Christmas in Da Nang: A veteran reflects on Vietnam

I like Christmas, but Christmas 1968 was not very Christmassy. I was 21 years old, and in my ninth month of a 12-month-and-20-day Marine Corps tour in Vietnam. 

Only two memories stick with me from that December. First, a 24-hour Christmas truce was scheduled with the North Vietnamese. I was not a grunt in Vietnam, but my job required me to hitch rides on helicopters between First Marine Division headquarters north of Da Nang and a much smaller base called An Hoa. The helipad was near the Recon Marines’ bunker. Recon Marines were tough, well trained and lethal. 

Not long after the date of the upcoming Christmas truce was announced, I went to the recon bunker to hitch a ride. There was a new sign posted: only 17 more killing days until Christmas. 

My second memory: that December, we had a celebrity. Surprisingly, I had seen a few other celebrities during my time in Vietnam. During the presidential campaign season, George Wallace sent his running mate, Gen. Curtis LeMay, to Vietnam on a so-called fact-finding tour and we enlisted Marines ate lunch with him. Lemay had said such outlandish things that even George Wallace had enough and got him out of the states.

And, earlier that year, I met a presidential son-in-law and future senator: 1st Lt. Charles Robb. To say we “met” is a bit too elegant: we passed each other on the path to the outhouse. I saluted him, he saluted back, each of us carrying a roll of toilet paper. 

My December celebrity was the four-star Navy admiral in charge of all our forces in the Pacific. One of his brief stops was at An Hoa to meet with our Marine Corps brigadier general at his bunker. An officer grabbed me and told me to stand outside the bunker entrance and be some kind of honor guard. Several helicopters touched down, and the most high-ranking officers I’d ever seen, both Vietnamese and American, came walking towards me led by our visitor, an old man, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., the future senator’s father. 

They walked towards me, McCain leading, and I expected them to walk straight into the bunker. But McCain stopped, looked me in the eye, and said, “Son, where’s the pisser?”

I accurately pointed him in the right direction.

Those are my memories of Christmas, 1968. 

After I was elected to Congress in 1996, I learned about Sen. John McCain III right away, about his independence and commitment.  He was a strong proponent of campaign finance reform. There were only a handful of House Republicans supporting McCain’s bill. One of them told me that in the days leading up to the House vote on his bill, McCain met with them, looked each one in the eye, and asked each of them, one-by-one, “Bob, are you with me? Dave, are you with me?  John, are you with me?”

I first met McCain on a trip he and Joe Lieberman led to the Munich Defense Conference. We waited on the small jet for McCain, and when he arrived, he said hello and immediately changed into blue jeans and a baseball hat, looking like the badass pilot he had been in Vietnam.

I didn’t see much of McCain after that, but we all learned a lot more about him when he ran for president. I read a biographical piece about him that discussed the challenges of a father-son relationship in a military family during multiple wars and multiple separations. 

And then I saw a couple sentences that just blew me away. During Senator McCain’s 5½ years in a Hanoi POW prison, everyone knew, including the North Vietnamese, that his father was a high ranking Naval officer. Adm. John McCain could do no more than any other POW family. I am sure he frequently wondered if his son was being mistreated because of who his father was. 

According to this article, Adm. McCain did one thing for himself. He scheduled one of his trips to Vietnam during December, and at the point when he was at his closest to the North Vietnam border, he stood by himself for a few minutes looking towards the North, knowing that for this Christmas, this was as close as the two could be. 

I often think back to that day in 1968. We see someone and almost immediately and unconsciously we make assumptions about what they are doing, what they are thinking, what they are feeling. In December 1968, a not very Christmassy Christmas, I met Adm. John McCain. It turns out he wasn’t old; he was 57. And he wasn’t looking for the pisser. He was looking for his son.