Slayton’s Brad Pagel is a Gulf War veteran who survived peace

The Cardiac Kid

SLAYTON — Brad Pagel, 55, grew up on a dairy farm in rural Garvin, milking cows twice daily. His father served in the Army, and during Pagel’s sophomore year of high school, he became interested in following in his father’s footsteps.

By his junior year, he was certain of the decision. He signed up for the Delayed Entry Program after his junior year and graduated in 1987 from Balaton High School.

Flying to New Jersey to attend basic training at Fort Dix was his first time on an airplane. AIT was at Fort Lee, Va., where he trained to be a 77F, a petroleum supply specialist. He handled POL — petroleum, oil and lubricants.

The Army sent Pagel back to Dix to learn to drive an M977 HEMTT truck. The acronym stands for Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck. It is a diesel-powered, eight-wheel drive, 10-ton truck that has been in service since 1982. However, the Army — in its infinite wisdom —sent him to a Chinook helicopter unit in Fort Hood, Texas, where his job was refueling choppers.

Pagel became part of B Company, 2nd Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment. It turned out his team supported the whole base and fueled all kinds of birds: OH-58 Kiowa, UH-1 Iroquois “Hueys,” UH-60 Black Hawk, AH-64 Apache, CH-47 Chinook.

At the time, Fort Hood was home to two divisions, the 1st Cavalry and the 2nd Armored. Choppers from the base helped fight the Yellowstone National Park fires in the summer of 1988. Otherwise, the units at Hood were holding down the fort and going to field training exercises.

That changed when the Mideast nation of Iraq, led by dictator Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. The United States launched Operation Desert Shield to protect Saudi Arabia and a few other nearby countries while the world watched to see whether Iraq complied with deadlines from the United Nations.

Meanwhile, the operation provided a platform for a coalition of nations to prepare for an offensive response.

Orders for the 2/158th came down in October. There would be no going home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. They were to load a railhead in November and send vehicles and equipment on ships out of the Port of Houston.

The ships took 30 days, while Pagel and his fellow soldiers flew across the Atlantic Ocean on Dec. 26.

They landed at King Fahd International Airport and headed to KKMC — King Khalid Military City.

The Middle East Division of the Army Corps of Engineers had construction agreements with Saudi Arabia going back to 1951, and, from 1976 to 1988, the corps had a $14 billion agreement to build hospitals, schools, roads, airfields and other structures as a joint American-Arabian training program. This included three military bases, and the crown jewel was the $1.3 billion, octagon-shaped KKMC in the northeast part of the kingdom. It was completed in 1986 and designed to house 65,000 personnel.

The bond forged through these construction projects was a major reason why Saudi Arabia accepted the U.S. military presence during Desert Shield/Storm.

It’s hard to say just how many troops were at KKMC. It’s been said Americans had their own city among many coalition forces at the base — a city within a city. It was a place where the Army engineers had their HQ, too.

Plus, Air Force engineers were present for repairs to runways and helicopter pads. Large quantities of supplies and pre-positioned equipment were at that base, and Patriot missiles were positioned to protect it from Iraqi Scuds.

Pagel said 2/158th’s active-duty A and B companies deployed. C Company was a Reserve unit and didn’t go. D company was a National Guard unit, and it went.

B Company’s mission was refueling birds. They had 57 Chinooks on one airstrip all lined up.

“We had hot refueling points set up on the airstrip at KKMC,” he said. “Other companies were bringing fuel back from the tank farm.”

When he wasn’t on duty, he was hanging out at the tents, playing spades and other card games and dealing with scorpions and camel spiders.

When Iraq didn’t meet its Jan. 16 deadline, Operation Desert Storm began. Helicopters from KKMC took off and headed in different directions. Just because a pilot flies south from the airfield doesn’t mean it is headed to a southern objective.

“You never know the chopper’s destination or what the load is,” Pagel said.

Now and then, he would overhear the crew talk about what’s going on in Iraq, such as transporting enemy prisoners of war.

“I mainly put my head down and did my job,” he said. “It was hot.”

On Feb. 21, Iraq fired three Scud missiles at or near KKMC and another on Feb. 24, all intercepted by the Patriots. Thirty-seven miles away and out of the range of KKMC’s Patriot system, on Feb. 14, the city of Hafar al-Batin reported five Scud impacts, causing four injuries but no deaths.

The 2/158 returned Memorial Day 1991, flying back on Trans World Airlines to Fort Hood. Families met their soldiers at the brigade gym area. However, Pagel’s parents ran a dairy farm, so you know what that means.

Shipping of Army equipment across the seas was backlogged, and the unit’s stuff didn’t arrive until August 1991. No one in the 2/158 had trucks, equipment or work to do. Pagel finally saw his parents when he got out of the Army in August 1991.

“People asked me what the Middle East was like. I told them it was like what you read in the Old Testament,” Pagel said.

He wasn’t in local parades. He didn’t want recognition. By September, he got a job with a beer distributor. He was in Minnesota for the Halloween Blizzard of 1991. He had to deliver beer the next day.

Pagel did that for 1 1/2 years before deciding to try a bigger truck. He got his Class A CDL and began driving semis for Floyd Wild Trucking in Marshall. He hauled kitchen cabinets to Michigan weekly. He has driven for Larry Schaffer out of Redwood Falls and Larry Peterson of Fulda. For Peterson, he hauled meat and produce to California and back.

He drove an oversized rig for CRT Specialized Transportation, which his aunt and uncle operate.

“I didn’t mind that. It was daylight hours,” Pagel said.

He met Patricia Stoakes in 2003 on Interstate 90 over the CB radio around 2 in the morning on day. Brad was driving a new 2004 big rig. She said she was driving a “piece of crap out of Brandon, S.D. and the trailer light wasn’t working.”

His new truck, however, “smelled like he ran over a dozen skunks,” Patricia said.

She radioed him about the smell. He radioed her about the taillight. They pulled off at Fairmont, and that’s how they met.

“It turned out I knew her sister and brother, her dad and others in her family, but not her,” Brad said.

Brad and Patricia Pagel wed on Thanksgiving weekend in 2006. By this time, they were working as a team for Leroy Prins Trucking out of Rushmore, hauling meat and produce.

Every one of these veteran stories you read in the Legionnaire seems to have a date on which everything changes. For Pagel, it was March 31, 2007. He had stopped to eat at McDonald’s with a buddy in Fairmont and suffered a sudden heart attack.

Well, actually, it was six massive heart attacks: One in Fairmont, then five more on the ambulance ride to Mankato.

Three days prior, he had experienced back pain. He blew it off as needing to see a chiropractor. There was no arm feeling that heart-attack patients often describe.

He woke up partially while riding in the ambulance to Mayo Clinic Health Systems in Mankato, which transferred him to Rochester. It was in Rochester that he woke up fully.

“Then they tell me what happened,” Pagel said. “I don’t remember how many days it was. It’s been downhill since. Never sick a day in my life until those heart attacks.”

For that part of the story, you have to ask Patricia.

On that day, helicopter flights were grounded because of thunderstorms, she said. Mankato doctors put stints in Brad to prepare him for the 82-mile ride of his life to the Mayo Clinic’s St. Marys Hospital.

“They gave him a 5 percent chance of making it to Rochester,” she said. “He somehow made it.”

It helped that his lunch buddy at the Fairmont McDonald’s was a combat medic with a tank crew, she added. Pagel had collapsed in the restroom, and neither Brad nor Patricia recall who found him in there. However, his buddy acted fast, performing compressions until the ambulance arrived.

Brad also credits the medical crew.

“The ambulance guy gave me nitro glycerin,” he said.

On June 7, Brad had a triple bypass, and on Nov. 7, doctors implanted a defibrillator.

Patricia graduated from Brandon Valley High School in Brandon, S.D., in 1980. After marrying, she and Brad lived in Hills, a tiny southwest Minnesota town near the Iowa border, and suffered a house fire in 2009. They moved to Slayton in 2012.

He joined The American Legion in March 2015 as a member at Slayton Post 64 while involved with local veterans working on a memorial for Murray County.

“I showed up at one meeting, paid dues at the next meeting. At the third meeting, I was elected commander that night. I’ve been post commander ever since,” Pagel said.

Pagel went to a 2nd District Convention in Madelia one year, where Randy Olson of Winnebago Post 82 and Ryan Hill of Brewster Post 464 convinced him to be a district vice commander. The next year, he was commander, and he ended up being the Covid commander who served two years.

He served as a department sergeant-at-arms last year. Presently, he serves on the Department of Minnesota National Security/Foreign Relations Committee and is the judge advocate for the 2nd District.

Why the Legion? He likes the programs, the Four Pillars (Veterans, Defense, Americanism and Youth) and how The American Legion welcomes anyone who served, whether or not they deployed.

Post 64 has no building and, he said, works hard for its visibility in Slayton. Recently, a member of the post convinced his company to donate a pickup to the post instead of trading it away. The post accepted it and wrapped the 2016 Chevy Silverado with 140,000 miles with a patriotic design and put carpet in the bed.

Now, the members take it in parades. The honor guard uses it to travel to funerals.

The post also gets noticed for having American Legion Baseball and Fastpitch Softball teams, and with a good relationship with the school district. The honor guard provides colors at football games.

Pagel has had four mild heart attacks since his episode in 2007, bringing his cardiac attack tally to 10. The Mayo Clinic told him he lacks the heart function to keep working. He travels to the VA Medical Center in Sioux Falls for his health care. He says the care is top-notch.

“The heart attack hurt my ability to work. I do help my brother on the farm now and then, but being involved in The American Legion gave me a purpose again, and, you know, I like that,” he said.

They are a blended family, with six grown children. Together, they have 12 grandkids, one dog, two cats.

Patricia joined the Auxiliary in 2017. She is a member of Avoca Unit 576.

“I finally joined after I saw what he was doing, and I liked what he was doing. I decided I would join the Auxiliary so I could help veterans, too,” she said.