Tap Code: The Epic Survival Tale of a Vietnam POW and the Secret Code That Changed Everything

by Carlyle S. Harris, Sara W. Berry

Carlyle “Smitty” Harris was shot down while trying to bomb a bridge in North Vietnam in 1965, fairly early in the war. While in a POW camp, he managed to teach other prisoners a code called the “tap code,” which allows spelling out words via taps when you can’t do the short/long required by morse code. It’s very simple:

    1   2   3    4   5
1   A   B   C/K  D   E
2   F   G   H    I   J
3   L   M   N    O   P
4   Q   R   S    T   U
5   V   W   X    Y   Z

Tap out the column and row number for each letter, and there you go.

The book is not so much about the code itself, which is very simple, but about how the POWs maintained not only sanity but military discipline even in the camps. Even when they were all isolated, they used the code to establish who was the senior officer in command in the camp. The officer gave orders, and the men obeyed them. They resisted their Vietnamese captors in whatever ways they could, with different levels of resistance – the highest being to belt out the national anthem!

About half of the book is from his wife Louise’s perspective. They had two daughters and she was pregnant with their son when Smitty was shot down. She talked about him with the kids as if he could walk in the door at any time. She fought for her rights to receive his military pay, which the army was planning to largely withhold, knowing that what she did would set a precedent for other wives of POWs. She sent him letters and packages, a few of which got through. Early on, he wrote her a letter that was surreptitiously picked up by someone from the Red Cross (or something like that) visiting from London. Incredibly, the letter eventually reached Louise.

Smitty was in captivity for 8 years, but he and Louise both considered it an important and positive time in their lives.