Prisoner in Vietnam. The Dewey Waddell Story of the downed F-105 Thunderchief and the Hanoi Hilton

[Music] [Music] i grew up in bremen georgia about an hour west of here graduated from high school there came to georgia tech 1952 met pat helps along the way we graduated in 1956 i had been accepted for pilot training with the air force after rotc but it was delayed for a year on that to go on active duty so i worked for lockheed out here in marietta and then in 1957 i entered pilot training down in bainbridge georgia i was very fortunate for the first group that flew the t-37 went from there to laredo texas t-33 and got my wings came back to moody air force base flying f-86 sales what what put you on a track to go into rotc and then into the air force is that something you wanted to do since you were a kid or what when did that kick in for you well growing up during world war ii formative years i heard about these guys flying tigers running around china strafing trains and doing things in the big raids i thought that must be really neat but i never thought i'd get a chance at it until i got to tech and found out there was rotc and that i could have a chance and what uh what made you choose tech probably because the football team right then plus my next door neighbor was a ham radio operator and he convinced me that if i went to tech and got electrical engineering degree my future was secure at what point in your air force career did you get introduced to the f-105 i was in graduate school in southern california in 1965-66 and while i was there i was thinking i'm going to miss out on this war because i had a lot of friends that already had assignments but i received an assignment at the time [Music] during before i finished out there for the 105. and the sequence of events was i'd go to survival school at the completion and then to nellis air force base and check out the 105 to go to talk lee thailand so when you're nellis how often did you get into las vegas surprisingly i didn't go down there as much as you'd think during that time uh we were pretty busy i i went out a few times to make sure i one go and win any extra money tell tell me as much as you can remember about your journey to vietnam how did they get you over there did you did you fly an airplane over there or did they ship you some other way just tell us about going to vietnam and your first impressions of being there okay i left from fort walton beach oakland air force base and the end of march 1967 i flew commercially to san francisco and then up to travis air force base where i was on a military contract flight that island hopped to the philippines clark air base and i went to jungle survival school there for about 10 days and then i flew again on contract flight to bangkok and then on a military airplane c-47 the old goony bird up to talk lee and what what do you remember about stepping off an airplane for the first time i had a very memorable introduction the fellow who was the ops officer for my squadron and the one who became my flight commander subsequently said welcome to the 354th the highest loss rate squadron in southeast asia yeah what a good deal and about a week later i went up and met with the wing commander who welcomed the new people and he told us that in two years of operation the track record was in 100 missions or one year tour you had a 50-50 chance of being shot down if you were shot down you had a 50-50 chance of being rescued welcome to the war you know most pilots are in love with the airplane that they flew but what i mean some of those lost rates had to do with the airplane you were flying correct the loss rate i think was primarily the mission but backing up when i was in graduate school and we knew people were getting assignments i had volunteered or indicated an interest in every airplane in southeast asia except the f-105 and that was based on a briefing article from uh colonel jaeger when he was head of the test pilot school he described as an electronic monster can't understand why the air force wasted their money on this thing so i was not particularly happy when i got my assignment but by the time i checked out an airplane started flying it i started to really like it by the time i left to go to war i won't say i was in love with it but i was proud i was flying it and the more i flew it the prouder i was but our mission since we only flew in north vietnam made us extremely vulnerable we did we didn't have much uh clearly say milk runs maybe on a bad weather day you'd do a recce down in route pack one north of the dmz and that was pretty easy but i was on my 47th mission and 31 of them were in the hanoi area i'd already beaten the odds two or three times i never got to meet colonel loles but he was the commander of the eighth wing over at yuban when i was flying and they flew in big cap on several missions into hanoi that i was on but i did not meet him personally until we until after the war so uh obviously your your missions were into dangerous territory and i've read that um well i won't get into reasons but because of our unwillingness to stop the stuff coming in from the russians they had a very robust anti-aircraft defense system so i imagine every mission was just tremendously high risk there were a few missions like the when we would do road recce or just general reconnaissance missions down in the lower packs one two or three they were all you're almost they were fun got out and roam around and see the countryside while you were doing it but yes when we went into the hanoi area the expression was when you get up there your ass belongs to uncle sam put those bombs on target and there were some missions that everything is there we went in at the time i was there we'd make run-ins at low altitude around 1500 2000 feet to try to stay out of the radar for the sounds and and the radar guns therefore small arms fire was a risk cut you had to avoid but then i in the pattern that we flew we'd pull up to about 14 000 feet and then come back in on a dive and that's when the radar could pick you up for the first month or so i was there where the migs would be laying for us right over hanoi and and one mission i was on we had migs going up with us and the pop we had 105's and migs and 105s and migs and sam's going off and flack all around i don't know who the meg leader was that day but he wasn't too smart [Laughter] oh you could almost watch your gauge drop i used i used to laughs and put your hand on the floorboards you could feel it going by i'm trying to think uh [Music] typical fuel consumption was probably about 3 000 gallons or pounds an hour the afterburner jumped to six six point a little over six thousand so you didn't do that unless you meant it no the the best i did i guess i got it about 1.3 or 4. but that's an interesting story if you put on it yeah go ahead i'd love to hear it we were on a mission on sunday afternoon in a railroad yard just northeast of hanoi across the the red river bridge there and my flight leader we were the number one bomb flight there was a flak suppression flight ahead of us and the number four guy there had been hit and was going down under the clouds we had about a two thousand dot level two thousand foot level layer and so my flight leader says i'm going to follow him down so that meant me leading the mission out and about the time i got out and got to recover right across hanoi and that's where we were in afterburner accelerating out of there and drinking a sam went off so close that i flew through the colored cloud which only lasts a couple of seconds and i came back and i told him that day i said i think the biggest damage i did was going across hanoi supersonic blowing out all the windows in town but as we got out i was starting to climb out and a fella from up here in georgia who happened to be in my squadron two gotta recognize his voice call me and he says single 105 18 eastern 97 shake it you got a mig on you so i did a split s right down through the cloud layer pulled up and when i did and looked out there was a mountain ridge on either side of me out here at least 500 feet higher than me and i came back out of there rather subdued to say the least i remember i got back i went through debriefing and intelligence at that time if you had a tough mission they'd pull out this bottle of bourbon old overholster i remember and he'd give you a shot and i threw that down and i started telling him about the mission he pulled us he liked another and i said yeah and i said can i have another one i had my third shot of bourbon we got through the debrief and i looked at my watches about five minutes till evening church time and i went down to the chapel and knew this methodist minister was down there and i leaned up and right on his face i said it was a close one today but he got me back here i said you think i'll be okay here he says he'll be glad you're here come on in but that was probably my most exciting day other than being shot down i guess a day you probably don't enjoy talking about but i hope you will july 5th 1967 and and maybe um you know i'd love for people who particularly young people to understand what your day was like not just the fact that you're shut down but your usual day and preparing for a mission and all you can remember about that day would be wonderful i'm having trouble talking about it july the 5th 1967 was obviously a very special day and two or three things led up to that in that i had just been appointed or signed as the executive officer of the squadron and we were having an inspection we had a new commander he asked me to do a check around to make sure we were ready and get acquainted myself so i had not flown for three days i had set a spare when i need when they needed but i didn't get off and i remember on the night of the fourth of july i wrote a letter home and i said well i missed the fireworks again today but fergie promised me tomorrow for sure and sure enough i went out the afternoon mission i dropped that report off on the commander's desk and it out and later on talking to people in hanoi when we were together almost without exception all of us acknowledged there was something different about the way we felt that day we couldn't put our finger on it but it didn't it wasn't like a normal day and i kept trying to think the whole time what have i forgotten what did i do and not not do or what and as it turns out obviously it was that sense i guess of of the impending what was him imminent but in my case i was uh the number four airplane and second flight on a railroad siding right up near the chinese border and just as we started our roll in the first flight there was a call for migs about 20 miles west of us at our altitude so as number four that's part of my responsibility so i took a quick look out there to see if i could pick them up and i didn't see anything but when i looked back my leader had already started rolling in and the flak was so thick that i couldn't see down so i had to stay up until some bombs went off and i could see the target consequently i had to adjust my roll in instead of being in a 45 degree dive i was probably at least 60 coming straight down and i had to adjust the altitude drop the bombs and i flew through three levels they were laying out flat at level three about 3000 feet apart i made it through the throat three of the levels of flack but just as my bones came off i felt a hit i'd been hit twice before so it was unmistakable but this time my procedure was when i dropped the bombs let's hit the afterburner pull out let that give me the thrust and start my jinking well i hit the afterburner the airplane just did a tumble and i came back out it stabilized and i remember this distinctly boy there'd be a heck of a ride at coney island i'd never been there but i'd heard about it so i relaxed put the burner back in get out of here and the airplane just started flipping and tumbling and i couldn't see out because of the flames but i was still going to try to make it as close as i could to the water we'd come in off the gulf and we're going back out that way but about that time though the camera up in front of the dash under the windscreen broke loose and i had to duck as it went over my head as i was looking the estimate panel just started crumbling and the airplane was starting to come apart so i leaned back put myself in position pulled the handles and i remember thinking nothing happened that boom is gone and i had a very interesting experience in that i grayed out i couldn't see anything didn't feel anything i was just kind of floating i thought i was dead literally and then i started feeling some pressure and my vision started coming back and i could see a little bit of green and then all of a sudden i could see the canopy of you know the tops of the trees and i'm coming down and i looked up to see if a canopy was open and it was just starting to blossom and i reached up to get it and when i put my hands on the risers they collapsed i was sitting on a log on the ground and that all took less than two seconds because i had those automatic systems that got me out pull to shoot not worked i wouldn't be here talking to you today i figure i went out inverted in negative g's and probably maybe even ejected toward the ground i don't know no idea but somebody up there was looking out for me that day again like the day that overhanoi supersonic you're not any place you want to be well the first thing obviously that i did once i was on the ground sitting on the log my pair my emergency beeper was going off get that off so i can talk but i couldn't get up to it i couldn't get it cut off i didn't think i realized after the fact that i had because two others had been shot down and their beepers are the ones that were going off blocking things but i made an immediate call told him i was down safe i'd check in in an hour that's really optimistic but sitting on the log looking down it's kind of a running i look down and look that tree this is just like north georgia those hills same kind of scrub trees and pine trees running around the ground gravel and then all of a sudden it dawned on me these ain't gonna be friendly north georgia's mountaineers everybody i see now may be looking to kill me so i started trying to get rid of stuff my shoot was caught in the trees i couldn't get it down my survival kit had that comes out separately had banged down and i couldn't get it open but i could get the side open that had the jungle hat with the mosquito net and a bottle two cans of water and i pulled out the water stuck them in my flight suit put the head on through my helmet down the hill hoping that would make them think i'd gone that way and i started up the hill which was the instructions the recommendations from survival school and as i got to almost the top of the hill and i could see a path out here that i was going to go to and i hesitate just long enough my i think actually my cheese suit got caught in some brambles and kept me from pushing these bushes open and a vietnamese ran across closer than four feet away the only thing he was in a hurry or didn't look my way so that caused me to look around a little bit and the path and then i saw these field wires across the way when i leaned up and looked i'd come down right in the gun ring there was a gun sat down here about 100 yards and another one over here about 150. and so i reconsidered my actions at this point don't get too carried away but i managed to get across that path without leaving a track with the boots and i thought if i got over on the other side and down the hill i could hide out for that hour and check in and maybe get picked up get out of here and i didn't realize when i got across all the brush was over here i was in grass oh maybe a foot foot and a half high and when i got to the edge and looked down it was a drop off into a bog i wasn't going anywhere in that direction so i sat down and opened one of the cans of water and at that point i was so thirsty i didn't think there was enough water around i took two sips and i thought it was going to come out my ears all the psychological the shock effects but i managed to drink it forced it down through the can away and about that time i heard voices gathering up over here along the trail and they were pointing and talking and i'd heard some shots and hollering back and forth that obviously found my parachute and helmet and so they eliminated that side they just really were going to come over here and they did and they came out and i did this and tried to get quite anything white out of sight and hide down but i turned out i i wasn't going to hide under anything they walked up and tapped me on the shoulder and welcomed me to north vietnam ones that came out and got me were actually militia they were in civilian clothes one of them had a rifle uh i don't mean to interrupt but these are regular north vietnamese no none of these civilians they're like militia oh okay they're civilian clothes i don't know how they fit into the system right right there then but like i say one of them had a rifle and they started stripping me down and of course when i got my pistol out over here one of them pulls it out and looks at it and i don't know why i was just a sixth sense i just happened to glance up just as he was starting to come across and hit me in the head and i ducked and missed him and the guy with a rifle leaned across and hit him with a butt in his chest knock him back and i remember thinking you and i are going to be friends i don't know about the others but i like you but they packed me down well they started me walk took off my boots stripped out everything out of the flight suit one amusing thing i carried a half a pack of salems because we had been told that ho chi minh liked those and if ho chi minh did most everybody else probably would and i carried some winston cigarettes too they pulled the cigarettes out looked at them crumble them up and threw them away i said well so much for intelligence but they started walking me and i realized if i walked very far barefooted my feet were not going to be any condition to do anything else so as i started down the trail i started watching and i found saw a root coming up and i hooked my foot in it and fell over and convinced them that i'd hurt myself and i got them to carry me all the way down the side of the mountain and stopped in a little village they put me in in a house in the back corner on a bed and i was there i'd say between 30 minutes and an hour because it and it came in tapped out and walked back out and i got in this i called it a a safari wagon it was is bigger than a jeep but not as big as you see safaris nowadays but open vehicle with a canvas top and they put me in the back seat one guy on each side they're holding my arms like this wasn't tied up but i looked up as the fellow on my left in english said you're now the prisoner of the chinese liberation army and what i saw in front was a picture of mao zedong and lynn powell kind of the premier and the head of the pm people's army and i couldn't put my hand up and do the marine salute but i've said something well okay you really did it to yourself this time because i figured i was going to china because we were that close to the border i learned over the next 24 hours that that's why the gun sites were so good down there the chinese were running them all and what we had rolled in over literally that got us was what we considered probably the best gun sight in north vietnam of course now i knew why and later in 79 when deng xiaoping came to this country he acknowledged that they had 300 000 regular troops in north vietnam for the war so that's what they were doing and it was also why we had been briefed about two or three weeks before that there would be no attempted rescues in the buffer zone right up near the border that they finally acknowledged that those were the chinese and i'd have to say it overall i was well treated with them they brought me something to eat they want me to do a radio broadcast which i declined with no pressure and that night the commandant came in they introduced him as a commandant and through the translator said that if i cooperated with them that i would be treated well and i'll be taken to beijing and be treated well and i declined that kind of offer also because in 1967 beijing and the moon were about the same distance from atlanta georgia as far as i was concerned i did not realize did not know i should say that we had an f-104 pilot had been shot down september 65 who was already in beijing and he came home when we did and i introduced myself to him and told him my opportunity to meet him he said you made a good choice he spent seven and a half years in solitaire and after the uh during the 24 hours with the chinese when i knew they took me around the next day to various gun sites we'd stopped someplace and about eight or ten guys had come out in uniform and line up and i called him the cheerleader a head guy who got out his little red book and he'd read and chant and read and chant and the the translator then would say the u.s will surely be defeated the vietnamese people will surely be victorious okay that's nice and one thing out of that which really surprised me was that almost every one of these guys had a camera and when the chanting and cheerleading was all over that all came around they're all making pictures so i had my fingers crossed that somebody was going to make a picture they'd get out because i knew that my close call was probably going to be reported as killed in action so i i cooperated with picture making at that point as much as possible but the that afternoon they took me up to a place i guess it was a either subordinate or a corresponding headquarters so i met some more regular army and i had i guess you would say a uh test of wills they'd started to chanting again and this time they wanted me to say it and i told them no i'm not going to say that and one of the guys i don't know what they smoke but his eyes showed he had something more more than than the issue maybe mold overholzer but he comes up with his rifle and puts a bayonet right under my chin and pops it up like that while the translator is right here saying you must see it and i wouldn't shake my head i just did kind of like that and after two or three times like captain for him saying you must see it i finally just did my lips tightly a grim so i'm not going to say that and an officer obviously came up and got this guy to back off with a rifle but i wasn't too sure there for a while because i could i could see he the rifle borer was clean it was operable but once that was over back in the truck back down to the where i'd been before uh in an area with a cave that was my my house right then and they let me take a nap and the commandant commander came by and motioned like that and went out and got in the truck and went down they turned me over to the north vietnamese and i remember when i made that offer and go to beijing i said no i want to go to hanoi the guy looked at me kind of shook his head so when he turned me over i laid her back out and i wanted to shake hands with him and we did which is part of the story because i hope to meet him later on but anyway the vietnamese took a blindfold of me and took me down i'm pretty confident to kept airfield and i got a jet helicopter ride into jelam right downtown and then a truck ride across the river to the big prison wallow we referred to wallow as the hanoi hilton but also yeah hanoi hilton tends to encompass all the camps if you're in hanoi you're in the hilton although everybody with few exceptions processed through the big prison initially and i went in the new guy village there learned i wasn't nearly as big i mean tough and strong as i thought i was a couple of little fellas with a rope can get you to do and say things that you didn't plan to and another one that uh got my arms up behind me for the better part of a day convinced me to do some things it had been opened in i think summer june july area 66 and they called it the farm because out the edge of town and you could hear the chickens and the animals and things around and they named the buildings for things like the barn and the stable and the chicken coop and it was an old french movie studio so it was a theater there that was obvious they had a swimming pool and one was a pool hall so all those names fit in about one of the guys that was living in front of the pool hall was a real character one day well almost all the doors had these little openings and we called them people peeps for sure and that's what they'd open up and look check on you every morning and during the day or at night or whatever one of the guards came by one day and did that and after he walked up this fella tapped his neighbor next door says the first zoo i've ever been in where the animals look at the people and from from then on it was the zoo after the zoo sometime during the summer of 70. the vietnamese were readying a new facility for us at an existing army post out again to the west of hanoi and they had moved at least two groups in there earlier one of them from the hanoi i mean from the sante prison where the raid took place later on but it was the first time we had had compound living so to speak it was a big long barracks that was divided into several rooms excuse me but after a few days we were all out together they'd come in just to unlock the doors in the morning we had to run of the place until siesta time done an issue and they'd put us back in for a couple hours and then we'd back out we had to run out of the place until time to lock up to go to bed we had a latrine area and a white shower area it definitely it was not hogan's heroes but it was so much better than anything we had had we're getting sunshine exercise and then the sante raid popped in and that was about six seven miles away we heard all the fireworks and see the airplanes and activity and it scared the jesus out of the vietnamese two days later we were all loaded up now taken back down to the big prison wallow downtown and it opened up an area in the back that we knew was back there because when i was there before we could hear people back in there they'd been using it for political prisoners as well as south vietnamese by prisoners they'd captured and these cell blocks were roughly 25 feet by about 55 or 60 and they had up to 100 120 south vietnamese in each one and there were 50 to 57 of us in each one and on the concrete slabs had about that much space and we then had guys laying on bed boards around on the floor it was a crowded sardine can but it was so nice to be with people that you'd only heard names of for several years but now you got a face to go on a personality and he got new people to talk to and these stories to hear it was actually fun for a few days first stop that i made when we went out to the zoo was an area we called the annex this there was a series of buildings i think there were nine or ten of them where they stored the film from the studio in fact there were old rolls of film around and so on and i was in this group of three other f-105 pilots that had been shot down in early october which got in there in late october but none of us knew anything about the tap code we tried to talk across the wall or do something to the group that was next to us there were two units in each building but we weren't getting anywhere till this the next spring like march this navy lieutenant commander came in who knew the code he had heard it but he wasn't hadn't had a chance to use it wasn't very good at it but we were over trying to get the guys next door to respond and he was tapping on the wall and we were given names and they were giving their names back i'm sorry to interrupt you sir but how did the code work was it a form of morse code or no how did you how did you know which letter was was what tap well the quick background is one of the very early air force officers i think he was number six or seven shot down had been talking to a german pow one of ours who was a german field in world war ii and talked about this code and smitty asked him what is it is it morse code no it's a little matrix five by five excuse me you drop out the letter k because you can get the same sound using a c it's a b c d e f g h i j right on down and to tap it you tap the first tab is for the row and the second tabs for the column so b would be one two two and my initial w was one two three four five dot dot a dot and it seems cumbersome till you get it and get going and once you get established doing it it's like a lot of other things you pick up a word from the context and you can get them to go on and you can do it even faster than the telegraph key i think we used it was a lifesaver for us but this first effort was really cumbersome and when they were given their names back this one came out as a as i mentioned there's no k you use the c it came back h i c c e's i know that doesn't make any sense so you didn't get over there and get him to do it again and about the third time i don't know why it popped in my mind i said h i see and all of a sudden i remembered think ask if that's jim and he went back gentlemen came back yes and it's jim hickerson and we had been fraternity brothers down here at georgia tech stood side by side at initiation he went in the navy right away when i had that delay at lockheed but we'd seen each other about two years after both of us had our wings but that that would have been 10 years later right there in hanoi but it was after he and i were then moved as we call across the wall into the main prison he was up in the barn and i was in the pool hall so he didn't communicate until about uh two years later when we had what i call a fruit basket turnover and he moved in next door to me and they'd taken some of the bricks out of the windows and i got to lean in and shake hands with him but then when we went out to the to the camp we call faith the compound living and then back into the other we stayed together for the next two and a half almost two years thinking about the whole experience you had to go through a range of i i shouldn't say you had to i would imagine you went through a range of emotions definitely in the beginning you're you're a new opportunity for them and and then there must reach a point where the enemy says we've done everything with this guy that's of value to us we can do and now you just become i shouldn't say just become now you're you're a prisoner when you think back i mean there had to be fear boredom hunger i mean how do you describe the stages of your imprisonment and what it did to you well first off was the startling realization that air force intelligence at survival school was out of touch with the real world because i asked the question as part of the process what do you know about the pows you're probably aware of the hanoi march that had happened in the summer 66 oh and by the way one of the navy guys was shot down a couple of days before that happened and they put him in he got down and kept the prison and his quote was one of the famous ones he said you guys do this very often [Laughter] but i i was concerned about it and the sergeant told me in the philippines oh we've had reports of really really good treatment up there because they've been seen out in town at night and restaurants and theaters and stuff and i'd been there about a week when i settle down enough which i get my hands on that surgeon again and also a marine from world from korea but anyway i was not prepared for the immediate torture to be candid uh obviously in survival school we were taught name rank serial number date of birth according to the code of conduct and invade further question the best of your ability but a german pow fellow u.s air force who had been german pl debbie when i was there made the statement that if you have something that they want they will get it if you're by yourself they'll get it out of you if they're more than one beware of things they'll do to play off each other to get it so once i got the name rank serial number date of birth and they said what was your target and i said i don't know and he said well you mean you don't know and his english wasn't that good but i could understand it but i used the fact that i couldn't to get him to repeat things to buy time to think about what i was doing and saying but anyway he let me know right away that name rank serial number is not going to cut it oh in fact that's one of the humorous things i told you about faking that injury up in the mountain to get them to carry me i tried the same thing with the chinese they brought in a doctor he checked me out so now you're okay i said no deep i know you're okay when i get to hanoi now i'm in a new venue so when the interrogator comes in and he says sit and he was at a table with this light little gooseneck thing down here with a stool and he says sit so i start like i'm a hobble over there and he looks up and he says maybe you best actor in survival school but now you in hanoi sit down [Laughter] that alerted me this guy is not a dummy he's in touch and over the course of the night he convinced me that their intelligence was immediately up to date he asked me two questions over the course one i'd been briefed on it the day before i was shot down and one a day i was shot down as top secret and he asked me why this happened first one was why the mig wine of the 104 or the f4 is no longer flat mid cap and i said you mean they weren't up there today i thought they were and then he says why can you not fly over hanoi below ten thousand feet now and we just been briefed on that that day because there's a french delegation in town so once that confirmed that i got to be serious about this and when he was asking these questions what was your targets i don't know i was a spare got pulled in i just followed them who was in who else was in your flight i don't know who's in your squadron well i'm new i've only been there a short time he kept pressing for names so i started coming up with guys from high school and from tech who are 4f or never in a few i threw in some names of guys that finished 200 mission gone home to be good and i kept cranking this and finally after i don't know how many hours and several times of tying me up and being past passing out and coming back to consciousness he said why you keep lying i said might lie they said yeah you lie same day you we shoot down man 357 squadron tells us everything and i thought about that a minute and i said well if he tells you why you ask me he said i want to hear you say so we're back to the game again name rank serial number write down all the same questions and i remember from survival school if you tell them a lie and somebody else telling the truth the liar's in trouble and i thought oh guys if he really did tell him i'm in trouble so i started pulling my answers back to more factual things but not quite as best i could but sweating it out and finally when he quit about daylight and this has started little after dark the night before and i got the day off and i lay there and they brought me some soup and rice to eat and i got to thinking he really conned me he played all those things they told me about in survival school he did it and then i thought it hooked like ain't nobody else up here now yeah yeah and i never heard any reference about another guy until i got to the zoo with those new 105 pilots and one of the guys had been at the other base at karate and he said oh he said i knew about you you shot down the same day as ward dodge and he was a flight leader and another i said what do you mean he said yeah he and another guy were shot down that day they were 357th squadron so yeah they had the guy he they put him out he died in captivity about a week later once i got through the fear and i mentioned the next day when when i said he really hooked me uh i gotta shape up here and start earning my pay as a major in the united states air force they came in the next morning it says today you write your autobiography i said no not going to do that that's nakota tonka you won't write he said oh where did you two i said i don't take orders from you yeah none of these guys wore rank so you didn't know who you were talking to really but they all look like kids as you know orientals tend to look much younger than they are for a long long time but we went through that and they said well i bring in a camp commander he he orders you to write i said okay so he goes and i was really being this flippant blessing no kidding so he comes back in a few minutes with a guy about his age the same size assistant this is a camp commander and i said to myself so yeah this was saturday morning i said oh yeah these guys were out drinking beer last night they said oh we're gonna have some fun with a new guy he says he asked will you write your autobiography i said nope they talked in vietnamese he says he asked you one last time i said no he talked to me and he says he orders you to write your autobiography i said i take my orders from the chief of staff of the united states air force [Laughter] they talked a little more in vietnamese and he says one more time i shook my head and the camp commander looks up and very good english says you will be very sorry got him walked out two or three minutes later this big guy comes in biggest vietnamese i saw and they put me on the ground pulled my arms back up behind me i couldn't do it again my life depended on my palms were together behind my neck i could scratch my neck and he put vietnamese handcuffs right there and they walked out and i thought yeah this is a big deal and about five minutes later my hands were numb my arms were numb and shortly my shoulders were numb and pretty soon my chest was numb and so i started walking around so i could keep myself alert and active i thought next thing i knew i'm laying in the floor i'd obviously fallen knocked out that i did that three or four times so i just gave up quit trying to walk around and during the meal time that meal time came they came comes in with a bowl of soup and a plate of rice and hosed it up and i said oh good we're gonna get a break here get something to eat he holds it up and or i'm sorry he sets it on the table and he does that and i shook my head he walked over and picked it up walked out hmm maybe they are serious about this okay i lay here a while longer so i guess i passed out off and on because the next time the afternoon meal time came he comes in with a soup and rice again sets it down did it i said no but i had been conscious enough during the time but i realized i hadn't seen another american i've been here for four days now and this was the funny part i haven't felt my hands all day this is into the afternoon i haven't felt anything from my waist up in a good while if i can't use my hands i can't feed myself and i probably can't play golf again so when he starts to pick up the stuff to go away i said wait a minute and he turns around how's that i said i'll try pictured it i said okay he turned around and i had he wouldn't leave till i said yes so he left the suit went out and got the officer came back and the officer asked me and i tried with him i'll try he shook his head so i said okay so he takes handcuffs off and i'd been through rope tying up before and when they do that the whole purpose is to cut off circulation and when they release it it's like grabbing a electric board if you've ever been shocked you know by house curl well this time it came off i just shook all over and they brought in a little booklet like i never had it down here but they called test booklets you know the little blue book sort of thing lined with a whole thing of questions sit down and write and so for about three or four days i'd sit there and hold a pen in my mouth and push it around with my hands and i'd get six or eight words on a page that way and use up stuff and it was questions what's your name and i put it down what's your father's name i put daddy what's your mother's name i put mommy where were you born i put early age you know just making my seat i don't know i guess i was so beaten down by this point i didn't really care what they did i was gonna have some fun in the process but they never referred to that again and it proved for me at least the whole point was we can make you do it what that sergeant had said we'll show you that we run this camp you'll do what we tell you to do so from then on as a game how much i could keep them from from doing and then that night when you were asking this was really my low point when i ate that meal and realized that i had been broken yeah so then overall we had a big thunderstorm it rained and i was so thirsty and giving me any water except the interrogator would be there and he'd have a cup and offer it and i remember i got up and i pulled the table over put the chair on it put the stool on and got up where i could get his vent and reached out and got a hold of a limb on the tree so that the rain coming down and run down and i'd get some water off my arm and then it quit right about the time i got it and so i went over and leaned up against a wall just slumped down and there was one light way over in the corner and i looked up and it just kept attracting my attention and i remember thinking this was like moses in the burning bush i guess and i sat there and i looked at the light and whether it was a split second or an hour i can't tell you but i had an experience of something happened to me and it was all over i was feel very comfortable very secure you're going to live you're going to get out of this and you'll go home someday and from then on i i was able to accept things that happened and would be a crackdown right after escape and i'm not camp and other things that are cut down could have a little sense that this this might be bad i i could just think about it for a minute and i could feel comfortable again and go on and do what i had to do and i i remember thinking harry truman made the statement as president that he had no trouble sleeping every night because he knew he had done the best that day that he knew to do and he needed his rest for the next day and i realized that i was i was able to do it i could lie down every night and go to sleep no matter what was going on and how long have you been a prisoner when that happened i was shot down on wednesday afternoon and that was saturday night so three days three days after you were shot down you you feel you had a moment that gave you i won't call it peace but gave you something that got you through the rest of those years was there a day in that prison camp after that that you didn't feel that awareness or didn't think about that or did that sustain you every single day i can't say it i thought consciously every day but the feeling was there every day and what do you think about that now what do you think that was it still sustains me and the experience that i had there after we were in those large groups we started after some confrontations with the vietnamese we started having sunday church services and i thought about it a lot you know what what does this mean to me what do i do and i participated not as an activist but participated in the services attended and when i got home i went to see another one of our classmates down here at georgia tech who had become an episcopal minister and i talked to him about it and asked him how did you make the transition because he had been a technical major how did you make the transition to the tomb experience and the first assignment i had when i got back i was at the air war college and one of my classmates there was a catholic priest that i got to know fairly well and i was still in this time you know i was saved in that ejection i went through this other experience what what am i here for and the catholic priest let me put it in the best perspective he said don't try to solve the problem he said you go through your life looking for the sign or looking for this or what he said you may miss what you're actually here for he said just accept the fact that you're here and make the most of it that you can and that's that's really what's been with me ever since not like five and a half almost six years a prisoner how did you find out you were going home and when you were going home and tell me about that experience well to put it all in perspective when nixon started the bombing again in may of 72 we were in the big prison there at wallow and somebody that went to quiz as we call the interrogations because that was easier to say in the tap brought back message that nixon is crazy man we don't know what happens now but we had in our camp one south vietnamese prisoner and three thai prisoners who were allowed out to work and do things and of course they were speaking the language and they were they were really our intelligence and we got a heads up that 209 was the number literally were going to be moved out of camp and sure enough about a week later 209 of us were moved right up to the chinese border deep in the mountains and a camp that we thought initially was new to us we learned later on that others had been there ahead of us probably who i don't know but we spent the rest of the of 72 there and over the winter and in october we didn't have radios in each cell there they didn't have power like we had back in the big prison we had these little radios in each room and you got these propaganda broadcast hanoi hannah we call it the voice of vietnam all the garbage up here they had to do it by quizzes and one of the fellas that went early picked up they were asking him what do you think about this proposed end of the war or whatever this is in early october and then i was called out right the end of october and he asked me he said are you disappointed there was no settlement in october i said you know i didn't know they were going to be once how can i be disappointed if something i didn't know was going out what's going to happen anyway and kind of went on with that and then over christmas and the holiday and new years it got really cold and we were settling in all of us were looking to be there in the winter and one night the building i was in at the top of the hill one of the fellas woke us up he said we just had three trucks come in to camp so we all stayed up and we counted 17 trucks you don't need that many to bring in a month's load of food something is up and the guards came around that morning and let us out to go out to to eat or to shave whatever we're going to do we had a little area kind of a little patio we could get out to in our building and he leans he looks around at one of the other guys and he does this and then he comes back like that something is really up here so we went back in and just so we didn't miss out on it we all started rolling up our gear that afternoon when the guard came around and opened it up and he gives us this which was a signal to roll up ready to move we just all leaned over patting our roll he got a big smile on his face and right after dark they loaded us on the trucks headed back to hanoi and about halfway down mid-afternoon we stopped and had a little coffee break he gave us water and a little energy bars coconut bar stuff and instead of getting back on the truck necessarily to your own they divided us out in four categories and what turned out to be the first two release groups went back to the big prison the third release group went to one we called the plantation and the fourth one went to the zoo and excuse me we'd been back about a week and i was at the plantation in the third group they called us out one afternoon we lined up and the camp commander came over and he read us the protocol from the parish treaty that that in itself required that the prisoners be notified within 48 hours of this date and they're told and they stood there for a few minutes uh waiting for us to do something and when we didn't they said okay dismissed and we all filed back into our own little cells and then we went up hugging these so god gotta hope it's true hope it's true and in my particular case i was pulled out and taken up to wallow it turns out that after the first release group there was a little difference of opinion between oh the conditions for release were that everybody would be released in four equal increments over the next 60 days so the and with the sick and wounded being released first well the us expected that to be release the sick and wounded then four more increments the vietnamese interpreted be the second wound it would be in the first increment so they had a little hassle about that and somehow they came up and released 20 guys just pulled almost at random came out so as that was going on i was pulled up to the second release group then they decided no the count didn't work so i went back to the plantation and then they pulled me out again and whatever the problem was we were supposed to be released on the first of march and the camp commander came in and we had the big you know going away things special dinner blah blah blah and ida last night in february and then he told us he said maybe you do not go tomorrow there is small problem i will let you know so the next morning he comes in and said i don't think so today and that night he said maybe tomorrow and then but by march the 3rd we were i hope somebody got out of here anyway and he came in that night and he says i think tomorrow okay and sure enough the next morning he comes in and came in there was a group called the i forget the exact name name but there were an indian a canadian a czech and another soviet union type had to come around and inspect everybody so they came through we figured i think we might make it today and sure enough about an hour later we started out we got our go home clothes that we've been fitted for we went out to pick them up put them on and they walked us out the front gate and they had their little 20 seat buses out there and we all got on and headed over to the g alum for the big trip home i'd like to hear this well we got out there because we pulled out onto the ramp and i saw that 141 out there of course working out there my neighbor at uh craig had gotten out of the air force and was testified in 141 and i'd walked out into one just for a left to go to southeast asia and i saw that airplane the united states of america and that big flag up there and i told a lot of people when i walked down and walked up that ramp i could smell the red clay out of north georgia i knew i was going home is that just an expression or did you really feel like you smelled i mean i i started feeling like i'm headed home yeah well the the one question i want to ask you the the pen ultimate next to the last is a lot of things changed for you while you were a prisoner you found out about losing your father and losing other family members and your wife and again i you know if you don't mind my asking what sustained you through that well i had premonitions or indications i guess you'd say on both i only got two letters from my wife and i were there and there were six lines but she only used about four of them so all she just said was the children are fine they help a lot another one was i moved to atlanta to go to emory the children doing well you could almost read into it the indifference and in the case of my dad uh the one thing that i got from my mother was a birthday card to assign love mother and that was probably one of the really low points when i realized he was gone because i was looking forward to seeing him i knew he was in bad shape when i left but i was looking forward to going back and seeing him again and so when i got there to clark we'd been there i don't know three or four hours and he came around got me said there's a colonel up here wants to see you he introduced himself from 13th air force headquarters and he was standing in the doorway to the little ward area that i was in and i looked up and a technician that had been seen around was leaned up to the desk up here about 20 30 feet i don't know why i turned around there's another technician like standing around over here it's not going to be a standard conversation what is it so he started out casually told me about my aunt dying and my uncle dying and my father-in-law dying and then your father died and your wife got a divorce and as i've described it it wasn't a surprise it was the shock of confirmation the things i was hoping weren't true but i had a sense and it's kind of a running when i learned about more detail about my wife's divorce when i was up in the mountains and i hadn't gotten anything heard anything i went to a quiz and i asked an officer whom i'd known from way back at the zoo i said i hadn't heard anything from my wife in a long time i said i'm i'm wondering if maybe something is happening no i think everything's fine and i said well i said i would really like to know i don't want my children to be in a curtain or any problem they say okay i ask and several months later i went to quiz with him again and he said i asked he said i think everything okay as it turns out that first quiz was within a week of when she filed for the divorce and the second one was within a week of when it was granted and they had sent it over sent the paperwork to hanoi to campaign pension and since i didn't reply within 30 days i wasn't contesting it well i was still going through the checkout down at maxwell air force base in montgomery alabama but my mother wanted to get the family together at home and visit and so i came up flew up commercially and my ex-wife was here in town at the time she came out and picked me up at the airport and went over to her house and we were talking i was going to take my children out with me for this party and we were sitting there talking she said how you plan on getting to bremen i was like oh gosh [Laughter] that didn't cross my mind oh well i'll rent a car oh no i guess i can't do that i don't have a driver's license hmm why i didn't think i ride the bus i don't know because that'd been right off the bat i thought well maybe pat will uh rent me an airplane because i had a pilot's license commercial lesson and i wasn't thinking the fact that you got to have a medical to make it effective but she said you better do something so this is getting kind of late if you're going out there tomorrow so i called him up i don't know i guess we looked in the phone book i got him at home and i said hey you got any airplane you might run out tomorrow he says what for i said well i need to get out to bremen with me and the children they said when you want to go and i said oh sometime mid-morning or so he says hold on a minute look around he said how's about 10 o'clock would that be good 10 30 and i said yeah it'd be fine so he said you know how to get out to my place and i said yeah they said all right i'll see you then so we come driving up out here and turns out he had a demonstration set up for hope for sale with a king air i think it was uh anyways about a eight or ten place airplane and this company people were here and they were really nice welcome to us in and said yeah i would be glad they gave me a ride out to west georgia airport and my brother was there to pick me up but pat and i have laughed about that a lot of times those six years of your life that you gave literally gave to this country uh and all that happened to you what would you say to young people or what what would you if you could get them all to pay attention to you for the next minute what would you say well first i would say that i'm proud of my service at the time i was there i honestly believe that we were doing something that needed to be done because the threat of communism and the expansion of china and their efforts to particularly in asia and southeast asia could have had very difficult future and while we did not win and unfortunately i think i have to say we we gave we actually did win the combat our politicians gave it away later on but we did accomplish a uh stalemate so to speak and i think we stopped that expansion gave those countries a chance to get on a little firmer basis as far as vietnamese people i was disappointed for them the boat people that's that many were killed and or died in the process of getting out of there and in cambodia that were literally killed during the pol pot regime i don't think we can take any pride at all in allowing that to happen but when we finally started recognizing the vietnamese i was asked by one of the local stations what do you think about it with the trade and then the recognition i said we went over there to give them a chance for self-determination and it looks like they're finally going to get it and on the two trips i've made back over there i think we really did win the hearts and minds because they really like americans there now but for the status now and the condition and the future of this country i have real concern the last few years the mood of the country the culture of the country society have changed in ways that i cannot say it i feel proud about but i do talk to enough young people who have good attitudes and good patriotic values that i'm optimistic that they will rise to the top and be the cream of the crop and we'll get this country back on track someday [Music] [Music] you

Channel: DroneScapes

Views: 372,940

Keywords: Waddell, dewey waddell, dewey wayne waddell, prisoner, vietnam, interview, prisoner of war, hanoi hilton prison, hanoi hilton stories, hanoi hilton simple history, F-105, f-105 thunderchief vietnam war, POW, wayne waddell, hanoi hilton prisoners of war, prisoner of war vietnam, prisoner released, hanoi hilton, vietnam pow stories, vietnam pow, vietnam war stories, f 105 thunderchief, pow vietnam, vietnam pows, vietnam prison, vietnam stories, Vietnam veterans interviews

Id: YnvnOmerhss

Length: 74min 16sec (4456 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 12 2022