 McCain and other prisoners were moved around to different camps at times , but conditions over the next several years were generally more tolerable than they had been before . Unbeknownst to them , each year that Jack McCain was CINCPAC , he paid a Christmastime visit to the American troops in South Vietnam serving closest to the DMZ ; he would stand alone and look north , to be as close to his son as he could get . By 1971 , some 30 – 50 percent of the POWs had become disillusioned about the war , both because of the apparent lack of military progress and what they heard of the growing anti @-@ war movement in the U.S. , and some of them were less reluctant to make propaganda statements for the North Vietnamese . McCain was not among them : he participated in a defiant church service and led an effort to write letters home that only portrayed the camp in a negative light , and as a result spent much of the year in a camp reserved for " bad attitude " cases . 
