Encoded for the Experiencing War web site for the Veterans History Project.
The recording of the interview with George Deel was digitized.
This transcription was encoded with minimal changes to the original text in an effort to preserve original content and idiosyncrasies of the person interviewed. Period language and terminology are also retained. Encoding is literal with regard to the transcriptionist's capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Spelling errors are indicated with [sic]; however, recurring errors in spelling within a single document have been marked the first time and not subsequently.
Today is September 28th 2008. I am Damon Qualkinbush and I am George Deel at 6320 Braewick Road in Indianapolis Indiana. Mr. Deel served in the Kuwait and Iraq War. Mr. Deel was in infantry unit and held the fallowing rank: Sergeant.
Were you drafted or did you enlist?
I enlisted
Where were you living at the time?
French Lick, Indiana
Why did you join?
I just joined out of something to do. I wanted to join the service, my father served, my mom served and just decided it was something to do.
Why did you pick the service branch you joined?
I went into the Marine Corps first and I just didn't like the army. I didn't like the recruiter and the way he acted towards me, but the Marine recruiter I talked to really impressed me, so I join the Marines.
Do you recall your first days in the service?
Yes, they were very rough, a lot of yelling, screaming, can't do this, can't do that, and this was all during boot camp. It was a big shock and there were people walking around that just didn't know what to do and it was something else.
What was boot camp like, and your training?
Very physically and mentally demanding. They would break you down and build you back up, they would get you to a breaking point and from there build you back up and they just wanted to make sure you could handle the situations they were going to put you in. Physically people come out of there and parents don't even recognize them.
A lot of obstacle courses and?
Yea, obstacle courses and we climbed a mountain in Califomia. I can't really say the name and what they called it, but we climbed that during the rain and it was something else. Artillery, A lot of stuff: the training I went through they don't allow anymore. They use to shoot guns over the top of your head but now they just use air things that make a popping sound, simulations, it was very physically demanding.
How did you get through all of that?
Heh, you just push yourself and force yourself to do it knowing that once I got it over with it's done. I got that part out of there and the faster I got it done and the better I do it, it's behind me.
Where did you serve?
During the war? I served over in Iraq and Kuwait, mainly in Kuwait, doing security force, I went up to Iraq several different times doing security for civilian contractors.
ok. Do you remember arrving there and like what it was like and stuff?
Yea, we arrived early in the moming, it was like three or four hours before sunlight, and when our plane came down we had to pull all the shades down on the plane and the lights had to go out. They wouldn't let us off the plane until daylight because they were afraid somebody would shoot and the culture of the people over there. I mean you saw guys holding hands and it was just different.
ok. What was your job assignment?
Security. Mainly, I was supposed to do security in the mess halls and such, but my job at the time when I went over was I was a cook, but when I was over there I didn't cook. I wasn't supposed to, but I was supposed to make sure they put nothing into the food that might poison something. We had to get rid of eggs one moming for 12,000 people.
wow
They thought they put something in it, so we had to send off samples and they tumed out negative.
Did you see combat?
I had missles shot at me, but face-to-face. No.
Tell me a couple of your most memorable experiences?
Missles being shot at me? The first time, just sitting there putting your chemical suits on and wondering if you were ever going see your family again. The one time I really remember was that a missle went over the top of us and they said it was our missle going after their missles and theirs weren't getting close to us, but it tumed out their missles were actually overshooting us and we were actually telling the news that they were overshooting and they were just adding more and more to it and even ours overshooting us right into the Gulf. I've seen grown men cry, people panic, go nuts, a little bit of everything.
How did you stay in touch with your family?
We had postal service over there, we wrote letters back and forth and it took about four or five weeks of mail getting back and forth and then we were able later on to call.
Did you ever like get packages and stuff?
Yes, I got several packages from people from all over. I got packages from kids from schools that I didn't even know who they were and just pictures and cards that they drawn. Like a picture of themselves wishing us the best and supporting us. Families, my kids and my mom, they sent me packages constantly and several other family members and always you'd come back from doing your duty and on your bunk there would be packages and letters and that was the biggest thing. The greatest feeling that you know somebody's there looking after you, when you come back. It was like Christmas everyday. You really looked forward to it because the times I didn't have communications at home for almost two months and I'd get these packages that would come in and it was like a little kid at Christmas. You'd read the things and people would send me letters that I hadn't heard or talked to for years and it was great.
What was the food like at your things?
We had good food at times, bad food other times. The one thing I can remember one day is that we had lobster, had king crab legs and I just couldn't believe it. They brought this stuff out and served us and being a cook we always ate after everybody else and they had these pots full of lobster tails and I got to eat as much as I wanted. I don't know how much I ate but I slept good that night.
Was there anything nasty or you know not good?
Yea, they weren't allowed to have pork over there, no pork products and in the momings we had bacon and all it was was turkey bologna and they fried it and it was really nasty. We had served four meals a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight lunch, and they served soy r _, , I 3 ! J burgers and they baked them and a lot of times when I worked the night shift that was the only thing I got to eat because when I left for my shift breakfast wasn't ready yet so you missed breakfast, lunch and dinner and when you came back on it was after the dinner, but you mainly slept (or tried to) because it was so hot over there. I lived on Beenie Weenies, Vienna sausages, canned foods, I couldn't eat the turkey hot dogs or turkey bologna and hamburgers they served at night. I just couldn't eat it.
So did you eat every couple hours then? Cd:No.
What span oftime did you have to wait till you ate? Cd: Breakfast went for 3 hours; they had a span there where you could come in and eat. Lunch was 3 hours, 4 hours for the evening meal and the midnight went from midnight to four in the morning and they closed up then.
Did you have plenty of supplies there? Cd: Yea, at times we were short on a lot of stuff. When we got there we didn't have hammers no nails and we needed to build stuff. Our humvees were not annored and we had to go to junk yards and scrounge around tor steel plating and armor for the vehicle. We put sand bags in there and we just constantly looking for something to protect ourselves because they didn't have all the equipment that they needed to go over there with.
They did provide you with some stuff though right? Cd: Yea, I had a brand new weapon, all kinds of new body annor, new clothes, new boots. Yea they did pretty well but the heavy equipment like the armor they didn't have what they should have and they knew about it and it was a deficiency. They are working on it now
Did you ever feel pressure or stress there? Cd: All the time
It was pretty stressful there? Cd: Very stressful, you would be just walking or sitting or just doing your job and all of the time the sirens would go off and the missles were coming in and you would just start shaking and you got to get stuff on because you didn't know if it was the chemicals, and even if it wasn't chemicals the missles they sent over had a kill radius that went out a long ways and just the explosion could kill you.
Were the other people in your around you stressed a lot too?
Yea there were several break down and we had to send them to medics for therapy. We had a few of them that really broke down.
Was there anything special you did for good luck?
I put my kids pictures up and I had pictures of my kids in my wallet and I always just woke up knowing that you never know that day and I always just knew that I would get home, no matter where I am I would get home.
How did people entertain themselves there, how did you entertain yourself?
I read a lot of books and I took a little dvd player over with me and the Kuwaiti people had a lot of pirated movies and you'd get them for dirt cheap. They'd film them off the screen and some of them came for our convenience. I watched a lot of movies, we walked, we couldn't do a lot of walking because of the heat, but we watched a lot of movies at the E-Club which had a lot of big screen TV s. I'd be watching midnight TV during my day time because there was like an eight hour time difference, I'd be watching late night TV on the satellite over there.
What were the weather conditions like there?
They had sand storms where you couldn't see your hand from your face and it was always blowing sand; heat was a 145 degrees and it rained one time while we were there and just enough that you could see the rain drops where it dropped on the sand and I missed it. Everything was real dry and when you showered you would have sweat rings off yourself of salt and you would clean the old sweat off just to sweat some more and when you wiped a towel against your skin the sweat would come up again.
Were there entertainers there while you were there or you know people that tried to entertain you guys?
Yea, there was, I didn't really get to meet them or anything but there were cheerleaders and I think they were Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders but I couldn't get over there because the lines were so thick. One day I was over at the airport and my sergeant came up to me and told me I had been doing a good job and he said he had something for me, a little treat and I got two tickets. I said what are they to and he said we're gonna see a little movie tonight, its terminator 3. So we got over to the do-hall in Kuwait and I asked him why it was so special and he said your gonna see and we were looking at the stage and Arnold Schwarzenegger came out and he gave a little speech and everything and some people got autrographs and we went into the theater and there were only 250 of us got to watch this movie out of 100,000 some odd thousand people and I sat like five seats from him watching the premier oftenninator 3. Yea, it was pretty cool and I got some pictures of that too.
What did you do when you left your base? Cd: We hauled supplies, did security on this contractor and they worked on the different things that we destroyed trying to rebuild or they destroyed and rebuilding a power plant, water treatment plant and I can't remember where the other places we went to, but we were rewiring and restoring stuff and we supplied the security [0:16:36j
Did you ever have to pull your gun, did you ever have to take it out?
I pointed my weapon a couple times and we had vehicles coming up along side and I'd aim at somebody and they would back off real quick, but I never had to take it off safety but never had to pull the trigger. Well actually I did, never fired a shot the whole time I was there
That's a good thing. Did anyone ever pull a gun on you?
No
That's a good thing too. Did anything unusual happen to you or maybe humorous?
Humorous? Nothing really humorous but there some really different things that I had to wonder about and we had to take down four people in Basrah, Iraq that had weapons and it was funny. If you think about your different types of humor, that we weren't allowed to take him down and we were on a mission trying to find a colonel that was trying to get back from Kuwait and was already down there and as we were getting ready to pull out and they told us we couldn't take him down a taxi cab pulled up and I had my M4 sticking up to their window and I was face to face maybe three foot apart from this guy and if it wasn't him it was a guy that looked exactly like Saddam Hussein and the sergeant in front of us told us we couldn't take him down but we had a laugh about it and this was about 3 weeks before they finally caught him in Bazrah. So who knows it could have been him or couldn't have been
I know war is pretty serious but did you guys ever pull pranks on eachother? r ,~ L 6 .
Yea, well the sirens were always going off and we would put our gas masks on and we would wake people up and they'd jump up and start putting all of their stuff on and everybody would be back laughing.
Did that ever happen to you?
Yea
Did you take a lot of photographs while you were there?
Yes, I've got several, I think I've got close to 2000 photos
so you brought a camera then?
Yes, I brought a digital camera
And they were okay with that?
Yes, there were certain spots where you weren't allowed to, but I took a lot of pictures.
Who were the people in the photographs you usually took?
A lot of friends, different soldiers, I took whatever I could, Iraqi civilians and unusual things you didn't see everyday.
What did you think of your fellow soldiers? Did you make friends with them?
Made friends with quite a few officers over there, really high ranking officers, I made friends with this one colonel, and at the chow line 1'd just sit up there and check IDs and it was our little things to look at their names and there's some really funny names out there and when they passed by I'd be like, did you see that name? We did that three or four days in a row and we got to a point where we were pretty good friends and unlisted man and and officer weren't really supposed to act like that, but we became pretty good friends.
What about like the people in your bunker and where you stayed?
We became pretty good friends, we had a few people and we had one guy we had problems with and we got him the help he needed because he had some problems.
Did you keep a personal diary while you were there?
No, all my pictures, digital tells you where your at and with my memory I could remember a lot of stuff when I went through my pictures.
Do you recall the day your service ended?
Yea, I was having back problems over there and I woke up one morning and my back was so stiff that they sent me back over to the medics and the female colonel, and when I walked into her little room she sat down and told me your going home. Now I just looked at her and I said Mam? And she said " Theres no if's ands or buts your going home and your back needs help and your going to Gennany and then your probably gonna go up to one of the hospitals in the states and then your military career is over".
Were you able to keep relationships with women or that sort ofthing over there?
No, that was really banned, there were several that did it and there was lot going on over there, where married folk would interact with other people and have affairs, I tried to stay away from that because you could get in a lot of trouble. I was married at the time and tried to keep contact with her if I could, but I was kinda limited because we were thousands of miles apart. [0:23:25J
Yea, where were you when your service ended?
When I finally was sent from the airport to the mass station where they send all the wounded and then I was airlifted from them and sent to Landstahl Germany and spent a weekend in the hospital there and then I was sent to a big hospital in Washington D.C. and then I went to Fort Knox and sawall kinds of different doctors down there and got a bunch of diagnoses. That was the funny thing that happened to me and it might have been five or six doctors a week and they'd hand me a prescription of pain pills and I was just taking them off the shelf and everytime I go in there they would give me a bag of pain pills and then they would make me fill out stuff for more and they told me if I didn't do it 1'd be in trouble and I had enough pain pills to be a phannicist so I ended up throwing them in my wood stove and then I didn't want a cloud of drebis coming off that so I ended up mixing them with stuff that nobody would wanna touch so nobody got into them so I could get rid of them. I just took an aspirin and an ibuprofen off the shelf because I didn't like having that feeling of incoherent and having that not knowing exactly whats going on.
Yea, after your stays in hospitals and stuff how long did it take for you to get back to Indiana?
Well I went to Fort Knox and they said I was being discharged and I went up to Atterbury Indiana which is southeast of Indianapolis or a few miles and I went there for a few weeks and I had a bunch of military leave that added up and they said take that and they gave me a date when it would end and that's actually when I finished up. [0:26:071 Dq- When you got back how long did it take for you to go back to work or school? [8 1 Cd: I was back home for a week and a half and the company I worked for called me up and wanted me to come back to work but I still had two weeks, two and a half weeks of military leave added up but they were having a safety meeting so I had to go to it so I ended up going back early and went back to construction and stuff.
Did you go to college? Cd: I've got 60 some hours of college at Vincennes University.
But that was before you went off right? Cd: Yes.
Do you still have friends that you talk to that you made in the service? Cd: Yes several, a lot of them went there different ways and to different states but with the Guard we're were a lot brought from all areas of Southern Indiana, some even from Kentucky and Illinois and I'm in contact with a few people, but I don't see a whole lot of them since theyre like sixty, fifty miles away and the last several years I've been out with my work.
Have you ever had like a get together with all of your members? Cd: Yea, they have a retirement party for all the people that were out of the unit and they have them I guess and I think they had one that I didn't get to go to because I was out of state but that was the only one I knew of.
Okay, have you joined a veterans organization? Cd: Yea, I joined the American Legion in French Lick and I've been thinking about joining a Nam Vet group but I haven't really did that yet.
What did you do as a career after the war? Cd: I worked as construction for a while and I got out of that and I was a truck driver, but I was on the road truck driving a lot and I decided I needed to be home and truck driving took me out of the state and put me on the road all of the time so a few months ago I took a home dump truck driving job.
Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or the military in general? Cd: Yes, in a ways yes and I always understood why we had war and I always thought that somebody had to attack you and I got to really thinking why people do things, like the killing fields and Vietnam and Bosnia and then seeing pictures of the fields in Iraq and several bodies. Iraq War-Dca! Also I've seen kids over there with arms and legs tom otT because of the war and yes, the way they lived, swimming in open sewers, not having fresh water, starving to death and what they lived in, I mean my dog has a better house than what they do. Then you see the people that are rulers ofthat country that live in mansions that have marble palaces and gold encrusted jewels on stuff. It was just stuff out of the movies and everybody else was just scraping for a morsel of food while those people were just having feasts and that's the way it was.
So there was a big difference between the impoverished poor people at the place you were at then the very rich people, People that lived extravagantly? Cd: Very much so, they had during the war piles and piles of money, millions of dollars piled up and they went nuts when we freed them and they were treating us like gods.
How did the people that lived there treat you? Cd: Some didn't like us and would curse us and some would sit there and act like best friends and when we turned our backs they would shoot us, but they would go out of their way to do anything for us, so it went all different ways.
So you watch movies and stuff about war and what do you think about these things after you've experienced war? Cd: I try not to think about because I do have dreams about it that wake me up at the middle of the night and I see things out there, the way people were treated and here in the states we have a right to protest for it. I mean that's the reason I was over there fighting for it for your freedom of speech, but the way they lived over there we needed to be there and some people thanked me, a few people and some wondered why we were over there and the people that thanked me were friends and family and others that I've barely even met see me and my shirt and ask if I served and I say "Yeah" and others ask me when they see my shirt for Iraqi Freedom and ask me why I went over there because they think they need to get us out.
When you got home was there a big welcome from your mom and everything, how was that? Cd: Yea, I kinda came home when everybody was working and I didn't get a real big reception and my wife at the time met me at the airport when I got home and then I had to go straight back to the base and I only had a few hours to get to base so I didn't have a whole lot of time.
What did you do when you first got back to the States and Indiana? [lOJ Cd: I went and had me a bacon sandwich for one thing because we weren't allowed to have bacon over there because of the religion and I got my beer over in Germany and we had nonnalcholic beer which is just as good, but I still missed the American beer and I went around and sawall the changes in my home town and areas around
Were there a lot? Cd: There were a few yea, and went to school for a Veterans Day thing and I went in uniform for that and did a few things for that and people thanking me and, you know, telling me that they were glad to see me home safe and everything.
Do you still have your uniform? Cd: Yes I do, they let us keep a couple sets.
Is it in your room? Cd: Its in my closet.
Ok, how did the service affect your life and what kind of experience was that? Cd: I missed out on a lot of stuff in my 22 years in the service, I missed out on graduations, birthdays and Christmases and different other holidays and just different things like this friend of mine I missed out on his wedding and I was supposed to be his best man and I was told I had to do something else and anytime. It seemed like I had to go out and do something else there was something else going on. Your friends are having a party or a get together and they want you to go but your not allowed to go.
Do you still think it was a positive experience? Cd: Oh yea, its real positive. If I had to do it over again I never would have gotten out, I mean if I could I would have just stayed in because they don't fire you. Here in civilian life you do something and mess up your job and they fire you and here they don't and they just give you a slap on the hand and on up and you've still got a job. [0:34:421
So you wouldn't change anything and you would go back even? Cd: I tried this past year and my unit's in Iraq right now and they come back on the 1 sl of December of this year and I begged to go back over and I come down with some medical problems this year which are keeping me back out, but yea I would go back over. iraq War-Dcaf
So is there anything you would like to add that I haven't covered or asked you about or anything that you still have to say?
I just think that we needed to be over there and the people over there, the majority of them the way they were living. It's a different culture. It's like you going over or they coming over here and trying to take over and trying to force their way of life on you and change your life and its gonna be a cultural shock to you, too. So we just gotta give them time and yea it's just gonna take time over there.
Do you think or when you came back were you welcomed and did you think the army welcomed you and thanked you for all you've done?
I've had some problems with the Army. I've been trying to find out through my records what kind of ribbons and stuff because I'm putting a thing together on my wall to show my ranks and stuff and all my ribbons and stuff and I've been having a hard time getting through to the army and I've gone to myoid unit countless times and they've told me theyre gonna send them to me and nothing ever happened and recently actually this last week I went to them and tried to get a hold of the records and send me my copy of what ribbons I should be having for like overseas service ribbons and Iraqi service ribbons and stuff like that, but nothing happened.
You got ribbons there, did you get commemoration from the Army?
When I got home a friend of mine gave me a package and the only reason I got that was because he grabbed it for me and it had a little coin and some other stuff on it. But yea, I had a package that I was supposed to give my employer that had a coin of appreciation for their support on it and everything and the employer I had, I wrote him letters and never got no response so I didn't send that coin to him and I gave it to my mom because she supported me and the company I worked for didn't, so I gave it to her and all the company I worked for wanted to know was when I was coming back to work and they didn't care when or what was happening to me over there so I didn't give it to them and otherwise the package that the friend gave to me the Guard hadn't sent it to me and he just seen it and thought of me and he got it to me.
So how has your thinking of war changed from when before you went over to Kuwait and Iraq to after and you know now that you've seen things first hand?
I used to always think that it would be good, I joined the service to do things that were adventure and excitement and through boot camp and everything and I went to the Marine Corps Iraq War-Deaf boot camp and they push you and everything and be like "We're going to war. We're going to war." and you know they put this in your head and you think I can't wait and I want to go do something and go to war and I wanna be able fight and do things I was trained to do and once you get to do it, what was I thinking? Because it was totally not the cool thing and it was scary, you might not come back from it.
You were saying that when you went to boot camp it was grueling and stuff, were you not in the greatest shape when you went over there?
I ran for a couple years and I worked construction and I was in really good shape, but not the shape that I should have been for going over there.
For the army?
Yea for the Marines they did a three mile run and you had twenty eight minutes to finish it and when I went in I did it in eighteen minutes and forty seconds and when I came out of boot camp I actually lost two minutes because I was doing it in twenty minutes and something, but I built up where I couldn't do but three pushups and three situps, not three pushups but three chinups on the chin up bar before I had let go of the bar and drop off. Well I could do a couple hundred after I graduated from boot camp without dropping off the bar because that's how we got priveliges to call home on, they'd tell you to do seventy chinups and we'll let you have five minutes to call home and that's what you pushed for and you gained it, you earned it and if you actually got the time to do it which we didn't actually have the time to do it and time to call home then, yea I was somewhat better shape then others and I saw people in boot camp and they were lucky to be fit enough to walk and they would come out and we had a guy, he was probably 300 pounds when he went in and when he came out and he weighed about 180 pounds and his parents actually brushed against his arm and walked passed him looking for him and didn't recognize him and even when he walked up to them and said hi they just looked at him for a minute and he was like 'Mom, Dad don't you recognize me?' And that's when they broke down and they just couldn't believe it.
So the army really did have a higher standard then?
Yea the service had a big standard, physical fitness, that can save your life. One of the drill instructors told me. He was in Vietnam and he told me a story about the situps and so many reasons why we did it and once this master seargeant got shot point blank in the stomach with the Iraq War-Dca/ Vietnamese with a .45, well he had been a big situp fanatic and as soon as the guy shot him he tensed up and all it did was go past the skin and got lodged in the muscle and ifhe hadn't been in such good shape it would have practically torn into two because that's a big caliber pistol and it saved his life and it can save your life to be in top physical shape.
So I mean is there anything else you'd like to add?
Not really, no.
Alright, well then thank you for letting me interview you and that's the end of our interview then.
Well, you're welcome.
Thank you.