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So you've read the Hanoi Hilton stories; you know, the ones where the noble American pilots are tortured but do a pretty good job of 'keeping the faith' and sticking together. Well, this book will give you a different view: let's meet some American enlisted men in a jungle POW camp turning on eachother and acting like amimals. Some might find this shocking. Apart from telling the almost unbelievable story of an eccentric American defector, this book allows you to become a jungle captive and experience all the wretched elements that fate entails. In all fairness, I'm sure all soldiers--Americans or otherwise--DO NOT act this under extreme duress. By the way, this book WAS made into a movie and it was TERRIBLE. I think the Karate Kid guy played Garwood.

Truth is stranger than fiction. This young man, a PFC in his spit & polish uniform, 45 on his belt, a relatively new man in the motorpool goes to a remote spot to wait for his passenger and is captured by the Viet Cong. From his attire they decide he must be an important U.S. officer. (He was waiting for one). For a year he lives in a one man cage in the jungle rotting in his own filth before he is ever spoken to. Finally another prisoner arrives who is an officer and has the ability to speak Vietnamese and is an expert on survival. This young man probably believes that the officer is God. He takes every word as gospel. Another prisoner joins the team and the triangle puts some pressure on the relationships. They learn everything they can to try to survive. Escape attempts finally result in the slow and painful death of the Mentor officer. As the population grows, more complications arise in the relationships. After years of living like this newcomers assume that the young man is Vietnamese because of his language, demeanor, and the fact that he lives separately and has freedom to move about the camp in trustee fashion. And this is just the beginning of the story - his adventures continue for many years and the story takes interesting twists and turns ending up in a courtroom drama. Why this isn't a major motion picture I don't understand. Read this book. In fact - read all Winston Groom books they are fantastic.

The author's do not incude one fragment of testimony from Garwood's other American POWs who later testified against him at his court martial where he was convicted of being a turncoat traitor. This is nothing but a collection of half truths and fabracations.