Week of Music, Scuds, Groceries and Prayers

MONDAY, FEB. 4

Israeli army spokesman Nachman Shai, the soft-spoken, bespectacled brigadier general whose name has become a household word in his country since the war in the Persian Gulf began, is wrapping up a routine briefing when another famous name steps to the microphone--Abie Nathan, the Israeli broadcaster and controversial activist who operates a shipboard radio station called The Voice of Peace from “somewhere in the Mediterranean.”

Why, asks Nathan, must Israel Radio depress people even more during Iraqi Scud alerts by broadcasting such downbeat music while everyone is waiting in their sealed rooms for the all-clear? “I think they should sing in the bunkers,” Nathan says, “even as a sign of defiance.”

Shai, ever accommodating, promises to take the matter up with broadcast authorities, and himself proposes a call-in format so that listeners in gas masks can request their favorites records.

TUESDAY, FEB. 5

At 3 a.m., squadrons of fighter jets sweep across the desert at low altitude, awakening Marines at their base in northern Saudi Arabia. An hour later, flashes of fire light up the horizon from the direction of Kuwait.

The unit’s first sergeant barks commands to his men at the morning formation: “Continue filling your sandbags, continue working on your fighting positions . . . work on your rifles and pistols so when you have to use them they will be ready to go.

“Just because they knocked some Scud missile sites doesn’t mean they don’t have some more somewhere else. This war isn’t over yet, and it won’t be for some time. Marines have still got a lot of work to do, so don’t relax.”

It’s a cold, windy day in the Jewish town of Ariel on the occupied West Bank, and Scud missiles had fallen near the settlement in both of the latest Iraqi attacks. But Efraim Gouetah, proprietor of Effi’s Fruits & Vegetables, is in a fine mood.

“When the missiles come, we all still go onto the roofs to watch,” he says, adding that the Scud attacks have mostly been wonderful for business. With most missiles falling on Tel Aviv, small groups of residents of the seaside city have come to Ariel because it may be out of Iraq’s target area.

Dina Shalit, an assistant to Ariel’s mayor, says so many have come that there are shortages of newspapers and new lines in the medical clinics. Referring to the tensions of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which began in late 1987, Shalit adds: “For three years they wouldn’t accept a dinner invitation. And now they’re coming to live here.”

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 6

In Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s two holiest shrines--the cities of Mecca and Medina--it is a Roman Catholic chaplain who is called on to dedicate a new dining hall on an air base that is home to American, Saudi, Kuwaiti and British forces.

“O God, Allah,” he begins the prayer, and then concludes with a phrase in Arabic: “May the God of all of us bless us all.”

“You can pray ecumenically,” Father Vincent Inghilterra explains later. “We all pray to the same God.”

It’s grocery-shopping day on the aircraft carrier Midway, a delicate rendezvous at sea with a Navy supply ship and a hand-over of food supplies for 6,400 hungry sailors: 13,000 pounds of hamburger, 600 cans of cheese balls, 2,500 tins of potato chips, 1,800 gallons of ice cream, fresh vegetables--and mail.

For three hours the supply ship Spice nestles alongside the huge carrier in one of the heavily protected safe havens of the Persian Gulf dubbed “parking lots” by the Navy.

“We’ve got all the players in the world out here,” says signalman Kevin Menshouse, surveying the field of destroyers and frigates gathered as far as the blue horizon for supplies. “It’s like Grand Central Station.”

Menshouse’s counterpart on the Midway is Mike Davinport. The two men communicate from their respective ships via the hand-and-arm signals that are the universal language of the sea. Davinport has a lot of information to relay: He hasn’t been in port for so long he’s forgotten the last time he saw land; life on the Midway means 130 hour work weeks; combat pay isn’t due until April. Enough said. The Spice finishes its deliveries and pulls away as the two ships sail off into the Persian Gulf.

Michael McKinnon, a filmmaker, is in Jubayl working on a piece about the huge Gulf oil spill for National Geographic.

“Don’t think of it as an oil slick,” he says. “Think of it as an ice flow.” He describes the slick as a two-inch-thick “skin of oil,” more like grease because the lighter elements have evaporated. “It’s the breakdown of the ecosystem,” he laments. “This is the hatchery for the Gulf.”

THURSDAY, FEB. 7

There aren’t many laughs or diversions in this war, but leave it to the Marines. They’ve put together a disco of sorts in a recreation tent near the front lines in Saudi Arabia, complete with plywood dance floor.

They’ve invented a dance called the “gas mask”--you put your hands to your face, simulate panic and stomp your feet--and music is provided by two Marine DJs, Scud B and Lover L. With the whooping growing loud on the floor, Maj. John Head yells in to the revelers: “They can hear you all the way to the COC (Combat Operation Center). They can probably hear you all the way to the Kuwait border, too.”

Air Force Capt. Jon Engle flies an A-10 observation plane, spotting targets for attack aircraft. It gives him a good vantage point for watching allied pilots fire on Iraqi troops, tanks and vehicles--and gauging the damage.

“There are areas where they are digging in,” he says. “There are areas where they have left in a hurry, and there are areas littered with broken, burned-out vehicles. Every day, we go out and kill a few more tanks and knock out a few more artillery sites. And every day, that’s that many less tanks that our ground guys are going to have to face when they finally push on in.”

At a rate of 30 a day, paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division have been lining up at a base legal center in northern Saudi Arabia to have wills written or updated. “Any time you have people on jump status to jump out of airplanes, you want to make sure their house is in order,” says Maj. Chip Luckey.

FRIDAY, FEB. 8

U.S. F-16 pilots switched to Maverick missiles last week to blast Iraqi tanks in occupied Kuwait. The ground-to-air missiles are infrared guided and are more precise than the less-sophisticated conventional bombs usually used to wear down Iraq’s ground-fighting capability. At one major base in central Saudi Arabia, Tech. Sgt. John Hite scrawls a message in pink chalk on the Maverick mounted under an F-16’s wing, dedicating the missile to his sons. “This one is for Johnny, Jason, Chris. Happy birthday, Johnny.” His eldest will be 17 on Valentine’s Day.

SATURDAY, FEB. 9

The telex was unvarnished: “Baby boy. Born 25 Jan. 1315 HRS. Weight: 7 lbs, 15 ounces. Length: 20 in. Name: Christopher Adam. Both baby and wife doing fine. Call home if possible.”

It was not the ideal way to receive word about the birth of your first child, and he hasn’t been able to call home yet. But nothing has diminished Army Spec. Jeff Cunningham’s pride.

“It made me feel on top of the world,” says Cunningham, of Tupelo, Miss. “I walked around with my chest out like a banty rooster. I just can’t wait to see him or get a picture.”

The American Red Cross, which delivers such messages to troops, estimates that 14,000 soldiers here have become new fathers since the first ground forces were deployed back in August.

SUNDAY, FEB. 10

In a country where every religion except Islam is banned, Sunday mornings assume a secretive air.

Not far from the border between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, a unit of U.S.Marines is camped. Inside an olive drab tent, marked only by two tent pegs lashed into a crude cross and stuck in the ground, a worship service was under way. As a helicopter lifts off with its distinctive thwack-thwack, a hymn drifts out of the tent.

“It gives me hope,” says Corp. James Keisler of Peachtree, Ga., as he leaves a 9 a.m. Mass. “I pray that God will find a fair resolution to all this without the loss of too many lives.”