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“Arise and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.” Winston Churchill
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Search Results for: Surviving Hell: A POW's Journey
Surviving Hell: An Introduction, part 6
This coming Tuesday is the official publication date of the paperback edition of Leo Thorsness’s Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey with a new introduction that I contributed to the book. The book is available from Amazon now and maybe even in a bookstore near you as well. The book is a memoir recalling the Medal of Honor mission that Colonel Thorsness flew as an Air Force pilot during the Vietnam »
Surviving Hell: An Introduction, part 5
Next Tuesday is the official publication date of the paperback edition of Leo Thorsness’s Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey with a new introduction that I contributed to the book. The book is available from Amazon now and maybe even in a bookstore near you as well. The book is part memoir, recalling the Medal of Honor mission that Col. Thorsness flew as an Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War »
Surviving Hell: An Introduction, part 4
I have been celebrating the publication next Tuesday of the paperback edition of Leo Thorsness’s Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey with a new introduction that I contributed to the book. The book is available from Amazon now and maybe even in a bookstore near you as well. The book is part memoir, recalling the Medal of Honor mission that Col. Thorsness flew as an Air Force pilot during the Vietnam »
Surviving Hell: An Introduction, part 3
USAF Col. (ret.) Jack Broughton supplies one of the numerous endorsements that prefaces Leo Thorsness’s memoir of his Medal of Honor mission and his subsequent six years of captivity in North Vietnam: “Leo was the boss of our Wild Weasel SAM hunters, and if he was on our daily trip to Hanoi, it was no sweat. I saw him being shot down, and as I set up the rescue attempt »
Surviving Hell: An Introduction, part 2
Next Tuesday is the official publication date of the paperback edition of Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey by Leo Thorsness, but it is available now from Amazon. I wrote the new introduction for the paperback edition and want to draw attention to the book with a short post each day through next Tuesday. Commenting on my preview of this series last month, before I learned that a glitch at the »
Surviving Hell: An Introduction
Next Tuesday is the official publication date of the paperback edition of Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey by Leo Thorsness. It was originally scheduled for publication on March 15, but glitches at the printer delayed publication. The book is now available at Amazon. I received my shipment of copies from Amazon last week and Amazon shows it is available for delivery now. It should be in the stores next Tuesday. »
Surviving Hell
I had the great good fortune of meeing Leo Thorsness last summer through the offices of McCain campaign midwest spokesman Tom Steward. When Tom invited me to meet with Colonel Thorsness in St. Paul as he toured on behalf of Senator McCain, I vaguely recalled Colonel Thorsness as a Vietnam veteran who had narrowly lost a 1974 Senate race to George McGovern in the toxic afermath of Watergate. That recollection »
Surviving hell with John McCain
Retired Air Force Colonel Leo Thorsness is the Medal of Honor recipient who shared a cell with John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton. I reported on my interview of Colonel Thorsness in “Who is Leo Thorsness and why is he supporting John McCain?” Saturday’s New York Times published a short op-ed column by Colonel Thorsness expressing his support for Senator McCain. The column is “A prisoner’s mind.” Listening to Colonel »
From the Hanoi Hilton
In today’s New York Times Richard Goldstein recalls: As Christmas 1970 approached, 43 American prisoners of war in a large holding cell at the North Vietnamese camp known as the Hanoi Hilton sought to hold a brief church service. Their guards stopped them, and so the seeds of rebellion were planted. A few days later, Lt. Cmdr. Edwin A. Shuman III, a downed Navy pilot, orchestrated the resistance, knowing he »
Happiness according to Hugh
Our friend Hugh Hewitt has a new book coming out next month, The Happiest Life: Seven Gifts, Seven Givers, & the Secret to Genuine Success. The book is now available for inspection and preorder at Amazon. Hugh sent me a copy of the book in PDF so that I could write a blurb for his publisher. I look forward to rereading the book in hardcover. Like Leo Thorsness’s Surviving Hell: »
A salute on Veterans Day
Today is Veterans Day. I’m thinking about Leo Thorsness, the native Minnesotan who served in Vietnam and was awarded the Medal of Honor for one helluva mission he flew in 1967, shortly before he was shot down. Every ounce of the courage he displayed on his Medal of Honor Mission was required to endure his six years of confinement in the Hanoi Hilton and its Heartbreak Hotel section, which the »
The lesson for today
The Medal of Honor Society convened its annual meeting in Gettysburg earlier this month. Nearly half of the 79 living Medal of Honor recipients attended this year’s meeting. Several of them stopped off for an appearance at the Gettysburg Middle School to share their thoughts. Among them was my friend Leo Thorsness, author of the incredibly powerful memoir Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey. Stars and Stripes leads off its report »
Gary Sinise recommends
The August issue of O Magazine (I think) features four Books That Made a Difference to Gary Sinise. Sinise is of course one of Hollywood’s good guys, and two of the four books he selects will be familiar to faithful Power Line readers: Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey, by Leo Thorsness (Sinise’s comments are here) and Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand (Sinise’s comments are here). These two books obviously relate to »
We interrupt this message
On Sunday I mapped out a series of brief posts about the new paperback edition of Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey, by Medal of Honor recipient and Minnesota native Leo Thorsness, and I’ve been running the posts this week. The paperback edition includes a new introduction that I contributed to the book, and I therefore hope it is at least as successful in paperback as it was in hardcover. March »
Annals of honor
One of the highlights of my experience writing for Power Line was meeting Leo Thorsness in the summer of 2008 when he came to town speaking on behalf of the McCain presidential campaign. Colonel Thorness had been “tied up” in the Hanoi Hilton with John McCain for six or seven years and was touring the country to support McCain. Colonel Thorsness is a recipient of the Medal of Honor for »
Leo Thorsness: Torture thoughts on Memorial Day
Leo Thorsness is the Minnesota native who was awarded the Medal of Honor for unbelievable heroics in aerial combat over North Vietnam in April 1967. Within a few days of his heroics on his Medal of Honor mission, Col. Thorsness was shot down over North Vietnam and taken into captivity. In captivity he was tortured by the North Vietnamese for 18 straight days and periodically thereafter until his release in »
Thorsness’s themes
Leo Thorsness came to town this past week. On Tuesday night he spoke at a father-son dinner at St. Thomas Academy. On Wednesday morning he spoke about the Medal of Honor at a Center of the American Experiment breakfast program. On Wednesday evening at the Minneapolis Club, at the invitation of Minneapolis attorney (my friend) Kirk Kolbo, Thorsness spoke about his personal experience surviving torture and tough times as a »
