| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| Col Hickey (got Saddam) told his wife he knew it was Saddam |
| 2003-12-15 |
| More than most, his wife said, Col. James Hickey seethed about the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. "He was very angry that we were attacked so viciously," Maureen Hickey said. "With my husband, ever since 9/11 hit, there was this anger and a strong desire to do something. . . . I think he always hoped, in some capacity, he could help. So I guess, in a way, this was his chance to do something." At nightfall Saturday, Hickey was riding in a lead armored vehicle as commander of 600 soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team in a raid on the Iraqi village of Dwar. They were "assigned the mission to kill or capture Saddam Hussein," according to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the U.S.-led forces in Iraq. A haggard-looking Saddam was pulled from a hole under an adobe hut about 30 minutes later, without a shot fired, Hickey told his wife Sunday. "I asked him, ’Did you know it was him when you got him?’ " she said. "He said, ’I really had a strong sense it was him; it wasn’t a body double.’ He just thinks it happened so fast that Saddam didn’t know what hit him." When she learned on television that it was her husband’s unit that captured Saddam, she leaped from the couch at their Fort Hood home, launching across the room two cats that had been sitting in her lap. "You’re always rooting for the home team, so you can’t help but be excited and proud that it’s your guys, the 4th Infantry Division," she said. Hickey had commanded or taken part in more than 500 raids in the volatile area north of Baghdad since arriving in April. Some were in pursuit of Saddam; others, his lieutenants. "He was running raids day and night," said brother-in-law Bill Baltzer, who lives in Charlotte, N.C. "There was no question in his mind that they were going to get (Saddam)," Baltzer said. "His goal was to get him, and they weren’t going to rest until they got him." Hickey joined the 4th Infantry Division on April 15 and left days later for Kuwait, and then Iraq. When the war started in March, he was attending graduate classes at Georgetown University as an Army Senior Service College Fellow. He and Maureen were living in nearby Arlington, Va. "He was really sorry he wasn’t there at the beginning of the thing," said retired Army Col. John McEvoy, who lived across the street. They discussed military history on several occasions — McEvoy is a World War II veteran — as well as current events and the buildup to the war in Iraq. "He was very straightforward and down to earth," McEvoy said. Hickey arrived in Iraq as a lieutenant colonel and was made colonel and commander of the 1st Brigade in a ceremony June 13 in one of Saddam’s former palaces. Maureen Hickey deflects any label of hero that posterity might assign her husband. "Jim was fortunate and very aggressive in the way he went about his job and had some good luck and happened to be in the right place at the right time and nabbed the ace of spades." |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #1 I wonder how many times the troops in Iraq just missed him? Whoever the grunt was that pulled him out of the hole deserves to get promoted |
| Posted by: Cheddarhead 2003-12-15 5:08:26 PM |