OFF TO WAR

            

The date was August 2, 1990 and I was with my team doing a mine recovery exercise (MINEX) off the coast of Santa Rosa Island in Southern California.  Around 6:30 pm, while we ate dinner, the news came on saying that Kuwait had been invaded by Iraq.  We all sat there in the galley watching the tanks roll in to Kuwait thinking that it was just like in the movies.  Somebody said something to the effect of "Well, there they go again, another neighborly war." The speculations started flying  fast and furious; and being that we were the next mobile detachment in rotation to deploy, it got worst.  At the time I was attached to EOD Mobile Unit THREE detachment THREE THREE, out of San Diego.  The det included Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jim Alexander, Machinist Mate First Class Bill Woodward, Parachute Rigger Second Class Fred Fleener, Boatswain’s Mate Second Class John Carr, and Gunner’s Mate Guns Third Class Brian Economy.

Some of us did not even know were Kuwait was, so we started searching through the ship's library for a chart or map.  After finding the speck of the country in a National Geographic map we figured that it was too far; some other mobile unit would send their team.  The topic then turned to what kind of terrain, weather and type of ordnance those poor bastards going over would encounter.  This went on until midnight.  In the morning we finished the operation and Kuwait was forgotten until nine days later.

August is a good month for some of us.  Some classmates of mine, who were also stationed at Mobile Unit Three, had birthdays in August with me. Mike J. Bowers, James Edwards and myself  decided to have a big party and celebrate all of them on Saturday the 11^th, at Mike's house.  We had a very nice party with a lot of friends (I don't recall everybody present that day) and the topic of war in the Middle East came up once or twice but nothing too serious. 

Around 2:30 pm my beeper and John's went off and without saying much we looked around and it seemed like every one knew what that meant.  Some of the wives had watery eyes.  We called the command immediately and the XO answered.  We were told to start packing now because we were going to war aboard the USS Okinawa Monday morning.  I took my wife and daughter home and headed to the shop.  All I remember was feeling fear, uncertainty and anxiety but at the same time also felt lucky to be going; after training for so long to do a job, I was going to get a chance to prove myself, do it during a war and we would probably be some of the first ones there.  I was very exited, although I don’t know if that is the right word.

The shop (Navy slang for the workplace) got packed in three triwalls and we were ready to leave by Monday morning.  In the middle of all this, the command fired our OIC (Officer in Charge) and replaced him with CWO3 Gary Burns.  Alexander wasn’t even notified of the impending deployment. So Monday morning comes around and he shows up for work and finds the shop packed and all his things neatly thrown in a box.  He asked Bill what was going on and he replied: "Well Gunner, if you don't know I guess you ain't going!"  We all laughed for the first time in three days. Monday came and went, and the week, and the next and the next.  It became the old “hurry up and wait routine”, standby to standby.  In the meantime Fred "developed" a strange case of back pains and was replaced by Sonar Technician First Class Pete Williams.

 An interesting thing happened when we asked for our weapons; the command said that there were no weapons for us.  So obviously we raised some serious hell about it, we could not believe that they wanted us to go to war without weapons!  We then decided to buy our own and we started shopping for carbines and pistols.  When the command found out what we were doing, weapons mysteriously

appeared.  They came from the bottom of one of the SEAL team's armory, but they were weapons and that's all we wanted. I kept telling everyone that we are not going anywhere…that this thing was going to be resolved before we left. I even told the guys that if and when we ended up going, I would shave my mustache off. 

Then one day we were told that there was a change of plans and that now we are going by plane to Saudi Arabia as a land team instead of on a ship.  Once again the panic button set in and instead of just three triwalls, we were scrambling to find a trailer, a boat, a pickup truck, and a Blazer to take, plus a pallet of High Explosives, a pallet of hazmat (hazardous materials) and a pallet of personal gear.  We were given two weeks to get everything ready.  We did and on 28 September 1990 at approximately 5:00 pm we gathered at Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego to say goodbye to our families and friends.  After leaving everyone behind, CDR Lanning, our skipper, gave us his final words of wisdom: "Stay low, keep your heads and asses down and don't get shot". We took off from San Diego; onboard a C141 headed into God knows what…with my friends, weapons, explosives and my razor to shave my mustache.

Gulf War Procedures

The art of Explosive Ordnance Disposal was developed in part by trial and error.  Errors that took the life of many good men.  One can say that render safe procedures, or RSPs, have been written in blood.  Nowadays RSPs are developed by using high technology equipment and a lot of experience.  Sometimes these methods just don’t apply and good old EOD ingenuity kicks in.

In early March 1991, I went into Kuwait City with BM1 Pete Williams and BM1 John Carr, to start the long and arduous task of clearing ordnance from the city.  The oil fires were still ablaze, the signs of war visible everywhere.  Tanks and vehicles blown up in every corner, every building and house hit by enemy shells, and homeless people meandering in the city.  And then there was the ordnance left behind by the Iraqis.  Upon my return to the States, I heard a quote somewhere that the Iraqis had left behind more ordnance in Kuwait City than the Kuwaitis had in the beginning.  I found that very easy to believe.  There was ordnance laying everywhere, in every house, and in every corner, on the beach and in backyards. 

One day, during the morning brief, we were told that for that day there was no job for us, and that we were to stay away from designated sectors of the city because there were still some small pockets of resistance.  So, what are three Navy EOD techs to do in a war torn city and with nothing to do?  You guessed it; we loaded our truck and went sightseeing...to the places we were told not to go!

We started going from building to building, trench to trench, looking for ordnance, and the fact is that we didn’t have to look far to find any.  We soon found a box of grenades, and we decided to dispose of them by throwing them.  At this point in time, Kuwait was under martial law and we were the marshals.  We basically could do whatever we wanted.  The box of grenades was quickly disposed of, and our grenade throwing skills were 100% better.  Close to the beach we found a box containing hand thrown, anti-tank, RKG-3 grenades.  Because we were not sure of the delay and since they were quite bit bigger than the previous grenades we had disposed of, we had to come up with a plan for our disposal operation.  Like good EOD techs it took us about one minute to come up with a well thought of, intelligent plan: an improvised disposal operation.  The plan was to hit the desert road to Baghdad, hang out the window and throw one out, while I timed it from the back seat...hell of a plan.  We expressed our approval to each other and congratulated ourselves for developing such a sound and ingenious plan.

Here is what actually happened: John is driving the Blazer, I am in the backseat, and Pete is hanging out the passenger side window.  Pete tells John: “Let me know when we hit 70 mph, so I can throw this thing!”  John then replies something to the effect of “OK! I got it”.  At that point Pete thinks that John said got it as in got the speed now and out flies a grenade!  The thing detonated close to 15' behind our Blazer.  I yelled and ducked behind John who said that the last thing he saw in the rear view mirror was my eyeballs, as big as basketballs, going by!  We thought for sure that we had fragged the vehicle and there would be hell to pay when we got back to camp.

We pulled off to the side of the road immediately, and much to our relief, the vehicle was intact.  We counted our blessings, threw the box of grenades on the desert sand and high-tailed it out of there.  The decision was made right there, and was unanimous, that we wouldn’t pursue a change in the publications to reflect our new procedure.  We did not laugh for a while...until we really thought about what we had done.... and how stupid it had been.

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.