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A Powerful Story
From a speech made by Capt. John S. McCain, US, (R) who represents
Arizona in the U.S. Senate:
As you may know, I spent five and one half years as a prisoner
of war during the Vietnam War. In the early years of our imprisonment,
the NVA kept us in solitary confinement or two or three to a cell.
In 1971, the NVA moved us from these conditions of isolation into
large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men to a room. This was,
as you can imagine, a wonderful change and was a direct result
of the efforts of millions of Americans on behalf of a few hundred
POWs 10,000 miles from home.
One of the men who moved into my room was a young man named Mike
Christian. Mike came from a small town near Selma, Alabama. He
didn't wear a pair of shoes until he was 13 years old. At 17,
he enlisted in the US Navy. He later earned a commission by going
to Officer Training School. Then he became a Naval Flight Officer
and was shot down and captured in 1967.
Mike had a keen and deep appreciation of the opportunities this
country and our military provide for people who want to work and
want to succeed.
As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some
prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages
were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing. Mike
got himself a bamboo needle. Over a period of a couple of months,
he created an American flag and sewed on the inside of his shirt.
Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's
shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance.
I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important
part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell,
it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.
One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically,
and discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed
it. That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, and
for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian severely for
the next couple of hours. Then, they opened the door of the cell
and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could.
The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle
on which we slept. Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner
of the room. As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we
could. After the excitement died down, I looked in the corner
of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with
a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was
my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes
almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American
flag. He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian
feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important
it was to us to be able to Pledge our allegiance to our flag and
country.
So the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance, you must never
forget the sacrifice and courage that thousands of Americans have
made to build our nation and promote freedom around the world.
You must remember our duty, our honor, and our country.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
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