Day to day life in Nairyah during Desert Shield

Trips to Nairyah were great as a change of pace but they still had the 98% boredom factor discussed earlier. There were four to a crew. On this trip the crew was:

Pilot-in-Command:  Mark
Co-Pilot: Your's Truly
Flight Engineer: Snyder
Crew Chief: Dustin

Mark was the Battalion Safety Officer and he was also a good leader. (Many pilots are great at flying, not so good working with crews.)  He did a good job of making sure that we were not only keeping the aircraft up for missions, was the one who made daily checks with the logistics operations in Nairyah for missions and such. He also made sure that we were keeping up with emergency procedures and other crew coordination issues. Mostly, I think he tried to keep us from killing each other.

Boredom is the seed of a lot of discontent. Sometimes people do things to annoy others just for something to do. Seems that we kept that to a minimum. There were the normal trading Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs) so that we all were eating meals that we kinda sorta liked. One thing we really hated was having to choke down an MRE you did like. We also had the luxury of space in the helicopter to store not only MREs but sufficient amounts of food from home and most of all water.

By the time we were doing the Nairyah missions, it was November and cooling off comparing to the summertime temperatures we were dealing with on arrival. We were acclimatized and the moderating temperatures helped moderate tempers too. The wind in Saudi was generally from the north most every day and with the wind came dust and sand. Everywhere. Keeping the aircraft and equipment clean was a never ending battle. Keeping ourselves clean was also a challenge.

Dustin was the crew barber. We were doing haircuts just because shorter hair is easier in the desert, but a buzz cut is not optimal for a flight helmet. You need a decent pad of hair to prevent hot spots giving you a contact headache on your scalp. With the heat, and dust and sand and relatively close quarters sleeping in an enclosed aircraft, personal hygiene was also paramount.  The access door to the center hook opened a yard square hole in the bottom of the aircraft. We figured out how to drape a poncho across the back of the aircraft and rig a five-gallon water can from the ceiling and Viola! we had a shower.

I think the thing I hated the most there were the biting black flies. At our base, these were not an issue. But they were in Nairyah. They were constantly in your face all day, thankfully they were not active at night. I had several books and I liked to read, but flies in my face made it difficult. I finally learned what horses know instinctively, to face into the wind. My favorite spot was on top of the helicopter, facing into the wind, leaning back on the aft pylon. I spent quite a few hours up there, just reading and looking out over the town.

While we were close to a small town, one of the lasting impressions of the region is the desolation. Except for the village to the south, in every other direction all you could see was the desert. Sand and rocks and dirt with the tapline road only man made presence away from the town. There were what appeared to be the remains of a dead goat on the end of the runway. It was hair and skin and bones and all that remained after bugs, scavengers and heat had done their best on it. It might have been there a month or a decade, I couldn't tell.

That was one observation I made in the desert. If something died, machinery broke, whatever, it was left where it was. I saw a Mercedes coupe, on the side of the road, stripped of what could be easily taken, miles from anywhere. This was a very barren and foreboding area. It gave us a lot to think about as to how dependent we were upon each other not only for our jobs, but our own survival. If our aircraft failed out on a mission, we could end up isolated, alone and on our own. Yeah we had radios, but I also knew their limitations and if we ended up in a bad situation, we could have easily run out of provisions before we could be located. There was a lot of time to just sit and think: "What if?"

My sons and I looked up Nairyah on Google Maps today, and the remnants airstrip is still there, north of the town and just barely visible. It appears the temporary cargo base had been made more permanent after we left, as there are now concrete cargo pads there were at one time there was a major supply operation. When I was there, it was nothing but sand.