Dave Williams’ war anniversary is March 23 – the day in 2003 that his Apache attack helicopter was shot down in Iraq and he and a co-pilot became the first American POWs in a generation.
The pair were freed, along with five other Army soldiers, three weeks later.
The Geneva Conventions prohibit nations from sending freed prisoners back to the same war, so Williams, 35, now serves as a flight instructor at Fort Rucker, Ala.
He has a head full of gray hair and some back problems – the impact of the crash landing cost him three discs in his spine.
There are invisible scars, too. For years, he said, he couldn’t accept that he wasn’t at fault for being shot out of the sky and captured.
In July 2005, something changed.
“It was like a eureka moment: 'Dave, it’s over! You did good. You did what you were supposed to.’”
Nightmares visit occasionally, but Williams said he isn’t tortured by memories.
The chief warrant officer and his wife, a former Army helicopter pilot, have a 7-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter.
“I don’t ever take it for granted,” said Williams, a 1991 graduate of Great Bridge High School in Chesapeake. “That’s one of my things. Never take it for granted.”
In captivity in Iraq, Williams vowed he’d buy an airplane if he made it out alive. So every weekend, he takes to the sky in a four-seat Piper Arrow.
On a recent trip, his daughter complained: “Daddy, it’s taking too long. You need to get a jet.”
Said Williams: “I was like, 'Woman, you have no idea!’”
Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com
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