I was the com/nav shop head at the time, and a Staff Sergeant. We walked into the hangars on the second of August, and there wasn’t a sound from the flight line or the shops. It was very weird, because normally it was buzzing and clanging. And then we were told to get our troops and muster on the hangar deck.

There, the skipper told the entire squadron that Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait that morning, and we would all be packing up to head back to El Toro in anticipation of something big going down, in line with precisely why we were there to begin with.

Everyone had half an hour to get to the barracks to get their gear and get back, because we had planes to launch and gear to embark as soon as they could scramble the 130s to come get us.

All the troops took off, but the SgtMaj held us shop heads back and said,

‘I don’t know HOW she did it, or got the number, but the phone rang on the CO’s desk first this morning, and it was LCpl Schmuckatelli’s wife. FROM EL TORO. She called to tell the Skipper that she was very sorry about the deployment to Saudi Arabia (!), but LCpl Schmuckatelli couldn’t go, because she has three children and doesn’t drive.’