Surviving Hell: A POW'S Journey

by Leo Thorsness

Book Overview

Thorsness joined the US Air Force in 1951 at age 18 and became a jet pilot during the Vietnam War. During a 1967 mission he was shot down over North Vietnam. Injured and captured, he spent six years... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594035202
• ISBN13: 9781594035203
• Release Date: April 2011
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

must read

This is a short quick to the point book. It holds your intrest about a Medal of honor winner an a great american. It suprises you with its humor. Thank you Leo we are all in your debt. Viet Nam veteran

Beyond Heroism

. Surviving Hell: A POWs Journey is a beautifully constructed set of twenty-two chapters written as short essays. It weaves Leo's life before, after and during his imprisoned six years including a full solitary year in a tiny cell. It is an unforgettable story about why hundreds of Americans survived because of their faith, their families, their courage, their love of freedom in America. It relates the sad stories of some of the twenty percent of American POWs who could not survive the Middle Ages torture and cruelty of the North Vietnamese guards. . No previous book about American POWs has described so well the strategies those remarkable men used in their daily effort to maintain their humanity and about their refusal to be stripped of their basic dignity through brutal and cruel torture. Americas North Vietnam POWs endured the longest wartime captivity of any POWs in United States history. This is a book impossible to put aside once your reading begins. It is an historically accurate description of experiences resembling Hell at its worst. I am privileged to have flown with Leo Thorsness and been friends with Gaylee and Leo for forty years. No one has served America with more courage or distinction. His Medal of Honor tells only part of his remarkable life story. Bob Krone, Ph.D., Colonel, USAF (Ret)

A Hero's Memoir

Leo Thorsness is one of only five living United States Air Force Medal of Honor Recipients. He is one of our nation's greatest heroes. "Surviving Hell: A POW's Journey" is his compelling memoir which makes us all appreciate our freedom. Leo writes with passion. He very realistically articulates the horrors of war and imprisonment. "Surviving Hell" teaches us important lessons, including how very fortunate we are. Recommend the book most highly.

One Fine Tale

If you are patriotic, if you admire those who flew the tough missions over North Vietnam, if you want to get inside the cockpit of a fighter pilot who earned the Medal of Honor, if you want understand what our aviators faced while POWs, this is the book for you.