The call of loyalty and the call of friendship compelled author Arlyn Perkey to investigate the fate of Donald L. Sparks–a Vietnam veteran with the high priority status of Missing in Action-Prisoner of War-Last Known Alive. Intertwining his own story with that of his friend Don, Perkey offers a portrait of two naive Iowa farm boys, drafted, sent to Vietnam, and wounded when their squads were ambushed. One returned to the life he had imagined. The other suffered a fate obscured by decades of misinformation, withheld information, and failed communication fostered by bureaucratic protocols and unwarranted paranoia. Last Know Alive pieces together the story of Donald L. Sparks’ struggle to stay alive and return to his beloved Iowa home.
Unexpected Prisoner: Memoir of a Vietnam POW
When Lieutenant Robert Wideman’s plane crashed on a bombing run in the Vietnam War, he feared falling into enemy hands. Although he endured the kind of pain that makes people question humanity, physical torture was not his biggest problem. During six years as a prisoner of war, he saw the
