Vietnam POWs were honored at their 45th annual reunion.
Circle T Ranch has rolled out the red carpet for a group of Vietnam prisoners of war gathering in North Texas for their annual reunion.
The 2,500-acre ranch, which is in the Westlake area and is owned by Hillwood, staged a huge event for the dozens of veterans Friday evening. Festivities included a private air show featuring a B-52, A-1 Skyraider, a A-37 Dragonfly, an A-4, a T-38 and a flag jump.
The veterans are members of a group called NAM-POW, which was formed to help repatriate 801 former prisoners of war returning from Southeast Asia.
Attendees include entrepreneur and former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, Hillwood chairman Ross Perot, Jr., Congressman Sam Johnson, Major General James “Jim” Jackson (Ret.), General T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, and representatives from NAM-POWs, Inc.
There is a nice video with the story at THIS LINK
Category: Veterans in the news
Great video; quite the turn-out, and seems everyone had a good time. The flag jump was a real crowd pleaser.
We never heard of 99.5% of these men. Yesterday, I ran through the list of the POWs and was aghast to see how many were held for so long. There dozens of EMs, mostly helicopter crew members. One man, E4 Donald Braswell, Army, was a POW exactly one day. One day? Yes, he escaped. Turns out, he wasn’t the only one. For some reason, maybe someone here will know or can provide an educated guess, of the 40+ escapees, all but 4 were EMs.
Now that I think of it, the lion’s of the officers were shot down over North Vietnam, making evasion and Huey pick-up all but impossible. On the other hand, the 40 or so EMs that escaped were either all ready on the ground in South VN or were helicopter crew who survived a shoot-down or mechanical failure and were able to get free of their local captors before being transported north.
share, dammit. lion’s share. I Robot strikes again.
Got to the prison camp and realized it was all officers and said “screw this”?
The NFL needs to take a lesson from these guys! No knees taken there. I almost feel dirty mentioning the NFL in this post. There are people that are heroes in their own mind and then there are real Heroes! All gave some some gave all. These guys gave a hell of a lot. Welcome home gentlemen, thank you for giving so much of yourselves.
A tough bunch of men.
My respect, gentlemen.
BZ Circe T Ranch and NAM-POW! This is such a cool way to honor these great men.
Did not realize that there was anything like this going on. Glad to know about it.
Nicely done, too.
Most former POWs are humble, quiet men. Few want to be noticed, love spending time with their peers, and in many cases, don’t talk much to press at these gatherings. News crews had choppers overhead, as the 8 busses from Frisco to the Ranch attracted attention as the traffic on the expressway was stopped for their escorted ride. State Police and Patriot Guard road point.
Awesome event. Heroes – every one.
Ditto to everything Forever Grateful wrote.
Good stuff here. Voted for ole Ross Perot each time. Never thought it was wasting my vote, even though I figured he didn’t have that proverbial snow ball’s chance. Tying this thready thingy to the GFM one, we had a supposed homeless disabled vet here locally a while back on the TV. He was claiming POW Status, in a wheel chair with no legs, insinuating he lost them in combat/as POW. I dug around on the POW Network listing and couldn’t find his name. Noticed then the # of EM POWs and the time frames. Most of the publicity of those fellows kinda fell thru the crack when all the video of returning Officers was being shown. This local guy scammed him a free crib and other things. Guess I need to go back and see if we can get a stolen valor gig on him. There were some questions raised briefly, but were pushed aside by the reporters. Had a drill SGT in Basic and AIT who told us time and time again, that if it appeared capture was imminent, save the last round for yourself. Both had Comrades-in-Arms who had been captured by Victor Charles.
Didn’t vote for him, but admire him all the same. He was helping POWs and their families before POWs were a thing.
Tough and salty men. Glad they still get together.
On another note, all the phony Vietnam POWs outed on here should walk in shame forever. I notice, none of those ass holes showed up for the event.
I guess someone must have vetted the POW attendees, cuz last I heard the VA had a list of over 13,000 Viet of the Nam POW’s claiming benefits. When you combine the fake POW’s exposed by Mary Schantag and this site, there are clearly thousands of fakers. Good thing this event wasn’t over-run with POSers.
Bet two Texans were not there:
Rick Cayton:
https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=62197
The 1st SEAC’s buddy, Michael Killam:
https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=63422
😉
Welcome home, gentlemen. Thankfully, I never had to find out how I would’ve been able to handle that.