I remember my first patrol in Vietnam like it was yesterday.  It was brutally hot and sweat rained down my face in steady stream as I scanned the horizon. I was absolutely terrified. My mind was cluttered with countless fears:  Would we be ambushed?   If I was shot at, would I measure up and return fire?

Today, nearly forty years after those terrifying steps, I still search for meanings to the values of duty and honor that are the center of my life.  Recently, I came across the astonishing story of Don Cook.  Just as I was easing into Vietnam, he was taking his last steps on earth as a prisoner of the Viet Cong.  Cook's story reflects how a special man with purpose can serve his nation even in the obscurity of a POW camp.  It is also a story worthy of the young and old alike because it tells of a person who in the face of certain death never wavered from his belief in God and faith in this nation.  We need to be told these of such heroic deeds as the boundary between civilians and military grows perilously larger.

It matters little that Cook was a Marine and even less that he was a Roman Catholic.  What is significant is that Cook met the harsh adversity of a Viet Cong prison camp with a selfless dignity that is living on far after his death in 1967 from starvation and disease deep inside the endless jungle of then South Vietnam.  He was always strong in the face of his captors' brutal demands and steadfast in sharing his meager food and medicine rations with his fellow troops.

Cook, a Marine captain with four children back home, was serving as an advisor to the Vietnamese Marine Corps in 1964 when he was wounded and captured in an intense firefight.  He spent the next three years being subjected to dysentery, malaria, and the savage beatings by his captors.  There were no Red Cross or clergy visits, letters home, or quiet time.  There was only misery in spades. 

The story of Cook comes alive because of the caring of the brilliant biographer Don Price in The First Marine Captured in Vietnam.  Price is a powerful storyteller.  The best biographers are those that are able to comprehend the heart, mind, and soul of the person that they are writing about.  A seamless and successful biography reveals the subject in a way that makes the person come alive for generations to come. This is what Price, also a Marine, has done in this carefully told story worthy of a Pulitzer Prize.

What did Cook do that was so remarkable?  For openers, Cook steadfastly held to the U.S. Code of Conduct by refusing to divulge anything more than his name, rank, serial number and date of birth.  Second, he took charge of the POW group even though this was not always the most senior member.  He ws constantly maltreated for the deeds of others, often isolated, shackled, and placed on half-rations.

As a young enlisted Marine in Vietnam, I feared being captured.  I once helped collected the remains of a murdered Marine.  He was chopped like firewood, his eyes gouged out, with still worse transgressions that I will not describe.  Our enemy had no respect for the Geneva Convention.

Those brave men who served and survived as Prisoners-of-War in any conflict deserve our utmost admiration.  Cook didn't make it out alive because he was defiantly selfless. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into the doing that matters, Mother Teresa reminded us.  She never had the time to care for herself. Cook selflessly conducted himself in keeping with the highest traditions of Marine Corps leadership.

A warrior cannot be ready for battle until he or she has committed to wearing the honor of our beloved country someplace near his or her heart.  Those who are motivated solely by spite or hatred can never rightly adorn the colors of this nation in battle.  Be sure of that.

Don Cook became the Marine Corps' first prisoner in the Vietnam War.  A man of immense faith fully shared, he now is being weighed as a martyr in the Catholic Church.  Those who were with him told his incredible story, and he was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1980.  Now, Price has shared this legend for us all.  We are in his debt.  Let us thank those who have sacrificed for our nation.