It’s a Subdued Christmas for Troops in Gulf

In foxholes, on ships and at wind-swept desert bases, nearly 300,000 U.S. troops gathered Tuesday in the shadow of war to observe Christmas with carols, religious services and a traditional turkey dinner.

The first thing Aviation Recruit Stephanie Harr, 19, did when she awoke on the hospital ship Mercy was run topside and scream “Merry Christmas!” in the direction of her hometown, San Antonio. “I’m scared, and my family’s scared,” she admitted.

Others by the thousands called loved ones in the United States, clogging Saudi Arabia’s international phone circuits. Many attended chapel services that were held throughout the day at various units, and several thousand got to see Bob Hope, who had given his first Christmas performance for troops abroad in 1941.

“What do I want for Christmas? To be home,” said Lt. Maro Jenkins of Albany, Ga., a reservist. “But it’s still peaceful, so I guess you can’t say it’s a bad Christmas.”

U.S. forces remained in a state of heightened alert, for fear that Iraq might take advantage of Christmas as the Arabs did Yom Kippur, the Jews’ holiest day, when they attacked Israel in October, 1973. Air Force fighter-bombers made low-level runs across Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, and at the 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers sharpened their cargo-handling skills by collecting 12,500-pound containers full of Christmas gifts addressed to “Any Serviceman” and dropped from C-130s.

“I don’t tell the enemy anything,” Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Operation Desert Shield, said the other day, “but I will damn sure tell Saddam Hussein that he should not expect us all to be stood down on Christmas and think he’s going to be able to catch us napping and asleep on Christmas Day.”

The cargo that was parachuted to Lt. Mike Gibler’s men on a sandy expanse known as Drop Zone Devil was part of a holiday avalanche of letters and presents that poured into Saudi Arabia from the United States, reaching more than a million pounds a day just before Christmas. One Marine battalion, Combat Service Support Attachment 111, was so besieged with candy and cakes that its mechanics wouldn’t release equipment brought in for repair unless the claimants also agreed to truck away some of the food. “I’m living out here in the middle of nowhere, and I’ve gained 10 pounds since I got in-country,” said the battalion executive officer, Maj. Bill Lucenta of Wellesley, Mass.

With clear skies and temperatures in the low 70s, Saudi Arabia’s Christmas weather suggested a balmy Southern California day as troops ate Christmas dinner in staggered shifts, often with sleeves rolled up and sweat marks on their backs. Specialist Barry Randale of Columbus, Ga., a member of a Patriot missile unit safeguarding Saudi Arabia’s oil installations, and hundreds of other unit cooks worked through the night Monday to make sure every U.S. serviceman and woman was served a hot turkey dinner.

By the time the day was over, the Americans in the gulf region, part of the largest U.S. military buildup since Vietnam, had eaten 75 tons of turkey, 86 tons of roast beef, 17 tons of shrimp and enough pumpkin pies to fill a warehouse. “Soldiers are always hungry,” said the region’s military food adviser, CWO4 Wesley Wolf, whose motto is “A burger on every bayonet.” “Feed ‘em, and five minutes later they’re hungry again.”

All religions but Islam are officially forbidden in Saudi Arabia, but within their bases Americans held Christian services and sung carols--without incident and with informal Saudi acquiescence. The U.S. Defense Department, though, concerned that Iraq would use pictures of the services to inflame Islamic fundamentalist passions, forbade the filming of any religious aspect of Christmas.

And in deference to the conservative Saudis, the Pentagon did not allow coverage of Bob Hope’s Christmas performances, which had an all-male cast except for Hope’s wife, Delores, who sang “White Christmas.”

Hope lamented that because Saudi Arabia prohibits women entertainers, he had to leave “the girls,” including Marie Osmond and the Pointer Sisters, behind in Bahrain.

The 87-year-old entertainer told a news conference he was surprised that journalists could not cover the six or seven shows he had planned here, as they had his performances during 43 other Christmases with U.S. troops. “Did I keep the press away?” he said. “I live for the press. Honey, that wasn’t my idea, believe me.” His shows, though, were being filmed by NBC cameramen for a network special planned for January.

The U.S. military said earlier that it was restricting coverage of Hope’s three-day tour for security reasons and because media coverage, “however well-intentioned, has a very great likelihood of being exploited by the Iraqis for propaganda purposes.”

Hope said an American military public affairs officer and a cultural affairs officer had gone over his material with him and that as a result he had eliminated some jokes and parts of his act that could have been offensive to the Saudis. He said it did not bother him to have to accommodate the host government and that he had made similar concessions on other tours.

“I know exactly what they (the Saudis) are doing,” he said. “They’ve got a problem, because the king is running the place and they’ve got their religion and beliefs and you kind of have to abide by it.”

Then he slipped in one of his trademark jokes. “What bothers me,” he said, deadpan, “is they don’t want any entertainment--and they still invited me.”

Hope had announced his retirement from Christmas performances after a four-city European tour in 1989. But he couldn’t keep away when American servicemen began pouring into the gulf. “Up popped the madman,” he told journalists, “and I finally said, ‘We have to go over.’ . . . I hope we never have another war, but they couldn’t hide this war from me.”