Thomas Collins III would like to clarify one point about his bombing missions in Vietnam, and the more than seven years he spent as a prisoner of war:
It was not a mistake, not a waste, not a failure.
“We needed to stop communism,” says Collins, 74, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel. “It was a good mission. We needed to nip that in the bud, and we did. Actually, Vietnam was successful. We stopped communism.”
Porter Halyburton was born in 1941 and grew up in Davidson, North Carolina, with his grandparents because his parents divorced when he was young. His grandfather taught at Davidson, and Porter later attended that university. He enjoyed sports and being outdoors, often roaming the area around Davidson with a .22
Fifty years ago this week, returning Vietnam War released prisoner of war, Air Force Maj. Charles E. Greene Jr. of Schenectady, alighted a C-9 Nightingale at Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Mass. and embraced his wife, Sandra, and 10-year-old daughter Kim, who had been escorted to the plane’s ramp.
Summer may be gone for a while, but the glorious, crisp mid-autumn weather that we so often experience in Iowa was in full bloom as we met at the Wakonda Club at noon for our weekly meeting. President Don Flannery welcomed us and called on Rob Hedgepeth for words of
It was all so long ago, and time for a final interview with nine U.S. Marines released from Vietnam’s infamous Hanoi Hilton prison in 1973. Capt. William Kerr Angus was number nine, the last in line. I called this group of Marines “The Pendleton 9,” a microcosm of men mired in what
Five years ago I wrote “Jack, Will You Sing Again?” — a story about Col. Jack Tomes, a POW for six and a half years in the Hanoi Hilton, a notorious camp for POWs in Vietnam known for its brutal treatment of American prisoners. Spence Field brought Jack to Moultrie