‘Where Have You Guys Been?’ POW From Chicago Just Visiting
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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The allies have captured many Iraqi soldiers, but few were so strange as the man who greeted his captors in Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt and a perfect Chicago accent.
“Where have you guys been?” he asked. “We’ve been waiting for you!”
A resident of Chicago, the unidentified Iraqi man had been visiting his grandmother in Baghdad when he was drafted into the Iraqi army, according to a senior allied military source. He had no further details.
The story had a familiar ring.
On Jan. 21, while helping set up a POW camp, Sgt. Alan Jones of Milwaukee was approached by a prisoner and discovered to his astonishment that they knew each other by sight.
The Iraqi had been a student in Wheeling, Ill., where Jones had belonged to a Veteran of Foreign Wars post, and they figured out that they had passed many times on the street.
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