The final effort came when our reconnaissance team reported contact with the POWs and their guards by radio near midnight at a pre-arranged crossing site.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I went overseas hoping to prove that all our POWs were home. I came back convinced that they were still alive.
On the eighteenth of December 1972, when we thought we were getting another of the hundreds of little tactical air raids, we heard the bombs going in out there in the railroad yards and this went on for about thirty minutes.
There was a military police brigade with over 3,400 soldiers getting ready to go home because their mission - prisoner-of-war operations - was finished.
Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.
When I get the morning report on security, I call those battalions in the regions where there are problems.
It takes time to understand the difference between civilian POWs and military POWs. There's an educational process.
It's really kind of a challenge to keep coordinated with the two station crews that we'll be interacting with. And of course one of them launched quite some time before our mission.
The proof is in the pudding when they come home. Will we have the data about their health, will we know where they were stationed, what their unit deployments were? I will need that information.
I submit that those who run the American military at the top, and those whose boots are on the ground and who run the machinery and equipment, are sending a signal: You asked us to do something. Give us some time and we will solve the problems and we will do it.
The PoWs went through something so horrible, you don't know who's coming back.
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