A few minutes later, François Chalais entered the room with two cameramen. He questioned me for several minutes, asking about my shootdown, my squadron, the nature of my injuries, and my father. I repeated the same information about my ship and squadron and told him I was being treated well by the doctors, who had promised to operate on my leg. Off camera, the Cat and Chihuahua were visibly displeased with my answers. Chihuahua demanded that I say more.
“I have no more to say about it,” I replied.
Both Vietnamese insisted that I express gratitude for the lenient and humane treatment I had received. I refused, and when they pressed me, Chalais said, “I think what he told me is sufficient.”
Chalais then inquired about the quality of the food I was getting, and I responded, “It’s not like Paris, but I eat it.” Finally, Chalais asked if I had a message for my family.
“I would just like to tell my wife that I’m going to get well. I love her, and hope to see her soon. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell her that. That’s all I have to say.”
Chihuahua told me to say that I could receive letters and pictures from home. “No,” I replied. A visibly agitated Cat demanded that I say on camera how much I wanted the war to end so I could go home. Again, Chalais stepped in to help me, saying very firmly that he was satisfied with my answer, and that the interview was over. I appreciated his help.
Although I had resisted giving my interrogators any useful information and had greatly irritated the Cat by refusing his demands during the interview, I should not have given out information about my ship and squadron, and I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our name, rank, and serial number.
When Chalais had left, the Cat admonished me for my “bad attitude” and told me I wouldn’t receive any more operations. I was taken back to my old room.
Carol went to see Chalais after he returned to Paris, and he gave her a copy of the film, which was shown in the States on the CBS evening news a short time later.
My parents saw it before it was broadcast nationally. A public affairs officer, Herbert Hetu, who worked for my father when my father was the Navy chief in Europe, had a friend who was a producer at CBS. His friend informed him that CBS had the film of my interview, and he offered to screen it for my parents. Hetu and my parents were in New York at the time. My father was scheduled to give a speech on the emerging strength of the Soviet Navy to the prestigious Overseas Press Club. It was an important and much-anticipated speech that he had been preparing for weeks.
Hetu viewed the film and decided not to show it to my father before he delivered his speech, fearing it would “uncork him.” Instead, he persuaded his friend at CBS to hold the film until the morning, when my parents could view it. He then contacted my father’s personal aide and told him: “After the speech, get with the admiral and tell him about this film. They’re going to hold it and we’ll take him over to CBS tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll want to see it.”
Hetu accompanied my parents to CBS the next day. He remembered my father reacting very emotionally to the film. “We took him over with Mrs. McCain, and I think I said to the admiral, ‘I think you and Mrs. McCain ought to see this by yourselves. You don’t want anybody else in there.’ So that’s the way they watched it, and it was a very emotional piece of film…. I think Admiral McCain and his wife looked at the film twice. His reaction afterward was very emotional, but he never talked to us about it. Some things are just too painful for words.”
It was hard not to see how pleased the Vietnamese were to have captured an admiral’s son, and I knew that my father’s identity was directly related to my survival. Often during my hospital stay I received visits from high-ranking officials. Some observed me for a few minutes and then left without asking any questions. Others would converse idly with me, asking only a few innocuous questions. During one visit, I was told to meet with a visiting Cuban delegation. When I refused, they did not force the issue, either out of concern for my condition or because they were worried about what I might say. One evening, General Vo Nguyen Giap, minister of defense and hero of Dien Bien Phu, paid me a visit. He stared at me wordlessly for a minute, then left.
Bug arrived one day and had me listen to a tape of a POW denouncing America’s involvement in the war. The POW was a Marine, a veteran who had flown in the Korean War. The vigor with which he criticized the United States surprised me. His language did not seem stilted, nor did his tone sound forced.
Bug told me he wanted me to make a similar statement. I told him I didn’t want to say such things.
He told me I shouldn’t be afraid to speak openly about the war, that there was nothing to be ashamed of or to fear.
“I don’t feel that way about the war,” I replied, and was threatened for what seemed like the hundredth time with a warning that I would be denied an operation because of my “bad attitude.”
In early December, they operated on my leg. The Vietnamese filmed the operation. I haven’t a clue why. Regrettably, the operation wasn’t much of a success. The doctors severed all the ligaments on one side of my knee, which has never fully recovered. After the war, thanks to the work of a kind and talented physical therapist, my knee regained much of its mobility—enough, anyway, for me to return to flight status for a time. But today, when I am tired or when the weather is inclement, my knee stiffens in pain, and I pick up a trace of my old limp.
They decided to discharge me later that December. I had been in the hospital about six weeks. I was in bad shape. I had a high fever and suffered from dysentery. I had lost about fifty pounds and weighed barely a hundred. I was still in my chest cast, and my leg hurt like hell.
On the brighter side, at my request, the Vietnamese were taking me to another prison camp. Bug had entered my room one day and abruptly announced, “The doctors say you are not getting better.”
The accusatory tone he used to relay this all too obvious diagnosis implied that I was somehow responsible for my condition and had deliberately tried to embarrass the Vietnamese medical establishment by refusing to recover.
“Put me with other Americans,” I responded, “and I’ll get better.”
Bug said nothing in reply. He just looked at me briefly with the expression he used to convey his disdain for an inferior enemy, then withdrew from the room.
That evening I was blindfolded, placed in the back of a truck, and driven to a truck repair facility that had been converted into a prison a few years earlier. It was situated in what had once been the gardens of the mayor of Hanoi’s official residence. The Americans held there called it “the Plantation.”
To my great relief, I was placed in a cell in a building we called “the Gun Shed” with two other prisoners, both Air Force majors, George “Bud” Day and Norris Overly. I could have asked for no better companions. There has never been a doubt in my mind that Bud Day and Norris Overly saved my life.
Bud and Norris later told me that their first impression of me, emaciated, bug-eyed, and bright with fever, was of a man at the threshold of death. They thought the Vietnamese expected me to die and had placed me in their care to escape the blame when I failed to recover.
Despite my poor condition, I was overjoyed to be in the company of Americans. I had by this time been a prisoner of war for two months, and I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of another American.
I was frail, but voluble. I wouldn’t stop talking all through that first day with Bud and Norris, explaining my shootdown, describing my treatment since capture, inquiring about their experiences, and asking for all the details of the prison system and for information about other prisoners.