The enlisted men who supervised the training succeeded in convincing me that I never wanted to become a prisoner of war. I recall that after our "capture", the sailors — wearing Red Army uniforms — marched the dozen or so of us along the ocean without our boots. It was very cold, and all our resolve and determination could not prevent our courage from draining out through our wet feet. They took us to a compound of small huts with dirt floors. The camp was surrounded by barbed wire, and the entrance was guarded by armed soldiers. Several times that night I was on the verge of calling the whole thing off. I suspect that I was not the only one. We held on because none of us trainees wanted to be the person to quit. The camp had an array of torture devices, including the infamous "black box" (which I actually liked because it was the only time I was off the ground and not miserably cold), and our captors also threatened executions, though we had the comfort of knowing that they would not carry them through.

We were all interrogated a few times, some of us more than others. During one interrogation, I was led blindfolded into a room. Suddenly one of the "enemy" hit me hard in the stomach — a sucker punch that left me doubled over, out of breath. I think three other people were present, but I was never sure. Two men grabbed me at my sides. They put a pole of some kind under my knees and bent me over backward. My head went down lower than the rest of my body. The questions (What is your unit? Where are you from?) were asked by one man. But we were not supposed to talk. I remember that the blindfold was heavy and completely covered my face. As the two men held me down, one on each side, someone began pouring water onto the blindfold, and suddenly I was drowning. The water streamed into my nose and then into my mouth when I gasped for breath. I couldn't stop it. All I could breathe was water, and it was terrifying. I think I began to lose consciousness. I felt my lungs begin to fill with burning liquid. Pulling out my fingernails or even cutting off a finger would have been preferable. At least if someone had attacked my hands, I would have had to simply tolerate pain. But drowning is another matter.

Even though I knew that I was in a military facility and that my "captors" would not kill me, my body reacted to the danger it was in. Adrenaline helped me to fight out of the position in which I was being held. I can't really explain how I managed to stand up, still with one man clinging to each arm. I only know how horrible it was. The experience was probably only a few minutes, but to me it seemed much longer. Waterboarding has, unfortunately, become a household word. Back then, we called it "water torture". We recognised it as something the US would never do, whatever the provocation. We must ask our leaders, elected and appointed, to be aware of such horrors; we must ask them to stop the narrow and superficial thinking that hinges upon "legal" definitions and to use common sense. Waterboarding is torture, and torture is clearly a crime against humanity.

WASHINGTON POST Richard Mezo, who served in the navy for six years, teaches at Germanna Community College's Fredericksburg, Virginia, campus.