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DOWNTOWN SAUDI ARABIA
by Brett Bailey
 First Battalion Third Marines, One-Three, were stationed in Hawaii, the easy life, if being a Marine could ever be called easy. Lance Corporal Brett Bailey endured hikes or “humps” in Marine—that’s Jarhead— lingo, live-fire exercises, demolition training, and officers who considered Bailey and his fellow Marines to be sorry sons ’a bitches and would tell them that frequently.
LCpl Bailey was with One-Three when word started coming of an impending showdown in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, better known as Operation Desert Shield and then Operation Desert Storm.
LCpl Bailey describes the conflict not as a military strategist pondering a chessboard of massive movements of men and matériel but from the point of view of one of the pawns, a boot on the ground. Bailey knew he was a warrior tromping ground in a part of the world that had been invaded by others, including Xenophon, Alexander the Great, and countless Roman legionaries. East was meeting West again. Shields and spears had given way to machine guns and rocket launchers, but tents, heat, sand, and miserable food were still part of the ancient ordeal.
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