For nearly a year, Kailua resident Emilia Thomas never knew that her husband, a Marine Corps aviation observer, was alive after being shot down in Vietnam and being held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi.
“That’s the only thing that still bothers me,” said retired Marine Chief Warrant Officer William Thomas, who was captured on May 19, 1972, a few miles from Quang Tri city. “They never told my family they had me. I was always listed as missing in action.”
After two nights in the warehouse the three American POWs were moved to a Cambodian Navy bachelor officers’ quarters by the river. Two rooms had been partitioned off on one end of the small building: one room for the officer and one for the enlisted men. Each room had two
On two occasions, Douglas “Pete” Peterson served in Vietnam when he didn’t have to. Already a 10-year Air Force veteran when his number was called in 1966, then-Captain Peterson, with a pregnant wife and two kids at home, was eligible for a deferment, but didn’t apply. Instead, he took his
Lt. Cmdr. Al Agnew was on a reconnaissance mission over Hanoi, Vietnam during the tail end of the Vietnam War on December 28, 1972 when a fighter jet escorting him across enemy territory radioed in with an urgent message: Turn right.
On 12 July 1967; Sgt. Cordine McMurray, then Sgt. Martin S. Frank, SP4 James L. Van Bendegom; SP4 James F. Schiele, SP4 Nathan B. Henry, SP4 Stanley A. Newell, and SP4 Richard R. Perricone were riflemen assigned to a search and destroy patrol operating in the Ia Drang Valley, Pleiku
Murphy Neal Jones Sr., a Baton Rouge native who endured more than 6½ years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam’s infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” died Thursday in Delaware. He was 81. A football star at Baton Rouge High School who went on to play at Tulane University, Jones was a
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