Presidential Hopeful Continues Fight for Veterans

Ex-Vietnam POW, McCain Cellmate, Continues Fight for Veterans
by Melissa Nelson

FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. — It was spring of 1968 and George "Bud" Day was nearly a year into his life as prisoner of war when his North Vietnamese captors opened his cell door and brought in a man. Wearing a full body cast, the man, Day and his cellmate could see, was nearly dead.

It was John McCain.

The story of the man who’d become a U.S. senator and now a presidential candidate is familiar, especially to the retired Air Force colonel who recounted that time in a 1989 autobiography.

McCain had been in isolation for seven weeks and could not wash or feed himself, Day wrote in "Return With Honor."

"We were the first Americans he had talked to. … We were delighted to have him, and he was more than elated to see us."  (continued…)

McCain’s path after the war lead him to a very public and political life. Day, on the other hand, lives largely outside the spotlight — though he often receives honors and accolades. As his nation’s most highly decorated living combat veteran, the Medal of Honor winner keeps his fighting spirit intact as ever, even at the age of 82. 

From his cluttered Fort Walton Beach law office, Day works under the buzzing fluorescent lights of his no-frills law library. He approaches his legal work just as he did his military career — he isn’t afraid to get rough.

He retired from the Air Force at the rank of colonel, never attaining his general’s star. He believes he wasn’t promoted further because he "told it like it was."

"When I returned from prison, there was a huge amount of the Air Force leadership that were not combat oriented. They were quasi-political managers," he said.

It was his tendency for tough talk, he says, that kept him out of politics.

"I probably could have been more tempered in some of my remarks but when they asked, I told them," he said.

He and McCain have remained close since they first shared that 9 foot by 15 foot cell, and years later he advised the younger Navy man against running for the U.S. Senate.

"When he first said he was going into politics, I said politics is compromise and John had almost zero ability to compromise," said Day.

He said he told McCain politics was like prostitution.

"You have to do a whole bunch of things and then there is a paycheck," he said.

"But he told me that I ought to know him better than that."

And he said his friend was right.

"He jammed legislation through up there that every player has fought him on. He has been a maverick," he said.

Day and McCain were together in various prisons, first at one camp known as the Plantation and later in the infamous Hanoi Hilton.

Day was taken prisoner in 1967 after he was shot down above North Vietnam. He escaped and was on the run for 10 days when he was recaptured, mere miles from friendly forces.

During his imprisonment, the once-muscular, 5-foot-9 Day was hung by his arms for days, tearing them from their sockets.

Finally, after five and a half years of torture, Day was freed in 1973 — a skeletal figure of the once dashing fighter pilot. His hands and arms never functioned properly again. His back and legs still ache constantly. Doctors were unable to salvage his teeth. And, he’s two inches shorter, a loss he blames on his aircraft bailout and his physical ailments.

But he carries himself with the erect posture of a disciplined officer, there is no visible sign of his past trauma. For formal events, he wears a dress shirt and tie topped by his leather fighter pilot’s jacket which bears his combat patches.

Day has been fighting the political and military establishments since returning to civilian life. He’s perhaps best known for his drive to restore retirement benefits to World War II and Korean era veterans.

In 2003, he took the battle to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to restore the free lifetime health care promised at enlistment. Day sued on behalf of retirees who enlisted before a 1956 change to the benefits, giving them free care in military facilities only if space was available.

Day says the lawsuit is part of his life’s work, his effort to fight for the rights of those who serve the nation’s military.

And he continues to take on the military bureaucracy on behalf of clients like Army Maj. John Nelson, a medical officer who was wounded when a bomb exploded at a mess hall in Mosul, Iraq, in 2004.

Nelson, a father of five who saved dozens of fellow soldiers in the blast, speaks with a slow stutter, cannot drive and suffers from short-term memory loss. The Army initially said his injuries merited a 40 percent disability rating. Day, however, took the case to an evaluation board last year and persuaded them to award full benefits.

"I had gone before the board twice and I wasn’t getting anywhere," Nelson said. "Col. Day doesn’t give a (expletive). He will tell it to them like it is."

He likened Day to the television lawyer Matlock.

But Day, who calls himself "the only fighter pilot lawyer out there" isn’t exactly the kindly, old, Southern gentleman lawyer portrayed by Andy Griffith. He’s been through too much for a grandfatherly facade.

Day, for example, has little empathy for fellow prisoners who "rolled over" to earn good treatment. Such men, he said, did not deserve heroic accolades upon their return.

In the prison camps, Day commonly was the highest-ranking captive. He commanded his fellow prisoners not to divulge sensitive information under torture.

Day and the others would send coded messages by tapping on their prison walls. "Some of the messages (orders) I sent down the wall, I knew they were impossible to follow," he said. "But I didn’t ask them to do anything I didn’t do myself."

That past has defined his present as he works through his Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation to discredit the stories of some Vietnam veterans. Sen. John Kerry, former Sen. J. William Fullbright and Jane Fonda are among his ongoing targets because "we were portrayed as murderers and baby killers."

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Day worked with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to discredit Kerry’s military experience. This time around, his foundation hopes to release another film ahead of the November vote to draw parallels between the U.S. pullout of Vietnam and the dangers of ending the military surge in Iraq.

"They cut off funding to the South Vietnamese Army and we ended up being defeated and that’s really very relevant to what’s happening right now," Day said.

Day enjoys working in politics from behind the scenes, but has no regrets about not running himself. Panhandle Republicans asked him to run for Congress in the 1980s.

"I was sour on the idea of going to Congress, to Washington D.C., to any one of those kind of political offices, because of my concern that you go up there as, say, a hamburger and you come out a hot dog," he said.

Plus, he said, "I had been separated from my wife and kids for six years, I had just gotten home, bought this building, gotten this law practice going and I liked living here in a small town."

Looking back on his legacy, he says he is most proud of his time as a prisoner of war.

"As awful as it sounds, no one could say we did not do well. (Being a POW) was a major issue in my life and one that I am extremely proud of. I was just living day to day," he said. "One really bad cold and I would have been dead."