Consider these excerpts from the Wikipedia:

John McCain graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958, and was married in 1965. He became a naval aviator, flying attack aircraft from carriers. During his training and deployments he survived two airplane crashes and a collision with power lines.

During the Vietnam War in 1967, he narrowly escaped death in the Forrestal fire. He was at the epicenter of the Forrestal fire, when a rocket accidentally fired across the carrier's deck and hit planes, including McCain's which had been waiting to launch. McCain escaped from his burning jet and was trying to help another pilot escape when a bomb exploded; McCain was struck in the legs and chest by shrapnel. The ensuing fire killed 134 sailors and took 24 hours to control.

On his twenty-third bombing mission over North Vietnam later in 1967, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese. He spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war, including periods of torture.

McCain fractured both arms and a leg, and then nearly drowned when he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi. After he regained consciousness, a mob gathered around, spat on him, kicked him, and stripped him of his clothes. Others crushed his shoulder with the butt of a rifle and bayoneted him in his left foot and abdominal area; he was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Loa Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by American POWs.

Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to give him medical care unless he gave them military information, beating and interrogating him. Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care and announced his capture. His status as a POW made the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

McCain spent six weeks in the Hoa Loa hospital, receiving marginal care. Now having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white, McCain was sent to a different camp on the outskirts of Hanoi in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week; they nursed McCain and kept him alive. In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.

In July 1968, McCain's father was named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater. McCain was immediately offered a chance to return home early: The North Vietnamese wanted a worldwide propaganda coup by appearing merciful, and also wanted to show other POWs that elites like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially. McCain turned down the offer of repatriation; he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.

In August of 1968, a program of severe torture methods began on McCain, using rope bindings into painful positions, and beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery. His injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head. He subsequently received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements.

 

Although most American's know that McCain was a POW, few realize how long and cruel his imprisonment was, as detailed above.