Dan Heller 
Hello All,
For this 4th of July, webmaster emeritus Bear Taylor asked that this missive from LtCol Swindle be published on Rolling Thunder Remembered. He was shot down on 11 November 1966, spending more than six years in the hellish Hanoi Hilton, and other North Vietnamese POW camps. Despite being brutally and tortuously interrogated, Orson Swindle resisted and gave the North Vietnamese nothing of value. GBU, LtCol Swindle.
-Webmaster Dan
The American Flag
Lt. Colonel Orson Swindle, USMC (ret)
I could not help but reflect on a day long ago – March 4, 1973 – and being at the airfield in Hanoi, North Vietnam, awaiting a big, beautiful C-141 aircraft to fly me and my fellow POWS home after years of incarceration and pain – 6 years and 4 months for me.
We patiently waited, still in the grip of the Communist troops. Then, at a distance, we saw the C-141 on its approach to land. It was like a dream and, after so many years, really hard to believe.
The aircraft landed and began to taxi to the area where we were being held before release. As it approached us, the aircraft became more visible – and, there before our squinting eyes, was a big, red white and blue American Flag emblazoned on the tail of the aircraft moving closer and closer. Among the dozens of Americans standing by, soon to board that aircraft for freedom, I am pretty sure there was not a dry eye among us.
You see, the Flag is more than a piece of cloth or an ornament to be disrespected. It represented the glue that held us together for all those years of abuse, torture, deprivation, uncertainty, fear and pain. We all knew it represented us, our indomitable spirit, our courage, our hopes, our dreams, our faith and our love for our Country. We resisted our captors day in and day out, in my case, for 2,305 days.
We often paid a painful price for our resistance, for remaining loyal to our Country and our Flag. Our motto was Return with Honor.
We had lived in fear of dishonoring that Flag in any way. We were inspired by it and even made little flags from cloth we stole in prison. We were beaten for possessing those little scrap cloth flags. And, every night in our cells, we looked toward home year after year, and we said the Pledge of Allegiance together, although we were often detained in solitary confinement in solid-walled cells, apart from our fellow Prisoners of War.
The Flag, the Pledge, our Country and each other, meant a lot to us – and, they still do.
