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 of 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 until 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, indivisible, with
liberty and justice for all."

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