He Became a POW in Vietnam Two Days Before His Baby Was Born

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Host Martine Hackett will share these powerful perspectives from real people with MG so their experiences can help inspire the MG community and educate others about this rare condition. Listen to find strength in community on the MG journey on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Week after week Xfinity Flex unlocks access to premium networks and apps so you can try fresh entertainment for free each and every week. Catch the season premiere of Outlander from Stars. Journey through the sounds of Black Music Month with pics from Lifetime Movie Club and Revolt. Celebrate Pride Month with stories from OutTV and HearTV. Then kick back with nature scenes from Music Choice Relax and jam all June with iHeartRadio's Songs of the Summer Radio. Discover new shows and movies for free, no strings attached.

Say free this week into your Xfinity voice remote. 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 OurAmericanStories.com. They're some of our favorites. And by the way, they don't have to be your stories. If you've seen or heard a story on your local news or just around town, send 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 Hanoi Hilton. Let's hear from Candy and Ken sharing their remarkable story. We were married in November of 69 and then went to one year of pilot training in Big Spring, Texas. Ken achieved what he wanted. He wanted to get an F-4 fighter plane, which I didn't want him to get because I knew where he would be going.

But he did and that's what he wanted. 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-4. Like in the movie Top Gun where the lady tells Maverick that you're not happy unless you're going mock-toothed, your hair on fire, well that's kind of... Of course we're up fairly high, 25,000 feet doing that, so it's not like you're going supersonic at ground level, which is also fun by the way.

I've been supersonic at about 200 feet and it's amazing. We went on then to Victorville, California for F-4 training for six months. At that time then in March of 1971, March 4th, my mother and father got the visit that my brother had been declared missing in action. He was in the army.

He was 21 years old. It was a hard day for our family, but two months later it even became more difficult because my mom and dad received the phone call that my brother had been declared dead, but nobody recovered. But on that day 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 Ken finished the F-4 and on October 31st of 1971 Ken went to U Dorn Air Force Base in Thailand and I was seven months pregnant. Two months later on December 18th on December 18th, 1971, I was 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 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 23 years old, very naive and I said, oh mom they're 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 Mrs. Kenneth R. Wells. And I was on the couch but it took me a while to get up because I was pregnant. I got up and went to the door and then they read me the telegram, we regret to inform you that your husband, First Lieutenant Kenneth R. Wells is missing in action.

My heart just dropped. I'd only flown eight missions, this was my ninth mission that I was on on the 18th of December of 71. In October of 68, 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 North Vietnamese used as routes, road routes to get supplies down to the south. I was the wingman in 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 12 500-pound bombs on board, each aircraft took off and as soon as we got airborne, we got a radio call from Red Crown, which was their radar ship out in the Gulf of Tonkin, telling us that another F-4 had been shot down on the border of Laos and North Vietnam.

So they wanted us to provide a search and rescue coverage for the other crew that had been shot down. So we kept the bombs on board, we orbited for about 45 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-21 fighters had launched out of Hanoi and were heading toward the shoot-down site of this other aircraft. So the lead pilot in 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-21s 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, 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 called the lead aircraft, and I said, well, we're going to be punching out in about one minute. And he said, well, we'll be about two minutes behind you.

So they ejected as well, but they were rescued. And you've been listening to Ken and Candy Wells. When we come back, more of what happened here on Our American Stories. and click the Donate button. Give a little, give a lot.

Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. For each person living with myasthenia gravis or MG, their journey with this rare neuromuscular condition is unique. That's why Untold Stories Life with myasthenia gravis, a new podcast from iHeartRadio in partnership with Argenics, is exploring the extraordinary challenges and personal triumphs of underserved communities living with MG. Host Martine Hackett will share powerful perspectives from people living with the debilitating muscle weakness and fatigue caused by this rare disorder. Each episode will uncover the reality of life with myasthenia gravis. From early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care, every person with MG has a story to tell. And by featuring these real life experiences, this podcast hopes to inspire the MG community, educate others about this rare condition, and let those living with it know that they are not alone.

Listen to Untold Stories Life with myasthenia gravis on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Week after week Xfinity Flex unlocks access to premium networks and apps so you can try fresh entertainment for free each and every week. Catch the season premiere of Outlander from S.T.A.R.S., journey through the sounds of Black Music Month with pics from Lifetime Movie Club and Revolt, celebrate Pride Month with stories from OutTV and HearTV, then kick back with nature scenes from Music Choice Relax, and jam All June with iHeartRadio's Songs of the Summer Radio. Discover new shows and movies for free, no strings attached.

Say free this week into your Xfinity voice remote. Brought to you by Nissan, designed to thrill. The art and science of designing a vehicle involves many stages, some of which include cutting edge technology, but at the very start there's a step that has been around since the beginning of design itself, the two-dimensional sketch, and the designers at Nissan know that this involves much more than a technical drawing. The early finished sketches can be abstract, they might give a sense of shapes and colors, of lines and reflective surfaces, they're there to impart a feeling that this car was meant to go fast or this car is meant to take you on an adventure. Ideally the sketch marries form and function, it looks like the type of vehicle that will take your breath away but also be perfectly suited for its intended purpose.

Brought to you by Nissan, designed to thrill. And we continue with our American stories and with Ken and Candy Wells's story. When we last left off Candy had just found out that her husband Ken was declared missing in action in the Vietnam war. Let's pick back up with their story.

You know you hear people say that their lies flash before their minds. I think that all began during the flight when I was getting ready to pull the ejection handle. I was thinking about Candy knowing that she's nine months pregnant and you know I may not survive this to get home. That particular day they added on an extra couple missions, they ran out of experienced crew members, had one airplane left. Anyway I got the toss of the coin I guess to be the aircraft commander of that.

Lee my back seater was only on his 20th mission so we had two inexperienced guys in our aircraft but Lee was a major, had 13 years in the Air Force by that time. I was probably pretty naive about what was going to happen, figured while I'm flying with this experienced guy he knows what to do and didn't realize that things could go kind of sour. The fuel gauges read zero that's when we punched out and we were at about 5,000 feet altitude doing around 300 knots. Once we got out in the parachute it's pretty quiet up there when that happens.

We heard the engines quit on the aircraft and it went in. We came down on opposite sides of the same hill. I came down in the trees and I my parachute canopy got caught up in the branches of the tree so I stopped my feet were swinging about 30 feet above the ground.

I lowered myself to the ground, 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 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 hill it's probably about six in the evening.

It's December so it's getting it's pretty dark at that time. Then we're able to spend that night trying to make 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's pretty frustrating that all night about every 15 minutes we try to make radio contact with the aircraft we were hearing.

In some cases it was aircraft that were going in to rescue the other crew that punched out. Daybreak the next morning we 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 we were able to move a couple hills more inland away from the coast. Lee said about 10 30 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 it can keep warm out here. I didn't think it was a good idea for him to go back but he outranked me so he went back.

All I heard was the shooting and I didn't know whether he was still alive or not. 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 were probably 20 north Vietnamese that were searching around that area and they had come by me twice once each direction within oh 10 15 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 10 15 feet away from me just staring at me and when I saw how many guys there were around I had put my I put my little 38 revolver back in the holster. I 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 there were about 20 guys around me jumping on down for joy that just 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 one out front and one 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 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 someone else have the military shirt someone else the pants and but they all had the weapons but the first real military guy was at this fire camp and after I'd been there a while he indicated to somebody to give me something to eat and the guy handed the guy handed me a little ball 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 I've got to give you something to eat so after giving me the ball of rice they gave me a flight suit to put on and it was a major flight suit so I assumed it was Lee's and then they gave me my boots back but they wouldn't let me lice them up tie them up and so walking several hours through the jungle I got huge blisters on my feet which eventually became infected and actually got blood poisoning then walked for several hours came to a little little village where they just put me there for a couple hours and occasionally some little kids would come in and peek at me inside the in the room where they'd bring me out and let the kids in the neighborhood see me it's probably about 10 o'clock that night then they 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 use wire to tie me to to the seat supports on each side of the helicopter and that's when I noticed that there was a warm body next to me and it was Lee and they actually they actually wired us together somehow so if I moved to get comfortable it tightened the wires on him and he would groan and say don't do that if if we tried to talk to each other we got whacked with the butt of a rifle oh weren't allowed to communicate with each other but just knowing that we were each alive I think encouraged the two of us I don't know maybe it's a 45-minute helicopter ride from Haiphong to Hanoi and then drove us to the the camp that we called nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton GW camp 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 captured these Americans you know so 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 he had his arms and his legs and that gave me hope that he was going to be okay but that was December 21st when I found out he was a POW December 23rd I had our son and you're listening to Ken and Candy Wells share their story and folks if you've ever had somebody serving overseas in combat you know that the husband and the wife are both serving and you're hearing it here on this story that worry that she had when her husband was declared missing in action went away when the North Vietnamese paraded around these four airmen proud that they'd captured them and this gave the bride a sense of hope and the very next day the birth of her child and at least with some glimmer that something good could happen in the end when we come back more of Ken and Candy Wells's story what happens next here on our American stories for each person living with myasthenia gravis or mg their journey with this rare neuromuscular condition is unique that's why untold stories life with myasthenia gravis a new podcast from iHeartRadio in partnership with Argenics is exploring the extraordinary challenges and personal triumphs of underserved communities living with mg host Martine Hackett will share powerful perspectives from people living with the debilitating muscle weakness and fatigue caused by this rare disorder each episode will uncover the reality of life with myasthenia gravis from early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care every person with mg has a story to tell and by featuring these real life experiences this podcast hopes to inspire the mg community educate others about this rare condition and let those living with it know that they are not alone listen to untold stories life with myasthenia gravis on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts week after week Xfinity Flex unlocks access to premium networks and apps so you can try fresh entertainment for free each and every week catch the season premiere of outlander from stars journey through the sounds of black music month with pics from lifetime movie club and revolt celebrate pride month with stories from out tv and hear tv then kick back with nature scenes from music choice relax and jam all june with iHeartRadio's songs of the summer radio discover new shows and movies for free no strings attached say free this week into your Xfinity voice remote brought to you by Nissan designed to thrill the art and science of designing a vehicle involves many stages some of which include cutting edge technology but at the very start there's a step that has been around since the beginning of design itself the two-dimensional sketch and the designers at Nissan know that this involves much more than a technical drawing the early finished sketches can be abstract they might give a sense of shapes and colors of lines and reflective surfaces they're there to impart a feeling that this car was meant to go fast or this car is meant to take you on an adventure ideally the sketch marries form and function it looks like the type of vehicle that will take your breath away but also be perfectly suited for its intended purpose brought to you by Nissan designed to thrill and we continue with our American stories and Ken and Candy Wells's story let's pick up where we last left off 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 alone and it was like I was really feeling sorry for myself but then I went 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 there are only three of you in this room that know that your loved one is alive 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 when we got to the prison camp they put us in solitary confinement and that lasted nine days and during that time was the 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 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 cell part way across camp and there was already a young man in there it's a young man who's my age Dick Vaughn was his name they put Lee and I with Dick in one cell three days later then 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 15 by 15 square feet and three of us in one cell and we didn't know anything about the camp at that point but a few weeks later the guard took us out of that cell and just kept us out of the cell for about two hours and when we finally came back into the cell he locks us up and dick found a piece of candy on the floor with a piece of paper wrapped around it of course after the guard left he opened it up and there was a note inside it said welcome to the zoo so there are 79 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 years through that note we're able to establish a line of communication with these other 79 guys and through communication with them realized that the first prisoner ever captured Everett Alvarez was captured August 5 of 1964 he had been there over seven years when we showed up so here we are we'd been there at this point been there close to a month you know probably feeling sorry for ourselves that um yeah we're prisoners and who knows when 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 have been there you know in some cases a third or quarter of their lives 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 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 10-15 minutes a day to take a bath or to clean our plates and bowls which grounds up these pieces of paper dick during one of his interrogation sessions had stolen the piece of pencil lead out piece of pencil lead out of a mechanical pencil he got it down below the table 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 uh he had an amazing memory he could remember a newspaper article he had read two years ago names dates numbers so through that we used the junction of this eight foot high brick wall and the edge of the wall of the office building as a mailbox and then we placed a little chip of a brick on top of it so if you're if you're looking at it 50 60 feet away and you saw this little chip up there you'd realize there's a note up there it needs to be picked up so one day we would pass a note to them next day they would pass a note back to us i was the scribe i learned how to write very small and and use abbreviations to get a lot of information on one of these pieces of paper you take a cigarette wrapper and open it up you've got a rectangle to write on on the inside then through that we set up another way to communicate is they had drilled a hole the size of a nickel through about 15 inches of brick and mortar through the end of their building aimed right at our door our door had a peephole on it with a flap on the outside and the guards would 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 day they had to 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 we used that method for anything covert any 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 40 questions and we were there about three months and we were able to get through all those 40 questions through these notes and within a day or two after finishing those questions we were moved back to the hanoi hilton camps i i kind of looked at that as maybe that was our purpose for being there was to help these guys um because in that first note they said send us all the information you can think about in the outside world in the last five years they were starved for information anyway i just think that really helped them to get that information like i say lee was a wealth of information about things they want to know about the stock market how that was going what did the new cars look like and one of the funny questions we got is have they developed a birth control pill for males yet so anyway you never knew what was going to come up out of their mouths or out of their notes 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 this term called missing in action and that's not knowing anything about it but it's not knowing anything about it but it's not knowing anything about it but it's not knowing anything 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 who actually knew her husband was alive her pity party well it ended the same thing happened to 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 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 for each person living with myasthenia gravis or mg their journey with this rare neuromuscular condition is unique that's why untold stories life with myasthenia gravis a new podcast from iheartradio in partnership with argenics is exploring the extraordinary challenges and personal triumphs of underserved communities living with mg host martine hackett will share powerful perspectives from people living with the debilitating muscle weakness and fatigue caused by this rare disorder each episode will uncover the reality of life with myasthenia gravis from early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care every person with mg has a story to tell and by featuring these real life experiences this podcast hopes to inspire the mg community educate others about this rare condition and let those living with it know that they are not alone listen to untold stories life with myasthenia gravis on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts week after week xfinity flex unlocks access to premium networks and apps so you can try fresh entertainment for free each and every week catch the season premiere of outlander from stars journey through the sounds of black music month with pics from lifetime movie club and revolt celebrate pride month with stories from out tv and hear tv then kick back with nature scenes from music choice relax and jam all june with iheartradio's songs of the summer radio discover new shows and movies for free no strings attached say free this week into your xfinity voice remote brought to you by nissan designed to thrill the art and science of designing a vehicle involves many stages some of which include cutting edge technology but at the very start there's a step that has been around since the beginning of design itself the two-dimensional sketch and the designers at nissan know that this involves much more than a technical drawing the early finished sketches can be abstract they might give a sense of shapes and colors of lines and reflective surfaces they're there to impart a feeling that this car was meant to go fast or this car is meant to take you on an adventure ideally the sketch marries form and function it looks like the type of vehicle that will take your breath away but also be perfectly suited suited for its intended purpose brought to you by nissan designed to thrill and we're back with our american stories and with former pow at the hanoi hilton can wells and his wife candy let's return to this couple with the final part of their stories 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 pows out there we need to keep this on the front burner get these men home well i guess i always had faith in god i i guess i had faith in our country to the point where we can just stay alive somehow they'll come and get us out of here and faith in our camaraderie just within our group i mean it's i think any one of us would have died later lives down for anyone else in the camp still at the hanoi hilton in an area called new guy 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 is tied with strings in the front so we had our normal prison clothes and then what the guards would call put on your good clothes that was the long sleeve say what everybody dressed up it was just pajamas and so brought everybody out into this small courtyard and then the camp commander vietnamese camp commander came in with an interpreter and a couple guards and it was january 29 1973 when he came in and he read prepared statement that the peace agreements had been signed in paris two days before on the 27th there would be a 60-day withdrawal period of all of our troops and a 60-day period of release of the prisoners 25 every 15 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 15-day period 28 march of 73 they loaded 40 of us on two camouflage buses and drove us through the city of hanoi to the guillaume airport coming around this small terminal building seeing this beautiful c-141 aircraft parked on the ramp red cross on the tail and the american flag on the tail they called out our names one at a time in the order that we were captured i was number two in line of that group escorted us to the back of the aircraft and up the ramp when the last man's foot hit the ramp and ramp came up the engines are started we taxied out pulled on the runway and i don't think two words were spoken the whole time they lied to us so many times during our captivity that we didn't know if this didn't even seem real but 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 it was about a two hour and 45 minute flight to the philippines where we spent about three days in the hospital there at the clark airbase in the philippines got to take a nice hot shower the first time in 16 months they fitted us for a uniform got to go down to the cafeteria and eat whatever we want when the first prisoners came out they were real leery 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 let them eat what they want so they had quite a spread there for us and i go through with a tray and i anything that looked like i had protein in it i wanted it sat down a couple glasses of milk grew up on a dairy farm so i missed milk and i think i ate about 10 bites and i couldn't eat anymore the stomach i think had shrunk then they had arranged times during the evening when we could call home for the first time and mine is fairly late at night when i called candy it was 4 a.m on the 29th of march in the states where she was which was her birthday well first of all it was 4 a.m so it was very startling and it wasn't ken on the phone it was another officer who said mrs kenneth r well then it's kind of scary yes you know then he said i have your husband here would you like to speak to him yes you know so then ken got on and i knew it was ken it was real and it was like our first date how are you fine you know we we had been separated about as long as we had been married when it first got back to the states 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 near sacramento 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 a string of cars the plane pulls up the red carpet is rolled out 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 me out and i walked the red carpet and then ken came down the stairs and there's some really sweet pictures of ken of i hugging and kissing for the first time 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 it was during that two-week period still in california where go ahead i had to go to the car go ahead 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 i gather him up i have my hand on the doorknob to turn it and ken says where are you going i'm like oh yeah i forgot you know it was just another thing that we had to get adjustment that oh yeah i'm sorry and we heard later that something like 80 or 90 percent of the prisoners got divorced after he came home so there's just a lot of pressure like she was she had to become independent not only for herself but to take care of well kevin and of course i hadn't changed at all in 16 months right when i left i was just a husband now i'm coming home to an almost 16 month old boy kind of scary he didn't have a lot to do with me at first we're still at travis in the quarters the two weeks in the hospital there was as an outpatient so they put us up in the base quarters but i'd bribe him with food and treats and stuff like that and at the end of the two weeks when we flew then from travis up to portland international airport uh there's a picture of me holding kevin there us and i'm holding kevin and i i felt like we were dad and son i think that two weeks there was good for us to become a little family unit before they launch us onto the world it was a great time for us to get to know one another better again when we know some of the stories of those who didn't get to come home like our brother rodney or even some of the prisoners that came back and their family situation just dissolved we just feel blessed we feel god is with us through the whole experience and we feel blessed to be able to come home and start over and live out a normal life 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 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 yeah and a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling by our own madison derricott 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 in 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 they held on comforting each other the story of ken and candy wells the story of so many pows and as they said the story of those who never came back and not just in vietnam but all of america's wars their stories all of them here on the internet their stories all of them here on our 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