By Andy Clark

It was a cold, damp autumn day, as I remember it, sitting in a cinder block bunker terrified I was going to loose my hand as I loaded black clay disks into the machine in front of me. Seconds later I would hear a muffled voice shout, and the machine’s springs and mechanism would suddenly and violently let go, flinging the disk out of the bunker followed by another muffled boom, boom. I would then quickly lean down, take another disk from the box and gingerly place it in the machine. It was at this point my fear would take over, worried one of the distant voices would shout too soon and thus catch and propel my severed hand out of the bunker instead of the disk. Of course this never happened and once I got the rhythm, my fear slowly subsided, well sort of.

FULL FOCUS GALLERY: SHOOTING CANADA

I think I was about 12 years old at the time and I was helping out at the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Shoot at the local Trap Shooting Club just outside Ancaster, Ontario. Each year the contest was held on the weekend before the holiday as a dozen or so members, including my dad, all vied to hit the most clay pigeons and go home with a freshly cleaned turkey donated by a local farmer. Though my dad and grandfather had versed me well in the handling of guns by that age I was still too young to take part so was therefore drafted to load the machine.

That was a long time ago now, but something I thought about as I made my way to the Vancouver Gun Club in Richmond, British Columbia recently. This was the first of two visits to gun ranges I had organized as part of Reuters pictures series on guns. The Vancouver Gun Club dates back to 1924 and is nestled amongst farmland on 39 acres of open and wooded property. The outdoor range is shotgun only and offers trap, skeet and Olympic trap shooting. It also has sporting clays plus another type of shotgun sport shooting called Five Stand. The club has an annual membership of about 400 but also offers day passes to non-members.

I was greeted at the club by a member of the executive, Brian Wong, who after giving me a quick tour of the facility mentioned that once I was done with taking pictures to come over to the trap shooting and give it a try myself. Over the next four or five hours I wandered the grounds photographing some of the 50 or so people out that day. Men and women ranging in ages from mid-teens to their 70s combined with shotguns ranging in price from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars made for a varied day of photos. While taking pictures at one of the sporting clays stations one of the shooters suggested that if he hit the clay I should be able to get a picture of the hit, I guess you might say he challenged me to a shooting contest. Obviously I had to wait for the gun to fire before I fired and it took a few tries for me to follow the bright orange clays out with my lens. We soon were in sync and as he triggered his double barreled shotgun I triggered my 10fps camera and would hazard to say after about a dozen attempts my hit and miss rate was about the same as the shooters.

At the end of each of the two days I spent at the club I took up Brian’s offer to shoot a few clays myself. Though maybe it would be more accurate to say shoot “at” a few clays. I spent many a weekend as a young lad shooting at moving and stationary targets with my dad but gave it up as my photojournalism career began in my late teens. I was therefore quite surprised to realize that shooting a shotgun and firing a camera at a moving target had many similarities. Suffice to say I hope the photos I got over the two days were better than the results I had with the shotgun after all these years.

All in all it was a marvelous time at the Vancouver Gun Club. In fact I plan to acquire my gun license and return to the club in the coming months along with my son to pass forward the good times I had with my dad at the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Shoot.

The book immediately caught my eye. It was small, about the size of a deck of cards, but twice the thickness, and there was no question it was very old. It sat in a pile of other aged publications that had just arrived at MacLeod’s Books in downtown Vancouver. It looked fragile as I picked it up and opened to the title page. “Wow!”, I said.

I had been in MacLeod’s Books about five or six hours at that point, not to search for any rare or out of print books but to do a day in the life photo essay on the 50-year-old used book store. The store originally opened in the early 1960s but in 1973 a young Don Stewart bought the place and has been there ever since.

I had been in the store once before about five years ago while waiting for an assignment to begin nearby. Once inside I was in awe of the thousands of books I saw. Unfortunately, duty called and I left shortly after. Well maybe I am fibbing a bit here. I love books, always have, and when I got a glimpse of the inside I had to turn and walk out, right then. If I hadn’t I would have been in there for hours, my assignment forgotten and my wallet considerably lighter. I promised myself I would return and thought this place might even make a pretty good photo story.

My return came about two weeks ago when I happened to drive by and decided to stop in and talk to the owner. Again I was speechless once inside. After looking around for a few minutes I approached Don and made my pitch to spend a day or two in his place to photograph and produce a photo essay. I was very surprised he agreed to the idea quite quickly and we set a date for the project.

As I mentioned Don Stewart has owned the used bookstore for about 40 years. He estimates he has roughly 100,000 titles in stock. Add to that the multiple copies of many titles and the number of books he actually has far exceeds a count I couldn’t even begin to estimate.

There were books everywhere on the main floor of his shop. The shelves were all packed solid, reaching far up into the high ceiling. What didn’t fit was piled on the floor or in corners. At first glance it looked like complete chaos but I soon noticed everything was sorted in categories, topics or authors. There was no computer to search for titles like many modern stores today. I watched in amazement as people came in asking for sometimes obscure books and Don or one of his staff would say, “yes we have that”, and either point to its location or take them to it.

I spent about 10 hours in MacLeod’s over two days. In that time I would say I spent an equal amount of time shooting pictures as I did browsing through books. If I wasn’t looking for a picture I was looking at pictures. Don has a considerable collection of photo books and I found myself often wandering over to spend a few moments scanning through a Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn or an old photography instruction manual from the early 1950s.

Besides the main floor there is also a massive collection of used books in the basement. A maze of narrow aisles stacked well above my head forced me on at least two occasions to leave my waist photo pouches and one of my cameras behind so that I could side step my way to a corner I wanted to shoot from. Though unlikely I always had a fear I might knock over a pile and accidentally cause one of those comical bookshelf domino effects seen in movies.

During the afternoon a fellow showed up at the door with a grocery cart full of books he wanted to sell. Don spent several minutes looking through the collection picking out several and bringing them inside and stacking them on a table.

This brings me back to the beginning of my story. In that collection was that small old and fragile book I now held in my hand and opened to the title page. There on the page was a portrait of England’s King George II and below his coronation date of October 10, 1727. The book was a bible and had been published in or around that time. Holding a book almost 300 years old was quite a thrill. I asked Don where the fellow had obtained this old bible along with the other aged books. I was shocked when he said the man had found them in a garbage dumpster in an alley several blocks away.

For hours afterwards I couldn’t help but think how lucky it was that the 300-year-old book had been found and how shameful it had been callously tossed away. I also mused on what tales the book could tell as it traveled hand to hand from a printing press in 18th century England to a dumpster in 21st century Vancouver.

Swatting away a swarm of pesky summertime mosquitoes, I walked down a quiet country road shaded by rows of elderly trees. You could say, it was any ordinary rural road except for one thing. Parked amongst the trees was a collection of battle-scared and brightly colored stock cars. All tethered onto trailers and pulled behind pickup trucks, the collection of road warriors and their owners waited patiently for the gates to open for another Saturday night at Agassiz Speedway.

SLIDESHOW: HIGH OCTANE RACING

Built in 1970 the speedway is a quarter mile oval track nestled into the side of Agassiz Mountain about 90 minutes drive east of Vancouver, British Columbia. Owned and operated by the non-profit Kent Raceway Society the track hosts about 12 races a season beginning in April and running through to late October.

I have always enjoyed car racing. I spent, though a few said mis-spent, some of my formative teenage youth on darkened summer highways north of Toronto in the late 1960s, riding in muscle cars and drag racing until either the wee hours of the morning or the cops chased us away. Though I witnessed a horrendous accident one night while racing I still look back on those times with fond memories.

Once the gates open for competitors at 3 o’clock sharp, the empty grass and graveled infield pits filled up and sprang to life as everybody got to work preparing their cars for the evenings races. The air is soon filled with the sound of high torque power ratchets and revving engines followed soon after by the first warm ups on the track. There was so much activity going on that at first I didn’t know where to turn my attention or camera. I quickly realized that photographically I was just spinning my wheels (excuse the pun) so during a break I crossed to the outside of the track and spent about an hour just observing. The sunlight at that time of day was horrible as it always is so it was not time wasted. I have always felt any feature shooting between 11:00am and 4:00pm on any cloudless sunny day in summer is a waste of film or in today’s terms a waste of pixels.

Just after dusk with qualifying over, now began the racing. I had been warned ahead of time, by the track photographer, that though there were plenty of lights around the course, they were not very bright and I soon found out how true that was. The old photo term “available darkness” certainly held true. Without a doubt if it were not for today’s digital cameras and their high tolerance to low light there is little chance I could have done any decent pictures at all. Any attempt to shoot this story even on high ISO film 15 or so years ago would have been futile. An interesting sidebar story, was many of the overhead lights had been donated, to the speedway, by the police. Seems the lights had been used by those running illegal indoor marijuana grow-ops and had been confiscated after the operations had been busted or raided by the police.

There was the odd story within the story. One I found was the O’Reilly family. The father, John, had raced at the track for many years and now carrying on the tradition was his 14-year-old daughter Chelsey. Driving the same 1968 Chevy Chevelle her dad had used Chelsey bravely took to the track racing against drivers twice her age and experience. Race nights were a complete family affair for Team O’Reilly. Chelsey’s two sisters Chrystal and Veronica were the pit crew, her dad the mechanic and mother Margaret moral support. This was Chelsey’s rookie year as a driver since the minimum age to race at the track is 14, though she had practiced on the track a year earlier when only 13. Chelsey’s chances of winning a race were slim but her goal was not to come in last during qualifying or races, which she successfully completed. No small feat for a driver who cannot legally drive in British Columbia for another couple of years.

Though I was not surprised to find a 14-year-old racing one thing that did give me pause was the appearance of a princess walking amongst the fumes and noise of the pit area. Dressed in a long gown and wearing a tiara the young woman looked way out of place surrounded by grease monkeys and grizzled drivers. Turns out she had been asked to hand out the trophies that night to the winners of each race. Wanting to impress, the young lady had searched e-bay to find the used gown she wore.

Though there is nothing like the thrill of standing in the pits of a Formula One or Indy Car races as I have dozens of times over my photo career, my experiences at Agassiz Speedway were by far the best. There is something about car racing at its grass roots level. No multi-million dollar cars and egos, just down to earth folks who love to race.

Arriving outside the main gates I couldn’t help but notice there were no crowds of spectators milling around or scalpers shouting their prime seat tickets for sale, in fact all was very quiet. It was roughly 7:45am and besides a couple of birds singing in the trees and a dog barking somewhere out of sight it appeared I was completely alone. My sudden fears of the wrong day and or wrong place were soon quelled as I entered the gates and walked down a small path. There before me was the field of play and scattered across it were the players warming up and preparing for the first day of competition at the fifth annual Pacific Cup Croquet Tournament.

Yes that is correct folks, I said croquet. Several months ago I was searching for a website totally unrelated and for reasons only Google knows, up came a page with a detailed list of the 2012 croquet tournaments across North America. Before I could click the page away, I remembered seeing some interesting images from a tournament at least 25 years ago and thought, I wonder. Sure enough listed halfway down the page was the Vancouver Croquet Club’s fifth annual Pacific Cup.

Like many people, the only croquet I know is what one may have played in their backyard as a child, known as Golf Croquet. The croquet I was about to witness was nothing like that. The game played during the tournament was the full international version known as Association Croquet. I can report that even after it was explained to me on several occasions combined with watching it for three days, all I know is that it involves two players and each match runs just over two hours. In fact my ignorance of the sport became clear on the first day of competition. I had settled down on a bench along the sidelines to watch a couple of players warming up, hoping to get any idea of what to expect once play began. After about 40 minutes I thought this was an unusually long warm up. I approached an elderly fellow nearby and asked when the game might get underway. With a look of disbelief the gentleman replied “they have been playing for 30 minutes”.

Obviously croquet is not a game of action but rather, from what I can tell, a game of strategy and quiet reflection. One player referred to it as chess on grass. Besides the sound of the mallet connecting with the ball there is very little sound at all. No moments of high five joy or shouts of jubilation here. One may hear a player compliment another on his well played turn or you might hear another player curse under his breath on a missed shot but other than that it’s like photographing a sporting event inside a monastery.

Photographing croquet did offer some interesting challenges. As I have said this sport does not involve moments of peak action. Your are not intently concentrating through your lens with your finger on a hair trigger waiting for athletes to fly through the air or crash into each other. Croquet required great patience and sometimes shear willpower not to walk away out of boredom. Observing players and their body language or style of play became the key.

I observed one player for over an hour after I noticed he would once in awhile take a particular stroke, or shot causing both croquet balls to bounce off the ground, one of the more action packed moments of the game. I also found I spent a lot of time walking around the pitch so as to be in the right spot for any anticipated moments. I estimate over the days I was there I probably walked some three or four kilometers in total.

Though I admit there were times I wasn’t sure croquet was going to make a decent photo story in the end I think it was well worth the time. There is no question I learned a new respect for the skill and ability of these players, much like golfers and how they can maneuver a ball with a club. I don’t think I will take up the sport myself anytime soon but according to some research I did, the sport has become very popular in the last 25 years. Its roots apparently go back to the thirteenth century when French peasants played the game, but its modern day history began in the 1850s and has fallen in and out of favor since then. Prior to 1980 there were only an estimated 50 competitive players in North America. Today there are an estimated 8,000. While talking to one of the players on the final day he recounted a story to me that probably describes what most people think. A famous croquet player a number of years ago when asked about joining a local club by a novice quipped back “There are only two kinds of croquet players in the world. Old people and their parents.”

“Hey bud, don’t blink or you’ll miss it,” the guy behind the counter said after I answered his query as to where I was headed.

I had stopped to grab a coffee along highway 97, about a five-hour drive north into the mountains from Vancouver. My destination was the town of Falkland, named after a career British soldier, Colonel Falkland GE Warren who had settled in the area in 1892. The reason for my visit was to photograph an annual event very popular with those living in the area, named the 94th Annual Falkland Stampede. One of the oldest rodeos in Canada, the stampede began as a community picnic in March of 1919 to celebrate the end of the First World War months earlier. Each year as the event grew, area residents gathered to enjoy local cowboys riding broncos and in 1969 the little stampede was sanctioned as a professional rodeo.

I first became aware of the Stampede while covering forest fires in 2003 just north of the area. I had seen a very weathered sign by a roadside and thought it might be worth looking into as a photo essay. Nine years went by, with me forgetting about the Stampede until the end of the event, until I finally arranged to shoot it.

As the coffee jockey had said, Falkland was a very small place nestled between two valleys. With about 10 shops and homes on the main street it wasn’t hard to find the stampede grounds. The old wooden stands with signs of recent repairs surrounded the small dirt ring, lined by white metal fencing and animal staging chutes at each end. For a photographer, finding places like this causes one to quietly say…Yesssss! As some will say, small rodeos like these are nothing new. Many have been photographed before and as I like to joke back, “That’s very true my friend, but not by me.”

SLIDESHOW: COWBOY LIFE

For many photographers, covering events these days can be an exercise in futility when it comes to taking photographs. So many organizers are uptight about “their message” or “controlling photographers” that many times by days end I ask myself if its even worth it anymore. Not so at the Falkland Stampede. Everything was the exact opposite and very laid back. Obviously I had to demonstrate through letters and e-mails I was there legitimately to photograph the event, but after that was established, I was on my own. I could basically go where I wanted as long as I didn’t enter the ring during competition which I assured them was not something I would willingly do.

As a result of this quiet country attitude I decided not to scurry around sticking my lens in peoples faces. I spent the three days trying as best I could not to be noticed, many times being able to take pictures as if I wasn’t even there. Of course this meant I might miss a nice photo or two, which happened on at least one occasion. In that particular case I saw a nice moment of a cowboy preparing for the bull riding, spending a quiet moment mentally preparing. It was a photo I would like to have taken, but it meant sprinting about 10 meters and most likely disturbing his private moment. Though I walked towards him in hopes he would remain there, it was not to be. I thought afterwards that maybe I should have rushed towards him. And some will agree saying you “you blew it Clark”. Then again this ain’t the big city either, withchasing spot news down the street. There will plenty more where that came from and so there were.

After spending the first day photographing cowboys preparing (generally behind-the-scenes), I decided to spend day two shooting the action inside the ring. This was when I experienced a “Close Encounter of the Equine Kind.” While up against the fence during the saddle bronc competition, I was hoping to get a nice low wide-angle image if any of the horses came my way. About halfway through the competition a very aggressive horse inappropriately named ‘Tender Foot’ quickly threw his rider and came bucking in my direction. Seizing the moment, I quickly tilted my camera up and instinctively reached out about a foot under the fence firing away. What I had failed to notice was that an outrider was galloping full tilt up the fence line on my right to catch up to the bronco and bring it under control. How the outrider horse missed my hands and camera I will never know. Though my hands and camera survived unscathed, I did get a face and mouthful of flying dirt as payment for my inattention.

Overall my three days at the 94th edition of the Falkland Stampede was the best assignment I have had in many months. It was a nice exercise to observe and photograph instead of reacting as many of us are forced to do in the day-to-day news photography world. But remember – if you ever decide to visit and photograph the Falkland Stampede, “don’t blink or you may miss it…”

I looked at my clock it was 4am. I fumbled for the phone in the dark knocking it to the floor. After at least three more rings I finally got my hand on the receiver and answered. The calm voice at the other end was Photo Editor Herman Beals on our Washington, DC Picture Desk. “How ya doin?” he asked “I have been trying to get through to you for an hour”. I have no recollection of what my rebuttal was. “Andy, they are bombing Baghdad”, “Uhhh??” was my only answer. Crap!!, I had just slept through the first two hours of the Gulf War.

As I found out later I had not only slept through the uncountable number of fighter jets taking off nearby, that would literally vibrate my room but the loud wail of air raid sirens all around the hotel combined with the apparent pounding on my door of hotel staff. It was expected that once the bombing had commenced in Iraq there was high expectation Iraq would answer with a large Scud attack thus sending everybody to the air raid shelters minus yours truly Rip Van Winkle.

I had been in Dhahran a little over two weeks having arrived several days after Christmas 1990. The Dhahran International Hotel was right beside a major coalition airbase in the small city about an hours drive south of the Kuwait border on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The hotel was the headquarters of the U.S. military’s Joint Information Bureau (JIB) and also had been taken over top to bottom by every major news and television organization in the world. Reuters had six rooms in a row in one of the wings. Four were used as living quarters while the last two adjoining had been converted into a small newsroom, darkroom and picture desk.

This was the first time the U.S. military had instituted their embed program. Unlike the ones of today everything was pool. All agencies, newspapers or magazines that were part of the embed program had to pool their images through a central editing point in Dhahran headed up by Reuters and the Associated Press along with the three major U.S. magazines, Newsweek, Time and US News and World Report.

All this was, of course, a number of years before any of us used digital cameras, laptops, e-mail or portable sat-phones so there was no way to file anything from the field. Thus, all film had to be shipped back via the military to Dhahran where it was processed and edited by the pool group. Before the ground war started and during the many weeks of the initial air war it took an average of three days for the film to get from frontline units back to us. In several cases it took even longer. I remember one situation when a photographer was taken to the secret stealth fighter base to spend a few days. He shipped his film after a day or so and then returned to Dhahran four days after that. He beat his film back by two days.

Communications at the hotel were generally good. Everything was filed over phone lines using a leafax or a T-1 and film scanner. On some days though it was difficult to get an international line and created havoc trying to file pictures and therefore it was decided each morning either myself or the desk would call the other and then leave the line open for hours as need required. We did have a satellite phone just in case, or as I called it the “Steroid Phone”. It was twice the size of an average suitcase and weighed enough to anchor the QE II. Fortunately we never had to use it until we were in Kuwait City after the war was over.

About three weeks before the ground war eventually began I was called up, as it were, and given my marching orders to join the army unit I had been assigned to, namely a brigade of the U.S. 2nd Armored Division (Forward). My experiences with the 2nd Armor were not much different than the many other photographers embedded and I am sure many had similar or more harrowing adventures than I. Therefore I thought I would just write down a few observations and small stories that I remember.

Once the air war had begun we would get approximately three or four Scud attack warnings a night. The air raid sirens would go off, the hotel would cut the power to go dark and most people would head for air raid shelter in the basement. Myself and two photographer colleagues decided we would rather stay above ground in the event of a hit. We actually felt safer, though it wasn’t, and the three of us would gather up our flak jackets, helmets and gas masks and go outside and meet around the hotel pool. On most occasions we would set up our cameras for time exposures to try and get images of the Patriot Missiles from nearby batteries blasting into the sky to intercept incoming Scuds. We even tried on a couple occasions to get the missiles as they flew skyward reflected in the pool, but that never worked. I have always felt it must have been a bizarre site as the three of us sat in deck chairs around the pool with our cameras pointed skyward wearing flak jackets, helmets and gas masks.

When arriving at the 2nd Armour’s camp for the first time I was traveling with a couple soldiers in their Humvee, in the middle of nowhere and well after dark. When approaching the camp perimeter we came within a hairs breath of being fired upon when both soldiers either forgot or failed to shout out the password….what a great start, or finish, that would have been.

I remember talking to a soldier once about the upcoming combat and I never forgot what he said. “If there is a bullet out there with my name on it there is nothing I can do. It’s the bullets that say To Whom It May Concern, that bother me.” Amen to that.

In the days leading up to the ground war we moved our camp closer to the Iraqi border maybe three or four kilometers from their defenses. By this time there was constant artillery barrages firing into Iraq from the left and right of us all day and all night. Just after midnight on several nights the B-52 bombers came in and dropped their loads up and down the Iraqi line. The ground literally shook even from our distance away and on the first night I came out of the tent to watch. With the flat unobstructed view in the desert, it was without a doubt like watching the Gates of Hell open up. I also found it interesting that once I got used to it I could actually sleep through an artillery barrage even if the battery was only 100 or so meters away.

About a week before the ground war started a patrol from our unit was out on a night mission in Bradley Fighting Vehicles and had come upon a similar Iraq patrol of BMPs and a very intense fight ensued. At one point the U.S. patrol called in air support and several Apache helicopters came in. Unfortunately, one of the Apaches accidentally mis-identified one of the Bradleys and took it out with a missile. Luckily no soldiers were killed but several were wounded. Once the war started as we moved through the desert mostly at night we had Apaches overhead hunting and protecting. This constantly kept me on edge fearing a similar mistake might occur.

On the morning the ground war started we mounted up and headed into Iraq just before dawn. Resistance was very light if at all, probably thanks to those B-52 strikes days earlier. The imminent danger though were the hundreds of unexploded bomblets everywhere. About the size of baseballs they were leftover from the MLRS rockets fired at the Iraqi lines. At one point, a few hours after dawn, we stopped for about 20 minutes and I noticed a soldier get out of his vehicle a fair distance away. I turned to the guy beside me to say something. At the same instant there was this muffled “whumph” like explosion. I looked back and saw nothing but a cloud of sand where the soldier had stood. It seems for reasons I will never understand, he decided to “Play it Like Beckham” and kicked one of the bomblets. I heard later that he survived but was minus a foot.

Two days before the ground war started everybody was ordered into their chemical warfare suits and began taking our nerve gas pills. Another item we put on was a type of masking tape around our arms and lower leg. It was treated in someway so that if you came in contact with any chemical agents in the air, red spots would appear on the surface. On the second day of the war we briefly stopped to check and clear a small fortification. A soldier standing a few feet away glanced over at my arm and his eyes went wide. I looked down at myself and there on my right arm were small but distinct red spots on the tape. I checked my other arm and there were a few there too. A quick look at the tape on my legs revealed nothing. Nobody else I had been around over the last 48 hours had any red spots but the fact that I did, put everybody on edge nevertheless. We never did figure out what it was but 20 years later there is no sign I might grow a third arm or second nose so I can only assume whatever caused it must have been harmless.

Once I rejoined my Reuters colleagues in Kuwait City, fuel for our vehicles was a problem. Obviously, fuel stations were closed and on a couple of occasions we drove north out of the city. There were hundreds of vehicles both military and civilian abandoned by the retreating Iraq Army sitting by the roadside. We would check the vehicles for any fuel in them and siphon what we could into several gas cans we carried with us. Once, while heading out of town we found a petrol station open but the lineup was hundreds of meters long. So we pulled over and I got out with my cameras and began shooting pictures. The owner looked over and saw me and welcomed me. “Are you press?” he said, I sure was and that made his day. After a few moments he said “do you need any petrol?” I said we sure do. “Come my friend, bring your truck I fill it for you.” I waved to my colleague who was driving over and not only did we fill the truck but all the gas cans we had in the back and all for free!” I did feel guilty that we had cut into line, but I guess war is hell.

My total time covering the story came to just over three months. Upon my return I took my camera gear to be cleaned and technicians spent a week trying to get the desert out of every nook and cranny not to mention I continued to find bits of Iraqi desert in my clothing and belongings for months later.

Its funny how 20 years later one looks back and thinks how exciting a time it was and even laugh at some of the adventures endured but at the time, as many soldiers said, it was 50 percent boredom and 50 percent terror.