Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 1, 1991 TAG: 9103010185
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"It was probably the most frightening thing I've ever heard," Gibson said. "When you actually hear those words - `tank war' - it really strikes home."
It struck home because Gibson's son, Pfc. Roger William Smith Jr. of Roanoke, drives a tank with the Army's 24th Infantry Division.
She relaxed - a little - Wednesday night as news reports indicated that the Persian Gulf war might be over. "I really did not even start to accept it until this morning, when I read the paper and realized that the major tank battles were over."
Gibson, who works at Martin Travel, said Thursday that she is "very scared right now. . . . If I can get through the next two days without hearing about anything happening to him, then I'll really celebrate."
"Right now I'm shaking," she added. "It's too good to be true."
She last heard from Roger, who turned 21 the day after Christmas, when her telephone rang at 2 a.m. Valentine's Day.
They talked for about half an hour. He was in good spirits but was "very, very dirty. He hadn't had a shower in five weeks."
He said his hands were black with grime and dry and bleeding from the effects of the desert elements.
Gibson said she thought the conflict in the Persian Gulf "might keep my grandsons and my friends' children from going to war" someday in the future. "I just think this was a good thing to do. . . . I'm very proud of my son and all of the coalition forces and everything they've done."
Gibson wasn't the only Western Virginia mother - or sister, brother, father, wife, husband, cousin, boyfriend or girlfriend - who was expressing relief about the apparent end to the war.
"You didn't hear me holler?" Linda Brown of Fincastle said when she was asked about her reaction.
Her son, Army Pfc. Steven L. Brown, is with the 82nd Airborne, one of the first American units sent to the Middle East. He celebrated his 19th birthday on Sept. 26 in Saudi Arabia.
Brown hasn't seen her son since the last week of July. She received a couple of letters from him, apparently written in January or around Feb. 1, in the past two weeks.
Steven has an older brother, Roger, 21, who was with a tank crew in Germany until he was discharged from the service in December.
Linda Brown said Steven's younger brother, Shawn, 12, hasn't been able to talk with his parents about the war. But she said he's been helped by a support group at school. "All he could ask last night was: `Is he coming home tomorrow?' "
Donna Peavler of Rural Retreat has been trying to contain her "joy and shouting."
"I have had my hopes up so many times," she said. "I won't believe it until my son walks through the door. I love my son very much - and all those other kids over there. I want to see them home."
Her son, Air National Guard Capt. C.M. ("M as in mother," she said) Peavler, has been flying a C-130 cargo plane out of a base somewhere in Saudi Arabia. His 29th birthday will be March 13.
"This mother is very, very proud of the men and women over there - and our country," Peavler said. "I just want them all to have a nice welcome home."
Peggy Brammer of Franklin County was moving to a new home Wednesday night, so she didn't find out about the end of the fighting until late - after her television set was hooked up.
Her son, Charles Hodge, 21, is a chief petty officer on the USS Independence, which had been in the Persian Gulf but has since rotated back to San Diego.
The aircraft carrier had been due to be rotated back to the war area in June, Brammer said. So she was ecstatic that it appeared the war would be over before her son had to return to the battle zone. "That dread was still there that he would have to go back."
Wednesday night she stayed up until well after 1 a.m., trying to soak up every detail about the cease-fire. "It was just wonderful news to hear."
by CNB