The Mercedes Enterprise (Mercedes, Tex.), Vol. 80, No. 19, Ed. 1 Wednesday, May 8, 1991 Page: 4 of 22
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Mercedes Area Newspapers and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Library.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Mi
Mercedes, Texas 78570 Wednesday, Mav 8. 1991
Desert Storm Stories: Del Toro and Galvan
Radford kept his promise to fellow soldier Prado
[Continued from Page 1.]
***
9
K
Capt. Rachel del Toro handled
supplies for missile units
INTENTLY LISTENING TO WAR STORIES of BM2 Roel Galvan are
students in Lise Pinkerton’s room at Taylor Elementary. The class and
the sailor were pen pals during his time at sea in support of Desert
Storm. [Mercedes Enterprise Photo.]
BM2 Roel Galvan served
on assault ship USS Guam
he would have kept the promise we
made.”
y
n
GUADLUPE PRADO, JR.
...just out of basic training.
“Garv told me that a dav doesn’t
go by without him thinking about
Wally,” says David Prado, 10 years
Later, the unit was extremely
busy, and took credit for a number of
Scud kills. She even brought back a
Scud fragment, from a missile
knocked down over King Khalid
Military City.
Un G-Day, the first day of the
ground war, one of the battalion’s
Hawk batteries was to move into
Iraq. “My unit, the command unit,
was supposed to go out on the 28th
(the last day of the ground war) but
“Everyone got to their positions,
manned their equipment or got into
their Scud shelters and we settled
down to wait. But nothing happened
that time.”
Capt. Del Toro returns to her post
at Ft. Bliss late this week and then
“it’s back to work.”
But she looks back on Operation
Desert Shield/Storm with a sense of
accomplishment.
[Editor’s Note - These two articles are more in the series that is telling
the story of the Kuwait War from the viewpoint of Mercedes people who
participated. We remind readers that returning servicemen and women
are invited to visit with us and share their stories, as well.]
“I really did read everyone of the
letters,” she says. “They were great
— they were all so sweet.”
WELCOMED ON RETURN FROM WAR -- Sgt. Noe Martinez was
honored last Saturday with a party at his family’s home. He has
returned from duty with the 1st Cavalry Division in Operation Desert
Storm, and will return to Fort Hood following a short vacation. He is
flanked by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Rafael Martinez.
ON DUTY IN THE DESERT - Army Capt. Rachel del Toro poses in the
Saudi Arabian desert with a vehicle from headquarters battery of her
unit last October. A note to family members on the back tells them "not
to worry --1 have my gas mask inside.” The soldiers were making a site
reconnaissance at the time the picture was taken.
Now living in Pittsburgh, Radford
and his wife, Patty, have raised two
boys, 18-year-old Gary, Jr. and
10-year-old Brian. To visit Mercedes,
they flew to San Antonio and drove
the rest of the way.
The night before the family left,
there was a Prado and Radford
■ family get-together, with good food
4 and good fellowship and a tight
N bonding among people who had
4 only recently been complete stran-
. gers.
***
And then there’s the promise
made, and the promise kept.
“When we were out there in the
jungle,” Radford recalls, “we made
a commitment to each other. We
agreed, ‘If something happens to
me, I want you to visit my family. If
something happens to you, I’ll visit
your’s. That’s how close we were.”
So when Gary Radford was first
introduced to Wally Prado’s mother,
he gave her a tight hug and said,
“Here, this is from Wally.”
Page 4 — The Mercedes Enterprise
“Guadalupe Prado didn’t die
alone in that jungle,” Radford says.
“He was with someone who cared for
him.”
It’s a military truth that an army
moves and fights on its stomach --
without food and supplies even the
best-trained force is useless.
By that measure, Captain Rachel
del Toro played one of the most
important roles in the Gulf War. She
was a logistics officer for an air
defense task force in Saudi Arabia.
“Our job was the coordinating
and directing- of logistics and
supplies for about '1200 soldiers,”
she explains. Her unit, 2/1, 11th Air
, Defense Artillery Brigade, was as-
signed to the 18th Airborne Corps.
“Normally our battalion has three
Hawk (air defense missile) batteries,
but for this operation, they augment-
ed us with three Patriot missile
batteries,” she says. “The Hawks
have two firing platoons per battery
( with four launchers per platoon, and
| the Patriots have five launchers per
battery with four missiles per
launcher. Besides all the people it
takes to run that unit, they assigned
us an infantry platoon for security.”
Her job: make sure that everyone
in the unit had everything needed,
from ammunition and food, to
clothing and office supplies. “It’s a
big job, a full-time job.”
the center part of the ship.”
The ship and her crew spent most
of the time in the Persian Gulf at
defense condition three, “which is
basically wartime cruising,” he
explains. “Only twice did we go to
general quarters (battle stations).”
The first was when there was a
major fuel oil leak in one of the ship’s
compartments. “That’s about the
worst thing that can happen short of
getting hit, but we got it under
control.”
The second alert came about the
time the ground war started, “when
we got reports that Iraqi Mirage F-ls
were on their way to attack the
13-ship marine assault force.
“Most of us were asleep, in-
cluding myself, and when they tried
to wake me, I thought it was just my
buddies kidding around,” he says.
“But when the alarm sounded, I
moved pretty fast. There was mass
confusion, people running half-
dressed to their stations, people
dressing on the run. That threat,
though, never materialized.”
When things weren’t so exciting,
sailors and marines passed the time
playing cards or watching movies on
the ship’s closed circuit television
system. “We’d see some shows five"
or six times; we’d have the lines
memorized. We’d see news pro-
grams, but they were a week to 10
days old.”
Among leisure time treats were
reading letters from his pen pals in
classrooms at Taylor, Travis and
Kennedy Elementaries in Mercedes.
“People would also send us cards,
food, candy. That made us feel real
good, pretty great actually. It was
great to know we had their support.”
When he visited Mercedes, he
spoke to his pen pals, and they
seemed most interested in his
participation in the evacuation of
people from the US embassy in
Mogadishu, Somalia. “They were
having a civil war, their own thing,
not related to the Gulf War,” he
explains. The operation lasted about
four days during the first week of
January. “First, the marines went in .
to secure the embassy grounds, then
the people were brought out on the
helicopters. We even had one woman
we’d taken out give birth on the ship,
so that was something else to feel
good about.”
Of his experiences in the Gulf
War, the sailor says he would do it all
over again. “I’m proud of what we
did out there. I’d go again if my
country called me.".
“He deserved more than a Silver
Star,” Radford says. “In the first
burst, the radio officer and I were
both wounded, but Wally and
another man were stuck out in front,
even worse off. He could have
withdrawn, but then none of us
would have made it. If it weren’t for
what he did, there are at least three
of us who wouldn’t have made it
out.”
He brought a slide that shows
Wally and two other soldiers. The
other two escaped because of his
bravery. One committed suicide
within three years of leaving ’Nam.
* * *
“People don’t know what Wally
did out there,“ Radford says. “He
gave his life for us. I know it, a
couple of other guys know it, but
most people, not even in his
hometown, know it. People here
need to realize the extent of his
sacrifice.
“That’s why I’d like to see this
citation,” he points to the Silver Star
awards' text, "posted in the hall at
your high school.”
Prado wasn’t supposed to be in
the jungle the day he died, his former
sergeant says. “He was supposed to
be on R&R in Hawaii, but the
helicopters couldn’t get in or out
because of the heavy fighting. They
had just knocked down a Chinook
I (transport helicopter) the day before.
“And he died just two or three
I days before his birthday.” Radford
pauses in thought.
“I’d like to think that if the places
were switched, I would have done
what he aid, to save him. I know that
if I were the one who hadn’t made it,
“In a way, it was a big field
problem, but we knew it was for real.
The ammunition was live, the
missiles were armed, the anti-
chemical warfare gear and antidotes,
they were all real.
“But we were well-trained, and I
think everyone performed well,” she
concludes. “All our training paid
off.”
Roel Galvan’s amphibious assault
ship USS Guam never delivered its
cargo of US Marines into direct
combat with Iraqi troops, but it
nevertheless played the important
role of diversion.
“These guys were ready to go in
and do their jobs,” the MHS
graduate says. “They didn’t realize
they wouldn’t assault until it was
nearly all over. And most of them
were pretty trustratea, pretty angry.
“But after we found out that our
presence off the coast of Kuwait tied
up over six Iraqi divisions and
probably saved lots of American
lives, most of us realized we were
• there for a good reason. It wasn’t the
waste of time we thought it was.”
The son of Roel and Maria T.
Galvan returned to Mercedes re-
cently for his first vacation in a while.
He entered the Navy just three days
after his high school graduation in
1987. “Out of the last eight months,
we only spent 27 days in port,” he
says. “ What I really missed was just
being able to go out and do things.”
The ship carries a complement of
625 sailors, whose primary duty is to
get the 1600 marines it can also carry
onto an enemy’s shore through
amphibious assault.
As a boatswain’s mate, Galvan is
in charge of anchorings when the
ship comes to port, but at sea, he’s a
crewmember for a three-inch gun
used for the ship’s defense.
The ship normally hauls 20 to 22
CH46 transport helicopters used for
taking the marines ashore. “For this
mission, though, we had 26,” he
recalls. “They also brought Harrier
jump jets to let them practice
landings and give us experience at
working with them.” The photo he
sent to The Enterprise, which
appeared a couple of weeks back,
showed 500 pound bombs that ended
up on a Harrier from the USS
Nassau. They were mounted on a jet
and dropped on Failaka Island,
bearing Roel’s chalked-on message.
“To Hussein, from Mercedes, Texas
with love!”
"When we first entered the
(Persian) Gulf, it was pretty tense,”
he says. “Some of us had trouble
sleeping, because we knew the threat
posed by floating mines. In order to
attack with planes or boats, they’d
have to get through some heavy
defenses, but we felt vulnerable to
mines. My office was right at the
front of the ship, so I didn’t hang out
there a lot. When I wasn’t on duty, I
tried to find something to do towards
they cancelled that when the shoot-
ing stopped. So we had to off-load
everything we’d loaded on the
trucks.”
She did get to see Iraq on trips to
deliver supplies to the units there..
She managed to pick up an Iraqi
helmet; despite the danger of
anti-personnel mines -- “I was on a
well-traveled path.”
“From the main supply route, we
could see a lot of their (abandoned)
firing positions,” she recalls. “Near
the border (with Saudi Arabia), we
could see where the positions had
been hit by our helicopter gunships.
They tore things up pretty bad.
Farther north, you could see where
they had been hit by air strikes. That
looked even worse.”
“I would say some of the busiest
people were the MPs, .who spent a lot
of time . processing theenemy
prisoners of war. Mostoftheground 3
combat was tank battles, so the
average infantryman didn’t see a lot
of action. Our battalion’s Stinger
(light anti-aircraft missile) unit was
attached to a task force that did get
all the way to the Euphrates River.”
There wasn’t much news while
the unit was at its first location. “We
could’t even catch the Armed Forces
Network some of the time, we were
so far out. It left us curious.” Mail
from home sometimes took three to
five weeks to arrive, but when it
came, the captain’s bundles included
letters from her three classrooms full
of pen pals at Kennedy Elementary.
THAT’S AN IRAQI HELMET that was picked up from Garza’s room at Kennedy Elementary School. [Merce-
an abandoned position by Capt. Rachel del Toro. des Enterprise Photo.]
Listening to her story are her pen pals from Mrs. Julia
younger than the brother he lost in
Vietnam.
“When I took him to the
cemetery to find the grave, he
wouldn’t get out of the car, wouldn’t’
go close to the grave with me. So I
showed him how to find it, counted
off the number of headstones from
the road and pointed it out. Then he
took me home and came back --
alone.”
Guadalupe’s mother, Ignacia Pra-
do, said the visit by Radford brought
her much happiness, but also
' renewed the sadness over her lost
son.
She was in the Middle East from
September 11 to March 17, and her
first bit of excitement came even
before the shooting war started.
“We had our first Scud alert in
November or December,” she re-
calls. “Since we were an air defense
unit, we had the radar that gave us
an early warning -- we knew
something was happening.
From the citation for a Silver Star
(Posthumous) issued to Spec. 4
Guadalupe Prado, Jr.:
“His courageous act allowed the
element to organize effective fire and
hold casualties to a minimum.
Continuing to place suppressive fire,
Prado was struck...and was fatally
wounded. Spec. 4 Prado’s personal
bravery and devotion to duty were in
keeping with the highest traditions of
the military service and reflect great
credit upon himself, his unit and the
US Army.”
***
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Matching Search Results
View two places within this issue that match your search.Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
The Mercedes Enterprise (Mercedes, Tex.), Vol. 80, No. 19, Ed. 1 Wednesday, May 8, 1991, newspaper, May 8, 1991; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1614118/m1/4/?q=%22rio+rico%22: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Library.