Tapping a reserve of support

As four military wives spent more than an hour at a support group meeting Sunday, one thing was made clear.

Kuwait is hot. A-hundred-and-twenty-one-degrees hot.

The overseas temperature was one of the many topics discussed Sunday at the air-conditioned VFW in Cape Girardeau, where group leader Tina Plaskie briefed Nancy Smith, Shannon Gannon and Cindy Mingus on a variety of topics, including military traveling tips and military benefits. The women also read e-mails and made a few guesses as to where and when their husbands may go next, what they might do when they get there and when they might come home.

Twenty-seven Army reservists from Cape Girardeau's 389th Engineering Battalion were sent along with another company from Iowa to Kuwait on Tuesday. As heavy-equipment operators, their task will be to reconstruct the mess in Iraq following the combat portion of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The wives of the 389th plan to meet every Sunday, with the exception of this Sunday, which falls on Memorial Day weekend.

All of the women said the group was important to them.

"It means a lot," Mingus said of the support group. "Just getting the information is the most important thing. Right now, it's just great to know they're OK."

Sunday's meeting was matter-of-fact and upbeat. Plaskie said the best guess at this point is that in the next couple of weeks, their husbands will move from their Kuwait base to a city north of Baghdad to work. They'll return home no later than a year from May 14, but Plaskie, whose husband John is a sergeant, said word has it that higher-ups hope to have the men home before Christmas.

Much of the hour-plus meeting was spent reading e-mails, or parts of e-mails, from the men overseas or their wives.

Most of the e-mails noted the extreme weather the reservists are experiencing at Camp Virginia in Kuwait City. The men arrived to 121-degree heat, and the sand blows everywhere, including into the ears of reservists. But the e-mails indicated the men are keeping a sense of humor about it.

One e-mail that Plaskie read from a colonel's wife explained Iraq's place in biblical history -- how the Garden of Eden was in between Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers -- and how Nineveh, the place the prophet Jonah was supposed to go, is also inside the borders of Iraq.

"I can understand why Jonah didn't want to go there and took a boat in a different direction," Plaskie read.

Mingus also read an e-mail from her husband, Sgt. Paul Mingus.

Paul's e-mail used the phrase "and sweat" after nearly every sentence.

"We played cards, and sweat. We ate, and sweat. ..." the e-mail read. He also joked about the snoring of Sgt. Stephen Gannon, whose wife, Shannon, laughed and echoed sympathy for the men who have to bunk with him.

Shannon said she worries about her husband because he is such a meticulously neat person and the conditions make it impossible to be that way.

"He's so clean, and over there they've got sand blowing in their ears and they're always sweating," she said. "And they can't use the bathroom facilities the way they're used to."

bmiller@semissourian.com

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