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.”
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
Piloting the same plane that rescued him 31 years ago, a former American prisoner of war returned to Vietnam on Friday on his last military mission to bring home remains thought to be fallen comrades. Air Force Reserve Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier stood in his flight uniform saluting two aluminum
Isolated, they tapped on walls to communicate with each other in the beginning. Later, with a little more freedom granted, they played bridge together, shared some of the rotating Sunday chaplain duties and encouraged each other with the recitations from movies, books and poetry. The memories, now half a century
Debbie Haney first saw George McSwain when she was five. Haney was watching a 1973 newscast of Operation Homecoming when she saw McSwains face flash across the television screen. She remembers asking her father why the man looked so angry. He told her that McSwain had been a prisoner of
In a ceremony hosted by the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society and the JB MDL leadership, 18 former POWs of the Vietnam War were honored for their service and bravery recognizing the passing of forty years since their repatriation in 1973. Chief Warrant Officer 4 Francis Anton, Maj. Gen. John Borling, Cmdr.