In 1967, there was a “unit” of approximately 300 Americans fighting the Vietnam War from within a Hanoi prison. The unit—later named the 4th Allied POW Wing—was located in the drab North Vietnamese capital. Within this unit, every man had the same job: prisoner of war.
All—except three enlisted airmen—were officers, including me. Our job description was to continue fighting for the United States while imprisoned.
It is an era many people wish to forget, not only the veterans who fought on foreign soil, but those left at home and those who protested so vocally about the Vietnam War. In earlier wars the soldiers knew they had the support from the home front, while not making
Weeks after arriving in Vietnam in 1968, Korean War veteran Sergeant First Class Floyd Wilmoth- who enlisted in the US Army in 1953- stepped aboard the river vessel LCU1577 ‘Sunset Strip’. Days later, Wilmouth and his crew were unwittingly embroiled in an international incident between Cambodia and the United States.
Everybody says we had nothing to do, but we did have something to do, we had an obligation to fulfill,” Lieut. Col. Alan Lurie said recently. “That was to follow the Code of Conduct, to resist the North Vietnamese attempts to exploit us. And that was full‐time job in that
March 29 is National Vietnam War Veterans Day. Two years ago, we were fortunate to receive a donation from the son of CAPT Kay Russell, a naval aviator who served time in a North Vietnamese POW (prisoner of war) camp. When I first saw the shirt he wore as a
Joe Milligan knew he had a problem when his North Vietnamese prison guards began wearing handkerchiefs over their faces when they entered his cell. The odor of rotting, infected flesh came from his arms, badly burned after Milligan ejected from his crippled F-4C Phantom and into a fireball. His burns