Thick black smoke from burning oil wells obscured the sun over a sea of endless sand as Capt. Doug White fixed his gaze on an Iraqi military base through a hole the size of a small envelope.

It was 12 years ago when White, armed with an M-16 rifle and a grenade launcher, peered through a periscope and waited for a signal that would send him and his partner jumping from the back of his vehicle, ready for battle.

But white flags were raised in the distance and the signal never came.

A dozen years later, on the anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, White is preparing others for the second part of a war he says never ends.

"Nobody wants to go to war," he said. "But we also don't want that war coming to us later on in the form of terrorism."

The same aggressors from more than a decade ago have resurfaced, he said. "I remember when we were getting ready to leave Saudi Arabia. We felt that we had unfinished business and that we'd be back in 10 years."

With the buildup of troops in the Persian Gulf, White's prediction may not have been far off. "It's been 12 (years)," he said. "We had a feeling that we hadn't heard the last of Saddam Hussein."

These days, he sits behind a desk covered with miniature tanks, helicopters and American flags as an assistant professor of military science and Commandant of cadets for MSU's Army ROTC.

During his years as an MSU student, he frequently visited Spartan Stadium, Case Hall, Crunchy's and P.T. O'Malley's - but he never stepped into the Demonstration Hall for ROTC training or wore the standard-issue apparel he does today.

He waited until he received his political science degree to join the Army as an infantry soldier in 1988.

"It's something I'd always wanted to do and I'd always felt the need to do," he said. "I knew that if I didn't do it then I would probably regret it later."

After completing basic training, he was dispatched to Germany for two years before his unit moved on to Saudi Arabia.

He arrived in Iraq on the eve of the Gulf War, earning his stripes in a place where nerves were on end.

"We trained hard but we didn't have a whole lot of combat experience in our unit, other than some Vietnam soldiers," he said. "And we knew that Iraq had just come off their eight-year war with Iran and were going to have some combat-hardened veterans.

"They were the fourth-largest army in the world at the time, so we were pretty nervous."

The absence of American culture added to the stress.

After spending Christmas in Saudi Arabia, White longed for a 7-Eleven, a real bed, a television and food other than the rationed boiled chicken and potatoes.

"It wasn't your ideal Christmas," he said. "But soldiers are going to make the best of it no matter where they're at. When you're doing something important like that you just have to drive on."

White and other soldiers decorated their tents with trimmings sent from home, opened gifts of snacks and stationary from the Red Cross and made Christmas trees from water bottles.

Then the war started.

"You reach a point where regardless of how scared you are or how nervous you are you still have a job to do," he said. "The training takes over and you're going to do the right thing."

As temperatures dropped below freezing, White spent nights curled up in the seats of his Hummer, just in case the battalion commander needed to depart suddenly to an emergency meeting.

"I never knew when my boss wanted to go someplace," he said. "It could be anytime, day or night, and I didn't want him to waste his time looking for me because he had things to do."

White drove the commander more than 8,000 miles to meetings for five months, making his own trails through sand and underbrush to their next destination.

"Our daily routine was pretty boring," he said.

White's job was to sit in the back of a military vehicle, ready to fight on the ground if the time came, but it never did. White only saw the aftermath of nightly air attacks as he helped capture prisoners who surrendered by the masses.

But, on those cold nights, he learned the importance of keeping on guard.

"You don't know exactly where it's going to come or when, but we always train for it," he said.

Kendra Snyder can be reached at snyderk6@msu.edu.