"As you may know, I
spent five and one half years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. In
the early years of our imprisonment, the NVA kept us in solitary confinement or
two or three to a cell. In 1971 the NVA moved us from these conditions of
isolation into large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men to a
room.
This was, as
you can imagine, a wonderful change and was a direct result of the efforts of
millions of Americans on behalf of a few hundred POWs 10,000 miles from
home.
One of the
men who moved into my room was a young man named Mike
Christian.
Mike came
from a small town near Selma , Alabama He didn't wear a pair of shoes
until he was 13 years old. At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy. He later earned a
commission by going to Officer Training School Then he became a Naval Flight
Officer and was shot down and captured in 1967. Mike had a keen and deep
appreciation of the opportunities this country and our military provide for
people who want to work and want to succeed.
As part of the change
in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from
home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of
clothing.
Mike got
himself a bamboo needle. Over a period of a couple of months, he created an
American flag and sewed it on the inside of his shirt.
Every
afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's shirt on the wall
of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance.
I know the
Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I
can assure you that in that stark cell it was indeed the most important and
meaningful event.
One day the
Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically, and discovered Mike's
shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it.
That evening
they returned, opened the door of the cell, and for the benefit of all of us,
beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours. Then, they opened the
door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we
could.
The cell in
which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept. Four naked
light bulbs hung in each corner of the room.
As I said,
we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I
looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb
with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend,
Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating
he had received, making another American flag. He was not making the flag
because it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag because he
knew how important it was to us to be able to Pledge our allegiance to our flag
and country.
So the next
time you say the Pledge of Allegiance, you must never forget the sacrifice and
courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote
freedom around the world. You must remember our duty, our honor, and our
country."
"I pledge
allegiance to the flag of the United
States of America and to the
republic for which it
stands, one nation
under God,
indivisible,
with liberty and justice for
all."
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