kitchens, mess halls, and a water tower to be replenished by convoys of trucks from the nearest water source.
Al Kharz lies fifty miles southeast of Riyadh, which turned out to be just three miles beyond the maximum range of the Scud missiles in Iraq’s possession. It would be home for three months to five squadrons: two of F-15E Strike Eagles—the 336th Rocketeers and the Chiefs, the 335th Squadron out of Seymour Johnson, who joined at this point; one of F-15C pure-fighter Eagles; and two of F-16 Falcon fighters.
There was a special street for the 250 female personnel in the wing; these included the lawyer, ground-crew chiefs, truck drivers, clerks, nurses, and two squadron intelligence officers.
The aircrew flew themselves up from Thumrait; the ground crew and other staff came by cargo airplane. The entire transshipment took two days, and when they arrived, the engineers were still at work and would remain so until Christmas.
Don Walker had enjoyed his time in Thumrait. Living conditions were modern and excellent, and in the relaxed atmosphere of Oman, alcoholic drinks were permitted within the base.
For the first time, he had met the British SAS, who have a permanent training base there, and other “contract officers” serving with the Omani forces of Sultan Qaboos. Some memorable parties were held, members of the opposite sex were eminently datable, and flying the Eagles on feint missions up to the Iraqi border had been great.
Of the SAS, after a trip into the desert with them in light scout cars, Walker had remarked to the newly appointed squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Turner:
“These guys are certifiably insane.”
Al Kharz would turn out to be different from Thumrait. As the home of the two holy places, Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia enforces strict teetotalism, as well as any exposure of the female form below the chin, excluding hands and feet.
In his General Order Number, One, General Schwarzkopf had banned all alcohol for the entire Coalition forces under his command. All American units abided by that order, and it strictly applied at Al Kharz.
At the port of Dammam, however, the American off-loaders were bemused by the amount of shampoo destined for the British Royal Air
Force. Crate after crate of the stuff was unloaded, put onto trucks or C-130 Hercules air-freighters, and brought to the RAF squadrons. They remained puzzled that in a largely waterless environment, the British aircrew could spend so much time washing their hair. It was an enigma that would continue to puzzle them until the end of the war.
At the other side of the peninsula, on the desert base of Tabuq, which British Tornados shared with American Falcons, the USAF pilots were even more intrigued to see the British at sundown, seated beneath their awnings, decanting a small portion of shampoo into a glass and topping it up with bottled water.
At Al Kharz the problem did not arise—there was no shampoo.
Conditions, moreover, were more cramped than at Thumrait. Apart from the wing commander, who had a tent to himself, the others from colonel on down shared on the basis of two, four, six, eight, or twelve to a tent, according to rank.
Even worse, the female personnel were out of bounds, a problem made even more frustrating by the fact that the American women, true to their culture and with no Saudi Mutawa—religious police—to see them, took to sun- bathing in bikinis behind low fences that they erected around their tents.
This led to a rush by the aircrew to commandeer all the hilux trucks on the base, vehicles with their chassis set high above the wheels. Only from the top of these, standing on tiptoe, could a real patriot proceed from his tent to the flight lines, passing through an enormous diversion to drive down the street between the female tents, and check that the women were in good shape.
Apart from these civic obligations, for most it was back to a creaking cot and the “happy sock.”
There was also a new mood for another reason. The United Nations had issued its January 15 deadline to Saddam Hussein. The declarations coming out of Baghdad remained defiant. For the first time it became clear that they were going to go to war. The training missions took on a new and urgent edge.
For some reason, December 15 in Vienna was quite warm. The sun shone, and the temperature rose. At the lunch hour Fraulein Hardenberg left the bank as usual for her modest lunch and decided on a whim to buy sandwiches and eat them in the Stadtpark a few blocks away from the Ballgasse.
It was her habit to do this through the summer and even into the autumn, and for this she always brought her sandwiches with her. On December 15 she had none.
Nevertheless, looking at the bright blue sky above Franzis-kanerplatz and protected by her neat tweed coat, she decided that if nature was going to offer, even for one day, a bit of
summer, to the Viennese—she would take advantage and eat in the park.
There was a special reason she loved the small park across the Ring.
At one end is the Hubner Kursalon, a glass-walled restaurant like a large conservatory. Here during the lunch hour a small orchestra is wont to play the melodies of Strauss, that most Viennese of composers.
Without being able to afford to lunch there, others can sit outside the enclosure and enjoy the music for free. Moreover, in the center of the park, protected by his stone arch, stands the statue of the great Johann himself.
Edith Hardenberg bought her sandwiches at a local lunch-bar, found a park bench in the sun, and nibbled away while she listened to the waltz tunes.
“
She jumped, jerked out of her reverie by the low voice saying “Excuse me.”
If there was one thing Miss Hardenberg would have none of, it was being addressed by a complete stranger. She glanced to her side.
He was young and dark-haired, with soft brown eyes, and his voice had a foreign accent. She was about to look firmly away again when she noticed the young man had an illustrated brochure of some kind in his hand and was pointing at a word in the text. Despite herself she glanced down. The brochure was the illustrated program notes for
“Please, this word—it is not German, no?”
His forefinger was pointing at the word
She should have left there and then, of course, just gotten up and walked away. She began to rewrap her sandwiches.
“No,” she said shortly, “it’s Italian.”
“Ah,” said the man apologetically. “I am learning German, but I do not understand Italian. Does it mean the story, please?”
“No,” she said, “it means the score, the music.”
“Thank you,” he said with genuine gratitude. “It is so hard to understand your Viennese operas, but I do love them so much.”
Her fingers slowed in their flutter to wrap the remaining sandwiches and leave.
“It is set in Egypt, you know,” the young man explained. Such nonsense, to tell her that, she who knew every word of
“Indeed it is,” she said. This had gone far enough, she told herself.
Whoever he was, he was a very impudent young man. Why, they were almost in conversation. The very idea.
“The same as
“I like Verdi, but I think I prefer Mozart.”
Her sandwiches were rewrapped; she was ready to go. She should just stand up and go. She turned to look at him, and he chose that moment to look up and smile.
It was a very shy smile, almost pleading; brown spaniel eyes topped by lashes a model would have killed for.
