HE IS A HERO WHO WON THE CONGRESSIONAL Medal of Honor for his bravery as a Vietnam War POW, yet retired Vice Adm. James Bond Stockdale is still volunteering for precarious adventures. Washington insiders may dismiss his campaign for the vice presidency as the political equivalent of a suicide mission; Stockdale sees it as a matter of duty and loyalty to an old pal, running mate Ross Perot.

Last March when Perot proclaimed in a speech to the National Press Club that it was time "to clean out the barn" in Washington, Stockdale, 68, and his wile, Sybil, 67, sent Perot a note. "We bought our new shovels, and we're ready to go to Washington anytime," the Stockdales wrote. "Just let us know." Stockdale was stunned 10 days later when Perot phoned to ask if he would be his stand-in vice presidential candidate in states that require two names on petitions. Assured his role would be a temporary formality, until Perot could screen other potential candidates, Stockdale didn't hesitate. "Of course I'll do that for you, Ross," Stockdale said.

Now, following Perot's belated official entry into the race Oct. 1, Stockdale has suddenly found himself catapulted into one of the roughest presidential campaigns in years. Perot had abandoned his search for a running mate last July, but it is unlikely he could have found a man of greater character to share his ticket. Shot down on a bombing mission over North Vietnam in 1965, Stockdale endured more than seven years as a prisoner of war. "He is one of the few authentic heroes that I have known in my life," says Clinton supporter Adm. William J. Crowe, retired chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff. Martin Anderson, a former economic policy adviser to President Reagan, is equally enthusiastic. "Stockdale may be the strong part of the ticket," he says.

Stockdale's friendship with Perot is an outgrowth of his wife Sybil's efforts as founder of an organization of POW families that drew attention to the plight of Americans held captive during the Vietnam War. At the time of her husband's capture, Sybil was living in Coronado, Calif., with their four young boys and tutoring dyslexic children. She met Perot when he offered to make a dramatic gesture on behalf of the POWs for Christmas 1969. "He chartered a couple of 707s to try to fly food and medicine to Hanoi, to get in to the men." Sybil recalls. "The Vietnamese wouldn't let him in. But he did put the inhumane treatment of POWs on the front pages of newspapers."

As the highest-ranking POW at the brutal prison known as the Hanoi Hilton, Stockdale was a role model for his fellow prisoners. Former POW Pete Peterson and Stockdale were held in adjacent cells for six years and did not set eyes on each other until they were released from the prison. "We communicated with a tap code," recalls Peterson, now a Democratic Congressman from Florida. "He established a code of conduct that said, 'Resist to the point of death or permanent injury, and then give them something.' "

In the 1984 book In Love and War, which Stockdale cowrote with his wife, he describes one horrifying torture session. Fearing he would break down and jeopardize other POWs by giving away their secret methods of communication, Stockdale smashed a glass pane in a door and slashed his wrists with shards of glass. Convinced that he was prepared to kill himself rather than give in, his jailers stopped their torture.

Stockdale met Perot a few days after his release from Vietnam in 1973 and was impressed. "The thing that I've never doubted is his total honesty," the admiral says. In the years since, the Stockdales have kept in touch with the Texas billionaire. "We would trust our lives to him," says Sybil. "When we leave the country to go traveling, we say to our children, 'If we are hijacked or captured, call Ross.' We know he would come and get us." The Stockdales' extended family—which includes their four sons, ages 30 to 41, and five grandchildren—has been enthusiastically behind Perot's candidacy from the beginning. "From the time our sons were little, they've heard about Ross Perot," says Sybil.

Like Perot, Stockdale doesn't always do things by the numbers. The son of a commercial-pottery plan! executive from Abingdon, Ill., Stockdale displayed both moxie and a sense of mischief while a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy. "Jim was not shy about breaking the rules," says Admiral Crowe, a classmate who remembers sneaking off with Stockdale on occasion without permission. Commissioned in 1946, Stockdale enrolled 15 years later in a master's degree program for naval officers at Stanford University. While there, he grew enamored of the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus, who was enslaved in Rome during the 1st century A.D. It was the teachings of Epictetus, Stockdale says, that steeled him through his POW years.

During Stockdale's captivity he fell behind his Navy peers, and top assignments were closed to him after his release. His scholary bent led to an appointment in 1977 as president of the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. After retiring from the Navy in 1979, he spent a year as president of the Citadel, an all-male academy in Charleston, S.C., and tried to reform some of its antiquated traditions, including the hazing of first-year students. But the school's governing board refused to go along, and he resigned in protest. Since 1981, Stockdale has been a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank on the grounds of Stanford. When Perot asked him to join the campaign, Stockdale was in the midst of research for a book on Epictetus. "For a year I've been immersed in his discourses," Stockdale says. "I was just about ready to start writing when Ross called last March and said, 'How about it?' "

Stockdale insists that Perot's recent decision to reenter the race involved a genuine change of heart. "He was on the fence," Stockdale says. "Some, including me, were trying to encourage him to gel back in. I said, 'Ross, we've already paid for our tickets. We might as well enjoy the show.' "

Though he walks with a limp (when he was shot down over Vietnam, his left leg was badly dislocated in an attack by angry villagers and then broken by a clumsy torturer), Stockdale insists he will run hard throughout what will probably be a difficult—and losing—campaign. "It can't be too bad." he says. "It's only a month. And I spent more than a month one time blindfolded, naked on a cement floor with a broken leg. So I can get through this fine."

DAVID GROGAN
DON SIDER and bureau reports