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Souvenir Sand from Desert Storm - Yes, Sand


bryang
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My wife found this today while we were out at one of our favorite thrift stores, and I'll admit that this very minor item has to be one of the coolest - and weirdest - bring-back items I've seen.

 

 

Desert Storm "souvenir sand."

 

 

As a Gulf War Veteran, I find this quite ironic, as we all were under strictest orders not to bring any sand home with us. Every container, vehicle and piece of unit equipment as well as personal items, were painstakingly inspected for dirt, sand, vegetable matter before we could even think of boarding that "freedom bird" for the trip home.

 

It created a little bit of a public affairs stir when General Schwartzkopf - before the international news media - stopped on a beach of newly-liberated Kuwait and scooped up some beach sand as a souvenir.

 

 

Anyways, this is the first time I've seen anything like this. Its amusing, and I believe makes for an odd military souvenir for the collection!

 

 

Bryan

 

 

 

 

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Guess I must have violated the regs, too.

 

Mine's in a little bottle that sits at my desk at work...along with some currency picked up along the way.

 

It sits beside a smaller bottle of black sand from Iwo Jima that a former Marine once gave me.

 

It's really hard to realize that was 25 years ago.

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dumb question, but why couldn't you bring home sand?

 

https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/955/~/importing-soil-into-the-united-states

 

The gist being here:

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) strictly regulates the importation of soil in order to prevent the introduction of foreign pests and diseases into the United States. Importation of soil into the United States from foreign sources and movement of soil within the continental United States is restricted unless authorized by APHIS. Importation and interstate movement of soil are allowed under certain conditions as outlined in an APHIS permit or compliance agreement."

 

Soil (such as sand) can carry disease vectors such as hoof/mouth disease, and therefore it's importation is heavily regulated by U.S. customs. All military vehicles must be completely washed down before re-entering the U.S. from abroad. This is also why personnel are typically prohibited from bringing such items back to country - who knows whether the General's aid did the paperwork or if it just came back anyway...and unless a given Soldier had access to U.S. customs prior to boarding the plane home, he/she wasn't going to be given the time to fill out paperwork, wait for approval, and then be given special exemption for a single can of sand. Not that the stuff didn't make it back anyway...

 

 

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Well leave it too some enterprizing flea market vendor selling sand in Saudi Araba. Wonder if he profited from this. I was just given some volcanic ash from Iwo Jima. I wouldnt call it sand. But its still intresting. I still think its cool.

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Personally I opted to bring back a handful of pebbles from Desert Storm. They were sand polished and ranged from green to black in color. I had seen all the sand I wanted to see and had no desire to bring any home with me.

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Personally I opted to bring back a handful of pebbles from Desert Storm. They were sand polished and ranged from green to black in color. I had seen all the sand I wanted to see and had no desire to bring any home with me.

 

Tell me about it!

 

The personnel tasked with inspecting our equipment and vehicles (most often Military Police) were absolutely fanatical about it. We wore our PT shorts and t-shirts and had to actually crawl beneath our vehicles and scrub and hose out every little nook and cranny. To this end, we were given access to fire hydrants (near the coast).

 

Our shipping containers had to be absolutely spotless - not the slightest hint of sand - before we were allowed to pack our equipment and gear in them. All of this - of course - was done under the watchful eyes of the Military Police who first inspected every item first.

 

 

As for myself, I had no desire to bring sand back home with me. I'd had my fill of daily cleaning it out of my rifle and gear, wiping it out of my ears, from around my neck, as well as other places I'll not mention.

 

After twenty five years, however, I have to admit that this little "souvenir" brought a smile to my face.

 

 

Bryan

 

 

 

 

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Jarhead8007

Neat little souvenir! I've never seen one of those before. I brought home some little bits of sand in empty MRE Tabasco bottles. But I think I brought home more by accident inside my uniforms and boots.

 

Like Flash, I collected up a couple of really interesting rocks. One of them actually looked like the fossilized inside of a plant - a bunch of little parallel tubes.

 

Here's one of my post-cease fire pictures. Obviously there was a lot of sand around. Very sad that I couldn't keep the AK, magazines, or the bayonet, but I kept a magazine pouch and canteen, though.

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When putting away my web gear for the last time in the late 1990s, I found a piece of rock that I had picked up and stuck in my ammo pouch when traveling into Iraq after the cease fire. I think it was from a site called "Scud Hill" in southern Iraq. I still have it somewhere. As for the sand, I do remember being warned, but being assigned to Headquarters, Third Army we didn't have to go through the extensive check that others did.

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I shipped home four large boxes of bring-back stuff. A few days after the cease fire, we were recalled from Kuwait back to KKMC in northern Saudi Arabia (I was in 2d battalion, 5th Special Forces Group). The day after we made the drive back to the FOB, the 101st Airborne told our command that they had a plane returning to the 'States and that there were a certain number of seats free. Our command literally walked through our areas and pointed to individuals - "You're flying home tomorrow ... You over there - You're headed home tomorrow ..."

 

When our guys got to the plane, the MPs checking through their stuff told them that there were several items they couldn't bring back: "Can't take those five empty AK magazines back - you may take one." "Can't take that Iraqi tank crewman's helmet back." etc .....

 

We concluded that these MPs (Reservists, I think) didn't get into the action they'd hoped to, and were essentially taking these "contraband" items for themselves.

 

The rest of us boxed up our war trophies and mailed them home. At the Army post office I had my four boxes (open for inspection before sealing them up to send home) on the table for the young Soldier to look through. She looked through all of the Iraqi uniforms and gear I had. As she was halfway through the second box, she looked up at me and said "None of this stuff came off dead people did it?" I replied "Not all of it." I smiled at her as she quickly pulled her hands out of the box. I winked at her and told her that I was just kidding (although there were some items I actually had taken off of dead Iraqis). She just looked at the remaining boxes and simply said that they all looked good, and sealed them up!

 

I still have quite a bit of my old trophies. I gave a lot of items to family and friends, as well as those people who had written me during my deployment - many of the letters sent to "any service member." These letters meant quite a lot to me and the others I served with. I made sure that each of the ones I exchanged letters with had a keepsake from me from the war.

 

 

This photo was taken a few minutes after I disembarked from the plane, and was back home at Fort Campbell, KY. A couple buddies from my unit who had gotten home a week before me met us at the airfield with beer and pizza. Here's me enjoying my first beer in nine months, as well as a good cigar.

 

 

Bryan

 

 

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I have a jar of Saudi Arabian sand that made it back in 1990-91. Had a friend who was a flight engineer on C-141s.

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