1991 Pacific Stars and Stripes Gulf War section

Transcription

Pacific Stars and Stripes (ft&)
Vol. 46, No. 131
S P E C I A L
EDITION
Page 2
voi.46, NO. 131
PACIFIC SUNDAY—
May 12, 1991
Pacific Stars and Stripes (ff«0
PACIFIC
Inside:
DESERT VIGIL: The long wait for war
Air war: They're bombing Baghdad'
Pain, hope and glory
Making war Nintendo style
FREEDOM ROAD: The tanks came rolling in
Liberating Kuwait
Coming home
The ultimate sacrifice
Gulf
War
5,7
8
11,12
15
20,21
22
25,27
29
Jagodzinski
Schad
Jagodzinski
Live drama, real stuff
DRAKE
Y
ears from now, I'll reflect that one of
history's shortest wars didn't last through
a single TV guide. I live in a Tokyo apartment, and the landlady dangled house TV before
me as a lure — JCTV, fed to residents by cable.
Live or delayed, there was topical stuff like Joan
Rivers and Crossfire, CNN newscasts and a procession of vintage films.
Sold, I moved in.
On the last day of 1990, I found the Januarythrough-March JCTV Guide, promising everything from Nutrition News to Errol Flynn in
"The Charge of the Light Brigade."
Little of that got seen.
A war got in the way.
Live drama. Real stuff.
The desert sands poured past the hourglass
deadline a man in Washington had given a despot
in Baghdad, and I beheld something I never
thought I'd see — the direct-by-satellite start of a
war, three reporters relating the first assault on
an enemy capital as bomb thunder shook the
shutters of their hotel room.
That antique Flynn flick about the Crimean
War was blown aside, as were "Captain Blood"
and "The Sea Hawk." Who cared about cavalry
charges and muzzle-loading guns when all the
lethal technology of modern times could be seen
and believed?
Who could forget that dark, remote blur
transforming into the drawing-board image of a
Tomahawk missile?
Who needed the fantasy images of Flynn or
Heston when that living-room genie, at button
push, summoned terrifying reality?
Laser bombs broke bunkers and dropped a
long bridge, girder and span, into the Euphrates
River.
Waste left by raging explosive made gripping,
gun-camera footage.
A man who had to be told twice, Saddam
Hussein ignored another posted notice and a
ground war began. What was left of his threadbare forces was ground to grist in days.
When George Bush spread his hands to signal
a knockout, that TV Guide was still a month
away from becoming a back number. Like those
never-seen films, this had been much like a movie-script war, full of high drama and brief travail.
All we needed now was a happy-ending finish —
that fadeout clinch.
We got it.
Homecoming, those troops swarming home to
cheering families — those thank-God embraces
at airports, the touch-and-feel gratitude of young
wives who wouldn't let go, children who wriggled through the embraces with sobs of delight.
How many movie directors, trying for moments like this, have stomped on their megaphones in frustration?
For me, there will always be that moment a
returning soldier was blindfolded by his wife,
who then placed in his arms the life that had
come into his life while he was away.
O
h, that tearful look of discovery and wonderment as the hankerchief was pulled
away, with the musical-score chorale of
voices that cared.
It was the perfect ending, all right.
But life is no movie, and hurtful reality fell
hard — the just over a hundred lives lost in a
brief war.
To think that those lives became back issues
sooner than that TV guide.
That little magazine is now useless trash, on
its way to the incinerator.
Those lives were precious and irretrievable.
Coming next week
Shrines, museums, a park and large zoo, Ueno
offers a cross section of Japanese culture as well as
an oasis within Tokyo. Photo by Mike Van Hoecke.
Staff
Mike Hagburg
Editor
Sharie D. Derrickson
Assistant Editor
Scott Schumaker
Advertising Manager
Andrea L.lto
Ass't. Advertising Manager
229-3141; Commercial (03)3404-9447
Cover:Soldiers from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment plow through the Saudi-Iraqi border. Below: Sailors aboard the USS Saratoga move equipment across
the flight deck at sunrise in the Red Sea. Photos by
Wayne J. Begasse and Rob Jagodzinski. Front cover
design by Bill Belford.
Pacific Sunday is a weakly supplement to Pacific Stars and Stripes and is
an authorized unofficial publication for members of the military services
overseas. Contents of Pacific Sunday are not necessarily the official views
of, or endorsed by, the U.S. Government. The appearance of advertising in
this publication does not constitute endorsement by the Department of
Defense of products advertised. Everything advertised in this publication
shall be made available for purchase, use, or patronage without regard to
race, color, religion, sex, age, marital status, physical handicap, political
affiliation, or any other non-merit factor of the purchaser, user, or patron.
Pacific
Stars and Stripes
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUNDAY-
vol. 46, NO. 131 Page 3
Pacific Stars and Stripes (ft»)
The
'Scud
bureau'
From the
buildup
to the
breakthrough
A
ug. 2, 1990: Iraqi tanks roll into neighboring Kuwait in an act of aggression that
stirs the United States to form an unprecedented international coalition against Saddam
Hussein's war machine.
In the following weeks, America and its allies
begin deploying hundreds of thousands of troops
to the Perisan Gulf to stop any further Iraqi
advances south and prepare, if necessary, to
drive Hussein's army from Kuwait.
Joining the deployment is a team of Stars and
Stripes reporters from the newspaper's Pacific
and European editions.
With stories and photographs, the Stripes
team records a running account of the military
buildup in the Gulf, and of the whirlwind war
launched by coalition forces Jan. 17.
On the following pages are the accounts of
three Pacific Stars and Stripes journalists who
covered events in the Mideast.
Their stories are personal recollections and
observations — not chronological accounts of
the crisis and war.
Stripes' Gulf headquarters was a rambling
Stripes
Left to right: Vince Crawley, Ron Jensen, Wayne Begasse, Rob Jagodzinski, Ken Clauson, Dave Schad.
apartment in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia — located
about a half-mile from the barracks where 28
U.S. GIs died in a Scud missile attack.
At the height of the war, however, most
Stripes' reporters and photographers were well
north of Dhahran — crossing into Iraq with the
troops.
Early in the crisis, the first Pacific Stripes
reporter on the scene was Rob Jagodzinski, who
arrived in the Mideast in September.
Jagodzinski witnessed the buildup of allied
forces in the Arabian Peninsula, and surrounding waters, and reported from the Iraqi border
during the first month of the air war.
Dave Schad arrived in Saudi Arabia early in
the New Year. He reported on the final weeks of
pre-war preparations and accompanied an infantry division into Iraq at the start of the allied
ground assault north.
Wayne Begasse, who also entered the Gulf in
January, photographed the beginning of the
ground war and witnessed victory celebrations
after the liberation of Kuwait City.
When the troops started to leave the Gulf, so
did the Stripes team — in time to cover the
victors' homecomings.
Saudi Arabia Military Bases
TURKEY
Ras anura
IRAQ
- LEBANON
KUWAIT
Ras al Mishab
/JORDAN
CTabuk
Al Waih
Jabayl
Jiddah
Naval HQ
U.S. Central
Command
Dhahran
U.S. equip•jm|n|inti troops
enter the country
Hafr al-Baten
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Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies
AP/Cynthia Greer
Page 4
vbi. 46, NO. 131
PACIFIC SUNDAY -
Pacific Stars and Stripes (f
May 12, 1991
The University of Maryland
salutes all who have served
and supported throughout
the Gulf Crisis
Advertising appearing on this page is not endorsed by the Department of Defense, the military departments or Pacific Stars and Stripes
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUNDA/—
voi.46, NO. 131 Page 5
Stripes, Jagodzinski
An F/A-18 rockets off the waist catapault of the carrier USS Saratoga during a combat air patrol mission above the Red Sea.
DESERT VIGIL
Troops faced long,
hot wait for war
By Rob Jagodzinski
Stripes Mideast Correspondent
D
HAHRAN, Saudi Arabia — History books as yet
unwritten will likely reduce the Gulf crisis and
war to a few paragraphs and a handful of catch
phrases — "Desert Storm," "gas mask," "Scud missile," "smart bomb."
But few of those who were on hand in the Mideast to
watch the events unfold will forget the details about
their months in the Gulf, or the part they played in the
war. Such memories will remain with them for life.
War or peace, the Mideast is in itself unforgettable
to anyone who has traveled through it. More than a few
troops who deployed to Saudi Arabia, however, probably wish they'd never set foot in the desert kingdom,
with its rigid customs, its severe heat, its wilderness of
sand, its dour women wrapped in midnight black.
For many, in fact, the hardest part of the ordeal
proved not to be surviving a chemical attack or tank
battle, but simply weathering a half year spent in the
sand, or afloat in the surrounding waters.
Despite Big Macs, Cadillacs and air-conditioned
malls, Saudi Arabia remains a country rooted in an age
centuries past, like a passage torn from the Old Testament or the Koran.
In other Mideastern lands, Islam is the religion of
choice. But in Saudi Arabia it is the only choice, woven
into the fiber of everyday life and thrust on believer
and non- believer alike.
GIs who spent their time anywhere near a city in
Saudi Arabia will remember the haunting call to prayer, wailing from tinny loudspeakers five times a day.
They'll remember the ornate mosques, and they'll remember images of the faithful kneeling next to BMWs
or battered pickups on desert roadsides during sunset
devotion.
It's hard to forget about the country's strict censorship laws, which ban all news stories, magazine articles, music or films contrary to the government or its
religion. There are no bars, discos or movie theaters,
and although illicit drugs, drink and other vices can be
had at a high cost, it seems that anything even remotely
fun is forbidden.
Most troops in Saudi Arabia, however, spent little
time getting to know the local culture. Once herded off
camouflage transport planes at Dhahran air base, soldiers and Marines traveled to nearby ports to offload
their tanks, trucks or other vehicles from cargo ships.
Then they formed serpentine convoys that snaked
north across highways, away from the cities and deep
into the desert.
Along the way, dust-choked truck stops were the
only links many troops ever had with the Saudis.
A Marine sets up a HAWK missile system in the Saudi Arabian Desert.
P ge 6
Vol. 46, No. 131
FttCIFIC SUNDAY -
Pacific Stars and Stripes H-tt*)
May 12,
OUR GRATITUDE
GOES BEYOND
MERE WORDS
•NAVY
eHGhange
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1991
May 12, 1991
vol. 46, NO. 131 Page 7
PACIFIC SUNDAY — Pacific Stars and Stripes
An Air Force mechanic services a C-5 Galaxy.
inhospitable.
The intense heat was often hardest to bear.
During the daytime from late summer until
late fall, you couldn't escape the blow torch heat,
and only deep in the evenings did the sand begin
to cool. Troops learned to work around the heat
by sleeping at midday and working or training at
night.
Water kept you alive out in the sand, but to
avoid dehydration you had to learn to
force it down by the quart, since it
usually tasted of chlorine or iodine
and was always hot from the sun. The
water was often so hot you could use
it for coffee, although most troops
just poured Kool-aid into it to make it
easier to drink.
The desert regions that most troops
called home were seldom filled with
rolling, cactus-covered dunes as you
might find in the American Southwest. Much of the northern Saudi desert is as flat and dead as the floor of
an ancient sea, and littered with decades of trash left there by bedouin
sheepherders. Troops added to the existing garbage with their empty ration
pouches and other mounds of junk
strewn across each camp — which
promptly drew swarms of flies.
Desert camps were often thick with
fine, corpse-gray dust that settled into
the chow, clogged the nose and
ground into rifle actions and other
mechanical parts. And wind storms
could fill the air with powdered sand
that made you cough for hours.
Troops found it hard to navigate in
the featureless desert, they found it
difficult to gauge distances in its expanses, and tough to locate cover in
the flat terrain.
And aside from marathon card
games, mail from home or scorpion
fights, there were few diversions to
the seemingly ceasless desert vigils.
So boredom added to the other annoyances to make desert life sometimes
seem intolerable.
But most GIs got used to their
plight and learned to deal with their
surroundings long before the war began. The sunsets and sunrises, after
all, were often spectacular. And the
bright, crisp nights were silent and
star-filled.
Like their brothers in the desert,
sailors in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea
and North Arabian Sea also had to
deal with the Mideastern heat — especially those who worked on aircraft
carrier flight decks or among the furnaces and steam turbines of a ship's
power plant.
A USS Saratoga sailor walks on warplanes' wings.
T
he combination gas station-convenience
stores became more rundown with each
passing mile north, but troops flocked to
them to buy junk food, newspapers and cheap
trinkets for souvenirs.
While some troops lived in barracks in the
rear, the desert was home to many GIs during
the crisis and war, though at times it proved
ofripes, JagodzinsKi
A USS Midway helicopter squadron crewman scans the North Arabian Sea.
A carrier's steel deck radiates the sun's heat
like an iron frying pan, and the exhaust from
fighter jets makes flight deck temperatures even
harder to bear.
Meanwhile, deep in the guts of any steamdriven ship, firemen and boiler technicians
worked round-the-clock in temperatures above
100 degrees, keeping the furnaces burning and
the steam turbines turning.
Engine room hazards could include diesel
fires and severe burns from high-pressure
steam, while flight deck duty posed such dangers
as engine exhaust burns, loose missiles on deck,
plane crashes or men blown overboard.
Even months before the war, the Persian Gulf
could be a nasty place to work. The waterway
was often filled with oil slicks (though much
smaller than the slicks caused during the war),
as well as floating garbage and bloated sheep
carcasses that merchant ships threw overboard
(sharks loved them). To keep things interesting,
mines occasionally broke free from their moorings and drifted down from the Gulf's northern
reaches, so lookouts scanned the waters night
and day.
Enforcing the United Nations embargo of Iraq
kept allied sailors busy in the Mideastern waters
before the war. The men often had to board
ships suspected of carrying forbidden cargo to
or from Iraq, and sometimes had to divert vessels when such cargo was found. Meanwhile,
carrier-based fighter jets flew combat air patrols
near the Iraqi and Kuwaiti borders to thwart any
air raids that Saddam Hussein might launch.
A
bove the Arabian Peninsula, U.S. Air
Force fighter jets, along with those from
other coalition air forces, defended the
skies against attack. Day and night, Air Force
refueling tankers pumped gas into the jets. And
AWACS command and control planes directed
operations from the sky and readied to take
charge of any air battle, in the event of war.
Back on the desert floor, the pre-war buzzword was "training."
Infantrymen trained at clearing land mines by
crawling on their bellies and probing the ground
with sticks. Armored units bolted plows onto
their tanks and practiced breaching sand berms.
Anti-aircraft gunners fired their 20mm gatling
guns at model Iraqi jets. And anti-tank gunners
sighted in their missile systems by shooting at
demolished cars two miles distant.
Soldier, sailor, airman or Marine, everyone
practiced donning gas masks and chemical protective suits. They fired their weapons while
wearing protective gear and practiced cleansing
their skin of imaginary chemical agents.
The months of training and preparation paid
off when the hour of war came to pass on Jan.
17. The mother of all desert vigils had ended,'and
though no one could forsee it, the war would
prove infinitely shorter — and much less frustrating — than the six month crisis that preceded
it.
Page 8
voi.46, NO. 131
PACIFIC SUNDAY — Pacific Stars and Stripes (ft**)
May 12, 1991
Photos by
Rob Jagodzinski
AIR WAR
As the bombing
begins, pulses and
rumors quicken
D
HAHRAN, Saudi Arabia — The phone jangled me awake sometime before 3 a.m. January 17th, and I muttered and stumbled
across the dark room to answer it.
The message that came over the line swept all
the fog from my brain:
"They're bombing Baghdad."
Suddenly the six-month wait was over and the
United States and Iraq were at war.
The caller was Ron Jensen, one of our reporters who had volunteered to stay overnight at the
press center across town to make sure that if war
did break out we wouldn't hear about it hours
later. Strangely enough, Ron learned of the attack not from the press center but from a live
CNN broadcast — just like the rest of the world.
The military made no formal announcement until
later that morning.
As I listened to Ron in a kind of dazed disbelief, he relayed what little information he knew
about the opening minutes of the allied air strikes
on Baghdad. Then, I hung up and started banging
on every door in our house, waking up the other
four Stripes reporters.
For those deployed to the Mideast at the time,
the war's outbreak shocked the senses like a highvoltage jolt. At first I felt something close to
relief — the inevitable hour had come and the
months of waiting were over. But there was a lot
of uncertainty as well: Would Iraq fire chemical
missiles at Dhahran? Or could Hussein launch a
counter strike on the air base nearby?
The initial answer seemed to be yes, as air raid
sirens wailed outside our door.
The five of us reporters donned gas masks and
milled nervously around in a hallway until the
safe siren sounded a few minutes afterward. (We
later learned that the siren was set off not to warn
the city of attack, but to alert citizens that the war
Marines fire .50-cal. machine guns in preparation for a ground assault against Iraq.
had begun.) After the siren we went off to gather
notes and photos under the pre-dawn starlight.
The opening hours and days of the air campaign caused sensory overload. We watched combat jets roar north, missiles bristling under their
wings. Bogus reports of chemical attacks, counter
attacks and the death of Hussein filled the news
and fueled even more rumors.
The knowldege that you were close to a war
zone was powerful, electric, alarming.
Later on the first morning of the war, I was
heading north toward the Iraqi border to report
on preparations for the armored assault to free
Kuwait.
On the highway, huge convoys of military
trucks carried allied tanks, self-propelled howitzers and other armor to northern positions. American, British and Arab
troops shot hard grins at you on passing them, as if to say, "Can you believe
this! We're actually going to war!"
Wrecks littered the desert roadside,
along with tractor trailers that had broken down and armor that had flipped
off the trucks.
In a few hours we were rolling
through evacuated towns near the
Iraqi border, each one silent and lifeless as a bombed village before an allclear. Only a few dirt-floored truck
stops stayed open, where t r o o p s
flocked for junk food and kerosene for
their tent stoves.
The first night at a border base
camp proved sleepless. We stayed
awake late, huddled around a shortwave, hanging on every word of a BBC
broadcast. (Radio Baghdad, self-proclaimed "voice of freedom" was myste-
During chemical warefare training, a Marine hoses off a truck in the desert.
riously silent for days after Desert Storm began.)
Sometime after midnight, truck horns began to
blast — the signal for a chemical attack. Everyone
donned gas masks and protective suits and filed
into a sand-bagged bunker. But the shells never
came. Allied jets ripped across the sky above, and
dull explosions sounded from miles off, somewhere past the border.
Sunrise found us shuffling into the bunker
again. Another false alarm, and everyone
emerged covered with sweat and smeared with
chemical-suit charcoal.
We blinked at each other, then started to laugh,
which seemed the only tension release.
So this was war.
— Rob Jagodzinski
A Sea King lands on the destroyer USS Fife.
May 12, 1991
vot. 46, NO. 131 Page 9
PACIFIC SUNDAY— Pacific Stars and Stripes
WE SALUTE YOU
From One Service To Another
ZUL
USO was there with you in WW II, Korea, Vietnam,
Desert Storm and we will always be there for you.
uso
is
ALWAYS
HOME
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Let NewSanno make
your homecoming
extra special!
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUNDAY—
vol. 46, NO. 131
Page 11
Pain hope
and glory
DoD photo pool, David Turnley
Al Kozakiewicz, left, cries in a med-evac helicopter after learning of the death of a fellow tank crewman; bodybag is far right.
By Dave Schad
OUTHERN IRAQ — Less than 24 hours
into the ground war, Sgt. 1st Class Russ
Fauver eyed the huge map hanging in his
armored personnel carrier and considered the
reports he'd heard over its radios.
"Saddam Hussein is getting his ass kicked,
and he don't even know it," announced Fauver,
as he rolled along some 60 miles inside of Iraq.
From his perch atop two cases of grenades,
the 33-year-old sergeant was in a position to
know.
As an operations NCO for the 2nd Squadron, 4th Cavalry, Fauver and the rest of the
unit were leading the 24th Infantry Division (Mech) on its 200-mile push toward
Iraq's Euphrates Valley.
The division, which is based at Fort
Stewart, Ga., had entered Iraq about 200
miles west of Kuwait just after noon, Feb.
24. Intelligence officers believed small
pockets of Iraqis would show themselves
that night.
The real fight, however, would come several days later from the Republican Guard.
Pushed north by other coalition forces,
the Guard was expected to break and run
up southern Iraq's Highway 8.
The stuff would hit the fan when they
encountered Fauver's squadron, his division and the rest of the 18th Airborne
Corps.
But it didn't work that way.
Rather than stand and fight, the few
Iraqi conscripts posted along the division's
invasion route surrendered, stayed in their
foxholes or simply ran away. A few Republican Guard units put up a scrap, but much
of the fight had left them.
S
geant major, soon after the corps took positions
along the Iraqi escape route. Despite their spot
in front of most of the division and their mission
of being first to fight the enemy, the cavalrymen
didn't see much action.
One company shot up a pair of Iraqi tanks,
and the squadron hauled in its share of prison"Basically, they're in a position where no
ers. But in the end, the burning vehicles, dematter which way they go, there will be somestroyed bunkers, or dead bodies the squadron
thing in front of them and somebody waiting to
routinely discovered were some other unit's
tear into their flanks," explained Sgt. Maj. Berwork.
The much-hyped "Mother of All Battles"
nie Cabrera, the 24th Cavalry's operations serturned out to be, as one sergeant called it,
"the mother of all blather."
The cavalrymen, of course, didn't know
that as they went about their last-minute
chores before the attack into Iraq. The
nearly 100 men assigned to the squadron
command post were quiet, and they exchanged somber looks with each other.
"I never thought it would come to this,"
said one veteran NCO.
Minutes before the section's 11 vehicles
drove north, Cabrera, one of the squadron's few Vietnam veterans, assembled his
men.
"War is the most violent thing on earth,
and you are going to see things that you
can't even begin to imagine, said Cabrera,
37, from Oxnard, Calif. "When you see
these things, do what you have to do, clean
yourself off and drive on. Don't think
you're less of a man if you get sick at the
sight of dead soldiers. We're human, and
that's the way God made us."
"We're all coming back," Cabrera added.
"We will not leave any of our dead or
wounded out there."
As the vehicles lined up, Fauver looked
into
the bottom of his Kevlar helmet and
DoD pool photo, Joe DeVera
smiled. "I'm going to be listening to my
The USS Wisconsin fires at Iraqi positions.
7 never thought it
would come to this'
Page 12
vol. 46, NO. 131
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUNDAY — Pacific Stars and Stripes (f
Stripes, Ken Clauson
An F-15 Eagle takes off from Saudi Arabia for a sortie against Iraqi targets.
family," said Fauver, from Hop Bottom, Pa. Inside the helmet, the sergeant had taped pictures
of his wife and three kids. Next to the photos
was a tiny tape recorder he'd cut from the "talking"' Christmas card they'd sent him. When he
poked the right spot on the cardboard, he could
hear his family say things like, "I love you," and
"Merry Christmas, honey."
Looking content and ready for anything,
Fauver put the helmet on. "I listen to them all
the time, and I expect to be hearing from them
more than ever during the next few days," he
added, turning his attention to the war.
D
uring a short stop several hours inside of
Iraq, Sgt. Joel Anderson lay behind his M16 rifle a few hundred yards from the
command post's vehicles.
While he pulled security, Anderson scanned
the Iraqi desert and observed that it didn't look
much different than the one in Saudi where he'd
lived for the last six months.
He said it was hard to believe he was actually
at war. "But I guess that will change as soon as
we actually see something," said Anderson, 26,
from Atlanta, Ga. "Still, I'm glad it's finally
started so we can get it over with and go home."
Not far away, Waleed Al-Gharbally leaned
across the hood of a vehicle and fiddled with a
shortwave radio. A Kuwaiti volunteer attached
as the cav's interpreter, Gharbally was anxious
for any news about the liberation of his country.
Away on business when the Iraqis invaded on
Aug. 2, Ghabally's wife and three kids were still
in Kuwait City. He'd heard from them once since
the occupation. Looking to do his part, he volunteered as an interpreter and asked to be assigned
to a frontline unit that was sure to see combat.
"A man without a country is nothing," said
Gharbally, 40. "For seven months, I had no
hope. Now, I have hope."
The next day's news from the British Broadcasting Corporation turned his hope to reality.
Hearing that U.S. Marines were nearing Kuwait
City, Gharbally broke into tears and hugged every dusty GI within reach.
On Wednesday, Gharbally started earning his
keep when the cav began running into bedouins
and scarfing up prisoners.
In the middle of a driving sand storm, Gharbally, and two Bradley Fighting Vehicles were
dispatched to inspect a tent and a herd of sheep
not far from where the squadron had stopped.
Gharbally approached the sandal-clad bedouin, who seemed distracted by the pair of 25mm
chain guns trained on him. Behind him, his
family huddled under the tent's shelter.
After exchanging cigarettes and Arab small
talk, Gharbally shook his head and looked exasperated.
"He's harmless and ignorant like most bedouins," Gharbally said. "I asked him how many
sheep he had, and he could tell me without
hesitating.
"I asked how many children he had, and he
had to think hard before remembering he had 11.
I asked if he knew what was going on, and he
said, 'No, I haven't got a radio
or anything. I don't know who
you are, but whoever you are, I
hope you win.'"
Before leaving, Gharbally
gave the family several Army
field rations and bottles of water.
"For the kids," he explained, not wanting to appear
soft-hearted.
Gharbally wasn't as kindly to
the next batch of Iraqis he encountered. The four soldiers
had been captured a day earlier
and were being held for interrogation. Barely able to contain
his contempt for the soldiers,
Gharbally listened as one sergeant told their story.
Stripes, Dave Schad
Part of a small desert outMarine light-armoured vehicle crewmen fight a chess war.
post, the four soldiers and
about 10 others had been given rifles, machine
come to power."
guns and rocket-propelled grenades and told
That night, Gharbally and the rest of the
simply to kill Americans.
squadron's CP settled in less than 100 yards from
Highway 8 — Iraq's main supply and escape
he unshaven, scroungy-looking prisoners
route. The modern, six-lane highway with road
told of low morale, lean rations and flatsigns in English and Arabic was littered with
out panic in their ranks when they first
burning vehicles and a few dead Iraqis.
spotted the Americans.
"We were nothing compared to the forces we
bout a mile away, Apache attack helicopwere facing," the sergeant said.
ters pounded a large supply depot. Light
An American intelligence officer asked Gharfrom the fires painted the night sky, and
bally to find out if the sergeant thought other
the
sound
of explosions from the depot and
Iraqi troops felt the same way.
nearby artillery attacks lasted into the night.
"The general public didn't want to invade
Kuwait — it was the Republican Party people
Staff Sgt. Mike Orr, an infantryman assigned
who wanted it and who benefitted from it," he
to a cavalry slot, sat on top of his Bradley,
told Gharbally. "This war is not our war. We spooned down an MRE and watched the firedon't want to fight Americans. The Republican
works.
Guard might fight. They are Saddam's dogs, and
Orr, who'd had to fight the Army's bureaucrathey will bark only as long as he is alive."
cy for his spot in a Bradley commander's seat,
After the interrogation, the four Iraqis were
sensed that the war was nearly over. He knew
driven into the desert and released. A U.S. serthat his chances of mixing it up with the enemy
geant loaded the four down with rations, water
were dwindling.
and an extra sleeping bag. Then, the NCO cut the
"I didn't come here to be a hero and win a
small compass away from his watch and gave it
bunch
of medals," said Orr, 30, from Colville,
to the Iraqi sergeant.
Wash. "I wanted to do my job to the best of my
The Iraqis, happy to be heading home, walked
ability and get my guys out alive."
around shaking hands with the Americans. One
dirty private had tears in his eyes, and he hugged
He said he was glad his crew was alive, but a
and kissed each of his captors.
part of him wondered what he'd missed.
"You always wonder if you're prepared for
harbally stood to the side and watched the
something like this," Orr said. "You want to
exchange silently. Before leaving, the
think that you are, but you don't know until
Iraqi sergeant approached him and exyou've been tested. That's what I wanted to find
tended his hand. Gharbally refused, and the two
out."
Arabs entered into a short, quiet debate. In the
At five the next morning, the temporary
end, Gharbally extended his hand, then stood
cease-fire went into effect.
watching as the Iraqis walked north toward
When Gharbally heard the news, he glanced at
home.
the remains of Iraq's army scattered along High"He wanted to apologize," Gharbally exway 8. Then he stood staring out across the
plained. "I told him it was too late for that. He
terrain.
wanted us to keep on going and kill Saddam
"Look at the birds and this beautiful, fertile
Hussein. Can you believe that? I told him to
return home and help other Iraqis do the job
desert," he said, half to himself. "It makes me
themselves. They're the ones who allowed him to
wonder why man must fight."
T
A
G
May 12, 1991
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VOL 46, NO. 131
PACIFIC SUNDAY-
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May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUN DAY
voi.46, NO. 131 Page 15
Making war
Nintendo style
TV images of video-game arrows
represented death and destruction
B
efore I left Saudi Arabia, I read that America hadn't settled on a name for its latest
war.
The Persian Gulf War, The War in the Gulf
and The Liberation of Kuwait were a few showing early promise. Eventually, time, the media
and historians will decide.
But, while these things are still being sorted
out, I'd like to offer up a candidate of my own:
"The Nintendo-A Team War."
The name came to me right after the fighting
ended. I had watched how TV covered the war. I
realized the war the American public was seeing
on television didn't match the war I saw in Iraq
and Kuwait.
I decided the folks at home can't be blamed if
they thought war had been a cross between a
video game and the TV series.
During the war, I saw dead Iraqis and burning
vehicles strewn along desert highways like road
kill. America might have gotten a glimpse of
that, but the Pentagon seemed to prefer to keep
cameras away from those things.
Instead,they showed videos of smart bombs
taking out bridges, hangars and buildings with
pinpoint accuracy. Naturally, the bombs never
missed, and I rarely saw any people in the target
areas.
Some of TV's high-priced war analysts even
used video screens they could draw on to help
explain which units were attacking where. John
Madden and other sportscasters began using the
devices several years ago to diagram football
Commentary
plays on national television.
It was easy to forget that those video-game
arrows represented death to thousands of Iraqis,
and that U.S. airmen, soldiers, sailors and Marines were out there risking their lives.
The broadcast war reminded me of a television episode of the A-Team series. Built around a
cast that included the tough Mr. T, the show
would pit its heroes against a new batch of
villains each week.
At the end of each episode there would be a
dramatic shoot-out. Firing from the hip with
weapons that never needed reloading, the good
guys would fill the screen with lead, shooting the
guns out of the bad guys' hands. Nobody ever
got shot, and in the end, the hoodlums always
gave up or ran away.
Nice and clean, just like the war.
While updating correspondents on the air war,
the military's spokesmen used sterile, unoffensive words such as "battle damage assessment,"
"battlefield preparation," and "collateral damage." Those words were a nice way of saying
that people were dying. That's part of war, but
the military seemed to believe the taxpayers
didn't need to be reminded of that. Pictures were
out of the question.
Stripes, "Jagodzinski
USS Midway sailors cart bomb racks across the flight deck.
Stripes, Begasse
A high-tech message for Saddam.
N
ot much changed when the ground war
started. The military imposed a 48-hour
news blackout and, for the most part, its
pool system of coverage kept us away from the
action. When stories and pictures were filed, this
system was painfully .slow about getting them
back from the front.
With few options left, the media could only
grudgingly present the Pentagon's view of the
war. We didn't hear much from the dusty, weary
troops/who were fighting the battles.
Try as I might, I can't really get mad at the
military for what many are calling a round-about
form of censorship. It had its own agenda, and
that was to sell the war and the military to
America.
They did that all right, but at what cost?
I would hate to think that America has gotten
the idea that wars now are easy, that our military
machine is unbeatable and that technology has
advanced so far that only a few bad guys get
hurt.
Some suggest that Iraq lost 100,000 soldiers in
the war. Nobody wants to talk about how many
civilians died as a result of "collateral damage."
The public needs to be given an idea of the
extent of the damage, and they should be shown
pictures to back the numbers up. They need to
be reminded that wars are still brutal, that people still bleed and that the dead, even the enemy's, leave behind spouses, children, parents
and friends.
Otherwise, it might be too easy to start another one.
— Dave Schad
Page 16
vol. 46, NO. 131
May 12, 1991
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUNDAY-
vol. 46, NO. 131
Page 17
Stripes, Begasse
A U.S. helicopter transports Iraqi prisoners of war.
Over the Gulf, an F-16 refuels from an
Air Force tanker.
Path makers
to
Stripes, Begasse
A Howitzer crewman cheers after his artillery round finds its Iraqi target.
freedom
Scenes and events of war
An F/A-18 jets past a catapault officer on the USS Midway.
Chronology
Stripes, Begasse
Soldiers get a ground war briefing.
August 2nd, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait. The U.N.
Security Council demands Iraq withdraw.
3rd: United States commits U.S. Naval forces to the
Persian Gulf.
6th: The U.N. Security Council imposes a trade embargo on Iraq.
7th: United States sends combat forces and planes to
Saudi Arabia.
8th: Iraq says it has annexed Kuwait.
10th: Arab leaders agree on plan to send forces to
protect Saudi Arabia.
13th: Amphibious ship USS Dubuque departs Sasebo
Naval Base, Japan for the Gulf.
14th: USS Blue Ridge, Seventh Fleet flagship, sails
from Japan to serve as command ship for Navy in Gulf.
16th: Iraq orders 2,500 Americans and 4,000 British to
report to Iraqi authorites.
21st — 24th: Marines from the 4th Regimental Headquarters: 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment: and
Combat Service Support Detachment 31, leave Okinawa
for the Persian Gulf aboard amphibious ships USS
Dubuque, San Bernardino and Schenectady.
Okinawa-deployed Seabees also depart for the Mideast.
28th: Iraq declares Kuwait its 19th province. Western
women and children hostages are set free.
September 13th: Iraqi soldiers storm French ambassador residence in Kuwait.
October: Air Force Tactical Air Controllers depart South
Korea for the Mideast, along with GIs from U.S. Forces
Korea.
12th: The Navy announces that the USS Midway
battle group, out of Japan, will join the Mideast task
force.
November 8th: Bush orders more than 10,000 additional troops to the Persian Gulf.
29th: The U . N . Security Council votes the use of
methods necessary to remove I r a q i troops from Kuwait
if they do not withdraw by Jan. 15th.
30th: Iraq shuns the U . N . demands.
December 6th: Saddam Hussein says he is releasing all
foreign hostages.
22nd: USS Dubuque returns to Japan from the Gulf.
23rd: 475th Air Base Wing Security Policemen leave
Yokota Air Base in Japan for the G ulf.
26th: Sailors from destroyers USS Fife and Oldendorf,
home-based in Japan, forcefully board and re-route an
Iraqi freighter trying to break the United Nations embargo in the North Arabian Sea.
30th: 374th Tactical Air Wing airmen leave Yokota for
the Gulf.
January 3rd, 1991: USS Beaufort departs Sasebo,
Japan for the Gulf.
15th: The United Nations deadline passes.
16th: Multinational forces begin attack in Iraq and
Kuwait.
17th: Scud missiles are fired at and strike Israel and a
Scud fired at Saudi Arabia is shot down by an American
Patriot missile — the first anti-missile missile fired in
the war.
Troops from the Marine Barracks in the Philippines
begin deploying to the G u l f .
18th: President Bush announces that Israel has promised not to retaliate against the I r a q i missile attack.
19th: At least 17 Israelis are injured when at least
three Scud missiles explode in Tel Aviv. Israel vows to
defend itself, but refrains from retaliation as the United States rushes Patriots and A r m y crews into Israel.
20th: Interviews with captured allied airmen are
broadcast by Iraqi television.
21st: Iraq announces it has placed prisoners of war as
sheilds at military targets.
26th: Three Iraqi MiG-23s are shot down by U.S. F-15s
in the first major dogfight of the war.
The Pentagon confirms that USS Louisville is the first
sub to launch cruise missiles in combat.
29th: A battalion-size force of United States Marines
engage in the largest ground battle to date in Kuwait.
There are no U.S. casualities.
30th: Iraqi tanks and troops advance into Saudi Arabia. The attacks are countered by U.S. Marines, Saudi
and Qatari troops. Eleven Marines die.
31st: Saudi and Qatari troops, with U.S. artillery backup, retake Khafji, Saudi Arabia.
February 4th: Iraqi positions in Kuwait are fired on by
the battleship USS Missouri.
12th: In the largest battlefield action to date, allied
forces open a combined land-sea-air barrage against
Iraqis in Kuwait.
13th: Iraqi officials claim at least 500 civilian dead
after U.S. Stealth fighers drop two bombs on a fortified
underground facility in Baghdad. Iraq describes the
facility as a public bomb shelter.
15th: Saddam Hussein announces that Iraq is prepared
to withdraw its forces from Kuwait but only under
conditions that include an Israeli pullout from occupied
Arab territories, forgiveness of Iraqi debts and allied
payment of costs for rebuilding Iraq. The offer is
dismissed as a 'cruel hoax' by President Bush.
18th: The American warships USS Princeton and USS
Tripoli strike floating mines; both are damaged
but
still operational.
23rd: The allies' ground offensive begins at 8 p.m.
EST. At 10:02 p.m. EST, President Bush announces to
Stripes, Schad
A 101st Airborne Division soldier naps at an air base in northern Saudi Arabia.
the nation that 'The liberation of Kuwait has entered
the final phase. The President authorizes General Norman Schwarzkopf to 'use all forces available, including ground forces, to expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait.'
24th: At the end of the first day of the ground
offensive, General Schwarz kopf declares the action a
'dramatic success' for allied forces. Allied casualities
are very light and more than 5,500 Iraqis are captured.
25th: Saddam Hussein is reported by Baghdad radio,
to have ordered troops to withdraw from Kuwait in
accordance with a Soviet peace plan. 'The war goes
on' according to White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater.
Twenty-eight U.S. soldiers are killed and 90 are
wounded when an Iraqi Scud missile hits a barracks in
Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia.
26th: Iraqi forces are in 'full retreat' according to
Brig. Gen. Richard Neal in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Allied
forces are pursuing and Iraqi POWs number 30,000plus. That number will climb to 63,000.
In an announcement, Saddam Hussein says Iraqi occupation forces will completely withdraw from Kuwait.
27th: The emirate's flag is raised by Kuwaiti troops in
Kuwait City. President Bush declares suspension of
offensive combat and lays out conditions for a permanent cease-fire.
April 8th: Cruiser USS Bunker Hill returns to Yokosuka,Japan.
15th: USS Midway's air wing returns to Atsugi, Japan.
17th: Midway battle group return to Yokosuka.
Page 18
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Page 20
vol. 45, NO. 131
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUND/V — Pacific Stars and Stripes (f
tripes, Begasse
U.S. Marines storm toward Kuwait City under a black, smoke-filled sky.
FREEDOM ROAD
By Wayne J. Begasse
N THE IRAQI BORDER —
Dust flew up from the desert
floor, marring a beauitiful
Saudi sunrise as hundreds of
Abrams tanks, Bradleys, and support vehicles from the Army's 2nd
Armored Cavalry Regiment rolled
towards Tap Line Road. When they
reached it they would be farther
north than any allied unit in Saudi
Arabia.
The move was only 70 kilome^^^
ters, according to the map that
•••"
hung in the regiment's command post. But
to the soldiers, the move signaled that the
ground war was becoming a reality.
It was Feb. 17. The air war was just a
month old, and Iraqi Foreign Minister
Tariq Aziz was in Moscow for talks with
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbechev. He
was quoted as saying it was up to the allies
to act on the peace proposal that Iraq offered Feb. 15. That proposal said Iraq was
prepared to pull out of Kuwait under certain conditions. It fell "well short" of what
is needed to end the war, said President
Bush in an evening press conference. It
looked as if the 2nd ACR would be going to
war — soon.
Since its arrival from Germany, the regiment had been sitting in the desert for the
last 2 Vz months.
Its assignment was to locate the enemy
and engage them until one of the heavier
armored units could come from the rear
and take up the fight. It took a full day to
get the regiment, three armored squadrons,
one aviation squadron, a support squadron
and the command post across Tap Line
Road.
As the soldiers dug in to their new home,
many began listening to their shortwave
radios — the only link they had to the
outside world. Radios told the same story
they had heard for the last month. The Air
Force continued its attack on Iraqi targets.
"That's OK," said Staff Sgt. Tom Nicholson, as he clenched his M-16. "It's only a
matter of days now and then its our turn.
And we plan to kick Saddam's butt."
Many, including Nicholson, were tired of
listening to the Air Force get all the credit.
They were worried that if the air war
forced Saddam to throw up the white flag,
then sitting in the desert the last few
months would be for naught.
"I'm a soldier, I've trained for this all my
career," said Nicholson. "I don't want to
miss out now. I want something to show for
O
When the
tanks came
rolling in
Stripes, Begasse
A U.S. Marine raises a fist in victory.
my war efforts." Nearby, several
combat veterans of Vietnam talked
to younger soldiers, whom the veterans called "war mongers." "I
can't believe my ears when I hear
them talking like that," said a veteran. "These guys don't know what
war is really like."
The next morning, Capt. Robert
Dobson, the regiment's public affairs officer, strode into the tent he
shared with Nicholson and Spec.
Lionel Green, and calmly said, "GDay's set. We move out on the
^^
21st."
™"™
No one said a thing for a minute
or two, and then the 21-year-old specialist
spoke. "You mean we're really going to
war?"
The regiment immediateley began preparations. The next day was another jump —
this time a shorter 20-kilometer move. It
put them within Iraqi artillery range.
Now, during the cold, clear nights, you
could hear the bombing raids going on
across the border. Some nights you could
feel the ground shake, but mostly you
could hear the destruction being dropped
on the Iraqi army.
On the morning of Feb. 20 — Day 38 of
the war — Dobson informed his men that
G-Day had been put on hold. President
Bush, we were told, wanted to wait to see
what would become of a Soviet proposal
that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait.
The men focused their attention on the
radio — listening to BBC reports — day and
night. For a while it looked as if Iraq was
sincere about pulling out.
On Feb 21, the Soviets announced they
and Iraq had agreed on a plan that could
lead to Iraq's withdraw! from Kuwait. It
was also the day the regiment was informed
that the ground war was on again. The
regiment was to breech the border on Feb.
23 — in just two days. The ground war
would officially start the next morning.
The next day the regiment buzzed with
preparations. Tank and Bradley fighting
vehicle commanders gave their tracks one
last going over, and squadron commanders
received their final brief.
One Bradley team was out on the northern most point. They kept an eye on the the
border and talked. One 18-year-old soldier
couldn't believe it was happening. "I left
for basic two weeks before Iraq invaded
Kuwait," he said. "It was all anyone talked
about in basic. Looking back on it now, I
wonder how I ever ended up here."
He was not alone. Three of the four men
that made up the crew of the Bradley were
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUNDA/ -
vol. 46, NO. 131 Page 21
Stripes, Begasse
Kuwaiti resistance fighters celebrate the liberation victory.
under 21. "Raw recruits," said their Bradley commander, a veteran who saw fighting
in the waning months of Vietnam. "I've
told these guys its OK to be afraid, that's
it's a natural reaction. Heck, I'm scared.
Tomorrow we go into Iraq. Some of us may
never return. But it's our job. I've tried to
train them in the short time we've been
together. Hopefully, it paid off.'
55
T
he morning of Feb. 23 brought lastminute reports that Iraq would immediately pull out of Kuwait. They
wouldn't be given the chance.
At 11 a.m., the BBC carried a report that
Bush had given the Iraqis till noon the
following day .to leave Kuwait.
Two and a half hours later, the green
light was on. The regiment began to move.
Artillery units unleashed a barrage. It lasted exactly nine minutes. Next came the
punch through the berm.
Hundreds of tanks sped across the border to secure points for the following day's
assualt. They met no resistance. That night
in the regiment's command post, soldiers
spent the night sleeping in their vehicles —
the tents all stowed for the next day's departure.
In the early morning darkness, the
ground war became a reality. By sunrise
the assualt was in full swing.
A few miles over the berm, vehicles
stopped at the sight of a huge white pyramid that marked the Iraqi border. Soldiers
brought out their cameras and groups
stood in front of the marker for souvenir
photos. A few gathered up Iraqi sand and
rocks.
Twenty miles into Iraq, the regimental
command post stopped. It had reached its
first-day objective.
An hour later, word was passed that the
front-line units were meeting little resistance. They were on the move again.
The first day took the regiment 45 miles
into Iraq. Captured Iraqi prisoners were
being shuffled towards the command post
from the front two squadrons. They had
surrendered without a fight.
T
he regiment continued the swing toward the Euphrates River Valley. The
next day there were more prisoners.
The war would continue for the regiment, but word was already reaching them:
U.S. Marines and Saudi military forces
were pushing into Kuwait. Iraqis were fleeing north — right into the 2nd ACR's path.
It's here that I left the unit. Through
news reports I kept track of its advance.
Staff Sgt. Nicholson, who craved the experience of war, had finally gotten a taste of
it.
Stripes, Begasse
A Marine kept his patriotism in his flak-vest pocket
Stripes, Begasse
An M1A1 tank sports a game label on the barrel of its 120mm gun.
Page 22
vol. 46, NO. 131
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUND/V — Pacific Stars and Stripes (frt*)
Photos by
Wayne J. Begasse
A Saudi bottles water in preparation for war.
Kuwait's
liberation
Thank you very much'
K
UWAIT CITY — I really didn't know what to
expect. The sky was black. Bombs had pitted
and scarred the highway that led into liberated Kuwait City. What was ahead? More importantly
would I be able to handle what I found? How would
the Kuwaitis — who days earlier had been given
back their country — react to the hundreds of us
reporters and photographers creating a second invasion?
It didn't take long before my questions were
answered.
As I and my partner, Ken Clauson of European
Stars and Stripes, made our way toward downtown
Kuwait City, we came upon our first checkpoint.
Armed with weapons that once belonged to Iraqis,
young Kuwaitis stopped each car. They were looking for Iraqis, Iraqi sympathizers and weapons.
They carefuly checked the papers of everyone in
each car; then they searched the trunks.
As we approached, I reached for the Kuwaiti
press credential hanging around my neck. There
was no need, however. A young Kuwaiti, no more
than 15 and holding an AK-47, stopped our car,
thrust his arm forward wanting to shake hands:
"Thank you, thank you very much."
We would hear that for the next 36 hours as we
traveled around Kuwait City trying to document
their liberation.
At the next roadblock — there seemed to be one
every 200 yards — we ran into a traffic jam. Figuring it must be debris strewn across the road causing
the slowdown, we made our way toward the front.
People kept shaking our hands, screaming "Thank
you, thank you George Bush, thank you everyone."
The cause of the traffic jam: another celebration
parade., and we were caught smack in the middle.
Although liberation was days old, that didn't stop
them from continuing the celebration.
Cars, trucks, flatbeds and even tanks filed past
in front of the U.S. Embassy. Thousands of Kuwaitis lined the street. Victorious Kuwaiti and Saudi
soldiers fired their weapons into the sky.
I shot several rolls of film in those first few
hours: GIs signing autographs for thankful Kuwaitis, young Kuwaiti women yelling "Up with
Bush, Down with Saddam," people waving huge
Kuwaiti flags.
There were two incidents I recall specifically.
I was standing there trying to take it all in, when
one Kuwaiti mother touched my shoulder and
asked if I was an American. When I answered, she
A Kuwaiti woman waves the national flag.
threw her arms around me and began thanking me.
I told her I wasn't a soldier, but a member of the
press.
"It doesn't matter, you're American. That is
enough. Americans freed our country from the
arms of that madman."
She then introduced me to her family, all nine of
them. The only one missing was her husband. He
had joined the Kuwait resistance, and she hasn't
heard from him since.
She whispered — she didn't want the children to
hear — that she fears he is dead.
When I left Kuwait for our return to Saudi
Arabia, I stopped to photograph the burning oil
fields.
As I was getting back into the car, another car
pulled alongside. Inside was a Kuwaiti man with his
family; his wife, two children and their Filipina
maid. They said they were out driving for the first
time since the Iraqi invasion on Aug. 2.
I gladly obliged his request that I pose with his
family for a picture. After the picture, he intro-
duced his family and we talked. He told me stories
of invasion day, how he and his family holed up in
their small house for seven months. They went
outside only for food and water.
He looked at the horizon, shook his head and said,
"What a pity. Our lives have been disrupted for the
last seven months, and although we are happy to
have come through it, it's sad to see what's become
of our country. It will take years to erase what
Saddam did in those seven months."
A
s we said our goodbyes, his 7-year-old
daughter reached into the car and brought
out a Kuwaiti flag, wrote something on it in
Arabic and handed it to me. The father
translated the Arabic: Long live freed Kuwait.
Thank you.
I still have that flag. It hangs on the wall near my
desk. It causes me to reflect of my short time in
Kuwait. Reflect on the plight of those people, the
ones that showed me a warm side, all the while
hurting inside.
— Wayne J. Begasse
Smoke from a burning Kuwaiti oil field floats over an abandoned housing complex.
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUNDAY -
vol. 46, NO. 131 Page 23
**********
* *
**
THE MARINE CORPS EXCHANGE
MCASIWAKUNI JAPAN
OFFERS CONGRATULATIONS AND GRATITUDE
FOR THE EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE
OF DUTIES AND
VICTORY
BY ALL SERVICEMEMBERS INVOLVED
IN
OPERATION DESERT STORM
WELCOME HOME
****************************************
SRA COMBS
SRA DUG HI EN
A1C FOLEY
SSGT HANCOC K
SGT HICKS
AMN LOWE
SGT ROONEY
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SSGT SCOT!
SGI MERR!TT
!H(-;i WAKbLY
'SGT MCNEIL JR
GTSCHROEDER
SRA EOX
SSGT TINCHER
18TRNS/LGTM
SSGT WEBER
MR. MADDEN
is /'f'";
SRA SHEETS
A 1C SOY
SGT WALKEP
;•;{ ;v -,/vii • ip.ivc;
T3GT MELENDtZ
TSGTWIl iAMS
SSGT SMITH
6990TH ESS
SSGT JACKSON
TSGT OSUNA
MR, ! FSTER
MR, KENY
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NAVV CFAO
603RD MASG
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STATION DEL
Page 24
voi.46.No. 131
Army & Air Force Exchange Service
PACIFIC SUNDAY- Pacific stars and stripes (w«o
I MCX (IP
Muwc Cftft licktmp M5»
»
May 12, 1991
eHdianqe
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May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUND/V-
Pacific Stars and Stripes (ft»)
vol. 46, NO. 131 Page 25
Tm
coming
home'
By Hal Drake
Stripes Senior Staff Writer
O
n Guam, a wife returning from the Persian
Gulf was greeted by a stay-at-home husband.
A Marine came back to Okinawa and declared
himself a true expeditionary creature — home was
where the duty was, overseas or not.
In the Philippines, sailor-town Olongapo was
rocked to the foundations as 15,000 Marines and
sailors arrived at once, washing the bitter taste of
near beer from their mouths with strong swallows
of San Miguel.
In Japan, families waited longer. Yellow ribbons, wilting in the spring thaw, stayed in place
on trees and doorknobs.
Then, after six months of crisis and combat, the
Midway battle group and the carrier's air wing
returned to Japan to families and friends delirious
with relief.
All over the western Pacific, Americans, finished with a short war, landed back under American colors on foreign ground.
The faraway victory was taken in stride, but not
the homecoming.
"You're late," Lt. Lee Huntzinger reproved her
husband, Lt. Cmdr. Mark Huntzinger, as he came
to Agana Naval Air Station to pick her up.
In blaring band music and a flutter of yellow
ribbons, he still looked as if he were driving to a
train station to collect a commuter spouse.
But this was mid-March and Lee had been away
since January, sent to the Gulf with Fleet Air
Reconnaissance Squadron 1.
Navy Lt. j.g. Mike Miklaski kisses his 5-week-old daughter for the first time.
Married three years, they marked up their
third missed anniversary — something both
took in career stride. Duty had always deferred
a candlelight dinner.
"There's always a possibility that either of us
could wander off to whatever contingency
comes up," shrugged Mark, a Seabee officer
who stayed on Guam as Lee went to Saudi
'These guys
deserve all the
fun they can get/
— Marine Capt. Randy Wormeester
U.S. Navy photo, Ted Salois
Marines and sailors of the amphibious ship USS Okinawa are greeted in Subic Bay.
Arabia. Lee, Navy wife and Navy officer,
agreed. She wanted to go.
"You don't want war or fighting," she said,
"but if you've spent your life training and if
war is inevitable, you want to contribute. You
want to be there doing your job."
Victory had been gained, and the gain was
worth the pain.
Marine Lance Cpl. Darrell Davis, holding the
colors of Headquarters Company, 4th Marine
Regiment, was first off a Fat Albert.
He was just ahead of 69 others who filed off
the C-5A at Kadena Air Base, the first group of
iV
Page 26
vol. 46, NO. 131
May 12, 1991
•4
Desert Storm
Heroes
VAQ-136
VFA-195
VA-185 VFA-
VAW-1
VA-1
May 12, 1991
vol. 46, NO. 131 Page 27
Jubilant members of the Army 24th Mechanized Infantry Division on their way home to Fort Stewart, Ga.
Marines to return to Okinawa after almost seven
months in the Gulf. The trip back had been
tiring, Davis admitted — 16 hours in the air, 16
hours on Diego Garcia, and now home.
That's what this was, Davis added. Anywhere
Sam told him to hang his helmet and be ready to
fight was home.
W
hat he had in hand was his unit flag,
worn and stained with the honest dirt of
duty, and Davis held it proudly. His commander had given it to him as he left Saudi
Arabia.
"He entrusted this to me and told me to bring
it home and put it back in front of the company."
The Marines had been out working, and
looked it — sweaty and unshaven, they were still
seized for frantic hugs from loved ones.
For Capt. Joe Coco, there was a first meeting
with an unacquainted loved one — 2-month-old
Drew, born while his father was away.
Blue uniforms were seen among the green,
and Jean Solie was glad.
Tech. Sgt. Michael Solie of the 376th Strategic
Wing had come to Kadena with his family in
August, the month a remote war started, and by
November he was gone.
"It's been four long months," Jean said.
"He's unquestionably a hero. He went out and
did what America's all about — help others to be
free."
Here, as in America, there were speeches of
tribute and gratitude. A general thanked his
troops for putting a despot in his place.
"You took a petty tyrant and showed him that
this is not the kind of world that will accept his
kind," said Maj. Gen. H. C. Stackpole III, commander of the III Marine Expeditionary Force.
T
he largest group of military people to deploy from the Pacific left with the halfdozen ships of the USS Midway battle
group on Oct. 2. Some 6,000 sailors in all spent
more than six months in the North Arabian Sea
and Persian Gulf. The beauty of the Midway's
return was that the carrier came back with all its
pilots and aircraft — none were killed or shot
down during the war.
"Every time the news said that a plane went
down, my heart leapt," said Nancy Rocha, whose
husband Lt. Jeff Rocha is an F/A-18 pilot with
the Midway.
"The kids worried a lot about their father,"
admitted Yukie Williston, while she waited for
her husband Chief Petty Officer Wade Williston
at the arrival of destroyer USS Oldendorf. "Our
three-year-old kept asking, 'when will daddy
come back?' "
But that question quickly faded when Kevin
Williston spotted his dad at the destroyer's rail,
and a smile lit the boy's face.
Not all Midway sailors, however, had such a
personal welcome.
"The worst part of coming back is having no
one to greet you," said Seaman Marco Mancilla,
a single sailor who works in the carrier's hangar
bay.
A few Marines went to the Mideast from
Misawa Air Base in northern Japan, exchanging
no shots and seeing little action except for thousands of Iraqi prisoners in single file, looking
like a long procession of ragged pilgrims.
M
any more soldiers and Marines, some
15,000, would have landed on the beaches of Kuwait if the allied ground assault
had not broken the spine of Saddam Hussein's
forces.
Instead, stopping off at Subic Bay Naval Station, they invaded Olongapo City — hit bars,
shops and restaurants with a benevolent barrage
of long green.
Some 5,000 men in Commander Amphibious
Group 5, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, were
ready for it. At sea for 10 months, they were the
first such outfit to be deployed that long since
the Indochina War.
There was no resistance from barkeeps and
hostesses dug in along Magsaysay Avenue,
where business had been barren of profit since
these troops passed through in January, before
they deployed, and spent wildly on a fatalistic
last fling.
Now they were home or headed home, and
had a lot of long days and lonely nights to make
up for.
"Lock yourself in your hall closet for 10
months and tell me what life is like," said Marine
Capt. Randy Wormeester. "These guys deserve
all the fun they can get."
One returnee, Petty Officer 1st Class Howard
Smith, debarked to meet wife Maria and 4-yearold daughter Yvonne.
First handed the "Mother of All Beer on d'
Pier," Smith then got roses from his little girl,
along with a carefully rehearsed greeting.
"Welcome home, daddy, I love you."
To Smith, this moment could only be experienced, never described.
"You see it a lot on TV, but you don't know
what it's like."
At Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo, longhung yellow ribbons had faded, but not the resolve to give those who went away a rousing
welcome-home.
Leslie Stoerck had put husband Kurt's presents under the Christmas tree as if his hands
would be there to open them, then shelved the
gifts that would not be unwrapped until absent
faces in the 374th Aerial Port Squadron returned. She waited. So did Katey, 4 months,
Kandyce, 2, Kerry, 6, Karly, 7, Kyle, 9 and Kimberly, 10. A much-missed daddy had been gone
since Nov. 28.
Pilots and crewmen of Carrier Air Wing 5,
deployed on the Midway, would return to Atsugi
Naval Air Facility to find happy families and the
work of a grateful Japanese hand waiting for
them.
Y
utaka Miura, a Yokohama dental technician and sparetime artist, painted the prow
of an F/A-18 Hornet lifting above a leaden
blue sea. There is a watchdog destroyer below
and the sky is turning a hostile gray.
With the painting, Miura and businessman
Suei Sen Lee sent a tribute.
"This picture was drawn for victory in the
war for peace and freedom and for safe return of
our naval forces. From the bottom of our heart,
we wish you full success in action and pray for
your safety. Hold out, U.S. Navy pilots."
Miura called his work "Return to Peace,"
which said it all for a lot of people.
Page 28
vol. 46, NO. 131
PACIFIC SUNDAY-
May 12, 1991
-h
GOLDEN
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUNDAY
voi.46, NO. 131 Page 29
The
ultimate
sacrifice
Stripes, Younghaus
Kristine Winkley, top center, and her children received caring and support from their neighbors
and friends, the Viramontes. Sean's pictures sits on the table in the background.
By Paul Younghaus
Stripes Okinawa Correspondent
K
ADENA AIR BASE — A relationship that
began in a bus terminal in Los Angeles in
1982 ended tragically in a dust storm in
Saudi Arabia Feb. 7, 1991. A Marine intelligence
officer, devoted husband and father of two, had
his life extinguished as the car he was driving hit
a tank broadside during a sand storm.
But, to the widow of Marine Chief Warrant
Officer 2 B. Sean Winkley, the tragedy had a
silver lining that she could have never dreamed
of.
"The Marine Corps has held my hand through
all of this and as hard as this has all been,
they've moved mountains to take care of me,"
said Kristine Winkley.
Kristine said she was crushed when the news
of her husband's death reached her Feb. 8. Sean
was the only Marine stationed on Okinawa, as
well as the only person from the state of Maine,
to die in the Gulf war.
To Kristine, Sean's deployment to the Mideast
was no suprise. She said the two had only been
together three to four years of their nine-year
marriage. Sean was in school or deployed the
rest of the time. Seth, 6, and Gabrielle, 5, were
also used to their father's frequent field duty.
"It was hard, he was always out in the field.
He missed a lot of time with Seth and Gabrielle,
and he always felt bad for that. We were always
hoping that things would slow down. We always
made plans for 'someday,' " she said.
A
ssigned to the 3rd Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Intelligence Battalion,
Winkley was in the Philippines when Iraq
invaded Kuwait. He returned to Okinawa for
three weeks, then left for the Mideast on Oct. 2.
"He wanted to go. This was exactly what he'd
been trained to do," Kristine said.
"I knew he wanted to go, but this was different, I didn't know when he would be back."
Then the news of Sean's accident came. The
3rd SRI team leader knew Kristine was close to
her neighbor, Mary Viramontes.
He asked Viramontes to accompany a casualty
assistance officer when he broke the news of
Sean's accident and serious injuries.
She was told her husband suffered multiple
fractures, internal bleeding, trauma and head
wounds and that he was in surgery. It was the
morning of Feb. 8.
All day Kristine was tense, worried that the
worst would happen. She and Viramontes waited
for any news.
About midnight casualty assistance officers
returned. She met them in the front yard.
"They looked at me and said, 'We're sorry.' I
broke down, I was hysterical. They had to carry
me back into the house." Mary and her husband,
Air Force Capt. Chris Viramontes, stayed with
Kristine.
"It was the longest night of my life. Chris and
Mary didn't let me out of their sight. We waited
until the next morning to tell Seth and Gabrielle," she said.
Kristine told her children that their father
was dead. They took it well, she said. They were
used to their father being gone and didn't really
understand at first that he was dead.
"They haven't cried," she said. "But Gabrielle
asked if I had a really long ladder to take daddy
into heaven."
D
uring the next few days Chris and Mary
were at Kristine's side all of the time.
They took care of her children. Other
neighbors brought her food.
On Feb. 11, Kristine went to the United States
for Sean's funeral. Capt. Hank Aaron, Sean's
team chief, went with her. He wasn't the casualty assistance officer, but Kristine asked that he
accompany her.
"He was super, he was my pillar of strength.
They didn't just tell me that Sean had died and
then forget me. I didn't think everyone would
take such a personal interest," she said.
Sean was given a hero's funeral with full
military honors. The state governor, a congresswoman, family and friends were there.
In all there were 300 people in the Erskine
Academy gymnasium, the high school from
which Sean graduated.
At the ceremony they played a special song
for Kristine, "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers. It was a special song for Kristine
and Sean. While he was in the Mideast he taped it
for Kristine. He filled an entire tape with that
one song and told her that every word in the
song said what he felt about her.
Kristine had another special song played: The
"Marine's Hymn." It was special because Kristine and Sean had been Marines when they met
at the Los Angeles bus terminal in 1981. And it
was special because of one part of one verse.
// the Army and the Navy ever look on Heaven's scene,
They will find the streets are guarded by United
States Marines.
"I can picture him in heaven with dress blues,
but he's probably wearing cammies. He was
more comfortable in them," she said.
At the graveside there a light snow was falling, dusting the U.S. flag over Sean's coffin with
A tragedy
claims a
Marine —
and leaves
a void
in his
family's
lives
a fine layer of white. Kristine said Sean loved
Maine and loved snow.
"The snowfall, the 21-gun-salute, and the
sound of taps was the hardest part of the day,"
she said. "The farewell was haunting."
The funeral was on Feb. 14, five days before
Kristine and Sean were to celebrate their ninth
wedding anniversary. She said it was hard to
bury him on Valentine's day.
Kristine ordered a military headstone with the
inscription: "He walks with Jesus," on the back.
A week before Easter, Kristine's son Seth
proudly showed her a colored egg with a sticker
that said "Daddy."
"He was outstanding, the perfect Marine. He
was human, but he personified the Marine
Corps. I never met a person who didn't like him.
He was good-natured and a true professional,"
she said. "He was also a wonderful husband and
father. He loved being a father. I wish he was
still here to see his children grow up."
Kristine vowed that her husband's memory
would not fade. She's putting special items of
Sean's in a foot locker to show his children when
they get older.
"Sometimes I ask myself, 'Why me?' This
isn't supposed to be happening to me. Everyone's coming home to Okinawa now except my
personal Marine. I wish I could be happier for
them," she said.
She's not bitter. In fact, she said she's been
overwhelmed by all the support she's received.
Friends rallied behind her, and acquaintances
came to her assistance.
"The Marine Corps takes care of its own. This
was the first time for everyone involved. The
casualty officer had never done this before, but
he made sure everything was taken care of,"
Kristine said. "This has been really hard, but the
Marine Corps, my friends and my faith have
carried me through. I can't think of what I could
have told anyone to do to make things any better."
K
ristine said she would be leaving Okinawa
sometime this month, and that she wasn't
sure yet about her plans. She said she
would like to go to college and study to be a
paralegal assistant.
"Now that the dust has settled, I thought that
everyone's lives would have to go on and that I'd
be on my own," she said. "But all my friends
have been with me all the way. They've been
great tension relievers — they've been my
strength. In the military you have an extended
family. I'll never forget how my family helped
me through this all."
Page 30
voi.46,No. 131
PACIFIC SUNDAY- Pacific stars and stripes («»)
May 12, 1991
T0TRE
••fff ID Jl
_^^^^^__
^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^
uininn
WOMEN
OF DE ERT TORM.
'S GREAT TO
YOIS BACK MOTH
IN.
WELL DONE!
Pac/ffc Stars and Stripes
Your Hometown Newspaper Away From Home
May 12, 1991
PACIFIC SUNDAY-
vol. 46, NO. 131 Page 31
CONGRATULATIONS AND
All our heroes front Desert Storm.
From Camp Zama MWR
^
P 9e S n0t endorsed b
°
Representing the
'
V the Department of Defense, the military departments or Pacific Stars and Stripes.
>wmi
itary
Commodore Computer • Broyhill Furniture Ind.
Leading Technologies • The Lane Company
Samsonite Luggage
• Coleman Products
Bulova Watch Company • Magnavox
Sealy Mattress Company • Sanyo
• Creighton Uniform
• NAVDUNGAREE
• Mattel Toy Company
• Norelco
• Texas In
The John K. Kealy Company
8000 Capwell Drive
Oakland, California 94621
*1*
Page 32
vol. 46, NO. 131
PACIFIC SUNDAY — Pacific Stars and Stripes (ft**)
May 12, 1991

1991 Pacific Stars and Stripes Gulf War section

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