Out of Harm’s Way : Air National Guardsmen Hopscotched Saudi Desert on Rescue Duty

In the thick of the Gulf War, Steve Toberman and Dave Winger ran rescue missions along the Kuwaiti border to pluck the wounded from the battlefield and bring them to military hospitals in Saudi Arabia.

As members of an aeromedical evacuation squadron, their mission was to take off, sometimes in the middle of the night, and land on hidden airstrips in a dusty no-man’s land. Filling their C-130 Hercules cargo planes with injured soldiers, they helped provide the link between small battlefield MASH stations and hospitals tucked safely in allied territory.

There were times when the two Air National Guardsmen wondered if they would make it back to Saudi Arabia, carrying their planeload of injured soldiers. Sometimes they wondered if they would make it out of the Middle East alive.

In a six-month journey that began at the start of the Gulf crisis and ended when the war did, the two air-evacuation medics have returned home to the Channel Islands Air National Guard base next to Point Mugu.

On Monday, two weeks after their return, Winger and Toberman emerged to recount their adventures.

“Sometimes I was so exhausted, yet my adrenaline was pumping,” said Winger, 26, of Granada Hills. “It was the most incredible experience of my life. Everything was changing from minute to minute. We never knew what was going to happen next.”

Sleep was a luxury. When they weren’t picking up injured soldiers, they were scrambling to take cover from SCUD missile attacks.

One night Toberman watched one of the deadly missiles fly over his base near the King Fahd Airport.

“Everything seemed like it was in slow motion,” said Toberman, 36, of Oxnard. “I just stood there in awe. It’s frozen in my mind like a photograph. I’ll never forget it.”

He keeps two pieces of the SCUD as a memento. It was retrieved by a friend of his who hauled it back to the base.

“I’ll never forget the lights from the Patriot missiles,” Toberman said. “It looked just like the Fourth of July. And the sound of the sirens make you jump real quick. You learn to move.”

Once, Winger said, he was aboard a plane that took off in the midst of a missile attack.

“It was the first time any of us have seen a C-130 take off so quickly,” Winger said of the slow-moving cargo planes. “All four engines were on and we were out of there. There were many times I was caught standing up on takeoff.”

Winger and Toberman were sent to Saudi Arabia in September with 12 other members of the 146th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron at the Channel Islands base. They were among the first from the area to leave for the Gulf.

At the height of the conflict, 310 reservists from the 1,400-member Air National Guard base were overseas on various assignments. Nearly all have returned.

Winger said his most vivid memories include the mission that he flew on Jan. 17, the day after the war started. For 16 hours he hopscotched across the desert in a C-130 helping to pick up the wounded.

“The plane was packed,” he said. “We had over 70 patients. And we had every type of injury on the plane. Everything from head injuries to gunshot wounds. It was crazy, we could hardly move around.”

Toberman said he was surprised at the large number of injured Iraqis that they helped transport to hospitals.

“There were a lot of amputees . . . a lot of them had walked on land mines,” Toberman said.

Now that they have returned home, Toberman and Winger said they are having a hard time adjusting to the slow pace and the peace and quiet.

“Silence makes me nervous now,” Winger said. “It was always quiet before a SCUD attack.”