Vet hopes Desert Storm will be remembered 30 years later
NS’ John Cianci is proud of vets’ service in the war, yet a fight for the recognition of its health impacts has left him frustrated
NORTH SMITHFIELD — As the 30th Anniversary of the end of Desert Storm arrives this weekend, John Cianci, a retired member of the R.I. Army National Guard, hopes it will be remembered by more than just the members of the U.S. military who served in it.
“It’s a pretty significant date,” Cianci, a longtime local resident, said while recalling his service with other members of the R.I. National Guard’s 119th Military Police Battalion in the war zone as the 1991 conflict with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq unfolded.
“Time goes by pretty quickly and it doesn’t seem like 30 years have passed,” Cianci said.
For Cianci, the war brings emotions of both pride over what he and the rest of the nation’s Desert Storm veterans accomplished and longstanding frustration over a later fight to gain recognition of the health impacts many of those veterans, himself included, brought home when the war ended.
The 25th Anniversary of Desert Storm came and went with little public acknowledgment from the U.S. Department of Defense, according to Cianci, and he fears that may also be the case this time around.
“We seemed to be a war that is barely mentioned today,” Cianci said.
That may be partly because Southwestern Asia remained a conflict area for years after the war to stop Hussein’s invasion of neighboring Kuwait and his mistreatment of the Kuwaiti people.
U.S. service members remain on-duty in the region and in Afghanistan in a peace-keeping role that continues to this day.
But none of that was known when the United States under President George H.W. Bush put together a world coalition of 39 countries to respond to the August 1990 Iraqi takeover of Kuwait and potential threat of a similar incursion into Saudi Arabia. The Gulf War, as it became known, started with a military build-up
followed by an air campaign in the region that began in the early morning hours of Jan. 17, 1991, and continued with a ground war ending with the liberation of Kuwait and a cease-fire agreement on Feb. 28, 1991.
Cianci had been serving with the 119th Military Police in December 1990 when the R.I. Guard unit was called up with other National Guard for deployment to the Saudi Arabian town of Hafar Al-Batin, where it became part of the Army’s 402nd MPW operation there.
As the war continued, the 402nd would process over 25,000 prisoners of war surrendering to coalition forces, Cianci noted.
The early days of their deployment were marked by the constant threat of Iraqi SCUD ballistic missile attacks and the possibility the SCUDs might also carry chemical weapon agents.
“A SCUD hit in our area the week before we got there and our chemical weapons alarms were going off,” Cianci recalled.
There were other threats that surfaced during the war and the Rhode Island troops would eventually see the environmental impacts of Hussein’s move to set Kuwaiti oil rigs on fire and would face potential chemical agent risks from the demolition of Iraqi munitions stored in the war zone.
Cianci would later learn that U.S. forces, including his own unit, may have been exposed to nerve gas agents believed to have been released during the destruction of ammo bunkers between March 3 and March 14, 1991.
“There was a letter that said we could have been exposed to levels of Sarin,” Cianci said.
Cianci remained in the war zone until May 1991, when the 119th’s deployment ended and its members returned home. He would go back to the war zone in February 2003 when the 119th participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom, an extension of the Persian Gulf War beginning with Saddam Hussein’s violation of the cease-fire agreement and ending with the fall of Baghdad and his capture.
The Rhode Island Guard unit returned home in May 2004, and Cianci would later retire from the Guard with 11 years of full-time service and 11 years of part-time service making up his 22-year military career.
Cianci’s Desert Storm legacy also includes a 25-year fight with the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration to get the health impacts from conflict experienced by him and many other veterans recognized as a lingering disability.
He has testified during Congressional hearings in Washington on what is now described as Gulf War Syndrome and the debilitating effects from exposure to toxins in the war zone ranging from the suspected nerve agents to the environmental pollution caused by oil fires and military operations.
Although all the members of his unit made it home, Cianci said there were some, such as Sgt. Sandy Girouard, who later died of illnesses their families said were linked to their war service.
Girouard died in September 1997 of an aggressive form of cancer that her doctor suspected may have been worsened by exposure to nerve agents, Cianci noted.
And there have been other losses among Rhode Island Guard members serving during the war, according to Cianci.
“I would say we have about 20 to 25 members who have died of different illnesses over the years that their families believe were related to the war,” Cianci said.
His own campaign to gain recognition of Desert Storm injuries was supported by a 2012 study that said the bombing of an Iraqi munitions dump during the war had released a plume of Sarin that may have reached the coalition forces at their bases.
“I learned that some of my symptoms were linked to something that happened during the war,” he explained.
Cianci’s efforts to have those impacts recognized by the VA proved successful two weeks ago when he was notified he had been granted disability for subcortical atrophy, a brain condition related to exposure to oil fires, the nerve gas Sarin, and diesel fuel during Desert Storm.
“They have recognized it and granted me a disability for it,” Cianci said. He hopes his own case will help other Gulf War veterans receive similar support for their own war-related injuries.
Gulf War veterans have until the end of this year to file a claim for such assistance under an extension that was granted while Gulf War Syndrome was investigated, he noted.
“That was a special extension that was granted that we hope can be extended again,” Cianci said.
As for the service of Rhode Island Guard members in Desert Storm, Cianci, who is commander of the R.I. Italian American War Veteran and a member of American Legion Post 88 in Burrillville, said they have much to be proud of, even today.
“We did our job and absolutely, without a doubt, accomplished our mission,” he said.
He also takes pride in what other members of his family have done with the Guard. His late mother Evelyn had served with the Rhode Island National Guard from 1976 to 1980, setting a family tradition that has continued with members of his family serving today.
His nephew Technical Sgt. Carter Cianci is currently deployed overseas with the R.I. Air National Guard, and another nephew, Casey Cianci, served in Southwest Asia from 2005 to 2006, he noted.
“He sent me a note at the time saying we may have started the war, but we escorted the last company operating in Iraqi Freedom out of Iraq,” Cianci said.