303F Fall 2026 The Unlikely War Hero: The Vietnam War Story of Navy Seaman Apprentice Doug Hegdahl

This presentation is based on the instructor’s 2024 book, The Unlikely War Hero, a slice-of-life biography of the Vietnam War story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest-ranking American captured in North Vietnam and held in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. The 20-year-old seaman apprentice serving aboard the USS Canberra fell off the ship in the Tonkin Gulf in the early morning hours of April 6, 1967. He managed to survive for at least three hours in the China Sea, then was picked up by a North Vietnamese fishing boat and taken to the Hanoi Hilton. He went on to make Vietnam War history. Calling it “a strange, fascinating, and ultimately powerful account of one man's endurance of life as a POW during the American war in Vietnam,” Tim O’Brien called the book “one of the finest nonfiction narratives to emerge from the Vietnam War."

A former staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, Marc Leepson is a journalist, historian, and the author of 11 books, including Saving Monticello and biographies of the Marquis de Lafayette, Francis Scott Key, and Army Sgt. Barry Sadler. He served two years in the Army, including in the Vietnam War. The arts editor, senior writer, and columnist for The VVA Veteran, he taught U.S. History at Laurel Ridge Community College from 2008-15.