Brilliant book by a Congressional Medal of Honor winner about his six years as a Vietnam prisoner of war. Most memoirs about the war were done after some time had passed though soon afterwards while memories were still livid (not that POW camps where people were killed can be easily forgotten). This was published in 1990 after Day wanted to write some major criticisms of US leadership and true identities of POWs who collaborated with the enemy. Day had to leave the US Air Force before he was left unpressured to find a publisher. This is very unusual, but very honest and true about horrendous things which were allowed to happen, often for purely political reasons. Day often reminiscences about going home to his family in Camelback, Arizona (originally from Sioux City, Iowa). He was a devout Christian but knew of Dante's Divine Comedy, specifically The Inferno, which he uses as a framework to describe his treatment at the hands of his torturers. having read many of the other POW memoirs, he mentions the same men and corroborates and fills out details not fully explained in their books (Beyond Survival, Gerald Coffee; The Passing of the Night, Robinson Risner; Chained Eagle, Everett Alvarez; Six Years in Hell, Jay R. Jensen). Gay died in 2013 but does here speak about the Son Tay Raiders, the credit he attributes to Nixon for the Hanoi bombing campaign which he believed, along with others, made their release inevitable. A Vietnam POW story which summed up everything that Gay learned since groups began departing from Hanoi. Very patriotic book where Gay saw his first duty as to live up to his code of ethics and return home with honor as a military man. Gay says that only at the end of their captivity did they begin to receive Red Cross packages when he read Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. He said that this was his life and hoped everyone would read the same book to know what American freedom is contrasted with. ( )

Col. George E. "Bud" Day is America's Most Highly Decorated Living Veteran and former commander of the famous "Misty's" which flew secret missions out-of Phu Cat Air Base, South Vietnam. This book details Col Day's life after he was shot down, captured by the enemy, escaped, recaptured and what life was like during his 67 month incarceration. This book is the most important in my collection because Bud was a member of the 136th Fighter Interceptor Squadron/ 107th Tactical Fighter Group in the mid '60s when I was a young airman with this unit. Col Day was and always will be a great inspiration to those who know him. This book had been out-of print for almost 20 years. If you are lucky enough to find a copy, read it and learn from it. ( )

2834 Return With Honor, by George E. Day (read 10 Feb 1996) The author was from Sioux City and was a prisoner in Vietnam from 1967 to 1973. This book is about that captivity. He is very right wing and a super hawk on Vietnam--which is no doubt why his book was not published by a better known publisher than a museum press in Mesa, Arizona. His experiences were frightful, and one cannot conceive how he could have gone through all he did and not be permanently crippled or dead. He has far greater stubbornness than I'd ever be able to have. The chapters at the end on his homecoming had me in tears. While I cannot agree with some of his political views, his story is one well worth reading. ( )