XBradTC

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XBradTC

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Desert Storm

On the night of January 16/17, 1991, my company, A Co., 7th Bn., 6th Inf., a part of the 1st Armored Division, was in an assembly area in the empty quarter of Saudi Arabia. We were still waiting for our combat vehicles to be unloaded. The night sky that evening was very clear. We had…

On the night of January 16/17, 1991, my company, A Co., 7th Bn., 6th Inf., a part of the 1st Armored Division, was in an assembly area in the empty quarter of Saudi Arabia. We were still waiting for our combat vehicles to be unloaded.

The night sky that evening was very clear. We had for weeks seen considerable air activity, of course. But in the small hours of the morning, while standing guard, I looked up and saw more aircraft than usual. Quite a lot more. North they went. And about an hour later, south they came as still others streamed north. Soon, someone picked up the BBC on the radio, and already the news was out that the air attack of Desert Storm had begun.

We wouldn’t even link up with our Bradleys until the 1st of February. But all day and night, we could see coalition aircraft heading to make our eventual ground assault easier.

A meme from last year.

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Responses to “Desert Storm”

  1. Wandering Neurons

    I was helping move the bullets, beans, and Bradleys to you via the C-5 airlift operations. Started training as a Flight Engineer on the Galaxy just before Desert Shield kicked off. Was sitting in the dorms on pre-mission standby when the air war started. Remember CNN being broadcast live from under a table…

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  2. Captain Ned

    I was watching CNN from the comfort of my couch (before CNN’s treason became known).
    Dad was USAF-R Intelligence Service and fell on the wrong side of up or out 6 months before Saddam invaded. When Saddam did invade, Dad’s unit called and “politely” asked “WTF aren’t you here”? Seems like military paperwork never changes, as they had no idea he’d been forcibly retired. In later years he said he should have just shut up and reported. If he had done so, that silver oak leaf would most likely have become a gold chicken.

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  3. ron snyder

    Lord, don’t tell me that was 25 years ago.

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  4. Captain Ned

    26, actually.

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  5. CT II Raven

    playing war games in New Mexico – recovered and papa san let us into the CC to watch the fun

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  6. R.K.

    As Operational Intelligence Specialist, briefing air refueling crew on their mission and known threats Hoping everyone came back. Nothing like orbiting 35k feet with about 85k pounds of aviation fuel with no offense/defense capability. Nothing like sucking up some seat cushion while watching the flack.

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  7. Xbradtc

    FTR, I spent the day burning human shit in a barrel with diesel.

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  8. Heltau

    I was just recently retired from the Navy.
    I was singing bomb, bomb, iran to the Beach Boys.
    To bad it did not just stop back in 1991.

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  9. Paul L. Quandt

    I was at Travis AFB, on the midnight to 0800 hrs shift. A C-141B crew chief, with NO aircraft in sight. The birds were all somewhere else doing good work, no doubt. We didn’t see an a/c for several weeks.
    Paul L. Quandt

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  10. Quartermaster

    Like Esli, I was slacking at college. I watched the progress of the war on a 4″ B&W TV in my dorm room.
    @Ned
    That was cold!

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  11. SFC Dunlap 173d RVN

    26 already…now I feel like a “frog” (f&$king REAL old guy).

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  12. LT Rusty

    So, Brad, what you’re saying pretty much is that it was just like any other Thursday? And it’s not much different now? XD
    In other news: 26 years ago yesterday, I was sitting in math class in 8th grade, and the teacher wheeled in a TV so we could watch news instead of talking about algebra.

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  13. Eric the OC Tanker

    At the start, Support Plt, HHC 1/68 Armor Wildflecken, FRG, then was one of he 250,000 who hade to stay home and mind the store (was PCSed to FT Polk on Valentines Day. Watched the war on CNN like everybody else in CONUS. Much to my wife’s relief.

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  14. timactual

    “FTR, I spent the day burning human shit in a barrel with diesel.”
    “I love the smell of diesel in the morning….”
    Been there, done that. The good side is that nobody bothers you while you are doing it, and if you stand upwind it ain’t too bad.

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  15. Derhoss

    I was in Delta company 3/1 avn 1 armored division. Eating the same sand as you.

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  16. Tinclad

    On the USS Theodore Roosevelt rounding the south end of the Arabian Peninsula. Our war started 2 days later.

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  17. Esli

    I might have been slacking in college, but at least I got to see the protests and general student whininess at WSU firsthand while I simultaneously regretted having gotten out of the army months before and fearing that my new National Guard unit would be called up (wanting to deploy but not with an absolutely incompetent unit….).
    Had an older lady in one of my classes going off about how bad the US was for “burying Iraqis in the trenchlines.” I explained, very politely, that she probably woudn’t care how we killed those guys if her husband was in one of the lead tanks. She shut up.

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  18. Tom

    On strategic deterrent patrol in USS Francis Scott Key (SSBN-657B). I remember the Captain getting on the 1MC and telling us that Operation Desert Shield had just turned into Operation Desert Storm… later that patrol I remember hanging out with the radiomen who were pulling in the BBC on our floating wire antenna, and listening to the BBC announce the end of the war (what was that, early March? Days underwater kind of run together and I didn’t think to write this down not that we were allowed to anyway). All the years of training and preparing, and turns out we were training for the wrong war!

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  19. Quartermaster

    Well Esli, you lived on the left coast. At Tenn Tech, their wasn’t one protest and heard not one whiner. In one class we had 4 Army ROTC cadets, and one Captain TNARNG who was a Tanker in the 278th ACR (can’t remember the squadron). I’d been a 19E, as well has having served as a swabo, and we talked about the war. All that was missing was adult beverages for the adults.
    I think there were a few whiners at Univ Tenn in Knoxville, and a number at Vanderbilt in Nashville, but they pretty much got hooted down. UT has AFROTC and ARROTC. Vanderbilt has both Army and Naval ROTC. Neither school was all that hospitable to leftist whiners.
    Vanderbilt, since, has gone down the tubes, having been “converged.”
    The WW2 memorial at Tech was quite well decorated shortly after the main ground op had completed.

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