Veteran Warrior Writings

Warrior writings

Desert Storm 3/4/1991
By John Fisher
Author: Angels in Vietnam

At dinnertime, everyone helped themselves in the kitchen and sat at the table in the dinning room. The conversation was minimal as everyone dug into the huge festive meal. Then Heidi addressed her son. ‘Jeremy, maybe this would be a good time to tell everyone your orders.’ Ben, who had avoided the subject as long as he could, looked across the table at Jeremy. Please dear God, no war. Jeremy stared at his Uncle, seemingly not knowing how to begin. ‘I’m being sent over to the Middle East next week,’ he said. Ben dropped his fork onto his plate; his eyes bulged in their sockets, his mouth wide open. Oh no, no, no . . . He felt paralyzed couldn’t move couldn’t say anything. His nephew was going to war! Ben’s ears began to ring with the sounds of explosions and tears filled into his eyes. He put his head into his hands and started to panthis breath getting shorter with every exhalation. Oh my God, another generation going to war.

While Ben was freaking out in Colorado, President Bush visited the troops in the Middle East for Thanksgiving. Exactly one week later, the UN Security Council authorized force if Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait by midnight, January 15th. On January 15th, Iraq refused to budge and on the 16th the U.S. government issued a statement declaring that Operation Desert Shield had now become Operation Desert Storm. That night warplanes attacked Baghdad and soon after Iraqi missiles returned fire. The war was on and by February 23, 1991, the Marines were marching into Iraq.

Ben, who had successfully bid on and acquired a hefty commercial construction project, left the job site and disappeared. Since January 15th he had been a hazard on the job his mind in another world. At night his dreams were of the war TET all over again bloody dead soldiers with Jeremy’s face. He drove into the mountains in desperation, just wanting to be alone away from people away from the news about the war.

He arrived up on Berthoud Pass and snow shoed high up into the peaks to a deserted prospectors cabin. His supplies were minimal food for a week and a sleeping bag stuffed into a pack, and a snowboard. Towards the end of the seventh day, his food supplies running out, frostbite setting in, he decided to return to his vehicle. He pulled into his pack, strapped on his snowboard, and began to slide down the steep grades. The snow was heavy after a two-foot snowfall the night before, as heavy as his state of mindstill desperate for resolution from war.