When next I saw a rag hanging on the line, I took it, and joyfully used it for days, although I had to suppress incipient feelings of remorse to sustain my joy.
Some months later, on my way back to my cell, I spied my old washrag drying on the line. I recognized it as my long-lost rag by a distinctive hole in its center. With a sigh of relief, I retrieved it and hung the stolen rag in its place.
That evening Bob Craner tapped me up on the wall. He was enraged.
“Dammit, the worst thing ever has happened to me,” he exclaimed. “A couple of months ago some rotten bastard stole my washrag, and I went for weeks without one. One day when I was sweeping leaves in the courtyard, I found an old rag in the dirt. I spent a long time cleaning it up. I never hung the thing on the wire because I was afraid some jerk would steal this one too. But today was such a nice, sunny day, I couldn’t resist, and I hung it out to dry. And can you believe it, some son of a bitch stole it. Dammit. I can’t believe it. Again I have no washrag.”
I said nothing as he poured out his troubles. When he finished, I sank to the floor, feeling as remorseful as I ever have, but I was not brave enough to confess my crime.
Every day, I heard Bob yell, “Bao cao, bao cao”—the phrase we used to summon the guards—“Washrag, washrag, give me a washrag, goddammit.” They ignored him.
On Christmas Day, after a good meal and a few minutes spent outside, Christmas carols played from the camp loudspeakers. They were a welcome relief to the atonal patriotic hymns the Vietnamese favored most other days, trying to crush our resolve with “Springtime in the Liberated Zone” and “I Asked My Mother How Many Air Pirates She Shot Down Today.”
That evening, listening to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” on a full stomach, longing for home, and feeling the spirit of Christmas, I resolved to confess my crime to Bob. I tapped him up on the wall, reminded him that Christmas was a time for forgiveness, and explained what I had done. When I finished, he made no response. He just thumped on the wall, which was our sign for approaching danger and the signal to cease communicating.
Later in the evening, he called me.
“Listen. In the Old West the worst thing you could do to a man was steal his horse. In prison the worst thing you can do to a man is steal his washrag. And you stole my washrag, you son of a bitch.” Although he intended his complaint to be humorous, I still felt terribly guilty.
Bob remained without the comfort of a washrag for quite a while after my confession, and he would often decry the injustice of it to me. “I get so sick of drying my hair with my pants,” he would lament as pangs of guilt stabbed at my conscience. I felt bad about the injury I had done Bob throughout the remainder of our captivity, finally relieving my guilt on our first Christmas as free men by sending Bob a carton of five hundred washrags as a Christmas present.
–– CHAPTER 23 ––
Hanoi Hilton
By next Christmas, in 1969, Bob and I were no longer neighbors. On December 9, another prisoner and I were moved to Hoa Lo, where most of our most senior officers were held. Loaded into the back of a truck, we were blindfolded during the short ride to the Hilton. Unaware of who my traveling companion was, I placed my hand on his leg and tapped: “I am John McCain. Who are you?” He tapped back a reply: “I am Ernie Brace.”
Ernie and I were taken to a section of the prison the POWs called “Little Vegas,” where each building was named after a different casino. We were locked in “the Golden Nugget.” We were given cells near each other, with only one other cell between us, and we were able to communicate with each other with little difficulty. Our cells faced the bath area, and by the end of my first day in Vegas I was able to contact many of the men in the camp.
I occupied three different rooms in Little Vegas that year. All of them offered excellent opportunities for communication, and I formed many close friendships with men whom I greatly admired. Treatment continued to improve, although we were periodically subjected to physical abuse for communicating.
I remained alone in the Golden Nugget until March, when my period of solitary confinement was finally ended with the arrival of John Finley, whom I was relieved to welcome as my new roommate.
That first Christmas in the Golden Nugget, while I was puzzling over my surprise social visit from the Cat, my wife was hovering between life and death in the emergency room of a Philadelphia hospital.
Carol had taken the kids to her parents’ house for the holidays. After dinner on Christmas Eve, she drove to our friends the Bookbinders’ to exchange gifts. It had begun to snow by the time she started back to her parents, and the roads were icy. She skidded off the road and smashed into a telephone pole, and was thrown from the car. The police found her some time later in shock, both legs fractured in several places, her arm and pelvis broken, and bleeding internally.
Several days passed before she was out of immediate danger. It would be six months and several operations before she was released from the hospital. Over the next two years, she would undergo many more operations to repair her injured legs. By the time the doctors were finished she would be four inches shorter than she was before the accident. After a year of intensive physical therapy she was able to walk with the aid of crutches.
Carol has a determined spirit. Had she less courage and resolve, I doubt she would have walked again. Her injuries had been so serious that at first the doctors had considered amputating her legs, but she had refused them permission. With her husband in prison on the other side of the world and three small children to raise alone, she now faced a long, painful struggle to recover from her nearly fatal injuries, resisting the prospect of having to live the remainder of her life in a wheelchair. I’ve known people with better odds who gave in to despair and self-pity. Not Carol. She suffered her hardships with courage and grace. She persevered, brave and hopeful, confident that our luck would turn and all our lives would somehow work out all right.
When the doctors told her they would attempt to notify me about her accident, she told them not to; she didn’t wish to add to my burdens. She would see her way through her misfortune without even the small comfort she might have derived from a few words of concern from me. I’ve never known a braver soul.
My family was often on my mind. I spent a part of each long day wondering and worrying about them. I didn’t worry about their material well-being. I knew they were receiving my pay. But I worried, as all POWs worry, about the psychological burden my long absence imposed on my wife and children.
My children were so young when I had left for war. Sidney had not yet reached her first birthday. I feared my absence, and the uncertainty about my ever coming home, would rob them of part of the joy of living that children from happy homes naturally possess. I had to fight back depression sometimes, thinking that they might have become sullen, insecure kids.
Not too long after my capture, Sidney’s memories of me had faded. To her I had become an object of curiosity, a man in a photograph whom her mother and brothers talked about a lot. She did not remember me so much as anticipate me, praying at night and on holidays with the rest of the family for the long-awaited reunion with a father she did not really know. In the years I was away, Carol allowed the children to accumulate a menagerie of pets—dogs, cats, fish, and birds. In 1973, when my release from prison had been announced and Carol informed the kids that I would be home soon, Sidney was confused.