Capt.
Elwood Osgood Wells 1917-1944
 Elwood
Osgood Wells was born in Epsom on August 20, 1917 to Walter Brackett
Wells and Sophronia M. Yeaton. He attended Epsom Schools and graduated
on June 19, 1931. He then went on to Pembroke Academy where he
played baseball, played cornet in the orchestra and participated
in prize speaking contests., winning one such event in 1933. Elwood
also appeared in plays at Pembroke before graduating June 20,
1935. He next attended the University of New Hampshire where he
was a member of the cross country team, member of Pi Kappa Alpha
fraternity, American Society of Civil Engineers, the Scabbard
and Blade Honor Society and the ROTC.
It was June
2, 1941, following his junior yer at UNH, that he enlisted in
the U.S. Army Air Forces, entering Parks Air College in St. Louis,
Illinois. By September he advances to Aviation Cadet at Randolph
Field in Texas, then being transferred to an advanced flying school
in November at Victoria, Texas. Mr. Wells was commissioned a Lieutenant
in January of 1942 and began instructing cadets at Enid, Oklahoma.
On January 14, 1943, back at Durham, NH, he married Miss Dorothy
Head of Epping, NH, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Head. On June
2 of that year he was shipped over seas as part of the India-China
Transport Service. While he was overseas, the birth of a daughter,
Kathleen Mildred Wells, took place January 7, 1944 in Exeter,
NH.
Excerpts from
Newspaper Clippings:
EPSOM
OFFICER MISSING AS HE STARTS LEAVE
Pilot
Scheduled to Return Home from India Base
EPSOM,
Sept. 1, (1944) - Last week Capt. Elwood O. Wells, 27, wrote to
his father, Walter B. Wells, Center Barnstead, that he was starting
home on leave Aug. 25.
Today the
father has been informed by the War Department that his son has
been missing since that date. This morning the father did not
know whether his son was lost on his last flight with the Air
Transport Command or on his homeward journey.
Capt. Wells
was a pilot in the India-China area, based in North India, and
had been making every other day flights.
His wife,
Dorothy Head Wells, and their daughter, Kathleen, whom he has
never seen, live in Epping.
Captain
Wells was making a flight from a base in India to China over "the
hump," the Himalaya mountains, with supplies and did not
return. It is beleived by his family that this was his final scheduled
flight before he was to start home on leave.
EPSOM
HONOR CAPTAIN WELLS, KILLED IN ASIA
Bombers
Dip in Salute To Flier Lost in Himalayas.
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