He disappeared into the jungle in 1963… and the world wrote his obituary.
But James “Nick” Rowe — a Green Beret — was still alive. Just not in the way anyone expected.
Captured by the Viet Cong, Rowe spent 62 months (over 5 years) imprisoned in a bamboo cage.

Starved
Beaten
Isolated
Cut off from everything and everyone he loved
His captors tried to break him. Instead, he adapted.
He hid his rank, lied about his identity, and turned every interrogation into misdirection.
When most men would fade, he learned to bend without breaking.
Where hope should’ve died, he built it from scraps of willpower.
Then — after five years in the shadows — he did the unthinkable.
He escaped.
When Rowe came home, he didn’t retire quietly.

He transformed his suffering into a survival blueprint that would protect soldiers for decades to come.
He created SERE — Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, a program now used to train America’s elite forces how to endure the unendurable.
In 1987, he returned to the field as an Intelligence Officer in the Philippines, tracking terror networks and safeguarding U.S. troops.
But in 1989, while uncovering a major planned attack, Rowe was assassinated on his way to work — silenced by the very extremists his mission threatened.
Nick Rowe’s story isn’t just about survival.
It’s about resilience carved in bone.
A man who walked out of a cage…
… and spent the rest of his life teaching others how to do the same.
His legacy isn’t written in medals.
It lives in every soldier who comes home because he once refused to break.