Operation Desert Storm and 107th Maintenance Company veteran Duane Streeck with the 88th Readiness Division was one of the visitors Feb. 26 during the Desert Storm History Dayevent at the Fort McCoy History Center.
Streeck was one of thousands of Soldiers who completed mobilization training between August 1990 and March 1991 during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. He currently works at McCoy in the Fort McCoy Draw Yard, managed by the 88th.
“Back in 1991, I worked at Camp Douglas (Wis.) at an organizational maintenance shop, and we deployed through Fort McCoy,” Streeck said. “I don't remember exact dates other than obviously Saddam went into Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, and I know we got put on alert Aug. 4.”
Unit mobilization
Streeck said the 107th, a Wisconsin National Guard unit, was mobilized around the middle of September 1990.
“We trained at Fort McCoy for roughly two months,” Streeck said. “I believe we flew out of Camp Douglas (Volk Field) on either the 9th and 10th or 10th and 11th of November 1990. And during our training here, because we were a local unit, it was kind of neat that we got to go home at night. It wasn't quite as bad as some of the other units, but we did a lot of training here at McCoy.”
Streeck said he remembers training on a wide variety of requirements at Fort McCoy during that time. Training such as weapons qualification, Warrior tasks, and more.
“We did weapons crawl,” Streeck said. “We did a grenade course. We also did a lot of (nuclear, biological, and chemical) NBC training. Also, all of our equipment was railroaded down someplace on the East Coast to ship over, so there was a period of time where all our equipment was driven onto the railroad cars at McCoy, and we helped assist with that. Four of our people rode the ships over (to the Middle East) with that equipment.”
A native of Bangor, Wis., which is where he still resides today, Streeck said at the time of Desert Shield/Desert Storm he had a young family, and it was hard for him to go on the deployment, yet was determined to do his best for the effort.
“I had been married two years, had a 2-year-old daughter and a son on the way,” he said.
Deploying to Saudi Arabia
“I was one of the few people who left on the second day, so when I got over there, and met up with the rest of our unit,” Streeck said. “We flew into Dharan Airport and got taken to a tent city. It was kind of a temporary city.”
Streeck said when he arrived in Saudi Arabia, he got there in the middle of the night.
“My cousin was in the unit, so he had saved a cot for me,” he said. “I don’t really remember a whole lot of that other than … just getting there and getting set up. …It wasn’t hot, hot, but it was obviously quite a bit warmer than Wisconsin. I talked to one of the guys who rode the ship over, and he said it was like 24 days or something like that that they were on the ship.”
Streeck added that he remembers when the 107th’s equipment got there.
We went down to the Port of Dammam (King Abdul Aziz Port/ Dammam Port),” he said. “A bunch of us actually went on the ship and drove our equipment off the ship. And part of our unit actually worked down at the port the whole time. In fact, our … work site was at the Port of Dammam. And a part of our unit actually worked on the port, and they were in charge of unloading ships as they came in with the equipment and other items.”
Looking back, he recalls during that whole time he was deployed the thing he and probably other Soldiers in his unit thought about was that there was always “that uncertainty” about what was going to happen.
“It was just the uncertainty of, you know, obviously a war may break out, and at that time, you know, looking back on it, for lack of a better term, we kind of kicked our rear ends,” Streeck said. “But going into it, nobody knew for sure what was going to happen. It’s always uncertain.
You can think about the worst-case scenario stuff. I think everybody was a bit concerned.”
Other than writing letters, communications with his family back home was a quick but regular effort.
“Once a week I called home,” Streeck said. “It was five bucks a minute to call home, so we kept it to five minutes a week. When my son was born, I called like every other day. But you said a lot in five minutes.
“That was probably the hardest,” he said. “I always figured the people back home had it a lot harder, and I’m sure it was that way with every war previous to that. … And I wrote a lot of letters.”
That was his first deployment. In his time with the 107th, he had also completed another deployment later on.
Proud to be a Desert Storm veteran
“It’s been 35 years,” Streeck said. “That’s a long time. Of course, at the time, it was like, why me? But yeah, ever since we've been back, just really glad to have been a part of it.”
History shows the 107th Maintenance Company was one of nine Wisconsin National Guard units mobilized during the buildup to Operation Desert Storm. This maintenance unit historically has been headquartered in Sparta, Wis., with detachments in places such as Viroqua and Sussex. Its mission has primarily been maintenance, repair, and recovery of Army equipment, ensuring vehicles, weapons, and support systems remain operational during training and deployments.
Fort McCoy’s motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.” Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.
The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/fortmccoywi, and on X (formerly Twitter) by searching “usagmccoy.”
Also try downloading the My Army Post app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base. Fort McCoy is also part of Army’s Installation Management Command where “We Are The Army’s Home.”