News-Info-Alerts

Re: Former Army POW Retraces Captivity

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: June 10, 2003

"Former Army POW retraces his captivity

By Marni McEntee, Stars and StripesEuropean edition, Monday, June 9, 2003

Courtesy of U.S. Army
Col. Martin Stanton stands outside the Al Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad, one of the places he was held by Iraqi soldiers after they captured him in 1990. Stanton now is Assistant Chief of Staff for Civil Military Operations in Iraq. He returned to Baghdad in April for the first time since his capture.


BAGHDAD, Iraq — Army Col. Martin Stanton has been in Iraq before — as a prisoner of war.

In 1990, Stanton was a 33-year-old major advising the 2nd Brigade, Saudi Arabian National Guard. In those days, officers got the occasional four-day weekend.

On one summer weekend, he flipped a coin to decide between going to the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Kuwait won.

“Looking back, I realize I must have known that troops were massing at the border,” said Stanton, 47, now assistant chief of staff for civil-military operations in Iraq.

“I blush at my innocence,” he said.

He arrived in Kuwait the night of Aug. 1 and checked into the Sheraton Hotel.

The next day, 200,000 Iraqi soldiers crossed into Kuwait to take the city. Now stranded at the Sheraton, Stanton checked in regularly with the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh.

“They told me to stay in place because my reporting was the only stuff coming out of there,” Stanton said.

The Iraqis never cut the Kuwait phone lines. Stanton managed to get through to his girlfriend, Donna, a registered nurse he met in Saudi Arabia. They ended up getting married later.

“I think he called me from the hotel in Kuwait,” his wife said Sunday by telephone from Tampa, Fla. “He was always on the phone.”

On Aug. 4, Stanton was on the phone with Maj. Rick Casem, assistant defense attaché in Riyadh, when someone kicked in Stanton’s hotel room door. A Republican Guard soldier strode into the room.

“You think you’ll say something pithy when something like that happens,” Stanton said. “I just told [him] ‘They’re right here. I gotta go.’”

The soldier ordered Stanton to pack one bag, then herded him on a bus full of businessmen from the hotel. The bus went north to Iraq. He wasn’t to see freedom again for 124 days.

During that time, the Iraqis kept the captives on the move, from Basra to Baghdad to Quaim to Kirkuk. They never physically hurt the POWs, although one sick captive failed to get medical help until Stanton and the others demanded it.

Stanton and his 15 fellow POWs became a tight-knit group. They were always planning their escape. But they never got a chance.

On Dec. 9, 1990, with little explanation, the Iraqis set them free. It was about a month before the Americans started bombing Iraq.

The Iraqis took the captives back to Baghdad, where they boarded an Iraqi Airlines 747 to Frankfurt. Later, Stanton went back to his hometown of Orlando, Fla., to reunite with his parents and Donna. They got married the day after Christmas and Stanton headed back to his post in Saudi Arabia.

“He was very determined to get back,” his wife said. “He was afraid they were going to keep him from the whole war.”

Stanton made his first trip back to Iraq this April to take over the civil affairs unit under Coalition Forces Land Component Command.

He found some time to retrace some of the steps of his captivity. In Baghdad, he posed for a picture outside the Al Rasheed Hotel, a once-grand inn where Stanton was held for nine days.

He also saw the burned out carcass of the 747 that carried him to freedom. It was the only one in the Iraqi Airways fleet. It was destroyed in the latest war with Iraq.

“It was fascinating to come back to Baghdad,” Stanton said. “Now I guess the circle is really closed.”

Somehow Stanton managed to keep his sense of humor about his four months as a POW.

He remembers walking the perimeter fence in Kirkuk singing “My Fair Lady,” with a Japanese captive and a Kurdish guard who could only chime in with “Wouldn’t it be lovely?” at the right moment.

He tells how he and the other captives disrobed when the Iraqis tried to take their photograph — a highly offensive display in the Muslim culture.

And he calls the Republic Guard soldier who kicked him out of his Kuwait hotel room “Gomer Pyle” for failing to notice the binoculars around his neck and the military map on the bed.

He wrote a book about his experience — “The Road to Baghdad” — which is now available on Amazon.com.

“Over the course of a decade, I’ve just turned the experience into funny stories,” Stanton said. “But you forget how scared and apprehensive you are when you are in captivity.”

© 2003 Stars and Stripes. "