According to a UPI wire story from Saigon which ran in American newspapers beginning Monday, September 27,

The Viet Cong said they executed two American prisoners Sunday … Although the broadcast did not say so, the executions apparently were in retaliation for the deaths Thursday of three anti-American demonstrators. The demonstrators were convicted by a military tribunal of engaging in terrorist activities and put before a firing squad in a soccer stadium at Da Nang.

An earlier execution of a Viet Cong terrorist by the government June 24 brought an announcement from the Communists that they had executed Sgt. Harold G. Bennet[t], a captive from Arkansas.

The two men shot on September 26 — whose names are garbled in the initial news report, since “the names were received phonetically” — were Sgt. Kenneth Mills Roraback and Capt. Humbert Roque “Rocky” Versace.

In 2002, Versace would be posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor — the first Vietnam War soldier so decorated on grounds of unwavering defiance as a POW.

On this day..

• 2014: A Barawe bigamist
• 1939: Javier Bueno, Asturian socialist newsman
• 1879: Anthony Blair
• 1946: Hong Sa-ik, a Korean general in the Japanese army
• 1568: Leonor de Cisneros, chastised wife
• 1904: Newly caught Herero prisoners-of-war
• 1803: Joseph Samuel survives three hangings
• 2003: Vignes Mourthi, framed in Singapore?
• 1778: James "Sandy Flash" Fitzpatrick
• 1913: Joe Richardson lynched
• 1764: Lt. Vasily Mirovich, for attempting to topple Catherine the Great
• 1396: Thousands of knights of the Last Crusade