I wrote the following story for a British Army newsletter, and it arrived the other day. Published again!
"It is a scene of familiar desolation. A wind swept patch of desert, tire tracks in the sand, debris littering the ground. Is this the scene of an IED attack?
No, it is the empty Gatorade and MRE storage pallets at Camp Kuwait, once again plundered by a squad of devious British soldiers.
“They come in out of Iraq like bandits,” says PFC Krag, waving his arms helplessly. “The Snatches drive in fast, the Scots jump out and confuse us with their accents while the English sneak behind our defenses and grab Gatorade by the case.” Private Krag then whispers, “And I’m not allowed to tell you about the… Welshmen,” he says with a shudder.
The American command remains under siege, with hit and run raids taking place two, sometimes three days a week. While cases of Gatorade are the prime target of the raids, “Meals, Ready to Eat” (MREs) are an important secondary treasure. According to Col. Enfield, an American physician in Kuwait, MREs are somehow addictive to the British troops, whereas “it is difficult to get American soldiers to eat them at all.”
New barbed wire defenses and machine gun positions do not seem to help protect the supplies, and the officer in charge – a Lt. Jorgenson – is not sanguine about his prospects. “They are clever, those Brits,” he says, despondently, “I do not see how we can keep them out of the Gatorade.”
The commander of the camp is apparently considering calling in the French, as they naturally repel the British. The hope is that this form of biological warfare will be deemed legal by the Red Cross and the United Nations War Crimes Commission.
As the wind blows sand across the desolate forlorn camp, the guards look warily up the road, waiting for the next raid. Lt. Jorgenson says wearily, “All we can do is wait and hope.”
IS1 Timothy Francis
Div HQ US LNO (and part time reporter)
Fair Winds and Following Sands!
For past Brown Sand Sailor entries and pics, visit: Brown Sand Sailor Web Site