Press & Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, NY) January 26, 2003
THE PROSPECT OF WAR
A different battle with familiar fears
AT HOME - Families, veterans know risks
By TODD MCADAM
Tonya Soyke faces her own personal battle with Iraq every day. The Binghamton woman wants to remain strong to support her son stationed in Kuwait, but fear eats away at her resolve like mustard gas at lung tissue.
And she's perfectly justified, experts say. Because while 12 years of technology gives U.S. forces a fighting superiority unequaled in the world, this isn't likely to be the same kind of war as the one that finished in 100 hours in 1991.
Then, the mission was to get Iraq out of Kuwait, and warnings to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein against using biochemical weapons were largely heeded. Now, the mission is to get Saddam out of Iraq, and he has absolutely no reason to hesitate, said Patrick Garrett, an analyst with Global Security.org, a nonprofit think tank based outside Washington, D.C. "It would make absolutely no sense for them not to use those weapons," Garrett said this week.
Gulf War veterans say the 1991 effort was no picnic. They spent weeks, even months, fighting fear, loneliness and boredom as much as Iraqis. Some parts of war never change, and what has changed in the past 12 years is as likely to make J'on Soyke's experience more harrowing as it is to make it easier.
Soyke stays off the phone in the evening in case her son J'on calls Binghamton from Kuwait. He's a corporal with the 2nd Marine Division whose job is to haul supplies to the Marines on the front lines. It's not directly combat, but a Scud missile or a howitzer shell doesn't exclude support troops.
"I'm not really for the war, but what're we going to do? It's not just my son, it's everybody's son," Soyke said. "I'm trying to be strong, to be supportive."
Equipment evolves
Mike Richards appreciates the sentiment -- his wife, Laurie, has to fight the same battle. The Johnson City man was a staff sergeant assigned to air base security for the 174th Fighter Wing during the Gulf War.
He's a reservist now, and was reactivated seven days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He's been in uniform ever since. In fact, he just got back from about three months in the United Arab Emirates, and if war does arrive, he can expect to be on a plane for the 20-hour flight to the Middle East any time.
Life in the Middle East is a little easier today than 12 years ago -- at least some of the buildings have developed from tent cities to actual buildings, he said. But that doesn't make it the most pleasant duty in the world, particularly with the threat of attack.
The U.S. military has evolved as well, Garrett said. The M1-A1 Abrams tank has thicker armor than in 1991, and the Bradley infantry fighting vehicles have been improved. The B-2 bomber is now capable of flying missions, and the Longbow improvement to the Apache helicopter makes it -- in military estimates -- up to four times more effective in killing tanks.
The FA-18 E/F Superhornet, the latest variant of the fighter jet, is the best the Marines have ever flown, he said, and planes are 10 times more likely to be using smart weapons than in 1990. The combat rations even come with M&Ms, just to give a little comfort of home.
"Tactics have evolved as well," he said.
In those same 12 years, the Iraqi army has declined. It rarely has battalion-level training, which is routine in the U.S. military. It has shrunk to 375,000 troops from more than 1 million. It also has fewer tanks, 2,200 compared with 5,550 in 1991, and those haven't been maintained or upgraded, according to published reports.
But those are just the numbers. The motives behind both sides, and the desires of their soldiers, are different. For Saddam, the 1991 invasion of Kuwait was a war of conquest, Garrett said. Now he's about to fight a war for survival.
Saddam's soldiers aren't fighting for a strange land as they were in 1991. This time they're fighting for their homes.
Lonely, dangerous work
James C. Hoffman of Edmeston spent six years recovering from the last war. It took that long for the antibiotics to eradicate the infection he contracted from driving through a chemical weapon zone. He knows what the Iraqis can do, even when they're not motivated.
Hoffman was an Army specialist with the 27th Combat Engineering Battalion. His job was to find a road under the desert sand and clear it, with no more company than one fellow soldier, a radio and the whistling of artillery flying overhead.
One day, he and his companion came across a low-lying hill. It was carved through with tunnels and trenches, none of which could be seen from below.
"If they wanted to fight, it would have been a whole different war," Hoffman said. It was then that he realized how dangerous war is -- even if it seems easy or dull.
As it was, Hoffman faced enough challenges. Everything he had was packed into his rig, and a feast consisted of A rations, tins of meat and gravy meant to be boiled in 55-gallon drums. Those were the days when he was back at his battalion's base camp.
Most of the time, dinner was an MRE, or meal ready to eat. It's a bag of food that's surprisingly tasty once you consider that it's meant to be stored without refrigeration for two years. The ham patties were good, he said, but don't eat the chicken a la king unless you can warm it up. Fortunately, his rig had a very warm turbocharger for such occasions.
His job, starting in September 1990, was to clear a road so equipment could pass over it. A tank -- and other tracked vehicles -- may be able to streak across the desert. But the wheeled trucks the military uses to get most of its stuff from one place to another need a road.
Hoffman built it. This time, J'on Soyke will use it.
Hoffman stared out over the desert at the beginning and asked his commander how long he'd be at work.
"I'll let you know," was the reply. Forty-five days later, Hoffman finally came out of the desert.
"Guys thought I had gone back to the States," he said.
Hunkering down
Richards had a simple job, in his own opinion. Keep the pilots and mechanics safe so the F-16s could kill tanks and keep the ground forces safe.
But that meant working 12 to 14 hours a day, he said. And what time was left was spent doing laundry, e-mailing home and running down to the PX to see if anything new had come in.
"We always said you didn't want more than one day off. You can do your laundry only so many times," Richards said.
Nobody ever shot at Richards, at least not with a rifle. But the Scuds flying overhead can rattle one's cage, even if one spends a week in a chemical-warfare suit in a bunker protected by Patriot anti-missile missiles.
"We were pretty funky by the end of the week," he said. "Somebody was always sneaking off to the showers."
The night an airman ran screaming, stark naked, past Richards during a Scud attack, however, shows that cleanliness may be next to godliness, but that's not the way a soldier wants to meet him.
Patriot anti-missile missiles kept Richards safe, so what was fearful then can be funny now.
The chemical suits J'on Soyke will use are better now than a dozen years ago, Richards said, although nothing takes away the stench of one's own sweat. "It's a little bit more labored breathing. And it's somewhat more clumsy because of the big rubber boots," he said. "But it's something you get used to."
Urban warfare
While a ground attack aimed at Baghdad may be easier than 12 years ago, Garrett has to point out something new that may add to casualties: urban warfare.
The initial plan, he said, is to "scare the hell out of the Iraqi generals and make them take care of it themselves." But if that doesn't work, U.S. forces would have to take the country themselves.
Tonya Soyke is already worrying about it. J'on underwent urban warfare training just before he deployed.
"He told me, 'Mom, I died like six times,' " she said.
But that was training, and dying six times there may just prevent dying once in real combat.
J'on Soyke tells his mother he's nervous about what may happen in the next few months, but like her, will be strong. If for no other reason, he has a wife and two children, 4-year-old Zhaun and 1-year-old Zhan'e.
"I'm on pins and needles, but I'm trying to stay strong for my son," Tonya Soyke said. He's trying to stay strong for his country. But Tonya Soyke would be lying if she didn't admit to a little fear.
That's OK, Richards said, he has been afraid many times: "There's nothing wrong with being afraid, it's what you do with it."
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