It wasn’t bad although 2 hours minus commercials is not nearly enough time to describe 5 years in an NVA prison camp. They really left out a lot.
I am still humbled by what these men went through. I started reading stories of POWs back around 1975 or so, when Reader’s Digest was printing book excerpts in the magazine, and some of those names and stories have never left my head: Jerry Denton, Jim Stockdale, Gerry Coffee, Rod Knutson, and many more. Some of them were in there for more than 7 years, and in solitary - in leg irons - for 4 years.
So did anyone else see it? Has anyone read the book on which it was based?
And didn’t the actor playing McCain look just like him? Amazing resemblance.
Back when James Stockdale was Perot’s VP candidate in 1992, I voted for their ticket, based on what I saw in the VP debates. The man could give an honest, straight answer to a question or debate point, something Quayle and Gore couldn’t seem to do.
Years later, after reading an article about him in a magazine, I wrote him a short note, telling him how I appreciated what he and all war veterans had done for our country. I included a SASE, with a notecard, asking, if he were so inclined, for an autograph. Adm. Stockdale did send it back, with a short note of his own. I keep it in a safe place.
I’d keep that in a safe place too - how nice of him to answer you. I really should write to some of those guys and tell them I have been thinking of them and wondering how they are since I was 10 years old.
If anyone would like to read more real-life accounts of Vietnam POWs, this seems to be a pretty comprehensive site: http://www.pownetwork.org/ - certain ones, if you find them, will show how sanitized the A&E movie was. (Even McCain’s own bio is much worse than what was shown.) I think it would have been too horrifying if they had been more true-to-life.
Check out the “phonies” section - it’s amazing and disgusting that people would stoop so low.