What did you do in the war, daddy??

I was once told the difference between a fairy tale and a war story is that the fairy tale starts out “Once upon a time”, while the war story starts out “Now this is no shit…”

Now this is no shit. There I was in undisclosed location in the middle east, sitting on a rough wooden table in front of the GPS (General Purpose Shelter) jawing with a couple of back-seaters when I noticed on odd red streak in the sky.  About the same time I noticed the streak, I heard what sounded like a low powered jet go overcranium.  At first I thought it was an EA-6 taking off, because compared the racket produced by F-4s taking off, the EA-6 made a whussy kind of sound. the lack of deafening roar always made me wonder how the engines on the EA-6 were able to get the airframe and four crew members aloft at all.

That notion that it was a Prowler was soon dispelled by a series of blasts. The first, I found out later, were two patriot missiles launched from directly behind our position going supersonic and then coming out of supersonic speed as they intercepted two scud missiles.  The rest of the blasts were from the destruction of the SCUDs.  The ironic part is that just after the blasts we got the “Alarm Red don hood and mask and gloves” announcement, and  I remember just sitting in the same spot with my mask in its container and the gloved tucked into my belt, figuring the moment had passed.

There were two to three SCUDs depending on who you talked to. One of my local national contacts actually brought me two small melted pieces of metal taken from the impact site. I had though to make them into earrings for my daughter, but she didn’t seem interested.  And that my friends, is about the most fearsome thing that happened to me during Desert Storm, and I am fine with that.