Flight from Arabia

Right after author Bruce M. Barrett graduated from high school at Peacock Military Academy in San Antonio, he accompanied his father and mother to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where his dad was to be the military attaché to the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Flight from Arabia recounts Bruce’s adventures in Saudi Arabia, including accompanying his dad on some pretty hair-raising then-secret missions and his trip home to go to college. Bruce’s father assigned him to accompany a general’s daughter back to the States, and they wound up on an air force cargo plane traveling through Egypt, Libya, and Pakistan, among other places. Together they explored the cultures and their budding friendship along the way. Bruce shares his memories of Saudi Arabia and its people from the heyday of the nation’s alliance with the United States.

This memoir recalls the adventure of a lifetime as two college-bound military brats in the mid-1960s take a military flight from the Middle East across Africa and Europe to the States.