After a month and a morning in captivity, three U.S. servicemen finished their trip to freedom Sunday on a tarmac at this NATO base, with each of them smartly saluting an honor guard and the Army and Air Force’s top European command.
Smiling and waving to a crowd of cheering, flag-waving supporters, the three men once held by Yugoslav forces then boarded a waiting helicopter for a nearby hospital.
On their journey from Serbia, they expressed their gratitude to Rev. Jesse Jackson–who negotiated their release–stated their hopes for peace in the Balkans and, in one instance, voiced some sympathy for their Serb captors.
After preliminary examinations, doctors and psychiatrists said the three men had suffered only minor injuries and probably would be released from the hospital in two or three days. The soldiers’ main need, doctors said, was more food to top off the Pizza Hut and Burger King fare given them by the flight and medical crew who brought them to Ramstein from Zagreb, Croatia.
That was good news for the families of the three servicemen, who were on their way to Germany on Sunday for long-awaited reunions.
The soldiers’ release Sunday morning at the War Press Center in downtown Belgrade, Yugoslavia, capped a stunning visit by Jackson and his delegation of religious leaders.
Few expected them to succeed when they left Washington on Wednesday. The Clinton administration had urged them not to go. But by Sunday afternoon, the three soldiers were chomping on cupcakes, drinking Coke and sharing their stories of captivity.
Earlier in their journey, one of the three, Staff Sgt. Christopher Stone, 25, of Smiths Creek, Mich., stepped to the Serb-Croat checkpoint gate on the road out of Serbia and said he was heading home from prison heavy-hearted.
“A lot of the guards, in fact, the majority of the guards treated us very well,” Stone said, as he held hands with Jackson. “As we were leaving them, it was kind of sad to know there’s this war going on, we’re leaving, and they’re left behind.”
Later, on the airport tarmac in Zagreb, Stone added: “It’s sad that this is happening, and we pray for peace in this conflict. I do hope that in some way our release will lead to negotiations for peace.”
The sentiments of the soldiers and the scene of their release created another Balkan incongruity: apparent kinship between captives and captors at a time when refugees continued to flee Kosovo and NATO bombs continued to fall.
The soldiers’ plea for peace, which dovetailed with Jackson’s calls for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, also contrasted sharply with the Clinton administration’s swift rejection of the idea that the return of the POWs might open a diplomatic door.
For all their kind words about their captors, the three servicemen described a sometimes harrowing experience of being held in isolation. To help get himself through the experience, Stone said he drew an American flag on a piece of toilet paper, folding it precisely like the real one he and the other POWs received Sunday from their 1st Infantry Division commander, Gen. David Grange, when they stepped on the tarmac in Zagreb.
“I used it as my symbol of my faith in my country and that they were doing everything they could to get us released,” Stone said. When he left prison, he brought the miniature version of the flag with him.
Spec. Steven Gonzales, of Huntsville, Tex., who turned 22 in captivity, leaned on another kind of faith. “I’ve always had the Lord our God there with us,” he said. “He was my companion through my darkest hours in my cell.”
Staff Sgt. Andrew Ramirez, 24, of Los Angeles, said he kept his faith in God as well, “and thought of my family and all the people in America that were behind us, that prayed for us.”
During their captivity, the soldiers offered up their own prayers. Fearing their prison could be hit by a NATO airstrike, they hoped each night they wouldn’t hear the tell-tale warning of impending bombs.
“Every night, they said that they would pray for the sirens not to go off,” said Rev. Irinej Dobrijevic, a Serbian Orthodox priest in Jackson’s ecumenical delegation, which rode with the soldiers from Belgrade to Zagreb.
For the first week after their capture, they were kept lying down with hoods over their heads and handcuffs on their wrists, said Bishop Dimitrios Pouchell, another member of the delegation who spoke with the soldiers on their six-hour bus ride from Belgrade to Zagreb.
But the heaviest burden was loneliness, they said, until finally they were visited by representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“They brought us messages from home and books,” Stone recalled.
“That was the best time; it came at the pinnacle of our isolation and our solitude.”
In the soldiers’ three hometowns, family and friends rejoiced.
“I’d like to tell you how excited we are right now to be on our way to see our family hero,” said Deanna Stone, sister of Sgt. Stone, at a news conference in Port Huron, Mich. “We are all incredibly grateful to Rev. Jackson for everything he’s done.”
In Los Angeles, Vivian Ramirez said she had spoken to her son on Saturday. “He was speechless.” she said. “He was just so overwhelmed that he is coming home. He sounded excited, just like I am.”
Gonzales’ mother, Rosie, said from her home in Huntsville, Texas, that seeing her son set free on television “was a deeply moving moment. . . . We saw the three (soldiers) holding their hands in the air with big smiles on their faces. it was wonderful, wonderful to see.”
The families, about 14 members in all, were expected to arrive in Germany on Monday.
Shortly before the prisoners’ first meeting with Jackson and Rep. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) on Friday, they were moved to new cells that had a special touch from their captors: target signs in the windows, an increasingly popular symbol in macabre Belgrade.
“That was a little concerning. We probably thought we were being left to be in a bombing situation,” Stone said. “But it turned out that wasn’t the case, it was just a harmless prank.”
The soldiers had nothing to read until recently, when they were given excerpts from the international code governing treatment of POWs. “I think all three of us now fully understand all our rights under the Geneva Convention,” Stone said with a smile.
They had plenty of time to worry as well. Gonzales’ chief concern when religious leaders met with him was “that bills hadn’t been paid and maybe it was affecting his family,” said Bishop Dimitrios.
The servicemen were isolated in 14-by-5-foot cells for much of their captivity since being seized March 31 while patrolling along Yugoslavia’s border with Macedonia.
“We didn’t have any contact with each other at all, other than a voice down the hall or a passing glance through a peephole,” Stone said. He confirmed that the finger-size bruise above his left eye occurred when they were captured. “They subdued us, and immediately following that we were protected,” he said.
Like his fellow captives, Stone thanked Jackson and the rest of the delegation. “We owe them our freedom,” he said. “And thanks to God for allowing it to happen.”
The soldiers finished their day at a hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where doctors said they suffered only minor injuries.
The three first called their families by cell phone Saturday while sitting at the same table where a Serbian military official signed over their release to Jackson, Blagojevich and Rev. Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council of Churches.
“I told my mother that we were free. The delegation had come and accomplished what they wanted, what all of America wanted and prayed for,” Ramirez said. “And I told her not to make me cry.”
