I met a former POW last night

[Lee Barner]

a retired USAF Lt Col F-4 and F-15 pilot who was shot down on May 22, 1972 just 25 miles from Hanoi while on his 229th mission. he told me the Air Rescue helicopter was close and told him to pop smoke. when he did, heavily armed locals, including women came from all directions. he had been on the ground 5 1/2 hours. he said he was standing there with his .38 special in one hand and his radio in the other. one woman fired a short burst in his direction. he said he threw the revolver one way and the radio the other. also said they marched him from village to village for two weeks before they turned him over to the NVA. he said they had never seen anyone like him before as he is a gentleman of color. when he learned I was a Vietnam vet he really opened up to me and we just went back in time for over an hour. after a 20 year career in the AF, he was a Professor of Military Science (JROTC) at a high school in Atlanta for another 20 years. he still pilots a twin engine jet at Randolph AFB, TX once a year. it is called the Red Tail Honor Flight in honor of the Tuskegee Airmen. each pilot gets to do one take off, fly for an hour and land. I really didn't want to got to Memphis yesterday to the track meet but am sure glad I did now. what an eye opener. lee

 

[Watchdog]

Lee, it sounds as if you had an enlightening and educational experience with this man. Good for you. I believe we could all learn more about the Vietnam war if we had the opportunity to hear from people like your new acquaintance.

 

[Lee Barner]

Jim, I agree whole heartedly. I have a whole new outlook on life. my wife commented last night on the way home that she could see a difference in me. I wasn't cussin the other drivers on the interstate and in the city and seemed more relaxed that she had seen me in years. unfortunately, my grandson's track team didn't qualify for the state tournament next week. lee

 

[onebadvet]

Thank You for your Service, and Welcome Home.

 

[fiasconva]

Not wanting to hijack Lee's post I'll just say I've had the pleasure of meeting two. One was a navigator on a bomber shot down over Austria in WWII and the other was a pilot shot down in Vietnam and spent time in the Hanoi Hilton the same time as John McCain.

 

[Squarebutt]

I knew a B-52 pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam and spent time in their guest houses. He didn't talk about it much, but when he did, any mention of his lost crewmates would make him choke up. God bless all those heroes.

 

[joeintexas]

Thank you Lee for the story, there are countless hero's silently out there that we owe the freedom we have today to. You have truly been privileged to have met one of them. I can't even imagine what they had to endure.

 

[LLOYD17]

Met this gentleman randomly as I was getting ready for a PRT.
Eugene McDaniel - Wikipedia
He commented on seeing khakis on an Army base and asked how the fleet was doing. Then he told me a little about his time as a POW. To say I was humbled and speechless is an understatement.

 

[Muley Gil]

A family friend was a POW in a Japanese camp during WW II. He never told me any stories, but he did talk to my dad, a WW II Navy signalman, about some of the horrors he endured.

He went to the VA hospital in Martinsburg WV and was given electroshock treatment, which destroyed his ability to speak. It used to make him so angry that he had so much trouble communicating after that. He was a Duke graduate, but still was a down to earth country boy from the mountains bordering the Shenandoah Valley.

My dad would drive him down to the VA center in Salam, Virginia. Needless to say, he never went back to the Martinsburg VA.

 

[Golddollar]

The only POW I knew personally was on the other side. One of my old professors was a Luftwaffe (German Air Force) pilot during World War II. He enlisted in the Luftwaffe only because evading military service was a capital offense and he figured he had a better life expectancy as a pilot. Knowing him, when he got shot down in North Africa, he was probably ecstatic to be captured by the Americans. He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp in Lubbock, Texas. He used his time in the camp to take correspondence courses from the University of Texas.

 

[vonn]

Never met a POW but I am sure they paid a high price. KIA might be better than MIA .

 

[rwsmith]

You lucky guy.....

I would feel privileged meeting someone who'd been through that, and able to pass on the story. There is a LOT that we need to remember. I was fortunate enough to get detailed stories from WWII vets and I'll remember all of them and pass them on to anybody that wants to listen.

PS: I met a holocaust survivor, didn't have a long conversation, but he had the tattoo. A B-17 pilot that was a shot down and taken prisoner by the Germans. My FIL was on the USS Panamint off Okinawa that the captain swung on the anchor chain to avoid torpedoes. He was a chief in charge of cleaning up the USS S. Hall Young that had been next to them when it got kamikazied. My friend Bill Polzin was on the USS Cochino went it sank from battery explosions off Norway. They succeeded in making it to the USS Tusk, but a civilian engineer and six members of the Tusk were lost when the large waves swept them off the deck. He gave me a detailed first hand account being in the compartment where the explosions were occurring.

I feel like a safe-deposit box for these experiences, sad as they were.

 

[mexicanjoe]

I remember my brother

My older half brother was in Battaan. He hardly spoke of it, only to tell me that freedom has the sweetest taste imaginable. He resorted to shooting iguanas when supplies ran low. He also ate mice, cockroaches and anything else they could find at the POW camp..First thing he did when he got home was to build a HUGE pantry and stocked it with groceries. I saw him have nightmares and screaming in Japanese ... He worked for many years afterward , but eventually the torture at the hands of Japanese caused him so much pain.... He passed many years ago , but his name and that of his buddy Charlie James are inscribed in the Bataan Memorial up in New Mexico......sure miss that guy.. I hope he and daddy are fishing their hearts out.

 

[rwsmith]

it's bad enough...

...being a poorly treated prisoner for some years, but being a prisoner permanently in your own mind.....?

 

[rwsmith]

Oh, here's another....

My step MIL's father was in WWI and we'd sit and talk. This was in the early 80's and he said that he could see clear as day in his own mind going cross country and going over the hill and seeing the trees. He met a German WWI vet some years later and told him, "You sure have a beautiful country over there."

My FIL had many other stories like the Liberty ship he was on cracking in half in the North Atlantic and another time that torpedoes got loose below decks in a storm and were rolling around all over the place and they had to 'lasso' them to get them secured. I never appreciated the SIZE of one of those torpedoes(21" dia x 20' long) and they weight about a ton and a half. He was around to talk about (even though he gave his hearing and vascular system to the cause) but think how many of the 'incidents' happened that didn't turn out good.

 

[keith44spl]

One of my boyhood friends father had been a POW in the last months of the ETO.

One day we were sitting in shade in his front yard....

He just said, "When we got overrun and captured....When we got to that prison camp,
I never felt so sorry for anybody like I did them boys that were there.
They were just bout starved to death, they'd boiled their shoe souls and ate em."

He'd just shake his head, like he still couldn't believe it after all the years.

He continued, "When we got liberated, we were given some decent clothes.
And in the fold of the trousers given to me was a little 32 Mauser...
When I drop that loaded pistol in my pants pocket, I can't describe how good that felt."

His son said he carried that 32 for the rest of his life.


Mr. Gene was a man among men.


.

 

[carpriver]

Thanks Lee for your post, I worked for a Lt. Col. that had his aircraft shot out from under him. He spent time in a NVA POW prison. He had some injuries that took him off flight status. He flew the Wild Weasel jamming the radar of the SAMS. he was treated pretty bad because of his role.

 

[shouldazagged]

Years ago I knew a survivor of the Bataan death march who was shipped to Japan to slave in coal mines. He had a raging hatred of all things Japanese and had to fight to control himself if he encountered Japanese tourists speaking their language.

But he was an alcoholic, and eventually realized that if he wanted to stay sober he would have to give up the rage and hatred.

So he did. The last time I saw him he had been sober for several years. I believe he died sober.

Quite a story.

 

[crazyphil]

I have had the honor of being acquainted with 3 POWs. All three were
employees of Morrison-Knudson when the Japanese took Wake Island
at the beginning of WWII. All gentlemen with interesting stories.

The story just above mine reminded me at the beginning of WWII
a friend of mine's older brother was KIA in the Navy. His Dad in a
rage went downtown, into a Chinese restaurant, and beat up all of
the Chinese he could find. Too drunk to know it wasn't Chinese,
but Japanese who killed his son.

I've told this before, so I hope I don't bore you to tears.
1945 (I was 10) we had a German POW camp down the road
at Tautphaus Park in Idaho Falls. One night my Mom screamed
and I jumped out of bed and ran to her at the back door.
There was a big guy rattling the handle on our screen door.
No AC, so we just had the screen door latched.
My Mom yelled at me to go get my gun.
As soon as the guy heard "gun" he turned and hi-tailed it
toward the alley. In the moonlight we could see big white
letters POW painted on the back of his jacket.

They used the POWs for farm labor. They would let us out
of school back then to help pick potatoes. There would be
POWs in the field working with us. A GI with a rifle setting
at the end of the rows watching them.

I just remembered, in basic at Lackland, March-April 1952
we had a former German soldier in our flight. He was a
veteran of WWII and somehow got to join up with the
winning side.

My cousin Capt. Elmer Hahn was commander of a B-29
shot down over Tokyo. He was in a Japanese prison camp,
when it was bombed by our B-29s, and was killed.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie UNBROKEN,
it is a good representation of what it might have been like
to be a POW. I recommend it.

 

[sheepdawg]

My dad was a WWII POW. He was in the Wehrmacht, one of the unlucky ones drafted when Germany realized things weren't going so hot. Fortunately he got sent to France and was captured by the Americans in October of 1944 near Metz, France. He had his share of nightmares and didn't tell me very much about the front lines but he'd open up about the POW camp because the Americans treated him very well.

The other POW I have met was Raymond Vohden who was captured and held by the North Vietnamese for almost eight years, he lived about 10 houses down from me in Memphis. I'll never forget when he finally came home, the whole neighborhood was waiting for him, he looked awful, a shell. I will never forget it. I did manage to talk to him about 3 months later. He seemed pretty troubled as could be expected. His relationship with his wife deteriorated and he wound up getting a divorce and moving away. From what I have read he led a pretty normal life in Virginia in the Navy. A true American hero he passed away in 2016 at the age of 86.