‘Fidel’ tortured POWs in Vietnam (Bomar, Hubbard, Cobeil)

Jack Bomar still has nightmares about the beatings administered by ”Fidel,” a Cuban government agent in North Vietnam who tortured him and 17 other U.S. prisoners of war some three decades ago.

”I wake up at night and I am in a situation back there,” the retired Air Force colonel said. ”Sometimes I am trying to bail out of my airplane, or sometimes it might be Fidel there, waiting to hammer me.”

Recently declassified Defense Department documents say three Cubans were sent to North Vietnam by Fidel Castro’s government to deal with U.S. POWs in what became known as the Cuba Program.

Now, some of those former POWs are thinking of suing the Cuban government for reparations, according to a Miami Herald report Sunday.

Other Publications You Might Be Interested In

Airmanship (Richard Brunhaver)

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

Read More »

POW Ben Pollard

Ben Pollard got a lot of mail his last week in prison, as many letters as he’d received in the preceding six years combined: four. – No matter that they dated to 1968, .and this was 1973. ; That sort of conduct “made (the iNorth Vietnamese) wonderful enemies,” said Pollard,

Read More »

Five Years as a POW in Vietnam (Myron Donald)

Myron Donald grew up on a corner of his grandfather’s farm Moravia in central New York.  His father was a carpenter; his mother a housewife.  He has two brothers and a sister.  In high school, he played football, baseball and basketball and was president of the Student Council.  He graduated

Read More »

Wilkes native Denver Key was POW with Senator McCain

Wilkes County native Wilson Denver “Denny” Key was a prisoner of war in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” in North Vietnam during essentially the same 5½-year period Sen. John McCain, who died Saturday, was held there. McCain, being remembered this week for his bravery and resolve as a POW, was captured

Read More »

Nevadan recalls POW ordeal (William Elander)

Here’s how Nevada Republican delegate Bill Elander describes becoming a prisoner of war: a bad day. “After 50 or 60 missions, I had a bad day,” the Sparks resident and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel said in an interview at the national GOP convention. “I was shot down in 1972

Read More »