Interviews & Essays
Essay By AuthorSeptember 1999
Senator John McCain Remembers a Courageous Comrade In his poem "The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water," Yeats wrote this verse:
I hear the old, old men say
All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.
Although I am, thankfully, not yet stuck with the appellation "old, old man," I grow closer to that rank than to my much-enjoyed and terribly misspent youth, and I take Yeats's point. Like most people, when I reflect back on the adventures, joys, and beauty of youth, I feel a longing for what is past and cannot be restored. But though the pleasures and vanities of youth prove ephemeral, something better can endure and endure until our last moment on earth. And that is the love we give and the honor we earn when, at a moment in our lives, we sacrifice with others for a cause greater than our self-interest.
We cannot always choose the moments. Oftentimes, they arrive unbidden by us. We can choose to let the moments pass, and avoid the difficulties they entail. But the loss we would incur by that choice is much dearer than the tribute we once paid to vanity.
When I was a young man, I thought glory was the highest ambition, and that all glory was self-glory. My parents tried to teach me otherwise, as did the United States Naval Academy. But I didn't understand the lesson until later in life when, as a prisoner of war, I confronted challenges to my self-respect that I never expected to face.
In that confrontation, I discovered that I was dependent on others to a greater extent than I had everrealized, but that neither they nor the cause we served made any claims on my identity. On the contrary, they gave me a larger sense of myself than I had before. I discovered that nothing is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone. Many good men, better men than I, taught me that lesson; among them was Mike Christian.
Mike was a Navy bombardier-navigator who had been shot down and captured in Vietnam the same year I had, 1967. He had grown up near Selma, Alabama. His family was poor. He had not worn shoes until he was 13 years old. Character was their wealth, and they raised Mike to be a good, righteous man.
What few packages the Vietnamese allowed us to receive from our families often contained handkerchiefs, scarves, and other clothing items. For some time, Mike had been taking little scraps of red and white cloth, and with a needle fashioned from a splinter of bamboo, he laboriously sewed an American flag onto the inside of his blue prison shirt. Every afternoon, before we ate our soup, we would hang Mike's flag on the wall of our cell and together recite the Pledge of Allegiance. No other event of the day had as much meaning to us.
The guards discovered Mike's flag one afternoon during a routine inspection and confiscated it. They returned that evening and took Mike outside. For our instruction as much as Mike's, they beat him severely, just outside our cell, puncturing his eardrum and breaking several of his ribs. When they had finished, they dragged him bleeding and nearly senseless back into our cell, and we helped him crawl to his place on the concrete platform that served as our bed. After things quieted down, we all lay down to go to sleep. Before drifting off, I happened to look toward a corner of the room, where one of the four naked lightbulbs that were always on in our cell cast a dim light on Mike Christian. He had crawled there quietly when he thought the rest of us were sleeping. With his eyes nearly swollen shut from the beating, he had picked up his needle and thread and begun sewing a new flag.
"All that's beautiful drifts away," except love and honor. And that makes all the difference, all the difference in the world.
—Senator John McCain
Forewords & Introductions
September 1999
In
Faith of My Fathers, former presidential candidate John McCain, whose tumultuous life and successful political career were documented in the bestselling
The Nightingale's Song, now tells his own story, with a focus on the men whose guidance, example, and influence have served to help make him the man he is today. Senator McCain composed the following essay exclusively for Barnes & Noble.com; in it he pays tribute to the courage and commitment exhibited by one of his fellow POW's during the Vietnam War.
Read an Excerpt
I returned to my room and called the television's ten owners together. I explained the situation, and that I had to bring Hart an answer right away. "Only one of us is going to get the demerits," I said, "and we have to choose who, right now." We settled the question as we always settled things in those days, with a "shake around." Over my objection, my friends, aware of my perilous situation at the Academy, excused me from participating.
In unison, each man hit his right fist three times into the palm of his other hand. On the third strike, each stuck out some of the fingers of his right hand. We then counted off the sum of the nine men's extended fingers, one number per man, with the last number falling on the man who would confess ownership of the television. As luck and fate would have it, the man turned out to be Henry Vargo.
Henry Vargo was a model midshipman. Studious, disciplined, respectful, Henry hardly ever bothered to watch the television. He had joined in its purchase only to help us out, to be one of the guys. Henry did not possess very many demerits, so the punishment he was about to receive wouldn't pose much of a problem for him. As added compensation, we magnanimously said that Hart would have to give the television back at the end of the year and Henry could keep it.
Smiling with satisfaction and relief, I returned to Hart's office to reveal the culprit.
"Midshipman McCain, First Class, sir."
"Well?"
"Sir, the television set belongs to Midshipman Vargo."
"Midshipman Vargo!" he bellowed in disbelief.
"Yes, sir, Midshipman Vargo."
Fighting to stop from smiling, I watched Hart's face flush red with anger. Finally, he dismissedme--"Get out of here, McCain."
I left him and walked back to my room, much relieved to have evaded, for the last time, Hart's wrath and his four-year quest to bring me to justice.
A few months later I sat amid a sea of navy whites, fifth from the bottom of my class, listening to President Eisenhower confer our degrees, exhort us to noble service on behalf of the Republic, and commission me an ensign in the United States Navy.
Eisenhower's remarks were not particularly memorable, owing to a combination of his flat delivery and our impatience to begin celebrating our liberation. Although he wasn't much of a speaker, we all admired the President. I remember wishing at one point during commencement that my dismal performance at the Academy had earned me an even lower place in the class standings.
In those days, only the first one hundred graduates in the class were called to the dais to receive their diplomas from the President. Graduation was conferred on the rest of us by company. John Poindexter graduated first in our class, an honor he had well earned. He walked proudly to the podium to receive his diploma and a handshake from the President of the United States, which the President bestowed on him with a brief "Well done and congratulations."
The midshipman who graduates last in his class is affectionately called the anchorman. When the anchorman's company was called, he was cheered by the whole brigade and hoisted onto the shoulders of his friends. Eisenhower motioned him up to the dais, and to the crowd's loud approval personally handed him his diploma; both President and anchorman smiling broadly as the President patted him on the back and chatted with him for a few minutes. I thought it a fine gesture from a man who understood our traditions.
I was proud to graduate from the Naval Academy. But at that moment, relief was the emotion I felt most keenly. I had already been accepted for flight training in Pensacola. In those days, all you had to do was pass the physical to qualify for flight training, and I was eager to embark on the life of a carefree naval aviator.
My orders left me enough time to take an extended holiday in Europe with Jack, Frank, and another classmate, Jim Higgins. We bummed a ride to Spain on a military aircraft from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. We spent several enjoyable days in Madrid, then boarded a train for Paris. Four days after we arrived, my friends left Paris for Copenhagen and the World's Fair. I remained behind, waiting to meet my new girlfriend, the daughter of a tobacco magnate from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We were in Paris during the summer of de Gaulle.
At the time, France was fighting a war to hold on to its Algerian colony, and its conspicuous lack of military success had caused the collapse of the French Fourth Republic. Terrorist bombings and other unpleasantness associated with the war had driven many Parisians out of the city to seek refuge in the French countryside. We had the city to ourselves, and we enjoyed it immensely.
Near the end of our stay, we stood in a throng of cheering Parisians along the Champs Elysées as two long, noisy lines of motorcycle policemen led the way to the Arc de Triomphe for de Gaulle's motorcade. The general and now president of the infant Fifth Republic stood erect in the backseat of his convertible limousine nodding at the overwrought crowds as they chanted, "Algerie Française, Algerie Française."
Four years after returning to power, and despite his solemn promise that Algeria would be forever French, de Gaulle granted the colony's independence. Nevertheless, he cut a hell of a figure that day, standing there so impassive and noble-looking while his nation's adoration washed over him. I was a kid at the time, and the general's grandeur made a great impression on me. In truth, I remain just as impressed four decades later.
I suppose to most people who knew me at Annapolis, my entire career at the Naval Academy is aptly summarized by the anecdotes I have recorded here. Most of my reminiscences feature the frivolous escapades with which I once established my reputation as a rash and prideful nonconformist.
In truth, I was less exceptional than I had imagined myself to be. Every class has its members who aspire to prominence by unconventional means. My father and grandfather had enjoyed only slightly less tarnished reputations at the Academy. My father, perhaps mindful of his own performance, rarely chastised me for falling well short of an exemplary midshipman's standards. In fact, I don't recall the subject of my record at the Academy ever being extensively discussed by either of my parents.
There was one occasion when my father registered his disapproval over my conduct at the Academy. One evening in our second year, my roommates and I were in the middle of a water balloon fight, adding to our room's usual disarray. We suspended our activity when someone knocked on the door. Frank opened the door to find an officer facing him with a disdainful look on his face as he appraised our room's unacceptable condition and the four of us standing in our skivvies soaking wet. My roommates greeted our unexpected guest by briskly standing at attention. I greeted him by saying, somewhat quizzically, "Dad?"
After an awkward second or two, he ordered, "As you were, gentlemen," and as my roommates began to exhale, he added, "This room is in gross disorder. John, meet me downstairs in five minutes." With that, he turned on his heels and left. I met him less than five minutes later, and he proceeded to lecture me, observing, "You're in too much trouble here, Johnny, to be asking for any more." That single incident is the only time I can remember my father upbraiding me for my dismal performance as a midshipman.
My behavior was not something that particularly worried my father. I believe he assumed that, like him, I would be absorbed into the traditions of the place whether I wished to or not, and that when the time arrived for me to face a real test of character, I would not disappoint him. He had seen many an officer who enjoyed the reputation of a rake--indeed, he had been one himself--rise to the occasion in the most dire situations, and exhibit courage and resourcefulness that confounded earlier detractors. He expected no less from me.
Even as I spent my years as a junior officer in the same profligate manner I had spent my Academy years, I cannot recall his severely rebuking me. America had fought two wars during his career, and he was certain there would soon be another one. He knew I would fight, and I think he trusted me to do my duty when my moment arrived. I don't know if I deserved his trust, but I am proud to have had it.
If I had ignored the less important conventions of the Academy, I was careful not to defame its more compelling traditions: the veneration of courage and resilience; the honor code that simply assumed your fidelity to its principles; the homage paid to men who had sacrificed greatly for their country; the expectation that you, too, would prove worthy of your country's trust.
Appearances to the contrary, it was never my intention to mock a revered culture that expected better of me. Like any other midshipman, I had wanted to prove my mettle to my contemporaries, and to the institution that figured so prominently in my family history. My idiosyncratic methods, if you can call them that, amounted to little more than imaginative expressions of the truculence I had used at other schools and in other circumstances to fend off what I had identified, often wrongly, as attacks upon my dignity.
The Academy, despite the irritating customs of plebe year and the encumbrances it placed on the individualist, was not interested in degrading my dignity. On the contrary, it had a more expansive conception of human dignity than I possessed when I arrived at its gates. The most important lesson I learned there was that to sustain my self-respect for a lifetime it would be necessary for me to have the honor of serving something greater than my self-interest.
When I left the Academy, I was not even aware I had learned that lesson. In a later crisis, I would suffer a genuine and ruthless attack on my dignity, an attack that, unlike the affronts I had exaggerated as a boy, left me desperate and uncertain. It was then I would recall, awakened by the example of men who shared my circumstances, the lesson that the Naval Academy in its antique way had labored to impress upon me. It changed my life forever.
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