[Tennessee Nana]

What happened to the practice of escaping if you could ???

Why didn’t McCain leave when he could so that he could pass on to the US anything he might have learnt about the enemies movements, treatment of POWs etc and who was in there with him ???

staying in that case was not a brave thing to do, it was stupid..

if I was Denton or one of the others I would have urged him to go, even if it was just to reassure the families about the other men..

McCain didn’t help our side by staying there..

[Mr Rogers]

“Why didn’t McCain leave when he could so that he could pass on to the US anything he might have learnt about the enemies movements, treatment of POWs etc and who was in there with him ???”

He didn’t know anything about troop movements. We already knew about the treatment of prisoners. And we had a pretty good idea of who was there - better than McCain.

[Hulka]

Broken arms, stabbed in the leg, starved and abused, POW in the most horrible prison ever. . .what chance did he have of effecting an escape? What actionable intel could he offer that would be worth the cost to his honor and breaking faith with his fellow POWs if he left early? The Code of Conduct requires you to escape if you can, but does NOT allow you to accept special favors--like early release.

Early rease was approved by Stockdale for a young guy that basically fell overboard and he was released to make sure names of POWs were known.

Many other POWs were offered early release and they all refused. Did that make then all “stupid.”

[RinaseaofDs]

Lord knows Stockdale tried. Wow. He gave a lecture to us at the USCG in 1986 or so. Guy was amazing. Never should have said yes to running with Perot.