9.16.2022 - POW/MIA Day Ceremony - Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter #207

we stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag please pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America one nation under God indivisible with liberty justice for all right I have Wayne Johnson will be doing the opening prayer all right later I know well if we already broke the table

all right good morning everybody almighty god father of us all we are servants turn to you for your continuance of your blessings upon us you who have spit as veterans from the grasp of our enemies grant us the full understanding of your precious Comfort we thank you for the Privileges of life and of the blessings we enjoy through your graciousness in our community the land in which we were given and the

freedom of speech religion and pursuit of happiness assist us to know who who better and the wisdom to acknowledge you as the god of the universe and of ideal in your mercy may we the living find our peace grant us from Above This Day the challenge of high Endeavor and the beauty of a humble Spirit the strong courage and the will without exertion to continue to glorify you to praise you and to love you to the

end of time amen please be seated want to welcome everyone here today my name is Justin latini the President of Vietnam Veterans of America chapter 207.

I am not a combat vet I am a submarine vet some say we had combat but I don't know I want to welcome everyone here to our 30th year this is the 30th year the 207 has been here for the remembrance we began in the 1992 holding the ceremony at Battleship Cove we then moved to Kennedy Park then on to City Hall and last year we finally came home to the Vietnam

memorial wall and stand with our brothers who was still missing I would like to thank the family members who are here today along with our fellow vet Vietnam brothers and sisters and all veterans who have joined us here today to the mayor of the city and other city and other state officials we thank you for coming by today and just so you may know on the wall there is a thousand sixty members who

have a circle next to their name these are members who are still missing when the remains are returned I'm sorry there's a cross when the mains are returned the circle is is is is put back on the cross letting you know that those remains have been returned today nearly 82 000 service members remain unaccounted for from conflicts dating back to World War II more than 72 thousand were from World War II eight

thousand from Korea and 1600 remain unaccounted from the Vietnam War today we recognize all pows and Mias but especially those here in Massachusetts from the Vietnam War which will read the names later in the program at this time I would like to bring up fall River's veterans service director Michaela Brito

good afternoon greetings from the city of Fall River and I'd like to thank Welcome All of You who've not been to our beautiful city before to this beautiful wall behind us you're not forgotten that Central phrase behind the Mi p-o-w-m-i remembrance movement that honors America's prison of wars and those who are still missing in action and their families 43 years ago Congress and the president

passed a resolution making the third Friday of September p-o-w-mia recognition day the point of pow Mia recognition day is to ensure that Americans remember to stand behind those who served and to make sure that we do everything that we can to account for those who never returned many of our service members suffered as prisoners of War during several decades of varying conflicts some of them made

it home tens of thousands never did of those 725 Vietnam War service members were imprisoned with 64 of them who died it is for these reasons that we are here today to honor and recognize these service members but most importantly to let their families know that their loved ones are not forgotten thank you very much Michaela now I'd like to bring on honored speaker mayor Paul Coogan Fall River

um thank you Justin I also want to acknowledge a few people that joined us here today our state representatives Paul Schmidt and Carol Fiola our housing director um Kevin spidella and of course Charlie denmead who helps to get all these events set up for the DCM I want to thank everyone for joining us at pow Mia recognition day it's an honor to recognize the men and women who served and sacrificed to keep the United

States safe I would also like to acknowledge those families of our missing soldiers and of course we wait with you we must take this time to remember the sacrifice the soldiers and their families paid because as we all know the cost of freedom is felt by more than just the men and women in arms their loved ones experience a very unique type of grief that many of us will never ever know they struggle with unanswered

questions every day to this day and we remind them that we do stand with them so we should all remember the efforts of our American men and women who are missing in action who became prisoners of War because without them we would not be here today God bless our former prisoners of War our soldiers missing in action and all their families and of course God bless the United States of America thank you all very much

thank you Maya today I have the honor to introduce Fred Perryton Lieutenant Commander U.S Navy who was interned as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam after he was shot down in October 1966 and was held until his release of February 1973.

Commander farrington's captives completely ignoring International agreement subject him to extreme mental and physical cruelties and obtained an attempt to attain information in false confession for the propaganda purposes through his resistance to those brutalities he contributes significantly toward the eventual abandonment of these hash treatment by the Vietnamese which was attracting International attention

by his determination courage resourcefulness and devotion Lieutenant Commander Puritan reflected great credit upon himself and held the highest traditions of the United Naval service in the United States armed forces this time I would like to welcome Fred foreign loud and clear all the Vietnam Vets please raise your hand okay first of all I'd like to thank Justin and his crew here I'm going to put this

wall in place in this entire park it's an amazing accomplishment and it can't have happens without some real strong leadership which I'm sure he's provided and the donations that must have come in here in the form of the labor and I I asked him today how many veterans organizations contrasted etc etc came out here to work for you and he said he told me in the great numbers and that and that's what built this wall

now this wall is something very unique yes it has the names of those that died in Vietnam and some who died after Vietnam but really what it is to me it's a healing wall it's been a credible amount of healing accomplished by visiting that wall I could look out here and I see a couple of guys that I rode motorcycles down there and part of Rolling Thunder and by the way Rolling Thunder

came from the name that was given to the operations in North Vietnam up through 1968.

Rolling Thunder was a period that I flew in North Vietnam and I never got the opportunity to fly down south because they had moved this all the way North automatically when I got over there but these trips that I've made riding to the wall with the guys I've seen so many guys in some of the most badass guys you want to see put their hand up on that wall and start crying

and that wall is speaking to him and it's speaking to all of us and they may be standing there crying and they may be standing next to the Sun or the father or mother of the guy whose name's there so it's much more than a morning it's a reunification and it's a very strong healing process I know it for me I talked the other night to a very good friend of mine

who's keeps all the statistics for the Nam power organization that I'm a part of Master McGrath call him massacres well forget that he's just a tough guy but he did all the all the painting and everything that's been seen about uh the treatment in North Vietnam how we were treated in the uh well the Torches portions and that type of thing but Mashers said same thing to me he said whenever I go to the wall

and many many were really all sold on it when it first was proposed I know at that time I was the EXO at the Naval Academy uh and we got things from Ross Perot and our thinking of it was well we didn't like the kind of the Subterranean uh the way it was appeared to be subterranean they were looking for something more combative but then we came to realize that it was a healing wall

and it's verified time and time again when you see people there visiting and and it's the it's it's the reunion of reunions when you ride down here because there are thousands hundreds of thousands that show up on the on the Saturday and the Sunday before Memorial Day with all the bikes that I've ridden with we would line up in the Pentagon parking lot and it would be three hours before the last bike finished going

around leaving coming across the Potomac and then coming in behind the Lincoln Memorial and riding around the wall it would take them three hours to complete that process but in the meantime everybody's standing on the ground meeting each other shaking hands having a wonderful time in in reunion in reunion so uh that might be a little different take because we leave there on Thursday on

the 31st on Memorial Day we leave and then there comes a memorial service at the wall there's been 300 400 000 maybe even 500 000 there two days before and on that day they got maybe 3 500.

at the Memorial Day service not quite the same turnout now uh my experience m-i-a-p-o-w yes I was an MIA for three years I was a pow for 2313 days but who's counting six and a half years approximately how did I get there well I started out going to school at New Bedford Tech over there in New Bedford it came time to take uh what are you going to do when you get out of school

a lot of guys were going up and taking the exams for OCS in Newport I said why not so I went up I took the exams there were guys standing there in Tweed suits from Harvard MIT and other places and I'm sitting there in a sweater my father who was a medic in World War II drove me up and uh I'm sitting there and the chief gives us the exams to take and we take it and

then the chief takes it back and he sits down and grades them and when he gets to the end of the grading he says okay guys I'm going to call some names here and when I call those names you can come up and the petty officer right over there will tell you where you can apply again in other words they didn't pass the exam well I'm still sitting there and I'm seeing something's way out of

balance here and he's still sitting there at the and I can't take it anymore I always open up my big mouth too fast anyway that's something I've been blessed with I guess in some cases so I said well I'm gonna wait a minute so I walked up to the chief and I said Chiefs my name is Puritan I noticed you read all the names and I didn't hear mine and he said

yeah you passed God helped the United States Navy so I left I can't tell you how elated I was to have passed went back home still waiting to graduate from college and I walked up to uh had my final exam to complete I went up to the library one day when I was supposed to be working on my final paper and I saw a little book how to fly yeah that was more interesting what I

was working on so I picked it up and I started reading it and it was a very simple uh concept I said Jesus I'd like to do that well I had a friend of mine his name was Noel Hill and at the time he was he he was down at Embry Riddle flight school going to school down there he grew up on Round Hill the Hedy green estate and his father ran the airport down there

his father was a great guy he used to have Nola and I come down and try to get us to study harder so we had a place to study down there and Noel had the commitment from his father if he had spent one year at Tech then he can go off and go fly and do whatever he wanted to he'd send them to embryo well by the time I was uh ready

to go in the Navy Nolan come back and was already flying so I called him up and he says yeah I can I can teach you how to fly so I went out to New Bedford Airport with him and I got a private and I didn't get my private I got a solo license and um and so I was into into flying in that at that level I'll try to move ahead a little bit

I was at Noel's house working and uh some like Manchester and Manchester sailboth his sons came down and he said did you hear the president was assassinated and we thought he was telling a joke and he said no it's the truth he was then we all went and heard the news of President Kennedy's assassination the next day was my day to report for Duty the day after Kennedy was assassinated and I reported into OCS

but through OCS took another exam in OCS then because I really realized I was going the wrong way at OCS I must just be I'm glad they have all those tests of multiple choice because I must be a good guesser I passed the aviation test to become a pilot in Pensacola couldn't believe it had to go before border three or four aviators and they asked me questions of what I knew about flying

and I said they said well you know I said well I already fly you know I go oh Eddie Rickenbacker huh I said no I just uh I do I have phone I've got my soil license and uh they said to me they asked me the question oh okay then what do you know about naval aircraft what's the engine that's in the A1 I thought for a minute I said it's the same one in the DC3

they didn't know whether it was or not so they they looked at each other and looked back at me and said is that right I said yeah that's right I know it's right so when the I don't know sometime later we're all going up to see you in the the results are posted on the board who's been accepted to Flight Training I couldn't believe it I went up there

and I was I tell you was I happy oh okay you got to get high give me a break so then I went down and reported into uh Pensacola started flying started flying on the day that Everett Alvarez was shot down over Vietnam and that was August 5th 1964. Evan and I are good friends today uh but did it mean anything uh yeah that where was Vietnam someplace off someplace it's China a career or something

and then I left and uh went off to fly got pretty good flight grades but I was planning on really planning on being in a airline pilot and so they offered me Jets if you had the good fight group grades and I turned them down I said no I want to be an airline pilot and uh so I continued flew the t28s and then then we got into the funds line in

the T28 instead of flying jet size flying this big prop and yeah man formation flying and then when I got the carrier calls I carrier called on the Roosevelt essentially the Roosevelt's the ship I went to Vietnam on and I'm I'm totally hooked I mean and then I I finished there and uh oh my God I made a mistake I should have gone Jets so I go for my out meeting with the skipper the Squadron

and I and he said hey nice job you got good grades and everything I said yeah but I made a mistake I want to fly Jets how do I do that he says well I can tell you only one give you one piece of advice because it's Advanced Training was all done in Corpus Christi Texas when we're moving from there he says go down there and don't take no for an answer said okay

so I went down there and uh went into student control with a bunch of my other buddies that I all know that were finishing up at that time saw the detail of there oh really wasn't a detailer he was a second class petty officer sitting there and he was going to take my papers and uh he said well where are you going and I said well I'm going where where do I

go to check in for jets he said oh you got to go upstairs so I went upstairs sitting upstairs and uh waiting took a magic marker out there were two choices Kingsville of Beeville select which one you want to go to I put Kingsville because you get to Liberty faster in Corpus Christi from Kingsville than you would Beville so bang I signed up and uh I sit down with the other guys who I

haven't seen since pre-flight I don't really know them they're coming from Jets and this guy Larry Lamb the detailer down there comes out and he says where's Perryton so right here sir he said get in here I went in and sat down he says what are you pulling what are you pulling here and I said sir he said what are you pulling this is for jets you've been flying t28s I said yes sir

but I want to fly Jets he says you do he says you think you can think it's six miles a minute instead of three that's what you've been flying I said well I can try all right he says well I'm going to tell you something he said do you ever heard of Everett Alvarez and I said yeah you need that guy to get shot down over Vietnam and he says yeah well if I sent you Jets

you might get to meet him what do you think of that and I said well it's in the game it's in the game so uh he said I tell you what you look like you shine your shoes with something besides a wire brush so I'm going to send you to Kingsville and that's what he did sent me out to Kingsville Texas I started flying the uh f9f first jet finish the program graduated

completely got my orders to to Jacksonville for A4 training went through the rag did okay went on was assigned to my first Squadron which was uh VA 72 and we were leaving June 21st of 19 66 for Vietnam and my mother and parents were my father and mother were from up here I had a grandmother 88 that lived with us the matriarch of the family the Taskmaster tougher than nails

sent me to get a job when I went I went to grammar school for first grade I go to a grammar school and she says well now you got to get a job and I said first grade yeah go to work for Grace Neal up there emptying our buckets stuff garbage so that was Nana and she was a matriarch for the neighborhood but any case I don't want to get lost here but

I was going off to Vietnam we all knew it we were training hard flying a lot and uh just before we went my family came down Nana Mom Dad uh my sister and my father being an ex-navy guy petty officer second class he was somewhat leery about walking around his face as he was walking around there and the hangings and everything else and he didn't want to violate any any rules or regulations well most of us

by that time were knowing where we were going there weren't many regulations left we were just going full speed ahead so they came down and visited me and uh I flew the airplanes out to Mayport Florida to be boarded a load aboard the uh the Roosevelt that morning my mother came out and his father and Nana and they were invited on a hanger deck for a bit of a party like I'm going away it's just this

ceremonial and uh they were walking around I was talking to my mother and reintroducing her to uh the other guys and then they said all Pilots to the radio that's what I thought I heard so I said hey you got to get off the ship see you later when I get back well they looked at me kind of started I went back to the ready room and no I didn't have

to do it I didn't have to come in that early so I went back up on the flight deck it is with a laws of three come in and I was sitting up stood up on the up on the flight deck looking down and it was my mother my father my sister my grandmothers all standing down there and she was looking up had three guys myself Norm button Monday and Ray Otten and

you know they told us take a look at the guy on your right and the guy on the left you may have heard this one and uh only one of you will be left remaining so what happened first line period Norm buddy Bundy was killed he's on the wall what how what happened uh to me I got shot down I was missing in action as I say for three years

the other guy Ray Orton he went on he flew with the airlines my wife was an airline flight attendant for Delta and by the way she had she had been the the one that visited my family all the time when I was gone I had a date with her before we went overseas and and uh can't tell you how much I owe that lady because she was there regularly and people get scarce in those type of

situations nobody was knocking down the doors to see my mother and father she was dang I'm in prison got shot down on my 29th Edition I had a skipper Bruce Nystrom who had flown in Korea 67 missions he was a good man he was tough he was a tough task master I can remember him might get ready to fly with him prior to getting to be in a man he was grilling me like he couldn't

believe I'm sitting up there in the front of the ready room listening to him what's Marshall altitude what's the low Marshall what's this what's this what's that what's that we're getting ready to fly at night and finally I couldn't take it anymore I went to the back of the ready room I said I've had it hey skipper and I walked to the back of the ready room he came up he said hey you know why

you're doing this no I'm doing this to you he says I got to get you ready early I said well yeah you don't have to get me killed tonight though we were getting ready to launch off the ship and he kind of he kind of smiled some time later I was on it because we had some new guys join the Squadron while we were in route one of his name was Paul Worrell

and the skipper set to said to them one day go back to the talk to Fred he knows what I want ah man what a compliment again we go back we went go into port in Japan we'd come back out to fly it's October 18th 1966.

we're out there about to begin to read resume missions spell the name Dale content is a duty officer and I go down on the evening of the 19th and I don't see my name on the board to fly and in fact I'm supposed to fly with a guy named Gail Thompson and this guy who's a duty officer at Dale content who went on to fly with Delta Airlines and my wife has got himself in that slot

and so we we I started the mouth opens up hey what the hell is going on here damn you got yourself schedule my flight no I don't yeah you do there's no doubt about it you got to change it and the operations officer goes by and whisk screen what what are you guys doing I said hey he's got himself a mess he's he looked at he said okay deal give it to Fred

well when I next born and I get in for the launch and I'm taxiing forward and the reason I didn't want it because I knew they put me on rest cap which means you're sitting in airplanes for hours up there trying to stay cool and I go by and there's uh deal content cigarette and they're staying standing arrest cap machine so I flipped in the international figures signal which you're all familiar with taxi forward

launched and this is uh as Daniel blanks in a test I call them my one armed Marine because he's one of the greatest Servants of the Marine the the veterans in this area has been for a long time and we all know him and he was over there the same time I was and he contested the weather sucked uh with bad weather day and I we launched and we went into the beach and uh sure enough

we were heading up the river and I knew we were going too far up I said hey let's hit those barges down on the river we tried to roll in rolled in I got hit and uh wound up on the ground and that's when I say the war doesn't start to feet get on the ground and that sure started the war for me they immediately I was coming down in my parachute

and I looked at my right hand and I had my invented Tech ring on and I pulled the ring off and threw it away and I said to myself they'll never find out where I went to school yeah they never will well I landed saw a tree I thought I was going to hit the tree and the other story about this 100 from the right 100 from the left is

true here they come all along the dike on this uh they grab me attack me off I went through a series of interrogations and things like that they wrap you up right away but not not bad but you don't you lose the feeling of hands but they just got your hands tied behind your back they haven't played rough stuff yet and uh I went on that whole day at different spots later on in the afternoon

it seemed like it was a clambait going on we could hear I could hear they had me blindfolded in a hut and uh it seemed like they and what it was was a hate rally going on and that and it had been a guy came in that that was pushed inside of me across from where I was and they took him out first heard the hate rally and I I had

been looking for a guy named uh Robert Dean Woods I even mentioned he was shot down in that area and I thought well that's what I'll catch him when we get to the car into the big camps you know like the German chance where everybody gets together well that wasn't quite the way it was they let him out they let me out they had a blindfolded on me when after I stood up

there and took the spits and everything else and they had a Vietnamese girl leading me by a hostel around my neck and she led me right out to where I fell into what I thought was a grave I hit it and I said oh geez this is it hit the grave and I was laying in the grave they had rifles out they didn't shoot they pulled me out put

me on the truck took me to hunt away this guy was on the truck parted away and then he left I such a subsequently found out in 1996 his name was Henry Harry Edwards say that he was from Carolina and his body came home in 1996.

he never made it into the Pow Camp I got there you arrived and this is at the Hanoi Hilton now which is a big dungeon a castle French dungeon Maison Central on the door pushed down then they take you into the room they took me into a room called the knobby room which we later call the knobby room I didn't know where the hell I was and uh they proceeded to work you over now

I went over there Skipper had asked me one time he said what are you going to tell them if you get shot down and you're taken into prison and I looked at him and I said what do you mean what am I going to tell them his name rank service number and date of birth and what I was taught is Bible School you could even say oh two because I was

a lieutenant JG at the time instead of saying Lieutenant JT that way they might not know what service you went to and you're you're bound to give them only name rank service number and date of birth nothing else it wasn't a soft code of conduct it was a tough call to conduct so that's what I tried to do like everybody else and maybe after five hours in what we call the road trip basically

the elbows tied behind your back your manacles and then pulled up over your head and your legs and leg irons and they just keep putting the pressure on until you're screaming and uh I don't know how long some safe might last four hours five hours I don't think I lasted that long four hours they take you out out of them sorry okay you talk they start talking I say I can't answer that can't answer

that question okay you get eye and discipline again back in that for another session that guy went on all the most of the night next day the interrogations continue had one more session of it uh same result but I haven't signed any confessions yet that's what they want they want a brand in 1966 they had their welcome aboard program together they knew what they were going to do to it when you came in earlier

they were they were kind of making it up as they went well this was no makeup they knew what they were doing right away they gave me the reception program that's what it consisted of break you down and you trying to rely on the code of conduct so I went through a number of interrogations looking for the confession by the time it came to confessions my hands were so swollen up I couldn't use them

so they had the right to confession they didn't have a problem I was still beaten I might as well have written it and they took my hand and scribbled a something on there that I wrote it and I was left to my own diverse devices a couple of days then a couple of days they move you to the Heartbreak Hotel section was it eight room cell and when I was in there

they had leg irons but they didn't put them on tight they were locked down not tight but you were locked down but I looked over the first morning I woke up and I thought I was looking at a rabbit it wasn't a rabbit it's a rat eating what was put on the rack next to me stay there went on for well I was shot down October 20th you know I was moved

some weeks later to camp we call the zoo don't go in it's five miles south west of the Hanoi Hilton there was a name that was popular for a lot of years but the zoo everybody wound up there generally at one time however on the way over to the zoo from the Hanoi Hilton I was strapped in the back of a Jeep my hand could touch a guy next to me and he squeezed my hand

just saying like it's going to be okay buddy and that guy was Ross Terry and yells Tanner they've been at F-14 they went to the zoo I didn't see him again for a long time I went to the zoo I moved into the room in the barn and I didn't have the tap code that was the thing that usually if you tried to get the tap coat a 5x5 Matrix an American Football League

quovitis down the side and a b would be tapped and two two tests row column anyway that was the basis of the code I didn't have it I tried tapping on a wall banging on the wall to the guys next to us somebody answered and he he knew I didn't have the tap code just by the way I was tapping on a wall so he tried Morse code and I could

come back with a little bit of it and we communicated trying that and I got his name as Al ice something C long name and then the next morning it dawned on me I said can't be I was on the ship with Al karberger he was an lso I was in an lso in training and uh it couldn't be him I waited all night my first light came I got on and said uh

tap to him and I said are you Al Carpenter he said hi Fred and I've been going through interrogations with the I know I'm going along but I'm gonna go along okay I have to you got me here you got me started so I I couldn't believe it was Al carbona I had had interrogation the day before and in that interrogation he told me we're going to put you in a pit

small hole and bury you and not let you out you got a blackest of criminals well the next morning they came in roll up your bag

and stuff and go and I went for interrogation sticking I was sit I walked in the guy we called a rabbit he said uh do you know what today is and I said yeah he said well you don't look too happy you should be happy and I thought to myself yeah I I guess I should be happy I'm going to get it get out of here and he said

no wait a minute he got up and left and he comes back comes back in and he's got a guy in Striped Pajamas with him his name is Doug Burns he's a lieutenant commander sieber and Doug says to me he says hey how are you doing I was all day I still bandaged up I said don't don't talk to me he says wait a minute he said what do

you think I am you think I'm a traitor I said just don't talk to me I don't want to talk to anybody he says I'm not a traitor well they led us back to the room it's in the stable and in that room the walls opened up that was tapping on the walls Doug was communicating with all these guys I was actually I'm in the system and I didn't realize it and these guys

were all great guys like you guys you know welcome aboard that was when I felt welcome aboard and it won't carry on much longer but how did I get home okay I'll tell you how I got home and did I have a better homecoming and you guys had you better believe I had a better holes coming in you guy said and I'm going to tell you the high points of

that and then I'm going to get off the stage well we all deserve a good homecoming and and uh so the homecoming came we resisted it not gonna go boom boom boom we're a second group we saw the first group go I knew all the guys I was next in line anyway and they left and then uh they we got calls from our SRO a certain one of us has got

called out there were 18 of us that were called out and and we were told by the by the senior ranking officer in our room who had met with Colonel Gaddis the camp SRO and believe me yeah rank has his privilege it didn't have it there that's who they went for first the senior guys then Reisner God love him man they took more crap but anyway he said yeah

you ought to form up and leave the camp kind of meet you and lead you to the other side of the camp and we're saying ours what the hell is the story this is crazy nope you guys are going out I'm ordering y'all so we went we went to the other side of the camp we were in a place called new guy Village section it wasn't happening we got upset a senior ranking officer was Jim Peary

who flew out of Weymouth Air Force Base as a reserved years ago great guy we said Jim we don't like it we don't like it we're not we don't want to go tell them we're not going we're not going to go tell them to take us back to the other side we got in touch I won't tell you the means that communication it was crazy it was a potato potato in the soup to the

other side it was made of serving it over there put a message in that and Perry got the message in the next potato in his plate so it went it went directly to him and they say yeah we would agree with you ask him to bring you back so we went back we went to get back to the side of the camp time goes by they still say you guys are going we had

a a Vietnamese General come to us so tell us what was going on tell us how you guys are just screwing up the entire Paris Accords and all that stuff and uh you gotta you gotta change your way and you gotta go says oh we're going to address the relations with your government and our government and that was all to do with the Paris peace talks and uh we still said we told him we're not going

so we're supposed to go the next morning and the next morning I'm sitting there and I look out into the center of the camp and here comes this full bird Air Force kernel with members of what was the international Joint Commission that was in there and he's out in the middle of the camp and they take Jim Perry out to talk with him and we that we're always saying we want

the direct orders of the president of the United States if we're going to go that's what Jim would always tell them so he went out and um in the middle of the camp here's his colonel and he says I'm the direct representative of the president of the United States and uh you would come with me and we're going to guy alive and we're taking you guys home and all of a sudden

we saw Jim Perry say something to him and they got all upset and the colonel and the international committee guys in a joint International whatever they call them they left and Jim came back to the cell and we're sitting there he's not even selling he says Jim what the hell did you tell him he said he was Colonel Austin the direct representative of the president of the United States

and uh he was here to take us home and at the direct orders of the president United States and we said well so what sounds good to me you know what it appears he said period what'd you tell him he said I told him over in that car Corner Room is normal Norman Earl Gaddis Colonel Air Force he is the senior ranking officer here you have him come over to Us sell and

tell us where are you to get out of camp and that's what they did and I stood there right in front of Norm Gaddis and he said well I'm going to tell you guys you did all you can do I'm ordering your home dang we went out we went out to guy lamb Airport loaded on a 141 Air Force nurse's most beautiful things I'd ever seen and uh our next question is will this airplane

get over off the beach when you want to get feet wet when we turned feet wet we were headings for a the Philippines and uh feet wet she has one up on the airplane I'll end it here we landed in the Philippines everything was fine I but you went by the debriefing and my mother had died my father had died my father had written me a letter when uh he knew I was coming home

who was always in my family my present wife Maggie everybody's Maggie flight attendant's flight attendant and uh my savior thank you

thank you very much at this time we're going to move right to the closing ceremony we're going to read the list of names from Massachusetts who is still Mia's Richard Benavides

Bruce R Baxter missing in action sir Eugene p bezarek Just Singing In Action sir Kenneth a baraby

Warren Bowles we'll see in action sir Russell p bot deviton C Cochrane an sir Joseph P Dunn missing in action sir John S Earls missing in action sir William D Frawley mission in action sir Roger C Gorn missing in action sir Richard Graves Joseph G Greenleaf Richard Hopper sir Robert D Hower missing in action sir John R Han missing an action sir Henry H heron I see an action sir David H Holmes Daniel M Kelly

Paul C King in action sir Gerald Kinsman missing in action sir Michael J cozington sir John M lever missing an action sir Don McHale James a Magnuson Arthur v McLaughlin missing in action sir Charlton Miller missing in action Sir Richard G Morin sir William F Mullen missing in action sir John F overlock John R painter Jr Edward F Rogers missing in action sir James J Sansone missing in action sir William M Smith

action sir Martin J Sullivan missing in action sir Robert J Todd Oren J Walker Jr my neck Ritz in action sir

yeah at this time I'd like to bring back the chaplain Wayne Johnson for the closing prayer and then we will be laying the wreath at the wall

heavenly father that's able to sit and not proposed hope in memory of our brothers who answered the call of you dear Lord against the tyranny of mankind we ask you to send them understanding love hope and classification that we veterans have not forgotten them and continue to work for their accounting and return amen for our brothers forever missing may they reside in your lonely in your kingdom for our brother still

held in captivity may your light of Truth guide them and keep them whole for the families wanting their resolved may they understand and finding your inner peace these things we ask in your name amen afraid you want to lay The Reef with me

absolute two

I would like to thank everyone for coming out today this concludes the 2022 Powai event thank you very much