POW MIA

I hear them calling in the night
When my world is calm and quiet.

They speak to me in words I would not hear,
Yet their voices won't be silenced.

They beseech me with whispers.
Asking, 'why were we left?

They cannot understand.
The wind carries their questions.
The stars shine down as tears.
The moon becomes their faces.

And I have no answer worth speaking.

I have many friends who served in Vietnam.
Many that died there,
many that died after they came home from Agent Orange.
I pray each day for our POW’s and MIA’s
that they will be brought home!
You are NOT forgotten!
As long as I breathe I will be thinking
and praying for you.

Larry Borrows photographer
title of photo

“Operation Prairie-Hill 484 Marines, 1966”

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.
It must be fought for, protected,
and handed on for them to do the same,
or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children
what it was once like in the United States when men were free.”
-- Ronald Reagan

POW Prayer

Please hear me ,Lord…..
It’s the dead of night…..

It is dark and cold,
the night surrounds me Like a blanket of hope.
As long as it is night, they will stay in their corner.
I lie here wondering ~
how long is it again?
I cling to the dream of my family ~
I see them in my mind.
It is another Independence Day at home.
When will my independence come?
I will NOT believe that they have forgotten me!!
I look in the hole I have dug here,
for the things that I hide from them.
A little smile across my lips~
in all this time they have never found my little stash!

I pull out a little scrap of shredded red and white.
For me, it waves in the breeze of home!
It is my salvation ~
it tells me there is hope.
There is a tiny piece of cloth,
a remnant of the uniform worn with the pride
only a soldier knows.
Ah, here is that little corner of the photo I once had!
They think they destroyed it ~
It is my private joke on them.
For I can still see the face of my little boy. But ~~~
he must be almost a man by now...

I am not sure?

How long has it been again?
They could not have forgotten me,
as they go from one day to the next without me.
I will not believe that!
If they have, I shall surely be swallowed
up in the mists of this hell!

How long has it been again?
No ~
they have not forgotten ~
how could they have?
Have they ?
My God?
Have they?

By Joanna Mckenzie Henshaw

Until They ALL Come Home

Until they all come home
We watch and wait
Young and old, black and white
So far away, they're sent to fight

Until they all come home
We wear our ribbons to show our pride
And let them know we are on their side

Until they all come home
We pray for peace
Throughout the land
Protect them all, on sea and sand
Until they all come home

By James Withrow
Rolling Thunder

Click on each pictures below ....

to read about each of the
POW’s MIA’s I have on my website.

LT. Dan Borah

1LTJerryLRoe

Ronald Leslie Bond

Capt. John McDonnell

Maj. L Gourley

We know that our POW's and MIA's

are among the many American servicemen
held in Southeast Asia, after the end of the war.
I believe with all my heart their are many POWs
still held in Southeast Asia.
We hear of "superb" Vietnamese cooperation.

It is a lie.

The Vietnamese know exactly
where our POW's and MIA's are located.

Since the end of the Vietnam War
well over 21,000 reports of American prisoners,
missing and otherwise unaccounted for have been
received by our government.
Many of these reports document LIVE
America Prisoners of War
remaining captive throughout Southeast Asia TODAY.

By 1990 over 10,000 reports have been received
by the U.S. Government concerning men
missing in Southeast Asia.
The government of Cambodia has stated that it
would like to return a number of American remains to
the U.S.
(in fact, the number of remains mentioned
is more than are officially listed missing in that country),
but the U.S., having no diplomatic relations with
Cambodia, refuses to respond officially to that offer.

Most authorities believe there are hundreds of
Americans still alive in Southeast Asia today,
waiting for their country to come for them.
If there is even one American alive,
he deserves our ultimate efforts to bring him home now.

Congress has set aside the
THIRD FRIDAY of September in each year as
National POW/MIA Recognition Day.
It is a time to remember those who never came home.
Congress has further recognized the
POW/MIA flag of the National League of Families
as the official flag to represent our missing soldiers.

Come For Me

Twenty years in the jungle has taken it's toll on me.
I'm not the same man I used to be.
But one thing's consistent ... I long to be free.
Please, Mr. President, come for me.
The scars of my torture will never go away.
I'm fifty pounds lighter. My hair is gray.
But the shackles can't chain the freedom in me.
Please, ("mighty") lawmakers come for me.
If my family believed there's a chance I'd survived,
They'd fight to their deaths to prove I'm alive.
Please, lovin' family, come for me.
Some captors say you don't know I'm here,
That I'm doomed to this prison year after year.
God Bless America, the land of the free.
Please, friends and parishioners, come for me.
Other captors say you know that I'm here,
But refuse to accept the evidence, so clear.
Will some caring citizen hear my plea?
Please, fellow countrymen, come for me.
I'll have faith in my country 'till my dying day.
I'll never believe you could leave me this way.
My Country, 'tis of thee .....
Please, please, America, come for me!

By LeAnn Thieman, 1987

Until our government and the American people
face the truth, and acknowledge the legacy of the men
left behind and kept behind, Vietnam will never go away.

Five United States Presidents,
at one point or another in their terms, have
stood before the American people,
and exhorted them to
"put Vietnam behind us"
But a nation and its people cannot
"put behind" them,
that which they know they've been continuously deceived
about by their leaders.
And if there is one thing the American people
old enough to know, or read, or watch TV
really understand, it is that virtually everything
their leaders once told them about Vietnam,
and the war in Southeast Asia,
has later been proven to be a lie,
to manipulate them or hide illegal or unconstitutional acts by
Presidents from them and the Congress.

Until Presidents are willing to stop this abuse of the national security
imprimatur for politically expedient and self-protecting motives,
of which the POW/MIA conundrum is surely
the most embarrassing icon, we are stuck with
the lingering cultural cancer that was our Vietnam aftermath.

No true healing will occur,
no resolution and satisfaction and closure can
finally begin,
until a President with the moral courage to stop the charade
concerning the legacy of these men abandoned,
steps forward and honorably
and finally puts an end to this trail of tears,
anguish from the frustration of these Families,
so honor can be restored to their sacrifice on behalf of the nation.

Nonetheless, President Clinton,
against all major Veterans Organizations' protests,
and those of the Families of the POWs and MIAs groups,
lifted the 26-year-old Trade Embargo against
the Communist Regime in Vietnam.
News reports in national magazines claimed
"sources inside the White House say
the President's National Security Advisor,
Anthony Lake, was the last holdout" against lifting the embargo.
The Clinton Administration moved
quickly towards full normalization of relations with Vietnam.

The national polls taken
immediately after the President Clinton’s actions
showed that 83% of Americans
"don't believe the Vietnamese are cooperating enough"
to resolve the MIA issue,
despite Clinton's assurances they were.
Another poll showed 73% of Americans
"believe their government is lying about Vietnam POWs and MIAs",
and an astounding "52% of Americans believe there is a live American
POW alive today in Vietnam".

Captors bound their arms so tightly that they lost circulation.
They were denied food and water.
They were beaten.
When they still refused to cooperate,
their torturers moved on to a new,
more sinister method-the "rope torture."

Prisoners were forced face down onto a bunk with their
ankles in stocks and a rope tied at their elbows,
with the rope, then pulled up to run through a hook in the ceiling.
The guard hoisted the prisoner off the bunk so the prisoner
could not ease any of his weight-producing
extreme pain and constricting breathing.
"The pain is literally beyond description."
After about 10 or 15 minutes in this position, tied up so tightly,
your nerves in your arms are pinched off,
and then your whole upper torso becomes numb.
It's a relief. You feel no more pain. ...
However when they release the ropes,
the procedure works completely in reverse.
It's almost like double jeopardy-you go through
the same pain coming out of the ropes as you did going in."

One of the many reasons I HATE Hanoi John Kerry
and Hanoi Jane Fonda !

Former POW Jim Warner today told HUMAN EVENTS
that he first learned about Lt. John Kerry in a
North Vietnamese prison camp.
When his captors brought him out of solitary confinement
in the infamous Skid Row punishment camp for an interrogation,
they made him read the typewritten transcript of a statement by Kerry,
speaking in the United States.
His interrogator kept pointing at Kerry's words, saying,
'See? This officer from your Navy says you deserve to be punished.'"

Tom Collins, another Vietnam POW whose plane was shot down in 1965,
was made to listen to Kerry's testimony on tape during his captivity.
What they wanted to do was get us to make statements
that they could use for propaganda,
no matter what it took to get it" he said.
"They would torture us, some were even killed for it.
And then I see somebody like John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans
[Against the War] giving them the same propaganda they
wanted me to give them, free of charge.
"He knew he was putting us at risk," Warner went on.
"And he was demanding unilateral withdrawal,
which means our value as bargaining chips would be gone.
And what do you think would have happened to us then?"

Those who refused to meet with Fonda were tortured.
Civilian Michael Benge, an official of the agency for
International development, was captured in Cambodia,
and when refused to meet with Jane Fonda,
was forced to kneel on the cold cement floor of his cell
holding a steel rod in front of him for two days.
Every time the rod dipped to the floor, he was brutally beaten.
When he finally returned home with the other POWs years later,
he was missing part of his right foot /
Back in America, Jane informed the public that
the American soldiers were being well treated and not tortured.
Her outrageous claims were later exposed when
American POWs returned home and
told of years of agonizing torture and inhumane treatment.

The United States has a legal and moral responsibility
to seek out and prosecute the individuals who
purposely caused mistreatment of U.S. prisoners of war
which resulted in the loss of life, limb and long-lasting physical
and psychological problems to survivors.
Today, in the United States,
where Nazi war criminals are still being hunted down and deported,
( and that IS A GOOD THING! ) it is possible to find
known Vietnamese war criminals visiting,
enjoying our freedoms and unconcerned
with being punished for their crimes.

POW Lt. Nick Rowe said Versace,
who the Viet Cong had labeled a "reactionary,"
was being tortured by guards in an indoctrination hut
a few feet from Rowe's cage when Versace
defiantly told a Viet Cong guard,
"I'm an officer in the United States Army.
You can force me to come here,
you can make me sit and listen,
but I don't believe a damn word of what you say!"
Rowe said those were the last words
any American ever heard from Versace.
Soon after, according to a U.S. government report,
Versace was marched to Central Committee headquarters
and forced to kneel and apologize for his "crimes"
before he was shot in the back of the head.

God help us all !!!! Because we have John Kerry and
Jane Fonda living, eating and sleeping in our
country. Enjoying the freedoms we enjoy
without one blink in their hearts of a
conscience of the deaths and
brutality they have brought upon our
troops !!!!!!

My heart aches for our POW's and MIA's !