ABSTRACT
Not all the returning veterans were forgotten. The exceptions, the ones who really aroused public interest and sympathy, were the prisoners of war. After the deaths and wounds and hardships suffered by so many thousands of Americans, and untold millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians, I was somewhat confused and surprised by the emphasis placed upon a handful of GIs in prison camps in North Vietnam or in Viet Cong jungle redoubts in the south. It was not that they personally did not deserve sympathy and support. It was just that their suffering was exaggerated out of all proportion to that of the many, many more who had died unknown and unmourned except by their immediate families and friends or else endured untold miseries in field hospitals.
