The Lockwood Family has been confined to a make shift hotel in the center of an industrial area in Baghdad. They are part of Saddam Hussein’s human shield program, the Iraqi policy to take foreigners in Iraq and Kuwait hostage, and house them near important buildings as a way of deterring military intervention from the US, Britain, and their allies. 

After a surprise visit from Saddam Hussein himself, Iraqi TV released footage of Hussein meeting 5 year old Stuart Lockwood, and it becomes a viral news story, long before that term existed. After the meeting, the Lockwood’s get some amazing news, Hussein has agreed to let hostages go, but not all of them, only the women and children. 

The Chappell family in Kuwait gets the same message, but somehow, the part about only women and children, get’s lost along the way, and John Chappell is told at the very last minute that he has to stay. 

For Season One: we take a trip back to 1990, to the first Gulf War and Desert Storm. We follow the frightening and unlikely tale of a British family and many others, who were working or vacationing in the middle east at the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and how these unlikely westerners became an official part of Saddam Hussein's military strategy. 

Join Host, Producer, and Modern History Enthusiast Robb Coles to revisit and walk through the big news stories that were breaking in the background of millennial childhood.

Sources: 
Diary of a Human Shield by Glenda Lockwood
With It or In It: Desert Shield and Storm from the Loader's Hatch by Bacil Donovan Warren
The Last Flight to Kuwait: BBC 
Saddam’s Shields: 
The United States and Hostage-Taking During the First Gulf War by Matthew Gailani 
Live from Baghdad Book: Robert Wiener 
Live from Baghdad Film: HBO


Interviews: Bacil Donovan Warren, Matthew Gailani