Nevadan recalls POW ordeal
September 5, 2008 - 9:00 pm
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Here's how Nevada Republican delegate Bill Elander describes becoming a prisoner of war: a bad day.
"After 50 or 60 missions, I had a bad day," the Sparks resident and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel said in an interview at the national GOP convention. "I was shot down in 1972 and captured right over Hanoi."
Like the man he is here to nominate for the presidency, John McCain, Elander has a former flyboy's irreverent sense of humor. Ask him to tell the story of his military service, and he says with an impish grin, "I was the world's greatest fighter pilot for 20 years."
As McCain strives to become the first Vietnam veteran elected to the presidency, there is a spotlight at this convention on his fellow veterans, especially his fellow former prisoners of war.
There are 24 of them here at the convention, and their names were read on the floor on Wednesday night. Elander, 74, has been feted at exclusive events, including a dinner with McCain's mother and a special reception Thursday night after McCain's acceptance speech.
Elander was prisoner with McCain at Hanoi Hilton in North Vietnam. They met only briefly.
McCain's experience as a prisoner there for more than five years gets mentioned constantly.
Since he first moved to Arizona and ran for Congress in 1982, it's something he's cited as a qualification; his supporters say it's proof that he's not just the right politician but an American hero.
In his speech Thursday, McCain traced his patriotism to that Vietnamese prison cell: "I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said. "I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency, for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place but an idea, a cause worth fighting for."
Those who aren't fans of McCain might wonder whether he's milking his wartime experience, traumatic as it certainly was, for more than it's worth, or what getting shot out of the sky has to do with being a leader.
Elander says that's fair. Plenty of men have been prisoners who have no business being president. But McCain was not just any prisoner, he said.
"John was a hero to me not because he was tortured, though that's sad too, and received some bad injuries when he was shot down -- I had very few," Elander said.
"John was offered an early out. It would have been a tremendous propaganda victory for the enemy; his dad was the chief of naval operations. Because he was injured, he had permission (from American officials in the camp) to go and sign the propaganda and get out. But that was not acceptable to John."
That choice, Elander said, is something McCain did, not something that was done to him.
The prisoners lived by a strict code that was aimed at never letting their captors or the outside world see any chinks in their resolve. Not accepting releases that they believed would be used as propaganda victories, except in cases of medical necessity, was part of that. But there were other prisoners who, understandably, didn't have McCain's strength.
"After enduring the type of treatment we did, and disease and rats and the nastiness of the guards, and then they come to you and say, 'Do you want to go home?' Most of us have never been tested like that," Elander said. "There were others who didn't hold fast like John. It shows that his honor is above reproach."
He is modest and does not frame it this way, but Elander, too, made a choice to put himself in more danger than was required, to do more for his country than it asked of him.
When he was shot down, he was on his second combat tour. His first had been in 1965, flying F-105s from Thailand.
After that, he spent several years stateside, including a stint on the air-show circuit with the Thunderbirds demonstration squadron, based at Nellis Air Force Base. But in 1971, he said, he asked to go back.
"I felt that I should return to Southeast Asia and do whatever I could for the war effort," he said mildly. "That's what I was trained to do."
Shot down in July 1972, Elander spent his first several weeks at the "Hilton" -- not a hotel at all but a former French prison known as Hoa Lo -- in solitary confinement, deprived of food, brutalized.
"I don't deny I was a bit frightened," he said. "It was constant interrogation, tied up with ropes and twine and whatnot. Every day it was a victory if you survived."
After six weeks or so, when he figures his captors probably decided they weren't going to get any information out of him that would be timely anymore, he was put in a room with 14 other men. Some were men he knew, and the company made things more bearable.
"My commanding officer was shot down in 1964, and he was still there," Elander recalled. "He said, 'Bill Elander, I've been here seven years. What took you so long?'"
Knowing that others had been there so much longer gave him faith in his own ability to keep going. But it also added to the horror and helplessness of the unknown. How long would he be there? Fifteen years? Twenty?
Like the current war, Elander believes, Vietnam was a political war, fought as much in the Congress and media as in the theater of battle.
The prisoners would observe a letup in bombings, for example, and wait for a new man to be taken captive who could tell them what new policy was being tried, what accord signed.
After one agreement, the prisoners' treatment changed for the better, and they were brought together and allowed to mingle. That's when Elander believes he met McCain. But the detente didn't last, and the socializing wasn't repeated.
In December 1972, there was an intense, sustained bombardment, "then suddenly everything went quiet. So we knew something was up."
In early January, all of the cells were opened, and the men were led to a courtyard, where they formed into military ranks in an attempt to keep up their dignity, though they were barefoot and in tattered prisoners' pajamas.
"They read the articles of the agreement that said we would be released," Elander said. "They were waiting for the jubilation, the jumping and the cheering. But we just stood there at attention. We weren't going to let them and their cameras see the jubilation that we all felt inside."
Elander spent the next few months in a different facility, waiting for his release to come as others who had been imprisoned longer were released first.
It was April 1 and his wedding anniversary when he reunited with his wife, who was living in Florida with the families of other missing-in-action and prisoner-of-war troops. From July to November, she had not known whether he was alive.
Elander stayed in the Air Force until 1978, when he and his wife moved to Reno and he went to work for MGM, helping open the Reno MGM Grand, now the Grand Sierra Resort. They moved to Alaska for 15 years, where Elander headed the Anchorage Convention and Visitors Bureau, then retired to Sparks.
Although he's always voted Republican and still believes in President Bush, Elander said he hasn't been especially politically active in the past. He had never been to a national convention until he was asked to join the Nevada delegation this year.
He believes McCain, like Nixon, will take forceful command of an unpopular war.
"The media and the politicians vilified the war," Elander said. "I was fortunate that my commander in chief kept it up. John will see this war to a successful conclusion. He won't wave a white flag."
Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.