March 20, 1991

Dear Family and Friends:

Here is my SECOND update letter to Corporal Daron Stenvold's involvement in Operation Desert Storm.

There were, all together, 35 people that left with Daron to Saudi Arabia. They were most of the members of his unit here in Minneapolis. There are only about 3 or 4 people left here in Minneapolis.

I had stated in my last letter that a soldier was fined $18,000 for destroying a camel. That is the correct amount, except that it was reported in Saudi Money, not American dollars. One Saudi Arabian dollar bill is called "One Riyal" and One American dollar equals about $3.75 Riyals. So that equals about $4,800 American Dollars, which is still a sizable chunk of change. I can only guess, but I'm sure that the Saudi government won't enforce this fine, because we're fighting alongside them, against Suddam.

Daron notices also that in Jubail, there are very distinct areas of the very Rich and of the extremely poor. There is no fine line here. The conditions for all of the poor are very harsh. Also, Arab men frequently have more than one wife!!

Here is some information from a call that I received on 2-19-91. It lasted from 1:00pm to 2:25pm:

When Daron calls, he just sits down at a phone and when he picks it up, it automatically dials an AT&T operator. He then give him\her the phone # he wants to call, and his AT&T calling card #.

Another S.C.U.D. landed at the Port of Jubail two days ago. It was a 250 to 500 pound missile (small), but it landed right on the beach-line by their camp. The poles of their tents nearly shook right out of the ground and he saw an enormous shower of sparks from the explosion. The sound was deafening.

For the last three days, he has seen an enormous buildup of transport activity to the front line. All ammunition runs. He believes the ground war will start on the night of February 20, 1991, or the next day. He has been on guard duty for about 2 1/2 weeks, but he just got new orders about 2 hours ago - he is now being moved to the front lines. He will be part of the last 7 people from his unit that are not yet at the front. As of now, only one person from his unit remains in Jubail, Tom Huesman. He leaves at 0400 on the morning of the 20th. Unfortunately, he'll only get about 3 hours of sleep before this. He mentioned to his girlfriend that reality is sinking in, and that he has a stomach ache from it. Needless to say, he probably won't sleep at all. I think the main problem is that he's more afraid of accidents than anything else. As of today, MORE people have been killed or hurt from friendly fire and non-war related accidents by our own people, than ALL of the Iraq's aggression against us!!! In other words, we've killed or hurt more of our own people than Iraq has!!! These senseless accidents happen on a daily basis. He knows of several cases of serious injuries and\or death.

There is a certain stretch of road where most of the deaths have occurred, it's been affectionately called "Widow's Run".

When he gets to the front, he'll be driving a machine called an "LVS", Logistic Vehicle System. It's simply a power unit, kind of like a giant Semi, that you can attach several different pieces of equipment to. It's very flexible in that sense. So basically, it's just a giant engine with a cab on it, that you hook whatever piece of hardware you want up to it. The seat belts in this thing are enormous. They pin your entire body down to the seat so you can only move your arms and legs, no bending or twisting of your body.

By being on guard duty and standing in those boots for long periods of time, on top of everything else, he says he now has a case of Shin-Splints! He has taken pictures of the warship "Tarawa". He can't get over on how massive it is. There is no such thing as "Ice" where he is at. I asked him if he had ever gotten caught in a Sand-Storm, but he said no, only at the front has he heard of people getting caught in those.

One of the ships he watched being unloaded, held 72 contains that empty, weighed 50 tons EACH. They were ALL FULL and EACH weighed 400 tons!! All of it was ammunition being hauled to the front!! The funny thing was that they just push each of these containers into the water and they floated! From there, it was just like docking a boat to it's trailer, trucks would drive right up to the shoreline, hook up to them and off they'd go.

He sees people coming back from the front and some of them have lost what seems to be 20lbs! So, the last few days, he and another guy have been eating everything in sight, trying to bulk up!

Reminder ! All letters and packages you send, he WILL save everything. If you send him pictures or anything that'll he'll want to save that he can't eat, that's fine. Because all of that sort of stuff, he simply mails it right back to me, where I will store it and hold onto it until he returns! Everything that he mails out of Saudi if free. He pays no postage.

Information from a letter I received on 2-14-91:

Daron writes: "My first night on guard duty was the best. I was on the rear guard post, watching along the rocks along the shoreline, with another Marine, looking for frogmen or whatever might be trying to get in. Well, somehow a Marine wearing camie bottoms, a grey sweatshirt and a black stocking cap, made it to the bottom of the rocks without any one seeing him. By the way, this area is completely OFF LIMITS to everyone! And everyone knows that if they are caught down there, they will be punished! He was there to talk a tape to his wife. He was not quite as lucky on his way up however. As I was walking, I saw him far up the coast, at about 50-75 yards, so I ran towards him while he could not see me. He was climbing back up, off the rocks. When I was about 30 yrds. from him, I dove behind a rock, put a round in the chamber and hollered to him: "Halt, or I'll shoot!" He shit! He dropped his tape player onto the rocks and I had him put down his weapon. Then I had him put his I.D. on a rock and keep backing up while I advanced to check his I.D. He checked out. I told Him to get his shit and that he was lucky I did not shoot him on sight and that I would not write him up this time either. He did break his tape recorder, but he was relieved. So was I. What an ordeal for my first night."

Information from a letter I received on 3-11-91:

Everyone is dog-ass tired! They've working 30+ hour days with only 6 hours rest! While moving ammunition to the front lines, during the few days prior to the start of the war, his unit ran into a weird problem. They couldn't find anyone who wanted ammunition, everyone was full-up. Plus everyone at these check points said, "Nope, we can't take your ammunition because we'll be moving north pretty quick and we can't be loaded down with all this ammo!"

"One night, a Cobra helicopter 'locked in' on our convoy, I shit! I was the third truck back. Those guy's already destroyed one of our convoy's. They blew the shit out of it, then asked questions! The things, two of them, came out of nowhere and got in front of us, flying backwards, guns aimed and we are told to just continue driving if this happens. After a LONG 30 seconds or so, we were recognized and they left! Since the first convoy was destroyed, they said 'Hey, we have to mark our trucks!'. We all have an upside down V on our doors for ground troops and orange squares on the top for aircraft. Well, the squares are not working out. Now they are installing infrared systems that the aircraft can scan and recognize. The problem is that they don't have enough of these to go along with every convoy!"

"We live off MRE's now (Meals Ready to Eat). Yum-Yum, Yuck! I think I'm getting fat! Burp! I just ate a Chicken Ala King before this letter. Check this out, there was a REAL bag of M&M's in it for desert! That was cool! I just wish they did not say "Best before 16JAN90" on them!! Goes to show you how fresh the Chicken was!"

He writes on the 25th - "I think it is close to being over. We're getting NO resistance." In a day and a half from then, it was over!

He writes a day after the cease-fire: "The war is over, but the damn Iraqi's have no communications, so they don't know it yet! There have already been two fire fights within a mile of us, just this morning!"

Well, as you all know, the ground war started on March 24th, 1991 and ending on March 27th, 1991. It was a four day, 100 hour war. Daron thinks the war started at about 4 or 5 in the morning.

When Daron and I spoke four days prior to the ground war, we both knew that we wouldn't be able to talk again until the fighting was over. This was due to the fact that he was going to be at the front lines, and they wouldn't have access to phones until they were able to fall back to the rear. So, the war ended on a Wednesday, and I was optimistically hoping that he'd be able to call by the end of the weekend, because that would be about 4 days after the fighting. So I just sat around getting anxious, waiting for the phone to ring, which was probably a mistake to start out with. It's hard, because you know that he's right there in the thick of things and there's no way finding out what's going on. The only way is to hear from him, and I knew that he would call A.S.A.P. when the fighting was over. That's why, at that time, I thought four days was a long time not to hear from him. Plus the fact that other members of his unit were able to call home that weekend, but not Daron! Which brings us to this next little dilema. On that Saturday, after everything was going on in the news, things were happening so fast, start of the war, end of the war, rejoicing, people calling home, and still no word from Daron.

That is when I started feeling that something wasn't quite right. Then on Sunday, I received a call from a wife of a person who is in Daron's unit. She is basically the "Information Center" for the 6th Motor Battalion Unit. She keeps in contact with most of the wife's of the marines in Saudi, and has been keeping informal lists of whose talked to who and when, trying to get a handle on who's accounted for and who's not. Well, while reviewing her lasted compilation of names, she noticed that about 3 or 4 names have never shown up in her last 2 or 3 weeks of tracking. And one of those names was Daron's. Now this in itself is by no means the end all of official lists, but what it did signify was that no one in Daron's original 6th MTBN unit had seen or heard from him in 2 or 3 weeks. Well, of course, this affirmed my earlier suspicions about why the hell hasn't he called in such while! At that point, she made an effort to communicate to the other wives, that when their husbands call home, ask each of them about Daron and the other people on the list. And low and behold, late that Sunday night, we had someone call and say "Yes, I've seen him just the other day." So, after a pretty tense day of wondering, at least I had some bit of hope back that we weren't in the middle of something tragic. During the midst of that weekend, I only told of few of you of what I just wrote about. I didn't want to start a big panic or anything. It's just that I didn't want to be the only one worrying and losing sleep over it! Aren't I nice!HeeHee

What had happened was that he had somehow hitched up with the 8th MTBN. Then from there, he was 'borrowed' to the 7th MTBN at the front lines. That is why no one from the 6th MTBN had seen or heard from him.

So then, after that fun weekend, it was still another 3 days before I'd get a call from him, which, by the beginning of the third day, was starting to worry me. By this time, it was a full 7 days since the cease fire. Our troops were celebrating and waving flags, driving around inside Kuwait and everything had, for the most part, calmed down. I had thought for sure he'd have a few minutes in there somewhere that he could get to the phone and give me a quick hello. But alas, he called! Yippee!!

Here are the most recent times that I've talked to him:

3-6-91, talked for 5 min.

3-7-91 10:50am to 11:00pm

3-8-91 10:50am to 11:15pm

3-11-91 4:50pm to 5:45pm

3-20-91 8:00am to 8:25am

Since the beginning and end of the ground war, Daron has been with the 8th and now 7th Motor Battalions. He has been camped about 120 miles west of the Saudi Arabian town of Mishab, the in the middle of the desert. Mishab is right on the border of Kuwait, right next to Khafji. He has been moving the thousands of tons of ammunition that was stock piled on the front lines, prior to the ground war. And because the ground war only lasted 4 days, they have alot of left-over ammunition and all of it needs to go.

His first night on the front lines wasn't the friendliest. While sleeping that first night, at about 2 or 3 in the morning, the tent fell on him and about 4 or 5 other guys, from high winds. Now, this isn't your typical cub scout plastic camping tent. It has a four-inch square wooden beam as a support, and a huge metal pole to support the center of the tent. Well, when the tent came down, the heavy wooden beam missed his head by two inches and the center pole fell down across legs!

With the combined weight of the canvas tent and the center pole across his legs, Daron couldn't move an inch. So picture this, your sleeping, your startled awake by what, you don't know, it's pitch black out, you can't see a thing, you can't move and worst of all, you don't know why you can't move because you can't see anything. Also, you don't know if everyone else is O.K. or not! So finally, around 6am that morning, some people came by and lifted the tent off the men. Everyone was O.K.! Boy, that was a nice welcome to the front lines!!

He has had his first shower in 3 weeks, and it even had hot water!!!! Daron and a friend had decided that they had wanted to do something different with their hair styles, so they shaved their heads bald! At the time of this call, Daron's hair had grown back, but now he has grown a mustache!

Along with moving ammunition back to the rear, Daron was also involved with moving Tanks, Fuel, Iraqi POW's, and clearing Iraqi bunkers. He was with a unit that was responsible for what they called, "Bag 'em and Tag 'em". You can only drive when there is a wind blowing. If there is not even a slight breeze blowing, nobody moves, because otherwise, when you drive, you kick up an incredible amount of dust and it's impossible to see!!!

There are billions of fly's in the desert. They are big, clumsy and not afraid of anything! As you know, flies back home here are very quick to fly if you even come close to hitting them. Over there, once they land, they stay. Also, they have no qualms about flying right smack into your mouth if it's open!! HeeHee, gee I wish I could be there!!HeeHee.

On a sad note, a friend and fellow Marine that Daron knew very well, was killed on March 4, 1991. His name is Dan Joel. He is the same age, same rank and possibly the same time of service as Daron.

This brings me to this note. Our people are still getting killed over there and this war is by no means 'over'!! It saddens me that so many people are completely blind to the fact that their loved one is NOT home free yet. They think that because the fighting is over, everything is O.K. I do not buy this for one minute. It is still a very dangerous situation out there, with land mines and rebels, that anything could happen over there! Just the other day, a bunker that one of our soldiers was sleeping in, collapsed and he was killed!! Yeh, well you won't see me rejoicing that the war is 'over' until every single person that we sent over is home and\or accounted for!

Daron's current status is this. He is still with the 7th MTBN, 120 miles in the middle of the desert, outside of Mishab, Saudi Arabia. He is awaiting orders to regroup with his original unit, the 6th, back in Jubail. Once this is done, that is his first step to coming home! From that point, it might be just a month or so before he back in the states. He will arrive first in California, and he has been told that they will spend a month there, dealing with equipment, physicals, de-briefs and general cleanup. From there, it's hello Minneapolis!!

At the time of this mornings phone call, he was deep inside the city of Kuwait! Only a small group of soldiers from the 7th MTBN are inside Kuwait! He was bringing food and water to the troops there. There is the constant threat of land mines and sniper fire. He tells of resistance fighters shooting from time to time throughout the day.

Our troops there are just waiting around ready to leave. Apparently, the bulk of our troops are leaving from Jubail, and currently, they are completely packed there - they can't hold another person. So that means that everyone who is about to leave, basically has to sit tight wherever they may be, until space opens up in Jubail.

From his phone call this morning, he is supposed to regroup with the 8th MTBN sometime next week. The 6th MTBN is scheduled to leave Jubail during the last week of April! Now remember, that's still a long ways off and things can change on a moments notice, but at least there is an tentative schedule for him to come home!!

Here is an updated list of everyone who is receiving this letter:

Ahlman, Ken & Jean

Amundson, Roger & Sandy

Bruns, Cara

Chesney, Doug & Marcia

Chesney, Paul & Lee

Dice, Josephine

Fischer, Myk

Gerber, Kathy

Gerber, Dave & LaVonne

Gillett, Harlan

Hand, Denny & Jackie

Hartung, Jim & Shirley

Hauge, Jim & Penny

Hein, Greg & Kim

Helberg, Mike

Hinchley, Bill & Genelle

Horob, Gary & Jan

Jacobson, Todd & Bonnie

Jahner, Dennie & Francie

Karsch, Kendall

Knudson, Ed & Mildred

Knudson, Allan & Kari

Lane, Linda

Makelky, Mark & Joanne

Mann, Andrea

Miller, Gary & Denise

Miller, Garnet

Nelson, Alisa

Noyce, Dave

Nyguard, Jody

Oberlander, Curt & Jan

Randall, Joleen

Richmond, Jenny

Sampson, Sue

Sand, Maridale

Sand, John

Sand, Jim

Seykora, Mainerd & Ruth

Seykora, Tom

Seykora, Amy

Shapiro, Beth

Shumila, Marie

Signalness, Raymond & Deloris

Stenvold, Deloris

Stenvold, Joey & Beth

Stenvold, Mike & Shirley

Stenvold, Kamie

Stenvold, Tom & Twyla

Stenvold, Dewayne

VanPutten, Ken & Joanne

Walter, Tom & Sandy

PLEASE, keep sending letters and packages! Daron will still be there for some time yet! So far, he has had a good showing of support and he tells me that he can't thank you enough! He really appreciates hearing from all of you, it means alot to him! He also mentioned that he'd like to hear from those of you he hasn't talk to in a few years! He'd love to catch up with you!

Thanks again, everyone, and the next letter you receive will hopefully contain a date and time in which he will be returning!!

Sincerely,

Jason D. Stenvold

Marine Brother

P.S. Keep those letters flowing!