Texas veteran shot down in Vietnam on 7 years as POW at ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison camp: ‘You keep faith’

5 a long time in the past, Col. James Lamar was taking part in poker in opposition to fellow prisoners of conflict with playing cards made of bathroom paper and chips fabricated from matchsticks on the “Hanoi Hilton” in North Vietnam on the tail finish of his almost 7-year stint on the infamous jail camp. 

In the present day, 94-year-old Lamar enjoys taking part in Texas Maintain ’em in opposition to a rotating forged of faculty college students, tech bros, retirees and fellow veterans who frequent Texas Card Home within the state capital of Austin. 

Lamar detailed the day he obtained shot down in Vietnam and his expertise as a prisoner of conflict in an interview with Fox Information Digital on the card home. 

Col. James Lamar within the Nineteen Fifties when he was a pilot teacher at an Air Pressure base in Arizona. 
(Fox Information Digital)

Lamar joined the Air Pressure in 1948 after three years within the Naval Reserve and accomplished pilot coaching in 1949. He was deployed to a fighter squadron in Japan simply earlier than the Korean Warfare broke out and flew 100 fight missions in that battle in 1950-51. 

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After coming back from Korea, Lamar served in varied pilot teacher roles earlier than deploying to Thailand firstly of the Vietnam Warfare. 

“Once we obtained the information that we had been going to go, I obtained an instantaneous premonition that one thing was going to occur to me — I’d be shot down, killed, prisoner — I did not know what, however I knew one thing unhealthy was going to occur,” Lamar stated. 

Col. James Lamar shares his story with Fox Information Digital at Texas Card Home in Austin, Texas. 
(Fox Information Digital)

Positive sufficient, on Lamar’s a hundred and first mission in North Vietnam on Could 6, 1965, he was shot down throughout a bombing run over a railroad yard.

“We obtained to our goal space, I used to be the primary one to go in,” Lamar stated. “I pulled as much as 12,000 toes, rolled over, and once I was headed down, I want to have been some place else, as a result of the flak (anti-aircraft fireplace) was only a stable layer under me. As I dive by way of it — growth — I obtained hit, my aircraft obtained hit within the fuselage ahead of the cockpit, however there was an instantaneous fireplace within the cockpit.”

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Lamar pulled out of his dive and began jinking side-to-side to keep away from additional anti-aircraft fireplace, then radioed his group to inform them that he was heading to a protected bailout space about 50 miles away. 

Two F-84 jet fighters, one of many many planes Lamar flew in his three-decade navy profession, fly overhead on this 1958 file picture. 
(Denver Submit through Getty Photographs)

“Instantly after I stated that, there got here the very excited voice of my No. 4 man, who yelled at me, ‘Get out, lead, you’ve got obtained an enormous fireplace going,'” Lamar recalled. 

“So I simply reached for the handles … the left one, the cover went, and the best one, I went. One drawback, the handbook on the plane stated don’t eject over 525 knots, nautical miles per hour. If you happen to do, all kinds of unhealthy issues can occur. Properly, the final time I noticed the airspeed tape, simply earlier than I left that cockpit, it was going quickly by way of 700 knots. So I ejected at above the velocity of sound.”

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Lamar awoke with a damaged arm and his parachute hanging from a tree. A gaggle of Vietnamese peasants ultimately discovered him and took him to a navy submit to show him over to the North Vietnamese military, which tortured him and tried in useless to get Lamar to lure different fighter pilots into an ambush. 

American POW troopers inside their jail cell on the Hanoi Hilton previous to their launch in 1973 in Hanoi, Vietnam.  
(David Hume Kennerly/Getty Photographs)

After failing to get any data out of Lamar, the troopers took him to Hỏa Lò Jail, which Individuals prisoners of conflict facetiously referred to as the “Hanoi Hilton,” the place he would spend almost seven years. 

In the course of the first few years within the jail camp, his captors subjected him to varied levels of psychological and bodily abuse, however the Individuals found out that they may safely talk round lunchtime when the guards took a break. 

“At some point in our midday communication, I informed the fellows that I am very depressed. What do you do to fight despair? Jerry Denton (one other prisoner of conflict) stated, ‘I am going to inform you what you do, Jim. You pray. You retain religion in God, your nation and your loved ones. And then you definitely reside every day, someday at a time. That is the best way you get by way of,'” Lamar recalled. 

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“And he was proper. My despair lifted, and I began dwelling someday at a time. And that is how I went by way of the full 2,400 and a few odd days.”

Lamar was ultimately launched Feb. 12, 1973 with a number of hundred different prisoners of conflict in Operation Homecoming.