This is the incredible tale of the youngest and lowest-ranking American POW captured in North Vietnam. Doug Hegdahl convinced his captors he was stupid, then spent the next two years memorizing the names of 254 fellow prisoners.
In April 1967, twenty-year-old Doug Hegdahl was knocked overboard from a U.S. Navy cruiser in the Gulf of Tonkin. Initially believed to be a special ops commando, he was turned over to North Vietnamese who beat him and then turned him over to the prison known as the Hanoi Hilton, where Hegdahl maintained a ruse of being a country bumpkin who couldn’t read or write. The North Vietnamese called him “The Incredibly Stupid One,” and guards paid no attention to Hegdahl as he proceeded to memorize information about more than 250 prisoners, which he memorized to the tune of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Offered release in the summer of 1969, Hegdahl balked—the POW code stipulated that prisoners should be released in the order of capture—but was ordered to accept so that he could provide his information to the American military.
In a vividly written book based on archival research, personal interviews, and the author’s own experiences in the Vietnam War, Marc Leepson tells the story of this most unique of American military heroes. Most of the prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton were pilots or navigators—such as John McCain and James Stockdale—and Hegdahl was the only non-officer, the lowest-ranking person in the prison. He was never properly recognized or decorated for his extraordinary efforts after the war, and his story has never been told, except briefly in books like John McCain’s Faith of My Fathers. Hegdahl’s is a story of survival, not only his own, but that of the hundreds of American POWs he helped ensure.
"Marc Leepson's The Unlikely War Hero is a comprehensive and enthralling study of Navy sailor Douglas Hegdahl's captivity during the Vietnam War, and his extraordinary and dedicated service to his fellow POWs and to U.S. naval intelligence. It is a worthy complement to the literature on the POW experience."
"In The Unlikely War Hero, author and Vietnam War veteran Marc Leepson probes one of the most under-appreciated stories of the American POW experience during the long and costly war in Southeast Asia. With the empathy of a former enlisted man, Leepson tells a thoroughly researched story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest-ranking American captured by the North Vietnamese, who used his status as a low-value prisoner to become a veritable font of first-hand information regarding the status and treatment of his fellow POWs upon his reluctant early release from captivity. This book tells us once again never to underestimate the wily American enlisted man. It's an inspiring treat to read for veterans and those who simply appreciate the unsinkable American spirit."
"Talk about forgotten heroes! In The Unlikely War Hero, Marc Leepson has dug gold. In telling one of the most remarkable stories to come out of the Vietnam War, he has come up with a damned good read. And he tells the story with compassion and verve."
"This remarkable, true story of a young American who used common sense, humor, guts, and guile to outwit his pitiless captors kept me turning its pages. Marc Leepson's book is an astonishing story of survival in the brutal POW camps of North Vietnam by an average boy from South Dakota who kept himself alive, and helped many of his higher-ranking fellow captives. At times, I almost felt like I was in those cells with Doug and the other POWs. Doug Hegdahl may be an unlikely hero, but a hero he was, and the nation should be thankful for the perseverance he demonstrated across years of cruel captivity."
Marc Leepson graduated from George Washington University with a history degree in 1967, served in the U.S. Army for the following two years, including a tour in Vietnam, and earned a master’s in history from George Washington. He was a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly for ten years before becoming a fulltime freelancer. His work has appeared in magazines such as Smithsonian, Military History, Civil War Times, American History, Vietnam, and World War II, and in newspapers such as the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. He has been senior writer, arts editor, and columnist for The VVA Veteran (the magazine of Vietnam Veterans of America) and has written reviews for Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. He has been interviewed on The Today Show, the History Channel, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, and other TV and radio shows. His previous books are Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler from the Vietnam War and Pop Stardom to Murder and Unsolved, Violent Death; What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, a Life; Lafayette: Lessons in Leadership from the Idealist General; Desperate Engagement: How a Little-Known Civil War Battle Saved Washington, DC, and Changed American History; Flag: An American Biography; Saving Monticello: The Levy Family’s Epic Quest to Rescue the House That Jefferson Built. He lives in Middleburg, Virginia.
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