50 Years Ago
■Mrs. Mary Cutter, 211 Elm St., grandmother of Capt. James Cutter, prisoner of war in North Vietnam, reported this morning that she has learned her grandson will be among the last prisoners to be returned to the U.S. “He hasn’t been there (as a POW) as long as some,” Mrs. Cutter conceded. “He’s only been there about a year.”
When Lt. Col. Harlan Chapman arrived in Hawaii after his release from seven years in North Vietnamese prisoner of war camps, Marine Lt. Gen. Louis Wilson was there to meet him. “Welcome back to the Marine Corps,” Wilson told Chapman. “Thank you, general,” Chapman replied, “But I never left.” Chapman
News of the emergency landing of a U.S. spy plane on China’s Hainan Island is giving flashbacks to a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who spent 7-1/2 years as a POW in China. It was on that island that Philip Smith spent his first hours after he was shot down
Marion “Tony” Marshall had a penchant for pushing boundaries. This led to some rather intriguing experiences during his time as a POW in Vietnam. Tony always wanted to be a pilot. Despite “skating” in high school he secured an interview for a military academy appointment and was one of only 6
Retired Air Force Col. Robert Certain was a navigator on the first B-52 shot down during Operation Linebacker II.
Co-pilot William Arcuri’s last B-52 mission and his prisoner-of-war experience The electronic warfare officer yells into the microphone, “SAM uplink — 5 o’clock, SAM 6 o’clock, SAM 7 o’clock.” Four Soviet made SAM-2 surface-to-air missiles, each armed with a 288-pound fragmentation warhead, are racing up at more than 2,600 miles