Six years, nine months and four days — that’s the length of time 1959 Conroe graduate Col. James E. Ray spent as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.
He was shot down on Mother’s Day 1966 and was released two days before Valentine’s Day 1973. Upon his return home to Conroe, the city hosted a parade around the downtown square and celebration at Tiger Stadium in early March 1973 where the stadium was filled with supporters.
In 1967, there was a “unit” of approximately 300 Americans fighting the Vietnam Warfrom within a Hanoi prison. The unit—later named the 4th Allied POW Wing—waslocated in the drab North Vietnamese capital. Within this unit, every man had thesame job: prisoner of war.All—except three enlisted airmen—were officers, including me. Our
Lieutenant Colonel Galand Dwight Kramer was born 5 September 1941 in Wichita, Kansas. He grew up in Kansas and Oklahoma, graduating from Tulsa’s Edison High School in 1959. He is a 1964 graduate of the University of Oklahoma with a Petroleum Land Management degree. He was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant
I was hiding under a log. Doing my best to masquerade as North Vietnam terrain, I’d pulled branches on top of me, smeared mud on my face, and arranged leaves and other foliage to stick out of my clothes. I was 20 miles behind enemy lines, having parachuted out of
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
The events on Dec. 20, 1972, were clearly on the mind of former Air Force pilot Paul Granger as he exited a T-38C Talon following a special hourlong flight March 3 that began and ended on the east flightline at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph. Caught up in the emotional aftermath
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