Today marked 40 years since the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces and the end of the Vietnam War. But, for three men who spent years of their lives as prisoners of war, the memories of that era remain fresh.
The men shared their stories at an event hosted by the North Carolina Museum of History and North Carolina Vietnam Veterans Inc., in Raleigh, April 17, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War.
Retired Air Force Col. Laird Guttersen, 80, who spent five years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp and later became an advocate for families of missing military personnel, died June 13 in Tucson of complications of a stroke, according to family members. His F-4 Phantom was shot down over North
Debbie Haney first saw George McSwain when she was five. Haney was watching a 1973 newscast of Operation Homecoming when she saw McSwains face flash across the television screen. She remembers asking her father why the man looked so angry. He told her that McSwain had been a prisoner of
Jack Bomar still has nightmares about the beatings administered by ”Fidel,” a Cuban government agent in North Vietnam who tortured him and 17 other U.S. prisoners of war some three decades ago. ”I wake up at night and I am in a situation back there,” the retired Air Force colonel
Weeks after arriving in Vietnam in 1968, Korean War veteran Sergeant First Class Floyd Wilmoth- who enlisted in the US Army in 1953- stepped aboard the river vessel LCU1577 ‘Sunset Strip’. Days later, Wilmouth and his crew were unwittingly embroiled in an international incident between Cambodia and the United States.
On April 19, 1967, Maj. Leo Thorsness (pilot) and Capt. Harold Johnson (EWO) led a Wild Weasel formation on a mission against the Xuan Mai army barracks about 30 miles southwest of Hanoi. After they silenced one SAM site and destroyed another, enemy anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) shot down the accompanying