What began as a video of a reunion of soldiers for those who couldn’t make it in person turned into an award-winning, 70-minute documentary. It not only captured the men 30 years after they got home, but also showed them as the young men who were stationed in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm/Desert Shield in the early 1990s.
“FOXTROT: Operation Reunification,” directed by Academy Award-winner Roberto Oregel, will be screened twice this weekend in Durango at the American Legion: Once Saturday night and again Sunday afternoon.
Both shows are free, and donations are welcome. Everyone is welcome.
If you go
WHAT: Screening of “FOXTROT: Operation Reunification,” an award-winning documentary film about a Marine Corps surgical hospital during Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Directed by Roberto Oregel, an Academy Award-winning director, produced by J.T. Coyne, Captain, USN (Ret).
WHEN: 6 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
WHERE: American Legion, 828 East Second Ave.
ADMISSION: Free, donations welcome.
MORE INFORMATION: Email jaytecoyne@gmail.com.
The documentary, according to a news release, tells the story of Foxtrot Company – a team of 250 hospital corpsmen, 40 surgeons and 12 nurses – who deployed on short notice to Saudi Arabia in August 1990. The soldiers were brought together from different areas of the country, so didn’t know each other, said Navy Capt. (Ret.) J.T. Coyne, who is one of the film’s producers and who was there. Coyne and his wife are also former Hesperus residents, having moved here after they both retired from the Navy. He said the men returned from war in 1991 and didn’t get a reunion together until 2017.
“We got a whole bunch of the guys together in Oceanside, California, in April of 2017 and it was exactly to the day, 30 years to the day, that we got home,” he said. “One of the guys, Andy Oregel, invited his brother down to video the reunion, just so we could send it out to everybody who couldn’t make it and they’d have a memory of it. That’s how it got started. After three days of hearing us telling stories and all that kind of stuff, Roberto says, ‘Hey, this would make a great documentary.’”
Andy’s contribution wasn’t over. Coyne said that after the reunion, there was three day’s worth of video to go through and figure out how to compile it. That’s when Andy said he had a VHS tape of a video he had shot when they were stationed in the desert, on Christmas Day 1990.
“He goes into the (operating rooms), into the X-ray, into the lab, and as you pass this guy, he talks to him, and it’s the1990s, (they) are all young kids,” Coyne said. “We took that film, and we edited it in between ... and it goes back and forth like that, interspersed with the stories.”
The company came together at Camp Pendleton in California, Coyne said. The men were assigned to the Marine Corps and came from places including Pensacola, Florida; Quantico, Virginia; and Bremerton, Washington. He was in charge of putting the company together for their assignment in Saudi Arabia.
“There’s like 400 men standing out on this parade deck, and I walked down with a blank roster,” he said. “I need 20 operation room technicians, and I just called on them and they come up, and I write them down, and that’s how we formed the company. ... Three days later, I left for Saudi and they followed me a week later.”
The company was tasked with setting up a hospital about halfway between Al Jabail and Kuwait, in the desert where an oil company had built an expeditionary airfield.
“There was nothing, just a flat piece of desert, and we build a 150-bed, six operating room, fully operational hospital in less a month,” Coyne said. “That’s 85 tons of medical supplies it took. It took 35 flatbed trucks to move us there, and we had a rough terrain forklift that could take it off of the trucks, but then the men had to hand carry it out to the tents where we’re doing surgery – in a tent with a sand floor.”
All of this is being done in temperatures that would hit 120 degrees, he said, adding that protective gear was a must because of burning oil and chemical weapons.
“We were there from August until the first week in January. Our first enemy was the desert,” he said. “We are prepared for chemical warfare: They’d given us casualty estimates in the thousands from chemical warfare. We were taking care of patients while wearing MOPP (Mission Oriented Protective Posture) suits, heavy gloves, respirators.”
Coyne, who was 40 during the deployment, said all of his doctors were young lieutenants, all younger than 30 and brand new to the Navy. They’ve been in less than one or two years. The hospital corpsman were all young, too, he said.
“It was the first time that America has actually deployed their all-volunteer force,” he said. “After Vietnam, we got away from the draft and went to all-volunteer. So now onto a major war with an all-volunteer army, and it was kind of scary, knowing they had chemical weapons. They had the fifth largest army in the world. And so we deployed over there with what’s called the 7th Marine Regiment out of 29 Palms in California. They were a blocking force to keep the Kuwaitis, the Iraqis, from coming into Saudi Arabia. That was called Desert Shield. And our job was to provide medical support for the 7th Marine Regiment.”
Though all of this, the soldiers bonded quickly, and have stayed in touch since, despite the hasty goodbye they had upon returning stateside and being sent back to their various original places. And it’s what made the reunion so special.
“The amazing thing is that we recognized everybody, And we’re 30 years older,” Coyne said. “Hearing them talk, oh boy, I have a little bit of post traumatic stress, and when I think about all these guys, it I just get very choked up. You know, these guys were 19 and 20 years old at the time ... so hearing how they’re they’ve grown and their families and their businesses ... it was just wonderful.
“The comment that was the best for me was we were sitting around talking, and my wife turns to me, and she goes, ‘These guys tell the same stories you tell.’ And, well, it was just a validation that I really wasn’t imagining all this craziness. It really did happen.”
For Coyne, who talks about how the soldiers’ exposure to low doses of chemical weapons and oil well fires during Desert Storm/Desert Shield have resulted in the development of many types of cancers, “FOXTROT: Operation Reunification” serves not only as a documentary that chronicles a reunion, it serves a bigger purpose as well.
“I think the most important thing was our original goal was just so everyone would understand what we went through,” he said. “We felt we’ve been telling the stories, but until you see how bad it was and hear from multiple sources ... that was the first thing, mostly for our own crew and our families,” he said. “But, you know, we lose 22 veterans a day to suicide because they have no one to talk to. We’ve had no suicides among these 300 men because we’ve mutually supported each other now for over 30 years.”
katie@durangoherald.com
