The Adventures of Rich and GC: Stick to the Road and Beware the Oil Fires at Night

So one evening after the shooting had stopped,we had started to calm down and settle in at the Kuwait International Airport (KIA), I had noticed that I was feeling kind of angst ridden. I could feel every part of my body as though it was all tingling, except for my brain. It was an odd sensation; I had full awareness of my body except for my brain. Anyhow, when I told GC about this he said I needed to go take a walk. It took some convincing but he managed to get me to go for a walk with him.
We told our squad leaders what we were doing. We grabbed a pistol and wandered off to follow the hard top away from the camp towards the oil fires that were only a mile or two away from the camp, but still very loud and bright. We were talking about nothing in particular and started joking about the unexploded ordinance that was likely on the ground where we were. At one point one of us picked up a rock and threw it out in to the desert, not knowing if we were next to a mine field or not. We were so stressed out that we kind of didn’t care if we would set off a land mine or not. However, as we waited for the rock to hit the ground we started to laugh, a maniacal insane sort of laugh. We enjoyed that so much they we continued to do it from time to time as we walked and talked about the things we had seen, done and expected to happen.

At one point we noticed some tracer rounds snaking up through the sky, headed towards us. It was a long ways off, but it was hard to tell just how far off it was due to the nature of the desert. So not being in the right frame of mind we just stood there watching the rounds come closer, fizzle out and... Well it was at about that point that GC said “If one of those rounds hits me I’m going to be pissed”.

“Me too” I replied, and we watched as more rounds snaked up into the air, headed our way. I grabbed up another rock and threw it in to the dirt near us hoping to hit a mine. GC started laughing as we turned our backs on the tracers, and continued our walk. It started to get very dark but our way was lit by the fires in the distance, and we continued to talk about whatever was on our minds. The scene was like something out of a movie. In fact the move that closely resembled that night was American Werewolf in London, where the main character and his friend are walking away from a small town out on the Moors. Those two friends had been given the advise to stick to the road and beware the full moon. I was relaying the movie to GC when I got to the part about sticking to the road. For us the road meant safety from land mines, unexploded ordinance and the fastest way back to the camp. Astonishingly, just as I told him this part of the movie we noticed that the oil fires had gotten very bright and had blinded us somewhat, when we looked down we realized we had wandered off the road and out in to the dirt, and just like in the movie, we could not see the road.

Standing still we turned away from the fires and waited a few minutes as our eyes readjusted to the light. With luck GC was able to spot our foot prints and then the road. Shielding, our eyes and laughing as we walked, we made it back on to the hard top, and walked back to the camp without incident. Whenever, I see American Werewolf in London I think back on that night, and how far over the edge the two of us had been and the return to sanity that we each had made.

copyright 2009 William T. Richards