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VOLUME 58 ISSUE 30 JULY 27, 2021 P135 cycle for their first time. The sand there was deep and difficult, and to make matters worse, the CG wanted these Marines trained in three days versus three weeks, which is how long the course was at Camp Pendleton. Over the next four months, I taught U.S. Marines, British Royal Marines, Navy Seals, Army Rangers, and some guys who wouldn't identify themselves how to ride motor- cycles in the open desert. The instructions were simple: get on, start it up, and follow me. If you crash, get back on and catch up. Fortunately, I only had three trainees with injuries that were serious enough to need medevac during that entire time. I'm calling that pretty damn good consider- ing the circumstances. January came and the war had started. I was still reporting to the CG, but now the mission had changed from training to operations. Fifteen Marines from around the Corps, all of whom had already been qualified to op- erate combat motorcycles, were assigned to my charge. I paired up teams of two based on their riding abilities, and I gave them the missions that I was confident they could handle. I wanted the best riders with me, and we took the toughest missions simply be- cause of our ability to stay on the bike in deep sand. Our missions varied from day to day depending on what the CG needed. Some days we would act as snipers laying down harassing fire (basi- cally trying to get the Iraqis to shoot back at us so that we could identify their exact location), some days we would run recon missions to locate enemy units and report their location or call for fire, and other times we would run frag orders and map overlays to various commanders at the front of the fight. The scariest missions were when we'd be sent up to re- trieve intelligence reports from our Force Recon guys. You've probably never heard of Force Recon, but they're the baddest of the bad. Guys who are trained as both Navy Seals and Army Rang- ers (and probably a lot of other stuff that we're not supposed to know about). These guys would be dressed like locals (think Taliban)—beards and all—and they would be as far from anywhere as you could get. They were hard to find, and once we found them, we weren't always certain that they were friendly since they looked so much like the locals. Tiptoe in, and if they didn't start shoot- ing, they're probably the guys we're looking for, that was our strategy. The ground war in the Gulf last- ed exactly one hundred hours, and some people discount our service in that war for that rea- son, but we were surrounded by death and destruction, and we feared for our lives every day. I'm glad that it was short and even happier that I never saw a dead American. There were fatalities, but no one in my unit died, and if we're not heroes because of that, that's fine with me. Combat Motorcycles ultimately lead to a fantastic career in the motorcycle industry for me, and I know that the other Marines I served with went on to great things in their lives as well. Several of us are planning on getting back togeth- er for a ride, this time with no one shooting at us, hopefully. CN Not quite the I-405 freeway in L.A.