Coffee and words. // We were standing on the Mutla Ridge in Kuwait waiting for the offensive in to Iraq to start. It was holiday camp-esque. Nothing to do but wait. All that political shit bored us. All that Nuclear Biological Chemical attack stuff wasn’t going to happen. A few of my lads had threaded a pole through two jerry cans of water and, having fashioned a bench of sorts, were pushing out the weights. The boredom before. Then, and i can still vividly recall it to this day, one of the lads, stood on the edge of the Ridge looking South, shouted, ‘fuck kind of a plane is that Boss ? …. hasn’t even got proper wings … and where’s the pilot’. The following five seconds changed everything. It was a missile. Quite a large one. And we were stood looking down on it on its way towards the Kuwaiti Military Compound to our South. Less than a minute later we were in full protective suits and respirators in holes in the ground. My men dealt with the those few minutes in different ways. Some swore loudly (even through a respirator). Some cried their eyes out. Some literally shat themselves. We had no warning of that missile, but for every future launch warning we were faster than a fucking fast thing putting our kit on and forcing ourselves down in to the sand at the bottom of our trenches. We were given as much warning as we could about the imminency of something that might kill us, and we responded as quickly and professionally as we could in order to maximise the survivability of ourselves and our brothers in arms. // Do what you can, where you are, with what you have, to the best of your ability. // Sermon Ends.