 Did you ever lose hope during the whole time you were there? You were there how many years six years and three months and Joe I I didn't think we were going to get out alive What were your first impressions on landing in Vietnam? Well, I I remember that very very clearly Joe that the sites that I that I that I saw were United States Air Force and Marine Corps airplanes Taxi-ing and taking off with their combat loads of bombs rockets napalm and I thought to myself I'm finally here This is the war zone. This is what you've always wanted. You're here And what was your daily routine like when you were flying nights? Well, I started flying missions on August 22nd. I got shot down On November the 22nd and so if you if you looked at how many days I did is that's 92 days and I flew 87 missions. You were taken straight away to the Hanoi Hilton. Yes, I was taken to Wallo prison right Mason Central and They trucked you down there, right? They threw me unceremoniously into the back of a truck Blindfolded handcuffed bound hand and foot just boom threw me in the back of the truck describe the interrogations that you underwent personally Well, the first one was the was the real really the only one They asked me what my target was and I could not under any circumstances Tell them what my target was the method of that we use for communicating was the was the 5x5 tap code now The funny thing is when I was being interrogated on that first day And I was being asked all these questions And I wouldn't give the answers that the guy wanted and he went out to go get his hooligans to torture me I'm sitting there by myself and I'm looking at this table with all these scratches in it And I look down and here's the tap code scratched into the table And it's in the interrogation right in the interrogation room and it says POW is learn this code And I'm just I'm dumbfound it, you know Were you at any point during your captivity? Were you tortured? Well that that first day yes, and one time when I got caught trying to pass a note I was a little bit too bold and they caught me and And they beat me up on that particular occasion and they tossed me into a Room actually it didn't have a door I had to they had to had to crawl in through a window and I wound up right next to John Sidney McCain What was your reception like from family and friends when you finally got home my my hometown was Something else there was a mob out outside my house I mean that it was that street was absolutely blocked. It was you couldn't drive drive drive through there It was just wall-to-wall people all over the place. You said list the positive lessons of learning with them one of them is never give up Never give up. That's that's why the POW survived. They were never the VC were never gonna beat us No matter what they were gonna they could kill us, but they weren't they were never gonna beat us