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.”
Indiana University professor emeritus Ron Osgood was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1968, but his time in the Navy didn’t fully shape his understanding of the war. That came some four decades later, when Osgood began production on his 2010 PBS documentary “My Vietnam, Your Iraq.” This year, he
Col. Al Brunstrom of the U.S. Air Force, retired, 83, describes how he was shot down in Vietnam in the RF-101 (Voodoo) he was flying, on a scale model of the aircraft, at his home in the Woods and Lakes community near Ocklawaha, Fla. on Tuesday, August 5, 2014. Brunstrom
If captured by the enemy and imprisoned during wartime, American servicemembers must summon the highest levels of courage. A pair of retired lieutenant colonels in Texas knows all too well what it’s like to be stripped of freedoms and have their patriotism and faith put to the test. Lawrence Barbay was
Navy Lt. Giles Norrington was making his 22nd reconnaissance flight into North Vietnamese territory when communist rebels shot off the right wing of his RA-5C Vigilante. The plane erupted into a fireball. As Norrington and his navigator, Richard Tangeman, tried to escape, Norrington thought, “It’s taking a long time to
Operation Homecoming, which freed now-retired Col. Tom McNish and more than 600 prisoners of war from Vietnam 50 years ago this spring, was the best military operation of McNish’s 34-year career. “Due to Operation Homecoming and the totally nourishing environment that it put us in immediately after getting out of