{"id":46284,"date":"2014-05-08T06:30:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T10:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=46284"},"modified":"2014-05-08T06:16:41","modified_gmt":"2014-05-08T10:16:41","slug":"irving-rice-phony-pows-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=46284","title":{"rendered":"Irving Rice; phony POW’s records"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month we discussed Irving Rice<\/a>, the aircraft mechanic who was captured by the Viet Cong and subsequently escaped in a vivid tale of derring-do. Of course, he wasn’t on the DoD’s POW\/MIA website, but the tale was told in the pages of Unionville, Pennsylvania’s Herald Standard<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Rice\u2019s journey has another chapter, one that defines him to this day. He was captured by Viet Cong on March 5 outside Saigon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a little Vietnamese boy crying,\u201d Rice said with a faraway look in his eyes. \u201cI decided to go down to check this out, to see if he is in trouble. I wanted to see if there is anything wrong. Little did I know that that one little trip down there would change my life forever. I had no clue there was a Viet Cong unit down there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rice said it was dark when he was ambushed. The soldiers beat him up and he passed out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came to, I was in severe pain,\u201d he said. \u201cI was bleeding. I was lying on a cot in a jail cell. I didn\u2019t know what to think, but I knew I had to get out of there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rice said the jail cell was not very big, maybe 10 feet by 8 feet and had a wooden door. By Rice\u2019s estimate, he was probably there more than eight hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I had to move,\u201d he said. \u201cI was hurt, but I finally got up. I went across the room, across the jail cell. I then ran as fast as I could, kicked the wooden door. I fell back. I was hurt, but I got out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rice said he was able to crawl onto the building\u2019s roof where he saw barbed wire everywhere. The young soldier knew he was far from safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as I got on top of that building, I heard pow, pow, pow, zing, right past my head,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought, \u2018they are shooting at me,\u2019 so I started rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rice said he rolled off the roof and fell maybe six feet. He crawled to a cemetery, rolled over a stone wall and into the woods.<\/p>\n

\u201cI laid down there,\u201d he said. \u201cI said this is where I\u2019m going to die. I didn\u2019t want to die at the hands of the Viet Cong soldiers. I didn\u2019t know what kind of injuries I had. There was so much pain in my legs. I laid there and thought, this is it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rice remembers hearing a jeep before he was spotted by American soldiers. The soldiers picked him up and told him what was happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe guys said, \u2018You are the lucky one,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI said, \u2018I don\u2019t feel so lucky.\u2019 They said, \u2018There was a big battle last night. We did a room to room search. We found other American soldiers, but they all had their throats cut.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Rice said that news was a lot to bear then and now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt hit me that I was the only one who escaped that building. I carried that to this day,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, well he was an Air Force mechanic and he was at Tan Son Nhut Airbase in Vietnam, but his records surprisingly don’t mention his capture by the Viet Cong;<\/p>\n

\"Irving<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Irving<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Irving<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

His FOIA request turned up an Air Force Commendation Medal that doesn’t mention his capture either. Like I said before, it took him 40 years to tell his story and he should have waited another 40 years to tell it. He should have stuck to writing poetry<\/a> instead of fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month we discussed Irving Rice, the aircraft mechanic who was captured by the Viet Cong … Irving Rice; phony POW’s records<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phony-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}