Video Log
Name: Lee M. Wilson
War: Desert Storm
Branch: U.S. Army
Born: 7/21/1964
Interview Date: 2/20/2012
Interviewed By: George England
00:00:00
This interview took place at the Marriott Residence Inn, Avon, Ct, thanks to their
patriotism, generosity and support for the Connecticut Central State University,
Veteran’s History Project. Wilson’s rank at discharge was Sergeant. While living
in Coleman, Alabama, Wilson joined the Army at twenty-four years of age in
order to receive training in heavy equipment, part of the engineers. He was sent
to Ft. Leavenworth, Missouri, for eight weeks of basic training followed by eight
weeks of Advanced Equipment Training, requiring just crossing the road to a
training center. Wilson says he learned a lot about heavy equipment, just what
he wanted. While there, he exercised and ran a lot and got into good physical
condition, earlier he had participated in a lots of marathon races. He put in two
years. Wilson says he had no trouble taking orders since he had strict parents.
00:02:05
Says they slept in barracks and also slept in the woods in February. At AITAdvance Infantry Training, they learned to build a bridge, plant charges and
then learned how to blow it up. After that he was in the Army Reserves. He
came home in 1987 and went back in 1989.
00:03:43
From Coleman, Alabama he went to Ft. Dicks, NJ, then to Frankfurt, Germany
then to, can not remember name of town, his division headquarters. Then
received orders to go to Dexhans. What did the military have at that location. It
was close to Rhine River. Had two battalions, the River Rats and up the hill was
Patriot Missiles. Germany is where you go for training/rifle and demolition.
Mock up training. We would live in the woods for two months and get weekend
passes?
00:05:48
We stayed out of big cities. The German population was nice. From Oppenheim,
we went next to a train station. Wilson was deployed to Desert Storm. Was on
CQ – at 11 pm – left for Desert Storm to Saudi Arabia. They had stopped in Crete
to refuel, landed in Saudi to ditch all their gear. went from airfield at Cement
City and put up their tents.
00:10:00
Wilson was then sent to a port somewhere around Bahrain. Then got on board a
ship, which was camouflaged.
00:10:54
We had mine-throwers that could throw mines about 30-40 feet, making a good
minefield and you could cover a pretty large area by going back and forth.
00:11:35
In Saudi, the roads were marked by different colored barrels, so you would
know where to go. Out into the desert in Saudi. Going through Iran into Kuwait,
then went through Iraq to Kuwait. We did a five-day push, with no sleep. After
two days in the sand, they realized a truck carrying a big load did not travel too
well in it.
00:12:30
They parked my vehicle, a M9ACE. Then we had a five-day push to Baghdad to
take out the Republican Guard. The Iraq tanks were buried in sand. We fought
those guys for a day before we made our turn and we were ordered to stop. We
recovered over forty prisoners. With all of this sand, how well did the
equipment work? Most of the vehicles were made for specifically for operating
in sand. We were at Dexheim for month, moved the battalion. In Iraq, we saw
many of A10’s flying over. We’d see them take off. We would see Blackhawk
and Apache helicopters.
00:18:34
We saw the living quarters for Republican Guard. There were rooms and TV
sets. There were” pipes” sticking out of a stairwell. These were gun barrels of
the hidden tanks. We checked them to be sure they were not booby-trapped.
Do you have any pictures of that? Yes. There is one area that we ran into on the
ground where there were buried tanks and you can see barrels pointing up. It
wasn’t burning when I looked. We ran into bunch of shells, half of those shells
were chemical. We saw a number of Iraqis walking. We had an engineer
company.
00:20:41
After that we went back into field and got an E5 break, It means moving up to
Sergeant and getting your three stripes.
00:22:04
Then received orders to Ft Knox, Ky. The first unit was the engineers. They had
graders, bulldozers. And, we had paving machines. They had just got back from
somewhere overseas. On a temporary assignment, Wilson was sent to Texas
with a crew to do roadwork with border control. He can’t remember the name,
but it was out in nowhere for about thirty days. Says we were cleaning up roads
and making draining ditches.Then back Ft. Knox again.
00:24:02
Wilson was sent back to Missouri for a “B” course. Then sent to Puerto Rico to
do some training in “checkpoints” in order to know how to disarm car bombs. In
Puerto Rico we were in the mountains. He says he has eight and one half years
of service counting active and reserve duty.
00:26:34
When Wilson got back from Desert Storm, he says he was told he could not give
blood for three years due breathing smoke from burning oil wells and
explosions, touching Iraq poison gas shells. Was told he has “Desert Storm
Syndrome”.
00:27:35
Before deployment, he had been given eighteen shots in one day.
00:29:05
Wilson used the GI Bill. He went to community college and studied computer
science. He has three semesters to go for an associates degree. He now owns
his own computer service business called “Lee’s Computer Service, Avon, Ct.
Wilson joined the Avon VFW, Post 3272. He “likes the fellows, good bunch of
guys, all stick together”. Wilson says he has a forty percent disability rating. He
says he has service-connected problems with both knees and lower back
problems. His application for increasing his disability has been in for over two
years. He does not like the Veterans Administration. Reason: “They just want
you to be quiet and not talk about your pains”. All of his prescriptions are
covered for service-connected reasons, including glasses.
00:31:30
Conclusion