A Lesson in Resilience w/ POWs John McCain and Ernie Brace

Think about where you were five years ago. Seven years ago. Now imagine having spent all your time since then sitting alone in a foreign prison cell. How would you have survived?

At a preview screening of the season premiere of National Geographic Channel’s “Locked Up Abroad,” now-Senator John McCain and his fellow Vietnam POW Ernie Brace explained how they used a Morse code-like “tapping” system to tell each other jokes, lies—anything to lift the spirit—through their shared cell wall while trapped at the “Hanoi Hilton” Vietnam prison camp.

“Those that did not tap on the wall for whatever reason suffered severe deterioration,” said McCain at the event, held at National Geographic’s M Street headquarters on Monday. “It really was, in some ways, life or death….”

Moderated by National Journal’s Tom DeFrank—who had covered the return of the POWs back in February 1973 as a journalist for Newsweek – the screening marked the first time McCain and Brace appeared together publicly to share their experience.

“Had you been on that tarmac,” said DeFrank, introducing the event, “You would have gotten a refresher course in the resilience of the human spirit.”