GRANDPA’S WAR – Part 36 – KKMC

After we dumped the sand, the road took us back to the vicinity of Hafar Al-Batin. In this case, taht meant KKMC (King Kahlid Military Community). We weren’t exactly in the middle of nowhere anymore.

And we were starting to get at some creature comforts.

I can’t really call this a creature comfort but one of the many things that was waiting for us was Desert Issue uniforms.

We’d deployed down to the Middle east wearing our woodland BDUs. These were the same uniforms worn in the States, Europe and Korea.

Simply, there weren’t enough desert uniforms in the pipeline to equip several divisions. So, we went to war wearing what we had.

It worked to our advantage. I’ve heard that the Iraqis felt we were some kind of super unit. That men and women who wore these uniforms were the same soldier that ran the Russians off. It was probably all talk. And I groan every time I see a movie about the Gulf War and see the soldiers in desert BDUs.

And we got American hamburgers.

There was a large built-up area about two miles from our camp. It was a large tentlike structure about the size of an aircraft hangar. It had a small PX in it and the tailors for our new uniforms. We went down and name tags were made for each of us. men running singer sewing machines sewed them and patches (to include our new combat patches) on.

Outside was a shade area with picnic tables. There was a hamburger stand there called McGunners.

We all went next door and had a couple of cheeseburgers and sodas.

It was no Red Robin. There was no tomato, no onion or lettuce on the burger. There also weren’t any fries.

But there was mustard and ketchup. It was hot. And it was light years ahead of MREs.

All things considered, it wasn’t a half-bad bad cheeseburger.

We also had a TV brought out to us. It was put up in a tent. If you wanted to sit and watch, then you brought your own chair.

And speaking of watching, the only thing we had to watch was the Superbowl. It was delivered to us on VHS tape and had been played months before. Stars and Stripes had covered the game for us and we knew who won, who lost, and so on.

We pretended not to know.

They put the tape into the player and we enjoyed the game. We actually had popcorn delivered to us in a big trash can and plastic trash bags.

One of the funnier things that occurred while we were parked at KKMC. A girl I knew came out to say hi. Greg and I were sharing a tent, and she comes in. She sees our cots with sleeping bags laid out on them. A bare bulb hung from the tent peak. We had a Styrofoam cooler we got ice in twice a week (if we were lucky).

She sat on my cot, and said, “Wow, this is the field.”

Greg and I laughed and one of us responded with, “Compared to where we’ve been, this is the Hilton!”

One of the more interesting aspects of KKMC was a small white house. It sat on maybe a quarter acre of ground. The house was surrounded by a high white wall, with a single gate with another wall behind it. Two armed guards at the gate.

I was told that Idi Amin, the former dictator and strongman of Uganda resided there. As I understood the arrangement, when he was deposed, he went into exile in Saudi Arabia. He was put in the house, given food, and limited contact with the world. He could go out into the yard and tend his garden. He could watch TV, read, and eat his meals which he fixed himself.

Step outside the walls surrounding the yard and he’d be shot!

While it looked nice, it was a gilded cage, and he was still a prisoner.

I never tried to confirm the story.

KKMC itself was beautiful. A lot of money had gone into it and that was very obvious. The roads were large and well maintained. The buildings were modern and the grounds plush.

Probably the most beautiful Mosque we saw over there was at KKMC.

We’d seen Mosques house in small metal buildings at truck stop. The one in Al Quasumah that aside from the minaret, would have looked perfect at home at the Taos Pueblo.

The mosque at KKMC was art. It was beautiful. Not being a follower of Islam, I couldn’t enter in to see if the inside matched the outside.

I could only look at it and suspect that it did.

All photographs Copyright – Richard L. Muniz

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