When I flew into Saudi it was in the middle of the night. You could see to the end of the earth it was so flat. After touching down everyone was hearded off the tarmac into a holding area until day break. When the sun started coming up we were sent over to a line of busses that were all painted up like the Partridge family owned them. All of the bottom luggage compartments were open and the drivers had their bedrolls layed out inside along with pictures taped to the walls and a few books. The bus drivers were like modern day nomads, hired by Uncle Sam to transport us to Dharan. We had to put all the gear on the top of the bus because the luggage space was where the driver lived. There weren't any bars on the windows but the bus I was on had bullet holes in the windows. We were all FNG's... the whole country was FNG's... not very comforting.

When I was leaving to come back to Germany...... I had been carrying several rolls of mechanics wrenches in my duffle bag that I had found, 'er.. secured, after one of the units moved out to Iraq (dumbass mechanic left them sitting on the tarmac). I scooped them up and kept them with me the whole time I was there. My duffle bag weighed about 150lbs, because of this but on the tank it didn't matter. When we were told we were headed home they transported us deep into Saudi Arabia to an Air Force strip (base) they had put in. These guys were so far from the action that folks back here in the states had a better chance of seeing scuds than these pricks did. We show up, it's 115 degrees in the shade and we were wearing the big heavy flak vests, helmets, carrying everything that wasn't packed on top of the love bus... The Air Force pricks are all walking around in shorts, wearing baseball caps.... real baseball caps, like Boston Red Sox etc. When the ice cream truck showed up (yup, ice cream truck) and these pricks all got in line in front of us, a big nasty fight broke out. I forgot who broke it up but they banned the tankers from partaking in the frozen deserts while we were there. We never got any ice cream but we fealt a whole lot better about kicking these pricks asses. The best part came when this 5'4" female airman (or airwoman...) went out to unload the gear off the top of our bus. One of the guys on top struggled to roll my duffle over to the edge of the bus to hand it down to her. I thought very briefly about yelling to her to be careful.... He rolls it over to the edge and lets it fly. Knocked this airwoman right on her ass. Next to leaving, that was pretty high on the grins list.

It was 26 or 27 hours in the back of a C130 (I think) with pallets of parts and 9 other guys before we touched down in Germany. That flight sucked.