In August of 1967 I was shot down on my 101st mission near Dong Hoi, just north of the Demilitarized Zone. I was the co-pilot on an F4C. Both the pilot and I survived the crash and spent the next five and one-half years in a Communist prison in Hanoi — the Hanoi Hilton. Before I was shot down I had become disillusioned with the way we were fighting the war. The intent of what we were trying to do was absolutely correct. But we were going about accomplishing our goals in the wrong way.
A GOOD AGE: The Stratton incident becomes the Stratton way (Richard Stratton)
News stories about the Vietnam conflict were a daily staple in the spring of 1968 when I joined The Patriot Ledger as a copy reader on the news desk. I soon learned that the year before a Quincy native, Lt. Cmdr. Richard Stratton, had been captured after he was forced
