My Memories of The Gulf War - Part 1

Whenever I see the pics of those happy Kuwaiti faces welcoming the British and Allied troops into Kuwait after the liberation it makes my heart swell with pride that we took part and Kuwait was free. Simultaneously, my heart aches and my eyes flood with tears remembering all those who lost their lives and the long suffering months of those who were in and out of Kuwait.

My story..

My first hour awake on the morning of 2nd Aug, 1990.

I woke up around 7AM on 2nd August, 1990 with quite a start - I was on a flight to London and was worried I'd over slept. I got up, got ready and happen to notice the answering machine blinking. Thinking it was a friend, who probably wanted something from London, I checked the machine.

A familiar voice but frantic, Elaine called me from her office in the city it seems there were Iraqi helicopters flying over her building, explosions and gunfire. What the hell? Next message played while my mind raced it was another friend, Fiona, telling me to grab my passport, fill the car with gas and head for the Saudi border.

I pulled back the curtains in the living room and could see smoke bellowing from what looked like the Amir's Palace by the Kuwait Towers and then I heard the explosions until then the a/c has stiffled the noise. I ran into the bedroom to tell my husband the Iraqis had invaded to which he grunted and said it's nothing and turned over. I called the airport to check on the flight to which they said call back in an hour. Again I rushed to the window and now I opened the door to the balcony- the noises made me jump; explosions, gunfire and yelling.

I saw a flat bed truck pull up in front of our building they dropped off two Iraqi soldiers carrying guns on their shoulders, seems they were taking them around and depositing them all over Jabriya. Again I returned to my husband and told him of the explosions, smoke, gunfire, Iraqi soldiers downstairs. This time he very slowly sat up and half-asleep trundled to the balcony. I had a pair of jeans I was trying to put on whilst still wearing the skirt not wanting to miss anything from the balcony. My thoughts were; that flight to London isn't going today and we need to get some fuel, money, food.

Whilst I was trying to get two legs in the same trouser hole and watch the surreal happenings unwinding; a small white four door car came racing across the desert towards our building. A small frail-looking Kuwaiti, looked as if he was a policeman from the Traffic Courts building, jumped out of the car - this was immediately downstairs from where we lived. We both peered over the balcony expecting the two larger Iraqis to shoot him. The Kuwaiti only had a handgun and the two Iraqis had kalashnikovs. My legs turned to jelly and gave way and slumped to the floor, my husband completely ignored me and so I had  to drag myself up using the balcony railings to see what was going to happen. The Kuwaiti was screaming at them to give up their guns and get on the floor. Surprisingly they did. By this time a jeep came by with what looked like more Iraqis jumping out but they were Kuwaitis -just the uniforms were so similar it was hard to tell who was who. They took away the two Iraqis towards the traffic courts building.

My husband quickly found his binoculars and was heading for the roof. I was afraid but more afraid of staying in the apartment alone so followed him up. The moment we stepped on the roof we heard two helicopters come flying over. For some reason I thought they must be Kuwaiti and started waving at them until I saw the Iraqi flag on the side. Not sure how I missed it - I could see the helicopter crews' faces, it was that close. We lived on the 5th floor and they must have been less than 100 metres, approximately, above us. They were heading towards the city. Within 1 minute, as they passed over Hawally, one of the helicopters got shot down. It went down, crash landing in Hawally right in front of our eyes.

And that was our first hour of the invasion of Kuwait..