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		20
 A: Well, we were turned over to the International Committee
 of the Red Cross in Baghdad. From there, because it was
 kind of a surprise to the Red Cross, they hadn't really
 made arrangements to fly us out of Baghdad. Ten of us
 were released, and we got in three Red Cross vehicles and
 drove from Baghdad to Jordan, which was about a nine hour
 trip. We got to drive around Baghdad a little bit, so
 I got to see some of the buildings that were bombed out.
 We also drove across the Euphrates River and got to see
 some of the bridges that had been dropped along the way.
 We had a police escort the whole way, so it was not very
 comfortable driving across Iraq. But on the other hand,
 I wasn't terrified because they obviously wanted to get
 rid of us. We drove to Jordan, crossed the border and
 went to a Jordanian Air Force Base. At that point we
 were turned over to the American Ambassador. We then
 went on a Jordanian helicopter to Amman, Jordan, where
 we were met by a medevac C-141. We flew from there to
 Bahrain and went to the US Naval hospital ship, "Mercy."
 As I said before, only ten of us were released initially
 and I knew there were a lot more prisoners than that.
 So, when being released, we asked the guy repeatedly when
 the other guys were going to be released. That was very
 much a concern, hoping these guys weren't going to be
 there for a long time. On the one hand, obviously, they
 didn't offer us a choice. We also knew it was the first
 chance to get the names out of everybody that we knew
 that was in there. We went to the Red Cross, told them
 all the names. As soon as we got on the C-141 there was
 a doctor there for every prisoner and an escort officer
 and they also had some intelligence people. We also told
 them all the names of the prisoners that we knew so they
 could start accounting for them. We were on the hospital
 ship, arriving about 5 o'clock in the morning, and they
 arranged for us to have a call back to our families,
 which was good. Then we started going through a lot of
 medical tests on the ship.

 Q: What was the prognosis on that? Did everybody turn out
 all right? 

 A: Yes, one of the prisoners released with me included
 Robert Wetzel, a Navy guy. They had put a plate in his
 arm, and that was going to have to be replaced. But
 basically everybody was in pretty good shape. The next
 day, we heard that they were supposed to release the rest
 of the prisoners and in fact, they did turn them over to
 the Red Cross. But they couldn't fly out of Baghdad
 because of the winds and the weather in Baghdad so they
 spent an additional night in Baghdad at a hotel and then
 flew out on the 6th of March They flew down to Bahrain
 and then came down to the hospital ship. We stayed in
 Bahrain until the 10th, and then were flown on a VC-135,

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