Special Operations.Com

THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

"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 'til 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