After a little more than two months into the deployment that was now well-known throughout the world as "Operation DESERT SHIELD," things at Dhahran Air Base had really become comfortable - spelled, "LAX." By this time it seemed that the only people who were taking the deployment and the reason for it seriously was the OSI and the Security Police - and not all of the Security Police personnel were taking it seriously, either. Our commander, Lt Col Pack, certainly was - he was still creating more posts for us to man and still screaming for more people, although by now we had just about as many troops in country under his command as we were going to get. But as for his Command Staff - well, some of them were working 8 hour days, they had access to vehicles where they could go off-base and into downtown Dhahran, they had both the time and the transportation available to them to take advantage of the recreation area which included a pool that the MWR services had set up, and they were enjoying relaxing, comfortable meals at the local luxury hotel which was housing the British RAF troops that had joined our wing at the base. (Yeah, the Brits had the right idea - we were living in beat-to-shit Saudi dorms and US issued tents, and the Brits were staying at the Hilton. Go figure.)
But for those of us working the line, it was another thing entirely.
We took it all in stride, however, because most of us out there in the desert would have cut our own arms off rather than become known as a REMF - especially at that time and at that place. We had very little respect for anyone on the command staff below the rank of Technical Sergeant, because those folks were stupid enough to flaunt their privileges in our faces. Techs and above knew where we had come from having done it before us in a different war in a different place, so they knew better. But there were a few on the command staff that didn't, and to this day there's one of them that if I ever run into him he's gonna get back what he dealt out - in spades.
So doing our best to uphold the tradition of the American soldier to be ingenious in the face of adversity, we set about making our lives easier. And I must admit, we did pretty well.
The first thing we did was find a way to wash and dry our clothes without having to do it in the shower. This was accomplished for my sector when we moved our command post from the old underground bunker out on the flightline to an empty housing unit in the USMTM compound which just happened to have a working washer and dryer. It also had a working refrigerator, too, and that came in handy as well. The routine was that the Controller (radio operator) working that night would spend the night working the radio and washing the bags of clothes dropped off at the beginning of the shift. He had 12 hours to do it, so it was never a problem. (Jeff Archer, if you're reading this by some quirk of fate, many thanks!)
The next thing we did was find a privately-owned market, kind of like a 7-11, which also just happened to be on the base - which meant we could get to it. This market sold a little bit of everything, and we'd go shopping there for candy, cigarettes, Frank's Hot Sauce (which I absolutely LOVE to this day!), and even hamburgers and fried chicken. There was a grill at the front of the store, and the owner of Abdul's (of course we called it that, not knowing what the real name of the place was - we didn't read Arabic, and the owner didn't speak English so we couldn't ask) made a killing off of us. After more than 60 days eating MREs or the food served in the chow hall, those hamburgers and fried chicken were manna from heaven! The sales of fried chicken kinda took a nosedive once we discovered that it wasn't fried chicken but was really fried alleycat...after that, hamburgers were the specialty of the day. Even the rumor about the meat really being camel meat didn't stop us from buying them. (No, it wasn't really camel meat, by the way.)
The folks at AAFES had set up a field Base Exchange by then, and this was a big help too. The BX that was there before we got there was by now doing 1,000% of the business it was prior to the deployment, and since the US Army was now stationed at my base and working out of the area, the BX was flooded with "straight legs" and it was really hard to get into the place. So AAFES set up a field BX in Tent City, and whatever we needed in the way of personal hygiene items and a few luxury items were available there. We could buy cigarettes there but they were cheaper at Abdul's, so we only bought them from the BX when Abdul's was closed or out of stock. And after he realized the gold mine that the US troops were, Abdul began staying open 24/7 and he made damned sure he never ran out of anything.
Yeah, we were helping out the Saudis in more ways than one.
As I mentioned before, the Brits had arrived at our base and had set up operations there as well. The 24th Squadron of the Royal Air Force was located at Dhahran, and I quickly made friends with several of them. Within days I started "horse trading" with the Brits for things that we had and they wanted, and vice-versa. For example, one of the Brits wanted a US issue desert patrol cap, and he offered to trade me a Brit-issue beret complete with unit crest on it. Needless to say, I made the trade; to this day I still have the beret. And with that one simple trade began a routine of "horse tradaing" that I carried on for most of the deployment, at least until the shooting started and things got really serious again. By the time I was finished trading, I had a complete British RAF camoflauged uniform in my possession - and I mean COMPLETE. Boots, pants, shirt with the Brit equivalent of my current rank, belt with chrome buckle on which was the unit crest, beret, field hat, and canvas webbed gear whcih included the belt, suspenders, two ammo pouches, two canteens and a butt pack - I had it all! The only thing I didn't have was a rifle, and one of the Brits offered to get me one of those. All I had to do was trade him an M-16 for it, and we were square.
No, I didn't even consider it. Really. I never would have been able to get it back into the US.
But I was offered a trade that I really, really, REALLY wished I could have carried out. One of the Brit officers, their equivalent of a lieutenant colonel, took a liking to our Hummers and offered to trade me for one. He was offering a full case of "Pinch" scotch in exchange for one of our beat-to-hell Hummers! And with 12 bottles in a case, that would have pretty much set me up for oh, the next 6 months or so! (For those of you who don't know, "Pinch" is a VERY good and VERY expensive brand of Scotch which sells for about fifty bucks a bottle in the States.) But there was no way I could have pulled it off, and I told the officer so. He was surprised that our military kept track of the vehicles deployed under those conditions. "In our air force, old boy, they simply write the lorries off as soon as we leave!"
Kinda made me wish I was in the RAF, ya know? But I did let the guy drive my Hummer, which made him very happy. In return he told me that anytime I wanted a good, hot meal all I had to do was "pop on over to our mess tent and tell the lads I sent you!"
And trust me, I did...more than once!
All in all, considering our location and the reason we were there, life wasn't too bad. Sure, we missed our families and there was always the still-likely possibility that we'd be seeing Iraqi armor coming across the desert, but we were making the best of it. We were also counting the days until mid-November, because that was when we were told we would be rotating back to the States and another unit would be coming in to take our place.
Sure they would. Really.
More later.
IHC
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