Remember the Vietnam War and 1973? Probably not, but Air Force fighter pilot Captain Guy Dennis Gruters does. After being held as a prisoner of war for five plus years, including time in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, he was repatriated to the U.S. in 1973 along with 591 surviving POWs.
As a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and with a graduate engineering degree from Purdue University, Gruters volunteered for service in that war after extensive training as a pilot.
Isolation, poisonous snakes, giant spiders, torture, starvation, the ongoing smell of feces and urine, Gruters experienced it after being shot down for the second time on Dec. 20, 1967, in North Vietnam and captured.
