Former POW Celebrates 30 Years Of Freedom (Charles Brown)

As U.S. prisoners of war in Iraq await their freedom, Col. Charles Brown, 439th Maintenance Group commander here recalled the end of his own POW experience 30 years earlier.

On April 1, 1973, a young, Captain Brown walked off a C-9 Nightingale onto the tarmac here after spending 101 days as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. He was imprisoned at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” after his B-52 Stratofortress was hit by a missile Dec. 19, 1972.

Brown’s experience as a POW takes on renewed significance in light of current events in Iraq. “It brings back old memories,” he said.

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Other Publications You Might Be Interested In

POWs and Politics: How Much does Hanoi Really Know A Paper Presented on 19 April 1996 at the Center for the Study of the Vietnam Conflict Symposium “After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam,” at Texas Tech University

The recent diplomatic recognition of Vietnam, along with the lifting of the economic embargo, offers an opportunity to re-examine one of the most pernicious legacies of the Vietnam War, the POW/MIA dilemma. Two decades after the war ended, the POW/MIA issue continues to divide Americans in a manner reminiscent of

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A heroic connection (Charlie James)

It took her 44 years, but Morreen O’Reilly-Mersberger finally tracked down the prisoner of war whose name was on a bracelet that she purchased in college and kept to this day. The 62-year-old Plymouth resident bought the item for $2 in the fall of 1970 from a student group on

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