Blissful Day at Fort: POWs Come Home

The sun set behind the jagged Franklin Mountains before the C-17 transport plane coming in from Germany touched down Saturday.

Late flight or not, there was no turning back for the crowd gathered to welcome home the special band of returning military personnel -- seven former prisoners of war in Iraq. There was a brass band, a man dressed as Uncle Sam, off-duty soldiers, family members and townsfolk from El Paso.

The crowd burst into cheers of “USA, USA” when the wing lights became visible in the eastern sky about 7:30 p.m. As the plane taxied to a flood-lighted area near the waiting crowd, the top hatch of the plane was popped open and two of the former POWs emerged and flashed the victory sign.

The returning soldiers boarded a motorized cart that carried them off the runway to a reception -- waving and shaking hands with the waiting crowd along the way.

Among those waiting in the chilling wind was Beth Hill, 39, wife of an Army chief warrant officer still in Iraq.

“What better miracle could you have asked for at Easter for these families that have had all this suffering? It’s a happy time for all of us,” Hill said.

Five of the soldiers are from the Ft. Bliss-based Army 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, and the other two are Army Apache helicopter crew members with the 1st Cavalry Division, Ft. Hood, Texas. After stopping at Ft. Bliss, the C-17 flight continued to Ft. Hood.

Claudio Bastidas, 31, a physical education teacher, was one of many El Paso residents drawn to the base for the arrival of the ex-POWs.

Where he teaches, Nolan Richardson Middle School, so many students come from military families that they have created a “wall of remembrance” with photographs of parents now serving in Iraq or elsewhere, he said.

“I’m excited they are finally coming home,” Bastidas said of the former prisoners. “But I also remember the memorial service we had last week for those killed in action. It doesn’t always have a happy ending.”

Nine American soldiers were killed in the fighting in which the members of the 507th were captured; another prisoner of war, Pfc. Jessica Lynch of Palestine, W.Va., was rescued earlier in a commando raid and is recuperating from her injuries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Saturday afternoon, two aunts and the grandmother of one of the returning former POWs, Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30, of El Paso, flew in to be on hand to greet her.

“I spoke to her two mornings ago,” said Sheila Madeam of Brooklyn, an aunt. “She called at 5:23 a.m. I said, ‘Shana, did you know you’re a hero here?’ She said, ‘I was doing what I was supposed to do.’ ”

Johnson suffered gunshot wounds to both ankles during her capture. She stood briefly with the help of her fellow soldiers after touching down in Texas. As she was carried on a stretcher to the plane at Ramstein Air Base for the flight home, she had smiled gamely and flashed a V-for-victory sign to a waiting crowd.

Three of the former POWs were treated for gunshot wounds at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.

“They’re all in good condition,” Marie Shaw, Landstuhl’s public affairs officer, said.

A nine-member team of debriefing specialists and a psychologist accompanied the seven ex-POWs on the flight.

In El Paso, officials of William Beaumont Army Medical Center said they had assembled a 15-member task force, including mental health specialists, to treat the freed POWs from Ft. Bliss, and that the soldiers would undergo checkups before being granted leave to spend time with their families.

Friends of Johnson organized an effort, mentioned in the Saturday edition of the El Paso Times, the local newspaper, to decorate her path home with ribbons of purple, her favorite color.

“I want to hug her and kiss her and tell her I love her,” said the soldier’s aunt, who wore a badge decorated with her niece’s portrait. “What she did, where she went, I don’t know if I could have survived that.”

When the pilot on the aunt’s flight announced that relatives of the former POW were aboard the Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta, the passengers burst into applause.

In addition to Johnson, two more members of the 507th Maintenance Company suffered gunshot wounds: Spc. Edgar Hernandez, 21, of Mission, Texas, was shot in the elbow, and Spc. Joseph Hudson, 23, of Alamogordo, N.M., was hit twice in the ribs and once in the buttocks. But they were able to walk aboard the homebound C-17.

The other freed prisoners from the 507th are Pfc. Patrick Miller, 23, of Park City, Kan., and Sgt. James Riley of Pennsauken, N.J.

The former POWs had spent three days at a U.S. military hospital in Germany, where they were housed in a separate ward to help them relax and recover from their ordeal in captivity. The former POWs were freed by U.S. Marines last Sunday in a small town near Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

The soldiers from the Ft. Bliss-based unit were captured March 23 in an Iraqi ambush near the southern city of Nasiriyah as U.S. troops advanced on Baghdad.

The two Apache crewmen’s helicopter went down in Iraq on March 23.

Before the transport took off from Ramstein, the two Apache crewmen, Chief Warrant Officer David S. Williams, 30, of Orlando, Fla., and Chief Warrant Officer Ronald D. Young Jr., 26, of Lithia Springs, Ga., popped from the hatch and brandished an American flag that a well-wisher had given them.

In his weekly radio address, President Bush gave thanks for the safe return of the former prisoners, saying “the whole nation” shared in the happy news that the seven who flew back to the United States on Saturday were now safe.

“This year, Easter and Passover have special meaning for the families of our men and women in uniform who feel so intensely the absence of their loved ones during these days,” Bush said Saturday.

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Associated Press and Reuters were used in compiling this report.