U.S. patrol apparently scared off Hamill's captors
Escaped hostage treated at hospital in Germany
 |  Thomas Hamill shakes hands with U.S. troops after his escape. |
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 Kellie Hamill, wife of U.S. contractor Thomas Hamill, talks with CNN's Bob Franken.
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 U.S. soldiers describe how they discovered Hamill after his escape from Iraqi captors.
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 U.S. contractor Thomas Hamill, missing since last month in Iraq, escapes his captors.
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 Two Mississippi towns, two very different endings for loved ones in Iraq.
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LANDSTUHL, Germany (CNN) -- After three weeks of captivity by Iraqi insurgents, American Thomas Hamill walked free when his guards apparently fled from an approaching U.S. Army patrol, soldiers who found him said Monday.
One of the soldiers, 2nd Lt. Joseph Merrill, said his platoon was looking for a break in an oil pipeline near Balad when Hamill approached them from a nearby farmhouse, waving his shirt and shouting that he was an American prisoner.
"He came out in the field, and he actually took his shirt off and waved his shirt in the air," Merrill said. "As he got closer, we heard he was speaking English."
Hamill, a U.S. contractor from Macon, Mississippi, had been shot in the right forearm. He was treated Monday at a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.
"At first, at a distance, we thought he was an Iraqi farmer who was coming up to the trucks," Merrill said. "And the first man who walked up to him realized immediately that it was Mr. Hamill."
Hamill had been working as a truck driver for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the oil services company Halliburton Co. He was captured in an April 9 ambush by insurgents on a fuel convoy west of Baghdad.
Hamill was one of seven KBR employees reported missing after the convoy attack. Four were later found dead, and two are still missing.
A soldier in the convoy, Sgt. Elmer Krause, 40, also was confirmed dead. The fate of Pfc. Keith Maupin, 20, remains unknown.
Hamill's cousin, Jason Higginbotham, said Hamill told him he had given his captors the slip days earlier -- only to turn back when he failed to draw the attention of a passing American helicopter.
"He said he escaped one time about three days earlier, and he was out in the middle of the desert," Higginbotham said.
"A helicopter came over, and he tried to flag it down, but it evidently didn't see him. So he decided you know -- he didn't have any food and water -- and he'd more than likely die in the desert trying to make it on his own, and they were taking pretty good care of him. So he went and put himself back in captivity without them knowing."
Hamill got another chance Sunday morning when Merrill and his men -- members of a New York National Guard company assigned to the Army's 1st Infantry Division -- passed within a half-mile of the house where he was being held.
Sgt. 1st Class Mark Forbes said an AK-47 assault rifle was lying in the grass near the house but that only women and children were in the home when troops arrived.
"We assessed from what he had told us that someone was watching him," Forbes said. "They probably saw us coming and decided that 40 on one wasn't going to be a good day for [them] and walked off."
Hamill said nothing to his rescuers about mistreatment, Merrill said. He took water but refused food, saying his captors had fed him.
Hamill's wife, Kellie, spoke to her husband after he was found Sunday. She said he did not discuss details of his ordeal.
Kellie Hamill on Monday was headed to Houston, Texas, where KBR is based, on the first leg of a trip to be reunited with her husband. She said she was unsure of her travel plans beyond Texas but said, "We'll know more when we get there."
Hamill's aunt, Coleene Higginbotham, told CNN's "American Morning" that the family's faith "never wavered" during her nephew's captivity.
"We always believed God would bring him through this," she said. "Through it all, he's given us strength to know that he was going to bring him through it."
CNN's Mike Brooks contributed to this report.
