Getting Chummy  By the time we'd moved onto the airbase, we'd worked out just what exactly we were doing and how, and supporting units were starting to arrive.  Life was less about living and getting what we needed to do so, and more about getting the mission accomplished.  We were EOD, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, bomb squad, if you will.  And we were a Battalion-level unit, meaning we didn't do the defusing ourselves, we managed a series of smaller units who did it.  So we were doing liaison with the Saudi government, contractors, and various US government agencies and military organizations.  We were also getting our subordinate units over there and set up, ready to do their thing.  It was much easier for them than for us, because no one had known we were coming, no support had been arranged.  It had taken a couple months to get the kinks worked out of regularly getting food and water and other items of necessity.      But this was great fun, coordinating, arranging, shaking hands, making connections.  Before long, units that had nothing to do with us were coming to us with questions and requests for favors.  It didn't take long for a barter system to emerge, and some very odd things were being bartered.  Videotapes for alkaline batteries.  Canned goods for floppy disks.  Cases of soda for sex.  Oops I didn't say that, did I?  No, I didn't do that kind of trading, but I know some who did.  Any sex I had was certainly for free.      It was while we were at the airbase that the Ether Bunny incident occurred.  Some guys came into the MASH with complaints of rectal pain.  Apparently they'd been raped, but none of them recalled any such thing happening.  One evening a medic was caught in the act of sexual assault, armed with ether.  He was promptly sent back to the States for judicial action.  Now we got all this secondhand, living behind the hospital as we did.      Life was chummy on the airbase; we made friends in all services, and got familiar with all the stores and mess halls and things on the base.  We bought lamb ribs at the grocery store and had barbecues, we had people over for rounds of spades.  Some of us went on long moonlit walks to explore the neighborhood.  It was great going to town and looking for jewelery and clothes, and any other gifts we might send home.  We began to find the cool places in town to eat, even if my presence did require us to stick to the segregated "family rooms."      Before the winter, we were moving again, this time to a house, in an enclave in Khobar, a suburb of Dhahran.  How we scored these quarters, I still don't know.      Most of the resdential areas around Dhahran were in the form of enclaves, walled-in neighborhoods.  Our neighborhood was pretty cool, mostly civilians from out-of-country.  We didn't get to know that many of our immediate neighbors, but down the street were a pair of Scotsmen, roommates, and very fun guys they were.  Then there was the mysterious tea lady.      Sometimes we'd find a carafe of hot tea at our door, and wonder where it would come from.  Soon some of us took to keeping watch on the door, and finally saw her, a Saudi woman completely enrobed in her abaya.  One of our sergeants finally helped her overcome her shyness long enough to introduce me to her, and we became acquainted, if not quite friends.  Her English needed help and my Arabic was nonexistent at the time, but we made do for awhile.  When Ramadan came around, she would ask me to come over and taste her cooking for her during the daytime, so she wouldn't break her fast before nightfall.  She would ask if this or that tasted right, and of course I said I didn't know, but that I liked it.  How could I know if it tasted right if I'd never tasted it before?      The Scotsmen I got quite a bit closer to, well, one of them anyway.  I am sucker for cuddliness, for a Scots brogue, and for kilted men.  I am a sucker for fun-lovers, good kissers, and folks who supply me with fodder for my various vices.  So for this person I was a complete sucker, and enjoyed every minute of it.  Well, until it came time to leave, anyway.      I cried in the truck, on the way to the airport.  So much had happened, and it had been hard, but I'd come to love that place, that time.  I know if I were to go back now, it wouldn't be the same.  -- Spring