POW, with infected wounded leg, punished for three escape attempts, dysentery 
ridden, logically disputing infuriated indoctrinators, tortured, hair turned 
white,  countering propoganda to villagers while being dragged around by a 
rope around his neck, when being transferred, isolated during two years, 
until executed. 

The last heard from Versace, was his singing "God Bless America" at the top 
of his lungs from his isolation box.
===================================================
Rocky Versace was a West Point Graduate son of a West Point Graduate,
whose bravery is legendary, and Medal of Honor winner ( authorized, 
downgraded, then 30 years later finalized) who had been accepted to be a 
priest, upon completion of his second tour of duty, to work with Vietnamese 
children.

In October 1963, two weeks before his second tour was to end, Versace 
accompanied a South Vietnamese company was overrun by a large enemy force, 
and Versace went down with three rounds in the leg. He, Rowe and Pitzer were 
taken prisoner, stripped of their boots and led into the forest...of dark 
maze of mangrove, canals and swamps. The prisoners were kept in bamboo cages, 
deprived of food and exposed to insects, heat and disease.

Versace's untreated leg became badly infected, but within three weeks he 
tried to escape, dragging himself on his hands and knees. Guards soon 
discovered him crawling in the swamp. Back in camp, they twisted his injured 
leg.

Versace was kept in irons, flat on his back and frequently gagged in a dark 
and hot bamboo isolation cage that was 6 feet long, 2 feet wide and 3 feet 
high.

The VC cadre set up indoctrination classes, but Versace attended only at the 
tip of a bayonet. Rowe and Pitzer "adopted a sit-and-listen attitude between 
bouts of body-wrenching dysentery, feeling the more we said, the worse off 
we'd be," Rowe later wrote. "Rocky, on the other hand, was engaging all 
comers." The instructor's voice would "climb an octave from its already high 
pitch" as Versace tripped him up with verbal gymnastics, Rowe said.

Versace's defiance grew even as his condition worsened, infuriating his 
captors. 

"He told them to go to hell in Vietnamese, French and English," one of 
Versace's fellow captives, Dan Pitzer, who died in 1997, told a historian. 
"He got a lot of pressure and torture, but he held his path. As a West Point 
grad, it was duty, honor, country. There was no other way."

Increasingly, Versace was separated from the other prisoners. 

Military men kept hearing stories from admiring rice farmers about the resolute, 
white-haired POW whom the Viet Cong pulled around by a rope.

"Rocky Versace made an impression on these people, which heightened our 
eagerness to rescue him and caused us to immediately respond to any 
intelligence we could get," said Nicholson, who now works for a veterans 
organization in Alexandria.

Three times, after receiving tips about Versace's whereabouts, U.S. advisers 
launched helicopters to rescue him, and three times they came back 
empty-handed, taking heavy casualties on one occasion.

"It was very frustrating," Nicholson said. "Very frustrating and very sad."

The last the other prisoners heard from him, he was singing "God Bless 
America" at the top of his lungs from his isolation box.

On Sept. 29, 1965, Hanoi Radio announced that Versace had been executed in 
retaliation for the killing of suspected communist sympathizers by South 
Vietnam.

"He drew upon his inner self to create a force so strong that those who 
sought to destroy his will, met an army his to command."

Complete story at: 
http://www.mishalov.com/Versace.html