John Sexton, the man who I am going to tell you about, has some amazing stories and lots of bad luck. He also has a Purple Heart, and was a prisoner of war for over a year. I’m going to tell you about his time in the hands of the North Vietnamese and how he earned his Purple Heart.
If you read my first blog post, The Road to Earn a Purple Heart, you will know that my grandpa’s U.S. platoon was on patrol and ran into a battalion of North Vietnamese. Now, I am going to tell you about John Sexton, a man who was in my grandpa’s platoon.
My grandpa saved John Sexton’s life in battle by shooting an enemy soldier who was taking aim at him from a nearby tree. After the battle, a few of the track vehicles were damaged, and John Sexton was left behind in one of them with a box of sea rations over his head and his elbow sticking out. He was playing dead at the time. Unfortunately for him, a hand grenade was thrown into the track vehicle and blew off his elbow. Then he gave a cry of pain and was captured.
He was kept in a bamboo cage for about a year. About two years before he went to Vietnam he was in a car accident and some of his back teeth were dislodged, so he had a metal plate in his mouth to secure his teeth. One time his guard fell asleep and John wrenched the metal plate out of his mouth and cut his way out of the bamboo cage. About twenty minutes after roaming through the forest he ran into a different North Vietnamese battalion and was captured. He was eventually released, and when he came back to the U.S. he became a well-known figure. He has a badge for people to recognize him as a prisoner of war.
In fact my next blog will be on Jeremiah Denton who just died this past March 2014. He is also a famous person because he was a prisoner of war for almost eight years. He also was a U.S. Senator from Alabama for one term (one term is six years in the U.S. Senate). Jeremiah Denton is also a well-known figure because of his famous morse code eye lash blinking spelling out torture. Because of his heroic actions he made the North Vietnamese leaders very angry. I will tell you more about him in my next blog post.
