Pplk.v.v. Jan Josef

"I introduced myself and he says, 'I hope you'll do better than the former platoon leader who absolutely couldn't handle it.' I walked over to the soldiers and had them lined up. I told them, 'I'm not going to threaten you in any way, but whoever doesn't want to be here, guys, leave the military now and get a civilian life. Those who stick with us will go on to Kuwait with us.' We started the drills, we did equipment checks, we did practice runs, and we weighed the vehicles and the individual axles. Then the Americans came. We loaded it all onto C-5A Galaxy planes, and we flew to Saudi Arabia via Spain."

"It was Saturday morning, three o'clock I think, when the liaison officer rushed in and told me to come to the barracks now. He said we had been attacked but didn't know who did it. We thought we had been attacked by the Americans, so we sounded the alarm, the whole regiment went out to the border, and then we found out we had gone the wrong way two or three days later. We came back, all crying. I was crying listening to the radio over how the Russians had deceived us. But, what were we supposed to do?"