Norris Overly, a 41‐ year‐old Air Force Colonel from Detroit, is one of nine men in the United States who know what it is like to live in a North Vietnamese prison camp.
He was just a soldier on a bracelet in a basket – Army 1st Lt. John Dunn, who was taken prisoner in 1968. I decided his Irish Dunn was a good match for my Irish Cahill. The Vietnam War was the first time I heard of prisoners of war. Though
It was December 26, 1972. The vibration from bombs exploding in the distance resonated through the walls of the North Vietnamese prison. In his cell, an American pilot peered through the barred windows where he saw the silhouette of a B-52 Stratofortress in flames. He could only watch as the
On this day in 2005, retired Navy Vice Admiral William “Bill” Lawrence passes away. Decades earlier, Lawrence had been a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton. He was one of the highest-ranking members of our military to be held in that infamous prison. Trouble began in June 1967. Lawrence
Indiana University professor emeritus Ron Osgood was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1968, but his time in the Navy didn’t fully shape his understanding of the war. That came some four decades later, when Osgood began production on his 2010 PBS documentary “My Vietnam, Your Iraq.” This year, he
I stood up and made a gesture of surrender, and they were all over me. Funny thing, the first thing to come off was my Seiko watch . . . then they got around to my gun and knife.” When Bill Wilson was captured by the North Vietnamese, one of