A large crowd of past and present service members, students and guests gathered at Grand Avenue Theater to hear Colonel Thomas J. Curtis, retiree from the United States Air Force, speak about his time as a Prisoner of War (POW) in Vietnam on Friday. Organized by Master Networks Belton Chapter and named “Living History,” Colonel Curtis revealed the brutal reality behind being imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton and how he has lived to tell his story as one of 687 POWs who returned alive.

Defiant Vietnam POWs, defiant wives at home (William Stark)
First came a knock on the door, then the bad news, then a request for silence. Don’t tell anyone that your husband/father/son/brother has become a prisoner of war. That was the way it went early in the Vietnam War. U.S. government officials didn’t want to antagonize the North Vietnamese captors,

