John Cantlie, Vietnam and Stoic Philosophy

How An Ancient Philosophy Can Empower Warriors, Detainees — And Us

I am writing this at a lovely wooden desk, with a glorious early summer country landscape out the window to my left. It’s a place of peace and contemplation. John Cantlie is a prisoner of Islamic State. I can’t really imagine how he feels or what he is looking at right now. I don’t really want to.

Rewind a couple of decades and our lives were much closer.

We both worked for SuperBike magazine in England, testing 180mph motorbikes for a living and having a life of freedom and excitement. It wasn’t an entirely safe occupation. But compare that to now. We know John has been waterboarded, tortured, starved and beaten for well over two years. We think and hope that he is still alive. And if I could, I would give him a book to read in his hideous confinement.

It was written by another man who knew confinement and torture.

On 9 September 1965, Wing Commander Jim Stockdale flew at 500 knots into a flak trap over Vietnam. He ejected from his destroyed Douglas A-4E Skyhawk and reached the ground largely unharmed. Within a couple of minutes of landing he was savagely beaten and had his leg broken by an angry mob.

He’d seen the ‘roughnecks’ coming for him as he floated down on his parachute. What would you say to yourself at that moment? This is what he actually said: ‘I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.’

Jim Stockdale was an extraordinary man and officer. He went on to lead the US POWs in Vietnam for the next seven and a half years. Seven and a half years being tortured, largely kept in isolation, interrogated and starved. He came out of it with his head high and, more importantly, so did all those who came under his influence.

So who did this highly trained jet pilot and Naval commander credit with his ability to conquer in adversity? The men under his command? His tutors at grad school at Stanford University? No, an ex-slave from Ancient Greece who, like Stockdale, had a damaged leg and a limp.