The men seemed tense when they got off the small camouflage-painted buses at Gia Lam. A crowd of several hundred North Vietnamese soldiers and civilians stared at them in the glaring noon sun. Only when they spotted the American escort officers did most of the men break into wide grins. Tension and stiffness gave way to relaxation. It has been such a long trip. None of the prisoners talked to the large crowd of Hanoi-based and visiting newsmen away from the three evacuation planes.
Someone smashed his shoulder with a rifle butt, and a bayonet was jabbed into his groin and ankle. Soldiers then heaved his body onto a truck. Hubbell in his book P. Guards gave him minimal food and water. For days, the year-old pilot drifted in and out of consciousness. When questioned, he just told his captors his name, rank and serial number. In return, jailers beat him. Now we take you to the hospital. No one had even bothered to wash the grime off me. Guards returned McCain to a roach-filled room, and interrogators beat him.
Someone else stuck a bayonet in my ankle and groin. Soon, an army truck arrives, taking McCain as a prisoner of war. He will remain one for five and a half years.
After six weeks, he has lost 50 pounds and weighs barely With the help of fellow prisoners, McCain slowly regains some strength and is eventually able to stand up and walk with the aid of crutches. McCain ultimately refuses the offer, telling a North Vietnamese officer that his decision is final. The beatings and interrogations continue, and McCain makes two attempts to hang himself, earning further beatings as punishment. Unable to take it any longer, he says, he signs a confession dictated by his captors.
Told the following day to make a tape recording of the confession he at first refuses but is soon beaten into complying. No one would ever look upon me again with anything but pity or contempt. McCain remains a prisoner until the U. McCain is photographed shaking hands with President Richard M. Nixon, while standing with the aid of two crutches. Richard Nixon personally welcomed him home after McCain's five and a half years as a P. In , McCain retires from the Navy with the rank of captain.
Senate, where he becomes an unusually visible freshman senator, with a focus on military and foreign-policy issues. In the decades that followed, he proved that incarceration did more than merely offer the opportunity to make his own name. It shaped his life and gave him an origin story that would sustain the McCain mythology throughout the rest of his time in the military, as well as in the House and the Senate. Write to Lily Rothman at lily. By Lily Rothman. John McCain, front, right with his squadron in Get our History Newsletter.
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