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Hussein scorned the deadline, declaring to his people and troops via radio broadcast “the mother of all battles is under way.” He urged them to prepare for a battle “of justice against vice, of the believer against the infidels.” Given the power by Congress, President Bush declared war. Operation Desert Storm had begun and at 7 p.m. EST on January 17, the United States launched air attacks and missile strikes on Iraq and occupied-Kuwait.

“We’re using force and we’re not going to stop until he pulls out of Kuwait,” Bush insisted.

The president quickly backed up his stern words by authorizing the call-up of one million army reservists and national guardsmen and guardswomen. Those potential reinforcements were added to the tens of thousands of men and women already serving in the Persian Gulf.

One of those soldiers already stationed in Saudi Arabia was Conway Bailey. That October, Bailey left his post as deputy warden at the Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland to return to active duty as a member of the 260th Armored Division, Army Reserve Unit of Baltimore. A chief warrant officer, Bailey’s platoon supplied ammunition to military units throughout Saudi Arabia.

Age forty-four, Bailey had already served two tours in Vietnam a decade and a half earlier.

“I was a lot more frightened [in Saudi Arabia],” he recalled. “I kept comparing Saudi with Vietnam. I kept expecting things to happen that didn’t. In Vietnam, the danger was real. In Saudi Arabia and Iraq, it was more imagined. You sat around and wondered what could happen.”

Conway Bailey wasn’t the only member of his family who sat around wondering what could happen. In his hometown of Baltimore, Conway’s daughter, Conya, and his ex-wife, Thelma, also feared the worst. And in

Buffalo—while he practiced, studied, and watched film to prepare for the biggest game of his life—Conway’s eldest son, Carlton Bailey, prayed for his father’s safety.

“I knew that things were happening, and I may not ever see him again, and the love that I had for my dad was going to be gone,” Carlton said years later.

Although Carlton’s parents divorced when he was in high school, Conway stayed a part of his son’s life. He guided and mentored his son in addition to rooting him on during football games, first at Baltimore’s Woodlawn High School, then at the University of North Carolina.

“He was always supportive, always a positive type person,” Bailey said about his father.

Despite playing most of his collegiate career as a nose tackle, Bailey possessed great speed and agility; in addition to football, he had been a hurdles champion in high school. A ninth-round draft choice of the Bills in 1988, Bailey cracked the team’s starting lineup two seasons later, at the same time his father was called back into military service.

“It’s kind of hard not to think about it when one of your loved ones is over there,” Bailey said the week of the AFC Championship Game. “It’s real hard. But in the latest letter I received from my father, about two weeks ago, he said, ‘Do the best you can and don’t worry about me.’ He said to take care of things here and get to the Super Bowl, and he’ll take care of things there.”

To get to the Super Bowl, Bailey and the Bills would have to defeat the Los Angeles Raiders. During the Bills’ weeklong preparations for the Raiders—whose high-powered running game featured not one, but two, former Heisman Trophy–winning running backs, Marcus Allen and Bo Jackson—Carlton Bailey did his best to follow his father’s orders.

“He hasn’t missed a beat, he hasn’t missed a call, he hasn’t missed a down,” Darryl Talley said of his defensive teammate. “So that shows he’s concentrating exactly on what he has to do. That takes discipline—a whole lot of discipline.”

“In one of the letters I wrote to him, I said that, hopefully, when I’m on the field, I can make a big play not only for the team or myself, but for him,” Bailey told a reporter that week. “Whether we win or not, I’m going to put forth the extra, extra effort. And that way, when he’s reading