A Christmas to Remember

I vividly remember the Christmas spent in the Great Saudi Desert in 1990 waiting to go to war with Iraq.

I have snapshots of the different parts of that day which are imprinted on my mind forever. As I think about it now, safe and warm and dry and home for the holidays as an old retired soldier, I realize that most of the pictures I conjure up from that Christmas spent with Task Force Striker in the desert center around food.

Somebody ought to poll our various groups of combat veterans and ask them if they remember what they had to eat on, say, Christmas Day 1944 or 1951 or 1969, depending on what war they were in. I guarantee you that they can tell you. For the very few World War One vets remaining to us, they could tell you too regardless of how little else they can recollect. I think the reason for this incredible feat of memory is twofold. The first is, we remember it because we were away from home and in a combat zone with a band of brothers we had been in combat with or would go into combat with. The second reason we remember that particular Christmas is because of the food

Napoleon said an army travels on its stomach, which is absolutely true. Soldiers will endure incredible privations and danger and extremes in weather and temperature as long as they are properly fed.

Note, I said “properly” fed and not “well” fed.

I can remember only a few days where we were “well” fed in the 7 1/2 months of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and Christmas was absolutely the best. We had been in the desert since early September after shipping out of Ft. Benning, Ga., in August only two weeks after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. We came to the desert with our combat vehicles and the clothes on our backs and in our rucksacks. We slept under our camouflage nets and took what shelter they provided us from the blistering damn sun during the day. There were no tents, no latrines, no showers, no food other than Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), which were unpalatable.

How unpalatable?

My Hummer driver, Cpl. Barron Scott, put out a corned beef hash MRE for a starving Iraqi dog we came across in the war, and the dog refused to eat it! That made it unanimous. I never met anybody else who would eat it either.

We ate MREs for three meals a day unheated for about the first four weeks in the desert. It was up to 135 degrees during the day, so unheated was OK. Finally in early October, we started to get the Army’s answer to real food, the T-ration.

They are flat tins shaped like a sardine can but about 16 inches long and 10 inches wide and 3 inches deep. They are easy to transport and to heat up in special ovens. Add a huge can opener, and you’re in business.

The only problem with them is that they are incredibly tasteless and boring.

An even bigger problem with T-rations is when they are not properly distributed because the servicing logistics unit was too lazy to break the rations down properly and engaged in the “forklift distribution system.”

Forklift “Distribution” Model

After a month of T-rations with a reasonable amount of variety, Task Force Striker fell prey to the forklift distribution system. We all rolled up to the chow hall area, centrally located inside the Task Force perimeter, to discover that we were having chicken cacciatore for breakfast. Most troops groused some but ate it because it was still better than nothing or an MRE. Dinner came, and the same meal was served. Breakfast came, and the same meal was served again.

Thinking this odd and sometimes being a bit slow, I finally asked our mess sergeant, SFC Vern Bramlett (who was the best mess sergeant in the Army!) why we were eating chicken cacciatore for breakfast and dinner each day. (Lunch was always an MRE.) He told me that was all the ration distribution center had to give us, and that we had a 30-day supply to boot! I wasn’t concerned at this point because I told him, bright fellow that I am, that he should trade with other units.

Another few days went by, and we were still having chicken cacciatore twice a day with a rare day or two of something more palatable for breakfast. Then the twice-a-day chicken cacciatore started up again, and I again talked to SFC Bramlett, who looked absolutely exhausted.

He said, in essence, “Look, colonel. I’ve been driving all over this theater every day trying to find somebody to trade with, and nobody wants chicken cacciatore. Even the Brits who have the worst chow in the entire coalition won’t trade with us!” The situation was hopeless.

Christmas is Coming

I have always prided myself on being close to my soldiers. I love the little rascals, and they know they can tell me what’s really going on. If it’s bad stuff and I can fix it, they know I’ll fix it. For the next several weeks, the constant theme from the troops was how much they couldn’t stand chicken cacciatore anymore.

Many soldiers were skipping the breakfast and dinner meals and making do with an MRE. I was always able to cheer them up a bit by telling them that we would get a great meal on Christmas and to hang in there. I used phrases like “We’ll eat like kings!” “We’ll be swimming in a sea of great chow!” “There will be more chow than any human being could possibly eat!” Then they would always ask if there would be seconds allowed. I would pause and say very dramatically and somberly, “Yes, there will be seconds allowed.”

This grand pronouncement would generally be followed by high fives and cheering. As we departed one of these sessions, my command sergeant major, Dwight Hood, suggested that it would be a very ugly thing if the Army didn’t come through with good chow and enough of it so that the troops could go through the chow line a second time. I was supremely confident, however, and blithely mentioned to the mess sergeant my promises to the troops and noticed that his pile of chicken cacciatore tins had not dwindled very much. To his credit, SFC Bramlett said he and his guys who in my opinion were the best cooks in the Army, would make it happen, come hell or high water!

The Great Day

Christmas Day 1990 broke somewhat chilly but clear in the desert.

The heat had finally moderated over the past few months of fall, and the temperatures were only up in the 80s or low 90s during the day. Unfortunately, it was starting to get downright cold and even below freezing at night, and we had only light summer clothing. As we moved around to get warm, the Christmas greetings fairly flew and even the profanity so prevalent in a line combat battalion moderated for the day.

The smell of turkeys and hams cooking up at the mess hall wafted throughout the task force area. We had a formation for all the soldiers, and I gave them one of my famous speeches, which they tolerated fairly well. Among other things, I told them if I couldn’t be with my family back in Georgia on this day, I couldn’t ask for a better bunch of bastards to be with. They liked that, and they liked when I told them how proud I was of them for their service to their country, particularly when the vast majority of their fellow citizenry had elected (and continues to elect) not to serve.

I toured the area, talking to the troops and wishing them a merry Christmas, and they were all excited about the meal coming up. It was the central theme ultimately of every discussion that day. All was well. Things couldn’t be better. Then my headquarters company commander, Capt. Butch Botters, came up to me with words every commander dreads: “Sir, we have a problem.”

Butch was never one to get flustered, so I knew it was a big problem.

Butch pointed to the west to show me the problem. The whole horizon from left to right and as high as the sun was a wall of dirty brown and moving rapidly our way. We were about to get hit with a desert sand storm, which could sport winds of more than 100 m.p.h. and radically change the entire desert by moving millions of tons of sand in a matter of hours.

We had experienced several of these storms earlier in our stay in the open desert and knew that they could last for an hour or a week. We also knew that the blowing sand would ruin Christmas dinner. We didn’t have tents to serve the food in, so the chow line had always been an open-air affair, with the troops eating their meals on a few picnic tables or standing with their plates on the hoods of vehicles.

Butch had mobilized his supply troops, and they came up with a salvaged cargo parachute that had been traded for with the 82d Airborne Division troops somewhere along the line. The top of the parachute was lifted up on the boom of a heavy recovery vehicle to make a tent. The troops were frantically banging 6-foot-long steel fence pickets into the ground to hold the edges of the parachute down, and the rising wind was plucking them out as if they were straws and flinging them dangerously around the area.

The wind was probably 80 m.p.h. by then, or even slightly more.

The troops playing sports stopped their games and rushed to help. Everybody had visions of the Christmas dinner they had dreamed about for weeks covered with sand. I ran off most of the extra troops before they got killed by flying 6-foot pickets and watched in despair as more pickets ripped loose and the wind got ahead of them. I thought all was lost until the support platoon leader, Lt. Dan Vanucci, drove a 5-ton truck along the edge of the parachute and it held.

The wind was roaring by then, but the parachute held. Dan had his guys quickly park more trucks around the perimeter of the parachute.

“God  bless us, every one!”

The companies had drawn lots to see in what order they would proceed through the chow line. It takes a few hours to feed a thousand men in the best of times, but that day we had to slow the pace even more because of the limited space inside the parachute tent. The wind howled and beat at the soldiers standing patiently in line waiting for their turns to get inside the tent.

They laughed and joked in spite of the blowing sand, and my officers and I waited at the end of the line. (Officers eat last, and with their troops in good units.)

Finally, it was our turn to enter the parachute tent. We came in, and it was glorious in spite of the red haze of sand dust hanging in the air. Butch had the few picnic tables we owned dragged into the tent, and each table had a decoration on it and a menu, which was staggering in its scope.

We went through the chow line, and the cooks, who had suffered the slings and arrows of 1,000 chicken cacciatore-hating men for a month were grinning from ear to ear as they dished up the greatest meal ever eaten. Normally, the officers would have spelled the cooks who had stayed up all night cooking the meal in order to serve their soldiers, but the cooks had refused to leave the line this time.

They were justifiably proud of what they had done and would not share the hour. Our plates were so heavy with good and plentiful chow that it was almost a modern miracle to behold.

I sat down and thoroughly enjoyed my feast in spite of a slight sandy-flavored grittiness in the shrimp cocktail. All was right with the world, and it was a great day. It ended on the best note ever when a young trooper who was obviously spending his first Christmas away from home shyly came up to my table to wish me a merry Christmas.

This kid couldn’t have weighed 120 pounds and was probably all of 18 years old. He gave me a crooked smile when I wished him a merry Christmas back and he said, “Sir, I’m going back for seconds just like you said!”

I could only think of Tiny Tim’s “God bless us, everyone!” from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as I got up to shake the young soldier’s hand and slap him on the back to wish him Godspeed as he headed back into the chow line. I wiped away a tear and knew right then and there that we would beat the Iraqi army to its knees in the pending war.

Tiny Tim was getting seconds.