A Q&A with Vietnam Veteran Marc Leepson

Author of The Unlikely War Hero: A Vietnam War POW’s Story of Courage and Resilience in the Hanoi Hilton

By Daria Sommers

In 1969, when the North Vietnamese decided to release the first American POWs as a propaganda stunt, they chose Doug Hegdahl to be one of them. They called the twenty-one-year old Navy Seaman Apprentice Kẻ Ngu Ngốc Tột Đỉnh, “The Incredibly Stupid One.”

But Hegdahl was anything but stupid. The youngest and lowest ranking POW at the Hanoi Hilton, he had feigned mental disability in order to be disregarded by his captors. While the prison guards looked the other way, Hegdahl took on a private mission. He memorized the names of 254 fellow prisoners. When Hegdahl returned home, he rattled off the names and gave lots of other information about the prison system that helped account for missing personnel. The information he provided made it possible to reclassify 63 MIAs as POWs, giving hope and relief to their families.

The incredible story of how Hegdahl, a high school graduate from a small town in South Dakota, accomplished this extraordinary feat and the unusual circumstances that led to his capture are chronicled by Vietnam Veteran Marc Leepson in his latest book The Unlikely War Hero: A Vietnam War POW’s Story of Courage and Resilience in the Hanoi Hilton.

Here is an excerpt from The Unlikely War Hero, followed by an interview with the author discussing how he came upon Hegdahl’s story, the challenges involved in researching it and why it is important to remember the quiet heroism of this young American from a half century ago.

To learn more about journalist, author and historian Marc Leepson, visit marcleepson.com. The Unlikely War Hero (Stackpole Books) is available at major bookstores online.

View the VBC livestream of Marc Leepson discussing The Unlikely War Hero at veteransbreakfastclub.org/the-story-of-vietnam-pow-doug-hegdahl/

Captured at Sea

Excerpt courtesy of the author

Little-known fact about the Vietnam War: 271 U.S. Navy sailors were lost at sea in the waters off the coast of Vietnam from 1965-73. A good portion were thrown overboard during fires and explosions. Scores of others went over the side by accident, by malfeasance, or by their own desire to end it all.

Only one American sailor during the long war in Vietnam, however, went into the drink and wound up in a Prisoner of War camp in Hanoi: Seaman Apprentice Douglas Brent Hegdahl. The incredible Vietnam War story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest-ranking American POW captured in North Vietnam, began at around 4:30 a.m. on April 6, 1967. That’s when Hegdahl, 20, lay wide awake in his bunk below decks on the U.S.S. Canberra, a guided missile cruiser patrolling the coast of North Vietnam.

He was working a blue-collar job on the Canberra, a World War II-vintage guided missile cruiser patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin. As an ammunition handler, he was a tiny cog in the ship’s Deck Division, the guys who did the grunt work, including swabbing the decks, painting everything that didn’t move, scrubbing toilets in the heads, and humping ammo.

Zero dark thirty that morning. Doug Hegdahl struggled to get some sleep on his triple bunk mattress as the Canberra’s guns bombarded enemy positions more than a dozen miles away. He’d heard those guns blasting away at night when he’d humped the shells and powder kegs below decks. But he’d never seen them in action. And guys who had seen night firing told him it was an amazing sight.

So, Hegdahl decided to take a look for himself. He slowly rolled his six-foot, 225-pound body out of his cramped bunk, and made his way to the gun line to take in his first night bombardment. He walked closer and closer to the booming guns along the narrow, teak wood deck. There was not a sailor in sight. The guns began roaring as he headed toward one of the massive eight-inch gun mounts.

“And the next thing I remember I was in the water,” Hegdahl later said, “and I can’t tell you how I fell from my ship. All I know is, I walked up on the deck, it was dark and they were firing, and the next thing I recall I was in the water.”

Said water being the Gulf of Tonkin. Just the clothes on his back—no life preserver, no ID, no glasses. He screamed for help as loudly as he could. But it was pitch dark, the guns were roaring, and not a soul was on deck. After about four hours in the water, exhaustion set in. He knew he couldn’t stay afloat much longer.

Then Doug Hegdahl heard faint voices and an object closing in on him. He looked up and saw Vietnamese men on a primitive fishing boat. “It looked like a Viking ship coming through the swells,” Hegdahl later said. He managed to raise his arms. They saw him, hauled him in, brought him to the shore—and turned him over to the North Vietnamese Army.

“I didn’t think of myself as being captured,” Doug Hegdahl later said. “I thought of myself being rescued.” It was “probably the most embarrassing capture in the entire Vietnam War.”

Two days after being pulled out of the sea, Doug Hegdahl found himself in the infamous Hỏa Lò (“WHA-low”) POW camp, the one U.S.  prisoners  sarcastically  referred  to  as  the  Hanoi  Hilton.  The youngest American prisoner captured in North Vietnam, and the lowest-ranking imprisoned American there, he would be held for more than two years.

But after Doug Hegdahl came home in 1969, the young South Dakotan wrote his way into the Vietnam War history books.

* * * *

A Q&A with Marc Leepson

When did you first learn about the Doug Hegdahl story? What about it caught your attention?

I learned of the story through my work at Vietnam Veterans of America reading about Doug in memoirs by former Vietnam War POWs, Vietnam War history books, and POW documentaries. I was struck by Doug’s memory, how he buffaloed the Vietnamese, his fearlessness behind bars, and the impact of the names he brought home on the families—and later, I learned—on the North Vietnamese treatment of the POWs.

I understand Doug Hegdahl chose not to participate in your research. How challenging did that make it? How did you research the story?

It was challenging, for sure. But I got lucky when Doug told Dick Stratton, whom he roomed with for a time in the Hanoi Hilton and had remained friends with ever since Dick came home in ’73, that it would be okay with him if Dick helped me. And “Beak” Stratton did that—in spades.

For more than two years, he answered every one of my many emails within hours and with tons of information, a lot of which had never been published before. He also read the two chapters in the book that deal with him and was writing me encouraging words through the late fall of 2024. I’m sorry to say that Dick died January 18 at 93.

I also benefitted from the fact that Doug was quoted extensively in two books about POWs that appeared in the mid-seventies, that his hours-long testimony before a congressional committee in 1969 is part of the Congressional Record, that two of his debriefings after coming home have been declassified and are digitized on the Library of Congress’ website, and that Doug was a talking head on several POW documentaries.

Beyond Dick Stratton, who else did you interview?

I interviewed 20 sailors on Doug’s ship, The Canberra. And made good use of the ship’s Deck Logs and Muster Rolls, which are online at the National Archives website. And I talked to Navy historians and a friend who served in the Navy in the Tonkin Gulf, to get Navy details—I was in the Army and knew precious little about life aboard ship in a warzone.

In addition to Dick Stratton, I interviewed four other POWs, Joe Crecca (who roomed with Doug at one point), Porter Halyburton, Everett Alvarez, and Wes Rumble (who was released with Doug). I read a bunch of POW memoirs. I found oral histories of several dozen USAF former POWs online, many of which mentioned Doug. And I read the best secondary sources, including the encyclopedic Honor Bound.

I interviewed three of Doug’s high school friends. And made good use of the extensive collection of newspaper articles, oral histories, official military and State Department documents and many other primary source 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.

The Unlikely War Hero is already in its 4th printing. Aside from simply being a good story, what is it that appeals to readers? Quiet heroism?

I think POW stories in general are intriguing. And you’re right about the quiet heroism part. By the way, I didn’t use the words “war hero” lightly in the title. I firmly believe that what Doug did behind bars in the infamous Hanoi Hilton was one of the most remarkable and courageous—and consequential—acts outside of combat in the Vietnam War. And I think that resonates with many people.