I said, "Absolutely." I had been with MAG-39 S-2 for about a year and a half at that point, and I was ready to move on to somewhere else, and I felt that I had learned a lot working at Group that I could bring to bear down at a squadron. My OIC warned me that the squadron was preparing to deploy with Contingency MAGTF 3-88 to the Persian Gulf. We would first deploy to MCAS Futenma, Okinawa, Japan, as part of the Unit Deployment Program, a regular six month deployment rotation the squadron normally participated in. But once we got there, the bulk of the squadron would load up on an LPD and go to the Persian Gulf. A detachment would stay behind to cover the normal UDP responsibilities. The Contingency MAGTF in the Gulf before us had seen some action, and it looked like we might, as well, so I was pumped about the deployment.
An HMLA squadron normally has an Intel Chief and an Intel Clerk. Because we were going to split on Oki, a second Intel Clerk was assigned to the squadron. PFC Jeffrey Dinsmore and PFC Kidder became my charges for the deployment. Kidder would stay on Oki and Dinsmore would come with me. Our OIC was a Cobra pilot, named John Alli. He was a short, aggressive First Lieutenant. He was great to work with, just a bit over-eager at times. We were augmented by elements of an Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM) from MCAS Tustin, CA. A second officer was added to the S-2 (Intelligence) Shop, a captain named George Steele. He was the only Black pilot I ever met, and one of the smartest people I've ever known. He was a Greco-Roman wrestler in college, and was immensely strong. He was a perfect compliment to 1stLt Alli, because he was laid back and knew his position. "I'm a pilot, you're the Intel Chief. Keep me out of trouble." he told me. He also reigned in 1stLt Alli once in a while when he got carried away with things we needed to do to prepare for the deployment. All the HMM pilots tended to be more laid back than the Cobra pilots. I've been told that Cobra pilots are frustrated jet jocks, and there would seem to be some truth in that. There aren't a lot of billets for fighter pilots, so the Corps gets to pick and choose the very best, but I'm sure timing has a lot to do with it, as well. Anyway, the Cobra pilots tended to be Type A personalities, while the Huey, Sea Knight and Sea Stallion pilots were more Type B personalities.
It was the usual long flight to Okinawa, via Alaska and mainland Japan. We were there for a week or so, and then we loaded up on the USS Dubuque (LPD-8) and headed for the Philippines, where we would pick up some CONEX boxes with special gear installed. The entire CMAGTF was onboard the one ship. We had the Command Element with extra Marines from 1st Radio Battalion; the Air Combat Element (ACE)--our HMLA squadron reinforced with CH-46s from an HMM squadron; a Ground Combat Element made up of a reinforced rifle company from 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, some Recon Marines from Bravo Company, 1st Recon Battalion, and some Marines from Light AntiAircraft Defense (LAAD) Battalion, and a Combat Service Support Detachment to handle our logistics. The S Shop personnel (Administration, Intelligence, Operations and Logistics) for 267 were blended into the Commend Element, rather than have two separate units and all the extra paperwork that would have created. Two platoons from the GCE were stationed on barges out in the middle of the Gulf once we got there, so there was really a fair amount of room onboard the ship, which isn't the normal case. Usually everyone is stuffed in like sardines, and space is a privilege. There was a great deal of concern about the possibility for small boat attacks, and the Iranian Air Force was flying F-14s to counter Iraq's F-1s, which is why theGCE was augmented with both TOW missile teams and the Marines from LAAD Battalion. The Ace even played around with trying to get a lock on the heat of boat engines with the Sidewinder missiles the Cobras carried. I don't remember that idea getting anywhere, though. We had Marines manning extra .50 caliber machineguns and Mk-19 40mm grenade launchers along the rails of the ship, in addition to the machineguns and large guns manned by the ship's sailors. Any Iranian boat or plane that tried to attack us would have gotten a very nasty reception. I wasn't impressed with the sailors' aim, but the Marines were scary good at hitting things. When we had gunnery practice, the sailors would place a string of fire that started in front of the target, passed through it, and then proceeded on up to the horizon. When Marines fired, they would put a burst to the left, a burst to the right, and then chew the target up. The Mk-19s were awesome. When we had trash call, the gunners would set up sometimes on the fantail of the ship and wait for the trash to float back away from us, and then they would fire 5 round bursts, "blup-blup-blup-blup-blup", then there would be a pause, and then boom-boom-boom-boom-boom, the trash would be destroyed. It was a blast to watch them work. The Marines from Recon got a lot of trigger-time, as well. They were outfitted with assault vests, crash helmets and carried 9mm pistols and silenced MP-5s. They practiced double-tapping over and over on targets set up on the fantail.
We had an international incident on the way to the Gulf. About 400 miles off the coast of Vietnam, we ran into a boat filled with refugees. The sailors were running around all excited, saying the ship was going to get another humanitarian award. I guess they had run into this kind of thing before. But the captain of the ship was in a great hurry to get to the Gulf, so he directed that we give them some water and food, a map, and a compass and basically told them, "The Philippines, that way" and left them. A couple refugees jumped off their boat and started to swim over when we stopped. I didn't see it myself, but I was told that one of them got too close and was sucked into the propeller. We found out right about the time that we got to the Gulf that the refugees' trip wasn't easy. A bunch of them died, and they wound up eating some of their dead. It caused a big stink. All the sailors hated Captain Bailin. He was on the 1MC all the time yelling at someone. "Goddamit, (insert department), what is going on down there?! Do I have to come down there and run that department myself?" Apparently, he had ordered the crew to alter the ship's exterior lighting configuration, which is a big no-no in the Navy, and he had appropriated some money from one departments funding in order to buy a stereo system for his cabin. And to top it all off, the ship's previous CO was the officer charged with conducting the investigation into what happened, and the crew loved him, so there was a line out the door and down the hall with sailors ready and willing to make statements against Captain Bailin.
We also made a special detour to dip below the equator so we could have a Wog Day. The Navy loves to make a big deal out of crossing certain imaginary lines on the globe, and crossing the equator is one of them. Sailors and Marines who have done it before are "Shellbacks", and those who have not done it yet are "Wogs" or "Pollywogs". You have to wear your clothes inside out and your underwear on the outside, and the Shellbacks make you do a bunch of stupid things, like bob for onions out of a toilet filled with tabasco sauce and other nasty stuff, and crawl around the whole ship on your hands and knees. The shellbacks also cut up a firehose and tape handles onto them, and spank you as you crawl around. And they find the fattest, nastiest chief on the chip, grease his stomach, dress him up in a diaper an make him the Royal Baby. The wogs all get to crawl up to him at some point and dig an oyster out of his bellybutton with their teeth. It's as bad as it sounds. The entire ship gets trashed. The whole thing takes three days. The first day is "Wog's Revenge". They get to do stuff to the Shellbacks, which is pretty stupid, seeing that the very next day the Shellbacks are going to be in total charge of you, and are guaranteed to exact revenge on anything you did to them the day before. There is also a beauty pageant, where each shop or department dresses up one of their members in drag and puts them in the competition. The second day is the chaos, and the third day is spent cleaning up the mess. So, we had time to go out of our way to the Gulf to do that, but we didn't have time to stop and pick up some refugees in a leaky, overcrowded boat with a questionable engine, and drop them off in Singapore or Thailand, which was on our way. The whole thing struck me as pretty gay, although I have to admit, it would have been fun to do it one more time as a Shellback You get a certificate to certify that you are a Shellback I still have it somewhere. My brother served two tours in the Navy and has several certificates, to commemorate crossing different lines of latitude and longitude.
Our time in the Gulf was pretty uneventful. We were the mothership for several minesweepers that were operating to keep the gulf free from mines that were released by the Iranians, or ones that broke free from the Shatt al Arab waterway and drifted out to sea. One time the divers from the minesweepers came onboard with a tape to show us of a mine they had found. It was sitting on the bottom of the Gulf in about 200 feet of water, still in the wheeled case it was packaged in. Once they are thrown overboard, a chain is supposed to deploy to place the mine at a specific depth, and the case becomes the mine's anchor. This one failed to deploy. There were lots of fish all around it. The bottom is pretty void of structure, so fish gather around anything down there. An announcement came over the loudspeaker when they were about to detonate the mine. The countdown started about 30 minutes before they blew it, so everyone was out to see it happen. They finally got to the 10 second countdown, and nothing happened, Finally, some bubbles came up. It was very unimpressive.
The minesweepers couldn't make their own water, so they depended on us to supply them. We also had a tiny PX, which was more than they had. Even though the ship didn't have that many Marines embarked onboard, we had water rationing, because of the minesweepers, and because the ship was so old. They broke a hole in the hull one time when they were doing some kind of maintenance. The bottom of the ship was rusted right through in a spot, and when they hit it, it crumpled and water started pouring in. The Navy got a little excited over that one, but they plugged it up and got it fixed. There was always a sailor out with his "atomic woodpecker", an air-driven device with three prongs that vibrated, which was used to chip paint and rust off the ship to get down to bare metal so it could be repainted. We were in the Gulf right through the summer. I felt bad for the sailors and Marines who had to stand watch on the rails for aircraft and small boats. The Navy rigged what canvas it could to try to give them shelter, but it was still very hot.
The Iran-Iraq War was in its final year. The Iranians had been winning for a while, because they had been using human wave tactics to overwhelm the Iraqis, but the Iraqis had finally figured out how to handle them, and the Iranians were running out of bodies, so Iraq was back on the offensive and regaining territory it had lost. The Airbus shoot-down happened while we were there. We had arrangements with the Iraqis to control parts of their flights so they wouldn't fly directly over any US ships. The Gulf is not a big place, and there were a number of ships in the area, so it got complicated at times. The air controllers would have the flights of Iraqi F-1s turn left, then turn right then turn left again to zigzag between all the ships. Sometimes the Iraqis said "enough is enough" and just did whatever they wanted. I can't say I blamed them. They were trying to fly combat missions and here we were directing them all over the place, so by the time they got into position to attack something, they weren't very sure where they were, where home was, or anything else, for that matter. Every so often 1stLt Alli would tell me about Saudi F-15s operating in the area. They would use the helos as targets to practice with their radar guidance systems. He said it was very unnerving to have the F-15s roll in on you and get the warning tones that you were being painted by a missile radar. The US tried to get them to stop it, but they did it anyway, sometimes.
We typically spent about three weeks at sea, and then pulled into Bahrain for a couple days. A couple times we tied to the pier, but most times we were at anchorage, and had to ride boats in for liberty. The Navy had an Admin Support Unit on Bahrain, a tiny little base, but it had a rec center and phones, and it was off the ship, so it was cool with us. We could also go out in town, Manama. Dinars had an exchange rate of about 1:3 (ten dinars was about thirty US dollars), so you had to really think about what you spent any money on. The Gulf Hotel was a popular place to go. They had a contract with British Airways, so all the stewardesses stayed there. It was about the only place you could see a Caucasian woman. There was a Hardees out in town, A Kentucky Fried Chicken, and two Pizza Huts. One was downtown, and I preferred to go to that one, because Bahraini women would come in and take off their outer coverings. A lot of them were pretty, and wore nice dresses. We never talked to each other, but there was a lot of eye flirting. A couple hotels had live entertainment. The whole audience was male, though, no women allowed. Alcohol was pretty expensive. There were a couple good old boys in my berthing area who liked to drink Jack Daniels. They were paying $7-$10 per shot, but it was Jack, so they were happy. I saved up a lot of money while we were there, but I bought a few Persian carpets just before we left, and then I spent a lot of money during the liberty stops on the way back to Okinawa, so I didn't have much money to show for my time when we got back to the States.
I gave some classes on Arab culture, and visited all the berthing areas on a weekly basis to give everyone an intelligence brief about what was happening in the region. I bought some Arab clothes in the suq (market) in Bahrain one of the first times we made a port call, and I sometimes got dressed up to get everyone's attention. I had LCpl Dinsmore dress up in the female clothes and come along with me a couple times. One week, one of the Staff Sergeants in the Staff NCO berthing tried to tell me I was wrong, and proceeded to tell me what was going on in the region. What possible source he had for getting his info is beyond me. We weren't getting newspapers, and he didn't have a shortwave radio or anything. All the other Staff NCOs tried to tell him to sit down and shut up, but he wouldn't listen. So, the Staff NCOs didn't get much information that week. I got along well with the Operations Clerk and the NBC Marine we were assigned from MAG-39, and it became our job to tape broadcasts for the ships tv about the ports we were headed to. The only information I had was a binder full of CIA Fact Book sheets and a travel guide I picked up on Okinawa. I had never been to any of these ports before, except the Philippines, and we had all been to the Philippines, so it was a case of the deaf leading the blind. We did the best job we could, and nobody came up to us and told us we sucked, so I guess it was alright.
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