Senator John McCain's prisoner of war experience
has been mentioned often in the U.S. presidential campaign. There's a
story within the story, however, chronicled by Mark McDonald of the Knight
Ridder News Service. I want to focus not on the senator, but on Mai Van
On-the man who pulled McCain from Truc Bach Lake in North Vietnam, on
October 26, 1967.
McDonald recounted the events of that morning,
which, at the time, may have seemed like just one more of many bombing
raids on Hanoi in the fall of 1967. Mai Van On said, "It was about 11
a.m. I had just come home for lunch and put my bicycle into the house.
Then the air-raid siren went off and 60 to 70 of us ran to a tunnel to
avoid the bombs. I was at the entrance of the tunnel when I saw the pilot
go into the water."
Then On related the trauma of the moment: "The
tunnel was still shaking from the bombing when I ran to the lake."
McDonald wrote that On had witnessed "the
desperate flier, John Sidney McCain III, [who] had floated down into Hanoi's
Truc Bach Lake after his Navy Skyhawk bomber was hit by a North Vietnamese
missile." No one knew at that moment that the lone figure descending into
the lake had been knocked unconscious when he ejected from his plane,
and that both of his arms were broken and his right knee shattered.
On, a retired colonel of the North Vietnamese
army, plunged into the lake after the injured pilot while the bombing
raid continued on the factory where On worked as a security guard.
"He's the enemy!"
When he jumped into the water and began to
swim the 200 yards to the point of impact, his neighbors yelled out, "He's
the enemy! Let him die!" As On reached the impact point, all he could
see was a bit of white silk of the parachute. The young American's 50
pounds of flight gear held him beneath the surface. On used a stout bamboo
pole to hoist the wounded pilot to the surface while the bombs continued
to fall.
