We arrived at Griffin Base, as our compound was called, late on the night of January 20, 1991, after sitting on our gear next to the runway most of the afternoon and evening. Griffin Base was the truck park for a civilian trucking firm. A concrete block wall about eight feet high surrounded it. There was a dispatcher shack just inside the gate, which was on the east wall. To the right was an open front maintenance building against the north wall. A large metal warehouse building also occupied the north wall. In the southeast corner of the compound was a long building used for showering. The rest of the southern half of the compound was filled with modular huts. These were not ready for our occupation yet. In the large open area used to park trucks was a maze of expedient shelters made of scrap wood frames, cardboard boxes, and plastic sheeting. That is where the other units were billeted. Most of our company joined them. It was reminiscent of the area we called “Dogpatch” in Da Nang, Vietnam, just outside the wire west of the airfield. We ate MREs for the first week as we waited to get married up with our equipment. Then, the food service sergeant, SFC Bohannon, was able to set up limited operation in the metal warehouse. Soon we were eating hot food from T-Pacs. It was definitely an improvement. After several more days, the mess sergeant plugged into the subsistence supply system. We had fresh food after that. Meals were excellent. After two weeks the other units at Griffin Base were assigned missions and moved out to sites elsewhere. By that time we had our tentage. Our commander ordered “shanty town” dismantled and tents erected. About this time we assumed the mission of providing security to the Port of Dammam, which was the largest logistic installation in Saudi Arabia. One thing that broke the monotony and helped morale was the nightly broadcasts of General Schwartzkopf’s briefing to the news media. Norman Schwartzkopf was the right leader at the right time. The war was flawlessly executed. The 85th Evac Hospital served the troops in the Dhahran area. It was a large maze-like facility of interconnected and air conditioned “tents.” I went to sick call one morning in February because my thumb was not healing properly. In Yuma, I crushed the end of the thumb while trying to fix a problem with the back hatch on a HMMWV. At the dispensary at MCAS Yuma, I learned that I had broken the bone in the tip of the thumb. The shearing motion of the HMMWV’s hatch had also sliced through half of the nail. The Navy doctor had to remove the nail. The nail grew out slowly, but there was something wrong with the nail bed. I developed an ingrown thumbnail. The treatment on my first visit did not help. In late February, I made another trip to the hospital. As I waited in the clinic area, a doctor was discussing with a colleague his participation in the emergency surgery performed on the casualties from the last Scud to strike Dhahran. On the evening of February 25, 1991, Iraq fired a Scud at Dhahran. The ground assault against Iraq had started the previous day. A Patriot was fired at that Scud. The puff of smoke from the explosion of the Patriot at intercept was almost directly above our compound. The intercept was a near miss. The Scud continued on and slammed into the warehouse in which members of the 475th Quartermaster Group, an Army reserve unit from Pennsylvania, were billeted. Twenty-seven were killed and ninety-eight were wounded. SFC Bohannon, said missile fragments punched holes in the warehouse roof right over a corner of his kitchen area. I don’t know how many times in training I heard cadre say, “Don’t bunch up. One round will get you all.” Another bit of advice was, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Those who ignore these hard learned axioms do so at their peril. As I moved across the tented hospital module to have my thumb looked at, the surgeon showed me one of the photographs taken on the night of carnage that resulted in 27 KIA and 98 wounded. The photo showed a soldiers thigh with a large chunk gone. The surrounding tissue had the gray-brown look of a well-done pot roast. The doctor specifically stated that the leg looked like cooked meat. I don’t know if the soldier’s leg was saved or not. The orthopedic surgeon that looked at my thumb, which was showing signs of infection, and prescribed antibiotic ointment. He instructed me to clean the wound with soap and sterile water, apply the antibiotic, and then a clean bandage. He told me to do this several times a day. He recommended that I boil the water before washing the wound because our bottled drinking water was not sterile. The medical people were concerned about infection in theater. Apparently, there were as many nasty germs lurking in the desert as there had been in the jungles of Southeast Asia - I’m a veteran of both wars. That so many germs could exist in the desert surprised me. I became more concerned about infection because the memory of Vietnam awakened sleeping visions of jungle rot. I later learned that Kurdistan, Iran, was believed to be one of the four bubonic plague foci of the pre-modern world. That explained one of the vaccinations we received - for the plague - prior to deployment to Iraq. Griffin Base was located across the road from some kind of facility that processed barley. We could see the huge mound of barley rising above the cement walls surrounding the grain processor. After we had been at Griffin Base four or five weeks, we became infested with small brown bugs. I don’t know what they were, but they got into my cap and crawled around on my head. We called them barley bugs. After awhile, they just disappeared. A week or so after my second visit to medical, I returned to the Evac Hospital. My thumb was still not healing. As I sat in the waiting area, another sergeant from the 855th that I knew from Yuma sat down next to me. Dave had broken his arm several days earlier. Initially, he was kept in one of the wards. I had not realized he had been released from the hospital. As we sat and talked, he told me of the Iraqi prisoner who shared the ward Dave had been assigned to. Dave said that the Iraqi had been brought in missing an arm. The language barrier had prevented the U.S. soldiers from communicating with him. A day or two later, he was transferred out of the ward. Dave didn’t know his destination. As the Iraqi was being carried out, he became animated and very vocal. He gestured towards a canvas bag that he had arrived with. After some initial confusion, the medics grabbed the bag and checked the contents. They found his severed arm inside. Apparently, the Iraqi believed the Americans could re-attach his arm. That made a statement about the humane treatment U.S. forces afforded prisoners. It also said something about Iraqi perception of our medical technology. But why hadn’t anyone checked his bag when he was brought in? Seriously injured and without an arm, he was not perceived as a threat. Later, in March, I returned to the hospital. The doctor looked at my thumb. A small flap of skin was blocking the growth of my thumbnail and inhibiting healing. He numbed my thumb. He cut out the blocking lump of skin, and then cauterized the wound with silver nitrate. He told me that if the procedure didn’t work, the next step might involve amputating part of my thumb. Fortunately, it worked. XXX The war had concluded about a month prior to my March visit to medical. Life in Iraq had become routine. I had long since smoked that last of the ten cigars I had brought with me from Arizona. I began to crave smoking a cigar. I searched for cigars at the small PXs that were operating in Dhahran, but to no avail - all I could find were the small cigars with the plastic tips. Not acceptable. I had not thrown away the second small packet that once contained five White Owl New Yorker cigars. The company address was on the box. One of the other Vietnam Veterans in our company had mentioned writing to the Campbell Soup Company and had received a case of soup courtesy of Campbell Soup. I decided I would contact White Owl and see if I could order a box of cigars, and wrote them a letter letting them know that I had been a longtime customer. I told them that I preferred the White Owl Invincible, but had changed to the New Yorker because the Invincible was no longer available in my area in Arizona. I inquired as to whether or not they would accept my credit card number and sell me a box of cigars. A couple of weeks later, a carton arrived from White Owl. In it were ten five-packs of Invincibles and ten five-packs of New Yorkers. Included in the carton was a letter explaining that the cigars were compliments of the White Owl Company. The company thanked me for my service. It was beyond my expectations. A hundred of my favorite cigars just for hanging out in the desert and nearly losing my thumb. I immediately wrote them a letter of profuse thanks. Then, I passed out about one half of my newly received treasures to members of the company whom I knew enjoyed cigars. I made a lot of points that day. I got into the habit of taking a smoke break in the late afternoon. I would sit on the curb of the dispatcher’s hut that served as the company headquarters. I would light up a cigar and sip a warm can of soda facing west towards my “Mecca” in Arizona. Ice was a luxury, so soft drinks were consumed warm. We had a wide variety to choose from. There was Coca Cola, Pepsi, Sprite, and Seven-up plus a few others. On one side, the can looked just like it did in the States. On the other side, the brand name was written in Arabic script. Then, there were soft drinks from other places. Afri Kola, a reasonable substitute for Coke, was produced somewhere in the region. I would have preferred wine with my cigar, but alcohol was forbidden. As I sat smoking a cigar one afternoon, I heard something at the gate near where I sat. The head of a dog appeared under the gate. Doing the low crawl, the dog scrabbled its way under the gate. Three puppies quickly followed it. The dog, actually a bitch, had the short hair, size, and the coloring of a Boxer. She had a snout longer than a boxer, though. Mama was foraging for food for her pups and herself. They would stick around for a little while, and then crawl back under the gate and leave. They were wary all the while. This furry quartet visited daily. They were a welcome distraction. I never saw the dogs allow anyone to pet them. They were very skittish around humans. I thought it was strange. Another day, the company admin sergeant stopped by during my smoke break. He had some interesting information on our food service sergeant. He said that SFC Bohannon had told him that he had the Japan occupation medal. The National Guard had a lot of old soldiers at that time. I was forty-two, but Bo was clearly older than that. The admin sergeant checked his service record book, and the entry was there. Bo had been awarded the medal for service in Japan in 1949. XXX The sky to the north always had a pronounced thick layer of smoke from the oil wells that Saddam Hussein ordered his troops to torch. Kuwait was on fire. We were over two hundred miles from the Saudi – Kuwaiti border, yet the smoke was clearly visible where we were. One evening, the company commander gathered three platoon leaders, the acting first sergeant, and me for a meeting. He had been to a Battalion meeting where the subject of reassigning company missions had been discussed. One of those missions involved relocating an MP company to Kuwait. Our CO wanted our input. Should he volunteer the 855th MP Company for the mission? He went around the room. The young platoon leaders were eager for the opportunity to serve in Kuwait. It sounded like adventure. The First Shirt, a Vietnam veteran, also voted in the affirmative. The CO turned to me. I said I thought it was a bad idea. In the Marine Corps about fifteen years earlier, I was assigned to the MCAS (H) Futenma Aircraft Crash Rescue section. During that assignment, I learned a great deal about fire fighting and fire science. I shared the benefit of the knowledge I had gained during that assignment with my fellow soldiers seated in the room with the CO. I told them that the chief killer at a fire scene was smoke. More people died of smoke inhalation than burning to death. I briefly discussed the products of combustion. For example, burning wool gives off hydrogen cyanide gas as a by-product. Plastics emit extremely toxic aldehyde fumes, and a principal ingredient in plastic is oil. Hundreds of burning oil wells blanketed Kuwait with thick petroleum smoke. I remembered summer days long ago in Los Angeles. When the days were very hot and very smoggy, I had trouble breathing. It was disabling. Logic dictated that breathing that smoke-filled air for weeks or months in a hot desert climate could not be a good thing. Then, I shared some knowledge of improved conventional munitions that I had gained working at Yuma Proving Ground. I explained that many of the new artillery delivered sub-munitions did not look like ordnance at all. Many of them looked like electronic components. A few were particularly deceptive. One artillery round contained dozens of wedge-shaped sub-munitions with a round ball in the center. They were high-explosive anti-personnel mines. If disturbed, they would detonate with brutal effectiveness. Another experimental sub-munition that I saw at Yuma Proving Ground was something called the “rook”. It was as long as my index finger. The body was as big around as my finger and as long as my finger from the hand to the first knuckle. Extending from the body was a flat, spiraled piece of metal. It acted like the tail on a kite, and made sure the rook was correctly oriented after being ejected from the artillery projectile casing so it would detonate promptly on impact. It looked like a party favor. A few days before our meeting, a soldier in another company in our battalion had been severely wounded when he disturbed a cluster bomb unit. He didn’t know what it was. Our company had not had any training in identification of these new and deadly sub-munitions. I finished by telling the commander that if we were ordered to take the assignment, we would go and do the best job we could. But, I asked that he not volunteer for the assignment. I didn’t want my fellow soldiers subjected to that environment and risking their safety just for an adventure. When I finished speaking, no one said anything. I wondered if I sounded like a sage, or just a big chicken – a party pooper. The Commander dismissed us. Not another word was said of the conversation in that room that night, but our company was not assigned to that duty. We stayed where we were. XXX Units began to roll down the causeway to the Port of Dammam. The retrograde out of theater had begun. Convoys of armor or artillery vehicles over a mile long were common. They were impressive. Each M-1 tank had its own tractor-trailer rig to transport it. Each unit would stop at an assembly area just outside the port. Then, they would move into a staging area inside the port when space became available. From there, each vehicle would go to the decontamination wash point.  Once a vehicle had been cleaned to U.S. customs satisfaction, which ensured no unwanted flora or fauna - or germs - entered the U.S., it went into a quarantine area. There, it was off limits to the owning unit to prevent illegal contraband being stashed in the vehicle. From the quarantine area, the vehicle was then driven or towed aboard ship. One morning as I took a turn directing traffic onto the port, I noticed a first sergeant wearing First Cavalry insignias sitting in his vehicle across the road. He was obviously agitated about something. When there was a lull in the movement of vehicles, I walked over to find out what was wrong. He was highly pissed off and venting. As I approached, he shook his head and said, “They didn’t let us finish it. We’re going to have to come back here and do this again.” He believed, as many of us did, that Saddam Hussein would prove to be a problem in the future. I nodded my head in agreement. I understood his anger. I stood there silently for a few minutes more absorbing his prophecy, and then moved back across the road. It was troubling to think about a second war with Iraq. Some soldiers who had photographed scenes along the infamous “Highway of Death” offered to sell sets of photographs. The photos were brutally graphic records of the carnage. Dead Iraqi bodies were blue-black and bloated amongst destroyed armor and other vehicles that littered the route of retreat out of Kuwait. I didn’t need anything to refresh this memory. My feelings toward Iraqi soldiers were different than those I held against the Viet Cong. I hated the Cong, still. During Desert Storm, many, if not most, Iraqi soldiers were manning the front lines or serving with the point of a gun at their backs courtesy of the Iraqi Republican Guard. Those common soldiers were truly between a rock and a hard place. That is why so many surrendered when given the opportunity. There was even outrage expressed by the western media when advancing U.S. tanks fitted with dozer blades buried Iraqis alive in their trenches. The media felt the U.S. violated the Geneva Convention. There was a brief discussion on humane ways of killing an enemy. U.S. representatives stated the action was not a Convention violation. As the tempo of troops departing Saudi Arabia increased, we knew our turn was approaching when we were told to go to Khobar Towers to draw our desert camouflage uniforms. It was mid-May. Each soldier was issued two. The camouflage pattern was quickly dubbed “chocolate chip”. Someone at the highest level of command directed that all soldiers returning from Desert Storm would be in the desert camouflage uniforms upon their return to the U.S. Getting the uniforms properly prepared for wear according to uniform regulations was a welcome distraction from the routine. We went to the PX to order the requisite black on tan name tapes worn over the right shirt pocket, and the matching “U.S. Army” tape for over the left pocket. We bought the other necessary patches. Because we now had wartime service, we were allowed to wear the right shoulder sleeve insignia. In our case, it was the shoulder insignia of the Eighty-Ninth MP Brigade out of Fort Sam Houston, Texas. The insignia was round with vertical stripes. In the middle of the insignia was the head of a griffin superimposed on a knight’s broadsword. One of our senior sergeants referred to it as the lizard on a stick. As I returned from the port a couple of days before we departed Dhahran, I saw the body of a dead animal in a vacant lot adjacent to Griffin Base. It had been there for a day or two because it was already bloated from lying in the sun. There was no mistake though, it was the mama dog. There was no sign of the pups. I sadly wondered who or what killed the dog, and what would happen to her pups. When we returned to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, for demobilization, we assembled in a reception center one afternoon. An Army officer gave us a briefing on what was involved in the process of returning to the Arizona National Guard structure. As we sat there, the officer spoke of Kuwait and mentioned that the air quality over that stricken country was extremely poor. He said that breathing the smoke-laden air was the same as smoking thirty packs of cigarettes a day. I felt vindicated for smoking all those White Owls. Bill Clark joined the Marine Corps in 1965. He served in Vietnam with the First Light Anti-Aircraft Missile Battalion at Da Nang. Bill left the Marine Corps in 1979 and worked at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in the Range Management Division as a federal civil servant. In 1985, Bill joined the Arizona Army National Guard. He served in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, as a member of the 855th Military Police Company during Desert Storm. Bill retired from the U.S. Army in July 1995 and began teaching at an inner-city high school in Phoenix, Arizona. Bill published a personal history about his first four years in the Marine Corps entitled Land, Sea, and Foreign Shore in 2002. He retired in 2009 as a reading teacher to pursue his interest in writing. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Land-Sea-and-Foreign-Shore/Clair-William-Clark-II/e/9781401063801http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Land-Sea-and-Foreign-Shore/Clair-William-Clark-II/e/9781401063801shapeimage_2_link_0