The night of January 19th, four SCUDs impacted around al Jubayl. Two explosions shook the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion’s Air Detachment over the King Abdul Aziz Naval Air Station.
It was about four in the morning. The men who failed to mask in time, or achieve a tight seal, smelled and tasted something sharply acrid. A dense yellowish mist was seen floating over the camp. Some choaked; others experienced profuse nasal secretions, obscuring their masks.
Seabee Fred Willoughby remembers the pandemonium. “People were yelling, ‘MOPP-4, not a drill!’” A sired sounded. Willoughby thought the numbing of his mouth, lips and face felt much like a dentist’s pain killer. Shipmate Nick Roberts felt his exposed skin burn and a strange metallic taste “like sucking on a penny.”
Larry Perry, a naval construction worker stationed at King Abdul Aziz Naval Air Station, remembers emerging from a bomb shelter wearing his gas mask and being enveloped by a mist.
William Kay, an electrician assigned to Construction Battalion 24, heard and felt two loud “booms.” Sirens sounded; the camp public address announced: “Confirmed mustard gas; go to MOPP-4,” the highest level of chemical warefare alert. Like so many others, Kay left his building before securing his gas mask which immediately filled with fumes smelling of ammonia.
Harold Edwards, in charge of the Nuclear/Biological/Chemical (NBC) team for the 24th Seabees’ Air Detachment, used his M-256 kit that tested positive for blister agent. Under shipmate Tom Muse’s watch a blister formed.
Witnesses confirmed that Edwards had immediately reported the detections, but CENTCOM did not record the events. Two British M9 and CAM detections were reported in the NBC log during this time.
At the U.S. ammunition depot Log Base Alpha in the Saudi desert, NCO William Brady witnessed a SCUD detonation directly overhead, intercepted by a Patriot missile. “Everything shook,” Brady later told U.S. Senate investigators. “Chemical alarms were going off everywhere, and there was sheer panic.” Brady smelled sulfur, and his nose streamed mucus.
The M8A1 automatic alarms could not detect blister agent, but a litmus paper test would. Nerve agent turns yellow. Brady’s litmus paper turned red, confirmed presence of mustard gas. His M-256 chemical detection kit confirmed it.
West of Log Base Echo, military police Staff Sergeant Dale Glover was awakened to be told, by his Battalion NBC officer, that they were under chemical attack. An M-256 kit registered a positive reading. Everyone had a runny nose. After removing their chemical protection suits a few hours later, “three or four had to be medevaced out.”
An urgent message was drafted on January 19th to Rock Island Arsenal’s Commandant of the Marine Corps demanded more CBW protection. At 10:30 that morning, the intelligence arm of Central Command, ARCENT G-2, logged a Iraqi chem plant had been bombed, and its smoke was blowing across the Saudi’s border.
A soldier, located about 40 miles east of King Khalid Military City, heard every M-8 alarm, over 30 in close succession. His NBC officer radioed in that a nerve agent plant had been bombed about 150 miles away, and he was to take no action.
At 13:30, British Major Bobby Harris reported that their Saudi companions were “masking.” A smoke cloud was drifting their way. CENTCOM killed the report, ruling that the toxic plume was “not a likely hazard.”
At 17:10, Czech chemical specialists at Hafir al Batin, heard the whoop-whoop of their chemical detectors alerting. The Czechoslovak Federative Republic military chemical decontamination unit used the most sophisticated NBC detection and classification equipment in the Gulf.
After an American unit’s first sergeant recorded the Czech chemical detection, he was ordered to send the logs to Washington for “historical purposes.”
Czech Federation soldiers continued to identify “borderline life-threatening concentrations of the chemical agents yperite and sarin” in King Khalid Military City.
From his position near King Fahd International Airport, Lance Corporal Rocky Gallegos with Bravo Battery, 2nd Light Anti-aircraft Missile Battalion, watched a SCUD missile being shot out of the sky over his head. It tumbled, spitting flames and exploded again as it struck the ground.
Almost immediately Gallegos experienced a “very strong raunchy taste, like very bitter burnt toast” in his mouth. A sudden headache overcame him, and he felt like throwing up. Ten minutes passed before the alert and order to put on gas masks. He had already been exposed and found it painful to look at bright lights. His symptoms worsened, afflicted with diarrhea.
At dawn’s first light, Navy reservist Nick Roberts noticed a thin yellow powder coating tents and vehicles. “Chemical-hazard” tape crossed the port’s commercial entrance. Though apparently unmarked, an entire herd of fenced-in animals were dead.
CIA analyst Patrick Eddington said that suit shortages persisted throughout the Gulf War.”
Companies from twenty-six countries supplied Saddam Hussein with equipment for his chemical, nuclear, and advanced weapons programs. Among them: Germany (86), France (21), UK (19), USA (18), Austria (17), Italy (12), Switzerland (11), China, Yugoslavia, South and North Koreas, Cuba, Denmark, Finland and Norway. Iraq’s debt just to Chinese state-owned firms exceeds US $5,000M.
William Thomas’ book, Bringing The War Home, accounts these facts in considerable detail [see <http://www.islandnet.com/~wilco>].
Hiding the truth from the inquiring public’s eye is harder than ever
before, in part due to the Internet. Our sincere appreciation to all veterans
of all wars and political engagements.