Why Didn'T You Get Me Out?

WHY DIDN'T YOU GET ME OUT?

Interpersonal Communications

WHY DIDN'T YOU GET ME OUT?

" Why Didn't You Get Me Out", by Frank Anton. This book was about the trials and anguish of being a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. He spent five years in four different prisoner of war camps and one POW prison in Hanoi, in which he spent the remainder of his imprisonment. This book talked about the ordeals he went through dealing with malnutrition, torture , the possibility of not being returned to life as he knew it, and about the trials of being isolated from the world, the will to survive, and despair of your country knowing where you were at and doing nothing about it.

Frank Anton was a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War. The first mission's that he flew were called "slicks", which were the military name for choppers that flew supply and small troop transport hops. For the first three months that Frank was in Vietnam that was the type of missions he was involved with. He had a run of bad luck from day one. On his first mission his helicopter was shot up by small arms (enemy rifle fire) and had to make an emergency landing in enemy territory. He radioed in for a bush mechanic to fly to his landing site to fix his aircraft. The mechanic fixed the aircraft with hundred mile per hour tape and frank flew the rest of the mission with tape covering a fist size hole in the main rotor blade. The second mission he flew he was shot done again. This time the aircraft crashed and he had to hide from the Viet- Cong for two days, until he was rescued. The third time he was shot done was when he started his stint in the POW camps and "war criminal" prison.

For the next five years he had to endure starvation, disease, and mental and physical torture. The five years that he was captured, twenty-four service men would also be imprisoned with him, nine died and three were released. The other twelve had to walk the torturous Ho Chi Minh trail, which took them six months to do. But the worst of the ordeal was the fact of being betrayed, by his government and fellow soldier. An American crossover named Robert Garwood was guarding Frank and the other eleven POW. He was a private first class in the United States marines. Garwood acted as a guard, interpreter, an instructor of the Vietnamese political indoctrination, and a spy against the American and allied troops.

The whole time that Frank Anton was a prisoner, the United States government knew where he was. When the American were bombing and shelling the Viet Cong, the rounds always fell short of their prison camps. Also there were two attempts to rescue the prisoner, the rescue choppers