Zaragoza-- Land of the Lisps

In May 2001 not too long after I had returned from Saudi Arabia with my squadron we were assigned a vacation like training deployment. We got word that the deployment was heading to Zaragoza, Spain and it was clear that the work would be very light so my boss got our crew on the list and off we were... in a C-130 HERC cargo plane sitting on nets... Not anybodies idea of a good time.


The HERC is a 4 engine turbo propeller aircraft that moves very slow. It took us around 6 hours to cross France and land in Zaragoza which is located in the norther part of Spain. The HERC's cruising speed is only about 330 MPH (540KPH) and the cargo netting is oh so not comfortable. We would take reflective belts we had to wear while in uniform after sunset and pass it through the netting and rest our foreheads in the other part and lean forward just to get some sleep. But having vehicles and other equipment needed for the deployment strapped down where your feet are supposed to be is something you can never get accustomed to. And pray that you don't feel the urge to relieve yourself.


When we landed in Spain and the doors were opened the heat and humidity entered into the plane instantly and oppressively while 90 odd bodies didn't help the situation. As the buses came we couldn't load our personal effects into the cargo bay quick enough. The air-conditioning was a Godsend and we were quickly on our way off of the Spanish military base that is attached to the public airport and into the middle of a modern, crowded and beautiful city.

We soon pulled up to a wonderful hotel in the middle of the city named Hotel Ramiro l. We were all given our own rooms and I remember speaking with some other friends on the trip about how nice the hotel was. On top of the nice hotel that we didn't have to pay for I think we were also receiving close to a hundred dollars per diem for being there.


Not long after we arrived we were all called into the conference room and were told by some OSI agents that I never saw before that there had been a political assassination that afternoon. They told us that we had nothing to worry about but to be more keen of our surroundings.

Here is the article from CNN about the incident.

Killing prompts Spanish rallies

ZARAGOZA, Spain -- Thousands of people have protested across Spain at the latest killing blamed on Basque separatists.

More than 300,000 people gathered on Monday to protest the killing of Manuel Gimenez Abad, 52, president of the local chapter of the ruling centre-right Popular Party.


Abad was shot on Sunday as he walked with his son to a soccer match.

While no one has claimed responsibility for the killing, officials immediately blamed it on Basque separatist group ETA.

Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and other Spanish politicians led the procession through Zaragoza, capital of the northeast Aragon region.

They were joined by Abad's widow Ana Larraz and their two teenage children.

Demonstrators marched holding a banner that read, "For freedom, against terrorism."

An official statement read at the rally, accused ETA of seeking independence through "suffering, injustice, fear and barbarity."

Similar rallies were held in Madrid and other Spanish cities.

Prior to the shooting ETA was thought to be observing an undeclared truce in the run-up to May 13 elections.

The last killing blamed on the group was March 20 in the Basque town of Lasarte.

Polls indicate the Popular Party, opposed to Basque independence, could win for the first time since the Basque country won limited self-rule in 1979.


Sunday's killing was the seventh blamed on ETA this year and the 30th since it ended a 14-month-old ceasefire in December 1999.

ETA has killed more than 800 people in its 33-year-old campaign for Basque independence.

Abad's funeral was held Monday afternoon in his hometown, Jaca, a village of 15,000 people at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains near the border with France.

At the service, the bishop of Jaca, Jose Maria Conget, said, "No ideology can justify terrorism. Terror is the enemy of humanity."

The killing was condemned by politicians, and all parties in the Basque elections except the pro-independence Euskal Herritarrok, widely considered ETA's political wing, suspended campaign events for Monday.

"We will defeat them with the rule of law," said Javier Arenas, president the national Popular Party.

"Basques have got to go and vote on May 13 and tell ETA that they are not wanted, that they have to disappear," said Carlos Iturgaiz, PP president in the Basque region."

So this incident caused the whole of the city to come to a standstill one day and the main boulevard in the city was packed with people marching down it. I remember I had to be to work around 2pm or so and I wanted to make a run to the McDonald's that was close by and unfortunately on the other side of the parade.


I was not going to let 300k protesters get in my way of a Big Mac! So I managed to weave in and out of the parade lines and make it across the large boulevard get lunch and then fight my back through it again... The worst part though was that my fries were cold by the time I walked back to the hotel. And I don't like cold fries.

And as I sat back in the hotel room of my crew-member eating cold fries and watching the news coverage of the protests (in Spanish) we noticed just how strong the lisp of the locals was. The name of the city we were visiting went form Zaragoza to Thaaragothah. Apparently most of Spain has this linguistic trait but it is the strongest in Zaragoza.

Other that I just did a lot of shopping and sight-seeing around the old beautiful city. And showed up for a few hours in the afternoon to do a little work. And I assume we flew back on a C-130 to Germany but I cannot remember. I need to talk to some of my old pal that went with me...

Me & Prince Sultan

On this day 8 years ago I was deployed to Prince Sultan Airbase (also known as P-SAB) in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the United States Air Force. I had just turned 20 a few months prior and I had been in the Air Force for a few months over 2 years at this point.

This being my first time in Saudi Arabia I, much like most people first visiting, never know what to expect. I thought to myself things like, 'It's winter but it's Saudi! How cold can it really be?' And, 'What facilities will they have on base?' Fortunately I was the 2ND leg of the 6 month window our squadron was due to deploy and had some information from colleagues about certain things going on.

Upon landing at P-SAB we disembarked off the military jumbo jet and then had to find our luggage that had been taken off the plane and placed on the concrete for us to sort through. After finding my bags I found my way to a line consisting of the other people that were on the flight with me. At the head of this line was a man is traditional Arab dress checking through the luggage of all the people who had just arrived. It was his job to confiscate any contraband that was deemed prohibited under the agreement that had been signed between the two governments. I remember that a few VHS tapes were confiscated off of one individual to be reviewed and then returned to him once they had checked out. A few people had a particular CD by the rap duo,Outkast confiscated. Not because of the musical content on the CD but the artwork of a naked woman on the CD itself.


Once everyone had been past the customs guy we were in-processed and put on some school buses painted tan and driven to the location where we would be sleeping for the next 3 months. The accommodations were excellent. I was assigned to a room with another guy from my shop and in the room there was 2 bunk beds, 4 large closets and a small refrigerator. The room was within a larger building that had perhaps 14 other rooms just like mine and a large communal living room with American cable television and a full kitchen setup on one wall. There was a 2 communal bathrooms with maybe 4 private stalls and 4 private showers as well as a laundry room with a handful of washers and dryers.

The overall living conditions were excellent but that as because it was not easy to live in the desert for 3 to 6 months and they had to do everything they could from to prevent people from going insane. There was an outdoor swimming pool, tennis courts, basketball courts and a very well equipped gym.

The chow hall food was not the best that I had ever tasted but they did try. There were some trailers that held a Burger King, a Baskin Robbins, a pizza place and a Chinese restaurant as well.

Financially P-SAB was a great place to be. First off all there was not too much one could spend their money on. Secondly, being is a 'hostile' area we were entitled to tax-free income as well as certain hazard pay bonuses. One could easily walk away from a 3 month stint in the desert with $5 grand in his pocket if he was so inclined.

The work was very manotonous for us in Saudi as typically jets would take off and come back with generally a minimal amount of problems. In fact we spent most our time sitting in a trailer playing PlayStation, playing basketball in combat boots when the weather was not too bad or sitting in the back of a 'bread truck' waiting for work to develop.


Overall the weather was perfect for the 3 months I was there. I think we saw rain drops once or twice but they never amounted to anything more than a spectacle and the Saudi in March and April is actually quite lovely. There were a few sandstorms while we were there and one in particular was so severe that when I fully extended my arm out in front of me I could not see my finger tips.


In fact that sandstorm cost me a small chunk of money. While I was deployed I was taking an English course towards my degree and had all my assignments on a 3.5" floppy disk that I had to print out and send in the mail to my instructor. During that terrible sandstorm sand got into everything and everywhere that a grain of sand has the ability to fit into including my backpack that contained my floppy disk. Grains of sand managed to get into the disk and scratch the film inside making it so a computer could not read the files on the disk. And I failed the class.

Days tend to blend together in situation like these. Only remarkable events separate ordinary 'Groundhog' like days. Days where there is a mind blowing sandstorm. Or the day a French Mirage crashed not to far from the base on a training mission killing the pilot. The day that Chief Master Sergeant Thompson yelled at me for moving a porta potty with a forklift like machine because I needlessly drove to close to a jet.


And the day I was able to get an R&R trip to the capital city of Riyaadh a couple weeks before we went back home to Germany. P-SAB was about 2 hours south of Riyaadh and only a handful of people go to go every week. I was selected by my first Sergeant to go and really looked forward to it after being stuck on the base for the past 2 and a half months. I remember driving in a big Chevrolet Suburban with 3 other men, one woman and our two military chaperons. We were told to wear dress pants, a button up shirt and dress shoes while the woman had to dress in a traditional Muslim woman's dress. She didn't have to wear the face veil but chose to to get the full experience of the culture we were about to experience.

In Riyaadh we had the option to go for lunch at a traditional Arab restaurant or Fuddruckers, a classic American burger restaurant. I was outnumbered 3 to 2 and we ended up at Fuddruckers having burgers and fried chicken which was not so bad after 2 and a half months of P-SAB chow hall but... You know.


We were taken to a traditional Arab market in Riyaadh and went shopping for gold and mink blankets. I had a beautiful experience in the market when the Arabic call to prayer came over the loudspeakers. The man chanting in Arabic was very beautiful in itself but the speakers around me seemed to be a split second apart and it was kind of like 'surround sound' echo all around the area.

We flew out of P-SAB in early April and when we landed in Germany everything was a new green. Germany is an incredibly green place to begin with but after being in the desert for a few months even the military camouflaged uniforms looked greener.

After returning we were entitled to 2 weeks vacation to unwind and get back into the swing of things.