re: #111 Joel

Is it true that US soldiers deployed in Saudi Arabia were told not to display crosses on their necks or to have Bibles?

That was kind of an oddity. There was no problem with having a bible or missal, indeed, they were printed and bound in desert tan for distribution. I still have mine, somewhere. I saw Christian chaplains, in certain places, with their branch insignia, and other chaplains, one, anyway, possibly Jewish, without. There was talk of not wearing a cross on your neck but I can’t think of anytime it was enforced. And the Saudis generally went out of their way to avoid seeing anything that might have required them to act in ways that the guys with the tanks and such wouldn’t like.

About the only real annoyance was that female troops couldn’t run around in T-shirts, but that was ignored outside the Saudi-controlled towns and cities and, again, the Saudis turned a blind eye. I know it’s hard for Americans to accept, but their government really went about as far as it could to accomodate us while not causing a revolution against themselves.