War and remembrance

It comes rushing back with every headline and newscast, the feel of oppressively hot days in the Saudi Arabian desert, or the sound of missiles whistling overhead, or the sight of the Persian Gulf's endless expanse.

With deployment of tens of thousands of additional troops this month to the same region, the United States has poised itself for a repeat of the war President George W. Bush's father launched against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for invading Kuwait in 1990.

Some of the half-million U.S. troops deployed in that war against Iraq came from Southeast Missouri. Most were already serving in active duty, but many others were part-time reservists called to war from civilian life, including at least 58 Army and 60 Naval medical reservists from the Cape Girardeau area.

It was an exciting opportunity for some to do what they'd been trained to do: fight tyranny and defend freedom. For others, the news of war was unexpected and frightening -- they joined the military for college money and to see the world, not to die overseas.

The first U.S. bomb was dropped on Iraq on Jan. 16, 1991, and the United States called a cease fire on Feb. 28, 1991. During that time, Southeast Missouri's military men and women put their personal lives on hold, and their families watched the fray through the media's eyes.

Today, the focus is on Iraq's suspected buildup of chemical and biological weapons, and the results of recent U.N. inspections aren't resolving concerns. The U.S. and British militaries are amassing troops, supplies and weapons in the region that could exceed the numbers used in the Gulf War.

Those who experienced it a decade ago are watching with interest.

***

Twelve years ago, Janet Gluesing of Cape Girardeau helped form a local support group for those with relatives deployed during Desert Storm. Her son, Jamie Newcomer, was a sergeant with the Air Force, stationed in Oman. He had been in the service for five years.

"It was very devastating to know he was going to be in a war zone," she said. "For everyone else, it's as if life goes on, but not for you."

Newcomer recalled telling his mother about his deployment 12 years ago.

"It was a very emotional phone call to contact your family and tell them," he said. "I broke down and it was tough. But I was proud of the bigger picture and what it was all about, protecting freedom."

Gluesing's support group met weekly, sometimes giving away yellow ribbons at the Westfield Shoppingtown. Having the group helped her put fears aside and have faith in God to protect her son, she said.

"I'm a Christian, and I'd tell other parents now to be in prayer and put their children in the Lord's hands. It also helps to talk to others in that same position so you can know you're not alone."

Gluesing kept a close eye on the news during Desert Storm.

"When you have someone over there, you read everything and you become very hungry to get all the information you can," she said. "Part of you is there and it's real and you're living it too."

Today, Technical Sgt. Newcomer plays a more vital role in his work with the U.S. Transportation Command in logistics, planning and sending supplies and troops. He is stationed at Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Ill., and anticipates a promotion to master sergeant in June.

"I feel like I contribute much more to the effort today than the small amount I did then, though it was certainly important," he said. "I keep seeing the news about troops moving and supplies, and it's like watching myself in action."

Gluesing still has concerns, but said the likelihood of her son being redeployed to the Gulf is slim.

"I didn't resent the fact he was called," she said. "But it was very nerve-wracking."

***

Donald Bollinger was an all-American boy at Scott City High School in 1989, taller than average with gleaming red hair. He played basketball and ran track, worked to make a little extra money and thought a lot about the future.

And the way the Army presented it, the future seemed pretty cool. After graduation, he could get out of sometimes-suffocating small-town life, see the world and learn about electronics.

Then came an operation they called Desert Shield.

"I had no idea we'd go to war," said Bollinger, now 32. "I was pretty well scared to death. You had people going AWOL all over the place. One guy crushed his hand in a trunk so he wouldn't have to go."

His 24th Infantry Division was sent out on a "training exercise" that took Pfc. Bollinger into Kuwait and finally across enemy lines into Iraq. His specialty was field artillery digital systems repair. He was on the front lines, available if any of the firing equipment broke down. His unit was so close to the enemy that Scud missiles went overhead -- they were long range.

The most danger came from friendly fire, but no one he knew got hurt. "There was more to fear from our military than from the Iraqis. We had people coming up to us, waving their hands in the air and wanting food."

After eight months in 115-degree heat, worrying about the shelling and working around the camp, Bollinger became immune to the sight of dead bodies and the smell of burning flesh. He got to come back to the United States.

He got out of the military in 1992 on a medical discharge -- a knee injury from playing basketball -- and today lives in Chaffee and works as a maintenance technician for Havco Wood Products.

Every day the media or acquaintances remind him of his time overseas. "I think we should go in and take Saddam out of power," Bollinger said. "There's nothing wrong with the people over there. It was either say they hate us or get killed."

***

In 1990, 10,452 naval medical reservists were deployed in Operation Desert Storm. Among the 60 activated from the area was registered nurse Sheila Holloway, now 46, of Cape Girardeau, for whom today's problems with Iraq are dark echoes from the past.

"I've been talking about it a lot with my family recently," she said. "It's almost amazing the parallels between the two situations."

When she was activated for deployment in December 1990, she was a nurse in St. Francis Medical Center's intensive care unit.

The reality of war hit her upon arrival with the 970 others in her unit in Bahrain, an island off the coast of Saudi Arabia, she said. The sight of the fighter jets with missiles under the wings said it all.

"We just knew this is war," she said. "It was like, 'Wow. We're here and this is really it.'"

Holloway was stationed at the Navy's 6th Fleet 500-bed tent hospital in the intensive care burn unit. She recalled treating soldiers burned in a barracks explosion and several accident victims.

Holloway left behind two teenage sons, Chris and Cory Lee, now 28 and 25, in Southeast Missouri. Her father, Leonard Adams of Bell City, Mo., would occasionally get out a world map to study the area of the Persian Gulf where Holloway was stationed in Bahrain, she said.

Holloway sent audio tapes to her sons, but there were things she couldn't tell them out of an effort to protect them from fear, she said. However, she received a letter from a woman in Wheeling, W. Va., who had written to become a pen pal with a U.S. soldier.

"We've communicated ever since the Gulf," she said. "Those letters really meant a lot to me. It's like I could 'dump' my real feelings out to her."

Before her deployment, Holloway earned an associate degree as a registered nurse and was about to take a state certification board examination. However, her military service interrupted those plans. At the time, Missouri law kept nursing students from attending graduate-level studies and finding work as registered nurses if they missed taking the exam the first time it was offered, Holloway said.

With the help of a naval ombudsman, Holloway drafted a bill to establish wartime service as an exemption for those who missed the nursing exam to allow them to take it later and continue their studies. Former Missouri House Rep. Mary Kasten of Cape Girardeau sponsored the bill, and it went into effect in 1991.

"I didn't want anyone else to have to go through what I did," she said. "It was a really bad feeling to go to the other side of the world to serve the military and then come back home and not be able to do your job. It was very upsetting."

Holloway left the reserves in 1994. Today, she lives in Northport, N.Y., and works at the Veterans Administration Center. She intends to return to Missouri in the fall to pursue a master's degree in nursing.

***

When Mark Goodman told his family he wanted to be a Marine, his uncle, who'd served in that military branch, had something to say about it.

"He sat me down and said, 'People actually die,'" Goodman remembered.

He was undeterred. A 1981 graduate of Scott City High School and 1985 grad of the University of Missouri-Columbia, he was a captain and a Marine Corps pilot stationed in Cherry Point, N.J., by the time the nation went to war with Iraq.

And he was ready.

Goodman went overseas in August 1990, flew over 30 combat missions and earned three medals. He piloted an EA-6B Prowler, which jammed the radar of surface-to-air missiles. No one guarded by a Prowler died in Desert Storm.

But it wasn't a bloodless war, he quickly points out. "People think it was, but there were 150 people who died in that war. Three friends of mine who were flying carriers got killed."

He returned home to his wife, Chris, in April 1991 and got out of the military in 1996. Today, Goodman lives in Littleton, Colo., is a pilot for United Airlines and has two children, Drew, 10, and Clara, 6. He thinks about how lucky he is to have them when he hears about deployments to the Middle East.

"I think there will be not as much of an air war but more people on the ground," he said. "How that plays out, who knows? But I can assure you that our forces will be prepared to the utmost."

***

Naval reservist Vincent Glueck has lived with the possibility of deployment for nearly 16 years. Before being activated during Desert Storm, he worked at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau as a nuclear medical technician.

In the Persian Gulf, Glueck was a petty officer with the 6th Fleet hospital's patient admissions and transfers. He often put wounded on medevac helicopters bound for a U.S. military hospital in Germany.

The memories of that time come to the surface when he sees news about new deployments to the region and the media's images of troops and their loved ones.

"I can see the families and how it affects them and the troops," Glueck said. "It's kind of reminiscent of then. The hardest part is leaving your family behind. I would recommend anybody keep their family informed about the situation so that it's not a shock to them if you're called up."

Today, Chief Petty Officer Glueck works as a positron emission tomography technician at St. Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau. Because he's still in the Naval Reserve, he faces the possibility of another call to active duty.

"It's a day-by-day thing," he said. "I've heard nothing official yet."

***

In August 1990, Marine Lance Cpl. Shannon Sinn left Cape Girardeau to board the USS Naussau headed for the Persian Gulf. Once there, he trained fellow soldiers aboard a Harrier jet carrier how to protect themselves during nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.

"I was surprised it happened so fast," he said. "Within two weeks of Iraq invading Kuwait, we were leaving."

During Desert Storm, Sinn's ship never landed, but it pulled close enough to shore for its jets to fly missions into Kuwait. He was away from the United States for eight months, and has only a couple of regrets.

"I had a good experience," he said. "We weren't ever in direct contact. But it was long, and I missed my wife terribly and my son's birth. I'll always regret that, but it was something I just had to do."

He was able to get in a number of phone calls home to his wife by using a ham radio to place a collect telephone call.

Sinn served more than seven years in the Marines and four in the National Guard. Today, he works in quality control at Delta Asphalt in Cape Girardeau. He stays on top of news about the United States' tensions with Saddam Hussein.

"I try to keep up on the news," he said. "Since I was a part of it last time, I couldn't take a detached look at it like we do now on the outside."

***

For Petty Officer Jeffery L. Davis, Desert Storm was a waiting game.

He was deployed to the Persian Gulf aboard the USS Cayuga, a Seabee charged with constructing bridges from ship to shore. But the Cayuga never docked.

"I spent all the time over there waiting," he said. "I didn't come home for nine or 10 months."

He was almost getting his wish: Davis, who graduated from Chaffee High School in 1987, joined the Navy right away, hoping to travel. When he learned the United States was going to war with Iraq, he was more curious than anything.

His mother's request in the Southeast Missourian on Dec. 23, 1990, for people to write her son summed up his feeling about being part of the war effort. "When he writes, he mostly says he is tired of waiting and not knowing what will happen next," Linda Coomer told a reporter.

Davis gets irritated when he hears about another possible war with Iraq.

"My memories are of aggravation that we didn't get the job done when we were over there," he said. "But I'm no politician."

He served five years in the Navy as a diesel mechanic. Today he is an electrician in Redding, Calif. Davis and his wife, Kristine, have two sons.