Survivors: Vietnam P.O.W.S Tell Their Stories

This book describes the very brutal conditions endured by POWs who were held captive in S.V.N, Cambodia or Laos. It also does a good job of describing the widely diverse backgrounds of the POWs themselves and how that either assisted or inhibited them from bonding together for their mutual well being. I served in the province in SVN, Quang Ngai, where most of the camp locations were. The camp was moved about six or seven times between 1965 and March 71, initially in Quang Tin (now Quang Nam) then later south into Quang Ngai Province. It was in a remote extremely rugged mountainous area, which is one reason why U.S. Forces never found it.

This book describes the POW experiences of 9 Americans (2 pilots and 7 soldiers) held in Vietnamese jungle prison camps and, later, the Hanoi Hilton. The first third of the book covers time spent by the grunts as they were captured and held in the jungle. Initially, I was disappointed not to read about the Hanoi Hilton, but the author slowly leads us up to that point. He describes, after several years in prison jungles, how the soldiers are moved out north, toward Hanoi, and later kept in the Hilton with other prisoners. The stories are told in first person narratives and are interwoven with stories from the other camp mates. This book is not about prisoners in various camps around Viet Nam, but about one specific camp. Nevertheless, it is an excellent book about their experiences in the jungle prison and the torture and boredom they lived through day end and day out. I recommend this book along with Grant's "Over the Beach" (about jet pilots flying off of the Oriskany on bombing missions over North Viet Nam).

This is one of the greatest books that I have read on the Vietnam War subject, and I have read many; its limited scope notwithstanding. Ostensibly, this book is the graphic of the experiences of a discrete number of men kept captive by the VC/NVA command. However, due to the complex subtleties of the book's structure, it becomes a bit more than this, especially because it encompasses a wider array of U.S. prisoners, and also Europeans, and South Vietnamese soldiers and mercenaries. The author has chosen to extract excerpts of interviews that he must have given to those men who volunteered to speak with him. The largest part of the book is given over to a group held in high mountain jungle camps in South Vietnam, and then of their march North to Hanoi and finally of theirs and others experiences in the so-called Hanoi Hilton. We are privileged to experience the lives of these men through their own eyes. We witness brutality, humiliation, bravery, cowardice, fear, humour, death, disease, insanity, depravity and, yes, love and friendship; both internecine and between the prisoners and their 'enemies.' The Vietnam War was, for the United States, a complex situation to say the least. The POW experience there does a wonderful job of conveying the complexities and difficulties this war posed for our society. Suffice it to say that one is left with a sense of awe for the strength and forbearance of these 'survivors' (but for one of the men, Theodore Guy, whose understandably disturbing and distorted views are explored a bit later in the book). One of the most beautiful aspects of this book is the testimonials that various POW's give to explain and ameliorate the weaknesses and 'failings' of their fellow prisoners. I was also struck by the underlying humility with which the prisoners spoke of their own experiences, some of which involved personal valor and heroism that all but one of the prisoners left unsaid, only to have their secrets unveiled by a different prisoner. I say that there is one stand out voice here that is filled with anger, hatred and braggadocio and that voice is Mr. Guy's. It stands in stark contrast to the testimony of the other prisoners, and one can't help but think that the author intentionally included this point of view. Guy was the senior officer in the so-called Hanoi Hilton for much of the time he was imprisoned and was unrepentantly gung ho during his tenure there. He set up lines of communication between the prisoners in order to help give strength to his fellow Americans and to enforce his policies of resistance to the enemy and to maintain this united front. He is embittered by the fact that a small contingent of the Americans there, members of the so-called Peace Committee, were cooperating with the enemy by making tapes and writing letters that condemned the American participation in the war. He even went so far as to attempt to stir up a firestorm after he returned home by going to the press with allegat

Zalin Grant does a masterful job of merging the interviews of the different POW's. The reader is able to take advantage of a wide array of viewpoints on their situation as prisoners. I found myself trying to decide which prisoner was the good guy and which was the bad guy. There was more animosity between some of the prisoners than their was between them and their captors! Anyone who drools over the prospect of learning more about POW life needs to add this tale to their respective library and enjoy!

Zalin Grant did a masterful job weaving together oral interviews of seven of the twelve survivors of one of the worst death camps run by the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. There were 11 deaths from disease and starvation, plus one killed attempting escape during the time period covered by Grant's book. After the unsuccessful Son Toy raid on an empty POW camp in North Vietnam, the Viet Cong moved their southern prisoners by walking them to Hanoi. The journey took six months, but ultimately all of Grant's survivors were released in Operation Homecoming in 1973. This book is must reading for the serious researcher on POWs, or anyone who wants to know how difficult it was to survive jungle captivity. Also recommended is a brand new book by survivor interviewee Frank Anton "Why Didn't You Get Me Out?," which includes most of his experiences covered in Grant's book, but adds Anton's observations about MIAs seen in Laos on his way to Hanoi, plus Anton's concerns about the plight of MIAs written off by the US government many years ago