Until his release Feb. 12, 1973, he was a prisoner of war at the “Hanoi Hilton” prison compound. A common torture, he said, was an arm contortion known as the “rope trick,” in which his arms were forced behind his back and toward his head.

Dave Bakke: POW bracelet still meaningful (Leland Hildebrand)
Donna Bowers was a teenager in the early 1970s, when she received her POW bracelet. The name on the bracelet was Col. Leland Hildebrand. There was a date with the name: 12/18/71. Those bracelets were worn in honor of American soldiers missing or taken prisoner in the Vietnam War. That’s something we

