Tortured in notorious ‘Hanoi Hilton,’ 11 GIs were unbreakable

Documentary honors Vietnam War Veteran Daniel H. Hefel

After 14 years of gathering war stories, Tim Breitbach created a documentary depicting his cousin’s life, Daniel Hefel, a Vietnam War veteran. The film was shown for free March 30 during a public gathering at Southwestern Illinois College in Belleville, which was attended by a diverse audience of college students,

Injured POW Salutes Flag (Roy Madden Jr)

The Story Behind the Story: An Inside Look at the Extraordinary True Events that Inspired ‘Glory Denied’ (Floyd Thompson)

Glory Denied is about the cost of war, in this case the Vietnam War, to an American family. But in many ways, it is also the story of our country’s painful growth in the 1960s and 70s. United States Army Colonel Floyd “Jim” Thompson, the longest held prisoner of war (POW)

Where is the most austere or arduous place you spent the holidays while deployed? (Hughes, Alcorn)

On 22 December 1965, on a combat mission over North Vietnam, I was shot down and captured. I spent Christmas on a concrete floor in a North Vietnamese prison, arms tightly bound behind my back. For eight holiday seasons I enjoyed “the humane and lenient treatment of the North Vietnamese people,”

Col. Thomas Parrott of Dalton was a POW in Vietnam for more than 5 years

BeLinda Stevens Parrish remembers the parade Dalton threw for returning Vietnam War hero Thomas Vance Parrott, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war (POW) camp. “He was my cousin by marriage, not by blood,” she said. “I remember watching TV when prisoners were brought