News-Info-Alerts

Re: Hope Kept PGW POW Alive

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: March 30, 2003

"Hope kept POW going in Iraqi cell

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News

Navy Lt. Bob Wetzel never gave up hope.

Not when he ejected from his A-6 attack plane, landing in the Iraqi desert with two broken arms, a broken collarbone and cracked vertebrae.

Not when he was captured, interrogated and beaten with a leather whip.

"I was expecting the worst," Wetzel said Friday of the days following his parachute drop into Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991, the beginning of the Persian Gulf War.

When Iraqis took him to a dungeonlike room on Jan. 18, "I was expecting to die a miserable death within the first hour."

But he never quite gave up hope.

And it was that hope, the refusal to give in to depression, that carried him through - and it's what will save American POWs in this war, said Wetzel, now a first officer for United Airlines.

In Desert Storm, Wetzel flew his A-6 off the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga in the Red Sea. Bombardier Jeffrey Zahn was at his side.

Their target: the H-3 airfield 250 miles west of Baghdad, the same airfield seized by coalition forces last week.

He was 12 miles from the target, flying below radar at 200 feet, when suddenly the sky lit up, turning night into day.

"One of their missiles was coming right at us," Wetzel said. "I turned and it detonated right behind us." Right away, the twin-engine plane lost one engine. A few seconds later, it lost the other.

Wetzel and Zahn ejected, hard. The seats were attached to rocket motors, and when they went off, the blast broke Wetzel's back. His arm slammed against the seat. The force of the parachute opening cracked his collarbone.

He lost consciousness, and when he and his parachute hit the Iraqi desert, he broke his other arm.

When he woke up, "I was in shock," Wetzel said.

He was 30 and in peak physical condition. He had assumed that if he ever found himself on the ground in Iraq, he could evade the enemy and get out.

"But now, I was barely able to walk, just shuffling along." He joined up with Zahn and hid in a gully, but Iraqi airmen from the H-3 airfield soon found them.

Luckily, Wetzel and Zahn were found by medical people attached to the airfield.

The dungeon, where he expected to be tortured, instead was the place where they sewed up some of his cuts by candlelight.

They gave him anesthesia, and he slept until morning. They'd operated on both arms, inserting metal to hold the bones in place.

"The turning point came that day," he said. "I was feeling so depressed about my horrible situation, not only being a POW, but all the broken bones.

"I said to myself, 'All right, this is a matter of survival here. I'm going to do whatever I need to get out of here safely."

From then on, he became optimistic, determined to make the most of it. He spent most of his time in captivity doing one of four things:

"I prayed a lot to God.

"I thought of the happy times growing up in New Jersey with my family and friends.

"I thought of the happy times I was going to have when I was released with my fiancee and friends.

"And I just daydreamed a lot."

After a week in the hospital, he was transferred to a prison, where he was kept in solitary confinement.

After three weeks, he was brought in for interrogation.

"I wasn't going to give out any secrets, but I was going to answer enough questions to stay alive."

They didn't believe him when he told them he had no middle name, so the interrogation got off to a rough start."They beat me for about five minutes with this big leather whip."

They asked him what aircraft carrier he was on and how many planes it carried.

Instead, he gave his name, rank and serial number. That brought more whippings.

He never divulged anything they couldn't have picked up from CNN or simple research.

He was interrogated once more some days later, and was transferred to several prisons during the next few weeks.

On March 2, the day he was supposed to marry his fiancee, Jacqui, Iraqis told him, "The war is over. You guys lost."

Two days later, he and 10 others were released to the Red Cross at a Baghdad hotel. Zahn returned to the States as well.

Wetzel married Jacqui three months after his release, and they now live in Centennial with their three children.

"I was never really scarred by the whole thing," Wetzel said. "I attribute it to those four things I kept focusing on.""