The Happenings at Sea

One of the things are, when it, when everything happened, everything happened boom, boom, boom It was the 17th of January, when everything lit up there and everything happened and then, like I said, we started and we had a certain kind of medication that we had to start taking, all of us, because of failure to, say if we got chemical warfare that came at us. So one of the things are being under the umbrella of the Americans on land we had to take the medication just in case anything happened and any type of like a bad scud would come over us or something like that. We’d get an intelligence briefing every morning or every evening of what was going on, and one of the things are, so that we had intelligence of what had happened or whatever. And then on, that was when the war actually started, was the 17th, was the main gunfire of everything, when they did the attack going into Bahrain and everything like that at the time. So we’re 170 nautical miles away from the actual war being in Doha, Qatar. So we were like 20 miles short for scud landing zone, for landing on us, so that’s how close we were. So if they directed something at us, we would go top-high, so everybody would get dressed up in their full garment, from their gas mask suits, and their NBCW suits. Boom, and it was like, bang bang bang… and that would happen.

Mr. Hynes shares some stories of preparation on board ship with medications and sense of equipment being ready for use should scud missiles be fired.

Gerald Hynes

Mr. Gerald “Jerry” Hynes was born October 6, 1963 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Following in his father’s footsteps, Mr. Hynes decided to join the navy and take on the trade of cook. Spending 27 years in the military, Mr. Hynes lived in Germany with his family and during this time in service, was provided an opportunity to join the contingent going to Persian Gulf War. Mr. Hynes expresses his pride for the service he gave to our Country, now retired from the military he resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia.