As always, lightly edited. New story in a few days. Enjoy.

For those not familiar, the SCUD missile is a fairly cheap surface to surface missile. I've written about it before, but Saddam had a bunch of those. During Desert Shield, one of the things the allies were worried about was Saddam launching chemical and biological weapons at us using those SCUD missiles. There was a lot of controversy around WMDs after OIF, but Saddam absolutely had them during Desert Storm.

Ultimately the Patriot missile batteries assigned to the area were reprogrammed to shoot down missiles instead of planes. They had a lot of successes. Patriot units from my brigade, 11th ADA, were part of that.

I've written a bit about this before, too. Anytime a SCUD got launched in theater, an alert went out. Now, it didn't matter if the SCUD was going to Israel, Jordan, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. We all had to go to MOPP 4. Mission Oriented Protective Posture. That is all the protective gear you wear for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) threats. This is a charcoal lined suit you wear over your uniform, rubber boots and gloves, and your gas mask.

It was already incredibly hot in the desert. Wearing that on top of it was causing guys to pass out. It sucked. It is possible to drink while in MOPP, but very hard to stay hydrated. For you civilians if you are curious, there is a little rubber straw attachment that goes into the top of your canteen and attaches to your mask so you don't have to open it or break the seal on your mask.

So on this fine Sunday, Iraq launched ten SCUD missiles. Not one of them landed within hundreds of miles of our unit, yet we spent most of the day in MOPP 4. In the heat. Pissed off, dehydrated and tired.

Then the chemical alarm we had set up started going off, sometime after breakfast and the first launch. It had been going off for the last few days here and there, but today it went nuts. And it kept going off. We tested the air a few times throughout the day and kept getting either negative readings or very borderline ones. The other squads in my battery had the same thing happen in their areas. Repeated radio calls to HQ were met with "It is the sand setting them off."

At this point we got pretty nervous. Yes, the chemical detectors were old and shitty. Yes, they sometimes malfunctioned. Yes, very fine sand could set them off but wasn't supposed to. They should not be going off all day long, 20 times a day. So us and some guys from some of the other squads starting thinking maybe ol' Saddam went ahead and put some Sarin or something into one of those SCUD missiles. And we remained paranoid about it. It is one of the reasons we were so damn angry when it came time to invade a few weeks later.

What we didn't know, couldn't know, and the US government didn't admit for years was that a few days earlier two NBC weapons depots had been bombed by the EOD. The wind carried a massive plume of smoke and chemical weapons, lovely things like VX nerve gas, over a large area, exposing 250,000 or more of us. That is why our alarm was going off. The test strips for testing the air just weren't sensitive enough to give us a hard positive - the Sarin and other agents were too diluted in the air. As it turns out, not diluted enough.

The war ended. I went home. Within a year or so I started having symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome, right as I was being discharged. And of course I was pronounced healthy by the Army medics on exit (other than my messed up foot) so that made getting help later hard.

I fought the VA for years. A story came out about a Czech chemical weapons unit that detected the Sarin and other agents, but the VA sent me a letter saying it never happened when I submitted it as proof. I was flat out called a liar more than once. It took over 20 years for me to finally get compensation for Gulf War Syndrome.

I need to insert some context here. Part of the problem was the VA denied I was in the area affected by the chemical weapons once they did finally start paying out claims for GWS. I spent years tracking down reports filed that weren't classified about movements of our units and where we were (inside the affected area) to include in my claim.

In the end, what got it was not me proving I was exposed in the area. It was my diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. That is what the VA calls a "presumptive cause" which means I automatically got my award at that point just by being in theater. Two VA doctors diagnosed Fibromyalgia and put it in my records. I just had to go to the compensation board and tell them. Bam. Instant award.

GWS manifests differently in people. My Gulf War Syndrome has manifested as:

• Fibromyalgia, which is getting worse as I get older

• Memory loss and cognitive problems, which are partly related to the fibro

• Strange rashes and sores that come and go

• Chronic fatigue

• Stomach and digestive issues

Twenty years. I don't mean this to be a bitch about the VA - they are going to tell me what the DOD tells them - but that is what we deal with. Then again, it was a VA shrink who told me "you didn't see enough combat" to have PTSD. (It took years to get an award for that, and they took it away before I got it back again.) Ugh.

Still, I consider myself lucky. I can still work (although that won't last much longer and I'll have to retire early) and I'm not dying of cancer. A lot of guys came home from Desert Storm and started dying of really rare cancers, especially brain cancer. Now I'm paranoid. Every migraine, every lost memory, every time I space out and lose a thought I think - fuck - it's a damn brain tumor. It isn't, at least yet.

Fuck you Saddam. Rot in hell.

So in the end, it wasn't the SCUD missiles. It was a fire caused by a USAF bombing run bombing from Army EOD. According to /u/Kiowascout, they knew VX rockets were in the pile. I'm not sure how to feel about that. Kinda pissed off at the REMFs who approved the bombing I guess. (Edited to reflect new information)

OneLove 22ADay Slava Ukraini! Heróyam sláva!