[TomasUSMC]

Bottom line, he could have come home early but he didn’t and Adm Stockdale praised him for it.

John McCain in the Crucible
Commentary by James B. Stockdale
The New York Times

..... I think John McCain is solid as a rock.

And I consider it blasphemy to smudge the straight-arrow prisoner-of-war
record of a man who was near death when he arrived at Hoa Loa prison 1967:
both arms broken, left leg broken, left shoulder broken by a civilian with a
rifle butt.

He was eventually taken to the same rat-infested hospital room I had
occupied
two years earlier, and, like me, he had surgery on his leg. By then the
Vietnamese had discovered that his father was the ranking admiral in the
Pacific Fleet, and he received an offer that, as far as I know, was made to
no other American prisoner: immediate release, no strings attached. He
refused, thereby sentencing himself to four more years in a cell.

There was a special cramped and hot privy-like structure in that Hanoi
prison
reserved for whichever American was causing the Vietnamese the most trouble.
I was the first in the camp to be locked up in it, and I gave it the name
Calcutta.

There was only room for one person at a time in the cage, and after a couple
of months I was taken out and marched back to a regular cell. As I limped
along, I sneaked a peek at my replacement: John McCain, hobbling along on
his
own bad leg.

James B. Stockdale, a retired Navy Vice Admiral, was the Reform Party
vice-presidential candidate in 1992.

[Bringbackthedraft]

James B. Stockdale, a retired Navy Vice Admiral, was the Reform Party
vice-presidential candidate in 1992. ............................ Yeah, just another war hero that most would not remember today. Ask anyone walking down a busy street; “Who is James Stockdale?”, and see what you get as an answer. Heroes fade as the years go by. Roger Young, Milton Olive who are they? Forgotten by most remembered by a few.