The State of Qatar is a small country, roughly 120 miles by 70 miles, that sticks out into the Arabian Gulf like a thumb from the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia. The capitol, Doha, is located on a protected harbor midway on the eastern coast of the nation. Doha, population 400,000, is a medium sized modern city and is the major population center of the country. The majority of the land is low and barren, much of it desert scrub. In the south though, there are mangrove swamps, and the center of the country is dominated by an inland sea, filled with enough tall, shifting sand dunes to match any old tale of the desert. The climate is terribly hot in the summer with observed temperatures in the 50C 120+F range not uncommon. Because of its proximity to the Gulf waters, Qatar also has to contend with high humidity, making summer days even more uncomfortable. On the other hand, the winter climate is actually pleasant with highs in the seventies and eighties, with an occasional rain shower.
Qatar’s history is a long one. There are signs of human habitation from as long ago as 4000BC, both in fishing villages along the coast and Bedouins inland.
The nation is ruled by an Emir, roughly functionally equivalent to a King of European tradition, yet whose basis of power is based more upon his status as a tribal, or family, leader or elder. As the leader of the ‘family’, the Emir makes the rules in concert with other Government officials, but unlike most Western leaders his role as an ‘Elder’ also makes him accessible to his citizens. Monthly, the citizens of the nation are invited to the Royal Palace where they can bring any issues directly to their leader. I was also shocked to see that the first listings in the national telephone directory were for the Emir and his staff. (I could only imagine that here in the US…) We were told that these numbers would actually connect you to the people listed, something that I thought the better of attempting.
The primary force affecting life throughout the Middle East, and especially in the Gulf region, is religion. The Islamic religion forms a basis for much of day-to-day life, from the workweek (Sunday to Thursday, as Friday is the Islamic holy day) through the laws and customs of the land. The amount that Islam affects daily life throughout the Middle East varies widely from nation to nation and Qatar had a reputation of being quite strict – although not nearly so much as the very conservative Saudi Arabia.
During our ‘Inprocess’ briefing we were told to go out, meet, and get to know our hosts in the Qatar Emiri Air Force and the local people, that they were very friendly, and that they love a good discussion and debate.
“But you probably shouldn’t discuss either religion or politics. The people
here have some strong opinions, and are pretty set in their ways.”
So, of course, that gave us a good place to start…
‘Inprocessing’ to a new base is normally a process which takes about a week, filled with briefings, classes, and of course, the obligatory paperwork that makes the military ‘go round’. Inprocessing into Doha was quick and painless. We stopped off at the orderly room, which was in an ‘accordion–like’ temporary building set up in a one-time parking lot area of what was now tent city. The First Sergeant greeted us with a quick “Welcome to Qatar”, ‘do this/don’t do that’ speech, and that was it. We were assigned tents and were sent on our way. When I arrived they were out of sleeping bags, so for my first week or so I had to make due with my field jacket and extra socks in the heavily air conditioned tent.
Speaking of the tent, I made my way to D-4, which was to be my new address. Our home was a sand colored double tent unit with a veranda attached to the front. Running down the peak of the tent front to back was a roughly 18” diameter duct from which was expelled cold air-conditioned air. Yes, our tents were steel framed, double layered, air-conditioned and heated – altogether not too bad, for a tent. One thing that you couldn’t help but notice, just alongside our tent was the diesel generator that powered the tents in our row. It was a large wheeled unit and whenever it was running it emitted an unbelievable noise – the unit was clearly marked “Hearing Protection Required Within 25 Feet” - it was about 15 feet from my bunk.
Along both walls were sixteen typical Army cots, the empty one (mine) being the second on the left as you entered through the door. Down the central walkway there were a couple of tables, which usually had a card game going whenever the lights were on. My tentmates were mostly AGE guys (Aircraft Ground Support Equipment) and I was happy to see several familiar faces. The AGE shop was next to our hangar back at TJ and we were back and forth fairly often – the AGE toolroom was always a good place to get ‘D’ batteries for our boombox radios when our toolroom caught on to what we were using them for… One face concerned me though, one of the AGE guys back at Torrejon was known as our ‘Base Ninja’. He considered himself quite a ‘martial artist’ (although we had heard stories of his ‘skills’) spoke to very few people, and always kept to himself. I don’t think that anyone felt comfortable around him, and he came across to me as someone you see described on the news as: “He was always just a quiet guy. I would never have expected this…” (Fill in the blank for what this could be…) I deposited my gear under my bunk, unpacked far enough to get my camera to a ‘safe’ spot and wandered next door to D-5 where most of the other Phase guys were living.
It was nice to once again be among friends. Everyone was eager to hear all of my news from TJ and I had carried messages over from several spouses. I was just as eager to hear about Qatar and what our conditions were, they told me that they had only been in tents for about a week after moving from the Gulf Hotel for higher command mandated ‘security concerns’.
At this time there was normally one hot meal every other day, although they were becoming more frequent. The meals were cooked in a trailer mounted field kitchen and were normally something that could be cooked on a ‘homemade’ grill, still a nice change from the soon to be dreaded MRE’s (Meals ready to Eat). Plenty of MRE’s were available though, so we could ‘mix-n-match’ the best selections from each menu. There was also a virtually unlimited supply of locally bottled water available. Much was made in the press about the many gallons of water a day that we were drinking, and while that may have been true for the Army guys over in Saudi, for us – basically sedentary AF mechanics, we got by on a few liters. There was a latrine at one corner of tent city, it was also a field portable unit about one hundred yards away from the tent, luckily usually downwind. There were also two new shower tents (one male, one female) a couple of hundred feet from the tent in the other direction. Only cold water so far, but everyone was told that there was a water heater ‘on the way’. The water temperature in the shower was more affected by the time of day than anything else. Water was trucked in daily and deposited into a black rubber bladder which sat on the ground behind the shower tents, the water, as you can well imagine became pretty warm (very hot) after an afternoon sitting in the Qatari sun. You could be fairly confident about getting a comfortable shower if you could time it right to be there soon after the water delivery, late at night, or early in the morning. On the other hand, whereas our food, latrine and showers were what you might expect in our ‘bare base’ situation, our laundry wasn’t – all of our clothes were sent out weekly to a local hotel and returned nicely pressed on hangars. Tent city was also equipped with a ‘Movie tent/Rec Center’ which had a couple of TV’s and VCR’s which ran around the clock showings of basically whatever videos could be found. However, it was for another day to find this out. It had already been several long days back-to-back and I was tired, John also said that he’d signed us both up for a trip into Doha to visit the Gulf Helicopters housing area for some relaxation. That sounded good to me so I bundled myself up in my field jacket, sweatpants, and extra socks against the air-conditioned coldness and put my head down on my clothes wrapped boots and said goodnight.
Welcome to Qatar.
The next morning we boarded our bus for what was to be my first trip off base. We exited tent city through the back gate, a guarded entry control point, from there we had about a mile drive rough drive over a hard packed sand road to another heavily guarded entry control point and the base’s back gate.
From there, we had reached civilization, not far from the Gulf Hotel (which had served as the Squadron’s original ‘home’) and the blue-green waters of Doha’s harbor – the Arabian Gulf.
(Blah, blah, have to fill this in... -MK)
One of the wives brought of a tray of what looked like...
“Here try a couple of these.”
“Umm…, what are they? Are you supposed to eat them?” (I wasn’t going to fall for one of those ‘Hey, look what I got that guy to eat’ tricks.) “They’re figs, they don’t look very good, but try one.”
“Figs like in ‘Fig Newtons’?”
So I tried one, and yes, despite they way they look, the figs were very good along with the dates.
We asked what the houses were like and one of the pilots invited us over. Walking away from the clubhouse to one of the surrounding homes the heat was incredible. You could feel it radiating up from the pavement right through your shoes. It was definitely going to take some time to get used to the local climate, but that made it feel even nicer to enter the cool shade of the house. The houses were beautiful, sort of a ‘southwestern style’, comfortable and roomy. After showing us around our host asked:
“Can I get you guys a drink?”
“Thanks, that would be great.” (…thinking that a cold Coke would really hit the spot…) “Good, do you like scotch?”
So here it is, my first full day ‘at the war’ and I’m lying in the sun next to the pool with a tall drink in my hand. My first thought was, “No one at home would believe this…” – so I took pictures, and secondly “If you have to go to a war, that ain’t a bad way to do it…”
These following are 'unedited' chapters that I'm posting as I write. Some day I'll work them all in together...
