Bat 21

Lt. Col. Iceal Hambleton, a 53-year-old Air Force navigator on an EB-66 radar aircraft, was an unlikely man to be fighting for his life on the ground. When a surface-to-air missile destroyed his plane in 1972, he came down in the path of a major North Vietnamese advance, far from friendly lines. Hostile forces wanted him badly, since he carried sensitive electronic surveillance secrets, and his rescue was blocked by enemy gunfire.

For twelve days Hambleton stayed alive on rainwater and raw corn while fighting injury, infection and dysentery. He buried himself in a shallow grave and used his survival radio to direct air strikes against nearby guns and troop movements. Aircraft circled overhead, and a B-52 strike cleared the ground around his hiding place in a rescue method never tried before. When he was finally ordered to crawl toward safety at night, the escape route was disguised as a set of golf holes he had once played, and the course was full of dangers, including a polluted river, leeches, snakes, starvation and a knife fight.

William C. Anderson's book, first published in 1980, reconstructs this ordeal and draws on the speech and dark humor of fighter crews. It follows the swings between despair and elation that a man in hiding experiences, along with the stubborn endurance it takes to keep going. A 1988 film adaptation starring Gene Hackman brought the story to a wider audience.