Seventy-one-year-old Richard Fieler of Nottingham was a jet engine mechanic and an electronics specialist for the FB-111 bomber. In 1962, Fieler moved his wife and three young children to Libya, where he was stationed along the Mediterranean Sea for three years. He recounts his experiences there as an American soldier.

I was a jet engine mechanic, stationed at the Wheelus Air Base, which was used as a practice firing range for all of Europe. Everyone would fly their fighter aircraft down to Wheelus and go out into the desert to practice bombing and strafing.

The base was on the east side of Tripoli and the subdivision we lived in was on the west side. My family was with me, which is why we went for three years. If you went over single, you only went for 18 months. My wife and I had three children. The first one was in second grade when we came back to the states, and the second oldest had just started first grade. When we came back to the States they had to go into regular school. It was hard on the kids, but they’d gone to an American school at the base.

There were three cities that were established along the Mediterranean coast. Tripoli was the only one that survived World War II. To the west were ruins of Sabratah, and to the east were the ruins of Lepcis Magna. Sabratah was smaller and that was about an hour west of Tripoli. Lepcis Magna was maybe an hour and a half to the east, but it was pretty good sized city for those days. Sabratah was under reconstruction. There were people trying to put the ruins back together. The Phoenicians had established the cities, and people were trying to put all the stones back together like a jigsaw puzzle. Where they dug into the sand you could see where all the houses used to be. Sabratah had an amphitheater and one year the high school got permission to put on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” there. I sat on a stone bench and watched just like people did thousands of years ago.

Along the Mediterranean, the first 20 miles inland is arable. People can farm and there are wells for water. Then there’s a plateau where the Sahara Desert starts. When the Italians controlled Libya before World War II, they imported farmers and planted all kinds of olive trees. When we were there, the desert was coming back in, and the Arabs didn’t know how to counteract it. I remember going through groves of olive trees that were half-buried in sand.

On the plateau, right before the beginning of the Sahara, there was a town we roughly translated to mean “The Lady of Garianne.” It was a prisoner of war camp from World War II, where British and Americans had been imprisoned. The Italians ran the camp. There was one building that you could walk into and there were pictures on the wall that the prisoners had painted. They were a brownish color and the local people said the prisoners used their own blood to paint the pictures. That’s why it was that dark reddish brown.

At one end of the building there was a painting of a naked woman who was posed leaning back. When you first saw it from a distance that’s all it looked like, but up close it was an outline of the Mediterranean Sea. It had all the names of the cities painted on there, and everybody said there was a secret escape route painted into it. There were two other paintings on the side walls and they were definitely British. You could tell by the tin helmets on the soldiers. The paintings were of women bringing the soldiers food. As POWs they didn’t have any food, so those paintings were how they cheered themselves up.

It was kind of unique that we got to know some of the Arab children. One day our doorbell rang and there were Arab children outside carrying scythes. I thought they were going to attack us. But finally we understood that they wanted to cut our grass. We said OK and we shut the door, but peeked through the windows watching them. They had some animals at home but no grazing land, so they had to forage for food for their animals.

When they got to the backyard, they found a merry-go-round we had for the kids. They were chattering like magpies, and two of them got on there and figured out how to make the merry-go-round turn. They were having a ball. I took pictures of them and of course the kids wanted money to let me take the pictures. I gave them some money and then they cut some more grass and left. The next time they came back I showed them the pictures. I had even taken a little bit of a movie on 8mm film. My wife and I brought them in the house and showed them the film and they were beside themselves. After that, I could take pictures all day long and they wouldn’t charge me anymore. We gave them the pictures and they were so ecstatic.

I remember once the people of the city were rioting. We had to go through Tripoli, and one day we were going down a four lane highway, which was the main drag of the city. The mob of people was on one side of the street and the army and police were on the other side. We could see bricks and stones being thrown across the road directly above us. We kept our heads down. There was a policeman driving in front of us and we saw him bend over right as a brick went over his head. We were really scared because if an attack started, we would be right in the middle of it.

My family and I left Libya right before Vietnam started. A king was in power when we were there and he came to the States for medical treatment. While he was out of the country a part of the military overthrew him. As soon as he was overthrown, they kicked all the Americans out of the country. That was in 1970, so I’m glad we got out when we did.

Richard Fieler retired from the Air Force in 1975, and since then has taught woodworking at both Exeter High School and Pinkerton Academy in Derry. He currently lives with his wife, Mary, and spends his time handing out Hershey’s Kisses to patients at hospitals and nursing homes.