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.
