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At Wiesbaden a banner proclaimed WELCOME TO THE FREEDOM HOTEL. The returnees occupied either two-or four-bed hospital rooms along a blue-carpeted corridor with yellow ribbons festooned over each door. The Americans could watch three German TV channels, but preferred the English-language armed forces station. In a third-floor library they could catch up on U.S. newspapers and magazines and even watch video tapes recapping world events they had missed, ranging from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the death of Mae West.
They scrambled into a telephone room, where 24 of them at a time could call anyone they wished at Government expense. In the early hours of Wednesday, Washington, D.C., time, those long-silent voices sent their relatives in the U.S. into shouts of joy and expressions of affection as the broken threads of family life were tentatively rejoined. At 2:30 a.m., Alice Metrinko picked up her phone in Olyphant, Pa., to hear her son Michael, 34, say, "Hi, Mom." They chatted for 45 minutes. She asked why he had seemed to be hiding from the TV cameramen in Algiers. Well, he said, his shirt was ragged and dirty, and his trousers had no cuffs. He had lost about 40 Ibs. but insisted, "Oh, Mother, I feel fine." His first wish on getting home, he said, was to do some painting around the house. "The bathroom needs painting," he was told. "Good," he said.
In San Diego, Dorothea Morefield, who may almost have been serious in jesting that "I'm getting tired of the color yellow," also had a quip when her husband Richard called from West Germany. She pleaded, "The next time you're going to be late for dinner, please call." When John E. Graves reached his son Martin in Reston, Va., he confided, "Believe it or not, I didn't think I could, but I've discovered that I can find my way to the toilet alone."
Phillip Lewis had some ready advice for his son Paul, who called from Wiesbaden. Lewis, who lives in a small farming community south of Chicago, had last heard from Paul when he had phoned from Hungary to say that his next diplomatic post would be in Tehran. "You damn fool," the father had said. "You don't know what you're getting into." This time when Paul called, Lewis said in mock seriousness, "Maybe you'll listen to your old man from now on." Despite her vast relief that her husband Barry was safe, Barbara Rosen of Brooklyn echoed a refrain heard often among the other families. "The servicemen who went over in that rescue attempt were the true heroes of this entire Iran crisis," she said, "because they went over knowing full well that they might not come back." Eight of them died in the Iranian desert in April.
After calling home, the Americans at Wiesbaden turned to a more tedious task: debriefings by intelligence officers and a series of medical and mental tests. Said a psychiatrist at the hospital: "We are looking for physical signs of stress, like migraines and ulcers. We try to spot signs of depression or suicidal tendencies. Hyperactive chatter is another sign of possible disturbance."