SIDNEY — Guy Gruters tapped into his memories of Vietnam and his connection to John McCain on Friday, the fifth anniversary of the U.S. senator’s death.
“Two taps if he understands, so if he doesn’t he goes,” Gruters said, recalling how he communicated with McCain during their days as prisoners of war. Gruters was an Air Force fighter pilot when he was captured and sent to a prison camp.
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Using one’s fingers to tap out coded messages on cell walls was how the POWs communicated with each other. Gruters tapped on the tabletop at Cazadores, a restaurant in Sidney, to show News Center 7 Reporter Brandon Lewis how it was done.
He and Bob Craner, an Air Force major, occupied a cell next to the cell McCain was in for part of the five years all three of them were POWs. Gruters said the only vantage point he had to see McCain was from under the crack of his cell door.
“We knew how crippled he was because we saw him, hobbling, pardon me, hobbling past us. He was really in bad shape,” Gruters recalled.
But the tapping on 18 inches of brick wall that separated them and being able to “talk” that way for hours forged a friendship among the three captives.
McCain, in his book, “Faith of My Fathers,” wrote about his experience as a POW and included mentions of Craner and Gruters.
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“I was alone, and I needed to talk as much as possible with my neighbor to keep from lapsing into despair,’ McCain wrote in the book. “So Bob kept up his end of our ceaseless conversation to get me through my years in solitary.”
Gruters said, “I was supporting their friendship, OK, and that was a great experience.”
The tapping on the walls helped prisoners pass along orders from senior officers to get everyone on the same page about how to deal with their interrogators.
“Basically, they call you in, so your orders are to answer them as hard line as you can, all right,” Gruters said. “Be a jerk, a real jerk, all right. And as soon as you get back to your cell, you tap out to the leader, these were the jerk answers I gave and he says, ‘yeah, good.’ ”
That communication kept the three of them alive long enough to gain their freedom.
“I’m very, very happy to have served, you know, and I’m very happy to have served in Vietnam,” Gruters said. " I think Vietnam was a great fight and I just went back there for the first time in 50 years. And believe me, Vietnam is a, is a great ally of the United States. They are our great friends.”
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