honor slip away from him. he felt shame that he had let the country down, he had let his father down, his family down, his compatriots down. everybody, but mostly me. mostly me. how s that? because the standards that i set for myself. he would be forever haunted by the shame he felt. yet, in the short-term his fellow pows pulled him through. get up off the floor, go back at them. you lost a round, we ll win the fight. you always go back into the fight, but you always come back. but it was really about coming home. and in march of 1973, after more than five 1/2 years of torture, isolation, and illness, mccain was one of 100 pows released by the north vietnamese. of course, we were very pa
mccain. obituaries with headlines talking about the forts he made to reestablish ties between the u.s. and hong kong strike him as this monumental statesman of the success. it s more striking when you consider his long history with that country going back to when he was a naval aviator conducting bombing runs when he was shot down in his first mission in 1967 and held was a pow for more than five years. because his father was the u.s. commander in the pacific, the north vietnamese offered to release him multiple times ahead of fellow pows and he refused multiple times to be allow himself to be used as a propaganda weapon. and that s part of what made him a war hero, even though he endured horrific torture by his own accounts in in, among other places, that infamous
family. yes. and we have, you know, we knew that this day would come, but, there is still a sadness that it is in the air. yes. my memory of john mccain, and john was a unique individual. he is very, very fortunate to have lived episodes that happened several times in his career prior totured and while down. he is, if you will recall, he was in a body cast and taken care of by other fellow p.o.w.s and john could not feed himself or bathe himself or clean himself, and all of this was done with the assistance of cellmates like bud day, and the medal of honor winner who is now deis ceased, orson swindle and other people who were key people in his survival in the day.
life is being on a squad dron with 12 afrirplanes and the togetherness and comrade derry, that s the same thing that developed with a fellow pows. do you think what s happened here in the congress is that you don t have people who served nogt war? we had the greatest generation, the bob doles of the world and others who had served together. was there nothing that sort of brings people together in the way that did? you know, david, that is absolutely true because i saw that particularly with dole. there was a bond there. both of them ended up terribly wounded in the same hospital. yes. and late senator. he lost his arm. and there was something unspoke 2011 between them so i think that mattered some.
psychologist and navy commander. the word martin keeps using is routine, routine. and i understand that coupled with sergeant bergdahl being allowed to make his own decisions, those are two of the most crucial things, why? well, it s very important to understand this young man under went five years of very difficult, if not harsh captivity under less than desirable circumstances, and that s not including what we don t know regarding if there was any torture, what kind of isolation and deprivation did he experience, as well as what periods of time did he fear in fact for his life. so that s a long road to come back from, and as you mentioned, the military has a lot of experience. we return 951 pows at the end of the vietnam war. the difference with him, he was isolated. he was not with a group of fellow pows and he was probably