Isolated, they tapped on walls to communicate with each other in the beginning.
Later, with a little more freedom granted, they played bridge together, shared some of the rotating Sunday chaplain duties and encouraged each other with the recitations from movies, books and poetry.
The memories, now half a century old, are still fresh in John Fer’s mind as he recalled life in the North Vietnamese prison camp with John McCain and others who were held captive for several years.
For weeks the returned P.O.W.s had been stepping from “freedom birds” onto the television screens—most of them saluting crisply, walking smartly, looking physically fit and acting mentally alert. As the nation’s early apprehensions faded, a new idea set in: perhaps the P.O.W.s had been humanely treated after all. That illusion
Before his plane was shot down, before spending more than six years as a prisoner of war and before he was honored during his hometown’s Fourth of July parade, Col. Robert Waggoner called Steamboat Springs home. “He was the youngest boy of eight children, and he grew up and went
The Summerville man is modest, even while pointing at a display box of medals he’s earned through blood and sweat. Samuel Vaughan spent 16 months imprisoned at Hanoi in Vietnam. He was captured on April 18, 1971, only three months after arriving in Vietnam as a fighter pilot for the
Summer may be gone for a while, but the glorious, crisp mid-autumn weather that we so often experience in Iowa was in full bloom as we met at the Wakonda Club at noon for our weekly meeting. President Don Flannery welcomed us and called on Rob Hedgepeth for words of