America’s Perdurable POWs : BOUNCING BACK; How a Heroic Band of POW’s Survived Vietnam <i> By Geoffrey Norman (Houghton Mifflin: $19.95; 256 pp.; 0-395-45186-8) </i>

It was ironic that Al Stafford wasn’t supposed to fly the bombing mission at all that morning. He was just a backup, waiting in the flight line aboard the carrier USS Oriskany in case one of the other A-4 jet bombers malfunctioned on that hot summer day in 1967. Sure enough, one did.

Within minutes, Lt. Cmdr. Stafford was airborne, streaking across the South China Sea toward the coast of North Vietnam where his air group had been assigned to destroy a military bridge used to transport arms and men into South Vietnam. As the formation neared the target, Stafford’s missile-warning device buzzed. From the cockpit he could see the giant SAM Russian missiles roaring toward and past him, looking for all the world like giant flying telephone poles.

Suddenly there was a horrific explosion as a 300-pound SAM warhead exploded just behind his cockpit, igniting the four tons of bombs he was carrying, as well as his fuel tanks. The plane literally disintegrated in midair.

By all rights, Stafford should have been dead, but somehow the automatic seat ejector had been set off and he awakened floating gently down toward the lush but hostile greenery of the Vietnamese countryside. His flight suit was on fire; his arm was broken, as well as several ribs, and a shoulder was separated. He was bleeding heavily from head wounds. But he was alive, a condition which, very soon, even he would come to regret.

Stafford was quickly captured and force-marched in his condition several miles to an interrogation center, where he was immediately beaten, tortured, starved and jammed upside down for 24 hours into a sewer pipe set in the ground --all because he would not reveal the name of his ship. In those days, that was standard treatment for captured pilots, and virtually all of them, Stafford included, broke under the pressure--to one degree or another.

“Bouncing Back� is the story of Stafford and many of his comrades who spent up to six years in the grisly dungeons the North Vietnamese called “prison camps.� It is the story of how they coped during those awful times, and it recalls such works as “King Rat,� “The Bridge on the River Kwai� and “Papillon.� “Bounce Back� was the phrase the men used to describe their recovery from the consistent torture their captors inflicted to exploit the POWs for propaganda purposes.

It also is the story of their return and how now, 20 years later, they have “bounced back� into a society from which they were so long removed.

Maltreatment of American prisoners at the hands of the North Vietnamese has been chronicled before, mostly in autobiographies, but the author of this book probably does more justice to the subject than most, having solicited information from a wider body of sources and subjects.

Treatment of U.S. war prisoners, even by the Nazis, pales by what is described here: constant slow starvation, isolation, vermin, exposure, beatings, little or no medical treatment and the frequent use of medieval-style engines of torture. Only the Japanese barbarism toward POWs in World War II or some of the bizarre goings-on in northern China toward the end of the last century come close by comparison. How these men persevered is remarkable.

Use of the POWs for propaganda purposes was a common tactic. “Confessions� needed to be signed; appearences were demanded at “press conferences� to repudiate American policy. The POWs drew up their own set of rules for these occasions, since it was obvious no man could withstand the consequences if he followed to the letter the official U.S. Armed Forces Code of Conduct.

Most, though not all, initially refused and let themselves be subjected to torture first, but when the torture became too great they would give in. Stafford, for instance, was strung up, whipped, beaten and kicked for hours on end before he consented to tape a “confession� and have it played before a crowd of journalists, including a photographer for Life magazine. Even so, he managed to betray his captors by bowing stiffly four times like some character out of “The Manchurian Candidate,� so that the Americans, at least, could tell the statements were coerced. Then he went back to his cell to begin the process of “bouncing back.�

The prisoners devised an elaborate code and message system, which has been described by others but is an integral part of this book. Much of their time was devoted to this endeavor, since communication of any sort was so important. Reduced to pitiable, malnourished wretches, most survivors managed mainly because of this code and the consequent ability of senior officers to command, to keep the faith.

Toward the end of the war, when the treatment eased somewhat and the POWs were allowed to mingle, the men bucked up their spirits by organizing classes for each other, each man teaching his specialty, whether engineering, cooking, literature, mechanics or gardening.

In 1972, the POWs were released and each man faced a different sort of crisis. Some wives had filed for divorce--one on grounds of desertion. Relationships had to be renewed; infant children were now half-grown. Some POWs, so badly injured they no longer could fly, faced an uncertain job market years behind their peers. Stafford, for instance, learned that his wife had moved to Hong Kong and did not much desire to return to America.

But one lesson the ordeal in prison had taught most of them was that they could Bounce Back. A study conducted by the military indicated that 15 years after their release, there were no long-term psychological problems. While there was one suicide, and others suffered bouts of depression for a while, all in all they proved incredibly resilient.

Stafford himself stayed in the service and ultimately took command of the Navy survival school in Pensacola, Fla. The concept of Bouncing Back was incorporated into the program with great success.