Thoughts On My Attendance At John McCain's Funeral

Dear Family and Friends,

Sandy and I attended John McCain's funeral this past Saturday ( September 8, 2018). I would like to share with you my thoughts and reflections of him and what it meant to me.

First of all, please understand I will not address any of his political positions or his life after he returned back from the POW camp.

John was present in the adjoining cell to the one Bob Craner and I stayed in, following our stay at the Hòa Lò Prison prison (the Hanoi Hilton), for more than two years. We used the tap code to communicate through the walls for many hours daily during those years. We came to know each other well.

Initially, John suffered greatly, having ejected out of a fighter plane at 650 knots (750 miles per hour) and been severely wounded, with multiple broken and mangled limbs from the force of the airstream (for example, multiple breaks in arms and legs, his right leg was twisted permanently 180 degrees at the knee, with the heel facing up and the toes down when laying on his back) and being bayoneted by a soldier through his broken shoulder shortly after capture. He spent a long time in the hospital in Hanoi. They saved his life primarily, he thought, because they found out his father was a Navy Admiral. The North Vietnamese rarely did such. Many suffered horribly before they died from such wounds, like my friend Lance Sijan. The wounds that John McCain sustained during the war left him with serious lifelong physical disabilities.

As an aside, I don't think the North Vietnamese could justify spending medical care resources on Americans while they had their own soldiers and civilians to care for.

John could not use his arms or hands or legs in any way for those first months. John somehow made it through this initial period, only because of two POWs saving his life by spoon feeding him and cleaning him for months, one of whom was Bud Day, a Medal of Honor winner. He was then treated like all of us. He had to undergo torture sessions and interrogation. His life as a POW is documented somewhat in his book titled Faith of My Fathers.

What I want to emphasize is that no matter what he said or did upon his return, the fact is that he suffered greatly, having been injured beyond belief and then having to stay in the prison hell for more than five years. Those in the news media and others whose speeches may have focused somewhat on his post POW career should reflect upon what he and the other POWs went through for all Americans.

John was a young handsome man and was a career soldier when I spent time in the prison with him. He was an American fighting man and as such deserves great respect and honor as do all veterans. People don't realize when there is a war going on that those fighting it, particularly those on the front line and especially those in a prison camp, are real American heroes. America is free because of men like John McCain and so are many citizens of other countries free because of our military patriots.

I would like to make everyone aware of the historical news I have learned regarding Vietnam.

First, there was a book written by a past Russian premier, Yegor Gaidar, titled Collapse of An Empire. This book makes very clear that America’s long involvement in Vietnam was the major reason the cold war ended. Our fighting for all those years helped put Russia in the red with foreign currency borrowing, which compounded and ended up resulting in a financial collapse. In addition, the military casualties it sustained were never ending and again, were very discouraging to them according to the book The Soviet Union And The Vietnam War, by Ilya V. Gaiduk, a Russian who uniquely had access for six full months to the private documents of the Politburo during the Vietnam War. The Politburo was constantly looking for ways to settle it because of the financial drain, the casualties and the fear of a hot war with the US Military. It was the terrible length of the Vietnam conflict that drained them financially and emotionally so badly. Only God could have known that such would happen, and we must thank Him for inspiring our leaders to do what they did, even though at the time we all felt we should win the war quickly.

Secondly, there was another famous and extremely respected leader worldwide, the Premier of Singapore from 1959 to 1990, Lee Kuan Yew, who wrote a book titled From Third World To First, because in his more than thirty year tenure, he took Singapore from third world to first. This book shows how it was done. This book is so full of wisdom, I sincerely wish every child on earth had to read it as part of schooling. In the book, he tells how America's prolonged involvement in Vietnam standing firm against communist aggression gave all of Southeast Asia the motivation and time to stand firm and not let the communist infiltrators take over their countries. Lee Kuan Kew said that all of Southeast Asia owes a “blood debt” to America.

The third testimony I have learned of firsthand is from a good friend of many years, Bill Stearman, now 96 and yet still writing outstanding articles for the finest journals in the world. He was a Foreign Service Officer working in the White House during the war, and head of the Indochina Group under Nixon. He was in the first wave of nine Marine landings in the Pacific during WW II as a Navy LSM Gunnery Officer and was with the State Department and Foreign Service from 1950 until his retirement in 1993. He worked in the White House for 17 years for four Presidents altogether. He was top man in the White House on Vietnam on the NSC Staff, the Director of the Indochina Staff. He told me personally that privately, the different governments of Southeast Asia were very thankful for what America did to save their countries by holding the line in Vietnam, and many of them were not friends of America, such as the Indonesian Military Leaders. His personal estimate is that four hundred and fifty million people are free in Southeast Asia according to the private testimony the heads of state made clear to other Foreign Service compatriots at that time. He recently wrote an article in the American Legion magazine, “Vietnam Revisited,” March, 2017, pointing out such facts. Further details are in his book, An American Adventure, by William Stearman.

And so attending the funeral of this brother POW of mine brought to mind all the hardship we went through together in our youth in the Hanoi Hilton and the other prison camps. It caused me to reflect upon all those who gave up their lives in Vietnam and the nine million who served loyally during the Vietnam War.

I just wanted to set the record straight, at least in the minds of my friends and family, that history has shown that men like John McCain and the other Vietnam veterans deserve our great praise and honor for doing what they did, because it contributed in a big way to ending the Cold War, and literally stopping cold the expansion of communism in Southeast Asia.

When I grew up, the communist threat was real. They had taken over many countries and were bent on destroying America. We all lived in fear of a nuclear holocaust. There were nuclear bomb shelters maintained in almost all cities of the USA and in many people’s backyards. But our enslavement and/or nuclear destruction did not happen. This blessed result wasn’t by accident or random chance. Instead, we can sincerely thank the American heroes who fought in that far off land for our freedom and for deliverance from the nuclear nightmare. We can also thank them for the freedom of Southeast Asia to the present day.

Please share this knowledge with your friends, especially Vietnam veterans you know…

Thank you!!!

God bless,

Guy and Sandy