August 14, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Ken Wells always knew what he wanted to do: fly fast. But when that dream became a reality, it landed him as a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam... Two days before his wife, Candy, gave birth to their child. Joining us with their story are both Ken and Candy.
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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.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
There's some of our favorites. And by the way, they
don't have to be your stories.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
If you've seen or heard a story on your local
news or just around town, send 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 Hanai Hilton.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Let's hear from Candy and Ken sharing the remarkable story.
Speaker 3 (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 4 (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 super
(02:04):
sonic at about two hundred feet and it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
We went on then to Victorville, California, for a Ford
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. It was a 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
(02:54):
nobody recovered. But on that day 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
(03:15):
can finish the F four And 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
(03:36):
sitting in my parents' living room 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
(03:58):
I say, Mom, it's okay, 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
(04:19):
probably just bringing me more papers to sign, I said,
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
(04:42):
me the telegram. We regret to inform you that your husband,
First Lieutenant Kenneth ar Wells, is missing in action.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
My heart just dropped.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I had only flown eight missions. This was my ninth
mission that 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
(05:20):
the North 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
(05:42):
soon as we got airborne, we've got a radio call
from Red Crown, which was the radar ship 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 kept the bombs on board. We
(06:06):
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. So the lead pilot and
(06:30):
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, very low on fuel,
(06:51):
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 he said, well,
(07:12):
we'll 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. Liehbibi here the host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
(07:42):
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
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to Ouramericanstories dot com and click the donate button. Give
a little, give a lot. Go to Alamerican Stories dot
com and give And we continue with our American Stories
(08:12):
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 4 (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.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Survive this. To get home.
Speaker 4 (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 wet about five
(09:35):
thousand feet altitude doing around three indre knots. Once he
got out into the parachute, it's pretty quiet up 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
(10:37):
radio contact with friendly aircraft. We were close enough to
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
(11:02):
was aircraft that were going in to rescue the other
crew that punched out. Daybreak the next morning 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
(11:23):
more inland away from the coast. Lee said, about 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 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.
(11:44):
All I heard was the shooting, and I didn't know
whether he was still alive or not. 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
(12:05):
that were searching around that area, and they had come
by me twice, once each direction, within ten 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
(12:29):
away from me, just staring at me. And when I
saw how many guys there were around.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
I had put my little.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
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're about
twenty guys around me, jumping them down for joy. That
(13:00):
captured an 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 keep me alive
(13:21):
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 else have
(13:42):
the military shirt, someone.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
Else the pants, but they all had the weapons.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
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, and that was my first indication, Well,
if you're going to kill me, you know that God
to give me something to eat.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
So after giving me the ball of.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
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,
and so walking several hours through the jungles, I got
huge blisters on my feet which eventually became infected and
(14:33):
actually got blood poisoning. Then walked for several hours, came.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
To a little.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Village where they put me there for a couple hours,
and occasionally some little kids would come in and peek
at me inside in the room, or they'd bring me
out and let the kids in the neighborhood you know,
see me. It's probably about ten o'clock that night. Then
(15:00):
they flew us from Haiphong to Hanoi, and so is
when I was put on the helicopter at night, 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
(15:21):
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 tightened the wires.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
One him and he had grown. They don't do that.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
If we tried to talk to each other, we got
whacked with a boat of a rifle. Oh, we weren't allowed
to communicate with each other, but just knowing that we
were each alive, I think encouraged the two of us.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Maybe it's a forty five minute helicopter ride from Hiphoon
to Hanoi and then drove us to the camp that
we called nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton Gildo w Camp.
Speaker 3 (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.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Know that the husband and the wife are both serving,
and you're hearing it here on this story.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
That worry that she had when her husband was declared
missing in action went away when the North Vietnamese paraded
around these 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
(17:46):
the end.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
When we come back more of.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Ken and Candy Wells's story, what happens next here on
our American stories? And we continue with our American stories,
(18:11):
and Ken and Candy Wells's story.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (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 4 (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 another the cell
part way across camp, and there was already a young
man in there. It's a young man, he's my age,
(20:08):
Dick 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 and three of us in one cell, and
(20:33):
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 piece of candy on the floor with a
piece of paper wrapped around it. Of course, after the
(20:55):
guard left, he opened it up and there was a
note inside it said, well, 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 camp less than five repeat five years. Through that note,
(21:16):
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
August five in nineteen sixty four. He had been there
over seven years when we showed up.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
So here we are.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
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 one we're going to get
out of here. And then to realize right across in
the next buildings and across this brick wall, eight foot
high brick wall separating our courtyards for prisoners who have
(22:04):
been there, in some cases a third.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
Or quarter of their lives.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
So kind of like Candy going to this meeting and
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
(22:31):
just passing notes across this eight foot high brick wall.
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,
(22:54):
had stolen the piece of pencil lead out of a
mechanical pencil. 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
(23:17):
years ago, names, dates, numbers.
Speaker 5 (23:20):
So through that we used.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
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 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 be picked up.
Speaker 5 (23:43):
So one day we would.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Pass a note to them, next day they would pass
a note back to us. I was described. 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 a rectangle to ride on on the inside. Then
(24:08):
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.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
At our door.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Our door had a peep hole on it with a
flap on the outside, and the guard 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
(24:43):
stand on the shoulders of another man just to get
up to the hole. 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 people, and I could transmit back to
him using visual alphabet similar to American sign language. So
(25:05):
we used that method for anything covert and a covert communication,
and then the 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
(25:30):
and we were able to get through all those forty
questions through these notes, 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,
(25:54):
send us all the information you can think about in
the outside world.
Speaker 5 (25:58):
In the last five years they were a star for information. Anyway.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
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, what did the new cars look like?
And one of the funny questions regard is have they
developed a birth control pill for males yet? So anyway,
(26:28):
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, that 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 3 (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 trun burner, get
these men home.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Out of here.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
And faith in our camaraderie just within our group. I mean,
it's think any one of us would have died later
lives down for anyone else.
Speaker 5 (28:32):
In the camp.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Still let the Hanoi Hilton in an area called Neugui 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.
(28:56):
And then what the guards would call, put on your
good clothes that was 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
(29:18):
he came in and he read prepared statement that the
peace agreements had been signed in Paris two days before.
Speaker 5 (29:25):
In the twenty seventh.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
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 sick and injured will come home first, and 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.
(29:52):
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
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
(30:12):
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
they started to We 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
(30:34):
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
and we knew we were free. And it was about
a two hour and forty five minute flight to the Philippines,
(30:56):
where we spent three days in the hospital there at
the our air base in the Philippines. Got to take
a nice hot shower in the first time in sixteen months.
They fitted us for a uniform. Got to go down
to the cafeteria and eat whatever we want. When the
(31:17):
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
him eat what they want. So they had to quite
have spread the air force and I go through with
a tray and anything that looked like I had protein
(31:38):
in it, I wanted it sat down. A couple of
glasses of milk grew up in the dairy farms. I
missed milk, and I think I ate about ten bites
and I couldn't eat anymore.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
Stomach I think had shrunk.
Speaker 4 (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 States
(32:14):
where she was, which is her birthday.
Speaker 3 (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,
and then it's kind of scary, yes, you know. Then
he said, I have your husband here. Would you like
(32:41):
to speak to him?
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yes, you know?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
So then Ken got on and I knew it was Ken.
It was real, and it was like our first date.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
How are you five?
Speaker 2 (32:57):
You know?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
We had been and separated about as long as we'd been.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Married when it first got back to the stage after
three days in the Philippines, and they flew us to
hospitals across the country. Mine happened to be Travis Air
Force Base, in California Air Sacramento.
Speaker 3 (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 line the strength of cars.
The plane pulls up, the red carpet is rolled down,
(33:40):
and the band plays, and I'm sitting there 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
(34:02):
me out, and I walked the red carpet, 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 4 (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 3 (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 4 (35:09):
And we've heard later that something like eighty or ninety
percent of the prisoners got divorced after he came home.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
So there was just a lot of pressure.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
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, I was just a husband. Now
I'm coming home to an almost sixteen month old boy,
(35:41):
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 pace quarters. But
I'd bribe him with food and treats and stuff like that.
And at the end of the two weeks, when we
(36:01):
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.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
I felt like we were dad and son.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
I think that two weeks there was good for us
to become a little family unit before they launched us
owner the world.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
It was a great time for us to get to
know one another better again.
Speaker 4 (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 blessed to feel
God is with us through the whole experience, and we
feel blessed to be able to come home and start
(36:55):
over and live out a normal life.
Speaker 3 (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.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
And not just in Vietnam, but all of America's wars.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
There's some of our favorites. And by the way, they
don't have to be your stories.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
If you've seen or heard a story on your local
news or just around town, send 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 Hanai Hilton.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Let's hear from Candy and Ken sharing the remarkable story.
Speaker 3 (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 4 (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 super
(02:04):
sonic at about two hundred feet and it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
We went on then to Victorville, California, for a Ford
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. It was a 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
(02:54):
nobody recovered. But on that day 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
(03:15):
can finish the F four And 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
(03:36):
sitting in my parents' living room 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
(03:58):
I say, Mom, it's okay, 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
(04:19):
probably just bringing me more papers to sign, I said,
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
(04:42):
me the telegram. We regret to inform you that your husband,
First Lieutenant Kenneth ar Wells, is missing in action.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
My heart just dropped.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I had only flown eight missions. This was my ninth
mission that 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
(05:20):
the North 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
(05:42):
soon as we got airborne, we've got a radio call
from Red Crown, which was the radar ship 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 kept the bombs on board. We
(06:06):
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. So the lead pilot and
(06:30):
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, very low on fuel,
(06:51):
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 he said, well,
(07:12):
we'll 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. Liehbibi here the host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
(07:42):
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to Ouramericanstories dot com and click the donate button. Give
a little, give a lot. Go to Alamerican Stories dot
com and give And we continue with our American Stories
(08:12):
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 4 (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.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Survive this. To get home.
Speaker 4 (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 wet about five
(09:35):
thousand feet altitude doing around three indre knots. Once he
got out into the parachute, it's pretty quiet up 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
(10:37):
radio contact with friendly aircraft. We were close enough to
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
(11:02):
was aircraft that were going in to rescue the other
crew that punched out. Daybreak the next morning 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
(11:23):
more inland away from the coast. Lee said, about 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 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.
(11:44):
All I heard was the shooting, and I didn't know
whether he was still alive or not. 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
(12:05):
that were searching around that area, and they had come
by me twice, once each direction, within ten 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
(12:29):
away from me, just staring at me. And when I
saw how many guys there were around.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
I had put my little.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
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're about
twenty guys around me, jumping them down for joy. That
(13:00):
captured an 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 keep me alive
(13:21):
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 else have
(13:42):
the military shirt, someone.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
Else the pants, but they all had the weapons.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
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, and that was my first indication, Well,
if you're going to kill me, you know that God
to give me something to eat.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
So after giving me the ball of.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
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,
and so walking several hours through the jungles, I got
huge blisters on my feet which eventually became infected and
(14:33):
actually got blood poisoning. Then walked for several hours, came.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
To a little.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Village where they put me there for a couple hours,
and occasionally some little kids would come in and peek
at me inside in the room, or they'd bring me
out and let the kids in the neighborhood you know,
see me. It's probably about ten o'clock that night. Then
(15:00):
they flew us from Haiphong to Hanoi, and so is
when I was put on the helicopter at night, 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
(15:21):
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 tightened the wires.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
One him and he had grown. They don't do that.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
If we tried to talk to each other, we got
whacked with a boat of a rifle. Oh, we weren't allowed
to communicate with each other, but just knowing that we
were each alive, I think encouraged the two of us.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Maybe it's a forty five minute helicopter ride from Hiphoon
to Hanoi and then drove us to the camp that
we called nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton Gildo w Camp.
Speaker 3 (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.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Know that the husband and the wife are both serving,
and you're hearing it here on this story.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
That worry that she had when her husband was declared
missing in action went away when the North Vietnamese paraded
around these 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
(17:46):
the end.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
When we come back more of.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Ken and Candy Wells's story, what happens next here on
our American stories? And we continue with our American stories,
(18:11):
and Ken and Candy Wells's story.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (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 4 (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 another the cell
part way across camp, and there was already a young
man in there. It's a young man, he's my age,
(20:08):
Dick 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 and three of us in one cell, and
(20:33):
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 piece of candy on the floor with a
piece of paper wrapped around it. Of course, after the
(20:55):
guard left, he opened it up and there was a
note inside it said, well, 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 camp less than five repeat five years. Through that note,
(21:16):
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
August five in nineteen sixty four. He had been there
over seven years when we showed up.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
So here we are.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
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 one we're going to get
out of here. And then to realize right across in
the next buildings and across this brick wall, eight foot
high brick wall separating our courtyards for prisoners who have
(22:04):
been there, in some cases a third.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
Or quarter of their lives.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
So kind of like Candy going to this meeting and
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
(22:31):
just passing notes across this eight foot high brick wall.
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,
(22:54):
had stolen the piece of pencil lead out of a
mechanical pencil. 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
(23:17):
years ago, names, dates, numbers.
Speaker 5 (23:20):
So through that we used.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
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 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 be picked up.
Speaker 5 (23:43):
So one day we would.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Pass a note to them, next day they would pass
a note back to us. I was described. 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 a rectangle to ride on on the inside. Then
(24:08):
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.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
At our door.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Our door had a peep hole on it with a
flap on the outside, and the guard 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
(24:43):
stand on the shoulders of another man just to get
up to the hole. 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 people, and I could transmit back to
him using visual alphabet similar to American sign language. So
(25:05):
we used that method for anything covert and a covert communication,
and then the 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
(25:30):
and we were able to get through all those forty
questions through these notes, 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,
(25:54):
send us all the information you can think about in
the outside world.
Speaker 5 (25:58):
In the last five years they were a star for information. Anyway.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
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, what did the new cars look like?
And one of the funny questions regard is have they
developed a birth control pill for males yet? So anyway,
(26:28):
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, that 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 3 (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 trun burner, get
these men home.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Out of here.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
And faith in our camaraderie just within our group. I mean,
it's think any one of us would have died later
lives down for anyone else.
Speaker 5 (28:32):
In the camp.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Still let the Hanoi Hilton in an area called Neugui 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.
(28:56):
And then what the guards would call, put on your
good clothes that was 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
(29:18):
he came in and he read prepared statement that the
peace agreements had been signed in Paris two days before.
Speaker 5 (29:25):
In the twenty seventh.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
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 sick and injured will come home first, and 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.
(29:52):
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
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
(30:12):
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
they started to We 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
(30:34):
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
and we knew we were free. And it was about
a two hour and forty five minute flight to the Philippines,
(30:56):
where we spent three days in the hospital there at
the our air base in the Philippines. Got to take
a nice hot shower in the first time in sixteen months.
They fitted us for a uniform. Got to go down
to the cafeteria and eat whatever we want. When the
(31:17):
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
him eat what they want. So they had to quite
have spread the air force and I go through with
a tray and anything that looked like I had protein
(31:38):
in it, I wanted it sat down. A couple of
glasses of milk grew up in the dairy farms. I
missed milk, and I think I ate about ten bites
and I couldn't eat anymore.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
Stomach I think had shrunk.
Speaker 4 (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 States
(32:14):
where she was, which is her birthday.
Speaker 3 (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,
and then it's kind of scary, yes, you know. Then
he said, I have your husband here. Would you like
(32:41):
to speak to him?
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yes, you know?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
So then Ken got on and I knew it was Ken.
It was real, and it was like our first date.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
How are you five?
Speaker 2 (32:57):
You know?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
We had been and separated about as long as we'd been.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Married when it first got back to the stage after
three days in the Philippines, and they flew us to
hospitals across the country. Mine happened to be Travis Air
Force Base, in California Air Sacramento.
Speaker 3 (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 line the strength of cars.
The plane pulls up, the red carpet is rolled down,
(33:40):
and the band plays, and I'm sitting there 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
(34:02):
me out, and I walked the red carpet, 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 4 (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 3 (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 4 (35:09):
And we've heard later that something like eighty or ninety
percent of the prisoners got divorced after he came home.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
So there was just a lot of pressure.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
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, I was just a husband. Now
I'm coming home to an almost sixteen month old boy,
(35:41):
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 pace quarters. But
I'd bribe him with food and treats and stuff like that.
And at the end of the two weeks, when we
(36:01):
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.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
I felt like we were dad and son.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
I think that two weeks there was good for us
to become a little family unit before they launched us
owner the world.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
It was a great time for us to get to
know one another better again.
Speaker 4 (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 blessed to feel
God is with us through the whole experience, and we
feel blessed to be able to come home and start
(36:55):
over and live out a normal life.
Speaker 3 (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.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
And not just in Vietnam, but all of America's wars.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
There's stories all of them here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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