Published at: 05/11/2025 09:00 PM

(LIFE, November 10 and September 29, 1972; Pilots in Pyjamas, author: Thomas Billhardt)

• At the end of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam (1955-1975), there were 543 American pilots captured by the Vietcong Army and 1,271 missing in action. All torn down by an organized people that the Pentagon's brilliant strategists always underestimated.
• The so-called POW, Prisoners of War, were all transferred to the prison known as “Hanoi Hilton” in North Vietnam, where, unlike the treatment that the marines gave to the Viet Cong, they were exposed to press conferences with international guests to attest to their lives.
• In a six-chapter work, entitled “Pilots in Pyjamas”, by the war correspondent of the then Socialist Germany, Thomas Billhardt, the living conditions of the marines in captivity, the medical treatments they received, how they were captured and returned to their homes, as established by the Geneva Convention, were portrayed for the story. Which is a treaty signed by the United States that limits the brutalities of war, protects wounded soldiers, shipwrecked at sea and civilians in occupied territories.
• Meanwhile, in the United States, the committee of wives of marines who disappeared in action or arrested as prisoners of war confessed, in the voice of their director Valerie Kushner: “It's true that many of us are not used to being alone. A large number have indulged in alcohol or drugs. The vast majority have resorted to psychiatric treatment. Worst of all, we sink into crises of self-pity or, on the contrary, we use hate and anger to redirect our lives... others simply move to live with another man, but continue to receive the monthly check from their imprisoned or missing husbands.”
• After five years of negotiations, all POWs returned safely to the United States. In many cases their homes were destroyed and their wives and children were absent.
• While this lady was clamoring for the return of her husband and speaking out in favor of thousands of housewives, the fiercest bombings, unleashed during that entire war by the government of Richard Nixon and his Secretary of the State Department Henry Kissinger, both war criminals, fell on Hanoi, in North Vietnam.
• On the other hand, the fierce militiamen, knee-deep in mud, repaired the damage caused to the dam that supplied water to the city, the courageous peasants tuned their artillery to shoot down more pilots and an army of nurses in underground hospitals treated the hundreds of injured caused by the genocidal bombs.
• While the Vietnamese people were rebuilding their own destiny, hundreds of thousands of women, children and the elderly who were victims of the brutality carried out by the North American Army, were planted throughout the occupied territories, from which they were finally expelled by the noble militia of Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho).

Mazo News Team