USO TOUR Newton takes 'home' overseas

The USO has sent 30 tours overseas so far this year.
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (AP) -- Wayne Newton has received plenty of standing ovations in his day, but the response he got on a USO tour of Iraq was still extraordinary.
"[The soldiers] stand up when you walk out onstage," Newton told The Associated Press in a dressing-room interview after a recent performance here. "They're so happy to see somebody from home."
Newton took over for Bob Hope as chief trouper for the United Service Organizations two years ago. His 20-member troupe recently returned from Kuwait and Iraq. Audiences ranged from several hundred to several thousand. At Balad, a major supply depot north of Baghdad, soldiers started showing up hours early.
"You could not be lousy enough to ruin the evening," Newton said, quoting the late comedian Jack Benny, for whom the singer used to open in Nevada.
The troupe stayed overnight at Camp Anaconda at Balad, where there was incoming mortar fire, said Julie Moulas, one of two Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders who went along. It was her 12th USO tour.
"The first time I went, I don't think I knew what I was getting into," Moulas said.
They visited a few military camps each day for handshakes, hugs, snapshots and to talk. At a school, Newton, actor Gary Sinise and singers Neal McCoy and Chris Isaak sang a cappella for Iraqi children. They rode out in a military convoy.
USO involvement
At 61, Newton has been around and around again. At 6, he sang for President Truman. He appeared on Lucille Ball's TV show.
His first USO tour came in 1966. He'd been rejected by the military due to severe asthma, which he says left his lungs scarred. After enthusiastic Marines filled a Lake Tahoe audience one night, he decided to go to Vietnam. He went again two years later.
Newton and some of his musicians and backup singers -- "the ones who can pass through security," he said jokingly onstage -- have done seven overseas tours in the past two years.
The USO has sent 30 tours overseas so far this year with 10 more scheduled, mostly around the holidays. Spokeswoman Donna St. John said they're funded by donations.
"The entertainers do not get paid," she said. "It's all volunteer.