In the summer of 1968, 31-year-old U.S. Navy Lt. Commander John S. McCain III – a prisoner of war in a North Vietnamese POW camp – was offered by his captors a chance to go home.
McCain’s father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., had just been awarded command of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, and the North Vietnamese saw an opportunity for a propaganda stunt: Show the world a “merciful” North Vietnamese government, while simultaneously creating a sense among other American prisoners that the “blue bloods” among the POW ranks would easily accept preferential treatment.
The younger McCain refused the bait.
Wracked with dysentery, having been tortured as a POW for nearly eight months (he would be imprisoned for another five years), at times suicidal, nearly killed upon ejecting from his crippled A-4E Skyhawk (shot down over Hanoi), and beaten and bayoneted during his capture; McCain simply said “no.”
The young Naval aviator couldn’t go home; not and leave behind those men who had been imprisoned and tortured longer than he.
McCain’s rejection of the enemy offer seems remarkable to many journalists who have recently been covering the presidential campaign of the now 71-year-old U.S. senator from Arizona. Some have asked, “How could you not go home?” McCain’s response is almost always something along the lines of, “Most of my fellow POWs would have done the same thing I did.”
A salute to his fellow former-prisoners: But it was much more.
What the journalists who have been covering McCain don’t understand – and which the North Vietnamese also failed to grasp – is that McCain’s actions were not – and are not –unusual for an American fighting man; and when I say American fighting man, I am specifically speaking of those trained for service in the various combat arms fields.
Granted, the average person would have jumped at a chance to leave hell and go home. So there is nothing wrong with the question.
But to an American combatant – soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine – there are many things worse than separation from loved ones, mental and physical torture, and death.
Those things which are an aversion to the American combatant, in his purest form, include: betraying or abandoning others, quitting when others are still on the job, lying about anything, cheating, stealing, exhibiting cowardice, cooperating with an enemy, surrendering when one still has the means to resist, or in any way violating the Code of Conduct for U.S. fighting forces or any other written or unwritten honor code. And it is something that endures beyond one’s service.