POWs

Our POWs: Seconds from death, then 1,000 miles of misery

Kerry.Sipe — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

NORFOLK

Arthur Dockery lives in a weathered white house with a rickety gate in the Fairmont Park section of town, where the street names suit an old soldier just fine: Verdun, Argonne, Marne – the bloody milestones of World War I.

Our POWs: In memory, others' pain feels as real as his own

Kerry.Sipe — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

VIRGINIA BEACH

Al Cratch was floating down in a parachute over Romania. He was bleeding heavily, riddled with shrapnel from the guns of the Luftwaffe M e109s that had just blasted his B-24 bomber out of the sky.

“It was pretty quiet,” Cratch recalls of his 15,000-foot drift to earth. “And kind of cold. There was a lot of time to think.”

Our POWs: Taken on D-Day, he got by on hope

Kerry.Sipe — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

NORFOLK

Bob Harwell spent nearly a year in German prison camps. He’s been called a hero.

“That’s a bunch of junk,” Harwell says. “I just did the job I was trained to do.”

Our POWs - a special salute to veterans of war

Kerry.Sipe — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

It happened when they were young, on distant battlefields. When they leave us, it will be part of their obituaries:
Prisoner of war.
If dying for your country is the ultimate sacrifice, these men gave the next full measure. Now, time is stealing them away. Around 100 POWs are all that remain in Hampton Roads.

Our POWs: Locked up for 6 years, he unlocked a spirit inside

Kerry.Sipe — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:53:34 -0500

VIRGINIA BEACH You have - deep inside - a reservoir of unimaginable strength. "If you're never tested, you don't know," says George Coker. Coker has been tested. Shot down over North Vietnam, he spent 6-1/2 years in captivity. Most of it was hard time - the kind they make movies about, the kind only a fanatical enemy can deliver.

Our POWs: Stigma of captured ship still gnaws at this sailor

Kerry.Sipe — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:43:39 -0500

SUFFOLK Surrendered. The word still bothers Willie Bussell. He's one of 82 Americans taken prisoner in 1968 when North Korea captured the Pueblo. The crew, accused of spying, was held for 11 months.

Our POWs: Death march, hell ships - horrors left him numb

Kerry.Sipe — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:31:31 -0500

SUFFOLK

On the first Tuesday of every month, Norman Matthews makes his way to Bunny’s Restaurant, a down-home diner popular with locals.

He comes to have breakfast with the Battling Bastards of Bataan, an ever-shrinking group. They’ve been meeting at Bunny’s for so long they have an honorary table and a custom-made flag nailed to the wall behind it.

Our POWs: His forced toil built the enemy's rails, bridges

Kerry.Sipe — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:20:49 -0500

NORFOLK

Stanley Woody was making $21 a month in the Navy in 1940. That seemed pretty good to a kid raised in an orphanage in Chattanooga, Tenn. He was used to following orders.

Old photos show a likable smile on a handsome face, and a lean, compact body, about 5-foot-6. In time, he’d be grateful he wasn’t taller.