Born in 1936, John McCain
followed his father and grandfather (both four star admirals) to the United
States Naval Academy, graduating in 1958. He went on to become a naval
aviator, and flew the A4 Skyhawk as part of a carrier squadron. Many of
my generation remember the terrible fire that almost took the USS Forrestal in
the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War. It was McCain’s plane that was
at the center of it.
As he was preparing to take off from the carrier,
McCain's fuel tank was hit by a missile from a nearby jet. The missile
had been set off by a stray electrical current. Two hundred gallons of
jet fuel were ignited and proceeded to detonate first one and then another of
the 1000 pound bombs that McCain’s jet had been carrying. The fire and
explosions set off a chain reaction that nearly took the ship. One
hundred and thirty four men were lost . Another one hundred and sixty one
were injured. Somehow, McCain survived with nothing more than burns and
shrapnel wounds. Two months later he was transferred to the USS
Oriskany.
From 1965 to 1968 no carrier’s pilots saw more action
or suffered more losses than those on the Oriskany. McCain’s own squadron
had the highest casualty rate of all. In 1967 alone (the year McCain was
transferred to it), one-third of the squadron’s pilots were killed or
captured. Just one month after arriving, McCain himself became one of
those casualties. He was shot down over Hanoi.
Hit by a missile that took his right wing, McCain’s
jet went into a violent spiral. He radioed that he had been hit, and
pulled the ejection handle. As he ejected, however, he struck part of the
plane: breaking his left arm; his right knee, and his right arm in three
places. He landed in the shallow waters of a lake in the middle of Hanoi,
and was pulled out by an angry crowd. Someone smashed a rifle butt into
his shoulder, breaking it. Someone else drove a bayonet into his groin
and ankle. Finally, a woman intervened and brought the abuse to an
end. McCain was now a prisoner of war.
Towards the end of his book, Faith of My Fathers, McCain
speaks of how important faith in God was to him in the six years that
followed. He was tortured repeatedly and held in solitary for long
periods. In the midst of it, his faith was, in his own words, an
“imperative.” It sustained him. At one point, after a difficult
interrogation, he was left in the interrogation room for the night, tied in
ropes. A short time after the interrogators left, a guard entered the
room and without smiling or saying a word, loosened the ropes, and then
left. Just before his shift ended at 4:00 a.m., the guard returned and
tightened the ropes once more.
One Christmas, a few months later, the same guard
approached McCain as he stood in the dirt courtyard. He came up and stood
beside him. Again, he didn’t smile or say a word. He just stared at
the ground in front of them. And then, using his foot, the guard drew a
cross in the dirt. The two stood looking at the cross for a minute of
two, and then the guard rubbed it out and walked away.
Faith in action. Love in action. So often
that’s the way God’s Spirit moves – touching us through someone nearby, or
touching our hearts in some inexplicable way. Maybe not in the way that
we would have hoped, but real and tangible nevertheless. A sign of God’s
presence. A sign that we are not alone. As McCain and countless
others have discovered, we are never truly alone.
“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
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