They were calling it "DESERT STORM". We had been involved in the exercise called "DESERT SHIELD"; then on the evening of January 17th, we received the word to go to MOPP IV (Military Operations in Protective Posture or something like that; level four means you put on everything Sam gave you to keep the bugs and rays and gas off of you). The bombs were falling on Baghdad...it had just become a shooting war. One of the biggest threats Mr. Hussein waved around was the use of chemical weapons if we were silly enough to attack him. So we had to get ready, just in case he was silly enough to use them. In our operations tent, the word was received and immediately passed to the platoons. We started getting on our chemical suits and booties and masks and gloves. In the flurry of activity one of the sergeants who worked in Ops got my attention and pointed to a female sergeant who was becoming more and more frantic. Her anxiety was making it harder and harder for her to get her gear on. In the process, she managed to tear a hole in the protective hood that was attached to her mask. She was trying to take the thing apart to install a new hood...crying and talking a mile minute to no one in particular. Truck and I sat down next to her and tried to calm her down. We explained that while we did have time to get into the gear, we didn't have time to rebuild it. Truck put a piece of the ubiquitous green tape (we used to call it "hundred-mile-an-hour tape, I don't know why) and sealed the hole in the hood; calmed her down, and got her into her gear. The real deal has a way of bringing out things about people you might never see otherwise...this young lady was the unit's NBC NCO...she was specially trained to handle all the unit's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical detection, decontamination, and protection equipment. Those days were done for her; she went back to one of the platoons to drive a truck.

So the Shield became a Storm. The only difference it made to us was that we now spent most of our days in our chemical suits. We continued convoy operations. In Operations we listened to the command net, the channel that the big dogs use to direct the war, trying to keep track of what was going on. We couldn't get the AFN radio station but some of us had short-wave capability on our Boom Boxes and could listen to BBC and occasionally pick up CNN. We had numerous chemical warnings and everyone would have to get back into the whole get-up. We heard news announcers telling the world that Iraq had launched so many Scuds toward Israel or Rhiyad but the missles fell "harmlessly in the desert". The same desert we were occupying at the time. Sometimes we could see them fly over and hoped they would fall harmlessly in someone else's patch of desert.

Now we were sitting in line, just a few hundred yards from the "Berm" (a wall of sand about 8-10 feet high that Saddam had pushed up to slow down an invader) hearing and feeling the concussion from the fuel-air bombs that were being dropped on the Iraqi positions opposite us. The wind kicked up, dust started blowing, and the word came to move...in the midst of a genuine Arabian Desert Sand Storm... at that point we initiated our own contribution to DESERT STORM. I was with the recovery team at the rear of the convoy. The commander was in the lead. Between us there were about a hundred tankers full of JP-8 and most of them couldn't see more than the tanker in front of them. We started out by driving into an abandoned field site that was surrounded by a six-foot berm of sand. When the commander realized he was inside a berm, he followed it around to the entrance where he met the rest of his convoy coming in. I got out and started directing traffic, getting the front of the convoy back on track and keeping the rearmost elements from going in. The wrecker followed everyone around inside the berm to make sure they all got out. When he showed up at the exit, I got back in my Blazer. My driver, John said, "Hey, Top...they're gone." I looked up and sure enough, the convoy had disappeared in the blowing sand. We took off in the direction we thought was the right way and for the next couple of hours we could talk to elements of the convoy on the radio, but we couldn't see more than thirty or forty feet in front of us. Great way to start a war.

To make matters worse, the Third Armored Division was rolling up the Iraqi Army in front of them at a frightening pace. Objectives that were designated to be reached at H + 36 (Army jargon meaning we expected to get there thirty-six hours from jump off) were blown by at H+12. The tanks were outrunning their support. We didn't have time to transfer fuel from our tankers to the 3rd's tankers; we were fueling M1A1s right from our 5000 gallon tankers. In some cases, refueling within a couple hundred yards of the Forward Edge of Battle. It was an awesome, fast, and scary action. We were racing back and forth, empties passing fulls. We didn't have time to transfer fuel or even trade out trailers, we just kept running. We passed through battlefields that were minutes old. We had episodes with soft sand, surrendering Iraqis, broken trucks, and all manner of confusion. We raced across Southern Iraq and stormed into Kuwait through the back door. We were just inside Kuwait at a Log Base when the word came down that we were under a Cease Fire. The shooting was stopped. We set up at Logistic Resupply Point 8...just for a couple hours. Then we were tasked to move fuel from our new Log Base in Iraq, Log Base Nellingen, to LRP 8 in Kuwait, in case things got heated up again. So we continued to run fuel. Now we had tankers running from Echo to Nellingen and from Nellingen into LRP 8. Some of the platoons went all the way into Kuwait City, along the famous "Death's Highway".

It wasn't much of a war, from the standpoint of endurance. We barely got into the swing of it and it was over. I have been on REFORGER exercises that were more taxing. But it had all the potential of a real knock-down-drag-out. We can look back from the perspective of what we know now, we see how it all turned out and judge it to be not much more than a pffft in history. But that night, when we were lined up and waiting for the word to jump, I was full of dread. I had two hundred of my own soldiers and almost that many strangers that were thrust into my care at the last minute...and I was supposed to take them into what could potentially be the worst day of their lives...or the last day. Saddam had purchased tanks and artillery and Migs and all manner of weapons from the USSR; his was the fourth-largest army in the world. This wasn't Panama or Grenada, po-dunk countries with second-rate equipment and untried soldiers. Saddam had been in an eight-year war with Iran until recently. The thing that concerned me most that night was the helicopters. Saddam had 500 Soviet Hind Gunships. They were like flying tanks. NATO troops knew you didn't need to shoot at one with anything less than a .50 Cal with armor-piercing rounds...anything less and you just mark your position...and it makes them mad. I had about four hundred soldiers sitting on about a million gallons of JP-8, not a very good match up. I wish I had known that evening what I know now...that everyone would go home safe...