Sgt. Tom Shaffer Jokes with His Friend Kathleen Williams About the Precautions They Have Been Given in the Event of a Chemical Weapons Attack

Of paramount concern to the Americans and their allies was the possibility that Saddam Hussein might utilize chemical weapons, which he had used during Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran and against Iraqi Kurds in 1988. Servicemen and women in the Gulf loathed the chemical protection gear they had been issued; in a desert environment where temperatures could soar to 120 degrees, the full-body suit became insufferably hot in seconds. Some were skeptical of the pills and shots administered to protect their immune systems from chemical agents. (In the years after the war, an estimated one hundred thousand Gulf War veterans, many of them only in their twenties and thirties, would complain of an array of chronic ailments now referred to as “Gulf War Syndrome.” Although a host of studies and tests have proved inconclusive, the antibodies distributed before and during the war have been blamed for the illnesses, which include intestinal problems and even brain damage.) Tom Shaffer, a twenty-three-year-old sergeant from Richmond, Virginia, served with the 43rd Engineering Company, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and he frequently updated his friend Kathleen Williams on his life in an army tent city in Saudi Arabia. In a brief, lighthearted letter to Williams, Shaffer alludes to suspicions about the inoculations the military was dispensing.

10 JAN 91

Kathy,

Hey, it’s me again! Aren’t you just privileged to get so much mail from me?! Anyway, today is Thursday, and they aren’t taking out boxes until tomorrow, so I might as well write to you some more. I also found the shirt in the bottom of one of my bags, and I thought you might want it to wear around the house or something, so I sent it to you instead of throwing it away.

Really nothing new has happened since I wrote last. We finished the ramp project today. My old squad leader from third platoon had a heart attack today. They took him to the hospital around dinner time. I hope he is okay, because he was a really good squad leader. We are still preparing to move. I have to wash my clothes tomorrow, and finish packing my bags, and then I’ll be ready. We never got our anthrax shots. They changed their minds I guess. I just heard on the radio that the troops are still getting vaccinated. Well let me tell you that we aren’t. They said that our mask will protect us against biological weapons, but there is no way to tell if we are in a biological contaminated area unless someone gets sick. By that time, everyone would probably already have contaminate in them, so what good is our mask going to do?!

We are also supposed to start taking some pills that are supposed to slow down a nerve agent once it’s in our system. I really don’t trust taking them, and I’m really thinking about throwing them away. Many people think we are being used as guinea pigs over here. The side effects for these pills are actual nerve agent poisoning! That’s one thing I could do without at this point of my life. I don’t want to end up going sterile, and not being able to have any kids! They had the talks last night and nothing came out of it, so that’s not good news.

I hope everything with you is fine. I sure hope I hear from you soon before I go crazy over here! I think this place has finally gotten to me! Well I’ll let you go, so I can seal this box and get to bed. Take care.

Love,

Tom

Shaffer, who never ingested the pills or received the shots, did not raise the issue with Williams again, and his attention was turned to the imminent assault on Iraq. “The night before last a guy in first platoon shot himself in the leg, because he said ‘God doesn’t want us to kill each other over here, and I’m not going to shoot anyone.’ Now that he has shot himself, he has to pay for all his medical treatment and will be sent to prison for 6 months-1 year. We will probably be home by the time he gets out. He blew the whole calf off his leg, so he’ll probably have trouble with it for the rest of his life.” Shaffer, himself, would return from the war alive and well, free of any symptoms of “Gulf War Syndrome.”