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.”
I heard a Special Forces soldier say recently that his greatest hero is the Vietnam veteran. In his words, he said the reason that today’s soldiers are treated so well is directly related to the disrespectful way the Vietnam veterans were treated upon returning home. I agree that today’s warriors have
In an AAFES parking lot at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, rests a plaque dedicated to former POWs from the Vietnam war, including some from the 388th Fighter Wing. It’s easy to walk past plaques, but this one is worth stopping to consider. For nearly a decade before it moved to Hill
Fred Flom, a Menasha native and a pilot who spent more than six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has died. Flom died June 23, according to his obituary. He was 80 years old. Flom grew up in Menasha as the youngest of four children. His family lived on
Douglas Hegdahl was born on September 3, 1946 in Clark, South Dakota. Being from a small town, Douglas once joked with a reporter that he’d “never been east of [his] uncles’ Dairy Queen stand in Glenwood, Minnesota or west of [his] aunt’s house in Phoenix, Arizona.” So when a military
The true things always ambush me on the road and take me by surprise when I am drifting down the light of placid days, careless about flanks and rearguard actions. I was not looking for a true thing to come upon me in the state of New Jersey. Nothing has