BEYOND THE DROPZONE

RUNNING INTO A FIGHTER PILOT

Posted by W. Thomas Smith Jr. on 15 June 2008 at 1:27 pm UTC

Yesterday, I ran into an old acquaintance, retired Air Force Col. Jack Van Loan (pictured above), who I had not seen in years.

Jack and his lovely wife, Linda, were having coffee at the Gourmet Shop in Five Points, a trendy little shopping, restaurant, and college-hangout district here in my hometown of Columbia, S.C.

We chatted for a few minutes. I introduced Jack and Linda to my mom and Mom’s little “step� great-granddaughter. We talked briefly about my ongoing work, Jack’s service more than 40-years-ago as a fighter pilot flying F-4 Phantoms over North Vietnam, etc. Then we wished one another a Happy Father’s Day (it was Father’s Day eve) and went on our ways.

As I mentioned Jack was a fighter pilot who flew combat missions during the Vietnam War. What I didn’t mention was that Jack also was a POW, having been shot down in the spring of 1967 (I was eight-years-old at the time) and spending the next six years of his life in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.�

Yes, he met John McCain there: The future Arizona Senator and presidential candidate was tossed into the same hell hole that Jack was living in several months after Jack was shot-down and captured.

I thought about yesterday’s chance coffee-shop meeting this morning, which prompted me to do a quick Google search of Jack, and the first piece I came across was this fantastic blog entry posted in January by another guy I know, Brad Warthen.

Brad is a vice president and the editorial page editor of The State, the largest newspaper — and the paper of record — here in South Carolina.

Brad writes:

 “…In October of Jack’s first year in Hanoi, a new prisoner came in, a naval aviator named John McCain. He was in really bad shape. He had ejected over Hanoi, and had landed in a lake right in the middle of the city. He suffered two broken arms and a broken leg ejecting. He nearly drowned in the lake before a mob pulled him out, and then set upon him. They spat on him, kicked him and stripped his clothes off. Then they crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, and bayoneted him in his left foot and his groin.

“That gave the enemy something to ‘bear down on.’ Lt. Cmdr. McCain would be strung up tight by his unhealed arms, hog-tied and left that way for the night.

“‘John was no different than anyone else, except that he was so badly hurt,’ said Jack. ‘He was really badly, badly hurt.’

“Jack and I got to talking about all this when he called me Wednesday morning, outraged over a story that had appeared in that morning’s paper, headlined ‘McCain’s war record attacked.’ A flier put out by an anti-McCain group was claiming the candidate had given up military information in return for medical treatment as a POW in Vietnam. 
…

“Jack, a retired colonel whom I’ve had the privilege of knowing for more than a decade, believes his old comrade would make the best president ‘because of all the stressful situations that he’s been under, and the way he’s responded.’ But he had called me about something more important than that. It was a matter of honor.

“Jack was incredulous: ‘To say that John would ask for medical treatment in return for military information is just preposterous. He turned down an opportunity to go home early, and that was right in front of all of us.’

“‘I mean, he was yelling it. I couldn’t repeat the language he used, and I wouldn’t repeat the language he used, but boy, it was really something. I turned to my cellmate … who heard it all also loud and clear; I said, ‘My God, they’re gonna kill him for that.’ … â€�

But there’s so much more. Read Brad’s entire piece here.

On an aside, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing Sen. McCain over the radio and for publication. I once contributed to a U.S. News & World Report cover story about him. And I wrote a piece in April of this year about the senator’s Vietnam experience here.

— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.

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