One thing that I learned about war is that it’s not all Hamburger Hill, Saving Private Ryan, We Were Soldiers, or any other numerous war movies that you’ve seen. There are a lot of behind the scene kind of people that help those out in front do their job. It’s still dangerous because you’re in a war zone and it takes a lot for those on the front lines to do their jobs.
My unit’s job was fuel supply. We basically thought of ourselves as glorified gas attendants. We unloaded fuel off the fuel trucks into our “fuel farm” and pumped it up about a mile to the Air Force who was running the flight line. We moved about 500,000 to 750,000 gallons of fuel a day. We had C-130 cargo plans flying in all day and those planes have a 50,000 gallon fuel capacity. We also had fighter planes come in and one time one was on fire and flew over the fuel farm on its way into the runway. That was pretty cool, well, maybe not for the pilot.
I was in a fox hole with an MP with a 50 cal machine gun aimed at the rear gate when we declared war on Iraq. On the radio we listened live to President George Bush’s address. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We expected suicide bombers, trucks driving through the gate to attempt sabotage, or any other form of retaliation. It didn’t happen.
I was at that fuel farm a few weeks and they asked for volunteers to head about 100 miles north, about 30 miles south of the Iraq border and start a new fuel farm at the end of a small runway. Me and about 5 others loaded up our gear and headed to our new “home.” We didn’t see a shower or hot food for about a month. Later on we did hook up with another small unit of about 15. We did a lot of sitting around waiting for things to happen. We supplied fuel to the Air Force and we had fuel trucks coming in and out throughout the day either picking up or dropping off fuel.
A few weeks after being there we heard about a “camp” about 3 miles away that had hot food and showers. Four of us decided to walk there, with permission from our Sgt, of course. As we’re walking across the desert in the middle of nowhere to get over to the camp we have to cross a road. As we’re about to cross a station wagon comes by, stops, asks us where we were going and offers us a ride. He then tells us that he’s from England and he works on the underwater oil rigs for the Saudi Arabians and lives in a compound with some other men right behind the camp. He then offers to take us there for food, shower, and a phone call home. We get there, and to be honest, it was hard to choose to shower first or eat. We all chose shower. We then went to eat. They had a buffet set up (this was normal for the men who lived there) and the cook, who was from the Philippines, had prepared a lot of food. I had some of the best curry that I’ve ever had in my life. I then called home but had to leave a message (answering machine, cell phones weren’t around). Then they took us back to our “home” and offered our small unit to keep coming over, which we did but created a schedule of when we would go over.
The biggest scare we had happened at about 2am when we heard a huge explosion. It turned out to be a scud missile that landed about 5 miles away. It was basically a missile that was pointed in the desired direction and when it ran out of fuel, it fell, hopefully injuring the enemy. We had not built a bunker yet and since we were worried about chemical agents, we put on our gas masks and went back to sleep. I had a short scare because I went to reach for mine next to my bunk and couldn’t find it quickly and had a moment of panic.
At night we could hear a low rumble that sounded like thunder. It turned out to be us bombing the Iraqi’s getting ready to cross the border to kick the Iraqi’s out of Kuwait.
The ground war lasted three days and they surrendered. In March, we packed up our gear. We pumped the fuel that was left into the middle of the desert. We were told that the Saudi’s told us to do it because that’s where it came from in the first place. We headed back south to gather our unit together from all over the country and to prepare to come home by cleaning our gear.
Our group was the first to get to the staging area and one night the captain comes in and asks one of the guys if he had his driver’s license. He said, “no, sir.” He then asked me and I said, “Yes, sir” and he goes, “You’re my new driver.” For the next two weeks I drove the captain wherever he had to go. I’d be up at 7am checking the Humvee and back around 7 or 8pm after stopping at “Camp 5” to get a shower. The other guys had to walk a mile to get a shower.
When it was time, we loaded a 777 civilian transport plane and headed home. We stopped in Belgium and then in Bangor, ME where we had an awesome military welcome home party in the terminal. I got back an hour early to the plane because I wanted to sit up in the cockpit during take-off, which I did. It was awesome and the plane felt like it went straight up in the air and within seconds we were above the clouds. We arrived back in CA and spent the next couple weeks at Camp Pendleton processing out of the military to go back to our reserve unit. All total, I was in Saudi Arabia about three and a half months.
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