October 16, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Ken Wells always dreamed of flying. When that dream took him to the skies over Vietnam, he knew the risks but never imagined how quickly everything would change. Just two days before his wife, Candy, gave birth to their first child, Ken’s plane was shot down. He spent years in captivity at the infamous Hanoi Hilton, surviving hunger, isolation, and torture. Back home, Candy raised their child alone, clinging to faith and hope that he would return. Together, they tell a story of endurance and of a love that withstood the distance.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love to hear from you, our listeners. Send
your stories to our American Stories dot com. There's some
of our favorites. And by the way, they don't have
to be your stories. If you've seen or heard a
story on your local news or just around town, send
(00:31):
us the link. We'll take it from there. Again, your
stories are some of our favorites. Up next, you're going
to hear from Ken Wells and his wife, Candy. Ken
served our country in Vietnam and was captured and taken
as a pow to the prisoner of war camp known
as the Hannai Hilton. Let's hear from Candy and Ken
sharing the remarkable story.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
We were married in November of sixty nine and then
went to one year of pilot training in Big Spring, Texas.
Ken achieved what he wanted. He wanted to get an
F four fighter plane, which I didn't want him to
get because I knew where he would be going, but
(01:19):
he did, and that's what he wanted.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I guess I'd wanted to fly ever since I was
a little kid watching airplanes fly in and out of
the Portland International Airport across the Columbia River from the
dairy farm I grew up on. But I always wanted
to fly a fighter aircraft, and so that was my
goal in pilot training and was able to finish high
enough in the class to get the F four. Like
(01:43):
in the movie Top Gun where the lady tells Maverick
that you're not happy unless you're going mock too with
your hair on fire, well that's kind of of course.
We're up fairly high twenty five thousand feet doing that,
so it's not like you're going supersonic at ground level,
which is also fun. By the way, I've been supersonic
(02:05):
at about two hundred feet and it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
We went on then to Victorville, California for a FOD
training for six months at that time than in March
of nineteen seventy one, March fourth, my mother and father
got the visit that my brother had been declared missing
(02:30):
in action. He was in the Army. He was twenty
one years old.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
It was a.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It was a hard day for our family. But two
months later it even became more difficult because my mom
and dad received the phone call that my brother had
been declared dead but nobody recovered. But on that day
(02:58):
when my mom and dad received that terrible call, I
was reaching for the phone to call them to tell
them they were expecting their first grandson. So we went
through our training and can finish the F four And
(03:18):
on October thirty first of nineteen seventy one, Ken went
to Udorn Air Force Base in Thailand, and I was
seven months pregnant. Two months later, on December eighteenth, nineteen
seventy one, I was sitting in my parents' living room
(03:40):
and my brother's sitting in a chair and he looks
out the window and he says, oh, mom, here comes
an army car. My mother, just because of what had happened,
became hysterical, and I was sitting by her and I'm
patting her leg and I say, Mom, is it's okay,
(04:01):
It's okay. And then the car got closer and he said, no,
it's an Air Force car. I was very young, I
was twenty three years old, very naive, and I said, oh, Mom,
they're probably just bringing me more papers to sign, I said,
(04:23):
But the two officers came to the door. My father
answered it, and they said Missus Kenneth our Wells, and
I was on the couch, but it took me a
while to get up because I was pregnant. I got
up and went to the door and then they read
me the telegram. We regret to inform you that your husband,
(04:47):
First Lieutenant Kenneth ar Wells, is missing in action. My
heart just dropped.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I had only flown eight missions. This was my ninth mission,
on the eighteenth of December of seventy one. In October
of sixty eight, President Johnson had declared a bombing halt
over North Vietnam, so we weren't even allowed to fly
over the country. We're fighting North Vietnam, so most of
our missions were bombing missions in Laos that the North
(05:20):
Vietnamese used as routes road routes to get supplies down
to the south. I was the wingman and a two
ship formation out of there. It started out to be
a bombing mission in the country of Laos. We took
off that day. We had twelve five hundred pound bombs
on board each aircraft took off and as soon as
(05:43):
we got airborne, we've got a radio call from Red Crown,
which was the radarship out in the Gulf of Tonkin,
telling us that another F four had been shot down
on the border of Laos and North Vietnam. So they
wanted just to provide a search and rescue coverage for
the other crew that had been shot down, so it
(06:04):
kept the bombs on board. We orbited for about forty
five minutes, got low on fuel, had to go to
an airborne tanker, get topped off with fuel, and as
we came off the tanker, we got a call that
two MiG twenty one fighters had launched out of Hanoi
and we're heading toward the shootdown site of this other aircraft.
(06:28):
So the lead pilot and the lead airplane got permission
to drop our bombs on our target that he had
hit the day before, and then we proceeded to chase
these two MiG twenty ones back into North Vietnam all
the way across North Vietnam. They actually went into Red China,
and then we turned around at the border of Red China,
(06:50):
very low on fuel, dangerously low on fuel, matter of fact,
and we needed to get to a tanker or get
back to our base as soon as possible. We got
jumped by two more MiGs on the way out. I
had about one minute of fuel left on the aircraft
when I call the lead aircraft and I said, well,
we're going to be punching out about one minute, and
(07:11):
he said, well, it will be about two minutes behind you.
So they ejected as well, but they were rescued.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And you've been listening to Ken and Candy Wells. When
we come back more of what happened here on our
American Stories, plee habib here, and I'd like to encourage
you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts,
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(07:40):
Any story you missed or want to hear again can
be found there daily again. Please subscribe to the Our
American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or
anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these
great American stories coming. And we continue with our American
(08:11):
Stories and with Ken and Candy Wells's story. When we
last left off, Candy had just found out that her
husband Ken was declared missing in action in the Vietnam War.
Let's pick back up with their story.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
You know, you hear people say that their lives flashed
before their minds. I think that all began during the
flight when I was getting ready to paul the ejection handle.
I was thinking about Candy, knowing that she's nine months pregnant,
and yeah, I may not survive this. To get home
(08:49):
that particular day, they added on an extra couple missions.
They ran out of experienced crew members, had one airplane left.
I got the toss of the coin. I guess to
be the aircraft commander of that. Lee, my back seater,
was only on his twentieth mission, so we had two
inexperienced guys in our aircraft. But Lee was a major
(09:11):
at thirteen years in the Air Force. By that time,
I was probably pretty naive about what was going to happen.
To figure, while I'm flying with this experienced guy, he
knows what to do, and didn't realize that things could
go kind of sour. A few gauges read zero. That's
when we punched out and we were qut about five
(09:35):
thousand feet altitude doing around three hundred knots. Once you
got out into the parachute, it's pretty quiet out there.
When that happens. We heard the engines quit on the aircraft,
and at one end we came down on opposite sides
of the same hill. I came down in the trees
(09:56):
and I my parachute canopy got caught up in the
branches of the tree, so I stopped my feet were
swinging about thirty feet above the ground, lowered myself to
the ground. I got the radio out of my seat
pack and was able to make radio communication contact with Lee,
so we kind of figured out we were on the
(10:17):
opposite sides of this same hill. We took off about
two in the afternoon. We punched out about four in
the afternoon. By the time we climbed to the top
of the hills, probably about six in the evening. It's December,
so it's getting his pretty dark at that time, and
then we're able to spend that night trying to make
radio contact with friendly aircraft. We were close enough to
(10:43):
hear friendly aircraft talking, but far enough away they couldn't
hear our transmission, so that was pretty frustrating. All night,
About every fifty minutes we tried to make radio contact
with the aircraft we were hearing. In some cases it
was aircraft that were going in to rescue the other
(11:05):
crew that punched out. Daybreak the next morning, I started
hearing noises around the bottom of the hill. We were
on some dogs barking, so we knew that they were
looking for us. We were able to move a couple
hills more inland away from the coast. Lee said, about
(11:28):
ten thirty that morning, he said, because it was really
cold that night, he said, I'm going to go back
and try and get my parachute so and keep warm
out here. I didn't think it was a good idea
for him to go back, but he outranked me, so
he went back. All I heard was the shooting, and
I didn't know whether he was still alive or not.
(11:52):
It was about an hour and a half later, around noon.
I was about a third of the way down from
the top of the hill and there are probably twenty
North Vietnamese that were searching around that area, and they
had come by me twice, once each direction, within ten
(12:15):
to fifteen feet away from me, and hadn't found me.
I thought, well, maybe that's the last pass. But then
they made a third pass back, and this time the
guy was right at my elevation and he stopped maybe
ten fifteen feet away from me, just staring at me.
And when I saw how many guys there were around.
(12:36):
I had put my little thirty eight Revolver back in
the whole story. Knew it wasn't going to be much good,
and we just stared at each other for several seconds,
and then he raised his rifle and then this started
shooting in the air, yelling and screaming, and within a
few seconds they were about twenty guys around me, jumping,
(12:58):
coming down for joy that captured American fighter pilot. They
stripped me down to my fruit of the looms, tied
my wrists and elbows together behind my back, tied two
ropes around my neck, went out front, and went out back,
and off went through the jungle. I didn't know for
at least two or three hours, whether they intended to
(13:21):
keep me alive or not. I didn't know whether Lee
was alive or not at that point. But we came
to a little fire camp on the side of the hill,
and that was where I saw I think the first
real military man that was there. These others were militia type,
you know, one guy might have a helmet and someone
(13:41):
else have the military shirt, someone else the pants, but
they all had the weapons. But the first real military
guy was at this fire camp. And after I'd been
there a while, he indicated to somebody to give me
something to eat, and he guy handed me a little
bit of rice about the size of a golf ball,
(14:03):
and that was my first indication, Well, if you're going
to kill me, you know, I got to give me
something to eat. So after giving me the ball of rice,
they gave me a flight suit to put on, and
it was a major flight suit, so I assumed it
was Lee's. And then they gave me my boots back,
but they wouldn't let me lace them up, tie them up,
(14:24):
and so walking several hours through the jungles, I got
huge blisters on my feet which eventually became infected and
actually got blood poisoning. Then walked for several hours, came
to a little village where they put me there for
a couple hours, and occasionally some little kids who'd come
(14:46):
in and peek at me inside in the room where
they'd bring me out and let the kids in the
neighborhood you see me. It's probably about ten o'clock that night.
Then they flew us from Hiphong to Hanoi, and so
it is when I was put on the helicopter at night,
(15:10):
they were actually wiring me instead of using ropes to
use wire to tie me to the seat supports on
each side of the helicopter. And that's when I noticed
that there was a warm body next to me, and
it was Lee. And they actually they actually wired us
together somehow, so if I moved to get comfortable, that
(15:32):
tightened the wires oney him and he had grown. They
don't do that. If we tried to talk to each other,
we got whacked with a boat of a rifle. Oh
weren't allowed to communicate with each other. But just knowing
that we were each alive, I think I encouraged the
two of us. I don't know. Maybe it's a forty
(15:54):
five minute helicopter ride from High Phoon to Hanoi and
then drove us to the camp that we called the
nickname the Hanoi Hilton Fieldove Camp.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
It was on all the major news channels because these
were the first four Americans that had been captured in
three years, and so the Vietnamese government was very thrilled
to say they had captured these Americans, you know, so
(16:28):
they plastered their pictures and I'm grateful that they did
because I was able to see that Ken was okay.
There had been a news conference in Hanoi, and I
got to see Ken walk out behind a curtain in
his prison pajamas. I could see that when he ejected,
(16:50):
he had his arms and his legs, and that gave
me hope that he was going to be okay. That
was December twenty first, when I found out he was
a pow. December twenty third, I had our son.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And you're listening to Ken and Candy Wells share their story,
and Folks, if you've ever had somebody serving overseas in combat,
you know that the husband and the wife are both serving,
and you're hearing it here on this story. That worry
that she had when her husband was declared missing in
action went away when the North Vietnamese paraded around these
(17:33):
four airmen, proud that they'd captured them. And this gave
the bride a sense of hope, and the very next
day the birth of her child, and at least with
some glimmer that something good could happen in the end.
When we come back more of Ken and Candy Wells's story,
what happens next here on our American stories? And we
(18:08):
continue with our American stories and Ken and Candy Wells's
story let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
The days were very dark. I went through a short
time where I was going through a pity party. Poor Candy.
She lost her brother, her husband's a pow she had
to give birth the loan, and it was like I
was really feeling sorry for myself. But then I went
(18:39):
to my first Washington State pow MIA meeting. At that meeting,
I walk into this room full of people and the
lady I went with her husband was missing in action,
and she leaned over and she told me, she said, Candy,
(19:01):
there are only three of you in this room that
know that your loved one is alive. And that was
quite an awakening for me to just get off the
pity party and be grateful for what I know, and
I quit feeling sorry for myself.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
When I got to the prison camp, they put us
in solitary confinement and that lasted nine days, and during
that time was different interrogation sessions. They're basically trying to
find out lots of information about the base where we
were stationed, and I had the advantage of being a
(19:47):
brand new first lieutenant that knew nothing. Lee, on the
other hand, I think they pressured him more for information.
But after nine days they came and got me out
of my cell and took me to the cell part
way across camp, and there was already a young man
in there. It's a young man. He's my age, Dick
(20:08):
Vaughan was his name. They put Lee and I with
Dick in one cell. Three days later than they moved
us from that camp over to a camp called the Zoo.
It was nicknamed the Zoo. We were put in a
cell then. It was probably fifteen by fifteen square feet
(20:29):
and three of us in one cell, and we didn't
know anything about the camp at that point. But a
few weeks later the guard took us out of that
cell and just kept us out of the cell for
about two hours, and when we finally came back into
the cell, he locks us up, and Dick found a
(20:49):
piece of candy on the floor with a piece of
paper wrapped around it. Of course, after the guard left
he opened it up and there was a note inside
it said we welcome to the Zoo. So there are
seventy nine prisoners in this camp. Other than yourselves, you
three are the only three that have been in this
(21:09):
camp less than five orpeat five years. Through that note
we're able to establish a line of communication with these
other seventy nine guys, and through communication with them, realized
that the first prisoner ever captured, Everett Alvarez, he captured
(21:32):
August five in nineteen sixty four. He had been there
over seven years when we showed up. So here we are.
We've been there at this point, been there close to
a month, you know, probably feeling sorry for ourselves that yeah,
we're prisoners, and who knows when we're going to get
(21:54):
out of here. And then to realize right across in
the next buildings and this brick wall, eight foot high
brick wall separating our courtyards for prisoners who have been there,
in some cases a third or quarter of their lives.
So kind of like Candy going to this meeting and
(22:15):
realizing she's lucky to know that I'm alive, you know,
we kind of quit feeling sorry for ourselves and started thinking, Okay,
what can we do to help these guys. We had
two methods of communication with them that developed. One was
just passing notes across this eight foot high brick wall.
(22:36):
The guards would throw their cigarette wrappers out in the courtyards,
and so we would when we got out maybe ten
fifteen minutes a day to take a bath or to
clean our plates and bowls, which grounds up these pieces
of paper. Dick during one of his interrogation sessions, had
stolen the piece of pencil lead out of a mechanical pencil.
(22:58):
He got it down below the from the interrogator and
pulled the lead out and broke off the blunt end
and put it back in. And so we had something
to write with. We had the paper Lee I always
called our walking encyclopedia. I had an amazing memory. He
could remember a newspaper article he had read two years ago, names, dates, numbers.
(23:20):
So through that we used the junction of this eight
foot high brick wall and the edge of the wall
of the office building as a mailbox. And then it
placed a little chip of a brick on top of it.
So if you're if you're looking at it fifty sixty
feet away and you saw this little chip up there,
you'd realize there's a note up there that needs to
(23:42):
be picked up. So one day we would pass a
note to them, next day they would pass a note
back to us. I was describe. I learned how to
write very small and use abbreviations. To get a lot
of information on one of these pieces of paper. He'd
take a cigarette wrapper and open it up. He got
(24:04):
a rectangle to ride on on the inside. Then through
that we set up another way to communicate. They had
drilled a hole the size of a nickel through about
fifteen inches of brick and mortar through the end of
their building, aimed right at our door. Our door had
a peep hole on it with a flap on the outside,
(24:25):
and the guards should push that to one side and
check on us from time to time throughout the day.
But I could push that flap to one side. From
the inside, I could see the hole in the building
that they had drilled through, and they had to drill
it fairly high up to hide it from the guards,
And so one man had to stand on the shoulders
of another man just to get up to the hole.
(24:47):
But then he'd stuck a wire through the hole and
he'd flick it up and down once for a dot,
twice for a dash, use the Morris code to transmit
to me. He could see my hand through the peepole,
and I could transmit back to him using visual alphabet
similar to American sign language. So we used that method
for anything covert and a covert communication, and then the
(25:12):
notes going back and forth was just informational messages. One
of the questions they asked us was did we really
land on the moon? They asked us about forty questions,
and we were there about three months and we were
able to get through all those forty questions through these notes,
(25:35):
and within a day or two after finishing those questions,
we were moved back to the Hanoi Hilton Camps. I
kind of looked at that as maybe that was our
purpose for being there, was to help these guys, because
in that first note they said, send us all the
(25:55):
information you can think about in the outside world. In
the last five years they were a star for information. Anyway.
I just think that really helped them to get that information.
Like I say, Lee was a wealth of information about
things I want to know about the stock market, how
that was going on, what did the new cars look like?
(26:16):
And one of the funny questions regard is have they
developed a birth control pill for mails yet? So anyway,
you never knew what was going to come out of
their mouths or out of their notes.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And we're listening to Ken and Candy Wells talk about
their experience, and my goodness, Candy's was something. She walks
into a room with a bunch of other families that
had suffered from this term called missing in action, and
that's not knowing anything about your loved one and what's
going on in their lives overseas, and she quickly got
an attitude adjustment because she was one of the few
(26:54):
who actually knew her husband was alive. Her pity party, well,
it ended the same thing happened Ken. He found out
that when he was at the Hanoi Hilton when he
was captured, but there are people who've been there seven years,
and quickly his attention turned not on himself and his
own feelings, but on serving the men who'd been there
for so long and were so starved, so in need
(27:15):
of any kind of human touch and connection to the
outside world. The story of Ken Wells and his bride,
Candy continues here on our American Stories, and we're back
(27:38):
with our American stories and with former pow at the
Hanoi Hilton, Ken Wells and his wife Candy. Let's return
to this couple with the final part of their stories.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I was very much in the media all along the year,
every holiday, they made sure to keep up with me,
and so I felt like I could help in our
community by making people aware that there were POW's out there.
We need to keep this on the front burner. Get
these men home.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Well, I guess I always had faith in God. I
guess I had faith in our country to the point
where we can just stay alive. Somehow they'll come and
get us out of here. And faith in our camaraderie
just within our group. I mean, it's think any one
of us would have died later our lives down for
anyone else in the camp still let the Hanoi Hilton
(28:35):
in an area called Newgui Village, and I remember guards
came and they said, everybody put on good clothes. Well,
everybody had two T shirts and then two long sleeve
shirts that just tied with strings in the front. So
we had our normal prison clothes. And then what the
(28:57):
guards would call put on your good clothes that was
a long sleeve say what everybody dressed up? It just pajamas.
And so brought everybody out into the small courtyard, and
then the camp commander, Vietnamese camp commander came in with
an interpreter and a couple of guards and it was
January twenty ninth, nineteen seventy three when he came in
(29:20):
and he Wade prepared statement that the peace agreements had
been signed in Paris two days before in the twenty
seventh there would be a sixty day withdrawal period of
all of our troops and a sixty day period of
release of the prisoners twenty five percent every fifteen days.
Of course, the second injured will come home first, and
(29:40):
then in order of your capture. And so we knew
in our group we were going to be part of
that last fifteen day period. Twenty eight Marchs of seventy three.
They loaded forty of us on two camouflage buses and
drove us through the city of Hanoi to the Gielam Airport.
Coming around this small terminal building, seeing this beautiful C
(30:03):
one aircraft parked on the ramp, red cross on the
tail and the American flag on the tail, they called
out our names, one at a time, in the order
that we were captured. I was number two in line
of that group. Escorted us to the back of the
aircraft and up the ramp. When the last man's foot
hit the ramp and the ramp came up ends and
(30:26):
they started to be taxied out, pulled on the runway,
and I don't think two words were spoken the whole time.
They had lied to us so many times during our
captivity that we didn't know if this didn't even seem real,
that this was happening until we got airborne and the
gear came up, and then the whole place broke loose
(30:46):
and we knew we were free. And it was about
a two hour and forty five minute flight to the Philippines,
where we spent three days in the hospital there at
the Ark Air Base in the Philippines. Got to take
a nice hot shower in the first time in sixteen months.
(31:09):
They fitted us for a uniform. Got to go down
to the cafeteria and eat whatever we want. When the
first prisoners came out, they were real larry about what
to feed us because they didn't know how our bodies
would react. But I think after the first group came out,
they realized, hey, we just need to let it let
(31:29):
him eet what they want. So they had to quite
a spread the air force, and I go through with
a tray and anything that looked like I had protein
in it, I wanted it sat down a couple of
glasses of milk. Grew up in a dairy farms. I
missed milk, and I think I ate about ten bites
and I couldn't eat anymore. Stomach I think had shrunk.
(31:54):
Then they had arranged times during the evening when we
could call home for the first time, and minus fairly
late at night. When I called Candy, it was four
am on the twenty ninth of March in the stage
(32:14):
where she was, which is her birthday.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Well, first of all, it was four am, so it
was very startling, and it wasn't Ken on the phone.
It was another officer who said, missus Kenneth our wells.
Then it's kind of scary, yes, you know. Then he said,
I have your husband here. Would you like to speak
(32:42):
to him? Yes, you know? So then Ken got on
and I knew it was Ken. It was real, and
it was like our first date. How are you fine?
Speaker 1 (32:57):
You know?
Speaker 2 (32:58):
We had been and separated about as long as we'd been.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Married when it first got back to the stage after
three days in the Philippines, and they flew us two
hospitals across the country. Mine happened to be Travis Air
Force Base in California Air Sacramento.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
When we were at Travis Air Force Base, they gave
each of the families that their husbands or loved one
would be coming home. They had each of us in
a separate car, so there's a lot of the strength
of cars. The plane pulls up, the red carpet is
rolled out, and the band plays, and I'm sitting there
(33:43):
just waiting as the door opens up the plane. Of course,
I've been watching from the first group, second third, all
the way. So when the door opened and the man
stepped out, then my car pulled forward, and the officer
then let me out, and I walked the red carpet,
(34:06):
and then Ken came down the stairs, and there's some
really sweet pictures of Ken ev I hugging and kissing
for the first time.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Spent two weeks there going through interrogation sessions again, but
also we all had parasites in our bodies. Several different
parasites had to be treated, so that's the reason I
was there for two weeks. There's during that two week
period still in California where go Ahead.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
I had become so independent of just doing things myself,
you know, and taking care of this little person that
I was just going to go out and get us
some groceries, you know. So Kevin and I gather him up.
I have my hand on the door knob to turn it,
and Ken says, where are you going? I'm like, oh, yeah,
(35:00):
I forgot, you know. It was just another thing that
we had to get adjustment that, Oh yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
And we've heard later that something like eighty or ninety
percent of the prisoners got divorced after he came home.
So there's just a lot of pressure. Like she was saying,
she had to become independent, not only for herself, but
to take care of well Kevin. And of course I
hadn't changed all in sixteen months. Right when I left,
(35:33):
I was just a husband. Now I'm coming home to
an almost sixteen month old boy, kind of scary. He
didn't have a lot to do with me. At first.
We're still at Travis in the quarters. The two weeks
in the hospital there was as an outpatient, so they
put us up in the base quarters. But I'd bribe
(35:56):
him with food and treats and stuff like that. And
at the end of the two weeks, when we flew
down from Travis up to Portland International Airport, there's a
picture of me holding Kevin there us and I'm holding
Kevin and I've I felt like we were dad and son.
(36:18):
I think that two weeks there was good for us
to become a little family unit before the launched us
out of the world.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
It was a great time for us to get to
know one another better again.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
When we know some of the stories of those who
didn't get to come home, like her brother Rodney, or
even some of the prisoners that came back and their
family situation just dissolved, we just feel feel blessed to
feel God is with us through the whole experience, and
we feel blessed to be able to come home and
(36:55):
start over and live out a normal life.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
The POWs were inventive, very creative. I just found it
very interesting how that they never gave up that spirit,
that they persevered through this difficult time. When some people
would just collapse, these men persevered held on when you
(37:22):
know that how little they had, but they did everything
to encourage one another to take care of one another
and just keep on keeping on.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah, and a terrific job on the production editing and
storytelling by our own Madison Dericot, and a special thanks
to Ken and Candy Wells for sharing their story. What
kept them going in that Hanoi Hilton well Ken said
it faith in God, faith and country, faith within his group.
And my goodness what Candy says at the end there
about the fact that those men never gave up, They persevered,
(37:59):
they held on comforting each other. The story of Canon
Candy Wells, the story of so many POWs, and as
they said, the story of those who never came back.
And not just in Vietnam, but all of America's wars.
There's stories all of them here on our American Stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love to hear from you, our listeners. Send
your stories to our American Stories dot com. There's some
of our favorites. And by the way, they don't have
to be your stories. If you've seen or heard a
story on your local news or just around town, send
(00:31):
us the link. We'll take it from there. Again, your
stories are some of our favorites. Up next, you're going
to hear from Ken Wells and his wife, Candy. Ken
served our country in Vietnam and was captured and taken
as a pow to the prisoner of war camp known
as the Hannai Hilton. Let's hear from Candy and Ken
sharing the remarkable story.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
We were married in November of sixty nine and then
went to one year of pilot training in Big Spring, Texas.
Ken achieved what he wanted. He wanted to get an
F four fighter plane, which I didn't want him to
get because I knew where he would be going, but
(01:19):
he did, and that's what he wanted.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I guess I'd wanted to fly ever since I was
a little kid watching airplanes fly in and out of
the Portland International Airport across the Columbia River from the
dairy farm I grew up on. But I always wanted
to fly a fighter aircraft, and so that was my
goal in pilot training and was able to finish high
enough in the class to get the F four. Like
(01:43):
in the movie Top Gun where the lady tells Maverick
that you're not happy unless you're going mock too with
your hair on fire, well that's kind of of course.
We're up fairly high twenty five thousand feet doing that,
so it's not like you're going supersonic at ground level,
which is also fun. By the way, I've been supersonic
(02:05):
at about two hundred feet and it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
We went on then to Victorville, California for a FOD
training for six months at that time than in March
of nineteen seventy one, March fourth, my mother and father
got the visit that my brother had been declared missing
(02:30):
in action. He was in the Army. He was twenty
one years old.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
It was a.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It was a hard day for our family. But two
months later it even became more difficult because my mom
and dad received the phone call that my brother had
been declared dead but nobody recovered. But on that day
(02:58):
when my mom and dad received that terrible call, I
was reaching for the phone to call them to tell
them they were expecting their first grandson. So we went
through our training and can finish the F four And
(03:18):
on October thirty first of nineteen seventy one, Ken went
to Udorn Air Force Base in Thailand, and I was
seven months pregnant. Two months later, on December eighteenth, nineteen
seventy one, I was sitting in my parents' living room
(03:40):
and my brother's sitting in a chair and he looks
out the window and he says, oh, mom, here comes
an army car. My mother, just because of what had happened,
became hysterical, and I was sitting by her and I'm
patting her leg and I say, Mom, is it's okay,
(04:01):
It's okay. And then the car got closer and he said, no,
it's an Air Force car. I was very young, I
was twenty three years old, very naive, and I said, oh, Mom,
they're probably just bringing me more papers to sign, I said,
(04:23):
But the two officers came to the door. My father
answered it, and they said Missus Kenneth our Wells, and
I was on the couch, but it took me a
while to get up because I was pregnant. I got
up and went to the door and then they read
me the telegram. We regret to inform you that your husband,
(04:47):
First Lieutenant Kenneth ar Wells, is missing in action. My
heart just dropped.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I had only flown eight missions. This was my ninth mission,
on the eighteenth of December of seventy one. In October
of sixty eight, President Johnson had declared a bombing halt
over North Vietnam, so we weren't even allowed to fly
over the country. We're fighting North Vietnam, so most of
our missions were bombing missions in Laos that the North
(05:20):
Vietnamese used as routes road routes to get supplies down
to the south. I was the wingman and a two
ship formation out of there. It started out to be
a bombing mission in the country of Laos. We took
off that day. We had twelve five hundred pound bombs
on board each aircraft took off and as soon as
(05:43):
we got airborne, we've got a radio call from Red Crown,
which was the radarship out in the Gulf of Tonkin,
telling us that another F four had been shot down
on the border of Laos and North Vietnam. So they
wanted just to provide a search and rescue coverage for
the other crew that had been shot down, so it
(06:04):
kept the bombs on board. We orbited for about forty
five minutes, got low on fuel, had to go to
an airborne tanker, get topped off with fuel, and as
we came off the tanker, we got a call that
two MiG twenty one fighters had launched out of Hanoi
and we're heading toward the shootdown site of this other aircraft.
(06:28):
So the lead pilot and the lead airplane got permission
to drop our bombs on our target that he had
hit the day before, and then we proceeded to chase
these two MiG twenty ones back into North Vietnam all
the way across North Vietnam. They actually went into Red China,
and then we turned around at the border of Red China,
(06:50):
very low on fuel, dangerously low on fuel, matter of fact,
and we needed to get to a tanker or get
back to our base as soon as possible. We got
jumped by two more MiGs on the way out. I
had about one minute of fuel left on the aircraft
when I call the lead aircraft and I said, well,
we're going to be punching out about one minute, and
(07:11):
he said, well, it will be about two minutes behind you.
So they ejected as well, but they were rescued.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And you've been listening to Ken and Candy Wells. When
we come back more of what happened here on our
American Stories, plee habib here, and I'd like to encourage
you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts.
(07:40):
Any story you missed or want to hear again can
be found there daily again. Please subscribe to the Our
American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or
anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these
great American stories coming. And we continue with our American
(08:11):
Stories and with Ken and Candy Wells's story. When we
last left off, Candy had just found out that her
husband Ken was declared missing in action in the Vietnam War.
Let's pick back up with their story.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
You know, you hear people say that their lives flashed
before their minds. I think that all began during the
flight when I was getting ready to paul the ejection handle.
I was thinking about Candy, knowing that she's nine months pregnant,
and yeah, I may not survive this. To get home
(08:49):
that particular day, they added on an extra couple missions.
They ran out of experienced crew members, had one airplane left.
I got the toss of the coin. I guess to
be the aircraft commander of that. Lee, my back seater,
was only on his twentieth mission, so we had two
inexperienced guys in our aircraft. But Lee was a major
(09:11):
at thirteen years in the Air Force. By that time,
I was probably pretty naive about what was going to happen.
To figure, while I'm flying with this experienced guy, he
knows what to do, and didn't realize that things could
go kind of sour. A few gauges read zero. That's
when we punched out and we were qut about five
(09:35):
thousand feet altitude doing around three hundred knots. Once you
got out into the parachute, it's pretty quiet out there.
When that happens. We heard the engines quit on the aircraft,
and at one end we came down on opposite sides
of the same hill. I came down in the trees
(09:56):
and I my parachute canopy got caught up in the
branches of the tree, so I stopped my feet were
swinging about thirty feet above the ground, lowered myself to
the ground. I got the radio out of my seat
pack and was able to make radio communication contact with Lee,
so we kind of figured out we were on the
(10:17):
opposite sides of this same hill. We took off about
two in the afternoon. We punched out about four in
the afternoon. By the time we climbed to the top
of the hills, probably about six in the evening. It's December,
so it's getting his pretty dark at that time, and
then we're able to spend that night trying to make
radio contact with friendly aircraft. We were close enough to
(10:43):
hear friendly aircraft talking, but far enough away they couldn't
hear our transmission, so that was pretty frustrating. All night,
About every fifty minutes we tried to make radio contact
with the aircraft we were hearing. In some cases it
was aircraft that were going in to rescue the other
(11:05):
crew that punched out. Daybreak the next morning, I started
hearing noises around the bottom of the hill. We were
on some dogs barking, so we knew that they were
looking for us. We were able to move a couple
hills more inland away from the coast. Lee said, about
(11:28):
ten thirty that morning, he said, because it was really
cold that night, he said, I'm going to go back
and try and get my parachute so and keep warm
out here. I didn't think it was a good idea
for him to go back, but he outranked me, so
he went back. All I heard was the shooting, and
I didn't know whether he was still alive or not.
(11:52):
It was about an hour and a half later, around noon.
I was about a third of the way down from
the top of the hill and there are probably twenty
North Vietnamese that were searching around that area, and they
had come by me twice, once each direction, within ten
(12:15):
to fifteen feet away from me, and hadn't found me.
I thought, well, maybe that's the last pass. But then
they made a third pass back, and this time the
guy was right at my elevation and he stopped maybe
ten fifteen feet away from me, just staring at me.
And when I saw how many guys there were around.
(12:36):
I had put my little thirty eight Revolver back in
the whole story. Knew it wasn't going to be much good,
and we just stared at each other for several seconds,
and then he raised his rifle and then this started
shooting in the air, yelling and screaming, and within a
few seconds they were about twenty guys around me, jumping,
(12:58):
coming down for joy that captured American fighter pilot. They
stripped me down to my fruit of the looms, tied
my wrists and elbows together behind my back, tied two
ropes around my neck, went out front, and went out back,
and off went through the jungle. I didn't know for
at least two or three hours, whether they intended to
(13:21):
keep me alive or not. I didn't know whether Lee
was alive or not at that point. But we came
to a little fire camp on the side of the hill,
and that was where I saw I think the first
real military man that was there. These others were militia type,
you know, one guy might have a helmet and someone
(13:41):
else have the military shirt, someone else the pants, but
they all had the weapons. But the first real military
guy was at this fire camp. And after I'd been
there a while, he indicated to somebody to give me
something to eat, and he guy handed me a little
bit of rice about the size of a golf ball,
(14:03):
and that was my first indication, Well, if you're going
to kill me, you know, I got to give me
something to eat. So after giving me the ball of rice,
they gave me a flight suit to put on, and
it was a major flight suit, so I assumed it
was Lee's. And then they gave me my boots back,
but they wouldn't let me lace them up, tie them up,
(14:24):
and so walking several hours through the jungles, I got
huge blisters on my feet which eventually became infected and
actually got blood poisoning. Then walked for several hours, came
to a little village where they put me there for
a couple hours, and occasionally some little kids who'd come
(14:46):
in and peek at me inside in the room where
they'd bring me out and let the kids in the
neighborhood you see me. It's probably about ten o'clock that night.
Then they flew us from Hiphong to Hanoi, and so
it is when I was put on the helicopter at night,
(15:10):
they were actually wiring me instead of using ropes to
use wire to tie me to the seat supports on
each side of the helicopter. And that's when I noticed
that there was a warm body next to me, and
it was Lee. And they actually they actually wired us
together somehow, so if I moved to get comfortable, that
(15:32):
tightened the wires oney him and he had grown. They
don't do that. If we tried to talk to each other,
we got whacked with a boat of a rifle. Oh
weren't allowed to communicate with each other. But just knowing
that we were each alive, I think I encouraged the
two of us. I don't know. Maybe it's a forty
(15:54):
five minute helicopter ride from High Phoon to Hanoi and
then drove us to the camp that we called the
nickname the Hanoi Hilton Fieldove Camp.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
It was on all the major news channels because these
were the first four Americans that had been captured in
three years, and so the Vietnamese government was very thrilled
to say they had captured these Americans, you know, so
(16:28):
they plastered their pictures and I'm grateful that they did
because I was able to see that Ken was okay.
There had been a news conference in Hanoi, and I
got to see Ken walk out behind a curtain in
his prison pajamas. I could see that when he ejected,
(16:50):
he had his arms and his legs, and that gave
me hope that he was going to be okay. That
was December twenty first, when I found out he was
a pow. December twenty third, I had our son.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And you're listening to Ken and Candy Wells share their story,
and Folks, if you've ever had somebody serving overseas in combat,
you know that the husband and the wife are both serving,
and you're hearing it here on this story. That worry
that she had when her husband was declared missing in
action went away when the North Vietnamese paraded around these
(17:33):
four airmen, proud that they'd captured them. And this gave
the bride a sense of hope, and the very next
day the birth of her child, and at least with
some glimmer that something good could happen in the end.
When we come back more of Ken and Candy Wells's story,
what happens next here on our American stories? And we
(18:08):
continue with our American stories and Ken and Candy Wells's
story let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
The days were very dark. I went through a short
time where I was going through a pity party. Poor Candy.
She lost her brother, her husband's a pow she had
to give birth the loan, and it was like I
was really feeling sorry for myself. But then I went
(18:39):
to my first Washington State pow MIA meeting. At that meeting,
I walk into this room full of people and the
lady I went with her husband was missing in action,
and she leaned over and she told me, she said, Candy,
(19:01):
there are only three of you in this room that
know that your loved one is alive. And that was
quite an awakening for me to just get off the
pity party and be grateful for what I know, and
I quit feeling sorry for myself.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
When I got to the prison camp, they put us
in solitary confinement and that lasted nine days, and during
that time was different interrogation sessions. They're basically trying to
find out lots of information about the base where we
were stationed, and I had the advantage of being a
(19:47):
brand new first lieutenant that knew nothing. Lee, on the
other hand, I think they pressured him more for information.
But after nine days they came and got me out
of my cell and took me to the cell part
way across camp, and there was already a young man
in there. It's a young man. He's my age, Dick
(20:08):
Vaughan was his name. They put Lee and I with
Dick in one cell. Three days later than they moved
us from that camp over to a camp called the Zoo.
It was nicknamed the Zoo. We were put in a
cell then. It was probably fifteen by fifteen square feet
(20:29):
and three of us in one cell, and we didn't
know anything about the camp at that point. But a
few weeks later the guard took us out of that
cell and just kept us out of the cell for
about two hours, and when we finally came back into
the cell, he locks us up, and Dick found a
(20:49):
piece of candy on the floor with a piece of
paper wrapped around it. Of course, after the guard left
he opened it up and there was a note inside
it said we welcome to the Zoo. So there are
seventy nine prisoners in this camp. Other than yourselves, you
three are the only three that have been in this
(21:09):
camp less than five orpeat five years. Through that note
we're able to establish a line of communication with these
other seventy nine guys, and through communication with them, realized
that the first prisoner ever captured, Everett Alvarez, he captured
(21:32):
August five in nineteen sixty four. He had been there
over seven years when we showed up. So here we are.
We've been there at this point, been there close to
a month, you know, probably feeling sorry for ourselves that yeah,
we're prisoners, and who knows when we're going to get
(21:54):
out of here. And then to realize right across in
the next buildings and this brick wall, eight foot high
brick wall separating our courtyards for prisoners who have been there,
in some cases a third or quarter of their lives.
So kind of like Candy going to this meeting and
(22:15):
realizing she's lucky to know that I'm alive, you know,
we kind of quit feeling sorry for ourselves and started thinking, Okay,
what can we do to help these guys. We had
two methods of communication with them that developed. One was
just passing notes across this eight foot high brick wall.
(22:36):
The guards would throw their cigarette wrappers out in the courtyards,
and so we would when we got out maybe ten
fifteen minutes a day to take a bath or to
clean our plates and bowls, which grounds up these pieces
of paper. Dick during one of his interrogation sessions, had
stolen the piece of pencil lead out of a mechanical pencil.
(22:58):
He got it down below the from the interrogator and
pulled the lead out and broke off the blunt end
and put it back in. And so we had something
to write with. We had the paper Lee I always
called our walking encyclopedia. I had an amazing memory. He
could remember a newspaper article he had read two years ago, names, dates, numbers.
(23:20):
So through that we used the junction of this eight
foot high brick wall and the edge of the wall
of the office building as a mailbox. And then it
placed a little chip of a brick on top of it.
So if you're if you're looking at it fifty sixty
feet away and you saw this little chip up there,
you'd realize there's a note up there that needs to
(23:42):
be picked up. So one day we would pass a
note to them, next day they would pass a note
back to us. I was describe. I learned how to
write very small and use abbreviations. To get a lot
of information on one of these pieces of paper. He'd
take a cigarette wrapper and open it up. He got
(24:04):
a rectangle to ride on on the inside. Then through
that we set up another way to communicate. They had
drilled a hole the size of a nickel through about
fifteen inches of brick and mortar through the end of
their building, aimed right at our door. Our door had
a peep hole on it with a flap on the outside,
(24:25):
and the guards should push that to one side and
check on us from time to time throughout the day.
But I could push that flap to one side. From
the inside, I could see the hole in the building
that they had drilled through, and they had to drill
it fairly high up to hide it from the guards,
And so one man had to stand on the shoulders
of another man just to get up to the hole.
(24:47):
But then he'd stuck a wire through the hole and
he'd flick it up and down once for a dot,
twice for a dash, use the Morris code to transmit
to me. He could see my hand through the peepole,
and I could transmit back to him using visual alphabet
similar to American sign language. So we used that method
for anything covert and a covert communication, and then the
(25:12):
notes going back and forth was just informational messages. One
of the questions they asked us was did we really
land on the moon? They asked us about forty questions,
and we were there about three months and we were
able to get through all those forty questions through these notes,
(25:35):
and within a day or two after finishing those questions,
we were moved back to the Hanoi Hilton Camps. I
kind of looked at that as maybe that was our
purpose for being there, was to help these guys, because
in that first note they said, send us all the
(25:55):
information you can think about in the outside world. In
the last five years they were a star for information. Anyway.
I just think that really helped them to get that information.
Like I say, Lee was a wealth of information about
things I want to know about the stock market, how
that was going on, what did the new cars look like?
(26:16):
And one of the funny questions regard is have they
developed a birth control pill for mails yet? So anyway,
you never knew what was going to come out of
their mouths or out of their notes.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And we're listening to Ken and Candy Wells talk about
their experience, and my goodness, Candy's was something. She walks
into a room with a bunch of other families that
had suffered from this term called missing in action, and
that's not knowing anything about your loved one and what's
going on in their lives overseas, and she quickly got
an attitude adjustment because she was one of the few
(26:54):
who actually knew her husband was alive. Her pity party, well,
it ended the same thing happened Ken. He found out
that when he was at the Hanoi Hilton when he
was captured, but there are people who've been there seven years,
and quickly his attention turned not on himself and his
own feelings, but on serving the men who'd been there
for so long and were so starved, so in need
(27:15):
of any kind of human touch and connection to the
outside world. The story of Ken Wells and his bride,
Candy continues here on our American Stories, and we're back
(27:38):
with our American stories and with former pow at the
Hanoi Hilton, Ken Wells and his wife Candy. Let's return
to this couple with the final part of their stories.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I was very much in the media all along the year,
every holiday, they made sure to keep up with me,
and so I felt like I could help in our
community by making people aware that there were POW's out there.
We need to keep this on the front burner. Get
these men home.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Well, I guess I always had faith in God. I
guess I had faith in our country to the point
where we can just stay alive. Somehow they'll come and
get us out of here. And faith in our camaraderie
just within our group. I mean, it's think any one
of us would have died later our lives down for
anyone else in the camp still let the Hanoi Hilton
(28:35):
in an area called Newgui Village, and I remember guards
came and they said, everybody put on good clothes. Well,
everybody had two T shirts and then two long sleeve
shirts that just tied with strings in the front. So
we had our normal prison clothes. And then what the
(28:57):
guards would call put on your good clothes that was
a long sleeve say what everybody dressed up? It just pajamas.
And so brought everybody out into the small courtyard, and
then the camp commander, Vietnamese camp commander came in with
an interpreter and a couple of guards and it was
January twenty ninth, nineteen seventy three when he came in
(29:20):
and he Wade prepared statement that the peace agreements had
been signed in Paris two days before in the twenty
seventh there would be a sixty day withdrawal period of
all of our troops and a sixty day period of
release of the prisoners twenty five percent every fifteen days.
Of course, the second injured will come home first, and
(29:40):
then in order of your capture. And so we knew
in our group we were going to be part of
that last fifteen day period. Twenty eight Marchs of seventy three.
They loaded forty of us on two camouflage buses and
drove us through the city of Hanoi to the Gielam Airport.
Coming around this small terminal building, seeing this beautiful C
(30:03):
one aircraft parked on the ramp, red cross on the
tail and the American flag on the tail, they called
out our names, one at a time, in the order
that we were captured. I was number two in line
of that group. Escorted us to the back of the
aircraft and up the ramp. When the last man's foot
hit the ramp and the ramp came up ends and
(30:26):
they started to be taxied out, pulled on the runway,
and I don't think two words were spoken the whole time.
They had lied to us so many times during our
captivity that we didn't know if this didn't even seem real,
that this was happening until we got airborne and the
gear came up, and then the whole place broke loose
(30:46):
and we knew we were free. And it was about
a two hour and forty five minute flight to the Philippines,
where we spent three days in the hospital there at
the Ark Air Base in the Philippines. Got to take
a nice hot shower in the first time in sixteen months.
(31:09):
They fitted us for a uniform. Got to go down
to the cafeteria and eat whatever we want. When the
first prisoners came out, they were real larry about what
to feed us because they didn't know how our bodies
would react. But I think after the first group came out,
they realized, hey, we just need to let it let
(31:29):
him eet what they want. So they had to quite
a spread the air force, and I go through with
a tray and anything that looked like I had protein
in it, I wanted it sat down a couple of
glasses of milk. Grew up in a dairy farms. I
missed milk, and I think I ate about ten bites
and I couldn't eat anymore. Stomach I think had shrunk.
(31:54):
Then they had arranged times during the evening when we
could call home for the first time, and minus fairly
late at night. When I called Candy, it was four
am on the twenty ninth of March in the stage
(32:14):
where she was, which is her birthday.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Well, first of all, it was four am, so it
was very startling, and it wasn't Ken on the phone.
It was another officer who said, missus Kenneth our wells.
Then it's kind of scary, yes, you know. Then he said,
I have your husband here. Would you like to speak
(32:42):
to him? Yes, you know? So then Ken got on
and I knew it was Ken. It was real, and
it was like our first date. How are you fine?
Speaker 1 (32:57):
You know?
Speaker 2 (32:58):
We had been and separated about as long as we'd been.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Married when it first got back to the stage after
three days in the Philippines, and they flew us two
hospitals across the country. Mine happened to be Travis Air
Force Base in California Air Sacramento.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
When we were at Travis Air Force Base, they gave
each of the families that their husbands or loved one
would be coming home. They had each of us in
a separate car, so there's a lot of the strength
of cars. The plane pulls up, the red carpet is
rolled out, and the band plays, and I'm sitting there
(33:43):
just waiting as the door opens up the plane. Of course,
I've been watching from the first group, second third, all
the way. So when the door opened and the man
stepped out, then my car pulled forward, and the officer
then let me out, and I walked the red carpet,
(34:06):
and then Ken came down the stairs, and there's some
really sweet pictures of Ken ev I hugging and kissing
for the first time.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Spent two weeks there going through interrogation sessions again, but
also we all had parasites in our bodies. Several different
parasites had to be treated, so that's the reason I
was there for two weeks. There's during that two week
period still in California where go Ahead.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
I had become so independent of just doing things myself,
you know, and taking care of this little person that
I was just going to go out and get us
some groceries, you know. So Kevin and I gather him up.
I have my hand on the door knob to turn it,
and Ken says, where are you going? I'm like, oh, yeah,
(35:00):
I forgot, you know. It was just another thing that
we had to get adjustment that, Oh yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
And we've heard later that something like eighty or ninety
percent of the prisoners got divorced after he came home.
So there's just a lot of pressure. Like she was saying,
she had to become independent, not only for herself, but
to take care of well Kevin. And of course I
hadn't changed all in sixteen months. Right when I left,
(35:33):
I was just a husband. Now I'm coming home to
an almost sixteen month old boy, kind of scary. He
didn't have a lot to do with me. At first.
We're still at Travis in the quarters. The two weeks
in the hospital there was as an outpatient, so they
put us up in the base quarters. But I'd bribe
(35:56):
him with food and treats and stuff like that. And
at the end of the two weeks, when we flew
down from Travis up to Portland International Airport, there's a
picture of me holding Kevin there us and I'm holding
Kevin and I've I felt like we were dad and son.
(36:18):
I think that two weeks there was good for us
to become a little family unit before the launched us
out of the world.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
It was a great time for us to get to
know one another better again.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
When we know some of the stories of those who
didn't get to come home, like her brother Rodney, or
even some of the prisoners that came back and their
family situation just dissolved, we just feel feel blessed to
feel God is with us through the whole experience, and
we feel blessed to be able to come home and
(36:55):
start over and live out a normal life.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
The POWs were inventive, very creative. I just found it
very interesting how that they never gave up that spirit,
that they persevered through this difficult time. When some people
would just collapse, these men persevered held on when you
(37:22):
know that how little they had, but they did everything
to encourage one another to take care of one another
and just keep on keeping on.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah, and a terrific job on the production editing and
storytelling by our own Madison Dericot, and a special thanks
to Ken and Candy Wells for sharing their story. What
kept them going in that Hanoi Hilton well Ken said
it faith in God, faith and country, faith within his group.
And my goodness what Candy says at the end there
about the fact that those men never gave up, They persevered,
(37:59):
they held on comforting each other. The story of Canon
Candy Wells, the story of so many POWs, and as
they said, the story of those who never came back.
And not just in Vietnam, but all of America's wars.
There's stories all of them here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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