American Patriot

by Robert Coram

  The North Vietnamese came to McCain and offered to send him home.

  McCain, as a number of POWs have written, not only refused in a voice loud enough to be heard by other POWs but called every guard a “cocksucker” or a “fucking son of a bitch” or a “slant-eyed bastard” and said he wanted to be treated like all the other prisoners. He was. He was severely beaten.

  Years later when McCain was asked about the incident, he said his actions were prompted by a desire to “boost the spirits” of other POWs. It is a curious and revealing comment. Most tough resisters based their actions on the Code of Conduct, which says prisoners should not accept a parole or special favors. McCain was courageous. But once again he was playing to the bleachers.

  Day began each morning by trying to rehabilitate his twisted hands. He placed one finger at a time on the window ledge and pulled down until the finger straightened or the pain became too great. Then another finger. Then another. But there was no progress. He could not move his fingers and he could not lift his arms above shoulder height. He feared that if he lived, he would be crippled for life.

  One morning in February, Overly returned from a meeting with prison officials and told Day and McCain he was about to be released; he was going home.

  Day looked at him suspiciously. “What did that cost you?”

  “Nothing,” Overly said.

  Day and McCain looked at each other. Overly’s hematoma had healed and he had no rope marks or swollen knees — nothing to show he had been tortured. He was thin but relatively fit: the perfect prisoner for the North Vietnamese to release.

  “Norris, you are gonna catch a lot of shit over this,” Day told him.

  “There is no way I would ever take an early release,” McCain said.

  Almost four decades later, Overly would contest this version of events. He would say he had been tortured but revealed nothing. He would say that he had not violated the Code of Conduct, that he was forced to leave, “expelled” from Hoa Lo.

  Overly said he would take a letter to Doris and to McCain’s wife, Carol. Day could not write, so he dictated to McCain, “I know, Doris, that you had faith that I lived. This letter confirms your good faith. Pray as I do that we are together soon.” Day asked her to send pictures of the children. After much effort, he managed to sign the note in his usual way — “George E. Day” — so Doris would know it truly was from him.

  Overly and two other officers were the first pilots released in what those who stayed behind would always call the “Fink Release Program.” Later, nine others (eight officers and one enlisted man) would be released early. But 99-plus percent of the POWs would not be repatriated until Operation Homecoming in early 1973. The chasm between the early releases and those who came home in 1973 would never be bridged.

  SHORTLY before Christmas 1967, Doris had received a package from the Mistys that contained Bud’s personal effects and civilian clothes, along with another pair of flying boots.

  She had heard nothing since the initial notification that he had been shot down. She did not know if he was evading, if he had been captured, or if he was dead.

  The U.S. government was following what POW wives and the wives of those missing in action called the “Keep-Quiet Policy.” President Lyndon Johnson wanted no public awareness that growing numbers of America’s fighting men were being shot down and jailed in Hanoi. Air Force officers instructed Doris not to tell anyone her husband had been shot down and was missing. She could say only that her husband was “in Vietnam.” Again and again she was told, “Don’t talk to the press.” “Don’t tell anyone your husband has been shot down.” “Don’t rock the boat.” “We are doing all we can.”

  She might have denied to the world that anything was wrong, but the arrival of Bud’s personal belongings somehow made it all so final. As if to put an oppressive stamp on that fact, everything in the package was covered with a heavy dank mildew.

  She hung the clothes outside for days to let the Arizona sun burn away the mildew and then washed them and put them away. She told herself that Bud was coming home. And when he came home, he would ask about his boots. A pilot, like a cowboy, is attached to his boots. Every time he puts them on, he remembers the airplanes and the missions he flew while wearing them. Doris knew that when Bud came back, he would want to fly again. The children cleaned and polished the boots and put them in the closet with the neatly pressed uniforms. Seeing the uniforms reminded her of how Bud used to throw his clothes on the floor when he walked in the door. She missed picking up his clothes.

  Each night when Doris and the children said their prayers, she prayed for Bud. She put Bud’s picture near the bed of each child. She wanted them to remember his face, to remember everything about him. She told them that she did not know when, but their father would be coming home. They should never doubt that fact. But one of the boys was so anxious about his father that he began wetting the bed.

  In January 1968, Doris was at the beauty shop when the beautician said, “What is going on with you? You are losing all your hair.” Doris knew it was from stress. She bought a wig. Her hair was falling out in clumps and she could not talk to anyone about why this was happening.

  On Friday, February 16, 1968, at 11:30 a.m., the phone rang. Doris picked it up and knew by the faint warbled hum that this was a long-distance call. She waited. A voice asked, “Is this Phoenix 278–4082?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are receiving a MARS call from Udorn, Thailand.” (“MARS” is a military communications system.)

  Her hand flew to her throat. “Okay.”

  Then another voice asked, “Is this Phoenix 278–4082?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Is this Doris Day?”

  “Yes, it is.” She was growing impatient. What was this about? It had to be news of Bud.

  “This is Major Norris Overly and I’ve just been released from prison in Hanoi. I’ve been your husband’s cell mate since last September. Bud is alive and well and in good spirits.”

  Doris threw back her head and laughed with joy. “Oh, I knew it,” she said. “I love you.”

  Air Force officials in Thailand would not let Overly talk more than a moment. He told Doris he would call again.

  Doris called an officer at Randolph Field, the man who, ever since Bud had been shot down, was her liaison with the Air Force, and told him about the conversation. “Can I tell?” she asked. The officer was disturbed that Overly had called and said, “It’s not official yet.”

  “It is for me. I’m telling my family.”

  She called her sister in Sioux City. “Bud is alive. He’s a POW in Hanoi. He’s alive.”

  Her sister, a devout Lutheran, was not surprised. After all, she had the entire congregation at St. John Lutheran Church praying for Bud.

  By now Doris was laughing and crying at the same time. She ran to her next-door neighbor’s house and, without knocking, threw open the door and shouted, “My husband is alive! My husband is alive!”

  A few days later Overly called again, this time from Hawaii. He said he was putting a letter from Bud in the mail. He told her the letter had been written by Bud’s roommate, a naval officer named John McCain, but Bud had signed it. Overly was afraid that if he brought the letter back to the mainland, the Air Force might confiscate it. He said that as soon as he visited his own family, he was coming to see her and to talk with the children. He had promised Bud he would do that.

  After Doris hung up, she wondered why this fellow McCain — someone she had never heard of — had written the letter. She pushed the thought from her mind. She would wait.

  Within a few days her hair stopped falling out and began growing back. She threw away the wig. And there was no more bed-wetting by one of the boys.

  On April 22, Overly arrived and said the Air Force had ordered him not to tell her anything about Bud. He paused and stared. She nodded, said, “Okay,” and waited.

  “I’ll tell you about me,” Overly said. “Here’s what happe
ned to me.” And he told her how he had been shot down and captured and placed in a holding area near Vinh, where he was “thrown in with another man.”

  Again he paused and stared. Doris understood.

  “When I first saw him, I thought he was an old man.”

  Doris broke the charade. She slapped the table. “Norris, my husband is not an old man.”

  Overly looked at her gently. He held his hand about halfway down his chest and said, “His beard was white and down to here. He is stooped. His right arm was broken in three places and he can’t lift it above his shoulder. He walks around with his right arm extended at a forty-five-degree angle with the palm up. He has no use of either hand. Doris, he is an old man.”

  Doris was not having this. Again she slapped the table. “My husband is not an old man.”

  Overly talked for hours and told her things about her husband that amazed her. Bud was a very private man. He did not talk of such things to anyone. Yet this stranger seemed to know all about her and the children. He even knew the special way she made salad and why she did not make gravy.

  Doris knew that if Bud had told all this to Overly, the two men must have been very close. Then Overly asked, “What aircraft did Bud fly?”

  It was an innocuous question, the sort of question everyone asked. But instantly the Sorensen genes kicked in: the World War II resistance in Norway, the oft told stories of how her family had dealt with German intelligence officers. If Bud had not told Overly that he flew an F-100, there could be only one reason: he did not trust this man.

  Neither would she.

  “A jet,” she said with a shrug.

  Norris took Steve to visit with him and his family in San Antonio. During the two-week visit, he taught Steve how to water-ski and introduced him to horseback riding, and the two had long man-to-man talks. Overly told Doris that she should buy Steve a horse, that it would help him adapt to his father’s being away and would give him something he did not have to share with his brother and two sisters.

  Doris bought Steve a horse. Steve thought long and hard about a name. Then he remembered that song his dad was always humming. He named the horse “Misty.”

  BY March, Day had healed enough that he could nurse McCain, feed him, keep him reasonably clean from the effects of savage diarrhea, and — most of all — encourage him. They were both in such terrible physical shape that a mere cold or a minor infection could have killed either of them. Because neither expected to live, each revealed things to the other that he had never revealed to another soul. They forged a friendship closer and more enduring than that of many brothers. They swore a blood oath. If McCain died, Bud would tell John’s parents that his last thoughts were of them and that he died without losing his honor. If Bud died, McCain would seek out Doris and tell her how much Bud loved her and that he had been a highly respected prisoner under terrible conditions.

  When the two men were taken from their cell to empty the bo, they were a comical pair, both dirty, both shit streaked, both wearing casts. Day could not use his hands but had some use of his left arm. He had a pronounced limp. McCain could not use his arms but did have some use of his hands. He still could not walk. The two men supported each other, arms wrapped around each other, McCain’s legs dragging as they lurched and stumbled, each effort the product of this human Rube Goldberg conglomeration of fighter pilots.

  Jack Van Loan was in a cell across the courtyard. He watched from a crack in the door and saw Day trudging along, head down, bent arm pumping, and could tell from the expression on his face that this was one determined man. Word had gotten out among the POWs of his escape and early torture and of his defiance.

  “His leadership was omnipresent,” Van Loan said. And the POWs knew who McCain was and how he had turned down an early release. When Van Loan saw them lurching toward the showers, he showed his respect in typical fighter pilot fashion.

  “Hire the handicapped!” he shouted. “They’re funny as hell.”

  The laughter of other POWs could be heard from inside their cells. Day and McCain laughed with them.

  Several POWs also recognized Day’s name as belonging to the man who survived both a fire on takeoff in a T-33 and a no-chute bailout from an F-84. Other POWs knew of Day’s gunnery scores and the papers he had written about delivering nuclear weapons. They learned the details of his escape to South Vietnam, his being shot when he tried to run, his torture down at Vinh. When one new POW first heard Day’s history, he said with reverence, “Now there’s a man who has pissed on every tree in the forest.”

  When Day lurched across the courtyard, other POWs saw ankles that were red from rusty shackles, knees swollen and bleeding from kneeling on concrete floors, and hands virtually useless, and they knew they were looking at someone who had undergone many a torture session. And they knew from his eyes that he had not been broken.

  When a newly arrived shoot-down, a Misty named Bob Craner, was placed in an adjacent cell, he told Bud he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel and recommended for four Silver Stars. McCain laughed and said, “Why don’t you tell the Bug? Maybe he will give you a fucking parade.”

  In March the cast was taken off Day’s right arm. His arm was bowed at the elbow and would not straighten. McCain pulled and tugged and tried to realign the bones, but it was impossible. He pressed the bones together as tightly as he could and bound the arm with rags. Day continued to worry about his hands, both still curled into claws. For hours every day, McCain acted as a physical therapist for Day, massaging his arms and hands. But Day’s fingers always recurled. The nerves in both arms seemed deadened. Then one morning Day managed to wiggle a finger for the first time.

  McCain burst into tears.

  By now the guards had decided that McCain, against all odds, was going to live and that he could survive alone. He and Day were transferred to different prisons. When McCain and Day separated, both men were near tears. They embraced like brothers, each fearing he would never again see the other, and each dreading what lay ahead.

  THE POWs were segregated by rank, the most senior officers kept in a remote portion of Hoa Lo and isolated from other prisoners. The thinking of the guards was that this would deprive the POWs of leadership. Other methods were used too. Some senior officers, such as James Stockdale and Robbie Risner, were tortured so severely that for months on end they could not be leaders. But what the guards did not understand was that in such instances the leadership passed down to a few senior Air Force majors such as Bud Day and Larry Guarino.

  Day and Guarino knew that if they were identified as commanders, they would receive special torture. Nevertheless, both accepted the burden of command and both paid the price. Both were almost killed by the Bug. And both became legends among the POWs.

  These men could not be more different. Day was a small-town boy from the heartland while Guarino was a street-smart wisecracking Italian from Newark, New Jersey. He was the eleventh American shoot-down of the war and had been in jail since 1965. Via tap code and whispering, Guarino sent out stirring messages almost daily telling POWs to resist until they were about to be permanently crippled or killed.

  Though the two men were in frequent communication, solitary confinement meant it would be several years before they actually met. In coming years, Day and Guarino would be the senior ranking officers (SROs) of their cell block or their building or their camp. Their life stories became interwoven as POWs and would remain so after they were released.

  AFTER Day and McCain were separated, their actions reflected their natural bent. McCain limped through the courtyard to the bath, waving his casts and shouting, “Ho Chi Minh sucks dead Japanese dicks.”

  A few months later, McCain was housed in the same building as Guarino. They were separated by two cells but could press cups against the wall and talk for hours every day. Guarino repeatedly counseled the young officer to be more circumspect. A few guards spoke enough English to understand. If they heard McCain, he would be tortured. “Fuck the goddamn gooks
,” McCain replied. “They are all pricks.”

  Guarino says that McCain was quite mercurial. One day he shouted into his cup that he wanted some advice.

  “What do you want to know?” Guarino replied.

  “It’s about women.”

  Guarino rolled his eyes. “Go ahead.”

  “Sometimes when I am with a woman, I ejaculate too soon.”

  Guarino could not believe what he was hearing. The brash young McCain wanted sexual advice from a man who had not seen a woman since he was shot down almost three years earlier.

  Nevertheless, he responded, “Next time you are about to have sex, think about something else.”

  “Do you mean I should not have an erection?”

  Guarino laughed. “No, you’re gonna need one of those.”

  Years later, he recalled McCain’s bravado. “He wanted to grow up and be Bud Day,” Guarino said.

  SOMEDAY, God willing, all the POWs would go home. Until that day, Bud decided, the POWs who were tortured and continued to resist must not be lumped in with those who went home early. There should be some way to recognize those who adhered to the Code of Conduct. More and more the slogan “Return with Honor” was on Day’s mind. That slogan perfectly described what he thought should be the goal of every POW. Later, these ideas would coalesce, and one of the most elite units of the American military would be formed. Until then, though, survival was the order of the day.

  LATE every Friday afternoon, Day tapped out a message sent down the line to all POWs under his command: “HH” — happy hour, the traditional Air Force Friday afternoon drinking and hell-raising session. Of course there was nothing to drink and nothing to celebrate. But by recognizing the tradition, the officers maintained a link to the outside world.

  Every Sunday morning, Day tapped out “CC” — church call. All the other SROs did the same thing. Most POWs then stood in their individual cells and faced east, the direction of America, placed their hands over their hearts, and said aloud the Pledge of Allegiance. Then they recited the Lord’s Prayer, after which they prayed for their fellow POWs who were being tortured; they prayed for the sick and injured POWs and for their families and for America. Day, as did most of the POWs, ended every message with “GBU.”