Marjorie Walterscheid has written three letters to Saddam Hussein, pleading with the Iraqi leader to release her husband in time for his daughter Raina`s 11th birthday party.
”I asked him to let my little girl`s daddy come home by Oct. 29, because all she wants for her birthday is her daddy,” said Walterscheid, a part-time waitress who lives in Jacksboro, Texas.
She has received no reply.
Her husband, Rainard, 52, an oil-drilling foreman in Kuwait, missed his daughter`s birthday. He remains one of Hussein`s American hostages, a political pawn in the tense Persian Gulf military standoff that this week enters its fourth month.
As the crisis continues, there is growing worry about the physical and psychological toll on the 750 to 1,000 Americans living in crowded Baghdad apartments, held under armed guard as ”human shields” at Iraqi military installations or still evading Iraqi soldiers by hiding in Kuwaiti villas.
”There is evidence that the Iraqis are starting to treat their hostages worse,” said a Western European diplomat.
In smuggled letters and brief phone calls to their families, some of the Americans describe worsening food shortages, health problems and threats from Iraqi soldiers.
”Things are getting worse day by day,” one American hiding in Kuwait wrote his family late in September. ”We`ve had a couple of serious personal setbacks in the last 10 days or so. My friend has stomach problems, and may have to have it treated at the hospital. . . . Food stocks are running low. Garbage and rodent problems are increasing.”
To pass the long hours in hiding, he said, they play Scrabble, listen to the news on a shortwave radio, read books and play cards. ”The afternoon is when the soldiers usually pick up people, so that is the most stressful. Some of us are ready for the bombing to start, because we just don`t see a resolution to this crisis through diplomatic ways.”
Clyde Jesse of Buffalo Grove, Ill., in a message that reached his family, said he is being held as a human shield at an Iraqi chemical plant where he is unable to get medical treatment for a serious back condition that has made one leg numb and useless.
”He said they`re being let out three times a day. There are no more eggs, no fruit, the food has gone down quite a bit,” said his daughter, Tamara Lundgren of Buffalo Grove.
Fifteen Western detainees, including some Americans, rioted Sept. 29 at an Iraqi armaments factory because of mistreatment by the guards and a near-starvation diet of rice and stale bread, according to a British hostage, Jim Thompson, 50, who was released last week. The Westerners, brought to the site to deter a possible American attack, tore down fences, broke windows and wrote anti-Hussein slogans on the walls before guards forced them at gunpoint back into their rooms, he said.
Secretary of State James A. Baker III and other top administration officials have publicly warned that mistreatment of the Americans is one factor that could precipitate a war.
But President Bush has tried to avoid focusing too much attention on the hostages, mindful of the experience of his two predecessors with hostages in Lebanon and Iran. State Department officials call the families at least every 48 hours to maintain contact, though they rarely provide new information.
While some families said they have been encouraged by the government to keep a low profile, others complain that not enough is being done. ”It just seems that there`s not much said about any of the hostages anymore,” said Patricia Hale, whose husband is held in Iraq. ”They`re just kind of being forgotten.”
”There doesn`t seem to be an action plan to get the hostages out,”
complained Michael P. Saba of Champaign, Ill., a business consultant and former Mobil Oil Corp. executive who has spent $12,000 of his own money to establish Coming Home, a support group for the hostage families.
Saba, who fled to Jordan from Baghdad a week after Hussein`s forces overran Kuwait, said he has been in touch with about 600 relatives of hostages. With the holidays approaching, he said, the strain will increase for these families ”who are emotionally strung out already.”
The administration is purposely vague about the number of Americans in Kuwait and Iraq to avoid giving useful information to Baghdad. And some of the American citizens reportedly are staying by choice, such as the American wives of Arab nationals or the U.S.-born children of Arab parents.
The largest number of Americans-as many as 700-are in Kuwait, where many live in constant danger of exposure by informants. ”We have made an attempt to get out through the desert and came quite close,” one American there wrote in mid-September. ”Unfortunately, they are now shooting at the cars instead of sending them back and so that is not a viable alternative.”
At the beleaguered U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, four women and four men, including Ambassador Nathaniel Howell, are hanging on with a diet of tuna fish and drinking water made by boiling water from the swimming pool. After a backyard well tapped into some brackish water last week, they were able to take long-overdue baths and wash clothes.
Roughly 300 other Americans are in Iraq, including 106 listed as being held at various locations by Iraqi authorities. ”We ask the Iraqis every day where they are,” said a State Department official.
One of those is Rainard Walterscheid, a Santa Fe International employee who was working on a Kuwaiti oil rig within sight of the border when Iraqi troops invaded Aug. 2.
Marjorie Walterscheid has received three letters from her husband, the last one about 10 days ago. It was dated Sept. 13, and ”he just said the living quarters are comfortable and good, and there`s six men living with him, a Frenchman, two Scottish, and three Swedish. I gathered that it wasn`t at no motel. He said, I don`t know how long I`ll be here, it may be for months, but he said the Iraqi government is treating him well.”
Marjorie Walterscheid has lost 28 pounds since the ordeal began. Exhausted, she quit her part-time waitressing job last week. ”Some days I feel like there should be something else I could do to try to help, but I don`t know what it could be,” she said, her voice cracking and eyes filling with tears.
A freed hostage brought her husband`s gold Rolex and a letter a few weeks ago. ”I would like to go to Iraq some way and see for myself that he`s really all right,” she said. ”I know some of the men aren`t being treated real good.”
Patricia Hale of Spring, Texas, a Houston suburb, has had no word from her husband, Ed, a 52-year-old drilling supervisor, since a letter dated Aug. 24. At the time, he said he was well and staying in a Baghdad hotel.
”I guess I`m doing as well as I can,” she said. ”I watch a lot of news and I`ve been writing letters to Ed, sending those any way I can. I keep thinking any day I`ll get another letter from him, so I keep hoping. ”
Hale and five other families of men working for OGE Drilling Co. of Houston had their paychecks cut off in early September because the company said it no longer could afford the cost. A few days later, a group of 13 oil companies and oil field service firms announced that they would help out.
”They really were left high and dry,” said the organizer of that effort, Patrick Collins, president of Plains Resources Inc., a small, independent oil producer in Houston. ”If I were stuck over there, I sure wouldn`t like to see my wife not be able to make ends meet.”
The release of 14 American hostages last week put Hale through emotional whiplash. ”If you can be happy and sad at the same time, that was me,” she said. ”I feld bad for Ed, but excited for the ones who were out.”
The last time that Donnita Cole of Odessa, Texas, heard from her husband, Johnny, was Sept. 6, when he was captured in Kuwait and moved to Baghdad. ”He sent a message through the consul section of the U.S. Embassy that he was OK, and on the morning of the 7th they removed him and that was it,” she said.
But Cole has more than her husband to worry about. One of her twin sons, John, 22, is stationed in Saudi Arabia with the Army. In a recent phone conversation, she said, ”We spent about 7 of our 10 minutes talking about his dad. . . . He found it hard to believe that after all this time, we still didn`t know anything.”
