Posted: 9/14/2006 4:07:19 AM EDT
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I overheard a young guy on my bowling league tell someone else about having done one deployment to Iraq. I sauntered over and asked when he was there. I don't recall the exact dates he mentioned, but it was before the actual invasion. I looked at him and said, "So, you weren't actually in Iraq?" He answered, "No." "Then do yourself a favor, stop telling people you did a deployment there...no tellin' who you're gonna piss of when you get caught in a lie." |
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Sir, FWIW the first time I was stationed in Italy (I'm a civilian employee of the US Navy) people in my organization were frequently "deployed" to our detachment in Bahrain. We had MSOs and SBUs in the gulf then and in addition to the USS La Salle we did frequent maintenance availabilities on many US Navy ships with local contractors often at the Basry Shipyard or Mina Sulman. During one of my first "deployments" to Bahrain we had one of our guys working on the USS Roberts in dry dock in Dubai. Later, during Desert Shield and Desert Storm some of us were sent to ships deployed in the North Gulf and occasionally the only method of transportation available was overland into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait with helo or RHIB transport out to the ship. When USS Tripoli hit a mine in the north Gulf, some of us were flown to her directly from Bahrain to perform preliminary "battle damage assessment". Subsequently, we patched her up at the ASRY shipyard at the end of the Muharraq peninsula in Bahrain. If you ask most any GI that was there at the time there were never any civilians deployed in the Gulf during GW1! Over a year later when I was back working in Newport News, they gave me a medal, they call it the "Civilian Service Desert Shield and Desert Storm Medal". I have it in a drawer some where at home. I can show copies of original TDY orders stamped "ISO Desert Storm/Desert Shield". I've been underway on a lot of ships that most of the crew did not realize I was a civilian, my blue coveralls look just like theirs! I even remember at a dinner dance at the Naples AFSouth Officer's Club the Master Chief of the Navy told my wife that the Navy never had any civilians deployed in the Gulf during Desert Shield/Desert Storm. I'll never forget the look on his face when she told him he was full of SXXX! Perhaps my "work" is not as colorful as those that carry a rifle, but not everyone is a "poser" and you don't know everything about who goes where and who does what, lighten up! JMHO, 7zero1 out. |