Well I served in the United States Air Force from 90 - 92 through Desert Shield/Storm. I worked in air transportation at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. We started mobilizing exactly 3 days after Iraq invaded Kuwait. The public didn't know we would be going to war until months later, but we knew immediately that we were going to war with Iraq. 80% of everything that was sent to Saudi Arabia went through Tinker, they are the transportation hub. So we were working 12 hour shifts 7 days a week from August 5th all the way up until about 2 weeks before Christmas.
And they pulled 'mobilization' on us a half dozen times or so. During 'mobilization' they can work you up to 36 hours straight. During mobilization there were C5 Galaxies landing every 10 minutes, we would load them up in that time, send them off, and another would land. It was crazy how much stuff we sent over there. You would have thought we were invading Russia. The Iraqies didn't have a chance in hell against all the fire power that was stacked against them. While the dumb ass tv analysists were busy making gloom predictions on how this war would wage on and on for decades, killing off thousands of our troops and turning into the next Vietnam, we were all like, "this thing will be over within a few hours"!
Needless to say we were all SOOOO disappointed when we marched to within spitting distance of Saddam Hussain and then Bush gave the order to halt because, "we weren't invading Iraq, we were liberating Kuwait"... we all pretty much knew that was going to come back and haunt us. Politics! I mean this was the war machine that Regan had built, if there's ever been a scenario of 'overkill' in a military conflict in the history of war, this was it. But if you ask me it was a much better strategy than sending over 'just enough', because with such a lop sided balance of power, the enemy was so intimidated by what they were fighting against, they were surrendering to news crews for God sakes! That's the way you do it.
So anyway right after the war ended Bush started slashing the military budget. They started putting people out left and right for just about any reason they could find. I had 3 marks against me, all involving some situation I'd gotten into due to my alcohal consumption. So I was given an involuntary 'early out' along with hundreds of other airmen there at Tinker, and thousands more across the military branches. Sure we were given honorary discharges so we could still recieve our bennefits and all that, but still, that's some thanks for all that hard work we put into the war effort.
Imagine that, put out of the military for drinking too much... there's irony for ya!
Had some time on KC 135 flying gas stations as well. 
Now we got the hugh a$$ KC 10's. After almost 60 years the BUFF (Big Ugly Flying F***er) is still the front line bomber causing havoc where ever it goes. 
