Iraq

To U.S. hostage, convoy's roar sounded like freedom

BAGHDAD - American hostage Thomas Hamill was sitting in a mud shack with a bullet wound festering in his arm when he heard the rumble of Army Humvees and escaped his captors for the second time. He stumbled into the desert and waved his shirt to get the attention of passing soldiers.

"He was yelling, "I'm an American, I'm an American POW!' " recalled Lt. Joseph Merrill, a member of a New York Army National Guard infantry platoon that happened upon the grizzled Mississippi contract worker about 40 miles north of Baghdad on Sunday morning.

The soldiers, who were searching the desert for a break in an oil line, radioed in that a farmer was approaching them. Hamill tripped and fell a few times, rising each time. Soon the soldiers understood he was shouting in English and somebody recognized the hostage, Merrill said.

"From a distance, it was obvious he was unarmed, so we did not have our weapons trained on him," the lieutenant said.

The soldiers offered Hamill food, which he declined, and water, which he drank.

It was Hamill's second escape attempt. His cousin, Jason Higginbotham, told CNN that Hamill had tried to escape before but went back to his captors, apparently unnoticed, after finding himself in the desert without food or water.

"He escaped one time about three days earlier and he was out in the middle of the desert. A helicopter came over and he tried to flag it down, but they evidently didn't see him," Higginbotham said. "They were taking fairly good care of him, so he went and put himself back in captivity."

The 43-year-old truck driver was taken Monday to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for treatment and a reunion with his wife, Kellie, expected today. She left Mississippi on Monday.

Marie Shaw, spokeswoman for the center, said Hamill will likely be able to return home by the end of the week.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who coincidentally visited the hospital Monday, spoke with Hamill for about five minutes and said he appeared to be in good health.

"I just tried to let him know we support him and good luck," Schwarzenegger said. "It must be unbelievable to be under the threat of maybe dying."

Schwarzenegger said Hamill requested the visit after learning from military officials that Schwarzenegger was there.

Hamill's whereabouts had been unknown since he was seen in a video taken after guerrillas captured him during an April 9 ambush on a supply convoy. Gunmen shot up and set fire to the vehicles on the outskirts of Baghdad. Though initial media reports said Hamill's left arm was injured, his wound was in the right forearm.

Some three weeks later, Hamill's captors took him to a mud farmhouse near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad.

The door to Hamill's room was a piece of sheet metal propped up by a board. Hamill of Macon, Miss., told soldiers he believed a single guard was nearby, but out of sight.

About 11:15 a.m. Sunday, soldiers from the New York National Guard's 2nd Battalion, 108th Infantry Regiment, drove their Humvees along a road next to an oil pipeline.

When Hamill heard the Humvees, he knocked over the sheet metal, pried open the doors and ran about 300 yards toward the convoy.

"He said he thought this was the only chance he had, so he made a run for it," said Merrill of Deposit, N.Y. "He said he didn't know if the guard was there or not."

Four soldiers who described the escape refused to answer questions about Hamill's time in captivity.

"All we did was find this man and get him out of there. This wasn't some Delta Force raid," said platoon Sgt. Mark Forbes, 43. He gestured quotation marks in the air as he stated, "Delta Force."

Merrill, who spent less than two hours with the former hostage, said Hamill was disoriented but healthy. He had just one bottle of water and didn't know exactly where he was.

Hamill escorted the platoon back to the shack, which was empty. Soldiers found an abandoned AK-47. A military photo showed his bed arranged on a couple of couch cushions on the dirt floor, with a blanket tossed over them. A bucket served as his latrine.

The Mississippi man told soldiers he had been well treated by his captors, who gave him a rudimentary medical kit, a box of cookies and an oil lamp.

Troops arrested two Iraqis farming in a field near the shack, Merrill said. The military thinks the men live in the nearby farmhouse, speculating that it was impossible for them not to know what had been happening in the shed.

- Information from Cox News Service was used in this report.

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