Pilot Quietly Celebrates Homecoming With Family : Military: After 13 days in captivity in North Korea, Bobby Hall enjoys low-key reunion at home. Immediate plans include lots of relaxing.

Army helicopter pilot Bobby Hall celebrated his first day of freedom Saturday in the quiet comfort of his family and hometown, planning to begin the new year without fanfare.

“We have decided to spend some time with the family, say hello to all the people that were here and helped support my family, and tell them how much I appreciate it,” Hall said.

Hall, appearing tired and overwhelmed, spoke briefly with reporters the day after he returned from 13 days in captivity in North Korea. He stood on the lawn of his modest home, where the blinds were drawn and yellow police tape cordoned off the yard.

Hall, a 28-year-old chief warrant officer, said he was under instructions from the military not to discuss the Dec. 17 helicopter flight that took him and a co-pilot across the demilitarized zone. The crash of the helicopter killed Chief Warrant Officer David M. Hilemon and led to Hall’s imprisonment by communist North Korea.

After his plane landed late Friday at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Hall said he did not know how his helicopter strayed across the border into North Korea.

“If I knew that, we wouldn’t have been there,” he said. “I really thought we were flying well south of the DMZ.

“The first time I knew something was wrong was when I heard a loud explosion and the windshield in front of us caved back in on us,” he said.

The aircraft lost power and started going down.

Hall read a statement in which he expressed his sympathy to Hilemon’s family.

“Dave turned to me, and the last thing I remember him saying is, ‘Bobby, I’ve been hit.’ ”

He said he saw that Hilemon had been injured, and he turned to him and asked: “ ‘Are you OK?’ . . . He never replied.”

Hall said Hilemon died at the crash site. “I was with him when he died.”

A flag-waving crowd had gathered at MacDill to greet Hall as he emerged onto the tarmac.

“I was amazed, really, at 2 o’clock in the morning, people were still out there waving, screaming and cheering. I was pretty moved,” Hall said Saturday.

This rural town of 7,500 was decorated throughout the ordeal with yellow ribbons and, later, with “Welcome Home” banners.

Hanging from the porch roof of Hall’s home was a giant handmade yellow sign that read “Welcome Home Bobby” in red and green letters. Another sign nearby read: “Our Prayers Have Been Answered.”

And at the end of Hall Drive, the tiny dirt road where Hall and his parents have homes, a banner with a U.S. flag and the inscription “Proud to Be an American” was stretched across a tree stump.

Hall said didn’t go to sleep until about 4 a.m., and slept well Saturday morning. It was the first time he’d been home with his wife, Donna, and sons, Byron, 9, and Brandon, 6, since late October.

The Halls had no plans for ringing in 1995. Instead, Hall said, he wanted to “just sit back and relax a little and kind of hope this all goes away pretty soon.”