Former prisoners of war honored
BUTLER TWP — John Durisko was a young Army medic tending to a wounded soldier near the end of World War II when he tried to reach the rest of the men in his outfit.
“I ran into a German machine gun,” said Durisko, now 97.
He was held for more than eight months in a small village near the Baltic Sea.
Asked the conditions of his internment, Durisko only looks into the distance and replies “Not too good.”
Hilles Miles, also of Mercer County, was a 19 year-old Marine when he was captured by the Viet Cong as he attempted to repair a military truck.
Miles spent 30 days as a captive, sleeping each night in a closed-in shelter the size of a portable restroom.
“I had to sleep sitting up,” he said. “It was rough.”
When his captors left the interment camp en masse to find more Americans, he and his six fellow prisoners killed the two Viet Cong guarding them and escaped.
“I’m the only one of those seven men left,” Miles said.
These were just two of the harrowing stories of bravery, resilience and survival among the six former POWs honored Friday at the Abie Abraham VA Medical Center during the annual POW/MIA Recognition Day Luncheon.
