Commemorating Veterans Day at the Deuel High School gym Monday, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Lebert recounted his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Lebert, a 1960 graduate of Watertown High School, joined the Air Force in 1965. During his 89th mission, in January 1968, Lebert’s plane
“I was a prisoner of war of the North Vietnamese 2,428 days, 18 hours and 35 minutes (nearly 7 years) . I calculated it on a Hewlett-Packard calculator one day. ” Before the January, 2006 dinner meeting of the Golden Gate Wing, the last time CAPT Cole Black was at the
People passing by Memorial Park on the Clemson University campus Friday morning June 3, 2022, might have seen what looked like a typical group of visitors getting a tour of the carefully manicured grounds that sit directly across from Memorial Stadium. A cluster of grandfatherly men, some using walkers, most
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
It was supposed to be a routine mission, a “milk run” in the words of George Coker, who was serving on his 55th missions in Vietnam as a bombardier/navigator. Usually, his missions consisted of flying over Vietnam from the aircraft carrier USS Constellation and bombing strategic points like bridges and