A few men lost their religion in prison or had never been very devout. A few men were not moved by appeals to patriotism or to written codes of conduct. Almost all of us were committed to one another. I knew what the others were suffering. Sitting in my cell, I could hear their screams as their faith was put to the test. At all costs, I wanted, as Bob Craner often put it, “to hold up my end of the bargain.”
My first concern was not that I might fail God and country, although I certainly hoped that I would not. I was afraid to fail my friends. I was afraid to come back from an interrogation and tell them I couldn’t hold up as well as they had. However I measured my character before Vietnam no longer mattered. What mattered now was how they measured my character. My self-regard became indivisible from their regard for me. And it will remain so for the rest of my life.
Had I accepted that many of the others had surrendered their dignity voluntarily, had agreed to live with such reproachful self-knowledge, I doubt I would have resisted to the extent that I did, and thus I would probably not have recovered from the shame I felt when I was broken.
This is the truth of war, of honor and courage, that my father and grandfather had passed on to me. But before my war, its meaning was obscure to me, hidden in the peculiar language of men who had gone to war and been changed forever by the experience. So, too, had the Academy, with its inanimate and living memorials to fidelity and valor, tried to reveal this truth to me. But I had interpreted the lesson, as I had interpreted my father’s lesson, within the limits of my vanity. I thought glory was the object of war, and all glory was self-glory.
No more. For I have learned the truth: there are greater pursuits than self-seeking. Glory is not a conceit. It is not a decoration for valor. It is not a prize for being the most clever, the strongest, or the boldest. Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely, and who rely on you in return. No misfortune, no injury, no humiliation can destroy it.
This is the faith that my commanders affirmed, that my brothers-in-arms encouraged my allegiance to. It was the faith I had unknowingly embraced at the Naval Academy. It was my father’s and grandfather’s faith. A filthy, crippled, broken man, all I had left of my dignity was the faith of my fathers. It was enough.
–– CHAPTER 21 ––
Commander in Chief
As my days in captivity lengthened, the man whose example had led me to Vietnam stood at the summit of his long naval career. I have heard several accounts of how my father managed to attain command of the Pacific. The most credible is the account provided by Admiral Tom Moorer, who, as Chief of Naval Operations, was my father’s boss. Although the Pacific Command is traditionally reserved for the Navy, all services vie for it, as it is one of the military’s most prestigious commands. Many months before a CINCPAC retires, jockeying begins among the services to get the President to appoint one of their own to the post. The Navy usually prevails, but the competition is intense, and the outcome is seldom certain from the outset.
In 1968, when Admiral U. S. Grant Sharp was scheduled to retire as CINCPAC, Admiral Moorer not only wanted to retain the command for the Navy, but wanted my father, to whom he was very close, to get the job. My father was not considered the most likely candidate for the post by many of his contemporaries. They had been surprised when he was appointed Commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe. His detractors in the Navy had attributed the promotion to his political connections and his assiduous cultivation of friendships with the most senior Navy brass. They would attribute his promotion to CINCPAC to those same relationships. There is some truth to their speculation, though not enough to justify their derision of my father’s success.
Both my father and my mother worked hard to build relationships with people who could help advance his career, but social networking was mainly my mother’s domain. She had the charm required for success in that field. My father won the regard of his superiors, military and civilian, by proving himself useful to them. He was a competent, reliable, often innovative, and always indefatigable subordinate who could be relied upon to accept any job without complaint and to make the most of it. Additionally, he had the gift of being able to articulate his and his superiors’ views with clarity and force.
My father worked awfully hard for his success, and by so doing rendered his country many years of good and faithful service. He had earned whatever help he was provided by powerful friends. In an interview for the Naval Institute’s Oral History Project, Admiral Moorer’s account of how my father got the Pacific Command reveals both the influence his patrons wielded on his behalf and how he came to enjoy their patronage.
Shortly before the Joint Chiefs of Staff were to meet to decide which service would assume command in the Pacific, with each service ready with its own nominee, Admiral Moorer, as luck would have it, was scheduled to attend a ceremony at the White House welcoming the king of Nepal. That morning, General Earl Wheeler, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had informed Moorer that the President was unlikely to consent to my father’s appointment and that he should select another nominee for the post. Moorer, however, knew that Ellsworth Bunker, the American ambassador to Vietnam, whose wife happened to be ambassador to Nepal, would also be attending the welcoming ceremony that afternoon. Bunker and my father had worked closely together during the U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965. Moorer knew my father had made a great impression on the ambassador, and he viewed the White House event as an opportunity to make the case for my father directly to the President and to enlist Bunker, whose judgment the President respected, in the cause.
Right after the conclusion of the ceremony, President Johnson indicated he wished to speak to Admiral Moorer. “Do you really think McCain should be CINCPAC?” the President asked. To which the admiral responded, “If I didn’t think Jack McCain would be a fine CINCPAC, I would never have nominated him in the first place.” Gesturing toward Bunker, Moorer suggested to the President that he solicit the ambassador’s views on the appointment. As Moorer knew he would, Bunker “just went into extremes of enthusiasm about McCain.” Persuaded by his trusted adviser’s unqualified endorsement, Johnson immediately called a press conference and announced my father’s appointment as Commander in Chief, Pacific, depriving the Joint Chiefs of the opportunity to formally consider and recommend a candidate.
“I stacked the deck and I’ve never regretted it,” Moorer remembered. “I’ve had many people work with me and for me, and I’ve worked for many people myself, but I’ve never known anyone as loyal as Jack McCain was.”
After his appointment as CINCPAC was announced, my father received a great many congratulatory notes. Several stand out. Among them was a letter from a chief bosun’s mate who had once served under my father:
At last, a fighting admiral in a fighting command. All that you have said has come to pass. Though history and the politicians will not give you credit for it, and you cannot say, I told you so, there are many of us who can and do. In the eyes of every professional man-of-wars man, you are the greatest admiral of our time….
I am afraid I have been too personal and I mean no disrespect, but Admiral I felt I would burst if I did not let you know of my feelings…. Give ’em Sea Power, sir.