When GC and I returned to the states there where many adjustments we had to make. Namely we had to adjust to ourselves. Much of our original personalities where still inside us but there was this alteration that had been made to us that for me at least made me feel, very jumpy. It’s a hard feeling to explain unless you have been through what we had been through. But as I had unfortunately, experienced a very traumatic event some ten years prior to this, I was probably a little more jumpy than the rest of my fellow returnees. But after six months serving in the Persian Gulf area we were finally sent home.
We had arrived in Philadelphia and took a bus to Ft. Meade where we would out process. Those of us that had family come up to welcome us home, got to go off with them, GC was in that group. But many of us had to wait for our families, and I was in that category. So I spent the remainder of the day in the barracks resting, listening to the radio, and attempting to relax and overcome the jet lag. Night finally came and I fell asleep.
During Desert Storm, when the Iraqi’s fired off a Scud missile at us, the Saudi’s would use their air raid sirens to alert everyone to an incoming attack. We had spent many a night getting woken up to the alarms and having to run in to a bunker wearing our NBC gear and then waiting for the all clear before we could go back to our tents and sleep. Now, U.S. Army bases back then would also use their air raid sirens to alert the fire department that they had to scramble and respond to an emergency on base. The barracks we were in at Fort Meade was about one block away from the siren, and so that first morning at about 07:00 the fire department got a call to respond to an emergency. As I lay in my bunk half asleep, the air raid siren went off, I jumped to my feet in a state of hyper-awareness, looking for my NBC gear, machine gun and ammo as I pulled on my uniform.
Well just as I was about to go running down the hall yelling Scud to alert the others, I caught a glimpse of the leaves of a hardwood tree just outside my window, this was the first time since I had returned that I had really looked at a hard wood tree this close-up. The realization slowly sunk in that I was back in the states. I half fell, half sat on the floor as the adrenaline slowly dissipated from my bloodstream, and my heart rate began the slow process of returning to normal. I had to verbally repeat to myself “It’s OK; you’re in the states and your safe”. I must have sat there just starring at the tree for about an hour. It was so green and beautiful. After I got back to a relatively normal state I finished getting dressed and went out to get breakfast. Later that morning when I was back at the barracks all the other guys were each talking about how the siren had made them jump. I told them of my reaction and they all said that if I had gone running down the hallway yelling "Scud" they would have been right behind me looking for the bunker that wasn’t there.
A few months later when I was back at my normal unit, we had a similar incident. We were up at Ft. A.P. Hill for weapons qualification. To wake us up in the morning the NBC NCO walked out to a truck and started honking the horn just like he would if we were under a chemical attack. I woke up in an Army tent on a cot wearing a partial uniform; I flashed back to the desert and started frantically looking for my gas mask. After about 30 seconds of desperately looking for it I yelled out “Fuck-it! You didn’t issue me a mask so I’ll just stay here and die!”. But then I ran out the tent only to discover I was not in the desert. As I walked back in to the tent re-adjusting to reality, the rest of the platoon, which had not been deployed for Desert Storm, stared at me worriedly but said nothing. After I calmed down, one of my team members asked if I was OK, and everyone was still staring at me. So I smiled and explained I had just had a flash back but I would be OK. They all relaxed shook their heads and went about their business getting ready for the day. The other Gulf War Veterans in the unit all said they had had a similar experience that morning. Our NBC NCO, himself a Gulf War Veteran, was not a well liked man from that point on.
Acronyms:
NBC Nuclear Biological Chemical
NCO Non Commissioned Officer
Copyright William T. Richards 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
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