A Green Beret's True Story of His Jack Lawson with Sully de Fontaine

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dropped on their homeland and could not believe that there was
any thought of defeat or surrender on the part of their emperor.
The troops living on Hainan Island lived well in a very pleasant climate.
They were seldom under air attack and when one of the infrequent
attackers showed up they were frequently shot down. The
crew members who survived the crash would be paraded through
the villages then executed in public.
In squalid conditions of the Hainan prison compound, we were
shocked to find hundreds of Dutch and Australian POWs, who unlike
many of their comrades, had survived starvation but were near death
after three years of enslavement by their Japanese captors.
Like the atrocities that Sully’s team would experience fifteen
years later during their Congo rescue mission, flies rose as we approached
prison huts where the stench of death prevailed.
Saving one allied soldier from dying in a prison camp would be a
small measure of success. Saving hundreds as we did was a resounding
signal to the world that free people will prevail in an oppressed
society as long as there is a government that will support the rescuers
and give them the latitude to do their jobs.
That is why stories of these humanitarian missions by U.S. soldiers
should never be forgotten or concealed in the classified libraries of
military history.
MG John K. Singlaub (USA Ret.)
Retired Army Major General John K. Singlaub’s wartime service has included
Special Operations combat missions into Nazi occupied France and Japanese occupied
China during World War II, and similar operations into communist occupied parts
of Korea during the Korean War and later into communist occupied parts of South
East Asia during the Vietnam War.