Stockdale on Stoicism 42

We organized a clandestine society via our wall tap code—a society with our own laws, traditions, customs, even heroes. 

To explain how it could be that we would order each other into more torture, order each other to refuse to comply with specific demands, intentionally call the bluff of our jailers, and force them to repeat the process described above, I'll explain with an apocryphal statement that could have come from at least half of those wonderful, competitive fly-boys I found myself locked up with:

"We are in a spot like we've never been in before. But we deserve to maintain our self-respect, to have the feeling we are fighting back. We can't refuse to do every degrading thing they demand of us, but it's up to you, boss, to pick out things we must all refuse to do, unless and until they put us through the ropes again. We deserve to sleep at night. We at least deserve to have the satisfaction that we are hewing to our leader's orders. Give us the list: what are we to take torture for?" 

This was a first step in claiming what was rightfully ours. Epictetus said: "The judge will do some things to you which are thought to be terrifying; but how can he stop you from taking the punishment he threatened?" 

That's my kind of Stoicism. You have a right to make them hurt you, and they don't like to do it. The prison commissar told my fellow prisoner Ev Alvarez when he was released: "You Americans were nothing like the French; we could count on them to be reasonable."

I put a lot of thought into what my first orders should be. They would be orders that could be obeyed, not a "cover your ass" move of reiterating some U.S. government policy like "name, rank, serial number, and date of birth," which had no chance of standing up in the torture room. 

My mindset was, "We here under the gun are the experts, we are the masters of our fate. Ignore guilt-inducing echoes of hollow edicts, throw out the book, and write your own." 

My orders came out as easy-to-remember acronyms. The principal one was BACK US:  

Don't Bow in public; stay off the Air; admit no Crimes; never Kiss them goodbye. US could be interpreted as United States, but really meant that each of us had to work at the lowest common denominator, never negotiating for himself, but only for all. 

—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison