November 5, 2008

•   ‘Freedom has a taste’
  
    I'm
  writing this column on Election Day morning, one week before Veterans
  Day. As I write, I'm wearing a bracelet I haven't worn in a long time.
    The
  bracelet feels very familiar on my left wrist, because it's one I wore
  every day for four years. I got it when I was in the ninth grade, and I
  didn't stop wearing it until 1973, just before I graduated from high
  school.
    It's not a pretty piece of jewelry —  flat and
  silver-colored, made out of some kind of cheap metal. The silver paint
  on the inside is completely rubbed away from being worn for so long. It
  has no decorations, just some words and numbers in block type:
  

   “CDR RENDER CRAYTON 2-7-66”
  

    It's
  a POW bracelet, made to be worn in honor of Americans being held
  prisoner by the North Vietnamese. To remind us to pray for them and
  their families. To help us remember that brave men were being held
  captive by our enemies. To remind us that freedom has a price. That War
  has a face.
   We wore the bracelets with the commitment that we would continue to wear them until our prisoners were released.
  I'm
  wearing this bracelet again today for several reasons. The first is
  because I'm hoping and praying that another Vietnam-era Navy pilot,
  another former prisoner of war, will be, by the time you read this, our
  new president-elect.
    The second, is because I feel a connection to
  Capt. Crayton. You kind of feel like you know somebody when you wear
  their name around your wrist — and pray for them — for four years.
    And
  the third, and probably most powerful reason, is because the POW
  bracelet reminds me of my father. Today, when the eyes of the world are
  on two men, one of them a Vietnam-era Naval aviator like my dad, my
  mind is much on my late father, the veteran of three combat tours.
  While flying his RA5-C Vigilante over enemy territory, he could easily
  have been shot down, like his comrade John McCain was, like many of his
  friends were. Like my best friend Diana's father was. Unlike my dad,
  John McCain and Render Crayton, Diana’s daddy never came home.
    Up
  until this morning, all I knew about Crayton was that he was a Navy
  pilot who had been shot down and captured by the Vietnamese, and that
  he had been one of those who came home alive.
    Because I found the
  worn old bracelet in a drawer this morning, I was curious to learn more
  about the man whose name it bears. I did a Google search on “Render
  Crayton,” and soon found myself reading a feature story published Oct.
  11 in the Idaho Statesman, by a reporter named Dan Popkey. Then I found
  a second story, based on another interview Popkey did with Crayton,
  this one about his friend and fellow prisoner, John McCain.
    I
  learned that Crayton was McCain’s advanced-flight instructor for four
  months in Corpus Christi before the war. They also spent several months
  together in a 40-man cellblock in the infamous prison, the Hanoi
  Hilton. Crayton knew McCain well. He’s supporting him for president.
    A
  native Southerner, Render Crayton was born in North Carolina in 1933,
  the same year Daddy was born in Mississippi. His Navy career spanned 30
  years, including the seven he spent as a prisoner of war in North
  Vietnam. Flying an A-4 Skyhawk based on the USS Ticonderoga, he was
  shot down Feb. 7, 1966 — the date on my bracelet. After he ejected from
  his wounded jet, he broke his right shoulder, which never healed
  correctly because of lack of treatment.
    From the ground, in enemy
  territory, he radioed the other planes in his flight and gave his
  position, and two of his fellow A-4s strafed the area around where he
  had landed, trying to protect him from the North Vietnamese. A
  helicopter was dispatched to go pick him up, but it was slow in
  arriving. Worried that they would run out of fuel, Crayton asked that
  the fighters patrolling the area to protect him go back to safety.
   By
  the time the rescue helicopter finally arrived, his parachute was still
  there, but Crayton was gone —  captured by the enemy. The young pilot
  spent the next two years in solitary confinement. He was imprisoned for
  a total of seven years in camps in and around Hanoi. During that time,
  like John McCain, he was brutally tortured by his captors.
  Along with McCain and about 600 other prisoners of war, Crayton was finally released in 1973.
    I'll
  never forget when the prisoners were released. I was a senior in high
  school in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Our family gathered around the TV
  to watch news coverage of the first POWs getting off the big C-141As
  that had brought them to Clark Air Force base in the Philippines.
    They
  emerged one by one from the door of the plane, emaciated and pale, and
  walked, as straight and tall as they could with their improperly healed
  broken bones, down the steps, and proudly saluted the American military
  men waiting for them. I’ll never forget watching one of the frail
  former POWs gingerly kneel on the hot runway and kiss the concrete of
  the U. S. base, overcome with joy at being once again on American soil.
    I
  watched with tears running down my cheeks. I still can't watch or read
  anything about prisoners of war without getting very emotional. These
  men were my dad’s comrades-in-arms. These were men like the pilots I
  had grown up around, like the fathers of my friends, our neighbors on
  the Navy bases where I grew up.
    I’m so happy to know now that
  retired Navy Captain Render Crayton is alive and well and living in
  Ketchum, Idaho. I’d love to be able to talk to him. I’d love to be able
  to thank him. But for today, I’ll just wear his bracelet one more time,
  in tribute to him and to the other brave men like him. Men like John
  McCain. Men like my father.
  “Freedom has a taste to those who fought
  and almost died for it, that the protected shall never know.”
   (Written
  by an unknown author on a cell wall in the Hanoi Hilton)

  By Celia DeWoody
  Copyright 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times
  Published Nov. 5, 2008

  
  

  
  
  
  

  • 8:11 pm
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