[Pete F.]

John McCain’s flight suit, helmet, and parachute are on display in a glass case at a Hanoi prison nine blocks from where President Trump is expected to meet with the North Korean leader this week.

The arched brick entrance to what the Vietnamese call Hoa Lo Prison and American POWs dubbed the Hanoi Hilton still bears the words “MAISON CENTRALE” that McCain would recall seeing when he was carried there a half century ago.

At the time, McCain had two broken arms and a broken leg suffered while ejecting from his stricken warplane. He had been beaten and bayoneted after he landed in Truc Bach Lake, which is also within easy walking distance of the upcoming summit with Kim Jong Un.

The site of the capture is now marked by a stone monument. The inscription is in Vietnamese but a date and name is recognizable to an English speaker.

“26-10-1967...JOHN SIDNEY MCCAIN”

Of course, neither the monument inscription nor the museum display make any mention of the years of torture McCain suffered. Nor is there mention of the offer of early release the Vietnamese made to McCain 10 months after his capture. They did so upon learning his father was the new commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific.

McCain famously refused, citing the P.O.W. Code of Conduct, which prohibits accepting special favors from the enemy, including being released other than in the order of capture. He would later voice a more visceral reason, drawn from that selfless sector of the soul from which true American greatness rises.

"I knew that every prisoner the Vietnamese tried to break, those who had arrived before me and those who would come after me, would be taunted with the story of how an admiral's son had gone home early, a lucky beneficiary of America's class-conscious society," McCain would subsequently explain.

At the time, McCain simply told the Vietnamese he was not interested. He would recall one of the guards warning, “Now, McCain, it will be very bad for you.”

That very same week in July of 1968, Local Draft Board No. 3 in Jamaica, Queens, New York changed Donald Trump’s classification from 2S (“registrant deferred because of activity in study”) to 1A (“available for military service.”) Trump was suddenly in danger of being drafted and sent to Vietnam.

By October, Trump had secured a letter from a doctor saying that he suffered from bone spurs in his heels. Trump was reclassified to 1Y (“registrant qualified for service only in time of war or national emergency”) and then 4F (“registrant not qualified for military service.”) He remained free to ride around New York City in a limo and pursue a social life that later prompted him to say that STDs were “my Vietnam.”

In the meantime, McCain endured five more years of torture and torment. He survived to become a U.S. senator from Arizona and to run unsuccessfully for president.

When Trump took a turn at running for president, McCain took exception with his base-rousing description of Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. Trump responded by declaring that McCain was “not a war hero.”

“He's a war hero because he was captured,” Trump famously remarked. “I like people that weren't captured.”