Swept Away on an Unusual Island

[tshiggins]

My friend Dave was scheduled to head back to the United States during Desert Shield, until he got stop-lossed in the months leading up to Desert Storm.

Once the conflict ended and Iraq had been kicked out of Kuwait, he and a bunch of other stop-lossed troops received orders to board a chartered commercial jet at the nearest airbase for the trip back Fort Bragg.

So, they gathered up their kits and turned in their rifles and ammo (and grenades) to a sergeant, but were told to take everything else back with them.

After a very long flight, they landed at a civilian commercial aviation airport in North Carolina, and had to go through customs.
The customs guy asked them if they had anything to declare, so they started to pile their gear on the table in front of him.

After about the sixth 9mm pistol and the fourth bolo knife hit the table, the guy just put one hand over his eyes and waved them through with the other.
(Once they got to the barracks, one guy found he'd left several loaded rifle mags in the bottom of his ruck. Oops.)

So, have an aircraft full of troops returning from a long, difficult deployment crash-land just off a beach in the Mediterranean (during a weird storm, of course).
The player-characters are the only survivors, and the plane comes apart.

All that's left for them to use is the stuff that managed to wash ashore or land on the beach, and whatever they could make it out of the plane with.