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.”
A prisoner of war gave riveting details of his experience in Vietnam Thursday night to members of Purdue’s Tri-Service ROTC. Retired Air Force Col. Kevin Cheney always wanted to fly planes. On July 1, 1972, the jet Cheney, then Capt. Cheney, was flying was shot down.
In the early morning hours of 29 October 1963, at Tan Phu village in southernmost Vietnam, then-First Lieutenant (1LT) James N. ‘Nick’ Rowe, the Assistant Detachment Commander, Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 23, prepared for a ‘routine’ combat patrol. Rowe, Senior Special Forces (SF) Medic Master Sergeant Daniel L. Pitzer,
POW comes marching home again and Lynnfield gets right in step By Marvin Olasky Globe Correspondent LYNNFIELD “Lauren Lengyel is OK in our books,” a sign at the public librayr proclaimed yesterday afternoon as Lengyel, an Air Force captain and six-year captive in North Vietnam, was honored by his neighbors
Lorain County native Lt. Col. Harlan Page Chapman, a veteran who spent seven years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, died on Monday at his home in Green Valley, Arizona. Chapman, 89, had lived in Arizona with his wife, Frances “Fran” Chapman, since 2015 and was diagnosed
Air Force Capt. Jack M. Butcher who a few years ago was playing “Hail To The Victors” as a member of the University of Michigan Marching Band, heard that fight song played in his honor Saturday afternoon. Ann Arbor’s first prisoner of war to return from Vietnam was welcomed home