On this date in 1973, the Viet Cong released First Lieutenant Richard Bates of the U.S. Air Force. While flying a mission nearly 6 months before, he was shot down over North Vietnam and taken prisoner. Bates was from Plaza, ND, and was 24 when he was captured.
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.
A Prisoner of War bracelet from the 1970s has managed to unite a U.S. Navy veteran and an Air Force veteran on Mar. 3. Lt. Col. Bob Jeffrey was taken as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam Conflict, and it was that bracelet that gave him hope during the
For several months, a dank 6.5-by-7-foot cell at the Hanoi Hilton served as a crucible that tested the limits of human endurance for retired Air Force Col. Leon Ellis and three of his fellow prisoners.
As a young Air Force public affairs sergeant in 1990, George Hayward learned firsthand accounts of Americans tortured in North Vietnamese prisons and a little-known story of escape. The telling came from retired Col. William Baugh, a civilian public affairs chief Hayward served under at Falcon Air Force Base— now