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Met a POW today

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Road Program

Road Program

Hangin' on by the static wicks
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So I'm at occupational therapy today and this older guy comes in. I sort of overhear his conversation with one of the therapists and he says he has to come in every year as part of a program. Program? Yes, it's for POW's. It turns out this guy is a retired AF Colonel who spent 7 years in the Hilton. We ended up at the same table and had a nice conversation.

The purpose of this post is to say to him or any other former POW who may be reading the board THANK YOU for keeping the faith and giving the rest of us an example to live up to in case the most awful of events occurs.

God bless you and, once more, welcome home.
 
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Fly Navy

Fly Navy

...Great Job!
pilot
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I've met a couple POWs in my time in the Navy and NROTC. Quite an experience,
 
Grant

Grant

Registered User
7 years? My God... I couldnt imagine. And yes, a huge "Thank You" is owed to every former POW.
 
nittany03

nittany03

Recovering NFO. Herder of Programmers.
pilot
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Amen . . . can't imagine going through that. Hopefully SERE school will be as close as I come. Apparently John McCain faced accusations of carpetbagging when he ran for Senate in Arizona, but those folks shut up when he mentioned that the place he'd lived in the longest was Hanoi . . . unbelievable.
 
S

Super18Ordie

F/A-18 Ordnanceman
We had this old master chief on my last ship. He was a former POW I dont know if it was Vietnam or after. I think he was in his 50s-60s. You could never ask how old he was because it would change everytime. But I had heard that he didnt have to retire if he didnt want to because of his status. But he was old and senile. And nobody knew the story of how he became a POW I had heard that it was because he was somewhere on liberty that he wasnt supposed to be or something like that which explained why he never left the ship inport overseas.
 
Flash

Flash

SEVAL/ECMO
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Super18Ordie said:
We had this old master chief on my last ship. He was a former POW I dont know if it was Vietnam or after. I think he was in his 50s-60s. You could never ask how old he was because it would change everytime. But I had heard that he didnt have to retire if he didnt want to because of his status. But he was old and senile. And nobody knew the story of how he became a POW I had heard that it was because he was somewhere on liberty that he wasnt supposed to be or something like that which explained why he never left the ship inport overseas.
Click to expand...

The only enlisted POW in Vietnam retired as a CWO and was on the staff of the Navy San Diego SERE school and still talked there after he retired when my buddies went through in '98. I am not aware of any other Navy enlisted POW's since then. Can anyone else want to shed some light?

P.S. The guys who landed in China were not POW's, were are not at war with China.
 
Road Program

Road Program

Hangin' on by the static wicks
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The enlisted NAVY who I know of who was a POW fell off his ship and was picked up by fisherman and turned over to the NVA. There were other enlisted from the other services, though. 3% of the Hanoi Hilton's population was enlisted.
 
Flash

Flash

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Road Program said:
The enlisted NAVY who I know of who was a POW fell off his ship and was picked up by fisherman and turned over to the NVA. There were other enlisted from the other services, though. 3% of the Hanoi Hilton's population was enlisted.
Click to expand...

The guy who washed overboard was Douglas Hegdahl. He was the only early returnee from North Vietnam who was authorized by the POW leadership to do so, mostly to get the story out on them. He also memorized the names of 256 other POW's. Some info on him here:

http://www.pownetwork.org/bios/h/h135.htm

http://www.geocities.com/talesofseasia/doug.html
 
C

Chris Hill

SNA
We've had a few Vietnam POW's come in to our NROTC unit here (CAPT Arve Chauncey was in HH for 6 years and spoke to us recently in great detail - he does the yearly physical too - he actually used to be the CO of our unit). It's amazing to hear their stories. They are true heroes.

I know I posted this before, but these are pictures I took of the Hanoi Hilton this last January:

http://community.webshots.com/user/christopherahill
 
zab1001

zab1001

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Flash said:
The only enlisted POW in Vietnam retired as a CWO and was on the staff of the Navy San Diego SERE school and still talked there after he retired when my buddies went through in '98.
Click to expand...

As of 2000, he was still giving his "presentation" in San Dog. Any recent SERE grads seen him at the course lately?
 
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