Wow!! It all became real! August 2, 1990 and Operation Desert Shield

August 2, 1990 changed my life and the lives of thousands of others when Iraq invaded Kuwait. I had just in processed into Alpha Company (Predators) 7-101 Aviation, 101^st Airborne Division (Air Assault) after a one-year tour in South Korea. My Korea tour was a reminder that there are places in the world that are always on the brink of war as the armistice just stopped the fighting and established a demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two countries. Technically, they are still in a state of war. I had hoped that my Fort Campbell assignment would give me a chance to become reacquainted with my family, but alas, that was not going to happen for a while.

By the end of day on August 2^nd, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, it was apparent that the Division Ready Brigade (DRB) of the 101^st Airborne Division, was going to deploy to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield. Indeed, I’d never seen so many things happen so fast in the Army. My battalion was already in a state of shock from the loss of three members due to a crash nine days earlier and this new mission had not been anticipated by anyone. Everybody in the Division was working 18-hour days and the entire post was a whirlwind of activity.

The DRB consisted of an Infantry brigade plus a myriad of attached units. A battalion from the Division Artillery, A command team from the Division Command Staff, Air Defense teams, a detachment from the 101^st support team for supplies, food, fuel, ammo and anything else needed and three companies of Aviation assets. (An AH-64 Apache Company minus, a UH-60 Blackhawk Company minus and a CH-47D Chinook Company minus) The minus refers to the fact that only about 2/3 of the unit can deploy as some aircraft are either in maintenance or due maintenance in a short period so these are left to be completed by the rear detachment when the unit deployed.

The DRB deployment started within 72 hours of us getting the warning order (August 4th Infantry units and forward support units), but due to the sheer size of this exodus, the schedule for Bravo Company (Varsity) at the time was near the 100th sortie by the Air Force. (Sortie = 1 plane flight for non-military types.) This was good for 7th battalion as it allowed time to make some decisions about personnel and equipment that were going to be sent. Some aircraft from Alpha Company and Charlie Company with more available flight time were swapped for low time remaining Bravo Company aircraft. (All military aircraft are tracked by hours flown and there are scheduled maintenance phases required on Chinooks every 200 hours of flight time.) Enlisted crew members were assigned to the aircraft they maintained, these crew members were also swapped along with their aircraft. Pilots from Alpha and Charlie were also attached for temporary Duty with Bravo Company to fill in missing ranks in their organization. Since I was still in training, I couldn’t deploy with the DRB. However, I still played an important role in the upcoming weeks events.

By August 12, 1990 the DRB had left Fort Campbell. C-5B Galaxy and C-141 Starlifters and Civilian Reserve Air Fleet Airliners had been a constant stream for days and totaled over 200 sorties of men and equipment. Meanwhile the rest of the division was already preparing for deployment. Unlike the DRB, then rest of the Division equipment would deploy by sea, which meant that it had to be shipped to port. CH-47D aircraft don’t fit well into cargo ships. At the time (maybe still, I haven’t checked) they could only be moved below deck inside one US Naval Reserve Fleet ship. This ship was to dock at the Blount Island Terminal, port of Jacksonville, Florida. I was part if the team that was tasked to fly aircraft from Fort Campbell to Jacksonville.

I flew a total of four trips to Jacksonville to stage the aircraft at Camp Blanding Air National Guard Base, FL. so the helicopters could be flown to the Blount Island terminal. Once they landed at the terminal, they were prepped to load on the transport ship. The first flight was my Readiness Level 2 (RL2) check ride that would allow me to fly later flights with any Pilot-in-Command. Each flight included a refueling stop at Warner Robins AFB outside Macon, GA with a destination of Camp Blanding, FL. 30 miles southwest of Jacksonville, FL. We stayed the night in the National Guard barracks there and then returned to Ft. Campbell via a 40-hour bus ride. A couple days later, we repeated the process and again returned on a chartered bus. While the pilots were ferrying aircraft, the maintenance teams were racing to fix aircraft that needed immediate maintenance and to get others that were in the middle of Phase maintenance completed so that they could be flown.

After my third deployment trip, I was told to prepare for an extended stay on my fourth and final trip to Jacksonville. We flew down to Camp Blanding, and I became part of a two flight crew team to fly the aircraft from the staging area at Camp Blanding to the Blount Island terminal. These ferry trips to the terminal were done in pairs because there was limited space to land at Blount Island. A landing zone was marked out in a parking lot adjacent to the dock, just large enough to land 2 CH-47s. The lead aircraft would land in the center of the LZ and then taxi as far forward as possible (There were obstacles to be avoided like light poles etc.) and then the second aircraft landed behind the first. As soon as the aircraft were shutdown, the maintenance team began to disassemble the aircraft for shipment. This involved removal of the blades, rotor heads, forward and aft transmissions and the aft pylon and storing these components on stands inside the aircraft. Initially, this took about 6 hours an aircraft. By the end of the deployment of 35 aircraft, they were doing it in about 2 hours.

After the aircraft were aboard the ship, we were again rewarded with a bus trip back to Fort Campbell the first week of September. A few days later, on September the 9^th, we boarded a Civilian Reserve Air Fleet 747 with our field gear and took off for Saudi Arabia. We landed in Dhahran at 9 AM in the morning. We exited the aircraft and walked across the tarmac and we were herded by some air force airmen into a pair of General Purpose Large (GP Large) tents that had been erected in the sand a couple hundred feet from the edge of the tarmac where our plane had parked. As we descended the portable staircase from the plane to the tarmac, it seemed that we were in the jet wash of the cargo plane that was parked ahead of us. When I got to the bottom of the stairs did I realize that the cargo plane was parked and its engines were not running. I was feeling was the local breeze @ 137 degrees Fahrenheit.

There was total confusion in the tent. No place to sit, stifling hot and the only good thing was it was shade. After a few minutes, the NCO in charge (NCOIC) grabbed 8 or 10 enlisted soldiers who carried in cases of water into the tent from some nearby Conex containers. We were ordered that we couldn’t leave the tent until we’d each drank two of the liter and a half bottles of water. (How fast can you drink 3 liters of water?) There was some mumbling until our Battalion Commander told everyone it was a valid order. (Apparently they had several soldiers already hospitalized for dehydration and this was part of the attempt to help us newbies keep from killing ourselves by not knowing to drink in the desert.) After an eternity (no more than 90 minutes, no time in an Army wait) some buses arrived and we were transported to our new home. The parking garage at the unfinished King Fahd International Airport.

To be continued ….