What Happens When we Lose Hope?

Major Harold Kushner was a prisoner of the Viet Cong for more than five years. Kushner describes one of his fellow American prisoners, a tough twenty-four-year-old Marine who had made a deal with their captors. The Marine agreed to cooperate with the enemy, and in return the commander of the prison camp promised he would let him go.

The young Marine did whatever was asked of him. He became a model prisoner, and he even became the leader of the camp’s thought-reform group. But before long it became clear to him that the camp commander had lied to him and that the Viet Cong had no…