Veterans Voices: First Gulf War

Victoria Shadley's job began after the First Gulf War ended. She and her crew ran a wash rack in Turkey, where they cleaned military vehicles returning from the war and then sent them on ships bound for home.

Shelby Setnikar, Biwabik, set out on a caravan through the Saudi desert en route to Baghdad with the Army’s Third Infantry Division. They slept in their vehicles, ate MRE’s and were given two bottles of Evian water a day.

Paul Lesch was just a newbie nuclear machinist mate when he was helicoptered to the USS Theodore Roosevelt at the start of the First Gulf War. Even for someone in training, there was no downtime aboard the aircraft carrier that flew bombing missions to Iraq around the clock.

John W. Marshall, Duluth, signed up for infantry because that’s what he wanted. On February 26, 1991, he and his unit encountered Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard in the Battle of 73 Easting, the largest tank battle since World War II.

Jeff Hall's ambulance group deployed to Saudi Arabia and, within a week, the war found them when scud missiles started heading their way.

Eric Kerska, a captain with a tank battalion, was told to convoy his troops across 300 miles of desert. But all he had was a compass and a hand-drawn map.

As a public affairs officer, Casey Mahon was responsible for attending the daily CNN briefing. Because Mahon held the microphone for reporters asking questions, he unwittingly found himself part of the daily broadcast.

On February 23, Darrin Janisch and the 82nd Airborne participated in the beginning of the ground war. They were 100 hours in, over the border in Iraq, when the war suddenly ended.

Victoria Shadley was told the sergeant major didn’t like the grease under her fingernails from a recent brake job. And not long after, this Army light wheel mechanic found herself deployed to Turkey for the cleanup of the First Gulf War.

Paul Lesch’s day aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt started, officially, at 7 a.m. But there was constant maintenance to be done in the nuclear reactor space. Then there were late-night drills. He was lucky to get three hours of sleep, let alone see the sun.

Lori Allert was stationed at the Army hospital at Landstuhl in Germany. There, the nurse helped stabilize US military troops wounded in the First Gulf War before their trip to stateside hospitals.

As an Army nurse in the First Gulf War, Kathy Friedrich ended up spending more time taking care of Iraqi POWs than American wounded. Her patients broke down into two groups: Saddam Hussein’s elite Guard and the ordinary Iraqi citizen forced into the conflict.

John W. Marshall was hit by friendly tank fire, though he didn’t know it at the time. He was on the ground when an Iraqi—the enemy—ran up and offered him a drink of water and a cigarette.

Lisa Erickson, a jet engine mechanic at Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, specialized in the Pratt & Whitney F100 engine that went in the Air Force’s F-15 and F-16 planes. Though not directly in the Gulf War, Erickson and her crew worked long hours prepping engines to send to the Gulf and repairing the sand-clogged engines that returned from there. 

Shelby Setnikar, a pharmacist tech with the Army’s Third Infantry Division, came off guard duty to take a nap in the large barracks tent when someone burst in shouting, "Gas! Gas! Gas!"

Larry Liiljenquist, stationed on the USS Blue Ridge, looked forward to mail call. There were letters from family and packages from a Persian Gulf support group back home with, among other things, the latest (now a month old) copy of the local paper.

Kathy Friedrich had trained to be an ICU nurse with the Army. Yet when she first arrived in Saudi Arabia, she and the other nurses and doctors found themselves filling sandbags.

Jeff Hall was an officer assigned to an ambulance company. His drivers had to be ready at a moment’s notice. Still, he found some of the units they were assigned to had put them on KP duty. What if casualties suddenly came in?

Casey Mahon was coming off a 12-hour shift in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when an explosion shook his building. It was a Patriot missile encountering a scud. That’s when he knew he was at war..

Erick Kerska’s plane touched down in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf War was ramping up and this Army officer never forgot what the flight attendant told him when he exited the plane: "Good hunting."

During Desert Storm, Cal Portner’s unit was asked to take its mobile photo equipment to Spain to set up a photo processing and interpretation center for a stateside unit.

Lisa Erickson's dad joked that she didn’t even know how to put gas in her car. But the Air Force made her a jet engine mechanic and she learned. She was one of two females on the crew at Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa, that supplied jet engine motors to planes in the Gulf War. 

Theresa Dawson was a Russian linguist in Berlin when war the US went to war with Iraq. Though her unit had the opportunity to deploy, they were still vital to the mission in Europe, where the Berlin wall had fallen but a Soviet threat still lingered. 

Army nurse Lori Allert was told in summer 1990 that she may be deployed. Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces had invaded Kuwait. So she waited. And waited. Finally, after New Year’s, she got the call. She was being mobilized.

Larry Liljenquist, a marine, was given sea duty on the flagship for the 7th Fleet. The fleet, scheduled to go to Russia, suddenly received orders to redirect to the Persian Gulf.

Darrin Janisch’s fellow paratroopers in the 82nd Airborne had just returned from Operation Just Cause in Panama. They figured that was their big deployment for a long while. They never figured on Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait.

Cal Portner was part of a unit that ran a mobile photomat at his German base. When Desert Shield, and later Desert Storm, broke out, he and his unit members were not allowed to deploy, for the moment, because their work was so essential to the security of Europe.