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Re: Iraq Ex-POW Tells of Torment

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: November 11, 2003

"Ex-POW tells more of his war torment

By MARK BIXLER / Cox News Service

JACKSON, Miss. -- Ron Young Jr. had three weeks to fear the unknown as a prisoner of war in Iraq.

He feared that his captors would torture him. He worried they would rape a female soldier in captivity. He wondered whether he would ever again see his family back in Lithia Springs.

Now Young is a former Army aviator settling into civilian life with fresh perspective and lingering concern for troops who are still in danger.

"I have a new appreciation for life and especially for my family," Young said. "My heart goes out to the soldiers who are still over there."

Young delivered the keynote speech Sunday at a "Celebrate America!" program in Jackson, a guest of honor on stage with three Medal of Honor winners from Mississippi and four mothers from the state whose sons in the military have been killed in Iraq.

"You vets have always been my heroes. I've always looked up to you," he told a crowd of roughly 1,500 flag-waving veterans and their families and supporters.

Young provided new details in an interview and in his remarks of what happened after he and Chief Warrant Officer David S. Williams of Orlando Fla. were shot down while their Apache Longbow helicopter was attacking targets near Karbala in March.

"We were foaming at the mouth to get into the fight," he said.

Young said his and other helicopters in his unit encountered withering fire as soon as they got in position to attack. Bullets sliced the air between their rotor blades. One engine went out. Young smelled smoke.

He tried to shoot back, he said, but his gun did not work.

"I pulled the trigger and nothing happened," he said.

After the helicopter went down, Young and Williams raced toward an irrigation ditch. An F-18 streaked low over the battlefield and dropped a bomb so close that Young and Williams could feel heat from the explosion.

He said he could hear Iraqis talking on the radio of his downed chopper.

"They were talking on our radio, saying 'We hear you, Americans!'" he said.

Young said the first day or two in captivity were the worst. His captors "beat the crap out of us" and shouted questions demanding to know why he had come "to kill our women and children."

They moved him to another prison and kept him in solitary confinement.

He said he had no idea other Americans were being held with him until he had spent about a week as a prisoner. He peered through the crack between a door and its frame one day and saw an African-American woman in pajamas coming out of the bathroom.

She turned out to be Pvt. Shoshana Johnson, one of five soldiers taken prisoner after their convoy took a wrong turn and drove into an ambush in southern Iraq.

Young said he was moved seven times and that four different groups of captors guarded him. The walls in one prison in Baghdad shook with thunderous explosion each time American bombs landed nearby.

As time went on, he said, he had more contact with six other American soldiers being held with him as prisoners of war. At one point, he said, he feared for what might happen to the only female soldier in the group.

"I was really worried about whether they would sexually assault Shoshana Johnson," Young said.

After guards suggested she "stay here and marry an Iraqi man," Young said, he told them that she was married.

"I was surprised, but they kind of stopped messing with her after that," he said.

Pvt. Jessica Lynch, a U.S. soldier who was held elsewhere in Iraq as a prisoner of war, was raped by Iraqi guards, according to a book published this month, but Young said he did not think Johnson was assaulted.

Young said he bathed only once -- as guards watched -- during his three weeks as a prisoner of war. He ate "rice and nasty chicken," got very sick and lost 25 lbs.

Marines rescued him and the six other U.S. prisoners of war in April.

Young came home to a hero's welcome. He has met with President Bush and appeared on the television program "60 Minutes." One magazine named him one of the nation's most eligible bachelors. Another magazine said he was among the "hottest" people in metro Atlanta.

Yet reminders of his ordeal were hard to escape.

Sharp noises have a way of tormenting troops who have endured trauma, and once, while speaking to a church in Texas, he winced in shock when a little girl in the congregation popped a balloon. Another time, at a Memorial Day ceremony in Lithia Springs, he said, the sharp crack of rifles in a 21-gun salute unnerved him.

Young said he avoided watching news of the war at first but now follows it closely.

The other day, he said, he watched a television interview with a young widow whose soldier husband had been killed in Iraq.

"I sat there and cried on the couch just listening to the news," he said. "These are the guys who are trying to make a difference in the lives of generations down the road."

Young left the Army about a month ago and is trying to plan his future. He said he and Williams have talked about writing a book but have made no final decisions. He also has thought about applying to Georgia Tech to study aviation or maybe aeronautical engineering. Young said he may join some other branch of the military and fly again.

He also has earned money making speeches, as he did Sunday in Jackson.

Young strode to the microphone after former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, praised U.S. troops in Iraq and after Miss Mississippi, in a resplendent red pantsuit, tiara sparkling in the spotlight, delivered a rousing rendition of "God Bless the U.S.A."

Most military men and women, Young said, will not receive anywhere near the attention that he got after returning from Iraq, but they should not go unacknowledged.

He said he saw someone on an airplane approach a stranger in uniform to thank him for serving -- a model, he said, for people who want to thank men and women in the military for following their nation's command to put themselves in harm's way.

"Please support our troops no matter what," he said. "They're the ones putting themselves in harm's way."

Mark Bixler writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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