Despite everyone’s best efforts, the next few days were utter chaos. The units back in the States were loading the equipment and supplies that they believed would be the most important, but their reporting system could not tell the people on the receiving end what would be dumped on the airport ramp or dockside in the Middle East; and no one knew where to send it to unload. In other words, the strategic airlift delivered their shipments to the wrong bases, and God only knew where equipment and supplies might be found.
Thus, a C-141 might take off from Pope AFB with 82d Airborne Division equipment on pallets. It would land in Spain or Germany to be unloaded, then part of the shipment would be loaded on a C-5, which would land at Riyadh. Meanwhile, the 82d was in Dhahran, in the northeast. So now the troops there were looking for their gear — which was sitting in a mountain of containers on the base at Riyadh — and Transportation Command was listing it as being en route. Try that times ten thousand, and at a growing rate, and you get an idea of what was going on.
(The C-130s turned out to be invaluable in straightening out the strategic airlift mess. Bill Rider just had the loads dumped in theater, then, while people there straightened things out, he sent the big jets back for more.)
In addition, every day people would arrive with no idea of the location of their unit. Thousands of men and women would land, starved for sleep, half-frozen from the long airplane ride, only to emerge in the blistering hot desert, given bottles of water, and asked, “Who are you and where do you want to go?” Most did not have a clue (in which case, if you couldn’t find your unit, you found someone who could use you until things got sorted out).
The pain and suffering the troops endured during the early deployment was beyond belief. At some locations, there was triple bunking — three people sharing a single bed or cot in eight-hour shifts. Later, more people were added to the schedule by making room for sleeping under the bed. The Arab hosts in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman opened up their bases, schools, hangars, and homes to help out. Americans were being housed everywhere.
Yet there was caution. After the 1983 murder of 241 Marines in Beirut by a suicide bomber, hotels were seen as risky (especially by General Schwarzkopf, who had a mania against hotels, because of his fear of terrorists). Often a person would arrive late at night, get bused to a beautiful hotel, enjoy the luxury of a bath with a fine meal and television in an air-conditioned room, only to get dumped in the desert the next day. There were thousands of stories like this.
And there were many snafus — at customs checkpoints, for instance, where vital munitions convoys would be held up at a border by bureaucratic agents. Customs people in every country feel they work for nobody, and that everyone is a smuggler, but this is especially true in countries that forbid the drinking of alcohol and consider bra ads pornography. Better to be slow than to take any risks. A shipment of munitions? Those papers had better be in order.
Then there were the communications shortfalls. Americans are used to telephones and communications access. Now a soldier was deployed to a nation where he needed permission for an international telephone line. He landed and went to the nearest telephone, perhaps a few miles away, so he could call home. But he couldn’t get an operator who knew who he was and where he was trying to call. His frustration level was instantly sky-high… even as he recalled what they’d told him when he’d boarded the aircraft about being ready to fight the minute he hit the ground.
? One of the first deploying USAF units was a support group from the 363d Tactical Fighter Wing at Shaw AFB, South Carolina, who had been on alert to deploy since the crisis had begun. After their F-16s had roared off into the night, the maintenance teams had been loaded onto C-141s en route to who knew where. Hours later — all spent in the hold of a cramped, freezing cargo plane — they landed at midnight somewhere in the Arabian Gulf.
As it happened, their F-16s were at Al Dhafra, and this C-14 had landed at the old military base in Abu Dhabi, about ten miles away, because the ramp at Al Dhafra was full and could not accept them. Nobody in the airplane knew that.
Peering out the aircraft’s door, the thirty men and women from the 363d found only a dark, empty parking ramp, with hellishly hot desert air blasting them in the face. In the distance, they could see the lights of a city.
They climbed down the boarding stairs, and somebody thrust bottled water at them. Not knowing what else to do, they stowed it somewhere, then turned their attention to unloading the equipment they carried on board — spare aircraft engines, toolboxes, weapons, and spare parts. Airpower, as the United States practices it, brings it all — enough for thirty days of fighting until the supply lifeline can be built.
Meanwhile, all around them were guys in white robes and scarves over their heads: pleasant guys, as it happened, who spoke excellent English, though not the drawling southern dialect these folks from South Carolina were used to.
Before long they learned that they’d landed in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and were to be bused to Al Dhafra, the military air base near Abu Dhabi, the capital of the emirate with that name. They were quickly packed into a small but clean bus. Then they headed out on a multilane freeway into the desert night — away from the city! Unaccustomed to the 110?F nighttime heat (it was even hotter during the day, and more humid), they began to drink the bottled water that had been thrust at them earlier, grateful for the relief.
The bus driver, a nice fellow, was from Ethiopia and spoke very little English. After a time, he turned off the highway and onto a dirt road that quickly became part of the vast desert. Up and down they bounced, over sand dunes and rock-strewn waste, until finally the bus came to a halt. “All out here,” the driver ordered. The miserable band, loaded down with duffel bags and personal weapons, straggled out of the bus and assembled somewhere in the hot desert nowhere. Then off went the bus.
At that point, the lieutenant in charge, a young man named Tom Barth, took charge. Charge of what? Charge of whom? Where? Going where? It was pitch black, and the questions from the others started coming. But no answers were apparent.
Soon wild desert dogs began to circle the group, attracted to the smell of food from a few MREs (Meals Ready to Eat — field rations of questionable taste) and leftover in-flight meals. The big question was who was most afraid of whom, but the people did a better job of bluffing, so the wild dogs kept their distance.
Later, from the direction of the city lights they could still see over the horizon, a white cloud started to form. Was it a gas attack from invading Iraqi forces?
Actually, no.
Though this hearty band didn’t know it, they were in fact hundreds of miles south of Kuwait, just a few miles from the UAE coast, and they were observing the sea fog roll in. But just to be on the safe side, the lieutenant had everyone check their gas masks. Though their full chemical protection suits were loaded on the cargo pallets on the ramp next to the aircraft, they all carried a gas mask for just the threat that now seemed to be confronting them.
The fog did not reach them, but in the distance a new terror appeared — the lights of an oncoming car, bouncing from dune to dune. Up drove a dark Mercedes with tinted windows. Terrorists? It stopped, and the electric window slid noiselessly down. Tom Barth, fully aware that it was his responsibility to keep this band alive, ordered security policemen in the group to be ready to shoot, but to aim for the legs, in case this visitor wasn’t
The driver looked at him. “Are you Lieutenant Barth?” he asked politely.
“Yes, I am. Why?” Barth answered, in his most manly manner, greatly relieved.
The driver brushed off his questions and handed Barth a cellular phone.
Composing himself, he spoke into it. “Hello, Lieutenant Barth.”
Rapidly, an American on the other end replied, “Tom, where the
Though Barth had no clue, he did his best to explain. Finally, it was decided. They would just stay put, and someone would come and get them in the morning. Without a word, the Arab (just somebody from the UAE who was told to find the lost Americans) retrieved the phone, closed the tinted window, and drove off into the night, never knowing how close he came to being kneecapped by a terrified American Air Force lieutenant.
The next few hours passed slowly. There were complaints about how fucked up things were — and questions about where the women could go to the bathroom, because not all the bottled water turned into sweat.
