AFTERMATH OF WAR : Oddities: Saved by a Mouse

Michael Trout, a Greensburg, Pa., reservist caught in the Persian Gulf War’s most devastating Scud attack, said he may owe his life to a mouse. He was playing Trivial Pursuit with his buddies in the barracks near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, moments before an Iraqi missile hit Feb. 25. He spotted a mouse and left the group. “I’m scared of mice, so I walked away,” he recalled as he recovered from wounds at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington. Six of the eight soldiers who CONTINUED TO PLAY THE GAME WERE KILLED, he said. Trout was hit by shrapnel and suffered ear damage. About a dozen survivors of the Scud attack and a Michigan soldier wounded during fighting in Iraq received Purple Hearts in a ceremony at the hospital.