|
Chief Warrant Officer Frank Anton,
USA (ret.), retired from the US Army after 21 years of service. He then flew 727s for American Airlines
until his retirement in 1997. In January of 1968, Frank Anton was piloting a helicopter gunship in North
Vietnam when he was shot down and captured. According to Frank Anton, “I spent the next 62 months
as a prisoner of war. I was held in the moving camps in the south until early 1971 when we were marched to North Vietnam where
I remained until the general prisoner release in March of 1973. At my debriefing after being released, I was shown photographs
to help jog my memory. Included among those photos were pictures taken of me while I was a prisoner. Some of them were taken
from a very short distance, indicating that throughout my captivity, my whereabouts were clearly known to friendly troops
located in close proximity...close enough to effect a rescue of myself and the other sick and dying Americans held with me.”
Frank Anton is the author of Why Didn't You Get Me Out?: A POW's Nightmare in Vietnam. According to the book description of Why
Didn't You Get Me Out?: A POW's Nightmare in Vietnam, “Frank anton went to Vietnam in 1967 to
serve the country he loved. Now, more than thirty years later, he tells the story of how his own government failed him. For
give hellish years, American soldier Frank Anton was held as a POW in Vietnam. Subject to disease, starvation, and physical
and psychological torture, Anton and his fellow prisoners held out hope that the U.S. government would find and rescue them.
When he was finally freed in
1973, Anton returned to the United States bruised and battered. And the most devastating blow of all had yet to even be struck.
Upon his release, Anton and debriefed by the government and saw both aerial photographs of the prison camps where he was held
and a close-us picture of himself walking the grueling Ho Chi Minh Trail. The government had known all along where and when
Anton and his fellow soldiers were being held--and made no attempt to rescue them. Now, in this harrowing first-person account and shocking expose, Frank Anton recounts
his years as a POW and the aftermath--devoting his life to understanding why and how his own government left him and others
to suffer and possibly die in the Vietnamese prison camps. And the answers he's uncovered will forever astound and disturb
you.”
|
