During Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the Americans in Saudi Arabia were not confined solely to US Armed Forces. Nearly 15,000 American men, women and children lived in the Eastern and Central Provinces of the Kingdom during the period. Here the wargamer's widow, who was in Dhahran during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, recounts her experiences.
When I complained that the summer of 1990 was boring I didn't expect things to get that interesting. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait caught everyone by surprise. We stayed glued to our radios trying to tune in BBC and VOA. We did get VOA once -- but they announced that the next two hours of news were going to be in Farsi, so we lost interest. I won't talk about Shield that much -- the boys and I left in mid-August and came back in December so what we saw was the tail end of the siege. Why did we come back? It was time. And Saudi Arabia was our home. I was going to be damned if I was going to let some tin plated dictator ruin my life anymore than he already had, and I was going to be doubly damned if he was going to run me off from my home again. One of the things I learned form Shield was that American soldiers and marines are some of the most decent people I ever met.
We were part of a program that was organized in August or September to provide the troops with a home cooked meal, a shower or a chance to make a private telephone. There were also convoys of Americans who drove their four-wheeled drive vehicles up to the "front" (until the shooting started) and set up barbecues for a battalion or troop. They estimated when the war was over that the program had served 170,000 men and women between August and Christmas.
As the January 15th deadline approached there was a sense of inevitability. It was a like waiting for a hurricane to hit -- there wasn't anything that was going to stop it. All you could do was batten down the hatches and get ready to ride it out. I think the finality of it came after the Baker-Aziz talks failed. I remember two headlines in the local English language papers. One, just after Perez de Cuellar visited Baghdad, read "Only God knows if there will be war."
The one on January 16th was even more pessimistic, or preparatory. There was a picture of a camel with two tanks behind it, and a setting sun in the background. "All hope lost, war only option," it read.
You could sense something was about to happen. AFRTS had been playing what I guess you could call inspirational music -- things like "I'm Proud to be an American," Ray Charles' version of "America the Beautiful" and Bette Midler's "From a Distance."
The next night we were woken up by a phone call from a friend of ours who works at the airbase --"Desert Shield is now Desert Storm," he told me. The early hours of the war -- which was the middle of the night here -- are nothing but a series of impressions. After the phone call --which must have happened just before Baghdad started getting hit, I turned on the radio --AFRTS was still playing music at this point and the song was "Wind Beneath My Wings." Then came the news. Two quotes stand out. Schwarzkopf's "Call To Battle" where he said "Now you must be the thunder and lightning of Desert Storm..." really gave me chills of fear and good wishes for the men and women out there. The other quote -- "The liberation of Kuwait has begun," was different -- it was a confirmation that the waiting was over.
What else? I remember the air raid sirens going off at the airbase "somewhere in Saudi Arabia." Scared the hell out of me at first. We never did find out why they turned them on that night.
I remember walking outside in the dark -- there were clouds that night and you could hear the planes but couldn't see them. They droned on all night -- wave after wave. I never really knew there were that many warplanes in the world.
When morning came we all went outside and when the cloud cover lifted you could see them. They flew low over the houses. You could make out the tail markings sometimes that's how close they were. The next night the SCUDs came. The first week of SCUDs the air raid sirens were next to useless. Our first warning was the loud KA-BOOOOM of a Patriot battery firing. Then the kids and I would head for the safe room. Once it was really weird as we got a phone call from the States telling us that an attack was happening before we knew we under attack. Eventually they got it straightened out, though. It was quite clever actually. What the government did was have one of the radio stations stop broadcasting at 9 PM. You'd tune into this radio station, turn the volume all the way up and go to sleep. If anything happened it played out loud chords of music and announced "The Danger Alert has sounded" in Arabic and English. Then you'd wait. If there weren't any booms, you'd know the attack was elsewhere and go to sleep. If not, or it was an early evening attack I and the kids would head for the safe room.
Our safe room consisted of a large, L-shaped storage closet under the stairs. It was big enough for two sleeping bags and everyone could stand. We equipped it with a few toys plus emergency provisions and our gas masks. We had been told to tape our windows in case of a chemical attack, but I was more concerned about them breaking and spraying glass. So I went out and bought some clear packing tape and taped all the windows in an eight-pointed star design. I think the clear tape was a good idea as you weren't constantly reminded by seeing obviously taped windows.
The boys camped out in the "safe room" for the duration of the war. That way their sleep wouldn't be as disturbed as bringing them downstairs each warning. And there were a lot of them -- any missile aimed south set off everything from Riyadh to the Gulf. I remember I was on the phone to a friend in the states when the danger siren sounded, I told her I had to go and hung up. By the time I put the phone down the kids (and the cat) were in the safe room. After a night of interrupted sleep I'd see my husband off to work and eventually get together with my friends around 10 AM. We'd reassure one another that even though the rest of the world thought we were crazy, we were okay.
Why did I the kids and I stays? I felt safer there then anywhere. The State Department and the military worked out some evacuation flights from Dhahran three days after the war started (for which they charged by the way and marked your passport as invalid if you didn't pay within 90 days.) I decided to stay because I figured we were safer here than any airport in the world. I was more worried about terrorists than the occasional SCUD.
The kids took the war well. Our little one was just a baby and I don't think he ever knew what was going on. It was all some sort of a game sleeping under the stairs. The older one was fine as well. He and his friends played soldiers in the backyard with their GI Joes.
If we had been watching the war on television it would have been worse then living through it. The media, especially television, had a way of making things worse. It only managed to scare the hell out of our parents. They'd see the missiles and what not and of course everything looked worse on television than it was. The repeats probably gave them the illusion of constant bombardment.
Speaking about not telling people what was going on -- the United States State Department was a joke. They had a travel advisory posted on August 3rd which essentially said "defer travel to the Eastern Province." Despite the fact that war was about to break out they never changed that advisory even after January 17th, though they might have finally then, By then it was kinda silly to change it. The commercial aircraft stopped flying into Dhahran when the war started. What was really annoying was that they waited until the end of December to talk to the American community even though there is a perfectly good consulate in Dhahran. What a lot of folks were mad about was just before the war the State Department told everyone in Jordan and Pakistan to get out, that their safety was in jeopardy. The Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia was okay though, you were just supposed to "defer" travel. They also waited until the 7th day of the war to issue gas masks to the American citizens. You can see they were well-organized.
What was life like? More or less normal. I know that sounds crazy, but things really were more or less the same. I mean we had dinner at the usual time, went to bed at the regular time, though not in the regular place for the kids. Nothing really changed though you always half-listened to the radio or stopped to watch TV if it was on. I still had to shop, take care of the house, fix dinner and so on. My oldest son went to classes and den meetings.
I guess I'll remember a lot of things about the war. Charles Jaco in his gas mask freaking out and yelling "Gas! Gas!" Carrying a gas mask around like a fashion accessory. Getting phone calls in the middle of the night from concerned parents and friends. But what I'll always remember is the music from the period.
I cannot hear some songs without thinking about AFRTS and the days before and right into the war. Some of them --like "Wind Beneath My Wings" and "We are the Champions" just make me hear the warplanes again. "Wind Beneath My Wings" was playing when I was woken up by the phone announcing the start of the war. You could hear the planes taking off in droves above us. When the war ended, and they finally stopped the news broadcast, the guys at AFRTS played the "Star Spangled Banner" -- I got goose bumps of excitement, and then they moved into "We Are The Champions of the World."
Right before the war the two songs which they played at least once an hour was "God Bless the USA," and "Show Me The Way," which they had mixed with portions of the Congressional debate on the war resolution. Another "favorite" was "From a Distance." I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to those songs without thinking about the war.
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© Copyright 1996 by David W. Tschanz.
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