Roach Races and Russian Roulette *

By Frank Trippett

Victims of the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 were not likely to be preoccupied last week by Washington's struggle with the event's public and political implications. Instead, they began coming to terms with memories that are bound to linger for a long time. Even though the event received sustained television exposure, countless episodes, trivial and grave, took place that went unreported during the ordeal. The hijackers tormented certain passengers capriciously and randomly. They proved to be avaricious as well as demonic, looting thousands of dollars' worth of jewelry, cash and personal possessions and, in fact, even stealing pens worth only a few cents.

Tales of the oddities, cruelties and bizarre twists that occurred began to pour forth after the return to the U.S. of the last 39 hostages. Some stories were horrific, some implausible, others surreal. There were accounts of the hijackers turning away from stark brutality to administer kindnesses to passengers: fetching a blanket for a young girl with bronchitis, providing cough drops for a passenger with cold symptoms. One terrorist, it was recalled, proposed marriage to the flight's purser; at another point, a hijacker beat a passenger, threatened to shoot him, then apologized and wept with his victim. Passengers became targets in many games of Russian roulette. Here are the recollections of some of the hostages:

Robert Brown, 42, Stow, Mass., international marketing director for the Boston Scientific Corp., a medical equipment company. An ex-Marine captain thrice decorated during Viet Nam duty, Brown was kicked in the face by one of the hijackers. The blow broke a blood vessel in his left eye that took eight days to heal. Later, Brown and three other captives were locked up for days in an underground room, 20 ft. square, which he believes was a command bunker. Brown, who kept a diary on folded white paper, got to be known as "the Coach" by his fellow hostages because he insisted that they all exercise each day. Brown's contingent devised a game of imaginary golf, playing mind shots on a course laid out verbally by Robert Trautmann Jr., 37, a Laredo, Texas, developer. At one chilling point, one of the original two hijackers swaggered into the bunker-like room in West Beirut and said, "Hi, do you know me?" When no one answered, he waved a silver pistol in their faces and said, "Now do you remember me?" They assured him that they did. Once, Brown told the Boston Herald, "our guard fell asleep in our room with his pistol right there. But there were other guards outside, and two steel doors, and more to get to the surface, which would have been impossible." After their own clothes became filthy, the four were given gym shorts and shirts to put on. Said Brown: "We looked kind of silly in those things, but they were clean."

Thomas Murry, 58, Newbury Park, Calif., field service engineer for Northrop Corp. When the hijackers forced everybody into the crash position (head between knees), the 6-ft. 4-in. Murry had trouble. "I was hit on the back of the head three times because the hijacker didn't feel my head was low enough." He and seven others wound up in an apartment isolated from the rest, and called themselves "the Crazy Eights" because of their number and the name of the card game they played endlessly.

Ralf Traugott, 32, Lunenburg, Mass., automobile dealer. One of the two initial hijackers, who called himself "Castro," spoke German better than English. When he discovered that Traugott was born in Berlin, "he immediately called out my name and came over to me," recalls Traugott. "He put his 9-mm pistol against my forehead and put a hand grenade against my ear." In German, Castro asked, "Have you fear?" Traugott replied in German, "No, I have no fear." That answer, says Traugott, seemed to surprise Castro, so Traugott added, "O.K., a little bit when you have the gun and the grenade there. Take it away." Once Traugott entered the lavatory just after Castro's companion, who called himself "Said," came out. Says Traugott: "He forgot his gun on the top of the toilet. Even if I tried to grab it and do something, it would have been total chaos, lots of people would have been killed. I just walked out and into the cockpit and said, 'Come here, will you? You left something in there.' You should have heard them laugh." In Beirut, Traugott was taken all over the city. Says he: "They took me out night after night, day after day. I was shown military complexes. I went to a funeral vigil in the middle of the night, down this alley, with a tank on each end of the alley, the tanks shrouded with black veils. A lot of soldiers, warriors, were standing there, heavily armed, with black headbands. Everyone was crying."

Arthur Toga, 33, St. Louis, assistant research professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine. During a TV interview with the NBC affiliate in St. Louis, Toga recalled that one terrorist showed him a gun. ; Said Toga: "He took out four cartridges and spun the thing, and then put the gun to my belly and pulled the trigger. The gun didn't go off." Twice more, the captor pulled the trigger, Toga said. Toga disclosed that one of the hijackers proposed marriage to Purser Uli Derickson. Said Toga: "That was the only time she lost control. The guy was serious about the proposal, and it really threw Uli for a loop."

Kurt Carlson, 38, Rockford, Ill., roofing contractor. When he realized a hijacking was in progress, he pulled the identification from his wallet that showed him to be a major in the Army Reserve and stuffed it underneath his seat. Unfortunately, Carlson had an official U.S. Government passport. He says, "They identified me as being diplomatic. They saw it as either CIA or FBI." Carlson was beaten severely over a period of 4 1/2 hours. "They started hitting me on the back of the shoulders with an arm of a chair that was torn off." He remained in mortal danger until he managed, with the help of Purser Derickson, to convince the terrorists that he was not "diplomatic" but Army Reserve, with "a wife and a little baby girl." At that point, his tormentor underwent a dramatic change of mood. Declares Carlson: "He walked over to me, looked down and picked me up and put his arms around me, told me he loved me and that he was sorry, and that he never meant to kill me, that he had to beat me. I was crying and he had a tear in his eye. And the reason he did was not because of me, but apparently he had a wife and a baby girl that were killed by the American bombing during the Beirut crisis."

James Hoskins Jr., 22, Indianapolis, recent graduate of Butler University. Held in a house with 17 others, Hoskins vividly recalls the outsize cockroaches that shared their quarters. Says he: "We thought about capturing the cockroaches, which were at least 4 1/2 in. long, and painting numbers on them and having cockroach races."

Raymond Johnson, 62, Aurora, Ill., retired truck driver. Like many of the Americans, he points to Uli Derickson as a model of valor. As soon as the hijacking began, he saw one of the terrorists give Derickson "a tremendous kick in the body." Derickson, Johnson says, spoke German, as did one of the hijackers. "That," he maintains, "was a lifesaver." His most fearful moment came when "they accused my wife of being Israeli because she had bought a Star of David in Israel. They put a gun to my head and said they were going to kill me and my wife."

+ John McCarty, 40, San Francisco, restaurant manager. He and a traveling companion, Victor Amburgy, 31, a former letter carrier who also lives in San Francisco, posed as brothers to conceal the fact that they are homosexuals. The Shi'ites have a stern attitude toward homosexuality and, says McCarty, "Had they known, we could have been killed." McCarty adds that the militiamen who guarded him particularly liked his olive-drab fatigue pants and tank-top shirts. "They thought that was real macho," says he.

Leo Byron, 47, Harrisburg, Pa., state department of public welfare administrator. His wife Carolyn and daughter Pamela, 13, were taken off the plane in Algiers, but only after the family had been looted of many possessions. Byron says the terrorists even stole his reversible leather belt. He was shocked by their reckless use of weapons. One terrorist, trying to chase away some children playing in the street near where Byron was being held, shot a boy about ten in the foot. The same day another guard accidentally triggered a round and struck one of his own men in the shoulder. Carolyn Byron recalls that she had felt apprehensive about the two men who eventually hijacked the plane as soon as she saw one of them set off the airport metal detector twice. But when she mentioned her suspicions, she says, "everyone kind of, you know, ho-ho-hoed."

John Testrake, 57, Richmond, Mo., TWA Flight 847 pilot. Once passengers were taken off the plane, Testrake told the Kansas City Times, the crew's main occupation was sleeping. Because the terrorists "were not used to toilets to sit on or toilet paper" they turned the lavatories into a "foul mess," Testrake told the New York Times. So he negotiated a deal in which the crew used one lavatory and the terrorists the two others. One captor "seemed a little off," says Testrake. "He talked about having us dive the plane into the Israeli Knesset." Each day, Testrake says, he prayed with Flight Engineer Benjamin Zimmermann, 45, a Lutheran minister. "I already had a strong faith in God," says Testrake, "and I guess this was another proof positive that he does keep his promises to those who trust in him."

With reporting by John H. Kennedy/Boston and J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago, with other bureaus