Benghazi Journal---coming soon

Coming Soon!

Benghazi Journal

Benghazi, Libya, June 1st, 1964

 In the spring of 1964 I took a transfer from Exxon USA to Esso Libya. My new position was to work as a well-site geologist, assigned to the Benghazi, Libya office. When my wife, Vertis, and I moved to Benghazi, we were only two years out of college, and neither of us had ever traveled or lived outside of the southwestern United States. Our time spent in Libya was immediately prior to the overthrow of King Idris’s monarchy by Colonel Omar Gadhafi. The impending coup was evident to us as we interacted with Libyans on a daily basis, and observed the unrest in the country. Before we left Benghazi there were riots in the street, and one night we were caught up in a wild, screaming demonstration in a movie theater. I managed to push my way through the crowd, and pull Vertis out of the theater unscathed.  We lived on the economy. Our next door neighbors were the English Consulate’s daughter and across the street lived an Iranian family. Trying to communicate with our family back home, other than letter writing, was almost impossible. My job required me to fly 150 to 250 miles every two weeks into the Libyan Sahara Desert and spend sometimes as long as three weeks on a drilling rig before returning to Benghazi.  I was one of several geologists who were responsible for determining if oil was present as the wells were drilled.  During one of my many drives across the road-less desert, I became lost in a sandstorm for the better part of a day and night, and a few weeks later, I was on a drilling rig when the well blew-out. For a short time it scattered everyone, and there were some very anxious moments before the crew got it under control. I also supervised the testing of a giant discovery oil well, which later produced over 10,000 barrels of oil a day. But the highlight or maybe the lowlight of my time in Libya happened in mid-July during the last month of my two year assignment.  I traveled over 800 miles southeast of Benghazi to a remote French drilling rig near the Algerian border. It was located in the Red Sand Desert of Libya where, because the red sand traps solar heat, a world record temperature of 138 degrees had been recorded very near where the well was located. When we flew down from Tripoli in an old DC-3 to the location and tried to find the drilling rig, we encountered a huge sandstorm. After circling in the sandstorm for several hours---which was living hell---we, tried to return to Tripoli. As we approached the runway we had to make an emergency landing. We ran out of gasoline as we landed. The next morning the sandstorm had abated, and we flew down to the rig, and twenty-three days later, I finally flew back to Benghazi. During my time in the desert, I dodged some of the three million land mines left over from World War II, traveled cross-country to the home of the World War two British Long Rang Desert Group’s wartime camp at Kufura Oasis, and journeyed farther south to the Lady be Good, an American B-24 bomber, which because of a navigation error, had landed deep in the desert. The remains of the crew were found in 1959. They died trying to walk out of the desert. Vertis and I made friends with a number of Libyans, and interacted and worked with others during the two years we lived in Benghazi. This book is an account of those two years. It is a window into how life was in Libya before Gadhafi, and before the more recent revolution sent a once peaceful country spiraling into chaos.