Col. George “Bud” Day, 1925–2013

last updated 8 January 2015

Col. George “Bud” Day had been a prisoner of war in North Vietnam’s “Hanoi Hilton” for more than three years when armed guards burst into a cell where he and his fellow captives were holding a forbidden religious service. Day defied their rifle barrels by loudly singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The then major “had an indomitable will to survive,” said Sen. John McCain, a cell mate. “He strengthened my will to live.”

Day was a decorated fighter pilot nearing retirement when his plane was shot down over North Vietnam in August 1967, said The New York Times. Captured by the Viet Cong, he escaped and wandered barefoot through the jungle for two weeks, searching for U.S. troops and “surviving on a few berries and frogs.” But Communist forces found him first, and “this time, Maj. Day could not escape.”

Day arrived at the Hanoi Hilton half-dead from malnutrition and infected wounds, said FrontPageMag.com. McCain helped nurse him back to health, fashioning a “homemade splint” for his broken arm. In the five years that followed, as Day endured “starvation, staged execution, and torture,” his resoluteness inspired his fellow POWs. After he was finally released in 1973, he received the Medal of Honor and the Air Force Cross.