Hero Found

Listeners may recognize the story of captured Vietnam War pilot Dieter Dengler from the 2006 film RESCUE DAWN. Dengler's 1978 memoir, ESCAPE FROM LAOS, forms the basis of Henderson's book, to which he has added information supplied by fellow pilots, friends, and family. The German-American Dengler led a lifestyle of derring-do typical of military pilots, always pushing the edge with alcohol, society's rules, and women. As becomes apparent, his survival in post-WWII Germany prepared him well for a Laotian POW camp, where he ate maggots, live snakes, and raw fish eyes. Narrator Todd McLaren delivers the many scenes of aerial action and combat with enthusiasm and excitement. His animated involvement adds a special spark to a work already compelling from beginning to end. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

April 26, 2010
Only a handful of Vietnam War POWs escaped captivity. One of those was Dieter Dengler, a German-born navy Skyraider pilot shot down on his first mission over Laos in 1966 and taken prisoner by the Pathet Lao in a remote jungle camp. Tortured and nearly starved to death, Dengler led his fellow prisoners in a daring escape, and he miraculously survived 23 days in the jungle before an inexperienced pilot spotted him frantically signaling from the dense jungle just over the border in North Vietnam. Dengler’s harrowing and amazing story has been told before : in his 1978 memoir, Escape from Laos, and in two films, Werner Herzog’s documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and a feature film, Rescue Dawn. Henderson, who served as a navy weatherman aboard Dengler’s aircraft carrier, has crafted a worthy narrative that adds new material based on interviews with Dengler (who died in 2001) and his navy comrades, friends. and family, along with newly unearthed archival records. These include the official 78-page military “Dengler Debriefing,” which Henderson (coauthor, And the Sea Will Tell) obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. This often riveting account sheds new light on an oft-told true story.