www.WingmenForMcCain.com . . . the REAL John McCain as remembered by fellow P.O.W.s and flyers




					"WITH ALL HIS HEART . . . AND GUTS!"
				BY COMMANDER J.B. SOUDER, USN (Ret.)
				After 335 missions in 1966, 1967, 1971 and 1972, I was one of the very fortunate ones to escape the fabled "golden BB" until very late in the war. I was shot-down on April 27, 1972. After about a month in a solo cell I was integrated into the prison population-at-large and began to get first-person stories from the POWs who had been there a long time. Since conditions had improved markedly during the recent year---the torture had virtually ceased, the food was somewhat better and more plentiful, etc---they wanted us "new guys" to know how conditions were in the "old days". They also wanted us to know which guys among them had been the toughest and the most inspirational to the rest of them. In order to inform us, they spent hours and hours of sending the tales to us via the tap code, the flash code, and by whispered messages. One of the stories I most vividly remember was that of Lt. Cdr John Sidney McCain, a navy pilot who'd been shot down on October 26, 1967. I already knew about McCain's shoot-down because I'd been on the same mission and helped destroy a Mig-21 that day, only to have the victory dampened considerably by the news that McCain had been shot-down by a SAM directly overhead Hanoi. Anyway, the stories about John McCain's inspirational example of self-discipline and self-denial by his refusal of early release were inspirational to us "new guys". When he refused early release---and because he knew he could get released any time he wanted to simply by telling the Vietnamese he wanted it--- he inspired all the guys who heard about his refusal. He was a LEGEND to the rest of the POWs, according to the stories they told us newly arrived POWs, and we held him in the highest possible esteem. Stories abounded about JSM's personal courage, endurance, self-sacrifice and absolute determination to return home with honor, and those stories established for us "new guys" goals to personally attain, and standards by which to measure our own performance as men and American POWs. During all my personal encounters with John McCain in that prison in Hanoi--of which there were many--I found him to be a "monument of a man", a virtual "living miracle" of courage, perseverance, endurance, unending optimism, and inspiration to his fellow POWs and steadfast loyalty to the United States of America. Even at that depressing time and under those discouraging, disheartening circumstances, I learned why, for what, and just how John McCain lived his daily life "for something greater than himself". When he says in his campaign "Country First", he means it, and he means it with all his heart---and guts! J. B. Souder Commander, US Navy (Retired) POW April 27, 1972--March 28, 1973