GOSTAS, THEODORE W.

Name: Theodore W. Gostas
Rank/Branch: 03 United States Army
Unit: 135th Military Intelligence Battalion Provisional, 525th MI GP
Date of Birth: 13 December 1938 (Butte MT)
Home City of Record: Cheyenne, WY
Date of Loss: 01 February 1968
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 162734N 1073551E
Status (in 1973): Returnee
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground

Other Personnel in Incident: Daves, Gary CIV (released); Henderson,
Alexander CIV (released); Meyer, Lewis CIV (released); Olsen, Robert CIV
(Released); Page, Russell CIV (Released); Rander, Donald USA (Released);
Rushton, Thomas CIV (Released); Spalding, Richard CIV (Released); Stark,
Lawrence CIV attached to USN (Released); Willis, Charles CIV (Released).

Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK 14 February 1997 from one or more of the
following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources and information
provided by Ret. Major Gostas. Updated 2003.

REMARKS: 730316 Released by PRG

SYNOPSIS: Theodore Gostas attended Kemper Military Academy before serving in
Vietnam.

Gostas was working with the 135th Military Intelligence Battalion
Provisional, in the northern part of South Vietnam during TET '68 when Hue
came under seige. Ted recalls being trapped without his radio, and being
unable to warn hundreds of 5th Marines as they walked into an ambush. Many
lost their lives that day.  Government records indicate he and 11 others
were captured soon afterward. Ten of those were civilians working with the
Vietnamese.

While in captivity, he was severely beaten several times and kicked in the
head and stomach. He was stuck in the head with an AK 47 and hung from a
rope for extended periods and was denied water. He spent 4 1/2 years in
solitary confinment. He had severe intestinal problems, and numerous
absessed teeth throughout his ordeal. Gostas says it was solitary that
did the worst damage.

With Gostas in the Hanoi Hilton's "New Guy Village" were Capt. Jim Thompson,
Staff Sgt. Don Rander and CIV Chuck Willis.

Reflecting on his release, Ted Gostas says he "couldn't believe after all
that torture that I was really home." He retired from the Army with the rank
of Major, being awarded the Bronze Star and 2 Purple Hearts and the POW
medal.

Although he suffers from many health related problems as a result of his
torture and captivity, he continues his work as a "war artist" and has
raised several thousand dollars in college scholarships for the children of
indigent veterans. He donates 100% of the proceeds of his art work and book
sales to the scholarship fund. "Prisoner" was written and illustrated by Ted
in 1974 and is still available.

Ted and his wife Joanne enjoy his retirement in Wyoming. They have 2
surviving children, Laura and Demetrius. Their son Jason was killed in a
traffic accident at 19. They also have a stepson, Jason, and 4 grandsons.

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Associated Press Newswires
Wednesday, October 1, 2003

Cowboy Enterprise: POW recalls horror of captivity
By ILENE OLSON

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - Ted Gostas knows better than most what it is like to
feel fear, pain and uncertainty. As a prisoner of war in Vietnam for five
years, he suffered physical and mental pain and torture beyond the limits
many endure and survive.

Gostas talked about his experiences, and the lessons he learned from them,
during a program recently commemorating National Prisoner of War/Missing in
Action Day at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Gostas spent all but the
last six months of his imprisonment in solitary confinement.

What food he was given to eat was far from the balanced diet his body
craved.

He was beaten, allowed to heal partially, then beaten again.

During one torture session, he fainted 18 times.

Each night, Gostas was awakened repeatedly after he had slept for about 15
minutes, then ordered to go to sleep again. That kept his body and mind in a
perpetual state of weariness, and prevented his body from rejuvenating
itself.

His immune system suffered; his health deteriorated.

The physical and emotional torture took its toll.

To occupy his mind with more pleasant thoughts, he began imagining taking
his wife out to dinner and giving her a bouquet of roses. After awhile, the
imaginary story line began to change.

"I started throwing the roses at her," he said. "Then I was throwing my wife
through the restaurant window. I realized I was losing my mind. I couldn't
keep a story straight in my head."

By the time he was rescued, he was something less than human, he said.

"I went over (to Vietnam) as a captain," he said. "I came back as an
animal."

Officials placed him in Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, where he was
put in a ward by himself to keep him from hurting someone else.

"In one week, I demolished that entire ward," including the 23 beds and
footlockers in it, he said.

Eventually, after 13 electrical shock treatments and years of psychiatric
care, he returned a state much closer to the man he had been before.

He began venting his hurt and facilitating healing by expressing them
through drawings, paintings and writings.

Through it all, Gostas has learned many lessons about life, which he shared
with the audience.

He offered the following advice:

--Don't accumulate possessions to the point where they possess you. That
tends to make people lose contact with their fellow human beings.

--Learn to accept pain. "We can't avoid it," Gostas said. "It will always be
with us. Get used to it. Go on and do things in your life in spite of it.
Pain will be a piggyback rider. Eventually, some of it will fall off."

--Become active. Stay involved with people and the community. "When you are
honestly and sincerely convinced that what you have done is great, it is,"
he said.

--Don't wait for someone to carry you up the ladder (of success). Your
appreciation of freedom and your ability to be kind to people and animals
will be your greatest attributes.

--Maximize your life despite situations that seem hopeless. Gostas pointed
out the example of the passengers on the airliner in Pennsylvania on
September 11, 2001, who, despite a hopeless situation, chose to do something
to improve it. "They acted in spite of the hopelessness," he said.

--Substitute some of the "dribble" of life which he defined as things like
television and loud music with things that will uplift. Those include
reading good books, listening to uplifting music and developing creative
talents.

Gostas said he hasn't entirely overcome pain or fear.

But, "if I reach the mountains or not, I'm content," he said. "I keep trying
to do at least one thing until fear and anxiety jump off my back.
"You can't avoid being sick. But you can (choose to) recover or get worse."

Gostas said the United States has accomplished what it set out to do in
Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Osama bin Laden is on the run. Saddam's sons are gone. Saddam would be
insane to come back to Iraq. He'd last about a minute.

"We've done our job. We need to be congratulated for that and we need to
bring our men and women home.

"It's time for us to withdraw, or we'll be back in Vietnam again."

Several teenagers from a Casper youth group attended Gostas' presentation.

They all came away with a new perspective.

Oshea Abeyta, 16, said, "People get smarter with age. He knows a lot. He's
been through a lot."

"It made me think," said Lindsay Hadlock, 15. "I learned that people have to
brave to be in wars. I don't know if I would be brave enough to be in
solitary confinement. I don't think I could handle it."

Lauren Burton, 15, said, "The problems I have aren't very bad compared to
what other people have to go through."

Ericka Trujillo, 13, said, "I learned to appreciate what I have, like our
freedom. We really take it for granted. He had to live basically in a box."

Kellie Hadlock, 13, added, "It's nice to know that you're free and you don't
have to worry about that."

=======================

Bracelet links duo

By MARGARET LAYBOURN
Star-Tribune correspondent

CHEYENNE -- In 1970, three college students began making metal bracelets
engraved with the names of Vietnam war prisoners to remind Americans of the
sacrifices these men were making.

Carrol Leger, now a Cheyenne resident, bought a POW bracelet for 75 cents in
Wichita Falls, Texas, and wore it for four years while serving in the U.S.
Air Force. The name, "Major Theodore Gostos," was on the aluminum band --
and also on Leger's mind.

In 1976, when Leger moved to Cheyenne from Louisiana with his wife, Melissa,
he misplaced the bracelet. Twenty years later he met Ted Gostos, who lives
in Cheyenne, and Leger remembered that was the name on the bracelet he had
worn.

Recently Leger's sister found the missing memento and checked the name on
the Internet. Finding that the former POW lived in Cheyenne, she called her
brother and asked if he knew him. In a small-world scenario, she returned
the bracelet to her brother who, in turn, presented it to his friend, Ted
Gostos.

"Returning the bracelet, which I wore feeling that somehow wearing it made a
difference, was meaningful for me," Leger said.

Gostos was grateful for the band, which he put with several others he has
received.

Living in hell

Gostos received his law degree from the University of Wyoming and entered
the service. He was captured and made a POW in Vietnam from 1968 to 1973. He
was kept in solitary confinement for more than four years. He existed in a
windowless hut in total isolation for 23 hours and 50 minutes every day,
with 10 minutes each night to go out to empty and clean his slip bucket.

Gostos was the only Army intelligence officer to be captured during the
Vietnam War, and his captors were supremely suspicious of him. He was
tortured and interrogated for hours. Because of the hatred of the Vietnamese
soldiers toward the American POWs, he was sentenced to death: execution by
firing squad.

Every morning for three years the prisoner was tortured psychologically by
the sounds of soldiers banging their gun butts on the concrete in front of
his hut as he prayed in expectation of death. The daily mock execution
exhausted him, and the intimations of fear and horror can still be triggered
by certain things, such as a watch being placed on a table, he said.

Dr. Clotilde Brown, a Veterans Administration psychiatrist, wrote that to
her knowledge, Gostos suffered more than any other captive during his years
of solitary confinement. He had no contact with other American prisoners,
and the Vietnamese were afraid of him because of his screaming and desperate
outbursts.

After his return, Gostos underwent massive psychological treatments in
various veterans hospitals. To heal himself, Gostos turned to the redemptive
qualities of painting and poetry. A book of his POW poetry has been
published, and he has made more than 7,000 sketches in black and colored
inks, in addition to more than 2,000 acrylic paintings.

"My salvation is my art," he says.

His disturbing works have been shown in galleries across the country. His
most recent exhibit was September through March 2005 at the Veterans Art
Gallery in Appleton, Wis., where 80 of his paintings were hung.

Steve Cotherman, a former curator of art for the state of Wyoming, now
curator of art in Minnesota, encouraged Gostos to paint early in his
rehabilitation. In a foreword to the Appleton exhibit he wrote, "In
paintings of power and grace, sledgehammer awkwardness and subtle
simplicity, Ted Gostos has succeeded in telling his story in the most
straightforward and honest way he knows. He chronicles one man's experience
with mankind's special earthly kind of hell, war."

Gostos' vision is for a marble museum of three floors where his works of art
could give testimony of living in hell.

"We have war because people have given up caring," he said. "They see
casualties and turn the page."