Falling asleep on a grasshopper

or why one should always try to avoid Majors

Early in our deployment to Saudi Arabia, I was sent back to the port of Dammam to try to scrounge up some medical supplies. After Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, our division had shipped over to Saudi Arabia in less than three weeks to defend the Saudi kingdom against any further incursions by Iraq. I mean, this was our one job. Our tanks were already painted desert brown for this. In Georgia.

We flew over on big 747s, one of only two times I have flown first class (neither time was fun). When we got our equipment, we headed out to the middle of the desert to take up defensive positions. But half our battalion had come down with the runs - probably from some salads a Saudi prince had donated to us. 

We did not have enough pills. So I went back to Dammam with my driver in our Humvee to look for fresh supplies. I don't remember my driver's name, but he was a young, earnest country type. The kind who grew a mustache that never quite worked, but it did not matter.

Eventually - I have no idea how - we found one of those pop-up Air Force field hospitals, the ones with the bouncy-house walls. We asked the supply officer for help, but no joy. Then an Air Force sergeant literally whispered to us from behind some boxes and waved us over. He said he'd hook us up. When no was looking, he put a box of free stuff in the back of the Hummer - something about wanting to help the troops.

The next step was for us to report back to the port and then drive back to our unit in the middle of the desert about four hours away. A convoy of trucks was being assembled but the Major in charge had a problem. He had enough drivers, but not enough "TC"s - truck commanders, basically someone to ride shot gun. Army regulations said every truck needed two people in the cab - presumably for safety. Well.

None of had slept enough for weeks but the Army was in a hurry to get these trucks into the sand. It was the middle of the night but it did not matter. And because my Humvee did not need two soldiers, the Major "requisitioned" me to ride shotgun in one of these huge HEMMIT trucks. Long, flat trucks with eight huge wheels. I always thought they looked like giant grasshoppers. The driver was a young, African-American soldier, nice guy. But tired. Like me.

Our convoy of grasshoppers soon hit the highway towards Riyadh, the most boring piece of road you could imagine. Nothing but flat, brown sand on both sides. Not interesting desert landscape like the US Southwest. Just sand.

As we drove along this long highway in the middle of the night, the driver and I saw truck after truck veer off the highway - and I don't mean in a slight tangential kinda way, but straight up right angles from the road. Just driving into the desert, bump bump bump. The drivers - and the TCs presumably - were falling asleep, truck after truck. 

So we spent four hours blowing our horns at one another to try to keep everyone awake. The whole way.

But then. Then I heard some distant noises in my head. Some sort of... what was that? And then I would jerk awake, bump bump bump, as our truck veered into the dessert ourselves, and the other trucks were blowing their horn at us. We had fallen asleep.

My driver and I tried yelling at one another to stay awake - but we were absolutely beat, and again and again we both drifted into sleep. Us - and every other truck on the way. Drive. Blow your horn. Fall asleep. Bump bump bump. Repeat. If we were anywhere else but the Saudi dessert, none of us would have survived.

I eventually took a pencil and lodged it vertically between my chest and my Adam's apple so that when I started to nod off, the point would stick into my throat and wake me up. Pure terror. And all because the Army was in a hurry to defend a piece of landscape in the literal middle of nowhere.

When we finally arrived at our unit, I was utterly exhausted and was afraid of some other random Major giving me something else to do. So I crawled into the well of the passenger side of the HEMMIT and curled up into a little ball. And slept.

When I woke up several hours later, no one had missed me. And no one had invaded Saudi Arabia.