Con Son POWs

The men wearing purple shirts and white bandanas were just a few of a plane load of North Vietnamese POWS we were loading from the infamous detention camp on the small island of Con Son off the southern tip of South Vietnam - 1973.  There were reports of torture and confinement of prisoners in tiger cages … all this supposedly validated by a visiting US Congressional delegation. It was near the end of US involvement in the war and these lucky prisoners were being freed as part of prisoner exchanges. Our destination was a remote dirt airfield near Hue, just south of the DMZ where the men were to be freed. Needless to say they were most elated as the South Vietnamese guards in green look on.