Awaiting Combat, GIs Look Inward and Find a New Outlook on Life

In these tense, perhaps final hours before the anticipated ground war to liberate Kuwait, many GIs are quietly reflecting on the profound ways that the war experience already has changed their outlook on life, perhaps forever.

Their epiphanies about life after war seem as innumerable and as luminous as the thousands of stars burning over the dark Arabian nights.

“This changes our perspective,” says Army Sgt. Michael Napier, 27, of Pittsburgh. “Every day when I walk in the door, I’m going to kiss my wife and tell her I love her.”

And when his young daughter asks to accompany him on errands, Napier will no longer turn her away. When his wife speaks, he will listen more closely.

“I realize I can die at any time and may not make it to 28,” says the TOW missile section leader.

Spec. Curtis Belin, 25, of Lumberton, N.C., vows to be more respectful to his parents. The TOW missile gunner also has written to several foes back home, seeking peace.

“There is a tendency sometimes to treat people badly,” he says. “This war makes you want to change your whole life.”

Supply Specialist Matthew Blount, 22, of Spartanburg, S.C., adds: “You become more focused on what you want to do. You realize things can change quickly and there’s nothing you can do about it,” says Blount, who plans to return to school after the war to study history. “You realize life is more precious.”

Sgt. Dale Nace, 34, of York, Pa., sees his top priorities after returning home as going fishing and spending time with his daughter: “I can see my daughter. I missed Christmas. I can drive my new car (which) I’ve been paying on for five months. I can eat pizza.”

In recent weeks, attendance at church services among the front-line troops has been going up noticeably.

“It’s fear,” said Maj. Donald Rutherford, a Roman Catholic priest from Albany, N.Y. “God is playing more of a part in their lives.” Rutherford said Bible reading also appears more prevalent.

Staff Sgt. Robert Langston vows to stop putting his work ahead of all else. “When I get back, my family will be the most important thing in my life,” says the 28-year-old from Cleburn, Tex. “The uncertainty of whether you come home makes you think of that.”

But there’s at least one skeptic of wartime resolutions. Master Sgt. James Reese says he has heard all this before--in Vietnam.

“(Soldiers) say, ‘When I get back, I’ll do this and that,’ ” scoffs the 43-year-old from Jacksonville, Fla. “Some do. But most think back, relax and go back to their old ways.”

But even Reese did not doubt what is probably the most prevalent sentiment being expressed by soldiers up and down the lines: They never want to go to the beach again.

This story was written from pool reports cleared by military censors.