Service to honor 25th anniversary of Iraqi Scud missile attack
Scott Beveridge/Observer-Reporter
A photo featured in the book, “13 Soldiers: A Personal History of Americans at War,” shows Mary Rhoads of California Borough returning home in March 1991 shortly after a Scud missile crushed her barracks during the Persian Gulf War.
Scott Beveridge/Observer-Reporter
In this 2014 photo, Mary Rhoads takes a break during a walk in her hometown of California, where she worked as a meter maid before being deployed to the Persian Gulf War.
Joseph Bongiorni III
Anthony Madison
John Boliver Jr.
The nightmares return for Persian Gulf War veteran Mary Rhoads every time the anniversary of the Feb. 25, 1991, Iraqi Scud missile attack that killed 13 of her comrades, including two from the Mon Valley and another from Hickory, draws near.
The bad memories experienced by the former California Borough meter maid intermingle with the those of the good times she shared with other members of the 14th Quartermaster, a Hempfield Township-based water-purification unit that suffered the worst casualties during the brief war.
“I still miss them every day,” Rhoads, 59, said Thursday, a week before a memorial will be held at the Hempfield base to mark the 25th anniversary of the attack that also injured 43 members of her unit.
“It’s nice to let the KIA (Killed in Action) families know that we haven’t forgotten them,” she said.
A U.S. Patriot missile that day failed to intercept the Scud, which decimated the unit’s barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Rhoads left the building shortly before the Scud landed and killed her best friend, Spc. Beverly Sue Clark, 23, of Indiana County.
Also killed were Spc. John August Boliver Jr., 27, of Monongahela; Sgt. Joseph Phillip Bongiorni III, 20, of Hickory; and Spc. Anthony Erik Madison, 27, of Monessen, Westmoreland County.
Rhoads later became a symbol of the physical and emotional wounds veterans of that war suffer. She was among the first veterans of the conflict to win a disability case for having undiagnosed illnesses associatedwith Persian Gulf syndrome. There also is a chapter about her in U.S. Sen. John McCain’s 2014 book, “13 Soldiers; A Personal History of Americans at War.”
“I stirred up the pot,” Rhoads said when the book was released in November 2014.
Discovering last year that the monument to the 14th Quartermaster had been neglected and was in disrepair made matters worse for some of its veterans and those of other military conflicts.
The U.S. Army apologized for its condition, and it invested $197,000 in approach of the 25th anniversary to refurbish the monument at 900 Armory Drive, where the memorial service will be held at noon Thursday.
“It broke my heart,” Rhoads said.
The public is invited to attend the memorial program, said Maj. Julius D. Penn, public affairs officer for the 316th Expeditionary Sustainment Command in Coraopolis.