When one of the 5,500 US Navy personnel currently on board the USS Constellation in the Gulf casts an eye from left to right around the aircraft carrier's vast missile storage bay, this is what they see, writes Oliver Burkeman.
First, a guided missile, gunmetal grey, then, to the right of that missile, another one. Then another. Then a 49-year-old car salesman from Grimsby, northern England. Then another missile. Then a - hang on a second . . .
"They seem to find me rather amusing," admits Paul St Pierre, who works 12 hours a day behind a small folding table squeezed into one corner of the missile bay.
When a naval recruit on an aircraft carrier thousands of miles from home wants to buy a new four-wheel-drive, say, or a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, they do not have the luxury of shopping around. They have Paul St Pierre.
The sandy-haired and goateed son of a deep-sea trawler skipper, St Pierre gave up a perfectly good job at Philip Middleton Hyundai in Grimsby five years ago for one of the strangest posts in the American military, selling trucks, cars and motorbikes to American sailors on ships deployed in the Gulf region.
The pay is worse than his old job, the paperwork infinitely more infuriating, and for months at a time he has to sleep on a "rack", a cramped bunk in a communal berth. Unsurprisingly, people sometimes ask why he made the switch. "The lure of adventure," he tells them, simply. "And, of course, the tax-free angle."
His employer, the Overseas Military Sales Corporation, exploits a little-known scheme, overseen by Congress, whereby five American auto manufacturers - Chrysler, Ford, GM, Harley-Davidson and Buell - agree to sell at factory prices in return for a captive market that foreign carmakers cannot penetrate.
The savings to the buyer can be as high as 25 per cent. As a result, St Pierre's customers tend to think highly of him, which is just one of numerous ways in which his life differs from that of most car salesmen.
Some other ways: there is no haggling over the price, because it is fixed. There are no shiny suits: St Pierre dresses to fit in.