50 years ago, direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War officially ended as the last remaining combat troops and prisoners of war returned to American soil.
It was a complex moment for the country, as the war was deeply unpopular and ended in defeat. More than 58,000 Americans died in the war, along with three million Vietnamese. Fredrik Logevall told Under the Radar that Americans were ready for the war to be over.
The word hero gets thrown around a lot. A Fairdale family has no doubt it fits Colonel Dewey Lee Smith. The former prisoner of war died this week at age 85. His death comes after a life spent with the memories of five tortuous years in North Vietnam and the
Debbie Haney first saw George McSwain when she was five. Haney was watching a 1973 newscast of Operation Homecoming when she saw McSwains face flash across the television screen. She remembers asking her father why the man looked so angry. He told her that McSwain had been a prisoner of
When 2nd Lt. John “Spike” Nasmyth climbed into his F-4 Phantom II on Sept. 4, 1966, to fly a combat mission over Vietnam, he never foresaw that he’d be blown out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile. The last words he heard before his jet was transformed into a
On the Fourth of July, the 65-year-old former Navy pilot talked about his blessings while fingering the remnant of a 57-millimeter anti-aircraft shell that downed his plane in the Vietnam War. Osborne managed to eject from his A-4 Skyhawk before it crashed, but it seems the 30-year-old casing has found
Dozens attended a funeral service at Barrancas National Cemetery (BNC) onboard Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola May 16 for retired Cmdr. Ralph Ellis Gaither Jr., a naval aviator well-known in the Pensacola community as a Vietnam veteran and Prisoner of War (POW) who had exemplified defiance while in enemy hands.