Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign promises a ``different kind'' of holiday message when it previews a new ad with reporters this afternoon.

     There's been a lot of hullabaloo about the subliminal cross in the window behind GOP candidate Mike Huckabee in his latest ad as he offers a Jesus-laden, Merry Christmas to all.

     Well, McCain bears his own cross with this mailing and it's one a North Vietnamese captor drew in the dirt with his sandal at the infamous, Hanoi Hilton POW prison camp.

     McCain spent more than five years there.

     ``As a POW, my captors would tie my arms behind my back and then loop the rope around my neck and ankles so that my head was p ulled down between my knees,''  McCain writes in the mailing.

    ``I was often left like that through the night.''

     One night a guard came into his cell and loosened the ropes to relieve the pain. He returned the next morning to retighten them in time so he wouldn't get into trouble.

     Then a month later on Christmas Day, the same guard walked up and without a word, drew the cross in the dirt.

    ``We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas, even in the darkness of a Vietnamese prison camp,'' McCain wrote.

    ``After a minute or two, he rubbed it out and walked away.''

    McCain calls the man ``my Good Samaritan.''

    ``I will never forget that man and I will never forget that moment,'' McCain concludes. ``And I will never forget that, no matter where you are, no matter how difficult the circumstances, there will always be someone who will pick you up and carry you.''

    Obviously, McCain is looking for New Hampshire voters in the next 19 days to pick him on the trash heap of political history and carry him to a second, primary victory.