In an interesting bit of irony, we landed at Clark on the morning of December 2 to help support the Aquino presidency against a military coup launched by soldiers loyal to former President Marcos the previous day. Apparently 3,000 of them had shut down the international airport—named after President Aquino’s late husband—seized several military air bases, and even tried to take over the presidential palace.
President Aquino had requested US military assistance, and we launched Operation Classic Resolve. US Air Force Phantom II fighters took off from Clark with clearance to buzz rebel planes at their bases, fire in front of them if they attempted to take off, and shoot them down if they did.
We stayed in a hangar at Clark with two US Navy SEAL teams on full military alert waiting to be called into action. Our mission was to rescue President Aquino from the presidential palace and take her to Clark AFB, should the palace come under siege. We spent the next ten days working out and playing cards.
Some of the SEALs were standoffish. Some were cool. After the ten days, we were recalled to Okinawa.
My last stay at Clark was one year later, in May 1991, when volcanic ash from nearby Mount Pinatubo started to rain over the base and seismographs recorded hundreds of minor earthquakes that geologists believed were precursors to a major eruption. Because of the falling ash and dangerous levels of sulfur, all combat aircraft and nonessential personnel were being evacuated. We left the day before the volcano erupted on the 15th of June, producing the second largest terrestrial eruption of the twentieth century.
The entire base was shut down and subsequently turned over to the Philippine government, which reopened it as a commercial airport in 1993.
7
FIRST GULF WAR
During my time with ODA 136, we traveled frequently to Guam—a US territory in the Pacific Ocean and the largest island in Micronesia with 210 square feet and a population of roughly 150,000 people. On December 7, 1941, it had been captured by the Japanese army hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was liberated by the US in July 1944 and had since been home to several large US military bases, including Andersen Air Force Base and US Naval Base Guam.
During a stay there in 1990, my teammates and I decided to try to break the world HALO team jump record. Our plan was to go up in a B-52 bomber and jump from 40,000 feet. It would have been awesome. But when we submitted our request to SOCOM, they turned it down.
So we settled for a C-130 instead and were going to be joined by three US Marines, two Air Force officers, and six AF crewmen. The day before the jump, we packed and repacked our chutes—like we always do—checked our equipment, and practiced switching from the pure oxygen we would breathe on the plane to the mixed oxygen bottle that would be attached to our stomachs as we descended.
Jumping from 40,000 feet isn’t something you take casually, and involves serious health hazards, like hypoxia and decompression sickness. To compensate for a lack of oxygen in the air, heart and breathing rates increase. We knew that hypoxia or oxygen deprivation could result in dizziness, euphoria, blurred or tunnel vision, poor muscle coordination, and slow reaction time—things we didn’t want to experience when we were falling to earth at up to 128 mph. You forget to open your chute and for some reason your reserve doesn’t open, and you’re a goner. Pigeon feed.
Decompression sickness (DCS), or the bends, occurs when nitrogen bubbles form in the tissues and blood due to a rapid reduction in pressure. It manifests as joint pain and can cause paralysis and death.
The higher the altitude, the higher the risk of developing DCS. So before we took off, we spent an hour and a half on the ground breathing pure oxygen to purge nitrogen from our systems. Then we ascended to 40,000 feet—roughly 11,000 feet higher than Mount Everest. Since we weren’t in a pressurized cabin, we continued to breathe O2 from a console on the plane. That didn’t prevent the two Air Force officers from developing air embolisms—gas bubbles that entered the bloodstream due to trauma to the lungs caused by the lack of pressure and our rapid descent.
The symptoms were similar to decompression sickness—in the case of the Air Force officers, tremors, numbness, and loss of consciousness. Not good at all when you needed to be alert.
So we descended to 37,200 feet to lessen the strain on our bodies. The Air Force guys felt better. But when we tried to open the back gate of the C-130, the wind speed outside was so strong that we couldn’t lower it. We had to open the side doors instead.
The temperature inside the plane was a bone-chilling -10 degrees Fahrenheit, and it promised to be even colder given the windchill factor outside. It wouldn’t be out of the question if it dipped to -40. All of us wore long underwear under our jumpsuits, sock and glove liners, and hoods over our necks and ears. The cold was a critical factor, because we needed a few minutes of manual dexterity to properly adjust our equipment before exiting the aircraft and time to maneuver our parachutes immediately after exiting.
The racket from the plane made speech impossible, so our team leader raised his hand to signal the two-minute warning. We unhooked our breathing masks from the C-130’s console, attached them to our individual oxygen bottles, then checked each other’s eyes to make sure no one was suffering from hypoxia. We were all good so far.
We quickly double- and triple-checked our equipment, connections, and bottle pressure. Then the jump light shifted from red to green. I took a deep breath, and three seconds behind our team sergeant starting falling at 140 mph. The feeling was indescribable. We were so high above the clouds we couldn’t see the ground. I knew that if I opened my chute at this height, it would explode into shreds. But I had no interest in ending the exhilarating fall.
As I dropped like a stone, air pushed against my arms and chest. The closer I got to earth, the denser the pressure grew, until the force of it threatened to rip my mask and helmet off my head. The temperature grew warmer, too, as I sank through layers of clouds and saw the beautiful green earth spread below.
After falling for four and a half minutes, I reached 4,000 feet and opened my chute.
Our landing site was the runway of the international airport, but the wind was strong and pulled us west. I watched the sergeant ahead of me drift past the runway. I came down in a field of sugarcane. The guys behind me landed even farther away, as far as a Kmart parking lot.
Aside from our team sergeant, who suffered frostbite to his face, the remainder of us came through unscathed. What an experience. The icing on the cake was when we learned we broke the world record and made the news locally and in the US.
* * *
Upon my return to Okinawa, I heard that Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and was placing troops on the border of Saudi Arabia. It sounded ominous as hell, knowing as I did that Iraq possessed the world’s fourth largest army and had developed a stockpile of biological and chemical weapons and that its leader, Saddam, was an aggressive SOB who wanted to dominate the Persian Gulf.
Saddam’s war against Iran—which ended in 1988—had left his country highly indebted to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. With his economy in shambles and his countrymen disheartened, Saddam asked the Arab countries to relieve the debts. They had refused.
Adding to Saddam’s displeasure with Kuwait was a long-standing dispute over territory and the fact that Kuwait had been exceeding its OPEC quotas for oil production. When Kuwait refused to yield to Iraqi diplomatic efforts and threats, Saddam launched an invasion on August 2, 1990.
Iraq’s million-man standing army quickly overwhelmed Kuwait’s tiny military, the Kuwaiti royal family fled the country, and within twelve hours Iraq gained control of most of oil-rich Kuwait.
The rest of the world responded with shock and outrage. US president George H. W. Bush joined the United Nations Security Council and the Arab League in condemning the invasion and calling for the immediate withdraw of Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Through the remainder of 1990, a diplomatic tug-of-war ensued as Saddam tried to wangle concessions from Saudi Arabia, the US, and other countr
ies, and they demanded that he leave Kuwait.
Also of serious concern were Saddam’s mounting verbal attacks on Saudi Arabia. With large elements of the Iraqi army now within easy striking distance of Saudi oil fields, the world feared Saddam would extend his ambitions even further. The Saudi oil fields, along with Kuwaiti and Iraqi reserves, would give him control of the majority of the world’s oil reserves.
For obvious reasons, this was an unacceptable scenario to the US and many other countries. On August 7, President Bush announced an immediate buildup of US troops in Saudi Arabia at the request of its leader, King Fahd, to protect its border with Iraq. Under the code name Operation Desert Shield, the US quickly deployed more than 200,000 military personnel to Saudi Arabia, including thirty-six F-15s from the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing based in Bitburg, Germany, and forty-eight F-15s from the 1st Fighter Wing from Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. Additionally, the aircraft carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and Independence and their battle group and the battleships Missouri and Wisconsin stationed themselves in the Persian Gulf.
As soon as I heard about the buildup of forces in the area leading to what looked like a showdown with Iraq, I wanted to be included.
So I marched into the Special Forces administrative office in Okinawa and asked the sergeant major on duty to be deployed immediately. I said, “Sir, I speak Arabic and Farsi and know I can be useful. I request that you send me to be part of Operation Desert Shield.”
He seemed surprised by my request and reminded me that I was assigned to 1st Group Special Forces, which wasn’t being called and was slated to remain in Okinawa to continue its rotational training.
“With all respect, sir,” I replied, “I’m not complaining. All I’m saying is that I think I can be of more use in the Middle East. I speak the local languages. I know the region. I can help in whatever capacity I’m needed.”
“Sergeant,” he shot back, “you’re assigned to First Group, and as far as I know that’s not going to change. So return to your unit.”
It was typical by-the-books bureaucracy. Not to be deterred, I went to see 1st Group Sergeant Major McGuire and SF Major Ronnie Strand, who happened to be visiting the base, and made the same request to them.
The two saw the value I could bring to the operation and told me they would send me to Fort Campbell, Tennessee, to join 5th Group, which had already deployed to the Middle East. My former SF group was no longer headquartered at Bragg and had moved to Campbell.
“Why can’t you just send me to Saudi Arabia to join Fifth Group there?” I asked.
“Sorry, Sergeant, it doesn’t work that way,” Major McGuire explained. “You have to be processed out of First Group first and file a PCS [permanent change of station] before you can go to Fifth.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I flew to California in late December 1990 and spent a couple of days with my family, making sure not to tell them that I was deploying to the Middle East. The looming conflict with Iraq was the lead story on the news every night.
In late November, the UN Security Council had passed Resolution 678, which gave the Iraqis a deadline of January 15, 1991, to withdraw from Kuwait. It also authorized the use of force should Iraq fail to comply. Meanwhile, the Pentagon determined that the 200,000 men it already had in Saudi Arabia weren’t enough to drive the heavily armed, well-entrenched Iraqis out of Kuwait. So President Bush, with Saudi approval, deployed an additional 140,000 US soldiers, including the 3rd Armored Division and its Abrams M1A tanks. Concurrently, he and his representatives started to assemble a coalition of forces to oppose Iraq that eventually included thirty-four countries—among them the UK, Argentina, Canada, Egypt, Italy, Pakistan, Senegal, France, and Syria.
Germany and Japan didn’t commit troops but made financial contributions that totaled over $16 billion. Even the Soviet Union supported the US-led coalition. As I watched and waited, 956,600 coalition forces arrived in the Persian Gulf under the command of US Army General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.
I was at Fort Campbell, where I spent a very frustrating month being processed and taking gas mask and advanced weapons training.
On January 15 the UN deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait came and went, and the following morning Coalition forces launched Operation Desert Storm, which began with a powerful bombing campaign aimed at destroying Iraqi border radar stations and key elements of their antiaircraft network. Targets expanded over the next several days to include Iraqi command and communications facilities, weapons research facilities, and naval forces.
The initial air attacks gave our military an opportunity to see how our new weapons performed in combat conditions. We quickly found out that ground-fired M1A1 Abrams and MIM-104 Patriot missiles gave the Iraq military little time to defend themselves. And the groundbreaking new Global Positioning System (GPS) helped to pinpoint hits by the Tomahawk missile and other weapons and allowed troops to find their way in the desert without the use of maps.
Iraq responded to Coalition air strikes by launching Scud missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel, which did some damage, but were relatively ineffective. Then on January 29, Iraq attacked and occupied the Saudi city of Khafji, which was retaken by elements of the Saudi National Guard backed up by US Marines two days later.
Meanwhile, the Coalition took complete control of the skies over Iraq and Kuwait and continued a brutal day-and-night air assault, which averaged 2,555 sorties every twenty-four hours. US F-15s, AH-64 Apache helicopters, B-52 Stratofortress bombers, and F-117A Stealth fighters inflicted devastating damage to Saddam Hussein’s vaulted Republican Guard.
I saw this with my own eyes when I finally arrived in Saudi Arabia the third week of February attached to ODA 596. Our top secret mission was to sneak into Iraq at night and ID targets. Covered with face paint, night cammos, and body armor, we deployed in four-man teams—sometimes all four of us in a Humvee with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted in back, and on other occasions two guys each riding four-wheel dirt bikes.
We got our orders directly from the J2s (military intel guys) at Coalition headquarters with specific quadrants to search. Our rules of engagement (ROE) required that we avoid detection but allowed us to return fire should we be engaged by Iraqi forces.
Going across the border at night into enemy territory was extremely tense, especially when we knew the enemy was in a high state of alert. We carried AN/TVS-5 night observation scopes with a range of over one kilometer and GPS markers. We used them to identify and mark targets such as Iraqi bunkers, tanks, and hard sites for future F-15 strikes.
I participated in a dozen such missions. Training for them was one thing, but actually venturing into enemy territory and avoiding land mines, snipers, and ambushes was different. All my senses were on high alert. We knew that, if captured, the Iraqis would likely torture us. It wouldn’t be the game playing we had participated in at SERE school. It would be the real thing with real pain and real degradation.
I squelched my fears and focused on the mission. The landscape was a desert with a few low hills. Stars spread bright overhead as though they were watching. Our ears strained to hear over the muffled engines. Our eyes scanned the horizon for shadows, movement, and flickers of light.
Third time out, four of us were on two dune buggies, bouncing over mounds of dirt. I stopped our buggy on a bluff, cut the engine, and surveyed the land in front of us through Steiner night binos. Nothing to the left or in the middle, but 200 meters away and to the right I saw a group of five soldiers standing outside a fence that encircled two one-story cement structures. They were huddled together. I couldn’t tell if they were actively guarding the compound or drinking tea.
The Iraqis heard an echo from a buggy behind us, shouldered their AK-47s, and opened fire. We shot back, causing them to scurry inside the compound and seek cover.
“Cowards,” one of my colleagues muttered.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here before they send out a patrol,” I said back.
We quic
kly noted the GPS coordinates of the compound, radioed them to base, and set out looking for new targets. Two nights later when we passed through that sector, the buildings had been reduced to piles of charred rubble.
Poor fools, I thought to myself. Blindly following the ambitions of a megalomaniac.
Another time, we were sent out to inspect a suspected WMD (weapons of mass destruction) site about twenty miles inside Iraq. Late at night, we passed through a sandstorm and found what looked from a distance like an empty compound—no lights, no sign of movement. Fingers on the triggers of our M16s, we moved all the way up to the fence. As my colleagues kept watch, I cut through the lock at the gate. Then while two guys kept guard, myself and another colleague donned chemical suits and went inside.
We found two low, abandoned buildings and some old barrels and rusted cylinders. I wasn’t a chemical weapons expert, but it looked like a whole lot of nothing.
Nevertheless, we called in the coordinates to an F-15 pilot overhead, then cleared out and watched from a safe distance as the jet swooped in and obliterated the compound. The spectacle from a half mile away was incredible, and the destructive power of one F-15 was awe-inspiring.
Now I understood why the resolve of the Iraqi forces wasn’t strong. We witnessed that phenomenon over and over in the three or four firefights we engaged in. As soon as we directed fire at Iraqi soldiers they generally fled right away, even though we were operating in their territory at night and almost certainly outnumbered.
So it wasn’t a surprise to me that when the Coalition ground assault launched at the end of February, it met little resistance. The liberation of Kuwait took four days. With the exception of a few intense tank battles, most Iraqi units surrendered quickly. They left behind looted homes and businesses, land mines, and over 700 burning oil wells.
The US-led Coalition juggernaut didn’t stop at the liberation of Kuwait but proceeded into Iraq and punished Saddam’s Republican Guard. US Army VII Corps led by the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment rolled into southern Iraq from western Kuwait. Simultaneously, the US XVIII Airborne Corps spearheaded by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 24th Infantry Division attacked across Iraq’s undefended southern desert. They were joined by UK’s 1st Armoured Division and France’s 6th Light Armoured Division Daguet.
Full Battle Rattle Page 10