Page 168 - 100 Hours to Destiny

The month of March 1991 was coming to an end. We had been at
Manifa so long that the 1st Marine Division had set up phones, a makeshift
PX, showers and a hot food chow hall that ran from 0600 to 2000. Many of
us would PT and train together, there was even a weight room. Life was easy
now. If you weren’t on a work party, you could pretty much enjoy yourself,
even bask in the late March Saudi Arabian sun. We Marines just simply had
to respond to our chain of command, and everyone was living a pretty
simple existence. Then the day came that Capt Pollard came to Delta
Company from the officers’ tent and gathered us to tell us, “Gents, we’re
going home.”

A strange phenomenon took hold of the Marines of Delta Company. We had been in the
desert so long that we became a part of the desert. We had been through combat and we
were at home in our surroundings. Day to day activities melded into the next day; it seemed
as though it would never end. It took Capt Pollard to shake us out of our complacency. We
had to get home. Delta had other missions to fulfill.

I will never forget how everyone looked at each other, whether it
was in disbelief or life had become so simple that we hesitated… maybe we
had become so embedded in this life, that we weren’t sure about going back
to life in “the world”. We had been in country going on eight months, we had
all changed. A life of training, preparing, going into combat and then