Maverick war hero whose feud with Trump’s been reignited by his death at 81
President is accused of insulting John McCain by going to play golf
Nothing quite showed the viciousness to which Donald trump was prepared to stoop against political opponents as his attack on John McCain’s war record. ‘he is not a war hero. he is a war hero because he was captured,’ the President sneered three years ago. ‘i like people that
weren’t captured.’ given the veteran Arizona senator was not only captured in the Vietnam War but tortured during nearly six appalling years as a prisoner- of-war, trump’s jibe was tasteless enough. But the fact trump had avoided being drafted into the same conflict – first because he was a student and later because he supposedly had heel spurs – made his remark all the more offensive.
Yesterday, trump tweeted his ‘deepest sympathies and respect’ to the family of his long-time Republican rival just an hour after McCain died aged 81 following a year-long battle with brain cancer.
the senator, who described himself as a maverick, passed away at his ranch in hidden Valley, Arizona, surrounded by his wife, Cindy, and family on Saturday afternoon. he had made it known that he didn’t want trump to attend his funeral.
the President was later accused of showing insufficient respect after he was seen back on a golf course just 17 hours after McCain’s death. trump’s reaction contrasted badly with that of his wife Melania who paid a fuller tribute to McCain’s ‘service to the nation’
McCain, who in his youth had a reputation as a cocky party boy, was born into a highly- decorated military family and became a navy pilot. he was sent to Vietnam in 1967 to join America’s air campaign. Anxious to prove himself, he volunteered for dangerous missions.
in october 1967, he was flying his 23rd mission off aircraft carriers in one-seater Skyhawk attack planes when he was shot down. McCain bailed out and parachuted into truc Bach Lake in hanoi, the Vietnamese capital. Both his arms were broken and a leg shattered, and McCain was only able to avoid drowning by pulling his life-jacket cord with his teeth. He
was pulled out of the water by a furious mob which attacked him and even bayoneted him before being chased away by a nurse. McCain was dragged in a pitiful state to a nearby prison, nicknamed the hanoi hilton by PoWs. of course, the moniker was deeply ironic as it was an infamously brutal place.
his captors attempted to withhold medical attention until McCain gave them military information. But he defied them with his combative temperament. Asked to identify his squadron members, he listed the names of a famous American football team. As a result, his broken bones were never reset properly. Despite his pain and at times being close to death, he frequently raged at his guards – ensuring his treatment got worse.
in 1968, his captors suddenly offered to release him early. it’s possible they did so because his father had just been made commander-inchief in the Pacific. McCain refused, sticking to the PoW code of ‘first in, first out’. he wasn’t prepared to jump the queue.
his refusal went down badly with the Vietnamese and he recalled a guard telling him: ‘now, McCain, it will be very bad for you.’ his jailers set out to break him and began a fierce routine of beatings and torture. they’d suspend him from ropes which lashed his arms behind him. he was severely beaten every two hours. throughout, he was suffering from dysentery.
After a week, he caved in and signed what the north Vietnamese called a ‘confession’, declaring that he was an ‘air pirate’ and a ‘black criminal’. Returned to his cell, McCain was mortified by what he saw as his betrayal of his family and country – a remorse he felt for the rest of his life.
‘i had learned what we all learned there – every man has his breaking point. i had reached mine,’ he wrote later. Plunged into a ‘suffocating despair’, he took off his prison shirt, rolled it like a rope and tried to hang himself from his cell window – but a guard burst in and stopped him.
harbouring impossibly high standards for himself, McCain always insisted that he never regarded himself as a war hero.
he spent more than two years in solitary confinement, fed only watery pumpkin soup and morsels of bread. his dank cell was no more about 7ft by 10ft, with a tiny, barred window.
McCain communicated with the man in the next cell by tapping on the wall – a method used to pass on news of the war. he put himself to sleep at night by reciting the names of his fellow prisoners. his health declined further and his weight fell to 7st 7lb. there were few moments of respite – once a guard secretly loosened McCain’s rope bindings for a night, later silently drawing a cross in the earth with his foot to indicate he was a Christian. EVentuALLY,
he and nearly 600 other uS prisoners came home early in 1973. McCain, whose hair had turned white at 36, returned on crutches and a minor celebrity. he had to undergo long medical treatment and rehabilitation.
he was never able to raise his arms over his head and had to rely on someone else to comb his hair.
Although, unlike many veterans, he had few psychological scars, he admitted that – due to his association of it with his brutal guards – the sound of keys rattling always made him tense up. he left the navy in 1981 for politics, a year after he split up from his first wife. he blamed the breakdown of his marriage on his selfishness and womanising, but biographers believe their enforced separation during the war played a part.
he married his second wife, Cindy, who was 18 years younger, the same year. Despite his ordeal there, McCain worked as a senator to normalise uS relations with Vietnam. A monument to him now stands on the shores of the hanoi lake where he was shot down.
Americans living in the city went there yesterday to leave flowers and flags. A touching tribute to a true American hero.
McCain was considered too conservative when he was defeated by Barack obama in the 2008 presidential election. however, he became a hero for Democrats and moderate Republicans during the trump administration as he tore into the President’s policies.
Praise came from both sides of uS politics yesterday. george W Bush said he was a ‘man of deep conviction and a patriot of the highest order’. obama said that, despite their political differences, he and McCain shared a ‘fidelity to something higher – the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed’.