Mother Of Former Iraq POW Dies

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. (AP) – Anecita Hudson, the mother of a soldier taken prisoner in the early days of the Iraq war, has died.

Hudson, 56, died Sunday in an El Paso, Texas, hospital. The cause of death was not immediately released, said Hamilton-O’Dell Funeral Home in Alamogordo. Her oldest son, Army Spc. Joseph Hudson, was among five soldiers of the Fort Bliss, Texas-based 507th Maintenance Company who were captured in Iraq when their convoy was ambushed by Iraqi forces on March 23, 2003, near Nasiriyah.

The soldiers were freed the next month. Nine other soldiers from the 507th were killed in the attack. Anecita Hudson had spotted her son on an Iraqi video shown on television, and said afterward she had no warning from the government about the video. “It’s like a bad dream, seeing your son get captured on TV,” she told The Associated Press. Anecita Hudson, who was born in the Philippines, moved her family to Alamogordo after her husband, David, an Air Force retiree, was killed in a motorcycle crash in Florida in 1991.

The family previously had lived in Alamogordo when David Hudson was stationed at nearby Holloman Air Force Base. She is survived by her sons, Joseph and Anthony; two grandchildren; and longtime companion Charles F. Johnson Jr. Mass is slated Saturday at 2 p.m. in the Hamilton-O’Dell chapel.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)