The below is an excerpt from the book I am writing on Task Force Striker (1-18 Inf Regt) in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I post it today because Paul Vansickle was kind enough to post on Facebook that today, 2 Sept marked the anniversary of our arrival in Saudi Arabia. I had quite forgotten that, but it was 28 years ago today. By the way, Paul was the guy who first figured out that AK-47 fire would go through the front slope on an M113. He was the driver of scout track HQ-25 and was our first wounded in action in a close fight in the Euphrates River Valley about 0200 in the morning. So for all the guys in the old battalion asking “where’s our book?”, here is part of it.
Fort Stewart, end of August 1990
We had been at Fort Stewart for about a week doing last minute preparations for deployment like zeroing rifles, getting combat filters for our protective masks and so on. A million thins to do. The rest of the brigade had already moved out to go to Saudi Arabia and we waited for our turn.
We were finally alerted for movement and were bussed over to Hunter Army Airfield. The rest of the brigade had departed over the previous week so we were anxious to catch up. As with most things in the Army, it was a case of hurry up and wait. The plane did not arrive for two more days and there were no billets for the troops at Hunter. We made do and camped out in the hangars and surrounding areas. Fortunately, it did not rain but the weather was very hot and humid and boredom was the main enemy.
The aircraft we flew on was part of the Civilian Reserve Air Fleet or CRAF. There were not enough Air Force cargo aircraft to fly us over. The Air Force was very busy flying all its support personnel and equipment over to Saudi Arabia in support of their own deployment. I can’t remember which airline we flew on but believe it was Pan American which pretty much folded a year or two later. Some of my troops now say that they flew on a Trump Airlines aircraft and mistakenly believe that Mr. Trump provided the aircraft for free. He most assuredly was paid whatever the going rate was for CRAF aircraft.
The first leg of our journey was to Brussels in Belgium. We were parked well away from the terminal but were permitted to go onto the tarmac while the plane was serviced. We noted that half a dozen Belgian paratroopers with automatic weapons provided security for us and the airplane. It was ironic that these poor bastards were dragged out in the middle of the night to stand around us for several hours; in effect guarding 400 well-armed American soldiers.
Unlike peacetime deployments to places like the National Training Center in California, we were all armed and the hold of the aircraft contained ammunition to include anti-tank rockets and hand grenades. Still, it was a nice gesture by the Belgian government. As a thought, perhaps they were there to make sure we behaved ourselves? We did. There wasn’t much chance of getting into trouble on the tarmac about a mile from the terminal after all.
We continued our flight from Brussels to Ad-Damman, a Saudi port on the Persian Gulf. We had no real knowledge of our final destination and coincidentally, no maps for use once we got there. The Army was unable to issue us maps of Saudi Arabia until just prior to the start of the ground war. More on all that later.
We landed in Saudi Arabia about 1800. When they opened the aircraft door, a wave of super-heated air greeted us with a stiff wind. The temperature was around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It was the 1st of September 1990. The date is significant because we missed out on a month’s worth of combat pay and combat tax exemption by arriving in September instead of August. Of course, we were all totally unaware of such things at the time.
As we deplaned I sent some of the staff off to find where we were supposed to go. Nobody had met the plane and we were all standing around getting smoked by the heat. Those that had not done so, completed drinking their gallon of water. We had all been issued with a gallon of water in a plastic jug and our instructions were to drink the whole gallon starting two hours prior to landing. We had all dutifully achieved this except the few who now finished up. We were to regret this action in the not too distant future.
My staff came back and told me they had found the brigade liaison officer’s tent, but nobody was there. I ordered the troops to be moved off the tarmac and moved over to where this tent was. We were all standing or sitting around for about 45 minutes when the brigade liaison officer came sauntering up and asked how long we had been there. This particular liaison officer was a captain from the brigade S3 shop and had recently joined the brigade as a filler once we alerted for deployment. I had known this captain when he was a singularly unimpressive lieutenant in the battalion I was the executive officer for in Germany several years earlier. The captain and I already had a history that started the first day he had joined the brigade almost a month earlier. He had walked uninvited into my office in my headquarters (something that just isn’t done by junior officers!) on his first day in the brigade and informed me he would be taking command of one of my companies in a few months. The brigade commander had just told him so according to him. My response was to tell him that if his manner of performance had not improved since Germany, that wasn’t going to happen. I also told him to get the hell out of my office and to see my adjutant if he wished to speak to me in the future.
So, as we stood around for forty-five plus minutes waiting for the captain, I thought it appropriate to ask him if he was unaware of our arrival time. He said, no, he knew when we were due in. I then asked him why he had not met us, and he said he had to go to chow up at the Air Force mess before it closed. He had obviously had a very leisurely dinner while we all stood around waiting for him. His prospects for future command in the battalion were not looking good. They would look even worse down the road.
After a good bit of time, some busses arrived escorted by Saudi Arabian police cars with their lights flashing. The captain said we were to get on the busses. I asked him where we were going and he got a startled look on his face and said he didn’t know. He said his only orders were to put people on the busses. He had no idea where the rest of the brigade was. Apparently, he was not alone in this ignorance. The Saudi police had no idea either.
We started off following the police cars into the night for it was quite dark by now. We drove and drove. And then we drove and drove some more. It was at this point that the gallon of water had begun to make its effects known. As the old saying goes, what goes in must come out. The bus drivers did not speak any English, so we could not communicate with them to ask how much longer before we got to wherever the hell we were going. Lieutenant Charley Brown from Alpha company had taken it upon himself to learn some Arabic during our deployment phase and attempted to communicate with the driver. The driver was a Turk and did not speak Arabic. The busses did not have a bathroom, of course.
After about three hours of driving around and passing the same points several times, we finally came to the port of Ad-Damman. The Saudi police abruptly left the busses and disappeared into the night, lights still flashing. We had pulled off the side of the road entering the port and the bus drivers clearly had no idea what to do next now that the police escort had departed. While they pondered this, the troops stormed the bus door and rushed the edge of a large drainage ditch and began to fill it up. I was more than happy to join them!
As we were doing our best to fill the ditch, a Humvee coming from the port saw us and pulled over. The drive got out and found his way to me. He politely waited until my full gallon of water was properly disposed of, then introduced himself. He had been in the battalion and was now the driver for the brigade deputy commanding officer. He had recognized some of the guys as
he was driving by and decided to stop. He asked me why we were at the port. I told him that is where the busses brought us. He then politely asked if I knew where we were supposed to be going and I responded that we were supposed to be joining the rest of the brigade. I asked if the brigade was at the port and he looked at me like I had two heads but then offered to lead us to where the brigade was located. I gladly accepted his offer. By this time it was about 2330 hours.
As we were reloading all the troops onto the busses and turning the busses around I asked the driver why he was at the port and he said he had been sent to get fried chicken for the brigade deputy commanding officer (DCO) at a stand down in the port. He said he went almost every night to get chicken for the DCO. As an aside and which will be discussed at great length later, the chow situation for the next seven months was never very good with a few exceptions. I can say, however, that the DCO was one of the few members of the brigade I knew who did not lose weight during our adventures. He shared that title with the sergeant major of the support battalion who also had a driver who knew where the fried chicken stands were and was kept pretty busy visiting them at all hours. That sergeant major in fact noticeably gained weight and was known as the “reclining Buda” throughout Task Force Striker; always being found in his bunk and eating whenever visited. But I digress.
I got in the DCO’s Humvee with the young driver and we drove for a good half hour before we came to a compound with a gated entry with armed guards situated on the Persian Gulf. As I recall the guards were Saudis. They knew the driver and waved us through the gate. As we entered there were a series of jersey barriers set up in a serpentine to keep a suicide truck from rapidly gaining entry to the main camp, a lesson learned from the 1985 Beirut bombing of the marine barracks. I noted, however, that the exit road from the camp did not have barriers and was a straight shot out of the camp.
We got off the busses after finally arriving at the camp after almost five hours of travel from the airport. I was to learn later when we were at the port preparing to return home after Desert Storm that the airfield was less than thirty minutes from the camp! The trucks bearing our duffel bags had arrived hours earlier than us and Major Bourgoine, the battalion XO who was already at the camp as part of the advanced party arriving several days ahead of us, was getting extremely concerned when we did not show up for over four more hours. He was visibly relieved but also curious as where we had been. I told him driving around in circles as far as I could tell. He told me that the DCO wanted to give us our country cultural briefing now that we were finally there. He led us down to the brigade staff area. I noted that it was around 0030 hours at this point and asked how long the brief would take. He said it was usually about an hour or so.
As we assembled, the DCO having eaten his chicken while we waited, came out of his tent with a bullhorn. He welcomed us to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and proceeded to tell us that we should never show the soles of our feet to the Saudis as that was deemed offensive. We should also not take pictures of them because that was deemed offensive. As he was giving us all this wildly valuable information I looked around at the troops and they were falling asleep on their feet. Nobody was paying any heed to what was coming out of the bullhorn. I went up to the DCO and told him the boys were whacked and not paying attention. I suggested that we allow them to find their duffel bags (which were piled in no particular order on several large trucks sitting in the dark outside of the few lights in the camp), get to sleep and we would be happy to get the rest of the brief later that day, it being 0100 by that time. The DCO was a very likeable fellow and seemed somewhat surprised at my request but agreed to it. We never did get the rest of the brief but managed to do pretty well without it.
The troops descended on the baggage trucks once given the word and each man grabbed a duffel bag, pulled it over to the light and read the name out. Although it looked like chaos, within about twenty minutes everybody had their bag. The XO then led us to our assigned tents. As we were walking that way and lugging our gear and duffel bags, he very apologetically informed us that we had tents but no cots. The rest of the brigade had cots but we had only a handful. He said that when the main body of the division moved out of the camp several days earlier, they had been told to leave the cots for follow on units but some had taken the cots anyhow. This left a shortage across the camp, but originally the tents we were assigned had sufficient cots; the unit occupying them before us having better discipline left the cots as ordered. Then the “Great Cot Heist” took place as earlier arriving units from our own brigade came and stole cots from our tents to make up their shortages. The XO and his few advance party team had valiantly tried to guard the cots but found that as soon as they chased one group of cot thieves from one tent, another group was taking cots from the other unguarded tents. Although picturing the event was mildly amusing, we were all too tired to care. We got to our assigned tents, took out a shelter half or poncho and laid it on the powdery coral dust that was the floor of each tent and went to sleep. The XO told me I had a brigade staff meeting in about five hours and I could only groan in response.
When I was at the brigade staff meeting held that morning, I asked the brigade Provost Marshal Officer (PMO) why there were no barriers on the exit road and he said that would require somebody to be driving the wrong way on a one-way road! I suggested that a fellow driving a truck load of explosives that he was going to detonate along with himself was probably not too concerned about getting a traffic ticket. What amazed (and concerned) me was that we were the last unit to arrive but the first to note the lack of barriers into and out of the camp. Our tents were closest to the road and we would be the ones most likely to be blown up, hence my question. The brigade commander said he didn’t think it necessary since we would be leaving in a few days once our ships arrived at the port with all our vehicles. He also said that there was no way to get more barriers as far as he knew. I politely pointed out that the number of barriers on the entrance lane were excessive, extending for over one hundred yards with multiple turns and half of them could be shifted over to the exit lane. The barriers were grudgingly moved the next day so that both roads were now blocked. It was clear that I had not endeared myself to the commander and his staff yet again, but the polite overlooking of shortfalls and other niceties were far outweighed by necessities for doing what’s right to protect your troops. This was not just another exercise, and this was not just training. This was preparation for combat operations in a foreign land. We would be playing for keeps as they say. As I was to learn latter, my belief that we would enter into combat in the future was not generally shared by those on the brigade staff. They had a reason to believe that which will be covered down the road.