Library of Congress
John McCain on the horrors he endured as a POW
“I thought perhaps I was going to die,” McCain told ABC’s Sam Donaldson in a 1999 interview when describing being captured and tortured by the Vietcong.
Library of Congress
“I thought perhaps I was going to die,” McCain told ABC’s Sam Donaldson in a 1999 interview when describing being captured and tortured by the Vietcong.
In 1972, as the Paris Peace Accords drew to a conclusion, young William Reeder, Jr. was a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to an AH-1G Cobra Attack Helicopter in Vietnam. For many servicemen and women, the Vietnam War was over for the U.S. military. Reeder was afraid he missed the opportunity to see combat as a Cobra gunship pilot. The North Vietnamese had other plans, however, and the Easter Offensive changed Reeder’s life forever.
The actual story of Prisoners of War (POWs) left behind in previous wars is quite documented but became obscured by hoax POW pictures, small time scams, and other diversions. This is the story of those POWs left behind in Laos and Vietnam, drawn on facts from government published reports and official testimony from high-level figures such as former U.S. Defense Secretary and CIA Director James Schlesinger who testified under oath that POWs remained behind in