AREA SOLDIERS AGREE: `THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME'

JACKSON MAN HAS SOUVENIR OF WAR: Maj. Terry Crass of Jackson displays copies of the local newspaper he obtained while serving in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with a hospital unit during Operation Desert Storm. The Army reservist, who is assistant director of nursing at the Missouri Veterans Home, recently returned home from the gulf. (Photo by Fred Lynch)

CAPE GIRARDEAU Lt. Col. James Palen did double duty in the Persian Gulf.

The Cape Girardeau doctor, a flight surgeon in the United States Air Force Reserve, is stateside again, having arrived at Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Ill. He expects to be processed out within the next 10 days.

But while serving active duty in the Persian Gulf, he logged 70 hours of flight time, including five or six combat missions. He flew to the front on occasion to pick up casualties, and with other crews on tanker missions.

"Flight surgeons are required to fly," he said, "partly to understand the mission so we can help deal with the stress of the missions."

Palen is among several Persian Gulf veterans arriving in the states daily. Among other Cape Girardeau residents now safely home are Army reservists, Maj. Terry Crass and Sgt. Ted Hooker, who were stationed at the same Saudi Arabian hospital.

Five members of the Fleet Hospital, which trains at the Naval Reserve Center here, returned to Cape Girardeau Tuesday night.

They include Vincent Glueck, Sheila Lee, and Richard Fehr, all of Cape Girardeau; Ronald Sindle, Sikeston; and Betty Jones of Poplar Bluff. Dr. Mike Brown of Cape Girardeau has also returned to the states. He was met by family at Chicago.

Petty Officer 1st Class Glueck, a nuclear medicine technologist at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau, returned home from Bahrain in the Persian Gulf at midnight Tuesday.

The island off the coast of Saudi Arabia had been his home since Jan. 22, where he was part of the 6th Fleet Hospital.

"It's very, very good to be back," said Glueck. "We thought for sure when we went over there, we'd be there for a year. As it turned out, with the minimal number of casualties and large number of medical personnel, they just naturally started cutting back."

When Palen was called to active duty Jan. 9, he expected to ship out to the Persian Gulf. "Our unit's mission is to go anywhere in the world to set up a medical facility. We were anxious to participate. It's what we're trained to do take care of the casualties."

Palen's first mission was helping establishing a hospital. He explained that his unit landed at an airport in the Saudi Arabian desert about 120 miles south of the Kuwaiti border. "It was in `Scud Alley,'" he said. "The Scud missiles went right over the top of us."

He said, except for the airfield, "there was nothing but desert."

In the desert, his unit constructed a 250-bed tent hospital, along with living quarters for the military personnel stationed there.

When the unit first arrived, they were told to prepare to handle up to 3,000 casualties a day, Palen said. Just before the ground war began, he said, they were told to expect 1,000 casualties. He said the actual number treated at the hospital was much lower.

"We were real lucky. We went to war and came away with very few casualties."

He explained that as a flight surgeon his primary job is to care for pilots, flight crews and patients being transported on aircraft.

Just before the ground war started, Palen was transferred from the desert hospital to an air base in Jiddah.

Palen said that the injuries he saw at the medical facility in the desert were related to training. "Broken bones, back injuries, burns, lacerations," he explained.

"When I got down to Jiddah, I was taking care of pilots and I saw a lot of sunburn and colds and other minor things.

"There were some stress-related problems and anxiety," he said of the pilots who were receiving enemy fire as they flew missions.

Although most of the medical ailments he treated were not serious, Palen said, keeping the pilots and crews healthy was important. "We had to keep these guys flying. They were the ones flying bombing missions."

Palen is still working as a flight surgeon at Scott Air Force Base. "I'm taking care of flight crews bringing patients in from overseas," he said. "We are still supporting the Desert Storm Operation here."

Palen said he is anxious to reopen his practice in Cape Girardeau and hopes to do so by early April. "I hope my patients will come back," he said.

Despite his concerns about the practice, Palen wholeheartedly supported the action in the gulf.

"I agree this is what needed to be done. And I was pleased to do my part."

When Maj. Crass and Sgt. Hooker were notified they were going to be activated, neither thought they would wind up in Saudi Arabia.

Crass, who is assistant director of nursing at the Missouri Veterans Home here, and Hooker, who is in medical electronics at the Missouri Delta Medical Center at Sikeston, are members of the 217th Evacuation Hospital Group out of San Antonio, Texas, and are attached to the 21st general hospital here.

"We train at the Cape Girardeau Army Reserve Center here," said Crass. "When our group was called, we had about 20 people from this center.

"We originally thought we would stay stateside," he said. "But when they revealed our orders, the destination of the group was King Faisal Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and we arrived there two days before the war started.

"We were surprised at what we found there," said Crass. "We had a high-rise type of building for living quarters, and King Faisal is the best medical facility in Saudi.

Crass' specialty with the 217th Group is orthopedics.

"The hospital at Riyadh had allocated 300 beds for the coalition," said Crass. "The staff there was prepared to work with us in case of casualties," he said. "Fortunately, we didn't have to use any of them. We had no casualties in that area."

Crass worked alongside the regular nursing staff at the hospital.

"It was great to get back home," said Crass. "We left Saudi Arabia March 10, and reported to Texas for deactivation.

"When you get into a situation like that 10,000 miles from home, in a war zone you get to appreciate our way of life here."

Crass said the Saudis treated them great.

"They welcomed us and they supported us," he said. "But, it was still great to get back to the U.S."

Hooker, who previously worked at St. Francis Medical Center here before accepting a position at the Missouri Delta Medical Center at Sikeston in 1986 repairing medical equipment, also thought he would remain stateside.

"We left the Army Reserve Center here the day after Christmas, en route to Fort Polk, La.," said Hooker. "Along the way, we joined other groups, some from St. Louis, and others from Poplar Bluff. Once we got to Fort Polk, they let us know we were going to Saudi Arabia."

Like Crass, Hooker arrived at Riyadh Jan. 13, two days before the aerial war started.

"We left King Faisal about two months later, on March 9," said Hooker.

"I'm sure glad to be back," he said. "I'm looking forward to April 1, when I return to work at Delta Medical Center.

Glueck, 36, is especially glad to see his wife, Cindy, and three sons, Adam, Jacob and Travis.

"Everybody over there, that's all we did was talk about our families," he said. "The average age was about 37, so we had a lot of people over there with families and children. That was pretty well the number one topic of conversation."

Glueck said he was surprised at the war's low number of casualties. He said when he arrived in the gulf Jan. 22, fleet hospital personnel were told to expect 60-70 casualties daily once the ground war began.

"That was nothing near what we got," Glueck said. "There were very light casualties. "It was a blessing. It was a miracle because it could have went the other way very easily."

Glueck said he expects most of the Missouri reservists who were part of the fleet hospital to be home by this weekend. He said large groups should be returning today and Friday.

"It's definitely good to be back in Cape," Glueck said. "Everybody over there was very impressed with the support we got from the people back home.

"There were times when it was tough, but the support we got really helped."

(Staff Writer Jay Eastlick also contributed to this story.)