Immediately after Army pilot William Reeder’s attack helicopter was shot down and crashed in South Vietnam, he was unable to stand and suspected his back was broken.

“I was almost completely paralyzed,” said Reeder, now a retired Army colonel and author of a new book, “Through the Valley: My Captivity in Vietnam.”

Reeder, who attended Roosevelt High School in Honolulu for a year in the early 1960s, recalls in his book how he survived as a prisoner of war for 11 months and became emotionally stronger because of the experience.

A book-signing event is set for 1 to 3 p.m. today at the Pacific Aviation Museum. The 238-page book, published by Naval Institute Press in April, focuses on his ordeal as a prisoner of war and an excruciatingly painful three-month march to a prison in Hanoi.

During his year in Honolulu, Reeder had a newspaper route delivering the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and was in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at Roosevelt. He finished high school in California and enlisted in the Army in August 1965, thinking he would serve three years in the military and return to civilian life.

Reeder was on his second tour of duty in Vietnam, after graduating from the officer’s training program, and flying a Cobra attack helicopter near the Cambodian and Laotian border on May 9, 1972, when his aircraft was shot down.

At the crash site, despite his injuries, he crawled into nearby brush then managed to walk far enough to elude the North Vietnamese military for three days.

Besides his back injury, he had burns on the back of his neck, his right ankle was bleeding from a shrapnel wound, and shell fragment wounds left blood running down his face.

During subsequent interrogation, his captors bound Reeder’s elbows together, resulting in dislocations in both arms. Also, they took his socks, forcing him to walk sockless in boots for the three-month march to Hanoi, after which the bottom of his feet felt “like hamburger.”

In addition, his right leg became infected and he suffered a number of tropical diseases, including three kinds of malaria.

Reeder said initially he was grouped with prisoners confined in bamboo cages in jungle camps with meager provisions. “Conditions were very, very bad,” he said. “People were dying almost every day. … That was complete agony.”

Upon entering the prison in Hanoi, Reeder said he knew he would survive. “I don’t know how long I would have survived in the camps,” he said.

Reeder said his book also honors a couple of captured South Vietnamese soldiers who, at the expense of their own well-being, helped him stay alive.

He was released from the Hanoi prison on March 7, 1973, several months before direct U.S. involvement in the war ended. Reeder, who retired from the Army as a full colonel in 1995, said he had been thinking about writing his book for more than 40 years.

But when he sat down to write it, he was forced to relive the POW experience in his mind’s eye. “That was unsettling. I went to bed with not having good thoughts and dreams,” he said. “I was wondering what I was doing.”

Reeder said his wife, Melanie, kept him on track as she contended that his personal story could inspire and motivate people who have suffered similar experiences. “We all face problems,” he said. “The small things in life don’t bother me anymore.”