Invasion

We were in Kuwait City in the high summer. Outside was like an oven, but inside more like a fridge.  We Westerners who were not used to these temperatures were shivering in jackets.  We were sitting with a Kuwaiti merchant, talking around business and swapping stories. 

There was a commotion outside.  A delegation from a US multinational forced its way past the office manager and staff and burst into the room. The delegation was headed by a retired five star US general who had been involved in the liberation of Kuwait five years before. 

Our host was embarrassed and asked us to leave the room. His staff ushered us out, but we could not help seeing what happened next.

The General was wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. He was red-faced, apparently from anger rather than heat.  Still wearing his ten gallon hat, showers of spit visible in the shafts of sunlight, he marched up to our host and slapped an agreement and a pen down on the desk: “We saved your ass in the war, boy, and it’s high time you started to show some gradd-i-tood!”

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See also:  Generals