22 Years Ago Today:
I was in the middle of a body of water east of China/Russia, west of Alaska, when we got the news posted on the Forward Compartment Middle Level saying that the day before, Saddam Hussein had crossed over the border into Kuwait.
The thing to know about boats, especially fast attacks, is that there’s no real means of contact with the outside world, or at least not at that time. Mail followed us from port to port, and any notifications from family were in 50-word “familygrams” that were the Navy equivalent of a postcard, with their words having been read upwards of a half-dozen times before finding their intended recipient. So even though all we got on Iraq invading Kuwait was about two sentences, we all knew it was serious.
The day we got word (August 3rd), US Naval forces were committed to the Gulf region. While I never went to the Gulf for Desert Shield/Storm, there were a few guys on a few of the boats I knew who did (a couple of my buddies from the nuke pipeline were on the USS Chicago) make it there.
Where were you when you got word troops were being committed to the Gulf in 1990?
Category: War Stories
Just got off the mid-watch as a QM2 on the USS Antietam (CG-54) and was sleeping in my rack. We were in the Indian Ocean with the USS Independence BG on a regular deployment.
That day we were supposed to arrive in Diego Garcia for a little rest on the beach, but that wasn’t to be (no beer for you!)
A couple days later we were the first US warship to sail into the Gulf. Ended up getting relieved and leaving before the fighting started, though. Watched it on TV back home.
I was in my Freshman year at Mississippi State and in AFROTC. We got a lot of nasty looks from many of the Middle Eastern students on uniform days. The night the air campaign started we had a beer bust in the dorm, getting hammered and watching CNN. It chafed at us to not be there, as it did our PAS COL Billy Boyd (who had been a Bird Dog pilot in RVN and was on his twilight tour). As he put it, “I feel like my team is in the Super Bowl and my ass is on the injured reserve list.” We lost a few cadets to National Guard activation and on of my buddies that lived across the hall from me in dorm, a Marine Reservist who also happened to be the only NBC guy in his unit. He immediately went from being LCPL Nobody to being one of the most listened to guys in his unit.
I was on gate guard at Erlangen Kaserne, Germany. Waiting in the dayroom for my next shift to start I watched on AFN as our unit (1st Armored Division) was tagged for deployment.
We stayed busy sending Rivet Joint birds out of Nebraska as fast as we could to the AOR. Ended up on the ground at Lajes working the tankers doing all the fighter drags across the pond, and topping off the B-52s out of Barksdale the first night.
I was at the 6922nd Electronic Security Squadron in the Philippines (Clark AB). From the reports I was reading I knew the fit had hit the shan before any deployments were announced. Once they started I learned that people in my career field were being asked to volunteer. I gave it a nights thought and went to my orderly room the next day to give it a go. I was told that since he had started getting hostile fire pay (bad terrorist threat) we were considered a war zone and weren’t allowed to go. Months later I’m working a daywatch when the circuit alarm on one of our teletypes goes off. It’s an EAM declaring MINIMIZE due to initiation of hostilities. Wow, we’re at war.
The timing of the invasion struck me as interesting because this was the time of the “peace dividend” talk and projected force reduction. I was with a support group headquarters in Germany with V Corps and figured we would stay put, which was fine with me since I didn’t figure my appreciation of MRE’s would be improved by a steady diet of them in the desert. As it turned out, we wound up being attached to VII Corps and became the “landlord” of Log Base Echo. We had been scheduled to be deactivated as part of the force reduction, but lessons learned reversed that once we got back to Germany.
Was sitting on front porch, cup of mud and cig in hand waking up from having been on a remote rig site for several weeks when the telephone rang. Oldest brother was calling from Europe, gave me his usual set of instructions(He was a hard core RVN Marine in the 60’s before joining the Army)and to be expecting a letter packet in the mail over next few days. Later that day watching the news, I pretty well knew even though he could never come right out and say he was shipped off to a shooting war.
I was an E-5 in the AF and had returned early from a TDY in Eglin AFB,Fl (where we practiced that scenerio) to bury my Mom when I saw the news. Called the base (Bergstrom AFB) and they said RTB after the service. 3 days later I was there. Was just in Panama for Just Cause Dec 1989-Mar 90.
Was at Fischbach AS comm site near Sembach Germany. Just finished bedding down our M-49s, A1Bs, -8s and -12s after a two week exercise near Stutgart. Next day we were at Ramstein in a marshaling line.
Was walking out the door, heading to C&GSC. Picked up the newspaper, saw the headline, and handed it to Spousal Unit, while saying, “I win.” We’d had a bet on which day Saddam would invade Kuwait. I was smack on the day. No one was released from C&GSC to deploy, so my reserve unit went, and I did not. I worked in the Army Operations Center instead. Still, winning that bet was sweet…
At Ft. Hood, in a III Corps brigade. I volunteered to go with the 2d AD, got attached the the 2d Marine Division. Before I left Texas, I got married. I should have skipped that step.