SOURCE: Toronto Star, Katie Daubs reporting, Feb. 28, 2016
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/02/28/looking-back-on-the-gulf-war-through-an-artists-eyes.html
ARCHIVED ARTICLE:
Looking back on the Gulf War through an artist’s eyes
Ted Zuber, himself a veteran, was Canada’s official artist during the Gulf War, which ended on Feb. 28, 1991. Twenty-five years later, he reflects on what he saw.
TED ZUBER / CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM
"Long Day at Doha" — one of Ted Zuber's canvases capturing the experience of Canadians fighting in the Gulf War. His paintings are now in the collection of the Canadian War Museum.
When he was chosen as Canada’s official artist for the Gulf War, veteran Ted Zuber had second thoughts. He had served in the Korean War with the Royal Canadian Regiment. “I thought ‘Good god, I’m not going to go back to that. I’m not that stupid.’”
He almost called it off before the difference of the operation dawned on him: “I’m not going over there to kill people. I’m going as an artist. Somehow I felt perfectly protected behind a paint brush.”
He was in his late 50s when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait 25 years ago and says he must have been the “oldest bugger” in the Gulf.
Dressed in a uniform, with the word “artist” on each shoulder, he surveyed the scenes in the bustling Canadian outposts in the Middle East, his paints and easel at the ready.
“People would come up and say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’”
So he’d explain, and watch as troops “grew an inch” when they realized the Canadian government had sent him there to record their lives for posterity. It was Canada’s first war in nearly four decades.
“They were really proud that Canada had thought enough of what they were doing to have it portrayed by a war artist,” he says.
Long Day at Doha
During his first days, Zuber was in a public affairs trailer at the base in Doha, Qatar, and asked the staff when he would get his Tilley hat. “You’re not going to get one … you’re not posted here permanently,” they said. Zuber walked across the compound and asked the man in charge of supplies, who denied him until he offered a sketch. “When I made someone’s sketch they were proud as hell, because that meant that their drawing would last forever in the archives of the Canadian War Museum.” He learned his pencil had power, and wielded it expertly, sketching the chief cook at the Doha base. “Every time I showed up, she had a steak for me.”
TOPP High
TED ZUBER/CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM
"TOPP High"
The threat of chemical warfare loomed in the Persian Gulf. Saddam Hussein was rumoured to have the world’s largest stockpile of nerve and mustard gas. Zuber’s first experience with a Scud missile attack was on the base at Doha. Inside the concrete bunker, the yellow light of a battery lamp bounced off the goggles of the chemical suits, looking like a “horror movie ... One guy yelled at me because I hadn’t properly zipped up the top of my suit ... You’ll see this fellow on the left zipping up his suit. That’s me.” After they were cleared to leave, Zuber took off his chemical suit and struggled to breathe. A doctor examined him and told him it was an anxiety attack. “She said, ‘Your body has a memory, and the shellfire you went through in Korea all those years ago, your body remembers all that.’” Zuber went through 11 Scud attacks. “After a while you didn’t even bother putting your suit on, you get so nonchalant about these things.”
Pit Stop to Target
TED ZUBER/CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM
"Pit Stop to Target"
Zuber went up with a Canadian air-to-air refueller that served as a circling gas station for coalition fighters on their way into Iraq. The Boeing flew in a 25-kilometre radius for hours, 7,500 metres above the Kuwait border, waiting for planes to approach for refuelling. “This one particular aircraft on the left side of our aircraft was having difficulty, he couldn’t seem to get hooked in,” he recalls. Zuber asked the Canadians if they could guide the approaching aircraft by radio: “We’re not going to speak to anybody because the enemy could zero in,” one replied, “and that would be the end of us.” The Canadian controller’s hand grasped the window. “He was unconsciously reaching out, if you will, to help that pilot out there. I thought, there’s my painting.”
0500 Al Qaysumah
TED ZUBER/CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM
"0500 Al Qaysumah"
After the ground war began, an Iraqi prisoner of war was brought to the Canadian field hospital by British soldiers who had found him in a burned out bunker, semi-conscious and filled with shrapnel. Zuber was moved by the medical team’s insistence on saving the man’s right arm. In Canada, it would have been amputated. “In that part of the world, you have to eat with the right hand and you use left hand for cleansing yourself,” he says. “If for some reason you lose the right hand, you are really an outcast.” After the war, Zuber tried to find the man to give him a copy of the painting. He eventually learned the man died three days after the operation.
Rendezvous
TED ZUBER/CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM
"Rendezvous"
The Canadian navy had three ships in the gulf, and their role evolved as the war progressed. After the air war began, Canada took the lead in organizing logistics and deliveries so coalition war ships could stay “on station” in the gulf. Zuber lived on board HMCS Protecteur for a week, and went with a crew in a Sea King helicopter to make a delivery to another ship. On the return flight, the crew circled for mines: a destroyed mine meant a bottle of champagne on the ship. They moved in closer and made a sad discovery. “It was a bloody black plastic bag of garbage,” Zuber says. “Being an old soldier … I said, ‘Look, you guys, if you want a witness, I’ll swear that was a mine,’ and they looked at me like I was a deceitful old bugger,” he remembers. “I was quite taken with their sincerity and honesty.”
Ted Zuber, a veteran of the Korean War, was Canada's official artist during the Gulf War.
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