News-Info-Alerts

Re: Gulf War POW Flies in Iraq

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: February 08, 2003

"POW in '91 is a pilot again for new Iraq conflict

On Feb. 9, 1991, an Iraqi missile blew apart then-Capt. Russell Sanborn's AV-8B Harrier over southern Kuwait.

© February 8, 2003

Every morning, Lt. Col. Russell Sanborn wakes to an alarm that plays a recording of his five children singing ``Good morning, Daddy.''

All five were born after his release from an Iraqi prison camp 12 years ago. Most of them know that Daddy is going back to the place where the bad guys shot him down.

Before Sanborn left with Amphibious Task Force East from the coast of North Carolina last month, 10-year-old Jacob gave him some pretty sound advice: ``Dad, this time fly higher, fly faster.''

Sanborn is still flying Harriers. He is executive officer of a squadron aboard the amphibious assault ship Bataan, which reached the Red Sea earlier this week, and is steaming toward another possible war with Iraq.

These Harriers don't have to go as low as the ones Sanborn flew back in '91. Those planes were ``dinosaurs,'' Sanborn said.

The dinosaur Sanborn was flying on Feb. 9, 1991, took off from a makeshift air base at a soccer stadium in Al Jubayl, Saudi Arabia. It never made it back. Sunday is the 12th anniversary of a day Sanborn will never forget.

It was mission No. 17 of Operation Desert Storm for Sanborn.

While over southern Kuwait, an Iraqi missile struck the engine exhaust of his AV-8B Harrier. Sanborn, and the men in the air group's other two planes, were so focused on their ground target that no one saw the missile coming.

The explosion blew apart Sanborn's Harrier. His shattered airframe flipped over and began spiraling downward.

``After that, you're just along for the ride,'' Sanborn said. ``There's nothing you can do, so I pulled the handle and floated down.''

The ejection went smoothly. He landed about 12 miles from the Saudi border and four miles from a key landmark in his target area -- Al Jaber Air Base.

Sanborn's instincts told him to evade and escape. He spread his orange and white parachute for the F-15 and other Harrier in his group to see, and tried to radio his position in.

Then he spotted a dozen Iraqi soldiers. They charged toward him, pointing AK-47s and shouting in Arabic and broken English.

``This is Jump 57,'' Sanborn said into the radio. ``I'm alive. This is my final transmission. I am about to be taken prisoner by 12 Iraqis.''

But the radio was faulty, and no one above would ever hear his call.

The Iraqis took the radio and Sanborn's other survival gear, bound his hands and blindfolded him. After about an hour, the sun set and he was pushed into a pickup truck and driven to a headquarters about 15 minutes away.

There, the local commander made Sanborn walk a gantlet of shell-shocked and angry soldiers who had been bombed relentlessly for weeks.

Iraqi after Iraqi punched, kicked and beat Sanborn with rifle butts. The bilingual among them shouted, ``Kill him!''

``Their morale was low,'' Sanborn said. ``All they'd been able to do for three weeks was be bombed and hide from bombs. Pilots were the guys that were bombing them, so they looked at pilots as the lowest of the bad guys.''

Sanborn was put back in the pickup and driven to another headquarters, this one in Basra. There, he was sent blindfolded through another gantlet, where he was pummeled again.

Then it was on to Baghdad, driving only at night to avoid being bombed, and through innumerable checkpoints at intersections and bridges. Each checkpoint guard on the road to Baghdad was invited to beat the prisoner.

``The guy would come up, grab your face and punch you,'' he said. ``I would know it was coming every time we slowed down.''

Sanborn was held in a prison for common criminals. His one-man cell was 10-feet-by-12-feet and included a foam mat, a blanket and a bucket to use as a toilet. Occasionally he was allowed to dump the bucket into a hole at the end of the cell block.

``They wanted to dehumanize you,'' Sanborn said.

A sliver of light eked in from a slot in the cinder-block wall. A broken lightbulb hung from a wire in the center of the cell.

The Iraqis took his flight suit and gave him yellow pants with a rope belt, a yellow shirt that had POW stamped over the left breast, and a pair of canvas sneakers.

His jailers in Baghdad spoke fluent English and used their language skills to interrogate and torment him.

``They would say, `You realize no one knows you're here. We could kill you at anymoment, make it easy on yourself,' '' he said.

In interrogations, the Iraqis played what Sanborn called ``bad cop-bad cop.''

``Most of them were just thugs, who would punch and kick you whenever they could,'' he said.

The beatings were relentless, as the Iraqis asked about tactics, the airplane and target selection.

Sanborn, then a captain, used all the skills he had to survive and frustrate his captors' efforts to break him.

``Not that you ever win,'' he said. ``But you hope to break even.''

The worst beating came when his captors lost patience and burst his eardrums by hitting both ears with something -- he's not sure what because he was blindfolded.

Sanborn said the conditions in his cell were appalling. Prisoners were not permitted to bathe or wash their hands.

The food was often contaminated, and it didn't take long for Sanborn to develop stomach illnesses. Vomiting and diarrhea lasted through his confinement, adding to the filth of his cell.

``I asked if I could see a doctor, but they would say, `No,' '' Sanborn said.

His 155-pound frame dropped to 141.

The Iraqis served gruel for breakfast, typically chopped corn in a thick broth. Sanborn was given water infrequently. At night, prisoners were served a dark tea.

One night, the captors slid into his cell a bowl of fatty water that had a piece of backbone floating in it, possibly from a lamb.

The only other prisoners on the cellblock were three British Special Air Service soldiers. At night, while Iraqi guards cowered in bomb shelters to avoid allied airstrikes, the men would whisper to one another.

That night, Sanborn couldn't help but disparage the chow.

``So I complained to my British counterparts,'' Sanborn said, ``and one replied: `You colonists are always complaining about something. If it's not taxes, it's the food.' ''

As the war wore on, other allied prisoners joined the cellblock. By the end of the war, there were 10.

The prisoners learned of the cease-fire when one guard, a ``kid'' who had not participated in the briefings, poked his face into Sanborn's cell and whispered: ``Congratulations. The war is over. You'll be going home soon.''

The prisoners didn't know whether to believe the guard. When guards took five prisoners away, Sanborn and the others who remained didn't know whether the five had been released, or executed.

The next night, the Iraqis took Sanborn and the remaining prisoners to a ``halfway house'' in Baghdad, where they were then transferred to the Red Cross.

As the allied prisoners walked out of the prison, Sanborn said, the Iraqis sprayed them with perfume to cover up the smell of their sick and unwashed bodies. The Red Cross took them to the Al Rashid Hotel, where CNN reporters had stayed throughout the war, to spend the night before flying out the next morning.

Sanborn had his own room, but he was unable to relax.

``We weren't free,'' he said. ``We were still in Baghdad.''

Adding to his unease, hundreds of Iraqi citizens surrounded the hotel and threatened to storm it. Only Iraqi soldiers, like the ones who had beaten him, stood between the angry mob and the allied prisoners in the hotel.

He laid on top of the bedspread that night, ready to bolt up if the mob barged in.

The next morning he and the other allied prisoners flew to Saudi Arabia and freedom. It was March 5 -- 26 days after he had been shot down.

That same day, Sanborn's wife, Linda, learned for the first time that he was alive.

Sanborn said he does not know what to make of reports that Iraq is still holding Oceana-based pilot Scott Speicher, whom the Pentagon recently reclassified as missing in action.

``I have no idea what they would gain from keeping him, so I don't know why they would,'' Sanborn said. ``But I really don't know.''

After several days of medical care aboard the hospital ship Mercy, Sanborn flew back to the States and reunited with his wife.

Since then, the Sanborns have had Jacob and four girls -- spaced two years apart and blond like their mom, Sanborn said.

Each Feb. 9 since his return, Linda has given her husband a special present. Sanborn will open this year's present Sunday morning, by himself, aboard the Bataan.

Sanborn's POW experience only made him more eager to get back in the cockpit.

Fifteen days after returning to Cherry Point, Sanborn, a former University of Florida forestry student, went to his squadron commander.

``I said, `Sir, I can't cut the grass any more. When can I fly again?' ''

The answer: the next day.

``I got in that airplane, and for a minute I thought, `OK, buddy, you got me that one time,' '' Sanborn said. ``But as soon as I took off I was like: `Whoooo-hoooo!' ''

The Harrier is a tricky aircraft to fly and drop bombs from, and pilots really have to keep their heads in the game, he said. They have to block out all distractions.

By some accounts, the Harrier is a dangerous plane even when not in combat -- 45 Marines have died flying it, all in training or routine exercises.

``It's a terrifying airplane if you get complacent, or if you're dwelling on personal problems,'' he said. ``You've got to compartmentalize, focus on what you're doing.''

Sanborn says he loves the Harrier, and his job. And he says he doesn't think much about his days as a POW anymore.

Just the same -- and just for laughs, he says -- he carries with him the coordinates of the prison where he was held.

``If I get the chance, I am going to bomb it,'' he said with a laugh.

``No, if you start getting personal, you might start going down the wrong road. I've got a mission, I'm here to carry out that mission, and getting personal would distract from that.

``I'm just going to take my 10-year-old's advice: I'm flying faster and flying higher.''

Staff writer Dennis O'Brien is with Amphibious Task Force East for its deployment to the Middle East. He joined the Hampton Roads-based ships off the coast of North Carolina on Jan. 15. You can reach him at dobrien@pilotonline.com.

Copyright 1993-2003, HamptonRoads"