Captain Ben Ringsdorf was locked away for six and a half years in the Hanoi Hilton, the most notorious prison camp in the Vietnam War. After he and the rest of his captive soldiers were freed at war’s end, he was greeted with not only a hero’s welcome, but a “ready- made” family. However, even with all of the accolades and love he received, Ben faced physical, mental and emotional challenges just as daunting as his imprisonment, ones that threatened to tear his family apart. While things appear to look bright for the Ringsdorf family, their patriarch soon finds himself haunted by past memories and debilitated by alcoholism and a sense of paranoia, signs of the (at the time) not-yet-diagnosed PTSD. After the Music Stops is Gloria Gayden Corona’s memoir of her promising – yet whirlwind – relationship with the former POW, chronicling their blossoming romance, Ben’s repatriation and desire for a medical career, and his struggle with mental illness.
Seven Years in Hanoi: A POW Tells His Story
It Looked like and “ordinary” day when Air Force Capt. Larry Chesley took off. But less than an hour later he had been shot down over North Vietnam with a broken vertebra, stripped of his clothing and equipment and was sitting handcuffed and blindfolded in a hole in the ground.
