There were times I thought the end was coming.
That’s how Arthur Neil Black described his captivity after the helicopter he was aboard was shot down over North Vietnam on Sept. 20, 1965, while on a rescue mission for the U.S. Air Force.
“It was a very scary situation,” he recalled. “You don’t know if you are going to live or die. You start to pray. You don’t have anywhere else to turn. That becomes a saving grace.”
T he picture on the Time magazine cover for April 23, 1965, was Air Force Lt. Col. Robinson Risner. The cover story, “The Fighting American,” featured 10 US military members in Vietnam, with fighter pilot Risner—a rising star in the Air Force—foremost among them.“At the time it was a great
“The National Prisoners of War (POW) and Missing in Action (MIA) Recognition Day Observance Program honors our current MIAs, and past and current POWs around the nation,” said Post 197’s Bryan Richardson. Currently, Pike County has four known MIAs: Seaman 2nd Class David E. Ledford, Staff Sergeant Joel M. Matthews,
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
Six months before American combat troops were committed to Vietnam, Eugene Richardson, a 21-year-ld flight mechanic from Monroe County was killed while flying ammunition to a Special Forces camp on October 24, 1964. Rochester soon became economically involved in the war. General Dynamics, Stromberg-Carlson, Graflex, EastmanKodak, Bausch and Lomb, and