First U.S. POW In Vietnam

December 24, 1961

Overview

Specialist 4 George Fryett, a clerk for the Military Assistance and Advisory Group, Vietnam, is captured by Viet Cong troops while riding his bicycle on the outskirts of Saigon. Fryett, the first U.S. prisoner of war in Vietnam, is released six months later.1

¹Stuart I. Rochester and Frederick Kiley, Honor Bound: The History of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973 (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1998), 60–61. Regarding 12/24/61 date (versus Rochester and Kiely’s 12/26/61), see http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/vietnam/reports/documents/pmsea_info_f067.htm (link is external) (accessed 6/30/14). Press release dated from time of his release, found here: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/pwmia/316/87637.pdf states that Fryett went missing on 12/25/14. Andrew Wiest, Mary Kathryn Barbier, and Glenn Robins, eds., America and the Vietnam War: Re-examining the Culture and History of a Generation, (New York, Routledge: 2010), 166; James Howren and Taylor Baldwin Kiland, Open Doors: Vietnam POWs Thirty Years Later (Washington, D.C., Potomac Books: 2005), 153. See also http://www.pownetwork.org/bios/f/f067.htm (link is external) (accessed 3/10/14), in which Fryett recounts being interrogated on Christmas morning.