Orson Swindle Vietnam POW

today is Saturday September 16th and the location of the interview is at the Maxell house B&B Walla Walla Washington Dixie Ferguson and Vic Phillips the videographer are conducting the interview we represent the Blue Mountain chapter of the American Red Cross I am interviewing Orson swindle that's SWI ND l e a Vietnam veteran who left the service as a lieutenant colonel United States Marine Corp Orson once again could you state your name date of birth and current address game or she swindled SSDI mdle the right way to spill it and my date of birth is 8 March 1937 and my curtain home address is five five nine three Golf Course Drive Marcin Colorado at eight zero four six five thank you and Orson tell us where you were born and a little bit about your little town okay born in the little town of Camilla Georgia a rural town in southwest Georgia population when I grew up was probably less than 3,500 and my family had been there several generations that go back into the mid 1800s as I recall and I always went to a small school I think I'm on graduating class in high school was 65 and I was raised essentially by my great-grandmother I mean my grandmother and my great-aunt and my mother and father were divorced at the end of World War two my father was a Marine for the duration of the war listed in 1943 and managed to get there just in time to make the achievement of landing with the 28th Marines that attack Suribachi as you may recall and he survived the war he and my mother were divorced as I mentioned earlier and I was about eight years old and my father went in one direction I mother another and I said I'm not leaving come up with George I won't be raised by my grandmother and great aunt and it was probably one of the best decisions I've made all right so you went all through high school there and what happened after high school well I had to back up just a little bit I love football and I want to play football so badly and back in those days early 50s the football team of choice and in the state of Georgia was Georgia Tech and coach Bobby Dodd and I wondered they're a Georgia Tech and went off to Tech and I was a walk-on made the Freshman team only to just drop out because I didn't I had two growing laboratories if you're just if every afternoon three afternoons a week so it just became impractical plus I realized that I wasn't too good as I thought I was so I dropped off of that had a glorious time at Georgia Tech was an eighth he'll remember the Eternity and dear friends for life and managed to take only one extra quarter to graduate from Georgia Tech which was a major accomplishment for me and I just pronounced ATO what that is it's alpha tall amazing okay very good Greek letters all right so you were right at the time of the Vietnam are actually a little before the Vietnam War I graduated in 1959 and you know you didn't go on forever since World War two really but I am going to attack at that time 55 to 59 a lot of people don't recall this but that we had a mandatory ROTC participation yet to take two years of ROTC when you went to Georgia Tech and many other colleges around the country and I took ROTC for two years and found that I didn't particularly like part with TC and I chose to go through the PLC program to get a commission in the marine or what platoon leaders class is called which is our platoon leaders course I can't remember but it was a way it's similar off the cabinet school and it required that I go to Quantico Virginia this for six weeks in the summer but my sophomore year and six weeks in the summer of my junior year and then I was commissioned when I graduated from Tech in June of 1959 and in August of them actually due to Quantico the basic school so there I am 1959 I'm commissioned in the marine corps go through basic school at Quantico and then I'm assigned to the Marine Air Wing down at Beaufort South Carolina Marine Corps Air Station I had initially wanted to go to flight school but I got married right after I graduated from Tech and what is now my former wife a wonderful lady she wasn't particularly interested in that career so I dropped out of the aviation program and I became an engineer with the Marine Corps attached to the Air Wing and I was at Beaufort South Carolina from 62 I'm sorry from spring of 1960 through the spring of 1962 and in the meantime I'd gotten the bug to fly again and so I platfor fight school and I made it into flight school and went to Pensacola in February of 1962 February flight school in 1962 February ok yeah did you always think about joining the Marine Corps did joyce think about being in the military I you know during war - I was born 37 so the big years 42 43 44 45 oh I was five six seven and eight and we were all aware of the war because everybody had someone in a circus and it was the world war and it was a tremendous sacrifice American people and I remember planting Victory Gardens and as kids running around rummaging around for metal scrap metal and stuff for the war effort and collecting newspapers and bawling them up to give them to the people to pick them up and I can recall and Camela which is a little bit out of the way we had air raids at night in the Home Guard we were the older people who older men who couldn't go off to war they they drill once in a while and the lights would all go out through the air raids so we were just acutely aware of it my father wasn't in court Iwo Jima obviously was a bitter and famous battle and but I honestly when I went off to Georgia Tech it never entered my mind I want to have a career in the Marine Corps I had two fraternity brothers who a couple years older than me - were in the orbit you see program and they were going off to be Marines two years before I gotta attack and they sawed up planted the seed in my mind I talk to them a lot about what their plans were and tell me about the Marine Corps and that helped me make up my mind that I thought I might want to be a Marine officer and I applied for the Officer Candidate program or the PLC program as I mentioned earlier and 59 I went to BC school and my career started I must confess that I had reservations about whether I could hold the marriage together the family and things of that nature and flight school was difficult for me I I was older I had a two-year-old kid and of course I had all the encumbrances of that if you that's right work I'm worried about them and flying the dangerous business and I was not a naturally good pilot I became better as goodbye and once I got into aviation and got comfortable flying I said I think I'll stay in the morning we submitted this respond book book for a boy this is wonderful fun and somebody else pays for the gas nice big expensive toy right buddy wait what in kuan it was a Quantico were you was that your basic training officers training was in quite yes that's the old Marine officers I think virtually all now goes through the basic school and some would call it a Charm School teachers over our our our nice ways and it was about nine months if I remember correctly back in those days I think it's been trimmed down significantly we used to say it's it's six months of intensive training crammed into nine months so they pared it down a bit but all all this could be she's going laughing I can you just briefly describe your time in basic school wasn't for the most part was a good learning experience well it was a it was certainly a Marine Corps learning experience the Officer Candidate program is where you learn a great deal about the history and the indoctrination process of the Marine Corps and in the the officer candidates course a lot of stress is placed on physical stamina and your mental attitude coping with real adversity and hardship running forever and carrying big loads and doing all those things basic school was where you're exposed to virtually everything the Marine Corps does everything from infantry tactics to air support to personnel management logistics the whole thing you get it all there and that makes you when you go out and the the active in the operational for the Marine Corps you've got a fairly decent background and what the Marine Corps is all about of course Marines will tell you or quickly that we're all trained to be infantry officers infantry is everything in the Marine Corps and rightly so it carries the load we in the air wing provide the support to them as well as artillery things of that nature so it's a great concept I think and it prepared us for what was to come we really had no idea what was to come and that would be Vietnam in our in our experience and in addition to all of that you get exposed to graders from Holy Cross and Dartmouth and Princeton and Yale and you know University of Georgia and Georgia Tech in California and it just were from everywhere and that in itself was a tremendously rewarding experience and those friendships of though today's are still with me I have a dear friend named he's Colonel Jack Brennan who was President Nixon military marine aid and military aid we've been friends since we were 19 years old you know we see each other several times a year we travel together and so a lifelong friendship and I'm guessing you remember a few of those instructors names too I remember one gunnery sergeant in particularly started laborer who by his just clear his throat he's scared the hell out of all this I do remember quite a few of them they were good people they're a special group so your graduation then from basic school and then you go on into aviation right I go down to Marine Corps station Beaufort as an engineering officer I'm there about a year and all my neighbor's all my friends are flying FH and a for Scott the a4 Skyhawk the f8 Crusaders and they're all saying you ordered or flight school and I'm saying yes good and I eventually get accepted and unbeknownst to me my dearest friend in the Marine Corps in those days was a marine captain my name is Jim Jim Harrison and Jim live next door and he gave my former wife the first set of wings she ever got to give to me when I made it through flight school my makings of life who was a questionable in certain times but but those are the wings that were pinned onto me and I have them today very special so if you could name the various training bases that you went to or assigned to in the radiation okay well at Buford I had the great opportunity to go down to Puerto Rico over a little roads which was Naval Air Station it was a Naval Air Station and a naval port in fact they had a big one of those big tanks they float the ships indicate what I think where they call them now but it was built for two it was fascinating to see what was prepared because I think at one time there was some consideration that the government of England will have to come to the Caribbean that's it because they were bombing them so they then but I was a rural roads I attended a school at Fort Lee Virginia in the fall of 1961 had to do with the logistics job and the engineering jobs that I had and then after leaving Beaufort a bit of life school first you got Pensacola back in those days then I went to up to Meridian Mississippi for a day for jets and then I went to Kingsville Texas for advanced Jets and then I got my wings there and shortly after that after getting my wings I was picked with a bunch of Marines to fly naval ROTC students during the summer in the aviation segment of their training and that we did up at Corpus Christi so I moved up there and then I got orders back to Marine Corps Air Station Buford my old unit and I got back just in time to have the very job that I left because they were going on and piteous operation they need to somebody to come in and provide the base support or built we built ten cities if you will and provided water and all the electricity and things of that nature and I had a lot of experience in that so I went right back to the job I left and then we went to Alba Maria Spain and built an expedition area as it was calling those days SATs feel that's the metal clanking that we land Jets on has arresting gear on it and also has a catapult only which I don't think we used over there but but after al Maria came back to Buford was in a sign to VM faw.2 35 which was an fh squadron f8 east water in the latest model of the f8 to my great delight and I began lying my first really operational jet and what doesn't f8 crusader guild let's listen spis it has a big motor and a good version and it does what the f8 was primarily an air-to-air combat aircraft intercept if you will that model that I flew had been the wing it but the redesign and it had two stations on it they held bomb racks to carry bombs so now we in that's water and I sister squad started learning how to drop bombs and we did a lot of training in an ordnance delivery and we were scheduled to go to Iwakuni Japan the Marine Corps has had a regular rotation that you would Kuni fair defense part of the japanese-american trees I guess that we provide air defense and a few months before this is late 65 maybe at the fall of 65 they're starting to hint to us that we're probably going to Vietnam were you hearing news about oh yes we were we were learning more and more about it and the Marines went into Vietnam if I remember correctly and mass in the spring of 65 and I know they were helicopter units there that are about that early and I think that's a may force we were in the process of building the this SATs feel of the it was called temporary but it lasted for a long time airfield made of metal planking and we were eventually told we would be going there instead of to Japan thus water mood or leave in Japan was going down there and like in November I think it's spent about a month in country and then we came in in late January and started flight operations on the 1st of February of nineteen sixty six February 1st 1966 in Vietnam in Vietnam what was that Danai yes ok and Chu Lai had been built because they force were flying out of there and it was still upgrading but we were operating in both Danang an July with fixed-wing fighters we had helicopters that hoped a cold marble mountain or monkey Mountain and lucky man what came out had other places so or so what were your thoughts were did you feel as prepared as you could be to be assigned to Vietnam we you still had your family back home had my family in fact my wife and a two-year-old boy over spilled I'm sorry four year old son went back to our hometown week my wife and I grown up together and got them settled just before I went to tonight Aang we we all went home for Christmas there in 65 and then we all assembled out of there el Toro we sat and waited on Air Force kc-135 it which was a one c-135 I guess it would be called which was the curtain day in those days the 707 I believe that the airlines were flying except the Air Force version janay yeah you were commenting about your wife going back home right well yeah I left my wife at home her mother was there and to one of her brother and you know we had what we grew up there and had lots of friends there so that was a convenient way to set them up was in Vietnam and you know we were transported out to Da Nang via Air Force 130-135 which was the equivalent of a commercial 707 as I recall and I one thing I recall about the flight that it was very long and I had no windows an airplane and they fed us about every six hours and yeah I think I felt a stake every six hours to keep us content you know the Lions are getting restless look throw some red meat to it but we we the squadron in Mass assembled and we got on the planes ever there propel Toro and we hold like California and we first flew to two Hickam Air Base in Hawaii we spent the night as I recall and in fact the buildings we stayed in are still there standing but not in use their blue ragged shape and it was over walk through memory lane many years later when I'm gonna go back and see them and then we flew to I think it was Midway Island where we refuel and then we flew from there to Guam if I remember correctly and then from Guam to Da Nang and I remember getting off the plane of the Nang it's the busiest place ever saw in my life they were airplanes taxing in all direction there was hot as blue blazes and noise and noise and noise it was it was it was a rush to say the least uh I felt comfortable being there I thought we had gone through a very good training cycle we had spent a lot of hours on target learning bombing techniques with an airplane that was not designed to be a bomber and in fact we the gunsight that we have them on a plane was for air combat and at the the ground the air I'm here to ground guns like very different but we just had to modify how we used it and back to that old concept would put a grease pencil mark of every windscreen that it was not quite that bad but but we felt prepared we had a good bunch of pilots and we start flying immediately our commanding officer was a lieutenant colonel George Gibson and a marvelous man I had known him before I went to flight school one of my neighbors before went to white school was a Great Santini come on colonel don khon Laurie was a dear friend and and so you know I it was ready it's anybody who's never been to war could be oh yeah you know I remember I was not on the first flight that went out I think I was on the second one we had our flight leaders in the skipper four planes were briefed for their first mission which was it was good it was the mission I mean it was to bomb supposedly that the river crossing at ship home well they showed us the photos of all the gun position around your home and when the four of them came out of the briefing they looked like death warmed over they were action white and I just that well please do a good job so I don't have to go through all this but we would bombs upon countless times that I suspect that the riverbed there where we were bombing is its steel throughout because there was so many bombs dropped on it as it was no bridge it was just a river crossing and they didn't get shot at and that relieved us a lot and then we began flying hot and heavy in fact the squadron I can't state what records wound up being but we were setting records every month with the number of missions we flew like per day of every other month we must have I think we flew over 900 missions in one month which is thirty a day and we had 15 1215 airplanes you know usually and few of them would be down for me and you personally how many flights a day missions a day would you say I think I flew for one day and those who were there in those days may remember we had the internal struggle within the Vietnamese Armed Forces and when Kalki who later became president was representing the aviation side of the of their military and then that we had a confrontation up at high van pass where the tanks of the South Vietnamese were coming to the Nang to take home the hit we'd have Air Force we should have gotten a good signal right then but on that day they had VF a ones which is a big plus and 80s viene at Vietnamese of National Air Force I guess and they were stationed there denying and we've got the their infantry and tanks coming down from the north and have in past and I mean so versus just for the record when he indexes which palaces west I ban HIV a in I believe I think it's just building sank but you have the Air Force and their military is squaring off and we're sitting there with all of the assets we have so they launched us since we were fighters fought and had guns Air Force at that time didn't have guns and we would go up and over at the field and on I think I flew four or five ops that day and there's no way we could turn with a lower than a one it was just one circle around but if we stayed high they'd have our type of coming after us and we hopefully but we have spent rounds from or smaller and far landing in our flight well spent rounds or the the projectile from smaller and smiles coming over bullets if you will and hitting the ground on a flight line it was a it was a uninteresting dateless lay beliefs and but on a typical day most of us would the pilots in this quarter and they were 15 or 20 of us maybe 20 we were flight Weiss a day when you would come back in at the end of the day what was it like did you just collapse or share with the debrief with each other no you go to the club and during San Miguel Beer briefing we would be brief before the flights and then we go up bleep and then if we re briefed ourselves go down the flight line and then we were getting an airplane to go fly the mission very often we were dealing with airborne facts that usually the Air Force provided early on the Marines started having their own and our flights were up into the northern tier of I Corps believe it's called that northern province I mean North in science I saw Vietnam candid and we go out the DMC and we as I said we would often have more fun and not have airborne facts who could mark targets they win the slaw l19 air fare or bird dogs as we call them and then we started flying interdiction missions over North Vietnam and what was referred to as route pack one pack our Oh ute bag pick1 and that's north of the DMZ for I don't know 100 miles I've forgotten with a distances work and I think oh we also flew over in Laos with a lot of missions and Laos of course we weren't supposed to tell anybody we've gone over the last which was a big joke because there were no bomb being dropped over there and anybody could figure it out let out was that well did you fly over the Ho Chi Minh Trail oh yeah I had a lot of missions on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in fact I flew one mission and over Laos and we took we went all the way up to the China border and when I landed I think that quarter pound the fuel laughter which is not very much it was a long day but the thing is I think it's almost three hours which is a really stretching what this airplane to do well what kind about you what kind of bonds are there how many bombs and how heavy were they well we had first off had four cannons which carried 400 rounds of 20 millimeter 100 rounds each cannon they're mounted on the side underneath the cockpit and then we had to wing stations and we had to bit uh missile racks it set on the side of the airplane on the shoulders so to speak and we could put one two three we could carry four five inch rockets on either side Zuni rockets and that would give us eight Zuni rockets which is a pretty potent weapon and then on the winged stations we could put on a bomb rack attached to this mount and carry eight a total of eight four on each side 500-pound bombs are 250 pound bombs or we could carry a single thousand-pound bomb on each side or a single 2,000 pound bomb on each side plus we could attach not at the same time if we did weren't carrying bombs we could put big rocket pods look at carry rocket pods that shot maybe same way we call the the smallest one was 10 5 2 and 1/2 inch rockets and I think we ain't even the larger than that but I'm not sure you aren't to the teeth we had a lot of bullets unfortunately couldn't stay on the station very long so you better be ready when we get there well yeah and we're gonna get to that very shortly could you actually see the Vietcong down there on some occasion could you see convoys I never saw a convoy that was primarily in the jungle of layouts Laos and we flew a lot of I flew a lot of missions and I know others no score turned it to at night over the Ho Chi Minh Trail or Laos and we were sisters you know enslaved by the air force first c-47s and I'm trying to think what they call them they had a call sign that was so interesting and the c-47s where they were kicking flares out for us and we did light up the ground and not well that's what I'm getting to and that was a struggle because it was difficult to see what we were trying to hit was it creep just creepy uh the first time or two it says it's more than creepy was scary but the Air Force brings in the c-130s which are a Marine Corps airplane - right and the c-130 could kick out daylight it was just amazing the difference the light of the world and when we got that kind of illumination with some guidance from the facts of in a crew where they knew where these targets were we can start to identify the targets and you know we we would occasionally see some evidence of trucks but I can't say I ever saw a convoy because I didn't know Orson that day came for you but were there others getting shot down your buddies and we got there shortly on the 1st and 2nd of February one of my dear friends lieutenant John B Sherman who is in flight school with me and on the orders to Beaufort with me and the orders from the group over to the squadron with me and a great pilot a bachelor everybody loved John Sherman my that first name my four year old no my two year three year old son ever uttered was John Sherman and that's because John Sherman had a motorcycle and he'd come out and Kevin was so excited to see the Botes I mean had John Sherman but John was killed he apparently was hit or he didn't fly fast enough down around outside of Chula if I remember correctly in March that's just a month after we got there maybe maybe late March that had to affect you Orson it does you know you but I think there's an aspect of this kind of training I think you're trained to you're trained to stay focused on what you're what you're doing and Naval Aviation is great landing on a carrier is rote doing the same thing over and over and over to this just automatic you do it intuitively or instinctively and I think flying missions similarly when we start briefing your focus just mirrors in on that that function then you go up here and you got hold on what you're doing and and I was not a senior captain at the time and I certainly didn't have the experience because I had to start flying and but the more senior flight leaders would brief everything methodically we're gonna do this we're going to be this air speed with this out to we're going to go up here and then we're going to turn left and you know that type of stuff and then we're going to listen to the fact we have one if we don't we make our own approaches often hide we try to all come in from different angles in the case of is anybody then they're shooting with you know evasive maneuvers and you just do it and you come home and we never lost anybody and the flights that I was on until I got shot down yeah but there were other casualties losses of aircraft chill I would lose a few and we occasionally Danang what loser here would it was mine it was not that hazardous in a sense it's always had it but it just wasn't a common thing that if you're over there in Thailand with Air Force One 105 they're losers from or Nevada everyday I mean half the people I knew and prison were from f15 and navy 1/4 I kid you not they shot down a bunch of well arson that day came for you so can you describe that day and how by the way hell fart into your assignment in Vietnam oh I had I got there that said the first of February and I was shot down on the 11th of November 66 Armistice Day so a Veterans Day I guess I we I was flying with a guy I was no longer in the squawker and I was over I meant I've flown hundred eighty-five missions or so by August and that's February to August with it six months almost six months and seven six months and I've flown 185 missions by then that's 30 a month lot and probably at least a third of them at night and at least a third of them over North Vietnam and Laos and I was really experienced and when I went over the wing of working from a foreign supporter in commander George Gibson he had been relieved of command and replaced and unruly that's the wrong word but blaze his tours over and he was the operations officer for the wing the g3 and then next go to him in his office was the Great Santini g4 so we we run to who again and they have a great time I let him meet you he unfortunately passed away it was a character on half everybody either loved him or hated you he loved me and he was a great man but we had a guy in the squadron went over there that didn't perform well and he sort of worked at Boalt so to speak to get out of the squadron after we got there and then just before the squadron is to leave country he managed to get back in to go to Japan and I had sworn I'd never fly with him again well I have the duty of the night before I fly and I go soon-im elude relieved at 6:00 a.m. I go and hit the sack because I know I'm gonna be flying the afternoon and I am I think I've seen the schedule yeah I've seen the schedule but I saw he was leading the flight because the new commanding officer of the spotter and didn't want anybody outside this water and leading the flights and I hear I'm with 180 or 200 missions and I can't lead over there over 200 but but anyway I I go to sleep thinking about that you know and then I wake up and discover they just shot two Air Force that forth down on our target and I'm saying no I mean what am I going to do go to here with a guy that I don't I don't have any confidence in and but there's no way I can back out of this flight with these circumstances because that wall look good so stiff upper-lip I went out in the flew the mission on his wing we got over the target just across the DMZ right but place called that that lake their fingers Lake and not maybe a few miles from the beach and it was a really windy day and the fact that we had airborne facts actually eased over in the North Vietnam a little l19 but instead of being at 1,500 feet like they were in South Vietnam there were six and seven thousand feet out there because a gun gunfire horror and the sneak like I said they shot two Air Force down and they would that day they had damage would knock those down those two down got me and then damaged three other airplanes well well Austin aged six is a goal hearing and the wind was blowing the smoke away from the target and the lead who will remain unnamed couldn't see it but I'm following him around in formation with it that's my job and he's going to set us up for our bombing runs and finally I see this pretty I'm damned target and I say I've got that target i'ma roll again cuz I'm getting tired it's it's not good to hang around up there and I rolled in but when I did I realized he had lowered us an altitude so over there was no way I could drop these two thousand two thousand pound bombs two of them no way I could drop them so I boarded the run pulled up came around came back in for the second run and pulling out of it I got a huge impact underneath my airplane and it obviously is attention gaining to say the least and I looked over the hydraulic gauges on this side of the instrument panel I rolled in and proceeded to pick up the dive angle which is 40 degrees and I'm at 8,000 feet and 40 degrees and 500 knots if I remember correctly and I'm smoking down this thing and we can't deviate we didn't have the computers of today where the computer does all the calculator we're trying to figure out the winds there's real windy down there we've got to be on the right die of angle if we're shallow we're going to hit short if we're steep we're going to hit long got to be on the airspeed if we're fast we hit long if we're slow we hit short and all these calculations are going through my mind and certainly where they just shot to f4 is down but I don't see any fire and I pulled off impact on the aircraft of immediate jolt the airplane starts slightly vibrating and I look over the hydraulic gauges which are the lifeblood of the airplane it doesn't apply without flight controls which are powered by a hydraulic fluid and all three of them are going down and about that time I get my attention back on what's happening I'm gonna steep climb I'm going very fast and and all of a sudden aircraft just pitches up a very steep angle well I had to push the power forward because it's your stall if you do that and I'm trying to figure out what the hell's going on here have a suspicion and I radio the fact and and told him I said I'm hit I'm trying to make it to the beach and about that time the airplane pitched right straight over the tops are the elevators on the back of the airplane control up and down are free pre planing back there and all of a sudden when apparently hit him so that they push the nose over and now I'm going downhill at about 500 aughts and I pulled out at about 2,000 feet and it's this is seconds I'm talking about all this happening and so I can't be much higher than 3,000 feet and also I'm going downhill at about 70 degree angle at a great rate I can't the sticks won't work nothing's working and in the process of going over the top negative G's lifted me up out of the seat of the airplane the seat panel which is where the parachute is is attached to me but I'm no longer in the seat so if I'm going eject I got to get back in the seat so I use a stick to pull myself back down and once it's stabilized and over down attitude to get seated see if I can do anything and finally I got on the mic again and radio and said I'm getting out of this damn thing and I pull the curtain and all of a sudden my world changed Orson you're a your copilot the pilots around you what what happened to them I don't know yeah I'm gonna get to that and I said I transmitted well I'm sure the last transmission was that an octave about Maria Callas level you know very high in squeaky and I'm not very proud of that because I know I was in an absolute blue panic right then because I lost control the airplane and and there's no way I could recover it didn't have any controls and nobody heard I be honest with you as I got on the ground and we went through my head for the next six years what happened I'm sick god I hope nobody heard last transmission when I got on one of the first questions I asked of people who would know is anybody here by the trash visit not a word I said thank you lord nobody heard me my most panic one with the same face I thought so I was relieved with that at least and you know there I'm in the pursuit and the first thought I had that I said I I jacked it we pull the curtain and it triggers all the mechanism and then about a half a second you're out in the air and I had that face burger in my hand I took it away and I said dear God take care of Gil and Kevin and then I threw it down I reached my radio I took my helmet off so I could talk on the radio and I don't I never heard anything so those damn things weren't you know the radios that we had along with the infantry with the walkie talkie it was so bad we were buying people who had access to the Radio Shack and P X's were buying little radios there to carry with them because what they would work but anyway they were receiving committee for me down there or hundreds of people there shooting at me I would find out later that one of the Air Force f4 crewman was killed in his parachute they shot it and Jake killed him payment rifles and I landed among them they immediately started beating up on me and stripping me of my flight gear my G suit and all that stuff and they wish they were using machetes to try to cut that stuff off and I thought they're going to kill me right there so I said I'll take it off and I undid all the buckles and things they're fascinated by all the buckles but they took me down into a cave by the way with these no leeches it was you know the old folks women and children militia with rifles and bayonets and army it was a cross-section of Vietnam and they took me down as cave where they put me on sort of a hole it was about you know full five feet wide about about six feet long and they told me to sit down and I sat down and then people for the next 12 hours which stroll in there they would spit on me urinate on me beat me with sticks go rocks on me and bash my head it was a middle night I was in total shock and I kept telling myself this is not happening you know good God not happening and that was my first day in North Sea it is surreal yeah I that worried whether people constantly around you all night long all night long all the time all the time and did they they waited for day to make their next move then they wait the next morning I was taken out and I remember I was just dying of thirst and I think it's a part of shock to certain extent and I had been banged up a little my knees would bust it up a little bit but combined Laura's out of okay amazing and they took me out and I absolutely could not speak I know I was dehydrated and they finally brought some water to me as I said well this would be great it was scalding hot which I couldn't drink so it said it was and then they start inter gave me I'm standing in front of three Vietnamese officers this theater the table and and I found out later they were officers but then signors they had on their collars and they're asking me questions about what's my name on a stripper Camrys up here on my chest what squadron that's up there too so that's that's the squadron Barbie yes the squadron oh yeah they wouldn't know what squadron and I had had an eboard which came out of the airplane with me which I sort of designed to do which had my brief my my table for gun sights and stuff like that and had briefing paper on it and shortly so they do a lot of information about what I was doing and that didn't bother me and you know I was saying I'm not going to answer that well they had it because they're sitting right there with my desk well I said if it's probably in there you look there I don't remember and then they sort of asked me about who's in my supporter and I said I I'm not going to answer any more questions and they kept pestering me and slapped me around a little bit 5h that's pretty good English oh yeah these guys can speak English though the officers could normally at least well they started kicking me around a little bit and then they said well you obviously are not going to cooperate so we're going to show you the punishment that you're gonna receive for the risk that's I mean North Vietnam and they had three guards lay down the rifles over here and three little rifles over here they took parachute riser cord put it above my elbows cinched it down trunk it tight to the point where there's no circulation in my arms and and my lord extremity hands and then hit this one parachute Roger cord over here with these three and then they did the same thing over here then those two guys exchanged the courts where this arm was being pulled by that group and this arms are being pulled by this group they pulled my help my arms until my elbow were together back in my back and and they dislocated my shoulders my arms were like this together and up my back and they started wrapping the cord around my entire torso to lock it in like that and then they put parachute riser cord on my thumbs which were here and then lifted me up off the ground on a rafter pulled it up like we're hanging means if it's by my thumbs and then then they just beat the living hell out of me and was this like in a village hit a little it was in a little Hut it was outside of a little village if I remember correctly mm-hmm and it had gotten raining that evening and I think the shock I'm freezing I'm just I'm just freedom and I'm in fear and I'm shaking but I'm hurting them and I don't know there's no way I can solve this problem I've got to get out of this because I'm going mad and what the one at this point did you finally get some I forgot about the water yeah I later got some waters or at all but I told my talk to them and they started again who's your squadron commander and I did some really quick thinking and I remember my high school football team we had a great one we were undefeated and we had a great coach and assistant coach and I said okay guys you're gonna help me now and the squadron commander about my former head football coach we keep the squadron commander the XO was his assistant coach and all the pilots for the guy on first team when I got home they had a seven years later or six years later they had a big day in Camilla Georgia for me to build a small town everybody knew me and Hospital oratory and I'm talking and I'm telling this story and I looked down there and about half dozen build-a-guy that's it don't you ever go to North Vietnam but you're damn well looking for you so I wheedled out of that without giving any information and they tipped me out that this was sort of typical that rewarded me with food since I talked I mean they want to give you that impression and it's you know you do for us we do for you and just garbage I had read so much about communist ideology or tactics I mean that when I came home I read Sultan Eaton's book no longer and I swear to God some of the rhetoric was verbatim out of that they just changed the nouns it wasn't the motherland that was Vietnam and you know it was almost comical if it didn't hurt so much and they put me back in a Cell where I stayed for several days and it from noises I could hear they perhaps had two or three other people there but I couldn't talk to them there's no way I could get in touch with them and then they started I think that was the last session of interrogation there then we started we started walking they got me out and and I'm walking up a road now this is like the first day of to later and I look up ahead of me in lieu of a hole they're three Americans and it was the remaining three of the four crewmen from their fours and I found that out later but they're maybe 50 yards ahead I mean they keep us they had them together till they obviously knew each other and they've got me trailing behind and we it's we walked for long time a day or two and then then they had to wait across the river and they had their like same Pam's and they put me in one with one of those guys and we immediately identify each other and start chatting and they came with a rifle butts and start beating us and then we got out of that and then we got on a truck and then we were starting to be close enough to talk but they always had guards sitting between us you know it's just difficult to communicate and I can communicate about your head with a gun but what we just anytime I felt like it just hit you over there the reasons usually well like you talk about to stop you from talking and they hurt you know if you'll stop talking but it just it was just I mean we've bombed the hell out of the country so you know I can see how they might be a little anger with us one of the cardinal roots you remember as a fighter pilot for God's sake don't jump out of the plane over the target you just bombed there then I gonna like it and it took us from in roof we stopped several times and I went through various episodes torture like I had been through before to the point where it weirdness all down and we weren't getting much to eat the Flies on everything pretty soon diarrhea and dysentery or mountain or - it's in look what were they feeding you general rice rice rice occasionally they would sprinkle some ground-up peanuts on it and so there wasn't really that much about it yeah and the water we had was typically tea but it Benbow than anything as they pulled it they knew to boil it because we had gotten terrible journey we've got them anyway but not journey would even warn when we all came home by the way one of the first thing they did they gave us he's warm killing cyanide tablets that's bacon it worked and we got rid of worms but I remember one particular bad session I wouldn't talk to him I wouldn't they kept asking me the same question I wouldn't answer them so they started really beating up on me in they trust me up with my hand spot on my back and they're like we think as kids we call it hogtied a noose around my leg my neck run through my legs and attach them around my waist or something I forgotten but anyway they have you bent over and they were all you know foot shorter than I was and it had been a circle of about eight or nine guys in a little village I remember the little kids came and watched this but they started slapping my head then bent over their level they're popping me inside the head and they ruptured my eardrums and my nose I'm bleeding and they just beat me like a ping-pong ball around this little circle and you know but I think back on I think I could have been that bad you're damn right he was the bad awesome good kidding yourself that was are you you did you think along the way that this is it Oh again you know you you you in those early weeks for all of us that took some time to get there we were not convinced we're gonna live through it I mean there was one day when I an officer just got provoked because I wouldn't talk and he pulled out his pistol and put it right in my face and pull the trigger and thank God it didn't have any bullets in it but you know that's just that's heart-stopping and the other guys three guys were they were Air Force and they'd beaten it up pretty bad and by the time we get to hanoi it this was xi enorm they were shot down same day I think we got to handle over about the 19th of December so we're talking to 35 days long and just wore us out and toward the end as we approached Hanoi they had us in trucks and military guys will recognize a six by four cargo truck or something like that and we were trussed up and had a sitting on the decking of this damn thing and the roads were just horrendous and we're bouncing bouncing and bouncing all the time it just beat the living daylights out of you and by the time we get to Hanoi in the night what pretty well done and they open the back of the truck and we struggle to get out of being tied up and and look up in this gate it's a big steel gate solid steel you know and they open it up and they took me away from the other three and I said I'll see you later and I gave one on my shoes my sock they taking my boots away from in and and he was really suffering I gave him my socks and I walked him barefooted and they closed that door behind me and I got that minute later maybe I was the last one out anybody in there anyway they closed the door and I walked in it I thought I thought I just stepped into hell because the door was a good chunk and there was and sound effects Hanoi Hilton place and they put me in a cell and a little segment I would later learn was called new guy village where all the you know you have you got village and it's where they put people for initial interrogations and I was housed and they have to later and what we call Heartbreak Hotel which was a cellblock it had one two three four you must had eight cell one of them was converted into a sought of shower had a showerhead in it and then the other seven if there were that man maybe maybe we were five and the it had to concrete to concrete bunks leg irons and end well that they would have you open an opal I guess with your legs in it clamp them down you can't move and they started in Turkey me hours and hours a day and I was trying my damnedest to avoid anything person where you just almost delirious I wasn't delirious but I was depressed despair I guess there's a better word not depressed but just despairs of God what the hell I'm gonna get out of this thing and I kept seeing the other guys here and they've survived it apparently and we didn't know a lot of our POWs back here and they got me in an interrogation room toward the end of that stay there and they had guards behind me more senior officers there and he's interrogating me and I won't answer question they started beating me on the back of the neck but with gun butts rifle butts and then he played said well we're gonna cut this short or words to that effect that one's people but I'm an actor that we do but he said if you do not talk now if you do not write I think they're trying to get me to write a statement you will get these he lifted the ropes up for mine and I just I just I can't do this again I just cannot do it so I said okay you got to start figuring out how to lie and writing and I wrote a statement and I watched up the English where anybody would need brains in the United States could say this guy didn't write this he's boil educated this and during the course of me sitting at this little desk I started they left me in the room and I started looking around the desk and I picked up underneath the ledge of the desk there was a box of the alphabet ABCDE and five by five and I looked and K was not there so they dropped k and it said POWs learned this and had cat and had dot dot dot dot dot dot and then T what I thought thought thought thought thought thought for for for now lifted that damn thing about that time they come back in and totally head and finished writing and sled beat me again but I had been in a very in back a very very short period of time I had because I saw that but either way I have to get back to the stupid thing and writing and then eventually after that's over they take me out and they move to another camp which we call my mind is forgetting you forget the good know it was an old photo studio which was interesting they had made live the film studio and I can't think I named my what I can't believe that but anyway I was put in the cell by myself and I would stay that way until I always briefly moved in for about two days with one guy he was a Navy ensign George Coker who would later escape from an outlying killer ochre seal see okay here are great guy who lives in the Norfolk area and he he was captured very quickly but they put me in there with him and I have no idea why other than maybe just to let him scare me about what they can do to you and we tapped through the wall to a guy who's next him they Merle Kobe land seal viel I believe it that's right and I never met Earl I did I'm learning a tap from George that with a couple of days we were together I mean it was intense he was they'd been shot down but I hear before me see I was I was there six years in four months every day over is was there almost nine years and most of the guys before me had been shot down they'd been that they said they were there over seven years so I was one of the new guys if you will and and that would change but but anyway I tapped through Earl Coby over briefly and Earl would die in prison he he people who I never saw him with people who saw him said he that looked as though he was in a catatonic state he would just defy them and they beat him with rifle cleaning rods and he would influential they just killed him there's a question about all that would you explain the refusal I think I know the answer the refusal to comply would you define that well you know after Korea there was a lot of scandal that you will probably know the right word concerned by the leadership of our government and our military that the POWs in Korea we had remember we had 22 that opted to stay after the Peace Accords there the 38th parallel or whatever and why would what Americans want to stay and the propaganda was the issue and and they were also very uneducated or not that's a terrible way to say that they did not they were not sophisticated let me go say it that way there will kids eighteen year old kids off of farms and rural areas that they're like my hometown you know and they didn't have the benefit of going to college but they were drafted into Korea and they get there and it's not just the shooting it's once they were captured a whole new concept started played the Soviets if you reach those the needs and they mastered deprivation and just making you miserable and you didn't have to really talk to anybody if you were tough enough on them and deprived them of things kept them cold in the winter and didn't feed him enough and the propaganda just pounded on well these 22 I think most of me eventually came home if I remember correctly but they collaborated and boy we really didn't like that so the code of conduct was written and a coded on duck worked I can believe I can say that with full confidence that most of the guys would agree with me on that except for one or two things and the main one was you will not give them information you need to Americans the Brits have something very similar to it in fact a year later I would do a lecture series with the Brits then talking to their troops about I can't think of the name of the committee it's it's referred to about committee and I was given the American version of it and and I was the only one had been a POWs I was relating what I encountered it's sort of like I'm doing here and so other countries have it but I know the Brits did but I don't other country but perhaps they do but basically said you will not cooperate with the enemy and you will not give them anything name rang the survivor well every damn one of us went beyond name rank and serial number because it hurt I mean they would take you to the point in my case I said why don't you just kill me that's too easy we want to make you suffer and the one thing I forget fail to mention but once I got the hand away and you start going through this routine of interrogations and beatings and so forth you realize that they have no intentions of killing you they see you as ransom there will come a day when the United States will pay dearly to get us out and a part of making that even more important they didn't let many people right they treated us pretty badly they extracted as much propaganda as they could and told us we were never going home and of course all over to a pretty damn confident you know they should have killed us a long time ago if we're never going home was a good point so you which we felt like we were basically ransom uh-huh so that kept your hope up well oh yeah right I mean you gotta have something to look forward because it look grim I mean you know when you've been there year after year after year but and you are talking about talking just happens well I guess I get to learn about that and then I am moved into a newly open camp back in wallow I I'm still struggling with the name of the other camp and I can't believe that when anyway I'm taken back to the master camp at wallow and put in this new extension it's just it's a freshly painted new cells obviously patched up and painted and new board bunks like I described with the leg iron thing the end of it shackled eye shadow a little leg irons and I'm put in there by myself and and I I'm still being belligerent I almost feel I've got to be belligerent cuz I've written something I feel guilty as hell about it and everyone I was went through that same thing and I'm really feeling bad about it I and I'm by myself I'm pacing back and forth and I finally start communicating and I get in touch tapping the wall very slowly to the guy next to me was commander Bill Frankie bill was there well over seven years and then had no stock bail has moved in later Admiral Stockdale commander Stockdale has moved in a few cells down I'm whispering to him and yes we would clear we communicated enough to say okay you guys then here watch that inference you watch this one Washington gonna swear room with and if we saw a guard coming we do a little call real quickly and everybody get up pacing back and forth and but I've whispered Jim saw bill on several occasion and just praise him until hell freezes over just a remarkable leader in any way but I'm resisting I won't sign first they want everybody to sign for so much on my sign of his hope you know something dirty as all get-out that mean I was scraping that from the beatings and the pushing me down in mud and everything and it was early days and then the southern part of the country I was scraping the dirt out on a scale over a year we got to bathe once every several weeks or something like that was it a shower oh no it's just a lunch a double what in all countries think you know the to put and water that you could drink no you could not drink and I'm filthy because they won't give me soap and I want to sign for it so one night they come and get me and they take me and they move me in with three wonderful human beings Ron stored all Air Force captain's ron stores who is about the third or fourth guy captors sto RZ sto are Z's German and West Charmin who was grew up over here Joseph Washington he was an f15 pilot Ron had been an L 19 Powell they got shot down over the DMZ as controls were disabled on the plate and he drifted over in the North Vietnam aney they captured him that's sha R M a.m. Charmian s SCH i er ma and his widow lives over in Everett and dear dear dear dear friends Allah and then the third guy was George McKnight who grew up in Oregon and George was fine a ones and got shot down and I walk in there and I knew from my communications that they were real movers and shakers regular movers they were resistors perfect and they communicated and I really had developed a respect for and I walked in that cell I said I'm worse than this one note on my ring I don't want to apologize to you guys because I've let you down I wrote this statement under pressure but I wrote this thing and George McKnight laughs it was infectious laugh he said you're looking at the Ernestine way of North Vietnam he said I'm tick you man when they got you know troop you will write and that humor made me smile to the board that tears came to my eyes I did it was it was good to be appreciated I guess little what is that comforting and we became fast friends and we also became the focal Westenra always the focal point of the communication that were they just were just obsessed with community and so we went up before of us and and they caught some people communicating and they started torturing people and our names came being the relay point well they came in one night and a mob of guards and a couple of officers and we were bombing the living hell out of during the day and they came in and the officer who we always suspected and being on drugs really drugged out but his eyes did glazed and you just they were just enraged and they got made us all get up on a bunch they clamped those leg irons down tied our hands are cuffed our hands behind us and then started just beating the hell out of us with these rubber it literally automobile tire they cut them in the shape of flip-flops and just beaten the devil out of us and a couple of us started shouting torture so the others would know what's going on and just solve that problem they took these little dish towels that was about twice the size of a of a washcloth and with Neyers stuff them down our throat and well that's something else to look up and you see this knife and the beatings continued they eventually split us up and put us outside and what were basically bath stalls where we got the use of mine once every three weeks and still cuffed up put my legs and big leg leg here and just all this way and I'm crumped up over in the corner I'm in shorts it's in July if I remember correctly it's hot as 40 Hills and I stay up we stay up there for 3-4 days and my they put tourniquets on my arms and I lose the feeling in my arms completely and I can't move because leg irons your NATO myself at night them as soon as the Sun Goes Down the mosquitos would come out and just swarm all over in here no was there in your eyes there in your ears and it goes on and every time I fighter would come over having bombed they come in and kick the living daylights out of your as I told somebody I think yesterday and that talk I've been kicked in the groin by more more communists and you will probably ever meet in your life yeah and it just they just come and just just brutally beat up on us we think when you get infections they cut your skin I don't recall in my case Ron stores had infections he had a scar like a bracelet around his four run because of handcuffs they they were not handcuffs there were manacles the difference is manacles or a permanent thing inflexible thing and they screw the manacles down and by the time the tourniquet effect swelling its scarred him world to think were and he had this bracelet around of course he was almost proud of it said look what I they gave me in here badge of honor and it's this episode that Ron we're after the few days they came in and took me out of the leg on walked me out into the courtyard undid the tourniquets and when they did the blood flow was such a I don't know how to describe it other than shocking the pain from the blood flow which is seeming for lower to me but it was so sharp and just everything went white and I started staggering I was passing out and they took me into an interrogation room and started interrogating me about who was communicating and how what we do it and I wasn't answering thing and we got other guys love the three guys were tougher that I'm a lot tougher than I am and they took me and set me down on the floor cross my legs like yoga style you know and then they got three or four guys behind me and they pushed me over to my face was on the concrete floor I'm in a double-double they then trussed up my arms again in the tourniquets up behind my back and then they hold me down and wrap me up so I can't straighten up so I'm about this high on the floor and then they pick me up and put me on the edge like a tire and ruled me out into the court around and played games with me and I'm just going it's maddening the pain is something I don't like painting and I've experienced a lot but anyway they it's just it's beyond inhuman yeah I can't even comprehend it anymore I can't comprehend you during this but how did I get out of that mess I guess I wrote something well wrote something and then they took Wes and me and we got from over here and Jones is my best friend and they took us out to a strip of little it almost got any impressions like a little apartments and back out it was a little kitchen area where open fires were used charcoal for cooking and they put me in an m1 wes's or none of them we got handcuffs behind our back which we stayed in for about three months and lo and behold they come and get us one day and we're going to go get some water one chogi Pole you know and we can't talk well we've been tapping through the wall till they're tapping you handcuffed behind your back tapping the wall that way yeah you know anyway you know and you're trying to put my mosquito net which was our responsibility with your hands cut behind you just a wee bit difficult but anyway they said you're gonna go and get some water over the over this power plant we should our plant oh my god that's a big target it became famous with us there and so we go walking around the block and of course our ID we're skin and everything we see and we got this big like a little bit cooler so that they pull in the football coaches you know at the end of the game becoming the Gatorade and get this long chubby Pole and we're walking along you can't talk and we ever say anything that beat us so we have our hands on the poles and it's on your shoulder and I can very subtly put pressure on it use the tap code and we're community it forth as we walk along but we're looking there's the dope dope Gummer bridge I believe it's called major bridge in Hanoi and we walk around the block and we come up from this power plant and we go - electric power and cold cold fuel I think it's go and we go in there and they fill up this thing with water and they take it over to one of the boilers where they have lots of steam and just inject the steam into the water and that purifies the water for us to drink so then we take it back but we've checked out the whole area and then shortly after that started we sort of figured out where we were and George McKnight who I mentioned and George coal for Georgia had been moved after we didn't know everybody was out there but George McKnight and George Coker were next to each other and they got out of the handcuffs and escaped one night and got into the Red River I guess what that Maine Real Madrid were and they got away for about 18 hours going floating downstream thinking they could float 100 miles to the coast and somebody pick him up and I got captured even this strengthened subdued oh yeah it was unreal they those are two very brief yeah but but we lived out there for a number of months and we call that place the power plant because we do it by the power plant well we noticed one day that they will they put barrels 55-gallon drums all along the street up look with peeking through cracks and a windows cracks and the blinds that our boards are open and we notice they put he barrels out - what the hell is that is then I even remembered before we came over we were learning about the snake I there was the walleye which of the TV camera and I got it bomb and the red eye which was the rule and I aircraft thing that troops was shoot was a scary thing with your fighter where they got those but anyway I got thinking I said and we were all living in souls help us at what we were tapping I said Wes I remember being briefed on something called a walleye and what it was was it had a a fours have a little screen installed on their instrument when they dropped this bomb it had a camera and they also it had a flare on the back of it so you could see it going down and the pilot some way to control the elevators and sort of guide it in and they were quite accurate in fact they put one right through the windows above where we went to get the that hot water and I said what would those barrels be they'd be smoke because smoke will blur the definitions of the thing tries to lock in on that you can identify that's exactly what they were and when the air raid sounded they popped those st. oh them and it's a chemical thing and smoke would come over so like DDT when we were kids you know they'd spray it and and boy all hell broke loose Navy bomb there I guess the Air Force participated too and they did find it they destroyed oh they bombed it and missile it or whatever else and when they were dropping a bomb we've been left up I mean we're right there and they don't know where they're lasted eight probably yeah didn't we don't think I knew but none of the things that we speculated the reason that I was walking around it because they figured somebody that was on there on our side there and Hanoi would have seen us and they would relay back they've got prisoners over here right by that power plant and the Navy would say oh my god we can't bomb there well if they were thinking that nobody push that idea cuz I damn sure Bob that place and I mean it was a the ceilings were coming in or they didn't hit us but if we take 100 yards away big bombs or some did you get to meet these folks later on that did that damage I well McCain got shot down coming to bomb that place oh but I know a number of people who actually flew fighter cover for the a force coming in or with a force on the power plant it was a famous attack in their 6767 oh yeah now year see how far into your time I'm a about a year a lot has happened in the and we eventually see I forgotten whether they moved us after I forgotten the events but they move us back into the into the Hanoi Hilton where the camp where they had us we had those camps a moment they would call Vegas and he's building had to start us whatever was that I you know some of the other guys the Air Force guys they knew all about Vegas I didn't everything my Vegas I never got allowed to go there for what they need with all the casinos you know the star does whatever they are in and we moved back in there and Ron of course disappeared and George McKnight after his escape with George poking in Catherine he disappeared Coker disappears and we would find out much later that they took 11 of our most senior and these two or 29 George Coker junior officers took Kemp that they would they would call Alcatraz and they were in leg irons for over a year I think about a year and a half every day in leg irons and they won't dirt floors with these leg irons on and I think they were cuffed most the time but Admiral Denton was I mean Jerry Denton was there Jim Stockdale Robbie rotten er no no Tanner there was Lebanon McKnight Coker shoemaker I'm up to aid but it's three more and I can't think of running us but they were they just all disappeared run stores dressed we're run scores dies and them to leave well we you know we were all being shuffled around all the time they Vietnamese thought they were breaking up our communications by moving us what they were doing was we were in this camp they wanted to break this up and then we're never going to succeed breaking it up wait a period of time and they move us over here and now we could share it with these guys over here what going over there and the guys that were here that went over there it was cross pollenization if you will and they were actually helping us yeah and could you like share some of your daily creativity well the the daily creativity would in those days was tapping them all communicate communication was a lifeblood you had to communicate because so many of us were living in isolation like we live in Seoul all by ourselves well very seldom that any of us truly get isolated someday because we just were obsessed with communicating and as soon as the door slammed and somebody new was in everybody was down whispering on those we were so funny story or earlier I when I'm first getting started there in early 67 I'm under the door looking out to the walkway to enough to clear that and I'm communicating with Jim Jim Stockdale down here and then I whisper down to West and Ron stores here and one day they come in and the cell right next to me which was empty and when I mentioned so I don't want you to think of bars oh I'm just doing a solid put put deep concrete walls not even bars oh no no no bars no so gently cut windows wall covered it was totally closed was it dark they had a light the light was always of them when six years sleeping the lights on my wife wonders why and go to sleep with lights on what's wrong with that but the this particular day as soon as the guard goes out I'm down on the floor peeking out to find him watch him walk away so I know he's gone right over here to the left outside of my cell is a little stool and then there's this new guy and I get then I start whispering to that I said hey this is a new guy is his horse and Swindell I'm a marine and and he comes up and he said what'd you say your name was I said Orson swindle he said my name is Fred crow and my family grew up in Camilla and Pelham Georgia don't I commend at that time the guard jumps down off the damn stool open the door take Fred out beats the hell out of it and I never late now on Fred growing to a week with the Nixon White House for that weird I get Fred I'm the one who got you in trouble but but back to we discover these guys are missing the Wes and I move in together back at the big prison and then we stay there but I moved in I didn't move in West right away I moved in with Bob peel who's in the top six first six that got shot down he you know like like sort of Robert Peel England okay and Bob's a great guy he he'd been there a long time he got shot down earlier is he still with us yeah he is he leaves it applies for Southwest I think still flying well he may have retired now but but Bob and I live together he's from Paris Tennessee which is up over Kentucky Lake and I know everything in the world about his family I know his dogs I know everything he's done in his life he knows everything I've been in my life so but then one night they come around and all of a sudden they split Bob and me up as I recall and I go out I'm blindfolded and they got my hands cuffed like this but not painfully but just immobilizing me and they lead me out and I'm get on the bus and I'm stumbling and getting on the bus putting blackboard they set me down and they take the cuffs off with this hand and they know the payroll and then there's a guy sitting next to me well the first thing we do when we made these moves is put my hand on his knee and instead of playing with him I tapped it by pressure on his knee and I said OS here he comes back to WS here wet sharp we're back together and just the simple things yeah and then we we got to nowhere going we want to know where we're going I guess better since we got to it so we have a system that we had worked over in conversations and I'll say I'll keep up with vectors you keep overtime so we know which wall of the prison we went on we know we drove half a minute west then we turn north or south but I'm keeping track of vectors left right letter and I keep got to keep the sequence he's over there saying 30 seconds minute and a half and then when we get to where we going and we all get out and there's no assurance those two people will be together but we get communicating with two or three days we're hooked up with everybody who is doing the same thing and then we compare notes and the guys who were flying up in the route back six which is Hanoi they knew a little bit about geography and we said we think we're due west of Hanoi maybe about 20 klicks okay everybody raised everybody's a bet but what we are maybe slightly north west I mean that's so smart and then one of the guys had it was taken over for quiz one day and as he's walking over they've got the gate to this this quiz room we said we think we're there and and one of the guys he's won a lot of missions over he said that would be out around a place called santé we bought targets out there one that answered okay got that and then one day that we just said where it's on tape one of the guys walking over to quit one day and the main gate is open and a rule street sign out there saying Sante and then he went in the quiz room and in the quiz room at arrogation room there was a big map and he when the guards left him in there before the interrogator came he went over the map santé that's exactly where we were and it was we were within just train - we went up within a mile or certainly I probably less than a mile very trained and then we I was put in a room with West Charmin we're back together again Bob Hill no I wasn't in that room Oh what maybe was Chuck Boyd who would later go on and make four stars and therefore wonderful friend and sent playing shuffleboard great guy Gary Thornton who is an innocent and David Gray who was a lieutenant who yeah we had some great people I mean virtually all and some of them didn't belong there they just military but I had six seven roommates and there one of them was John Frederick who was a Marine Warrant Officer they'd been shot down and he was the second marine plane shot down he follows captain or was him hopefully in an f4 his radar guy had flown in the earliest radar-equipped aircraft and Marine Corps the f7f in Korea at night bombing trains and he was a she was a master sergeant and we became the best of friends what a wonderful man and he got a terrible obviously terrible infection about six months before we released he died and I had the honor and the sadness to take some military decorations up his family and meet his family which I felt like I knew they were like a brother oh yeah we were all so close but we would Sante and then we were out there and they were basically not they were harassing us but anytime we stepped out of line they would take us and do something to us they took me out to interrogate me and I wouldn't answer the questions and they put me on a stool in the middle of a room in the middle of the summer when temperatures probably got to over and they kept me awake I was chained to this stool and they kept me awake sitting on this to the light level of my head about I'm told I got I went nuts I'm told about ten days and the guys in the cells or adjacent to that said I all of a sudden I started raising the hill and screaming and shouting and the guards all came in there and then I got very quiet and they they unhooked me and told me to go in the corner and sleep on the floor and you get an idea maybe the whip sleep well the next day they come back and say that surely you're right the propaganda is a prop again you know blank blank I'm not doing that and so I went back on the stool for another ten days I'm told now I don't know because I was nuts that's what they told me and after ten days I wrote a propaganda statement praising president are not president for praise he senator Teddy Kennedy about a spy for his anti-war action trying to get a war and it was just garbage and I feel loosen they did I some of the Wallace hallucinations you ever heard is the wild stuff and then that was my turn honest - they took others out did similar things I think I held the record but supposedly staying awake too long but yeah and to this day I don't deny myself sleep but I'll only be able to sleep another view that Orson do most Americans know these details because this I have not heard the specifics before like this you know you hear the the light burning and the water dripping things like that but this is just it's just a you know the big controversy now you know john mccain has been rather more citrus about we don't torture and and i would you come in well I believe that should be our our standard but if if I'm a battlefield commander and I'm closing with the enemy and I catch some of his people his scallops with my scallops and they bring them back and I'm talking about the life and death of the lives of my people and we're about to engage it the element of where they are you know if it takes me torturing that guy to get that information I'm probably gonna do it because it overpowers the the moral Brown that we should be standing on but that's life and death it's back to that old argument if somebody's backed suspected of having a dirty bomb in New York City what would you would you torture them to find out where it is you're damn right you would well I know you can't speak for John McCain but do you know why he would be I mean you're on one side but he's on the other well he is taking the ethical stand my god I love John like a brother I disagree on a lot of things but he's trying to do the right thing and his sense of ethics and write my own says we don't do this and I totally agree with him but that's what it said we don't do this but if I'm that battlefield commander and I cut these young kids back to me and we're gonna engage I'm gonna find out everything I can find that but we're just instead of and I don't know what and God forgive me but I am NOT going to sacrifice these people if I could have avoided it very interesting I'm so arson at this point you went off to Vietnam did you not a trick question but were you questioning or thinking what was the cause or we still like what what was your wedding you know I had read a lot of history I didn't know a lot of the Vietnam history I certainly I remember the French and it did men too and all that because about a senior in high school and I guess and I believed we were doing the right thing now because why well what we were being told and communism and I understood the well the domino theory that if Vietnam fell very likely Guam I may not go home but Burma would fall Thailand was off I still think that's what a highly possible scenario and our leaders were telling us that and and see in 20/20 hindsight we can see that LBJ was lying to us you know about some of this stuff some of our best leaders were not telling us the truth and and you know why they were not this series of Ken Burns Vietnam will be enlightening because I suspect it's going to give the point of view of the North Amis more credibility than the point of view of the Americans I just suspect that I don't know I've seen snippets of it I was invited to a promotional thing here a few weeks ago in Denver and I heard what he had to say I heard the snippets and I was getting a sense that it's a little bit yeah I didn't have any reservations I you know there is a part of our ego those of us who fly and I'm sure the entry types think the same way am i up to it can I measure up to what's expected it that I trained well enough to be good enough to do what I'm supposed to do and we're all curious about that you always how would I react in war you know another question projecting and so that's a wood behind it and we were flying so much and we were engrossed in that and and and I didn't think about it was I I was held in determinate I'll go hit targets if the targets were given about to go hit them and I did a pretty job of that and I didn't have any regrets about it and I was all of us were damn near nuts driven by the the rules of war or the ground rules that we have given we couldn't go into the DMZ and they were flooding through the DIA we couldn't do this we couldn't do that you can't drop without a positive identification by everyone fact oh my god you put all this stuff together and pretty soon your hands are tied behind your back and so off on our hands were tied behind our back that I didn't see and then all you know fairness I don't know if the infantry was that restricted but I've read a few stories where it appears they were but we certainly were not permitted to do certain things and and I think it may have a lot to do if they were not and we were we were so visible we were the you know the Flyboys you know the people that everybody knew got shot down he's got it in the jungles fighting nobody knew what they were doing it and and and nobody kept up with it they kept up with us because we were visiting they weren't visible they the the young people who officers and that fought in the south and the jungles and I'll even go so far as to speak in terms of the POWs they were not many most on that was a fluid battlefield as you well know from your experiences and the POWs down there where they were captured if they were not killed they were moved around and pretty soon disease would set in they lost a lot that way in and just a handful of them survived it and doctor Hale Kushner who retired as a colonel he was a flight surgeon he was a POWs helicopters in was shot down he was captured he was kept with American forces they were kept in jungle camps and bamboo cages and just deprivation beyond belief and the young several young Americans got sick and the Vietnamese would not let dr. Cushing or persons try to help and they died can you imagine the horror over that and they had it I mean we had it bad but they had as much words that we did and troops in the field I'm a pilot I'm on a v8 we don't see what they see we don't see friends blowing away and and the proudest thing in my life is that I'm a Vietnam veteran and I served with them and I would assist adem as best I could because they damn well took the brunt of the hardship and every time there's a great statement but yeah just to bring home your point that in the south part of Vietnam as well as where you were all types of sacrifice and suffering heroic acts were common like like the general he would Jima said uncommon valor was a common virtue and I think and then go back to that old saying that you know and the heat of warfare ground warfare I'm talking about always remember that the marine out on the front lines is fighting for the marine in the trench with him it's a lofty lofty or things of country and honor and all that stuff in the heat of battle you're taking care of each other no one left my father Hugh Jima and I've got a lot of reading about Iwo Jima and my god that was a horror show like nobody had ever seen and and those guys were taking care of each other and the same in the south and you know we had the later episodes of opposition to the war and you know people are following orders and things like that and I have no doubt so a lot of that was true I think a lot of it was driven by the drug culture that seemed to set in and they were getting their share of drugs in Vietnam from what I understand I wasn't there but I got the the soldier with a rifle is a most important person on Armed Forces and they took care of each other as best they could we in the sterile environment of the air did our best to help them as much as we could so and then when you got back down on the ground you were doing it for each other doing it for each other and there was a group of people who are doing their best to get me out one of my dear friends who got shot down in 1972 and captured a marine a6 I can't live in Colorado and we came to be a real good friends over the last three years since I've been living there and I did I hardly knew him what am I missing isn't it no no not at all I'm bill at Billings young captain then they built out of brain cancer here a few weeks ago and digital pipe and Bill were very dear to us and still are but bill and I would occasionally be at speaking engagements where I was speaking he was introducing me because he's the native Colorado and he was introduced me all these organizations and friends and he would say he was very humble just an incredibly humble guy he said you know everybody I'm a QW but I was there for eight months of what it was and he said I didn't do anything and he was he would try to say this is the guy he spent six years and four months and the first words out of my mouth said I want to tell you something but billing as he said he's not a hero I said my eyes he's a hero he got shot down trying to get me out and there's nothing I value more than somebody willing to risk their life to get me out and be a very successful life but he had had well or said in the remaining moments the last part of this story I want to know specifically when did you get communication from home any kind of letters your family or anything how far into your well I was presumed to be captain and he could I hit the ground I knew I got on the ground without dying and they just assumed I was probably captured but I did not get to write home until after hochiminh at that would be in 69 my wife wrote me letters incredibly frequently I did not get one until December of 1970 and it was three years old I had a picture of my son alive how your son knows and they of course I had I tell people I think I had the satisfaction of the comfort of knowing that my country was gonna take care of my wife in family the Marine Corps was going to take care of that and they did they were very good about it but they didn't know a damn thing about me so they worried I didn't have to have that worry because I was confident that she was at home and her family was there and and people who loved me dearly were all around her she had a tough time but not because of a lack of attention of the comforts of peace and whereas she had word of I mean she didn't know anything about me of course and my son had no idea why she kept his my picture there by and he when I came home first I called when I got released and from Clark Air Force Base and I said and we had our conversation first words out of my mouth was I'm sorry please forgive me and then tune the codes the conversation was the house Kevin she said well he's right here and I could can I talk to him I said he's not gonna talk because he's he's he's emotional and he doesn't know either well he said but he said to tell you he's 11 years old well as and along with that part of this story per se I just loved the coming home story so the miserable years went on and then I feel finished when you did know you actually well it about after Ho Chi Minh died in 69 mmm most of the torturing Wayne not only there's someone really badly tortured but I think it gives the impression that he was the driving force behind the vengeance against us I guess that's a way of putting it but anyway it noticeably changed for most of us so we were still grossly underweight they started feeding us a little better let's teach you I got down to one point out it's on tape we were you know we're always thinking on how to do things we were allowed to bathe once a week and after that I'll be monsoon rain storm came through the water cistern in the little shower area filled up so we're looking at that and there's a bucket over here to say you know and it had a dream Avenue city if one of us gets in that and displaces the water is back there college physic or high school physics we're gonna displace our weight so we got to do it slowly because the bucket will only hold so much but we got to count the buckets and and we will pour in that water somewhere they play sellstrom holy cuz we don't have a lot of water but the guys we several I was tried to get weighed and they were estimated now as little as 125 and I I don't think I got that bin but what they said but there were other episodes that I could spend hours talking about but we they Vietnamese isolated colonel bud day who was a dear dear friend of mine he was also a recipient of the Medal of Honor along with Admiral Stockdale and Leo Thor sness and Lance side John whose restored into himself young Air Force Academy graduate that died because of injuries that they never treated but bud day is a consummate leader he had been a marine and listy guy in World War two and when I get a commission one fire plane so when the Air Force and Air Cadets and all this stuff and he's legendary literally legendary and we were the dearest of friends and and and the Vietnamese looked at him and to me and about 25 guys and said you guys are just rotten you don't you just give us too much trouble so we're gonna send you away so they sent us away again and we're we're out in this remote camp that I think we call it skid row and they're not doing that later and we're you know having a good time getting to know each other we're all living in individual cells where there's a wall about this far away from us and a walkway here and it's dark and dank and damp but we're hanging on the bars here and we bouncing my name voices off of wall to talk to each other and they just they're funny stories above that existence but anyway after the Sante raid became a fact rated admit them that we went out there after the Sun say ray they took us out of wall they brought everybody in to the big prison from those remote camps after the Sante rate because they scared the daylights a time we landed 23 miles or 20 miles from Hanoi and didn't lose a man one guy broke his foot one guy f-105 got shot down and a rescue people picked him up no loss of life and they these Special Forces guys kick when I got on the ground but we weren't there and bull Simon who led the raid told me he said those young men were crying when they got back online all the coppers about you guys weren't there but and you meant you got to meet the leader then oh yeah I delivered part of his eulogy a wonderful man I mean Rambo couldn't hold a candle to her yeah but anyway we're with bud and they finally bring us out of Exile and put us in a room together and we were there for about a year and a half and they basically a leaving us alone and if we don't make an issue they don't bothers and we had a few issues that came up but in 70 late 1972 christmas is coming and I've had more in another room before I got in this group we had had we'd informed the Hanoi players and we recreated the Christmas Carol by who's that who's the guy who wrote it my mind I'm rambling through so many things here but at my Charles Dickens everybody knows there's Caroline Scrooge and the ghost of Christmas is brother fast and barley and all these guys and we created the characters in a some dialogue and and it had a big laugh at Christmastime it's not like it was all if we finally got to the point where it halfway reminded you of Stalag 16 or 17 whatever is go with william older than that crap I've seen that movie about six times before I get shot and I had a fascination with POWs and I read books but anyway we're over there with bud day and our this bunch of reprobates and McCain's in there in Jimmy Bell and Ned Shubin and Jack fellows and Leo Thor smus and my Christian and every one of those guys I just mean because such John McCain has passed away and they were just dear dear friends or means to me inspirations to me but anyway we're there and we decide that we're gonna read the Christmas Carol again and I'm production casting director and I said McCain you're gonna be Scrooge and we stole we stole some cotton out of the medics bag when he was over here doing something with somebody who had mosquito bites or something it yeah we steal the cotton we make wool Lambchop sideburns on everything and I give John his lines and we just made it up as we went and some of it was just we couldn't repeat it again what spirit and but we laughed everybody laughed if you had a tape of that Orson yeah oh it would have been well he could have been movie we could we could uh we could blackmail some people with this as a matter of fact but John was Scrooge I was Christmases past bread in the future and Chomper was Cratchit Bob Cratchit had the kid with the limp and and that guy Tiny Tim was the biggest guy in the room and we put him in diapers and it was hilarious and they brought the spirits up of everybody one of our my favorite people from these friends that have passed away was Ned Schumann Ed was a naval academy graduate a lot of Naval Academy graduate oh by the way but Ned looked like Ichabod Crane he was so skinny in heaven though it was bigger than mine and he just sort of slumped over and even he was a test pilot this guy was so smart it was disappearing but he was always just nervous he he said what do you think we get not has any Damon did your senior to me you should know that I don't know what but but we think I just hit my mic probably screech - gross Luther video but they did something there is a story a poem about a wayside in in England and it may have been Jamaica in and the poem is about the beautiful tests and the writers her lover is coming together but the people who don't like her lover have tied her on a post and she's in the window and they've got the candles so he can see her from far away and he's riding riding riding in his horse and to get and rescue the beautiful test and one of the other guys is test and and that is there is a rider and he's pretending is on a horse riding and they did that it's just hilarious God love these guys Bravo but any of it would the idiot Vietnamese watching this they they are when we first came back from Sunday they were terrified that we will a lot together they thought we'd have a riot or something I don't know what do is good fun they and we were just having fun they didn't they so quit paying our group in particular this would pay attention to because they knew they could do anything with us I beat us they had to miss you when you are God we roll into the new year now well the Christmas bombing you know that was just oh my god we're laying there on the concrete pad with my Skeeter that's up and I'm McCain is over here I'm here Jimmy Jimmy bail is over here that both the short guys and I look up as we're trying to fall asleep there and the beam in the building was exposed or steel beam just sort of wave I said good God look at that and about that time the shock waves come rolling in it was a b---fifty twos and the sky landed up the horizon we could see up out of this high window that they had covered but we're looking this way we could see it and I said I've seen one of these things up close that's a b-52 nothing drops that many bomb and it started and it roll and a troll in three cheering well that was not going to do us any good we a couple of people got a little out of hand they took them on beat them I mean this we've got to be smart you know let's don't go asking for BT so we didn't but we were cheering you know inside and that went on for what ten days and then everything that quiet and all of a sudden we hear different kind of propaganda we don't hear it but we don't understand it but it's something there's something different tone and then one night they come in there ourselves and wait about 25 in there and they come in and they give us it roll up so we had this little rice mat we slept on and a blanket and a couple of pairs of pajamas and we roll all that stuff up to be moved and so they caught it to call us out and we all knew everything about each other and we knew when we got shot down and we noticed that everybody they call was shot down within two months of each other and we figured we were gonna be released and over I shoot down and they said roll up go out and so we're talking it just that hell this is this is good news they're dividing us up by date or shoot down so that's got to be good so and it was okay and they took us separated us I'm in the group that was around my shoot down date which was 11 November 66 why we extended over into early 67 and a few months before me and then one day a guard who had been at another camp who was a halfway decent kid in fact he disappeared he cried at the beatings of Budd day and read McDaniels with fan belts and they eliminated him and he shows up and he said I think he told some guys that he recognized I think it will be very good and then one day we're sitting there it's a cloudy day and we hear a c-130 c-130 sounds like a c-130 and a Huey sound like nothing else they all they you know what it is well we'd hear this c-130 or sounds like a c-130 and there's a ceiling up here about 600 feet and all of a sudden a black c-130 breaks through the clouds and we're looking at that damn thing oh my god and we knew that we were getting ready to go home and a few weeks later they bring the International inspection team to come in and they walk around and meet us it rapollo ox and a couple other countries and of course Americans and one army expect four and we came up basis are you gonna you're not gonna believe how you can retrieve home did you know and then you are then then then it I was in the second group groups released and we watched the first group get together and they went over and they gave him some clothes that were sort of great trial to the light blue shirt and some corny looking shoes all this stuff was made in Poland communist Poland pull in a great country and great people but on the economy doesn't it suck but anyway they gave them little bags and then they one day they told them to all format we could see them now they've taken the blinds down we can see out of the windows and they say adios we'll be waiting for you and then it came our turn and we went and got the clothes put them on and look they came in one morning and said ok everybody outside in your group and the senior officer which had never respected our RAM until this time and we were taken out to bus as we walked out of those iron gates that I talked about and there was a bus out there and it must've been ten thousand Vietnamese outside of that exit of it that entryway to the proving camp and they weren't read looking at us and they were very worldly and nothing was out of hand they weren't mad you know they'd want to watch and we drove yes we drove through Hanoi - I think it's get on there what I'm not forgotten now but which I guess was their major airport and we see all the bomb damage at one of the most striking things I've ever seen we passed by the rail yard it was completely obliterated and right in the middle of it as a train engine standing on its nose it had been blowing up in the air and came down our snows then we got to the airport on an old hanger and we're sitting there they bring us some refreshments a little piece of the candy or something like that and I think it some water and we sitting on the bus and finally until it's time to get off the bus and about that time we'd look over there and here comes a c-141 coming in from landing and we just look at it we weren't sure we weren't totally convinced put reliever and then we kept looking at that damn thing it landed and sort of went out of sight with over rain roll and then it came up closer to an area we saw a big crowd of people and it got up there and we looked out and I'm very flag is on the table would be numbered and you talk about some tears and we got out and they called our names and we walk through this crowd and they've got a bit big open square and a table of North Whitney's officers and a an Air Force team and out in front of the table is a spoken-- for the vietnamese and we see some of the people that tortured us and we make a note on them and when we had a chance to mumble something to some of the Americans they take a picture that got and this general Ogun was there and brigadier general in the Air Force and they called her name when I went shook his hands he said there's your plane home young lieutenant walked me out to the airplane and as I'm approaching I was the only marine in this group and Air Force colonel was at the bottom of the back of the ramp there and he said are you the marine I said yes sir he said the friend of yours up there and I looked up here as my neighbor the guy that gave the wings to her wife Jim Harrison and he looked like celesta Stallone the handsome guy but God is he just a reprobate he's at the wall man and he is he is there and the tears are just streaming on his cheeks and we made our way home from there and I just unlived off when those wheels came up well when the wheels came up with pretty sure we're going to nowhere and everybody just broke and you've probably seen pictures of the guys cheering and then we settle down there the best-looking flight nurses for the Air Force you've ever seen of all beautiful girls they had magazines newspapers and the magazine of choice for all of us was a new playbook because I have to change while go away and as we as we cross the beats the pilot came up said oh no none feet with and feet with ophélie we're over the world oh god yeah I got you and then the rest of my life started and then in about two minutes and then I'll be like no can you do quick summary the rest of your life you got home I know that's gonna be hard to do but you you know by the way how many years in the service at that point time all together all together just over 20 20 years I came in an active duty in August of a fifty fifty nine and retired in November of 79 and then you came to Colorado well before that I got it I got a whole nother episode I became assistant secretary for Reagan of Commerce and I had spent eight years Reagan administration I went through a divorce my wife was a great gal and she raised a great son but it it was it was just too much and I put both of us and then I I ran for Congress and hit Hawaii after married Angie I was fool it let the seven Republicans that way talking over conifers against an incumbent of eight years and then I I worked with Jack Kemp and VIN Weber and Jean Kerr Packer and Bill Bennett and empower America then I became a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission for seven years and then I retired again and we my wife's son and his wife had triplet daughters born in 2000 and their seven years old what does they make it 17 2010 tonight and we decided we wanted to be with them for the rest of our lives so we moved to Colorado and they live five minutes away and and as my friend Larry frizzy a Marine who was a POWs shot down in 67 or 68 I believe he got one with Bachelor love motorcycles he told us first thing I do by bubucaca he's a ride around the country so Christmas we got them in March of Christmas we get a card from him it's got a pic to him hang you over the side of Niagara Falls by one hand my Santa Claus having a beer and a ship Magnum of champagne and the caption on e said X POWs never have a end of story oh boy I quote a beautiful ending and a and a as I said to you before a triple blessing from God with those darling little grand girls and could you do that quickly we have Lila uh-huh who is the other one Italy and they will have marina and Ariana who are difficult winds and to this day I can't tell them apart I say Ariana just know Popeye and marina I am your wife Angie and Angie and we live in Boulder Colorado and like I said five minutes away from them and we spend a lot of time with them they they light up my life I mean they love their granny and they love their papa but they love granny because she teaches them someone but I just sit there and smile see myself I missed my son from four to eleven I'm seeing the learning process and a maturing process and them now it's kind of a blessing isn't it just I'm blessed luckiest how do you ever met yeah the locust years you know there have been eatin now a blessing we just thank you for this incredible American story with a as a true patriot Orson it forgotten I love it so oh you're an amazing Patriot thank you so much thank you

Channel: Victor Phillips

Views: 58,631

Rating: 4.7570372 out of 5

Keywords: Orson Swindle, Vietnam War, POW, Marine Aviation

Id: fE0hvMm_epw

Length: 123min 22sec (7402 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 25 2017