Filler One in Kingdom

I was in the USAR twice. The first time was 1970-76. I wanted to be a physician, so I trained as a combat medic, but was never activated to Vietnam. I was a SP/5 (sergeant) and received several commendations. I finished my 6 years and received an honorable discharge.

After medical school, I decided to become a commissioned officer. My goal was to get a pension, but I also wanted to be an officer, because my dad was a captain bombardier/navigator in The Army Air Corps during WWII. My second time in the Reserves was from 1988-91. My civilian job was doing clinical research for Lederle Labs in Pearl River, NY. I was doing weekend drills in Orangeburg, NY at an old Nike missile base; our hospital unit was a deployable medical unit (DepMed).

In November, I completed the officer's Basic course at Ft. Sam Houston. I was one of four majors attending this course, so we were each made a Platoon leader of 55 officers.

On a Friday afternoon, right before Christmas 1990, I received a call from a Major in The Physician Management Branch. I was told I was being "involuntarily reassigned" to a Station Hospital (316^th) in Harrisburg, PA and that I would not be going to Germany. I was being reassigned as a "filler"-i.e., filling a need for an infectious diseases physician. My unit wasn't ready to be mobilized, so they stayed at home and watched Desert Storm on CNN.

The hardest part for me was saying goodbye to my wife and two small children (ages 1 and 6) and not knowing if I would return home.

When I arrived at Aberdeen Proving Grounds (our mobilization site) I told myself no matter how bad the war was going to be I would make something positive out of it. We trained there for 11 days and then were shipped via an unmarked L10-11 to Riyadh, Saudia Arabia. It was a fitful flight-all the way over, I had dreams about being in the middle of a chemical battlefield. This was probably due to my grandfather, who was mustard gassed by the Germans, while fighting in France. He was awarded the Purple Heart. He had respiratory problems for the rest of his life, but was able to work.

The first week, we stayed in an empty apartment building that was built to house Arab nomads (Bedouins), but they were used to sleeping outdoors and did want to live in this building. I worked in a clinic doing physical exams.

The second week, we moved into villas near The Saudi Arabian National Guard Hospital (SANG)- a beautiful state of the art hospital built by King Fahad. It had marble floors, three CAT scans and a rapid screening test for Brucellosis-a bacterial disease transmitted in cheese and animal milk. We evacuated the cilivian patients who could be moved to make room for US soldiers. We expected 100 casualities per day.

We were divided into 2 teams (A & B) and were assigned 24 hour shifts. I took care of soldiers with shrapnel wounds, had a newly diagnosed diabetic squared away on insulin and got him an eye exam. He said to me "Sir, I come from San Diego-can I go back there? I replied: "no, sergeant-you're going to Germany." I sent him by helicopter out of the theater of operations to the next nearest station.

The start of the ground war was my wedding anniversary-Jan 16^th. For the first month, my wife had no money coming in from Lederle, or the Army. It was really tough on her. I wrote a letter to the President of my company, because I was worried we were going to lose our house, because my military salary was one-half my civilian salary. The company had no policy for this situation, so they had a special board meeting and decided to make up the difference in my salary for up to one year. I was only gone three months, because it was such a short war. I was and still am very grateful to Lederle.

I was a good officer-primarily due to pride in my family's service in WWI, WWII and Korea. I didn't do anything heroic, but I did put my life on the line by being on call every third night. Whenever a scud went off (which was often) whichever physician was on call would put on full MOPP suit, get in a jeep, drive one mile to the hospital and wait outside

for casualities to arrive, so that they could be decontaminated before entering the ER.

My Officer's Evaluation report (OER) rated me in the top 3% of all military physicians. I was recommended for promotion ahead of my peers. I was a major (O-4); I would have made lt.colonel (O-5). All I had to do was take two courses (Officer's Advanced and Command and General Staff), but the next war was Somalia, and I couldn't leave my wife and two little children again, so I resigned my commission. A bird colonel called me up and tried to get me to reconsider. He told me I was the kind of officer who the Army needs. I thanked him, but declined.