 The Marine recruiter looked at me and said, the only thing I can guarantee you is boot camp and then go into war in Vietnam. I had to convince my mother and father to sign for me since I was a minor. After two and a half months of walking, one morning I couldn't get up. I couldn't put no weight on my leg and my guards came up to me and won a chamber around and put the AK-47 on my head. He told me in Vietnamese, you get up or I'm going to kill you. To be quite honest with you, I didn't think I could. I started singing the Marine Corps anthem and got up and walked and made it to a prisoner of war camp that was on the Vietnam-Lay-Ocean border in the jungles of South Vietnam. When I got through the door, I looked to the left-hand side and there was Hal Kushner, Dave Harker, Tom Davis, Ike McMillan, Daley, Lewis, Feaster, and there was probably two or three others. Dennis Hammond, Sergeant Marine Corps. I looked at them and I said to myself, oh my God. They looked absolutely immacid. I knew they were Americans and they were grinning at me and I was grinning at them. Hal Kushner asked me who I was and I told him, he said, well have a seat. He says, how are you? The interpreter walked out and left me there and I started talking to them and come to find out some of them had been five, they're five years or longer. He flew into Denane and I remember this just like it happened five minutes ago. They dropped the tailgate. We ran out the back and I think I took three steps and the rockets started coming in. That rocket attack lasted about 20 minutes and that was my first five minutes in combat. That was probably the first time that I asked myself what did I get myself into. So backing up, you walked three months on a badly wounded foot before they finally stopped at the camp where you were finally in prison. Yes, sir. And all that time without a boot on that foot then it was becoming infected along the way. Yes, sir. And you continued on. What happened when you got to the camp? I made the 26th prisoner that was held by that Vietnamese unit of which out of those 26 only 12 survived and I'm one of them after two years in the jungles in South Vietnam. And there was no doubt in this type of an environment and it's nothing more than an extension of the formal French prison system that was there when they occupied the country. That they had all the time in the world to devote indoctrination and humiliation beating you and just basically humiliating you. The only way you were going to die there is that they shot you. And we had all come to the conclusion that we would never do anything unless something went terribly bad that would lead up to that. Actual release was postponed four times because of breaks in the peace talks. And finally one day they came in and they gave us these clothes and said put it on and gave us a bag. They said you're going home and I said you're going home. I didn't believe in that. But anyway, they stuck us on a bus that had all the windows covered. We drove and they opened the doors to the bus. And as I got off the bus I looked off to the right side and there was an Air Force C-141 hospital, Air Force General. Standing there on the left hand side there was an Air Force General and a couple of colonels. And then about every North Vietnamese dignitary that the air force was in the country was standing there. And we had to go up there and salute that general and shake this Air Force Colonel's hand. And they would say to you walk very briskly to that airplane. And they didn't have to tell me twice. They said don't run but walk briskly. Got to the door, there was Air Force Flight nurses on there. And they put us in the seats and they hugged us and told us walk them home and kissed us and gave us cigarettes and beer and candy. We're taxing. The next thing I know the front end of the plane goes up and I'm looking down like this. And as it banks hard to the left I looked out the window and I saw the last time I ever saw a North Vietnamese. And I was glad.