Prisoner of War

I've been thinking about it for a long time on taking a important personal steps in my life with talking about my very painful experiences being a POW in a war zones. I've kept the fact that I was earlier in my lifetime in military service in the Army a victim of being a POW in foreign countries. I decided that since I'm age 50 sitting in a room with other people on New Years day I'd finally come to terms with talking about a dark period in my life serving overseas in the US Army. Sitting next to a older women who came to America as a child from Germany who survived her heroic escaping East Germany made me think hard about things in my lifetime I've survived. I turned to her after a long conversation listening to running away from communist Stazi East German police and border guards while crossing the Berlin Wall,one of very few people to succeed at not being brutally murdered doing it. I finally decided to open up to her and a couple people sitting close to her that I suffered enormous pain and brutality,torture,cruelty,etc at the hands of my hateful captors who night and day did heinous things to me as a Prisoner of War. It's very painful two times being captured by a hostile enemy that left me with permanent scars in my lifetime. You see people who are Army and military service branches being depicted in movies as weak,incompetent walking dead people. I guess people don't want to hear that some people on this planet don't have a glamorous life in a prison camp. I sit here at age 50 thankful that I'm living and I survived being a military prisoner in Somalia POW camp. The guards were horrible & brutally torture,abusive towards American soldiers in the POW prison camp. The torture,beating,force starvation,physical brutality never stopped night and day I suffered and so did other American soldiers in this camp. The Somalia government looked the other way while us the American soldiers got continued brutally treated and we all felt NO Body cared about us. I admit I'm having trouble trying to write this article because I'm still effected by hearing the screams of my fellow American soldiers being brutally treated and some of them died from it. The electric shocking,constant mental,physical torture,taunting,etc of military POWs is what we went through in this prison camp. They used needless to lethal injection,shot with a pistol,beating to death anyone in the camp who did not do what they demand night and day. I'll never forgive the Somalia guards for the heinous things they did to me including repeatedly trying to end my life. You accept that when you join the military their are risks involved in being shipped to foreign countries but nobody ever gives you handbook & classes on survival of POW situation. The fact is your on your own once you become a POW in a foreign country that is in a war.  Basically you either quickly learn how to survive being a POW or you die from it which is what happens to most POW people they never walk out living to freedom and go home to their families. I remember when I was a military advisor in the Pentagon in later life we had a discussion on how to better prepare people for being overseas deployment to a hostile areas in countries. I said people in military service aren't being given adequate preparation for dealing with hostile war situations. The military brass took everything I said to heart knowing I'm one of the fortunate survivors of being a POW in Somalia and the other country which did worse things to me as a POW. The second experience of being POW I'm still not able to come out talking about it because it's just gruesome what the guards did to me every day. I get it that a lot of the hatred,brutality I unfortunately experienced was because of being US Army Special Operations & being in a foreign country that has insane hatred towards American people especially American soldiers
. Being a POW survivor I've decided to break my silence this year 2019 to tell some of what happened to me because I hope this will help the thousands of POW survivors same as myself begin the healing process and come to terms with the lifetime after effects of being in a foreign country captured and imprisoned in a prison camp. I still carry anger,resentment,hatred towards the guards in both countries camps that did heinous things to me. I read the Holy Bible it says to practice forgiveness to your enemies and turn the other cheek I still can't do that even at age 50 for what they did to me as a Prisoner of War. I'll just stop talking here the pain of both times being ruined in a POW camp because I don't want to relive it again even though talking about it seems to be helping me..

H.E. John F Norton Jr.