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1991 Archive
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Archive of 1991 Gulf War Articles
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Celebration darkened by war’s
memories
Soldiers hesitate to tell of
horrors amidst victorious homecoming
by Tom Weber and Steve Kloehn
Talk of pride and victory in war flowed
easily as the bands played and the flags waved on Friday, but
the tales of horror unfolded more slowly for soldiers returning
from the Persian Gulf. In their desert camouflage, the troops
looked pleasantly bewildered by the hundreds of strangers who
had come to Bangor International Airport to welcome them home.
The soldiers happily signed autographs, talked into
microphones, squinted at TV lights, and filled pages in
reporters’ notebooks.
Ron Nagel of Colorado, a 24-year-old
corporal with the Army’s 52nd Engineers, stood apart from
the festivities for a moment and quietly sipped the first
non-Saudi Pepsi he had drunk in five months. He held a flag in
one hand while another poked out from the breast pocket of his
shirt.
“It’s hard to describe the
things we saw in Iraq,” Nagel said, shaking his head as
he recalled the battles fought in Basra. “It’s bad
enough to see someone dead for the first time, or someone blown
into a hundred pieces all over the place. “But the worst
part was driving down the roads in Iraq and seeing people with
arms or legs missing. They fell down in the road so they
wouldn’t be shot, and they begged for our help, and all
we could do was drive by and do nothing. We had a job to do,
but I still had to ask the Lord for forgiveness.”
The nightmares have yet to begin for
Nagel, who plans to “get life started again” soon
with his wife in Widefield, Colorado. But his daydreams are
filled with the gruesome pictures he expects to carry in his
head for a long time.
“It’s real hard to go by a
truck somewhere and see a guy sitting in there with no head, or
two guys in the back who are burned black because they
couldn’t get out in time.” he said. “Even
when we were well inside Saudi, where I knew we were safe, I
couldn’t pass a car without
thinking I’d see a dead body inside.”
As Nagel spoke, 13-year-old Shawn Lyon of
Dexter walked over to ask for his autograph. After signing the
sheet, Nagel reached into his pocket and handed the boy a Saudi
riyal — a paper note worth about 33 cents. “What do
you want my autograph for?” Nagel said. “I’m
getting everybody’s,” Lyon said.
“You’re heroes.”
When the boy had left, however, Nagel
admitted that he didn’t feel much like a hero. “The
only heroes in this war were the people who died over
there,” he said. “Everybody
sees those John Wayne movies, and that’s their
picture of a hero. I wasn’t doing any John Wayne stuff
over there. I was doing a job and I’m glad I’m
back.”
Sgt. 1st Class Russ Wilhite of the First
Infantry Division also was thinking of the desert — not a
barren desert but a desert full of beleaguered Iraqis,
burnt-out equipment and corpses. “There were a lot of
corpses,” Wilhite said. “You didn’t know it
until you had to move a vehicle out of the way. You would start
pushing a tank off the road and a corpse would fall out.”
The Army’s push to Kuwait City was littered with the
bodies of people who had died during coalition aerial and
artillery attacks, and crowded with those who had survived.
Wilhite encountered Iraqis popping up out of holes and
trenches, even out of 55-gallon drums with eyeslits cut in the
side — one-man forts that the
soldiers used during the day.
For the most part, the Iraqis were out of
food. Some had a little rice, some had baby food. A few
officers kept goats in their foxholes. One young Iraqi told an
American interpreter that he had been stopped for speeding, and
inducted into the Iraqi Army as punishment. They gave him a gun
and sent him to the front.
The Iraqis were desperate to surrender.
They kissed the food the allies gave them. “I felt bad at
first about the Iraqi prisoners, until we hit Kuwait City. Then
I realized the infant formula they were eating was infant
formula they had taken away from Kuwaiti babies,” Wilhite
said. “Then you’re not so anxious to give those
guys your food.”
During his eight days in Basra, however,
Nagel said he never once considered the Iraqis his enemy.
“The only enemy I had over there was Saddam,” he
said. “The Republican Guard deserved the incredible force
we hit them with. Man, it was a slaughter. But I’m not so
sure about the regular Iraqi army. Some of them didn’t
even have weapons.”
Nagel didn’t share those thoughts
with the young girl who asked him a few questions for a high
school report. “So what did you do when you were over
there?” the girl asked. “Sweat,” Nagel said.
“And what was the best part of being involved with the
war?” she asked. “Coming home,” was all he
said.
Coming home — the band, the
children and adults shaking his hand and patting his back
— did little to dim Wilhite’s memories of the
carnage. “We were going to Kuwait City and you could
smell the bodies. The rain was bloating them up, so they rotted
even faster,” Wilhite said. “I remember a flatbed
trailer full of body bags. They were putting them in mass
graves. They had to. They had to do something, because they
were getting ripe fast.”
Beverly Wolf Tremble of Portland came up
to Bangor with her husband and 5-day-old son, Matthew, just to
welcome the troops home. She introduced herself and asked
Wilhite to pose for a picture with Matthew. Wilhite gently took
the infant, who was dressed in a tiny camouflage sweat suit,
and cradled him in the palm of his hand. Wilhite smiled at
Matthew, who slept soundly through it all, his pink scalp
resting on the heavy calluses at the heel of the
soldier’s hand.
“This is good,” Wilhite said,
rocking the baby long after the pictures had been taken.
“I can handle a load like this.”
From The
Bangor Daily News
Saturday-Sunday March 9-10, 1991
Saturday-Sunday March 9-10, 1991
