Grant weaves together interviews with nine Americans who were POWs
in Vietnam, selecting his subjects from a group captured and held
for three years in the South. The final third of the book deals
with their transport to Hanoi and the treatment they received
there. Accounts of pre-capture experiences give a fine picture of
the senseless daily conduct of the war, its horror and futility. A
three-year stay in jungle prison becomes a struggle for survival
against disease, depression and malnutrition. Due to their
devastating honesty, fascinating character studies emerge of men
under constant and severe stress. The North Vietnamese used a
classic carrot-and-stick approach to obtain signatures on antiwar
material and cooperation in propaganda broadcasts. Warrant Officer
Frank Anton says, "The vast majority of POWs were guilty of
violating the Code of Conduct. The ones who refused to give the
North Vietnamese anything but name, rank and serial number didn't
come home." While most POWs came to oppose the war, few
collaborated enthusiastically in exchange for favors. One of those
who did, John Young, reveals much about himself in his
contradictory and self-serving statements - as does Young's
nemesis, Col. Ted Guy, who emerges as an archetypal military
marionette, but also a brave man determined to organize the
prisoners. An important addition to the literature of the Vietnam
war. (Kirkus Reviews)
This book is the moving story of nine American soldiers and pilots
who were captured and held prisoner for five years. It could only
be told in their own words so author Zalin Grant interviewed each
of the men and wove their accounts together to form a single,
compelling narrative of war and survival. They describe the details
of their daily existence in a Vietcong jungle prison as the war
ebbed and flowed around them: the rats, the terror of American
bombing raids, the sickness, starvation, and torture. Through the
juxtaposition of their individual stories we see the subtle,
destructive tensions that operate on a group of men in such
desperate circumstances. Marched up the Ho Chi Minh trail to Hanoi,
the prisoners' physical ordeal gave way to an agonizing moral
dilemma. Should they join the "Peace Committee," a group of POWs
protesting the war? Or should they resist their captors by all
possible means as ordered by the secret American commander of the
Hanoi prison? After years in the jungle on the edge of survival,
each man had to answer the questions: Who am I? What do I believe?
These men form a cross section of the army we sent to Vietnam.
Their words illuminate not only their individual background and
experience, but also the meaning of this war for all of us.
General
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