“I said, ‘Don’t bother me,’ and again he says, ‘Ed, listen to me....’ ”
Mechenbier shook his head as the decades-old realization came back again: “That voice six feet behind me saved my (rear end.) ...And every day now, I say, ‘Thank you, Kevin.’ ”
As Mechenbier and McManus parachuted from the flaming aircraft, a group of locals on the ground were shooting at their floating, defenseless forms.
The bullets missed, but Mechenbier ended up with a broken back. He and McManus were taken to the Hoa Lo prison, which was dubbed the Hanoi Hilton.
It was June 1967, the Vietnam War was in full swing and for the next 5 years, 8 months and 4 days, Mechenbier went through an unimaginable ordeal as a caged prisoner of war.
For four of those years he was kept in a 7-by-7-foot cell with McManus.
“On each side we had two feet of concrete slab that we slept on and in the middle was a 3-foot space to walk in,” said Mechenbier. “I’ve got to say there is absolutely nothing I do not know about Kevin Joseph Patrick McManus.
“He shared every secret of his life with me — things his wife would never even know — and I shared every secret of my life.”
As he thought about it, his eyes glistened ever so slightly, then he smiled: “I had the privilege, if you will, of doing Kevin’s eulogy a couple of years ago and I said, ‘My secrets have gone to the grave.’ ”
And yet at the Nutter Center on Wednesday evening, Mechenbier shared a few of those long-buried thoughts.
More than a game
Wright State and the Air Force Academy met for the first time ever on the basketball court Wednesday night. More than a game, it was a bonding of two next-door neighbors — the university and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — and it included a gathering of the two teams the night before at the Air Force Museum, a gala reception for both schools’ grads before the game and some moments, both fun and poignant, following the tipoff.
After WSU’s 76-61 victory, Raiders coach Billy Donlon summed it up best:
“There were a lot more important things happening here tonight than the score. ... To be around people who protect and serve, it taught us a lot. It gives all of us an appreciation of history and an appreciation of the work and sacrifice put in by people so we can live the lives we do back here.”
And no one could teach his players the lessons of teamwork, inner strength and against-all-odds resiliency better than Mechenbier, who, as president of the local Air Force Academy alumni association, helped put the event together.
“The North Vietnamese knew the importance of bonding and support and a sense of community, so they tried to prevent that by keeping us in small groups,” he said.
“(Now Senator) John McCain got shot down about four months after I did and for nine months or so he lived 45 feet from me, but I never saw him because they kept us isolated.
“If they caught you were trying to communicate with each other, you spent two weeks in irons — or worse — but we still found ways.”
Their prime means of communication was by tapping on a wall.
“We used a 5-by-5 matrix — 5 letters across, 5 rows down — that Smitty Harris had learned when he was a Boy Scout,” said Mechenbier. “Since there are 26 letters in the alphabet, we had to drop one letter. We made it the K since most bad words have a K — usually preceded by a UC — in them.”
They spelled out conversations and got so good at it that they understood each other’s tap patterns and mental patterns and could complete the thought as quickly as their unseen fellow prisoner.
When a documentary was made of Everett Alvarez, the Navy fighter pilot who was held 8½ years, Mechenbier said one former POW described the knocking as sounding “like a bunch of run-away woodpeckers.”
“It’s amazing what the mind can do,” Mechenbier said. “To keep ourselves mentally busy, we went through all kinds of exercises. We’d pool our collective memories and come up with the Cincinnati Reds’ lineup in 1953 or the New York Yankees’ in ’61.
“We remembered the first car we had and imagined the things we’d have done with it if we had had the money. Then we imagined the girls we would have attracted if we had a better car.”
Mechenbier let his imagination run and he fantasized wine tastings for his fellow POWs and would describe the flavors of each vintage. As the men ate rotted pumpkins and turnip tops, he talked about the best wine to serve with the finest meals.
And for a bit of up-yours humor, he convinced his captors that an upraised middle finger was a friendly greeting and it was one he gave them whenever he could.
‘By yourself, you’re pretty frail’
Mechenbier was finally released after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973.
He returned to his wife, Jeri, here in Dayton and was assigned to the 4950th Test Wing fighter branch at Wright-Patterson AFB. Over the decades that followed, he rose to the rank of Major General and when he retired in 2004, Mechenbier was the last remaining active duty POW.
On his final flight, he piloted a C-141 Starlifter — the same aircraft that returned him from Vietnam — back to Hanoi to bring home the remains of two American servicemen who had been missing in action.
Now 68, he’s a consultant for a local defense contractor, a recruiter for the Air Force research laboratory and an avid golfer. He and Jeri have four children, three of whom were orphans they adopted from Vietnam, Thailand and Korea.
He said he and most of his fellow POWs “didn’t come away with fundamental changes in what we do or in our value systems.
“But one thing now, I don’t take anything for granted. I mean here I was (in my mind) the world’s greatest fighter pilot and I step away for almost six years and would you believe the world has the audacity to go on without me.
“And most of all I never forgot we made it through — one day at a time — thanks to camaraderie and the understanding that by yourself you’re pretty frail.
“Your body can take a lot of physical torture — we all proved that individually — but when it comes to bouncing back emotionally, it takes somebody else. It takes a team. That’s how you survive.”
Billy Donlon was right.
This night was about a lot more than a final score.
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