Beyond Endurance — The Remarkable Prisoner of War Story of Lance Sijan
The Heroic Tale of Vietnam POW Lance Sijan Still Inspires Today
Since its inception in 1862, the Medal of Honor has stood as the nation’s highest and most prestigious military award given to the rare individual who “distinguishes himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.”
To date, there have been 3, 507 recipients of the award, each of them representing a unique yet incredibly common story of bravery, courage, and sacrifice in the finest tradition of this country’s armed forces.
No Medal of Honor recipient embodied those ideals more than Captain Lance Sijan. Born in Milwaukee in 1942, Sijan graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1965 and was assigned to the 480th Tactical Fighter Squadron stationed at Da Nang Airbase in South Vietnam.
He was flying his 52nd combat mission on the night of November 9, 1967, with his commander, Lt. Col. John Armstrong, on a bombing run over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, when a malfunctioning fuse on one of his bombs caused an explosion that brought his F-4 Phantom flaming down in enemy territory.
Sijan and Armstrong ejected from the cockpit and engaged their parachutes. (Armstrong’s body was never recovered and he was later declared Killed In Action.) Crashing through the jungle canopy in the dark, Sijan suffered a fractured skull, a gashed right hand with three broken fingers, a compound fracture of his left leg, and several deep lacerations over his body. Crippled and bleeding deep in enemy territory, things couldn’t have looked more hopeless.
But in his mind, it was a matter of duty to continue to take the fight to the enemy any way he could. After quickly assessing the situation he made a makeshift crutch out of a stick and, with the help of a compass, started dragging himself through the underbrush in the direction of South Vietnam.
Given the extent of his wounds, it was all he could do to crawl for maybe a few hundred yards in a day before blacking out from pain and exhaustion.
For 46 days he struggled with shock, dehydration and severe weight loss, but survived by eating jungle plants and licking the dew off of leaves. His broken bones made every movement forward an excruciating test of will. The jungle air was hard to breathe. The terrain was unforgiving. And the danger of being captured by a vengeful enemy was ever-present.Freedom came to an end for Lance Sijan on Christmas Day of 1967 when a North Vietnamese army patrol found his unconscious body lying yards off a footpath. He was now officially a Prisoner of War.
He was held in the city of Vinh where, along with other POWs, he was denied critically needed medical attention, beaten, and tortured for days on end. As they did throughout the war, the North Vietnamese proved they would stop at nothing to extract information and propaganda statements from American prisoners. Already in agony from his untreated wounds, not to mention seriously malnourished, Sijan held fast to the prisoners of war code of conduct. Nothing but name, rank, and serial number.
But the fight in him didn’t end there. One night he saw a vulnerable moment and lured a guard into his cell, then somehow managed to muster the strength to knock him out cold and escape. Even in his weakened condition he slipped out of camp and escaped into the jungle again, only to be captured a few hours later. The pain they inflicted this time was even worse. Fellow prisoners could hear his screams, but also his repeated shouts of defiance: “Sijan! My name is Lance Peter Sijan!”
Next was Hanoi and its aptly named Hoa Lo prison (In Vietnamese Hoa Lo means “fiery furnace.” American prisoners simply called it the Hanoi Hilton.) Following a three-day trip in the cold rains of monsoon season, Sijan arrived at Hoa Lo emaciated and bloodied, having suffered just about every wound a human body can bear.
He was thrown into a dank concrete room where he endured more interrogation and torture, developing pneumonia along the way. Within eight days he lapsed into delirium and was placed in a new cell with two other prisoners who tried as best they could to nurse the man back to some semblance of health.
But in the end, it all proved too much to bear and Lance Sijan died in Hoa Lo on or about January 22, 1968. According to later testimony of fellow POWs, in his final days he was still talking in a raspy, weakened voice about fighting the enemy and finding a way to escape.
In 1975 Sijan became the first Air Force Academy graduate to be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his prolonged valor in the face of the enemy. One year later the Air Force Academy named a dormitory hall in his honor.
“A long time ago, I lived for a time in the company of heroes, men who endured great hardships but who refused to lose faith in their God, their country, and their comrades. I am a witness to a thousand acts of compassion, sacrifice, and endurance. But of all the men whose dignity humbles me, one name is revered among all others- Lance Sijan.”
- Former POW and U.S. Senator John McCain
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