{"id":84217,"date":"2019-01-17T08:20:33","date_gmt":"2019-01-17T12:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=84217"},"modified":"2022-01-13T20:32:30","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T01:32:30","slug":"john-henry-knight-jr-vietnam-pow-silver-star-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=84217","title":{"rendered":"John Henry Knight Jr – Vietnam POW & Silver Star Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The folks at MilitaryPhony<\/a> send us their work on John Henry Knight Jr.<\/p>\n

John died in November 2018, but before he did he gave a lengthy interview in The Record Live<\/a> – the Orange, Texas paper.<\/p>\n

In this interview, he talked about leaving high school at age 17 to join the Navy in 1962.<\/p>\n

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

He also spoke of his plane being shot down and becoming a Prisoner of War in Cambodia\u00a0for two years.<\/p>\n

Knight never expected to live long enough to be a veteran.<\/p>\n

The retired iron worker says he spent two years as a Viet Cong prisoner after being shot down over Cambodia in 1962.<\/p>\n

Knight, who ultimately escaped via Thailand, was among a crew of 26 on the giant Lockheed Constellation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was one of two that survived,\u201d the U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer said.<\/p>\n

But you\u2019ll have to take Knight\u2019s word for it. Like the Impossible Mission Force from TV and movies, the U.S. government disavowed any knowledge of Knight\u2019s flights over Vietnam\u2019s western neighbor.<\/p>\n

\u201cDenied truth,\u201d is what Knight called it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to my records, I spent my time on a seaplane tender in Rota, Spain. There\u2019s only two things wrong with that: they didn\u2019t have any seaplane tenders and Rota is an air base, not a sea base.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would still be two years before President Lyndon Johnson authorized direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam, a bloody 12-year engagement that caused division and upheaval on the homefront.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an out-and-out civil war that we got pulled into,\u201d Knight said of the U.S. siding with South Vietnam against a North Vietnamese Army assisted by Communist China and the Communist guerilla group known as the Viet Cong, or Viet Minh.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a dirty little war. But it was the war we had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knight said he was awarded the Silver Star for bravery.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Knight claims that he escaped by hiding under a dead Cambodian soldier.\u00a0 He also claims that he went on to become a Russian interpreter.<\/p>\n

Knight died days after this interview, but his obituary reinforced his legacy as a two-year POW in Cambodia.<\/p>\n

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

His military records, however, tell quite a different story.<\/p>\n

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

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


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

The ship that he was on, the USS Luce,<\/a> was never anywhere near Vietnam.\u00a0 He was never within a thousand miles of\u00a0Cambodia and he most certainly was never a POW.<\/p>\n

There is no Silver Star or POW medal in Knight’s records.\u00a0 According to his official military\u00a0records, he got out as an E-4 vs. the E-7 that he claimed.<\/p>\n

As to being a Russian interpreter — well,\u00a0 the Navy seems to think he was a Radarman<\/a>.\u00a0 He did not die a war hero who was awarded a Silver Star for bravery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The folks at MilitaryPhony send us their work on John Henry Knight Jr. John died in … John Henry Knight Jr – Vietnam POW & Silver Star Claims<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":667,"featured_media":84219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,393,336,384,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-navy","category-navyposer","category-pow","category-russia","category-valorvultures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84217","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\/667"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/84219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}