Why John McCain is a Great Man.

In 1967, during the Vietnam War, McCain was shot down over Hanoi and seriously injured, breaking his left arm, his right arm in three places and his right knee. Within a few months, McCain had lost about 50 pounds, suffering incessantly from dysentery and unable to retain nourishment.

In June 1968, after his captors discovered that McCain’s father was an Admiral, they asked him whether he would like to be released early.

As McCain writes in his book, Faith Of My Fathers:

“The prospect of going home to my family was powerfully tempting. But I knew what the Code of Conduct instructed, and I held back from responding, saying I would have to think about it. He told me to go back to my cell and consider his offer carefully.”

McCain sought the advice of a fellow POW, Bob Craner. After lengthy discussions, Craner advised McCain to accept the offer. Craner argued that the seriously injured, such as McCain, should be excused from the Code’s restriction on accepting amnesty. Craner said that McCain’s long-term survival in prison was in doubt.

“I wanted to say yes. I badly wanted to go home. I was tired and sick, and despite my bad attitude, I was often afraid. But I couldn’t keep from my own counsel the knowledge of how my release would affect my father, and my fellow prisoners. I knew what the Vietnamese hoped to gain from my release.

“Although I did not know it at the time, my father would shortly assume command of the war effort as Commander in Chief, Pacific. The Vietnamese intended to hail his arrival with a propaganda spectacle as they released his son in a gesture of ‘goodwill’. I was to be enticed into accepting special treatment in the hope that it would shame the new enemy commander.

“Moreover, I knew that every prisoner the Vietnamese tried to break, those who had arrived before me and those would come after me, would be taunted with the story of how an admiral’s son had gone home early, a lucky beneficiary of America’s class-conscious society. I knew that my release would add to the suffering of men who were already straining to keep faith with their country. I was injured, but I believed I could survive. I couldn’t persuade myself to leave.”

McCain knew that if he rejected the offer from the Vietnamese that his treatment would become more harsh and cruel. Nothing happened for two months. Then one day, the torture began. At two-to three-hour intervals, the guards would administer beatings. They broke his ribs and many teeth.

At one point, three guards came into McCain’s cell and gave him the worst beating he had yet experienced. One guard hit McCain in the face and knocked him across the room into the waste bucket. McCain fell on the bucket and broke his left arm again.

“Despairing of any relief from pain and further torture, and fearing the close approach of my moment of dishonor, I tried to take my life. I doubt I really intended to kill myself. But I couldn’t fight anymore, and I remember deciding that the last thing I could do to make them believe I was still resisting, that I wouldn’t break, was to attempt suicide. Obviously, it wasn’t an ideal plan, but it struck me at the time as reasonable.”

Like many POWs, McCain was broken, but his spirit remained firm.

As McCain says: “Glory is not a conceit. It is not a decoration for valor. It is not a prize for being the most clever, the strongest, or the boldest. Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely, and who rely on you in return. No misfortune, no injury, no humiliation can destroy it.”