August 8, 1990

The first thing you learn when you fly on military aircraft is the importance of ear plugs. Military aircraft are designed to carry cargo, not for human comfort, so noise insulation isn't real high on the priority list. Before the C-141 had even cranked engines, we had already put our earplugs in. As I've always said, "He who gets on a military aircraft without earplugs is a fool; he who gets off a military aircraft without earplugs is a deaf fool." Combine the noise level with the cargo-netting seats, and you have the makings of one long, uncomfortable trip.

Military people are remarkably adaptable, and as soon as the aircraft hit cruising altitude and the crew chief told us we could move around, there was a mad dash for the pallets of sleeping bags loaded on the plane with us. That pallet was the softest area on the plane and could hold about four or maybe five guys, and if you weren't sitting right next to it you were left out when the mad dash took place. Of course, I was sitting near the nose of the aircraft, so I made due with the cargo netting seats. After about four hours of those I was ready for something else, so I tried laying down on the deck with my chem suit in its bag for a pillow. That worked for about ten minutes. Nobody ever got up from the pallets of sleeping bags, so that wasn't gonna happen - they knew a good thing when they saw it and weren't moving.

Like I said, it was a long, uncomfortable trip.

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning on 8 Aug we landed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany to refuel, and since it was the wee hours of the morning nothing was open so we couldn't get anything to eat or drink, and were restricted to one small waiting area in the terminal. We stayed there for about two hours and then were ushered back onto the C-141 for the remaining leg of the trip. This leg wouldn't be anywhere near as long, so at least we had that.

It was during this last leg of the flight that the lieutenant who was on board with us - not the cool one who asked me to go along, but some douchebag whose name escapes me - got the idea that we should have the troops open up the pallets and get our flak vests and helmets out so we'd have them when the plane landed. I asked him why, and the answer just about floored me.

"We might be landing in a hot LZ and have to fight our way off of the aircraft!" This was just an indicator of the silly shit this moron would do over the next three months until he rotated out to transfer to another base.

I pointed out to the lieutenant that if the LZ was hot there was no way the Air Force was going to let the aircraft land. For the airfield to be "hot" the base would have had to have been overrun, and if that had happened we'd hear about it and the aircraft would be diverted to a safe landing area. I had to say this to him several times, but it finally sunk in. I didn't even want to get into the fact that there was no way the crew chief was gonna let us de-palletize the gear on the aircraft in flight. Shows you how much the lieutenant knew, huh?

The rest of the flight was uneventful, but compared to what happened on the other aircraft (my unit was broken up into two groups, one group on each aircraft) we had it easy. First the heat went out on the aircraft so everyone spent most of the trip freezing their cajones off, and then the squadron commander decided that it would be a good idea to conduct gas mask drills - all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.

From what I heard, he's lucky to have gotten off the aircraft alive. Remember, the guys on the plane had guns and a full compliment of ammunition to go with them. He's lucky he didn't get shot. So compared to this, my lieutenant was a piece of cake.

After a few more hours we finally landed at our destination, Dhahran Air Base in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We were told by the crew chief that the temperature outside was 113 degrees with 10% humidity. In short, getting off of the aircraft was gonna be like stepping into an oven. And when the plane came to a stop and the crew chief opened the door, it felt just like that - the heat invaded the aircraft in a wave, and we all instantly broke out in sweat. We all got to our feet and picked up our gear, then started the procession off of their aircraft. Since I was sitting near the nose of the aircraft I was one of the first ones off the plane, and when I got to the ladder leading down I took one step and stopped to look around.

All I saw was sand. Sand, sand, and more sand. No buildings, no people, no trees, no grasss, nothing but sand. "Where the hell's the base?" I said to no one in particular.

From behind me I heard the next man in line say, "Man, this is the last place I wanna fuckin' die!" And that just about sums it up, I thought.

As it turns out the aircraft was on the parking ramp of the base but had come to a stop facing away from the main base. I didn't know it, but at that moment I was looking at the area which would be my main patrol area in the coming months. Just about that time a bus showed up to take us to the terminal, and once there we "processed in." This consisted of us signing a roster indicating we got there, and that was it. We were all issued what would become a piece of standard equipment for the next week or so until we got accustomed to the heat, that being a liter of bottled water. Then it was off to a hangar to wait for our gear to be offloaded from the aircraft.

About an hour later we got our gear and were then trucked over to the place that would be our home for the foreseeable future. Since we were Security Police, we were to be billeted in what had been planned to be the Base Security Force barracks; they had just finished construction of the building a few days before and the Saudis never had the chance to move in before we showed up. The building had two floors and was designed in a square with an open court area in the middle. The room we were in was big enough to hold about 24 beds if you placed them side by side and nearly touching, which they did. Needless to say, privacy was out the window. The good news was that it had running water, a shower/bathroom area, and was air conditioned. Sure, the AC consisted of a window air conditioner mounted in a hole in the wall in each room, but at least it was there.

The bad news was that it was built by Phillipino immigrants who were being paid shit for wages and who therefore didn't care about quality of work. The building started to fall apart around us in a matter of days, and our Civil Engineers had a full time job just keeping the place up.

But on the late afternoon of August 8, 1990 all I cared about was getting out of my uniform that I had been in for more than 36 hours, taking a hot shower, and getting some sleep.

We started security operations the next day.

More to come.

IHC