Patriots and Scuds

    I'm going to tell a personal account of one of my friends who served during the Gulf War.  I'm also going to go into some events and the psychological effects war has on individuals before and after.
For the circumstances in the story currently, I'm going to keep the story anonymous. So before even deploying to the war a regular thing an airman has to do is basic training, which in this instance was hard and brutal it was when drill sergeants can look you down and say obscene things and physically hit you. One of the things that were required during training was fire guard which was a drill where you had to wait behind a door and not open it for long hours. On one of these occasions, a drill sergeant tells him to open the door but respins saying he has orders not to open the door to anyone. This then proceeded the Sergent to say I'm going to "skull ---- your wife" then the response was ------- you. This then results in the Sergent opening up the door with keys and say I'll kick your ass in the Broom Room but the response was why not do it in the Day Room since it was bigger.
    The things that played in his mind was that you wouldn't even know if you would make it back home to his nine-month-old baby. Also keeping in mind what happens to soldiers in WW2 and Vietnam movies added more anticipation and stress to the fact of being deployed.
Once you arrived in the War the heat hit you first coming from the US to the desert is a big shift and that heat hits you first.
    Before one of the major operations midnight to noon al airplanes were lit up and ready to go around 70 planes in line ranging from bomber to fighters at KKIA. His job was to fix airplanes before and during missions which required vast knowledge and the ability to fix problems of an aircraft during missions. One of the mishaps during a maintenance check on a vehicle was when his boss lost a finger. So it goes that to check up on a plane you have to put pins in it's landing gear so it's safe to operate on but this causes the plane landing gear not to shut which inhibits it from taking off. During one of the maintenance checks a plane was going for a takeoff but there was a pin in its landing gear so the Boss reached in quickly and removed it but this caused the landing gear to shut on his fingers but due to him moving quickly he only lost one finger. Another accident took place during the flight where a refueling plane hit a bomber with its boomer which damaged the bomber. But this was the second time the pilot of the refueling plane did this since it removed the paint of the bomber which was taken seriously so when the plane landed they took the pilot away.
    During the Gulf, War troops were told that Sadam uses biological weapons on his people so it was critical to know how to use a hazmat suit. Soldiers suffered from PTSD since whenever there was a warning of a chemical attack the bases sirens would blare and the lights would turn red which meant you had only a limited time before the bombs would hit. One of these instances was when he was on a food run and went to Kings Terminal to grab some coffee and food. But out of the blue, the sirens blared out a guy speaking in a foreign language and when he went outside he saw everyone had on their gas masks on. He then went on to sit down and light a cig and everything slowed down. The people running and the seamless acceptance of death. Then when the lights and the alarm stopped everything sped up again.
    Another close encounter was when the flight line crew was coming in on a bus a sniper started to shoot out the windows of the bus. So everyone ducked down from the windows and went to safety. After that incident, the buses would wither be escorted or have two guards with machine guns in the front and back of the bus.
    To go in more depth about the attacks on US bases the Iraqi would fire their Russian Scud missiles at US bases but to counter this the US set up Patriot missiles which were anti-missile launcher which would shoot down incoming missiles. One incident was when the alarms blared and everyone put on their suits. Also when the lights would turn red meant that everyone should go inside the bunkers. Once the Patriot missiles were fired they would hit the Scuds thus eliminating the target. After the attacks, they would have the clear out shrapnel from the missiles remains and sometimes they would find Russian writing on the scuds. On the mental aspect of these attacks, soldiers would be exposed to rumors about what would happen if you were gassed and the commanders drilled them about wearing the suits. This furthered advanced some soldiers PTSD on the whole situation.
    His duties were to fix planes anything from fixing landing gear to its struts. Also, he had the responsibility to fix planes while in flight. Some of the planes which were repaired were the B52, C135, and kc135. ( check on the anti-radar plane) which was a plane that had a dome on top so it killed all radar systems for miles around. When the radar systems were down this kept the Iraqis grounded which then allowed the US to come in hard with air superiority and destroy all Iraqi belligerents.
After his nine-month deployment ended he got awards and demonstrated through the honor guard. But what hit the hardest after the war was that his son didn't know who he was. When he came back his son didn't recognize him but instead went back to his mother. War parted a family apart and was only connected through letters. At the end of the day, war does more than the effect you on the battlefield but it also spreads back to home.