He couldn’t recall how he had gotten there — all Douglas Hegdahl could remember was leaving behind his glasses in his bunk and going up to the top deck of the cruiser Canberra to watch the ship firing its guns off the Gulf of Tonkin.

“I can’t tell you how I fell from my ship,” Hegdahl said after his release in 1969 . “All I know is, I walked up on the deck. It was dark and they were firing, and the next thing I recall I was in the water.”

Picked up by a North Vietnamese fishing boat after treading water for hours, and handed over to the Viet Cong before being brought to Hỏa Lò Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.

It was there that the 20-year-old sailor from Clark, South Dakota, began one of the greatest non-combatant cons of the war.

Deemed a low-value prisoner due to his low r

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