Robbi Risner’s story of being imprisoned drew wide acclaim after that war’s end. His autobiography, The Passing of the Night: My Seven Years as a Prisoner of the North Vietnamese, describes seven years of torture and mistreatment by the North Vietnamese. In his book, Risner attributes faith in God and prayer as being instrumental to his surviving the Hanoi prison experience. In his words he describes how he survived a torture session in July 1967, handcuffed and in stocks after destroying two pictures of his family to prevent them from being used as propaganda by an East German film crew:
To make it, I prayed by the hour. It was automatic, almost subconscious. I did not ask God to take me out of it. I prayed he would give me strength to endure it. When it would get so bad that I did not think I could stand it, I would ask God to ease it and somehow I would make it. He kept me.
Thanks for sharing.
I cant remember if it was his book about being a VN POW but it was once of the first ones about it. In high school JROTC two of my superiors were deeply disturbed when they read that book about the part where the North Vietnamese played an anti war tape from a USN Lt. Our JROTC instructors assured them that no real Navy Lt. would ever do that. Turns out that years later the real US vets who were our instructors were wrong. It was John F’n Kerry.
#2, Risner was one of Hanoi’s “Most Wanted” pilots, esp. after his picture appeared on the cover of either TIME or Newsweek magazine.
Met him many years later. Now that is an officer and a gentleman.