Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

Getting Healthy 261was Cereal Boy. He was one of the more educated guys out there. Hecould read and write and he taught some of the others the same skills.Of all the FARC we dealt with, he was the most inquisitive. One morninghe was on guard duty and sat reading a Spanish-language magazinecalled Most Interesting. He started asking us about the U.S. spaceprogram and in particular about the Apollo missions. As we talked, itcame out that he didn’t believe that the U.S. had sent men to the moon.I had been raised in South Florida and Tom lived near Cape Canaveral.We tried to explain to Cereal Boy what a rocket was, how large the onesused for moon missions were, what kind of fuel they used as a propellant,how satellites worked and helped to transmit signals, as well asall the things you could see at the museum there. I told him that I’dseen actual rocks from the moon, and he just stared at me in disbelief,saying I couldn’t have.Marc, Tom, and I must have talked for close to an hour, with all threeof us trying to get him to understand the basic ideas behind the spaceprogram. He was completely blown away. To his credit, he was trying tolearn. He loved listening to the radio and kept a notebook with him andtook notes all the time. He liked history and would write down all kindsof dates and trivia. He would come up to us and ask questions like, “Isit true Theodore Roosevelt wrote a book on naval history when he wasin college?” or “Did you know John F. Kennedy swam twice a day in apool in the White House?”I’d try to think of topics related to his questions, and it was goodfor me to exercise my brain in that way. Trying to remember otherdetails and facts was like lifting mental weights. We were talking aboutdiplomacy one day, and thinking of his question about Roosevelt, I toldhim about America’s Great White Fleet. I detailed the story of howRoosevelt issued an order sending a United States Navy battle fleet—four battleships and their escorts—around the world. Their hulls werepainted white to show our neutrality, but it also demonstrated to everyoneour growing American military power and blue-water navy capabil-