currently know as Top Gun. Captain Plum went on to 74 successful combat missions in an F-4 Phantom in Vietnam and that included more than 100 carrier landings. What I want to talk to Captain Plum about today is what happened on his 75th mission. Captain Plum was shot down over Hanoi, who was taken prisoner, he was tortured, and he spent the next 2,103 days in an eight by eight foot cell as a prisoner of war. Before I go any further, Captain Plum on behalf of DAV and the veterans we represent, thank you for your courageous service and sacrifice and thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. Rob, thank you very much for what you do. I'm pleased to be with you and I'm proud to speak to fellow veterans. I would like to free if you could to jump right in and tell me about those more than 2,100 days as a prisoner of war. It's a little bit tough to put it in a few sentences or a minute or two, but basically the 2,103 days that I spent there, and incidentally I wasn't always in that the late foot, late foot cell, that was sort of the average size cell, but a lot of things transpired over those years. But it was, as we say in aviation, hours and hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme terror. So it was a lot of time to spend isolated, but then I think it relates to what we're doing today in our isolation because we were cut off from the rest of the world. We were even cut off from our fellow POWs. Most of the time, all of the time I spent in isolation, some of the time in solitary confinement, and not as much as some of the more senior guys, the record was four and a half years, Jeremiah Denton in solitary confinement. So I think the parallel of what we're doing today is in this isolated period of time, how do we survive this and even thrive because of it? Well, the first few days, but back to the prison scene, was filled with beatings and torture and no medical care of course for months. I was bleeding from four open wounds. I got really skinny. I figure I was down about 115 pounds and I weighed 175 this morning. So it seemed like every cell in my body seemed to hurt. I remember not being able to blink my eyes without something hurting somewhere in my body. It was ridiculous. And so it was by far the worst pain that I had ever seen. But then after the torture, tossed in this little cell and then the mental anguish began, I felt very guilty about having given in to the enemy. You know, I mean, fighter pilots are not supposed to give up. You know, that's not in the DNA of most military people. And I had given up. And I even wondered if I ever could go back to my home country and face my family and friends and fellow military pals knowing that I'd failed in my mission so miserably. And I think this is somewhat common, not just in military life, but in everyday life, when we try so hard at something, you know, in this situation we're in right now. You know, we had a job and working hard and gaining a little bit of savings and suddenly we're out of work and we're confined to one room in the house and we've got kids that are home from school and, you know, or maybe an unmarried daughter that moves in with her two kids and, you know, it's tough. So I grappled then with this feeling of depression and guilt, you know, for a long time until I finally got communication with one of the guys in the cell next to me, Bob Shoemaker. She had been in prison for two years when I showed up. And so he was a fount of knowledge and wisdom. And the first thing he told me when I confessed to him that I had failed, you know, that I had given up to the enemy, he said, hell, everybody did that. None of us was as strong as we wanted to be. So pull up your big boy pants. We've got a war to fight here. He said, our senior leadership in this prison camp is the finest you will ever see. He said, you've just joined the best team you will ever play on, ever. They've redefined our mission. We're not on the defensive. I'll tell you this, when I heard that, he's passing this to me in a code, tapping on a wall. In this case, he was tugging on a wire in this secret code that he had developed. And so it was very slow. You know, the communication was very slow, but it was very deliberate. You know, he said, we're not on the defensive. And I remember, you know, stepping away from that wall and looking around in my little prison cell, eight foot by eight feet and not a book to read or a window to look at or a pencil or a piece of paper, you know, a two-gallon bucket in the corner was my toilet. I mean, it was pretty grim situations. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm not on the defensive, huh? He said, no, our leadership has redefined this. We have a mission. We are military guys and we are warriors and we will pursue this war to our last dying breath. Well, it still seemed to be pretty silly for me as a junior officer to have all these senior guys down in the end cell block, you know, wanting me to conform to their military regiment, but it worked. We set up this community by the communication and built this team. And so that we could face the enemy with solidarity. And it was really interesting because we, you know, obviously we weren't exactly on the point of the spear, you know, we weren't shooting down airplanes or dropping bombs anymore. But oh, by the way, just that feeling of unity and power that we had within that prison camp brought us all together and really allowed us to come home in great shape. Which of those aspects do you feel like was the most important? Was it the, that you had that community or that you had a mission or is it a combination of both? It sounds like a combination of both. Well, that's a good question. It was absolutely vital that we have a mission, a purpose in life. And I know, you know, one of the things that troubles me the most now is all of our veterans that are committing suicide. And so I work on that. I'm involved in a couple of different organizations that seem to have a handle on it. But I've often felt that having a mission is so vital. While we're in the military, you know, we got a purpose. We know the purpose. If you don't know the purpose, ask your drill instructor. He'll tell you the purpose. No question about that. But, you know, we all have this reason to put on the uniform. Well, when guys retire, take off that uniform, suddenly they don't have that same purpose anymore. You know, they, and they sort of flounder around. I think looking for a reason, you know, to get up in the morning, you know, a reason to go to work or to read a book or to take care of your loved ones. And so purpose was vital. Now, the purpose would not have been effective without that communication. Communication was vital, not just because we were passing around military secrets or escape plans or all that stuff. But the communication served as a lifesaver just by validating the very existence of another prisoner of war. In those cells when we were alone and it was dark, you know, you couldn't tell green from red in a lot of those prison camps. It was just that dark. It was a dungeon. And in that situation, you lose track. You don't know what's a real memory. What's a hallucination of a memory? You don't know sometimes if you're even alive or dead. There was nothing to tell me for sure that I was a living human being. So the tapping on a wall or the tugging on a wire, they have somebody tug back or tap back, you know, we'd use it, the old shaving haircut. Da, da, da, da, da. And the other guy would go, da, da. And just, I mean, that was revolutionary. It was, it was like I'm alive. Somebody's responding to something I'm doing physically. And then the second part was, hey, somebody cares. Somebody cares enough to risk their life, you know, to help me. And so that combination, I think, as you pointed out, purpose and then the unity within the communication really were two of the major things that allowed my survival. We were talking about before we started recording. I'd first, I know I've heard you on Jocko Willings podcast in vice, as you inform me, you corrected me. And, but also on a recent, most recently on a Reddit, which is a website on there, what's called an AMA or an Ask Me Anything. And so many of the questions that were thrown at you were obviously from men and women. I would say probably young men and women who have not served, so have not had the type of training and experience that I had as a Marine, you had as a graduate of Annapolis and Naval Aviator and all the rest. With this civilian military gap being so large, larger than probably never has before, certainly in this country. What, why is it important for you to, do you feel to get out and get this message about your experience out in front of these young men? Well, the message I think is pretty universal. Anybody that has had a challenge in your life, which is all of us, can identify not necessarily with the drama of being a prisoner of war, but with the response that you have when you come into a challenge within your life. Everybody has had fear. Everybody has had frustration. Everybody has had loneliness and felt that you've failed at something. And so there's a real connection, I think, between my story and the story of any military guy or gal, because while the circumstance may be different, the personal response, the human emotion is largely the same. And I am convinced that you can be in just as much of a prison camp going through a divorce or losing a job, or for that matter, contracting a coronavirus, I call it the eight inch prison, you know, that myself was eight feet long and eight feet wide, and I'm convinced that for the first several months, I was in a prison far worse than that was the eight inches, eight inch box, you know, I had over my head that it was a mental, it was a mental game. So that eight inch space between my ears really was the challenge, and I needed to escape that challenge. It was interesting, and that asked me anything reddit thing that some of the, of course, you never know the age or background or political aliens of anybody who asks you these questions, but it was really kind of interesting. I got this question of, do you play terraria? Okay, I think that was terraria. And well, this is a video game, okay, that I'd never heard of, and so I had to Google this terraria thing to tell him, no, I don't play terraria. So, but a lot of interesting questions. You're going to come out of one of those a gamer one of these days, you end up with an Xbox or Switch or whatever the kids are playing. Can you tell me again, some of these men and women obviously haven't served and so few have been through the hell that you experienced. Are there tips and tricks maybe for escaping that eight inch prison that you talked about? Do you have any that anything they could pass along especially in these trying times? Absolutely. And we've already talked about a couple of them. Find a purpose. If you don't have a purpose in life, you know, you're losing out and probably going downhill. And the purpose can be very, very simple, you know, find a way to serve. And I know that most of your audience are veterans. And I would say just because you took off the uniform doesn't mean that you don't still owe your country a debt of gratitude, you know, a way to serve. And then there's a couple of things for you. I think when you are in the service of others, you're actually helping yourself because you have a purpose. You have this reason to live. So find a purpose. Communicate. You know, we so often assume that other people understand what we're thinking or what's in our heart. And, you know, it's like gratification. Well, yes, you may appreciate something that your husband does or your wife does or even your kids does. And you think, well, they know I love them. I don't have to tell them. You know, they know that I appreciate they're making that meal for me or, you know, washing the car for me. But talk to them. You know, I'm convinced that gratification in silence or gratification without a verbal or even physical action is empty. It's not really gratification at all because it doesn't go anywhere if you don't say something. So, so I think that would be the second thing. Now communicate with people be having attitude of gratitude and in serve. You know, I think that service to others without asking anything return. You know, it's that it's that servant leadership. I think that we that we that have been in the military know full well that you can be a leader without, you know, without a bar on your on your on your shoulder. In fact, most of the best leaders I ever had, you know, or were some of the younger even less experienced people that just knew right from long and work afraid to say right from wrong. And so be a certain leader communicate and find yourself a purpose. Well, it sounds like you know, you did all of that after after getting out of that that hellish prison camp or you escaped the life of POW you were able to go on to have, you know, more service much more service. You retired after 28 years of service and you continue to lead today and you inspire as a public speaker. And I just want to again on behalf of DAV Captain Plum I want to thank you for your time today. I want to thank you for your leadership and most of all, I want to thank you for continuing to get out there and tell your story, especially during these trying times when I feel like it's so important. Thanks for that, Rob. I feel, you know, I feel a dedication, a service. As you mentioned, I speak for a living. That's what I've done. I've had all my speeches canceled. And so, you know, I've gotten on the Zoom circuit and so and I do a daily video, as a matter of fact, about the connection. They're just short one minute videos about the connection. The first one I did was on toilet paper. And it became pretty popular. Perfect. I've been very popular. It was crazy. It was crazy. You know, the way people just went over the moon because they didn't have any toilet paper. And I made the comment on this daily video that my Tinder tiny two should not been touched by a sheet of shaman for 2,103 days to get over it. And also, you know, I've written my autobiography, my book, I'm not a hero. And then that seems to strike a chord with people in today's isolation. Captain Plum, where can folks find that information from? Sure. My website, CharliePlum.com and C-H-A-R-L-I-E and P-L-U-M-B CharliePlum.com. And that's got, you know, that's got my Instagram and LinkedIn and all those connections on it as well as a bunch of videos of the stories that I tell on my speeches. And you can order a book from there. And I autograph every book that I send out of my office here. I know where I'll be going after we get off this interview. Again, Captain Plum, thank you for your service. Thank you for your time today. And best of luck to you during these crazy times. Thanks again for what you do and all of your DAV members. I really respect and appreciate you and salute you.