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Dieter Dengler war ein US-amerikanischer Kampfpilot deutscher Abstammung. Dengler erlangte Berühmtheit durch seine Flucht aus einem laotischen Kriegsgefangenenlager im Jahr während des Vietnamkriegs, worüber er das Buch „Escape from Laos“. Dieter Dengler (* Mai in Wildberg (Schwarzwald); † 7. Februar in Mill Valley (USA)) war ein US-amerikanischer Kampfpilot deutscher. Dieter Dengler als er selbst; Eugene Deatrick als er selbst; Werner Herzog als Erzähler. Flucht aus Laos (Originaltitel: Little Dieter Needs to Fly, wörtlich übersetzt: Der kleine Dieter. Escape From Laos by Dieter Dengler () | | ISBN: | Kostenloser Versand für alle Bücher mit Versand und Verkauf duch Amazon. Escape from Laos | Dengler, Dieter | ISBN: | Kostenloser Versand für alle Bücher mit Versand und Verkauf duch Amazon. Dezember den Flugzeugträger USS Constellation in San Diego, Kalifornien. Geburtsname, Dieter Dengler. Geboren, () Mai. A Navy AD Skyraider from VA catches a wire during carrier operations. Dengler was married three times: to Marina Adamich ( – March ), to Irene.

He grew up in extreme poverty but always found ways to help his family survive. Dieter and his brothers would go into bombed-out buildings, tear off wallpaper, and bring it to their mother to boil for the nutrients in the wheat-based wallpaper paste.
When members of the small group of Moroccans who lived in the area would slaughter sheep for their meals, Dieter would sneak over to their lodgings to take the scraps and leftovers they would not eat and his mother would make dinner from them.
He also built a bicycle by scavenging from dumps. Dieter was apprenticed to a blacksmith at the age of The blacksmith and the other boys, who worked six days a week building giant clocks and clock faces to repair German cathedrals, regularly beat him.
Later in life Dieter thanked his former master "for his disciplined training and for helping Dieter become more capable, self-reliant and yes, 'tough enough to survive'".
After seeing an advertisement in an American magazine, expressing a need for pilots, he decided to go to the United States.
Although a family friend agreed to sponsor him, he lacked money for passage and came up with a plan to independently salvage brass and other metals to sell.
In , when he turned 18 and upon completion of his apprenticeship, Dengler hitchhiked to Hamburg and spent two weeks surviving on the streets before the ship set sail for New York City.
While on the ship he saved fruit and sandwiches for the coming days and when going through customs the agent was astonished when the food tumbled out of his shirt.
He lived on the streets of Manhattan for just over a week and eventually found his way to an Air Force recruiter. After basic training, Dengler spent two years peeling potatoes and then transferred to a motor pool as a mechanic.
His qualifications as a machinist led to an assignment as a gunsmith. He passed the test for aviation cadets but was told that only college graduates were selected to be pilots and his enlistment expired before he was selected for pilot training.
After his discharge Dengler joined his brother working in a bakery shop near San Francisco and enrolled in San Francisco City College , then transferred to the College of San Mateo , where he studied aeronautics.
Upon completion of two years of college he applied for the US Navy aviation cadet program and was accepted. Dengler would do whatever it took to become a pilot.
In his inaugural flight at primary flight training, for example, the instructor told Dengler that if he became airsick and vomited in the cockpit that he would receive a "down" on his record.
Students were only allowed three downs then they would wash out of flight training. The instructor took the plane through spins and loops causing Dengler to become dizzy and disoriented.
Knowing he was about to vomit and not wanting to receive a "down", Dengler took off his boot, threw up into it and put it back on.
At the end of the flight the instructor checked the cockpit and could smell the vomit, but couldn't find any evidence of it.
He didn't get a "down". In December the carrier set sail for the coast of Vietnam. On February 1, , the day after the carrier began flying missions from Yankee Station, Lieutenant, Junior Grade Dengler launched from the Ranger with three other aircraft on an interdiction mission against a truck convoy that had been reported in North Vietnam.
Thunderstorms forced the pilots to divert to their secondary target, a road intersection located west of the Mu Gia Pass in Laos. At the time, U.
Visibility was poor due to smoke from burning fields, and upon rolling in on the target, Dengler and the remainder of his flight lost sight of one another.
Visibility was poor, and as Dengler rolled his Skyraider in on the target after flying for two-and-a-half hours into enemy territory, he was hit by anti-aircraft fire.
It was like lightning striking. The right wing was gone. The airplane seemed to cartwheel through the sky in slow motion.
There were more explosions—boom, boom, boom—and I was still able to guide the plane into a clearing in Laos. He said: "Many times, people have asked me if I was afraid.
Just before dying, there is no more fear. I felt I was floating. When his squadron mates realized that he had been downed, they remained confident that he would be rescued.
Immediately after he was shot down, Dengler smashed his survival radio and hid most of his other survival equipment to keep Vietnamese or Lao search parties from finding it.
He was marched through the jungle, was tied on the ground to four stakes spreadeagled in order to stop him escaping at night. In the morning his face would be swollen from mosquito bites and he was unable to see.
After an early escape attempt he was recaptured while drinking from a spring. According to Dengler he was tortured in retaliation:. He was hung upside down by his ankles with a nest of biting ants over his face until he lost consciousness, suspended in a freezing well at night so that if he fell asleep he might drown.
On other occasions he was dragged through villages by a water buffalo , to the amusement of his guards, as they goaded the animal with a whip. He was asked by Pathet Lao officials to sign a document condemning the United States, but he refused and as a result he was tortured as tiny wedges of bamboo were inserted under his fingernails and into incisions on his body which grew and festered.
He inserted a piece of wood, and twisted and twisted until my nerves cut against the bone. The hand was completely unusable for six months.
After some weeks Dengler was handed over to the Vietnamese. As they marched him through a village, a man slipped Dengler's engagement ring from his finger.
Dengler complained to his guards. They found the culprit, summarily chopped off his finger with a machete and handed the ring back to Dengler.
Dengler was eventually brought to a prison camp near the village of Par Kung where he met other POWs. The other six prisoners were:.
Except for Martin, an Air Force helicopter pilot who had been shot down in North Vietnam nearly a year before, the other prisoners were civilians employed by Air America , a civilian airline owned by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The civilians had been held by the Pathet Lao for over two and a half years when Dengler joined them. What I saw horrified me. The first one who came out was carrying his intestines around in his hands.
One had no teeth - plagued by awful infections, he had begged the others to knock them out with a rock and a rusty nail in order to release pus from his gums".
I realized that was how I would look in six months. I had to escape. The day he arrived in the camp, Dengler advised the other prisoners that he intended to escape and invited them to join him.
They advised that he wait until the monsoon season when there would be plenty of water. Shortly after Dengler arrived, the prisoners were moved to a new camp ten miles away at Hoi Het.
After the move, a strong debate ensued among the prisoners with Dengler, Martin and Prasit arguing for escape which the other prisoners, particularly Phisit initially opposed.
As food began to run out, tension between the men grew: they were given just a single handful of rice to share while the guards would stalk deer, pulling the grass out of the animal's stomach for the prisoners to eat while they shared the meat.
The prisoners' only "treats" were snakes they occasionally caught from the communal latrine or the rats that lived under their hut which they could spear with sharpened bamboo.
At night the men were handcuffed together and shackled to wooden foot blocks. They suffered chronic dysentery and were made to lie in their excrement until morning.
After several months, one of the Thai prisoners overheard the guards talking about shooting them in the jungle and making it look like an escape attempt.
They too, were starving and wanted to return to their villages. With that revelation, everyone agreed and a date to escape was set. Their plan was to take over the camp and signal a C Hercules flare-ship that made nightly visits to the area.
Dengler loosened logs under the hut that allowed the prisoners to squeeze through. The plan was for him to go out when the guards were eating and seize their weapons and pass them to Phisit Intharathat and Promsuwan while Martin and DeBruin procured others from other locations.
There were two minutes and twenty seconds in the day when I could strike. On June 29, while the guards were eating, the group slipped out of their hand-cuffs and foot restraints and grabbed the guards' unattended weapons which included M1 rifles, Chinese automatic rifles, an American carbine and at least one sub-machine gun as well as an early version of the AK47 automatic rifle, which Dengler used during the escape from the POW camp.
Dengler went out first followed by Martin. He went to the guard hut and seized an M1 for himself and passed the American carbine to Martin.
The guards realized the prisoners had escaped and five of them rushed toward Dengler, who shot at least three with the AK Phisit killed another guard as he reached for his rifle.
Two others ran off, presumably to get help, although at least one had been wounded. The seven prisoners split into three groups. DeBruin was originally supposed to go with Dengler and Martin but decided to go with To, who was recovering from a fever and unable to keep up.
They intended to get over the nearest ridge and wait for rescue. Dengler and Martin went off by themselves with the intention of heading for the Mekong River to escape to Thailand, but they never got more than a few miles from the camp from which they had escaped.
With the exception of Phisit, who was recaptured and later rescued by Laotian troops, none of the other prisoners were ever seen again.
DeBruin was reportedly captured and placed in another camp, then disappeared in Escape proved to be hazardous. Soon, the two men's feet were white, mangled stumps from trekking through the dense jungle.
They found the sole of an old tennis shoe, which they wore alternately, strapping it onto a foot with rattan for a few moments' respite. In this way they were able to make their way to a fast-flowing river.
The men built a raft and floated downstream on ferocious rapids, tying themselves to trees at night to stop themselves being washed away in the torrential water.
By morning they would be covered in mud and hundreds of leeches. When they thought they were on their way to the Mekong, they discovered that they had gone around in a circle.
They had spotted several villages but had not been detected. They set up camp in an abandoned village where they found shelter from the nearly incessant rain.
They had brought rice with them and found other food, but were still on the verge of starvation. Their intent had been to signal a C but at first lacked the energy to build a fire using primitive methods of rubbing bamboo together.
Dengler finally managed to locate carbine cartridges that Martin had thrown away and used their powder to enhance the tinder and got a fire going.
That night they lit torches and waved them in the shape of an S and O when a C came over. The airplane circled and dropped a couple of flares and they were overjoyed, believing they had been spotted.
They woke up the next morning to find the landscape covered by fog and drizzle, but when it lifted, no rescue force appeared.
Martin, who was weak from starvation and was suffering from malaria, wanted to approach a nearby Akha village to steal some food. Dengler knew it was not a good idea, but refused to let his friend go near the village alone.
They saw a little boy playing with a dog and the child ran into the village calling out "American! With the next swipe, Martin's head came off.
Dengler jumped to his feet and rushed toward the villager, who turned and ran into the village to get help.
I reached for the rubber sole from his foot, grabbed it and ran. From that moment on, all my motions became mechanical.
The film score was written by German composer Klaus Badelt , after previously working with Herzog in his film Invincible. The soundtrack was released on June 26, Preceding its theatrical run, Rescue Dawn was generally met with positive critical reviews before its initial screening in cinemas.
Among mainstream critics in the United States, the film received almost exclusively positive reviews. Its consensus reads, "Director Werner Herzog has once again made a compelling tale of man versus nature, and Christian Bale completely immerses himself in the role of fighter pilot and prisoner of war Dieter Dengler.
Kirk Honeycutt, writing in The Hollywood Reporter , said actor Bale's performance was "most complex and compelling". He praised the director Herzog for his use of "lush jungle locations in Thailand, eloquent camera work and an unobtrusive but powerful music score" which brought to life the "story of a man in the wilderness battling the elements on his own terms".
Film critic Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times called Rescue Dawn , "perhaps the most believable [movie] that Herzog has made" while exclaiming, "There is nothing in it we cannot, or do not, believe.
I was almost prepared to compare it to the classic storytelling of John Huston when I realized it had crucial Herzogian differences". In the San Francisco Chronicle , Walter Addiego wrote that the film was "an old-fashioned prisoner-of-war movie that becomes much more because of writer-director Werner Herzog's admiration for the remarkable true story of its protagonist , Dieter Dengler".
He thought the director "found an actor capable of conveying the Herzog-ian hero—wounded, a holy fool, a crackpot, a dreamer of outsized dreams—in everyone.
He declared, "War stories don't get much more harrowing or detached than Rescue Dawn , and that's both blessing and curse for the Werner Herzog film.
The film, however, was not without its detractors. Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail , felt that, "The strangely hybrid result, half Herzog and half Hollywood, plays like its own battleground.
Sometimes, the tension is fascinatingly productive; other times, all we get is the worst of both worlds". She added, director Herzog "already has covered much of the tropical terrain of his long-delayed action film in his documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly ".
Hoberman of The Village Voice , said the film "rivals Apocalypto as a jungle marathon, has all this and more".
He also noted, "Bale even looks authentically starved as in The Machinist. But seeing Dengler's adventure staged hardly seems more real than hearing his account—although, as conventionally framed and lit as it is, Rescue Dawn is the closest thing to a 'real' movie that Herzog has ever made.
And the triumphant ending—in which Dengler is welcomed back to his carrier with applause and speeches—is disappointingly conventional". James Berardinelli writing for ReelViews , called Rescue Dawn , "a solid effort from Herzog that fans of the genre should actively seek out" and noted that "Herzog understood when he made Little Dieter Needs to Fly that the ex-pilot's story would make an excellent feature.
It's surprising it has taken him so long to make that movie. He may be the most versatile under performer today. No role seems to be beyond him, and he has worked with some of the best directors of his era".
Describing some pitfalls, Elizabeth Weitzman of the NY Daily News said there was "an odd emotional disconnect leading up to the climactic escape, which can be traced directly to the performances".
Unfortunately, it's about 30 minutes too long. Although the rest of this based-on-truth adventure is woven with powerful moments, only toward the end will it hold you completely in its grip.
It's an instant classic of the form, a portrait of courage and sacrifice at their most stirring, but subversively resisting cant and cliche". Similarly, David Ansen wrote in Newsweek that " Rescue Dawn is a Werner Herzog movie and a true story , and though it's as taut and exciting as many edge-of-your-seat Hollywood escape movies, there's a mania about Dieter that sets him apart, a wild-eyed bravado that suggests the line between bravery and complete lunacy is a thin one.
Michael Phillips, in the Chicago Tribune , however, was not moved by the storytelling. He described his negativity saying " Rescue Dawn is Herzog's first English-language screenplay, and this is part of its problem: The hushed conversations between prisoners sound only fitfully idiomatic.
Also — crucially — Herzog can't find a way to make his own big finish feel authentic, even if things did happen roughly this way.
He praised the film, calling it an "edge-of-your-seat POW story". At Metacritic , which assigns a weighted average out of to critics' reviews, Rescue Dawn received a score of 77 based on 36 reviews.
Musetto of the New York Post , who called it one of the best films of Following its cinematic release in , Rescue Dawn was nominated for multiple awards, including a Golden Satellite Award and an Independent Spirit Award.
The film opened via limited release on July 4, in the United States. Its official wide release was on July 24, In addition, three deleted scenes with optional commentary by Herzog and Hill, and a still photo gallery are also included.
The widescreen hi-definition Blu-ray version was released at the same time. Special features include audio commentary by Herzog and Hill, deleted scenes with optional commentary by Herzog and Hill.
Other extras include featurettes The Making of a True Story multi-part documentary , Honoring the Brave interactive memorial , Preparing for Survival , Before the Dawn Mission Secrets trivia track , a photo gallery and the theatrical trailer in high definition format.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Theatrical release poster. Christian Bale Steve Zahn. Klaus Badelt Ernst Reijseger. Release date.
Running time. Christian Bale left and Steve Zahn right starred in the film. British Board of Film Classification. December 8, Retrieved December 7, The Numbers.
Retrieved: July 10, Box Office Mojo. Retrieved: December 13, Rescue Dawn [Motion picture]. United States: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Retrieved: June 2, CNET Networks. Retrieved: June 19, Rescue Dawn. Chicago Sun-Times , July 12, Retrieved: December 14, Retrieved: July 8, Review: 'Rescue Dawn'.
December 14, Independent Spirit Awards. Anton, Frank. New York: St. Martin's Press, Bailey, Lawrence. Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books, Dengler, Dieter.
Escape From Laos. Henderson, Bruce. New York: Harper, Maltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide.
September - 3. Er wurde durch den Dschungel marschiert und an vier Pfähle gebunden, die ausgebreitet Fußball Online Stream, um ihn nachts von der Flucht abzuhalten. Sie wachten am nächsten Morgen auf und stellten fest, dass die Landschaft von Nebel und Nieselregen bedeckt war, aber Die Eiskönigin Stream sie sich hob, erschien keine Rettungskraft. Dengler würde alles tun, um Pilot zu werden. Es könnte mich nicht weniger interessieren, ob ich lebte oder starb. Sie litten an chronischer Ruhr und mussten bis zum Morgen in ihren Matt Stone liegen.Dieter Dengler Navigation menu Video
Alive and Free - Or Dead - The First POW Pilot to Escape the Vietnam War Their plan was to take over the camp and signal a C Hercules flare-ship that made nightly visits to the area. That night when a C flare-ship came, Dengler set fire to the huts and burned the village down. He lived on the streets of Manhattan for just over a week and eventually found his Bibixxx Gangbang to an Air Force recruiter. Christian Deadshot Steve Zahn. Anitube biography task force.Dieter Dengler Video
Rescue Dawn Official Trailer #1 - Christian Bale, Steve Zahn Movie (2006) HD
Dieter Dengler Video
Little Dieter Needs to Fly Werner Herzog 1997
In the San Francisco Chronicle , Walter Addiego wrote that the film was "an old-fashioned prisoner-of-war movie that becomes much more because of writer-director Werner Herzog's admiration for the remarkable true story of its protagonist , Dieter Dengler".
He thought the director "found an actor capable of conveying the Herzog-ian hero—wounded, a holy fool, a crackpot, a dreamer of outsized dreams—in everyone.
He declared, "War stories don't get much more harrowing or detached than Rescue Dawn , and that's both blessing and curse for the Werner Herzog film.
The film, however, was not without its detractors. Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail , felt that, "The strangely hybrid result, half Herzog and half Hollywood, plays like its own battleground.
Sometimes, the tension is fascinatingly productive; other times, all we get is the worst of both worlds". She added, director Herzog "already has covered much of the tropical terrain of his long-delayed action film in his documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly ".
Hoberman of The Village Voice , said the film "rivals Apocalypto as a jungle marathon, has all this and more".
He also noted, "Bale even looks authentically starved as in The Machinist. But seeing Dengler's adventure staged hardly seems more real than hearing his account—although, as conventionally framed and lit as it is, Rescue Dawn is the closest thing to a 'real' movie that Herzog has ever made.
And the triumphant ending—in which Dengler is welcomed back to his carrier with applause and speeches—is disappointingly conventional".
James Berardinelli writing for ReelViews , called Rescue Dawn , "a solid effort from Herzog that fans of the genre should actively seek out" and noted that "Herzog understood when he made Little Dieter Needs to Fly that the ex-pilot's story would make an excellent feature.
It's surprising it has taken him so long to make that movie. He may be the most versatile under performer today.
No role seems to be beyond him, and he has worked with some of the best directors of his era". Describing some pitfalls, Elizabeth Weitzman of the NY Daily News said there was "an odd emotional disconnect leading up to the climactic escape, which can be traced directly to the performances".
Unfortunately, it's about 30 minutes too long. Although the rest of this based-on-truth adventure is woven with powerful moments, only toward the end will it hold you completely in its grip.
It's an instant classic of the form, a portrait of courage and sacrifice at their most stirring, but subversively resisting cant and cliche".
Similarly, David Ansen wrote in Newsweek that " Rescue Dawn is a Werner Herzog movie and a true story , and though it's as taut and exciting as many edge-of-your-seat Hollywood escape movies, there's a mania about Dieter that sets him apart, a wild-eyed bravado that suggests the line between bravery and complete lunacy is a thin one.
Michael Phillips, in the Chicago Tribune , however, was not moved by the storytelling. He described his negativity saying " Rescue Dawn is Herzog's first English-language screenplay, and this is part of its problem: The hushed conversations between prisoners sound only fitfully idiomatic.
Also — crucially — Herzog can't find a way to make his own big finish feel authentic, even if things did happen roughly this way. He praised the film, calling it an "edge-of-your-seat POW story".
At Metacritic , which assigns a weighted average out of to critics' reviews, Rescue Dawn received a score of 77 based on 36 reviews.
Musetto of the New York Post , who called it one of the best films of Following its cinematic release in , Rescue Dawn was nominated for multiple awards, including a Golden Satellite Award and an Independent Spirit Award.
The film opened via limited release on July 4, in the United States. Its official wide release was on July 24, In addition, three deleted scenes with optional commentary by Herzog and Hill, and a still photo gallery are also included.
The widescreen hi-definition Blu-ray version was released at the same time. Special features include audio commentary by Herzog and Hill, deleted scenes with optional commentary by Herzog and Hill.
Other extras include featurettes The Making of a True Story multi-part documentary , Honoring the Brave interactive memorial , Preparing for Survival , Before the Dawn Mission Secrets trivia track , a photo gallery and the theatrical trailer in high definition format.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Theatrical release poster. Christian Bale Steve Zahn. Klaus Badelt Ernst Reijseger.
Release date. Running time. Christian Bale left and Steve Zahn right starred in the film. British Board of Film Classification.
December 8, Retrieved December 7, The Numbers. Retrieved: July 10, Box Office Mojo. Retrieved: December 13, Rescue Dawn [Motion picture]. United States: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
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He was hung upside down by his ankles with a nest of biting ants over his face until he lost consciousness, suspended in a freezing well at night so that if he fell asleep he might drown.
On other occasions he was dragged through villages by a water buffalo , to the amusement of his guards, as they goaded the animal with a whip.
He was asked by Pathet Lao officials to sign a document condemning the United States, but he refused and as a result he was tortured as tiny wedges of bamboo were inserted under his fingernails and into incisions on his body which grew and festered.
He inserted a piece of wood, and twisted and twisted until my nerves cut against the bone. The hand was completely unusable for six months.
After some weeks Dengler was handed over to the Vietnamese. As they marched him through a village, a man slipped Dengler's engagement ring from his finger.
Dengler complained to his guards. They found the culprit, summarily chopped off his finger with a machete and handed the ring back to Dengler.
Dengler was eventually brought to a prison camp near the village of Par Kung where he met other POWs. The other six prisoners were:.
Except for Martin, an Air Force helicopter pilot who had been shot down in North Vietnam nearly a year before, the other prisoners were civilians employed by Air America , a civilian airline owned by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The civilians had been held by the Pathet Lao for over two and a half years when Dengler joined them. What I saw horrified me.
The first one who came out was carrying his intestines around in his hands. One had no teeth - plagued by awful infections, he had begged the others to knock them out with a rock and a rusty nail in order to release pus from his gums".
I realized that was how I would look in six months. I had to escape. The day he arrived in the camp, Dengler advised the other prisoners that he intended to escape and invited them to join him.
They advised that he wait until the monsoon season when there would be plenty of water. Shortly after Dengler arrived, the prisoners were moved to a new camp ten miles away at Hoi Het.
After the move, a strong debate ensued among the prisoners with Dengler, Martin and Prasit arguing for escape which the other prisoners, particularly Phisit initially opposed.
As food began to run out, tension between the men grew: they were given just a single handful of rice to share while the guards would stalk deer, pulling the grass out of the animal's stomach for the prisoners to eat while they shared the meat.
The prisoners' only "treats" were snakes they occasionally caught from the communal latrine or the rats that lived under their hut which they could spear with sharpened bamboo.
At night the men were handcuffed together and shackled to wooden foot blocks. They suffered chronic dysentery and were made to lie in their excrement until morning.
After several months, one of the Thai prisoners overheard the guards talking about shooting them in the jungle and making it look like an escape attempt.
They too, were starving and wanted to return to their villages. With that revelation, everyone agreed and a date to escape was set.
Their plan was to take over the camp and signal a C Hercules flare-ship that made nightly visits to the area. Dengler loosened logs under the hut that allowed the prisoners to squeeze through.
The plan was for him to go out when the guards were eating and seize their weapons and pass them to Phisit Intharathat and Promsuwan while Martin and DeBruin procured others from other locations.
There were two minutes and twenty seconds in the day when I could strike. On June 29, while the guards were eating, the group slipped out of their hand-cuffs and foot restraints and grabbed the guards' unattended weapons which included M1 rifles, Chinese automatic rifles, an American carbine and at least one sub-machine gun as well as an early version of the AK47 automatic rifle, which Dengler used during the escape from the POW camp.
Dengler went out first followed by Martin. He went to the guard hut and seized an M1 for himself and passed the American carbine to Martin.
The guards realized the prisoners had escaped and five of them rushed toward Dengler, who shot at least three with the AK Phisit killed another guard as he reached for his rifle.
Two others ran off, presumably to get help, although at least one had been wounded. The seven prisoners split into three groups.
DeBruin was originally supposed to go with Dengler and Martin but decided to go with To, who was recovering from a fever and unable to keep up. They intended to get over the nearest ridge and wait for rescue.
Dengler and Martin went off by themselves with the intention of heading for the Mekong River to escape to Thailand, but they never got more than a few miles from the camp from which they had escaped.
With the exception of Phisit, who was recaptured and later rescued by Laotian troops, none of the other prisoners were ever seen again. DeBruin was reportedly captured and placed in another camp, then disappeared in Escape proved to be hazardous.
Soon, the two men's feet were white, mangled stumps from trekking through the dense jungle. They found the sole of an old tennis shoe, which they wore alternately, strapping it onto a foot with rattan for a few moments' respite.
In this way they were able to make their way to a fast-flowing river. The men built a raft and floated downstream on ferocious rapids, tying themselves to trees at night to stop themselves being washed away in the torrential water.
By morning they would be covered in mud and hundreds of leeches. When they thought they were on their way to the Mekong, they discovered that they had gone around in a circle.
They had spotted several villages but had not been detected. They set up camp in an abandoned village where they found shelter from the nearly incessant rain.
They had brought rice with them and found other food, but were still on the verge of starvation. Their intent had been to signal a C but at first lacked the energy to build a fire using primitive methods of rubbing bamboo together.
Dengler finally managed to locate carbine cartridges that Martin had thrown away and used their powder to enhance the tinder and got a fire going.
That night they lit torches and waved them in the shape of an S and O when a C came over. The airplane circled and dropped a couple of flares and they were overjoyed, believing they had been spotted.
They woke up the next morning to find the landscape covered by fog and drizzle, but when it lifted, no rescue force appeared.
Martin, who was weak from starvation and was suffering from malaria, wanted to approach a nearby Akha village to steal some food.
Dengler knew it was not a good idea, but refused to let his friend go near the village alone. They saw a little boy playing with a dog and the child ran into the village calling out "American!
With the next swipe, Martin's head came off. Dengler jumped to his feet and rushed toward the villager, who turned and ran into the village to get help.
I reached for the rubber sole from his foot, grabbed it and ran. From that moment on, all my motions became mechanical. I couldn't care less if I lived or died.
He became like my pet dog and was the only friend I had. These were his darkest hours. Little more than a walking skeleton after weeks on the run, he floated in and out of a hallucinatory state.
Lots of horses came galloping out. They were not driven by death, but by angels.
Ja, wirklich. So kommt es vor. Geben Sie wir werden diese Frage besprechen. Hier oder in PM.
Entschuldigen Sie, dass ich Sie unterbreche, aber meiner Meinung nach ist dieses Thema schon nicht aktuell.