yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Vietnam POW Escape | No Man Left Behind


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

I certainly remember the day I got shot down: the 6th of June, 1964. The ocean government had requested a show of support from the United States. We were tasked to go in and fly some missions over there as a kind of a show of force.

The last pass, the last mission, there was a big funk airplane. Township, everything started to fail; all the red lights started to come on. I forget how high I was when I ejected, but looking around at where I was gonna land, there was one tree in the middle of the clearing, and I hit it. My right hip and right knee were badly banged up.

I had dispatched a number of the Air America pilots under missions; they were dropping ammunition in rice noir outpost. One of the pilots came in, "There's a plane down." We all knew that we would be crossing the most dangerous area that you could cross. There wasn't much of a chance our little single-engine aircraft would make it over to kept him and then coming back.

As soon as they started to break into a hover, everything interrupted. I knew there was no chance of them being able to land and pick me up, so I didn't wave them off. There was a very courageous man there on the ground. What a brave act! Your gorilla, so to speak, that were under communist control were alarmed and started to lead me off toward their camp.

When you're kept in the prison, you are locked in a room. It was always, "I'm gonna get out of this when I get away from here somehow, someday." Nothing's going to happen unless I make it happen. It was going through that drill when I had the first encounter with another prisoner. His name was Boo, and he came over and sat down beside me. Through sign language, he said, "Walking," pointing.

Eventually, it was just, "When the right time comes, that's when we'll go." I went out and started pushing up the fence, and he came running down, and I was right behind him. I knew we were going away from the bad guys; that was the key point. But I didn't know for sure where Boo was headed. He hadn't given up hope and looked for the first opportunity to escape.

But thanks to his bravery and the things that he did, we were able to complete the mission. I don't think you can go through a life-and-death type of experience and come out the same way you went in. You realize that life’s pretty fragile, so I think I have a more positive outlook on life afterwards.

More Articles

View All
Impact of changes to trophic pyramids | High school biology | Khan Academy
What we see here is known as a trophic pyramid, and the word “trophic” in a biology context is referring to food relationships. So, one way to think about this is that it tells us who is eating whom and who is producing energy, and then who is able to lev…
Visualizing chemical equations using particulate models | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy
A question that some of you might have asked, or maybe haven’t asked, is where do we get our hydrogen from? Because molecular hydrogen, if it was just in the air, it is lighter than the other things that make up the air, so it would just float to the top …
Easiest tips to be a successful Real Estate Agent
[Music] Starss [Music] STS. What’s up, YouTube? It’s Graham here. I’m going to make a video today of the easiest tips that you can do to be successful in real estate. We’re going to start with this. Do you know what this is? This is called a light switch…
Warren Buffett: The Best 10 Minutes of Financial Advice on the Internet
Testing one million, two million, three million. That’s working. Okay, talk to you about your financial future, and I hope those figures become applicable to all of you as we go along. And I’d like to start by posing a problem for you. I said I’m just go…
I woke up at 4 am for a week💀 (one day was enough 🥵)| Med School Diaries 👩🏻‍⚕️
Let’s clear up three things before starting the video. Should you really wake up at 4 a.m. in order to be productive? Absolutely no. Did it make me more productive? Ah, kinda. Should you watch this video? It’s totally up to you. So, let’s get started. Le…
Lucy in the Sky with Asteroids | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic
What sparked my interest in space was just dreaming about the stars. This is Adriana Ocampo, she’s a NASA scientist, and back when she was a kid in Argentina, she’d grab her dog and head to the roof of her house. You know, we would go every evening that w…