Nation: A Feeling for Freedom

U.S. pilots in Viet Nam—like the airmen in the three other wars Americans have fought this century—laugh off the dangers they face each day in enemy skies. Yet as Hanoi intensifies its flak and missile defenses, they realize all too well the likelihood of death or capture and extend a special kind of respect to those who have eluded both. Into the flyer's pantheon of heroes last week went two young Navy lieutenants. One—whose name the Pentagon withheld to protect other prisoners who might have helped him—escaped from a Laos-based prison camp. He spent 23 days hiding in mountain...