The airman and the fighter: war's iconic photo

In the spring of 1965, Robinson was transferred to Thailand, where he joined an air rescue and recovery unit. He served on the crew of an HH-43B Huskie helicopter, an aircraft designed in part to reach areas where American planes had been shot down and pick up surviving crew members.

These missions were far from routine. The helicopters had to fly at low altitude, approach areas where enemy forces operated, and try to extract pilots before they were captured. Often the rescuers themselves became targets.

In September 1965, Robinson went on a mission that would change his life.

On September 20, an American F-105 Thunderchief fighter jet was shot down in North Vietnam. An American rescue team was sent to the area to pick up the pilot who had been forced to abandon his aircraft. Robinson and his crew arrived at the scene in the Huskie helicopter, managed to locate the pilot, and began the extraction operation.

But the area was already under enemy control. The helicopter took heavy ground fire, was hit repeatedly, and finally crashed.

Robinson and his comrades survived the crash, but found themselves deep in hostile territory. According to American accounts, North Vietnamese forces were already deployed in the area, and the crew was captured within a short time.

The morning after the crash, in the rural area of Ha Tinh province in North Vietnam, local militia members went out to search for the American crew members who had been hit.

Among the searchers was a 17-year-old girl named Nguyen Thi Kim Lai. She belonged to the local militia force, and in those days was part of the civil defense system that operated in the area against American attacks.

Kim Lai was not a professional soldier in the Western sense of the word. She was a local girl who had joined her village's defense force. Like many other women in Vietnam at that time, she carried a weapon, participated in guard and patrol missions, and was part of the combat and resistance system.

That morning, during searches in a forested area, she noticed movement from within a rocky crevice. When she approached, she discovered Robinson there, hiding after the helicopter crash.

According to her account, she fired three shots in the air. Robinson raised his hands and surrendered. Following the shots, other militia members arrived, took control of him, and bound his hands.

Kim Lai was 17 years old, about 5 feet tall, and weighed approximately 82 pounds. Facing her stood Robinson, a young American who stood nearly 6 feet 7 inches tall and weighed about 265 pounds. The gap between them was so great that it was hard to believe the tiny girl was the one leading the enormous man while he was shackled.

Because she was the one who located him, and among the force members was the smallest, it was decided that she would be the one to lead him back to the settlement area. She held her rifle and led the American prisoner on the long road, his hands bound and walking with his head bowed.

Local photographer Phan Tuan heard about the capture of the American pilot, rode his bicycle more than six miles, and arrived at the scene. There he immortalized the moment that became one of the war's most famous photographs.

For Robinson, the moments of walking with Kim Lai were only the beginning of a long and brutal period. He was transferred to North Vietnamese custody and taken to Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi, which became known by the nickname "Hanoi Hilton." The prison became one of the most recognized symbols of American captivity in the war.

Robinson was not alone. Captured with him were other crew members from the helicopter, including the helicopter commander, another crew member, and the pilot they had gone to rescue. All were forced to deal with a reality in which each additional day behind bars became a struggle in itself.

The days in prison were long, monotonous, and filled with fear. The prisoners suffered from isolation, repeated interrogations, harsh living conditions, and torture. Robinson moved between different detention facilities, including a compound the prisoners called "Briar Patch" and facilities in the Cu Loc area they called "the Zoo."

One of the hardest things for the prisoners was the complete disconnection from the outside world. They didn't know when the war would end, what was happening to their families, or if they would ever return home.

But within this reality, extraordinary survival methods also developed. The American prisoners developed a secret communication system using taps on cell walls. Each letter received a combination of taps, and thus the prisoners managed to pass messages, encourage each other, and maintain contact even when separated in different cells.

Robinson learned to use this communication method, which became one of the most important tools for maintaining the prisoners' spirits. He later recounted that when asked to describe life in captivity, he would describe it as a sequence of minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months of boredom, occasionally interrupted by terror.

During captivity he did not settle for mere survival. Despite his condition, he continued to demonstrate resistance and behavior that made him a respected figure among his fellow prisoners. For his steadfastness he was later awarded military decorations, including the Air Force Cross, considered one of the Air Force's highest decorations for valor in action.

Unusually, while in captivity he was also granted a direct commission to officer rank, and he became one of the few enlisted crew members to receive such an appointment. The granting of ranks was done in a most creative manner.

Because Robinson and his two comrades were the only enlisted men among dozens of pilots and officers, the officers in captivity appreciated their resilience and courage and decided to grant them a battlefield promotion. The officers organized a secret "officer course" for them inside the cells, passed written messages on toilet paper glued with rice, and swore them in as officers while they stood at attention in prison pajama uniforms.

Meanwhile, the war continued. Only in December 1972, after a long period of fighting, was the major American bombing operation called "Linebacker 2" carried out, during which targets in Hanoi and Haiphong were attacked for 11 days. Shortly thereafter, the diplomatic contacts that led to the Paris Accords in January 1973 advanced.

On February 12, 1973, the moment Robinson had waited for years finally arrived. As part of Operation "Homecoming," in which hundreds of American prisoners of war were released, he went free.

Surgery in the dark: survival under the surgeons' knife in Hanoi

In the fall of 1969, in the midst of his fourth year of captivity in North Vietnam, Billy Robinson was struck by severe abdominal pain. His cellmates, Neil Black and Art Cormier (who were Air Force paramedics), quickly identified it as acute appendicitis.

But in North Vietnamese captivity, receiving medical treatment was nearly impossible; the guards ignored complaints and treated prisoners like animals, as long as the food was eaten, the prisoner was considered healthy. To force the guards to call a doctor, the prisoners hatched a scheme: they conspicuously left Robinson's food rations outside the cell for several days as a sign that he was unable to eat, and shared among themselves what little food remained.

Only after four days of agony did the guards appear in the dead of night and take Robinson, bent over in pain and barely able to walk. He was loaded onto a bus whose windows were painted black, which jolted his ailing body along broken roads full of bomb craters.

Along the way he passed through three primitive hospitals; in one they tried to draw blood from him in the dark using only a flashlight, and in another he was laid on a creaking plank bed covered with a thin sheet without a mattress. Finally the local doctor explained to him in broken English: "This very necessary. If not operate, you not live."

The drama intensified when he was transferred to the operating room. Due to his tall stature (about 6'2"), the medical blankets were too short to cover him, and the stretcher got stuck in the high doorway threshold. When he was laid on the operating table, it turned out that the existing restraint straps were too short to encircle his sturdy body. As an improvised solution, the surgeons wrapped him from head to toe in medical gauze to the table. With his gaze directed upward, Robinson noticed the only lighting above him, a bulb with broken glass filled with dead flies, and he feared some would fall into the open wound. Around the table stood a barefoot staff, except for one nurse who wore wooden clogs.

The surgery was performed under only partial local anesthesia. During the procedure, the surgeons tilted the operating table at such a sharp and sideways angle that Robinson felt he was about to slide and fall. In a moment of resourcefulness, he freed an arm and leg from the gauze wrappings and gripped the table forcefully to stabilize himself during the surgery. At the moment of cutting and removing the appendix, the doctor said dully: "Now you feel pain," and a sharp, piercing wave of pain passed through his body.

At the end of the surgery, Robinson was returned to a recovery room, and after eight days in the hospital on a diet of thin noodle soup, he was returned to his cellmates. Thanks to their devoted care and his resilience, he managed to recover completely from the dramatic event and continue to survive until his release.

He was in captivity for 2,703 days, seven years, four months, and 21 days. This is one of the longest periods of captivity of any American serviceman in the Vietnam War, and he is considered one of the enlisted prisoners held for the longest time in U.S. military history.

In his later interviews he would say with a smile: "We like to say affectionately that we classify ourselves as one of the longest rescues in history."

When Robinson returned to the United States, he was no longer the young man who had gone on a rescue mission in September 1965. Seven long years in captivity left deep scars on him, and the return to civilian life was not simple.

He continued to serve in the U.S. Air Force for several more years, and eventually retired from service. But his story and Kim Lai's remained etched in public consciousness, mainly thanks to one photograph.

The photograph taken by Phan Tuan became one of the symbols of the war in North Vietnam. In 1966 it was displayed at a national photography exhibition, and the famous Vietnamese poet To Huu wrote a poem in its wake that became very well known in the country.

The Little Partisan

The propaganda photograph showing a young, short Vietnamese girl walking with a rifle behind the sturdy Robinson as if she "captured him alone" was completely staged, Robinson was actually captured by about 100 armed villagers.

Kim Lai herself did not initially know how famous the photograph had become. In 1968, during a break from her military activity, one of her friends showed her the stamp. She recognized herself in the photograph and was surprised to discover that the moment captured had become part of her country's history.

But the years passed, and the war ended. Kim Lai later left military service, studied nursing, and began working at a traditional medicine institute in Ha Tinh, and started a family.

Robinson, on the other hand, married twice but had no children of his own. After his return to the United States he also dealt with financial and personal difficulties, and for a long period was forced to work at various jobs, including in auto repair.

And then, in 1995, one of the most moving moments in the story occurred.

A team from Japanese television network NHK decided to produce a documentary called "The Meeting After 30 Years," in which the two people in the photograph would meet again. The directors and Vietnamese crew they worked with began to locate Kim Lai, and Robinson was invited to return to Vietnam.

In September 1995, thirty years after that day in the forest, Kim Lai sat with her grandchild at a neighbor's house. Suddenly someone called for her to return home: a stranger had come looking for her.

When she arrived, she noticed an unusually tall man at the doorway. She looked at him, needed a moment to process the sight, and then recognized him.

"Andrew Robinson," she said with emotion.

The person standing before her was no longer the young prisoner who had walked ahead of her with his hands bound, and she was no longer the 17-year-old girl who had held the rifle and led him through the village. Thirty years had passed, and both had come to the meeting carrying entire lifetimes of memories.

Robinson looked at her with a smile and joked that she wasn't really any taller since the last time they met. Kim Lai replied that he still looked young and strong.

The conversation between them touched on both the moments of war and what had happened to them since.

Robinson spoke about the difficulties he experienced in captivity and the complex return to the United States. He also mentioned a moment etched in his memory specifically after his capture: when he was transferred to a small village in the Ha Tinh area, local residents gave him food and drink and cared for him.

During the meeting, Robinson said: "We were lucky. If on that day one of us had aimed the weapon and fired at the other, we couldn't be sitting here today."

He and Kim Lai also talked about the photograph that made them famous. She told him about her life, her family, and how the photograph affected her personal life. Robinson for his part was impressed by the family she had built and the life she had created after the war.

The meeting was documented in a film by the Japanese television network, alongside a meeting with photographer Phan Tuan, the man who immortalized the historic moment in 1965.

Before parting, Kim Lai gave a gift to Robinson's wife, a traditional Vietnamese hat, as a memento of the meeting and the visit.

And as the cliché goes: he left captivity, but captivity never left him.

At one of the POW reunion gatherings, Billy Robinson sat in a room full of former fighters and pilots who had gone through the nightmare of captivity together. He looked around, turned to his friends, and asked one question: "When was the last time you were in a room where you trusted every single person in it?"