THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 27, 1996 TAG: 9606270365
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: 91 lines
Deborah Davidson had figured she was pretty lucky. Five years in the Air Force, and her husband, Senior Airman Michael Davidson, hadn't had to leave his family behind for a single overseas deployment.
Even when he got orders to join a 90-day rotation in Saudi Arabia with the 1st Fighter Wing from Langley Air Force Base, his wife wasn't too worried.
``I figured, Saudi Arabia - we hadn't heard anything about them in the news for a while,'' she said.
Suddenly Tuesday, everything changed.
A powerful truck bomb blew apart a high-rise apartment building in the U.S. compound near Dhahran, turning the eight-story building into a crumbling honeycomb and killing 19 U.S. airmen.
Fifteen hours later, Deborah Davidson, 35, and her children - Sandra, 6, and Brandon, 5 - watched as Michael Davidson, 33, an aircraft tracker, lifted off from Langley with 275 members of the 27th Fighter Squadron, bound for Dhahran.
For the families left behind, watching grim images of the devastation on TV, the bombing drives home once again how sickeningly vulnerable U.S. military forces are to terrorist attack.
The Davidsons, who live in Newport News, had coped with terrorism threats before during a three-year tour of duty in Germany. But this was different.
``When we were overseas we had tight security,'' Deborah Davidson said. ``We had bomb threats on our base and stuff like that, and I got kind of immune to it. . . .
``But I don't know Saudi Arabia. I've never been there. And this seems like it was directed at the Americans.''
It didn't help that Michael Davidson will be staying in the building next door to the one that was damaged in Tuesday's blast.
``I told him I'm not going to be a happy camper,'' Deborah Davidson said. ``I didn't want him to go. I thought for sure they would have canceled it, but he was like, no, no, no, that's why he joined the Air Force.''
Amid the horrifying reports from Dhahran, there was good news for Langley. Of the 94 Langley-based airmen on the ground there at the time of the blast, only one person was slightly injured.
But it was a fluke - an accident of timing. If the explosion had come a few days later, after the full Langley complement was in place, the likelihood of local casualties would have risen sharply.
``Some of the people that got killed were people that these people are relieving,'' Deborah Davidson said. ``Some of them were coming home in the next week. . . .
``I feel bad for the families. Here they were, all geared up to meet their husbands, and now some of them aren't going to be.''
The explosion was also sobering for Cindy Fegley, 30, whose husband, Staff Sgt. Stuart Fegley, 33, is a weapons maintenance crew chief with the Langley unit.
The Fegleys, who live in Newport News, are newlyweds. They were married May 18. Stuart Fegley had been expecting to be housed in the building that was destroyed in Dhahran.
``But I know that they're going to have heightened security, and they know how to take care of themselves,'' Cindy Fegley said. ``He was over there in Desert Storm, and this is his fifth time in Saudi Arabia.''
The Langley personnel are among more than 5,000 U.S. airmen assigned to a joint U.S. military task force enforcing a no-fly zone established over southern Iraq after the Persian Gulf War.
The death toll in Dhahran made it the worst terrorist blast involving Americans in the Middle East since the 1983 bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 241 American servicemen. The Beirut tragedy provided an early warning of the security threat facing U.S. forces overseas - and ultimately led to the withdrawal of American troops from Lebanon.
But President Clinton said Wednesday the United States will not be intimidated into leaving the Middle East.
When the 27th Fighter Squadron comes home to Hampton in October, another Langley-based unit, the 71st Fighter Squadron, will take its turn in the rotation. ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN color photos/The Virginian-Pilot
Deborah Davidson holds her children close as they watch about 275
members of the 1st Fighter Wing's 27th Fighter Squadron board a
plane, below, for Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The object of the family's
affection, Senior Airman Michael Davidson, is part of the group that
is rotating into the Gulf area to monitor the skies over Iraq.
Photo
BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Cindy Fegley of Newport News signs her love to Staff Sgt. Stuart
Fegley as he boards a transport for Saudi Arabia. He was to have
been housed in the building that was destroyed.
KEYWORDS: SAUDI ARABIA U.S. AIR FORCE TERRORISM
by CNB