I’m not exactly sure what I expected to see when I arrived in Saudi, but I can tell you that it wasn't the second floor of the parking garage at the incomplete King Fahd International Airport (KFIA). I thought this would be a transient thing and I did not expect it to be my home for the next four months. We were bussed from Dhahran a little over 20 miles to KFIA and I must admit it was a pretty amazing place. The parking garage was centered around a huge Mosque with a dome covered in gold. Not being Muslim, I was never allowed inside the Mosque itself but from the exterior is was quite the sight to behold. We were all looking around, looking for shade, just trying to get our wits about us after that eternal plane ride, when we were finally herded up a ramp to the second floor. There we met up with the part of our Battalion that had deployed with the Division Ready Brigade (DRB).
We were given an orientation of sorts, and we learned the basics of our new home. Our battalion, 7th Battalion, 101 Aviation Regiment (7-101 AVN) occupied the northeast corner of the second floor of the garage. We were shown critical information such as where the latrines were. (Since the airport was incomplete, there were no functional plumbing in the bathrooms of course, so the Army Engineers had built a row of 4-man privies along the north side of the building.
The dining facility was erected a couple hundred yards west using a standard Army Mobile Kitchen trailer (MKT). "C-Rations" had been the norm and they began serving “B-Rations” shortly before we had arrived. “B Rations” were tray pack rations in sealed large tray tins that could be heated in a 55-gallon immersion heater and the trays opened with a can opener. You had main courses like beef tips and noodles with brown gravy, vegetables were in separate tins and even dessert tins. The “B Ration” concept allowed two regular soldiers with just the limited knowledge of operating the immersion heaters and a can opener to feed an entire unit.
Billeting. We were housed in parking spaces. Enlisted soldiers were assigned three to a space (Nominally 10 feet by 20 feet) and officers were assigned two to a space. I was billeted with CW2 Terry Bell. Terry was a Washington State Army National Guard pilot who was called up to fill one of the pilot slots we had open prior to deployment. Terry and I got along just fine and he opted for the aisle side while I had the inside portion of the space backed up to CW4 PJ Kennedy who had deployed with the DRB. I’ll talk more about Mr. Kennedy later.
The final and most interesting thing about our billeting arrangement was that we had showers. The building didn’t have operational bathrooms, but it did have operational plumbing for the fire-hoses. The 1st floor of the building had an attached covered walkway made of concrete just like the rest of the building. This extended fifteen to twenty feet out from the building to provide shade from the sun and also protection from rain? The top of the walk was cover was a standard flat commercial roof and had drains for the one or two days a year that it might rain. The Engineers had built an 8-stall shower system, with large tanks on the top that could be filled using the fire hose and they gravity drained into shower heads similar to a rainforest showers you see in many home showers now days.
We weren’t issued cots yet so we were sleeping on the floor. We were each given a case of water (Local brands, 12 - 1.5 liter bottles) and again told to keep hydrated. It was the second week of September and the high temps were in the 130 Fahrenheit and the lows were in the mid to high 80s. One of the more interesting discoveries only took a couple days to figure out, and that was the location of the ceiling lights of the floor below. The heat they generated could be felt in a meter square of the concrete floor above the light. You learned quickly not to place your sleeping mat above one of those lights.
Our comrades who had deployed four weeks earlier on the DRB were now our guides. They had been keeping busy with maintaining their aircraft, and getting flight operations up and going, developing flight routes and everything else required when setting up a base in a new area of operations. The rest of us waited for something to do. The DRB personnel had deployed with all their equipment, we had with us only what we could hand carry. Our rucksacks, kit bags and our obsolete .38 caliber revolvers. (one benefit of this deployment was we finally got Beretta 9MMs a few weeks later to replace the essentially useless .38s.) Just about everything else we owned was taking a slow cruise on a cargo ship from Jacksonville and would not arrive until October. We’d gotten there in a hurry, now it was our time to wait.
After a couple of weeks, the situation normalized. Cots had arrived, we had something to sleep on, and that provided a much-appreciated respite from the heat retention of the concrete floor. Mail! Letter mail had already been setup using the Army Post Office (APO) system (APO NY 09309-4720). It took longer to get setup to handle packages since they were originally more concerned that we would be engaged before we were ready for action. Processing packages from loved ones was a low priority. After it became evident that this was not going to be a short deployment, they quickly enhanced the mail system to accommodate packages sent from home. Packages from home were very good for soldier morale and we needed the boost.
We were briefed that we could write home as much as we wanted to and since we were in a war zone, mail could be sent without postage. First we sent GI postcards that we made out of the cardboard from Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE) packaging. These were quick and easy to make and of course we had to ensure that no tactical information was written on them. (Where we were, what mission planning was looking like and such.) I don’t exactly remember when it happened, but I was designated the Mail Officer as an additional duty. Someone in my chain of command learned that I’d been a Mail Officer in Korea a few months earlier. I didn’t mind as it gave me something to do. It has been said that war was in 98% boredom punctuated by 2% sheer terror and I can agree with that.
We were restricted to the airport boundary except on flight missions and authorized trips off the base. My few trips off the base on the ground were limited to trips to the port to help identify our equipment and get to processed so it could be brought to the airfield. The DRB aircraft were used just enough to get and keep us current with minimum flight time until the rest of the aircraft arrived just before Halloween or so. Then we had to ferry them to the airfield and then we had to deal with logistical issues at KFIA.
KFIA was a joint use base. Both Army and Air Force units were there. The terminal ramps had AC-130s parked between the jetways. Most of the jet parking apron was used by 200+ AH-64s, UH-60s, OH-58Ds, UH-1s and the like. There were 2 north/south runways (16/34) and the parallel taxiway on the western runway was parking for our CH-47Ds and the taxiway on the eastern runway was parking for A-10 Thunderbolt II’s (Warthogs). Aircraft parking space was at a premium and this lead to a few incidents during our time at KFIA.
The first major aircraft accident was courtesy of the Air Force (USAF). At the north end of the western runway (34L) was a hangar that the Air Force used as a cargo distribution center. All day and night all types of cargo aircraft would go in and out of the area and the CH-47s on the parallel taxiway meant that cargo planes had to do most of their ground taxi on the runway itself and they only had access to the parallel taxiway at the very north end of the field. The CH-47s were parked facing west with the nose of the aircraft hanging past the edge of the taxiway and over a large drainage ditch between the parallel taxiway and the runway. This left us just enough room behind the CH-47s that we could towthen into and out of the parking spots we had there.
Early one morning, A USAF C-130 had arrived and had taxied to the cargo ramp for their load. They could leave the cargo area taxiing on the parallel taxiway up to the first intersection where they had to turn west onto the runway. Apparently, the pilots were not familiar with the modified airfield parking or just missed their turn in the dark, regardless, about 200 feet later they found themselves staring at 45 Chinooks all lined up along the parallel taxiway in front of them.
At this point, with their close proximity to the Helicopters, (less than 200 feet) they should have asked for ground support to come out with a tug and back the aircraft up. Instead, they chose to back up the aircraft using reverse engine thrust. This resulted with the nearest CH-47 being blown off its wheel chocks by the propwash and the helicopter rolled down the concrete slope of the drainage ditch where we found the helicopter in the morning. The helicopter was sitting crossways in a 40-foot wide, 15 foot deep ditch, resting on its nose on one slope and the cargo ramp on the other slope. If the accident hadn't resulted in 7 million dollars in damage to the Chinook and taken the aircraft out of action, it might have been funny. That Chinook was shipped back to Philadelphia for rebuild and was replaced by a Chinook from a stateside unit.
The next incident involved a Hellfire missile from an AH-64 Apache. The Apache was undergoing maintenance on the parking ramp. All aircraft that had weapons systems were always parked with weapons pointed toward the perimeter of the airfield, just in case something bad happened with the helicopter. In this instance, the missile launch system of this aircraft was being troubleshot by a depot maintenance team. By design, these aircraft have safeties that engage when the landing struts are compressed that disable the weapons systems while the aircraft is on the ground. For some reason, this safety interlock failed.
While the maintenance team was working on this AH-64, The Flight Engineer and Crew Chief (Who are both the crew and the mechanics for the aircraft) had moved Chinook 82-23780 from its parking location 100 yards or so in front of that Apache to the wash rack. Dirt and sand are enemies of a helicopter and washing the aircraft after each mission was one way to combat this. This left a gap between the Chinooks parked along the taxiway.
The Apache team was running through a testing sequence that was not supposed to be able to launch a missile when suddenly a Hellfire departed the aircraft. It traveled in a straight line across the tarmac, through the parking space that 23780 had occupied minutes before, across an active runway and landed in the USAF ammunition storage area on the edge of the airfield where it detonated and destroyed about 30 bomb pre-charges. One USAF airman was injured at the ammo facility. The explosion was heard all throughout the airport and of course, at first we all thought we were under attack. Chaos and confusion reigned for 15 to 30 minutes until there were command instructions letting everyone know that it was an accident and we were not an attack.
Aside from the obvious fact that the Iraqi Army was massed on the northern border of Saudi Arabia, our biggest enemy was boredom. Like any hurry up and wait scenario, we’d done the jump through your ass to ourselves up in Saudi Arabia in an impressive fashion. People and equipment were arriving every day. Normal routines had returned, just in a different location.
We were eating “A-Rations” now where the cooks cooked real food. We now had a semi-permanent building for a dining facility. We had a motor pool established and I was tasked with the monthly 10% inventory (Each month, 10% of the unit organizational property, accountable by the commander, is inventoried, 100% inventories only occur during a change of command normally.) which included the motor pool on this one. I think it was the first time that I impressed anyone in the battalion. Since I had been a truck mechanic before becoming a pilot, I knew all the tools, how to identify them and most of all how to conduct the inventory of the tools. Most officers struggled completing a motor pool inventory in any kind of a timely manner.
They built a small PX (Army/Air Force Exchange Service, Post Exchange or PX for short) shoppette where we could by candy, sundries and just about anything except pork, booze and objectionable reading material that had centerfolds in them. Mail was always a morale booster and we were getting plenty of mail. I knew because I got to supervise and help my soldiers pickup and deliver it. Bags and bags of mail full of care packages from home.
My buddy Jim Herzog “Zog” came up with an idea for a daily group lunch. Everyone had some kind of food. Lots of beef and turkey summer sausage, all kinds of cheese and crackers. Pop Tarts, you name it, if it was food that could be shipped and didn’t require refrigeration, it came in our boxes. Zog suggested that we get together at lunch and everyone bring some of their “pogey bait” (Slang for non-military food you have stashed) and we would have a smorgasbord. We did this daily because even "non-perishable" food tended to perish fairly quickly in the desert heat.
I quickly learned that in the summer heat lasted until around late November, I needed to drink about 9 of the 1.5 Liter bottles a day just to stay hydrated. I’d been to see the flight surgeon after about a month in the desert and learned I was just short of getting an IV for fluids. I started carrying a water bottle everywhere I went. Drinking about a Liter of water every waking hour seemed to be just right.
Keeping in shape also helped. During the launch of the DRB, movement of aircraft to Jacksonville and the deployment to Saudi, physical training had taken a back seat to just about everything. I wasn't in great condition and I never dealt well with heat. Improving my physical conditioning and my overall general health was now a higher priority. Running was a popular pastime at KFIA. Once you acclimatized to the desert, it wasn’t such a bad place to be. I was never much of a runner, but I had help from CW2 Art Yeams, who helped me to get in better shape.
Art was attached from us temporary duty from Alaska. Another pilot was named Pat (his last name escapes me now.) but we called them Arctic Art and Polar Pat referring to their Alaskan origin. Art was great shape and he was big on staying that way. I tried to use a bit of his enthusiasm to stay motivated and get in shape myself. Flight officers rarely worked out with the unit as a whole and Art was a good exercise buddy.
Art also schooled me in the art of Cribbage. I'd never seen the game and he was having a hard time finding anyone to play against, so I asked him if he'd teach me. He taught me Cribbage and then proceeded to beat me in 97 consecutive games until I finally got a freakishly good hand with an even better crib and managed to win a game before Art & Pat returned to the states just before Christmas 1990.
Like all deployed soldiers, we did our best to make ourselves “at home” in the parking garage. We began to be very careful about how we opened the cases of water bottles. We started to use them for furniture. It wasn’t too long that our parking spaces resembled dorm rooms, with a bunk, dressers made of boxes. We’d “Acquired” a large round piece of plywood that made an excellent poker table too.
Somewhere around the December time frame, our leadership decided we had become too casual in our homey comforts and decided on a “Standard” of how your parking space had to be laid out. All of our homey additions had to go away. It turned out that this didn’t really matter a whole lot as we left KFIA soon afterward as the Air War began in January 1991.
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