My
ScribeBy: Pauline Pekruhn - Special to The
Post and Courier
Originally Published on: 3/23/03
Page: 1G
The United States is once again in a war with Iraq. More than 200,000 U.S. troops are already in the Middle East. And back home pundits argue whether the cost of such a conflict is warranted. But the truth is few know the real cost of such a war. Kiawah resident Pauline Pekruhn does. Between 1984 and 1995 she and her husband, Richard, called Saudi Arabia home. They were Americans working for Aramco, the Arabian American Oil Company. And in 1991 they were caught in a war that neither of them will forget. Here is her story, in her own words.
Whatever else you were doing as 1991 began, you were keeping an eye on the impending war in the Middle East. We were boarding a plane after a brief holiday in Europe, heading back to our home in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, to wait for that war.
It wasn't the best of times to be flying around the Mideast, but worn out from months of tension, we had needed a break in a saner place. So we went as planned, and in my trip diary I wrote, "The buildup to war, the masses of troops, the sight and sound of their frightening equipment, is simply overwhelming. When we return from this trip, it will be just in time for the war to begin."
In Europe there was snow and a festive air. I could shift my anxiety about the war to the back of my mind, if not entirely out of it. When it came time to head back, war was looming and few flights were still operating into Dhahran. I wrote, "I'm really scared -- what a pickle we're in." A few men were scattered about our nearly empty plane, looking reluctant and fidgety. As for women, it was only me.
This is not surprising because since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait the previous August droves of women had already fled the danger. After much soul-searching, we resolved to see it through, hoping war wouldn't come, and getting ready in case it did. What was I doing in this place anyway, where evil people schemed to shoot missiles at me?
I came to be living in Dhahran when my husband, Richard, asked me if I'd like to move to Saudi Arabia, and I replied, "Can't hurt to look into it," instead of something more sensible like, "Huh?"
Our two sons, grown and out on their own, said, "Go for it." We told our astonished friends we hoped to have an adventure, a chance to live and work in another culture, and travel in exotic places. And oh, boy, did we.
Six years later it was our home, this curious place. Richard was an endodontist at Aramco's Dental Clinic, and I worked as a researcher in the law department, an exception to the rule prohibiting women in the workplace. It was constricting, though, to live in a fenced-in compound, in a country I couldn't leave without my husband's consent.
In the nearby Arab communities, eyes watched me, a woman neither shrouded nor veiled. Think mousy and you'll see my attire. A long, baggy cotton dress is the thing, accessorized with socks and sneakers. Stifling in a way, though not nearly as much as living inside that veil. But there was a great deal beyond that. More than 60 nationalities inhabited our community. Day-to-day life amid such cultural diversity was at times vexing, often just plain funny, and generally satisfying.
There was plenty to see and do in the Arab world, and we aimed to make each moment count. We traveled every chance we got, all around the kingdom and throughout much of the Mideast. We had built a nice life there and settled into it. The weekend everything changed was sweltering, pretty normal for Dhahran in August.
THE INVASION
Saddam Hussein chose a Thursday to overrun Kuwait with his Iraqi troops and dig in at our border, a weekend day in the Mideast. "Saudi Arabia Is Next," blared headlines, and the world knew -- but we didn't.
We had no cable or satellite, and newspapers were forbidden to print the story. Two days later when I walked into my office and found everyone clustered around a short-wave radio, I realized we were in terrible trouble. If Saddam wanted a really big oil-producing facility he need look no further. He would arrive in time for coffee.
Our protection, the Saudi Frontier Force, would dissolve with one "pffft" from a can of bug spray.
Confine a bunch of people in a perilous situation, deprive them of news, jam any means of communication and give them a grievance against their employer, and they will respond like we did, badly. We stopped all pretense of working, shared rumors and bad-mouthed Aramco for what we saw as a lack of concern. We wanted to get out, to run away.
We expected Aramco to evacuate us somewhere safe, but caught off guard, Aramco was slow to respond. It became every man for himself. Rumor had it that flights still operating were totally booked. The desert camping buffs escaped overland in off-road vehicles outfitted for survival in blazing heat. But we had only a small Mazda and a smidgen of common sense.
I took our sweet cats to the vet's office, crammed with harried pet owners and jumpy pets, for the health certificates required if we found a way to get them out. I asked the vet, "If all hell really does break out and the cats are still here, do you have any contingency plans?"
He answered, "Yes, someone will be here to put the animals down."
Once we confronted our worst fears, the frenzy subsided. Nothing else happened, and we felt OK just sticking around. With Iraqi troops still lurking just a couple of hours away though, Aramco took action and chartered planes to evacuate dependents. "I don't know whether we'll ever be back," I wrote on the plane going out. "My heart breaks for Richard, and all the husbands waving a sad goodbye. It's unreal, so many people scared silly and running around in circles."
I left, I guess, because I was told to go, but my heart wasn't in it. Back in the states, I faced an endless media barrage on one topic only, the tinderbox situation in the Mideast. This seemed more alarming than being in the midst of it. We had grandchildren now, and the time visiting with family was great, but I felt antsy and somehow adrift. So I headed home (to Dhahran) after only a few days.
Aboard the plane I noted, "I'm no better prepared to deal with all this than when we left. We love our life in Dhahran, but will it ever be the same?"
DESERT DOGS
On my return, I found a steamy August world of furious activity. Giant transport planes barely cleared the runway before the next one lumbered in. Highways clogged up with military convoys day and night, while helicopters hovered overhead, their whirly-chop kicking up clouds of sand. Tanks carried out maneuvers in the dunes behind our compound.
I was seeing the birth of Desert Shield, and with it came Desert Dogs, our little compound's outreach to the soldiers. We wanted to help, and here was a job we could do.
As ordinary civilians smack in the middle of the turmoil, we were able to support our soldiers in an active war zone and raise our own spirits in the process.
Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, we brought them all home. Along with relief from the heat and dust, they'd get a meal, bath, phone call home and clothes wash. When we couldn't reach them all this way, we set out in convoys across hundreds of miles of desert, bringing barbecues, cookies and back-home support to soldiers stationed at the front. Hundreds of Americans pitched in, again and again, aiming to reach every soldier at the front, and I hope we didn't miss too many.
We toured Navy vessels, climbed around in Bradley armored personnel carriers, and in and out of all sorts of helicopters and combat-ready aircraft, bombs branded with highly insulting personal messages for Saddam. We supported a Vietnam-era MASH unit field hospital and kept the all-too-nearby ammunitions depot supplied with ice.
On special days, such as the Marine Corps' 215th birthday and Pearl Harbor Day, we did gargantuan cookouts for thousands. Thanksgiving and Christmas were memorable that year, shared with the soldiers in our homes and at their units.
The American troops came to the Gulf because it was the right thing to do. They didn't ask why they were there. Here's what they did ask, almost always, "What are the folks back home saying about us here?" Next would come, "What are you doing here?"
Extraordinary circumstances had placed us there, where we could let them know we cared, and give them a pat on the back or a hug for the folks back home, who couldn't. We never forgot what we were all doing this for, not us and not the soldiers. They wondered, sometimes asking combat vets what the fighting was like, and whether they might die, or survive, but not whole.
DESERT STORM
We got back from Europe just ahead of the war and found Dhahran in a kind of limbo, too quiet with so many people away. I went to the field hospital, and it was gone -- moved closer to the front. We wanted to be doing things for the soldiers like before, but they were inaccessible, and grimmer tasks awaited us.
We stuck rolls and rolls of duct tape over our windows and stockpiled emergency supplies. Our bedroom became the safe room. Into it went cat food, litter box, people food, water, first-aid kit, emergency preparedness plan, short-wave radio, flashlight, batteries, exercise mats to hide under and more duct tape to seal the door if we were attacked.
We noted locations of communal safe houses in case we got caught outside. We learned about chemical warfare and stuck chemical detection strips on the wall.
The gas mask situation nearly did us in. Others had them, but we did not. Some were finally unearthed in Eastern Europe, relics from wars past. In what was little short of a free-for-all, I got our hideous gas masks just before the war began. One-size-fits-all, no instructions, antiquated filters.
I stood with other women in pouring rain for hours, while a much longer line for men moved through. When the Muttawa (the self-appointed religious police) strolled by, swishing his cane at our ankles to keep us in place, I nearly lost it.
Fighter jets roared off the runways, waking me at 2 a.m.
My hunch was that the war would begin that moonless night, and I could not return to sleep. Alert sirens sounded within the hour. We scooped up our cats and sealed ourselves into the safe room. On BBC we heard, "The war to liberate Kuwait has begun."
It's Desert Storm. We dialed 113 for announcements and heard a voice, "No attack, no gas."
Drifting back to sleep, we were again disturbed by alert sirens, and repeated the whole process -- cats, tape, BBC, dial 113. This time the voice announced, "This is really a real siren!"
The next night we got the real thing. An incoming scud missile was intercepted and destroyed by a Patriot missile. They really did work! But at that point, there was an entirely new psychological picture here. We hadn't knocked out the Iraqi offensive potential in the initial air assaults. They did have missiles, and they could reach Dhahran -- when the missile was shot down it was only 1,000 feet from the ground.
So what does it sound like, a Patriot missile colliding with a scud missile? Ear-splitting, like the world bursting apart with maximum fanfare, just over your head.
Much of each night was spent under exercise mats, cowering from the incessant din of aircraft, sirens and explosions. One time the detonations began with no warning. I rushed out to rescue our cats and saw a Patriot missile streak by, low in the sky. On a night when we were attacked and Tel Aviv was hit, I turned on Armed Forces Radio and heard, "Condition Black."
Chemicals released? It was to have meant that, but nothing came of it.
We tottered into work each day, gas masks handy, for the days also brought attacks. Sirens sounded first thing one morning, echoed by teeth-rattling explosions above our heads. Sealed into our office safe room, we listened to things dropping on the flimsy roof. A piece of shrapnel broke through and hung on the ceiling. I looked around piles of emergency supplies to my co-workers, some crying softly. They looked all worn-out, panicky. Outside, debris lay everywhere.
I could not sleep between attacks. At night I got so frantic I thought I'd bolt. It was an act of will for me to sleep in a sealed room, and my will left me. I couldn't stand that my home wasn't safe from chemicals or gas. I couldn't go outside. We were penned in our compound. We were trapped in the country, and I was about to snap.
WAR'S END
All commercial air traffic had ceased almost two weeks before, but there was still one way out and I took it -- an Air Force C5 transport plane.
For security reasons we were not told where we were going. I promised to pay for the flight not knowing what it would cost, and the IOU was noted in my passport. The seats faced backward, so I got a good long look at all that I was leaving, and thought for about the thousandth time since it all began, that this is not real.
What's really going on is that I've been plopped down right in the middle of this oh-so-interesting, oh-so-scary story. I wish I'd stuck it out just a little longer, because the scuds stopped coming in the very day I left. Before moving to the Mideast we'd loved coming to Kiawah Island, and this was where I needed to be. I rented a condo, walked the beach and sent reports to Richard, telling how beautiful it was, and how healing.
The war was dwindling when I headed home to Dhahran a few weeks later. Tragically, as I was flying back, Saddam sent in one last scud, destroying a military barracks in another part of Dhahran, and there were casualties. The war ended soon after I returned to Dhahran, but its effects lingered. The Kuwaiti oil wells burned for a couple of months, blackening our skies to the north. Our visits to the soldiers resumed, until little by little they got to go home. Military traffic jammed the highways as far as you could see, tanks, trucks, armored personnel carriers and busloads of departing soldiers.
I was very caught up in the emotions of the war. For the American troops, of course, but for the poor, beat-upon Iraqis as well. I will never forget CNN's videos of surrendering soldiers kissing the capturing American soldier's hand, and bowing on their knees to try and kiss his boots.
Our soldier's demeanor was a demonstration of why we won the war in this quick and decisive way. He stood there, tall and healthy and strong, well-trained and well cared for and with the faith of all Americans behind him, a fighting man trained to kill and prepared to kill and equipped to kill. And he held out a hand palm down and said, "No, it's OK. You're OK."
Firm, gentle and compassionate. And the Iraqis cried, "Salaam," wept with relief and bowed to kiss his boots. Peace.
Pauline and Richard left Saudi Arabia in 1995 and retired to Kiawah where they still reside.
My
Scribe