The Vietnamese Peasant Who Saved John McCain's Life

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We've all heard much about Senator John McCain's hero status as a former POW but here is a story you may not have heard: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-542277/How-war-hero-John-McCain-betrayed-Vietnamese-peasant-saved-life.html Start of excerpt: "In all the tales of wartime courage peppering John McCain's presidential campaign trail, perhaps the most outstanding example of selfless heroism involves not the candidate but a humble Vietnamese peasant. On October 26, 1967, Mai Van On ran from the safety of a bomb shelter at the height of an air raid and swam out into the lake where Lieutenant Commander McCain was drowning, tangled in his parachute cord after ejecting when his Skyhawk bomber was hit by a missile. In an extraordinary act of compassion at a time when Vietnamese citizens were being killed by US aerial bombardments, he pulled a barely conscious McCain to the lake surface and, with the help of a neighbour, dragged him towards the shore." End of excerpt I've said for a long time that despite the fact that I'm not a supporter of Senator McCain based on his policies I could never take away from him the respect he'd earned as a war hero and POW. I've often said one can't possibly imagine what he'd gone through during those five years. However, this article tells a part of the story that I'd never known before and to me honest it troubles me a bit. Here's more from the article linked above: "And when a furious mob at the water's edge began to beat and stab the captured pilot, Mr On drove them back. Nearly three decades later, a Vietnamese government commission confirmed he was indeed the rescuer and, in a 1996 meeting in Hanoi, McCain embraced and thanked Mr On and presented him with a Senate memento. From that brief encounter to his death at the age of 88 two years ago, Mr On never heard from the senator again, and three years after their meeting, McCain published an autobiography that makes no mention of his apparent debt to Mr On." End of excerpt I find it a bit strange that this detail was totally omitted from McCain's autobiography "Faith of My Fathers". After all, this man saved his life! If it hadn't been for him, none of the rest of McCain's story ever would have happened. Here's another small passage that gives me pause: "?Apparently McCain had broken both arms and one leg, and had sunk to the bottom, but they pulled him out of the lake. ?When they got to the bank, a couple of men attacked McCain, breaking his shoulder with a rifle butt and stabbing his leg, before Mr On stopped them." "APPARENTLY MCCAIN HAD BROKEN BOTH ARMS AND ONE LEG." Were we not led to believe that McCain's limbs had been broken by his captors? This may be viewed as a minor detail by some but I don't think the fact that this Vietnamese peasant saved his life is a minor detail nor is the fact that McCain didn't seem willing to as much as acknowledge him. When you put these items together with McCain's convenient switching of the NFL roster he recited while being interrogated from the Green Bay Packers to the Pittsburgh Steelers during a recent trip to Pennsylvania I think it raises some questions. Had any of you been familiar with this story before? Whether it's new news or old news, what do you make of it? Annie