(New York Post) — Jeremiah Denton, the Vietnam War POW who died Friday at age 89, uttered one of the great statements of defiance in American history.
In 1965, he was shot down in his A-6 during a bombing run over North Vietnam. He became a captive for more than seven years and endured an unimaginable regime of torture, humiliation and isolation, managing to retain his dignity and spirit even as his captors went to hideous lengths to snuff them out.
Soon after his capture, a young North Vietnamese solider signaled to him to bow down and, when he refused, pressed a gun to his head so hard it created a welt. Denton quickly learned that this would be mild treatment. He was taken to Hoa Lo Prison, or the Hanoi Hilton, where he led the resistance to the North Vietnamese efforts to extract propaganda confessions from their prisoners.
