The Adventures of Rich and GC: Lima Bravo Sierra

At one point just before the start of the ground war in Desert Storm my team had been ordered to recon the local area. The idea was that we should follow the road back west from where we were and familiarize ourselves with the terrain. Mind you this part of the Saudi desert was flat and featureless. The road is about the only land mark there is. Now just before we deployed to Saudi Arabia our supply sergeant turned down an opportunity to order GPS’s for each of the teams as he figured we wouldn’t get them anyway, but the one he did order we got and they kept it in the Command Post. This left us to use our military map and dead reckoning to figure out where we were. Again as I said, the part of the Saudi desert we were in was flat and featureless.
We pulled off the road about 20 miles away from our camp and traveled south for about 5 miles or so and then turned back east. After a while some sand berms and some odd shapes on the ground came into view. As we pulled up to the shapes we realized that these were the spent first stages of rockets from an MRLS. Seeing as we were to report any thing out of the ordinary we called it in. Our command post asked us to give our position so we guesstimated 20 miles out, five miles south, and two miles back. Not happy with our location report the CP told us to give proper grid coordinates. Well obviously without a GPS we couldn’t, everywhere we looked was flat horizon, and we told them that. They continued to demand that we fix our location. At this point even Sgt Keefer was getting annoyed with the CP and regretted calling in the report. The request for us to report our position was so ludicrous that I finally suggested we call our grid coordinate as Lima, Bravo, Sierra, which in military speak means Lost Bigger than S***. Three times we had to repeat our position and twice the radio operator did not understand what we were saying. He kept trying to tell us that we were not sending a proper military grid coordinate. Finally after the third repeat the First Sergeant grabbed the mike at the CP and said "OK guys I understand, buy the way you may be between the launchers and the boarder so you should turn off your radio so that you don’t get targeted by the missiles do you understand?"
To which we replied “Rodger, Out" and then turned our radio off, and proceeded home.
I'm told that they continued to try and raise us for a good 15 minutes after we were told to turn off our radio.

Copyright William T. Richards 2009

The Adventures of Rich and GC: A Slight Flight Delay

At O-Dark thirty on the morning of our departure from Ft. Meade Maryland to Saudi Arabia, Joe and I got in to our hummer, started up the engine and waited for the rest of the convoy to start moving. After a while the convoy started to pull away, Joe let loose the break and gave it some gas. As we started to make our first turn, Joe suddenly starts a frantic dance in his seat as the hummer continued to move straight. "Oh shit I forgot to unlock it!" he exclaimed. After a brief pause, he gets his keys out of his pocket and unlocks the cable holding the steering wheel in place. We have a good laugh as he starts us moving again, but I had to sit there and wonder... was that a good omen or a bad one?
In the end I think it was a bit of both, nothing went as smoothly as it could have, but we did seem to manage a decent sense of humor through out operations Desert Shield/Storm. Whenever things went a bit astray, I would see the humor in it, no mater how bizarre.


Copyright 2009 William T. Richards