“Rescue Dawn,” Eugene DeBruin and Dieter Dengler

Hollywood has long taken liberties when it comes to telling true stories and depicting real lives, but in Werner Herzog’s film, “Rescue Dawn,” his over-the-top depiction of a Wisconsin-bred American POW held captive in Laos was egregious.

Eugene DeBruin, who escaped from a POW camp in southern Laos along with U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler and five others in 1966, elected to stay in the vicinity of the camp with a fellow Air America crewmen and POW: a Chinese radio operator named To Yick Chiu, who was too ill to travel any distance. Their plan called for the others — when they reached safety — to tell the U.S. military where to look for DeBruin and Chiu. Dengler, who would become the longest-held American POW to escape captivity during the Vietnam War, tried to talk DeBruin out of staying behind, beseeching him to stick with the other two Americans on their trek through the jungle. If  DeBruin had listened to Dengler, he may well have made it out alive, as Dengler did. Instead, DeBruin and Chiu never made it out of the jungle. Later reports indicated that the two men likely had been recaptured by the Pathet Lao and executed.

Dengler always spoke highly of DeBruin, calling him “our peacemaker.” He certainly would have related this to Werner Herzog — the two men became close friends when Herzog filmed a 1997 documentary about Dengler (“Little Dieter Needs to Fly”). I can say this with certainty because Dengler told me the same thing more than once and never wavered in his sadness about the kindhearted DeBruin’s lost bid for freedom, believing his decision to not abandon a sick friend cost DeBruin his life. Also, presumably Herzog read Dengler’s 1976 book, ESCAPE FROM LAOS; in it, Dengler noted DeBruin’s exemplary character, and ultimate sacrifice.

Six years after Dengler’s death in 2001, along came Herzog with his feature film (now in Blu-ray) starring Christian Bale as Dengler. For some reason, the facts of this amazing escape story were insufficient for the noted German filmmaker, who directed the movie from his own script. Herzog jazzed up the script with a wholly fictitious likeliness of DeBruin, played by actor Jeremy Davies.  DeBruin comes off as a crazed and unstable Charles Manson-type — not to be trusted, and feared by his fellow POWs. Shame on Werner.

Gene DeBruin’s brother, Jerry, a retired college professor, is among Herzog’s staunchest critics. He helped start a website, www.RescueDawnTheTruth.com, to publish rebuttals to the Herzog film, taking particular offense to the portrayal of his brother, Gene. In researching my new book, HERO FOUND: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (Harper, 2010), I contacted Jerry DeBruin in 2007, explaining that I was attempting to gather accurate information about his brother. He declined to discuss his brother with me. For a year I pursued him via telephone and email, hoping he would reconsider. Jerry DeBruin remained mute.

It baffled me then, and continues to puzzle me to this day, that someone who could be so upset and concerned about the inaccurate portrayal of his brother in a Hollywood film would be unwilling to make sure a nonfiction book author got his brother right. In the end, I believe I did just that in HERO FOUND — portraying the kindly Gene DeBruin that Dieter Dengler admired and never forgot.