Stoker figured there was some shit going down in the Med, as he put it. “Hell,” he had said, “damn Egyptians shut down the Suez Canal. Maybe they want us to go over there and take charge.”
“Maybe,” Ives had replied. When they learned they were going into Sigonella, that seemed to add up for some action near Suez. But they did not stay long. They were on the big C5 Galaxy airlift planes the next night, winging their way into the darkness. The next thing they knew, they were in Saudi Arabia.
The two men waited there for some time, until the sound of that distant gunfire abated. Then, on a whim, Sergeant Stoker got down on the ground.
“What’s up Stokes? You itching to do some pushups?”
“Hell no. I’m going Indian on you, LT. Hush up. I want to listen to the ground.”
Stoker took off his helmet, pressed his ear to the ground, and the Lieutenant could see the starlight in his eyes. He got up, brushing the loamy sand from his trousers, and smiled.
“They’re coming,” he said definitively.
“Who’s coming?”
“Saddam’s grandkids, who else? Try it, LT. You can hear the AFV’s out there chewing up the ground.”
Lieutenant Ives shook his head, but with a grin. He took a deep breath of that desert night air, and felt the wind from the north on his face, cool and carrying the scent of earthy sand. Then he heard what Stoker had clued him in to just a moment earlier. They had been out for desert training many times, and Ives knew the sound of a tracked AFV in the distance when he heard one.
“Damn,” he said. “No shit, Stoker! They are coming. Let’s get back to the Hummer.”
They turned and went back to Hill 1178, hiking back up and standing on higher ground to surveil the land ahead. Then they saw a faint flickering on the edge of darkness, and Ives knew it had to be headlights on the vehicles. It grew over the next few minutes, that single point of light expanding with others that soon spread across the horizon.
“I make it about 35 klicks out there,” said Lieutenant Ives. Much of the elevation in that hill’s label was gained from the ground it sat on, and it was really no more than three or four hundred feet above the surrounding terrain. That would put the horizon about 36 kilometers out, and something had just crossed it—war. They both instinctively knew that was what they were looking at, war.
“Has to be at least a regiment,” said Stokes.
“Brigade,” said Ives. “Iraqi Army is all organized as brigades. “Hear that? There’s more hum than rattle out there stokes, so my bet is that this is a motor rifle brigade, not heavily mechanized.”
“Damn!” said Stokes. “Iraqis crossed the border? This is some serious shit, LT.”
“Alright, let’s get back to Halfar and clue in the Saudi’s. Better get them on the radio. By the time we get there, the Iraqis will be gassing gup in that hamlet we stopped at north of the city!”
Stoker and Ives delivered their warning to the Saudis, and then contacted OMCOM to make their full report. They were told to wait there at Halfar al Batin, and observe what the Saudis were doing, reporting every three hours. It was soon clear that the local commander. Lt. General Saifur Rahman Hamid, was preparing to make a stand. The General’s name meant “Sword of the Most Gracious,” and he seemed keen on using it. They saw that columns of troops and vehicles were arriving there every hour, coming up the road from the south.
“Where did all this come from?” asked Stoker.
“King Khalid Military City,” said Ives. “It’s about 60 kilometers southwest. But you’re right, all this couldn’t have come from that one base. I think they pulled units from the Hail district to the northwest.”
“Looks like they want to fight right here,” said the Sergeant.
“It does indeed. Hell, there must be five brigades here, and they’ve deployed on a 40 kilometer front from the way I read the map.”
“What’s so important about Halfar?” asked Stoker.
“That’s just it—nothing, really. There’s a big pipeline underground here. Runs all the way from Dammam to the Med—Trans-Arabian Pipeline. That has to be it.”
“Well shit, LT. They’d have to deploy on a much broader front to defend that, and well forward. Iraqis could cut that pipeline anywhere.”
“Just what I was thinking,” said the Lieutenant. “We better let OMCOM know that half the Saudi Army is out here on a limb, and spoiling for a fight. But for my money, I’d say they ought to be humping it southeast towards the coast. That’s where the main event will be. This is a sideshow.”
The tension was building over the next few hours, covered by a frenetic energy as the Saudi troops moved through the dusty streets of the city, coming from many directions. The men were unloading trucks, moving crates of ammunition, mines, wire, and setting up gun positions. North of the city, Ives could see them digging small revetments, just like those they had seen earlier in the desert. There was an urgency to their movements, tinged by uncertainty and fear.
Sergeant Stoker had been listening on the radio set in the Hummer, picking up news of what was happening as he switched from one military band to another. From what he could gather, there was a big invasion of Kuwait underway to the northeast. Reports were scattered. Nothing seemed definitive or certain, but he had heard this kind of radio traffic many times before, and he felt a palpable edge of panic beneath it all.
“Iraqis rolled into Kuwait,” he told the LT. “You were right. That’s where the main shit is. These guys we eyeballed earlier were probably just making a recon in force near the border out here, but where are they now?”
“Did you see that scuffle in the sky an hour ago?” said Ives. “Fighters were mixing it up. Iraqi air force was probably trying to reconnoiter this area, and they most likely saw all this business underway. If we were right, and that was a single brigade we saw earlier, then I don’t think they want to tangle with all this Saudi stuff. I just identified the locals here. They have 6th and 8th Mech Brigades, 45th Armored, King Saud Light Infantry and Border Guards on the flanks. Colonel Jahid says more troops are coming this way from Hail.”
“Strength in numbers,” said Stoker. “Bucks up morale before a fight. Did you report all that to OMCOM?”
“Of course, but they weren’t happy about it. They wanted me to make certain the Saudis were really digging in here, and when I told them what we’ve observed, the revetments and dugouts and all, the Major on the other end of the line was pissed. I don’t think OMCOM wants the Saudis out here. If they hit Kuwait hard, then most everything they have is going to be up there, not here.”
A blind man could see that.
The darkness in the desert night was near complete, for the sickle moon had set four hours earlier, leaving only the scattered diamond stars on sable black silk in the sky.
On this day Theodosius-I made his first entry into Constantinople in the year 380. The Thames River froze solid in 1434 and again in 1715. Mount Vesuvius was grumbling and vomiting lava in 1759. The Texas Rangers mounted up for the first time in 1835. Blue and Gray soldiers mauled one another at Chattanooga in 1863. A man named Clyde Coleman filed a patent on the first electric automobile starter in 1903. General Pershing pulled his troops out of Mexico in 1916. The FBI Crime Lab officially open in Washington DC in 1932, and the German Blitz began with the bombing of Bristol, killing 200 in 1940. Four years later in 1944, US bombers made the first raid on Tokyo from bases taken in Saipan. On a lighter note, in 1966, a British rock band named “The Beatles” recorded Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.