POW Bracelet

POW Bracelet

My mother has been a scrap booker from the beginning. She has put together scrap books from the Depression, World War II, my tonsillectomy and my sister and I each have a scrap book which contains articles about our accomplishments, pictures, mementos, etc. It does make for some excellent history reading. Recently I found the scrap book she kept of all of the letters I sent to her after I first joined the Navy in 1971.

I ran across a letter I wrote in December of 1971:

Dec 1971

Dear Dad,
I am enclosing something you might be interested in, a POW bracelet card, I have bought one and it would really make me feel good if you would buy one also. It’s only $2.50 and the POW/MIA effort needs all they can get. Several members of my squadron have been in this predicament.

Have you seen the article in January’s Reader’s Digest entitled, “Five Years to Freedom”? It is something to think about.
If I were in that predicament I would appreciate all the help people were doing back home.
The one I am wearing is for Staff/Seargeant (sic) David Demmon, who was captured in June 1965.

Love,
Robert

PS I took the liberty of filling it out. Send it in if you desire

I don’t know if my Dad ever did buy the bracelet, but after reading the letter yesterday I thought I’d look up Sgt Demmon on the internet. I found a lot of information, including that his status was upgraded from MIA to POW. In April 1991 the US government released a list of Prisoners of War and Missing in Action who were known to be alive in enemy hands and for whom there is no evidence that he or she died in captivity. This list commonly referred to today as the USG's "Last Known Alive" list, included David Demmon.

I thought I see if there were still POW bracelets available and located a site where they can be purchased. There is and it is: http://www.memorialbracelets.com/index.html. Unfortunately, we have added conflicts and names to the list.

I will start wearing a POW Bracelet for David Demmon.