John McCain’s remarks about the Pledge of Allegiance

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‘The Pledge  of Allegiance’ -
                   by Senator John McCain 
 

‘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 & nbsp;u ntil 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 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 flag because he knew how important it was to  us to be able to Pledge our allegiance to our flag and  country. 
  
So the next time you say  the Pledge of Allegiance, you must never forget the sacrifice  and courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our  nation and promote freedom around the world. You must remember  our duty, our honor, and our  country.’ 
  
‘I pledge allegiance to  the flag of the United States of America and to the republic  for which it stands, one nation  under  God, indivisable, with  liberty and justice for all.’