Operation Homecoming, which freed now-retired Col. Tom McNish and more than 600 prisoners of war from Vietnam 50 years ago this spring, was the best military operation of McNish’s 34-year career.
“On Earth as it is heaven.” It engulfed his mind as he stood there dirty, hungry and in pain. He struggled to hold his hands up against the wall. His knees shook as he spread his feet wide and tried with everything inside of him not to move a muscle,
On two occasions, Douglas “Pete” Peterson served in Vietnam when he didn’t have to. Already a 10-year Air Force veteran when his number was called in 1966, then-Captain Peterson, with a pregnant wife and two kids at home, was eligible for a deferment, but didn’t apply. Instead, he took his
In August of 1967 I was shot down on my 101st mission near Dong Hoi, just north of the Demilitarized Zone. I was the co-pilot on an F4C. Both the pilot and I survived the crash and spent the next five and one-half years in a Communist prison in Hanoi
Jon A. Reynolds, a retired U.S. air force brigadier-general who spent more than seven years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965, died April 16 at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 84. The cause was lung cancer. Reynolds was