Canada’s strangest war
When Canada fought Saddam Hussein 25 years ago, our forces operated under the joint command of Commodore Ken Summers. The Canadian Forces won praise for their part in the U.S.-led coalition, but it’s a role now remembered as much for its odd details as for its military value
It was after midnight, Jan. 17, 1991, when Commodore Ken Summers called everyone together in the canteen at the Canadian Forces’ headquarters in Bahrain. The air attack on Iraq was about to begin.
“Like it or not, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be involved in something in the very, very near future,” he said to the crowd, some wearing the Tilley hats that had been issued to protect them from the Persian Gulf sun. His biggest fear was a pre-emptive chemical attack from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. They had all taken pills as an early defence against the nerve agent Saddam was rumoured to have.
“It was the first time since 1953 that a Canadian government had knowingly sent Canadian fighters . . . into a war,” military historian David Bercuson says.
Inside the ships in the Persian Gulf, troops watched the computer screens as the missiles flew toward Iraq. High above, Canadian pilots in CF-18s monitored the airfields of Iraq and Kuwait for counterattacks, watching the trails of Tomahawk missiles below.
After his speech that night in Bahrain, Summers and the headquarters staff hunkered down in protective chemical suits and ordered pizza to await the attack. (Ordering in was a typical occurrence — there was no food at the compound.)
“I often thought afterwards, at the outset of the war, here was some guy in a vehicle, delivering Domino’s,” says Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Gregory, a senior logistics officer back in Halifax, who was on the phone with an officer in Bahrain that night. “I just burst out laughing.”
Iraq’s invasion of its tiny but wealthy neighbour Kuwait the previous summer had sparked a buildup of international forces, led by the U.S. military.
“A line has been drawn in the sand,” warned U.S. President George H.W. Bush as different countries steamed toward the Persian Gulf to join a naval blockade and supply air support. Five weeks after the coalition launched the air war on Jan. 17, a ground assault would quickly drive Saddam’s forces out.
The Canadians played a supporting role in the Persian Gulf War. There were no Canadian casualties, but the conflict marked a significant change from a peacekeeping military to a combat military.
“People around the country didn’t know quite what to make of it,” Bercuson says. Some protested. Some sent fruitcake. For those back home in Canada, the war was green flashes of anti-artillery fire and exploding bombs on CNN. For the people who served, it was popsicle runs on hot days, bulky chemical suits and the surprising morale boost of a giant pumpkin flown on a Sea King. They were the small, scary, absurd moments from a Canadian war effort that some have forgotten.
For the first time in the country’s history, all the troops operated under one joint commander.
That commander, Summers, called it the “darndest war” — a war that was still being debated in the House of Commons the night it began, a war that was “backed into” after months of lapsed deadlines, a war that could have been avoided, had Saddam simply left Kuwait.
“Most Canadians don’t realize how good those Canadians were over there . . . because they were watching CNN,” he says. “So were we.” Canada revs up, gingerly In the days after Saddam invaded oil-rich Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the United Nations Security Council ordered a worldwide embargo on trade with Iraq, hoping to cripple the economy and force his withdrawal.
President Bush ordered thousands of U.S. soldiers to Saudi Arabia. Britain agreed to send naval and air forces. French and Soviet warships were “steaming toward the Persian Gulf” to join the blockade, the Star reported.
The Canadian government proceeded “gingerly” by sending the navy first, Bercuson explains.
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney announced that three Canadian ships would bolster the U.S.-led embargo. Opposition politicians called it an “unsettling precedent,” but Mulroney maintained it was in keeping with UN resolutions.
For the next two weeks, the lights at the Halifax dockyards did not turn off. It was a six-month refit in two weeks, with new weapons and sensor systems added to ready the North Atlantic ships for the shallow waters they would soon call home.
The sailors called it the “Persian excursion.” Citizens lined the shores to wave them away on Aug. 24, while a pod of dolphins swam alongside. As the ships were approaching the Suez Canal three weeks later, the prime minister announced that a squadron of CF-18 fighter jets would fly cover for the navy.
Summers wanted to run the operations from one of the ships, but Ottawa persuaded him that he’d need space for a bigger staff. Navy Capt. Duncan “Dusty” Miller took over as commander at sea. Summers and his staff found a headquarters in a neglected building in the port of Manama, Bahrain. The military-commissioned history of Canada’s operation notes it was “hot as hell” beneath the October sun, and in the range of Scud missiles. But it would do.
Summers carved out a role for the Canadians, following the United Nations mandate, but also “listening very carefully to what the U.S. saw as needing done, in the pursuit of the coalition effort,” says Richard Gimblett, who served in the Gulf and cowrote the official history.
In Ottawa, a war cabinet was created so the government could stay informed and ready for potential changes.
“I could send off a message or phone call back to Ottawa and receive a reply within hours,” Summers says. “I know my American counterparts down there were actually stunned we could react that quickly.”
After the air war began in January, Canada took the lead role in organizing naval logistics and deliveries so coalition warships could stay “on station.” They were in charge of a “ranch on the sea, where the heavily laden supply ships, not unlike fattening cattle, were safely corralled, waiting to be driven to the carrier market,” the history notes.
The air force was based in Doha, Qatar, and began to fly defensive operations. By January, it flew “sweep and escort” missions with coalition fighters. By late February, the Canadians were bombing military targets. “The government was being very careful about gauging Canadian public opinion,” Bercuson says. Commander became ‘Uncle Ken’ The Gulf War was the most intense, highprofile operation Summers would face in his career.
Abrupt departures and long stretches at sea were common as he rose through the ranks. He had met his wife, Jody, in Halifax in 1967. She had just joined the air force as a nurse, and he was in the early days of his career, hoping to command a ship someday, just like the tanned and confident captain he remembered on deck from his cadet days. (“I thought, ‘My God. Maybe someday I will be like him,’ ” he recalls.)
When they moved to Victoria, Jody had to unpack the house by herself because Russian submarines had been detected off the Haida Gwaii islands.
“I don’t know if she really realized what she was signing on for,” Summers, 71, says from his home in Victoria, where he retired in 2000.
In August 1990, there was little warning that a major operation was beginning. The couple’s oldest son, Ted, was at a family wedding in Guelph, and found out his dad was going to the Gulf when he saw Summers’ photo on the front page of a newspaper.
A couple of weeks later, a photo of the youngest Summers child, 10-year-old David, was snapped before the ships left Halifax. David’s face was splashed across the front page. The war seemed big and exciting. Now 35, David remembers his father’s eight-month absence and the phone calls.
“I remember him saying I can’t tell you (where I am), in case the phone was being traced,” he says.
In Bahrain, Summers had a cot in his office and a house in the gated community of Yateem Garden, with old bungalows, palm trees and expats.
Jody credits the friends her husband made in the neighbourhood for grounding him when life was stressful.
The Abou Hamad family lived a few doors down. They were expats — Irene, originally from Germany, and Faris, from Lebanon, although most of his family had relocated to Canada. In 1990, they were working in Bahrain with twin 4-year-old daughters.
“We never locked the door,” Irene Abou Hamad says from her home in Ottawa, where the family moved after the Gulf War. “There was a lot of people who missed their families and came to inhale some sanity and run around with the kids.”
Summers was one of them. He brought his large cellphone to the family home and would phone the landline, to the amazement of the twins. He was “Amoo Ken.” Uncle Ken.
“When he came, they came running from all corners and ran to him,” Abou Hamad says.
Accustomed to roast beef and potatoes for Sunday dinner, Summers ate hummus, meat pies and spinach pies instead. He still loves Middle Eastern cuisine. Irene Abou Hamad remembers her Canadian guest as a smart, dapper guy who lit up a room with his old-fashioned charm and presence. “Full of energy,” she says.
Summers was described by a Star reporter in the Gulf as an “ebullient, persuasive charmer who seemed to enjoy every minute of his assignment.” In one story, he beamed with pleasure at the helm of a dinghy, freed from paperwork, on his way to visit the troops. Once at the ship, he “leaps for the monkey ladder and hauls himself aboard with the agility of a cat.”
In those days, the sky was so dark from Kuwaiti oil fires set by the Iraqi forces that it reminded Summers of the Ottawa “thunderbuster” storms of his childhood. Abou Hamad had to take a gas mask to work and time her commute around expected Iraqi Scud missiles. It was scary. Her daughters couldn’t play outside.
The only causeway from the tiny island of Bahrain to the Arabian Peninsula was closed to civilians; schools were shut and business was slow, Faris Abou Hamad remembers. Worried about the retaliation that might follow the allied military campaign, the family dug a foxhole in the garden “that Ken made fun of later,” Faris writes in an email.
Summers was a “barometer on how well the preparations or allied forces are doing,” says Faris. “If he shows up, it means really good news, while long absence denotes some serious challenges ahead.”
“In hard times you really know who your friends are,” Irene says. “You form deeper friendships that would otherwise take years.”
In 2013, Ken and Jody Summers attended the wedding of one of the little girls amazed by his cellphone.
Irene and her husband have since split up. Faris now lives in Dubai, but they all keep in touch.
“We both still love Ken,” Irene says.
Remembrance, or not On Remembrance Day 2015, Gimblett, the navy command historian and Gulf War veteran, dissuaded a group of veterans from asking for special recognition of the war’s 25th anniversary. “Nobody was killed, and Remembrance Day is really to honour those who gave their lives in national service,” he explains.
The Canadian supporting role “amounted to little more than a grain of sand in the desert,” Star reporter Alan Ferguson wrote in 1991, noting that however small the part, “Canada played it pretty much to perfection.”
“Other than a couple of CF-18 pilots, none of us really did see the enemy when you get right down to it,” says Gimblett.
The official history notes that the Canadian contribution has been “studiously ignored.” Mainstream accounts make only passing reference to Canada. Some returning veterans were faced with the perception that they hadn’t been in a “real war.”
“There were some people saying some of you guys should have been killed; it would have legitimized the war,” Dusty Miller says. “Hey, there were 150 Americans who actually died, and we were lucky, but we made our own luck.”
The air force was “flying smart” above the anti-aircraft and artillery fire that came from the rooftops of Baghdad, Summers says. The navy didn’t shy away from dangerous areas of the Persian Gulf as it participated in the embargo and later co-ordinated logistics.
“Each of the ships we had out there really were superb in keeping their eyes open in making sure they looked after everybody else,” says Miller, who retired in 2003.
“Service is service,” retired chaplain Baxter Park says from his home in Newfoundland. “The people who went there were prepared to die for their country.”
At a welcome-back rally in Toronto in April 1991, Summers told the Star that “Canada played a large part in making the peace in the Gulf.”
It heralded a new era for the Canadian military.
At the University of Calgary, Bercuson teaches Canadian military history to a group of students in their late teens and early 20s.
“For them, there hasn’t been a time when Canadians weren’t involved in a shooting war somewhere,” he notes.
Today, Summers reflects on the shift from the days of UN peacekeeping missions.
“Nowadays when you look at things, it’s not really blue beret anymore, is it?”