My Time in Kuwait during the Invasion of Iraq in 2003: Stories of the Corps
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At Camp Fox, Kuwait, 2003
Destinations > The Middle East > Kuwait > The Invasion of Iraq in 2003
I joined the Marine Corps on May 9th, 2001 - a full four months prior to September 11th - so, I honestly thought that I would not have to go to war as nothing was going on at the time. But, I vividly remember the moment that they first told us that we were getting sent to Iraq in early 2003. We were given one week's notice to cancel all of our phone plans, internet services, whatever we paid for on a monthly basis and get all of our gear together, packed up, and inspected to be ready to fly out on that deployment. It was a scary week for me because I had never been deployed before and because I had been mentally preparing for the deployment ever since I had heard about the first airplane, and watched the second airplane, crash into the twin towers on September 11th, 2001 - shortly after completing Marine Corps Boot Camp, when I was in military occupational school in 29 palms, California.
My mother had told me that she knew the Governor of the state of Illinois at the time, where I grew up. We had a short discussion in which she explained that there was a way to get me out of the military so that I wouldn't have to get deployed to war. As a parent now, I can’t imagine what she was going through emotionally as I don’t think I could deal with that myself. But, I was young and I told her that I wasn't going to do that. True, I had signed up for the military just to go to college, something that I thought was absolutely necessary for decent life as that’s pretty much what was fed to kids growing up in the 1980’s and 1990’s. I no longer believe that is true, and I’m open to talking to anyone who feels like it is necessary - to let them know why I now believe it is not. Anyway, I did believe it at the time and we didn’t have money for college, so this was my ticket and I didn’t think I had a choice.
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Putting camouflage netting up at Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
I chose the Marine Corps because my father had attempted to join the Marine Corps when he was younger, but they could not take him in soon enough given his particular situation. The Army could, so he signed up for a three year term and served as an engineer in Korea, in between the Korean and Vietnam wars. Anyway, despite just wanting to serve my country and afford to go to college, I also knew that I had made an obligation to the Marine Corps and decided to stick with it. My real mentality was more like that of the main character from the Netflix movie “Sand Castle,” Private Ocre, though.
So, one week after we were told to prepare for our deployment it was now Valentine's Day of 2003, and the day that I was deployed overseas to Camp Fox, Kuwait. Sadly, I am reminded annually of this deployment on that day, and, as you'll learn by reading this article, my feelings of that day are more along the lines of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre than of a cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance and love.
The invasion of Iraq was strongly opposed by some long-standing U.S. allies, including the governments of France, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand. Their leaders argued that there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that invading that country was not justified in the context of UNMOVIC's 12 February 2003 report.
We boarded the airplane at Cherry Point, North Carolina to fly out to Kuwait. It's strange flying on a commercial airplane while you're in the military. You think that you're going to get sent over on a military airplane, but that's not exactly what happened. They put us all on commercial airlines, planes that anybody would fly on, but the difference was that we had to bring all of our M16 assault rifles aboard the airplane. So every single person on board that flight had an assault rifle with them, apart from the flight crew. I mean, you think about it, it's kind of strange. Everyone on board trying to shove these long rifles under their seat for take off on a commercial airplane. We weren't allowed any ammunition, so the reality was that we just had a bunch of weapons that weren’t very dangerous on the airplane, but it was still very surreal to see so many weapons on the flight.
Boarding the flight to Kuwait, Valentines Day, 2003
We did have one layover on the way out there that they didn’t announce, to refuel, so it was a little scary when we were landing because we didn’t know if we had arrived yet. I believe it was in Germany, but we were not allowed to disembark the airplane at that time.
A lot of us were really, really tense when we landed at the airport in Kuwait. We didn't know what to expect as nobody told us if we were arriving somewhere safe or if we were running out into gun fire like you see in the movies. We thought, you know, that we might be flying right into a war zone or something, we might get shot at when we got off the airplane. Well, we were told to hurry off the airplane and move rather rapidly to the busses that were going to bring us out to our military camp. Additionally, we were told to use the restrooms one last time before we got on those busses; However, I did not need to go to the restroom at that time and was more worried about the situation that we were in, so I just quickly made my way onto the bus.
That ride took a lot longer than I expected. It probably was only about an hour and a half or so, but it felt to me like 3 hours because I ended up really needing to use the restroom. By the time that we arrived at the camp, my bladder was about to burst. I had already been considering just peeing on the floor of the bus for the last 10-15 minutes, and wishing that I had a portable toilet, because there really was no other alternative at that time - the buses were not permitted to stop. It was becoming unbearably painful.
When we arrived at Camp Fox very early in the morning on February 15th. It was still very dark out, but we were told to immediately get off of the bus and go into a military formation where they were going to welcome us to the camp and tell us some of the rules and whatnot. I knew that these things usually take another hour or so at least, and I was not going to be able to make it to the end of that formation. So as we arrived at nightfall, I got out and went around to the backside of the bus and just relieved myself in the desert sandbox that we were now in, because they didn't make the restrooms available to us after getting off the bus anyway. I then made my way to the formation and could only think about how relieved I was for a few minutes - so I missed a bit of the information. It was actually a very short formation, and I almost didn’t catch the part where we were instructed to go to specific tents before being sent on our way to get a few hours of shut-eye before the day officially started.
Me peeking out of our tent at Camp Fox, Kuwait
February 15th was also the day that the largest anti-war rally in history - protests against the Iraq War consisting of millions of people marching in over 600 cities around the world, began. Although we didn't have much access to global news over there, I did end up seeing a decent amount of the footage over the next couple weeks as I worked on the computer network and was one of a limited amount of people who had access to the internet. Even so, the actual beginning phase of the invasion didn't start until about a month later, on March 19th, so the first month was a bit muted for most of the troops there. It's hard to say exactly what it felt like to live there.
A herd of camels walks across the Kuwaiti desert
I do remember that over the course of the first month a lot of our tenseness, a lot of that worry that we had when we first arrived, kind of disappeared. It didn't feel as dangerous as we thought it was going to. It just kind of became a normal life out in a desert. We ended up letting our guards down. We really didn't need to worry about much. It was just a day to day life. Everybody fell into some sort of complacency, just setting everything up and getting everything working while feeling mainly like we were camping. It wasn’t too dissimilar to how things were portrayed in the book Jarhead (later made into a movie), although that story was about the Gulf War in 1991.
Plus, Camp Fox wasn't a military base, it was just an open camp in the middle of the desert. There were a lot of tents, each with around 32 bunks, and a fence around it, with guarded entry and exit areas, which we would need to pass through to walk towards the individually barbed wire surrounded facilities where we worked. I would walk about a quarter of a mile or so through loose sand to get to my work area - which was basically just a maze of CONEX boxes, like the shipping containers now used to build houses - work there for about 12 hours per day, and then go back to the tents. That was my life. That was our life.
Me setting up more camouflage netting on work units at Camp Fox, Kuwait in 2003
Satellite trucks for our communications at Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
They had me work as a computer network specialist at that moment in time, even though I was trained for defense messaging and as a certificate authority for writing fortezza encryption cards. As a meritorious Corporal with all of this extra specialized training, I felt like they were completely underutilizing me. So, for the most part, I just helped them set up secure computer networks, troubleshoot network issues, cut and crimp CAT-5 wires to plug computers into the routers, and to connect those routers to the network servers. We got our internet and communications from satellites that were attached to trucks. However, we always had to use hard wires that ran deep under the ground, instead of WiFi, so that nobody could splice into them and listen to what we were communicating about.
View of the tent area in the distance, from my workspace at Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
The Marine Corps had two other camps out there in Kuwait at the time that I was aware of, Camp Coyote and a forward camp called Camp Viper. I was told that Camp Viper was over the border in Iraq, but I don’t think that was the public story at the time or if it was even true. The American public was told that we didn’t cross the border until we started the convoy up into Iraq. There were a number of people selected to go up on that convoy, and part of my job was just to make sure that communications between Camp Fox and the convoy - that was moving up towards Baghdad - were working effectively.
Just before one of the many sandstorms that passed through hit Camp Fox, Kuwait in 2003
One day, as a coworker of mine and I finished work, we planned to head back to the tents and get something to eat just as a sandstorm arrived. Being familiar with the short walk, we decided to brave through it and ventured out toward the tents. You can't see much in a sandstorm, apart from the ground that you're walking on, so after awhile we both realized that it was taking far longer than it should have. With the sand spraying us from all directions - like being in the midst of a tornado on a beach - and no other options available, we continued. Now twice the time that it should have taken and we still weren't there, we were getting worried. Had we lost our way and ventured into a dangerous area? Should we stop and wait for the storm to pass and then find our way? We decided to continue for a little bit longer. About five minutes later we could see some barbed wire ahead of us, but it wasn't the tent area. As we got closer we realized it was the back side of our work area. We had walked in a full circle! Relieved to at least be somewhere safe, we decided to stay there until the storm passed.
Mess hall destroyed by sandstorm at Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
Food from Halliburton at Camp Fox Kuwait 2003
By the time we got back to the tent area, a part of the mess-hall - a large cafeteria-type tent that was almost as large as a circus tent and the place where we could all go to eat - was blown over and the plastic chairs were scattered about the area. No meal for us that night, but they had it back in operation by mid-day the day after. Normally, we’d walk in, grab some thin plastic dishes and utensils, walk through a catering line, and be served by Kuwaiti personnel whatever food the Halliburton company ordered for us three times per day - although we didn't always know exactly what it was. Halliburton was later sued for defrauding American taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars in regards to those food services. Trust me, it wasn’t gourmet, even if it likely cost taxpayers a hundred dollars a plate.
Doing laundry at Camp Fox, Kuwait in 2003
Originally, for laundry, Camp Fox just had an area where you had to bring your own bucket, fill it up with some water and suds, and do your own laundry, scrubbing it with a scrub brush - something we learned to do in boot camp - ringing it dry, bringing it back to our tents and hang it up on clothes lines. Eventually, they brought in a Kuwaiti laundry service that we could drop off a bag of our laundry at, similar to how a dry-cleaning service works, and they would take it out of the camp and have it washed for us within 1-2 days. When it returned, we would pay a little service fee and collect our cleaned and folded laundry. I preferred that method, but occasionally it wasn’t available.
Laundry service and shower house at Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
They also had a disbursing office, much like a small bank where we could withdraw a portion of our paychecks in the form of US Dollars, if we needed to buy anything local or pay for things like the laundry service.
The Navy Exchange BX PX at Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
Additionally, there was a Navy Exchange just outside of the tent area where you could buy necessities like shampoo, soap, socks, clothes, or whatever else you might need. It was just a small convenience store situation though, with the occasional Kuwaiti Camel Ride available, and I believe a KFC or something popped up over there a few months later.
Porta Johns near the tent area, Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
There were showers at Camp Fox as well. They weren't deluxe ones - basically camp-like shower facilities in a mobile home. A little bit of privacy so that you could shower up, but we weren't really allowed to use it every single day because there was a limited amount of water that they had to track back and forth. You're supposed to only use it like once every other day or so. We also had a bunch of Porta Johns located in specific areas of the of the camp as well, that was to the extent of our toilet facilities.
Me in a bunker at Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
Then it happened. Just over a month after we arrived, without warning, the air raid sirens started going off. Everybody just froze and started looking around. The thing is, we had learned what we needed to do if something like this were to occur near the beginning of our arrival, but we had become so complacent at that point that nobody was responding the way that we were supposed to. A Staff Sergeant that was outside at that time started yelling at everyone, “Get in the bunkers! What are you doing? Get in the bunkers right now!” So, we all started running towards the bunkers. And then I heard more yelling that caused a bit of a panic, “Gas, gas, gas!”
According to U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, the coalition aimed "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people", even though a UN inspection team had declared it had found absolutely no evidence of the existence of WMDs just before the start of the invasion.
Me carrying my chemical warfare gear - in backpack - and gas mask satchel in Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
We were trained that it was very possible that the Iraqi government had Scud missiles, that could be equipped with chemical warfare, and that they would potentially fire upon us if we were to go out into that region. So, before we went out there, we were all issued chemical hazmat suits and trained how to use them. They were these really thick hazmat suits, unlike the ones you saw people wearing during the covid pandemic. They were really thick carbon-layered, camouflage uniforms - a heavy jacket and heavy pants - that only stayed active for a few days. And so we were carrying these sealed bags around with these outfits inside of them the whole time, plus some rubber boots, rubber gloves, and a side pouch with a gasmask.
When they started yelling “gas, gas, gas,” that meant that we had to rip open our packages and put all of that on. We were technically given only one minute to get all of that gear on, but in the heat of the moment, at that point, we probably spent at least 5 or 10 seconds, maybe 15, just standing there wondering what to do until that Staff Sergeant started yelling: “Get into the bunkers right now!” and had us all scrambling toward the bunkers, getting there, and trying to put on our suits and stuff. I can assure you that even after 5 minutes, a lot of us didn't have on our outfits. The panic was real - all I could think at that moment was that I was going to die like a roach getting sprayed with Raid, and of all the things I didn’t get to do in my life. It was truly terrible.
Bunkers at Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
View from a bunker, Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
I'm not sure how much was actually getting shot at us during that time, though. I was told that some Scud missiles were apparently shot off, but that our Patriot missile battery was protecting our area. So if we were shot upon, those Patriot missiles would basically lock onto the Scud missiles and blow them out of the sky. For the most part they didn't even make it near the camp area, so it wasn't much of a real threat at Camp Fox. We didn’t know that at the time though, and there was still a small probability that one could get through the defense and land in our area - so we all still had to respond as if it were going to happen. So, there we were, all in the bunkers, waiting for the chemicals to spill over us, hoping that the suits and gas masks would work.
This was the day that coalition forces launched an incursion into Basra Province from their massing point close to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border [known to us as Camp Viper at the time].
Full Chemical suit on at Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
This started up a period of time that felt like forever because these warnings would go off initially every 60 to 90 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes after the last one, and a lot of us were just staying in our full chemical gear, those jackets and thick pants, because why even take it off when we're going to have to just put it right back on in a few minutes?
That was tough to do though, because it's about 100 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit out in the desert (38-46 Celsius) during March in Kuwait. So it was very hot, especially at midday. We did have some portable air conditioner units attached to the tents, but they would conveniently overheat around 105 degrees and couldn’t turn back on until the temperature decreased back below that heat level. So after it got above 105 it was very unbearable for us.
Marines in chemical gear while flag is at half mast - Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
That’s me at 20 years old in my Marine Corps skivvies trying to not die of heat at Camp Fox
While inside of our tents, we would normally just want to undress down to our skivvies if we weren't at work at the time. Then, we’d just lay there on our racks because it was out of the sun and about as cool as we were going to get. There was air flow in the tents, but there wasn't much we could do about the heat. So, that was a terrible conundrum considering that these air raid sirens were going off all through the day and night. We would have to get our heavy chemical suits back on, run out to those bunkers, and get our gas masks back on. I recall at least one particular night that I just slept in the bunker because I didn't want to keep going back and forth to the tent. I was so tired that I just needed to sleep. So I decided, you know what, I'm just going to sleep inside the bunker with all of my gear on and my gas mask just on the top of my head. This way, whenever these alarms went off, all I needed to do was pull the mask down over my face and just continue sitting there. No more running back and forth and putting on, and taking off, my gear. So, it was just a lot easier and it allowed me to get some sleep. That chaos lasted for about a month or so.
The invasion lasted just over one month, including 26 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq. On 1 May President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations: this ended the invasion period and began the period of military occupation.
Victory day at Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
CAT-5 trench, Camp Fox, Kuwait 2003
Then things started to get a little bit better - we didn't have these attacks occurring anymore. We just had to deal with the heat of the day on a regular basis and going to work as usual, digging some trenches on occasion for the CAT-5 cables that we needed. We started receiving some boxes from families in America that contained things like tons of candy for the most part, some magazines on occasion, and a few Iraqi Most Wanted playing card decks to keep us busy. After a while, we just had boxes of candy laying around because we were getting sent so much that most people weren't even eating any of it anymore. Especially since anything, like chocolate for example, would be melted even before it got there. So there was no point in even opening up those wrappers.
One day I was sent on a convoy out to Camp Doha, an Army base, close to Kuwait City. We got into the convoy, were given ammunition, and told to keep our weapons locked and loaded the whole drive. Our fingers were to be kept off of the trigger unless we needed to fire while we were rolling down the road. The drivers were also instructed to speed down the highways and not to stop for anything, just keep moving. If anybody tried to fire upon us we had our weapons ready just in case. Now this is in Kuwait, so realistically there was not much of a threat at that time for us as the U.S. is allies with Kuwait. It was only the threat of attack from potential terrorists that might have come into the country from Iraq and might be waiting for one of our convoys to attack us.
Dead sheep on the side of the road, Kuwait 2003
On the drive we passed by some rather poor farmers with trucks full of sheep, some junkyard looking areas, and then a region where we saw some dead sheep on the side of the roads as well. It was quite sad. Once we arrived in Kuwait City, we started passing by some really large homes for people that apparently have quite a significant amount of wealth - the equivalent of hundreds of million-dollar homes along the highway. Quite a change from what we saw earlier on the drive.
Arriving at Camp Doha, we took a look inside. It was much nicer than the Marine Corps camp. There was a full cafeteria inside, with different US restaurants - similar to what you might see at a decent US Mall at that time - at least five or six different US restaurants in the cafeteria area as well as a few others. And then there was an actual ATM there so that you could withdraw the local currency, which is the Kuwaiti dinar. I needed to use it to get some money for food, so I asked to withdraw $20 and out came a 5 Dinar bill. That was my first real exposure to a currency that was worth more than the US Dollar and I was confused. So here I was in Kuwait and their currency was essentially four times more powerful in buying things than the U.S. Dollar and, not too surprisingly, it did cost about 4-5 Dinar for me to purchase a fast-food meal while I was there. Anyway, I was just there as part of the convoy, so I didn't really have much of a mission. Whoever’s mission it was did whatever they needed to do and then we were on our way back to Camp Fox after that.
Happily home at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
I returned back on to the United States about five months after heading out there, so my return was sometime in July. I can't exactly remember why I was sent back earlier, but I do know that I was given a ticket to go back and that I took it because I did not want to be out there in that war anymore. The layover this time was in Ireland, which I do remember because we were permitted to get off of the airplane in a very confined section of the airport - which simply had a shop with Irish souvenirs. I bought a very small music box with a well-known Irish ballad on it that I still have to this day.
We landed back at Cherry Point, North Carolina, and took a bus back to Camp Lejeune where my mother was waiting for me. I was happy to be home, to see her, and I even had a weird sort of euphoria run over me as I realized that I actually had time to relax and that simple things, like restaurants and stores, were so abundant and available to me whenever I wanted to go. I was back home, and I was free again.
But so many others didn’t make it back, and that hurts me even today.
A field day line across Camp Fox, Kuwait in 2003
My Feelings about the Invasion of Iraq
After my deployment, I quickly adopted the feeling that we shouldn’t have been in Iraq. It was a difficult thing to wrestle with in my mind, as I had been there and I participated in it even though I didn’t want to be there. My mind wanted so much to believe that we were there to protect our country from terror because of my involvement, but - while I felt strongly that we needed to defend the United States from terror attacks like that of September 11th, 2001 - I feel that the only justified response to that was a search for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, not an invasion to catch Saddam Hussein in Iraq as he had nothing to do with September 11th. I also feel that our main reason for going to Iraq was because of crude oil, and that makes me feel that our lives were abused, misused, and put at risk simply to line the coffers of rich oil tycoons or keep gasoline prices at the pump ten cents lower per gallon. It hurts to think troops, people who volunteer their lives to defend the United States, can be used in that way.
No weapons of mass destruction were ever found after the invasion. On May, 19th, 2022, George W. Bush accidentally admitted that the Iraq war was ‘unjustified and brutal’ in one of his usual Freudian slips.
4,492 US service members did not return from the war in Iraq. Another 2,325 lost their lives in Afghanistan. A 2021 study from Brown University's Costs of War project estimated that over 30,000 more active-duty personnel and veterans of the post-9/11 wars, including OIF and OEF, have died by suicide. This article is dedicated to all of those who lost their lives or loved ones during those wars.
After this deployment I had a second deployment, but this time it was to Djibouti, in Africa.
Another perspective on the “Operation Enduring Freedom” war campaign in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DARECNXNOtC/
Learn more about this country, and the Liberation of Kuwait, by reading this amazing book today!
FAQ’s
How did I feel about being sent to Kuwait for the invasion of Iraq?
I felt a mix of emotions about being sent to Kuwait for the invasion of Iraq. I was proud to serve my country and protect it from terrorists, but I also had doubts about the legitimacy and morality of the war. I was nervous about leaving my family and friends back home, and I was curious about the culture and people of Kuwait.
What were some of the challenges and dangers that I faced during my deployment?
Some of the challenges and dangers that I faced during my deployment included: living in tents and sleeping on cots, dealing with sandstorms and extreme heat, wearing heavy gear and carrying weapons, facing constant threats of attacks from Iraqi forces, witnessing death and destruction, and being away from my loved ones for months.
How did I cope with the stress and trauma of war?
I coped with the stress and trauma of war by relying on my faith, my fellow Marines, and my sense of humor. I prayed daily, bonded with my fellow Marines and supported them when they were going through tough times, and I tried to find joy and laughter whenever possible. I also wrote letters and emails to my family and friends and listened to music and watched movies to distract myself from everything that was going on.
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