Former POWs Tell Their Story

Chief Warrant Officers David Williams and Ronald Young Jr. are Apache helicopter pilots who came home from Iraq after experiencing just about everything that can happen to a soldier.

The two pilots were shot down in a devastating firefight on March 24, shot at as they fled on foot, captured, held prisoner, beaten, displayed as trophies, rescued and hailed as heroes -- all within just 22 days.

Their story is a harrowing account of everything that war can be.

Although they have been home for a few weeks, they haven't shared their whole story publicly until now.

Their tale begins with a ferocious battle deep inside Iraq that brought their Apache down. Correspondent Dan Rather reports.

Williams and Young flew into a firestorm and survived, with their humor intact, their friendship strong and their loyalties clear.

"There are still guys over there and we want them in everyone's prayers and to remember those that have fallen," says Young. "But also, we do this job because we love it."

They do not believe they are heroes, but they believe their unit, 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, out of Fort Hood, Texas, performed heroically. They want Americans to know it.

On the night of March 23, 18 Apache helicopters set out across a sea of sand. The Apaches flew low and fast, taking fire and firing back, clearing the decks for American ground troops.

What none of the pilots knew on the night of March 23 was that this time, the Iraqi Republican Guard had planned an ambush, using cell phones to communicate the Apache positions as the helicopters swept toward Karbala.

There, in the darkness, a deadly hornet's nest was waiting.

"It's the wildest laser show you've ever seen in your life, all that stuff going on," says Young. "And the next thing you know, just that fast, you're in it. And bullets are going by you. It's just intense."

"I remember Ron saying, 'Man, don't fly through that.' And I said, 'I'm not going to fly through that,'" remembers Williams. "And it was like as soon as I said that, somebody opened up on us. And that's when it all went downhill from there."

Today, two months after the firefight, on the Udarri range in the desert of Kuwait, a massive tent is a temporary home for the men and women of the 227th attack helicopter battalion – the group that flew with and fought beside Williams and Young.

Lance McElhiney is the most senior Apache pilot in the unit, a veteran of Vietnam and the first Gulf War.

He describes the Iraqis they encountered in the firefight as tough enemies -- more sophisticated, more determined, and more deadly than most Americans might think.

"The night of the 23rd - 24th was some of the heaviest anti-aircraft systems I have ever seen. This was a smart enemy. They had learned from 12 years ago. They had shut down the power quads in the city and when we got deep into the city, whack the lights went on," says McElhiney. "We were skylighted and they started shooting. If people saw the pictures of Baghdad, if they can remember 12 years ago, tracers in the sky, we took about 10 times more. And we stayed there for 45 minutes fighting the enemy."

"I saw a lot of young kids become men, a girl become a woman. I saw a lot of people's lives changed forever."

Williams and Young, like the other Apache teams, were taking heavy fire.

"I realized about a minute and a half into flying into that stuff, you know, doing all the stuff I was doing, that I wasn't breathing," says Young. "I had to tell myself to start breathing again."

"I didn't even know it. And all I could think to myself was, 'Holy crap. Oh, my god, I can't believe this.' And I mean bullets are whizzing within inches of your head."

Eventually, their Apache weapons system got knocked out. Young was unable to return fire and Williams struggled to stay in the air -- by then, missing one engine and running out of options.

"I said, 'We're going down,'" says Williams. "And he said, 'Try to keep flying, try to keep flying it,' and we did."

"We were just getting tagged at that point," adds Young.

"I could hear a round hitting the side. I could feel it in the seat," says Williams. "The rounds hitting the side of the aircraft. Smoke and fire and aviation don't go well together. An aircraft will burn up in a matter of minutes."

"I'm trying to get a radio call out to let somebody know we're on foot. And that's exactly what I say, we're on foot," remembers Young. "And you can still hear the rounds. You can see the rounds coming over the top of the aircraft, still. And he pulls the power levers off and I hear, 'Get out.' And within a split second, I mean, it was the like the smoothest move I've ever done in my life, I pretty much pushed myself out of the cockpit, undid my seat belt, yanked my helmet out of the cannon plug and I was standing out there. I don't really remember the impact."

Williams doesn't remember either.

Pilots Fred Polidore and Matthew Stauffer were trying to provide cover for the helicopter carrying Williams and Young.

"Lance called me over the radio and said, 'Did you hear Ron and Dave went down,'" remembers Stauffer.

"The teams got separated and we continued to call them over the radio," says Polidore. "There was just silence and we said to ourselves, 'We've got to find them. We need to know.'"

Several times, Williams attempted to call for a hasty pickup, to have another helicopter come and pick them up. "But unfortunately, due to the fight, everybody had their own little fight going on."

"We stayed in the area looking for our guys until we had nothing working," says Polidore. "No weapons system, we hear engine two is out, we had no choice but to go back."

At the end of every operation, the Apaches were supposed to gather. But on the morning of March 24, one was missing.

"You land and it seemed everyone was emotionless," says Stauber. "Faces were emotionless, they just stared."

"I sat by the tail boom of my aircraft. I watched the sun come up," remembers McElhiney. "And I didn't show much emotion in front of people, but I cried."

The other pilots counted their blessings, and the bullet holes. Almost all of the Apaches had been hit repeatedly. Nearly all the rotor blades had to be repaired or replaced.

"The one thing that I will never ever forget as long as I live is the sound of those rounds hitting my aircraft," says Capt. Chad Lewis, company commander for the group. "The majority of us were very lucky to make it out of there that night."

But Williams and Young were not as lucky. In a field 50 miles away from their friends, the downed pilots were running for their lives.

"At this point, we're running through weeds and stuff," says Young. "Kind of tripping over each other, just trying to get away from the aircraft."

"The Iraqis could hear that the aircraft went down," adds Williams. "And they were converging very quickly."

"But you've got to run. You have to save your own life at that point," says Young. "And it was up to me and Dave to save our own lives."

The two pilots remember stumbling over each other to escape. "It's funny now, but it wasn't funny at the time," says Young. "But I look over and his lip light is on and it's yellow and people are shooting at us. And I yell at him that his lip light is on. I jump on top of him and start trying to rip the lip light out of his helmet."

"And then he looked at me and says, 'Your lip light is on,'" says Young, laughing. "So we threw our helmets, and we keep on running a little further."

Williams and Young both had 9 mm pistols. "I had mine out and I was ready to go," says Young.

They heard Iraqis approaching, and the pair crawled into a ditch.

"Like an alligator, just quietly goes along a creek, just with the eyes above water, that's what we did," says Williams. "Just with our noses above the water level. And we just kind of moved along."

"At first it wasn't that cold. Of course, all the adrenaline, all the running and how much, we had heated up," says Young. "But after a while, it just became bitterly cold. To where you could hardly move. And we started worried about going hypothermic, which would only add to a bad situation."

So they climbed out of the mud while the Iraqis drew closer.

"They got so close that we could hear them talking," says Williams. "What we do is we tried to lay, we actually laid down in the mud face down in hopes that they would have just walked by and missed us ... You know I could feel my heart ... and I was just praying, 'Please, please, just walk by.' Neither one of us wanted to be a prisoner."

The two started whispering. "What do you want me to do," Young remembers saying. "At this point, you know, it's still keep yourself alive.

But Williams says it was obvious that the Iraqis knew where they were located.

"I kind of slowly turned my head to look at them," he says. "We knew they had a lot more firepower that we did. I mean we were outnumbered. And I slowly raised my left hand up."

Next: What happened to David Williams and Ronald Young inside Iraq, in the hands of the enemy?