Scott Augustine

 

What branch of military were you in?

 U.S. Army

 When did you first join the service?

 October of 1987

 What type of training did you have after you joined?

 I was in the infantry.  Heavy anti-tank missile system

 Were you part of Desert Storm, Desert Shield, or OIF?

Desert Shield and Desert Storm 

What unit (or ship, dependent on earlier response) did you serve with?

I was in the 24th infantry and the actual battalion I was in was the 3rd battalion 7th infantry, Eco Company 3rd platoon.

 So that means you were in the Reserves?

 Yes.

 How many years had you been in the service before you were activated?

Three years going on my Fourth year.

When did you receive your pre-deployment training?  What kind of training did you receive?

Back then we didn’t have pre-deployment training.  We did our training in the same place that the troops that are going into Iraq. We had annual training and we actually did a rotation so we were all ready.

 Where was your staging area? 

We got ready at Fort Stewart, Georgia and then we went to Hunter Alme Airfield, which is in Savannah.  That’s where we flew out of.

 When did you go to your staging area and what were your duties while there?

Basically we had all our equipment all ready rail-headed to the ships.  So then we just grabbed our personal gear and waited to fly out.

 So it wasn’t that long?

 No, it was one day.

 You went over seas then?

 Right

 Did you experience any combat during Desert Storm?

I got there, our unit got there, I think on the 25th or 26th of August.  We landed on the 26th of August.  And we were basically in a bunch of staging areas up until the air war started which was in January, mid January.  And then February is when the ground war started and that’s when we went across the Iraqi boarder.  So, as far as seeing any combat up until then no. 

When you were waiting to go over the Iraqi boarder what were your responsibilities?

We did training.  We did a bunch of training exercises in the desert, in Saudi Arabia.

 How long were you waiting to go over?

Well we landed in Saudi Arabia on August 26th and we didn’t cross the boarder until February 24th.  So up until that time it was all staging in different areas and doing training.

What was it like being staged in Saudi Arabia?

It was definitely different.   You had to get use to the climate first, it got as hot as 128 degrees when we were there and it got as cold as down into the 30’s.  And we saw rain but we didn’t see any snow but we saw rain.  So it took two or three weeks just to get acclimatized. 

Well, I can remember when we first landed a bunch of us got sick.  The Saudi Arabia government thought it would be nice to feed us some food when I think half the battalion came down with whatever, food poisoning. We weren’t use to the food they provided for us.  So that was a shock.  A bunch of us, some of us even got sick with like flue like symptoms.  I think it was just getting use to the different environment, so it was kind of a shock in the beginning.  We spent most of our time in the Saudi desert at different staging areas.  There was one staging area we spent most of our time at, well actually we just stayed there and did some training but basically we stayed there three or four months.  We didn’t actually move until, up to the Iraqi boarder, until the first week in January is when we got close.  Then I think a week or so after that is when the air war started.  So we were staged next to the Iraqi boarder for the first week of January.  It was January 8th that we moved up to the boarder.  We didn’t cross until February 24th.  Trying to get use to that having scorpions crawling across the ground.  Couple of us got bit by one and taken to the medics and got fixed up.  The desert isn’t what you think it is, its more rocky out on the Saudi desert, its more rock then sand.  That use to be an ocean millions of years ago, there’s lots of fossils there in the rocks.  Seeing camels come through your...you know.  They call them nomads they live off the desert.  There were a couple times when camel herds came right through where we were staying.

 Was it really stressful waiting for anything to happen?

I think the worst part was not knowing.  When we first got there in August and then around October so we didn’t know if we were jus staying there as a show of force or if we were coming home.  And we didn’t actually get word that there was going to be a war until right around thanksgiving.  Then we knew for sure that we weren’t coming back home yet until we went over to Iraq.  So it was kind of a waiting game and a lot of us had families. At that time I had three young kids, ages I think, they were, 3 to 7, I think, at that time, my kids so. So it was kind of stressful.  I was a sergeant and one of my guys just got married and his wife was pregnant and he was over in Saudi and it was just kind of hard on him.  We had to deal with all that stuff.

 Besides being stressful what was the hardest part of it?  Like the waiting or…

No the waiting wasn’t the hardest part.  I guess the hardest part was the actually combat.  Obviously you can train as hard and as much as you can but until some one starts shooting at you it’s a whole different ball game.  I was in the infantry so I saw some combat.  You don’t train with live rounds and you don’t train with live rounds shooting at you, it’s a little bit different when that happens.

 How often do you think about what happened?

Every day.  I’m actually sick.  I came down with what is called the Golf war illness.  At first they called it a syndrome and then they called it Golf War illness and now they called it undiagnosed.  I live with what happened over there everyday.  I’m actually disable right now because of my illness.  I haven’t worked since August of 2000.

Could you describe what an average day was like during the war?

We had a regular routine.  We would get up before 6:00 and we would have to do a security watch.  Every body was ready, just kind of a little routine we went through, kind of training.  Every body had to get up and watch just to get use to that.  We did that every day out in the desert.  Another part of our routine was we always cleaned, I always made sure, not every body did this but I did.  Every body made sure there weapons were clean.  Because out there with the sand blowing and there was a lot of moisture out there.  We woke up some days with a thick fog, and that corrodes your weapons so we had to make sure our weapons were clean every day.  And I did that just because you don’t want to wait to shoot to find out it doesn’t work, so we did that every day.  And for us our missile system has to be calibrated every time you move, every time the temperature changes otherwise your weapon doesn‘t shoot were your aiming.  So you have to go through that every day and make sure that’s aimed up right.  So there was a regular routine we went through.  It wasn’t like getting up and making your breakfast, you had to go and get your breakfast.  We had some daily things that we had to do and some reports we had.  Like I was NCO so we had to report a weapons report and I was on a track combat armored vehicle you had to give a report if there were any changes in you vehicle that needed to be fixed or whatever.  So you had those daily things to do.  I think the main thing is that we tried to stay in a routine so if nothing else your life was structured, take some of the stress off.  We had some big training that we did too and some smaller trainings that just our company did and we did some big battalion trainings and we had some brigade training also.  Battalion there’s about 1000 people, brigade there is about 3,000soldiers, the company we had was a little over 100.  So we had some different trainings we did while we were there too, not just the daily routines.  One other thing is that once a month a few got to go, well you see we were spread out in the desert, we weren’t all grouped together.  Our battalion headquarters, that’s were we had all our maintenance and our medics and our logistics and stuff like that.  So every month we got to go there, we got to get out of the desert where we were staged and go to our battalion, where we could actually take a hot shower and things like that.  We didn’t take hot showers when we were out in the desert; you just washed up with whatever you got, cold water, whatever.  We got to actually go to the battalion where we could take showers with water actually coming out of a showerhead and we could wash our cloths.  They had a big washing area.  So we got to things like that once a month.  They had a tent there where they usually showed a movie.  Usually you spent about 24 hours there then you go back to your regular staging area; kind of a break from the regular routine. 

 What did serving your country or patriotism, meant to you while on active duty and now as a veteran?

For me I always knew I was going to join the military.  I knew that while I was in high school.  I actually didn’t join till I was 25 or 26.  I was called a late guy.  At that time the cut off date was when you were 25 or 26 as a first time listing.  So I had to do it then or I was never going to do it, so I finally did it.  Like I said I knew I was always going to do it, that was just something that was in me I guess.  I always knew I was going to serve in the military.  So I just did it.  As far as being a veteran now, I’m proud that I’m a veteran and that I served my country.  I’m kind of disappointed in the way some people act in this country.  I’m not going to get political about it but the way some people act, like some people take things for granted.  That kind of disappoints me.  It kind of makes me think what did I actually do over there.  I mean what was the purpose of being over there when you got people acting the way the do over in the country now.  I’m a little disappointed, I’m proud that I served but I’m disappointed in some people. 

 Did you make any lasting friendships during the war?

Well, No because when I got out of the military I never kept in contact with any one from my unit.  I can still remember there names but I don’t know where they live.  So I never did that once I cut my ties with the military I never renewed them.

 Is there a message you have for people today about the war?

One thing that I know being in the Golf War the first war in Iraq and I’m guessing if you talk, if you get a chance to talk to some other Golf War veterans they might have the same sentiment as me but this is my opinion.  If we would have stayed over there for another three weeks of fighting we wouldn’t be over there today doing what we are doing now.  Simply as we let, when the Iraq war started and they had them troops over there, most of them Iraqi troops that we fought in the second war we let go back.  They had a cease-fire and we let them go back right in front of us.  We couldn’t shoot at them; we had to let them go back.  Those are some of the same soldiers that were firing on our troops during this last war.  So if they had let us do what we were trained to do during the first war all those lives that were lost now during this war never would have happened.  So that kind of gets me why they never let us finish the job.  Its almost like we went over there they first time and they never let us finish the job.  They stopped us before we could do what we were trained to do and we had all the problems after that.  So I think that’s the biggest regret though or whatever that I have. 

 Is there anything else that you would like to add?  

When I was trying to get disability through the VA.  I would always have to go back to Madison for physical exams to try and prove that I was sick.  I got lucky, I had to go through the appeal process but I actually got rated high enough, 30 or 40% that I could actually go to school.  They actually paid me to go to school.  They started to pick up some of the medical expenses that I had.  Uncured when I go to the doctor up here.  So that helped me out because I actually got a nice education.  But as I got sicker, I couldn’t work anymore, so finally they denied me an increase.  I have to go through what they call a compensation and pension exams.  And they’re done by a bureaucratic doctor from the VA.  In the mean time they were giving me a bunch of experimental drugs, trying to find something that might work for me.  One of the experimental drugs they gave me was actually a form of anti-depressant.  I can’t remember what the name was.  It was given to me in a low form to help fight pain.  So time came for me to try and get an increase in my disability.  They used that against me by saying that there was nothing wrong with me and that it was all in my head, and that they were giving me anti-depressants for that.  The doctor, the bureaucratic doctor told me that in his report that if they sent me down to Tomah and gave me treatment for being crazy that I could be treated and live a normal life.  But the drugs were given to me three years earlier then that as a low dose form to help my pain.  It had nothing to do with me being a psych case.  And they used that against me to try and deny me increased benefits.  That’s what I had to work through with the VA.  One thing, I had to get representative Dave Obey involved.  Instead of sending me down to Madison every year for these compensation and pension reviews, these examinations.  They wanted to send me to all places to Minneapolis.  Now why would the send a veteran from Wisconsin to a VA hospital in Minneapolis, instead of having me go to Madison?  Not just one day, over a seven-day period they had me going back and forth to Minneapolis four times over a seven-day period.  For the same thing I was getting in Madison in one day.  I told them I couldn’t do that.  There was no way I could, at that time I couldn’t travel that far.  I had what was called irritable bowel syndrome, if I sit for a long time my guts expand and I get real gassy.  I couldn’t even drive down there, not to mention the pain in my arms and joints just trying to drive.  I couldn’t do that.  So I told them there is no way I could drive down there.  They said that if you didn’t drive down there and meet those appointments it would be grounds to deny me not only an increase in benefits, but they could take away my benefits completely for not showing up.  So what could I do, I told them I couldn’t go down there but I had to.  So someone suggested that I contact Dave Obey.  I did that, he said don’t worry about it.  Someone in his office called me, I had to fill out a form, but someone in the office called me a few days later and said don’t worry about it.  A week later they called me and said no longer are you going to Minneapolis, you got a one day appointment in Madison on this date.  So that’s the stuff I had to go through.  Not just me but other veterans also.  So that brings me to what’s going on in Walderi that had been going on for years.  Veterans from wars even in the Golf Wars were going through that even in the 90’s, early 90’s.  They had to go through that same stuff, and finally now a day it’s a little bit different I think things are more open and people are more critical about the VA and about the military.  Attitudes have changed, but back in the early 90’s when I was going through this I had myself and that was about it.  A lot of soldiers gave up, they gave in and those were the ones that were denied benefits or disability benefits.  They just gave up, they had enough.  After I had been going down to the VA hospital in Madison for a number of years, finally the VA decided that this must be posttraumatic stress.  So every time I went down there when that came out they started asking me well are you sleeping good at night, are you depressed.  They asked me all these questions when I went down there that they never asked me before.  Because they knew if they could it into that that they could send me down, at that time in Wisconsin it was Tomah, that’s were they would send me to get psychological valued.  And then they could treat you for that and say that you were okay and magically cured and all this pain you’ve got and all these other things you got, these headaches and everything, that’s all in your head.  They’d treat you for that send you down to Tomah for six or eight weeks, your cured and they don’t have to pay you benefits anymore.  I wouldn’t fall for that, I’m glad I didn’t, some troops did.  They got screwed.  I mean that’s the stuff we had to go through, coming back and being a veteran, working with the VA.  As far as my symptoms, I guess just for an FYI, I’ve got irritable bowel syndrome, which is chronic diarrhea.  I got gas pains so bad that it expanded my intestines and now I got diverticulosis.  Its developed into that so now I got to watch what I eat.  There are certain things that I can’t have.  I’ve got chronic headaches, chronic viral and bacterial infections because of a suppressed immune system, joint and muscle pain along with joint swelling and arthritis beginning.  I get muscle spasms and muscle twitches in my body.  I don’t heal very well if I get injured, my body doesn’t heal itself.  And because my immune system is suppressed I get a lot of infections on my skin that I have to treat with antibiotics, things that normal people wouldn’t have to worry about. 

Is anyone attempting to find out what happened?

 Well, there’s a lot of studies going on, there’s a lot of federally founded studies.  One doctor in Texas, I can’t remember what university hospital he’s working at.  He worked with some specialized x-ray equipment that can see the inside of your brain.  It’s something that you only do at a research hospital.  And he got involved because he had a cousin or a niece or something that came down with this illness, so he got involved in it.  He found out through his research, he used 30 different veterans that were sick, he found out in every single case there is something wrong in the lower brain.  That was like a rare form of brain damage.  The VA was going to do a study conducted with him to either confirm or deny it.  And low and behold this doctor’s research money got pulled and he was sent to California to do research on ALS.  Because it was two and half almost three times higher prevalent in Golf War veterans then it was in other veterans that weren’t in the Golf War.  So his funding money got pulled and he was sent to California and they haven’t done any more research on that.  The other thing is that the reason why we will never know what the veterans in the Golf War were exposed to is because every unit in the Golf War even now in the Iraqi war the have what is called the chemical downwind data report.  What it does is it’s a weather report and it tells you about humidity, the wind speed and direction, all kinds of atmospheric stuff.  It’s called a chemical downwind report because chemical persistence, how long a chemical agent is in the environment depends on the atmosphere, how humid it is what the temperature is and things like that.  Some chemical agents persist for days others a few hours depending on what the atmosphere was like that day.  Every day we were there was a chemical report done by the company, the battalion, brigade, division, and 18th airborne corp.  That was like a 200 page report with back up disks.  Out of that 200-page report there was a bunch of pages missing and all the back up disks disappeared.  So there was no way to know what we were actually exposed to.  Those reports mind you, were locked up at the Pentagon in a safe area.  So there is no way they could have disappeared but they magically disappeared.  Someone knows what happened but the hid or destroyed those reports and now we’ll never know what we were exposed to.  So there was cover up.