1973 U.S. NAVY TRAINING FILM “CODE OF CONDUCT” FOR PRISONERS OF WAR OPERATION HOMECOMING 26804

Love our channel? Help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference. Subscribe and become a channel member https://youtu.be/ODBW3pVahUE This is a training film was created by the U.S. Navy and the Dept. of Defense to educate inductees about the Code of Conduct for prisoners (:09). The film opens with a scene of 473 American POW’s returning home from Hanoi in the spring of 1973 (1:00). As the war in Vietnam drew to a close, American soldiers were released in early 1973 as part of Operation Homecoming. Press swarm their arrival (1:09). The film focuses on the ‘code of conduct’ which returned the men home safely (1:59). The code itself; introduced in 1955 is read (2:07). It then turns to a reenactment of Gen. George Washington and the Minutemen during the Revolutionary War (5:17). Alexander Hamilton’s address to the New York Commission is reenacted (5:41) prior to an image of the Declaration of Independence. A quote from Eisenhower (5:53). The first POW to be interviewed is Bob Fant (5:58); a retired Navy radar Intercept officer; working here as an instructor in a Navy Survival School. Colonel Fred Cherry; an African American fighter pilot is pictured whom had been on his third deployment to SE Asia on a SAM Suppression mission when his F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber was shot down (7:27). Fred retired and became a management consultant (7:30) (he passed in 2016). Commander Tim Sullivan (8:34); a radar observer and F-4 Phantom flyer, became a POW after being shot down over North Vietnam in November of 1967. His target at the time was a railroad bridge. Captain Stan Newell (9:42) was 19 year old E4 when he was captured during combat in the central highlands of South Vietnam in July of 1967. Newell speaks to the second article of the Code dealing with surrender (10:00) and of Staff Sergeant Montgomery who perished the day they were captured (10:29). A nineteen year old sailor; Doug Hegdahl, was captured after being blown from the USS Canberra in the Gulf of Tonkin (12:17) Doug was able to manipulate his guards into believing him to be ‘dumb’ and non-threatening to the point of earning himself the nickname of “the Incredibly Stupid One” among the camps while he simultaneously memorized personal information of an estimated 256 other POW’s in the Hanoi Hilton prison. Hegdahl is pictured here as a civilian instructor for the Navy’s Survival School in San Diego (12:19). Lieutenant Colonel James Nicholas Rowe (13:03) was one of only 34 other POW’s to escape during the Vietnam War. Rowe spent five years in prison camps in the jungles of Southern Vietnam. Rowe, during this film, was still a Special Forces Officer though he was killed in 1989 by a unit of the New People’s Army in the Philippines. Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Driscoll (13:57) was an Air Force Fighter Pilot when his F-105 was hit ten miles north of Hanoi. He was a POW for nearly seven y