Hanoi Hilton
This footage is 35 years old and it's the first time I have seen it. You can see the strain on John McCains face as he is released. It had to be a moment when he was thinking, "Is this really happening? Am I actually finally free after 5 years? Something could go wrong and I will be returned to my cell... I hope I can make it to the plane..."
That's what would have been going through my mind and I can't even imagine the rest of what John McCain may have been thinking.
»
- Nelsa's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Here is Part 5 of our series, The POW Years: John McCain in His Own Words. John McCain wrote a 17 page spread for U.S. News and World Report soon after his return from captivity in Vietnam. It was printed in U.S. News in May 1973. You can go there and read the entire feature. This is John McCain's account of those terrible years in his own words.
Part 2 - "It Looked to Many as if I Had Been Drugged"
Part 3 - "Communication Was Vital "for Survivial"
Part 4 - They Told Me I'd Never Go Home"
PART 5
Prayer: "I Was Sustained in Times of Trial"
I was finding that prayer helped. It wasn't a question of asking for superhuman strength or for God to strike the North Vietnamese dead. It was asking for moral and physical courage, for guidance and wisdom to do the right thing. I asked for comfort when I was in pain, and sometimes I received relief. I was sustained in many times of trial.
When the pressure was on, you seemed to go one way or the other. Either it was easier for them to break you the next time, or it was harder. In other words, if you are going to make it, you get tougher as time goes by. Part of it is just a transition from our way of life to that way of life. But you get to hate them so bad that it gives you strength.
Now I don't hate them any more—not these particular guys. I hate and detest the leaders. Some guards would just come in and do their job. When they were told to beat you they would come in and do it. Some seemed to get a big bang out of it. A lot of them were homosexual, although never toward us. Some, who were pretty damned sadistic, seemed to get a big thrill out of the beatings. read more »
»
- brianinmo's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Here is a very moving conversation between the most militarily decorated living American, Bud Day, and Tom Brokaw. Bud Day is a veteran of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, including being a POW in Vietnam, where he was a cellmate of Sen. John McCain. Day talks about honor, service, and gives some insight into those terrible days as a POW. This video ran on NBC in November 2007.
Note: He begins talking about his time as a POW at around the 7:12 mark of the video.
Here is Part 4 of our series, The POW Years: John McCain in His Own Words. John McCain wrote a 17 page spread for U.S. News and World Report soon after his return from captivity in Vietnam. It was printed in U.S. News in May 1973. You can go there and read the entire feature. This is John McCain's account of those terrible years in his own words.
Part 2 - "It Looked to Many as if I Had Been Drugged"
Part 3 - "Communication Was Vital "for Survivial"
PART 4
"They Told Me I'd Never Go Home"
I really didn't know what to think, because I had been having these other interrogations in which I had refused to co-operate. It was not hard because they were not torturing me at this time. They just told me I'd never go home and I was going to be tried as a war criminal. That was their constant theme for many months.
Suddenly "The Cat" said to me, "Do you want to go home?"
I was astonished, and I tell you frankly that I said that I would have to think about it. I went back to my room, and I thought about it for a long time. At this time I did not have communication with the camp senior ranking officer, so I could get no advice. I was worried whether I could stay alive or not, because I was in rather bad condition. I had been hit with a severe case of dysentery, which kept on for about a year and a half. I was losing weight again.
But I knew that the Code of Conduct says, "You will not accept parole or amnesty," and that "you will not accept special favors." For somebody to go home earlier is a special favor. There's no other way you can cut it.
I went back to him three nights later. He asked again, "Do you want to go home?" I told him "No." He wanted to know why, and I told him the reason. I said that Alvarez [first American captured] should go first, then enlisted men and that kind of stuff. read more »
»
- brianinmo's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Here is an excerpt from John McCain's book, Faith of My Fathers, printed today in the Australian Herald Sun. In this excerpt, McCain speaks of the horrific torture he and other Prisoners of War endured at the hands of the Viet Cong. But he not only endured the brutality, he triumphed over it because they could not take away from him the faith of his Fathers.
EARLY in the morning I prepared for my 23rd bombing run over North Vietnam - and my first attack on the enemy capital, Hanoi, writes White House hopeful John McCain
Our target was the thermal power plant near a small lake almost at the centre of the city.
About 9000ft, as we turned inbound on the target, our warning lights flashed and the tone for enemy radar started sounding so loudly that I had to turn down the volume.
I could see huge clouds of smoke and dust erupt on the ground as surface-to-air missiles were fired at us. The closer we came to the target, the fiercer the defences.
I recognised the target sitting next to the small lake and dived in on it, just as the tone went off signalling that a missile was flying towards me.
I knew I should roll out and fly evasive manoeuvres - "jinking" in flyers' parlance - but I was just about to release my bombs and, had I started jinking, I would never have had the time, nor probably the nerve, to go back in once I had lost the missile.
So at 1000m, I released my bombs, then pulled back the stick to begin a steep climb to a safer altitude. In the instant before the plane reacted, a missile blew my right wing off. read more »
»
- brianinmo's blog
- Login or register to post comments
