Fair Winds and Following Seas Senator McCain

VMAX  Forum

Help Support VMAX Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Kronx

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 31, 2013
Messages
987
Reaction score
103
Location
St. Louis
Fair Winds and Following Seas, Senator McCain

The family announced Senator John McCain was discontinuing medical treatment for brain cancer. Fair winds and following seas captain! My heart goes out to the McCain family! And my sincerest gratitude for a life of service to this nation!

I remember many years ago having to do some work in Marquette, Iowa. A small little town right on the Mississippi river. I stayed in a small hotel just on the other side of the Mississippi in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. The hotel had books guests could take to their rooms and read. And they had John McCain's book Faith of My Fathers. I read it and really came to respect the hell out of John McCain. No member serving in Congress has ever had or ever will have a 100% approval rating. I can and did disagree with some of his positions/policies, but he was always one of the few that I respected regardless.

There were a lot of things I remember about that book. But one that always stands out to me was the story of Mike Christian.

“What packages we were allowed to receive from our families often contained handkerchiefs, scarves, and other clothing items. For some time, Mike had been taking little scraps of red and white cloth, and with a needle he had fashioned from a piece of bamboo he laboriously sewed an American flag onto the inside of his blue prisoner's shirt. Every afternoon, before we ate our soup, we would hang Mike's flag on the wall of our cell and together recite the Pledge of Allegiance. No other event of the day had as much meaning to us.
"The guards discovered Mike's flag one afternoon during a routine inspection and confiscated it. They returned that evening and took Mike outside. For our benefit as much as Mike's they beat him severely, just outside our cell, puncturing his eardrum and breaking several of his ribs. When they had finished, they dragged him bleeding and nearly senseless back into our cell, and we helped him crawl to his place on the sleeping platform. After things quieted down, we all lay down to go to sleep. Before drifting off, I happened to look toward a corner of the room, where one of the four naked lightbulbs that were always illuminated in our cell cast a dim light on Mike Christian. He had crawled there quietly when he thought the rest of us were sleeping. With his eyes nearly swollen shut from the beating, he had quietly picked up his needle and begun sewing a new flag.”


Every time I read about the punishment given out to American PoWs, I reflect on the fact that McCain had the opportunity of early release from prison camp due to being the son of an admiral, but McCain refused. He is a stronger, tougher, and better man that I could ever pretend to be. He's a fighter to the very end.

/salute
 

Latest posts

Back
Top