At the time,
Brigadier General Dozier was kidnapped from his apartment in Verona at approximately 6 pm on December 17, 1981, by four men posing as plumbers. It was later reported that as many as four additional terrorists provided support using multiple vehicles. Although his wife, Judy Dozier, was not kidnapped, she was briefly held at gunpoint to coerce Dozier into compliance, and the terrorists left her bound and chained in the apartment's laundry room. Judy Dozier was rescued after she generated enough noise by leaning against the washing machine and hitting it with her shoulders and knees, which alerted a downstairs neighbor. In his paper
The Italian Red Brigades (1969–1984): Political Revolution and Threats to the State, Paul J. Smith, a National Security Affairs professor at the U.S. Naval War College, explains: Dozier was able to temporarily remove his headphones while his guard was not watching, allowing him to identify morning and evening traffic and thus tell time. He tracked the days in his diary, ending with a count of 40 days—a discrepancy of 2 days from the actual duration of his captivity. Dozier kept a diary by playing
Solitaire and recording fabricated scores on paper supplied by his guards. These scores were a base-seven alpha-numeric code developed by Dozier, based on the seven piles of cards used in the card game and the number of cards in each pile. Dozier was held for 42 days until January 28, 1982, when a team from
NOCS (a special operations unit of the
Polizia di Stato) rescued him from an apartment in
Padua without firing a shot, capturing the entire terrorist cell. The guard Ugo Milani, assigned to kill Dozier in the event of a rescue attempt did not do so, and was overwhelmed by the rescuing force. After his return to the U.S. Army in
Vicenza, President
Ronald Reagan congratulated him by telephone on regaining his freedom. ==Awards and decorations==