Veterans Voices: First Gulf War

During Desert Storm, Cal Portner’s unit was asked to take its mobile photo equipment to Spain to set up a photo processing and interpretation center for a stateside unit.

Lisa Erickson's dad joked that she didn’t even know how to put gas in her car. But the Air Force made her a jet engine mechanic and she learned. She was one of two females on the crew at Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa, that supplied jet engine motors to planes in the Gulf War. 

Theresa Dawson was a Russian linguist in Berlin when war the US went to war with Iraq. Though her unit had the opportunity to deploy, they were still vital to the mission in Europe, where the Berlin wall had fallen but a Soviet threat still lingered. 

Army nurse Lori Allert was told in summer 1990 that she may be deployed. Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces had invaded Kuwait. So she waited. And waited. Finally, after New Year’s, she got the call. She was being mobilized.

Larry Liljenquist, a marine, was given sea duty on the flagship for the 7th Fleet. The fleet, scheduled to go to Russia, suddenly received orders to redirect to the Persian Gulf.

Darrin Janisch’s fellow paratroopers in the 82nd Airborne had just returned from Operation Just Cause in Panama. They figured that was their big deployment for a long while. They never figured on Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait.

Cal Portner was part of a unit that ran a mobile photomat at his German base. When Desert Shield, and later Desert Storm, broke out, he and his unit members were not allowed to deploy, for the moment, because their work was so essential to the security of Europe.