Fellow POWs stand by McCain

ST. PAUL -- John McCain is accused of talking too much about his experience as a prisoner of war, but many of his fellow Vietnam POWs say the Republican presidential nominee can't talk about it enough.

In McCain's acceptance speech, scheduled for tonight, "we think he should play it up more," says Dave Wheat, a retired Navy pilot from Minnesota who was a POW for more than seven years. "People have always been interested in our experience, and they tout it more than we do. … To say he's milking it" — as former president Jimmy Carter did last week — "is a gross injustice."

Tom McNish, shot down and captured in 1966, says the senator "is telling his story now to allow the American people to understand who he is."

For the POWs, McCain's nomination is a reminder of what they endured in captivity and achieved after it.

Wherever they watch his speech — living room, corner bar, convention floor — they'll think of how far they've come and how much they and others like them have paid: suicides and divorces, lost promotions and missed opportunities, wounds and nightmares.

"We've gone from the bottom of the heap to the top of the heap," says Alan Brunstrom, an Air Force pilot captured in 1966. Adds Bill Baugh of Colorado Springs, shot down on his 25th combat mission, "John's the epitome of how we've hung in there."

McCain was a Navy pilot when he was downed over North Vietnam in October 1967. He suffered crippling, life-threatening injuries; received poor medical treatment; turned down an early release offered by the North Vietnamese after they learned his father was a top Naval commander; was isolated and tortured.

Like most of the other POWs, he was released in 1973.

Today, they're still tight. "If you've walked through a fire together like that, you've shared an experience very few people can relate to," says McNish, who was in a cell next to McCain's in the prison known as the Hanoi Hilton.

Almost all of McCain's former fellow captives like and respect him, even when they disagree. "I know him as a man, and that's most important," says Bill Austin, a former fighter pilot downed a few weeks before McCain. "He is who he says he is."