Snacks and Hot Towels on a Visit to the Front

The Kuwaitis are still thinking first-class.

While everyone else travels to the front in four-wheel-drive vehicles, they loaded 70 journalists, headed for a visit to the remnants of the Kuwaiti army, into a Kuwaiti Airways Boeing 727 replete with attentive stewardesses, tasty snacks and hot face towels.

Delighted passengers settled into the wide seats, not minding at all the delay en route caused by diversions around live-fire artillery ranges. A Kuwaiti official, noting the unusually docile and content journalists, walked through the aisle, beaming and saying over and over, “You are most welcome.”

The plane, named Bubiyan for a Kuwaiti island coveted by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, arrived at desolate Qaisumah 45 minutes later than planned. The marbled airport was empty except for some Pakistani workers who scurried about, sweeping up cigarette ashes almost before they hit the ground. Just outside, the real world waited in the form of a rickety old bus and a truck that would carry the journalists on the final, dusty leg into the desert to visit the Martyr’s Battalion.

Both the Saudis and the Pentagon realize the value of “photo opportunities,” and television is clearly the military’s favored medium in the gulf.

“We’re the poor kids on the block now,” said a correspondent for one major U.S. daily newspaper. His suspicions were confirmed during Thanksgiving, he said, when dozens of print journalists were trying to arrange military transportation to visit any unit in the field.

Meanwhile, network weatherman Willard Scott was already there, courtesy of a helicopter provided by the Pentagon.

The competition remains keen between journalists to get on any trip arranged by military information officers that promises the vaguest hint of a story or picture. Sixteen journalists signed up for an outing described as a chance “to view weights donated by Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

U.S. Marines have always had a strange sense of humor. Ask one what he plans to do for New Year’s Eve, and he’ll probably say, “We’ve made reservations at the Baghdad Hilton for 30,000.” During a live-fire exercise of the anti-tank TOW missile--the Marines who fire the weapons call themselves “TOW Critters”--Cpl. Victor Perez-Quinones of Reston, Va., amused himself by “broadcasting” a play-by-play of the action into his tape recorder. When a target was hit, he would yell, “And the crowd goes wild!” The small group of Leathernecks around him chanted, raised their cans of nonalcoholic beer and performed the wave.

After several months in Saudi Arabia, Bob Dvorchak, an Associated Press correspondent, was gladdened to hear that a package from the United States had arrived for him. After fruitless searches through two post offices, he found it at a third and opened it in front of a customs inspector. Sent by a friend, it contained candy, candles and a small Christmas tree.

This caused embarrassment all around because non-Muslim religious symbols are banned in Saudi Arabia. But the customs man was unshakably polite.

“We understand this is your religion,” he said. “Arrangements will be made for you to have it.” Having already lost a morning’s work, Dvorchak tried to explain that a tree has little to do with Christianity and besides, he would just as soon save the hassle and leave it behind.

No, the customs man insisted, you will have your tree--which Dvorchak finally toted away, but only after getting a letter from the Ministry of Information and promising to take it with him when he left the country.

C-rations, or “C-rats,” as soldiers have called them ever since World War II, and LURPs, the long-range patrol rations used in Vietnam, are meals of the past. Now the staple field diet is MREs--meals-ready-to-eat that are freeze-dried and come in 14 choices. Although most were sealed five or six years ago, GIs seem to agree that they are at least as tasty as airline food.

The various meals are traded like baseball cards. The omelet appears to have the lowest bartering value, the chunk of ham the highest, with the spaghetti in tomato sauce falling somewhere in between. The maple cake is universally chosen as the best dessert. The most favored side dish is the Accessory Packet B, which contains a tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce.