
Speaker Series: The Party Dolls – Escape from the Zoo Annex – Vietnam POW Story
July 5 @ 1:00 pm, ending 2:30 pm
Free with standard museum admission
Join us on Saturday, July 5th, 1pm to 2:30pm, for an engaging talk by award winning author George Hayward on his book The Party Dolls.
On 10 May 1969, two American prisoners of war escaped from a brutal Hanoi prison camp called the Annex. Their story is one of incredible bravery against the longest of odds. It’s also one of bitter conflict. Air Force Captains John Dramesi and Ed Atterberry escaped with help from their fellow prisoners, but that help was not given freely. The suffering it brought killed Atterberry, and scarred others for life.

Photo: John Dramesi on the left, AHM’s Hanoi Hilton Exhibit center, Ed Atterberry on the right.
THE PARTY DOLLS is the riveting, award-winning* true Vietnam War story of a failed escape code-named “the Party,” told by the former POWs who planned it. Author and former Air Force journalist George Hayward wrote it based on interviews he did between 1995 and 2002 with those POWs, and never released until this book. This is the most detailed account ever released of a heroic yet divisive—and little-known—episode from a divisive American conflict.
*2021 winner for Nonfiction Military History, Best Indie Book Awards® (BIBA®) and 2022 winner Military Nonfiction, Independent Press Awards.