From the moment we found out we were bound for Saudi Arabia, my office was flooded with young soldiers, and some not so young, who had to tell me why they couldn't go to a war. Some had joined to get the college benefit, some had new-found religious convictions, and some were very distraught at the thought of living in a tent in the desert. Many were just afraid of the unknown and could be settled down with some calm, reasoned advice. A few came up with a new excuse the minute an older one got shot full of holes. One in particular was angry at the suggestion that he was just frightened and that he would settle down once the reality and inevitability of it all sunk in. But after all, there was only one who was guaranteed to stay behind. She came into my office in her maternity BDUs and asked if she was going to have to go. She wasn't.

From notification to the point where the trains shipped out with our vehicles and equipment, there was an intense flurry of activity. Days were long...14 to 18 hours long. There were no days off, no rest, and very little personal time. But once the trains rolled, we found ourselves with no vehicles, no equipment, no mission, and not much to do except try to prepare soldiers for departure and what lay beyond. I arranged plenty of time off for those who had been so furiously busy, and concentrated on those who needed a little encouragement. We put new emphasis on physical training, more along the lines of combatives and less on two- mile runs. Hand-to-hand combat, King-of-the-Ring, Combat Volley Ball, etc. We received our travel instructions and on the morning of 16 December, we boarded buses on Flak Kaserne for the Stuttgart Airfield. From Stuttgart, we stopped in Rome for a few minutes, didn't even get off the plane, and then flew across the Med, over Egypt, and on to Riyadh Airfield in Saudi Arabia. I stepped off the plane and looked around; it was too dark to see anything except the area immediately around us. I had two thoughts almost simultaneously: "I'm in Saudi Arabia!" I had never in my life imagined I would ever be there. The second was, "I wish Charlie was here." We had been married so long that nothing seemed to be very interesting if I couldn't share it with her.

I was struck once again by the importance of organization. We had flown on the same plane with another unit from Stuttgart. When we deplaned, I had all of my platoon sergeants line up our crew-served weapons and count individual weapons. Within ten minutes we had all of our weapons accounted for...easy enough since they had all been tagged according to the instructions of the Movements Officer (The Army is really fussy about counting weapons...they hate it when one gets lost). But we were frozen in place because the commander of the other unit on the plane had misplaced a machine gun. He kept coming over and looking at the tags on our machine guns to make sure his wasn't among them. He seemed miffed when I suggested he should look for his own machine gun, since all of these were ours still, after he made three attempts to make them his. I don't know where they finally found the lost weapon, but it was after 0300 when we boarded the buses and headed for the port.

We were billeted on a pier at the port. Some of the piers were covered; ours wasn't. We were told to stake out an area so many feet by so many feet and set up our cots and that would be home until the ship with our vehicles arrived...not more than a week to ten days from then. The King was providing food at the pier: a truck we would call a "Roach Coach" at home brought mystery meat and bread. I stuck with MREs. But the next day we got great news: our ship was one day out and would be docking at another port about thirty or forty miles from where we were. We loaded on buses again and moved to the new port...to another pier...uncovered...and staked out so many feet by so many feet. The next day our ship docked and almost immediately started off-loading our trucks and equipment. We lined them all up on the pier, inspected them for loss or damage, and then lined them up to move to the processing point where they were counted, again...inspected, again...and lined up for convoy, again. The next morning we left the port area heading west across some terrain that could teach West Texas a thing or two about "empty".

Late that evening we arrived in the Seventh Corps Reception area. We had been told that we would have tents, hot food, and showers there. But there were already several units ahead of us who had had showers, hot food, and filled up the tents; so we ate more MREs, slept in trucks, and stunk. The next morning my commander woke me up with an almost child-like awe in his voice, "Hey, Top! Wake up! We're on the surface of the Moon!" Looking around, I almost agreed...the whole world from horizon to horizon was empty, flat, dirty, dusty, and only populated by a small group of tents that were several yards away. Apparently all the other units had pulled out while we slept. We went inside the command tent and were given an escort and orders to report to our Battalion, a small forward detachment of which was situated in a bivouac site a few miles off.

The drive to our Battalion detachment was short, just an hour or so. We were met by the operations staff who told us to keep our troops and equipment lined up; we would be leaving soon for our assembly area. I walked into the operations tent and was met by my "favorite" Sergeant Major. He informed me that my company was about to be detached from his battalion and attached to a battalion that was due in from the States. No explanation, no expression of regret, no Kiss-my-butt... just go away. I asked about support systems and such and was told to ask my new Sergeant Major. I was no longer a 4th Trans asset; I was now assigned to 6th Trans. In a peacetime exercise like REFORGER or other big manuevers, it is not uncommon to reorganize units for the sake of convenience. But in the face of a potential shooting war, it could be very "inconvenient" to be cut off from the support system you knew and get tossed to the curb.

A meeting was arranged with our new battalion's Advance Party and a recon run to our new assembly area was arranged. It turned out that our new battalion was headed up by a very experienced Lieutenant Colonel, and a Sergeant Major that I had worked for at Fort Leonard Wood. We did a dry run to TAA Henry...Tactical Assembly Area Henry, our new home until whenever.

The next day we convoyed out of 4th's AO and headed to that new home. I discovered that the conexes that we had packed with some very important purchases, like plywood and tools, were no longer ours...they were the property of 4th Trans and we would not have access to any of those items. The Sergeant Major took great pleasure in telling me this personally, with the required amount of feigned regret. He was willing to put my soldiers in a tough spot to pay me back for an earlier slight. Bastard.

"Second star on the right, straight on 'til morning" would have been more detailed directions than we had. Tapline Road to the intersection (the only intersection...about four hundred kilometers from the port), turn left...eleven miles past the entrance to King Khalid Military City turn left off the pavement and straight east to the red barrel. Right at the barrel and go south until you find the white barrel and the unit markers pounded into the ground. Believe it or not, we found it. It was almost where we had looked for it the day before.

We found putting up our tents to be a challenge; the ground was loose gravel for about five or six inches, then rock. The tent stakes bent when we tried to pound them in. We had to use three times the usual number of stakes and anchor them with sandbags to keep the tents up. The wind was fierce, the temperature was bitter cold, and everyone was so exhausted that once the tents were up, we all pretty much collapsed. It was Christmas Eve Eve. (Okay, Dana, Christmas Adam).

Only one week after saying our goodbyes and boarding the buses at Ludwigburg's Flak Kaserne, a week consisting of bus rides and long flights and more bus rides and sleeping in the open and eating Lord knows what seasoned with sand and grit, and boredom and frenetic activity, and convoys and sleeping in trucks, and dealing with vindictive idiots and more convoys and disappointments and more MREs and setting up a field site in howling, freezing wind, and constant sheer astonishment at the emptiness...the featurelessness...the hugeness...the alienness of our surroundings, we were in place "on the ground" ready to do what we did best...fueling the force.