Words that Never Leave You: “You have options – regardless of your surroundings – if you have self-discipline. The options are in your control, the way you respond. You are winning until you quit.”
Part Twenty-Eight n ongoing series from Hollie's book "Words That Never Leave You: Fifty Pearls of Wisdom and Reflection from Survivors Across the World."
Charlie Plumb has lived a life of torture and tragedy, but the retired airman and six-year prisoner of war (POW) still believes he is the luckiest man. Charlie grew up on a farm in Kansas during the Second World War, enamored by the notion of flying warplanes through hostile airspace. Despite his family’s poor economic status and not even having running water until age seven, the budding pilot views his childhood as rich in empathy and love.
“My parents couldn’t afford college, so I got a scholarship to the Naval Academy,” he said. “Within two days, I was on a Greyhound bus and pledging to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies.”
Even before he deployed to Vietnam, Charlie was stirring his rebellious side. As a Navy cadet, late Arizona senator John McCain trained Charlie to fly as an interceptor pilot. But a six-month waiting list was in place when he reported to Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego to fly the Phantom-F4 ll.
Even so, going against the grain, that dissent led to the development of the storied Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known as the TOP GUN School after the 1986 Tom Cruise blockbuster.
While deployed to Vietnam, under his code name “Plumber,” Charlie made over one hundred successful carrier landings and flew 74 triumphant missions throughout the Vietnam War. But on his 75th mission on May 19, 1967—five days before he was to return home—the then-24-year-old was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Hanoi.
Charlie spent the next 2,103 days fighting for his life in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. His existence had been reduced to routine torture, compounded by mosquitoes and machetes in his vicinity. However, Charlie refused to succumb or let his mind become a moral minefield. Instead, in the hot and scented jungle overgrown with thickets and mystery, he became somewhat of a motivational wellspring to his comrades whose bodies were wasting away.
Only Charlie never – not for a moment – saw himself as the victim, and he told me something which I never forgot.
“You have options – regardless of your surroundings – if you have self-discipline,” he noted. “The options are in your control, the way you respond. You are winning until you quit.”
PURCHASE YOUR COPY OF “WORDS THAT NEVER LEAVE YOU” TO READ MORE REFLECTIONS AND ANECDOTES
** Short read of meaningful lessons gleaned from the ordinary forced to become extraordinary
For speaking queries please contact meta@metaspeakers.org
I am also available for a select number of private coaching sessions for those wishing to write a book or venture into the foreign journalism space. Please contact directly for rates hollie@holliemckay.com
PLEASE CONSIDER A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO THIS SUBSTACK TO KEEP INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM ALIVE.