LT Gress, LT Weaver, CPT Hilferty. Port of Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Note my teenager-like “I’m really badass” posture. December, 1990.

Tent City
("Get out of my face or I'll rip your eyeballs out and skull-fuck you." Drill Instructor SSG James, USMC, May, 1982)

Upon arrival in Saudi Arabia we were taken to “Tent City” near the Port of Dammam, run by XVIII Airborne Corps--the parent unit of the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions. Those divisions had been the first US forces flown into the country, intended to give Saddam pause as his forces consolidated an hour's drive north of us in Kuwait. A charm of airborne divisions is that they are lightly equipped so you can get them and all of their equipment to wherever you need them in a couple hundred big cargo-plane trips. The downside of being lightly equipped is that you have to take care that you aren’t the guy bringing a rifle to a tank fight. Had Saddam kept pushing his armored forces south, he could have rolled right over the airborne divisions who rely on air support for most of their anti-armor capability.

You never want to be in a situation where air support is your sole option. Air support is often grounded by wind, blowing sand, limited visibility, the bad guys shooting back, or Happy Hour at the officer's club.

Tent City was a two square kilometer dense mass of dusty green tents that housed about 15,000 US troops all jammed cheek to jowl. It was a security nightmare. The perimeter barrier was a cyclone fence, and therefore offered neither cover nor concealment. There was a constant flow of locals and their vehicles through the front gate with no real inspection nor traffic control measures. Rapid movement inside Tent City, necessary to get additional forces to a problem at the front gate or a stretch of perimeter, was impossible because of the sheer number of residents, densely packed tents, and the dense web of tent guy-ropes between tents. Meanwhile, we were kept on edge by a constant stream of warnings describing the threat of drive-by shootings, mortar attacks, or insurgents.

The 15,000 soldiers didn't really have anything to do. Bored kids hung out and chatted, played cards, flirted, and tried to avoid work details.  It was a big high school summer camp that failed to put fun activities in the plan--leaving all the campers to their own devices.

This very foreign environment started chafing me immediately. Although I’d spent nine years in the Marines and Army, I didn’t have any experience with rear echelon pogue(*) support types such as those organizations that existed up at corps headquarters. Also, I was wired a bit tight back then. This was an XVIII Airborne Corps operation in a foreign land under threat by a couple hundred thousand determined enemy 2hrs hour away. However, instead of being 15k mature professional military types preparing for war, armed at all times, and soberly maintaining wary situational awareness of their surroundings, these were a bunch of kids romping around in shorts and flip-flops. It was bewildering. I was really quite out of step.

(*) "Pogue" is a derogatory term for rear echelon military types. They are far away from anything that goes "bang". In stark contrast to the privations, exhaustion, and the need for self-discipline that characterizes the pointy end of the military, pogues lead a comfortable life of warm beds, climate controlled workspaces, and coffee on demand. Antonym: Warrior.

One of the things that irritated the shit out of me at Tent City was that the soldiers just didn't look like soldiers. One of the ingredients of getting military types to act like warriors is to ensure that they look like warriors. New soldiers are taught both the formal rules and the informal traditions associated with the wearing of their uniforms. With the exception of the most elite units, a group taking pride in wearing their uniforms properly is a indication that they view themselves as trained professionals. I'd been conditioned such that my idea of a sloppy uniform was an unbuttoned pocket. What the 15,000 soldiers at Tent City wore looked like the result of a high school fieldtrip to an Army Surplus store. "What the fuck", I wondered, "was going on with the non-commissioned officers (NCO) at XVIII Airborne Corps that this sort of thing was acceptable?"

Ironically, I’d often been the lone voice that felt strongly enough about stupid uniformity to push back a bit. The idea that, while out in the field, everyone had to be precisely standardized had long struck me as over-wrought. If someone wanted to carry an extra canteen, magazine pouch, or whatever, I’d try to keep the brass out of their hair. In my opinion, If someone wanted to carry an extra canteen of water in the desert, telling them they couldn't have extra water because of "uniformity", was stupid.

The folks in this rear echelon pogue ant-hill seemed to think of the Army battledress uniform as a "theme." Like if you were to attend a party that had a specified theme; a common thread from which to weave your own imaginative "look." Every time I went to chow I'd end up standing next to soldiers wearing, for example, the newly issued desert night camouflage smock, as a bath robe of sorts. Complete with bare legs and flip-flop sandals that we called “shower shoes." The uniformity-obsessed martinets were getting the last laugh on me.

My irritation occasionally got to the point where I was unable to keep my mouth shut. On numerous occasions I tried to encourage the nearby pogue NCO with growled questions like “We're two hours from the enemy and you're standing around in skivvy shorts and shower shoes. What the fuck kind of example are you setting?" I did a lot of glaring and scowling during the couple weeks in Tent City.

I was young, foolish, dramatic, and a product of a different path. I didn’t understand that the Marines and my recent Army assignment in Korea were not like the rest of the military. The Army of today is different. After decades of deployments, a temporary assembly area in a threat theater is not summer camp. But in 1990, our nation had been in no conflict of note in almost a generation. It was new to us.


5-18IN(M) Command Post, Tent City, Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Note dense web of guy ropes at right. Dec90.

You are not special.
Remember, this is 1990 and we were not as sensitive then to some things as we are now. Don’t judge through more modern values.

CPT Hilferty, LT Weaver, and I were in the advance party command post (CP) tent when one of the squad leaders came in and complained that some of our group had been giving one of his youngest guys a hard time. His guy was Vietnamese and he was getting harassed for being a “gook."

This was 1990. The Vietnamese “boat people,” that came to our country from 1973-1975, had included a lot of kids. Many of these highly motivated and patriotic types had joined the military. I’d known some in college and in the Marines and every Vietnamese kid I’d ever known had worked his ass off at whatever he pursued. Their personal stories had a common refrain of how, upon arrival, one parent and all the kids worked while the other parent got a professional degree. The parent's roles then reversed and both would end up with professional degrees. Finally, with two good incomes, the family would start putting their kids through college. These stories were a heart-warming affirmation that we really were the land of opportunity. 

CPT Hilferty was seriously pissed that one of the kids was being singled out because he was “different." I seemed to get emotionally invested in every single little thing, but Hilferty’s style had been to just casually complain about everything. If you observed him closely, however, you were left with the impression that the complaints and criticism were just a hobby--he didn’t actually give a shit. This was different. Hilferty was seriously pissed. He had SFC Maxwell call a formation in front of our hooches. Greg Weaver and I, as usual, fell in to the rear of the formation, with our own hooch right behind us.

Hilferty tore into the platoon something fierce. He reminded them that we were right on the edge of a shooting match and that we were surrounded by clueless people in robes and flip flops. He said that the only people we could depend on, here and out in the desert, were each other--our brothers to the left and right of us. He was absolutely spitting fury that a couple shitheads would harass another of our group, and that others would hear this harassment and fail to stop it. “I don’t care if you are a Spic, Chink, N****r, Wop, Wetback or Gook. You....are.....not.....special. We are all brothers in green, we may have to protect each other with our fucking lives, and if I hear of one more motherfucker harassing someone else because of their color, YOU WILL FUCKING SWIM HOME!” he shouted. The entire formation was buffeted rearward by the angry words. I actually saw the entire group shift their balance rearward a bit, then shift forward, recovering their balance.

There was several seconds of complete silence as the storm of outrage passed. Then a plaintive voice was heard.

“Sir, you can’t say that."

CPT Hilferty, voice now calm, “Can’t say what?”

“Sir, you can’t say n****r.”

Hilferty stood there a heartbeat. You could see him processing this. He was running thru his memory tapes to recall his exact words so he could understand this complaint. Then he realized the reference.

Looking in the direction of the anonymous voice, Hilferty exclaimed, “Oh, I can’t say n****r, eh? N****r n****r n****r n****r n****r. There!”

I immediately locked my face and diaphragm rigid. I did an about face and was in our hooch in 2 strides. Greg was on my heels. I shoved my face in a blanket to muffle the howls of laughter. When I regained control and sat up, Greg was sitting on his cot chuckling and wiping his eyes. Today, it wouldn't matter that the N word was used in the context of yelling at some folks about being racist shitheads. Context wouldn't matter, you'd be done. But in 1990 context mattered.

Weapons “off safe”.
Many of the kids running around Tent City were unarmed. That was alarming. Of those that carried their M16, most of them had their weapon off safe. The population density of Tent City was such that one was always in streams of other people. I found my eyes drawn to every weapon around me and they were almost always off safe. I must have growled “Put your goddamned weapon on safe” about 100,000 times. It made me crazy. These people paid no attention to their weapon's safety switch. Further, these people apparently came from units with no tradition of weapon's safety. This was incomprehensible to me.

For nine years in the military, and as a kid growing up, it had always been pounded into me that if you are carrying a weapon, you obsess over the weapon’s safety switch. One’s thumb should always rest on the safety switch so you have constant physical feedback that the weapon is on safe. It’s not something you have to think about it.

The reason this was so important even though we had no ammunition is that being obsessed with weapon's safety is a behavior you learn with an unloaded weapon. If you issue someone live ammo, it's a little bit late to spend months imprinting upon them good weapon's safety habits. Imagine being in a scenario where it's likely that bad guys will be approaching soon to kill the folks you're responsible for, but you're scared to give your people ammunition because you've failed to make them safe with live ammo. That's a perfect example of a pogue military organization focusing on the no-account "we look good" slide presentation of the week at the cost of any focus on the "no shit" issues that are genuinely important.

The M16A1 Safety Selector Switch. Since it's on Semi, it's "off-Safe." (DOD).

Sadly, the Army doesn't really teach weapon's safety in boot camp. Each kid is issued an M16, but it's treated not like a weapon but like a plastic and metal farm implement that they're required to occasionally carry around. Only for a couple days do the kids use the rifle as intended. During "Range Week", they're (barely) taught to shoot by strictly following basic commands, one after another. In such a carefully controlled brief introduction to shooting a rifle you don't learn "habits." What you learn is to rigidly follow each step, as directed.

It is up to units, NCOs really, to teach weapon's safety. When the soldiers go out into the field on exercises they have to drilled to put their weapon on safe the heartbeat the rifle is handed to them in the arms room; to have their thumb on their safety selector switch whenever possible, and to habitually note the position of the safety switches of the rifles near them.  This wasn't an NCO failure, it was an Army culture failure, an Army leadership failure. We, the US Army, had failed to teach most of our soldiers how to be safe with their personal weapons, and therefore we were as much of a danger to each other, as to our nation's foes. It was bewildering.

Tent City Officer Of the Day (OOD).
To my very great surprise, I was informed that some random list of officers had worked its way down to my name and I was to be in charge of Tent City's security for 24 hours. “Holy shit”, I thought with awful trepidation. I was suddenly to be responsible for the safety of 15,000 summer campers, in charge of a security force I'd never worked with, responsible for security operations I was unfamiliar with, for a site that had no decent perimeter, in the middle of an entirely uncontrolled Saudi Arabian light industrial area. It made my eyes wide as saucers. I was really such a terrible choice for this.

Since leaving Korea I was seeing a very different side to the Army. In the Marines and during my year with the Army in Korea there had been a philosophy of being ready at a moment’s notice, of being a serious professional, of being a warrior. But now I was seeing some kind of garrison force world that I’d not known existed. It felt like I was observing a high school Junior ROTC program full of kids vaguely considering joining the military, organized by teachers that didn't have their heart in it. The soldiers and leaders behaved as if they felt that "bad scary things will never happen to me, so I'll just do my job and all will be well." I mused that maybe the leaders figured they’d get a year’s warning before "bad things" so they could then transition themselves and their charges, at a relaxed pace, to a more combat-ready frame of mind; a more warrior-like ethos of contained aggressiveness, and also an emphasis on wary situational awareness and weapons safety.

In Tent City there had been positively zero discussion with the leaders of the resident units on security subjects such as how we might defend ourselves, how we might get live ammo, or what external security force we might call upon to aid us. There were a couple hundred thousand bad guys just over the horizon and security "discussions" were limited to daily warnings that the threat level was extremely high. I didn't understand how there could be "warnings" without "plans."

The haughty maroon beanie(*) XVIII Airborne Corps pogues in charge of Tent City were all logistics types who didn’t seem to give a shit about security nor, in my young opinion, could they have executed site security ops for a girl scout jamboree. The pogues just wanted to “create the appearance” of having security. That’s what we called a “finger-drill”. You write something out on paper that briefs well, but in practice is a complete joke.

(*) Maroon beanie is a reference to the maroon beret that Airborne types wear. 82nd Airborne types are fairly serious types, but their corps HQ types aren’t necessarily.

Suddenly 1LT “wired a bit too tight” Gress was responsible for the security of 15 thousand soldiers jammed into two square kilometers. Each guard was given a magazine with five rounds in it with clear guidance to put the loaded magazine into his mag pouch, not into his weapon. We used 30 round magazines, but we were only allowed to put five rounds into it? That struck me as crazy. A soldier’s “basic load” of ammo is 210 rounds. I asked about the ammunition economizing but the LTC, that seemed to be running the place, told me that it would be “dangerous” to give the guards more ammunition.

Consider an accidental shooting scenario. Some knucklehead is screwing around with his weapon and suddenly "bang," it fires. Which bullet got fired?--The first bullet in the magazine. In order for the sixth bullet in the magazine to cause a problem, the knucklehead would have to first remove five.  Supporting a stupid policy can be explained away as apathy. But trying to convince someone else that the stupid policy makes sense, is quite different. Either the LTC was an idiot, or he figured that I was.

The maroon beanie types had come up with a solution that “sounded” safer, but the only genuine impact the "five round limit" had would be to ensure that the soldier who really needed ammunition would immediately run out. This was a "finger-drill"--a reference to a plan that sounds ok when you write it on paper, but in actual practice is stupid. Because you only "write it," not "do it," it's a finger-drill.  

As a youngster, when my Marine Corps unit was out in the bush, the guy on guard had live ammo. We were in Southern California--no one was going to attack us. But having live ammo made the guard a lot more serious and it got him used to being safe with a loaded weapon. In Korea, my first Army duty assignment, we didn’t always have live ammo in our magazines, but it was always close at hand. Since that was all I knew, I assumed that all military organizations thought that way. I was wrong about that.

I found a box of loaded magazines under my OOD desk and asked about it. I was told that the loaded mags were for the Quick Reaction Force (QRF). "What? How could the QRF be “quick” if they first had to come to the CP and dig under my desk for ammo?"

So I started issuing out loaded magazines to the QRF and also the guard towers. Each QRF soldier was issued a couple loaded magazines. Each guard tower got a box of spare magazines that would stay in their tower unless needed.

I’ve never really understood the Army’s obsession with accounting for every single bullet, each with a value of about a nickel, but it was an easy outrage to avoid so I toed the line and made everyone sign for their ammo. There were still some maroon beanies in the area and they objected to me issuing out all the ammunition. I reminded them that as the OOD, I was responsible for base security. The base commander, the LTC who was gone for the day, could direct me as to how he wanted me to do things, but all the staff could do is take the 24 hour shift themselves--letting me return to my hootch so I could get back to the paperback I was reading.

The Quick Reaction Force. None of the QRF were combat arms types like Infantry, Armor, or Artillery, nor did any of them seem to know each other. I had the Guard-force non-commissioned officer in charge (NCOIC), the senior SGT, organize them into squads and fire-teams. Then we spent four hours working on QRF basics. We needed to get the buddy teams and fire-teams used to working with each other. We rehearsed various scenarios that had the fire-teams moving through Tent City in a hurry to reinforce the perimeter, and then finding positions that were roughly on line, such that they could engage whatever threat might be attacking.

Moving down the “roads” was easy enough, but moving between the tents was hard, even in daylight. The tents were packed closely together, and the spaces between tents were a spider-web of guy-ropes fastened to stakes. The troops were a complete disaster at first. But, as they got the hang of it, hustling thru the gaps between the tents, with buddy teams and fire teams coordinating movement and sectors of responsibility, it quickly became pretty fun. They weren’t going to become Infantrymen in a day, but they were getting the general idea.

I tried to get the kids to imagine just how scary it would all be if there was shooting on the perimeter and thousands of soldiers, clad mostly in skivvy shorts and flip-flops, were stampeding towards them in the half-light of distant streetlights. I used emotionally loaded graphic language and tried to slowly and dramatically walk their imaginations through frightening scenarios of chaos and terror. If they were called upon to counter an intrusion, they were going to have to be mentally hard. Thousands of soldiers could be depending on them. They couldn’t think about fear, they couldn’t be squeamish, they couldn’t be reluctant to shoot a bad guy. They needed to be able to charge, with their team, to the sounds of the guns and engage the threat. They needed to have these scenarios already thought through so they could quickly overcome the paralysis that comes with shock and fear. As usual, my energy level was high and my language was coarse. I was speaking to them as if they were Marines or Army Infantrymen where the word “fuck” is just punctuation, like one would use a comma.

One boy piped up with “Sir. There. Are. Ladies. Present," chastising me for my profanity. I was momentarily rendered speechless. I was stunned that someone seemed unaware that we were going to war. I turned to one of the knots of young girls in the group and told them, matter-of-factly, “ladies, if my language offends you, you’re in the wrong fucking business.”

Now, 30yrs later, I think back to all of that drama of youth and have to chuckle. But at the time, I was so very serious.

After spending the morning with the QRF, I spent the afternoon touring the perimeter guard posts and gates. When I got back to the Tent City CP, the QRF was gone, just fucking gone. Apparently they had been dispersed to working parties, per general practice. I reacted poorly to that and directed the available NCOs to immediately go retrieve all members of the QRF.

A maroon beanie captain objected. I pointed out that “Sir, if you maroon beanie types disperse the QRF, then we don’t have a QRF." I cocked my head and looked at him suspiciously. "Are you people working for the Iraqies?” I asked. Remember, youthful drama.

Once the QRF had been reconstructed out of its component work parties, we had a short talk.

“You are the Guard-force QRF. The 15 thousand soldiers here in Tent City depend on you to be ready to reinforce the perimeter or engage a threat at any time. Until we get relieved tomorrow, your chain of command is the SGT of the Guard", pointing towards the Guard-force NCOIC, "and the Officer Of the Day", pointing to myself. "No one else. If god almighty tells you to go to the latrines and start burning barrels of shit, you politely tell them that you are Guard-force and subject only to that chain of command.”

There were a lot of grins. No shit details and they'd just been given plausible carte blanche to blow off leaders trying to make them labor in the hot sun.

On my next tour of the perimeter I found one of the Guard-force soldiers with their weapon off safe. That may seem like a small detail to observe, but with practice, your eyes are drawn to the safety selector switch of everyone around you. I asked for her weapon, removed the magazine then pulled the charging handle, noting with dismay the round that ejected. I picked up the ejected round.

I turned to the soldier. “Explain”, I asked. With her eyes darting around and her voice tremulous, she said “I didn’t mean it."

Speaking slowly and quietly, I said “Everyone was told, over and over again, not to put a loaded magazine into their weapon. You not only put the loaded magazine into your weapon, but also chambered a round and had your weapon off-safe. That’s just fucking stupid. You’re lucky you didn’t kill someone. Get in the front leaning rest position (Army-speak for push-up position), now.”

Then I went and talked to the NCO. After being hard on him for paying so little attention to his folks, I brought him over to the soldier. “Specialist (SPC) Jones, get up," I said. Looking back at the SGT, I said “Jones here has shown that she can’t be trusted with live ammunition. Here’s her magazine," handing the SGT the loaded magazine, “that stays with you. Pls ensure that she gets a bag of rocks.”

Then, turning to SPC Jones, who had assumed a position of attention, "Can you be trusted with a bag of rocks? If we are attacked you are to do as best you can to repel the armed attackers by throwing rocks at them." I repeated, "Can you be trusted with a bag of rocks?” Her face was streaked with tears. She nodded in the affirmative.

It was very strange being in charge of girls. It was entirely outside of my experience. Until a situation called for me to do otherwise, it seemed like the best course was to ignore gender all-together and just treat soldiers like soldiers. But certainly my reaction to making a girl cry was different then if it had been a guy with tear-streaked cheeks. I felt lousy about making the girl cry, but the lesson might save someone's life, so I had to ignore my distaste for the role and be a hard-ass. If it had been a guy crying, however, I'd have been hard on him. When faced with a little hardship, one can't simply start bawling. Your friends might one day depend on you to be strong, to shrug off your emotions, and to protect them by standing your ground. In that scenario I would have felt very obligated to help him inch forward a bit in the direction of the stoic warrior ethos of legend.

A couple guard towers later I got to the front gate and found that the security team was no longer carefully inspecting the cars and trucks coming through. The long queue of vehicles waiting to enter was gone. Sure, the long line had been unfortunate, but we had only so much room to set up inspection stations and still carefully control ingress. We weren’t the ones that failed to design the entrance with parallel inspection points, but now the guard force was just waving vehicles through. I inquired with the SGT in charge of the post. He said that a maroon beanie captain had come an hour prior and changed their instructions to “don’t search, just wave them in”. I put them back on track, made sure that they understood that their chain of command went to the SGT of the Guard and then to me--no one else, and then I headed back to the CP to talk to maroon beanie types again.

In retrospect, those vehicles did need to come in at a faster rate. I just didn't have a great solution. Setting up a perimeter entry point for vehicular traffic is tricky. There has to be barriers that prevent a vehicle from charging in. The soldiers doing the inspecting, and the line of cars waiting to be inspected, both need to be carefully over-watched. Foot traffic needs to kept away from the vehicular traffic, and there needs to be a barrier between the inspection point(s) and the interior of the camp. The entry point hadn't been designed with any cleverness. I didn't have much experience in setting up high capacity ingress points, but some of the security weaknesses were pretty obvious.

 In order to really fix the ingress points there would have to be separate people and vehicular gates. Barrier materials would have to be set up to allow multiple parallel inspection points, and control vehicular flow both before and after the inspection points. To do it right, it would probably take a a couple Infantry platoons to create parallel inspection points that would check multiple vehicles and their occupants simultaneously, while over-watching both inspection teams and the ingress queue with a couple crew served automatic and anti-armor weapons. I couldn't move the barrier materials, I didn't have a third of the necessary folks at the gate, and I had no automatic nor anti-armor weapons. Therefore I perceived fixing the long ingress queue was a maroon beanie problem, not an OOD problem. I had enough to worry about just trying to get the most security I could out of the ill-trained and equipped Guard-force.

Back at Tent City HQ I found the same couple of maroon beanie CPT staffers as before. I reminded them that they'd attempted to eliminate the QRF by dispersing them into work parties, and then told them about the front gate being told to quit inspecting vehicles coming into the site. I think I told them that if they interfered with security operations again, I’d find some MPs and have them arrested for “providing aid to the enemy”. I wasn’t sure that was actually in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), but they probably didn’t know the UCMJ any better than I did. There was no Google back then to quickly look it up.

Yes, yes, I took things a little too seriously back then.

Despite a cot being available, I was up all night checking the perimeter. Sleep was out of the question. I was far too anxious about the incredibly vulnerable high value target getting hit during my watch. I was determined that should there be an attack, I'd be in the right place at the right time to give everyone decent guidance on what to do, and I'd have plenty of ammunition on my person to feed everyone around me.

The night was quiet but about when dawn broke some tall lanky Transportation maroon beanie 1LT found me in the CP and told me that I was to be investigated regarding a sexual harassment complaint. That caught me by surprise. Sure, it had been 24 hours of drama but I’d not lifted up anyone’s skirt. It turned out that he was angry that I’d “dropped”, meaning directed to go to the push-up position, the female soldier that had chambered a round and put her weapon off-safe. He seemed to be taking it kind of personally. The reasoning for this being sexual harassment seemed a bit of a stretch. Apparently in their world one was not allowed to drop a soldier because that’s “punishment”, which requires an investigation and supporting paperwork associated with “due process”. Since I’d punished Annie Oakley, my motivation must have been sexual in nature.

This idea that you’re not allowed to put someone in the push-up position was actually coming into vogue in the Army. The memo just hadn’t gotten to me while I was in Korea.

I explained what happened, entirely expecting that would resolve this misunderstanding. I mean for chrissakes, waving around a loaded weapon off-safe?

To my surprise, however, the 1LT was still angry. He got in my face and exclaimed “You can’t do that, YOU CAN’T DO THAT. You can’t put someone in the front leaning rest. This is not boot camp!” I was without response. I absorbed his point and tried to fit it into the context of my military values. I thought to myself, “I can direct people to charge into machine gun fire, but I can’t direct someone to do pushups? We’re going to war and this is what we worry about?” It was bewildering.

The angry maroon beanie 1LT interpreted my silence as meaning I needed more convincing. “I don’t know what kind of unit you come from”, seeing my shoulder tab, “some Ranger unit I guess. But you can’t just drop whoever (sic) you like!”

It had been a hard 24 hours. I was really trying my best, but it just seemed like maroon beanie types were all that was wrong in the universe. I'd had enough.

I stepped back, wearily unslung my rifle off of my back and put it down on the cot. I removed my web belt and load bearing harness and laid them down neatly. Then I removed my pistol and shoulder rig. I didn’t hurry and I didn't look at the 1LT. I was engaging in a bit of theater and there needed to be some time for tension to build.

I returned my eyes to him and stepped back into his range. We glared at each other. I told him “I don’t know from what kind of worthless, irresponsible bunch of pussies you come from, but that SPC was reckless and could have easily killed someone. I prevented that from happening. As far as I'm concerned, her complete lack of weapons safety habits should have her whole chain of command strung up for dereliction of duty. If she was offended in the process, that’s just too damned bad. If you're so upset that you'd like to engage in some hand to hand training outside, lets do it. Otherwise--get out of my face or I'll rip out your eyeballs and skull-fuck you.”

That was actually a great phrase that I got from Drill Instructor SSG James at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego in May 1982. It might have just been an act for the benefit of us Marine recruits, but I was always convinced that, deep inside, Drill Instructor SSG James was an angry person.

The maroon beanie 1LT left.

The LTC base commander returned in the morning and his maroon beanie types complained to him. The LTC chewed on me for a while. He perceived me as a lunatic. I perceived him as being irresponsible with respect to camp security, but I had sense enough to avoid pushing back. Anything I said would just make him madder. 

Upon being relieved of OOD duties a couple minutes early, I went to the hooch and told CPT Hilferty everything that happened. He needed to know because if there were repercussions from my OOD tour, I wouldn't want him surprised. He was not a good listener. I had to stop the story several times because he kept laughing.

The only bright spot in the whole OOD debacle was that when all the ammunition had been handed back in, the count was high so there were rounds left over. I pocketed them. To keep them safe.

Two days later CPT Hilferty told me that some Judge Advocate General (JAG) lawyer-type had come by the 5-18IN hooch asking questions about sexual harassment and unauthorized non-judicial punishment associated with putting a female soldier in the push-up position. CPT Hilferty declared, “I told him to fuck off."

Getting our vehicles.
We pined for our vehicles every day. The Tent City CP would post bumper #'s of arrived vehicles and we watched those lists closely. We also made frequent trips to the huge port of Dammam snooping around for unreported vehicles that said 5-18IN(M) on their bumpers. Claiming one’s vehicles from the port was a heavily  bureaucratic process, but we were ready to grease the process with bolt cutters. Each time we found one of our vehicles parked among the endless lines of military hardware, we tried to find someone to formally give us possession, but if we couldn’t find someone in a couple hours, we cut the locks and took our truck or HMMWV.

We traveled to/from the port in modern luxurious tour buses. One day, while in a bus at the port, the alert sirens suddenly went off, meaning a SCUD alert. These were 1950's technology Soviet Bloc missiles that Iraq occasionally lofted in our general direction. We'd been warned to death about SCUDs, particularly their potential for carrying chemical munitions. But the reality was that Saudi Arabia was an awfully big place, SCUD long range accuracy sucked and no matter if it had a 1000lb conventional warhead or was full of VX Nerve agent, you were only in danger if it hit within a city block.

Yesterday's warning. A SCUD travels pretty fast so it gets to maximum range in under 10min. Yet, it took quite a while for SCUD warnings to reach us. Some satellite would see the launch. The event would get interpreted by some national resource. An alert would get flashed to DOD's US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, and then the message would travel down thru all the chains of command. By the time alert sirens sounded in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, the SCUD had impacted yesterday and the SCUD operators were back in their barracks watching soap operas.

On their very best day, the SCUD alert sirens warned you that a SCUD had hit somewhere an hour ago.

Upon hearing the sirens, the soldier driving the tour bus turned sharply and accelerated towards some huge roofed cargo area. It was acres and acres covered by a 3 story high steel roof. No walls just that huge roof way up high supported by massive pillars.The driver hollered for us to run out and get under shelter. “SCUDs, run for your lives!” That sort of thing. He led by example.

The tour bus was really quite comfortable. It was air conditioned and the seats were wonderful. Some enterprising soldier turned the bus back on which brought the AC back on-line. Also, the enclosed tour bus, compared to the open air cargo area, looked a better place to weather a nerve agent strike. Especially yesterday’s strike.

That kind of reflexive ill-thought out over-reaction seemed to happen a lot in Iraq1. The idea of real threats was new to us. A lot of folks, it seemed, had never mentally war-gamed likely threat scenarios, and considered logical reactions. Now that there really was a threat, some of their reactions just seemed completely devoid of analysis. In the months that followed we saw units and groups of soldiers cower in fear, having completely blown out of proportion some largely imaginary threat. It was as if, for some, cowering was reflexive. It seemed to me that, as soldiers, our reflexive response ought to be more along the lines of bringing up your rifle, taking a knee, and seeking a target. Speaking metaphorically.

Secretly, I worried that, looking at the larger Army, I was surrounded by knuckleheads that didn't actually "think" much. It occurred ot me that, my whole life I'd had the general idea that most everyone around me was reasonably smart and logical. But maybe I was wrong about that.

In the tour bus we napped.

Christmas.
I must give the Tent City pogues their due, they tried hard to make Christmas as nice as possible. I’m sure that for many of the kids, it was their first time far away from home for the holidays. A huge effort went into putting together a massive Christmas dinner. There was an unbelievable amount so food.

The pogues had worked darn hard to make the daily food operation work in support of the incredibly large population of Tent City. Feeding 15 thousand folks is a brutally hard logistical effort. First you have to get your hands on the basic food stuffs to prepare 30k meals/day. Then who’s going to cook it? Where are the necessary cooking facilities to prepare 30k meals/day? Then the food has to be rapidly moved in containers to Tent City before it all gets cold. Then it has to be set up on tables, portions served to thousands of (mostly) youngsters, and then there’s lots of clean up. The pogues did a really great job of this and I salute them for it.

It all went wrong for Christmas, however. Something was wrong with the food. My theory is that the locals, them being Muslim and all, got pissed about serving ham and shit in everything. It all smelled really bad. I stood in line for 90min to get a tray piled high with chow, started sniffing the food, and then dumped it all in a garbage can.

We did have a Santa though. I have no idea where they got the Santa suit, but that was a nice touch. Also, groups of soldiers wandered around and sang Christmas carols. That was nicely done.


Christmas, Tent City, Dammam, Saudi Arabia, December 24th, 1990.

The water buffalo.
There were two routes being considered for our trek into the desert. One was 550mi and the other was 700mi. I was flabbergasted. The longest military roadmarch I’d ever been on was probably only 200miles. Our Duece-and-a-half trucks were Korean War vintage and broke down every couple weeks, for Christ’s sakes. I wouldn’t send a Duece-and-a-half across the street without another vehicle along to go for help if need be.

By the end of December we had all of our vehicles except for a 5-ton truck and a “water buffalo”, which is a trailer with a 400 gallon water tank on it. We were going out into the desert. We could probably live without the truck, but we really needed that water buffalo.

One day at the port, while trying to hide my increasing anxiety about the water buffalo that still had not shown up yet, SFC Maxwell reported, with a tone of mischievous triumph, that the water buffalo had been found. I followed him across a couple of the vast parking lots full of staged military vehicles to go check out his find, the 400 gallon water trailer that we so badly needed. It was a fair walk. We ended up on the far side of the many acres of fenced-in parking lots.

With a big smile on his face, SFC Maxwell said, “There it is sir."

“I dunno, I don’t think that’s our water buffalo. “

SFC Maxwell replied, full of enthusiasm, “Sure it is sir.”

“I seem to remember a tired looking thing that needed paint. This one looks brand new. Besides, that’s some other unit painted on its bumpe."

“Sir, that there on the bumper isn’t actually a unit. It’s a reference to some equipment storage site. Technically, no unit owns that water buffalo. Yet. But a stencil and some black spray paint and a unit could own it in a couple minutes.”

“How about one of those computer inventory stickers? We have one that says 5-18 on it?”

“Yessir, I believe we do.”

“Well SFC Maxwell, I believe you’re right. This does appear to be our long lost water buffalo. Thank god we finally found it. Oh, and SGT Maxwell?”

“Sir?”

“After the war, should this every come up, lets just play stupid, eh?”

With a tone that radiated a big smile, “Yessir”.

I don’t know what water buffalos cost the Army, but I’m sure it’s a lot.


M-149 Water Buffalo. 400Gal capacity. (DOD)

Shitters and Showers.
No discussion of Tent City would be complete without mentioning the shitters and showers. Both consisted of rows of wooden stalls hastily set up by contractors. This, in a land, where there seemed to be no wood at all.

Getting stuck on a shit-detail. There was a rotating roster of units that were “on detail” and therefore had to provide working parties for the day. As your unit's day approached it behooved you to be especially useful and polite to your SGT.

The shitters were essentially a long row of wooden porta-potties. Under each toilet seat was a bottom section of a steel barrel, 12-14” tall, each containing a couple inches of diesel. As the shitter got visited through the day, the barrel bottom would fill with waste. Each morning the day's working party of unlucky bastards went behind of the row of shitters, reached under the seat platforms, and pulled the fairly full barrel bottoms out. Then, trying desperately not to slop any of the fiercely awful stew of shit, piss, and diesel on themselves, the soldiers dragged the barrel bottoms of waste back ten meters behind the shitters. Some of the barrel bottoms had too much diesel in them so, no matter how much care one exercised, slopping some on one's uniform trousers was simply unavoidable.

Since there were 15,000 of us, there were a lot of barrels.

The preferred way to deal with the human waste was to burn it. Once a row of barrels had been dragged to the burning area, the unlucky bastard worked to light the mixture on fire. Not "pour it out" and burn it, but just get the diesel in the steel barrel burning.

Each person on the shit-detail realized quickly that the shit-diesel stew wasn’t all that flammable because of it's high water content. The field sanitation manuals, no doubt written by staff officers whose actual experience at this task was largely theoretical, turned out to be optimistic regarding waste and diesel burning down to nothing. The shit-detail's real world testing indicated that piss doesn’t actually burn. The solution, if that’s what you want to call it, was to keep stirring the smoldering mixture with a stick.

Finding a shit stirring-stick was no easy matter in a land with no trees, save for a few carefully tended palms. Broom handles were often pressed into service. Unlike a fresh green stick, however, broom handles--dry and impregnated with skin oil, easily caught fire. Using a broom handle as a shit-stirring stick required diligent stirring because your offal stew needed to burn down faster then your stick did--the constant cycle of catching fire and then getting doused in the stew slowly turned the stick into a nub. There were a couple pieces of pipe laying about, grandfathered from one crew to the next, but you had to be careful or the barely burning diesel-shit brew made them too hot to handle.

The thick black smoke from the burning diesel and waste was truly awful. It made all of Tent City stink each morning. The shit-detail soldier, having to go from barrel to barrel to stir the stuff, had his face in the smoke for hours. No matter the errors in judgment that led to a soldier being assigned to a shit-detail, I imagined that recidivism was low.

Since the stirring device couldn’t be left in a smoldering brew, it was put on the ground. After weeks of burning barrels in the same place each day, laying the stirring implement on the ground and the occasional slop of contents, the barrel burning area became coated in diesel shit that clung to your boots. As a result, when you went back to your tent, not only did you smell terribly of burning diesel shit, but your boots actually brought some of it back for your tent-mates.

Certainly there were no brooms to sweep the stuff out of the tents. The brooms had all been disappearing.

The shitters stank aggressively. One did not look forward to morning necessaries. Also, during daylight hours the flies, in and about the shitters, were so numerous and aggressive that a visit to the shitters became almost harrowing.

Once the shitters reached a certain threshold of unappealing, soldiers started improvising. The less cultured started doing their business in the showers. Once deposited on the wooden floor, the offering was slow to go away because the water flow was just a sprinkle from a barrel of water up above. Soon there was a paste of unappealing content on the floor of what would be one more abandoned shower. 

The Tent City shower stalls, at least those that remained reasonably sanitary, were popular for evening trysts. I had no personal knowledge of this; being currently romantically involved in a mess of my own making, and also feeling quite obligated to set an example for appropriate professional military behavior.

I did, however, stumble into others consummating new relationships under difficult conditions. I quietly gave them space to bring a bit of happiness to their lives, while standing in a little stall, their feet in poop.


LT Gress and fiancée LT Kristi Bader, Tent City, on a chilly morning in Dammam Saudi Arabia. I’d just transferred from Korea to Germany to be near Kristi, and then promptly screwed everything all up. She deserved better than me.

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