US Army Special Forces James “Nick” Rowe:
Rowe served in Vietnam with the 5th Special Forces Group and was captured by the Viet Cong near the village of Le Coeur. Separated from his fellow Green Berets, he spent 62 months in captivity, with only brief contact with other American POWs.
At first, he relied on his training, following the military’s guidance on how to resist interrogation. But as the years passed, he realized those tactics had been designed to help soldiers survive weeks or months, not years.
Rowe became a master of psychological warfare, feeding his captors misinformation, pretending to be an engineer rather than a Special Forces officer, and creating new ways to resist.
In 1968—after five years of starvation and daily beatings—Rowe escaped. He had survived the unimaginable. Although entitled to a medical retirement and a peaceful life, Rowe chose to return to work. He developed SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) School, teaching future troops how to better prepare for capture.
In 1987, Rowe went back into the fight as an Intelligence Officer on a counter-insurgency mission in the Philippines. On April 21, 1989, as he uncovered details of an upcoming terrorist attack, he was assassinated. God Bless Our Vets!
To learn more about the Green Berets and the Vietnam War, check out The Giant Killer Documentary, Book, and Audiobook—available worldwide on Amazon, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube (free with commercials), TuneIn, Nook, Walmart, and most major sites!