Calgarian helped free McCain from Hanoi hellhole
The prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam was actually nicknamed The Plantation, though Hollywood and the media would eventually change the name to the Hanoi Hilton.
As decades passed, its infamy grew, partly because one of the American pilots freed after five years of imprisonment and torture would go on to become a leader in his country. But John McCain, the navy pilot who would become a respected senator and presidential candidate, may never have left that hellhole were it not for the actions of a Calgary soldier.
Both McCain and Norm Altenhof died this year. In the decades since they’d last met, their lives had moved in much different directions. But they will always be bound by the war in Vietnam.
Altenhof was born in Calgary in 1942 and enlisted in the reserves 18 years later. Seven years later he was a commissioned officer and, in 1973, while stationed in Moose Jaw with the Canadian Air Force, he was told he and three other captains were headed for Vietnam.
They would form one of seven prisoner of war exchange teams, set up through the International Commission of Control and Supervision — a body charged with arranging the release of those then being held captive.
By then, the United States was withdrawing from the war. A brittle truce was in place and during that time Altenhof and his three colleagues were instrumental in freeing prisoners from all sides.
In all, the commission would arrange the freedom of more than 32,000 people in the six months before the war erupted again.
But the highlight was freeing 516 American pilots being held at The Plantation in Hanoi.
“He actually kept the prisoner of war roster where John McCain is listed,” said Calgary’s Military Museums chief curator Rory Cory.
“He is listed as limping on his release document — John McCain owed his life and his freedom to a Canadian — to a Calgarian.
“Unfortunately, Norm Altenhof died recently, but his artifacts are going into the exhibit and we did an oral history with him before he passed away, so we’ll have those clips of him, too,” added Cory.
Altenhof was promoted to major when he returned to Canada, and eventually retired in 1986 to live in his hometown of Calgary.