Hi everyone! Thanks for beginning your journey with me as I uncover clues in the hundreds of letters my father left and learn about his life and subsequent death in South Vietnam.
A quarter-century after my father, US Army (retired) and US Agency for International Development (USAID) Senior Public Safety Advisor Major Jack J. Wells, is killed in Vietnam, I discover hundreds of his letters spanning his youth, two wars and a State Department career. The letters compel me to learn more about the father I lost as a nine-year-old. And when I begin corroborating what my father wrote by starting my formal research, I learn what we were told about his death isn’t true, that there was a cover-up, and that the details of his death are inexplicably classified. Thus, my Odyssean journey for the truth across two continents begins.
I encourage you to follow my journey, as the details of a story about extraordinary heroism, moral injury, post-traumatic resilience, and the consequences of truth-telling evolve. And in so doing, perhaps you will connect with someone you barely knew, and learn a new kind of love and faith, as I am doing.
James B. Wells 