Last year my friend Tammy M. sent me an e-mail with the subject line “Those Sneaky Marines” and attached were pictures of my (and my crew’s) painting work. I was shocked and surprised! One of the guys in my old unit must have sent these to someone, who (may have) in turn wrote up a commentary and then sent them to their contacts.

Then earlier this year, my friend Penny S. sent the same e-mail to me. Huh, I got it again! So, out of the blue, I Googled “Those Sneaky Marines” and I discovered those pictures are all over the internet, with commentaries and blogs about them. Holy Cannoli!

I started blogging back until I realized, “Dude, you have your own web-site!”  This was previously posted on www.bleedingonion.com until I decided to create this blog to allow anyone who wants, to comment on them.
 

Ras al-Ghar, Saudi Arabia, December 1990,

My squadron, HMH-466, was stationed at the Port of Al-Jubayal, a small naval port for Saudi Arabia. We just received our shipment of tan camouflaged paint and we were ordered to paint our ‘birds’. I, recently having gotten into a little trouble on a trumped up deal, was on that detail. There were a handful of us to get the job done.

By mid-day, I was getting a little bored of the painting and being a smart-ass, decided to make one of the spots into the figure of my girlfriend (at the time), similar to the “Mud-flap” girl. I was not even planning on keeping it, I was going to re-paint it over, I was just screwing around at the time. 

I had gotten part of the head, back and breast done when one of the other guys (Hawkins I think) on my squadron’s paint detail approached and noticed what I was doing. I personally was not planning on leaving it, I was just amusing myself. But my co-painter thought it was funny and joined in. He helped with the hair, since I was having a problem with it and he tackled the rear-end.

Soon enough, everyone else on the detail joined in and we worked through the night using large lights on a generator. I figured if the enemy saw the pictures, maybe they would pause for a moment and double check, giving me enough time to pop off some rounds since my principle job there was door-gunner.

We all thought that no one would really be able to see the paintings from a distance. But we ran into a bit of a snag. One of the Gunny’s saw it and brought over the XO (Executive Officer, 2nd in command under the CO – Commanding Officer). The XO, to put it nicely, was a jerk and did not like what we were doing.

Eventually, the CO got involved (I think one of the Crew Chiefs ran off to get him). After some discussion and viewing what were doing and seeing how excited we were, he decided to allow us to continue. The paintings stayed on the birds until we got back stateside to MCAS Tustin. Bummer. So, I guess you could say that those paintings were done for morale. And it is one of my best memories of the Gulf War.

The paintings continued. Someone liked Elvis, so we painted his Elvis’ head. One of the Crew Chiefs nickname was ‘Rooster’, so we painted a rooster’s head on the front of the A/C (The Kickin' Chickin). I painted a hand sticking out the middle finger (something the CO did not know about or would have approved) on the belly of one of the birds and "Eat Me" on another belly. And the guys painted a silhouette of me holding up my hand doing the peace sign near the tail of another A/C in honor of what I had started.

Now, there is one thing I would like to call out, and that is the middle finger painting: 1. Kids, don’t do middle finger paintings.  2. This was in no way an offensive gesture aimed at any religion. We saw Saddam’s army simply as the enemy, not a religious group! They had done some horrific things to the Kuwaitis and we were not happy about that.

There were two reasons why I painted the middle finger and "Eat Me" (or was it “Bite Me”?) on the belly of those helicopters:  1. Taunt the enemy (it was a war).  And 2.  Remember earlier when I said that I had recently gotten in trouble on some trumped up garbage?  This is the main reason why did the belly camouflage like that, I was sending a message back to those involved who had lied and created a false situation.  Every time they looked up at a bird lifting off or landing, they would see what I had to say.

I will admit though, while on parameter guard duty (our base had the second largest ammo dump in theater, so we were a potential terrorist target), I would take out my ham from my MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) and rub my weapons and ammo with it while yelling out in Arabic to the desert beyond what I was doing. Why would I do that? In their culture, having pork in your system will exempt you from entering heaven (your unclean). I know, I know, not cool. But hey, I figured if they knew I would fire ham at them then they would avoid instigating a fire fight. Suffice it to say, I didn’t get shot. Did my ploy work? You be the judge.

How did those pictures get on the net? Not sure. I was on a military themed web-site today, and they indicated that (L.) Lofton had sent in those pictures to one of the staff. Lofton was a Crew Chief in my squadron, more than likely, he took those pictures.

I just thought this was a damn good story to tell. How often do you get a chance to find out the origin of something like this?

Back in 1990, I never dreamed photos of our paintings would be shown all across the country and the world! I guess the past really can catch up with you.

In the nearly 600 web-sites, message boards and blogs I have visited this year I found people making great comments and compliments.  I also found that people would have discussions about them, sometimes heated ones about “Macho geared propaganda” and “Male species crap” or that these photos are Photoshoped!  

And the statement about why these were painted was to cause Islamic or Muslims to commit suicide for seeing the nude image of a woman is absolutely untrue.  I do not know who originally wrote that, but it saddens me and annoys me.  I do not want what I started, our work, to be associated with hatred and prejudice.  I feel that statement paints a poor light on the Marine Corps and the United States of America.

Looking back at my journal on day 124, it was me and Hawkins that did the planning and scheming of all A/C paintings.  That day, on A/C 51, we had begun at least five faces.  On day 122 of my journal, we had put a witch's face on the left side of the nose on A/C 63.  I now wish I had taken more photographs of our work, hopefully, additional pictures will surface some day.