After 14 years of gathering war stories, Tim Breitbach created a documentary depicting his cousin’s life, Daniel Hefel, a Vietnam War veteran.
The film was shown for free March 30 during a public gathering at Southwestern Illinois College in Belleville, which was attended by a diverse audience of college students, veterans, and community members.
Isolated, they tapped on walls to communicate with each other in the beginning. Later, with a little more freedom granted, they played bridge together, shared some of the rotating Sunday chaplain duties and encouraged each other with the recitations from movies, books and poetry. The memories, now half a century
There is no doubt, being told to stay home for months has many of us feeling stressed, anxious, and incredibly isolated. While mental health experts have offered up advice, we thought it may help to hear from a local man, who likely knows more about social isolation than any of
Born on Chicago’s South Side in 1940, John Borling seemed headed for a military career at an early age. Inspired by his uncle’s service in World War II as a B-24 navigator, and a weekend visit to West Point as a high school junior, Borling applied to all three academies
Charles “Chuck” Jackson has little memory of the crushing sound of metal as his F-4 Phantom II broke apart. What he does remember most is the split second before ejecting. A heat-seeking missile, about 6 to 8 feet long, fired by a pursuing North Vietnamese MIG-21 went right up the
He was just a soldier on a bracelet in a basket – Army 1st Lt. John Dunn, who was taken prisoner in 1968. I decided his Irish Dunn was a good match for my Irish Cahill. The Vietnam War was the first time I heard of prisoners of war. Though