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nWhat a strange, fascinating, and ultimately powerful account of one man's endurance of life as a POW during the American war in Vietnam. . . . This book, I believe, will stand the test of time as one of the finest nonfiction narratives to emerge from the Vietnam War. n --Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried n nOn April 6, 1967, twenty-year-old U.S. Navy Seaman Apprentice Doug Hegdahl fell off his ship, a guided-missile cruiser, in the Gulf of Tonkin. Close to exhaustion after nearly four hours in the water, he was picked up by a small fishing boat and soon found himself in Hỏa Lò Prison, the notorious North Vietnamese POW camp the prisoners called the Hanoi Hilton. Under intense interrogation, Hegdahl pretended to be a country bumpkin who could barely read or write. His captors fell for the ruse, calling him The Incredibly Stupid One. n nBut Doug Hegdahl was far from stupid. Possessing a razor-sharp memory, during the next two years he memorized the names of 254 fellow prisoners and senior officers ordered him to accept an early release. After coming home in August 1969, Hegdahl shocked his debriefers by rattling off the names of the men. Hanoi had admitted holding only a few dozen, although the U.S. military had reliable intel on scores of others. With Hegdahl's names, 63 missing servicemen were reclassified to Prisoners of War.n nBut that's not all. In addition to divulging the names, Doug Hegdahl told the Pentagon about the systematic torturing of the American P