Allied POWs in Iraq War

Your editorial regarding the POWs (“The All-Too Familiar POW Horror,” Jan. 22) states that “at least two of the three Americans who were brought before the camera had been beaten severely about the face.” This is not necessarily so. Ejection from a wounded and unstable aircraft flying at speeds in excess of 600 miles per hour is an extremely risky business. Tom Wolfe writes about ejection in “The Right Stuff”:

“In the era of jet fighters, ejection meant being exploded out of the cockpit by a nitroglycerin charge, like a human cannonball. The ejection itself was so hazardous--men lost knees, arms, and their lives on the rim of the cockpit or had the skin torn off their faces when they hit the ‘wall’ of air outside--that many pilots chose to wrestle their aircraft to the ground rather than try it.”

This is not to say that the downed pilots were not beaten by their captors, but it should also be said that the pattern of facial bruises and lacerations as shown on TV could be entirely consistent with ejection. The physical or psychic coercion that forced the pilots to make their statements is another matter altogether.

JOHN GREGORY DUNNE, New York