I have always taken the Desert Angel line "know how it feels there" to mean the climate. The Arizona heat and the Gulf War heat. Not the soldier's conditions. I googled to see if I was nuts and found this article from 1991.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1...s-persian-gulf
"Actually, weather in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq-the main theater of operations in the war-is a lot like the climate in parts of Arizona and New Mexico, ranging from hot and dry in the South to cool and mountainous in the North."