Captive Warriors: A Vietnam POW's Story (Texas A & M University Military History Series 23) (Volume 23) - Hardcover

Sam Johnson; Jan Winebrenner

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0890964963 ISBN 13: 9780890964965

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press, 1992

Synopsis

"If hell is here on earth, it is located on an oddly shaped city block in downtown Hanoi, Vietnam," writes Sam Johnson, who lived in that hell for seven years.

Col. Samuel R. Johnson, U.S. Air Force, was shot down in April, 1966, while flying his twenty-fifth mission over North Vietnam. Shortly after his capture and imprisonment in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, Colonel Johnson was labeled a diehard by his enemies. His creative and innovative resistance of prison authority earned him banishment to the high-security prison unit where, unknown to U.S. military intelligence, Ho Chi Minh kept the eleven prisoners believed to be a serious threat to his war efforts. For two years Johnson and the other ten endured leg irons, malnutrition, and appallingly primitive conditions while imprisoned in tiny cubicles built in the earthen-walled facility dug out of the center courtyard of North Vietnam's Ministry of Defense in downtown Hanoi.

Captive Warriors is the story of Alcatraz, where courage and humor thrived amid the madness. It is the story of Colonel Johnson's seven-year battle for his life, limbs, and sanity. It is the story of the hundreds of captured warriors--American POWs--whose lives lay in the hands of angry and vengeful North Vietnamese captors. The book also chronicles America's trek into political confusion and chaos throughout the course of the Vietnam War.

More than a story, Captive Warriors is a tribute to all the American prisoners of war who, without benefit of the conventional weapons of war, waged daily battles against an insidious enemy disdainful of the requirements of the Geneva Conventions and who, in the end, became the final pawn in the peace settlement that ended the longest war in American history.

About this title

About the Author:

SAM JOHNSON served twenty-nine years in the U.S. Air Force, flying sixty-two combat missions in Korea before his two tours of duty in Vietnam. He served as director of the Air Force Fighter Weapons School, wing commander of the 31st Wing at Homestead, Florida, and air division commander at Holloman AFB in Alamagordo, New Mexico, where he retired in 1979 as a command pilot. He earned two Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star with Valor, the Meritorious Service Medal, and nine other medals, including two purple hearts. He holds a bachelor's degree from Southern Methodist University and a Master's degree in international affairs from George Washington University. In 1991 he was elected to the U.S. Congress; he lives in Dallas, Texas.JAN WINEBRENNER is a freelance writer who lives in Plano, Texas. She grew up on the Navajo Indian Reservation in northern Arizona and studied English literature and education at Northern Arizona University and John Brown University. She has published numerous feature articles and two books, worked as a staff feature writer, and founded a local writer's guild. She is a frequent speaker for writers' groups and conferences.

From Library Journal:

Among prisoner of war memoirs, which all remind us of the brutality of war and the staggering toll it takes on the individual, Vietnam POW accounts are especially powerful reminders of what the ordinary soldier is sometimes forced to endure. Johnson, presently a Congressman from Texas, was an Air Force pilot shot down over North Vietnam in 1966. He spent the next seven years of his life in brutally inhumane conditions that tested his strength and will to survive in ways he never believed possible. His personal struggle, assisted by the love and compassion of his fellow POWs, forms the heart and soul of the book. Captive Warriors is as fine a work as James and Sybil Stockdale's In Love and War ( LJ 8/84) and Chained Eagle ( LJ 11/1/89) by Everett Alvarez Jr. and Anthony S. Pitch. Recommended for Vietnam collections.
- John R. Vallely, Siena Coll. Lib., Loudonville, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0890964963
• ISBN 13: 9780890964965
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 310
• Illustrator: Rod Keitz