“What was it like there?” is by far the most asked question I get involving the Persian Gulf War. How can I tell you? How is there any way for you to relate to anything I say to what it was like there? There is very little shared experience that will help you to understand. So I reply, “It was hot.”

But, you see, it was not always hot. It was constantly never constant. I could say it was like an eight-month-long movie with the greatest cast of characters ever assembled, but it was just too real to romanticize it like that, especially since yesterday was Veteran’s Day.

I have some photos of my experience with the 82nd Signal Battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division, and whenever I show them to people I get questions about my experience in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. So I answer them the best I can.

In tribute to Vet’s Day, I thought I’d write a little bit about about this relay site called Romeo-3, but this definitely won’t cover it all.

Romeo-3 was this signal relay site on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere. My platoon, Champion Node (a.k.a C-Node), spent most of Desert Shield there before the war started. I was the team chief, although I was just a private first class, of the switchboard rig, which was the center of communications for the surrounding countryside. I operated not only the telephone traffic, but I orchestrated troubleshooting with all the platoon’s communications. I had to know everybody else’s job as well as my own.

We played spades all the time. You’ve never seen such a lively game of cards played in your whole life. These were lively characters, too, my friends. Nobody can cuss better than soldiers: “In your face, spank dat ace, I got the high fuckin’ joker, buttwipe, shouldn’t have gone 10-for-two.”

The MRE’s (Meal, Ready to Eat) provided a lot of calories, but they also constipated people. For a while we would have one for breakfast and lunch, then we’d have heated T-rations which would, um … unconstipate people. So about a half-hour after supper we would be rummaging for toilet paper and running up the guard-point-1 hill headed for the makeshift shitters on the other side. The toilets were seats fastened onto boards which lay over giant holes in the ground, and a man could sit and shit and stare for miles at the desert scenery.

We had a large flat area the engineers bulldozed for us where we’d clobber each other in big football games. Often the games were played in combat boots with a half-flat football. We’d also have mass wrestle-fests. They would start out as VHF section versus wire and tech control (my section) but would soon turn into sergeants and the lieutenant versus the privates and specialists.

Guard duty was usually in groups of two. We’d battle sleep while we talked the night away. Everyone got to know each other well sitting out under the bright stars, hot sun, or cold rain.

I once went four days without sleep. Half the platoon left for a test relay shot, and I’d pull a 12-hour guard duty at night when it was cool, do cleaning details with the other night guards in the cool morning air, and by the time I got to the bunk I couldn’t sleep because of the daytime heat. So I played spades with the other guys who couldn’t sleep.

We never saw a cloud until December. I got to Saudi Arabia on Aug. 9. I remember us pointing and saying, “Look, a cloud! Wow!” That cloud we saw was just barely a whip of mist in the low sky above us.

Our platoon sergeant was the anti-Christ. I cannot possibly explain him to you without a few chapters. Sergeant Robinson was uncaring, didn’t like anybody, put us through unbelievable hell, and made us write letters to elementary school kids. Kids would ask, “Can you send me a bullet?” and tell us how much they loved war. They had bloody war crayon drawings of us killing Iraqis — and the war hadn’t even begun yet.

The U.S. was slowly becoming another country we didn’t know. While we were away, the nation was swept in a media frenzy which focused on us. My hometown made me out like a celebrity — for what? Because we were going to kill a bunch of Iraqis for a monarch called Kuwait over oil? Yippie.

I may disagree with why we were there, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do the job I had signed up to do, and I was awarded three times for my performance.

Personally, I just wanted to go home, finish my army career and go to college. For this period of eight months, Aug. 9 to April 2, I was disconnected from your world and was in one that you marvelled through the media but wouldn’t understand unless you were there.

That’s why most veterans don’t usually tell people about their experiences. If I do, I don’t say much about it. How am I going to find the words? The stories are too great in number.

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Tim Frerking is a junior in journalism mass communication from Pomeroy.