Vietnam POW and Michigan native Donald ‘Digger’ Odell

Nevadan recalls POW ordeal (William Elander)

Here’s how Nevada Republican delegate Bill Elander describes becoming a prisoner of war: a bad day. “After 50 or 60 missions, I had a bad day,” the Sparks resident and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel said in an interview at the national GOP convention. “I was shot down in 1972

Beloit’s native son, Vietnam POW shares heart and soul of defending freedom (Mastin, Storey)

The engineered violence U.S. Air Force pilots Ron Mastin and Tom Storey felt ejecting from an F-4 Phantom at 500 miles per hour was more shocking than impact of North Vietnamese ordinance that sent their jet crashing to the ground on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. On Mastin’s 34th aerial reconnaissance

P.O.W. Casualties Reported (Carroll Beeler)

Tass, the Soviet press agency, reported from Hanoi today that American air strikes over the North Vietnamese capital had inflicted casualties on Ameri can pilots held prisoner there. A Tass correspondent, Alex ander Mineyev, said that raids “during three straight nights” had dropped bombs in the area of a prison

McCain bargained with his Vietnamese captors (Fred Thompson)

In his speech Sept. 2, 2008, to the Republican National Convention, former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., recounted John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam after his Navy plane was shot down in October 1967. “They took him to the Hanoi Hilton, where he lapsed in and

TORTURE DETAILED BY 3 PILOTS HERE (Charles Rice, Wayne Goodermote, Charles Zuhoski)

Three Navy pilots released after six years in prison in North Vietnam yesterday detailed the torture they said they received at the hands of their captors. At a news conference held at the Naval Hospital in St. Albans, Queens, the officers, all from New York State, spoke in strong support