Full circle

Military: A former Vietnam POW meets a woman who prayed for him 34 years ago | Lynn Vincent

As the Air Force F-4 burned through the sky just north of the DMZ, a North Vietnamese surface-to-air missile streaked up to meet it. The SAM exploded a hundred feet away, strafing the American jet with metal shards and setting both engines on fire.

Capt. Bill Schwertfeger, the pilot, and his weapons officer, Lt. Ralph Galati, rode the flaming jet down to 2,500 feet then ejected, their parachutes blooming into perfect targets for villagers on the ground, who began shooting at them. The F-4 crash-landed, plowing up a row of huts. Schwertfeger and Galati floated down afterwards into a throng of 200 angry villagers who might have finished off the Americans had not local militia soldiers wanted to turn them over to Communist forces and collect a bounty.