Twenty-five-years-ago this weekend, coalition forces began the air campaign to force Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops out of Kuwait.
Operation Desert Storm got under way in the early hours of January 17 1991 and as a military campaign it lasted just six weeks.
Yet according to campaigners, the medical-legacy of the first Gulf War is still being felt by at least 10,000 British veterans who claim they are suffering from so-called Gulf War Syndrome.
Symptoms reported by some veterans returning from the Gulf have ranged from headaches, chronic fatigue, and sleep disturbance to irritable bowel, joint pains and psychological problems.
Theories over possible causes of ill health have ranged from the cocktail of innoculations given to troops on the eve of battle, to stress, psychological factors and the effects of inhaling toxic smoke from burning oil wells.
And yet 25 years on, whilst acknowledgeing Gulf-related illness, the Ministry of Defence still refuses to accept that Gulf War Syndrome exists.
One veteran angered by the government’s position is 42-year-old 1st Battalion Royal Highland Fusiliers veteran Alan Robertson, of Kilmarnock.
He was a 17-year-old Fusilier stationed at Al-Jubail in Saudi Arabia during the conflict.
As part of the war preparations, and whilst stationed at battalion HQ in Cambridge, he was given around a dozen vaccinations to protect him in the event that Saddam Hussein’s forces used chemical or biological weapons.
The infantryman saw out the war on active service, helping to round up and guard Iraqi prisoners of war.
But by the time he came out of the army at the end of 1992, he was suffering blackouts, severe migraines and had a collapsed shoulder. He was also displaying aggressive behaviour that had been uncharacteristic before the Gulf.
Following aborted attempts to carve a career as a bricklayer and computer builder, he says the condition has left him unable to work since 1997.
Now, as his health continues to deteriorate, and amid on-going legal campaigning to have his full war pension recognised, Alan believes his deployment to the Gulf directly caused his illness.
“I was 17 when we went. You didn’t question it. You just got on with it, “said the former Army Cadet, who joined up with the regulars when he was 16.
“Normally you would be asked about injections I was scared of needles – but before the Gulf we weren’t. We were lined up at tables, made to shout out our ‘name, rank and serial number’, and then got a couple of jabs at each table. There were 12 different jabs.
“We learned later that some of the jabs hadn’t been tested. Getting killed by the Iraqis was one thing. Being treated as guinea pigs by our own side was another.”
The medical legacy of the Gulf, claims Alan, is that every week, he now receives a delivery of colour-coded medication in plastic pill boxes.
His chemist pre-fills the blister packs with the dozen tablets he takes each day to combat black outs and severe pain in his shoulder and back.
Formerly a keen sportsman, he now struggles to walk more than a few metres from his home in Kilmarnock without becoming breathless. Some days he can barely even get up from his sofa because of severe pain. His condition is getting progressively worse, and he has been warned by his doctor that he may yet end up in a wheelchair.
But other family members are suffering in their own way too. His wife Heather, 40, adds: “It now affects me more than ever. I was his wife and a mother to our kids. Now I’m his carer rather than being a wife and mother. It’s getting harder for him to remember things and hold things together. To me this is normal now.
“Our daughter also has ADHD. Is it a result of Gulf War Syndrome? Well, a lot of the veterans we’ve met have children suffering from ADHD, so there’s definitely something there.”
Fife and Tayside’s local regiment The Black Watch did not serve in the first Gulf War. But it took heavy casualties during the second Gulf War from 2003 onwards.
Rob Scott, chairman of the Fife branch of the Black Watch Association, and a veteran of Northern Ireland, believes that any 1990/91 ex-soldier claiming to be suffering from Gulf War Syndrome should be given the “benefit of the doubt”.
He says: “Any ex-soldier who is suffering through their military service I have a great deal of sympathy for. They should get all the support that is going and the illnesses should be further investigated. They should be getting some sort of examination. It’s difficult how do you prove a sore back for example? But why would people make these things up if they’ve been ill for all this time? It’s all down to money on the part of the government if you ask me.
“We have thousands of ex-soldiers living on the streets in this country, and that in itself is a disgrace.”
Maria Rusling, general manager of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association (NGVFA), told The Courier there were now thought to be more than 10,000 veterans claiming a war pension from Gulf War 1, with around 20% of these from Scotland. In all 53,000 troops were prepared for war with 30,000 ultimately on the ground.
Amongst them was Maria’s ex-husband Sean who was a super-fit sergeant in the Parachute Regiment before suffering severe ill-health after the Gulf.
She says: “What the 25th anniversary of the conflict is going to highlight, as the veterans get older, is the severity of the problem. The issue has, let’s say, been tickled by the government. But they’ve never properly committed to it. The Americans on the other hand have taken a very different approach, but the British government have chosen to ignore their research. Basically the British government maintains that the problems are all psychological. In other words, that the veterans are all mental! But that really isn’t a fair assertion to make!
“It’s difficult to get appropriate treatment for illness if there’s no recognition of what the root of the problem is in the first place.
“It comes down to the old adage that once people are out of the military, they are ‘not our responsibility’.
“What we want is for the British government to apologise for the cocktail of vaccinations that Gulf veterans were injected with in 1990/91.”
The Ministry of Defence acknowledges that some Gulf veterans became ill and this “may be related to their Gulf experience”.
It acknowledges that epidemiological research has shown that Gulf veterans report more illness than those who were not deployed to the Gulf. But because the patterns of symptoms are similar to those experienced by personnel who did not deploy, and because overall severity of the symptoms is “not high”, it does not recognise that Gulf War Syndrome exists.
An MoD spokesperson said: “We are indebted to all those who served our country in the 1990/1991 Gulf conflict. In recognition of this financial support is available to veterans and dependants whose illness or death is due to service through the War Pensions Scheme and Armed Forces occupational pensions schemes. We are clear that veterans should not be disadvantaged as a result of their service and we are absolutely committed to supporting them and the wider Armed Forces community.”
The MoD spokesperson added that their priority was to ensure that Gulf veterans who are ill receive appropriate medical care from the National Health Service which is responsible for delivering healthcare for veterans.
The MoD sponsored a research programme into the possible health effects of the combination of vaccines and tablets which were given to troops at the time of the 1990/1991Gulf conflict to protect them against the threat of biological and chemical warfare. The overwhelming evidence from scientific research is that these would not have had adverse health effects.
An MoD spokesperson added: “Whilst we acknowledge that the phrase “Gulf War Syndrome” has become quite widespread in popular usage, the overwhelming consensus of the scientific and medical community is that there are too many different symptoms reported for this ill health to be characterised as a syndrome in medical terms. The government was pleased to note that a Pensions Appeal Tribunal in 2005 supported our position on this issue.
“The tribunal also stated that Gulf War Syndrome was a “useful umbrella term” to cover accepted conditions which are causally linked to the 1990/1991 Gulf Conflict.
“A written statement was published in the House of Commons on 24 November 2005 welcoming this development. We hope that the use of the umbrella term will address the known concern of some Gulf veterans that we have not recognised a link between their ill-health and the 1990/1991 Gulf Conflict. We hope that this will help to provide an element of closure for those who have sought some acknowledgment that their ill-health is connected to their Gulf service.”
malexander@thecourier.co.uk