After Action

-Return with honor is a phrase commonly used to signify the commitment to endure hardships and to maintain one's dignity while captured by the enemy.

Is it difficult when somebody calls you a hero simply for the fact of having been a former POW?

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-Definitely.

-Yeah, we're -- We were just doing our job, ma'am, and just wound up in a difficult place.

-Mm-hmm.

-The heroes were the guys on the wall for the Vietnam era.

-Yeah.

-Hmm.

-So they're the ones who gave their lives in service for the country.

We were all willing to do that, but we're grateful we didn't have to.

-It is, um... I hate it.

I really hate it.

I'm a survivor.

I'll take that title every day.

I survived my captivity.

You know, there's some issues along with that.

But heroes are the 9 people that I served with in 507 who are no longer here.

They gave everything they had.

I spent 22 days as a prisoner of war until the United States Marine Corps came and saved the day.

I mean, literally saved the day.

Kicking down the door.

It's just like a movie.

It was just like a movie.

They literally kicked down the door.

Talking about, "Get down, get down."

-After they surrounded us and brought us back, I'm just sitting there against the wall and I'm just crying and crying.

And so I just started praying.

I said, "Lord, I have no clue what you got in store, but I just, you know, I need you to cover me, and I just need to know that you're gonna get me home."

-We stopped at a river.

There was some darkened hooches on either side of where we stopped, and other trucks came up behind us, and I thought -- And the guards got out and went behind us.

I thought, "Oh, this doesn't look good.

I think this is where they're gonna kill us."

-What does it mean to return with honor?

-Maintaining our honor in the prison because the Vietnamese really hated that, when we referred to anybody by their military rank.

And then to come home with our heads held high.

And for us, that was very, very important to know that we could do that.

Um, because so many, so many ground forces came home, got spit on, got things thrown at them, were disdained.

It was horrible.

-Hi, I'm Stacy Pearsall, retired Air Force combat photographer.

And today I'm sitting down with Robert Certain, Shoshana Johnson and Melissa Coleman, three former POWs who have returned home with honor after action.

- There will be light There is a road Marching on Coming home Major funding for After Action is provided by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio, and by America's Vet Dogs.

-Melissa, Robert, Shoshana, welcome to the farm.

I want to thank you so much for coming.

I really appreciate you taking the time.

I like to start out getting to know veterans and their backstories.

And I want to hear a little bit about where you're from, why you chose the branch of service, kind of your origin story, if you will.

And I'm gonna start right in the middle.

-I was born in Savannah, Georgia, went to college at Emory University in Atlanta, and there was an ROTC -- Air Force ROTC there.

And I have an older brother who was in Air Force ROTC at the University of Georgia.

So I liked the idea of flying.

So -- And I was trying to avoid going to seminary anyway.

So -- So I joined the ROTC, got a full-ride scholarship.

And when I graduated, I received my commission, went off to California to learn to tell pilots where to go.

I was a trained navigator and bombardier, assigned to B-52s, trained in California, and then came to Blytheville, Arkansas, and went to U-Tapao, Thailand, and we flew 50 missions over there and came back.

Went back on alert.

Flew training missions.

Uh, proposed to this girl that I had met just before I went to Thailand.

And the fool woman said yes.

-Robert Certain was serving as an Air Force navigator bombardier on the B-52 Stratofortress in Vietnam when his aircraft was hit by two surface-to-air missiles over Hanoi on December 18, 1972.

Though all the crew ejected, only Bob and two other crew members survived the crash.

Bob spent 101 days as a prisoner of war until he was released during Operation Homecoming on March 29, 1973, when he returned home with honor.

-I was on alert in May, about May the 19th, uh, when the -- It was a Sunday and the wing commander came to the alert facility and that's unheard of.

They don't come out there on Sundays.

And then he called me aside.

I thought, "Oh, dear."

He said, "Lieutenant Certain.

Aren't you planning to marry Bob Wade's daughter in June?"

I said, "Yes, sir."

He said, "You're not gonna be here."

I said, "Excuse me?"

"We're deploying to Guam Saturday."

So we got married in a hurry.

You know, as Johnny Cash -- "Got married in a fever."

And, uh, the day I was scheduled to go home, uh, the rotations were canceled on a Friday.

Everybody went in the crew rest, and on Monday, we flew to Hanoi.

And I had the dubious distinction of being the first B-52 to get shot down over Hanoi and the first member of the crew to get captured.

There 100 days and came home and met my wife, whom I barely knew, uh, and my parents and others at Scott Air Force Base.

Uh, and the Air Force had agreed to -- to send me on active duty to seminary, and I left active duty and went to the reserves.

Stayed in the reserves till I retired from that in '99 and, uh, did parish work in various parts.

-How about you, Melissa?

-I had no aspirations to go in the military at all.

My best friend from seventh grade was in ROTC all through school, and, uh, all she asked for was a ride to a recruiter.

So I took her and sitting in the waiting room, and, you know, they're back there talking to her, and he comes out and he says, "Hey, you ever thought about joining the military?"

I said, "No."

He says, "Well, you know, we got this thing called the buddy system.

You know?

You can join together and you'll go to basic and AIT and your first duty station."

And I'm like...you know, not really interested.

And he said, "It's $2,500 bonus."

in 1988 to an 18-year-old -- I'm, like, not very good at math, but it sounds like $2,500, you know, and it sounds like a good deal.

"So tell me what you got."

So we get to talking and, you know, so we took the test and whatnot, and, um, my mom and dad were, like, sideswiped.

They were like, "What the hell," you know?

This was never a discussion because, like I said, never in their wildest dreams.

So anyway, we go off to basic and, uh, Fort Dix.

I had never been out of Michigan before.

Grew up and born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Uh, Fort Dix, New Jersey, for basic and Fort Leonard Wood for AIT.

-Melissa Coleman served as a heavy vehicle driver in the Army when she was deployed to Saudi Arabia in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

On January 30, 1991, her convoy was attacked and she was shot in the upper and forearm, captured and taken prisoner by Iraqi soldiers, making her the first enlisted female prisoner of war in U.S.

military history.

After spending 35 days in captivity, she was released on March 5, 1991, where she returned home with honor.

-When we get to Fort Leonard Wood, we're all in one big old, you know, big old dorm room.

We get, you know, meet all these people.

We're doing the training, and I'm loving driving trucks.

We're 88 Mikes and we're driving HEMTTs all through the mountains up there in, uh, Missouri and in the middle of winter and all kinds of crap.

Well, come to end AIT, supposed to go to our first duty station.

"Oh, well, Ivy, you're going to Germany.

Rathbun, you're going to Fort Bliss, Texas."

That wasn't part of the agreement.

So I get to -- get to my unit, and, uh, they're having a car wash, and I've never been out of Michigan.

My little lily-white self.

Pale as snow in Michigan.

Put on shorts and go to the car wash.

I got sunburned that first weekend.

They tried to court-martial me that first -- The first weekend I was in the unit, they tried to court-martial me for getting sunburn.

Like, welcome to Fort Bliss, Texas, but, uh, ended up, uh, getting raped by a fellow soldier at gunpoint.

Went and told top.

He said, "Stay away from him."

I'm like, "Sounds reasonable in an alternate universe."

We're in the same squad, same platoon, same everything.

So sure, I'll stay away from him somehow.

But, uh... Eventually I met my current husband.

Um, we were in the same unit.

Um, not married at the time.

Um, I got pregnant, um, in June of '90.

And in September of '90 -- Well, August of '90, Saddam invaded Kuwait.

Well, I miscarried on September 12th at three months' pregnant.

And, uh, they gave me 72 hours' bed rest and, uh, told me, "Okay, now that that's over, go ahead and prepare for deployment with your unit."

So that was that and off we went.

-So not a lot of sensitivity anywhere... -Oh, no.

-...in that process.

-Oh, no.

-So what's your story, Shoshana?

-Well, I'm an Army brat.

Um, you know, we immigrated to the U.S.

Um, my family is -- Since we came to the U.S., we've been serving in the military.

Uh, I had a great uncle that came over in the '50s, joined, served in the Korean War, and it's been a constant family tradition.

We only have one on active duty right now, and that's a rarity.

Um, so, army brat, we traveled around a lot.

Um, Fort Bliss, um, dad was stationed there a couple times.

Uh, it's where I graduated high school, and I remember being in high school, and I was in JROTC.

I loved -- I loved the structure of the military, I really did.

But being immigrant parents, you know, when it was time to graduate high school, I was like, "I'm gonna join."

They were like, "No, you're gonna go to college.

We did this for a reason.

You go to college."

I went to college at UTEP, University of Texas at El Paso.

First time I had, like, real freedom.

My parents were very strict.

Drill Sergeant Johnson did not play, and Mom backed him up with it.

So I got some real freedom and I had a good time.

I had a real good time.

I flunked out, you know.

And then I did a lot of different jobs, and I partied and I had a good time.

But there's a point in life where you say, "Is this it?

What do you want?

What do you want to do?"

And stuff like that.

Uh, my aunt gave me some advice.

She said, "Look at what you love to do and how you can make it a career and stop looking at how you can make money."

I love cooking, baking especially.

I wanted to do culinary school.

My parents said, "You better find your own way.

You got your two sisters behind you and we already tried to help you the first time, so now it's up to you."

-Army veteran Shoshana Johnson enlisted as a food service specialist before deploying in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

While there, her convoy was ambushed.

She was shot in the ankles and she was taken captive in the city of Nasiriyah.

She was held prisoner for 22 days along with five other members of her unit.

She was freed in a rescue mission conducted by Marines on April 13, 2003.

Shoshana is the first black female prisoner of war in U.S.

military history, and she returned home with honor.

-So I joined the Army.

Um, I did well on my ASVAB, but I wanted to go to culinary school so it didn't make sense to be, you know, a supply clerk or anything like that.

It didn't -- It didn't go towards my end goal.

So I was a cook.

I loved it.

I got stationed with my sister, who by that time had went to a military institute and was a commissioned officer.

Even though I was the older sister, she was a commissioned officer.

Got stationed with her at Fort Carson, Colorado, in the same regiment.

I hated it, man.

Um, uh, I had my daughter, uh, came time to re-enlist, and I re-enlisted to come home to Fort Bliss.

I had that support system there for my daughter.

I was there seven months, deployed, and we didn't think anything of it.

Like I said, it's a family thing.

We -- Korea, Vietnam, every conflict, we've had a family member serve.

And it's never been -- I mean, I did have -- My mom had a great, uh, second cousin that got injured in Vietnam.

But, you know, we all came out of it okay.

So I deployed thinking it was no big deal.

And, you know, we deployed.

Conflict started.

Three days into the conflict, we were at, um, convoy.

We were in that initial long convoy that you saw the videos and stuff.

We ended up falling back where vehicles get bogged down, we get stuck.

I'm in a maintenance company.

They're picking up vehicles.

We are falling -- Um, following behind the main convoy.

Signaling wasn't great.

We weren't getting any radio.

We passed the Marines.

-That was what that look was for.

-We passed the Marines as we go into Nasiriyah.

And I thought, "What the hell are we doing?

When does the Army, much less a maintenance unit, pass the Marine Corps going anywhere except towards the back?"

So, you know, I had that bad feeling.

Um... And we go into Nasiriyah and it's not secure.

We go in initially, I distinctly remember it.

We go straight, we take a turn to the left and it goes up like a "U," and then we stop.

They said the city's unsecure.

We got to get the hell out.

So we start going back.

And they had set up a lethal ambush.

They cut us into three sections.

The first part of the convoy gets out.

The second part is bogged down taking fire, but they're fighting back.

The end of the convoy is where me and the guys were bogged down.

And, uh, we lost 9 from 507th and two that were attached.

And, uh, myself, the, uh, four guys and Jessica were captured.

Actually, Lori was captured, too.

She was captured alive and she died of her injuries.

I was shot during the ambush.

Uh, we were captured.

It wasn't pleasant.

They beat the holy crap out of me until they realized I was female.

And they kind of backed off and separated me from the guys.

They immediately dragged me away and threw me.

And I remember I saw Sergeant Riley, and I yelled out, "Sergeant Riley!"

And they just shoved me in the back of a vehicle and take off.

-What was the biggest fear in that moment?

-Being taken away because I don't know what's happening and there's nobody to see.

-Mm-hmm.

-Um, even if they ended up killing me, Riley, Edgar and stuff would have seen it.

And there's something -- I don't think some people understand.

There's something to tell my family.

They separate me and take me away and they kill me.

Where's my body?

Where's what happened to me and so forth?

And, um, I think that was a thread through my whole captivity is if I don't make it, my family needs my body.

My family needs my body because I know my family.

They'll keep looking, they'll keep asking questions, and they won't live their own daggone life.

And maybe I have a little anxiety about that now.

I need to, you know, there are times when I'm alone, but I can't be alone-alone, you know?

Uh, I'll sit in my house alone.

But, you know, my sister lives down the street.

My parents are around the corner, and I know my parents are gonna call me and stuff like that.

I can't be just disappear and be alone-alone.

It's -- It's -- I can't do it.

-Hmm.

-But, you know, also, you know.

So I spent 22 days as a prisoner of war until the United States Marine Corps came and saved the day.

I mean, literally saved the day.

Kicking down the door.

It's just like a movie.

It was just like a movie.

They literally kicked down the door.

Talking about, "Get down, get down."

-Well, what were those initial moments for each of you?

-The night I was shot down, it was, uh, 20 minutes of freefall.

at 15,000 feet and then -- -You had 20 minutes to think about what was gonna happen to you?

-Yeah.

-That's a long time to think about.

-And then I'd have -- -20 minutes of freefall to think about what was gonna happen.

-When the parachute opened, I was hanging over the target.

-Oh, my God.

So then how long -- How long were you in your parachute looking down at what you had just bombed, saying, "That's the enemy waiting for me to come down to exact their... -At first, I wanted to make sure I didn't fall in the target.

It was on fire.

So I landed on the edge of that field, rolled into the ditch.

In a few minutes, the civilians spotted me and started throwing rocks at me from the railroad tracks, and four militia came up with AK-47s, invited me to come up out of the ditch.

So I surrendered and came up and they took my helmet.

They took my flight suit, my boots, my socks, and left me in my skivvies, blindfolded me, tied my elbows behind my back, and we -- and protected me from the civilians because actually they were unhappy that I'd dropped in on them unannounced like that.

-That was pretty nice of them, actually.

-Thinking back on it, uh, I'm sure there was a price on my head.

-Oh, you think they got some money in exchange for you?

-In exchange for bringing me to the -- to the prison alive.

They had a blue book like we had in college.

And they were -- They had the pilots', uh, dog tags, ID card, all that.

And they were writing all this stuff down.

So they were keeping good records of who they took.

And then after a while, we moved -- My foot -- Uh, and again, it's winter, it's December the 18th, and it's cold and I'm in my bare feet and my skivvies and blindfolded.

-Mm.

-And they took me to a road and my defense officer had been captured.

He was -- He was in the ditch with me.

And we're listening to B-52s bomb the city.

And that's kind of interesting.

They were to be bombed, the receiving end of that.

And then eventually a truck came along and they got us out and put us in this truck and drove us on this blackened, very narrow road with opposite traffic and those blackout headlights, if any, and stacks of supplies underneath all the trees.

So I'm thinking, "How do I get the message out?"

This is where they ought to bomb.

And, uh, we stopped at a river and there was some darkened hooches on either side of where we stopped, and other trucks came up behind us, and I thought -- The guards got out and went behind us.

I thought, "Oh, this doesn't look good.

I think this is where they're gonna kill us."

And then one of the guards came back and started just beating the crap out of me.

And then trucks started driving up out of the river.

It was a ferry crossing across the Red River.

And so when they got up out, then we got on the ferry and drove over to the other side into the city of Hanoi.

And they took us and drove us through the city.

It was all blackened out, you know, it was darkened.

And when we arrived at the very famous gate of the Hoa Lo, you know, Hanoi Hilton prison, I thought, "This is good.

They're -- We're gonna live."

And then went in to interrogation room and interrogated for hours at night.

Um, and they would leave me and come back and leave me and come back.

And at SERE school, we've been told if you're ever captured, if you're ever going into combat, develop a backstory with very few details that's not true, but that you can remember.

So if you're interrogated, you will tell the same story every time.

So I'm thinking, "Well, what's my backstory?"

So they started asking me questions.

They wanted to know about the technical aspects of the airplane.

So I'd say -- When they ask questions about the airplane, I'd say, you know, "I'm -- I'm just a celestial navigator.

I just navigate airplanes over water using the sun or the stars.

When we get over land, the radar navigator takes over.

And that's the end of my duties."

And then, um, they came in.

At one point, they fed us, gave us some cabbage soup, and they asked if I wanted to write a letter home.

I said, "It's my Geneva Convention right."

Oh, God.

He screamed and yelled and left.

And then after a while, he came back and said, "Okay, you can write a letter home."

He sat down.

He handed me the paper and a pen and inkwell.

"Now I tell you what to write."

And I said, "Nope.

I either write what I want or I don't write."

And he screamed and yelled, "You'll never see your family again.

We're gonna kill you."

But they had already called the news conference.

They took us in one at a time.

And when I walked in there, I was wearing the magenta and gray striped pajamas, and I had my hands in my sleeves like this.

And I was not aware of that.

But I saw a picture later, and, uh, and then I saw all these Europeans with cameras.

I thought, "Hot damn, I'm going home."

What the idea was, I was supposed to remember what was in the letter, and re-speak it over these microphones, and it would have been something like President Nixon stopped this horrible bombing and signed the treaty.

And -- But [indistinct] he don't say nothing.

But I looked at every photographer, so I was sure that they would have a picture and that would be on the wire services.

And so 48 hours later, it was on the front page of "The Washington Post" and every major newspaper in the country.

So my family knew I was coming home.

They didn't know when, but they knew I was alive and the war was coming to a conclusion.

The old prisoners just loved it.

Uh, when they realized it was B-52s after the first few, uh, they -- they were up.

They were out of their bunks, cheering and shouting and dancing around and getting ready to pack up and go home.

So that was that initial first night.

Welcome to the Hanoi Hilton.

-Hmm.

-Mnh-mnh.

-I got captured on January 31st.

We drove HETs, the heavy equipment transporters, hauling tanks, uh, 82.5-ton tractor-trailer combination.

Um, and so two of the -- two of our vehicles had been left in Dhahran for repair.

So we had moved up to Log Base Charlie in the middle of, uh, Saudi.

And so we took a minibus with the chief warrant officer of the maintenance unit as our lead.

We went down there to go pick him up.

So we're taking the two tractors, driving them back up with the minibus in front of us.

Well, we got to -- We had no radio communication.

They gave us a strip map to use in the desert.

No street signs, no nothing, no radio communication.

And we were not allowed to have our magazines in our weapons.

We had to have them in our flak vest.

Well, we get to the Jabal tapline and that -- Well, the road was closed, so you had to exit the freeway where they had speed bumps.

Well, the minibus... Doop doop doop doop over the speed bumps.

We can't do that in a bobtail tractor.

So we had to go slow, go slow.

By the time we got back on the freeway, minibus was gone.

No -- Couldn't see him.

Nowhere to be found.

So there we are, left to our own device.

I pulled over, truck behind me pulled over.

I'm telling them, "This is where we're supposed to go."

The three guys ganged up on me.

"You don't know where we're supposed to go.

You were sleeping when we were on the way up here."

I'm like, "No, I know we're supposed to go west."

"No, you don't..." So instead of being the B that I knew I was, copped the attitude, pop my headphones on.

Turned Anita Baker on, jumped in the passenger seat and let this idiot drive me due north into Khafji without knowing that Khafji had just been fought for that morning with the Marines.

And as we're driving, I'm looking out the window and I see off the road about -- maybe a mile off the road, this whole marine unit.

The entrance to Khafji had -- Like, I always described it like McDonald's arches, but they were -- It was almost like a "M," but it was green outline with the Arabic writing.

It was white and it had green writing.

So we drive right on through the -- right under the arch.

All of a sudden, we start taking fire.

I'm like, "What the hell?

Who is shooting at us?"

Because I'm still thinking we're in Saudi Arabia.

"Who the hell is shooting at us?"

So in the meantime, I feel this burning in my arm.

I look down.

Like, "Oh [no audio] I'm hit."

So the last thing I remember is I look up, made sure that the other truck got turned around and they were leaving, pulling, going back out of the city.

Still not a Marine in sight.

I can't get out the door because I can't -- My arm is in shock.

It's completely numb.

Lockett kicks out the window, jumps out the door, opens the door, pulls me out, and we try to run down the inside of the wall to get to one of the mansions down there.

We get to the end of the wall and he's trying to pull me over the wall.

He jumps up on the top of the wall and tries to pull me over.

He can't get me because by this time, they got -- They're on the outside of the wall and the inside, and they got us surrounded.

Long story short, we find out after the fact -- Well, then there was an air raid right after they captured us.

So now I'm cussing them out.

I'm like, "Who the hell is shooting at us?

Why are we -- Where are -- We're in Saudi.

Who's shooting at us?"

They're telling -- telling me, "No cuss, Mrs.

No cuss.

Why are y--" You know, "No cuss."

I'm still cussing them out.

After they surrounded us and brought us back, it was like a -- You know when you get your oil changed and they have the stairs that -- That's where they took us because it was an air raid.

And so I'm just sitting there against the wall and I'm just crying and crying.

And so I just started praying.

I said, "Lord, I have no clue what you got in store, but I just, you know, I need you to cover me, and I just need to know that you're gonna get me home."

And I felt, you know -- People look at me when I say this.

Some people are like, "Girl."

But, you know, most people that have faith are like, you know, "That's so amazing."

I swear I felt a warm start at the top of my head, went all the way through my body and out my feet, and I stopped crying right then.

I didn't cry for the rest of the 33 days except one time, and I didn't.

I just -- It was a peace that came over me, and I just knew that whatever it was, God was gonna see me through it and I was gonna be okay, and I was okay.

And so from that point, we waited on transport.

They had some Jeeps come and they took us from there.

There was another air raid and they put us in a foxhole.

When the air raid ended, they brought me back to the Jeep and they left David in the foxhole and they're like, "Get, get."

And I'm like... "Go get him.

I'm not getting in this vehicle unless you go get him because you're not leaving him.

So go get him.

And then I get in the vehicle."

So they went ahead.

You know, they were not happy about it, but they went and got him and brought him.

Well, then we traveled more through the desert, and we pull up, complete flat desert.

And there is a complete house underground.

I'm like, "What the hell?"

-Were they just moving you deeper?

-We were eventually making our way up to -- We were going through Kuwait at that point.

They were trying to work our way from, um, Khafji up through Kuwait to get into, uh, cross over into Iraq.

-Okay.

-We crossed over into Iraq, and now we're in a huge neighborhood with these huge houses, and there's this mansion, and it's a headquarters for the Iraqi army.

They got the room with all the computers and the satellite images and the maps laid out.

Then they take me in and they're asking me all these questions, because when they walked us into the foyer of the house, there's all these rooms and phones ringing, and I'm like, "Wow."

But anyway, they bring me in the room and they're asking me, "Where's 101st airborne?

Where's 32nd airborne?"

I'm like, "Hell if I know.

I'm a truck driver.

I don't know where those people are."

So... But we eventually got to Baghdad and got put in our prison.

And the prison had seven Saudi soldiers in another part of the prison.

And then it was David and I, and then they eventually moved him to another prison.

Being only 20, I really didn't understand the enormity of the situation because I was so naive.

So when I got released, I was mind-blown at the... -The lack of information?

-No.

Well, that too.

But I was mind-blown at the extent of the media notoriety and... -Oh, right.

Okay.

-That was way too much.

When they asked me when I got released, they were like, "How do you feel about the media?"

And I was like, "I'd rather be back in my cell because y'all are too much."

-People would tell my wife it was God's will that I survived.

And I thought, "Wait a minute, what about the three of my crew members who were killed?"

-Mm-hmm.

-All of whom were married, all of whom had children.

Uh, and we were newlyweds.

We barely knew each other.

And what about them?

Don't tell me that.

It's God's will that I do the best I can with my life at this point.

-Yeah.

You... It's hard to deal with coming home when others are dead.

-Yeah.

-That's a weight.

And you try.

I mean, but I'm only human.

You fall down, you get up and so forth.

But, Lord, sometimes you... There have been plenty of days when I was like, "It would have been easier just to let it go.

Just to close my eyes and let it -- just let it be done."

Then you still go back to that same question from -- from the first minute of captivity.

Why am I still here?

Captivity was, you know, 22 days.

I look back and I was like, that was pretty short, but it was still rough.

-Mm-hmm.

-And in between that time, they did that video.

What is your name and all that kind of stuff.

You never had to think so fast in your life.

Shoshana is a Hebrew name, very Jewish name, and I made sure to say Shauna, um, and so forth.

But after that, their little interrogation, I was seen by a doctor who cleaned up my wounds and so forth.

And then the guys were brought into the room, and I'd never been so glad to see, you know, because that meant I wasn't alone.

I wasn't alone.

And on the way to Baghdad, they would stop at the little cities to show us off.

They had Americans.

And at first, they let the city have access to us.

We got spit on.

I got slapped, you know, and so forth.

They finally took us to wherever they were supposed to do this and do the interrogation.

And where's the 101st airborne?

Where's the mechanized infantry?

-Did they roll out -- Time to write your letters?

-No, none of that.

And then I was like, "You realize I'm a cook, right?"

But then they break it down.

So how are they getting their supplies?

How are they feeding you?

I was like, "Oh, I don't know."

-You're just a cook after all.

-Yeah.

-"I'm not a supply officer."

-Right?

I'm like, "I'm just a cook."

I said, there's a -- there's two sergeants above me, you know, and stuff like that.

So interrogation took a little while.

Um, I remember then they finished up with the guys and they blindfolded us, taking us somewhere.

It ended up being to the prison where we were gonna be held.

And the whole time from I've been shot, I couldn't walk.

The pain was intense and they're carrying me.

By the time they got to the prison, they kind of put me up on my feet and I walked.

I was afraid that I -- I'm not light.

I carry some meat on my bones.

I was afraid that they would get tired of carrying me and just shoot me.

So when they put me -- propped me up on my -- I walked.

And, um, for the first week or so, I did get -- they came in every day and changed my bandage.

The nurse, because I was bleeding through every day, would come in and change my -- And then finally they said, "You need surgery."

And I was like, "Oh, okay."

So they were like, "We're gonna come in later, take an X-ray of your lungs and stuff."

And I was like, "Okay, okay."

I'm like, "Do I really have a choice?"

I mean, really?

-How much did you trust that whole process?

-I was terrified, but I'm also realizing that I'm bleeding through these bandages every single day.

I remember crying out one time when my legs were burning so bad.

The pain was so bad.

And I remember crying out that time and I just couldn't take it.

And I remember they came and gave me something for the pain.

I didn't like taking anything for the pain because it made me loopy and I was afraid... -Something would happen.

-Yeah.

So I remember that time I was crying out and crying in pain a lot and they -- I let them give me the [no audio] pain meds.

I just -- Excuse my language, but, um, there's very few times when I was crying because I wasn't trying to portray a weak, you know... Give an inch, they'll take a mile.

If I showed that weakness, I don't know what else they're gonna do.

-Mm-hmm.

-So you just try to hold on.

-Was that -- So that was a real fear.

It's like you didn't want to be... You didn't want to be incoherent at all?

At all?

-No, we don't want to be incoherent.

-No.

-Okay.

That makes sense.

-We had one pilot who had, uh, his arms had been dislocated when he ejected.

He got caught up in the risers of a parachute in a high-speed ejection.

And, uh, they took him out to -- to reset his -- his shoulders, put him in a cast like this, and then interrogated him when he was in, you know, he was up on meds.

And he came back to the cell and he said, "You know, they kept asking me if the exhaust from the airplane, the engines goes straight back or down.

Why would they want to know that?"

I said, "They just need to know where to aim the heat seekers."

"Ohh!

Oh, oh, that.

I told him I didn't know."

It's a good thing.

-So a couple of things that I heard was, you know, you don't want to be incoherent at all.

And that would lead me to a loss of control.

And I'm wondering how -- what kind of long-term effects that has on you.

Like, when you come home, do you still have a sense of anxiety at any loss of control?

-I've never lost control, ever.

[ Laughter ] -I'm sure his wife would say something.

-Tell me about it.

-Well, you know, they said you were -- You know, I'm a clergymen.

"You're way too militaristic."

I said, "What does that mean to you?"

I said, "In the military, we're organized.

We execute step by step, whatever the plan is, and we delegate authority.

So what's wrong with that?"

-But does it go a step further from your time in captivity?

How do you and your family cope?

What are you -- What are you doing at home to -- to -- Like, what are you doing to reintegrate?

-Well, I did a whole bunch of stuff to try to come to terms with why -- I was really focused on control, uh, from Christmas all the way to Easter.

And then I finally realized that was the bookends of my imprisonment.

I shut down a week before Christmas, and I came home a week before Holy Week.

And my wife had been after me for, like, 30 years to write it down so our children would know what I'd gone through.

And -- And so I started writing that down.

And so it was writing therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, and then finally EMDR.

And in EMDR... there was -- My manifestation of post-traumatic stress was not about being a prisoner of war.

It was -- It was about the last mission I flew where I was shot down.

And what they said was the thing about it is, if the themes of that repeat themselves in your current life, not the details, but the themes of that -- that mission, then your responses are going to be limited thematically to the same decisions you made once upon a time, long, long ago.

I was, uh, doing a Christmas mass, uh, at that year, and some friends from the previous parish were visiting family in town, and they came to church that night.

And then few days later, they came by the house and said, "What happened to you?"

I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "When you were our priest, you were so tense on Christmas Eve that the whole service was tense.

And now you're just kind of laid back.

So what -- What is it?"

I said, "Must be that EMDR thing."

-Mm-hmm.

-So.

So that's -- So that was -- I came home in 1973.

This was 1997.

-My gosh.

You lived decades with that.

-Decades with -- with 6 or 7 capital stewardship drives.

It just drove me nuts and everybody around me because I was so tense.

-Wow.

Shoshana, are you dealing with any, uh, sort of issues from captivity?

Like control?

-I -- I -- Well, yeah.

[ Laughs ] It's, um... it's something that I've learned to deal with and admit easily that I do have some issues.

It was a hard road.

I didn't want to admit it.

I was like, "I'm good, I'm fine."

My aunt was, like, Air Force nurse.

She was like, "No, you're not fine."

And kept pushing and the family kept pushing.

But it's also a realization that you're not the only one dealing.

Your whole family's dealing.

Especially coming from a military family where they've been serving in conflicts.

Every single one of them were having nightmares and stuff like that, you know?

Issues, um, with my captivity, bringing up stuff that they had dealt with.

Um, my daughter started therapy at 5.

She's living with a mother with PTSD.

And, you know, I would have night terrors and so forth.

And she knew.

I think the biggest thing that helped me, and I just came to this in the last 6 or 7 years, is that it's a chronic illness.

It's not going away.

I just learned different coping skills.

You know, we're -- This month is the anniversary, 22 years.

Um, so I know that I have to, uh, be a little more aware of when I start to slip into that depression.

I know that I may have to go on anti-depressants, depending on how I'm feeling.

I'm literally monitoring.

What did I do today?

You know, how am I feeling?

Do I need to, you know, start my therapy up again and so forth.

So I just deal with it like anybody that has a chronic illness, because one of the issues I kept saying is the guilt, not just surviving, but I had a bad feeling.

I felt something was wrong.

We passed those Marines and I knew something was wrong.

You know, I had the experience with all this military family.

Why didn't I say anything?

And then the reality is I was a E4.

I was a cook.

You had five sevens.

You had a warrant officer, the captain, the first sergeant.

They were gonna listen to the specialist and talking about "Don't go in the city.

It's wrong.

Something's wrong, doesn't feel right"?

But it's still something that comes up all the time.

If I had said something, would 9/11 people be still alive?

The two that were attached, 11 people still be alive.

So I'm doing better than I was before, but I'm still dealing with a chronic illness.

Are there days when it gets rough?

Hell yeah, because there were some really -- I don't want to cry -- good people.

And, um, one of the people that died, El Paso was both of our hometowns.

He was 19 years old.

Last year at Memorial Day, I ran into his mother at his grave because every time we have an event at the cemetery, I go and talk to Ruben.

Um, it's the first time I've seen her since the ambush.

That was really, really hard.

Mrs.

Estrella, she wanted to know what happened to her boy and I -- I couldn't tell her because I wasn't sure.

But I was able to tell her because I spoke to him when we did that turn around that morning in the ambulance.

I said, "Your son was brave.

We were doing all this stuff, and Estrella was like, 'We just got to handle this.'"

He gave off that perfect machismo energy at 19 years old.

I said, "Your -- your son didn't question it.

And I think me and Edgar were the last ones to speak to him and Johnson before everything went down and he died."

So being able to tell that to his mother after all these years was really good.

And I think it lifted a weight off of me.

But there are days when it's so heavy, so heavy.

Because...why?

Why am I here?

Am I doing what I'm supposed to do?

Am I missing the point?

Am I respecting their sacrifice?

It is -- It can be down.

But then, you know, sometimes you do a little something that you know they would find funny, or they would give you a hard time about and stuff like that, and then you find joy where you can.

-So what keeps your -- your sun shining, Melissa?

-Um, well, when I was -- when I was captured, uh, David and I were listed as AWOL.

-What?

-We were AWOL our entire captivity.

-Oh, my gosh.

-Um, yeah.

So they said that we wandered off.

So, um, needless to say, my father was on the FBI watch list.

Um, because he didn't take it well.

Um, so, um, and a member of the Pentagon stupidly gave my father his home number, but they would not list me as a MIA/POW.

They kept me as AWOL as my status the entire 33 days.

I have in my possession at home notes from a congressional hearing that stated that Saddam Hussein never had to release us, and he didn't intend to.

So they had made the arrangements to release 10 of us as a show of good faith.

And if once he did that, then there would be a swap.

So David and I were part of the initial 10.

Somebody from New Jersey called my parents at like 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, and she's just screaming in the phone.

"She's free.

She's free.

Do you see her?

She's on TV, she's on TV, she's free."

So my parents turned the TV on.

They see me in my yellow prisoner of war uniform.

My dad dialed that col-- that -- I think it was lieutenant colonel from the Pentagon.

He woke him up.

He said, "Now, you little son of a bitch, do you think you bastards can list her as a prisoner of war now that she has -- is officially on television in her prisoner of war uniform?"

And at that point is when they officially changed my status from AWOL to POW.

MI-- MIA/POW.

-Well, I want to take the opportunity to go around and maybe say a little message or something like that of, um, what you -- what you would want to -- leave a message behind to somebody who may be struggling, who may -- may need a little motivation and perseverance.

-I would just say you never do it alone.

I think we give this mysticism that he survived alone.

No one does anything by themselves.

We do it as a community, as in a group.

We support each other in every way possible.

But it's hard for people to support you and give you strength if you don't ask for help.

Reaching out and getting help is not a weakness.

It is a strength because you recognize that you need help and then you can go from there to fix the problem.

If you don't admit that you need help, you'll never get better.

-Mm-hmm.

-And what's the point of sitting with all of that when you have a life to live?

-Mm-hmm.

-Right.

I don't think any of us thought we could get through it when it happened, when we were captured.

-Mm-hmm.

-Uh, and -- But we did.

And there were a lot of things that helped us with our resilience during captivity, but that was not something we went in with.

We went in with -- We were fat, dumb and happy.

We were under 25.

We did not have fully myelinated frontal lobes, so we thought we were invincible.

Right?

As young people.

And that's who we send into war.

But, you know, you'd live life some days, one minute at a time, and not just one -- one day at a time.

And so that's what builds resilience over time is dealing -- is living through whatever life throws at you.

And for, I think what I've heard for the three of us, we also had a faith that helped guide us and to know that, "Okay, I made it through this minute.

Now let me see if I can make it through the next minute."

-My message will be just with any circumstance you're going through in life, just look at it as keep pushing through because, I mean, as I did with my breast cancer, as I told my husband to do with his cancer, I mean, keep pushing through.

I mean, you're gonna -- You don't have a choice but to keep going.

You're gonna get through to the other side and just trust in God that he's gonna see you through.

-Wow.

I love that, and thank you so much for sharing these very difficult moments in your life and for reminding everybody that there's a life beyond those difficult moments, and it's a life worth living and having fun and sharing that with people that you care about and who care about -- who care about you.

So, um, and just know that, um, whether you like it or not, I'm in your life from this moment forward.

So... -Thank you for inviting us.

-We're in yours too.

-It's happening whether you like it or not.

Melissa, Robert, Shoshana, thank you so much.

-Thank you.

-Thank you for having us.

-Thank you for the time.

- There will be light There is a road Marching on Coming home