Держали их на базах в джунглях, использовали в пропагандистских целях.
The first American taken prisoner by the Viet Cong was Army Spec. 4 George F. Fryett, seized Dec. 26, 1961, while riding a bicycle on the way to a swimming pool on the outskirts of Saigon. He was freed in June 1962: His captors simply came out of the jungle at a main road and put him on a bus back to Saigon.
The last POW was seized Jan. 27, 1973-the day the cease-fire was signed in Paris. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Phillip A. Kientzler, shot down near the Demilitarized Zone, was held for two months in North Vietnam under perhaps the most benign conditions of the war, with captives and captors awaiting prisoner releases. Kientzler was freed March 27, 1973, with the last wave of captives to go home.
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Prisoners captured and held in South Vietnam had a far different experience than the aviator officers shot down and held in the North. During the early years, one out of three Americans taken prisoner was expected to die in captivity--a toll reduced to one out of five by war's end. In the North, only one in 20 captives died in prison.
The longest held POW was captured in the South and spent much of his imprisonment there. Army Ranger Capt. Floyd J. "Jim" Thompson, commander of a Special Forces detachment in Quang Tri Province, was captured March 26, 1964, following the shootdown near the DMZ of his low-flying reconnaissance aircraft. He was held at a dozen jungle sites during the nearly nine years before his release on March 16, 1973. Thompson's captivity made him the longest held Prisoner of War in American history.
