‘They didn’t want to look back’: A fellow POW’s family remembers (Wesley Schierman)

Turning pages of her scrapbook Tuesday, Faye Schierman stopped when she saw a letter dated Sept. 12, 1971.

“I pray you had a grand anniversary Faye,” the letter said. The seven-line note had been impeccably handwritten by her husband, Air Force Maj. Wesley Schierman, during nearly eight years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

Since the death of U.S. Sen. John McCain on Saturday, news accounts of his life and legacy have highlighted more than five years he spent as a captive during the Vietnam War. While most Americans can’t imagine what McCain and his family endured, Schierman and her children know all too well — and will never forget.

“It was seven and a half years, almost a decade,” said Schierman, 81, who lost her husband four years ago.

Read more

Other Publications You Might Be Interested In

Vice Adm. Edward Martin, 83, Vietnam POW

Edward Martin wound up in the hands of the North Vietnamese much the way Sen. John McCain and Vice Adm. James Stockdale did — the Navy commander’s A-4 Skyhawk was hit by enemy fire during a bombing mission and downed just southeast of Hanoi. And like McCain and Stockdale, his

Read More »

Edwin A. ‘Ned’ Shuman, Navy aviator and POW, dies at 82

On Nov. 29, 1970, 43 U.S. servicemen gathered in the Hoa Lo prison compound, often called the “Hanoi Hilton,” and performed an act of retaliation— a church service. Nine days earlier, after a failed attempt by U.S. Special Forces to liberate the prisoners, the North Vietnamese captors had removed them

Read More »

The Poet POW (Major General John Borling)

Born on Chicago’s South Side in 1940, John Borling seemed headed for a military career at an early age. Inspired by his uncle’s service in World War II as a B-24 navigator, and a weekend visit to West Point as a high school junior, Borling applied to all three academies

Read More »