‘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

The Man Who Fell to Earth (Joseph Kittinger )

On August 16, 1960, Joe Kittinger went for a balloon ride. Sitting inside an open gondola suspended from an enormous helium-filled envelope, the U.S. Air Force captain rose to a height more than 19 miles above the Earth’s surface. His mission that day—part of Project Excelsior—was to test a new

Read More »

Vietnam POW from Virginia Beach dies at 77 (Jack Fellowes)

Retired Navy Capt. John H. “Jack” Fellowes, a pilot from Virginia Beach who was held at the “Hanoi Hilton” as a prisoner of war during Vietnam, has died from congestive heart failure, his family said. On Aug. 27, 1966, Lt. Cmdr. Fellowes and his bombardier-navigator, Lt. j.g. George Coker, also

Read More »

Museum display honors veteran (Richard Logan Francis)

The Bartlesville Area History Museum received a unique remembrance for its permanent gallery from graduates of a local College-High School class on Thursday. The Wildcat class of 1961 typically uses its “flower fund” to send condolences and flowers to classmates who have lost loved ones. But the former students dipped

Read More »