selections of watches and electronics, appealing to the GIs in sporadic English. The scene could be a rerun of another war and another place twenty years ago except for the absence of women.
Almost everything sold is imported. The place is oppressively noisy. Busy honks and revs from the streets mix with murmuring crowd noise and an assortment of music. Playing in one shop is the fluty Arabic dance tunes that blend, as I pass to the next, with the electric twangs of Lynard Skynard singing 'Sweet Home Alabama.'
Suddenly the shops begin to close. All along the street, scrolling metal security doors start to slam shut, as storekeepers usher GIs out. I look at my watch; it is still early. But then I notice that the storekeepers, squeezing padlocks and hurrying away, have left the lights on. It is, of course, prayer time. I'm delighted. Finally I will get to see the real Mideast character.
As I walk to the edge of the street, the prayers begin to roll in from some distant loudspeaker, and I look out to the grassy median between the two streets where a devotee is bowing. But he's isolated. I look up and down the median, and along the sidewalks but see only a few worshipers. Most of the local people stand in groups talking with one another, some smoking cigarettes and chatting with groups of GIs. I'm really surprised. Here in the heart of Islam, very few seem to take their faith seriously. Maybe they're more devout in the other towns. But then maybe they're not so different from us after all.
I go back to Eagletown to find that our crew is nearing the top of the assignment list, and I turn in.
After two and a half days the stage manager finally gives us a mission. But typically, the alert comes after we have been awake about ten hours and I have just turned in for another vain attempt to bank some sleep. It has been an agonizingly long day. The headwinds were fierce, and our trip up from the sands was almost ten hours.
We check in to the transient crew quarters at RAF Upper Heyford, England, and drag our bags up to the rooms. The World War II-vintage building is extremely well kept and nicely decorated. In stark contrast to our facilities at Eagletown, the Upper Heyford officers' quarters feature polished wooden floors with massive doors and high ceilings. The restaurant and pub are all in the same complex, and the pub has been opened to all ranks for the duration of the Persian Gulf operation. We agree to meet with the enlisted guys down in the pub for a round of bitters before turning in.
Mike and I start out the door but turn back and pitch our caps on the beds. He wears a cap bearing the logo of his airline, as do I. We have gotten used to wearing the unauthorized caps. They provide better protection from the sun than the silly flight hats issued us. But the caps are also an outlet for that touch of recalcitrance some of us need in order to avoid feeling like robots. And we were constantly catching hell on account of them. Only a few days before, while walking across a flight line under a relentless Arabian sun, Mike had been hailed by a derisive colonel.
'YOU THERE! YOU WITH THE HAT!'
He put the hat back on as soon as the colonel had blown off steam and departed. Nevertheless, we know better than to wear our hats in high-visibility places such as operations buildings and the like and especially in the club bar.
The pub is crowded with crewdogs. The wall is taking more hits than the dartboard. Flight-suited airmen huddle in comers and around small tables, talking of the usual suite of topics; only the sequence changes, depending on how long the crew has been out and on how tired the men are. A crew fresh from the States, for example, would be discussing the war and the military establishment, most likely, then sports and women. A crew that was tired and had flown many missions without a break at home would generally reverse the order. But the last subject covered was always the same.
The squirrel brothers grab a table, while Mike, Keith, and I squeeze to the bar. A group of a dozen or so crowd together at the center of the bar around a tall guy who is making contorted, impossible movements with raised hands. Mike and I are aghast when we see him. He is wearing
Not many traditions have developed over the years in the Air Force. It's certainly not like the centuries-old Navy, which is infested with them. The tradition of the hat in the bar is about the only one we've got, and it's fiercely protected.
The man appears to be the highest-ranking officer in the pub, though I am his equal. Maybe no one else has had the pluck to challenge him. Or perhaps he has already bought the round and thinks he has earned the right to wear the cap. He's lucky; if he had done this at a fighter base, he would have been seized, and the cap forcibly removed. Moreover, fighter pilots would have taken punitive action for a less well known transgression.
We all have a small pocket that holds a survival knife on the inside left thigh of our flight suits, although few people keep one in it. I lost my survival knife years ago. But fighter pilots wear 'G-suits' over their flight suits, which have identical knife pockets. Having no need for a knife pocket on the flight suit, they tear them off, in a celebrated ritual, and hang them on a wire over their bar like scalps on a lodgepole. All green fighter drivers and other pilots who wander into a fighter lair will suffer the fate.
We lean against the bar down near the end under the bell and order a pint of bitters. Mike is a veteran of several years' active duty and is as incredulous as I over this inexcusable sacrilege. He walks over and checks the guy out, comes back, and breaks the news that the guy's cap bears the logo of an airline that is a fierce competitor of ours. This revelation intensifies our contempt. Obviously he too is a reservist, like most of us here. But I decide to let matters be. We sip our bitters and try to ignore it.
Then he commits an unpardonable sin. He takes off the cap
'Hat on the bar! Hat on the bar! He's buyin'! He's buyin'!'
A momentary hush falls throughout the pub as all faces turn first our way, then his. Then a cheer goes up and the accused disappears in a rushing tide of crewdogs who stake their order at his expense.
As I lean back with a smile of justice and satisfaction, the man resumes his storytelling to his original audience and the dejected crewmen return to their tables. Mike turns to me.
'Can you believe this guy? He's not buying.'
The guy is beginning to get on my nerves. He isn't just trouncing the tradition, he's defiling it. Worse yet, he's souring the image that the enlisted men in the pub have of officers. The Possum, Keith Burton, is getting hot and is mumbling some extremely unflattering remarks about the good major.
I've had about enough and am thinking of leaving, but Mike will not let it be. He weasels in among the huddled group, snatches the cap from the bar, and returns to me. I look at the American Airlines logo, tie it to the bell rope hanging overhead, and lean back to wait.
I see the guy's hand reach back for the cap as he continues his yarning to a few still-faithful listeners. Finding it missing, he snaps his head toward me and then looks up at the bell. He is dishonored and now must save face. Shoving people aside, he drives ahead and thrusts his chest at me. But I stay cool and explain that he had not bought the round as per the tradition, a charge that he disputes, which in turn infuriates the Possum.
'You didn't buy my drink!' Keith charges.
The foolish major counters. 'You're a liar.'
The Possum surges forth, but Mike and I form a barrier. A major confrontation is developing as the guy's crew begins to congregate behind him, but I sense they're only coolly loyal to him. Meanwhile over against the wall, the squirrel brothers sit in a cloud of blue smoke, astutely not interested in participating but urging the Possum on with wild guffaws.
'WEAPONS RELEASED, WEAPONS RELEASED!'
'CLEARED TO KILL. CLEARED TO KILL!'
When the bartender realizes that the mother of all brawls is developing, she pronounces the pub closed and
