Creatures of Comfort

Saudi Arabia, 1990

After a three-day turnover, the detachment from EODMU 5 departed for Bahrain and we stayed in our new home and commenced the task of getting to know our new environment.  One of the first things I noticed was that we were living right next to the staging area for what seemed like all the ammo for Operation Desert Shield.  That was not a very comforting thought at all.  There were five open air warehouses approximately 500 feet long by 150 wide by 50 feet tall that were completely filled and emptied around 5 or 6 times while we were there with everything in our stockpile, short of nukes and chemical ordnance. 

The next thing we all noticed was approximately 20,000 soldiers living behind our firehouse.  Dammam Port was one of the main entry ports for all personnel coming in country.  With that amount of personnel came all the troubles associated with a small town.  We had incidents of prostitution; suicides and fights just to name a few.  Worst of all was the problem of lack of adequate sanitary facilities for that amount of personnel.  The lines to go the head (restroom) were incredible.  By the time it was your turn you probably forgot why you were in line or didn't need to be in line anymore.

One night I was walking towards the end of the pier, trying to check things out, when I noticed this long line going into a CONEX box.  There must have been close to a hundred soldiers there.  I approached one of the last guys and he told me the line was for oral sex for $20.00!!

The first thing we did was to set out and make our accommodations better.  We immediately made pull-up bars, sit-up bench and a dip bar from scrap wood.  Then came the cabinets for the quarters.  On the first day we were taken to our first meal "in-country", in an Army chow hall.  The only difference between us and the guys in the field was that our chow was warm, but it was just as bad.  We quickly decided that something had to be done about the chow situation.  Since we were divers, had a boat and had slings, we looked to Mother Ocean for our solution, she would not let us down.  The team started taking turns going out fishing and snorkeling for fish.  In matter of days we gathered quite an amount of fish.  The problem was that none of us wanted to clean them; that is when we remembered that the cleaning personnel at the firehouse were Filipinos.  We struck a deal with them: they clean all our fish and they get to keep the fish heads, they were all over that like white on rice.  Next order of business was: were to cook our fish. 

John and myself went to see one of the MP companies about some training when I noticed a 55-gallon drum laying around.  I made a deal with the CO of that company: for a pair of UDT shorts and a pair of dive socks he cut the drum in half, welded hinges, legs and a handle and presto, we had a BBQ, which doubled as an emergency destruct container for classified publications.  I told John that I was beginning to like this system of "acquiring" supplies, he agreed.

A couple of days later some of us were laying around when John shows up in our Blazer grinning from ear to ear like he just got told that he won the lotto in all 50 states.  Out of the back of the truck he pulled a trash bag full of rock lobsters, we couldn't believe our eyes.  He said he traded a case of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for them (all 220 lobsters).  Now, I cannot eat lobsters but I gladly helped clean them.  A problem then came to mind: were to keep them.  Pete went to our trailer and we started hearing all this noise; he was taking all the icepacks for our chemical suits out of the freezer.  Problem solved with room to spare for the extra fish (or whatever else we could “acquire”).

Gunner Burns introduced us to the OIC (Officer in Charge) of the Army's CID-Criminal Investigations Division, who happened to be a reserve officer, and we became good friends.  We knew Dave Annis was one of us when one night he showed up with about three kilos of fresh shrimp.  To this day I don't know where he got it but I don't care either.  Through the grapevine we heard that the new MP company arriving from Atlanta brought with them a refrigerated van full of goodies, so Brian, John and I proceeded to make new friends.  I remember the corporal in charge telling us how restricted the issue of everything was, how we had to have a special request chit signed by no less than the President himself and initialed by General Powell or Schwarzkopf and routed through Gen. Washington and the Pope, if we wanted to just look in the van.  So we returned to our humble abode empty handed but we did not give up…not by a long shot!

On our first trip to Bahrain, we brought back white rum and vodka in water bottles and we found out that a case of beer fits quite nicely in an empty case of MREs, so four or five cases of "alcoholic" MREs made it across to Saudi along with some bottles of EOD water.

Now we were ready to get anything we wanted.  We again paid a visit to our friends from the land of Scarlett O'Hara, but this time we were "loaded for bear".  We asked to talk to the sergeant in charge of supply.  When he came out with the same song and dance the corporal gave us, we pulled him aside and offered him a bottle of EOD water, letting him know that we had more were that came from if he ever got thirsty again.  The doors to the van opened up magically and by the time we made back to camp we had a dozen fresh eggs, a box of real butter, a slab of BACON (which was illegal to have because of the Muslim religion), a case of steaks and two cases of real Cokes-not the local sodas. 

Taking an inventory of our supplies at "home" showed we had steaks, fish, shrimp, lobsters, cokes, butter, bacon, eggs, booze and a BBQ, the only thing missing was a grill and we would be open for business.  The funny thing was that the Gunner had no idea were any of the stuff was coming from and he didn't care, he just said not to get caught.  The grill came from the brand new shelving unit inside the trailer.  All the chemical protective gear on that one shelf found its way to the deck-where it stayed for the duration of the deployment.

To make a long story longer, we became the social place of the camp.  On any given night we were entertaining any of the CO's of any company in port, the port commander, supply officers, in general, all the key people that could get us anything we wanted or get us out of trouble, if we happened to get into any. 

One of the most memorable times was when Captain Vaughn came to inspect the port.  He was in charge of all the Port Security and Harbor Defense Groups (PSHD) in country.  After the inspection we invited him for a fish fry at our shop.  He was very impressed with our accommodations and decided to stay the night with us instead of at his place.  At one point it was only myself, John, Brian and the Captain shooting the breeze when he turned around and asked us where did we keep the beer at.  We dutifully informed him that it was illegal to have alcoholic beverages in Saudi Arabia and being the good sailors that we were, we did not have any.  He looked at us like a father that just caught his sons telling the biggest lie ever fabricated by a human being and told us that when he was in Vietnam with the Brown Water Navy, the only place to get an ice cold beer on any day was any EOD shop and that he hoped times haven't changed that much.  Well, since he put that way, we might have one or two lying around somewhere.  Of course we knew that as soon as we handed him the can, all these MP’S were going to jump out of hiding and arrest us.  To our delight, nobody got arrested, and we spent the rest of the very long night trading sea stories, lies and getting drunk with the Skipper on the "one or two" beers we found.  He really appreciated the fact that times hadn't change and he made it a point to come a visit us every chance he could.  Two years later we received an invitation to his frocking ceremony to admiral.