Book Review - Honor Bound

• Author: Colonel Fred L. Borch
• Pages: 04

150 MILITARY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 163

HONOR BOUND1

REVIEWED BY COLONEL FRED L. BORCH2

This is truly the definitive work on the American prisoner of war (POW) experience in Southeast Asia, and no book could have been more thoroughly researched or provided more detail on American men (and women) held captive by the North Vietnamese, Viet Cong, Pathet Lao, and Communist Chinese between 1961 and 1973. The authors, Stuart Rochester, a professional historian at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Fred Kiley, a retired Air Force officer who teaches at the Air Force Academy, wrote Honor Bound as part of their official duties at the Department of Defense. The official nature of their research and writing meant not only that they had virtually unlimited access to official POW records (classified and unclassified), but also meant that they had ready access to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and civilians held as POWs during the Vietnam conflict.

Despite the tremendous volume of factual information in Honor Bound, the book is never tedious or boring. On the contrary, it is both riveting and compelling. Riveting because the dispassionate writing in Honor Bound has the opposite affect; the stories it tells of terrible suffering and incredible courage catch hold of the reader and do not let go. Compelling because what Stuart Rochester and Fred Kiley have written has a powerful and irresistible affect on the reader. Thus, for example, while many who read this book know that retired vice admiral and former vice presidential candidate Jim Stockdale was horribly brutalized by the North Vietnamese, the pages of Honor Bound leave no doubt why Stockdale was awarded the Medal of Honor after more than seven years as a POW. Stock-dale's experiences-and those of men like John McCain, Bud Day, Nick Rowe, and others described in the book-are simply electrifying.

While much of Honor Bound's narrative focuses on the experiences of individual combat captives-which is more than enough reason to read the book-what really makes the monograph important is the "big picture" view it presents of the POW experience in Southeast Asia. For example,

Rochester and Kiley demonstrate conclusively that those Americans held in Laos and South Vietnam suffered more-and had markedly lower rates of survival-than those Americans held in Hanoi. It was better to be held by the North Vietnamese than suffer the "peculiar blend of bondage and vagabondage"3 that was the lot of POWs...