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.”
March 29 is National Vietnam War Veterans Day. Two years ago, we were fortunate to receive a donation from the son of CAPT Kay Russell, a naval aviator who served time in a North Vietnamese POW (prisoner of war) camp. When I first saw the shirt he wore as a
During five years in prison camps, Sgt. Ed Flora survived a disabling gunshot wound and kept to himself all the information that North Vietnamese interrogators beat him regularly to get, said his daughter, Teresa Flora LaFratte. After her father’s death Sept. 15 in Arizona, LaFratte shared some details of his
To the North Vietnamese, Capt. James A. Mulligan Jr. had a “bad attitude.” As a result, he suffered heavily during his seven years in Hanoi prison. He spent 42 months in solitary confinement during the first four years, and for 16 of those months he was kept in a camp
Montgomery County commissioners joined veterans and their families in a solemn ceremony in observance of POW/MIA Recognition Day at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial outside the Montgomery County Court House in Norristown Friday morning. “Perhaps our greatest testament to our POWs and MIAs is not just that we gather today,” said
Michael Thomas Burns was fulfilling a lifelong dream of flying jets in the Air Force when he was shot down over Vietnam during a combat mission July 5, 1968. Burns was captured and later transferred to the infamous Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war camp. After spending 1,714 days in captivity,