Five Years To Freedom, James N. Rowe

Shut your mouth and stop complaining, you have it good… real good. That’s the first lesson this book teaches you.  There are many more.

Rowe, goes by Nick – his life is a lesson in mental fortitude. Five agonizing years as a POW in Vietnam from 1963-1968. The VC were faces of men who had seen long years of combat. The tactics the VC used.. at first, separating fellow American POWs. The individual becomes a single animal fighting for survival, loses the ability to identify or associate with anything other than himself, and bases actions on his immediate needs. The VC’s goal was to retrain the POW’s mind to the way of the VC. They were the gods while Americans were capitalist imperialists.

What that man had to ordeal and survive showed a rare glimpse into the mind of what you can accomplish if you put your mind in a place at never has been due to outside forces. A random sample of what he faced: almost fatal dysentery; re-educate and repentance of past deeds; the attempts to get out before illness incapacitated or killed him; fellow POWs executed in front of him and slowly; massive bloating from fluid retention; mosquito hell  - constant swarms of mosquitoes covering his entire body with bites; being a lone POW separated from the rest; left naked on the jungle floor to sleep and be bombarded by mosquitoes; shackled and chained every night.. the list goes on and on. It's beyond remarkable how he survived any one of those predicaments. Many of his fellow POWs did not. Mental and mind torture of his captors continually saying he was going home soon. Day – get up, cook rice, eat, sit, live until time to cook and eat dinner rice, or hopefully, some fish. Then, back to the cage for the night. I could go on and on. Just gratified he made it out alive. The sad thing is, Nick died in 1989 – assassinated by Communist insurgents in a suburb of Manila. He was training the army there to fight against the guerrillas. A life of service for our country. Every American should read this book.