What is good about having a pet?
Saturday, 10th November 1990
Field Journal – Camp Victor, Saudi Arabia
Nineteen hundred hours. Generator’s hammering away outside the tent and the stars are coming out sharp as pins over this godforsaken stretch of sand. Temperature’s dropped fifteen degrees since sundown – always does out here. The lads have rigged the satellite dish again after this afternoon’s sandstorm knocked it sideways, and we’ve finally got comms back to Riyadh. Took three hours. The bloody Inmarsat terminal’s meant to be cutting-edge, but it’s temperamental as a thoroughbred in a thunderstorm. Give me a decent HF set any day – at least you can jury-rig the aerial with tent pegs and paracord when it goes down.
Major Webber came through on the secure line wanting a full equipment audit by Monday. As if we’ve nothing better to do than count jerry cans and ammo crates whilst Saddam’s lot sit thirty kilometres north, dug in like ticks. I told him the lads needed rest, not paperwork. He said the audit was non-negotiable. I said a good deal of what comes down from Division is non-negotiable but still makes bugger-all sense out here in the real world. He rang off shortly after that. No doubt there’ll be consequences, but I’ve had my fill of pushing paper when we should be pushing forward or pulling back – anything but this interminable waiting.
The Americans have got their GPS units operational now – magic little boxes that tell you where you are to within fifty metres, supposedly. Saw one in action at the liaison meeting Thursday. No sextant, no map-and-compass work, just satellites pinging coordinates down from orbit. Makes you wonder what we’re training the young officers for if a computer the size of a attaché case can do the navigation for them. Still, I’ll admit there’s something reassuring about knowing your exact position when every dune looks identical and the sun turns the whole landscape into a shimmering white lie.
Corporal Davies brought his tracker dog round this evening – big German Shepherd bitch called Sabre. She’s been clearing suspected mine areas and doing perimeter sweeps since we arrived in theatre. Magnificent animal: all focus and controlled aggression when she’s working, but soft as butter when Davies gives her the stand-down command. I watched them training in the cooler hours before dusk. The trust between them is absolute. She’d walk into fire for him.
Got me thinking about what’s good in having a creature like that. It’s the constancy, I suppose. A dog doesn’t care about your rank or whether you’ve cocked up the logistics chain or told a superior officer where to stick his audit. The loyalty’s unconditional, which is more than you can say for most humans. There’s honesty in it, too – when a dog’s glad to see you, or wary, or worn out, you know it straight away. No politics, no hidden agendas. Out here, where everything’s provisional and we’re all wondering if we’ll still be sitting on our hands come Christmas or if this will turn hot before the New Year, that kind of straightforwardness is worth its weight in gold. Davies says she keeps him sane. I believe him.
Saw a fennec fox this morning on patrol – tiny thing, ears like radar dishes, watching us from behind a tamarisk bush. It bolted when the Landrovers got within thirty metres, vanished into the scrub as if it had never been. The desert’s full of ghosts like that: creatures perfectly adapted to a place that’ll kill you if you make one mistake with your water discipline or nav. There’s a lesson in that, though I’m too bloody-minded to learn it properly. I keep thinking we’re the ones bringing progress out here – technology, organisation, Western efficiency. But that fox has been thriving in this wilderness since long before we rolled up with our radios and generators, and it’ll be here long after we’ve packed up and gone home.
Remembrance Sunday tomorrow. We’re meant to hold a service at oh-nine-hundred, weather permitting. Two minutes’ silence for the fallen. I’ll stand there with the rest of them, thinking about the lads we lost in the Falklands, the ones who didn’t come back from Oman in ’75, all the names on all the memorials. And I’ll think about this lot under my command now, wondering which of them I might have to write letters home about if this situation goes kinetic.
The defiance I feel isn’t against Queen and country – God forbid. It’s against the waste of it all. The waiting, the posturing, the politicians who’ll make their decisions in air-conditioned offices whilst we sit out here breathing dust. But orders are orders, and we’ll do our duty when it’s asked of us.
Wind’s picking up again. Going to be a cold night.
Lt Col. J.M. Reynolds, 2nd Battalion
By late 1990, Operation Desert Shield marked the multinational coalition’s build-up in Saudi Arabia following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait that August. Over 600,000 coalition troops, including British forces, prepared for possible conflict as diplomatic efforts failed. This defensive phase transitioned into Operation Desert Storm in January 1991, a concentrated air and ground campaign that swiftly expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait by late February. The conflict signalled a new era of high-tech warfare, showcasing satellite navigation, precision-guided munitions, and real-time communications. It also reinforced Western military presence in the Gulf, shaping regional geopolitics and international relations for decades thereafter.
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