Townley, Alvin

"Naval aviator Jeremiah Denton was captured in North Vietnam in 1965. As a POW, Jerry Denton led a group of fellow American prisoners in withstanding gruesome conditions behind enemy lines. They developed a system of secret codes and covert communications to keep up their spirits. Later, he would endure long periods of solitary confinement. Always, Jerry told his fellow POWs that they would one day return home together. Although Jerry spent seven and a half years as a POW, he did finally return home in 1973 after the longest . . . deployment in U.S. history. Denton's story--including that of the men he led, and of his wife, who fought for prisoners' rights while he was held captive--is a . . . narrative of human resilience and endurance"--Provided by publisher.

The story of the indomitable American POWs who endured "Alcatraz," the Hanoi prison camp where North Vietnam locked its most dangerous and subversive prisoners, and the wives who fought to bring them home. During the Vietnam War, hundreds of American prisoners of war faced years of brutal conditions and horrific torture at the hands of Communist interrogators who ruthlessly plied them for military intelligence and propaganda. Determined to maintain their Code of Conduct, the inmates of the Hanoi Hilton and other POW camps developed a powerful underground resistance. To quash it, the North Vietnamese singled out its eleven leaders, Vietnam's own "dirty dozen," and banished them to an isolated jail that would become known as Alcatraz. None would leave its solitary cells and interrogation rooms unscathed; one would never return. As these men suffered in Hanoi, their wives launched an extraordinary campaign that would ultimately spark the POW/MIA movement. When the survivors finally returned, one would receive the Medal of Honor, another became a U.S. Senator, and a third still serves in Congress.

The author travels across the United States in search of Eagle Scouts in twenty-first-century America, and discusses how scouting has influenced their lives and the impact they have on future generations of Boy Scouts.