On 22 December 1965, on a combat mission over North Vietnam, I was shot down and captured. I spent Christmas on a concrete floor in a North Vietnamese prison, arms tightly bound behind my back. For eight holiday seasons I enjoyed “the humane and lenient treatment of the North Vietnamese people,” according to the interrogator.
3 P.O.W.’S ADMIT TALKING TO FOE (Coker, Mehl, McLeary)
Three Navy airmen told yesterday of having given information under torture to the North Vietnamese. But each said he had been able to offer some, resistance and none seemed in any way apologetic. “I would say I did not break,” said Capt. James P. Mehl of Hauppauge, L. I., a