Home > Gulf War Diary > "Holiday Blues"
By the end of November, the weather was getting bitterly cold, and the days were
getting shorter. "Shamals" (northerly Arabian peninsula winds) began
blowing sandstorms from the north and adding to the wind chill. The guard force
at night caught hell from the cold. Soldiers who lived in GP tents could keep
warm at night with pot belly stoves; soldiers in Bedouin tents, though, just
had to "suck it up." Bedouin tents were too flammable to allow stoves
therein. We were issued thermal underwear, something most soldiers had not
thought to bring to Saudi Arabia. "Who had thought that it could get so
damned cold in the desert," many soldiers wondered.
On November 30, 1990, the UN Security Council approved the use of force after
January 15, 1991 to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The intent was to give diplomacy
and sanctions until January 15 to solve the problem, after which the coalition
would be "authorized" (at least in the eyes of the UN) to liberate
Kuwait by force. This gave us a date to focus on, which improved morale by
taking some of the uncertainty away. With VII Corps' deployments and the UN
resolution, we were able to deduce that we would eventually attack to liberate
Kuwait. This was reinforced by the fact that our higher headquarters directed
that we change our training focus to concentrate on offensive, rather than
defensive, operations. People started saying that "the road home leads
through Kuwait."
In early December, Saddam Hussein started test firing SCUDs in the Western Iraqi
desert (presumably to make sure they actually worked). Of course, CENTCOM's
target acquisition systems would pick them up when they left their launch
platforms, and send out a "SCUD alert." Whenever we received SCUD
alerts, we expanded our perimeter and dispersed our vehicles into the
surrounding desert to increase our survivability. At first, this was something
new and exciting, but it started happening with a great deal of regularity, and
usually at night. Of course, at this point, the SCUDs were not being shot at
Saudi Arabia (they were only being test fired in Iraq), but, to be on the safe
side, we felt it prudent to make survivability moves. Nevertheless, it did not
take long for SCUD alerts to become synonymous with the expression "pain
in the ass."
By mid December, we had received a "warning order" to move to King
Khalid Military City (KKMC) to "prepare for future operations." KKMC
is a Saudi military base located approximately 40 kilometers southwest of the
Saudi city of Hafar Al Batin, near the tri-border area (where Iraq, Kuwait, and
Saudi Arabia meet) and the Neutral zone. KKMC was nicknamed "Emerald
City" after the famed secret city in the Wizard of Oz, because the
security-conscious Saudis would not allow KKMC to be publicly identified in any
way. We were excited about moving north simply because it was something new and
different. Unfortunately, the move was postponed when President Bush offered to
have Secretary of State Baker meet the Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to
explore peace. The concern was that the First Cavalry Division's move north
might be construed as a hostile activity, and might threaten the peace talks.
Christmas Day 1990 was tough. The "Holiday Blues" syndrome was in full
force. Once again, we were fed an extraordinary Christmas dinner, just like
Thanksgiving, but, as fate would have it, a shamal blew down from the north
just as we were sitting down for dinner. This shamal kicked up a huge
sandstorm, which pretty much ruined dinner. "Shield 107," the Armed
Forces Network radio station in Dhahran, played instrumental Christmas carols
all day long; all this did was depress people that much more. The fact that the
Christmas carols were instrumental was not by accident; the Saudis objected to
the religious content of Christmas carol lyrics, and insisted on
instrumental-only airings of holiday songs. This caused many soldiers to think,
"What are we doing defending this country anyway when we cannot even play
our music the way we want to?"
By New Year's, morale had hit rock bottom, and I was extremely concerned about
my soldiers' morale. I imagined Americans celebrating to bring in the New Year,
while we were slowly going crazy in the barren Arabian desert, not knowing what
would happen. I thought about the French Foreign Legion of Beau Geste fame,
and le cafard.
