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.”
Almost 50 years ago this month, they began to arrive. It was called Operation Homecoming, and it saw 591 American military prisoners of war finally free after years of often brutal captivity in Vietnam. Over several weeks in February and March of 1973, they were returned to military bases in
Brigadier General (Ret.) James Latham is an Air Force veteran who served for more than 27 years, from March 1969 to August 1997. He was a command pilot with more than 5,000 flying hours to include 383 combat missions in Southeast and Southwest Asia. On October 5th, 1972, while operating
Arthur Burera retired Air Force colonel who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1966 and spent 83 months as a prisoner of war, has died. The highly decorated war hero, who was held for a time in Hanoi with a pilot named John McCain, was 77. Burer had Alzheimer’s disease.
Col. Ted W. Guy, 4-18-29 to 4-23-99SRO at the Plantation was Air Force Lt. Col. Ted Guy. The combative Guy had been downed in Laos on March 22, 1968. He was captured after shooting it out with some North Vietnamese soldiers, killing at least two of them. After capture he