While the world's attention was riveted on video images of high-tech weaponry and pinpoint accuracy, the day-to-day reality of the Persian Gulf war often was more mundane.
"You ever see 500 guys play `Button, Button, Who's Got the Button' ?" asked Capt. Brock McClean of the 625th Military Police Company, a National Guard unit out of Murray.McClean, whose unit arrived in Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14 and guarded enemy prisoners of war from their second day in camp to the day before they shipped out to come home in April, was one of five Utah National Guardsmen who spoke at a meeting of the Utah Military History Society Wednesday night about their experiences during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Other guardsmen who spoke to the group were Capt. Fareed Betros, with the 142nd Military Intelligence Battalion, who served as interpreters and interrogation officers in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait; Maj. Brent Newren, with the 144th Evacuation Hospital near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Capt. Neil Hansen, with the 1457th Engineer Battalion, deployed to a war staging area in Germany; and Air National Guard Maj. Sharrel Cummings.
The 625th Military Police Company returned to Utah May 4. Operation Desert Storm marked the first time in its history the unit had gone to war, McClean said.
McClean's unit built its prison camp rather than wait for an engineering company to do the job. Two days after arriving at the site in eastern Saudi Arabia, its first 62 prisoners were sent in.
But it wasn't until the ground war was finished that the camp population boomed. "Our war started when the other war ended," said McClean.
At the end of March, nearly all of the camp's prisoners had been turned over to the Saudis for repatriation, McClean said. But just as the camp's population shrank to 300 prisoners, 12,000 more - including members of the Iraqi Republican Guard, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, two members of Saddam Hussein's staff and, mysteriously, some Kuwaitis - were shipped in.
Most of the prisoners were draftees, and they were generally docile and claimed to hate Saddam Hussein, McClean said. At one time, the camp - built for 12,000 prisoners - held 25,000, mostly draftees who surrendered when Iraq's civil war began.
"We saw more (of the) enemy than the front-line troops did," said McClean. And with just 80 MPs to guard all the prisoners, "we were very outnumbered. Some nights were very harrowing."
Guards were under orders to shoot to wound unless the prisoners were considered dangerous. The guards, however, used their discretion, McClean said. When prisoners crawled under the camp wire to escape for a visit to another camp, the guards would chase the prisoners down with pickup trucks, tackle them and haul them back to camp. Gunfire wasn't necessary.
But guns were fired when the prisoners rioted, usually over food, McClean said.
At first, the prisoners got standard-issue MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat. "Any Iraqi who was a draftee was very happy to see us, because the first thing we would do is give them an MRE and water. They loved MREs," McClean said. But under Geneva Convention rules, he said, the prisoners were entitled to finer fare, including roast lamb.
The guards would let the prisoners cook their own food, but the Iraqis would end up crushing each other as they all tried to get to the front of the food line at the same time. "These were riots to kill each other," McClean said.
There were lighter moments. The prisoners played Button, Button, Who's Got the Button, and kicked soccer balls until they popped on the concertina wire strung around the prison compound.
"And they used to sing at night," McClean said. "They sounded great. They could harmonize, those guys."