It is terrible the things that men went through who were POWs! I just read "Glory Denied: The Saga of Jim Thompson, America's Longest Held Prisoner of War" by Tom Philpott. Wow what a book! It begins with Jim at Present and then goes to the beginning. His childhood, his early military career, his captivity, his eventual release and then his life back in the states was described in fabulous detail. The psychological aspect of it is what drew me to the book originally. What they endured, witnessed, survived would make your skin crawl. The author did a great job in laying down Col. Thompson's early years. When he joined the military, I was intrigued as a veteran myself how much the Army training has changed. As he attended OCS and was in charge of other soldiers, I grew angry. He was in no way fit to command other men especially in a war, especially when he had absolutely no combat experience. I was very surprised that there wasn't an incident before his capture involving men from his team. In the section about is capture and torture, I felt sorry for the atrocities that he was subjected to. I cried when he finally got to come home. But just before he got on the plane, I started to hate him again. He was a terrible soldier, terrible leader, terrible father and husband. Though for a few of these he didn't exactly have a stellar role model to show him how to be a loving husband and father. I felt that the Army should have done more to honor him as a veteran and perhaps to prevent him from the decline. There has to be something that the military could have done to let people know within a reasonable amount of time that their loved ones were missing or captured. They knew about things that would happen to Jim upon his return. The things that were processes that he would be going through that were a normal progression for a survivor, that the military should have had an eye out for. I hated his wife Alyce throughout the entire book. She should not have given up on him so soon after his capture. It wasn't even a full year before she was out and about. If she were a stronger person her life would have turned out differently. She had no right to have the military not publish his name and acknowledge that he is the longest held POW! That would have helped the children and her if she just admitted that he was captured and that she was AFRAID. Though if the military would have stopped promoting a soldier who was in no way, shape, or form capable of performing as an officer, that would have changed half of the story too. He didn't deserve the stroke, the alcoholism, the failed marriages. I guess that his story was one in which much was learned for the "next time" we went to war.
I have a few more books to read on this war and then I am on to the Bataan Death March. I don't know why exactly the subjects are appealling to me now but they are so I am reading and learning about these times of conflict and turmoil.
