Faith of My Fathers (33 page)

My father's reputation as a frank, gruff, and engaging American military representative was widespread throughout Asia. Most, if not all, of the Asian heads of state whose countries were either allies of the United States or officially nonaligned with either superpower considered him a personal friend. He was accorded extraordinary courtesies whenever he paid official visits to their countries.

A few years ago, I met with Lee Kuan Yew, who as Singapore's “senior minister” has governed the city-state for decades and is considered by many to be the elder statesman of Asia. My visit was an official one, but Lee began our conversation by reminding me that he had been a friend of my father's. He went on to talk at great length about my father, in a tone suffused with fond regard for his memory. He paid polite but rather less close attention to the official subjects I had come to discuss. Throughout our discussion, he kept returning to my father, and repeating how highly he had valued my father's friendship and counsel. That was fine with me.

On another official visit, this time to Taiwan, I was invited to be the guest of honor at a luncheon banquet hosted by most of the Taiwan military command. The affair lasted over two hours, and considerable quantities of a Chinese rice wine that tastes more like whiskey than wine were consumed by the twenty or more aging generals in attendance. Every ten minutes or so, one or another of the generals rose to his feet and reverently offered a toast to the memory of my father, “the great American admiral, John McCain.”

Joe Vasey accompanied my father on his official visits to Asian capitals. He tells a humorous story about a trip they made to Indonesia during which they paid a call on President Suharto, who, until very recently, was one of Southeast Asia's most durable dictators. The story illustrates my father's diplomatic style and the respect accorded him by Asian leaders.

My father and Suharto enjoyed each other's company, and the meeting lasted much longer than planned. Near the end of their conversation, my father surprised his host and the American diplomats who accompanied him to the meeting by commenting on Indonesia's recent purchase of Soviet ships. “Why in the hell did you accept motor torpedo boats and submarines from the Soviets? Our intelligence reports indicate they are a bunch of junk.” Before Suharto could respond, my father asked his permission to visit one of the subs. After briefly consulting with an aide, Suharto agreed, and the next day my father and Admiral Vasey were flown to a naval base at the other end of Java.

When they arrived, they instantly confirmed the opinion of naval intelligence that the submarines in question were junk. They were freshly painted and immaculate, and the officers and crew were well turned out. But the two veterans of the American submarine service knew an antiquated ship when they saw one. It was clear to both of them that the sub had never been submerged or even under way since it had arrived some months earlier. Nevertheless, my father wanted to make a complete inspection. He asked the Indonesian admirals accompanying them to permit them to continue their inspection belowdecks, which, after a brief delay to prepare the crew, they were allowed to do.

When he reached the forward torpedo room, my father asked his host to fire a water slug, a standard test routinely performed by all navies. The outer door of the tube is opened, and after the tube fills with water a blast of air blows the water back out. The Indonesians agreed, assuring my father that the test was performed weekly on all their submarines. However, it seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for the demonstration to be performed, and it was obvious the Indonesians were uncertain how to proceed. When at length they attempted to fire the slug, the procedure was done in reverse. My father and Vasey were standing just a few feet behind the tube when high-pressure air blew open the tube's heavy bronze inner door. The door narrowly missed Admiral Vasey, he recalled, and the “great whoosh of high pressure air and oily vapor immediately engulfed the entire torpedo room in a dark cloud as our Indonesian friends scrambled up the vertical ladder to safety.” As they gasped for air, Vasey guided my father to the ladder and out of harm's way. Although much amused by the mishap, my father never remarked on it in subsequent meetings with his hosts.

Few, if any, American diplomatic or military officials could have expected such elaborate courtesies from the government of a country that was not an ally of the United States. But because of the respect Asian leaders had for my father he could use his influence to obtain important diplomatic and intelligence opportunities for the United States, always thinking ahead to future challenges to our security. He would even do his own intelligence work when the opportunity arose, as was the case on this occasion.

Admiral Vasey put the incident in a strategic perspective, observing that Washington was preoccupied with Vietnam and less concerned with Soviet overtures to Indonesia that were intended to promote political entente between the two nations. But Indonesia's proximity to vital sea-lanes concerned my father very much. He feared that Indonesia's drift into the Soviet sphere of influence would “drastically change the strategic face of Southeast Asia.” According to Vasey, after my father's visit, “no further Russian military assistance was provided.”

In time, I think the State Department came to value my father's somewhat unorthodox diplomacy, recognizing the opportunities his familiar relations with Asian rulers provided to U.S. statecraft. He was the first CINCPAC to be a regular participant in the annual conference of American ambassadors in Asia. Admiral Vasey observed that the ambassadors initially viewed my father “with great apprehension, but once they knew him and understood his style, they looked forward to his visits. His close rapport with and the confidence in him by Asian leaders always resulted in handsome dividends, insights and information.” I know that President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger valued his influence in the region, for in later years they told me so.

He flew to Vietnam about once a month to confer with General Creighton Abrams and assess the war's progress. He held Abrams in very high regard, and I believe Abrams reciprocated his admiration. Their appointments were announced by the President in the same press conference. But where my father's appointment had come as something of a surprise to official Washington, Abrams's appointment had been expected. He had been his predecessor's second in command, in which capacity he had acquitted himself well. My father outranked him, and Abrams was expected to report through my father to the Joint Chiefs. But as a practical matter, his opinion was expected to hold greater sway with Washington than my father's, at least to the extent that any military commander's could influence an administration that was so directly involved in both strategic and tactical decision making. And my father was a firm believer in giving his commanders in the field the full support they sought from CINCPAC, a policy he insisted on to his staff at Camp Smith, CINCPAC headquarters.

Disagreements and hard feelings within the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, MACV, about Washington's management of the war abated somewhat with the inauguration of the Nixon administration, but that is not to say that they disappeared altogether. No military operation, before or since, experienced the extraordinarily close involvement of political decision makers in day-to-day military decisions. But then no war since the Civil War was as politically controversial as Vietnam. MACV relied on my father to pass on its views and concerns to Washington, and he did not let MACV down. After every visit to the field, he dutifully passed up the line, unvarnished and with his full concurrence, whatever was bothering General Abrams and the other commanders of MACV.

Understandably, my father's appointment initially occasioned some apprehension in the field. He was, after all, an admiral. Vietnam was essentially a ground war, and most of its commanders were generals. It was, I'm sure, MACV's hope that my father would confine his visits to a few routine briefings and not attempt to impose a sailor's views on the infantry's war. But although he ably supported his commanders, he was not content to supervise the war from a distance. The war was his responsibility, and he never ducked his responsibilities. He quickly proved himself an astute commander and an important resource for MACV. He won the respect of Abrams and the other senior officers in Vietnam, who came to welcome his frequent visits as opportunities not just to vent their frustrations with Washington but to take advantage of the old man's counsel.

My mother accompanied him on all his trips to Vietnam. Frequently, my mother's sister, Rowena, joined them. My father's contemporaries often kidded him for having two wives, a reference to the fact that my mother and aunt were identical twins and to their constant presence at his side. He delighted in amplifying the joke himself. Whenever anyone asked him how he managed to tell his wife and sister-in-law apart, he would gruffly respond, “That's their problem.”

In truth, my father was delighted and flattered by the attention his wife and sister-in-law received. He was, in his way, as devoted to his wife and sister-in-law as they were to him. He enjoyed being constantly attended by two beautiful women, and what contentment he knew in his life, which was less, I think, than other men knew, he usually found in their company. My mother always traveled with my father. Had the Navy allowed it, I am sure she would have accompanied him on sea duty, and found in the alternately exciting and dull world of men at sea some useful and interesting way to occupy her time.

My father seldom went to Vietnam simply to receive official briefings. On most of his visits, after conferring with Abrams and senior officers, he would go into the field to talk with the younger officers and enlisted men who were doing the fighting. While he was in the field, my mother and Aunt Rowena remained in Saigon, shopping, sightseeing, visiting, and waiting for his return.

My father did not affect a regard for the opinion of his soldiers in a transparent attempt to boost their morale. He genuinely believed that their views about how the war was going were just as important as the views of their commanders in Saigon. Like his father before him, he believed that the men who executed combat orders were the best judges of their soundness. He wanted to know what they thought about operations that had been completed and about those that were imminent or in the planning stages. He wanted to know how news from home was affecting their morale. He wanted to know if they thought we would win the war. He based his own opinions on the war's conduct in large part on what he learned from the colonels, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, and privates who were conducting it.

A participant in one of my father's field briefings described the experience in a letter to me. In the summer of 1968, my father and General Abrams unexpectedly arrived at a battalion base camp in the Mekong Delta. There they received an improvised briefing on the battalion's operations from the battalion commander. My correspondent, Randy Carpenter, was then a twenty-two-year-old draftee who had through attrition been made a platoon leader. He had been asked to present my father with a captured AK-47 rifle. He recounted what happened after the brief ceremony concluded.

Your father, smoking a very large cigar, in a rough voice politely thanked everyone and asked if he and General Abrams could talk to me in private. He excused the three of us and we went to a small isolated area. Your father asked all of the questions. He wanted to know how much and what kind of action my platoon had seen. He asked general questions about the morale of my men and my morale. What kind of news we were getting from the states and how we were getting it? Had I been inside Cambodia on any operations? Did we have any men missing in action? Would I or my men have any problem expanding the operation into neighboring countries? What would the men's reaction be if we were asked to go into North Vietnam?…The meeting lasted about fifteen minutes and at the end I was ordered not to discuss any of what we talked about with anyone.

He was the commander my grandfather surely had hoped he would become: forceful, determined, clear thinking, and respectful of his men. Had my grandfather held the post, I believe he would have commanded in the same way. I like to believe my father recognized this, and that the recognition strengthened his confidence, and brought him a good measure of satisfaction.

Late in the war, my father would give the order that sent B-52s to rain destruction upon the city where I was held a prisoner. That was his duty, and he did not shrink from it.

While I was imprisoned, he never spoke about me at length to anyone other than my wife and mother. When friends offered their sympathy, he would thank them politely and change the subject.

He received hundreds of letters from members of Congress, dignitaries, fellow officers, enlisted men, family friends, and acquaintances offering their sympathy and prayers for my return. He politely and briefly replied to each one.

His responses were almost always written in the same style. The first paragraph of each began with an expression of his appreciation for the correspondent's sympathy, and closed, almost unvaryingly, with the line “God has a way of solving problems and we have great faith in the future.” The next paragraph would address another subject, often extending an invitation to visit my parents in London.

Copies of his letters are kept with my father's official papers. There are only three I have reviewed that differ substantially from the others. The first is a letter my father wrote to the wife of Colonel John Flynn. John was the most senior American officer in captivity. He had been shot down the day after I was captured and taken to the same hospital where I was held. We never saw each other in the hospital, although one day Cat, in his usual bragging mood, had shown me his identity card. For the first three years of his captivity, John, like the other higher-ranking officers, was kept segregated from the rest of us and out of our communication chain.