Second Lieutenant Barry Abbott’s feet had barely touched the ground in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia when someone handed him live ammunition. Minutes later, he was running to take cover from a Scud attack.
Welcome to Operation Desert Storm.
“That was a shock,” Abbott says, looking through the lens of time to just over 20 years ago. He leafs through a stack of photos that have been in storage for nearly that long, remembering his time serving with the U.S. Army Reserves.
“That happened every night. You could watch our Patriot Missiles go up and take them out. It was amazing,” he says.
Abbott was in the Middle East as part of a rapid deployment force sent to support the 101st Airborne Division, which was there in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. Their mission entailed camping out between Baghdad and Kuwait, partly to keep the Republican Guard from reinforcing Iraq’s forces in Kuwait, and partly to capture Iraqi soldiers retreating north from Kuwait City, where U.S. Marines were making their presence known. No one ever came south, although the U.S. forces there had captured more than a few Iraqi soldiers en route to the interdiction point.
“Every few miles, we’d come across Iraqi troops standing on the side of the road. They were tickled to be taken into custody because they hadn’t eaten for days, and we gave them food and water,” Abbott says.
Abbott’s role in the mission was to manage the local population with the area of operation. Once his brigade had connected with the 101st at what amounted to a large tent city in the middle of the desert, he went to work.
“Nomads have been wandering the desert for thousands of years. They were scared, and they didn’t know what to do. Part of my job was to find people in our perimeter and determine if they were a combatant or a non-combatant. If they were a noncombatant, we’d give them rice and gasoline and tell them to start traveling in a certain direction,” he says.
The road to military service
Today, Abbott is one half of the legal team at Cavett & Abbott in Chattanooga and has an active real estate litigation practice. Back then, he was a long way from his hometown of Chickamauga, Ga. But he wasn’t surprised to find himself in the desert wearing military garb.
“When I was in 11th grade, I realized I wouldn’t be playing football and hanging out with my friends forever, and that I needed to do something with my life. One of my best friends had gone to (the Military College of Georgia) in Dahlonega, and that seemed like a good deal. My family wasn’t wealthy, so I liked the idea of the military helping me to pay for school,” he says.
By his sophomore year, Abbott had decided he and the military were not a good fit, so he grew out his hair and transferred to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he majored in English and psychology. His plan was to graduate and then attend law school, but he was having a hard time making ends meet. Then he bumped into the one of the military officers in the ROTC building, where he had a class.
“He asked me if I wanted help paying for school, and I said yes. I was working three part-time jobs to pay for my classes,” Abbott says.
Abbott didn’t want to join the military full-time, so he took a Guaranteed Reserve Duty Scholarship. Following graduation in the spring of 1989, he completed basic training for officers at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Ind., and then started law school at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville while he waited to be assigned to a unit.
The assignment came as he started his second year of law school: he would be with the civil affairs unit of a rapid deployment force based in Knoxville, Tenn. “Back then, if you were with the Reserves, you would get really old equipment, but we were given new gear. That’s when I knew I was in a serious unit. But we had fun. We trained hard and stayed in shape,” he says.
Despite the training, Abbott never thought he’d be called to go anywhere. Then things changed virtually overnight. “When Saddam Hussein rolled into Kuwait and said, ‘This is mine,’ we knew the 101st would be mobilized. And since we were support for them, we knew we’d be going, too,” Abbott says.
Back home again
When Abbott returned home 94 days after his deployment, his hometown held a parade in honor of him and a few other returning soldiers. He took it in stride.
“I didn’t kill anyone or save anyone’s life. But a lot of jobs in the military have nothing to do with the heroic actions you see on TV. Someone has to feed the troops, fuel the trucks and provide medical care,” he says.
Abbott does not diminish the sacrifice these soldiers, who leave behind families and jobs to serve their country, make. He’d been married only a few months when he was ordered to active duty in December 1990, so he understands what they experience. “It’s hard to imagine the sacrifice unless you’re in a military family. It’s easy to imagine the loss of life, but people think less about the other things our soldiers give up – being separated from their families, living at the poverty level and the difficulties they face when they come back,” Abbott says.
His desire for Veteran’s Day is for people to learn about and appreciate more of what active duty service members go through. “Having experienced the separation, I appreciate our veterans more than ever. I was newly married, and I hadn’t spent much time outside of Tennessee, so I was away from my loved ones and everything that made me comfortable. There was no running water, no toilets and the food was really bad. That was tough,” he says.
Abbott isn’t complaining; rather, he says he liked being in the military and is proud to have served his country, although he downplays any honor others might feel he deserves. “I was proud to go, but that was part of the deal. I signed up for it; I said I would do it,” he says.
As a family man and a lawyer with an active practice, Abbott rarely has time to think about his days in the reserves. But his respect for American soldiers and military veterans goes deep, and when Veteran’s Day rolls around, he remembers to thank them for making the freedoms he enjoys possible.
“As much bickering as we have among ourselves, especially about politics, we still have the greatest nation in the world because of our veterans.”