Memories of being caged, shackled and exposed to the powerful herbicide Agent Orange linger in the mind of retired U.S. Army Captain Isaac “Ike” Camacho, the first American to escape a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam.
Still, Camacho, who spent nearly two years as a prisoner of war, said he would serve again if he could.
“At one point in your life you have to serve your country. This would be one way of serving your country,” the now 81-year-old Camacho said from his home in East El Paso.
Kevin McManus, 65, an Air Force pilot shot down over North Vietnam who spent nearly six years as a prisoner of war and later retired as a lieutenant colonel, died of lung cancer July 31 at his home in Oakton. Two weeks before he was scheduled to leave Vietnam, and
T he picture on the Time magazine cover for April 23, 1965, was Air Force Lt. Col. Robinson Risner. The cover story, “The Fighting American,” featured 10 US military members in Vietnam, with fighter pilot Risner—a rising star in the Air Force—foremost among them.“At the time it was a great
PREFACE When people ask about being a POW, they want to know what the Hanoi Hilton was like. What happened in the Hilton was the same for all of us. But what happened before we got to the Hilton or some other site was quite different. Some pilots were shot
There are people in this world who, no matter what you’re going through, have had it worse. Allen Brady is one of them. The retired Navy Captain was flying his A-6 Intruder on a mission to take out a North Vietnamese bridge on January 19th, 1967. And then, suddenly everything went
Walking next to his father near a lake he fished as a boy, Navy Lieut. Markham Gartley looked up at the clear, blue sky and filled his lungs with crisp autumn air. The 28‐year‐old pilot noted the colors of the northern Maine woods—the McIntosh reds of the sugar maples, the