Colorado Springs man details escape from Vietnam prison in self-published book (Trautman)

As a young Air Force public affairs sergeant in 1990, George Hayward learned firsthand accounts of Americans tortured in North Vietnamese prisons and a little-known story of escape.

The telling came from retired Col. William Baugh, a civilian public affairs chief Hayward served under at Falcon Air Force Base— now Schriever Space Force Base — east of Colorado Springs.

Baugh was shot down in an F-4 while bombing a railroad east of Hanoi on Jan. 21, 1967. He would spend more than six years as a prisoner of war alongside many other Air Force fighter pilots.

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Other Publications You Might Be Interested In

Five Years as a POW in Vietnam (Myron Donald)

Myron Donald grew up on a corner of his grandfather’s farm Moravia in central New York.  His father was a carpenter; his mother a housewife.  He has two brothers and a sister.  In high school, he played football, baseball and basketball and was president of the Student Council.  He graduated

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POW recalls captivity (Bradley Smith)

Navy Lt. Brad Smith was on a bombing run to destroy a bridge in North Vietnam when he was shot down in 1966. He didn’t see what ripped into his A-4 Skyhawk, but he saw the ground approaching at 600 mph as his crippled jet nose-dived toward the ground. Smith

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Vet has no regrets about Vietnam (Thomas Collins)

Thomas Collins III would like to clarify one point about his bombing missions in Vietnam, and the more than seven years he spent as a prisoner of war: It was not a mistake, not a waste, not a failure. “We needed to stop communism,” says Collins, 74, a retired U.S.

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