Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 17, 1991 TAG: 9102170236
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE/ NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Long
"Would you believe that our house looked like a flower shop?" said Wilma Davis, the mother of twin sons in the Saudi Arabian desert. "I guess it's their way of showing they care."
But it also sent an unintended message. "It reminded me of somebody dying," she said.
Meanwhile, husband Bob Davis can't get over the idea that he is grieving.
"I know they're not dead," he said of 19-year-old sons Keith and Kevin, both with the Army in the Middle East. "And they're probably not going to die. But the feelings I'm having are similar to if somebody died. It's like grief, or a loss."
"I think we both feel that way," Wilma Davis said.
The war that began with an air strike against Iraq Jan. 16 is into its fifth week. And the Davises have merged it with their daily routine.
Wilma Davis runs her day-care service. Bob Davis repairs telephone lines. Gabriele Davis - Kevin's German-born bride, wedded just days before he left - goes to her job at McDonald's in Fairlawn.
But the undercurrent - the war - still runs clear and strong.
It makes them stop talking when the radio news starts, or leads them to the electronics section in department stores, where the television sets are always on.
The news itself is a two-edged sword. "You don't want them to tell you something you don't really want to know," Gabriele Davis said.
What they fear most is the future.
That is, the ground war.
"Everybody says it's going to be really bloody," said Gabriele Davis. "If it's up to me, they could just leave it like it is right now."
Friday's news that Iraq was offering to pull out of Kuwait - if certain conditions were met - left the Davises cold. "We figured it was a hoax to begin with," Wilma Davis said. "I told Bob, `I'm not going to get excited.' I'm not going to get my hopes up until I see my boys coming up the front steps."
Born a minute apart in July 1971, Kevin and Keith Davis grew up side by side, attending Pulaski County High School and the Highland Park Community Church. They both joined the Army in 1989.
"They'd fight just like typical brothers, but they stuck together," Wilma Davis said.
The twins, who are in different Army units, both are believed to be on the front lines in Saudi Arabia.
Even the early skirmishes there have made Wilma Davis fret. "It really scares me when the ground troops go in," she said.
A reporter and a photographer who visited the Davises last week found them more relaxed than on Jan. 16, when their television carried reports of the first attacks on Iraq. On that night the Davises - Bob, Wilma and Gabriele - held hands and at times said little as the news reports came in.
Last week they laughed between bits of more serious conversation, and the talk sometimes drifted far from war.
In fact, they say, much of the tension they still feel has simply become more private - sometimes even from each other. These days, Gabriele Davis said, they close the door to cry.
They may have learned of necessity to keep a stiff upper lip. A cascade of phone calls and visits from friends and relatives, they said, hasn't stopped since the war began.
The Davises have another grown son, Dean Davis of Christiansburg, as well as a just-married daughter, Donna Davis-Hayes of Florida.
But they also get regular telephone calls from more distant relatives and friends, as well as visits from friends who live close by - all asking about the twins.
Meanwhile, some of the regular customers at the Fairlawn McDonald's have shown an interest, too. One of Gabriele Davis' customers there, who is including Kevin Davis in her prayers, asked for a picture of him - a precious thing to his new wife.
But the woman persisted.
"She said, `Please, please please.' So I gave it to her," Gabriele said.
After work, the Davises deal with stress in ways that work best for each. Wilma Davis downs decaf. Gabriele goes horseback riding.
Bob Davis eats.
"I'm putting on weight," said the good-natured Davis - who could already match body bulk with a kodiak bear. "Some people when they get stressed, they don't eat. I eat everything I can get my hands on."
Lately, he said, he has also a few times lost track of which day it was.
These days, life can be confusing. News of the twins comes in bits, like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. Kevin Davis called on Sunday, sounding depressed. Guard duty and stress have reduced his sleep to two to four hours a night, Gabriele Davis said.
Kevin Davis had recently spent a few hours with Keith.
Keith, normally assigned to military police, is believed to be on special assignment.
But Kevin Davis could say little about his brother. Kevin said, " `There's some things I just can't go into right now,' " Gabriele Davis recalled.
A letter from Keith did drift in a few days ago, in the uncertain way of military mail. Though undated, it apparently was written before the war started.
Like his brother's phone conversation, the letter is full of talk about "jumping" - military parlance for moving on:
"We've jumped now, only 7 miles north. But that's only a staging area. Now we are waiting for the order for us to jump again. . . . Right now we are living inside our vehicles and freezing to death at night," Keith wrote.
And lower: "It looks like we are going to war! And I'm not one bit embarrassed to say that I'm scared to death."
And lower:
"Don't lose any sleep over Kevin and me when the war starts. You guys don't have anything to worry about. We will both be home. I guarantee it."
The letter also asks that his parents urge members of the Highland Park Community Church to continue praying for them, and for the other soldiers overseas.
It is in places such as church - where long routine has left the largest empty spaces - that Bob and Wilma Davis sometimes think back most.
At Highland Park, Kevin Davis sat in back, Keith Davis between his mother and his father, his parents recalled. Halfway through the service, Keith Davis would hand his mother a handwritten message about where he thought they should go for lunch.
"Little things like that, I miss them tremendously," Bob Davis said.
The Davises have not spoken with son Keith since early January, Bob Davis said.
by CNB