December 23, 2025 • 50 mins
One of our first episodes of Season 6 resonated the most for us. Retired U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Col. Lee Ellis, who was shot down and captured during the Vietnam War, talks about leadership and team building lessons he learned during his five years as a prisoner of war, as well as throughout his military service and his 25 years as a leadership coach.
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(00:00):
We're back. Alphas, we're coming in hot.
With inspiring guests. Witty banter and colorful
commentary for today's veterans and military community.
This is the Tal Podcast. Hi there, Alphas.
During the holiday season, the Tal podcast team is taking a
break. Need a break?
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But while we're gone, we do havea little bonus content for you.
So we've looked back at all the things we've done during Season
6 and we've come up with a list of our our top six most
impactful guests from 2025. And that was not easy.
It really was difficult. There are so many great guests,
but we'll be re releasing those interviews this week.
So if you haven't already subscribed to Tango Halima on
(00:43):
Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube,or, you know, wherever you get
your podcast, don't miss our countdown.
We've got we've got you covered.OK, believe it or not, it's been
almost a year since we interviewed retired US Air Force
Colonel Lee Ellis, a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War who
was shot down, captured and heldcaptive as a POW for 5 1/2 years
(01:07):
at the infamous Hanoi Hilton. He shared his incredible story
of survival about his work with Leadership Freedom, LLC as a
nationally recognized leadershiptrainer, coach, author, and
keynote speaker. And I'll tell you what, this
indeed was one of the most memorable, memorable episodes.
The insights, the authenticity, the vulnerability that he shared
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and what he experienced was pretty unparalleled with kind of
what we've experienced on this podcast.
So, Joe, what do? What do you remember about this
one? For me, I think sometimes you,
you get this, this little tunnelvision of feeling like you've
been through some things and then you hear the story of
somebody who's been through something that you can't even
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begin to imagine. And, and not that I'm a big
complainer or anything, but it is a reminder that, you know,
asking for help is one thing, but just sitting around whining,
I think I'm good. I think I'll just let I'll let
other people do that because there's men like this floating
around that have been through some real things and and don't
complain about it at all. They share their story in such a
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beautiful and heartfelt way. It's is a It was a really
humbling, wonderful, wonderful interview with some great
insights. Stacy, probably nobody more more
ready to be a leadership trainerthan this guy, right?
No, I mean, like I was just going to say, I don't care how
much time has passed from that experience that he spent back in
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Vietnam. Those are those are the kind of
leave indelible Marks and will change you for life and some
very powerful life lessons learned, learned the hard way,
which we can all have takeaways from.
And his attitude is so incredibly remarkable.
And I always want to aspire to to be that way in my own life.
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So he's he's an incredible person, a human being.
His story is phenomenal and obviously has great, as my
friend Tommy Clark says, great intestinal fortitude.
So you definitely want to tune into this this episode.
I mean, it's, it really is, it's, it's living, it's living
history and the fact that we getinsights like this from these
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type of experiences, you know, we won't, you know, for
generations past and have accessto stuff like this.
So the just the ability to document for posterity, it's
really remarkable. So I'll, I'll tell you what,
stick around Alphas after the break and we'll be back with our
interview with Colonel Lee Ellisfrom episode 246.
You don't want to miss this one.Honoring those who came before
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us, the American Legion pays perpetual respect for all past
military sacrifices to ensure they are never forgotten by new
generations. We are veterans strengthened in
America. We are the American Legion.
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Today we're joined by retired Air Force Colonel Lee Ellis,
whose full name is actually Leon, which happens to be the
name of one of my favorite literary characters.
Just saying. Anyway, you go by Lee.
Welcome to the show Tal Podcast.Lee.
We are honored to have you here with us today.
Thank you. Great to be here.
(04:24):
Yeah, Colonel Ellis, it's an absolute honor to have you here.
As an Army aviator myself, who went through Searcy School at
Fort Rucker, now Fort Nova Cell.And so for those not familiar,
that survival evasion, Resistance and escape school, I
learned first hand how the lessons of Vietnam shaped the
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survival training that we received there.
Those lessons are rooted in the experience of heroes like you
that endured unimaginable hardships.
So it's deeply personal for me today.
I'm sorry to get to speak with you because of your resilience,
because of your leadership that inspired generations of service
members, you know, in including myself, you know, I remember
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being back there in flight school and watching some of the
videos from you and your generation to be able to take
the lessons learned that you guys went through with your
blood sacrifice to be able to instill that into us and how we
should go forward. So your time at the Hanoi Hilton
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is a testament to the power of resilience and leadership under
the most extreme conditions thata human being could be exposed
to. So with that being said, would
you briefly, I think it would begreat to share whatever you feel
compelled to about the circumstances that that led to
your capture and how you've beenable to take those experiences
(05:49):
as a POW to use to shape your understanding of leadership, of
how you translate those lessons for people facing very difficult
kinds of challenges today. You know, I was, I just turned
24 years old in 1967. I was on my 53rd mission over
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North Vietnam. I'm flying mostly patrolling up
and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and a few missions over into
Laos and a few in close air support for the Army and Marine
Corps and Icor down in northern part of South Vietnam.
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So I've flown different kinds ofmissions, but we were flying to
bomb out the Ho Chi Minh Trail and to prevent them bringing
down guns and ammo and soldiers to fight in the South because
they were not supposed to be down there according to the the
agreement of 1954 that the Communist Party in the North
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Vietnam had signed. So on my 53rd mission, my
airplane, we were getting shot at a lot.
Almost every mission we'd had airplane airplanes hit before
and usually when they got hit, we just a bullet hole would go
through the wing or something. And if you got hit by an
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aircraft artillery, 37 or 57 millimeter, it would blow a hole
in your tank and maybe the engine, and you'd usually make
it back at least where you couldjump out and be rescued if it
really fell apart. But this day, the 7th of
November, about 5:00 in the afternoon of 1967, my airplane
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blew up into several pieces, andthe cockpit was just one of
those pieces, and it was tumbling.
And in the F4 there are two 2 pilot.
The Air Force had two pilots, the Navy and Marine Corps had a
pilot and a Rio, a radar intercept officer in the back
seat. But we were flying and my half
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my class from pilot training in 67 A, which graduated in 60
August, 66 half of us across 8 bases.
There were 534 of us in that class and we, over half of us
got an assignment that said F4, Phantom Pipeline, Southeast
Asia. So we went to combat training
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right after we went to Sears school and then we went to
combat training and quick as we got qualified, we went to
Vietnam or to Thailand, to Ubank, Thailand or to one of
those bases in South Vietnam. So I was on my 53rd mission,
flown a good bed. I was flying with the Wing
Commander and the DO and the squadron commander and a lot of
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guys and you guys, I was training you guys that came into
the combat zone on how we did itover there.
And so that day when that airplane blew up, you know, I
was focused on ejecting and whenit flipped, it was negative G's
and my head was up against the cockpit.
(09:08):
And then it flipped again and itwas positive G's.
And I, I didn't want to eject with my head against the, the
top of the canopy. And so because I knew I'd
probably break my neck. And so it flipped and positive
G's and I pulled that handle andso did my front seater, Captain
Ken Fisher, who was 88 yesterday.
(09:29):
And we jumped out and he was about a half a mile away from
me. So I didn't, I didn't focus on
him. I just saw his parachute coming
down, but I was planning to. I did my parachute landing fall.
I hit all five points just like you're trained to do and jump
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down in a an old bump crater there and pulled out my radio,
emergency radio and I said, hey,I'm 200 meters.
NI told them to my wingman or myflight lead.
I said, I'm 200 meters north of the river, Start strafing.
I'm headed at 300. I'm headed South to the river
because we're only about a mile from the Conkin Gulf.
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Well, they surrounded me and captured me quickly.
And it took two weeks to get to Hanoi, and that's so many
stories there. But what happened was I had a
really good soldier who was in charge of taking me north.
He was a good man. Now, he worked for the
Communists because he had no choice.
But he was a good soldier and hewould not let them beat me up.
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He wouldn't let them punish me. He wouldn't let them attack me
because a lot of people were trying, you know, we'd bomb
bombing up there and the Communist Party would get out
there with a bullhorn in the village and start getting them
all fired up. And they'd try to come after me.
And he had his soldiers protect me.
And so I got to Hanoi and join up with Captain Fisher again and
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two other guys and we went into a 6 1/2 foot, 7 foot cell that
was totally, totally isolated inthat there was no cell wall.
There was no nobody on the otherside of that wall.
It was an empty walkway about that wide, about two feet wide
so that it was built that way sothat we could be maximum
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security. We couldn't tap on the wall to
anybody else and that was for the next 8 1/2 months and then I
moved to Sante for a couple years and that's where the
Raiders rated the Sante Raiders rated in 19 November 70, but
we'd already moved out. But those first few months were
really hard and we were all tortured and to try to, they
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wanted to get either some kind of information and they wanted
to break us so that we would collaborate with them and do
what they told us to do and not tried to communicate with our
peers and partners there. And of course we were, it was US
against them. And they wanted us to get to
provide anti war information andpropaganda for them and to obey
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them. And we were fighting very hard
not to do that. And so we got tortured.
Everybody got tortured and 95% of us did, but we bounced back.
And you know, Captain Fisher lasted longer than I did in the
torture. And the other guy in the cell
who was being tortured at the same time I was, he didn't last
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as long as I did. But when I was, you know, we had
the code of conduct and they said, you won't collaborate, you
won't give any information to the enemy.
And so when I finally gave in that day and filled out a three
page biography, I cried like a baby because I was so ashamed,
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so sad that I could not beat them and live up to my
commitment to the code of conduct.
And I get back to my cell and there's one guy already back.
And then Captain Fisher came back a few hours later.
And we decided that, well, we did our we did.
We did our best. And then when we got contact
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with the other cells later, a few months later, we learned
that everybody had been torturedto do that same thing.
And a lot of people had been tortured for other things.
But you had to bounce back. You had to believe in yourself
and your teammates. And you just, you know, you
suffered and you were sad. But they've been through that
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too. And some lasted longer than
others. Some guys are tougher than
others. And so we just we got, we
learned to live with that and day by day and that's where we
were, that's the early years. But we had great leadership as
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we got connected out at Sante. We had great leadership and our
leaders had been there longer. Generally the senior leaders
were guys that had been there two years longer than I had.
They got captured in 1965 and I didn't get captured till
November 67. So they had been through a whole
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lot of torture and been in solitary confinement a lot of
the times, but they just bouncedback every time, every time.
And that was a great example forus.
You got you're going to suffer, you're going to suffer, but you
got to stay positive and come through it.
That's a long. That's a long answer to your
question, but I'll try to answerthe next one shorter.
(14:50):
No. It was absolutely perfect and we
wanted to give you the opportunity to to share it as
much as you felt so, So thank you and.
And honestly, if if anybody's going to going to talk for a few
minutes here, they've heard enough of us, I think they'd
love to hear from you. And so, you know, it means so
much that you're here. I as somebody who partially
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makes a living telling awful stories about themselves.
I, I, I know that it takes a little bit out of you and it,
and it's not always easy. I was a corpsman with two, one
Marines in, in Fallujah. I went through some, some small
trials myself and, and I had to work really hard to find
purpose. And so I, I'd love to ask you
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and if you need to do context and go into a little bit more of
what you went through, that's obviously perfectly fine.
But I would love to hear some ofthe lessons that you learned.
I mean, it sounds like you've already spoke on one is that
you've got to sort of forgive yourself for for being human and
move on. Yeah.
And then not hold yourself accountable because it's easy to
look back as a, in my case, a 43year old man ago, if I could
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have done these things right here and it would have made my
life better, I could have done this or that.
And that's not fair to that 20 year old kid that was going
through that. Yeah.
You know, that kid did his best.And so I'd love to hear, you
know, some lessons from that time that that I think might be
applicable to, to to other people that have been through
struggles and trials themselves.You know, the thing that really
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helped us the most and was the communications in a community
that were struggling the way we were.
In other words, if we'd been in locked up with a guy who had
never been to the war and hadn'tbeen through torture, that'd be
a whole different game because he would not know.
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She would not know what what what it was like to go through
that. But when you've been locked up
with people that have gone through worst torture and worst
times and been there longer thanyou have, you know, you really
can't complain much. And they're smiling and, and
trying to outsmart the enemy. You, you start to realize that,
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well, they survived it and they're smiling.
And that guy's married and has two kids.
I'm single and he's been here two years or three years.
It just makes a lot of difference.
I think that's why it's so important.
And that's one of the things theAmerican Legion does.
When I was growing up, I don't think we had American Legion in
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little town I was in, but we hada BFW and those guys would go
there World War Two guys and Korean guys, they'd go there two
or three times a week after work.
And there it was totally dry county, so it was no alcohol.
So, but in the BFW they could sell beer and whiskey,
especially beer, I know. And guys would go over there and
have a beer and with their buddies and talk to them and
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then go home. And so that connection, I think,
was very important for him. And toward the end when here's
another thing that most people don't know is that in 1968, some
of a few of the wives started putting pressure on our
government. The Johnson administration had
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been the Secretary of Defense and the advisors in there had
told them not to put pressure onthe communist about our
treatment because they were thisand that and the other
negotiating or whatever. And so when in 1968, they had
told the wives and families to keep quiet, not to talk about
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POW treatment and all that kind of stuff and what was happening,
and a lot of them were MIAs missing in action.
So they rebelled and started to speak up and get into the public
venture. And then when the Nixon
administration came in in 1969 and Secretary Laird was a SEC
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def sector of defense, they agreed with the wives to put put
pressure on them. And they started putting
pressure on the communists aboutfollowing Geneva Conventions
that they had signed, that they would be treated, we would be
treated with lenient and humane treatment.
And so that pressure all began to build in 1960, early 69.
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And then in the summer of 1969, there was an escape at the zoo
camp, which was on the other side of town from the Hanoi
Hilton. And when that escape, they just
started torching people. Now, remember, they're getting
pressured from back in the US from the wives and families.
It's building up. And Ross Perot and people like
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that were paying for these wivesto fly around the country.
Several of my friend's wives gottogether and flew to different
countries, 10 or 12 countries, to put pressure on them.
These were more middle of the road countries that had more
contact with the communists in North Vietnam.
They put pressure on them to tell the communists in North
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Vietnam, the leaders there, to quit torturing us because they
had signed a Geneva Convention. Well, when Ho Chi Minh died in
September of 1969. And about 3 weeks later, in the
first week of October, the Communist Party leaders in North
Vietnam called in all the camp commanders and told them
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basically to stop the torture and to treat us differently.
And so that really made a big difference in what these wives
and families did back home, changed our treatment.
The torture stopped. Then in a year later, in
November of 70, the the Green Berets, the Special forces came
and raided a camp in July in N67N70, November the 21st, the
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night is 22nd. In the morning of the 22nd, they
raided the camp that I'd lived in for two years and we had
moved out because they had builta, they'd taken some old
barracks and made a showplace camp and we had been moved there
in July and they weren't sure about that.
So they raided the camp and we weren't there.
But they executed perfectly and we're still connected.
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We're connected with the Sante Raiders.
The PO WS are but wasn't. They weren't able to get anyone
out there. No, they couldn't get any.
There was no none of us there and not any of them.
The only one that was injured was one of the guys that had to
crash the helicopter inside the compound and one of the guys
broke his ankle when they crashed in.
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But none of them got hurt and they executed it perfectly.
But within 48 hours, we all moved back to the Hanoi Hilton
and they put us in big cells, 40most of us, all of us, all of it
except a few of the senior leaders were in cells are about
1800 to 2000 square feet and we had 40 to 60 guys in those
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cells. So it's an open Bay cell
barracks with the 40 to 60 guys.And so I had 55 guys in my cell
about 1800 square feet for the next two years.
And so we got healthier and healthier everyday.
We got, we had time to get emotionally and mentally healthy
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and we had time to get educated because we had classes 5-6 days
or five days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes,
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, classes 6 days, two hours in the
morning, 2 hours in the afternoon.
You can study Spanish, French, German, Russian, geography,
design and graphics and music, whatever you wanted.
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You could learn to play chess. We got so, so involved that, you
know, I thought I got speaking fluent French and fluent
Spanish. I'd had French in college and
2000 word vocabulary in German because we were working on it
every day, but we had no books. But there was some guy in that
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cell, or usually a couple of three that knew something about
a lot about something. So we just worked together and
we got healthy. That's why we have a lower PTSD
rate than the combat veterans from the South who were there a
year. And we're out living our peers.
Our average age now is 88. I'm 81.
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I'm the youngest, one of the twoyoungest guys that were there
five years or more. And our marriages have been
great. And I've just written a new book
about POW romance, Captured by Love.
It just came out a couple years ago.
I'm glad you brought that up because during my research, I
came across your publishing company, Freedom Star Media, and
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found those and found those books Captured by Love and then
two other books, Engaged with Honor and then Leading with
Honor Leadership lessons from the Hanoi Hilton.
Yep. Thank you.
Thank you. See the front of that one?
Leading with. Honor, there we go.
And for those of you who are notseeing the YouTube version, he
was showing us the covers of those books.
But you can find the covers of those books and the books.
(24:22):
You can buy those books online at freedomstartmedia.com or
where other wherever you get your other books, maybe your
local bookstore, you can order them there as well.
They're all on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, all those places.
Yeah, and. And Valentine's Day is just
around the corner. You love birds, so get out there
and get the captured by love book for your for the yeah.
(24:43):
As. Mormon Pedley. 20 stories of
guys who were Pows 5 to 8 years.There's two guys that were there
almost six years or five more than five years, I'm sorry, more
than eight, one guy more than eight years and two guys eight
years. And you know, most of them that
were married stayed married and they've been married over 60
(25:06):
years. And the ones that were married
and their wives divorced them when they came home, they met
somebody within a year and now they've been married 50 years.
And the guys like me that were single, I was the last single
guy, I think to get married. And I didn't get married till a
little bit, almost a year and a half after I got home.
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And my wife and I'll be married 50 years and next week.
Oh, that's nice. Congratulations.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
So we've had great relationshipsand we've been very healthy and
we just got healthy before we came home.
It was a real blessing that raidby the Fonte Raiders put us back
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into a big camp when those big cells where we really guiding
community every day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
For the book engage with honor, particularly you have you have
that book kind of broken down byby chapters that offers readers
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guidance on the approach to living honorably and accountable
accountability in your life. Can you break that down for me
the approach of this book and how people might can apply it?
You know, we have a a model. I'm a graphic person.
I'm not AI don't do graphics, but I'm a visual person.
So we built a model and that Courageous accountability model
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is on our website. You can download it for free.
But that is character courage and the commitment are the three
in the middle of it. OK Character courage and
commitment. You have to have courage to have
good character and maintain yourcommitments, OK.
And then on the right side it goes down.
It that takes you up to the top and it says clarify, connect,
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collaborate and close out. And I in fact, last year I did a
blog every month on that model, that visual model about
character, courage and commitment and then clarify,
collaborate. I did two months on collaborate
and close out and then today I did A1 and I talked about again,
(27:18):
clarifying and connecting and collaborating and having good
discussions in a meeting. So we use that model a lot and
that that is a kind of a, it's more day-to-day practical and
leading without a book has 6 chapters, 6 lessons leading
yourself and eight lessons, 8 chapters leading others.
(27:42):
But so those are overall leadership guidelines in leading
with honor, but engage with honor, it's called the subtitle
is Building a Culture of Courageous Accountability.
And you know, you really have tobelieve in yourself.
You have to be confident, but you have to be humble and
(28:06):
vulnerable. And a lot of leaders are not
confident enough in themselves to be humble and vulnerable.
But great leaders do because they they'll look at you and
they'll listen to you and say, you know what, I hadn't thought
of that. That's a good idea.
That takes confidence and humility.
And when you mess up, you say, guys, I should have listened to
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you. I messed up on that one.
And a confident leader can do that.
But when you're insecure, you can't do that.
Well, in the POW camps, we got very secure.
When you suffered for 5678 years, you come out of there
very secure. Like what are they going to?
What are they? What's going to happen to me
today that's worse than over there?
(28:50):
You know, so you don't worry about stuff.
You just, you're not insecure. And that's one reason we've been
so happy is that we got healthy enough to admit when we mess up.
Most of us all do. There's a couple that won't, but
most of us do and listen to other people.
When you're a leader and you listen to your people, they feel
(29:11):
more valuable, They feel more important.
You don't have to do what they say, but you might learn
something and you might want to do what they say.
You know, they say, you know what, that's a good idea, I'm
going to go do it. And they feel important.
They're going to work harder, they're going to be more loyal,
and they're going to be more confident in their performance.
(29:33):
So you're helping them grow. If you think back about it,
growing up, I had a very wonderful experience growing up.
My parents were healthy and good, had a good life.
But my, my friends, teenagers, my teenage friends in high
school, their parents believed in me and other young people and
(29:55):
they treated me like I was somebody, like a real person.
Well, that really I looking backnow, that helped me be more
confident and myself and believing in myself in that
period of suffering. I don't think thank you for
that, Colonel Ellis. I think I wanted you kind of a
(30:16):
little bit of a a fun question and but maybe before I lead into
that, Senator McCain when he wasPOWI think I remember hearing
when he got out that he said he just wanted to read, like wanted
to consume books, read and read.Was that because he wasn't in
community like you guys were? Was he in isolation?
(30:38):
Do you know what his situation was?
Well, he was, he was in isolation for a while, you know,
for a year or so in that early time.
But in toward the end, he was inwith other people.
But I think we all wanted to read.
I was not a book reader. I I wasn't a book reader much
(30:59):
until I went to the Air War College and I started having to
read and I said this is really good.
Yeah, it's. Now I read books all the time,
you know I love. Reading books, but write them.
It's it's funny what you appreciate once it's it's taken
away and you no longer have it. OK, so the, the funny play on
this is if you could design yourdream escape room, and I'm sure
(31:22):
you probably wouldn't put those,you know, 2 together, although
I'm sure you probably dreamed ofmini escapes.
If you were going to put puzzles, challenges, themes
inspired by your time in there, you know what, what would you
have put in there? Would it have been the books?
What was it the thing that you guys were craving most other
than your your family from your time in there?
(31:44):
And what, what if and when you fantasize and thought about the
ways in which you broke out? Was it to be able to return back
to America to, you know, taste the the foods that we always
talk about when we're in the military and we're away and we
don't have access to that? What was that like for you?
You know, I think it was different things at different
(32:04):
times because when you're 5 to 8years, you know, I spent one
month deciding what kind of lawyer I was going to be and
where I was going to go to law school.
And I was getting information onwhat kind of lawyers there are
and where to go to law school from guys around me secretly
communicating through the walls.And I thought about that all,
(32:27):
almost all day long, every day. And then I spent two months
thinking about farming because Igrew up on a farm.
And I thought, you know, when I go back, I'm going to get, I'm
going to start out with about 60acres and build it up.
And I would farm for 8 or 10 hours a day, planning and
calculating all that stuff that it was going to take.
(32:50):
And by the end of two months, I owned almost the whole county
because I didn't have to pay anytaxes and I can set my own
prices. My wife, when we came back, and
I met my wife about a year afterI got back, and we got married a
few months later, but we were transferred back to Randolph Air
(33:12):
Force Base in San Antonio. I wanted to buy a farm.
And she didn't push back on me. She hadn't learned to get in my
face and say, Lee, that's not a good idea.
And here's why Abci would have listened to her.
So we're different. And I'm very.
I listen to somebody who's direct in my face, but if they
mumble a little bit and talk about something, yeah, yeah,
(33:34):
yeah. I don't listen.
So she learned to get in my face, and that's been really
good. But we lived on a farm for about
a year. And then she was pregnant with
her fourth child. She had two when we got married,
and she'd had second one. She's pregnant with the second
one. She said, Lee, I'm getting
depressed at you on this farm. I don't have anybody to talk to,
(33:57):
and we need to move on base. And she said, I said, man, yeah,
yeah, yeah. She said, we need to get in
counseling now. This is 1979, early 79.
Nobody's ever, no pilot has everbeen to counseling, but they had
a counselor on the base. And I said, OK, because I'm
fearless, you know, let's go to counseling.
(34:20):
And we after the second meeting with the counselor, I said we
need to move on base. And so we sold the farm and
moved on base. It was just that's.
Great. That's greatly and I really, but
at the core of that, I think what I'm really here into is the
power of the minds and the ability to even win the physical
(34:42):
things and the activities and the things that we can do.
The actually having the materialthat you can put your focus and
awareness on something and whether it's through, you know,
8 months of, you know, you got your Juris doctorate, OK, now
it's on to become, you know, theprize winner of, you know, the
at the County Fair. And so thank, thank you for
(35:05):
sharing that with us. I think it's a good way to think
things true before you jump intothem.
And when you don't have to jump into something before, you have
to jump into it before you have to make a decision, because I
didn't. When we came home, the Air Force
(35:25):
said, you ready to go back to work?
And I said flying. And they said yeah.
And I said absolutely, I'm ready.
And I went back and re qualifiedfor flying and became an
instructor pilot right away. So and just had great flying
career. But when you're when you have
(35:47):
some time, it's a good time. It's a good time to think about
things. We guys would play golf, they
would stand up and learn how to swing their golf course,
remember how to swing their GolfClub and practice every day.
And one guy who'd played on the Academy and Naval Academy golf
team, when he came home, he got to play in the New Orleans Open
(36:10):
a few months, like two or three months after we came home, two
months after maybe six weeks, and I think he shot 3 over par.
Wow. He played in the pro Am but wow,
because he had practiced every almost every day the last two or
three years there. You know, you know, it's, it's
(36:35):
funny because you know, I hear and it seems like a lot of the
people that we talked to that that that really have true
resilience. It's not something that happened
during the bad thing. It's something that happens when
you're processing it. It's something that resilience
is how you take that bad thing and you you learn what to do
(36:56):
with it. And so and you know, you
mentioned talking about leadership and how you know a
good leader can can admit their mistakes and move on and listen
to people who around them that are smarter in the specific
thing that they're trying to do.My wife avoids that entire thing
by just always being right. But for people like me, I feel
(37:20):
like you're, there's got to be apattern of poor leadership that
you see doing, doing, you know, as a, as a leadership
consultant, you've worked with all these different ranges of,
of organizations. But there's got to be a pattern
of what you see because there's a certain type of people and you
can probably put this into better words than I can, that
are great at getting in charge and don't know what to do with
(37:44):
it when they get there. I mean, they just, they rise to
the top. They're the cream of the crop
and they just don't have the foundation to hold it all
together or something happens when they get there that becomes
a barrier between them and the leader that they they could be.
I'm curious what your experienceis as you've consulted with all
these different people and experiences that you had and
(38:05):
learned, you know, the hard way,you know, how do you, how do you
point that out to, to people that are that you know, that are
reaching out to you to say, hey,we need help here?
You know, you have to, as I saidat the very beginning, you have
to learn to listen to people. You have to learn to value
(38:28):
people. And when you're a we, we have an
assessment that shows you whether you're results oriented,
mission focus or relationship, people focus and you're
naturally wired. 40% of the population is naturally wired
for results mission, and 40% of the population is wired for
people and relationships. But as a leader, you're going to
(38:52):
have to learn to adapt to both. Now, you won't be as good as the
other guy who's a fully results focused and you won't be as if
your results focus. You won't be as good as a
relationship people are. But you can adapt enough that
nobody will know. They won't notice it.
You know, just a little bit of adapting.
(39:13):
You listen to somebody. I coached the CEO, the president
of a division of a Fortune 200 company back a few years ago and
he was a West Point graduate. He was a had been an Army Ranger
and now he's working as a president of a division of a
company. And he was a really good guy,
(39:35):
but he never encouraged anybody.He didn't really listen to him
much. And I sat down with him and I
said, you know what, you're a really good man.
You're a great man. But you need to learn to adapt
your behaviors to help people tofeel valued, important, that you
care about them. You listen to him.
(39:59):
And he said, well, that's just not me.
And I said, yes, you are a good man and you can adapt.
And I'm going to show you how. And I said last week, 2, two
weeks ago, we had a retreat. You had a retreat.
And I was there working with your team over here on Lake
(40:20):
Lanier Island at the one of the hotels there.
And I said the person in charge,I said, what was that retreat
like? He was it a good retreat?
He said, yeah, it was great. We accomplished all our goals.
We had a good time. Everything.
I said, well, have you told the the lady who's your VP in charge
of that? Have you told her?
He said no. I said, I want you to write out
(40:43):
two sentences to tell her you did.
She did a great job and he worked on it for 5 or 6 minutes
and we talked about it and I said, OK, they had a private
bathroom in his office. I'm going to stand here.
I want you to go in there and open the bathroom door and stand
in front of the mirror. And I want you to say it to her.
Practice saying it to her, walking.
(41:04):
I want you to go down the hall, pretend you went down the hall,
walked in her office. And I want you to say it.
And I watched him a time or two and I said you're not smiling.
I want you to smile and smile, he said.
You know, Joan, you know that retreat you organized and
conducted for us last week that was really successful?
(41:27):
Thank you so much for what you did.
That's all you got to do. And he did it.
He did it. And he started encouraging and
listening to his team and they just all of a sudden changed.
Well, I about a month later, I finished up my coaching
assignment with him and he said I was in his office.
(41:48):
He said now can you stay about 5minutes after today our meeting?
And I said, yeah, that's what heasked me when I first walked in.
I said sure. He said I want you to meet
someone. Well, when we finish, he jumps
up, goes out, comes in with thislady.
He introduces his wife. She said I want to meet you and
tell you thank you for what you've done because we have a
(42:09):
third, only one child, 13 year old son.
And he is sitting down with him and talking to him and listening
to him and they just have a great relationship now.
That is so. Warming.
And you know, I saw this guy is now CEO of a company in Atlanta.
And I was speaking, I told that story at a speaking to
(42:32):
commissioning of UGA cadets. And a guy came up to me and
said, I know who that is. And I said, well, I can't tell
you who it is, but I know he said, I know who it is.
I bet I can tell you. And he named the guy and I said,
sounds like you got a good guy, but I didn't tell him it was the
guy, but it was. And he said he's the best CEO
(42:54):
we've ever had. And I saw the guy.
I'd seen the guy, my friend, a few months earlier.
And I said, well, how you doing?He said, doing well.
He said, how's your son? He said we're going to run a
half marathon together on Saturday.
And then his son graduating college, is working in a
business here in Atlanta. He said we're going to run a
(43:17):
half marathon together on Saturday.
That's incredible. By the way, I'm over outside of
Douglasville. Yeah, OK.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not too far from you.
I know Douglasville is on the West side, right?
Yeah, well. Colonel Ellis, I love that
story. And I think one of the things
(43:38):
that you may not even recognize is there's certainly the
leadership consulting and helping to coach somebody
through that. But then there's also the really
special thing of what you personally endured in that small
community of those men that you were in that cell with that can,
can permeate and, and make a ripple unlike few others can
(44:02):
because of what you had to go through.
So it, it may just carry a little bit more weight coming
from, from Someone Like You. So the fact that you take the
time that you've made a continued career out of service,
out of helping leaders to get better and to serve better, it's
(44:22):
just a testament to you and the man that you are.
It's been an absolute privilege and honor for you to come and
spend some time with us today. Before you sign off, is there
anything you want to share with our alphas that we didn't get a
chance to discuss? Do you asking me?
Yes, Sir. Is there anything?
Is there anything you want to share that we didn't get a
(44:44):
chance to discuss? You know, I think being with a a
team who's gone through something that you've gone
through really was helpful. That was so helpful to us.
And our leaders had gone throughmore torture and more solitary
confinement. You know, Riser, Denton and
(45:06):
Stockdale were their three senior leaders for the most of
the time, and they were in solitary confine.
They were there 7 1/2 years. They've all spent more than four
years in solitary confinement. Now, they had connections to
their time, but Reisner, for instance, was in solitary
confinement in total darkness for 10 months.
(45:27):
And that's when I first met him and started communicating with
him secretly. But these guys, they just kept
bouncing back. And they would.
And when they had a cellmate andone, one guy, Stockdale had a
Navy Lieutenant JG he was a commander, a group commander on
(45:49):
a ship when he was shot down andcaptured in 65 and a guy was
shot down in 67. Dan Glenn was his cellmate.
And he told him, I'm going to put out some of the back USA
policy, a little bit more details of some things that we
(46:12):
can put into take one level downfrom the code of conduct about
how to operate and how to behave.
And so he went over it with Dan and listen to Dan's feedback,
who was a Lieutenant JG. And that was just a, a wonderful
thing. Our our leaders would listen to
us and take into account what wehad to say.
(46:35):
And their leaders treated us, the junior guys, like we were
somebody. And that was very important.
We we became more humble too, and more confident.
Well, you certainly had some of the most remarkable leaders on
on the planet to learn from, andwe consider you to be 1 as well.
(46:59):
Colonel Alice, we'll have your show handles and links, your
your social media handles and links we've talked about in our
show notes. And is there a website our
alphas can go to learn more about your work?
Leading with honor.com and POW romance.com, they learn use a
(47:21):
lot of stories on that and you can download the first two
stories of the book, but there'sa lot of pictures and podcasts
and things with people there that there.
But we also I do a monthly blog about a 708 hundred word blog on
leadership every month. And I'm like I said earlier,
(47:43):
I've been talking about some of those models, the courageous
accountability model last year. And this one I talk about the
engage and align model where youhow to get a group together in
your team and discuss things andlisten to everybody before you
make a decision. And then because it's going to
(48:05):
be so much more supported when you get them all together and
talk about it and make that decision.
So anyway, you can download the coaching video, 5 or 6 minute
coaching video and the blog or the blog, whichever 1 you want
every month. And a lot of those lessons, you
know, the leadership lessons that we learned in the POW camp,
(48:27):
amazing how some of those are sosimilar to relations and good
marriages and relationships. You know, you got to be
committed. You got to listen to the other
person and they got it. They're going to have different
talents than you are. You know, Joe, you mentioned
that earlier. You got to have different
talents than you are and some important, you know, treating
(48:53):
people with respect, trusting people and being trustworthy,
All of those things are so important.
It just, it means so much that that you spent this time with us
today. And, and so of course, thank you
so much for visiting. We, we, we look forward to, to,
to seeing you do more amazing things and sharing your
experiences. And so Alphas, please stick
(49:15):
around. We've got some scuttlebutt after
the break. Welcome back Alpha, as we're
keeping things short and sweet on the countdown so there's no
scuttle but today, but thanks for taking the trip down memory
lane with us. We really hope you guys enjoyed
the episode. On behalf of the entire Tal
Podcast team, we hope you're enjoying time with your loved
ones during the holiday season. If you miss us during the
(49:37):
holidays, which I know you are, you can always subscribe to our
podcast, our newsletter, or sendus guests and mail
recommendations at legion.org. Back slash Tal Salaam.
We're back. Alphas, we're coming in hot.
With inspiring guests. Witty banter and colorful
commentary for today's veterans and military community.
This is the Tal Podcast. Hi there, Alphas.
During the holiday season, the Tal podcast team is taking a
break. Need a break?
(00:21):
But while we're gone, we do havea little bonus content for you.
So we've looked back at all the things we've done during Season
6 and we've come up with a list of our our top six most
impactful guests from 2025. And that was not easy.
It really was difficult. There are so many great guests,
but we'll be re releasing those interviews this week.
So if you haven't already subscribed to Tango Halima on
(00:43):
Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube,or, you know, wherever you get
your podcast, don't miss our countdown.
We've got we've got you covered.OK, believe it or not, it's been
almost a year since we interviewed retired US Air Force
Colonel Lee Ellis, a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War who
was shot down, captured and heldcaptive as a POW for 5 1/2 years
(01:07):
at the infamous Hanoi Hilton. He shared his incredible story
of survival about his work with Leadership Freedom, LLC as a
nationally recognized leadershiptrainer, coach, author, and
keynote speaker. And I'll tell you what, this
indeed was one of the most memorable, memorable episodes.
The insights, the authenticity, the vulnerability that he shared
(01:30):
and what he experienced was pretty unparalleled with kind of
what we've experienced on this podcast.
So, Joe, what do? What do you remember about this
one? For me, I think sometimes you,
you get this, this little tunnelvision of feeling like you've
been through some things and then you hear the story of
somebody who's been through something that you can't even
(01:52):
begin to imagine. And, and not that I'm a big
complainer or anything, but it is a reminder that, you know,
asking for help is one thing, but just sitting around whining,
I think I'm good. I think I'll just let I'll let
other people do that because there's men like this floating
around that have been through some real things and and don't
complain about it at all. They share their story in such a
(02:14):
beautiful and heartfelt way. It's is a It was a really
humbling, wonderful, wonderful interview with some great
insights. Stacy, probably nobody more more
ready to be a leadership trainerthan this guy, right?
No, I mean, like I was just going to say, I don't care how
much time has passed from that experience that he spent back in
(02:36):
Vietnam. Those are those are the kind of
leave indelible Marks and will change you for life and some
very powerful life lessons learned, learned the hard way,
which we can all have takeaways from.
And his attitude is so incredibly remarkable.
And I always want to aspire to to be that way in my own life.
(02:59):
So he's he's an incredible person, a human being.
His story is phenomenal and obviously has great, as my
friend Tommy Clark says, great intestinal fortitude.
So you definitely want to tune into this this episode.
I mean, it's, it really is, it's, it's living, it's living
history and the fact that we getinsights like this from these
(03:19):
type of experiences, you know, we won't, you know, for
generations past and have accessto stuff like this.
So the just the ability to document for posterity, it's
really remarkable. So I'll, I'll tell you what,
stick around Alphas after the break and we'll be back with our
interview with Colonel Lee Ellisfrom episode 246.
You don't want to miss this one.Honoring those who came before
(03:42):
us, the American Legion pays perpetual respect for all past
military sacrifices to ensure they are never forgotten by new
generations. We are veterans strengthened in
America. We are the American Legion.
(04:03):
Today we're joined by retired Air Force Colonel Lee Ellis,
whose full name is actually Leon, which happens to be the
name of one of my favorite literary characters.
Just saying. Anyway, you go by Lee.
Welcome to the show Tal Podcast.Lee.
We are honored to have you here with us today.
Thank you. Great to be here.
(04:24):
Yeah, Colonel Ellis, it's an absolute honor to have you here.
As an Army aviator myself, who went through Searcy School at
Fort Rucker, now Fort Nova Cell.And so for those not familiar,
that survival evasion, Resistance and escape school, I
learned first hand how the lessons of Vietnam shaped the
(04:45):
survival training that we received there.
Those lessons are rooted in the experience of heroes like you
that endured unimaginable hardships.
So it's deeply personal for me today.
I'm sorry to get to speak with you because of your resilience,
because of your leadership that inspired generations of service
members, you know, in including myself, you know, I remember
(05:08):
being back there in flight school and watching some of the
videos from you and your generation to be able to take
the lessons learned that you guys went through with your
blood sacrifice to be able to instill that into us and how we
should go forward. So your time at the Hanoi Hilton
(05:28):
is a testament to the power of resilience and leadership under
the most extreme conditions thata human being could be exposed
to. So with that being said, would
you briefly, I think it would begreat to share whatever you feel
compelled to about the circumstances that that led to
your capture and how you've beenable to take those experiences
(05:49):
as a POW to use to shape your understanding of leadership, of
how you translate those lessons for people facing very difficult
kinds of challenges today. You know, I was, I just turned
24 years old in 1967. I was on my 53rd mission over
(06:09):
North Vietnam. I'm flying mostly patrolling up
and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and a few missions over into
Laos and a few in close air support for the Army and Marine
Corps and Icor down in northern part of South Vietnam.
(06:32):
So I've flown different kinds ofmissions, but we were flying to
bomb out the Ho Chi Minh Trail and to prevent them bringing
down guns and ammo and soldiers to fight in the South because
they were not supposed to be down there according to the the
agreement of 1954 that the Communist Party in the North
(06:56):
Vietnam had signed. So on my 53rd mission, my
airplane, we were getting shot at a lot.
Almost every mission we'd had airplane airplanes hit before
and usually when they got hit, we just a bullet hole would go
through the wing or something. And if you got hit by an
(07:18):
aircraft artillery, 37 or 57 millimeter, it would blow a hole
in your tank and maybe the engine, and you'd usually make
it back at least where you couldjump out and be rescued if it
really fell apart. But this day, the 7th of
November, about 5:00 in the afternoon of 1967, my airplane
(07:42):
blew up into several pieces, andthe cockpit was just one of
those pieces, and it was tumbling.
And in the F4 there are two 2 pilot.
The Air Force had two pilots, the Navy and Marine Corps had a
pilot and a Rio, a radar intercept officer in the back
seat. But we were flying and my half
(08:03):
my class from pilot training in 67 A, which graduated in 60
August, 66 half of us across 8 bases.
There were 534 of us in that class and we, over half of us
got an assignment that said F4, Phantom Pipeline, Southeast
Asia. So we went to combat training
(08:25):
right after we went to Sears school and then we went to
combat training and quick as we got qualified, we went to
Vietnam or to Thailand, to Ubank, Thailand or to one of
those bases in South Vietnam. So I was on my 53rd mission,
flown a good bed. I was flying with the Wing
Commander and the DO and the squadron commander and a lot of
(08:47):
guys and you guys, I was training you guys that came into
the combat zone on how we did itover there.
And so that day when that airplane blew up, you know, I
was focused on ejecting and whenit flipped, it was negative G's
and my head was up against the cockpit.
(09:08):
And then it flipped again and itwas positive G's.
And I, I didn't want to eject with my head against the, the
top of the canopy. And so because I knew I'd
probably break my neck. And so it flipped and positive
G's and I pulled that handle andso did my front seater, Captain
Ken Fisher, who was 88 yesterday.
(09:29):
And we jumped out and he was about a half a mile away from
me. So I didn't, I didn't focus on
him. I just saw his parachute coming
down, but I was planning to. I did my parachute landing fall.
I hit all five points just like you're trained to do and jump
(09:51):
down in a an old bump crater there and pulled out my radio,
emergency radio and I said, hey,I'm 200 meters.
NI told them to my wingman or myflight lead.
I said, I'm 200 meters north of the river, Start strafing.
I'm headed at 300. I'm headed South to the river
because we're only about a mile from the Conkin Gulf.
(10:14):
Well, they surrounded me and captured me quickly.
And it took two weeks to get to Hanoi, and that's so many
stories there. But what happened was I had a
really good soldier who was in charge of taking me north.
He was a good man. Now, he worked for the
Communists because he had no choice.
But he was a good soldier and hewould not let them beat me up.
(10:36):
He wouldn't let them punish me. He wouldn't let them attack me
because a lot of people were trying, you know, we'd bomb
bombing up there and the Communist Party would get out
there with a bullhorn in the village and start getting them
all fired up. And they'd try to come after me.
And he had his soldiers protect me.
And so I got to Hanoi and join up with Captain Fisher again and
(11:00):
two other guys and we went into a 6 1/2 foot, 7 foot cell that
was totally, totally isolated inthat there was no cell wall.
There was no nobody on the otherside of that wall.
It was an empty walkway about that wide, about two feet wide
so that it was built that way sothat we could be maximum
(11:22):
security. We couldn't tap on the wall to
anybody else and that was for the next 8 1/2 months and then I
moved to Sante for a couple years and that's where the
Raiders rated the Sante Raiders rated in 19 November 70, but
we'd already moved out. But those first few months were
really hard and we were all tortured and to try to, they
(11:48):
wanted to get either some kind of information and they wanted
to break us so that we would collaborate with them and do
what they told us to do and not tried to communicate with our
peers and partners there. And of course we were, it was US
against them. And they wanted us to get to
provide anti war information andpropaganda for them and to obey
(12:16):
them. And we were fighting very hard
not to do that. And so we got tortured.
Everybody got tortured and 95% of us did, but we bounced back.
And you know, Captain Fisher lasted longer than I did in the
torture. And the other guy in the cell
who was being tortured at the same time I was, he didn't last
(12:38):
as long as I did. But when I was, you know, we had
the code of conduct and they said, you won't collaborate, you
won't give any information to the enemy.
And so when I finally gave in that day and filled out a three
page biography, I cried like a baby because I was so ashamed,
(13:00):
so sad that I could not beat them and live up to my
commitment to the code of conduct.
And I get back to my cell and there's one guy already back.
And then Captain Fisher came back a few hours later.
And we decided that, well, we did our we did.
We did our best. And then when we got contact
(13:21):
with the other cells later, a few months later, we learned
that everybody had been torturedto do that same thing.
And a lot of people had been tortured for other things.
But you had to bounce back. You had to believe in yourself
and your teammates. And you just, you know, you
suffered and you were sad. But they've been through that
(13:43):
too. And some lasted longer than
others. Some guys are tougher than
others. And so we just we got, we
learned to live with that and day by day and that's where we
were, that's the early years. But we had great leadership as
(14:04):
we got connected out at Sante. We had great leadership and our
leaders had been there longer. Generally the senior leaders
were guys that had been there two years longer than I had.
They got captured in 1965 and I didn't get captured till
November 67. So they had been through a whole
(14:26):
lot of torture and been in solitary confinement a lot of
the times, but they just bouncedback every time, every time.
And that was a great example forus.
You got you're going to suffer, you're going to suffer, but you
got to stay positive and come through it.
That's a long. That's a long answer to your
question, but I'll try to answerthe next one shorter.
(14:50):
No. It was absolutely perfect and we
wanted to give you the opportunity to to share it as
much as you felt so, So thank you and.
And honestly, if if anybody's going to going to talk for a few
minutes here, they've heard enough of us, I think they'd
love to hear from you. And so, you know, it means so
much that you're here. I as somebody who partially
(15:13):
makes a living telling awful stories about themselves.
I, I, I know that it takes a little bit out of you and it,
and it's not always easy. I was a corpsman with two, one
Marines in, in Fallujah. I went through some, some small
trials myself and, and I had to work really hard to find
purpose. And so I, I'd love to ask you
(15:34):
and if you need to do context and go into a little bit more of
what you went through, that's obviously perfectly fine.
But I would love to hear some ofthe lessons that you learned.
I mean, it sounds like you've already spoke on one is that
you've got to sort of forgive yourself for for being human and
move on. Yeah.
And then not hold yourself accountable because it's easy to
look back as a, in my case, a 43year old man ago, if I could
(15:57):
have done these things right here and it would have made my
life better, I could have done this or that.
And that's not fair to that 20 year old kid that was going
through that. Yeah.
You know, that kid did his best.And so I'd love to hear, you
know, some lessons from that time that that I think might be
applicable to, to to other people that have been through
struggles and trials themselves.You know, the thing that really
(16:21):
helped us the most and was the communications in a community
that were struggling the way we were.
In other words, if we'd been in locked up with a guy who had
never been to the war and hadn'tbeen through torture, that'd be
a whole different game because he would not know.
(16:44):
She would not know what what what it was like to go through
that. But when you've been locked up
with people that have gone through worst torture and worst
times and been there longer thanyou have, you know, you really
can't complain much. And they're smiling and, and
trying to outsmart the enemy. You, you start to realize that,
(17:07):
well, they survived it and they're smiling.
And that guy's married and has two kids.
I'm single and he's been here two years or three years.
It just makes a lot of difference.
I think that's why it's so important.
And that's one of the things theAmerican Legion does.
When I was growing up, I don't think we had American Legion in
(17:29):
little town I was in, but we hada BFW and those guys would go
there World War Two guys and Korean guys, they'd go there two
or three times a week after work.
And there it was totally dry county, so it was no alcohol.
So, but in the BFW they could sell beer and whiskey,
especially beer, I know. And guys would go over there and
have a beer and with their buddies and talk to them and
(17:52):
then go home. And so that connection, I think,
was very important for him. And toward the end when here's
another thing that most people don't know is that in 1968, some
of a few of the wives started putting pressure on our
government. The Johnson administration had
(18:17):
been the Secretary of Defense and the advisors in there had
told them not to put pressure onthe communist about our
treatment because they were thisand that and the other
negotiating or whatever. And so when in 1968, they had
told the wives and families to keep quiet, not to talk about
(18:40):
POW treatment and all that kind of stuff and what was happening,
and a lot of them were MIAs missing in action.
So they rebelled and started to speak up and get into the public
venture. And then when the Nixon
administration came in in 1969 and Secretary Laird was a SEC
(19:01):
def sector of defense, they agreed with the wives to put put
pressure on them. And they started putting
pressure on the communists aboutfollowing Geneva Conventions
that they had signed, that they would be treated, we would be
treated with lenient and humane treatment.
And so that pressure all began to build in 1960, early 69.
(19:25):
And then in the summer of 1969, there was an escape at the zoo
camp, which was on the other side of town from the Hanoi
Hilton. And when that escape, they just
started torching people. Now, remember, they're getting
pressured from back in the US from the wives and families.
It's building up. And Ross Perot and people like
(19:47):
that were paying for these wivesto fly around the country.
Several of my friend's wives gottogether and flew to different
countries, 10 or 12 countries, to put pressure on them.
These were more middle of the road countries that had more
contact with the communists in North Vietnam.
They put pressure on them to tell the communists in North
(20:11):
Vietnam, the leaders there, to quit torturing us because they
had signed a Geneva Convention. Well, when Ho Chi Minh died in
September of 1969. And about 3 weeks later, in the
first week of October, the Communist Party leaders in North
Vietnam called in all the camp commanders and told them
(20:33):
basically to stop the torture and to treat us differently.
And so that really made a big difference in what these wives
and families did back home, changed our treatment.
The torture stopped. Then in a year later, in
November of 70, the the Green Berets, the Special forces came
and raided a camp in July in N67N70, November the 21st, the
(21:00):
night is 22nd. In the morning of the 22nd, they
raided the camp that I'd lived in for two years and we had
moved out because they had builta, they'd taken some old
barracks and made a showplace camp and we had been moved there
in July and they weren't sure about that.
So they raided the camp and we weren't there.
But they executed perfectly and we're still connected.
(21:23):
We're connected with the Sante Raiders.
The PO WS are but wasn't. They weren't able to get anyone
out there. No, they couldn't get any.
There was no none of us there and not any of them.
The only one that was injured was one of the guys that had to
crash the helicopter inside the compound and one of the guys
broke his ankle when they crashed in.
(21:45):
But none of them got hurt and they executed it perfectly.
But within 48 hours, we all moved back to the Hanoi Hilton
and they put us in big cells, 40most of us, all of us, all of it
except a few of the senior leaders were in cells are about
1800 to 2000 square feet and we had 40 to 60 guys in those
(22:08):
cells. So it's an open Bay cell
barracks with the 40 to 60 guys.And so I had 55 guys in my cell
about 1800 square feet for the next two years.
And so we got healthier and healthier everyday.
We got, we had time to get emotionally and mentally healthy
(22:31):
and we had time to get educated because we had classes 5-6 days
or five days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes,
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, classes 6 days, two hours in the
morning, 2 hours in the afternoon.
You can study Spanish, French, German, Russian, geography,
design and graphics and music, whatever you wanted.
(22:54):
You could learn to play chess. We got so, so involved that, you
know, I thought I got speaking fluent French and fluent
Spanish. I'd had French in college and
2000 word vocabulary in German because we were working on it
every day, but we had no books. But there was some guy in that
(23:16):
cell, or usually a couple of three that knew something about
a lot about something. So we just worked together and
we got healthy. That's why we have a lower PTSD
rate than the combat veterans from the South who were there a
year. And we're out living our peers.
Our average age now is 88. I'm 81.
(23:37):
I'm the youngest, one of the twoyoungest guys that were there
five years or more. And our marriages have been
great. And I've just written a new book
about POW romance, Captured by Love.
It just came out a couple years ago.
I'm glad you brought that up because during my research, I
came across your publishing company, Freedom Star Media, and
(23:59):
found those and found those books Captured by Love and then
two other books, Engaged with Honor and then Leading with
Honor Leadership lessons from the Hanoi Hilton.
Yep. Thank you.
Thank you. See the front of that one?
Leading with. Honor, there we go.
And for those of you who are notseeing the YouTube version, he
was showing us the covers of those books.
But you can find the covers of those books and the books.
(24:22):
You can buy those books online at freedomstartmedia.com or
where other wherever you get your other books, maybe your
local bookstore, you can order them there as well.
They're all on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, all those places.
Yeah, and. And Valentine's Day is just
around the corner. You love birds, so get out there
and get the captured by love book for your for the yeah.
(24:43):
As. Mormon Pedley. 20 stories of
guys who were Pows 5 to 8 years.There's two guys that were there
almost six years or five more than five years, I'm sorry, more
than eight, one guy more than eight years and two guys eight
years. And you know, most of them that
were married stayed married and they've been married over 60
(25:06):
years. And the ones that were married
and their wives divorced them when they came home, they met
somebody within a year and now they've been married 50 years.
And the guys like me that were single, I was the last single
guy, I think to get married. And I didn't get married till a
little bit, almost a year and a half after I got home.
(25:27):
And my wife and I'll be married 50 years and next week.
Oh, that's nice. Congratulations.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
So we've had great relationshipsand we've been very healthy and
we just got healthy before we came home.
It was a real blessing that raidby the Fonte Raiders put us back
(25:50):
into a big camp when those big cells where we really guiding
community every day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
For the book engage with honor, particularly you have you have
that book kind of broken down byby chapters that offers readers
(26:11):
guidance on the approach to living honorably and accountable
accountability in your life. Can you break that down for me
the approach of this book and how people might can apply it?
You know, we have a a model. I'm a graphic person.
I'm not AI don't do graphics, but I'm a visual person.
So we built a model and that Courageous accountability model
(26:31):
is on our website. You can download it for free.
But that is character courage and the commitment are the three
in the middle of it. OK Character courage and
commitment. You have to have courage to have
good character and maintain yourcommitments, OK.
And then on the right side it goes down.
It that takes you up to the top and it says clarify, connect,
(26:55):
collaborate and close out. And I in fact, last year I did a
blog every month on that model, that visual model about
character, courage and commitment and then clarify,
collaborate. I did two months on collaborate
and close out and then today I did A1 and I talked about again,
(27:18):
clarifying and connecting and collaborating and having good
discussions in a meeting. So we use that model a lot and
that that is a kind of a, it's more day-to-day practical and
leading without a book has 6 chapters, 6 lessons leading
yourself and eight lessons, 8 chapters leading others.
(27:42):
But so those are overall leadership guidelines in leading
with honor, but engage with honor, it's called the subtitle
is Building a Culture of Courageous Accountability.
And you know, you really have tobelieve in yourself.
You have to be confident, but you have to be humble and
(28:06):
vulnerable. And a lot of leaders are not
confident enough in themselves to be humble and vulnerable.
But great leaders do because they they'll look at you and
they'll listen to you and say, you know what, I hadn't thought
of that. That's a good idea.
That takes confidence and humility.
And when you mess up, you say, guys, I should have listened to
(28:29):
you. I messed up on that one.
And a confident leader can do that.
But when you're insecure, you can't do that.
Well, in the POW camps, we got very secure.
When you suffered for 5678 years, you come out of there
very secure. Like what are they going to?
What are they? What's going to happen to me
today that's worse than over there?
(28:50):
You know, so you don't worry about stuff.
You just, you're not insecure. And that's one reason we've been
so happy is that we got healthy enough to admit when we mess up.
Most of us all do. There's a couple that won't, but
most of us do and listen to other people.
When you're a leader and you listen to your people, they feel
(29:11):
more valuable, They feel more important.
You don't have to do what they say, but you might learn
something and you might want to do what they say.
You know, they say, you know what, that's a good idea, I'm
going to go do it. And they feel important.
They're going to work harder, they're going to be more loyal,
and they're going to be more confident in their performance.
(29:33):
So you're helping them grow. If you think back about it,
growing up, I had a very wonderful experience growing up.
My parents were healthy and good, had a good life.
But my, my friends, teenagers, my teenage friends in high
school, their parents believed in me and other young people and
(29:55):
they treated me like I was somebody, like a real person.
Well, that really I looking backnow, that helped me be more
confident and myself and believing in myself in that
period of suffering. I don't think thank you for
that, Colonel Ellis. I think I wanted you kind of a
(30:16):
little bit of a a fun question and but maybe before I lead into
that, Senator McCain when he wasPOWI think I remember hearing
when he got out that he said he just wanted to read, like wanted
to consume books, read and read.Was that because he wasn't in
community like you guys were? Was he in isolation?
(30:38):
Do you know what his situation was?
Well, he was, he was in isolation for a while, you know,
for a year or so in that early time.
But in toward the end, he was inwith other people.
But I think we all wanted to read.
I was not a book reader. I I wasn't a book reader much
(30:59):
until I went to the Air War College and I started having to
read and I said this is really good.
Yeah, it's. Now I read books all the time,
you know I love. Reading books, but write them.
It's it's funny what you appreciate once it's it's taken
away and you no longer have it. OK, so the, the funny play on
this is if you could design yourdream escape room, and I'm sure
(31:22):
you probably wouldn't put those,you know, 2 together, although
I'm sure you probably dreamed ofmini escapes.
If you were going to put puzzles, challenges, themes
inspired by your time in there, you know what, what would you
have put in there? Would it have been the books?
What was it the thing that you guys were craving most other
than your your family from your time in there?
(31:44):
And what, what if and when you fantasize and thought about the
ways in which you broke out? Was it to be able to return back
to America to, you know, taste the the foods that we always
talk about when we're in the military and we're away and we
don't have access to that? What was that like for you?
You know, I think it was different things at different
(32:04):
times because when you're 5 to 8years, you know, I spent one
month deciding what kind of lawyer I was going to be and
where I was going to go to law school.
And I was getting information onwhat kind of lawyers there are
and where to go to law school from guys around me secretly
communicating through the walls.And I thought about that all,
(32:27):
almost all day long, every day. And then I spent two months
thinking about farming because Igrew up on a farm.
And I thought, you know, when I go back, I'm going to get, I'm
going to start out with about 60acres and build it up.
And I would farm for 8 or 10 hours a day, planning and
calculating all that stuff that it was going to take.
(32:50):
And by the end of two months, I owned almost the whole county
because I didn't have to pay anytaxes and I can set my own
prices. My wife, when we came back, and
I met my wife about a year afterI got back, and we got married a
few months later, but we were transferred back to Randolph Air
(33:12):
Force Base in San Antonio. I wanted to buy a farm.
And she didn't push back on me. She hadn't learned to get in my
face and say, Lee, that's not a good idea.
And here's why Abci would have listened to her.
So we're different. And I'm very.
I listen to somebody who's direct in my face, but if they
mumble a little bit and talk about something, yeah, yeah,
(33:34):
yeah. I don't listen.
So she learned to get in my face, and that's been really
good. But we lived on a farm for about
a year. And then she was pregnant with
her fourth child. She had two when we got married,
and she'd had second one. She's pregnant with the second
one. She said, Lee, I'm getting
depressed at you on this farm. I don't have anybody to talk to,
(33:57):
and we need to move on base. And she said, I said, man, yeah,
yeah, yeah. She said, we need to get in
counseling now. This is 1979, early 79.
Nobody's ever, no pilot has everbeen to counseling, but they had
a counselor on the base. And I said, OK, because I'm
fearless, you know, let's go to counseling.
(34:20):
And we after the second meeting with the counselor, I said we
need to move on base. And so we sold the farm and
moved on base. It was just that's.
Great. That's greatly and I really, but
at the core of that, I think what I'm really here into is the
power of the minds and the ability to even win the physical
(34:42):
things and the activities and the things that we can do.
The actually having the materialthat you can put your focus and
awareness on something and whether it's through, you know,
8 months of, you know, you got your Juris doctorate, OK, now
it's on to become, you know, theprize winner of, you know, the
at the County Fair. And so thank, thank you for
(35:05):
sharing that with us. I think it's a good way to think
things true before you jump intothem.
And when you don't have to jump into something before, you have
to jump into it before you have to make a decision, because I
didn't. When we came home, the Air Force
(35:25):
said, you ready to go back to work?
And I said flying. And they said yeah.
And I said absolutely, I'm ready.
And I went back and re qualifiedfor flying and became an
instructor pilot right away. So and just had great flying
career. But when you're when you have
(35:47):
some time, it's a good time. It's a good time to think about
things. We guys would play golf, they
would stand up and learn how to swing their golf course,
remember how to swing their GolfClub and practice every day.
And one guy who'd played on the Academy and Naval Academy golf
team, when he came home, he got to play in the New Orleans Open
(36:10):
a few months, like two or three months after we came home, two
months after maybe six weeks, and I think he shot 3 over par.
Wow. He played in the pro Am but wow,
because he had practiced every almost every day the last two or
three years there. You know, you know, it's, it's
(36:35):
funny because you know, I hear and it seems like a lot of the
people that we talked to that that that really have true
resilience. It's not something that happened
during the bad thing. It's something that happens when
you're processing it. It's something that resilience
is how you take that bad thing and you you learn what to do
(36:56):
with it. And so and you know, you
mentioned talking about leadership and how you know a
good leader can can admit their mistakes and move on and listen
to people who around them that are smarter in the specific
thing that they're trying to do.My wife avoids that entire thing
by just always being right. But for people like me, I feel
(37:20):
like you're, there's got to be apattern of poor leadership that
you see doing, doing, you know, as a, as a leadership
consultant, you've worked with all these different ranges of,
of organizations. But there's got to be a pattern
of what you see because there's a certain type of people and you
can probably put this into better words than I can, that
are great at getting in charge and don't know what to do with
(37:44):
it when they get there. I mean, they just, they rise to
the top. They're the cream of the crop
and they just don't have the foundation to hold it all
together or something happens when they get there that becomes
a barrier between them and the leader that they they could be.
I'm curious what your experienceis as you've consulted with all
these different people and experiences that you had and
(38:05):
learned, you know, the hard way,you know, how do you, how do you
point that out to, to people that are that you know, that are
reaching out to you to say, hey,we need help here?
You know, you have to, as I saidat the very beginning, you have
to learn to listen to people. You have to learn to value
(38:28):
people. And when you're a we, we have an
assessment that shows you whether you're results oriented,
mission focus or relationship, people focus and you're
naturally wired. 40% of the population is naturally wired
for results mission, and 40% of the population is wired for
people and relationships. But as a leader, you're going to
(38:52):
have to learn to adapt to both. Now, you won't be as good as the
other guy who's a fully results focused and you won't be as if
your results focus. You won't be as good as a
relationship people are. But you can adapt enough that
nobody will know. They won't notice it.
You know, just a little bit of adapting.
(39:13):
You listen to somebody. I coached the CEO, the president
of a division of a Fortune 200 company back a few years ago and
he was a West Point graduate. He was a had been an Army Ranger
and now he's working as a president of a division of a
company. And he was a really good guy,
(39:35):
but he never encouraged anybody.He didn't really listen to him
much. And I sat down with him and I
said, you know what, you're a really good man.
You're a great man. But you need to learn to adapt
your behaviors to help people tofeel valued, important, that you
care about them. You listen to him.
(39:59):
And he said, well, that's just not me.
And I said, yes, you are a good man and you can adapt.
And I'm going to show you how. And I said last week, 2, two
weeks ago, we had a retreat. You had a retreat.
And I was there working with your team over here on Lake
(40:20):
Lanier Island at the one of the hotels there.
And I said the person in charge,I said, what was that retreat
like? He was it a good retreat?
He said, yeah, it was great. We accomplished all our goals.
We had a good time. Everything.
I said, well, have you told the the lady who's your VP in charge
of that? Have you told her?
He said no. I said, I want you to write out
(40:43):
two sentences to tell her you did.
She did a great job and he worked on it for 5 or 6 minutes
and we talked about it and I said, OK, they had a private
bathroom in his office. I'm going to stand here.
I want you to go in there and open the bathroom door and stand
in front of the mirror. And I want you to say it to her.
Practice saying it to her, walking.
(41:04):
I want you to go down the hall, pretend you went down the hall,
walked in her office. And I want you to say it.
And I watched him a time or two and I said you're not smiling.
I want you to smile and smile, he said.
You know, Joan, you know that retreat you organized and
conducted for us last week that was really successful?
(41:27):
Thank you so much for what you did.
That's all you got to do. And he did it.
He did it. And he started encouraging and
listening to his team and they just all of a sudden changed.
Well, I about a month later, I finished up my coaching
assignment with him and he said I was in his office.
(41:48):
He said now can you stay about 5minutes after today our meeting?
And I said, yeah, that's what heasked me when I first walked in.
I said sure. He said I want you to meet
someone. Well, when we finish, he jumps
up, goes out, comes in with thislady.
He introduces his wife. She said I want to meet you and
tell you thank you for what you've done because we have a
(42:09):
third, only one child, 13 year old son.
And he is sitting down with him and talking to him and listening
to him and they just have a great relationship now.
That is so. Warming.
And you know, I saw this guy is now CEO of a company in Atlanta.
And I was speaking, I told that story at a speaking to
(42:32):
commissioning of UGA cadets. And a guy came up to me and
said, I know who that is. And I said, well, I can't tell
you who it is, but I know he said, I know who it is.
I bet I can tell you. And he named the guy and I said,
sounds like you got a good guy, but I didn't tell him it was the
guy, but it was. And he said he's the best CEO
(42:54):
we've ever had. And I saw the guy.
I'd seen the guy, my friend, a few months earlier.
And I said, well, how you doing?He said, doing well.
He said, how's your son? He said we're going to run a
half marathon together on Saturday.
And then his son graduating college, is working in a
business here in Atlanta. He said we're going to run a
(43:17):
half marathon together on Saturday.
That's incredible. By the way, I'm over outside of
Douglasville. Yeah, OK.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not too far from you.
I know Douglasville is on the West side, right?
Yeah, well. Colonel Ellis, I love that
story. And I think one of the things
(43:38):
that you may not even recognize is there's certainly the
leadership consulting and helping to coach somebody
through that. But then there's also the really
special thing of what you personally endured in that small
community of those men that you were in that cell with that can,
can permeate and, and make a ripple unlike few others can
(44:02):
because of what you had to go through.
So it, it may just carry a little bit more weight coming
from, from Someone Like You. So the fact that you take the
time that you've made a continued career out of service,
out of helping leaders to get better and to serve better, it's
(44:22):
just a testament to you and the man that you are.
It's been an absolute privilege and honor for you to come and
spend some time with us today. Before you sign off, is there
anything you want to share with our alphas that we didn't get a
chance to discuss? Do you asking me?
Yes, Sir. Is there anything?
Is there anything you want to share that we didn't get a
(44:44):
chance to discuss? You know, I think being with a a
team who's gone through something that you've gone
through really was helpful. That was so helpful to us.
And our leaders had gone throughmore torture and more solitary
confinement. You know, Riser, Denton and
(45:06):
Stockdale were their three senior leaders for the most of
the time, and they were in solitary confine.
They were there 7 1/2 years. They've all spent more than four
years in solitary confinement. Now, they had connections to
their time, but Reisner, for instance, was in solitary
confinement in total darkness for 10 months.
(45:27):
And that's when I first met him and started communicating with
him secretly. But these guys, they just kept
bouncing back. And they would.
And when they had a cellmate andone, one guy, Stockdale had a
Navy Lieutenant JG he was a commander, a group commander on
(45:49):
a ship when he was shot down andcaptured in 65 and a guy was
shot down in 67. Dan Glenn was his cellmate.
And he told him, I'm going to put out some of the back USA
policy, a little bit more details of some things that we
(46:12):
can put into take one level downfrom the code of conduct about
how to operate and how to behave.
And so he went over it with Dan and listen to Dan's feedback,
who was a Lieutenant JG. And that was just a, a wonderful
thing. Our our leaders would listen to
us and take into account what wehad to say.
(46:35):
And their leaders treated us, the junior guys, like we were
somebody. And that was very important.
We we became more humble too, and more confident.
Well, you certainly had some of the most remarkable leaders on
on the planet to learn from, andwe consider you to be 1 as well.
(46:59):
Colonel Alice, we'll have your show handles and links, your
your social media handles and links we've talked about in our
show notes. And is there a website our
alphas can go to learn more about your work?
Leading with honor.com and POW romance.com, they learn use a
(47:21):
lot of stories on that and you can download the first two
stories of the book, but there'sa lot of pictures and podcasts
and things with people there that there.
But we also I do a monthly blog about a 708 hundred word blog on
leadership every month. And I'm like I said earlier,
(47:43):
I've been talking about some of those models, the courageous
accountability model last year. And this one I talk about the
engage and align model where youhow to get a group together in
your team and discuss things andlisten to everybody before you
make a decision. And then because it's going to
(48:05):
be so much more supported when you get them all together and
talk about it and make that decision.
So anyway, you can download the coaching video, 5 or 6 minute
coaching video and the blog or the blog, whichever 1 you want
every month. And a lot of those lessons, you
know, the leadership lessons that we learned in the POW camp,
(48:27):
amazing how some of those are sosimilar to relations and good
marriages and relationships. You know, you got to be
committed. You got to listen to the other
person and they got it. They're going to have different
talents than you are. You know, Joe, you mentioned
that earlier. You got to have different
talents than you are and some important, you know, treating
(48:53):
people with respect, trusting people and being trustworthy,
All of those things are so important.
It just, it means so much that that you spent this time with us
today. And, and so of course, thank you
so much for visiting. We, we, we look forward to, to,
to seeing you do more amazing things and sharing your
experiences. And so Alphas, please stick
(49:15):
around. We've got some scuttlebutt after
the break. Welcome back Alpha, as we're
keeping things short and sweet on the countdown so there's no
scuttle but today, but thanks for taking the trip down memory
lane with us. We really hope you guys enjoyed
the episode. On behalf of the entire Tal
Podcast team, we hope you're enjoying time with your loved
ones during the holiday season. If you miss us during the
(49:37):
holidays, which I know you are, you can always subscribe to our
podcast, our newsletter, or sendus guests and mail
recommendations at legion.org. Back slash Tal Salaam.
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