Desert Storm 20 years on - Part 2

Part 2 of 3 of my 20th anniversary look back at Desert Storm

The War That Wasn’t…


After my short, but probably for the best, stint with the security police of RAF Bentwaters/Woodbridge, the Ground War Portion of Desert Storm was getting ready to commence, and the Air Force decided they needed my newly-honed, critical defense skills in a place further from home – Gloucestershire County, England – across the country from Suffolk – nearly a 7 hour drive in the POS BMW – probably 5 or so in almost anything else.

No matter. What could go wrong?

It’s important to note, over a lifetime, there are probably fewer questions that can be answered in a less acceptable way than “what could go wrong?”

As a public service, I offer a short list of some of the others:

“She’s how old?”

“You can outrun a cop, right?”

And my personal favorite, which isn’t technically a question but serves the same purpose:

“Watch this…”

On my way to RAF Little Rissington the POS Beemer decided to … just…stop.

Wonderful, now I have to find a phone and call for a tow. So I knocked on the door of a quiet little house to ask for a phone and maybe get out of the crappy English winter weather.

Travel note for all of you who don’t travel much and might one day. First, I can’t really say enough good things about England, but they are a sneaky people. To whit: had the house I was about to enter been in America, there would have been subtle signs warning me about what might happen. There might have been cars in various states of dis-assembly; weeds everywhere; a half-broken chain-link fence; a mail box either nearly fallen down or reinforced with nuclear bunker thickness concrete – these and/or a variety of other signs would have been happily alight telling to me risk pneumonia and just keep walking.

But no, this was England. This is the same country where about a year before I got there, the public affairs officer at Bentwaters was giving a tour to a group of elderly English people (who are the sweetest people on the planet toward Americans) and a lady said to him, “If you Americans weren’t here, we’d all be speaking German.” To which, without missing a beat, the American officer replied, “Yes, and driving much better cars.” I cannot make this stuff up.

Anyway, being in England the garden was immaculate, the house incredibly tidy and there was only one car in the drive which seemed in a far better state of repair than my ironically German car gasping its last on the verge. So I knocked.

There are different accents in England if you weren’t aware. The English have their rednecks too. To us they all sound very sauve and so very…European. But make no mistake, the English are accent snobs like everyone else and they know a redneck Englishman when they hear one.

I had no such auditory skills.

These kind folks let me use the phone and then started talking to me in a very friendly way. When they realized I was American (which would take the normal English person exactly 0.0005 seconds) they then quickly deduced I was in the military and decided they could tell me about --- the prophecy.

Have you ever been in a situation where, unbidden, the banjo riff from Deliverance sounds in your head?

The prophecy of course, was one of the hundreds of ‘prophecies’ that nut jobs across the world were coming up with as we sent our forces into Saudi Arabia – very ‘end of the world’ sort of stuff. I’m sure these people were on the Good Ship Coco-Puff when the year 2000 rolled around as well.

I really wanted to be friendy and pretend to be suitably alarmed and awed by their declaration of imminent doom, but that was rendered nearly impossible when the drink they had given me flushed its way out my nose and onto their deep pile carpeting. (In England deep pile carpeting is one of those signs akin to those I would have seen outside in the U.S.). Fortunately, they thought I had sneezed and so I had to conjure a second and third ‘sneeze’ to capitalize on the ruse. No one is going to believe just one sneeze, even if they are wearing a tinfoil hat.

Eventually I made my way to RAF Fairford where I was to be billeted. With 15 other guys. In a single 2-bedroom home. There were 11 of us in cots side by side in the living room of this unfurnished house. Each day, as I no longer had a working automobile, I had to take a bus 45 minutes to RAF Little Rissington where I ‘worked’.

Let me explain Rissington. Remember last post I said the Cold War was great because we knew the enemy and their capabilities and blah blah blah? Well, Little Rissington was the result of our plans for the seemingly inevitable push of the monstrous Soviet Machine through the Fulda Gap in Germany and straight into our shopping malls where we were sure they would take all the toilet paper, feminine hygiene products and liquor.

Because we knew an invasion by the Soviets would cause casualties on a huge scale, we thoughtfully set up a number of rear-echelon ‘contingency hospitals’. RAF Little Rissington was the largest. Now, for years and years it was the job of 43 people to hang out at Rissington and watch the boxes of medical equipment and supplies and, should the balloon go up, get all that stuff out so we could be ready for a parade of wounded.

In two weeks, Rissington went from 43 people to more than 2,000 doctors, nurses, technicians and the largest contingent of military chaplains ever assembled in one place (or at least AF chaplains – there were more than 50 I think). Within a couple days two hangars on the old airfield were converted into wards – 750 beds in each hangar -- to see it was to be awed by how incredibly grim it would be when/if filled. Just filled with empty, made-up beds - each with two canisters of oxygen and whatever - it had the capacity to make a person sad to the point of morose because it was impossible not to think of it being full.

Technicians meanwhile, were busy opening never before used equipment – everything from X-Ray machines to the machine that goes Ping! I remember a conversation I had with one sergeant in the x-ray station.

Me: So, this stuff is brand new eh?

Sgt: Well, it’s never been opened before and never been used.

Me: Is it old?

Sgt: I’ve read about this type of x-ray machine in books but I’ve never actually seen one.

Words cannot adequately describe the look on his face as he glanced at this piece of machinery. You’ll have to trust me that it was indicative of the whole experience.

I met a Catholic priest while there who looked like he had a story. We talked and he told me how he was an 18 year old private in the Army during the Korean War. He said, and I quote, “I was a young man…doing things young men do…”

He didn’t actually say “wink, wink, nudge, nudge,” but he didn’t have to. Anyway, he went home after his stint, got engaged and after lots of story that doesn’t matter, made a promise to a priest that if he got selected for seminary, he’d go. The joke of course, being on the priest because it was late August and seminary started in two weeks and they only accepted people months in advance.

The lesson here being don't play games with God.

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when he told his fiancé he was leaving her to become a priest. Talk about a self-esteem body blow.

‘Darling, I’ve decided I won’t marry you but instead become a celibate priest…I’m sure you understand.’

We had the chance to have this talk while I was working. You see, my big 'job in the war’ was to put out a newsletter to let people know what was going on. Thankfully my job was made easier by this being the first war to feature CNN.

My job, in essence, entailed watching CNN and taking notes. Typing those notes up into a newsletter, copying them off, and delivering them to various bulletin boards on base on my large tricycle. (my second adult-sized tricycle of my Air Force career – and my last thankfully).

I hope you can start to appreciate the lengths I’m going to have to go to when I have to lie about “what I did in the war” when I have grand-children.

“My grand-dad was in a tank that rolled over the Republican Guard and kicked their ass out of Kuwait”

Oh yeah, “My grand-dad watched CNN and copied information and… and… and I’m going to get beat up now aren’t I?”

But those 1,500 beds were never really used much – and that’s why it’s a good thing the war wasn’t as bad as we thought it might be when we started. You see, RAF Little Rissington is about a 2 hour bus ride from RAF Upper Heyford, a large USAF base where wounded people would be flown to.

So this is the deal. Someone gets wounded in Saudi Arabia – they get medevaced to the rear where they are put on a plane and fly to Germany (about 6 – 10 hours whatever) then they get moved to another plane where they are flown to England (2 hours ish) then they are put on a bus and punished for 2 more hours traveling down really narrow, winding, often badly paved ‘C’ roads in England, where they now need medical assistance because of the drive.

But it didn’t happen often – and the patients we did have had minor problems – broken ankles from tripping into foxholes, a 50+ year old Reservist who had had a heart operation very recently, that kind of thing. The “operating theater” was in the middle of the 750 beds in the hangar – “walled” of by sheets. Not the most sterile of environments if you consider any high-ceilinged hangar you’ve ever been in. Had things been bad I’m sure the job would have gotten done – but it’s just as well things went as they did.

In the end, the nurses, doctors and technicians left and the war, for the most part, stayed in the Gulf. While there were a few casualties who went through Rissington, the only fatality I was aware of was my POS Green BMW. It didn’t survive the war.

Next up, part 3: Even REALLY hungry people won’t eat chicken ala king MREs.