Marc Leepson is the author of the new book The Unlikely War Hero: A Vietnam War POW's Story of Courage and Resilience in the Hanoi Hilton. It focuses on the life of Vietnam veteran Doug Hegdahl. Leepson's other books include Ballad of the Green Beret. He lives in Middleburg, Virginia.
Q: What inspired you to write The Unlikely War Hero?
A: Doug Hegdahl’s amazing Vietnam War POW story had been on my mind for about 25 years. At that point, I had been writing about the Vietnam War and Vietnam War veterans for more than 25 years and knew a good deal about the POWs. But this was a different kind of POW story and I wanted to explore it.
In 2000, after I had just finished my book Saving Monticello and I was mulling over ideas for what would come next, I decided to try to tell that story. I contacted Doug and spoke to him on the phone about it. He seemed willing to help, but later changed his mind.
So I reluctantly went on to another book idea, which became Flag: An American Biography, a history of the Stars & Stripes from the beginnings to the 21st century, which was published in 2005 and is still in print.
After I finished my book Ballad of the Green Beret, the biography of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, I thought I’d give telling Doug’s story another shot. My agent agreed, I wrote a proposal, and got a contract.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I read most of the secondary sources, including the most inclusive and thoroughly researched and annotated book on the American POWs in Vietnam, Stewart Rochester and Frederick Kiley’s Honor Bound. Those books led me to the primary sources: mainly memoirs and official records.
I interviewed five former POWs--Porter Halyburton, Everett Alvarez, Dick Stratton, Joe Crecca, and Wesley Rumble--by phone and email.
I also spoke to 19 men who served on the U.S.S. Canberra during its five Vietnam War cruises. Of that group, seven were on the ship when Doug Hegdahl went overboard, including junior officers Peter Carry, John McTernan, and Pete O’Connell, and Paul Rohal.
Doug Hegdahl chose not to contribute to the book. So I relied heavily on interviews he gave about his Vietnam War experiences to authors, reporters, and documentary filmmakers from the late 1960s to the early 2000s, when he all but stopped speaking for public consumption.
That included long interviews in Scott Blakey’s Prisoner at War: The Story of Commander Richard A. Stratton (1978) and John Hubbell’s P.O.W.: A Definitive History of the American Prisoner-of-War Experience in Vietnam (1974) and appearances Doug made as a talking head in three documentaries: 2,251 Days (1974), Return with Honor (1988), and Vietnam POWs: Stories of Survival (1997).
I searched through thousands of newspaper articles online using newspapers.com, the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America, and the ProQuest daily and historical newspaper database.
Other primary sources included many POW memoirs and the extensive collection of m newspaper articles, oral histories, official military and State Department documents, and other materials housed in the Library of Congress’ Vietnam-Era Prisoner-of-War/Missing-in-Action Database and Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center & Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive.
What surprised me the most was how virtually every former POW who has talked or written about Doug has nothing but superlatives to describe what he did behind bars and after he came home.
Also, the invaluable help that Dick Stratton—who shared a cell for a time with Doug in Hanoi and who remained close to him decades after they came home—gave me, answering all my many questions about Doug and the Hanoi Hilton and afterward whenever I asked and telling me Doug stories that have never been made public.
Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book says, “Leepson paints a striking picture of a canny survivor nonetheless committed to his compatriots.” What do you think of that description?
A: It’s quite accurate. And it’s what I was trying to do. I wanted to provide as many details as possible about what the canny and gutsy way Doug went about outwitting the North Vietnamese while in captivity and to show how what he did resulted in changing the status of 63 Americans from Missing in Action to Prisoner of War.
Q: As someone who served in Vietnam, how do you think the war is perceived today, and what do you see as its legacy?
A: I could write a book about those questions—maybe two books! To summarize what I feel very briefly: I think the war feels like ancient history to anyone under 50 and especially to young people.
For those of us who were of age during the war, memories of what happened in-country for those who served there, and the divisiveness at home for all of us, are still vivid memories.
As for the war’s legacy. It’d be impossible to sum that up in a few paragraphs. Suffice it to say, I thought (extremely naively as it turned out) that after that horrible, 10-year war ended, I would never see American troops engaged in combat again in my lifetime. And then I was rudely disabused of that notion in January 1991 when the first Persian Gulf War began.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m continuing my day job, working for Vietnam Veterans of America, as senior writer, columnist, and Arts editor of our magazine, The VVA Veteran, and thinking about my next book.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: My wife Janna and I had our first grandchildren on May 14 when our daughter Cara gave birth to identical twin girls. I can send you a picture if you’d like!
Also: that I will be doing talks about the Hegdahl book and would be happy to hear from folks who would like me to tell this amazing story to their book group, historical society, veterans organization—or virtually anywhere else!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Marc Leepson.
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