A Gulf Story (Part 8, The Penultimate)

The war in the Gulf and our involvement from Dhahran went on until February 27th, a few days after Dhahran Annie returned with its damaged rudder, tactics changed from low level attacks to medium level attacks, then weapon loads changed to Laser Guided Bombs (LGB) which none of us at Dhahran had ever even seen before! The Tornado losses reduced, although there was a jet lost from another base mid February with one of it’s crew members killed. I can still remember getting ready to see-off a jet on February 28th, Terry and I had fired up all the systems and were just waiting for the crew to show up. We waited, then we’re told that there was a delay! I think we assumed that this was probably due to poor weather over the target? But after another delay, we got a message that the mission was ‘scrubbed’ or cancelled, but that the jet was to be ‘powered’ down, but left ready to be launched if required, they never launched again and we were happy about that. The Scud missile alarms real and false continued for the entire war, we’d all got very complacent with them, we still put our gas masks on, when the alarm sounded, but not in the rush as during the first attacks. We’d become great fans of the US Patriot Air Defence guys, their missiles had successfully intercepted all of the Iraqi Scuds that were a threat to us at Dhahran. Instead of taking shelter, watching the Patriot missiles zoom up into the clouds and huge flash as it took out the inbound scud was much more common, although it did affect some of the guys adversely.

As the war seemed to ease off pressure wise on us as the groundcrew, I took up an invite from an RAF mate who was seconded to British Aerospace (BAe) and working alongside the Saudi Air Force, he’d invited me to their compound for drinks, alcoholic drinks, as these were allowed on the foreign worker’s compounds, well tolerated is probably a better word! I took a taxi and found the villa that he shared with a mate, I can remember that almost every inch of floor space had a bucket, bin or barrel with a date label on it and something brewing or fermenting in it! Anyway, I left my gas mask and the bag with my NBC Suit at his villa and we visited some bars on the compound before finishing up back at their villa. I don’t remember leaving, but I must’ve got a taxi back to our hotel. When I got back to my room I realised I’d left my gas mask etc at my mate’s villa! Shit! Oh well, we haven’t had an scud attack for a night or two? About an hour later the alarm sounded! Fucking typical! ‘Clunk’ one of our Scottish mechanics barged into our room “Bob, Charlie! Air attack!” Bob, my room mate, knew I’d left my gas mask at the BAe compound, said “I don’t think Charlie’s that bothered about it tonight mate!” I pulled my NBC duvet up over my head for protection! I’m not sure if it was a real attack or false alarm? I didn’t take much notice either way. On the evening of February 25th Terry and I were hanging around at the back of our engineering site when the air attack warning sounded, we got into our NBC suits, not hurriedly, we didn’t mask up and just scanned the sky waiting for the Patriots to launch. Then we both saw what looked like a shooting star low over the horizon to the Northeast of us, it then seemed to fizzle and dropped to earth and reminded me of watching a rocket on Bonfire Night, when you see the spent body of it falling, glowing to the ground. But whatever it was that we were watching was obviously much bigger and when it disappeared behind some buildings about 4.5km away there was the huge flash of an explosion. It turns out that we had just witnessed a scud break up in flight before the Patriot had decided to engage it! 27 US soldiers died and almost another 100 were severely injured in the blast, it had hit a warehouse that was being used as a temporary barracks, many of those killed were female soldiers. Strangely enough, we lost our complacency very quickly.

Once the war ended we started to pack things up and prepare to leave, the sky was grey with the smog from oil wells that had been torched by the fleeing Iraqi Army obeying Saddam’s ‘ Scorched Earth’ policy.

We had photos taken as a full team and also as the individual groups, also some more unofficial photos, then it was just a case of waiting for an aeroplane to take us home to Germany.

To be concluded..........