what was it like being a pow in vietnam

WWII veteran Newton Heisley, a former pilot in the Army Air Corps, designed the flag in 1972 using his Marine son as the model for the black and white flags famous silhouette. Harkers first sergeant, nicknamed Top, was a 41-year old Veteran of World War II and Korea who had earned a Silver Star before joining the company. Over 2.7 million Americans served in the war and 58,318 died, with thousands more going on to suffer from the lifelong impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder, a poorly understood affliction at the time. And sometimes we have to make that choice many times throughout the day. In an unprovoked assault on the village of My Lai in northern South Vietnam, a company of recently deployed and undertrained U.S. soldiers committed numerous atrocities, including the indiscriminate murder of 500 civilians, men, women, and children. But as American involvement in the war grew, U.S. advisers started getting captured. I got through those hellish years by the grace and mercy of God, who provided me with a strong POW support system. The date Sept. 14 was assigned the number 001and all in all, only numbers 1 through 195 were called to duty. Some of my friends, however, were not so lucky. I hold the deep conviction that our country should respect the service of all our faithful troops and veterans. The families were desperate, there was so much misinformation going around. Enemy shots caught our right engine on fire, and as the plane was going down, we ejected just before the aircraft crashed. (Click to view gallery.) Official websites use .gov A similar mechanism is in operation today. All Rights Reserved. CantWriteToSaveMyLife@yahoo.com. Stacker believes in making the worlds data more accessible through The planes the Pentagon fixed for us did have guns fitted to them, but the guns success rate was about 50 percent. Known as "Cable 243," the communique from President Kennedy's government to the U.S. ambassador in South Vietnam had an immediate impactDiem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were assassinated a few months later, leading to 12 successive military coups between 1963 and 1965. Browse the selection of POW related content below. In October of 1972 the Vietnamese allowed prisoners to be outside together for the first time since they arrived, and it looked like the war might be over. So, when they let everyone out, and then gave us reading material, they knew it was over. But nothing happened. Action films like 1983s Uncommon Valor and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) fictionalized attempts at rescuing living soldiers from captivity in Vietnam. Under the agreement, Vietnam remained divided into North and South at the 17th parallelthough North Vietnam swiftly resumed planning the takeover of South Vietnam. He holds a doctorate in military history from Great Britains Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University. The Ohio National Guard killed four unarmed college students and wounded nine more during the shooting. He said it meant a lot to him that we were able to do that to make sure those people could go to the polls and not get hurt. Over the years, rumors about men left behind and discrepancies in the number of missing vs. the number of returned outraged MIA familiesas did reports of the mishandling and misidentification of American remains. In part a test of Vietnamization, U.S. troops were not permitted to cross into Laos, though they did provide air support. Originally published in the October 2008 issue of Vietnam Magazine. Gene Smith lit a cigarette on the way down. Aired: 04/26/23 I think of all the love behind it every time I drive it.. The Vietnam War lasted from 1964-1973the longest war in American history until it was overtaken by the one in Afghanistanand servicemen typically did one-year tours of duty. By 1893, France had annexed neighboring Cambodia and Laos as well and created out of the three nations a territory referred to as Indochina. Torture brought each man to his breaking point, and many prisoners were forced to write confessions or sign statements under atrocious coercion. Phisayavong has found that with the passage of time, locals are more willing to help in recovery efforts: I feel that now when I go to missions, people openly cooperateThe first time, villagers did not fully cooperate. He was severely wounded and then captured at Anzio. Unfortunately, that was not out of the ordinary. John McCain is greeted by President Richard Nixon, left, in Washington, after McCain's release from a prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam. Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter. Control of North Vietnam had long been ceded to his successors by this point, but Ho had remained involved in North Vietnamese affairs and was a deeply symbolic figure for many Vietnamese. Drama like The Guns of Navarone. During the third congress of the Lao Dong, Ho Chi Minh ceded his position as party secretary-general to Le Duan. Commemoration of the war must account for these servicemen who underwent so much hardship for their nation. An official website of theU.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Looking for U.S. government information and services? He had worked for a power company during World War II and so was exempt from the draft, Harker recalled. I signed up to become a fighter pilot, even though I had never set foot on a planeI thought it sounded exciting. republish under a Creative Commons License, and we encourage you to When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed., Pushed further, McCain gave up more phony facts: Once I was instructed to draw a diagram of an aircraft carrier. But just how good is the information? That experience gave him a pretty strong clue that all the Nazi propaganda about the savage and barbaric Americans might not be quite accurate. 27 Apr 2023 04:34:24 They wouldnt let him practice medicine, Harker said of Kushner. After being taken, Harker was left with a soldier with a sidearm who walked in front of him, leading him away from the creek. American servicemen were imprisoned in large numbers during the Korean War, and many were horribly mistreated and left to die by their captors. I remember that night vividly. The Hanoi Hilton Is No Trump Hotel. Im thinking, Im going to die. Top is behind me telling me to switch to auto and fire. On the heels of the end of the Korean War (which saw Korea divided at the 38th parallel), negotiators at Geneva proposed a partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel. He is among the finest American soldiers I have ever known. Once one of the worlds poorest and most isolated countries, Vietnam is now a middle-income Feb 3, 1989, 11:00pm PDT. Seniors, students, and teachers with valid IDs -$8.00Members,children under 12, First Responders, and Active Military - FREE As the U.S. embassy and the troops guarding it were being evacuated, two U.S. Marines died from a rocket attack, the final U.S. casualties of the war. Fairly straightforward, right? Last year, a prominent hysteria-monger on talk radio insisted that torture works, as proved conclusively by John McCains own admission that under relentless and brutal interrogation he finally broke and divulged more than his name, rank, service number and date of birth, as specified by the U.S. Armed Forces Code of Conduct. Seeing the conflict primarily through a Cold War lens, President John F. Kennedy authorized covert operations in South Vietnam intended to prevent a Communist takeover in the region. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. They gave us western clothing and a travel bag and when they pulled us out of a holding cell wearing our red-striped pajamas we were given the clothes. 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Library (Members Only) From Dec. 18-29, 1972, the U.S. Air Force conducted an operation called Linebacker II, a maximum effort campaign to destroy targets using B-52 heavy bombers that dropped more than 15,000 tons of ordnance on more than 30 targets. Nonetheless, some self-appointed experts still insist that torture produces valid, actionable intelligence. At the age of 20, when I was called to serve my country and defend freedom, I hadnt blinked an eye. That meant our plane was defenseless. Myself (a Brookville High School graduate) along with thousands of people and the Brookville High School Band were there to cheer David on his return home. Eventually we were moved to Alcatraz, a special prison located in a courtyard behind the North Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense, along with eight other diehard POWs. 312-374-9333, Tuesday Saturday From Maryland, Harker went to Valley Forge in Pennsylvania where he went through medical treatment and rehabilitation, and he was reunited with his family. That first year of adjustment to jungle life was really hard on us. Once we compromise those values, we find ourselves on the slippery slope to being just the same as we think they are. Or they thought it was, because before you know it, the doors are all slammed shut again.. Jessica Pearce Rotondi is the author ofWhat We Inherit: A Secret War and a Familys Search for Answers. However, in the years since the first revelations about Abu Ghraib, there have been additional exposures of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo and other locations. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, the agency within the Department of Defense responsible for tracking down MIAs, reported in May 2020 that 81,900 Americans were still considered MIA: 72,598 from World War II, 7,580 from the Korean War, 1,587 from Vietnam, 126 from the Cold War, and six from conflicts since 1991. By 1967, however, his fortunes had changed. A newspaper clipping from the time shows support from his hometown. If you are a Veteran in crisis The court-martial board acquitted Glenn, but the Judge Advocate General of the Army, Maj. Gen. George B. Davis, registered a fierce dissenting legal opinion of the verdict. His own experience, however, provides perhaps one of the best illustrations of why a clear policy and practice forbidding torture or mistreatment of POWs is in the best interest of the United States. We also had better medical care there as they had a doctor to attend to us.. My father-in-laws question is still hanging there, and I still dont have an answer for him. Many prisons used to hold American POWs were in close proximity to Hanoi, with a few of the more well known jails located directly in Hanoi. Intended as a temporary division, the Geneva Accords stipulated that a general election was to be held two years later that would reunify the nation. The stories of suffering and survival that many POWs have remind us of the sacrifices that so often accompany war. | Photo courtesy of Congressman Johnson's office. Tickets available upon arrival. In doing so, youre agreeing to the below guidelines. Lasting six days, Operation Starlite largely scattered the 1st NLF Regiment, though it would regroup and rebuild later. Finally, in March, the U.S. landed its first major deployment of ground troops at Da Nangwith the intended purpose of defending U.S. air bases. Being home with his family, Harker said he learned how much anxiety and frustration and worry his parents went through while he was captive. I tried to bury my M-16 in the creek bed but I think they got it.. Three days after the U.S. initiated the shelling of two North Vietnamese islands, North Vietnamese torpedo boats surprised the Maddox and engaged the destroyer in direct combat. and more. The objective is to promote history on Medium and demonstrate the value of historical writing. They wanted to get us away from the battlefield but a few days later they did it again. My life has been a real blessing since then, and the staff at the VA hospital, what they do is marvelous, and I appreciate each one of them. Naval Academy midshipmen to talk about their ordeal a half-century ago. Newspapers, magazines, television crews all reported from Vietnam, and both news and scenes from the war were quickly broadcast back to the U.S. As such, images of imprisoned American servicemen were widely shown to the public for the first time. The staff judge advocates at MACV headquarters quickly realized that if American GIs were going to have any chance whatsoever of surviving their captivity, the Saigon government had to be convinced to change its policy and start giving POW status to captured VC and treating them in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. After he returned from Vietnam, Harker took some time off, but eventually returned to Blacksburg and finished his business degree from Virginia Tech in 1976 and found his way to work as a probation and parole officer. At first you looked out for yourself, but as time went on, you got more altruistic you realize, its not about me, but about the guy next door and you realize you had to take care of each other. But that begs a more fundamental question: Does it work? After a blatant breaking of the Paris Peace Accords by the North Vietnamese, President Ford declared that the U.S. would commit no further resources or troops to Vietnam. Then, bowed or bent in half, the prisoner was hoisted up onto the hook to hang by ropes. HANOI, Vietnam American prisoners of war locked up for years in North Vietnam knew the drill. Another argument goes that Al Qaida and the Taliban are transnational terrorist organizations, gangs of thugs, not armies of established states, and that since their fighters are illegal combatants rather than real soldiers, they are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. However, theLinebackeroperations in 1972 called for heavy bombing of North Vietnam, and therefore more planes were shot down. In 1991, a Wall Street Journal poll found that 69 percent of Americans believed there were living MIAs still being held captive in Southeast Asia. He led the way and showed us how to nurse and take care of men, and that became our goal to make people in their last hours and days as comfortable as possible it was our mission, and he was a big inspiration to us.. As a result, our names were blacklisted together as hardcore resistors. Worse still, reports of the horrible conditions and torture that many faced haunted the American people. This operation marked the beginning of the use of chemical warfare by the U.S. in Vietnam, known most infamously as Agent Orange. Part of the reason why the POW issue remains an enduring part of the Vietnam War They served our country faithfully and with all their heart. Forty-two of those months were spent in solitary confinement with 10 other fine American patriots because the Vietcong labeled us diehard resistors. My dad was really upset. This soldier remains in good spirits after being relieved from the dangerous operation a month prior. ! To publish, simply grab the HTML code or text to the left and paste into It read, Freedom has a taste to it to those who fight and almost die that the protected will never know.. It wasnt until 1969, when three prisoners were released that they knew I was alive. He was later awarded the Silver Star, the nation's third highest military combat decoration for valor. The battle had long-lasting implications, in that it reinforced tactics for both armieswith the NLF relying upon close-quarter combat to reduce artillery efficacy, and the U.S. pursuing a war of attrition with North Vietnam, aiming to dwindle their numbers. 10:00 am to 4:00 pm In a memo to the secretary of war, Davis wrote, No modern state, which is a party to international law, can sanction, either expressly or by a silence which imports consent, a resort to torture with a view to obtain confessions, as an incident to its military operations.. Then, in a bid to challenge the NLF's supply lines, President Johnson launched Operation Rolling Thunder, beginning a three-year-long continual bombing of North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh trail that resulted in an estimated 182,000 Vietnamese civilian deaths. Domestically, antiwar protests rose in the U.S. while reporting on the abusive treatment of U.S. prisoners of war by North Vietnam gathered attention to the conditions of life for POWs. The question of whether any U.S. military personnel were kept imprisoned after the war was and for some Americans, still is one of the chief legacies of the Vietnam War. Napoleon III, France's first President, began an invasion process of Vietnam in 1858 that would conclude in 1883 with a complete annexation of the country.
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