GONE BUT NOT
FORGOTTEN
McCain flew
an A-4 Sky Hawk on bombing mission over North Vietnam. Flying off and on the moving and pitching
deck of an aircraft carrier is, in itself, a dangerous mission, and only the
best Navy pilots are assigned that duty.
On his last
missions his plane was hit by a ground-to-air missile and he ejected into a
lake outside of Hanoi sustaining a broken leg.
He was captured by North
Vietnamese Regulars. His shoulder was
smashed by a blow from a rifle butt and he was stabbed in the abdomen and the
foot.
He was
brutally interrogated for a number of days and it wasn’t until the North
Vietnamese realized his father was an important admiral that he was given
medical treatment. He was eventually
transferred to a prison camp known as the Plantation
At the
Plantation he was interrogated and brutally tortured. With his hands tied behind him he was hoisted
off the floor and beaten, dislocating his shoulders in the process. Throughout this whole time, he kept faith
with his fellow POW’s, the Navy and the United States of America. As a political ploy the North Vietnamese
offered McCain an early release but McCain refused saying he would only accept
a release if every POW captured before him was also released.
McCain spent
five years in the Hanoi POW camp, much of that time in isolation under mental
and physical duress.
This man
kept the faith and was an example to his band of brothers.
After his
return and recovery McCain visited the Navy SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance
and Escape) detachment where I was an instructor. It was my privilege to meet McCain, along with other POW's, and hear firsthand
his experience at the hands of the North Vietnamese.
This country
owes a great debt to McCain and to all American Prisoners of War.
McCain’s
funeral was attended by Senators and Congressmen and former Presidents; but the
current President was missing in action.
Our five times deferments, draft dodging, cowardly President has shown contempt for McCain. Trump said in a Howard Stern interview that he had his own Vietnam by avoiding venereal disease from the women he had sex with during the Vietnam era – he called himself 'a brave soldier'.
Trump stated on television that McCain (and by extension all American POW’s) were not
heroes – that he liked men who weren’t captured. Trump ordered that the flag over the White
House not be lowered to half-mass after McCain’s death - but later reneged
after pressure from the American Legion.
It is beyond
my understanding how any man who has done military service or anyone that
supports our men and women in the military can back this unpatriotic, insecure billionaire
that now inhabits the oval office.
The Ol'Buzzard
