This article is provided
courtesy of Stars & Stripes, which
got its start as a newspaper for Union troops
during the Civil War, and has been published
continuously since 1942 in Europe and 1945
in the Pacific. Stripes reporters have
been in the field with American soldiers,
sailors and airmen in World War II, Korea,
the Cold War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Bosnia
and Kosovo, and are now on assignment in the
Middle East.
Stars and Stripes has one of the widest distribution
ranges of any newspaper in the world. Between
the Pacific and European editions, Stars
& Stripes services over 50 countries
where there are bases, posts, service members,
ships, or embassies.
By Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes European Edition They were on foot patrol amid sheep and tomato fields in the middle
of nowhere, when a bearded man came running toward them, falling and
getting back up, waving his shirt and shouting. At first they thought
he was an Iraqi, maybe a farmer.
But then they heard: “I’m an American!” he yelled. “I’m an American!
I’m an American POW!”
And so began the rescue of Thomas Hamill, held captive since April
9 after insurgents snatched him from a convoy. His rescuers were a
platoon of Army National Guard soldiers, of Company C, 2nd Battalion,
108th Infantry Regiment out of Gloversville, N.Y., deployed to Iraq
for just a few months.
Capt. George Rodriguez, 2nd Lt. Joseph Merrill and Sgt. 1st Class
Mark Forbes — who found themselves at a Green Zone news conference
Monday in front of the international media — were suitably modest.
“All we did was find this man and get him out of there,” said Forbes,
43, a construction manager in civilian life. “It wasn’t some ‘Delta
Force raid,’” he said, making air quotations with his fingers.
Added Merrill, 28, of the rescue, “It actually felt kind of good.”
Hamill, a truck driver with Kellogg, Brown & Root, had been kept in
a small building near a house “in the middle of the desert,” the soldiers
said, about 50 miles northwest of Baghdad. He’d heard the Humvees
that were trailing the foot patrol, then pushed his way out the door
blocked with a piece of metal and some wood, and made a dash for the
soldiers.
He was shoeless and thirsty, with a gunshot wound in his arm. He said
he’d been moved around a lot in the past weeks but had been laxly
guarded recently.
“He said, ‘I could have escaped a bunch of times, but where am I going
to go with one bottle of water and no map?’” Forbes said.
Hamill, a 43-year-old former dairy farmer from Mississippi, appeared
to be in good health, they said, although a little thinner. They offered
him food and water before he was airlifted to a hospital near Tikrit,
and they said he took the water but turned down the food, saying he’d
just eaten.
On Monday, Hamill was moved to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in
Germany for a checkup and treatment for his gunshot wound.
“He’s doing good, very good,” said Marie Shaw, spokeswoman for the
medical center. “He’s in the medical surgical ward. He should be able
to go home by the end of the week.”
Hamill’s wife, Kellie, who is flying from the States, will be meeting
him at Landstuhl on Tuesday.
The platoon was out in the area providing security for civilians who
were soon to arrive to repair a pipeline Sunday when Hamill appeared
at about 10:30 a.m. About 40 of them, they said, were doing a sweep
of the fields, on foot and with Humvees driving behind them. It was
the first time their unit had patrolled the area, although other patrols
have been in the area before, they said.
Hamill took them back to where he’d been kept. There was no one in
the building. Some small children and an older woman were in the house.
The soldiers detained two men walking in the area, but it was unknown
if they had any connection to Hamill’s kidnapping, authorities said.
The soldiers also found an AK-47 in the grass, and said they believed
that it belonged to the man who’d been guarding Hamill but who took
off when he saw the soldiers coming through the fields.
Hamill was ecstatic, they said, to see them. “He wanted to be around
Americans,” Forbes said. “He said, ‘Don’t leave me here.’”
It was also an emotional moment for them. “When he got on that bird
to leave,” Forbes said, “I had tears in my eyes.”
