Robin Williams had spent more than 30 years making audiences laugh. In December 2007, at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, an audience of American service members did something no crowd had ever done to him. In the middle of his act, they stood up, turned around and faced the other way.
He had no idea why. And the way he handled the next minute is a big part of why so many troops still talk about him with real love.
A bugle call in the middle of the act
Robin Williams was in Kuwait with the 2007 USO Chairman’s Holiday Tour, led by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen. Comedian Lewis Black, Kid Rock, cyclist Lance Armstrong and Miss USA Rachel Smith were traveling with him. Camp Arifjan was one of the early stops on a 15-stop, seven-country run, and thousands of service members turned out for the show.
Robin Williams was mid-routine, the crowd laughing along, when a bugle call sounded across the base.
As one, the audience rose to its feet, turned its back to the stage and faced the flag as it was lowered. Jim Garamone, a Defense Department reporter who traveled with Robin Williams on many of his USO tours, later wrote that the comedian had no idea what was happening.
What the troops knew that he didn’t
The bugle call was Retreat, followed by To the Colors. It is the daily ceremony that marks the lowering of the American flag at the end of the day. According to the Army’s own field manual, the tradition goes back to around 1835, when Retreat was sounded at sunset to tell sentries to begin their night watch and send the rest of the troops to their quarters.
Today, the rule is simple. When service members are outdoors and hear that first note, they stop what they are doing, face the flag or the music, and render honors. A comedy show does not change that. Neither does a famous comedian on stage.
He didn’t reach for a joke
Here is the part that the footage, recorded by the Defense Department, makes so striking. Robin Williams was one of the fastest improvisers of his generation. Every instinct he had was built to grab whatever was happening in the room and turn it into a laugh.
He didn’t. He took off his hat, crossed his hands in front of him and stood still. At one point he bowed his head. For a little over a minute, the man who never stopped talking said nothing at all.
When the music ended and the troops turned back around, the crowd broke into cheers and whistles. His first words were simple.
“I’m not gonna forget that.”
Then came the laugh
Only after that did he ask what had just happened. Members of the audience explained that it was a military tradition and nothing to worry about.
That was all Robin Williams needed. He told them he had never had an entire audience simply turn away from him, and that he had spent the whole time wondering what was coming from the direction they were all staring. Then he imagined what would have happened if “Retreat” had meant exactly that, with everyone packing up and pulling out on the spot. It was the kind of joke that pulled the whole camp back together.
The next day, at Camp Virginia, he was still thinking about it. He admitted that the moment had genuinely frightened him.
“I was like, what do you know that I don’t know? I felt like the one human left in a town where everybody else has been possessed.”
“Why we’re here”
Jim Garamone caught up with Robin Williams after the Arifjan show and asked what he made of it. The answer was short, and it had no punchline.
“Sort of reminds you why we’re here, doesn’t it.”
Garamone shared that exchange in a tribute he wrote for the Defense Department on August 12, 2014, the day after Robin Williams died. Out of all the shows he had watched on those tours, in Iraq, Afghanistan and across the Persian Gulf, he singled out that night in Kuwait as the one that stuck in his mind.
Robin Williams made six USO tours and performed for tens of thousands of service members in 13 countries. Plenty of those nights were louder and funnier. But the one people still share is the night he stood quietly with his hat in his hands while an entire audience turned its back on him, and understood exactly why.