A day that Wallingford recalled as clearly as if it were yesterday, as he recounted it to CNN at a recent reunion for surviving Vietnam War POWs in California.Īt the time of his capture, Wallingford had been tantalizingly close to freedom and home, with just six more days to go before his expected discharge. “The enemy descended upon us, took our weapons and anything visible, my wallet, the money,” Wallingford said. Instead he scrambled out of a porthole and found himself face-to-face with the North Vietnamese. “We started smelling gasoline on top of the bunker that we were in and knew a Molotov cocktail was coming next,” he recalled. His life flashed before his eyes, frame by frame, like an old 8mm film.
He’d spent the previous night hiding in a bunker with another soldier at a base that had been overrun by the North Vietnamese forces and was already nursing 17 shrapnel wounds when he realized his position had been spotted. Ken Wallingford had only days left to serve in the US Army when he found himself trapped – and seconds away from being burned alive.
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