When Lt. Colonel Ballard, a USAF jet pilot on a military mission over North Vietnam, was shot down in September 1966, his first thought was for his wife: Ruth, I’m sorry. It’s going to be a long time… Shortly afterward he was captured by North Vietnamese soldiers and interred as a prisoner of war. Thus began six and a half years of pain, hunger, thirst, fear, anxiety, humiliation, and degradation. But there was also hope. And faith. This memoir vividly chronicles Ballard’s capture, torture, and the living conditions that he and his fellow POWs endured until their release in March of 1973.
P.O.W. Two Years with the Vietcong
George Smith spent two years as a POW moving from camp to camp in the middle of the jungle. Impressed from the beginning by Vietcong military proficiency, he slowly overcame his Green Beret “arrogance” and learned to see the VC as people-warm, just, humane, sincere and so highly motivated that
