The Washington Examiner
Saturday, May 27, 2023
VIETNAM WAR
Vietnam POWs celebrate 50 years since Nixon bash honoring their return
by Mike Brest, Defense Reporter |
May 27, 2023 06:00 AM
"President Nixon came into the room and said that the bartenders would keep pouring and the band would keep playing until the last one of us left, and for many, it was daylight before they left," retired Col. Thomas McNish recounted.
The dinner, honoring the 591 service members who had recently returned to the United States after spending time in Vietnam camps as prisoners of war, was the largest ever hosted at the White House when it took place on May 24, 1973.
Vietnam POWs Return 50th Anniversary
The Richard Nixon Presidential Library celebrates the 50th anniversary of the return of the Vietnam POWs, in Yorba Linda, Calif., Tuesday, May 23, 2023.
(Jeff Gritchen/The Orange County Register via AP)
Fifty years later, those same attendees marked the anniversary of that event with a Wednesday reenactment hosted by the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California.
McNish, who spent about six and a half years in Vietnamese captivity after getting shot down on his 45th combat mission in Southeast Asia, attended the homecoming with "this beautiful young woman" whom he had met eight days after he returned to the U.S.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/vietnam-pows-celebrate-50-years-nixon-bash
