Ernest Brace

"Ernest Brace was a US Marine Corps pilot decorated for combat service in Korea, court-martialled for desertion after a plane crash and later celebrated for his fortitude as the longest-held civilian POW in the Vietnam War.



Brace spent nearly eight years in captivity. John McCain, the former US Presidential candidate who occupied the cell next to Brace's at the prison known as the Hanoi Hilton, described him as "a man whose bravery and sacrifice for this country have had no bounds".
Brace flew more than 100 missions in Korea, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross. In January 1961 he was on an officers' training course in Virginia when his plane crashed. He abandoned the scene, hitchhiked to Baltimore and turned himself in 10 days later, saying that he was burdened by domestic and FINANCIAL problems and had hoped to "get away from it all". A court martial convicted him of desertion and sentenced him to punitive dismissal.
He became a civilian contract pilot ferrying supplies and passengers into Laos during the Vietnam War. In 1965 Communist forces attacked his plane on an airstrip. He spent the next seven years and 10 months, "mostly encaged in small bamboo cages, to be beaten, starved, buried alive, and humiliated"."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/ernest-brace-war-hero-courtmartialled-for-desertion-who-became-the-longestserving-civilian-prisoner-of-war-in-vietnam-9926791.html