Ernest Brace | POW in Vietnam, 83
Family members say Ernest Brace, 83, a civilian who was captured during the Vietnam War while flying supplies for the CIA and tapped code through a wall to fellow prisoner John McCain, died Dec. 5 of a pulmonary embolism in Klamath Falls, Ore., where he retired in 1989.
Family members say Ernest Brace, 83, a civilian who was captured during the Vietnam War while flying supplies for the CIA and tapped code through a wall to fellow prisoner John McCain, died Dec. 5 of a pulmonary embolism in Klamath Falls, Ore., where he retired in 1989.
A Marine Corps pilot who won a Distinguished Flying Cross in the Korean War, Mr. Brace was later court-martialed for leaving the scene of a training-flight crash. He went on to fly helicopters for a company under contract to the CIA.
After his capture in 1965, he was held 31/2 years in a bamboo cage by North Vietnamese soldiers before being transferred to the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where he was put in a cell next to McCain, now a U.S. senator. - AP