General Led POWs During Vietnam War Bv Pai’I. Logan Journal Staff Writer Gen. John P. Flynn played an unsung leadership role for U.S. prisoners of war in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Flynn, who had many Air Force friends in New Mexico, died Wednesday in San Antonio, Texas. The retired lieutenant general was buried Monday at Fort Sam Houston. He was 74. Hervey Stockman of Albuquerque, a retired colonel and former Vietnam POW, said Monday that Flynn’s cause of death was combination of old age and “the deprivations he experienced while in prison” in North Vietnam from 1967 to 1973. Stockman, held nearly six years in a prison known as the “Hanoi Hilton,” said he shared a cell block with Flynn.
He said Flynn “had never been recognized adequately” as the POWs’ leader during their final years of incarceration. “Gen. Flynn was a fine man, a gentle man who was very humorous and very eloquent,” he said. “Once he was back in the U.S., he went on about his business and really did not try and capitalize on his prisoner-of-war experience. “He was very helpful to all POWs.
He felt strongly about improving lives, making sure we got good medical help. In my judgment, he was overlooked by the more interesting personalities, such as (James B.) Stockdale.” ‘,’ : Stockdale, who ran as the Independent Party’s vice presidential candidate with Ross Perot in 1992, was the highest-ranking military prisoner in Hanoi until Flynn’s F-105 was shot down in 1967. But Flynn was segregated from the rest of the POWs until January 1971, when he took over as senior ranking officer. “He was primarily responsible for getting us truly organized,” Stockman said. Flynn made sure POWs’ lengthy imprisonment did not affect their careers and promotions.
