First introduction to sights and smells of the desert...

A couple of weeks ago, I took a group of Vets from our VFW to the Wright Patterson Air Force Museum just as a day-trip.  It was a good trip and they got to see a lot of things.  More importantly it got them out of the house on a cold winter afternoon and gave them something to do.  But now we'll have to schedule another trip to go back some time because there is just too much to see and you can't really get it all in in one day. 

I have been down there many times, and thought I had seen all or most of it.  Wrong. I found a new area where I had never been yet.  It was a display featuring the Air Force during the Korean War,  and the most interesting part for me was the tent area they had set up.  Amazingly similar to the display at the Warner Robins museum I had seen in November,  the one thing that hit me right away, in both places, was the smell of canvas. There are two things that instantly take me back to Army days -- the smell of canvass and the smell of mold.  So when I returned home from the trip, I began looking around again for old Army pictures and I just happened to come upon these.  Just kinda thinking of the old days.

This was a deployment back in 1985 to Egypt to participate in a exercise called Bright Star, an ongoing joint training exercise between US and Egyptian forces.  This particular exercise had been going on for a few years, alternating deployments between Egypt and the NTC in SW United States.  I also think it went on for a few more years after our participation, but this was the one and only time I took troops to the Egyptian desert.  Little did I know I would return to deserts again on down the road.

During this exercise, we performed physical security MP duties, something our Company had done for quite a while, dating back to its WWII days I think.  Anyone who knows anything about MPs knows that there is a great deal of "spit and polish" associated with their duties and appearance.  MPs are known for pressed, if not starched, uniforms, highly shined boots, and a clean appearance...at least in a garrison environment.  In the field, some accommodations are made, but they still stand out in a crowd of soldiers.  And that was the first conflict we had -- it was hard to maintain uniform appearance in the desert.  We tried.  We ironed uniforms when we could and tried to keep all equipment and facilities in top order.  After all, we were working at a four-star HQ, so we had to look like we belonged to him.

 So what is the tie-in between the Wright Patt. trip and this blog entry?  Well, it was the thoughts of my "home" in the middle of the desert outside Cairo that just popped up when I smelled the tent at the museum.  As tents go, this wasn't that bad.  In fact it would have been a great tent  --- in a forest!!  We had big windows in the sides of the tent as you can see below, but they were only good for letting in lots of sand and heat.  The sun baked the roof and sides of the tent and generated that unmistakable smell of Army canvass tents that soldiers never forget.  There is supposed to be a tent liner or a cover which goes over the top of the tent and these are supposed to provide some measure of cooling.  Guess whose unit didn't have these items??!! 

So we all lived in a tent city, and this was my house.  I know, "location, location, location" is the catch phrase of all real estate agents, but the one who assigned this one to me had a patch over one eye and didn't speak English very well,  Oh well, it was a place to sleep.  Notice the laundry out on the line.

This was a pretty barren place.  These pictures of the rest of the area were taken when we were leaving. We were instructed to take everything out there and leave only sand.  The liaison guy said that the local Egyptians would take the big cardboard packing crates shown in the background and use them as "houses." 

The picture above was taken just after we had packed all of our "stuff" and were ready to saddle up for our trip home.  The picture below was taken at our formation just before leaving the tent city area enroute to the airport for a long trip home.

As I said earlier, this was my first time in this kind of environment, and the first time for all of these troops too.  But as things go in the Army, it wouldn't be the last.  Although our paths took many different twists after this assignment, I think the vast majority of these troops (say 20 to 25 of the ones shown above) also saw duties in Desert Storm, Iraq or Afghanistan at least once and some more than once.  Some also served in Bosnia and in Central America.  MPs get around.  These troops were really good people.  They trained hard, and were a source of pride when we deployed for missions like these.  They were professionals, and generally received high accolades wherever we served.  I saw some of them at our reunion this past fall, but some of them are now gone.  Unfortunately,  I don't remember all their names now; 29 years have clouded my memory a bit.  But I do remember some of them, and I remember how each of them served as well as they could, and how each of them taught me something -- something I more than likely used somewhere on down the road.

So as you can easily tell (and I have been reminded by some who read this blog), I have been focused a bit too much this winter on watching the snow fall and the birds flying around.  I've ignored the old Army days.  But, I think I will have to get back into this and some of the other topics for the blog.  Right now I'm sitting behind a large pile of old Army photos and I'm making a list of future topics.  So stay tuned -- I'll start cranking them out.  I want to get more of them done before golf season comes and I really become a slacker about writing.

Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they were meant to be there...to serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson or help figure out who you are or who you want to become.  (Anon.)


Hooah