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They joke, but it isn�t funny Mail Tribune / Jim Craven From left, Dennis Corrin, Steve Derry, Jason Weber and Arnie Alford speak to the press at a meeting Saturday afternoon less than 12 hours after landing at Medford�s airport. They said thinking of their families kept them strong, despite the constant fear and exhaustion they endured during months in captivity in the Amazon. Safe at home, former captives remember months of fear By Melissa Martin The hostages held for 141 days in Ecuador ate tree bark and rats, played chess on a magnetic board and rigged up a jungle gym to stay fit. With a gun pointed at them all the time, Jason Weber, 29, Steve Derry, 40, Arnie Alford, 41, and Dennis Corrin, 52, tried to keep up their spirits with a calendar they made to track their days and by telling each other stories. "It�s amazing what you can do for a gymnasium with a couple of trees and rope," Weber said. The four Erickson Air-Crane employees abducted from a South American oil camp last October met with the media at the Rogue Valley Country Club Saturday afternoon, only hours after they arrived in Medford. Although their eyes revealed their suffering, the men joked with each other as they described the terror of the past five months. "There was nothing good about it," said Weber, the youngest and the spokesman for the group. "There wasn�t one second of good the whole time." While the Gold Hill men found strength by thinking of their families back home, they feared for their lives daily. "Sometimes you think, �No,� but then again we knew we had good family at home and we were bound to make it somehow, so that�s what kept us all strong," said Weber, looking at his wife, Lisa, sitting among 50 reporters and 20 television cameras. The networks broadcast the event live. The hostages didn�t dare try to escape, said Corrin, a New Zealand pilot who was reunited with his family in Oregon. Erickson Air-Crane flew in his wife, Marguerite, along with their son, Timm, daughter Maree, and her son, Mac, born two days before Corrin left for the Amazon. "They said they would shoot us if we tried to escape and they said if the army found us, they would shoot us first," said Corrin, his grandson cooing in the background. How they ate depended on how scared the guerrillas were of the military discovering their camps. "Sometimes you�d have, we call it �tree bark tea,� " Weber said. "It�s a vine that they cut up and put in water and drink. Some days you�d have rice and the diet consisted of rice and maybe sardines. Sometimes we�d eat what you�d call a rat." They knew when it was Christmas because of the calendar they made. But they didn�t celebrate. "They made a few comments toward us, �Merry Christmas� and that type of crap," Weber said. "We left camp that day. Christmas wasn�t observed too much. New Year�s seemed to be their day of rooting. They got ahold of some booze somehow." They spent much of their time walking to evade the military or lying in their hammocks, sometimes for 20 to 22 hours a day. At times, they were permitted to play chess on a small, magnetic board provided by their captors or write to their families in a notebook that Weber stuffed in his backpack the morning of their abduction. The men were taken from an oil camp in Ecuador�s frontier near the Colombia border. Ten were taken, but two French pilots escaped and a Missouri oil technician, Ron Sanders, was murdered Jan. 31. "On Oct. 12, at about 4 o clock in the morning, we hear a bunch of racket and noise," Weber said, describing their abduction. "They came beating on our doors saying they were guerrillas, �Can you please come with us.� They took us out, put us in a truck, drove us down the road to where we had our helicopter station, put us in a helicopter and flew us away. "Forty-five minutes later, we�re on the ground and we�re walking. We walked for three days and hit a camp. Whenever you say camp, it�s not a shack in a woods. It�s strung between a few trees and a hammock." Weber said they were always on the move, camping for 28 to 40 days at a time and walking for seven or eight consecutive days, dodging the military. While the hostages didn�t know the political agenda of their captors, described as 30 men ages 16 to 40, it was clear they disliked Americans. "To them, they think all Americans are bad," Weber said. "Lots of propaganda is what we heard." The hostages didn�t know the French pilots had escaped, Alford said. The kidnappers told them the Frenchmen were being held in a different group. "They landed the helicopter and eight of us got out with the guerrillas that were guarding us," said Alford, whose wife, Mindi, was listening from a front-row seat. "Three guerrillas stayed in the aircraft with two pilots. They lifted off the ground and flew off and took the aircraft." Neither did the captives know that the guerrillas had killed Sanders, hostages from Argentina and Chile told media in Quito. Erickson officials would not allow reporters to ask about Sanders during the press conference. But on Thursday, their 141 days of terror ended. A week earlier, Erickson and the oil company employers paid kidnappers a ransom reported to be $13 million. "We got up in the morning, packed up our stuff, just like we moved any other day," Weber said. "We were really hoping we�d go home, but you don�t know. At 8:45 in the morning they told us to go this way down the trail and by noon hopefully you�ll be in Santa Rosa." Even when they realized they were free of their kidnappers, they didn�t relax, said Derry, whose family and friends staged a Central Point rally two weeks ago that generated national media attention. "It was a relief, but we were still scared," Derry said. "We still had to make it out. Just because we left that group doesn�t mean we wouldn�t be captured by another group of guerrillas. There�s a lot of stuff that goes on out there." The men met military escorts who got them safely to Quito. They arrived by private jet at the Medford airport at 12:40 a.m. Saturday. Asked about their plans, the freed hostages said they wanted to rest, learn to digest food again and stop answering telephone calls from reporters. And Derry said he hopes to see "Goldie" soon. "You�d better explain that Goldie is a dog and not just someone sitting at home waiting for you," said Corrin, teasing his fellow captive in a New Zealand accent. U.S. Congressman Greg Walden gave the Oregon captives a flag flown over the nation�s Capitol "in celebration of your release and as a constant reminder of how lucky we are as Americans to live in a free country governed by law and order," he said. He also promised the U.S. government would try to bring the kidnappers to justice. Lee Ramage, the chief operating officer of Erickson Air-Crane, also welcomed the heroes home and thanked their families for their patience. "Gentlemen, you have every reason to be very proud of your families because they have been proud of you," Ramage said. Blazing headlights foil camera crews at airport A Lear jet carrying the hostages landed at 12:38 a.m. Saturday at the Medford airport. The jet blasted by dozens of television cameras and reporters who came from up and down the West Coast to witness the Erickson Air-Crane employees� arrival in Oregon. It taxied near Erickson�s hangar at the west jet center and then turned toward the Immigration and Naturalization Service building. Family members, who had arrived shortly before touchdown, sped across the tarmac in Chevy Suburbans and vans to meet the jet. Realizing they might miss seeing the hostages step off the plane, reporters jumped into their cars and raced down Table Rock Road, Vilas Road and Crater Lake Highway to reach the INS parking lot, which is off the old Medco Road behind Costco. The Suburbans and vans carrying family members had lined up at an angle with the nose of the jet to prevent journalists from photographing anything more than legs and shoes. The vehicles beamed their headlights directly at the reporters peering through the airport�s chain-link fence, trying to film the momentous event in the dark and with the bright headlights beaming in their lenses. The hostages walked down the jet�s stairway carrying duffel bags and suitcases, passed security guards and slid into the vehicles, which had their doors open and dome lights on. The Suburbans and vans then exited near U.S. Customs as reporters jumped into their vehicles and attempted to follow. Reach reporter Melissa Martin at 776-4497, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.