The march soon deteriorated into near riot conditions, with North Vietnamese civilians beating the POWs along the 2 miles (3.2 km) route and their guards largely unable to control the melee.
Later, as the war became increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad, concern for the welfare of captured U.S. service members would become one of the few areas of common ground between opponents and supporters of the conflict.
On the afternoon of July 6, thirty-six POWS from the camp at Cu Loc nicknamed "The Zoo", and sixteen from the "Briar Patch" at Xom Ap Lo[4][5] were transported to the Hàng Đẫy Stadium in central Hanoi.
The POWs were issued prison uniforms stenciled with large, non-consecutive three-digit numbers, which they later speculated was intended to suggest that Hanoi held far more American captives than it did; at that point in the war, fewer than a hundred U.S. service members had been captured.
The organizers had obviously wanted to get the crowd riled up, angry and even more committed to the war effort, but had no intention of turning the locals loose to maul, and ultimately kill the prisoners.
[3] Numerous European journalists and film crews were present during the march, and their subsequent reporting on the event brought considerable condemnation of North Vietnam's treatment of American prisoners.
[3] Internationally, the prime ministers of India and the United Kingdom, Indira Gandhi and Harold Wilson, respectively, urged the Soviet Union to curb North Vietnamese mistreatment of U.S. prisoners.