U.S. MARINES IN THE
PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991:
ANTHOLOGY AND
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Major Charles D. Melson
U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Evelyn A. Englander
Captain David A. Dawson
U.S. Marine Corps
HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION
HEADQUARTERS, U.S. MARINE CORPS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1992
Other Publications in the Series
U.S. Marines in the Persian Gulf, 1990-1991
In Preparation
With the I Marine Expeditionary Force in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, 1992
With the 1st Marine Division in Desert Shield and Desert Storm
With the 2d Marine Division in Desert Shield and Desert Storm
With the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing in Desert Shield and Desert Storm
Marine Forces Afloat in Desert Shield and Desert Storm
Operation Provide Comfort:
U.S. Marine Corps Humanitarian Relief Operations in Northern Iraq, 1991
ii
Foreword
This anthology of articles follows in the tradition of an earlier
publication of the History and Museums Division, THE MARINES IN VIETNAM,
1954-1973: AN ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY. As with the Vietnam
anthology, the purpose of this anthology of articles from the U.S. NAVAL
INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, MARINE CORPS GAZETTE, FIELD ARTILLERY, and WASHINGTON
POST; messages and briefings from senior officers; and accompanying task
organization, chronology, and bibliography, is to serve as an interim
reference for use within the Marine Corps and for answering inquiries from
other government agencies and the general public concerning Marine activities
and operations in the Persian Gulf, until the History and Museums Division
completes an intended series of monographs dealing with the major Marine
commands in the area.
The 26 entries comprising this anthology provide a general overview of
Marine involvement in the Persian Gulf conflict. The first five focus on the
Marine Corps' contribution to the American effort to defend Saudi Arabia--
Operation Desert Shield. The second group concentrates on the Marine Corps'
role in the liberation of Kuwait--Operation Desert Storm. Within these two
sections, the entries have been organized to progress from the highest level
of organization, the Marine Expeditionary Force, to the lowest, the platoon,
squad, and individual Marine. The last three entries deal with the aftermath
of the war, and issues raised during the war. Also included is an appendix
consisting of an annotated bibliography of articles that appeared in the U.S.
NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, MARINE CORPS GAZETTE, and NAVAL WAR COLLEGE
REVIEW, from October 1990 to December 1991. While excellent articles
pertaining to the Persian Gulf have been published in many other periodicals,
due to the limitations of time and resources the History and Museums Division
confined its attention to the three aforementioned publications. Finally, two
additional appendices, one showing the task organization of I Marine
Expeditionary Force in February 1991 and another giving a chronology of
significant events involving Marines in the Persian Gulf from August 1990 to
June 1991, have been included.
I wish to thank the editors of the PROCEEDINGS, GAZETTE, FIELD
ARTILLERY, and WASHINGTON POST for their cooperation in permitting the
reproduction of their
iii
articles. These publications made a significant contribution to the record of
the Marine Corps' participation in the Persian Gulf conflict by originally
publishing these materials. Reproducing them here yields further dividend.
E. H. SIMMONS
Brigadier General
U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Director of Marine Corps History and Museums
iv
Preface
This anthology is organized into five sections: Operation Desert Shield,
Operation Desert Storm, after Desert Storm, related topics, and appendices.
Within the first two sections, the entries begin with a broad overview and
gradually work down the chain of command to the impressions of the Marine
rifleman. Thus, the first section begins with an article by Brigadier General
Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret), which describes the deployment of Marines to the
Persian Gulf in the broadest terms, and concludes with a report by Henry Allen
describing how individual Marines reacted to their deployment.
The second section opens with materials describing the conflict from the
perspective of Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, USMC, the commander of I
Marine Expeditionary Force. It then moves from the division, wing, and force
service support group level to accounts describing the actions of a regiment,
followed by battalions and a squadron, to conclude with reports of actions by
platoons and squads.
The fourth section consists of an article describing the Marine Corps
role in Operation Provide Comfort, the multinational humanitarian relief
effort extended to the Kurdish refugees after Iraq's defeat.
The fifth section begins with a letter from a Marine to a class of
school-children, which describes his reasons for fighting and also reflects
the tremendous support shown to all servicemen and women by the American
people. Last is an article on relations between the military and the media.
The appendices provide useful references, including the task organization,
chronology, and annotated bibliography.
This collection represents the efforts of a great number of people. Miss
Evelyn A. Englander, the Marine Corps Historical Center librarian, spent a
great deal of time collecting articles from numerous professional journals,
from which Major Charles D. Melson, USMC (Ret), formerly of the History and
Museums Division's Histories Section, made the initial selection of materials
for inclusion in the anthology and the bibliography. Major Melson also
selected all maps with the exception of those that have been reprinted from
the original articles. Miss Cynthia L. Davis of the Madeira School provided
the bulk of the bibliographic annotations under the supervision of Miss
Englander. Captain David A. Dawson, USMC, of the Histories Section, was
responsible for the final selection of entries, and wrote their introductions.
Mrs. Ann A. Ferrante of the Reference Section acquired the task organization
and compiled the chronology.
Mr. Benis M. Frank, Chief Historian, reviewed the materials. Editing and
Design Section staff members Mr. W. Stephen Hill and, particularly, Mrs.
Catherine A. Kerns worked diligently to transform a collection of clippings
into its present form. Colonel Daniel M. Smith, USMC, Deputy Director of
Marine Corps History and Museums, and Brigadier General Simmons, Director of
Marine Corps History and Museums, provided guidance and final review.
v
Although the entries have been reset, and new maps provided for some, all
have been reproduced as faithfully as possible to the original, including
typographical or other errors which may have occurred.
vi
Table of Contents
Original On-Line
Page Page
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iii 5
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v 7
"Getting Marines to the Gulf"
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret) . . . . . . . . 1 12
"This Was No Drill"
Interview with Major General John I. Hopkins, USMC . . . . . . 22 33
"Training, Education Were the Keys"
Interview with Brigadier General James A. Brabham, USMC. . . . 34 45
"Squinting at Death: The Desert Snipers"
Henry Allen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 52
"Saudi Christmas: The Marines Banter and Brave the Cold"
Henry Allen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 54
"Message to Members of I Marine Expeditionary Force, 23 Feb 91"
Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, USMC. . . . . . . . . . . 46 57
"CENTCOM News Briefing"
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army . . . . . . . . . . . 47 58
"U.S. Marines in Operation Desert Storm"
Colonel John R. Pope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 86
"Special Trust and Confidence Among the Trail-Breakers"
Interview with Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, USMC . . . 86 97
"Porous Minefield, Dispirited Troops and a Dog named Pow"
Molly Moore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 106
"Allies Used a Variation of Trojan Horse Ploy"
Molly Moore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 112
"Storming the Desert with the Generals"
Molly Moore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105 116
vii
Original On-Line
Page Page
"Marine Air: There When Needed"
Interview with Lieutenant General Royal N. Moore, Jr., USMC. .111 122
"The 1st Marine Division in the Attack"
Interview with Major General J. M. Myatt, USMC . . . . . . . .130 141
"Rolling with the 2d Marine Division"
Interview with Lieutenant General William M. Keys, USMC. . . .146 157
"A War of Logistics"
Interview with Brigadier General Charles C. Krulak, USMC . . .156 167
"The 3d Marines in Desert Storm"
Brigadier General John H. Admire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .163 174
"F/A-18Ds Go to War"
Captain Rueben A. Padilla, USMC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .170 181
"Artillery Raids in Southwestern Kuwait"
Lieutenant Colonel James L. Sachtleben, USMC . . . . . . . . .173 184
"The Opening of DESERT STORM: From the Frontlines"
Major Craig Huddleston, USMC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .183 194
"Out Front at the Front: Marines Brace for Task of
Clearing Mines"
Molly Moore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .185 196
"1st Day of War: `As Scary as You Can Get'"
Molly Moore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .188 199
"If It Didn't Have a White Flag, We Shot It"
Molly Moore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189 200
"Operation PROVIDE COMFORT:
Humanitarian and Security Assistance in Northern Iraq"
Colonel James L. Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191 202
"Into a Sea of Refugees: HMM-264"
Lieutenant Colonel Joseph A. Byrtus Jr., USMC. . . . . . . . .200 211
"BLT 2/8 Moves South"
Lieutenant Colonel Tony L. Corwin, USMC. . . . . . . . . . . .200 211
"Pushing Logistics to the Limit: MSSG-24"
Lieutenant Colonel Richard T. Kohl, USMC . . . . . . . . . . .202 213
viii
Original On-Line
Page Page
"Why We Fought"
Captain Grant K. Holcomb, USMC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203 214
"The Fourth Estate as a Force Multiplier"
Colonel John M. Shotwell, USMC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209 220
Marine Corps Forces in the Persian Gulf Region,
February 1991. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .224 235
Persian Gulf War Chronology, August 1990-June 1991 . . . . . .231 242
Selected Annotated Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239 250
ix
In this article, Brigadier General Simmons describes the U.S. Marine Corps'
involvement in the Persian Gulf from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to the eve of
Desert Storm. General Simmons places these actions in their global and
historical perspective, emphasizing the unique capabilities provided by a
large and ready expeditionary force.
Getting Marines To the Gulf
By Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, May 1991.
Few Americans could have identified Saddam Hussein on Wednesday, 1 August
1990, the day before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In the Marine Corps, the
most interesting things that were happening were taking place in the
Philippines and off the coast of Liberia.
Afloat in Philippine waters was the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit--the
13th MEU--which had sailed from Southern California on 20 June. Originally
scheduled for a port visit at Subic Bay and training ashore, the 13th MEU
found itself conveniently present to assist in earthquake relief. With
Colonel John E. Rhodes as its commander, the MEU included Battalion Landing
Team 1/4, reinforced Medium Helicopter Squadron 164, and MSSG-13, a tailored
combat service support group.
Already ashore at Subic was a contingency Marine air-ground task force
(CMAGTF 4-90) of about 2,000 Marines drawn from the Okinawa-based III Marine
Expeditionary Force, ostensibly for training but also with the purpose of
providing a deterrent against untoward antiAmerican guerrilla or terrorist
activity. The core of CMAGTF 4-90 was the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines.
Halfway around the world, standing off Monrovia, Liberia, in amphibious ships,
was the 22d MEU, with BLT 2/4, HMM-261, MSSG-22, and Colonel Granville R.
Amos, commanding.<1> Civil war had progressed to a point where it was obvious
that the government of President Samuel K. Doe would fall. The 22d MEU was
prepared to evacuate American citizens and foreign nationals.<2>
As Marine Expeditionary Units, the 13th MEU and 22d MEU were two of the
smallest of MAGTFS. With an occasional exception, these formations come in
three sizes, Marine Expeditionary Brigades or MEBs being next larger in size,
and Marine Expeditionary Forces or MEFs being the largest.<3> By doctrine,
MAGTFs must have four organizational elements: a command element, a ground
combat element, an aviation combat element, and a combat service support
element.<4>
Both the 13th MEU and 22d MEU were Marine Expeditionary Units, Special
Operations Capable [MEU (SOC)s], meaning that they had become trained and
practiced in a wide range of special operations. For example, in addition to
being prepared to reinforce beleaguered U.S. embassies and carry out
evacuations, they were trained in a number of other missions, including
boarding
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
FIGURE NOT AVAILABLE
Map
2
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
parties on suspect shipping, operations against terrorists, and amphibious
raids, day or night.<5>
This special-operations capability is something the Corps has developed
to a high art, and it has been a particular interest of the present Commandant
of the Marine Corps. Anyone wishing to understand the Marine Corps must
understand the status of its Commandant. There has been a Commandant,
designated as such, ever since the United States Marine Corps was authorized
by the Congress and approved by President John Adams on 11 July 1798. The
Corps numbers its Commandants, as kings and popes are numbered. The incumbent
is the 28th Commandant. No other service chief seems to have quite the clear
and unequivocal control of his service as that enjoyed by the resident of the
Commandant's House at the Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C. Since 1806, all
Commandants have lived in that house, the oldest official residence in
Washington still being used for its original purpose.<6>
The present Commandant, General Alfred M. ("Al") Gray, is now in the last
year of his four-year tenure. Sixty-two years old, stocky in build, born in
Rahway, New Jersey, and given to chewing tobacco, he spends as little time in
Washington as possible.<7> Gray enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1950, reached
the rank of sergeant, was commissioned in 1952, and served with the 1st Marine
Division in Korea. Trained as an artillery officer, he was soon doing more
esoteric things. In the early 1960s, as a young major, he was engaged in some
highly interesting intelligence operations in Vietnam. As a colonel, he
commanded the ground combat element of the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade in
the 1975 evacuation of Saigon. Immediately before becoming Commandant in
1987, he was the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic, and
Commanding General, II Marine Amphibious Force.<8> Before that, he commanded
the 2d Marine Division. He is imaginative, innovative, iconoclastic,
articulate, charismatic, and compassionate. His Marines love him.
Elsewhere in the world on 1 August 1990, the 24th and 26th MEUs were in
predeployment workup training at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The 11th MEU
was undergoing special-operations training in California. The 3d Battalion,
9th Marines, embarked in the BELLEAU WOOD (LHA-3), was at Seattle, Washington,
taking part in the annual Sea Fair.<9> An engineer platoon was ashore in
Sierra Leone, as part of a West Africa training cruise, working with local
forces and keeping an eye cocked towards neighboring Liberia. A Marine
detachment in the Caribbean was engaged in anti-drug trafficking operations,
and another detachment was operating with other federal agents along our
Southwest border. A reinforced battalion from the 7th Marine Regiment was
undergoing mountain warfare training in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.
Elements of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade were exercising in Hawaii.
Then came the second day of August. At about 0100 local time, in opening
moves reminiscent of North Korea's invasion of South Korea 40 years earlier,
three Iraqi Republican Guard divisions crossed the Kuwaiti border and began
converging on the capital of Kuwait City from the north and west, coordinating
their movement with the landing by helicopter of a special-operations division
in the city itself. The forces had linked up by 0530 and by nightfall, Kuwait
3
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
FIGURE NOT AVAILABLE
Map of Southwest Asia
City was in Iraqi hands. By noon of the next day, the Iraqis had reached
Kuwait's border with Saudi Arabia.<10>
On Saturday, 4 August, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Colin L. Powell, and the Commander-in-Chief, Central Command, General H.
Norman ("the Bear" or "Stormin' Norman") Schwarzkopf, both Army generals, met
with President George Bush and key members of his administration at Camp
David, Maryland. This was a day of decision.
Two days later, the 26th MEU(SOC), Colonel William C. Fite III,
commanding, began to load out at Morehead City, North Carolina. The three
major elements were BLT 3/8, HMM-162, and MSSG-26. The 26th MEU(SOC)'s Navy
counterpart was Amphibious Squadron Two.<11> The deployment of
4
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
the 26th MEU(SOC) on 6 August was a scheduled rotation that had nothing to do
with the Gulf crisis. The 26th MEU(SOC) was to relieve the 22d MEU(SOC) on
station near Liberia on 20 August. Meanwhile, the 22d MEU(SOC) had begun
evacuation operations and had put a reinforced rifle company ashore to protect
the U.S. Embassy.
On 7 August, JCS Chairman Powell, as directed by Secretary of Defense
Dick Cheney, ordered the first actual deployment of forces for Operation
Desert Shield. By definition, this was C-Day--Commencement Day. The clock
for Desert Shield had begun to tick.
In the case of the Marine Corps, the 1st MEB in Hawaii, the 7th MEB in
California, and the 4th MEB on the East Coast were alerted for possible
deployment.<12>
FIGURE NOT AVAILABLE
Map of The Kuwait Theater Of Operations
5
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Marines have been deploying by brigades for more than a hundred years.
The first expeditionary brigade worth counting was the one that went to Panama
in 1885. At the turn of the century, another brigade marched to the relief of
the embassies in Peking, shouldering aside the Boxers, then returning to the
Philippines for service against Aguinaldo's insurgents.
When the Marine Advance Base Force, the forerunner of today's Fleet
Marine Forces, was formed in 1913, it was a brigade of two small regiments.
It also had an aviation detachment: two primitive flying boats. The Advance
Base Brigade had its first expeditionary testing at Vera Cruz in 1914.
Unfortunately, the aviation detachment did not go along. There was no
convenient way to get the short-legged flying boats from New Orleans to Vera
Cruz other than to take them apart and put them into boxes.
In 1917, after the United States entered World War I, it was planned that
Marine aviation would support the Marine brigade that was sent to France, and
which figured prominently at such places as Belleau Wood, Soissons, Blanc
Mont, and the Meuse-Argonne. But the 1st Marine Aviation Force-four squadrons
of DH-4 DeHavillands--which reached France in late summer 1918, was used as
the Day Wing of the Navy Bombing Group, far from where the Marine brigade was
engaged.
Between World Wars I and II, the Marine Corps sent small expeditionary
brigades to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and China. In every
case, these brigades had an organic aviation clement. These bush-war Marine
aviators of the 1920s and 1930s did not invent dive bombing or its handmaiden,
close air support, as Marines sometimes like to claim, but they did do a great
deal to develop those concepts and make them work.
In 1933, when the old-style East and West Coast Expeditionary Forces
became the Fleet Marine Forces, there was a 1st Marine Brigade based at
Quantico and a 2d Brigade based at San Diego. Each had its own aircraft
group. At about this time, Marine squadrons began qualifying for
aircraft-carrier operations. This carrier qualification cross-training has
continued.
In early 1941 the 1st Marine Brigade became the 1st Marine Division and
the 2d Marine Brigade became the 2d Marine Division. Correspondingly, the
East and West Coast air groups became the 1st and 2d Marine Aircraft Wings.
Early World War II Marine Corps deployments were made in brigade strength. In
the summer of 1941, a 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was pulled out of the new
2d Marine Division, formed in 15 days, and sent to garrison Iceland. In
January 1942, a 2d Brigade was taken out of the 2d Division and sent to
American Samoa. Two months later, a 3d Brigade was stripped out of the 1st
Marine Division and dispatched to Western Samoa. In 1944, a two-regiment 1st
Provisional Marine Brigade (entirely different from the brigade that went to
Ireland) was formed for the re-occupation of Guam. But the aphorism is that
"The Marine Corps deploys by brigades, but fights by divisions." Thus it was
that by the end of World War II, the Corps had expanded to six Marine
divisions and five aircraft wings, and close air support had been developed to
a fine art.
6
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
After the war, the Marine Corps shrank to a point where it could barely
man the skeletons of two divisions and two aircraft wings. When the Korean
War erupted on 25 June 1950, the Marine Corps hurriedly stripped down the 1st
Marine Division to form a provisional brigade. This brigade landed at Pusan
on 2 August and, with the support of a Marine aircraft group with three
fighter-bomber squadrons, two of them carrier-based, had a great deal to do
with the successful defense of the Pusan Perimeter. On 15 September, this
brigade would join with its parent 1st Marine Division, now fleshed out with
Reserves, for the landing at Inchon. The 1st Marine Division and the 1st
Marine Aircraft Wing remained in Korea for the remainder of the war and turned
in a good performance, both in the air and on the ground, but not without some
jurisdictional and doctrinal problems with the Fifth Air Force.<13>
The four Marine battalion landing teams that landed in Lebanon in 1958
were brought together into the brigade size 2d Provisional Marine Force.
After that, the time-hallowed term "provisional" fell into disuse. By the
early 1960s the MAGTF concept had crystallized and the MEU, MEB, MEF triad had
emerged. The Dominican Intervention of 1965 saw the initial employment of the
6th Marine Expeditionary Unit and a buildup to the 4th Marine Expeditionary
Brigade.
In Vietnam, the first substantial commitment of U.S. ground combat forces
was on 8 March 1965, when the 9th MEB landed at Da Nang. It had, of course,
its aviation element. The 9th MEB was followed on 7 May by the landing of the
3d MEB at Chu Lai, some 55 miles south of Da Nang. Both brigades were then
absorbed into the III Marine Expeditionary Force, which quickly had its name
changed to the III Marine AMPHIBIOUS Force because it was presumed that the
South Vietnamese had unhappy memories of the French EXPEDITIONARY Corps.
Eventually, the III Marine Amphibious Force would include two Marine
divisions, two Marine regimental combat teams, and a huge 1st Marine Aircraft
Wing, but this took several years, with battalions and squadrons being fed
into the country one at a time. In Vietnam, there were also jurisdictional
and doctrinal problems concerning the use of tactical aviation, this time with
the Seventh Air Force.
The 1958 intervention in Lebanon had been a near bloodless success. This
would not be the case with the Marine "presence" in Lebanon that began in
August 1982 with the landing at Beirut of the 32d Marine Amphibious Unit. In
the ensuing months, the 32d MAU was relieved by the 24th MAU which, in turn,
was relieved by the 22d MAU (actually the redesignated 32d MAU). Then the
24th MAU returned once again and was there on that fatal Sunday morning, 23
October 1983, when the suicide truck-bomb destroyed the headquarters building
of BLT 1/8, killing 241 U.S. servicemen, most of them Marines, and wounding 70
more.
The 22d MAU was routinely on its way from the East Coast to relieve the
24th MAU when it was diverted for the Grenada intervention, landing on that
little island on 25 October and, after a week ashore, re-embarking and
proceeding to Lebanon.
7
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
The designation of MAGTFs as "amphibious" rather than "expeditionary"
continued until 1988, when General Gray put things back the way they had been,
to reflect more accurately Marine Corps missions and capabilities. Said
General Gray in explaining this change: "The Marine air-ground forces which we
forward deploy around the world are not limited to amphibious operations
alone. Rather, they are capable of projecting sustained, combined arms combat
power ashore in order to conduct a wide range of missions essential to the
protection of our national security interests."
For Operation Desert Shield, if the 1st and 7th Marine Expeditionary
Brigades were to be deployed, as planned, by air, they would be taking
virtually nothing with them but their individual arms and equipment.<14> That
would not give them much combat potential. It was expected that their heavy
equipment and supplies would be borne to the scene by the Maritime
Prepositioning Force.
In early 1980, then-Secretary of Defense Harold Brown testified to the
Congress: "Although we can lift a brigade size force [by air] to the scene of
a minor contingency very quickly, that force would be relatively lightly armed
. . . ." To supply such a force by air with substantial mechanized or armored
support, along with necessary ammunition, he went on, would occupy almost all
of DoD's airlift force.
Dr. Brown's recommended solution to this problem was to preposition
squadrons of commercial ships at strategic locations, each squadron loaded
with most of a MEB's combat equipment and about 30 days of supply.
Thirteen modern ships, with civilian crews, eventually were dedicated to
this concept. By the summer of 1990, there were three Maritime Prepositioning
Shipping Squadrons in being: MPSRon-1 in the Atlantic, MPSRon-2 in the Indian
Ocean, and MPSRon-3 in the Western Pacific.<15> These ships did not need
ports; they could offload either at a pier or in the stream. But they did
need a benign environment. They were not a substitute for amphibious ships,
which have an assault capability. Skeptics, among them many old-guard
Marines, questioned their usefulness. It was dangerous, it was argued, to
separate a Marine from his pack. A marriage of men and material on a
potential battlefield was problematic. Desert Shield would provide an acid
test for the MPS concept.
On 8 August (C + 2), Maritime Prepositioning Shipping Squadron 2 sailed
from Diego Garcia-that speck of an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean--
and Maritime Prepositioning Squadron 3 sailed from Guam. Destination for both
squadrons was the Persian Gulf. MPSRon2 was to marry up with 7th MEB, and
MPSRon-3 with 1st MEB, if and when those two MEBs deployed.
On 10 August (C + 3), CinCCent, that is, General Schwarzkopf, did indeed
call not only for the airlifted 1st and 7th MEBs but also for the seaborne 4th
MEB. No two MEBs are exactly alike in structure; they are task-organized.
The size of a brigade can easily vary from 7,000 to 17,000 troops or more,
mostly Marines, but also a considerable number of Navy men, because the
Corps's medical support and its chaplains, plus some engineering help, come
from the Navy.
8
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
General Schwarzkopf had succeeded Marine General George B. Crist on 23
November 1988 as commander of CentCom, with a staff of 675. In June 1990,
Marine Major General Robert B. Johnston joined his command as chief of staff.
Johnston, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1937, emigrated to this country in
1955, and came into the Marine Corps by way of a commission in 1961, after
graduating from San Diego State College. As a junior officer, he had two
tours in Vietnam, including command of a rifle company. Subsequently, he
would have the peacetime command of a battalion, a regiment, and of the 9th
Marine Amphibious Brigade.
On 12 August (C + 5), the 7th MEB, moving out from its desert base at
Twentynine Palms, California, with nearly 17,000 personnel, entered the air
flow for Saudi Arabia.<16> The planning figure was that the deployment of a
Marine Expeditionary Brigade by air required 250 C-141 sorties or equivalents.
It was no accident that 7th MEB was desert-trained. The brigade had long been
earmarked for employment in CentCom's sandy area of operations.
The first elements of the 7th MEB arrived at Al Jubayl on 14 August (C +
7). The brigade commander, Major General John I. Hopkins, arrived the next
day, as did the first ships of MPSRon-2, and the marriage of the 7th MEB and
MPSRon-2 was consummated. Rolling out of the MPS ships came the tanks,
howitzers, amphibious assault vehicles, light armored vehicles, and the other
weapons, supplies, and equipment which would give the 7th MEB its combat
punch. On 20 August its ground elements occupied their initial defensive
positions in northeastern Saudi Arabia. They were ready for combat.
7th MEB's commander, General Hopkins, a 58-year-old New Yorker raised in
Brooklyn and a 1956 graduate of the Naval Academy, is a tough Marine and looks
the part. A ground officer, he has a Silver Star from Vietnam and a Master's
degree gained at the University of Southern California from part-time study.
On 25 August (C + 18), General Hopkins, as CG I MEF(Forward), fully
confident that he could counter an Iraqi offensive in his zone of action,
reported to General Schwarzkopf that he was ready to assume responsibility for
the defense of the approaches to the vital seaport of Al Jubayl. His brigade,
numbering on that date 15,248 Marines with 123 tanks, 425 heavy weapons,
including artillery pieces, and 124 fixed and rotary winged aircraft, had made
a 12,000-mile strategic movement, using 259 MAC sorties and five MPS ships.
The 7th MEB's ground combat element was Regimental Landing Team 7 (RLT-7) with
four infantry battalions and a light armored infantry battalion. The latter
was equipped with the light armored vehicle (LAV) developed by General Motors
of Canada, based on the Swiss Piranha. The LAV is a wheeled, rather than
tracked vehicle, and is classified as an 8-by-8, meaning that it has four
rubber-tired driving wheels on a side. It comes in a number of variants, but
the basic LAV-25-so called because it mounts a 25mm "chain" gun, with its
three-man crew-is primarily a troop carrier for six Marines, well-suited for
light infantry and reconnaissance missions in the desert. It had, in fact,
been tested in Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s.
9
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
The combat service support element was Brigade Service Support Group 7
(BSSG-7).
The aviation combat element was Marine Aircraft Group 70 (MAG-70). A
kind of pocket air force, MAG-70 had both fixed-wing and helicopter squadrons,
toying a great variety of aircraft. Its fighter-attack aircraft was the
F/A-18 Hornet, which the Marine Corps considers to be the best combination
fighter and attack aircraft in the world. Its attack aircraft were the AV-8B
Harrier and the A6E Intruder. The Harrier is a true vertical takeoff and
landing aircraft. The Marines are the only U.S. service that has this
British-designed aircraft.<17>
The Corps's heavy helicopters are the CH-53D Sea Stallion and the CH-53E
Super Stallion, its medium helicopter is the CH-46 Sea Knight, and for light
helicopters the Corps has the AH-1W Super Cobra and the UH-1N, last in a long
line of Hueys.
MAG-70 also had a detachment of KC-130s. The Marine Corps version of the
Hercules serves both as a refueler and a transport.
The Commanding General, 3d Marine Aircraft Wing, Major General Royal N.
Moore, Jr, had arrived in the objective area on 16 August, one day after
General Hopkins. Born in Pasadena, California, in 1935, Moore had come into
the Marine Corps through the Naval Aviation Cadet program, being commissioned
in 1958. He has a bachelor's degree from Chapman College. He is both a
fixed-wing and helicopter pilot. In Vietnam he flew 287 combat missions,
primarily in high-performance reconnaissance and electronics countermeasures
aircraft, and received the Distinguished Flying Cross and 18 Air Medals. His
first task in Saudi Arabia was to determine the bed-down sites for the
arriving Marine Corps squadrons. Fixed-wing squadrons went to Marine Aircraft
Group 11 and helicopter squadrons to Marine Aircraft Group 16. Shortly after
his arrival Moore publicly predicted a short, violent air war against the
Iraqis.
On 17 August (C + 10), the first echelon of the 4th Marine Expeditionary
Brigade, with forces drawn from North and South Carolina bases and air
stations, sailed from Morehead City. The brigade, numbering about 8,000,
included RLT-2, MAG-40, and BSSG. To move 4th MEB, Atlantic-based Amphibious
Group Two, with Amphibious Squadrons Six and Eight, divided itself into three
Transit Groups of about five ships each. Transit Group 2 would sail on 20
August and Transit Group 3 on 22 August.<18>
Major General Harry W. Jenkins, Jr., the 52-year-old commanding general
of 4th MEB, is another Californian. A graduate of San Jose State College, he
also has a Master's degree from the University of Wisconsin. Commissioned in
1960, he commanded a rifle company in Vietnam as a captain.
On 25 August (C + 18), the air flow of the 1st Marine Expeditionary
Brigade from Hawaii began. The core of 1st MEB was the 3d Marines, with two
infantry battalions. No command element was sent, for there was already a
sufficient Marine Corps command structure in Saudi Arabia to receive the 1st
MEB's ground and aviation components. On 26 August, MPSRon-3 arrived at Al
Jubayl from Guam, and the marriage of 1st MEB and MPSRon-3 proceeded.
On 2 September (C + 26), the I Marine Expeditionary Force assumed
operational control of all Marine forces in CentCom's theater of operations. I
10
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
MEF was formed by "compositing" or fitting together the elements of the 7th
MEB and 1st MEB. In Marine Corps language, the 7th MEB "stood down" on that
date. Either "deactivated" or "dissolved" would be much too strong a word;
7th MEB could be readily reconstituted if the situation required it. Major
General Hopkins, the commanding general of the 7th MEB, now became the deputy
commander of I MEF.
I MEF's command element had come from Camp Pendleton, California. The
commanding general, Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, arrived at Riyadh on
17 August. Boomer is a North Carolinian, commissioned in the Marine Corps in
1960 after graduating from Duke University. As a captain he had two tours in
Vietnam, the first as a rifle company commander and the second as an advisor
to a Vietnamese Marine Corps battalion. He is an outdoorsman, whose favorite
pastime is hunting. He received a Master's degree in technology of management
from the American University in 1973, and then taught at the Naval Academy.
As do most general officers, he has a chest full of ribbons, but the most
significant are his two Silver Stars from Vietnam. Silver Stars require
gallantry in action and are not given lightly by the Marine Corps. He had
taken command of I MEF at Camp Pendleton on 8 August, immediately before
deployment, coming from command of the Reserve 4th Marine Division. He is now
52 years old.
At the same ceremony, Brigadier General James M. Myatt became the new
commanding general of the 1st Marine Division. Myatt had been commissioned a
second lieutenant in the Marine Corps after graduating from Sam Houston State
University in Texas. Later he would receive a master of science degree in
engineering electronics from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,
California. He served two tours in vietnam, the first as a platoon leader and
company commander and the second as an advisor to the Vietnamese Marines. He,
too, has a Silver Star.
On 5 September (C + 29) the 1st Marine Division "stood up," signifying
that the headquarters of the division was in place, having arrived from Camp
Pendleton, and was ready to assume control of the ground combat element of I
MEF.<20>
By 6 September, the three major subordinate headquarters of I MEF were in
place: the 1st Marine Division, the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing, and the 1st Force
Service Support Group, the last commanded by Brigadier General James A.
Brabham, Jr. General Brabham is a native Pennsylvanian, born in 1939, and a
1962 civil-engineering graduate of Cornell University. During the first of
his two Vietnam tours, he commanded a company in a shore party battalion;
during the second he was an engineer advisor to the Vietnamese Marine Corps.
Like General Boomer, he had a tour on the faculty of the Naval Academy. In
recent years Brabham had been the Deputy J-4 at USCentCom, an almost ideal
preparation for his present assignment. In addition to being the commanding
general of the 1st Force Service Support Group, he also functioned as
ComUSMarCent; that is, commander of the Marine component of the Central
Command until General Boomer's arrival.
11
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Consistent with existing doctrine and plans, General Schwarzkopf had
directed that USMarCent be established as a service component along with Air
Force (USAFCent), Navy (USNavCent), Army (USArCent), and Special Operations
Command (SOCCent).<21> ComUSMarCent would have operational control of all
Marine forces ashore.
Meanwhile, the 13th MEU(SOC), embarked in PhibRon 5, was on its way from
the Philippines, arriving in the Gulf of Oman on 7 September.<22> Another
name for PhibRon 5 with its embarked MEU was Amphibious Ready Group "A" or
"ARG Alpha."
A second ready group, ARG Bravo, was also activated in the Western
Pacific and dispatched to the Gulf, carrying a bob-tailed MAGTF 6-90 under
command of Colonel Ross A. Brown and including the headquarters of RLT, BLT
1/6, and a combat service support detachment.<23> Back in the Philippines,
elements of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade continued to be involved in
flood relief in the well-named Operation Mud Pack.
Recognizing the operational flexibility offered by an embarked amphibious
force, General Schwarzkopf had decided to keep both the 4th MEB and 13th
MEU(SOC) afloat. Command lines here would run from USCinCCent to ComUSNavCent
(who was also Commander, Seventh Fleet) to CATF Commander, Amphibious Task
Force), to CLF (Commander, Landing Force). General Jenkins, as CG 4th MEB and
CLF, would also have operational control of the 13th MEU(SOC).
On 11 September the first echelon of the 4th MEB arrived in the Gulf of
Oman in Transit Group 1. By 17 September, all three transit groups were in
the Gulf of Oman, just outside the Persian Gulf, and the amphibious task force
began to plan for landing rehearsals. The first of these landing exercises,
which would have the code name "Sea Soldier," began with a night amphibious
raid by the 13th MEU(SOC) followed by the 4th MEB landing across the beaches
of Oman by both helicopter and surface craft.
The workhorses for the surface landing were the Marine Corps' amphibian
tractors. In 1985 the Marine Corps changed the designation of the LVTP7A1 to
AAV7A1--amphibious assault vehicle-representing a shift in emphasis away from
the long-time LVT designation, meaning "landing vehicle, tracked." Without a
change of a bolt or plate, the AAV7A1 was to be more of an armored personnel
carrier and less of a landing vehicle. The LVTP7, which had come into the
Marine Corps inventory in the early 1970s, was a quantum improvement over the
short-ranged LVTP5 of the Vietnam era. Weighing in at 26 tons (23,991 kg)
combat-loaded, and with a three-man crew, it can carry 25 Marines. With a
road speed of 45 mph (72 km/h), it is also filly amphibious with water speeds
up to 8 mph (13 km/h). It is not as heavily armed or armored as the Army's
Bradley infantry fighting vehicle; on the other hand, the M2A1 Bradley carries
only seven troop passengers.
About this time, I MEF learned that the 7th Armored Brigade ("Desert
Rats") of the British Army of the Rhine was to come under I MEF's operational
control.<24> The Desert Rats, numbering some 14,000 soldiers, had earned their
name fighting with the British Eighth Army in North Africa in World War II,
12
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
but it had been a long time since they served in the desert. Their fighting
vehicles, however, had names that seemed well-suited to the task hand:
Challengers, Warriors, Scimitars, and Scorpions, The Challenger tank is
roughly equivalent to the American M60A3. The Warrior is an armored personnel
carrier chosen by the British after competition with the American Bradley.
The Scimitars and Scorpions are tracked reconnaissance vehicles that might be
called very light tanks.
Going into Desert Shield, the Marines' main battle tank was the M60A1, an
improvement, several generations removed, of the M48 tank of the Korean and
Vietnam wars. Weighing 58 tons (52,617 kg) and with a crew of four--
commander, gunner, loader, and driver--the M60A1 has as its main armament a
105mm gun. Retrofitted with applique armor, it is considered roughly equal
to, if lesser-gunned than the best tank in the Iraqi inventory, the much-
vaunted Soviet T-72.
The T-72, which came into service in the late 1970s, was successfully met
by the Israelis in Lebanon in 1982. Armed with a long-barreled, smooth-bored
125mm gun and with a three-man crew, the T-72 at 45 tons (41,000 kg) is
considerably lighter than the Marine Corps's M60A1. Both tanks have six road
wheels on a side but the T-72 with its squat hull and long-barreled gun is
distinctive in silhouette from the MO, with its more massive turret. In the
South Atlantic, the 26th MEU(SOC) had arrived on schedule off Monrovia, on 20
August, and began the relief of 22d MEU(SOC). By that time 683 persons had
been evacuated and the Marine presence ashore had been reduced to half a
company. Next day, 26th MEU(SOC) received a change of mission. It was to
proceed to the Mediterranean, leaving behind the USS WHIDBEY ISLAND (LSD-41)
and BARNSTABLE COUNTY (LST-1197) and a heavily reinforced rifle company (Co
K/3/8), along with helicopters and a combat service support detachment to
continue evacuation operations and protection of the embassy. This
detachment, under command of Major George S. Hartley, picked up the informal
name of "Monrovia MAGTF."
By C + 60, during the first week of November, Phase I of the Desert
Shield deployment was complete. Nearly 42,000 Marines, close to one-quarter
of the Marine Corps's total active duty strength and a fifth of the total U.S.
force in Desert Shield, had been deployed. More than 31,000 were ashore in I
MEF. The remainder, the 4th MEB and 13th MEU(SOC), were kept afloat as the
landing force of a strong amphibious task force.
But there was much more to come. During an 8 November press conference,
President Bush indicated that U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf area would be
increased by an additional 200,000 troops. Amplifying news stories
conjectured that the number of Marines in the objective area would be doubled
by the addition of the II Marine Expeditionary Force from the Corps's East
Coast bases and the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade from California.<25> The
Corps's Commandant, General Gray, added a footnote to the conjecture:
13
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
"There are four kinds of Marines: those in Saudi Arabia,
those going to Saudi Arabia, those who want to go to
Saudi Arabia, and those who don't want to go to Saudi
Arabia but are going anyway."
It was a point of pride with the Marine Corps that it had completed Phase
I deployments without any callup of the Marine Corps Reserve, except for a few
individuals who volunteered for active duty to fill mobilization billets. The
President's decision to expand the force changed that.
On 13 November, for Phase II, the involuntary callup of Selected Marine
Corps Reserve units began. These units were drawn from all over the country
from the widely dispersed Reserve 4th Marine Division and 4th Marine Aircraft
Wing. They were needed to sustain the forces already deployed and to round
out the additional forces that were to be sent.
A large-scale amphibious exercise, with the foreboding code name
"Imminent Thunder," was held near the head of the Persian Gulf, beginning 18
November. Uncertain landing conditions were created by shallow water and high
winds and the amphibious task force commander cancelled the surface assault
because of the sea state. The media got on to this, chattering about the
fragility of amphibious landings, not accepting the obvious explanation that
in an actual operation the landing could have been made, but that you don't
risk the unnecessary breakup of landing craft and vehicles in an exercise.
The helicopterborne part of the assault, launched from over the horizon, went
well. A Marine battalion landing team coming from the sea linked up with I
MEF forces ashore. Air support was not only Marine, Navy, and Air Force, but
also British and French.
The 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, numbering about 7,500, sailed from
San Diego on the first of December in the 13 ships of Amphibious Group
Three.<26> The last operational deployment of the 5th MEB had been in 1962,
when it went through the Panama Canal to take station in the Caribbean during
the Cuban Missile Crisis. The ground element core of the 5th MEB was the
reinforced 5th Marine regiment from Camp Pendleton; the aviation element,
MAG-50; and the combat service support element, BSSG-50.
Brigadier General Peter J. Rowe was in command. From Connecticut and now
52 years old, he had been commissioned in 1962 after graduation from
Cincinnati's Xavier University. Later he would take a master's degree at San
Diego State University. In the Vietnam War, after completing Vietnamese
language training, he had commanded an interrogation-translation team in the
battles for Hue City and Khe Sanh. Before getting command of the 5th MEB, he
had been assistant commander of the 1st Marine Division.
The 5th MEB's schedule called for it to arrive at Subic Bay on 26
December, for a brief training period. Then on 1 January, it was to proceed
so as to drive in the area of operations by 15 January. "Embedded" in 5th MEB
was the 11th MEU(SOC)--meaning that the 11th MEU(SOC) could be reconstituted
for missions such as those being per-formed by 13th MEU(SOC).
14
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
On the East Coast, the II Marine Expeditionary Force consisted
essentially of the 2d Marine Division and 2d Force Service Support Group,
based mainly at Camp Lejeune, and the 2d Marine Aircraft Wing, based largely
at Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, North Carolina. II MEF called
itself the "Carolina MAGTF" and it bore the imprint of General Gray's time as
Commanding General, 2d Marine Division (1981-84), and Commanding General,
Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic (1984-87).
In command was the current FMFLant commander, Lieutenant General Carl E.
Mundy, originally of Atlanta, Georgia. Commissioned in the Marine Corps in
1957 after graduation from Auburn University, he had served as an operations
officer and executive officer of an infantry battalion. Later, his string of
operational commands would include the 36th and 38th MAUs and the 4th MAB.
Immediately before his assignment to FMFLant in July 1990, he had been the
Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans, Policies, and Operations at Headquarters,
Marine Corps. But he was not destined to go to the Persian Gulf immediately.
Nearly 30,000 Marines and sailors from II MEF were scheduled for the
Gulf. Movement of the fly-in echelon (FIE) began on 9 December and was to
continue, at the rate of about 1,000 troops per day, until 15 January. Part
of I-I MEF's logistic support would come from MPSRon1, which left the East
Coast on 14 November with a scheduled arrival date at Al Jubayl of 12
December.
The departure of the major part of II MEF for the Gulf was marked by an
elaborate farewell ceremony at Camp Lejeune on Monday, 10 December, which saw
24,000 departing troops drawn up in massive squares on the parade ground.
Both the Commandant, General Gray, and the Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic
Fleet, Admiral Powell F. Carter, were there to wish them well. Perhaps the
most impressive part of the parade was the massing of the scarlet-and-gold
colors of II MEF and its subordinate units.<27>
But of the major elements, only the colors of the 2d Division and 2d
Force Service Support Group would be going to the Gulf, it having been decided
that there was not yet a requirement for the command elements of II Marine
Expeditionary Force and the 2d Marine Aircraft Wing. The deploying aviation
units would be joining the already deployed 3d Marine Aircraft Wing. Thus on
15 January, the I Marine Expeditionary Force would be structured very much
like the III Marine Amphibious Force in Vietnam: two divisions, a very large
wing,<28> and a substantial service support command.<29> In addition there
would be two Marine Expeditionary Brigades and a special-operations-capable
Marine Expeditionary Unit afloat, offering a very powerful landing force for
any contemplated amphibious operations.
Except for a demonstration incident to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the
2d Marine Division had not been operationally deployed since World War II,
where it fought with great distinction at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, and
Tinian.<30> Reminiscent of expeditionary practices before World War I, a
rifle company was stripped out of the ceremonial guard at the Marine Barracks,
Washington, D.C., and sent to Saudi Arabia, as well.
15
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Commanding the 2d Marine Division was Major General William M. Keys,
Pennsylvanian who had graduated from the Naval Academy in 1960. During his
first tour in Vietnam he commanded a rifle company; during his second he was
an advisor to the Vietnamese Marines at the battalion and brigade level. He
has both a Navy Cross and a Silver Star. A graduate of the National War
College, he also holds a Master's degree from the American University.
Peacetime operational commands had included both a battalion and a regiment.
The new year brought an unexpected diversion of forces from Desert Shield.
On Thursday, 3 January, a cable arrived in Washington from the U.S. Embassy in
Mogadishu, Somalia, requesting immediate evacuation. A two-week urban battle
had reached its climax and the government of the octogenarian president,
Mohamed Siad Barre, was collapsing. Armed looters had entered the embassy
compound. Orders went out to Seventh Fleet. The TRENTON (LPD-14), operating
the Indian Ocean, launched two CH-53Es loaded with 70 Marines. The distance
was 460 miles; nighttime aerial refueling was done twice from Marine KC-130s
flying from Bahrain. The helicopters arrived over Mogadishu early Friday
morning, 4 January, and sat down just inside the embassy gate. Part of the
Marine detachment secured the perimeter of the luxurious ($35 million)
compound, big enough to include a nine-hole golf course. The rest of the
Marines sallied forth into the corpse-littered streets to bring in stranded
Americans and other foreign nationals, including the Soviet ambassador and his
staff of 35 from the Soviet Embassy a mile away. By now more than 260 persons
were in the embassy compound. The hired security guards were holding off the
looters with small arms fire. A rocket-propelled grenade had impacted on an
Embassy building. The two CH-53Es took out 62 evacuees on Friday.<31> The
next day, Saturday, 5 January, five CHA6 helicopters from the GUAM (LPH-9),
which had closed the distance to Mogadishu, continued the evacuation.
Altogether more than 260 people were taken out, including 30 nationalities and
senior diplomats from ten countries.
Just prior to 15 January the British 7th Armored Brigade was detached to
rejoin its parent, the 1st Armored Division, which had arrived in Saudi
Arabia. The Desert Rats were to be replaced by the 1st Brigade, 2d U.S.
Armored Division-the "Tiger Brigade" -some 4,200 soldiers equipped with more
than a hundred M1A1 Abrams tanks and a large number of M2A2 Bradley infantry
fighting vehicles.
The Marine Corps had not been scheduled to get its first M1A1 Abrams, the
U.S. Army's premier main-battle tank, until November 1990, with an initial
operational capability not expected until late 1991. General Gray met with
General Carl E. Vuono, the Army's Chief of Staff, and asked for the loan of
some Army M1A1s. By the first part of January 1991, with U.S. Army
cooperation, I MEF had a significant number of M1A1s, considered the most
modern tank in the world. Slightly heavier at 63 tons (57,154 kg) than the
M60A1, the M1A1's most recognizable visual differences are its skirted seven
road-wheels and long turret, mounting a 120-mm. smooth-bore gun.
By the 15th of January the Marine Corps had something close to 84,000
troops in the objective area, almost half its active duty strength.<32> Of
this total,
16
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
some 66,000 (just over a thousand of whom were female Marines) were ashore
with I MEF. Afloat were the 4th MEB, 5th MEB, and 13th MEU(SOC)-almost 18,000
Marines. Taken together, these forces were close to the number of Marines
deployed to Vietnam in the peak year of 1968 and more than the total landed at
Iwo Jima in 1945.
Obviously, the Marine Corps's deployment to the Persian Gulf,
constituting as it did the largest Marine Corps movement since World War II,
was dependent on the sealift provided by the Navy and airlift provided by the
Air Force. Both the sealift and airlift were magnificent.
Contingency plans for deployment to the Persian Gulf--for all Services,
not just the Marine Corps--appear to have worked amazingly well. U.S.
deployments to the region were a logistical triumph. In the Korean War,
under-strength, under-trained, and poorly equipped American troops were flung
into battle piecemeal in an act of desperation. In some cases performance was
poor, and in many cases losses were frightful. In the Vietnam War, the state
of readiness of the armed forces was much better than Korea and often
outstanding-but they were fed into the objective area with a deliberate
slowness, reflecting the gradualism of the Johnson-McNamara strategy.
This time, as exemplified by the deployment of the Marines, the crux of
the Bush-Cheney-Powell strategy was to position a superbly equipped and highly
trained force in sufficient numbers on the anticipated battlefield.
17
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Notes
1. Amphibious Squadron Four (PhibRon 4): USS SAIPAN (LHA-2), PONCE (LPD-15),
and SUMTER, (LST-1181).
2. Such evacuations from troubled spots around the world have been a Marine
Corps mission almost from its inception. For a complete account of this
effort--Operation Sharp Edge--see pp. 102-106 of this issue.
3. Special Purpose Forces might be considered a fourth type of MAGTF. These
are small task-organized forces configured, as the name implies, for special
purposes. Recent use of Special Purpose Forces by the Marines includes
operations in Panama (Operation Just Cause) and in the Persian Gulf (Operation
Earnest Will).
4. The commander of a MEB is ordinarily a brigadier or major general. The
ground combat element is ordinarily a Regimental Landing Team. The aviation
element is ordinarily a composite Marine Aircraft Group. The fourth element
is the all-important Brigade Service Support Group. The repetition of the
word "ordinarily" is intentional; there is no fixed organization for a Marine
Expeditionary Brigade. Similarly, a Marine Expeditionary Unit ordinarily is
commanded by a colonel and will include a Battalion Landing Team, a reinforced
Helicopter Squadron, and a Service Support Group. A Marine Expeditionary
Force, commanded by a major general or lieutenant general, will ordinarily
have a Division, an Aircraft Wing, and a Force Service Support Group.
5. All MAGTFs have inherent special-operations capabilities. Before
deployment, MEUs undergo demanding comprehensive training leading to formal
certification and designation as Special Operations Capable."
6. Although the British burned the White House in 1814, they left the
Commandant's House unharmed, possibly because their commanding general was
staying there.
7. As of 15 January, General Gray had been to Saudi Arabia three times to
visit his troops.
8. The Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic (CG FMFLant), is also
the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Europe (CG FMFEur), with a small
planning staff in London.
9. When CG I MEF asked ComPhibGru-3 for the immediate return of BELLEAU WOOD
from Seattle, she steamed back to San Diego that night. The 3d Battalion, 9th
Marines disembarked and readied itself for air embarkation.
10. To put things into geographic perspective, look at the map of the Arabian
peninsula and see it as a land mass as large as the United States east of the
Mississippi. To the left or southwest is the Red Sea. To the right or
northeast are the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz that form a choke point,
and the Gulf of Oman. To the southeast are the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian
Sea.
11. Amphibious Squadron Two (PhibRon 2) consisted of the INCHON (LPH-12),
NASHVILLE (LPD-13), WHIDBEY ISLAND (LSD-41), FAIRFAX COUNTY (LST-1193).
18
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
and NEWPORT (LST-1179). A PhibRon with an embarked MEU forms an Amphibious
Ready Group (ARG).
12. The gears of command meshed as follows: USCinCCent was designated the
theater commander and the SUPPORTED unified command. USCinCPac, as one of the
SUPPORTING unified commanders, tasked his component commanders, CinCPacFlt
among them, to provide designated forces. CG FMFPac, subordinate to
CinCPacFlt, in turn ordered CG I MEF to ready the 1st and 7th MEBs for
deployment. Similarly, 4th MEB received its tasking from FMFLant which in
turn had been tasked by USCinCLant through USCinCLantFlt.
13. With the U.S. Air Force insistent on the indivisibility of air power and
the requirement for centralized operational control, and the U.S. Marine Corps
equally insistent on the integrated nature of its air-ground teams, such
doctrinal differences are inevitable, and, on balance, even have a certain
virtue.
14. Readers should prepare for a whole new lexicon of acronyms in use in
Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The air-transported elements of a MAGTF are
known as the "FIE" or "fly-in-echelon."
15. All MPS ships are named for Marine Corps recipients of the Medal of
Honor. The 13 ships were divided among the three squadrons as follows: MPSRon
1: MV KOCAK (MPS-1), OBREGON (MPS-2), PLESS (MPS-3), and BOBO (MPS-4); MPSRon
2: MV HAUGE (MPS-5), BAUGH (MPS-6), ANDERSON (MPS-7), FISHER (MPS-8), and
BONNYMAN (MPS-9); MPSRon 3: MV WILLIAMS (MPS-10), LOPEZ (MPS-11), LUMMUS
(MPS-12), and BUTTON (MPS-13).
16. 7th MEB, as with the other MAGTFS, had a standing command element or
headquarters. The ground combat element, i.e., the reinforced 7th Marines;
the aviation combat element, Marine Aircraft Group 70; and the combat service
support element, Brigade Service Support Group 7; were not permanently
assigned elements of the brigade, but all were designated and all had recently
exercised with the brigade.
17. The Harrier, a unique aircraft and uniquely suited to the Marine Corps,
had proved its excellence in the Battle for the Falklands. The RAF's Harriers
may well have been the premier tactical aircraft in that well-fought little
war. The A-6 Intruder is an old-timer, nearing the end of a tong and
successful service life. Earlier models distinguished themselves in Vietnam,
primarily because of their all-weather bombing capability. The Marines also
have the EA-6B Prowler which is the electronic warfare version.
18. Transit Group 1: USS SHREVEPORT (LPD-12), TRENTON (LPD-14), PORTLAND
(LSD37), and GUNSTON HALL (LSD-44). Transit Group 2: USS NASSAU (LHA-4),
RALEIGH (LPD-1), PENSACOLA (LSD-38), and SAGINAW, (LST-1 188). Transit Group
3: USS IWO JIMA (LPH-2), GUAM (LPH-9), MANITOWOC (LST-1180), and LAMOURE
COUNTY (LST-1194).
19. This relief had been planned months before Desert Shield. A division is
a major general's billet and it was a special tribute to General Myatt that he
was given the command as a brigadier. Major General John P. ("Phil") Monohan
was retiring after a distinguished 35-year career. His last assignment was as
commanding general of both I Marine Expeditionary Force and 1st Marine
Division. General Gray, who officiated at the 8 August ceremony, had decided
19
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
to divide these responsibilities between Boomer and Myatt, but at the same
time designating Boomer as Commanding General, Marine Corps Base, Camp
Pendleton. By eliminating a three star billet in Washington, Gray was able to
promote Boomer to lieutenant general. Within a few weeks Myatt was selected
for promotion to major general.
20. As eventually constituted, the 1st Marine Division in Desert Shield would
consist of three infantry regiments--the 1st, 3d, and 7th Marines; an
artillery regiment--the 11th Marines; and the following separate battalions:
1st Light Armored Infantry, 1st Combat Engineers, 1st Reconnaissance, 3d
Assault Amphibian, 1st and 3d Tanks.
21. A separate component command for the Marines avoided the ambiguity of
early Vietnam War command arrangements when ComUSMACV had a naval component
which was sometimes commanded by the CG III MAF as the senior naval officer.
22. The ships in PhibRon 5 were the USS OKINAWA (LPH-3), OGDEN (LPD-5), FORT
MCHENRY (LSD-43), CAYUGA (LST-1186), and DURHAM (LKA-114).
23. MAGTF 6-90 was embarked in the USS DUBUQUE (LPD-8), SAN BERNARDINO
(LST-1189), and SCHENECTADY (LST-1195).
24. This was reminiscent of the Korean War, when a Korean Marine Corps
regiment served under the 1st Marine Division and of the Vietnam War, when the
Korean Blue Dragon Brigade served under the operational guidance of the III
Marine Amphibious Force.
25. The JCS deployment order of 9 November 1990 did indeed specify the 11
Marine Expeditionary Force and 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade.
26. The 13 ships of PhibGru3 were the USS TARAWA (LHA-1), NEW ORLEANS
(LPH-11), TRIPOLI (LPH-10), DENVER (LPD-9), JUNEAU (LPD-10), VANCOUVER
(LPD-2), ANCHORAGE (LSD-36), GERMANTOWN (LSD-42), MOUNT VERNON (LSD-39),
PEORIA (LST-1183), BARBOUR COUNTY (LST-1184), FREDERICK (LST-1184), and
MOBILE (LKA-115).
27. Intermittently throughout this period the East Coast-based 22d Marine
Expeditionary Unit, having returned from its deployment, was on heightened
alert, ready to respond to a possible protection of the U. S. Embassy and
evacuation-of-U.S. citizens mission in Haiti, as that Caribbean country went
through the trauma of a presidential election and post-election unrest.
28. The 3d Marine Aircraft Wing for Desert Shield consisted of two fixed-wing
aircraft groups, MAGs 11 and 13; two helicopter groups, MAGs 16 and 26; Marine
Air Control Group 38; and several separate squadrons.
29. The 1st Force Service Group, reinforced, was divided into a General
Support Command, under BGen Brabham's immediate command and consisting of
three combat service support detachments; and a Direct Support Command
(essentially the 2d Force Service Command), under BGen Charles C. Krulak,
consisting of the 2d Medical Battalion, the 7th and 8th Engineer Support
Battalions. and three more combat service support detachments.
30. As organized for Desert Shield, the 2d Marine Division would include three
infantry regiments-the 4th, 6th. and 8th; an artillery regiment-the 10th
Marines;
20
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
and the following separate battalions: 2d Light Armored Infantry, 2d and 8th
Tanks, 2d Assault Amphibians, 2d Combat Engineers, and 2d Reconnaissance.
31. It was reported that on the way out, a baby was born to one of the
passengers while the CH-53E refueled in the air.
32. By 15 January some 17,000 Marine Corps Reserves had responded to the call
to active duty.
21
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Major General Hopkins commanded the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, the
first significant Marine Corps force to arrive in the Persian Gulf. Before he
deployed with the brigade, he also commanded the Marine Air Ground Combat
Center in Twentynine Palms California, where Marine units go for desert and
combined arm training. When Lieutenant General Boomer arrived in Saudi
Arabia, General Hopkins became the Deputy Commander of I Marine Expeditionary
force.
In this interview, General Hopkins discusses the first operational
offload of Maritime Prepositioning Ships, and describes the measures taken by
the first American forces to arrive in Saudi Arabia to defend against the
large, menacing Iraqi Army in Kuwait.
This Was No Drill
interview with Major General John I. Hopkins, USMC
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, November 1991
PROCEEDINGS: When were you alerted?
Hopkins: The brigade was alerted officially to deploy on 8 August 1990, while
the Maritime Prepositioning Ships [MPS] got under way on the 7th, and we
started working the Time Phased Force Deployment Data (TPFDD). We didn't have
all the ships in the right spots. Only three were at Diego Garcia; one was at
Blount Island, Florida, on a maintenance cycle; and one was en route. So we
didn't have our total package. But the Diego Garcia ships got moving.
We worked like hell. We had a problem with the TPFDD right away because
it was due to be updated in October. This was August, it hadn't been reworked
for a couple of years, and we had some problems. Everybody wanted to put on
more gear than the 250 equivalent airlift sorties allowed. So after my staff
came to me and said, "We need a decision. They're trying to dump everything
on," I said, "If you put something additional on the aircraft, you've got to
take something off."
PROCEEDINGS: Did you take more tanks on your ships, based on what you thought
you would be up against?
Hopkins: No. We had the generic Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF) equipment
package. We couldn't have changed it anyway. The MPS concept equals the
prepositioned ships plus the fly-in echelon. The flexibility is there,
though, for new weapon systems like the light armored vehicle [LAV] variants,
or new communications gear, and things that haven't been loaded on the MPS
since the last maintenance cycle; those get put on the fly-in echelon.
22
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
PROCEEDINGS: How was your intelligence support?
Hopkins: One of the failures of the whole damn war was intelligence. I think
it was terrible, absolutely terrible. Strategic intelligence, what the Air
Force was using in Iraq, that's something different. But the battlefield
intelligence was inadequate. When the battalion commanders and regimental
commanders--and I'm getting beyond my portion of it--crossed the line of
departure, they didn't know what was in front of them, and that's just
unconscionable, as far as I'm concerned.
PROCEEDINGS: You were the senior Marine commander in the area. Did you have
to do most of the liaison with the Saudis?
Hopkins: Yes. [Brigadier] General Jim Brabham had served with Central Command
on a previous tour and knew the area, so General Boomer sent him over to look
at the infrastructure. He went to Riyadh right away and really didn't have
anything to do with the 7th MEB. As soon as we got in we were hunkered down
at the port and marrying up our units with the equipment, I focused on the
tactical situation.
I conducted visual reconnaissance flights with the helicopters, and went
down to talk with Major General Saleh, who was the Saudi Eastern Province
Commander. Here we were, all these Americans coming into Saudi Arabia and we
needed some decisions: Where we could deploy; what infrastructure could we
use; where could we establish live-fire ranges. Those kinds of things.
Map of The Persian Gulf Area
23
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Rear Admiral Bader was the senior Saudi naval officer in Jubayl, and he
had a lot of influence in the local area. I would talk with him. There was a
Royal Commission of Jubayl on the civilian side of the house which controlled
most of the available infrastructure, but we had to get some camps set up to
get our Marines out of the port. Our Marines were sitting in these warehouses
in 130 degrees temperatures, with no heads or showers. The decision-making
system in Saudi Arabia took a long time to get moving. We did the best we
could in Jubayl, but the Saudis couldn't gear up fast enough. With the stench
and the heat, it was just tough. We had a good setup at the port facility,
but we had to get the troops out to the field for morale and security reasons.
Every day I would go around and see someone from the Royal Commission, or
Bader, or I'd go down and see Saleh, and then I'd get in a helicopter and I'd
go north to see how the hell we were setting up. We started to break the log
jam. We got the ranges, and we got permission to deploy. But it took a lot of
time.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you have to go immediately into defensive positions?
Hopkins: No. Like everything else, you've got to prepare the equipment and do
the reconnaissance. While the subordinate units were getting ready, my staff
was tying in with Central Command in Riyadh, and I was making liaison with the
local authorities; both civilian and military, so we could do what we needed
to do.
PROCEEDINGS: Were the Saudis defending?
Hopkins: No. They had a couple of trip-wire units deployed to the north, but
for all practical purposes the Saudis hadn't initiated any defensive plans for
the eastern province. I wanted to get a sector assigned to the Marine Corps,
get the ranges, and find out what limitations I had. For instance, they
didn't want us to put the tanks and the amtracks [AAVP-7 assault amphibians]
through the towns, because they thought we were going to damage the roads and
alarm the people. That type of thing.
The 2nd Brigade 82nd Airborne Division was in there. We tied in with
them defensively right away.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you have liaison teams with the 82nd?
Hopkins: Yes. We talked to them daily and figured out how we were going to
defend. My mission was to defend as far forward as possible, grind down the
Iraqis if they attacked, plus defend the vital areas around Jubayl. We were
also supposed to defend Ra's Tannurah, which is to the south, but that's too
big an area. We just didn't have the force for it, even though eventually we
had 17,000 Marines in the brigade. The Army eventually picked up the mission.
24
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
PROCEEDINGS: What about the equipment coming off the ships?
Hopkins: We had no problems with the offload. The pier facilities and the
airheads were great. We started to move the AV-8Bs up to the King Abdul Aziz
Naval Air Station right in back of Jubayl so they would be responsive to the
front lines. The F/A-18s were down at Shaik Isa in Bahrain.
There were only about three or four defensible pieces of terrain between
the Kuwaiti border and Jubayl. I went up to Manifa Bay, which is about 70
miles south of the Kuwaiti border. We decided to screen there with the light
armored vehicles, and then Colonel [now Brigadier General Carlton W.] Fulford
could deploy the mechanized units and the greater part of the Regimental
Combat Team by the cement factory, which was 40 miles north of Jubayl and 27
miles or so south of Manifa Bay, where there was some relief in the desert.
It was the best defensible terrain and Fulford deployed his Regimental Combat
Team there.
That was our concept. We would screen as far forward as possible, delay
and attrit the Iraqis with air power, then defend in a main battle area along
what became known as "cement ridge." The Iraqis had two possible attack
routes. We thought they'd either come down the coast or use a route a little
bit to the west, but both these routes come together at a junction near the
cement factory. If they kept coming, we had drawn a line in the sand by the
cement factory. We were going to stay there.
PROCEEDINGS: How soon were you ready?
Hopkins: 25 August. We were alerted on 8 August. The ships got there on 16
August. We started bringing in the troops, and we probably could have been
ready a couple of days earlier if the air had gotten over sooner.
We had the attack helicopters, the Hueys, and the transports. The
helicopters were coming in by Air Force C-5s. We had them all. They were
coming in fine.
But the fixed-wing was stalled at MCAS [Marine Corps Air Station]
Beaufort and at MCAS Cherry Point. The Air Force didn't give us the tankers
that we needed to get across the Atlantic. That was my biggest concern,
because basically the concept calls for us to be combat ready in about ten
days. We were ready on the ground, with the MEB declared combat ready on 25
August; but the F/A-18s didn't arrive until around the 23rd, because they were
delayed. The Air Force was moving its own aircraft, and that's one of the
weaknesses of the MPF concept--it's not tied together at the Joint Chiefs of
Staff level. They've got to say, "Okay. The ships are gone, but you also
have tactical air-craft to deploy." The aircraft need the same priority as
the ground forces, and they didn't get it.
PROCEEDINGS: When did you first get some OV-10s, either FLIR [forward-looking
infrared radar]-capable or for tactical air coordinator (airborne) missions
and radio relay?
25
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Hopkins: Not in August. The first OV-10s arrived in the latter part of
September. They self-deployed [via Greenland, Iceland, and down through
Europe]. The weather affected them. So they didn't come till later, and that
was a mistake.
Colonel Manfred Rietsch, who commanded Marine Aircraft Group 70, had
said, "Let's crane the OV-10s on board the T-AVBs [the aircraft maintenance
ships USNS WRIGHT (T-AVB-3) and the USNS CURTISS (T-AVB-4)]." So I talked to
General [Royal] Moore, who commanded the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing, and he said,
"We'll let them go out with the 5th MEB." But the 5th MEB didn't come out for
a couple more months.
If we had to do it again, we'd have to get the OV-10s over earlier. We
could see vastness of the desert from the maps, and we knew that the OV-10 was
a player. They're money in the bank. The one time you need them justifies
all you have to go through to get them there. The carrier battle groups are
always going to be around. But we've got to get the OV-10s in there. It's
tough. I don't want to belabor this, because it was a hiccup; we were still
combat ready. We used the Hueys to make up for it.
PROCEEDINGS: How did you tie in with the 82nd Airborne?
Hopkins: We had daily meetings with the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd, which was
also at Jubayl. I asked, "What are you guys going to do'?" We divided up the
pie and so forth. The 82nd was going to send their antitank [AT] teams out
there, with tanks and AT weapons in front to hit them with whatever they've
got, and then try to delay to Dammam.
PROCEEDINGS: The carriers were there early, and the Air Force F-15s came in
fairly early; what kind of liaison did you have with the carriers?
Hopkins: We didn't go directly to the carriers. We went through Central
Command and NavCent in Bahrain. Until we got our own aircraft there and we
had the self-sufficiency of the Marine air-ground task force, we were mainly
tied into the Air Force through CentAF in Riyadh. At that time, remember, the
carrier battle groups were not coming up that far north because they didn't
know what the missile and mine threats were. That evolved--they came up later
when they knew the missile threat wasn't there.
PROCEEDINGS: How would you have gotten air support if you really needed it?
Hopkins: We would have gone right to the Air Force through our liaison
officers with CentAF in Riyadh. We had our own attack helicopters, but every
day we were hoping Saddam wouldn't come down. If he had come down, it might
have been a different story in terms of the whole outcome. We would have
hunkered down right around Jubayl. Jubayl is the petrochemical capital of
Saudi Arabia. All the water that they get in Riyadh comes out of the
desalinization plants in Jubayl, so they could have theoretically cut off
Riyadh.
26
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
We were tied into all the command-and-control systems. We didn't have full
Marine air support yet, but we planned to plug in, send a mission, say, "Hey,
we need this." Central Command would have come through for us, and by 23
August Boomer was in Riyadh. I wasn't worried about getting air support.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you have any ground-based electronic warfare capability?
Hopkins: No, that was in the follow-on echelon. We didn't have radio
battalion support going in, but we did eventually get that capability.
PROCEEDINGS: Where were you getting your battlefield intelligence?
Hopkins: We relied on Central Command pushing it down to us from Riyadh.
Talking with General Saleh on a daily basis tied in the Saudi Army side of it,
and I would talk with Bader. But their intelligence was poor. We didn't
really have any intelligence except what was coming from Central Command, and
it painted an overpowering picture--we were facing 11 Iraqi divisions. But
this was from a macro-viewpoint.
Getting back to my earlier comment, intelligence was terrible. Later on
after the 7th MEB had been absorbed into I MEF, we were tracking the Iraqi
80th Tank Brigade for months. Because of the T-72 tanks, it was a major
threat--but it turned out that this unit wasn't in our sector after all. It
had left Kuwait months before and we didn't know it. The intelligence was not
accurate. They kept on building this guy to be a great fighter, great
artillery; they had barriers and mines; they're going to put oil into these
obstacles and light it off--and so forth.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you see any prisoners of war before the ground war started?
Hopkins: We never got any POWs until after the war started, and we got them
for ourselves. The Saudis had the POWs and wouldn't let us interrogate them
to get the intelligence we needed.
The Saudis picked up defectors. They took prisoners. But for the whole
six months of Desert Shield, right until we initiated the attack, the Saudis
controlled any defector who came across, and any POWS. At our level, we never
knew whether we were getting any of that information.
PROCEEDINGS: What took most of your time while you commanded the brigade?
Hopkins: Planning. Conducting liaison. Preparing the defense. How we were
to be supported? All those things you need to give the tactical commander
exactly what he requires. Making sure the operations order we had was good
tactically, that we tied in with the 82nd, that the Saudis knew exactly what
we were doing. We worked those issues day in and day out.
27
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
PROCEEDINGS: The desert has few terrain features--how did that affect you?
Hopkins: We had enough GPS gear as the operation developed. There were a few
problems with maps in terms of adequate numbers. Then, of course, when you're
along the coastline it doesn't present the problem that you would have if you
were in the middle of nowhere. We didn't want for anything logistically. We
unloaded those ships; we got the ammunition into our positions; and then we
trained as best we could. Colonel Fulford conducted combined arms training,
working the artillery and air hard.
PROCEEDINGS: But until the 25th, were you depending a great deal on air?
Hopkins: Yes. If they had come down on the 25th, of course, we would have had
a hasty defense instead of a more deliberate defense. We would have used Air
Force air, and kept on unloading the ships, getting stronger each day.
PROCEEDINGS: When did you give up the brigade as it was absorbed by I MEF?
Hopkins: Between 3 and 6 September. The 7th MEB command element and the
headquarters were absorbed by the MEF.
PROCEEDINGS: You run the Marine Corps training at Twentynine Palms in addition
to commanding the brigade. Were the troops prepared for what they went up
against? Do you plan to change any of the training?
Hopkins: With the commitments the Marine Corps has, every summer we're
rotating about one-third the outfit. We were in the middle of that when the
call came. Fulford assessed the state of training of his battalions--1/7 [1st
Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment], 2/7, 3/7, and 3/9. The MEB had been
scheduled to go to Turkey on Exercise Display Determination in September, and
I used the cover of that exercise to get moving a little bit, because even
before we were officially notified on 8 August, I thought maybe we would be
involved.
We used a little operational security to good effect. On the West Coast,
everybody said, "Hey, they're going out of the 1st Marine Division." Nobody
said anything about Twentynine Palms. So it was a good thing. We got out of
town without a lot of publicity. We set up an eight-day program--a minimum
program--and a 14-day program, because when you deploy in echelon, you don't
all go at the same time. Whatever training units needed, they got. We went
24-hours-a-day; we worked the Combined Arms Staff Trainer (CAST), command and
control, and battalion and regimental operations.
The 7th Marines were at Twentynine Palms and 3/9 was on its way up to
Canada to work with the Princess Guards. We brought them back. That was
Fulford's best-trained battalion because it had been together the longest.
28
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
PROCEEDINGS: Was 3/9 ticketed to go originally?
Hopkins: No, but we brought four battalions over. It happened that we had the
lift for four battalions instead of what we'd call a troop lift for three, so
we had four battalions. We constituted one of the battalions as a reserve,
but that came later.
Here is how it all evolved. One of the 7th's battalions--3/7--was on
unit deployment, but 1/5 had just come back from Panama, so Fulford asked for
1/5 and Major General [John P.] Monohan [then commanding the 1st Marine
Division] said, "Fine. Take 1/5." Remember, we still didn't know if 3/9 was
going to be turned around. So we had 1/7, 2/7, and 1/5. Then as we started
working the TPFDD, and because Fulford wanted to take as much as we could, he
asked Division to turn around 3/9, and we got them. So the final bag was 1/7,
2/7, 1/5, and 3/9.
We worked all the staffs in CAST. We realized we could not do a standard
combined arms exercise but we've got a mobile assault course that ties in
artillery on a company level. So we said, "Let's get everybody on the mobile
assault course that we can, tanks, amtracks, LAVs, and then we'll work the
infantry guys, zero their battle-sights, put them on the weapons ranges, and
do as much of that as we can. That's exactly what we did.
I think that was a dynamite program. I think it raised the level of
confidence and maximized the opportunity that we had. The units that were
going to flow first in the air lift went out to the field first. As the
time-phased deployment unfolded, each one of the battalions got maximum
opportunity to train before leaving.
PROCEEDINGS: People may forget now about the chemical threat because it didn't
materialize. Did you have all your gear at the time?
Hopkins: We took everything we had. The intelligence guys knew the Iraqis had
a hell of an NBC [nuclear, biological, and chemical] capability, so we brought
all the gas masks, all the MOPP [mission-oriented protective posture] gear.
The British gear came later. We got anything we asked for. The Marine Corps
turned to; DoD turned to: the industrial complex turned to.
PROCEEDINGS: Are you emphasizing anything different in training now that
you're back?
Hopkins: They caught us short in our mine-clearing capability, because we
hadn't worked with that. The Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin,
California, went to battle stations, came up with some video tapes, brought
them on over, and we worked that. But we started from ground zero in building
up, getting equipment.
29
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
PROCEEDINGS: How did your equipment hold up over there--tanks, LAVs?
Hopkins: Terrific. People ask me, "Are these kids-or the officers--any better
than they were ten years ago?" I say, "Marines are always Marines, but there
is a big difference between us and 20 years ago, and that's the weapon systems
we have. All our weapon systems worked perfectly. The only real glitch we
had was the line charges we used to blow breaching paths through the mine
fields; we had only about a 50-60 percent success rate. We just doubled up
whatever our requirement was to do that, and we had some teams come on over
and work on it. But that's basically the only thing that caused us any
problems.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you have enough night-vision capability?
Hopkins: Not initially for everyone, but enough for the forward units.
Eventually, we had plenty. That was one of the imbalances that cost the
Iraqis. It was just dynamite. With the M60, we were taking T-72s out at
3,000 meters, using our night vision stuff. We used it and optimized it.
PROCEEDINGS: Did the 7th MEB have M60 tanks on the ships?
Hopkins: Yes. A lot of people said, "How can you go up against a T-72?" Well,
take [Lieutenant Colonel Alphonso] Buster Diggs, who commanded the 3d Tank
Battalion. When this thing came down, I called him in and asked, "What do we
have to do?" He said, "The only thing we've got to do is when they come,
we've got to close with them right away and take away the advantage they have
of outgunning us. In close, we'll have more maneuverability, we'll have the
sabot round, and we'll cause some problems." And he was right, absolutely
right. During Desert Storm we were taking out the T-72s with M60s firing
sabot rounds because we got in close.
PROCEEDINGS: You've also got remotely piloted vehicles [RPVs]. Did you take
the Pioneers?
Hopkins: We had one company in the fly-in echelon of the brigade. Initially
there were some problems but then they were worked out. They did a hell of a
job. We used them for battlefield surveillance, for adjusting artillery. The
RPVs are here to stay.
PROCEEDINGS: Do you have any strong feelings about whether some of them should
stay with the division, some belong to the wing, who should own them?
Hopkins: No. That was a turf battle at first. They should either be owned by
the division, and used by the surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence
guys; and by the artillery--or the assets should be pooled under the MEF.
We've got to resolve that. The aviators wanted to control the RPVs to
preclude any chance
30
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
for midair collisions, but that's not a problem. The RPVs have to be out in
front of a tactical commander, although you could use it for rear area
security.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you have any communications problems?
Hopkins: We used multi-channel and TacSat, but don't forget, we weren't that
far out. The regiment was outside of Jubayl and we could still communicate
with the LAVs that were forward, so the distances were okay.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you use an LAV for a command post?
Hopkins: No. My command post was not that far from the units. The command
and control could still go from Jubayl.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you use commercial telephones much?
Hopkins: Absolutely. The reason for that is that whether people realize it or
not, Saudi Arabia has the best telecommunications system in the whole world.
Remember, the Iraqis weren't trying to take all that stuff out, so we used any
means available while we established redundancy in our communication. Then as
the units kept on flowing in, we got more communications gear, and it worked
out.
PROCEEDINGS: Did the troops initially stay in the lines for a long time before
anybody got to stand down?
Hopkins: Yes, they did, but their adrenalin was pumping--later on it was
motivation that kept them going. We moved right to the field. General Boomer
made a conscious decision that we would not have any built-up areas like those
we had in Vietnam. We were going bare-boned. You put a camouflage net over
somebody and it drops the temperature about ten degrees. We had to get them
acclimatized as soon as we could, and the only way to do that was to put them
in the field. Three or four weeks after we got there, they'd be down to their
tee-shirts. These Marines really looked good. Then we just started training,
training, and more training. Eventually we set up a rotation system from the
field to Jubayl for some rest and relaxation.
PROCEEDINGS: Did individual weapons hold up in the sand?
Hopkins: Absolutely. We were cleaning the weapons twice, three times a day.
Sand storms would come up and the Marines would be doubly careful. But we
didn't have any problems like the ones we had in Vietnam, many of which were
caused by improper care.
31
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
PROCEEDINGS: How did the LAVs hold up?
Hopkins: Remember that the Marine Corps and the Army went together on the LAV
and then they left us. This is General [Alfred M.] Gray's initiative. One of
the things in combined arms, and one of the things in the desert, is mobility.
You can't walk. You've got to have mobility. The LAV is a dynamic weapon,
and that includes the TOW and mortar variants. The 25-mm chain gun was
deadly. The LAV held up. It could go 30-40 miles per hour across the desert
floor. We used it when we were determining where we were going to breach and
before G-Day, we used the LAV to run up and down the border of Kuwait to
confuse the Iraqis on where our penetration was going.
PROCEEDINGS: Are you referring here to deception operations such as Troy?
Hopkins: Yes. [Brigadier General] Tom Draude ran that, and the LAV was a big
player. The tires held up, everything worked.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you have any tank transporters?
Hopkins: No, our tanks went on their own tracks, or we got host-nation
support. We did do that. Or you borrow them from the Army, once they are
established.
PROCEEDINGS: What is the 7th MEB story?
Hopkins: I'm very proud of what happened. Since the Iran affair with the
hostages, a lot of people in the Carter administration, the Marine Corps, and
the Navy, invested in the MPS concept; it went like clockwork. We were the
only service that had any initial sustainability. We could have fought on 25
August and sustained ourselves, but everyone else had to wait about six months
for the buildup.
The Army moved all its combat service support into the reserves. In
contrast, we were feeding hot meals in the mess hall within 16 days, before
the MEF arrived. We had kept our field messes, had brought them with us, and
had the capability to serve cooked Bravo [canned] rations augmented by some
fresh food that came in from the infrastructure.
The secret of the MPS concept, of course, is exercises. When I came
aboard in 1989, a year before, we took four ships and went to Exercise Thalay
Thai. I had the same Colonel Powell who commanded the Brigade Service Support
Group; I had Colonel Fulford with the ground combat arm. The only officer I
didn't have was the MAG-70 commander, Colonel Fratarangelo, who was
transferred to Central Command; Colonel Rietsch took his place.
At Thalay Thai my staff and those commanders did a two-ship offload in a
worst-case basis--6,000 meters off the beach--by ferrying everything. People
knew each other, and they knew me.
32
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The secret is employment. Predeployment or deployment, we're going to
get there--but then some people lose track. The real question is what are you
going to do when you get there? Are you going to be combat effective? Do you
know how to do these things? I've always tried for balance. The deployment
mode is important. We've got to meet Transportation Command's requirements.
But what we get paid for by the American people, Congress, the Commander-in-
Chief, and the JCS, is employment. That's always my thing.
I believe that a lack of human intelligence regarding Iraq and its
capabilities, (remember that Humint [human intelligence] was drastically cut
at the national level in the 1970s), put us at the mercy of the National
systems. These photographic systems can't tell you enemy intentions, although
they can do other things well. The intelligence information flow was
terrible. We had to send guys back to Washington to get photos three days
before we went into the minefields.
We got terrific cooperation from the Saudis. In any kind of operation
like this, you're going to have to spend a lot of time with the host country.
in this case, the host country is very sophisticated and you're the outsider,
just walking in there. You have to do the right thing. It all worked out.
33
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
By the end of the ground war, over 90 percent of the Fleet Marine Force was in
the Persian Gulf. In less than six months, Marine logisticians created an
infrastructure that supported over 90,000 Marines, a larger Marine force than
that present in Vietnam at the height of that conflict. Brigadier General
Brabham commanded the 1st Force Service Support Group, the senior Marine
logistical headquarters in the Persian Gulf. In this interview he describes
the efforts of the Marines in his command both in preparation for and during
the war.
Training, Education Were the Keys
interview with Brigadier General James A. Brabham, USMC
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, November 1991
PROCEEDINGS: Let's go at it chronologically. Where were you when you got your
warning order about deploying to the Gulf? And how did you go about setting up
an FSSG-sized operation in Saudi Arabia?
Brabham: The initial warning came very quickly after the Iraqi assault into
Kuwait, which began on 2 August. Lieutenant General [Walter E.] Boomer, then
in process of taking command of I MEF [Marine Expeditionary Force] at Camp
Pendleton, California, began holding meetings with his subordinate commanders.
It soon became evident that out first move would be to establish a presence in
the Central Command headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as CentCom's Marine
Corps component--MarCent. Since I had served earlier on the CentCom staff,
General Boomer dispatched me to Riyadh on 10 August--not as an FSSG commander
but as his personal representative, in charge of MarCent (Forward). My first
task was to become involved in the initial planning for introduction of forces
into Saudi Arabia--which involved real estate, transportation, and other
things to be sorted out at the CinC's level. I took along a few Marines--
technical experts--directly to Riyadh, and checked in with the senior
representative of the Central Command, Lieutenant General Chuck Horner, who
also served as the commander of CentCom's Air Force forces, or CentAF. Many
of the CinC's staff, including the J-4 [logistics officer], Major General Dane
Starling, U.S. Army, had already deployed to Riyadh.
Besides setting up MarCent (Forward), I had to work with the CinC's staff to
prepare for the early introduction of the 7th MEB Marine Expeditionary
Brigade], and to establish a direct link back to General Boomer at Camp
Pendleton, California, to keep him posted in near-real time about the
situation developing in the Gulf region.
34
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Within days, Major General [John I.] Hopkins had brought the 7th MEB into
the theater, and was deploying his forces in their initial operating area near
[the port of] Al Jubayl. I stayed in close contact with him to ensure that
his immediate needs were being met by the CentCom staff. The inevitable
problems in coordinating with the host nation were best solved at the CinC
level, so that was another key task for me in Riyadh.
About one month later--6 September, as I recall--we had enough combat
service support personnel in country to stand up the headquarters of the 1st
FSSG at Al Jubayl. It was a composite unit, consisting largely of BSSG-7
[Brigade Service Support Group-7, supporting the 7th MEB]; the smaller BSSG-1,
from Hawaii; and some of my own 1st FSSG people from Camp Pendleton. At the
time I moved my flag from Riyadh to Al Jubayl, our composite unit was roughly
half the size of a full-fledged FSSG. (See map on page 23)
PROCEEDINGS: These brigade service support groups had a lot of experience in
MPS [maritime prepositioning ships] deployments, didn't they?
Brabham: Absolutely. This first combat MPS deployment [where Marines are
flown into a crisis area to "marry up" with heavy equipment and supplies
carried by ships of MPS squadrons) had been well-rehearsed, and it went very,
very well. There was some hurry-up pressure to get Marines out to their
defensive positions, in light of the Iraqi threat--and we had to get used to
working in the heat and sand and other complicating factors--but we got a
great assist from the fact that we had exclusive use of the large, modern port
of Al Jubayl. It is a 16-berth port with full facilities, and it even had an
indigenous work force in place, ready to assist.
PROCEEDINGS: Who coordinated that stevedore effort?
Brabham: Initially, General Hopkins coordinated the offload of the 7th Marine
Expeditionary Brigade, and the follow-on 1st MEB handled their own unloading.
Once my force service support group was in place, however, we picked up
responsibility for the total port operation, including native workers and U.S.
Army units.
PROCEEDINGS: That's got to be a Marine Corps first!
Brabham: I guess it probably was. But it was a cooperative effort, under 1st
FSSG guidance. We had a naval support element that came with the MPS
squadrons and became the Navy's cargo-handling group. Those sailors worked
alongside the Marine Landing Support Battalion. Eventually, we added an Army
cargo-handling group, the 10th Transportation Battalion, which handled some
Marine shipping as well as Army shipping. Everyone cooperated, and it didn't
matter who unloaded what. We just worked against the priorities of the port,
and things turned out rather well.
35
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
PROCEEDINGS: Who handled initial construction?
Brabham: All of the general-support engineering came through the combined
efforts of two Marine engineer battalions and one SeaBee regiment. The
primary engineering effort was to improve the existing airfields in the
region. The Saudi airfields had tremendous runways, but they were lacking in
aprons and parking areas and those sorts of ancillary facilities. So we had a
major Navy-Marine Corps construction effort under way, to make the airfields
fully capable of supporting tactical operations. We couldn't spend much time
building living or working spaces for the first couple of months, so units in
the field had to rely on tentage--but living under canvas worked out okay,
even though it was hot.
PROCEEDINGS: Other than offloading and getting the air-fields in shape, what
were your major concerns? Any shortages?
Brabham: None to speak of. We were able to validate the MPS concept by
providing 30-plus days of material and supplies. We were fortunate, in that
the Saudi Arabian infrastructure is pretty good, even though it is
concentrated along the coast. The Saudis were able to assist us initially
with an abundant supply of fuel, some water, and even some basic ration
support--helping to solve our first major problems. After that, our priority
was to get our Marine forces deployed to their defensive positions in the
desert, then to establish immediate resupply processes to keep them in water,
fuel, and--of course--ammunition.
Most of our efforts from the beginning concentrated on unloading,
hauling, and laying down ammunition in basic stowage facilities in the desert.
In fact, ammunition remained the logistical driving factor throughout the
entire operation. A 30-day supply of ammunition for a Marine division adds up
to about 265,000 tons. Try to imagine stacking, moving, and storing that
amount of ammo, and you'll get some idea of the strain it placed on our
transportation system.
PROCEEDINGS: As more and more Marines arrived in country, did you spread your
support operations out from Al Jubayl?
Brabham: Our initial defensive perimeter was some 30 miles away from the port,
out in the desert. Within weeks, as we developed our defense-in-depth, we had
forces operating 80 miles out from the port, in areas with absolutely no
supporting infrastructure. Here we were, still in the defensive--Desert
Shield--part of the operation, and we were already required to provide support
over terrain and distances that Marines don't normally think about. Our
immediate response was to establish several forward-based combat service
support detachments, capable of providing all classes of supply to the
forwardmost units.
36
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I decided early on that the highly centralized command-and-control aspects
of the FSSG would not work well over such distances, and that the proper
solution was to break the organization into two groups--one for general
support, and the other for direct support of tactical units. I built a small,
streamlined staff (with a colonel in charge) for each group. This setup left
the FSSG headquarters and me free to deal with the host nation and the other
services, while exerting overall supervision over the two groups. Aviation
support, among other things, fell to the general support group, except for
those aviation elements deployed far forward with the ground forces. The
direct support group commander--Colonel Alex Powell--had entered the theater
of operations in command of Brigade Service Support Group-7. He took his
BSSG-7 staff and shifted his focus to direct support of the ground forces,
collocating his headquarters with that of Major General [J. M.] Mike Myatt,
commanding the 1st Marine Division. Even though Colonel Powell was one of my
subordinate commanders, he became General Myatt's advocate for resources and
mobility--one of the keys to our success in operating over such great
distances.
Before the 2d Marine Division arrived in-country in its reinforcing role,
I had a phone conversation with Brigadier General [C.C.] Chuck Krulak,
commanding the 2d FSSG. We agreed to continue the general support/direct
support arrangement. My 1st FSSG headquarters would remain the overall
logistics coordination agency, in a general support role. The 2d FSSG would
run the forward logistics battle. At the height of the Desert Storm ground
action, our supply lines were stretched more than 250 miles from Al Jubayl. I
don't know how we could have succeeded without General Krulak and his FSSG in
the direct support role, supplying the ammo, fuel, and water--the biggest
logistical drivers of combat operations.
PROCEEDINGS: By the time the ground attack got under way, we had the
equivalent of another Marine Expeditionary Force afloat off Kuwait, poised for
a major amphibious assault. Did you have plans to support such an amphibious
operation, if required?
Brabham: We sure did. From the day they first appeared in the Gulf, our
amphibious forces received continuous support from our FSSG in Saudi Arabia.
For example, we brought tanks from the amphibious forces to Al Jubayl,
performed required maintenance on them, and sent them back to the ships. We
provided secondary depots for Major General Harry Jenkins, the Commanding
General, 4th MEB, in Oman or wherever he needed them.
Had there been an amphibious assault, the real logistical drivers would
have been--once again--ammo, fuel, and water. We had a coordinated plan to
support the amphibious forces along the lines already established: the 1st
FSSG would pick up general support responsibilities and General Jenkins's own
combat service support forces would become his direct support element in
country. I had a lot of meetings with Colonel Jim Doyle, the embarked brigade
service support group commander, and we were wired together pretty tightly.
37
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
PROCEEDINGS: Getting into Desert Storm itself--were you amazed by the
swiftness of the victory? You must have had worst-case plans for a longer
period, with more casualties.
Brabham: Yes, we were pleasantly surprised. I was always concerned about its
turning into a real slugfest, and it had great potential to do just that. We
could never discount the massive amounts of arms and material the Iraqis had
in Kuwait. What we didn't know for certain was the strength of their will to
fight. That's almost impossible to tell until the fight begins.
General Krulak and I decided that we needed a substantial surge
capability to carry our committed ground forces through any period of heavy
fighting--again, the drivers were ammo, fuel, and water. We planned to
position ten days' worth of all classes of supply right up front with General
Krulak, and in one intensive two-week period we managed to move all that gear
up to a newly constructed combat service support area, way out in the middle
of the desert, where it could best support the barrier and minefield breaching
plans of the two Marine divisions. General Krulak called it "Al Khanjar"-the
dagger.
We set a goal of staging ten days' worth of supplies and equipment at Al
Khanjar, and General Boomer agreed. Then we began a most intense buildup
period, which used every imaginable means of transport. In addition to our
normal load-haulers, we used tactical vehicles--the logistics vehicle system
["Dragon Wagon"] vehicles, in particular. We even leased commercial
tractor-trailers. At one point, I had more than 1,000 40-ton tractor-trailers
leased from throughout the Gulf, as well as Saudi Arabia. Reserve motor
transport Marines drove them, for the most part.
We got tremendous support from the Air Force C-130 transport pilots, who
flew virtually every mission we requested. Chuck Krulak built an
expeditionary airstrip for them at the forward combat service support area,
and we augmented the C-130 hops with extensive use of Marine CH-53 heavy-lift
helicopters. We even used Army boats--in particular, their large LCU-2000
landing craft and logistic support vessels--to ferry material up the Gulf
coast to Ras al Mish'ab. From there, it was a relatively short leg by
helicopter and truck to the forward support area. At the same time, we were
establishing an extensive medical network--a casualty-handling chain between
the forward base, the fleet hospitals, and the evacuation airfields. All in
all, it took an incredible two weeks of effort to prepare that forward staging
base for the two-division attack through the minefields. We really loaded it
up--to ensure that we would have staying power if a slugfest started right
away. Chuck Krulak can give you some more details. He built the thing and we
just tried to keep him supplied-no small task for either of us.
PROCEEDINGS: With many combat units widely dispersed across the desert, and
the potential for mass casualties ever present, you obviously couldn't
replicate the Vietnam medical evacuation system of relying extensively on
dustoff helicopters to get the wounded to medical battalion hospitals far in
the rear . . .
38
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brabham: We had two medical battalions and their hospitals staged far forward
with General Krulak, and at least one company from each battalion was
mobile-loaded, so its field hospital could move with the ground units and set
up rapidly even farther forward, if that were required. A lot of careful
planning and hard work went into the mobile-loading of those hospitals. The
blood-replacement system, for example, was in good shape. The blood was on
hand and it was kept fresh. It is correct that we would have had to rely on
ground transport for casualties, and we had leased at least 60 buses from
Saudi sources. We took out the seats and built in racks to hold litters. The
buses were staged and ready to go.
Navy medicine really came through in this operation. They got their gear
there, and their doctors and corpsmen, and they were ready for anything. They
have things to improve as we all do, but they were a success story all the
way. My hat is off to them.
PROCEEDINGS: Desert Storm had to be one of the few times since World War I
that Marines faced the threat of mass casualties from chemical or biological
weapons. What additional burden did this place on you or the medical chain?
Brabham: My biggest concern was water. Sourcing was not a problem--you can
always find sources of water--but water hauling and distribution were always a
concern, because most of our water was coming all the way from the Gulf coast.
We had some possible sources in Kuwait, once the attack began, but we couldn't
be sure of them until we could actually walk the ground. Now, if you add the
demands of decontamination of Marines and equipment to an already difficult
problem, you must start thinking of reallocating transportation assets to
bring forward enough water. At that point water--not ammunition--would have
become the primary driver of the logistical effort.
PROCEEDINGS: Desert Storm highlighted the issue of women in combat once again.
As I recall, women are well-represented in the combat service support units--
from supply clerks to heavy-equipment operators--and they were certainly
exposed to many of the stresses and dangers of combat in the events you have
outlined. Were there any problems in the deployability or performance of the
female Marines?
Brabham: Absolutely no problems--I say that unequivocally. They did their
jobs, performed them well, and posed no special considerations in the FSSG.
We simply did not worry about them. They did fine.
39
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
PROCEEDINGS: With the speedy resolution of the ground war, you had to shift
gears rather quickly, to begin bringing all that material back home and
putting it back into shape. What special challenges did you face during the
equipment-retrograde phase of the operation?
Brabham: The logistical driving factor during retrograde was to reconstitute
our maritime prepositioning ships program with prewar loads in those floating
storehouses, restoring that vital rapid-response capability to the nation as
soon as possible. At the same time, we were trying to get our forces back
home and get their equipment cleaned up, to restore their readiness to deploy
on short notice. It was truly a Marine Corps-wide effort, assisted by
Headquarters Marine Corps, Quantico. Fleet Marine Force Atlantic and Pacific
headquarters, and the logistics bases at Albany, Georgia, and Barstow,
California.
Such a massive relocation of forces and equipment takes a while, even
under the best conditions. We had to support the pullout of the 1st Marine
Division and at the same time keep a 250-mile supply line open to the 2d
Marine Division, which would come out months later. We probably were
stretched as much during that critical early phase of redeployment as we were
at any other time, trying to do everything at once.
But the equipment is now back, and it's ready to go, although residual
cleanup efforts continue. Training has resumed at our bases, and we have no
significant holes in our readiness or our capability to deploy again, when
called. When you consider the hard, round-the-clock use that much of the
equipment got for eight months, including combat, that's pretty phenomenal.
And there are a lot of wonderful people out there in the logistics system who
made that happen.
PROCEEDINGS: Is there any question I haven't asked that you would like to
answer?
Brabham: The question I'm asked most frequently is, "What was the key to our
logistic success in Desert Storm?" That's a complex question, but I have a
rather simple answer: It's the educational level of our enlisted Marines and
their officers in our Corps today. And I say that because the key to being
able to do what we did in the Gulf is the flexibility of the Marines involved.
The way to meet those huge logistical demands is to flow your resources to the
focus of effort--the highest priority need at the time. This requires
flexibility, in the form of intelligent, well-trained Marines who can be
retrained on the spot and shift from one skill to another to meet the next
week's demand. Today's Marines can adjust that way, and they can make
decisions on their own to accomplish their missions, even though they may be
250 miles away from their bosses. In my view, that kind of flexibility goes
straight back to education.
PROCEEDINGS: As the new head of education and training at Quantico, you now
have a chance to put that theory into practice.
Brabham: I sure do.
40
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
In these articles Henry Allen, himself a former Marine, writing for THE
WASHINGTON POST, captures the outlook and idiosyncracies of the frontline
Marine. The first article describes the most self reliant of all modern
warriors, the sniper. In the second article, Allen shows how Marines, having
spent months in the desert away from their families, and with the prospect of
war looming, celebrated Christmas.
Squinting at Death: The Desert Snipers.
by Henry Allen
THE WASHINGTON POST, 28 December 1990.
Of course, when you are a sniper there is shooting.
In the Marine Corps this shooting is done with a custom-made 14-pound
.308-caliber rifle with a glass-bedded bull barrel, a Remington action and a
10-power Unertl telescopic sight. It has a bolt that doesn't so much load the
bullet as insinuate it into the chamber to be fired, a kind of smug
perfection. It has the heft of one single piece of metal, like an ingot.
You ask if you can lift it to your shoulder and look through the sights.
A circle of Saudi Arabian desert reels in the lens, with a bit of scrub
hovering there in magnified silence. There is something about it that is
intimate and unreal at the same time, as if you were aiming at a thought
inside your own mind.
"The first impression people get when you tell them you're a sniper is
you're the guy in the tree," says Sgt. Dave Cornett as he puts the rifle,
called an M40A1, back in a sealed and cushioned carrying case. But you'd
never shoot from a tree."
On the other hand, there are all those stories your Uncle Louie told
about Japanese snipers in palm trees, and there is the ongoing concept of man
as the murdering ape, too, so the tree thing lingers. Trees do not figure in
this theater. Snipers will be lucky to find a dune, a bit of scrub, maybe one
of the little trash piles left by the Bedouins.
Snipers are among the last warriors in the Western world who choose their
enemies and not only kill them but see them die.
This is not fashionable, nowadays, as Vietnam veterans learned when they
were asked, with triumphal snickers: "Did you kill anybody?"
Sgt. Alvin York was a great American legend of World War I for his
sniping. You shoot Germans like turkeys, he said, you start at the back of
the column and work up. But ever since bureaucrats and intellectuals started
doing most of the talking about war after World War II, this kind of killing
has come
Copyright 1990 THE WASHINGTON POST. Reprinted With Permission
41
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
to seem vulgar, even psychopathic, a coarse necessity best ignored if you want
to enjoy the benefits of it, like the making, as they say, of sausage.
It is more modern to press a button and annihilate scores, hundreds,
thousands, whatever, with systems, capabilities, all of the euphemisms for the
mass-production sniping that is war in the age of progress and technology.
As Jean Cocteau said of World War II, the plural has triumphed over the
singular, a tendency Dylan Thomas deplored when he insisted in a poem about an
air raid that "after the first death there is no other."
Sniping, the shooting part at least, is about first deaths. Snipers
prefer to talk about the other parts. They have learned to do it in precisely
the language that bureaucratic intellectuals approve of.
"People don't understand sniping," says Staff Sgt. Mike Barrett. "We're
the most misunderstood people in the world. Our primary mission is
intelligence, indexing targets, establishing disposition and composition of
the enemy, surveillance and target acquisition, determining what's viable and
what's not." Indexing. Disposition. Viable.
"We are the eyes and ears of the commanding officer. We carry cameras.
We have to be able to draw, do panoramic perspective drawing of what we see.
You have to be able to make it by yourselves out there, you and your partner.
You carry one meal a day, I never take a sleeping bag, I don't believe in
creature comforts. The more creature comforts you have, the less edge you
have, and I'm not about losing the edge. If it gets cold, my partner and I,
we hot-rack it, you roll up together inside a poncho liner, like you would
with your wife."
Of course, there is the shooting too. Sometimes you might use the range
of these rifles, well over 1,000 meters, to take out a radar installation.
Sometimes, you might kill someone.
There is no fancy language for this part, it seems.
The sniper puts the rifle on his shoulder and his partner studies the
target through a spotting scope, calculates the range, estimates how much to
allow for crosswind by studying heat waves twitching out there.
The sniper takes a breath, lets half of it out and fires. It can take a
full second for the bullet to get there.
"Your spotter is looking through the scope," Barrett says. "He sees the
guy's head explode. Vapor."
42
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Saudi Christmas: the Marines Banter and Brave the Cold
by Henry Allen
THE WASHINGTON POST, 26 December 1990.
Shining in the east, far beyond First Battalion, Fifth Marines, were a
couple of flares from gas burning over oil wells, the closest thing the
Marines would see to Christmas lights.
The Marines had gotten here in August, back when the temperature was 130
degrees and everyone was saying they'd be home for Christmas.
Now it was 40 degrees. It was midnight on Christmas Eve. This is an old
story, and against the gas flares you could see the outlines of Lance Cpl.
Steven Shalno and a buddy sitting on five-gallon water cans having an old
argument to go along with it, one of the older arguments in the history of the
world.
"I am from Boston, Massachusetts," Shalno said very slowly, "and I am
behind George Bush, my commander in chief, 110 percent."
"I am half Indian," said his buddy, not quite as slowly. "And I say it
is cold . . . out here. This whole thing out here, you've got to be kidding."
"I am from Boston, Massachusetts," Shalno kept saying, "and I am a devil
dog."
"Devil dog" is what the Germans called Marines in World War I. The
Marines know their history. It seems like half the corps also has read all of
the novels about Casca, the eternal mercenary, who pulled the duty of nailing
Christ to the Cross and was doomed, the Marines will tell you, to spend
eternity as a soldier, a career that can lead to billets like sitting on
five-gallon water cans in the cold desert wind on Christmas Eve in Saudi
Arabia.
After a while, they went back into their hooch, a bunch of canvas cots
under camouflage netting. The wind blew through the netting. Men snored and
talked in their sleep--they dream a lot out here in the desert, they say. You
could see the stars through the netting. Jittery smears.
For a long time Shalno stood outside the hooch and stared at the cot of a
stranger to the platoon, stared and stared until the stranger decided to move
and show he was awake.
"You warm enough?" Shalno asked. "You look cold, man. I'll give you my
poncho liner."
Copyright 1990 THE WASHINGTON POST. Reprinted With Permission
43
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
"Merry Christmas," the stranger said. "Merry Christmas," Shalno said.
Then he curled up on his own cot, no poncho liner, didn't even get into his
sleeping bag, and fell instantly asleep.
In the morning, the flares had turned to black smoke over the horizon and
it was Christmas Day.
The Marines had a Christmas tree made out of netting, toilet paper,
plastic plates, a cardboard star and some tinsel streamers that had come in
all the Christmas mail, tons of it, the whole country sending presents to
these guys.
A truck full of carolers labored through the sand from company to
company, and Marines sang along with them in a tight, quiet way.
"Anybody tells you morale is high, they're a damn liar," said Pfc. Joseph
Queen, who grew up in Northwest Washington. Then he went back to insulting
fellow radio man, Lance Cpl. Erik Holt, a Nez Perce Indian who was disputing
Queen's taste in athletic teams.
"Celtics," said Queen. "Chief, you must be drinking that Indian water
again."
Back home in Washington, Queen would have been helping his grandmother
put toys together, he said. "I'm one of her elves."
Back in Idaho, Holt said, "We'd go to the sweathouse in the morning, pray
to the Great Spirit, tell Indian stories about old times.
Wishing each other quiet Merry Christmases, Marines ambled toward the
drop points for morning chow, cereal and milk. Four months of living in soft
sand has given them a slow tread that makes them look tired and preoccupied.
"Reindeer!" somebody said. Eight Marines had lined up in front of a personnel
carrier, and they pretended to pull it with a rope while guys on top in Santa
hats tossed candy and presents.
"Actually, today is pretty motivating," said Staff Sgt. Brendon Van
Beuge. "You get the whole day off."
A Marine standing behind him said, "The whole day."
It wasn't sarcasm, it was the way Marines have of taking irony just far
enough that it becomes sincerity, and then taking that so far that it's irony
again.
Over at Dragons platoon--Dragons are antitank missiles carried by two-man
teams--Sgt. James Grassmick said, "Christmas," and lifted a slow thumb of
approval.
In the back of their hooch, Gunnery Sgt. Darrell Norford heated coffee on
a little gasoline stove.
"I've been married for seven years; I've been gone at Christmas for five
of them," he said. "Before we came out here, we'd only been back from
training in Panama for 24 hours. I patted my kids on the head, saw my wife...
and then we headed for the desert."
He had an old sergeant's way of watching you listen to him. "This thing
isn't for democracy or Kuwait or Texaco, it's for 50 percent of the world's
oil reserves, and that's what America runs on."
A lot of Marines in this battalion said something like this, part
realism, part cynicism, part professionalism, part Casca and part because
they've been alone
44
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
together for so long in the desert that any time they talk to a stranger they
have the tone of people clearing up misconceptions.
"Everybody's so in sync," said Lance Cpl. Benjamin Bradshaw.
"I could tell you every story Ben tells about his dog, Gretchen," said
Lance Cpl. Brian Archer.
"German shorthair," Bradshaw said. "No morals, but a smart dog." It was
almost as if they didn't need Christmas the way the rest of America does to
feel close, to feel like family, a family standing around dipping snuff
together and growing their first mustaches.
A lot of them said morale had actually improved when they found out they
wouldn't be home for Christmas after all.
There is a kind of logic to this, a logic that the Marine Corps runs on.
Capt. Jeremiah Walsh explained: "Everybody wanted to have a date they'd
be going home, but once we found out there would be no date, a great burden
was lifted from us."
Walsh has a master's degree in international relations, and he said he
had no animosity toward Iraqis.
"I think they're nice people. I was in Beirut when the bomb went off and
we lost all those Marines, but I don't hate those people either."
Very professional, but it was reasoning that was out there in
irony/sincerity land too.
Walsh called a company formation to explain it to his troops. Guidon
pennants rolled in the wind, and Marines did slow rounded facing movements in
the sand.
"I want to wish all of you a Merry Christmas " Walsh said. "The
surroundings are not what we want, but the camaraderie is here, the morale is
here to do the job. Hopefully, a diplomatic solution will take precedence,
but if not. . ."
After all the wristwatches and crossword puzzle books, yo-yos, footballs
and Frisbees for the troops--one guy even got a box of caviar and quail eggs--
Lt.Col. Chris Cortez, the battalion commander, announced his own gift. From 6
in the morning till 5 in the afternoon, "in the spirit of Christmas," his
troops would be allowed to listen to their tape recorders and radios without
ear-phones--sound discipline would be relaxed for one day, but one day only.
There would be volleyball, there would be a lot of dandy games. But after 5
o'clock, 1700 hours, there would be silence again in the desert, and no lights
again, not even reading under blankets with flashlights, nothing.
Silence and darkness, along with the gas flares and the stars, and here
and there the old muttered arguments, to fight, not to fight--not that they'd
make the slightest difference.
45
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
This message was sent to the men and women of I Marine Expeditionary Force by
their commanding general, Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, on the eve of
the ground attack into Kuwait.
Message to members of I Marine Expeditionary Force, 23 Feb 91
Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, USMC
After months of preparation, we are on the eve of the liberation of
Kuwait, a small, peaceful country that was brutally attacked and subsequently
pillaged by Iraq. Now we will attack into Kuwait, not to conquer, but to
drive out the invaders and restore the country to its citizens. In so doing,
you not only return a nation to its people, but you will destroy the war
machine of a ruthless dictator, who fully intended to control this part of the
world, thereby endangering many other nations, including our own.
We will succeed in our mission because we are well-trained and
well-equipped; because we are U.S. Marines, Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen: and
because our cause is just. Your children and grandchildren will read about
your victory in the years to come and appreciate your sacrifice and courage.
America will watch her sons and daughters and draw strength from your success.
May the spirit of your Marine forefathers ride with you and may God give
you the strength to accomplish your mission.
Semper Fi.
Boomer.
46
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
This is a transcript of the famous "Mother of all briefings," in which General
H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander in Chief U.S. Central Command, described to
the world on live television how United States and allied forces routed the
Iraqi army.
CENTCOM News Briefing
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, 27 February 1991
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being here.
I promised some of you a few days ago that as soon as the opportunity
presented itself I would give you a complete rundown on what we were doing,
and more importantly, why we were doing it--the strategy behind what we were
doing. I've been asked by Secretary [Richard B.] Cheney to do that this
evening, so if you will bear with me, we're going to go through a briefing. I
apologize to the folks over here who won't be able to see the charts, but
we're going to go through a complete briefing of the Operation. (Map 1)
This goes back to 7 August through 17 January. As you recall, we started our
deployment on the 7th of August. Basically what we started out against was a
couple of hundred thousand Iraqis that were in the Kuwait theater of
operations. I don't have to remind you all that we brought over, initially,
defensive forces in the form of the 101st, the 82d, the 24th Mechanized
Infantry Division, the 3d Armored Cavalry, and in essence, we had them arrayed
to the south, behind the Saudi task force. Also, there were Arab forces over
here in this area, arrayed in defensive positions. That, in essence, is the
way we started.
In the middle of November, the decision was made to increase the force
because, by that time, huge numbers of Iraqi forces had flowed into the area,
and generally in the disposition as they're shown right here. Therefore, we
increased the forces and built up more forces.
I would tell you that at this time we made a very deliberate decision to
align all of those forces within the boundary looking north towards Kuwait--
this being King Khalid Military City over here. So we aligned those forces so
it very much looked like they were all aligned directly on the Iraqi position.
We also, at the time, had a very active naval presence out in the gulf,
and we made sure that everybody understood about that naval presence. One of
the reasons why we did that is it became very apparent to us early on that the
Iraqis were quite concerned about an amphibious operation across the shores to
liberate Kuwait--this being Kuwait City. They put a very, very heavy barrier
of infantry along here, and they proceeded to build an extensive barrier that
went all the way across the border, down and around and up the side of Kuwait.
47
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Map 1, Ground Combat Ratio
48
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Basically, the problem we were faced with was this: when you looked at
the troop numbers, they really outnumbered us about 3-to-2, and when you
consider the number of combat service support people we have-that's
logisticians and that sort of thing in our Armed Forces, as far as fighting
troops, we were really outnumbered 2-to-1. In addition to that, they had
4,700 tanks versus our 3,500 when the buildup was complete, and they had a
great deal more artillery than we do.
I think any student of military strategy would tell you that in order to
attack a position, you should have a ratio of approximately 3-to-1 in favor of
the attacker. In order to attack a position that is heavily dug in and
barricaded such as the one we had here, you should have a ratio of 5-to-1 in
the way of troops in favor of the attacker. So you can see basically what our
problem was at that time. We were outnumbered as a minimum, 3-to-2, as far as
troops were concerned; we were outnumbered as far as tanks were concerned, and
we had to come up with some way to make up the difference. (Map 2)
I apologize for the busy nature of this chart, but I think it,s very
important for you to understand exactly what our strategy was. What you see
here is a color Coding where green is a go sign or a good sign as far as our
forces are concerned; yellow would be a caution sign; and red would be a stop
sign. Green represents units that have been attritted below 50 percent
strength; the yellow are units that are between 50 and 75 percent strength;
and of course the red are units that are over 75 percent strength.
What we did, of course, was start an extensive air campaign, and I
briefed you in quite some detail on that in the past. One of the purposes, I
told you at that time, of that extensive air campaign was to isolate the
Kuwaiti theater of operation: by taking out all of the bridges and supply
lines that ran between the north and the southern part of Iraq. That was to
prevent reinforcement and supply coining into the southern part of Iraq and
the Kuwaiti theater of operations. We also conducted a very heavy bombing
campaign, and many people questioned why the extensive bombing campaign. This
is the reason why. It was necessary to reduce these forces down to a strength
that made them weaker, particularly along the front line barrier that we had
to go through.
We continued our heavy operations out in the sea because we wanted the
Iraqis to continue to believe that we were going to conduct a massive
amphibious operation in this area. I think many of you recall the number of
amphibious rehearsals we had, to include Imminent Thunder, that was written
about quite extensively for many reasons. But we continued to have those
operations because we wanted him [Saddam Hussein] to concentrate his forces--
which he did.
I think this is probably one of the most important parts of the entire
briefing I can talk about. As you know, very early on we took out the Iraqi
air force. We knew that he [Saddam Hussein] had very, very limited
reconnaissance means. Therefore, when we took out his air force, for all
intents and purposes, we took out his ability to see what we were doing down
here in Saudi Arabia. Once we had taken out his eyes, we did what could best
be described as the "Hail Mary play" in football. I think you recall when the
quarterback is
49
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Map 2
50
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
desperate for a touchdown at the very end, what he does is he sets up behind
the center, and all of a sudden, every single one of his receivers goes way
out to one flank, and they all run down the field as fast as they possibly can
and into the end zone, and he lobs the ball. In essence, that's what we did.
When we knew that he couldn't see us any more, we did a massive movement
of troops all the way out to the west, to the extreme west, because at that
time we knew that he was still fixed in this area with the vast majority of
his forces, and once the air campaign started, he would be incapable of moving
out to counter this move, even if he knew we made it. There were some
additional troops out in this area, but they did not have the capability nor
the time to put in the barrier that had been described by Saddam Hussein as an
absolutely impenetrable tank barrier that no one would ever get through. I
believe those were his words.
So this was absolutely an extraordinary move. I must tell you, I can't
recall any time in the annals of military history when this number of forces
have moved over this distance to put themselves in a position to be able to
attack. But what's more important, and I think it's very, very important that
I make this point, and that's these logistics bases. Not only did we move the
troops out there, but we literally moved thousands and thousands of tons of
fuel, of ammunition, of spare parts, of water, and of food out here in this
area, because we wanted to have enough supplies on hand so if we launched
this, if we got into a slugfest battle, which we very easily could have gotten
into, we'd have enough supplies to last for 60 days. It was an absolutely
gigantic accomplishment, and I can't give credit enough to the logisticians
and the transporters who were able to pull this off, for the superb support we
had from the Saudi government, the literally thousands and thousands of
drivers of every national origin who helped us in this move out here. And of
course, great credit goes to the commanders of these units who were also able
to maneuver their forces out here and put them in this position.
But as a result, by the 23d of February, what you found is this
situation. The front lines had been attritted down to a point where all of
these units were at 50 percent or below. The second level, basically, that we
had to face, and these were the real tough fighters we were worried about
right here, were attritted to someplace between 50 and 75 percent. Although
we still had the Republican Guard located here and here, and part of the
Republican Guard in this area--they were very strong, and the Republican Guard
up in this area, strong; and we continued to hit the bridges all across this
area to make absolutely sure that no more reinforcements came into the battle.
This was the situation on the 23d of February. (Map 3)
I shouldn't forget these fellows. That SF stands for Special Forces. We
put Special Forces deep into the enemy territory. They went out on strategic
reconnaissance for us, and they let us know what was going on out there. They
were the eyes that were out there, and it's very important that I not forget
those folks. This was the morning of the 24th. Our plan initially had been
to start over here in this area, and do exactly what the Iraqis thought we
were going to do, and that's take them on head-on into their most heavily
defended area. Also,
51
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Map 3
52
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
at the same time, we launched amphibious feints and naval gunfire in this
area, so that they continued to think we were going to be attacking along this
coast, and therefore, fixed their forces in this position. Our hope was that
by fixing the forces in this position and with this attack through here in
this position, we would basically keep the forces here, and they wouldn't know
what was going on out in this area. I believe we succeeded in that very well.
At 4 o'clock in the morning, the Marines, the 1st Marine Division and the
2d Marine Division, launched attacks through the barrier system. They were
accompanied by the US Army Tiger Brigade of the 2d Armored Division. At the
same time, over here, two Saudi task forces also launched a penetration
through this barrier. But while they were doing that, at 4 o'clock in the
morning over here, the 6th French Armored Division, accompanied by a brigade
of the 82d Airborne, also launched an overland attack to their objective up in
this area. As Salman airfield, and we were held up a little bit by the
weather, but by 8 o'clock in the morning, the 101st Airborne air assault
launched an air assault deep into enemy territory to establish a forward
operating base in this location right here. Let me talk about each one of
those moves.
First of all, the Saudis over here on the east coast did a terrific job.
They went up against the very, very tough barrier systems; they breached the
barrier very, very effectively; they moved out aggressively; and continued
their attacks up the coast.
I can't say enough about the two Marine divisions. If I used words like
brilliant, it would really be an underdescription of the absolutely superb job
that they did in breaching the so-called impenetrable barrier. It was a
classic, absolutely classic, military breaching of a very, very tough
minefield, barbed wire, fire trenches-type barrier. They went through the
first barrier like it was water. They went across into the second barrier
line, even though they were under artillery fire at the time--they continued
to open up that breach. Then they brought both divisions streaming through
that breach. Absolutely superb operation, a textbook, and I think it will be
studied for many, many years to come as the way to do it.
I would also like to say that the French did an absolutely superb job of
moving out rapidly to take their objective out here, and they were very, very
successful, as was the 101st. Again, we still had the Special Forces located
in this area.
What we found was, as soon as we breached these obstacles here and
started bringing pressure, we started getting a large number of surrenders. I
think I talked to some of you about that this evening when I briefed you on
the evening of the 24th. We finally got a large number of surrenders. We
also found that these forces right here, were getting a large number of
surrenders and were meeting with a great deal of success.
We were worried about the weather. The weather was going to get pretty
bad the next day, and we were worried about launching this air assault. We
also started to have a huge number of atrocities of really the most
unspeakable type committed in downtown Kuwait City, to include reports that
the desalinization plant had been destroyed. When we heard that, we were
quite concerned
53
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Map 4
54
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
about what might be going on. Based upon that, and the situation as it was
developing, we made the decision that rather than wait until the following
morning to launch the remainder of these forces, that we would go ahead and
launch these forces that afternoon. (Map 4)
This was the situation you saw the afternoon of the 24th. The Marines
continued to make great progress going through the breach in this area, and
were moving rapidly north. The Saudi task force on the east coast was also
moving rapidly to the north and making very, very good progress. We launched
another Egyptian/Arab force in this location, and another Saudi force in this
location-again, to penetrate the barrier. But once again, to make the enemy
continue to think that we were doing exactly what he wanted us to do, and
that's make a headlong assault into a very, very tough barrier system--a very,
very tough mission for these folks here. But at the same time, what we did is
continued to attack with the French; we launched an attack on the part of the
entire VII Corps where the 1st Infantry Division went through, breached an
obstacle and minefield barrier here, established quite a large breach through
which we passed the 1st British Armored Division. At the same time, we
launched the 1st Armored Division and the 3d Armored Division and because of
our deception plan and the way it worked, we didn't even have to worry about a
barrier, we just went right around the enemy and were behind him in no time at
all, and the 2d Armored Cavalry [Regiment]. The 24th Mech Division also
launched out here in the far west. I ought to talk about the 101st, because
this is an important point.
Once the 101st had their forward operating base established here, they
then went ahead and launched into the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. There are
a lot of people who are still saying that the objective of the United States
of America was to capture Iraq and cause the downfall of the entire country of
Iraq. Ladies and gentlemen, when we were here, we were 150 miles away from
Baghdad, and there was nobody between us and Baghdad. If it had been our
intention to take Iraq, if it had been our intention to destroy the country,
if it had been our intention to overrun the country, we could have done it
unopposed, for all intents and purposes, from this position at that time.
That was not our intention, we have never said it was our intention. Our
intention was truly to eject the Iraqis out of Kuwait and destroy the military
power that had come in here. (Map 5)
So this was the situation at the end of 24 February in the afternoon.
The next two days went exactly like we thought they would go. The Saudis
continued to make great progress up on the eastern flank, keeping the pressure
off the Marines on the flank here. The Special Forces went out and started
operating small boat operations out in this area to help clear mines, but also
to threaten the flanks here, and to continue to make them think that we were,
in fact, going to conduct amphibious operations. The Saudi and Arab forces
that came in and took these two initial objectives turned to come in on the
flank heading towards Kuwait City, located right in this area here. The
British UK passed through and continued to attack up this flank. Of course,
the VII Corps came in and attacked in this direction shown here. The 24th
Infantry Division
55
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Map 5
56
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
made an unbelievable move all the way across into the Tigris and Euphrates
valley, and proceeded in blocking this avenue of egress out, which was the
only avenue of egress left because we continued to make sure that the bridges
stayed down. So there was no way out once the 24th was in this area, and the
101st continued to operate in here. The French, having succeeded in achieving
all their objectives, then set up a flanking position, a flank guard position
here, to make sure there were no forces that could come in and get us from the
flank.
By this time we had destroyed, or rendered completely ineffective, over
21 Iraqi divisions. (Map 6)
Of course, that brings us to today. Where we are today, is we now have a
solid wall across the north of the 18th Airborne Corps consisting of the units
shown right here, attacking straight to the east. We have a solid wall here,
again of the VII Corps also attacking straight to the east. The forces that
they are fighting right now are the forces of the Republican Guard.
Again, today we had a very significant day. The Arab forces coming from
both the west and the east closed in and moved into Kuwait City where they are
now in the process of securing Kuwait City entirely and ensuring that it's
absolutely secure. The 1st Marine Division continues to hold Kuwait
International Airport. The 2d Marine Division continues to be in a position
where it blocks any egress out of the city of Kuwait, so no one can leave. To
date, we have destroyed over 29--destroyed or rendered inoperable--I don't
like to say destroyed because that gives you visions of absolutely killing
everyone, and that's not what we're doing. But we have rendered completely
ineffective over 29 Iraqi divisions. The gates are closed. There is no way
out of here; there is no way out of here; and the enemy is fighting us in this
location right here.
We continue, of course, overwhelming air power. The air has done a
terrific job from the start to finish in supporting the ground forces, and we
also have had great support from the Navy--both in the form of naval gunfire
and in support of carrier air.
That's the situation at the present time. (Chart 1)
Peace is not without a cost. These have been the US casualties to date.
As you can see, these were the casualties we had in the air war; then of
course, we had the terrible misfortune of the Scud attack the other night
which, again, because the weapon malfunctioned, it caused death,
unfortunately, rather than in a proper function. Then, of course, these are
the casualties in the ground war, the total being shown here. (Chart 2)
I would just like to comment briefly about the casualty chart. The loss
of one human life is intolerable to any of us who are in the military. But I
would tell you that the casualties of that order of magnitude considering the
job that's been done and the number of forces that were involved is almost
miraculous, as far as the light number of casualties. It will never be
miraculous to the families of those people, but it is miraculous.
This is what's happened to date with the Iraqis. They started out with
over 4,000 tanks. As of today, we have over 3,000 confirmed destroyed and I
do mean destroyed or captured. As a matter of fact, that number is low
because you can add another 700 to that as a result of the battle that's going
on right
57
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Map 6
58
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
U.S. CASUALTY COUNT
KIA WIA MIA
CASUALTIES AIR WAR 23 34 39
(17 JAN-23 FEB)
CASUALTIES SCUD ATTK 28 90 0
CASUALTIES GROUND WAR 28 89 5
-------------------------------------
TOTAL CASUALTIES 79 213 44
CHART 1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
KTO GROUND ORDER OF BATTLE
ORIGINAL DESTROYED
STRENGTH OR
CAPTURED
TANK 4280 3008
ARMORED VEHICLES 2870 1856
ARTILLERY 3110 2140
CHART 2
59
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
now with the Republican Guard. So that number is very, very high, and we've
almost completely destroyed the offensive capability of the Iraqi forces in
the Kuwaiti theater of operations. The armored vehicle count is also very,
very high, and of course, you can see we're doing great damage to the
artillery. The battle is still going on, and I suspect that these numbers
will mount rather considerably. (Chart 3)
I wish I could give you a better number on this, to be very honest with
you. This is just a wild guess. It's an estimate that was sent to us by the
field today at noontime, but the prisoners out there are so heavy and so
extensive, and obviously, we're not in the business of going around and
counting noses at this time to determine precisely what the exact number is.
But we're very, very confident that we have well over 50,000 prisoners, of war
at this time, and that number is mounting on a continuing basis.
I would remind you that the war is continuing to go on. Even as we speak
right now there is fighting going on out there. Even as we speak right now
there are incredible acts of bravery going on. This afternoon we had an F-16
pilot shot down. We had contact with him, he had a broken leg on the ground.
Two helicopters from the 101st, they didn't have to do it, but they went in to
try and pull that pilot out. One of them was shot down, and we're still in
the process of working through that. But that's the kind of thing that's
going on out on the battlefield right now. It is not a Nintendo game--it is a
tough battle-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ENEMY PRISONERS OF WAR
17 JAN - 23 FEB 2,720
24 FEB - 27 FEB 48,000+
------------
TOTAL 50,000+
CHART 3
60
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
field where people are risking their lives at all times. There are great
heroes out there, and we ought to be very, very proud of them.
That's the campaign to date. That's the strategy to date. I'd now be
very happy to take any questions anyone might have.
Q: I want to go back to the air war. The chart you showed there with the
attrition rates of the various forces was almost the exact reverse of what
most of us thought was happening. It showed the front line troops attritted
to 75 percent or more, and the Republican Guard, which a lot of public focus
was on when we were covering the air war, attritted less than 75. Why is
that? How did it come to pass?
A: Let me tell you how we did this. We started off, of course, against
the strategic targets. I briefed you on that before. At the same time, we
were hitting the Republican Guard. But the Republican Guard, you must
remember, is a mechanized armor force for the most part, that is very, very
well dug in, and very, very well spread out. So in the initial stages of the
game, we were hitting the Republican Guard heavily, but we were hitting them
with strategic--type bombers rather than pinpoint precision bombers.
For lack of a better word, what happened is the air campaign shifted from
the strategic phase into the theater. We knew all along that this was the
important area. The nightmare scenario for all of us would have been to go
through, get hung up in this breach right here, and then have the enemy
artillery rain chemical weapons down on troops that were in a gaggle in the
breach right there. That was the nightmare scenario. So one of the things
that we felt we must have established is an absolute, as much destruction as
we could possibly get, of the artillery, the direct support artillery, that
would be firing on that wire. That's why we shifted it in the very latter
days, we absolutely punished this area very heavily because that was the first
challenge. Once we got through this and were moving, then it's a different
war. Then we're fighting our kind of war. Before we get through that, we're
fighting their kind of war, and that's what we didn't want to have to do.
At the same time, we continued to attrit the Republican Guard, and that's
why I would tell you that, again, the figures we're giving you are
conservative, they always have been conservative. But we promised you at the
outset we weren't going to give you anything inflated, we were going to give
you the best we had.
Q: He seems to have about 500-600 tanks left out of more than 4,000, as
just an example. I wonder if in an overview, despite these enormously
illustrative pictures, you could say what's left of the Iraqi army in terms of
how they could ever be a regional threat, or a threat to the region again?
A: There's not enough left at all for him to be a regional threat to the
region, an offensive regional threat. As you know, he has a very large army,
but most of the army that is left north of the Tigris/Euphrates valley is an
infantry army, it's not an armored army, it's not an armored heavy army, which
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means it really isn't an offensive army. So it doesn't have enough left.
unless someone chooses to re-arm them in the future.
Q. You said the Iraqis have got these divisions along the border which
were seriously attritted. It figures to be about 200,000 troops, maybe, that
were there. You've got 50,000 prisoners. Where are the rest of them?
A: There were a very, very large number of dead in these units--a very,
very large number of dead. We even found them, when we went into the units
ourselves, we found them in the trench lines. There were very heavy
desertions. At one point we had reports of desertion rates of more than 30
percent of the units that were along the front here. As you know, we had
quite a large number of prisoners of war that came across, so I think it's a
combination of desertions, of people that were killed, of the people that
we've captured, and of some other people who are just flat still running.
Q. It seems you've done so much, that the job is effectively done. Can I
ask you, what do you think really needs more to be done? His forces are, if
not destroyed, certainly no longer capable of posing a threat to the region.
They seem to want to go home. What more has to be done?
A: If I'm to accomplish the mission that I was given, and that's to make
sure that the Republican Guard is rendered incapable of conducting the type of
heinous acts that they've conducted so often in the past, what has to be done
is these forces continue to attack across here and put the Republican Guard
out of business. We're not in the business of killing them. We have PSYOP
[psychological operations] aircraft up. We're telling them over and over
again, all you've got to do is get out of your tanks and move off, and you
will not be killed. But they're continuing to fight, and as long as they
continue to fight, we're going to continue to fight with them.
Q: That move on the extreme left, which got within 150 miles of Baghdad,
was it also a part of the plan that the Iraqis might have thought it was going
to Baghdad, and would that have contributed to the deception?
A: I wouldn't have minded at all if they'd gotten a little bit nervous
about it. I mean that, very sincerely. I would have been delighted if they
had gotten very, very nervous about it. Frankly, I don't think they ever knew
it was there. I think they never knew it was there until the door had already
been closed on them.
Q: I'm wondering how much resistance there still is in Kuwait, and I'm
wondering what you would say to people who would say the purpose of this war
was to get the Iraqis out of Kuwait, and they're now out. What would you say
to the public that is thinking that right now?
A: I would say there was a lot more purpose to this war than just get the
Iraqis out of Kuwait. The purpose of this war was to enforce the resolutions
of the United Nations. There are some 12 different resolutions of the United
Nations, not all of which have been accepted by Iraq to date, as I understand
it.
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But I've got to tell you, that in the business of the military, of a military
commander, my job is not to go ahead and at some point say that's great,
they've just now pulled out of Kuwait--even though they're still shooting at
us, they're moving backward, and therefore, I've accomplished my mission.
That's not the way you fight it, and that's not the way I would ever fight it.
Q: You talked about heavy press coverage of Imminent Thunder early on,
and how it helped fool the Iraqis into thinking that it was a serious
operation. I wondered if you could talk about other ways in which the press
contributed to the campaign. (Laughter)
A: First of all, I don't want to characterize Imminent Thunder as being
only a deception, because it wasn't. We had every intention of conducting
amphibious operations if they were necessary, and that was a very, very real
rehearsal--as were the other rehearsals. I guess the one thing I would say to
the press that I was delighted with is in the very, very early stages of this
operation when we were over here building up, and we didn't have very much on
the ground, you all had given us credit for a whole lot more over here. As a
result, that gave me quite a feeling of confidence that we might not be
attacked quite as quickly as I thought we were going to be attacked. Other
than that, I would not like to get into the remainder of your question.
Q: What kind of fight is going on with the Republican Guard? And is there
any more fighting going on in Kuwait, or is Kuwait essentially out of the
action?
A: No. The fight that's going on with the Republican Guard right now is
just a classic tank battle. You've got fire and maneuver, they are continuing
to fight and shoot at us as our forces move forward, and our forces are in the
business of outflanking them, taking them in the rear, using our attack
helicopters, using our advanced technology. I would tell you that one of the
things that has prevailed, particularly in this battle out here, is our
technology. We had great weather for the air war, but right now, and for the
last three days, it's been raining out there, it's been dusty out there,
there's black smoke and haze in the air. It's an infantryman's weather--God
loves the infantryman, and that's just the kind of weather the infantry man
likes to fight in. But I would also tell you that our sights have worked
fantastically well in their ability to acquire, through that kind of dust and
haze, the enemy targets. The enemy sights have not worked that well. As a
matter of fact, we've had several anecdotal reports today of enemy who were
saying to us that they couldn't see anything through their sights and all of a
sudden, their tank exploded when their tank was hit by our sights. So that's
one of the indications of what's going on.
Q: If there's no air support, are you saying. . .
A: A very, very tough air environment. Obviously, as this box gets
smaller and smaller, okay, and the bad weather, it gets tougher and tougher to
use the air, and therefore, the air is acting more in an interdiction role
than any other.
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Q: Can you tell us why the French, who went very fast in the desert in
the first day, stopped in Salman and were invited to stop fighting after 36
hours?
A: Well, that's not exactly a correct statement. The French mission on
the first day was to protect our left flank. What we were interested in was
making sure we confined this battlefield--both on the right and the left--and
we didn't want anyone coming in and attacking these forces, which was the main
attack, coming in from their left flank. So the French mission was to go out
and not only seize Al Salman, but to set up a screen across our left flank,
which was absolutely vital to ensure that we weren't surprised. So they
definitely did not stop fighting. They continued to perform their mission,
and they performed it extraordinarily well.
Q: When Iraq's air force disappeared very early in the air war, there was
speculation they might return and provide cover during the ground war. Were
you expecting that? Were you surprised they never showed themselves again?
A: I was not expecting it. We were not expecting it, but I would tell
you that we never discounted it, and we were totally prepared in the event it
happened.
Q: Have they been completely destroyed? Where are they?
A: There's not an airplane that's flown. I'll tell you where they are.
A lot of them are dispersed throughout civilian communities in Iraq. We have
a lot of indications--we have proof of that, as a matter of fact.
Q: How many divisions of the Republican Guard now are you fighting, and
any idea how long that will take?
A: We're probably fighting on the order of... there were a total of five
of them up here. One of them we have probably destroyed yesterday. We
probably destroyed two more today. I would say that leaves us a couple that
we're in the process of fighting right now.
Q: Did you think this would turn out, I realize a great deal of strategy
and planning went into it, but when it took place, did you think this would
turn out to be such an easy cakewalk as it seems? And secondly, what are your
impressions of Saddam Hussein as a military strategist? (Laughter)
A: Ha.
First of all, if we thought it would have been such an easy fight, we
definitely would not have stocked 60 days' worth of supplies on these log
bases. As I've told you all for a very, very long time, it is very, very
important for a military commander never to assume away the capabilities of
his enemy. When you're facing an enemy that is over 500,000 strong, has the
reputation they've had of fighting for eight years, being combat-hardened
veterans, has a number of tanks and the type of equipment they had, you don't
assume away anything. So we certainly did not expect it to go this way.
As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither
a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a
tactician, nor is
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he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military
man. I want you to know that. (Laughter)
Q: General, I wonder if you could tell us anything more about Iraqi
casualties on the battlefield, you said there were large numbers. Are we
talking thousands, tens of thousands? Any more scale you can give us?
A: No, I wish I could answer that question. As you can imagine, this has
been a very fast-moving battle, as is desert warfare, and as a result even
today when I was asking for estimates, every commander out there said we just
can't give you an estimate, it went too fast, we've gone by too quickly.
Q: You went over very quickly, the special operations folks. Could you
tell us what their from role was?
A: We don't like to talk a lot about what the special operations do, as
you're well aware. But in this case, let me just cover some of the things
they did.
First of all, with every single Arab unit that went into battle, we had
Special Forces troops with them. The job of those Special Forces was to
travel and live right down at the battalion level with all those people to
make sure they could act as the communicators with friendly English-speaking
units that were on their flanks, and they could also call in air strikes as
necessary, they could coordinate helicopter strikes, and that sort of thing.
That's one of the principal roles they played, and it was a very, very
important role.
Secondly, they did a great job in strategic reconnaissance for us.
Thirdly, the Special Forces were 100 percent in charge of the combat search
and rescue, and that's a tough mission. When a pilot gets shot down out there
in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the enemy, and you're the folks that
are required to go in and go after them, that is a very tough mission, and
that was one of their missions.
And finally, they also did some direct action missions, period.
Q: General, there have been reports that when the Iraqis left Kuwait
City, they took with them a number of the Kuwait people as hostages. What can
you tell us about this.?
A: We've heard that they took up to 40,000. I think you've probably
heard the Kuwaitis themselves who were left in the city state that they were
taking people, and that they have taken them. So I don't think there's any
question about the fact that there was a very, very large number of young
Kuwaiti males taken out of that city within the last week or two. But that
pales to insignificance compared to the absolutely unspeakable atrocities that
occurred in Kuwait in the last week. They're not a part of the same human
race, the people that did that, that the rest of us are. I've got to pray
that that's the case.
Q: Can you tell us more about that?
A: No sir, I wouldn't want to talk about it.
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Q: Could you give us some indication of what's happening to the forces
left in Kuwait? What kind of forces are they, their size and are they engaged
at the moment?
A: You mean these up here?
Q: No, the ones in Kuwait, the three symbols to the, right.
A: These right here?
Q: Yes.
A: I'm not even sure they're here. I think they're probably gone. We
picked up a lot of signals of people. There's a road that goes right around
here and goes out that way. And I think they probably, more than likely, are
gone. So what you're really faced with is you're ending up fighting these
Republican (guard heavy mech and armor units that are there, and basically
what we want to do is capture their equipment.
Q: So they are all out of Kuwait then? So in fact they are all out of
Kuwait?
A: No, I can't say that. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there
are not pockets of people all around here who are just waiting to surrender as
soon as somebody uncovers them and comes to them. But we are certainly not
getting any internal fighting across our lines of communication or any of that
sort of thing.
Q: General, not to take anything away from the Army and the Marines on
the breaching maneuvers. . .
A: Thank you, sir. I hope you don't.
Q: But many of the reports that the pools have gotten from your field
commanders and the soldiers were indicating that these fortifications were not
as intense or as sophisticated as they were led to believe. Is this a result
of the bounding that they took that you described earlier, or they were
perhaps overrated in the first place?
A: Have you ever been in a minefield?
Q: No.
A: All there's got to be is one mine, and that's intense. There were
plenty of mines out there, plenty of barbed wire. There were fire trenches,
most of which we set off ahead of time. But there were still some that were
out there. The Egyptian forces had to go through fire trenches. There were a
lot of booby traps, a lot of barbed wire. Not a fun place to be. I've got to
tell you probably one of the toughest things that anyone ever has to do is go
up there and walk into something like that and go through it, and consider
that while you're going through it and clearing it, at the same time you're
probably under fire by enemy artillery. That's all I can say.
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Q: As tough as it was, was it less severe than you expected? I mean, were
you expecting even worse, in other words?
A: It was less severe than we expected, but one of the things I attribute
that to is the fact that we went to extensive measures to try and make it less
severe, okay, and we really did. I didn't mean to be facetious with my
answer, I just got to tell you that is a very tough mission for any person to
do, particularly in a minefield.
Q: General, is the Republican Guard your only remaining military
objective in Iraq? And I gather there have been some heavy engagements. How
would you rate this army you face--from the Republican Guard on down?
A: Rating an army is a tough thing to do. A great deal of the capability
of an army is its dedication to its cause and its will to fight. You can have
the best equipment in the world, you can have the largest numbers in the
world, but if you're not dedicated to your cause, if you don't have the will
to fight, then you're not going to have a very good army. One of the things
we learned right prior to the initiation of the campaign, that of course
contributed, as a matter of fact, to the timing of the ground campaign, is
that so many people were deserting and I think you've heard this, that the
Iraqis brought down execution squads whose job was to shoot people in the
front lines.
I've got to tell you, a soldier doesn't fight very hard for a leader who
is going to shoot him on his own whim. That's not what military leadership is
all about. So I attribute a great deal of the failure of the Iraqi army to
fight, to their own leadership. They committed them to a cause that they did
not believe in. They all are saying they didn't want to be there, they didn't
want to fight their fellow Arabs, they were lied to, they were deceived when
they went into Kuwait, they didn't believe in the cause, and then after they
got there, to have a leadership that was so uncaring for them that they didn't
properly feed them, they didn't properly give them water, and in the end, they
kept them there only at the point of a gun.
So I can't--now, the Republican Guard is entirely different. The
Republican Guard are the ones that went into Kuwait in the first place., They
get paid more, they got treated better, and oh by the way, they also were well
to the rear so they could be the first ones to bug out when the battlefield
started folding, while these poor fellows up here who didn't want to be here
in the first place, bore the brunt of the attack. But it didn't happen.
Q: General, could you tell us something about the British involvement,
and perhaps comment on today's report of 10 dead through friendly fire?
A: The British, I've got to tell you, have been absolutely superb members
of this coalition from the outset. I have a great deal of admiration and
respect for all the British that are out there, and particularly General Sir
Peter de la Billiere who is not only a great general, but he's also become a
very close personal friend of mine. They played a very, very key role in the
movement of the main attack. I would tell you that what they had to do was go
through this breach in one of the tougher areas, because I told you they had
reinforced here,
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and there were a lot of forces here, and what the Brits had to do was go
through the breach and then fill up the block, so the main attack could
continue on without forces over here, the mechanized forces over here,
attacking that main attack in the flank. That was a principal role of the
British. They did it absolutely magnificently, and then they immediately
followed up in the main attack, and they're still up there fighting right now.
So they did a great job.
Q: General, these 40,000 Kuwaiti hostages taken by the Iraqis, where are
they right now! That's quite a few people. Are they in the line of fire? Do
we know where they are?
A: No, no, no, we were told, but again, this is--a lot of this is
anecdotal, okay. We were told that they were taken back to Basra. We were
also told that some of them were taken all the way back to Baghdad. We were
told 100 different reasons why they were taken. Number one, to be a
bargaining chip if the time came when bargaining chips were needed. Another
one was for retribution because, of course, at that time Iraq was saying that
these people were not Kuwaitis, these were citizens of Iraq and therefore,
they could do anything they wanted to with them. So I just pray that they'll
all be returned safely before long.
Q: General, the other day on television, the deputy Soviet foreign
minister said that they were talking again about rearming the Iraqis. And
there's some indication that the United States, as well, believes that Iraq
needs to have a certain amount of armament to retain the balance of power. Do
you feel that your troops are in jeopardy finishing this off, when already the
politicians are talking about rearming the Iraqis? How do you feel about that?
A: Well, I certainly don't want to discuss, you know, what the deputy
foreign minister of the Soviet Union says. That's way out of my field. I
would tell you that I'm one of the first people that said at the outset that
it's not in the best interest of peace in this part of the world to destroy
Iraq, and I think the president of the United States has made it very clear
from the outset that our intention is not to destroy Iraq or the Iraqi people.
I think everyone has every right to legitimately defend themselves. But the
one thing that comes through loud and clear over, and over, and over again to
the people that have flown over Iraq, to the pilots that have gone in against
their military installations, when you look at the war machine that they have
faced, that war machine definitely was not a defensive war machine, and they
demonstrated that more than adequately when they overran Kuwait and then
called it a great military victory.
Q: General, before starting the land phase, how much were you concerned
by the Iraqi planes coming back from Iran? And do we know what happened to the
Iraqi helicopters?
A: As I said before, we were very concerned about the return of the Iraqi
planes from Iran, but we were prepared for it. We have been completely
prepared for any type of air attack the Iraqis might throw against us, and oh,
by the way, we're still prepared for it. We're not going to let down our
guard for
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one instant, so long as we know that capability is there, until we're sure
this whole thing is over.
The helicopters are another very interesting story. We know where the
helicopters were. They traditionally put their helicopter near some of their
other outfits, and we tracked them very carefully. But what happened is
despite the fact that Iraqis claim that we indiscriminately bombed civilian
targets, they took their helicopters and dispersed them all over the place in
civilian residential areas just as fast as they possibly could. But quite a
few of them were damaged on airfields, those that we could take on airfields.
The rest of them were dispersed.
Q: General, I'd like to ask you, you mentioned about the Saudi army
forces. Could you elaborate about their role, on the first day?
A: The Saudi army, as I said, the first thing they did was they--we had
this Bahrain attack that was going through here, and of course we were
concerned about the forces over here again, hitting the flanks. That's one of
the things you just don't want to have happen to your advancing forces.
So this force over here, the eastern task force, had to attack up the
coast to pin the enemy in this location. The forces--again the Saudi forces
over in this area were attacked through here, again, to pin all the forces in
this area because we didn't want those forces moving in this direction, and we
didn't want those forces moving in that direction.
It's a tough mission, okay, because these people were being required to
fight the kind of fight that the Iraqis wanted them to fight. It's a very,
very tough mission.
I would point out, it wasn't only the Saudis. I tell you it was the
Saudis, it was the Kuwaitis, it was the Egyptians, it was the Syrians, it was
the Emiris from the United Arab Emirates, it was the Bahrainis, it was the
Qataris, and it was the Omanis, and I apologize if I've left anybody out. But
it was a great coalition of people, all of whom did a fine job.
Q: Is there anything left of the Scud or chemical capability?
A: I don't know. I don't know. But we're sure going to find out if
there's anything-you know, the Scuds that were being fired against Saudi
Arabia came from right here, okay. So obviously, one of the things we're
going to check on when we finally get to that location is what's left.
Q: General, could you tell us in of the air war of how effective you
think it was in speeding up the ground campaign? Because obviously, it's gone
much faster than you ever expected? And ... how effective do you think the
AirLand battle campaign has been?
A: The air war, obviously, was very, very effective. You just can't
predict about things like that. You can make your best estimates at the
outset as to how quickly you will accomplish certain objectives. But, of
course, a lot of that depends on the enemy and how resilient the enemy is, how
tough they are, how well dug in they are.
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In the earlier stages, we made great progress in the air war. In the
latter stages, we didn't make a lot of progress because frankly they--the
enemy--had burrowed down into the ground as a result of the air war.
Now that, of course, made the air war a little bit tougher, but when you
dig your tanks in and bury them, they're no longer tanks. They're now pill
boxes. That, then, makes a difference in the ground campaign. When you don't
run them for a long time, they have seal problems, they have a lot of
maintenance problems and that type of thing.
So the air campaign was very, very successful and contributed a great
deal. How effective was the air-ground campaign? I think it was pretty
effective myself. I don't know what you all think.
Q: Can you tell us what you think as you look down the road would be a
reasonable size far the Iraqi army, and can you tell us roughly what the size
is now if the war were to stop this evening?
A: With regard to the size right now, at one time Saddam Hussein was
claiming that he had a 7 million man army. If he's got a 7 million man army,
they've still got a pretty big army out there.
How effective that army is, is an entirely different question. With
regard to the size of the army he should have, I don't think that's my job to
decide that. I think there are an awful lot of people that live in this part
of the world, and I would hope that is a decision that's arrived at mutually
by all the people in this part of the world to contribute to peace and
stability in this part of the world, I think that's the best answer I can
give.
Q: You said the gate was closed. Have you got ground forces blocking the
roads to Basra?
A: No.
Q: Is there any way they can get out that way?
A: No. That's why the gate's closed.
Q: Is there a military or political explanation as to why the Iraqis did
not use chemical weapons?
A: We've got a lot of questions about why the Iraqis didn't use chemical
weapons, and I don't know the answer. I just thank God they didn't.
Q: Is it possible they didn't use them because they didn't have time to
react?
A: You want me to speculate, I'll be delighted to speculate. Nobody can
ever pin you down when you speculate.
Number one, we destroyed their artillery. We went after their artillery
big time. They had major desertions in their artillery, and ... that's how
they would have delivered their chemical weapons, either that or by air. And
we all know what happened to their air. So we went after their artillery big
time, and I think we were probably highly, highly effective in going after
their artillery.
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There's other people who are speculating that the reason they didn't use
chemical weapons is because they were afraid if they used chemical weapons
there would be nuclear retaliation. There are other people that speculate
that they didn't use their chemical weapons because their chemical weapons
degraded, and because of the damage that we did to their chemical production
facilities, they were unable to upgrade the chemicals within their weapons as
a result of that degradation. That was one of the reasons, among others, that
we went after their chemical production facilities early on in the strategic
campaign. I'll never know the answer to that question, but as I say, thank
God they didn't.
Q: General, are you still bombing in northern Iraq, and if you are,
what's the purpose of it now?
A: Yes.
Q: What's being achieved now?
A: Military purposes that we--exactly the same things we were trying to
achieve before. The war is not over, and you've got to remember, people are
still dying out there. Okay? And those people that are dying are my troops,
and I'm going to continue to protect those troops in every way I possibly can
until the war is over.
Q: How soon after you've finally beaten the Republican Guards and the
other forces that threaten you, will you move your forces out of Iraq, either
into Kuwait or back into Saudi?
A: That's not my decision to make.
Q: What are you going to try and bring to justice the people responsible
for the atrocities in Kuwait City? And also, could you comment on the friendly
fire incident in which nine Britons were killed?
A: I'm sorry, that was asked earlier and I failed to do that. First of
all, on the first question, we have as much information as possible on those
people that were committing the atrocities, and, of course, we're going
through a screening process, and whenever we find those people that did, in
fact, commit those atrocities, we try and separate them out. We treat them no
differently than any other prisoner of war, but the ultimate disposition of
those people, of course, might be quite different than the way we would treat
any other prisoner of war.
With regard to the unfortunate incident yesterday, the only report we
have is that two A-10 aircraft came in, and they attacked two scout cars,
British armored cars, and that's what caused the casualties. There were nine
KIA [killed in action]. We deeply regret that. There's no excuse for it. I'm
not going to apologize for it. I am going to say that our experience has been
that based upon the extremely complicated number of different maneuvers that
were being accomplished out here, according to the extreme diversity of the
number of forces that were out here, according to the extreme differences in
the languages of the
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forces out here, and the weather conditions and everything else, I feel that
we were quite lucky that we did not have more of this type of incident. I
would also tell you that because we had a few earlier that you know about,
that we went to extraordinary lengths to try and prevent that type of thing
from happening. It's a terrible tragedy, and I'm sorry that it happened.
Q: Was it at night?
A: I don't know. I don't believe so because I believe the information I
have, that a forward air controller was involved in directing that, and that
would indicate that it was probably during the afternoon. But it was when
there was very, very close combat going on out there in that area.
Q: General, the United Nations General Assembly was talking about peace.
As a military man, you look at your challenge, and you can get some
satisfaction out of having achieved it. Is there some fear on your part that
there will be a cease--fire that will keep you from fulfilling the assignment
that you have? Is your assignment as a military man separate from the
political goals of the...
A: Do I fear a cease-fire?
Q: Do you fear that you will not be able to accomplish your end, that
there will be some political pressure brought on the campaign?
A: I think I've made it very clear to everybody that I'd just as soon the
war had never started. And I'd just as soon never have lost a single life out
there. That was not our choice.
We've accomplished our mission, and when the decision makers come to the
decision that there should be a cease-fire, nobody will be happier than me.
Q: General, we were told today that an A-10 returning from a mission
discovered and destroyed 16 Scuds. Is that a fact, and where were they
located?
A: Most of those Scuds were located in western Iraq. I would tell you
that we went into this with some intelligence estimates that I think I have
since come to believe were either grossly inaccurate, or our pilots are lying
through their teeth, and I choose to think the former rather than the latter,
particularly since many of the pilots have backed up what they've been saying
by film and that sort of thing.
But we went in with a very, very low number of these mobile erector
launchers that we thought the enemy had. However, at one point we had a
report that they may have had 10 times as many. I would tell you though, that
last night the pilots had a very, very successful afternoon and night as far
as the mobile erector launchers, most of them in western Iraq were reportedly
used against Israel.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Map 7
73
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Q: General, you've said many times in the past that you do not like body
counts. You've also told us tonight that enemy casualties were very, very
large. I'm wondering with the coalition forces already burying the dead on
the battlefield, will there ever be any sort of accounting or head counts made
or anything like that?
A: I don't think there's ever been, ever in the history of warfare, been
a successful count of the dead. And one of the reasons is the reason you
cite: that's because it's necessary to lay those people to rest for a lot of
reasons, and that happens.
So I would probably say no, there will never be an exact count. Probably
in the days to come, you're going to hear many, many stories, either
overinflated or underinflated, depending upon whom you hear them from. The
people who will know the best, unfortunately, are the families that won't see
their loved ones come home.
Q: If the gate is indeed closed, as you said several times, and the
theories about where these Kuwaiti hostages are--perhaps Basra, perhaps
Baghdad--where could they be? And was the timing for the start of the ground
campaign a purely military choice, or was it a military choice with political
influence on the choice of date?
A: That's two questions. When I say the gate is closed, I don't want to
give you the impression that absolutely nothing is escaping. Quite the
contrary. What isn't escaping is heavy tanks. What isn't escaping is
artillery pieces. What isn't escaping is that sort of thing.
That doesn't mean that civilian vehicles aren't escaping. That doesn't
mean that innocent civilians aren't escaping. That doesn't mean that unarmed
Iraqis aren't escaping. And that's not the gate I'm talking about. I'm
talking about the gate that has closed on the war machine that is out there...
The timing for the beginning of the ground campaign, we made military
analyses of when that ground campaign should be conducted. I gave my
recommendation to the secretary of defense and General Colin Powell. They
passed that recommendation on to the president, and the president acted upon
that recommendation.
Why, do you think we did it at the wrong time? (Laughter)
Q: I'm wondering if your recommendation and analysis were accepted
without change.
A: I'm very thankful for the fact that the president of the United
States has allowed the United States military and the coalition military to
fight this war exactly as it should have been fought. And the president in
every case has taken our guidance and our recommendations to heart and has
acted superbly as the commander in chief of the United States.
Thank you very much. (Map 7)
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
During Desert Storm, Colonel Pope was head of the Current Operations Branch at
Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, the "nerve center" of the Marine Corps. He
wrote this article the weekend after the end of the ground war. While not
purporting to be the final word, this piece shows how the Marines monitoring
the action as it happened viewed the war, before memories faded or an
"accepted" version of the war emerged.
U.S. Marines in Operation Desert Storm
By Col John R. Pope
MARINE CORPS GAZETTE, July 1991.
Operation DESERT STORM began on 16 January 1991 with the initiation of the air
campaign against Iraq and the Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait. D--day, 16
January, followed the 163-day-long Operation DESERT SHIELD, the positioning
and preparation of the Coalition Forces for the combat that was to liberate
Kuwait. From 7 August 1990 until D-day, the U.S. Marine Corps deployed
approximately 86,000 Marines to Southwest Asia. By the cessation of offensive
operations on 28 February 1991, this number had grown to over 92,000 Marines,
which included 24 infantry battalions, 19 fixed-wing and 21 helicopter
squadrons, and the associated command elements and combat, combat support, and
combat service support organizations. These forces were required to support a
Marine expeditionary force (MEF) ashore on the Arabian Peninsula and two
Marine expeditionary brigades (MEB) and a Marine expeditionary unit (MEU)
afloat in the Persian Gulf. Adding the more than 24,000 Marines deployed in
the Mediterranean and in the western Pacific, which included an additional 6
infantry battalions and 6 fixed-wing and 9 helicopter squadrons, nearly 90
percent of the operational forces of the Marine Corps were deployed
simultaneously. These numbers included 96 percent of the active duty infantry
battalions (and 6 Reserve battalions), 79 percent of the active fixed-wing
squadrons (and 1 Reserve squadron), and 91 percent of the active duty
helicopter squadrons (and 3 Reserve squadrons).
In the months preceding D-day, Marine forces deploying to the Commander
in Chief Central's (CinCCent's) area of responsibility (AOR) had been task
organized as Marine Central (MarCent)/I MEF, and consisted of 1st and 2d
Marine Divisions (MarDivs), 3d Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW), and 1st Force
Service Support Group (FSSG) ashore in Saudi Arabia. Afloat Marine forces
consisted of 4th MEB, 5th MEB with 11th MEU embedded, and 13th MEU, embarked
aboard NavCent amphibious ships in the Persian Gulf and north Arabian Sea.
The buildup of Marine forces validated the Marines' maritime prepositioning
force (MPF) concept, with Marines falling in on equipment from the three
maritime prepositioning squadrons (MPSs), in the process providing the first
credible ground defense capability in the area following the invasion of
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Map of The Persian Gulf Area
Kuwait. The Marine concept of compositing forces was also validated, with
Marines and units from all three active divisions, wings, and force service
support groups, augmented by Reserve organizations, melding together into I
MEF, exactly as conceived. These Marines and their units came together from
around the globe, to include California, Hawaii, North and South Carolina,
Okinawa, the Philippines, and every point in between to join into the largest
Marine force assembled for combat since World War II. In the process of the
buildup, the Marines had met every deadline imposed by the CinC, and were
ready at every significant point in the timeline to perform their assigned
missions. While preparing for combat in Southwest Asia, the Marines managed
to maintain a credible presence in the Western Pacific (Okinawa and the
Philippines) and conducted successful noncombatant evacuation operations in
two locations in Africa: the long-term (eight-month) Liberian mission in
support of the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, and the rapid extraction of several
hundred noncombatants from the international diplomatic community in
Mogadishu, Somalia, 4 through 6 January 1991.
The Day Before
On 15 January 1991, Marine forces were preparing for combat. For the
Marines, the reinforcement directed by the President had been accomplished
with the closure of additional forces from II MEF in North Carolina and the
arrival of 5th MEB from southern California. The 13th MEU, which previously
had
76
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
been in the Gulf, returned after a two-month training evolution in the Western
Pacific. The I MEF command post had moved north to Safaniya and the 1st
MarDiv was positioned in the northeast portion of the MarCent AOR. The 2d
MarDiv occupied the northwest portion of the AOR. The 1st FSSG was
establishing forward supply bases at Ra's al Mish'ab and Kibrit while
continuing the offload at Al Jubayl. The 3d MAW supported I MEF, provided a
24-hour F/A-18 combat air patrol station, and was moving its tactical air
control facilities north to Al Mish'ab as well. The 1st Brigade, 2d Armored
Division (the Army's Tiger Brigade) had been assigned to I MEF and was further
placed under the operational control of 2d MarDiv as a replacement for the
British 7th Armored Brigade, which was detached to join the newly arrived
British 1st Armored Division. The 4th MEB afloat had completed several highly
publicized amphibious exercises in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and
Oman, and was planning for Exercise SEA SOLDIER IV with the 5th MEB the last
week of January.
Air Campaign
I MEF began combat operations on 16 January 1991, with the 3d MAW flying
missions in support of CinCCent's air tasking order. The ground combat
elements continued to phase north while maintaining a solid defensive
capability. The first Marines to come under enemy fire were elements of the
1st Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Intelligence Group (SRIG) forward at the
town of Ra's al Khafji near the Saudi/Kuwait border. Task Force Shepherd, the
1st Light Armored Infantry (LAI) Battalion, continued its reconnaissance along
the Kuwaiti border while other 1st MarDiv regimental task forces repositioned
northward.
Marine aviation continued to strike targets in support of its air tasking
order and I MEF, and on 19 January the first combat aircraft loss for the
Marines occurred when an OV-10 was downed by enemy fire. The 1st Division's
task forces began a continuing series of "roving gun" artillery raids, firing
on suspected enemy positions in Kuwait. These raids were designed to provoke
an enemy reaction, with aerial observers, tactical air on station, and
artillery waiting to hammer the Iraqis should they come out of their fortified
positions. These raids, which promoted deception, kept the Iraqis off balance
and tested their response time as well as the accuracy of the response. The
"roving gun" raids continued with significant success until the initiation of
ground combat operations on 24 February.
As January progressed, Marine ground elements continued to move north.
New boundaries were established between the 1st and 2d MarDivs, with the 1st
to the west and 2d to the east in the I MEF zone. On 26 January, the 2d
MarDiv commenced artillery raids with the 2d LAI Battalion and 10th Marines in
its zone. Significantly, these raids constituted the first offensive action
for the 2d MarDiv, as a division, since World War II. Coalition forces
repositioned as well, with the Joint Forces Command North to the west of the
Marines and the Joint Forces Command East to the east along the coastal main
supply route
77
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Map 1, Map 2, and Map 3
78
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
leading into Kuwait. The 4th and 5th MEBs continued with Exercise SEA SOLDIER
IV at Ra's Madrakah, Oman, through 2 February.
On 29 January, the Iraqis penetrated the Saudi Arabian border at three
locations: north of Khafji; east of Wafrah; and at the "elbow." (See Map 1.)
The latter two incursions were repulsed by 1st and 2d MarDivs with heavy
casualties to the Iraqis. A multibrigade task force conducted the attack in
the east with the forward elements entering the town of Khafji. This was the
most significant and publicized ground action between Coalition Forces and the
Iraqis prior to the initiation of the ground offensive. Elements of the 1st
SRIG, which were in Khafji when the Iraqis entered the town, and
reconnaissance elements from Task Force Taro (3d Marines), sent to support a
Saudi/Qatari counterattack on Khafji, played a significant role, spotting
targets and adjusting fire for artillery and tactical air strikes throughout
the battle. By the afternoon of 30 January, Coalition Forces had cleared
Khafji and moved north of the town.
On 29 January, the 13th MEU conducted Operation DESERT STING, a raid on
the Iraqi occupied island of Maradim. No enemy soldiers were encountered;
however, large amounts of equipment, ammunition, and supplies were discovered
and destroyed. The 4th and 5th MEBs completed Exercise SEA SOLDIER IV on 2
February, backloaded, and prepared for amphibious operations in support of
DESERT STORM. (See Map 2.)
For the next several weeks, I MEF ground forces continued reconnaissance
missions while repositioning in preparation for the ground offensive. Marines
from Task Force Taro continued to provide training for Saudi forces in the
vicinity of Al Mish'ab, completing the cross training on 14 February. The 3d
MAW continued to attrit the enemy while flying missions in support of I MEF
and the CinCCent air tasking order, and the 1st FSSG continued supplying the
force while establishing new combat service support areas forward in the I MEF
zone. On 13 February, 1 MEF established a new command post at Al Khanjar,
completing its displacement by the 15th. A dirt strip capable of landing
C-130s, known as Lonesome Dove airfield, was also established at Al Khanjar.
on the 17th, 1st and 2d MarDivs began displacement to final positions,
establishing new boundaries that roughly bisected 1st MarDiv's old sector.
Task Force Troy, with tanks, TOWS, artillery, and reconnaissance elements, was
employed as a deception force to continue activities in 2d MarDiv's old sector
and to mask the division's westward passage through the 1st MarDiv into its
final position.
On 20 February, Marine AV-8Bs from 4th MEB conducted combat stakes from
aboard the USS NASSAU--a first for the Marine Corps.
Marine units continued screening operations and began probing and
infiltrating into the obstacle belts. The berm paralleling the Saudi-Kuwaiti
border was cut in numerous locations in anticipation of the impending ground
combat. Deception operations were continued throughout the I MEF AOR to
conceal the actual point of main effort for the offensive. On 21 February,
the 2d LAI Battalion was engaged on three separate occasions by Iraqi forces
during cross-border screening operations calling tactical air and artillery to
suppress the enemy each time.
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
During a 22 February attack on Iraqi trenchlines by a section of F/A-18s,
an Iraqi soldier was observed coming out of the trenches with his hands in the
air. The F/A-18s orbited the target and contacted I MEF ground forces, who
dispatched an LAI patrol to the location. Transfer of control of the enemy
prisoners was effected between the aircraft and the armored vehicles-another
Marine Corps first.
Deception operations continued on 22 and 23 February in both divisions'
zones as offensive preparations were finalized. Forces moved to the line of
departure, passed through breaches in the first obstacle belts, and began
screening operations to secure the flanks. Engineers also completed earthwork
for Marine artillery positions north of the border on the 23d.
G-Day
G-day, the designation for the commencement of ground operations, was 24
February 1991. I MEF spearheaded the ground attack for the Coalition Forces,
with 1st and 2d MarDivs breaching the Iraqis' obstacle belts and penetrating
deep into Kuwait. The 1st MarDiv led the attack in its zone at 0400 local,
penetrating the first and second Iraqi obstacle belts against moderate Iraqi
resistance. The 2d MarDiv followed at 0530, also penetrating the first and
second obstacle belts with little Iraqi response. Later, CinCCent would
lavish accolades on the Marine breaching operations, stating that military
professionals would study these classic operations for years to come.
Task Force Shepherd, the 1st LAI Battalion, provided screening operations
in the Al Wafrah and Al Burgan oil fields for the 1st MarDiv, engaging enemy
tanks south of the Al Jaber airfield. Other 1st MarDiv elements, the 1st, 3d,
4th, and 7th Marines, organized as combined arms task forces, breached the
obstacle belts and, by day's end, captured I MEF Objective A, the Al Jaber
airfield, while consolidating positions around the airfield and the Burgan oil
field. (See Map 3.) The 11th Marines provided artillery support to assault
elements throughout the day. Bomb damage assessment for the day included 21
enemy tanks destroyed and over 4,000 enemy prisoners of war at a cost of 1
killed in action (KIA), 9 wounded in action (WIA), 3 damaged tanks, and 1
damaged light armored vehicle.
The 2d LAI Battalion provided screening for the lead elements of 2d
MarDiv. Once through the obstacle belts, the Division, with the 6th and 8th
Marines, and the 1st Brigade, 2d Armored Division (U.S. Army), with artillery
support from the 10th Marines, temporarily consolidated its positions to
defend against a reported enemy armored column moving out of Kuwait City.
This column was engaged and defeated by a combination of ground and air
delivered weapons, and the division continued the attack, capturing by day's
end an intact enemy tank battalion with 35 T-55 tanks and over 5,000 enemy
prisoners of war, to include a brigade commander, at a cost of 1 KIA and 8
WIA.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Map 4 and Map 5
81
U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
The 3d MAW flew 611 sorties in support of I MEF on G-day, striking
elements of 6 Iraqi divisions and destroying 40 tanks, 3 armored personnel
carriers, 18 trucks, 102 miscellaneous vehicles, 3 antiaircraft artillery
(AAA) sites, and 4 FROG missile sites.
The 1st FSSG pushed supplies forward in support of the offensive, moving
thousands of tons of cargo and thousands of gallons of water and fuel by road
and airlift on the first day of ground combat. The southbound logistics
effort focused on moving enemy prisoners to the rear.
The 5th MEB, from its positions afloat in the Gulf, began to fly its
ground combat element Regimental Landing Team 5 (RLT-5) ashore to assume the
mission as I MEF Reserve on 24 February. (See Map 4.)
G + 1
On 25 February, the second day of ground combat, 1 MEF continued the
attack on zone, advancing in the face of moderate resistance.
The 1st MarDiv began the day on a line forward of the Burgan oil field.
In response to a division artillery time-on-target fire mission on suspected
enemy assembly areas, enemy armor boiled out and a close-quarters battle
ensued, involving all elements of the division. At the end of the day, the
division consolidated and prepared to clear the last of the enemy from the Al
Jaber airfield. With minimal casualties and equipment losses, the 1st MarDiv
had destroyed 80 enemy tanks and 100 other vehicles and had captured more than
2,000 enemy prisoners of war with more surrendering every hour.
The 2d MarDiv began the day south of Al Abdallya, attacking north toward
a hard-surface road grid nicknamed the "ice cube tray." Following artillery
prep fires, scores of enemy prisoners of war began streaming toward division
lines. In this encounter, 248 tanks were destroyed and 4,500 enemy prisoners
were captured, including an Iraqi general officer and a brigade commander.
The 3d MAW flew more than 460 sorties, striking elements of 6 enemy divisions,
destroying 52 tanks, 9 armored personnel carriers, 6 artillery tubes, and
additional AAA and FROG sites. In the first recorded instance of a remotely
piloted vehicle (RPV) capturing personnel, Iraqi soldiers waved white cloths
at a Marine RPV as it overflew their position on 25 February.
The 1st FSSG continued to push supplies forward and move prisoners to the
rear, providing thousands of tons of cargo and thousands of gallons of fuel
and water to I MEF forces.
To support ground operations ashore, the 4th MEB, aboard Task Force 156
shipping, was tasked to demonstrate significant activity in the vicinity of
Ash Shuaybah. (See Map 4.) Using a combination of deception activities, naval
gunfire from the USS MISSOURI, and 4th MEB helicopters, an amphibious
demonstration was underway by 0400 local on 25 February. In response to the
demonstration, the Iraqis focused their attention to the east, fired two
Silkworm missiles without effect, directed divisions in position along the
coast to hold in place and ordered another division north to reinforce.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
G + 2
On 26 February, the third day of offensive ground combat operations, I MEF
continued the ground attack in zone, advancing in the face of moderate
resistance. The 1st MarDiv's objective (MEF Objective C) was the Kuwait
International Airport, and the final assault on the objective began at 1600
lo-cal. Encountering armored resistance, the division continued to engage
until enemy forces surrendered northwest of the airport. In seizing the
airport, the division destroyed 250 T-55/62 tanks and over 70 T-72 tanks,
again with only minimal casualties and equipment losses. (See Map 5.)
The 2d MarDiv advanced to MEF objective B, the city of Al Jahra, with
moderate opposition, engaging and destroying enemy armor in zone. By 1600 the
division had secured the objective and continued through to secure positions,
to include the high ground at Mutla Ridge northwest of Al Jahra, blocking the
Iraqi escape route north to Basrah. 2d MarDiv casualties and equipment losses
were minimal, while 166 enemy tanks were destroyed and 4,200 enemy prisoners
were captured.
The 3d MAW continued to support the I MEF advance, striking targets
throughout the division zones, concentrating on artillery and armor in the
vicinity of Al Jahra and Kuwait International Airport. Damage assessments
included the destruction of 16 tanks, 2 armored personnel carriers, and 50
vehicles.
The 1st FSSG continued to push supplies forward and move enemy prisoners
of war to the rear, while the 5th MEB ground combat element moved to Al Jaber
airfield to assist in prisoner control and stood by as the I MEF reserve. In
the second amphibious deception operation in two days, helicopters from 4th
MEB conducted a predawn demonstration toward Bubiyan and Faylakah islands.
(See Map 5.)
G + 3
On 27 February, the fourth day of ground combat operations, I MEF
continued the offense in support of Operation DESERT STORM. The 1st MarDiv
completed the consolidation and securing of Kuwait International Airport by
0900 local, began clearing operations, and prepared to receive special
operations elements and Kuwaiti officials. The division also coordinated
passage of lines for Arab forces from Joint Forces Command East to enter
Kuwait City.
The 2d MarDiv remained in the vicinity of Al Jahra in blocking positions,
to include Mutla Ridge; it linked up with Kuwaiti resistance forces and began
clearing its zone while coordinating the passage of lines for Arab forces from
Joint Forces Command North moving into Kuwait City.
The 3d MAW flew more than 200 sorties in support of the divisions,
striking withdrawing elements of the Iraqi forces in northern Kuwait. By late
afternoon, airborne forward air controllers reported that it was difficult to
find a target
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
along Route 6 between Kuwait City and Basrah because there were so many Iraqis
waving something white.
The 1st FSSG continued its resupply mission while processing the
continuous flow of enemy prisoners. RLT-5 continued as I MEF reserve in the
vicinity of Al Jaber airfield.
The 1st Platoon, 2d Force Reconnaissance Company established an
observation post within the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City on 27 February
discovering in the process that the Stars and Stripes were still flying and
that the Embassy appeared untouched, with Embassy vehicles present with full
gas tanks. The Recon Marines also discovered an enormous sand table in a
Kuwaiti school adjacent to the Embassy. The sand table depicted the extensive
Iraqi defensive fortifications prepared in anticipation of an amphibious
assault by U.S. Marines. The extensive fortifications, to include bunkers,
obstacles, and minefields, were confirmed by the commanding general (CG), 1st
MarDiv, who reported that the beach fortifications in and around Kuwait City
were indeed extensive and formidable. The numerous amphibious exercises
conducted by the 4th and 5th MEBs had obviously served their purpose.
G + 4/V-Day
On 28 February, offensive combat operations ceased at 0800 local at the
direction of the President of the United States. I MEF prepared to assist the
Kuwaiti Government in clearing operations and civil affairs matters. Both 1st
and 2d MarDivs had reached the limit of their advance with substantial combat
power forward in position to block any Iraqi retreat. A preliminary
statistical review provided by the CG, I MEF, for the 100 hours of ground
combat indicated that U.S. Marines had destroyed or captured 1,040 enemy
tanks, destroyed or captured 608 enemy armored personnel carriers, destroyed
432 enemy artillery pieces, destroyed 5 FROG missile sites, with 1,510 enemy
KIA and over 20,000 enemy prisoners of war. Marine casualties due to ground
action during this period were reported at 5 killed and 48 wounded in action.
Marine aviation losses since the initiation of the ground war on 24 February
amounted to 2 fixed-wing aircraft. (Aviation losses following the initiation
of the air campaign but prior to the commencement of the ground war amounted
to four fixed-wing aircraft and one helicopter lost in action with two
helicopters lost in nonbattle mishaps.)
V + 1
On 1 March I MEF continued operations in support of Operation DESERT
STORM. The 1st MarDiv remained in defensive positions in the vicinity of
Kuwait International Airport and Al Jaber airfield and prepared for retrograde
operations. The division continued to uncover Iraqi weapons, ammunition, and
equipment in its zone. The 2d MarDiv remained in defensive positions in the
vicinity of Al Jahra, continued to process enemy prisoners, and destroyed
enemy equipment while consolidating its defensive positions. RLT-5 was
relieved of
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
its I MEF reserve mission and was directed to retrograde through the Al Wafrah
forest area to clear any bypassed Iraqi units while enroute to Al Mish'ab for
reembarkation aboard Navy ships. The 3d MAW entered an extended period of
maintenance standdown while continuing to provide resupply and medevac
support. The 1st FSSG continued its resupply and enemy prisoner transport
effort while explosive ordnance disposal personnel continued to destroy enemy
ammunition, clear bunkers, and neutralize weapons.
Aftermath
It is not too early to herald the performance of the individual Soldiers,
Sailors, Airmen, and Marines of I MEF throughout the battle in MarCent's AOR.
Reports from all quarters attest to their courage and professionalism under
fire and in the face of the unknown. Their success is perhaps best reflected
in the scenes of the reception provided them by the newly liberated citizens
of Kuwait. The reason for the months and months of hard work, hard training,
and sacrifice became self-evident as the world community watched their
triumph.
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Lieutenant General Boomer, as the Commanding General, I Marine Expeditionary
Force, led all Marine Forces in Saudi Arabia. In this interview, he discusses
tense moments at the beginning of the buildup, the planning and conduct of the
ground war, and his relations with the media.
Special Trust and Confidence Among the Trail-Breakers
interview with Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, USMC
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, November 1991
PROCEEDINGS: When did you plan to make your own move into the theater of
operations?
Boomer: I wanted to give John Hopkins time to get the 7th MEB in, and get his
feet on the ground--then I would come in quickly, right on his heels. Having
Jim Brabham there early was very important to us, because Jim knew the lay of
the land.
Before leaving, for Riyadh, five days after the 7th MEB began deploying,
I saw that the buildup on the aviation side was occurring very rapidly--but
not for us. John Hopkins and I were concerned, because the ground elements of
the brigade were virtually in position but the aviation component was lagging,
through no fault of its own. We had to fight for in-flight refueling support,
and I eventually had to ask CinCCent to intervene. He did, and we got the Air
Force tanker support we needed to get our Marine aviation into the theater.
There didn't seem to be a great deal of discipline in determining where
various aviation units would bed down. It seemed to be "first come, first
served" in acquiring airfields. So we needed to move very quickly, and Jim
Brabham helped us do that. With his experience, he swiftly identified the
airfields that would be the most useful to us and the improvements each field
would require.
When I arrived in Saudi Arabia, it was evident that John Hopkins had
things under control along the coast, so I went to Riyadh in order to
establish myself with the Central Command. The commander-in-chief, General
Schwarzkopf, had not arrived, and Lieutenant General] Chuck Horner, the Air
Force component commander, was in charge. I spent about ten days in Riyadh,
to get the lay of the land and to see how the CentCom staff would operate.
They were very thin at the time, still coming together.
Next, I went to Al Jubayl to establish the I MEF headquarters. There
were no major problems at the outset. John Hopkins had shown a lot of finesse
in making arrangements with the Saudis to use port facilities, warehouses,
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
transportation assets, and everything else that was required to unload the MPS
squadrons. He had quickly staked things out for us.
Getting unpacked, of course, was just the initial task. Our primary
concern was setting up a defense to protect the Al Jubayl complex-the heart of
the Saudi industrial area. Most of the oil fields are in and around Jubayl,
along the coast and to the north. And Jubayl houses a huge petrochemical
complex, as well as a large, modern port. So establishing that defense was
the overriding concern.
PROCEEDINGS: At the time, did you sense a strong enemy threat? The 7th MEB had
a lot of combat power, but was still relatively small, compared to forces the
Iraqis had in the region.
Boomer: It was small--compared to what the Iraqis already had in Kuwait and
what they continued to bring down from Iraq, as they consolidated their
position in Kuwait. From our perspective, it made sense for the enemy to
attack--and we planned for that. We took the threat very seriously. I have
been asked many times if we could have defended with the forces we had in
place initially. My answer--then and now: "Yes, but it would have been one
hell of a battle."
PROCEEDINGS: it appears that the MPS system really proved itself, filling the
gap between the first airlifted trip-wire force and the arrival of the first
heavy armored and mechanized units.
Boomer: Yes, MPS did fill the gap--without question. The 7th MEB was the
first force on the ground that offered a credible defense against mechanized
attack. The Army airborne troops who got there first were good, but were too
lightly armed and supplied to stop tanks for very long. The quick arrival of
the 7th MEB and the MPS squadron must have put Saddam Hussein on notice that
our President was serious about defending Saudi Arabia, for openers. The MPS
system worked exactly as planned. John Hopkins would certainly tell you that
his earlier MPS deployment exercises paid off in spades. In general, we knew
exactly what to do, and things went smoothly. I wouldn't change any of it--
except to have moved the Maritime Prepositioning Force sooner, which I think
General [A. M.] Gray [the Commandant of the Marine Corps] had been advocating.
PROCEEDINGS: Jim Brabham said that the original defensive perimeter 30 miles
out from Al Jubayl expanded to roughly 80 miles out, as more Marine units
arrived. When, in this process, did you shift gears and begin to think about
offensive action?
Boomer: As early as October, we really began to think and talk among
ourselves--about going on the offense. I believe that any group of prudent
commanders would have done the same thing. We didn't know for certain that
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
we were going into the attack, but we knew that was a possibility--so we began
to do some preliminary planning for that possibility.
PROCEEDINGS: Was a rotation plan with 2d Marine Division units pretty well
firmed up by then?
Boomer: Early on, we began looking at a key question: If we wound up with a
long-term commitment, and had to rotate our troops, how would we do it?
General Gray and I firmly agreed on a key point: If we did not assume the
offensive and instead began a rotation system, we would rotate by units--not
individuals, as we did in Vietnam. Meanwhile, while we were thinking about
this, the 1st Marine Division units continued arriving and we kept pushing out
the defensive perimeter. Rotation planning was one of several things going on
at the time.
PROCEEDINGS: After the President's decision to present a credible offensive
capability to Saddam Hussein, the 2d Marine Division--among others--began
arriving, and I MEF started to evolve into a Corps-level command. Was major
compositing or headquarters reshuffling required to make the transition?
Boomer: Not really. The I MEF headquarters continued to grow as the MEF got
bigger, and the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing headquarters continued to grow as
[Major] General [Royal] Moore absorbed the bulk of Marine Corps aviation.
Any early concepts of an extremely lean headquarters went out the window; as
we kept growing, we needed more staff support. At that point, "compositing"
was really a melding of staffs and addition of specialists from all over the
Marine Corps. The real compositing took place when the 7th MEB headquarters
composited into the I MEF headquarters.
We probably should have renamed ourselves the 1st Marine Expeditionary
Corps. General Gray mentioned that, but other things were happening at the
time and I didn't push for it. He was right, though--"Corps" was more
appropriate.
PROCEEDINGS: Speaking of "compositing"--it's been suggested that the term is
inaccurate, that what actually occurs is a breaking down of staffs that are
later mix-mastered into a larger staff at a higher echelon. This is
difficult, even under ideal circumstances to say nothing of combat. Thinking
back over your compositing experience, is there anything you would do
differently?
Boomer: Yes. The Marine Corps has tended to treat compositing as something
relatively simple to execute. That's not so. The human dynamics alone can
create significant problems in the process. So we need to devote more
organized thought and effort to the question of compositing.
For example: A deploying MEB's officers need to understand early that
they will not remain a brigade forever; they will composite into a MEF staff.
They need to look forward to their next jobs. Compositing is not a tearing
down; in
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reality, it is a building process--and that's the way they should look at it.
Instead of grieving over the loss of their old identity, they should be
actively seeking their new warfighting identity.
Frankly, the sooner the term "brigade" leaves our vocabulary, the happier
I'll be. I like the concept of the MEF (Forward), instead. It makes people
look ahead, not back. If they realize that they are part of the MEF that is
coming in behind them, they may start thinking harder about how to help the
MEF build toward combat readiness. A shift of identity is required. After
Desert Storm, anyone who thinks that a MEF does not have a fighting
headquarters hasn't been paying attention.
PROCEEDINGS: Once you started offensive planning in earnest, the breaching
operation--later praised as truly classic by General Schwarzkopf--came to the
fore. What were your original thoughts along that line, and when did you
begin thinking in terms of a two-division breach, instead of a single-division
breach followed by a passage of lines?
Boomer: We were impressed initially by the speed with which the Iraqis erected
their barrier line across Kuwait. We probably drew some erroneous conclusions
at the time, assuming the Iraqis to be stronger than they really were. As
time passed, our intelligence began to show that--while significant, with a
lot of land mines--the barriers were not as refined as we once had thought.
They could have been a lot better. Each day, we would find more pieces to the
puzzle until we became confident that we could get through--although we
remained very concerned about the riskiness of the operation.
At the outset, we did not have all the heavy breaching and mine-clearing
equipment we needed. I think that will always be the case for the Marine
Corps, because that stuff is hard to haul around on a routine basis. When you
are faced with a special breaching problem, you have to send for the right
gear. In our case, [Brigadier General] Bob Tiebout and MCRDAC [Marine Corps
Research, Development and Acquisition Command] did a great job of gathering
heavy equipment from around the world and getting it to us. You need a lot of
equipment for a division-sized breach, because of the requirement for
redundancy. You are going to lose some gear when you push through the
minefields--and that, of course, is exactly what happened. When the 2d Marine
Division arrived in country, we still had only enough breaching equipment for
one division. But the gear continued to come in, until it became apparent
that we would have enough for two divisions--so we changed plans. Getting the
equipment was just the first step. Our Marines had to train with it, and
learn to use it well. The 1st Marine Division had been training for several
months, working against obstacles we constructed that were noticeably tougher
than the Iraqi barriers. The 2d Marine Division had the benefit of watching
over the 1st Division's shoulder and telescoping their own breaching training,
but they still didn't have much time to become truly proficient. About two
weeks before the ground attack began, however, [Major General] Bill Keys
[commanding the 2d Marine Division] came to me and said, "I can do
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this breach with my division." Up to that point, we had planned to have the
1st Division do the breach, then pass the 2d Division through to continue the
attack into Kuwait. I was not comfortable with that original plan. Any
passage of lines under combat conditions is a horribly complicated evolution,
and the thought of a division-sized passage--with troops and vehicles strung
out for miles, vulnerable to artillery fire--really made me uneasy. But until
the equipment and training shortfalls were fixed, we had no other choice.
When Bill Keys said he could do his own breaching operation, I believed him.
Almost 20 years earlier, Bill and I had fought side-by-side as co-vans
[advisors to the South Vietnamese Marines] and I knew from that vivid
experience that when he makes a commitment, he keeps it. So I asked Bill a
few questions about his plan, then told him that I would go back to my
headquarters and think about it overnight. In reality, I think I had already
made up my mind by the time I got back to my command post. We would do the
two-division breach. It would mean asking General Schwarzkopf for some extra
time to move the 2d Division and our logistic support area farther to the
west, but I felt the change in plan was a good one--and that's the way it
turned out. I attribute that successful change in plan to Bill's positive
thinking, his strong belief in his Marines, and his stepping forward to put
everything on the line when it was most needed.
PROCEEDINGS: You've touched on something central here. In addition to you and
Bill Keys, there were a number of former co-vans on the scene in key
positions. Two characteristics of that combat advisory experience were the
need to act independently--writing your own rulebook as you kept moving
through new territory--and the need for shared trust and heavy reliance on the
co-vans around you. It sounds as though history may have been repeating
itself.
Boomer: The situation wasn't any different in the desert. The type of battle
we were fighting was unique in the history of the Marine Corps, so we were
continually breaking new ground. But I had commanders who were independent
thinkers, people I could rely on. Whenever they told me they could do
something, I knew them well enough to know that they could do it, even if it
involved some risk. There were times when I would look at a battle plan and
think, "I would do that a little differently." Then the second thought would
roll in: "But the commander wants to do it this way." If you have faith in
him, you leave his plan alone.
PROCEEDINGS: To ensure continuous support in the attack, you placed your
logistical support areas far forward, at times miles ahead of the nearest
friendly ground combat units. Did you ever have second thoughts about that,
or was it just something that had to be done?
Boomer: I felt that it had to be done. I didn't have any second thoughts, but
I didn't sleep well until we had consolidated our forces enough to remove some
of the danger. And those logisticians were at risk-way forward of where
they'd
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Map of Iraqi Force Deployments, 21 February 1991
normally be. But to sustain the attack with the speed and power it required,
we needed to take some risks. I had a great deal of faith in the
logisticians. I had been watching them for six or seven months by that time
and had seen their self-confidence grow steadily, to the point where I could
ask them to do things way beyond what doctrine said they were capable of
doing. This may be cheerleading, but I firmly believe that Marines can do
anything. If you give them at least some of the equipment they need and turn
them loose, you'll always be amazed at what they can accomplish.
When I told Jim Brabham and Chuck [Brigadier General C. C.] Krulak
[Commanding General, 2d Force Service Support Group] what I wanted to do,
their only request was to get started on it as quickly as possible. What they
created out there in the desert at the Al Khanjar support base was absolutely
mindboggling. Even seeing it from the air, you could hardly believe they had
done it--and in just two weeks! Earlier in the campaign, while we were still
learning what we were capable of doing, I might have hesitated to ask for so
much. But at that point I knew that I could ask for the near-impossible, and
they would deliver.
PROCEEDINGS: The possibility existed for a real slugging match, if the Iraqis
resisted strongly or used chemical or biological weapons reportedly at their
disposal. When did you first begin to think that they might not use their
mass-casualty producing weapons?
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Boomer: We went into the attack wearing chemical suits, and the four-day
operation was about three-fourths over before I began to think that the Iraqis
had probably missed their chance to cause heavy casualties to our side, and
started to relax a little.
PROCEEDINGS: In light of the controversy over "managed news," you scored a
coup by taking some journalists into the attack with your mobile command post.
Overall, how did you think the war was covered?
Boomer: Taking the media with me was a spur-of-the-moment thought. I knew
where my command post was going, and I thought to myself, "What a hell of a
view someone is going to get of this war!" The less-experienced reporters
want to cover a war from the rifle-company level--and there's a need for some
of that. But the best way to get a picture of what's happening is to go with
a senior command element that is operating far forward. Then you can get the
sights and sounds along with a clearer idea of what is happening throughout
the battlefield. I had no qualms about letting the media come along, and they
could report on anything they saw.
Overall, I think we got a good shake with the media. We tried to treat
them as fairly as we could and, generally speaking, they covered the Marines
quite fairly. We had no problem with allowing reporters to talk to individual
Marines. We thought that would result in good stories, because we have bright
young people who express themselves well. There's always a chance that
someone will get on camera and say something silly, but that's not confined to
junior Marines and we regarded that as an acceptable risk. I think subsequent
events proved us right on that.
Map of Allied Force Deployment, 24 February 1991
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
PROCEEDINGS: You touched briefly on establishing Marine aviation in the
region. In light of the joint air-tasking setup and the use of the Air
Tasking Order [ATO], do you feel that Marine air got to support you in the way
you'd hoped?
Boomer: Yes--there is no question about the quality or quantity of Marine air
support. It worked exactly as we had planned, over the years. General Homer
adhered to the Omnibus Agreement, with respect to allocation of sorties, and
the ATO served a useful purpose and generally worked--although it's still a
bit too large, too complicated, and too slow. We provided excess sorties to
the Air Force, as promised, and the Air Force made no attempt to assume
operational control of Marine aviation. The air support picture was not
entirely problem-free, but all in all it worked pretty damned well.
PROCEEDINGS: In your new role at Quantico [Commanding General, Marine Corps
Combat Development Command), you will be in a position to orchestrate the
lessons-learned analysis effort and possibly correct some shortcomings. Two
deficiencies that seem to come up during every war are tactical communications
and intelligence . . .
Boomer: In the area of communications, we still are not equipped to conduct a
joint campaign of that size. We have been giving some thought to the
equipment we need to ensure interoperability, so we know what we need; it's
just a matter of getting it. Frankly, it took some outside assistance to keep
us plugged into the joint setup in the desert, so we need to fix that
shortfall. That doesn't mean buying a billion dollars worth of gear, but
selective buying of equipment, including the new SINCGARS [Single Channel
Ground and Airborne Radio System] family of radios now coming on line.
The 1st Marine Division was particularly resourceful in using PLARS
[Position Locating and Reporting System], which came into its own during this
operation. We're just beginning to see its potential and must be innovative
in its use. Of course, the GPS [Global Positioning System] is an absolute
must, and we need to acquire more of that capability. If we get some money,
we can make some rather dramatic improvements.
In terms of intelligence, we probably have put too many eggs in the
satellite basket. In a campaign the size of Desert Storm, the satellites get
overworked, and fail to meet the expectations of the commanders, especially at
lower levels. We've led them to believe that they're going to get some
marvelous stuff-and what they do get is pretty good-but it never quite
measures up to their expectations, and they want to know why. We need to do
some fine-tuning.
We desperately missed the tactical reconnaissance capability that the
RF-4C, which left the inventory just as this campaign started, would have
provided. It's got to be one of our top priorities to get that capability
back into the Corps. We simply can't place total reliance on satellites for
real-time surveillance, battle-damage assessment, and the like.
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PROCEEDINGS: In closing, I'd like to give you a chance to answer any question
I haven't asked.
Boomer: The campaign was successful, and I wouldn't do things much
differently. The experience reinforced something that I have always believed
in: Training must remain our first priority not only for Fleet Marine Force
units, but at Marine Corps bases, as well. Quantico must take the lead in
this.
The thing that made the big difference on the battlefield is that we had
thousands and thousands of individual Marines constantly taking the
initiative. The young lance corporal would take a look, see something 75 or
100 meters out in front that needed to be done, and go out and do it without
being told. As I read through award citations from Desert Shield and Desert
Storm, this theme reappears, time and time again. That aggressive spirit
comes from being well-trained, and confident in your professional knowledge.
It is young Marines with that aggressive spirit who take their divisions
ahead. When you say that the division is moving forward, you are really
saying that thousands of Marines are forging ahead as individuals and in small
units. They are the real heroes of any battle. You can have the best battle
plan in the world, but without the right people to execute that plan it is no
more than a pipe dream. It's the well-trained Marine who turns that plan into
reality.
PROCEEDINGS: Once again, it comes right back down to that young rifleman. . .
Boomer: Yes--and the young truck driver, and the young communicator, and the
young engineer. Everyone has a piece of the action, and every piece is
important.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Molly Moore, a reporter for THE WASHINGTON POST, travelled with Lieutenant
General Boomer's command group during the ground campaign. In the first
article, she recounts the Marines' preparations for their offensive,
particularly the intelligence gathering effort. The second article describes
Task Force Troy, part of a comprehensive deception plan that also included the
amphibious forces off the coast of Kuwait. The third article shows what it
was like to be a part of the I MEF headquarters from the start of the ground
war to its end one hundred hours later.
Porous Minefields, Dispirited Troops and a Dog named Pow
by Molly Moore
THE WASHINGTON POST, 17 March 1991
Beginning the day after christmas, small U.S. reconnaissance teams
sitting in observation towers along the Kuwait border watched as hapless
camels and dogs were blown to pieces making their way through Iraqi
minefields. The observers soon realized that the Iraqis never returned to the
fields to replace the exploded mines.
The Marine recon teams also learned that the Iraqis had carefully marked
paths through the killing fields with coils of concertina wire. "Once we
found that, the only thing missing was the neon sign saying, `Start here'"
said a U.S. military officer.
The porous minefields were just one example of an Iraqi military threat
that never lived up to its advance billing. When the ground war finally came
the Iraqis proved to be a smaller force--and a far weaker one--than U.S.
commanders had initially expected.
The recon teams in the towers also began luring more and more Iraqi
front-line troops across the border to surrender and learned that the Iraqi
will to fight was far weaker than anyone had anticipated.
Sometime the Americans slipped notes urging surrender under the collar of
a black-and-white mutt dubbed "Pow" which begged for scraps on both sides of
the border. One day, Marines tied a nude magazine pinup to Pow's collar and
sent him across the line. That night, they said, four Iraqi soldiers crossed
the border and turned themselves in to the Americans.
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U.S. intelligence sources significantly overestimated the size of Iraqi
military forces, the complexity of their minefields and obstacle belts, and
their ability to execute war, according to new details emerging from captured
Iraqi combat documents, prisoner interviews and battlefield assessments by
allied commanders.
Iraqi military logs seized from bunkers across the desert and debriefing
of senior Iraqi officers taken prisoner during the war indicate that the Iraqi
military had positioned no more than 350,000 troops in Kuwait and southern
Iraq when the war began in mid-January--far fewer than the 540,000 troops
cited repeatedly by Pentagon officials at the time.
The 540,000 figure was the full-strength level of the Iraqi military
units that U.S. intelligence assumed were deployed in the Kuwaiti theater of
operations. But many front-line Iraqi units were manned at only 50 percent of
their full strength, and in the rear even the best artillery units were
operating with little more than two-thirds of their troops, Iraqi documents
show. Elite Republican Guard units in southern Iraq reportedly were the
strongest, with approximately 80 percent of their force in place, officials
said.
In addition, photographic intelligence from satellites, spy planes and
remotely piloted aircraft exaggerated the severity of the minefields and
obstacle belts that lay between the allied forces in Saudi Arabia and the
frontline Iraqi troops across the border in Kuwait, making trenches and other
barriers appear far more formidable than they were, according to military
authorities. U.S. intelligence assessments based on the performance of Iraqi
forces during their eight-year war with Iran also overestimated the ability of
Iraqi troops to effectively use the sophisticated artillery, tanks and other
weaponry in their arsenal, military of officials learned.
"They built these guys to be a monster," said Maj.Gen. William Keys,
commander of the U.S. Marines' 2nd Division. The burly general added that
even the physical size of the Iraqi soldiers had been exaggerated in his mind.
"I thought they were bigger people."
Operation Desert Storm's 100 hours of ground combat turned out to be two
wars--a one-two punch by Marines who surged up the middle with what amounted
to a right jab into the Iraqi midsection, and a left hook by U.S. Army and
allied forces carrying out the most massive armored flanking attack since
World War II that is the subject of part two of this series.
"They Can't Hit Me."
It was not until after Christmas, five months after Iraq invaded Kuwait,
that the initial inflated assessment of the Iraqi military began to be
punctured by the reconnaissance and Special Forces teams that had set up in
grungy guard posts along the border and in cramped underground holes in
Iraqi-held territory.
The border teams fired round after round into Kuwait in artillery probes
and discovered that the Iraqis--for all their much-acclaimed artillery
prowess--could not accurately pinpoint American positions to return fire. The
Marine commander, Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer, recounts that after two weeks of
these probes,
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Col. Richard Barry, chief of the reconnaissance and surveillance teams, strode
into Boomer's office and told his boss: "Those bastards have been shooting at
me--they know where I am and they can't hit me. I don't think they're all
that great."
With those reports, American field commanders began to suspect serious
shortcomings in the Iraqi military. "As we began to accumulate evidence
during those later weeks, we all began to sense certainly they were not up to
strength," Boomer said. "But we weren't going to say anything about it."
Just as the U.S. intelligence agencies reported the massive buildup of
Iraqi troops along the Kuwaiti border in late July but failed to predict
Saddam Hussein's intent to invade the oil-rich emirate, these same
institutions were unable to gauge the Iraqi soldiers' lack of commitment to
fight a war for a cause they did not support. While captured maps and
overlays reveal that intelligence agencies were extremely precise in their
assessments of which Iraqi military units were deployed in the battlefield and
where they were located, American intelligence badly misjudged the state of
affairs within those units.
"Intelligence concentrated on things, people, equipment, numbers," said
Lt. Col. Keith L. Holcomb, commander of a Marine team that penetrated into
Iraqi territory to gather first-hand intelligence in the days before the
ground war began. "War is a contest of wills. It's an intangible. They (the
Iraqis) didn't have the will."
While many commanders now concede that the Iraqi military was only a
fraction of the powerhouse it had been portrayed to be, they contend that the
early assessments contributed significantly to a battle plan that allowed
allied troops to overwhelm the Iraqi military with relatively small numbers of
casualties on the allied side.
"The intelligence guys are paid to give you the worst case, within
limits," said Boomer. "I think to some degree they did that, and that wasn't
a failing on their part. In fact, if anything, it helped us."
Battlefield assessments and captured sand models showing in elaborate
detail some Iraqi defensive positions indicate that the Iraqis had devised
professional, well-planned defenses, in many cases not dissimilar to what
American commanders said they would have established in the same areas.
Many defensive bunker complexes were masterfully designed; the main
ammunition and supply depot for the Iraq army corps assigned to defend central
Kuwait apparently went undetected by allied intelligence and remained
well-stocked and intact until Marine forces overran it.
Vast stocks of ammunition--most of it produced in Jordan--were found with
combat units throughout the battlefield, indicating that the Iraqis were
equipped to fight far longer than they did. American forces also found among
these stocks ammunition from the Soviet Union, China, Germany and the United
States.
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"Desertions Really Hurt Them."
In contrast to the Iraqi front lines, the bunkers of troops stationed
farther north and nearer Kuwait City were stuffed amply with sacks of potatoes
and rice and other foodstuffs. One Marine said he entered an Iraqi bunker and
saw a plump roast in a pan near a stove, indicating the cook fled minutes
before he planned to start dinner. In some areas, entire prefabricated houses
had been buried, complete with indoor toilets, showers, kitchens and potted
plants.
Allied forces say they captured at least eight brigadier generals or
colonels who commanded brigade-sized units. One general captured by Marine
forces at his desert command post was impeccably dressed, with meticulously
combed hair and clean fingernails. According to Marine Maj. Gen. Keys, who
met with the officer: "He was living a lot better than I was."
Personnel logs discovered in dozens of Iraqi command bunkers show that up
until a few weeks before the air war began, Iraqi commanders allowed their
soldiers to take leaves to visit their families. Those same documents show
that at least 20 percent of the troops never returned to their units.
"I think desertions really hurt them," said Col. Bill Steed, plans chief
for the Marine operation. "They had some units way below 50 percent
strength."
As allied aircraft began pounding Iraqi military positions in January,
Iraqi commanders formed execution squads and ordered them to shoot any troops
caught trying to defect or sneak away from their units, according to military
interviews with the captured Iraqi senior officers.
Meanwhile, from their body-sized holes in the sand miles inside
Iraqi-held territory, U.S. reconnaissance teams began to discover details of
the deterioration and lack of military commitment among Iraqi troops that had
remained invisible to the sophisticated intelligence equipment in the skies
above them.
On the night of Feb. 17, three six-member reconnaissance teams slipped
across the Kuwait border. For the next 76 hours, with no sleep and little
food, they crept through Iraqi defenses by night and hid in burlap covered
sand holes by day. They communicated by radio to their rear base using
cryptic one-word codes: "Cougar" meant the men were safe inside their holes,
"alligator," in case they were discovered and came under attack. For the
entire period, each man spoke only about a half-dozen words into his radio.
At one point, Sgt. John Smith, 32, heard Iraqi voices and coughs beneath
his feet. He had walked across the top of a buried bunker.
On the second night, the teams reached the first Iraqi minefield and
obstacle belt. In the cold, rainy darkness, four Iraqi soldiers began walking
toward one of the teams. The Marines waited breathlessly, trapped between
approaching enemy troops and the minefield. The Iraqis sauntered past,
oblivious to the hidden intruders.
"It was nerve-wracking. The responsibility was awesome," said Capt. Rory
Talkington, 33, who monitored their movements from the Saudi border. "The
lives of a lot of people were hanging in the balance of what they learned."
Using night-vision goggles, the men picked their way through Iraqi minefields
and began learning that the mines--although they were vast in number
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
and variety--were clumsily laid, most visible atop the ground. Before dawn,
they each spent about two hours digging small trenches, called "hides," in the
damp sand. From sunup to sundown, with burlap veil covering their bodies and
faces, the men peered through binoculars at an Iraqi encampment just over
1,000 yards away.
"They were like civilians thrown into a military environment," Sgt. Troy
G. Mitchell, 25, of Big Lake, Minn., said of the Iraqis he watched in the
camp. "They milled around, we never saw them carrying rifles, they had no
patrols, they had no reaction to the air power flying over them."
Cluster Bombs at Teatime.
Two days after the teams returned, American forces dispatched FA-18
Hornet attack planes to bomb the campsite, then sent armored vehicles in full
daylight across the border to within 100 yards of the encampment, from where
they demolished the site. "A lot of people got killed," said one
reconnaissance team member.
At a U.S. military observation border post on the coast to the east,
other reconnaissance teams observed seemingly oblivious Iraqi military
officers, who gathered on the veranda of a deserted holiday hotel each
afternoon to sip coffee and tea and watch the allied bombers flying overhead
to targets farther north. On Jan. 20, the reconnaissance teams called in an
air strike, which dropped a cluster bomb on the hotel patio, killing the
officers during teatime.
Senior U.S. military leaders say they remain mystified as to why no
chemical weapons stores have been found on the battlefield, after numerous
captured soldiers and officers told them that the Iraqi forces were planned to
use the weapons. While virtually all of the Iraqi forces were equipped with
chemical protective masks and suits--some of which were American-made--many
left their equipment in their bunkers when they surrendered. While allied
forces found some yellow-painted artillery shells--yellow is the
chemical-weapons warning color--they have been unable to confirm the presence
of any chemical or biological weapons.
Allied commanders now believe that the number of Iraqi forces remaining
in Kuwait and southern Iraq had diminished significantly by the time the
ground war started as a result of almost six weeks of aerial bombing, as well
as desertions. While some Iraqi officers told American military officials
that the bombing had resulted in minimal deaths in their units, others
reported massive deaths from the bombings.
U.S. military officials attribute the rapid capitulation of the Iraqi
military to a combination of the brutal and relentless air attacks, the
overwhelming ground assault from directions never expected by entrenched Iraqi
troops and the Iraqi military's inability to adjust artillery and other
weaponry and react quickly enough to repel the advancing land forces. The
powerful military punches, combined with the pervasive lack of commitment to a
cause Iraqi forces did not understand or support, led to surrenders of such
massive proportions that they
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overwhelmed allied efforts to collect and transport the prisoners from the
earliest hours of the ground war.
While some forces, particularly those near the Iraqi army 3rd Corps
headquarters outside Kuwait City, fought fiercely for short periods, they
usually surrendered after allied troops destroyed the first tanks and
artillery pieces.
In some cases, Iraqi officers, fearful that they would be killed crossing
the battlefield to surrender, sent their enlisted troops ahead with orders to
lead the Americans back to the officer bunkers so the leaders would then turn
themselves in.
One captured senior Iraqi commander told Marine Col. Ron Richard, plans
chief for the Marine 2nd Division, that the Iraqis referred to the Marines as
"Angels of Death," originally believing that they would kill every soldier in
their path, leaving no prisoners.
Even though some small-scale riots erupted at some of the overcrowded
prisoner collection points when American forces first began distributing food
and water, most U.S. troops said the Iraqi forces appeared happy that they
could finally surrender.
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Allies Used a Variation of Trojan Horse Ploy
by Molly Moore
THE WASHINGTON POST, 17 March 1991
For two weeks before allied forces stormed into Kuwait and Iraq, a
phantom Marine division stalked the border armed with loudspeakers blaring
tank noises. It filled sand berms with dummy tanks and artillery guns.
Helicopters landed daily, never delivering or picking up a passenger.
Military creators dubbed the team Task Force Troy--a subtler alternative
to the original designation of Task Force Trojan Horse--460 troops trying to
imitate the activity of 16,000 Marines who, in a major last-minute change of
allied war plans, were actually racing more than 100 miles to the west for a
new assault position.
"We wanted to avoid the appearance of the truth--that there was nobody
home," said Brig. Gen. Tom Draude, who commanded the operation. "We wanted to
create the illusion of force where there was none."
In the end, the team worried that it may have been too successful in its
efforts. "It was touchy on G-Day. There wasn't very much in that area and we
hoped no one counterattacked across the border," said Draude. "We didn't even
have a TOW (anti-tank missile)."
It was to become only one of dozens of major risks that allied forces
took in launching their free-flowing ground war against Iraqi forces, much of
which was revised on the backs of cardboard cartons and etched in the sand as
troops roared through Kuwait and Iraq at speeds far more rapid than commanders
anticipated.
The entire Marine attack plan changed so dramatically in the days before
the land war began Feb. 24 that one division did not receive its last pieces
of mine-breaching equipment until the day before it crossed the border into
Kuwait.
Allied forces moved so quickly through some parts of the battlefield that
wide flanks were left vulnerable to attack from the estimated 80,000 Iraqi
forces that American and Arab troops simply bypassed once inside Kuwait. The
pace was so swift that some Marine commanders feared that front-line units
would outrun the artillery batteries supporting them from behind.
Changed Plans on the Move
At the same time, the Marines pushed all of their ground forces through
the breaches, leaving no reserves behind to fill gaps if the first troops
encountered
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major problems. An amphibious brigade intended to be used as a reserve could
not be landed until well after the ground war began so as not to interfere
with the war plan.
"We changed plans while on the move," said Col. Ron Richard, plans chief
for the 2nd Marine Division. "We were mapping things out in the sand." His
counterpart in the 1st Marine Division, Lt.Col. Jerry Humble, said commanders
sketched the final plan for the takeover of Kuwait International Airport on
the back of a C-ration carton just before troops began surrounding the field.
"This was not the old classic frontal assault," said 1st Marine Division
commander, Maj. Gen. James M. "Mike" Myatt. "We wanted to create chaos for
them. If we were there to destroy every artillery piece and every soldier,
we'd still be there."
In the four months after the Bush administration ordered the military to
begin planning for an attack against Iraqi forces, the Marine Corps changed
its war plan five times, shifting from one end of the Kuwaiti border to the
other as Iraqi forces changed their own defensive concentrations.
"I had the general officers in once a week for months and we'd sit down
and war-game it among ourselves," said Lt.Gen. Walt Boomer, three-star
commander of the Marine forces. "Everybody had a favorite plan, an area they
favored, but by the time we finished there was general consensus, "Yeah, this
was the right place to go."
But barely two weeks before the ground war began, Boomer agreed to the
most dramatic change of all. At the urging of 2nd Marine Division commander
Maj.Gen. William M. Keys, he decided to send the two Marine divisions through
separate breaches in the minefields, rather than one behind the other through
the same gap.
Again, the plan meant major risks. The 2nd Division, based at Camp
Lejeune. N.C., had less desert training experience than the California-based
1st Division, had been in Saudi Arabia about half as long as its sister
division, and still had not received all of its mine-breaching equipment.
"The 2nd Division had to gear up, they didn't have as much time," said
Boomer. "But he (Keys) assured me they were ready to do it. You have to
trust your commanders' judgment. That's what we're paying them for."
Keys, who like many of the Desert Storm commanders had earned a healthy
respect for the ferocity of minefields in Vietnam, said he was concerned that
his men could become trapped in Iraqi-constructed obstacle belts. He worried
that they could be pounded by artillery fire before they could reach the other
side if they were forced to wait in line behind another division.
As both Army and Marine forces finished massive shifts westward across
the desert, ground commanders asked allied war chief Gen. H. Norman
Schwarzkopf for three additional days of aerial bombings, pushing back the
planned start of the ground campaign until 4 a.m. Feb. 24.
Three days before allied forces punched through Iraqi minefields, a light
armored infantry division pushed into Kuwait near the western point along the
Saudi-Kuwaiti border that marks the shortest distance between Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait City, in an effort to trick Iraqi forces into believing the assault
would
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come from that location. The Marine advance intentionally halted only a few
miles into Kuwait.
Captured Iraqi officers later told American authorities that the ruse
worked and that Iraqi troops were caught off guard on the night of Feb. 24
because they believed they had suppressed the allied incursion three nights
earlier.
For Marine forces, the three-day blitzkrieg across the Iraqi minefields
and the plains of burning tanks in the Kuwaiti desert resulted in
extraordinarily few deaths--six during the war itself, two of which are
believed to have been caused by accidents rather than hostile fire.
Despite the few casualties and the relative tactical ease of suppressing
Iraqi forces, "there was a lot more fighting than people realized," according
to Col. Larry Livingston, commander of the 6th Marine Regiment which
spearheaded the minefield breach for the 2nd Division.
This was a war of nagging artillery fire and short, intense bursts of
combat, rather than a campaign of prolonged battles and sustained
counterattacks.
History will record firefights in obscure places such as the Burgan oil
field, where Iraqi forces hid in clouds of smoke from burning wellheads, and
an agricultural station which served as an Iraqi headquarters area and was
dubbed the "Ice Cube Trays" because of its appearance from the air.
But the brief war was not fought without heroics. Just minutes after
starting through the western minefield breach, Livingston's regiment lost four
mire plows and 14 men were injured. When one line charge, which was supposed
to blast a trail through one portion of the minefield, failed to detonate, one
young Marine raced into the minefield twice in an effort to recharge the
device. "Everybody knew we had to bust through," said Livingston.
The 2nd Division faced the toughest minefields inside the Kuwaiti border,
obstacle belts laced through high-pressure oil pipelines between two
industrial collection points. One of its three regiments suffered so many
mechanical problems with equipment and imposing hurdles in the heavily seeded
field, that it did not finish breaching the obstacle belt until the second day
of the war operation.
As the troops emerged from the obstacle fields, there were constant
reports of snowstorm, snowstorm," over the radio--codeword for incoming
artillery. Livingston said that at one point, his men were "getting hammered"
because they had remained exposed to an opposing Iraqi force too long.
"Budweiser" and "Hurricane"
During one encounter, a young tanker became so excited about shooting his
first Iraqi T-72 tank that he failed to notice he had not destroyed the
weapon. As columns of American tanks charged past what they believed to be a
disabled T-72, a rear tank crew squinting through the oily black smoke that
blanketed the battlefield spotted its turret creaking in the direction of the
oncoming allied troops and fired in time to kill it.
On the eastern side of the battlefield, the 1st Marine Division was
facing its own sporadic surprise attacks. One Iraqi tank unit it had bypassed
came
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rumbling out of a fiery oil field and opened fire on advancing Marines.
Later, a Marine captain who had been shot in the jaw during the attack,
rendering him unable to speak, was mistakenly grouped with wounded Iraqi
troops because he was unrecognizable under the sand and oil that had turned
his skin and uniform a smoky black.
Allied forces, trying to limit radio commands because of Iraqi success at
intercepting transmissions, charted their progress in one-word codes. As the
1st Division slid into position across the Kuwaiti border the first night, it
used name-brand beers to announce its positions: "Budweiser" indicated the
artillery units were in place with their tubes up; "Miller" told commanders
that Task Force Taro was beginning its infiltration; "Falstaff" meant Task
Force Papa Bear was in attack position.
As the troops moved through the minefield, the codes switched to weather
themes: "Hurricanes" meant Task Force Ripper was breaching. Then came a
series of football words as they moved through the second obstacle lines:
"Snap" would have signaled that Task Force X-Ray had begun a helicopter
assault, and "Split End" meant Task Force Grizzly was in position on the east
flank. Moving out of the obstacle belts, the codes shifted to card game
analogies: "Royal Flush" was the announcement that one military objective had
been isolated, while "Aces" and "Queens signified that task forces were
rearming and refueling.
All the while, Marines and the Army's Tiger Brigade, which was assigned
to the same sector, were constantly attempting to track the flow of Arab
forces on both the left and right flanks of the two Marine divisions.
Frequently the slower, more methodical Saudi and Arab forces were further
behind the American lineup, leaving large expanses of Marine flank uncovered.
Some Saudi units had not even practiced mine breaching before the ground war
began, according to U.S. military officials.
One of the most dreaded missions of the war was aborted at the last
minute. Bush ordered the cease-fire before the 2nd Marine Division could
carry out its scheduled task of providing support for Kuwaiti resistance
efforts in clearing the immigrant town of Jahra, west of Kuwait City. In the
operation, Marines would have provided contingency support for dangerous
house-to-house sweeps. Asked how U.S. forces could wage such a high-intensity
war with so few allied casualties, Brig. Gen. Charles Krulak said: "It was a
miracle."
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Storming the Desert with the Generals
by Molly Moore
THE WASHINGTON POST, 14 April 1991
Three days before the Desert Storm ground campaign began, the Marines'
top general in the Persian Gulf invited me into his command post for what
turned out to be the rest of the war.
Lt.Gen. Walter Boomer's official letter of invitation promised no "major
scoops or revealing insights" and warned me to "expect some dead periods when
there will be little to report."
There were no dead periods. Life with the top brass of the Marines was
an unforgettable experience. In the postwar euphoria of what has been hailed
as a quick and easy victory, it may be forgotten that there was nothing quick
or easy about this operation for the troops who fought it or the commanders
who directed it.
The charts at the daily Riyadh press briefings made the victory appear
almost effortless, a smoothly run war of maneuver and speed against a clumsy
and overmatched enemy. But the battlefield reality was vastly different, a
string of intense episodes punctuated by split-second decisions and
last-minute revisions that the generals sometimes mapped on the backs of
cardboard boxes as their troops swept through the desert.
The cameras have shown smiling troopers waving triumphantly as Desert
Storm roared onward. But the videotaped scenes simply do not reveal the raw
emotion that bound the troops and their commanders together--a thick mix of
pride, camaraderie and elation seldom encountered in civilian life.
I joined the generals the night before the ground assault began, reaching
Boomer's compound after a seven-hour journey in the back of a military van
from a base deep in the rear. The Marine headquarters was a collection of
tents buried within sand berms, fighting vehicles and supply transports just a
few miles from the Iraqi lines.
From Boomer down to the greenest grunt, everyone faced--and had to face
down--the fear of dying. That fear became real in the days leading up to the
ground war, when the Marines began swallowing fistfuls of pills--including
nauseating nerve-gas antidotes and anthrax inhibitor--to ward off possible
chemical or biological warfare by the Iraqis. Later, when the troops charged
into the Iraqi minefields in stiff chemical suits, they did so thinking they
might die, twitching like cockroaches, in the fine mist of a chemical attack.
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Journalists who had spent months interviewing uniformed men and women in
the desert, sharing their snapshots from home, their mothers' homemade cookies
and their most private fears about death and dying, dreaded the prospect of
finding the names of those same men and women on long casualty lists.
Nine hours before the Feb. 24 H-Hour that officially began the ground
assault, the canvas tent called the "Chapel of the Breach" at the desert
command post bulged with an overflow crowd that spilled onto the sands outside
the open tent flap. When the service ended, there was a last-minute run on
the over-sized wooden rosaries that hung on a nail at the rear of the
makeshift church.
Across the camp, in the large tent that housed the combat operations
center, commanders who seemed to have aged years in the months since President
Bush ordered them to prepare for war solemnly awaited the long-dreaded breach
of the minefields that would begin at dawn. Most of them entered this war
shadowed by the ghosts of Vietnam, recognizing that the public perception back
home of political or military failure in the Persian Gulf would be disastrous
for the U.S. military.
What came through that night, however, was something much deeper-genuine
anguish over the prospects of high casualties among their troops.
Those troops had come from the Bart Simpson-M.C. Hammer rap music
generation, the first all-volunteer American force to fill the front lines of
combat. They had arrived in the Arabian desert with their hand-held Nintendo
games, VCRs and color television sets hot-wired to tactical military antennae.
They left with the life-altering experiences that even a 100-hour battle
imprints on the soul.
Boomer directed the assault into Kuwait from a perch atop a mobile
communications vehicle stuffed with radios. Life was a sequence of
stop-and-start desert travels as the headquarters rolled north toward Kuwait
City. The general spent almost every waking moment on the radio telephones,
listening, commenting, directing. When he wasn't on a circuit to someone, he
was huddled with his staff or other generals.
For weeks before the assault, the ground forces had seen Desert Storm as
something threatening but distant--pink-tinted jet streams that criss-crossed
the evening skies as warplanes streaked overhead toward Kuwait and Iraq, booms
and rumbles of cluster bombs and daisy-cutters slamming unseen into the sand
beyond the horizon.
But within minutes of crossing the minefields, the Marines and the war
came face-to-face. The bleak landscape lit up with ghastly fireworks as U.S.
missiles and shells found Iraqi tanks and artillery, turning them into funeral
pyres. Choppers thumped overhead, spitting missiles at Iraqis just beyond the
next knoll. Artillery fire flashed and boomed across the sands from every
direction.
At one point, Boomer's party of about 48 Marines and one reporter watched
a tank assault at one point on the horizon and a Cobra helicopter attack at
another.
"Look at those black dots on the side of the hill," ordered a voice on a
tactical radio during one skirmish. "If they're tanks or artillery--take them
out."
The response crackled: "They're artillery."
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"Take them out."
The laconic command unleashed a furious assault that scorched the desert
black and silenced the enemy guns.
The roving headquarters sometimes got closer to the middle of things than
anyone anticipated. At one point, shells from dug-in Iraqi guns were
screaming overhead from somewhere in front of us and answering American fire
was ripping overhead in the other direction. In the middle--where we were--
there were prayers that rounds from neither side would fall short.
Although Boomer's cavalcade stayed on the move, the threat from mines
kept the drivers careful to remain inside the same rutted tread or tire tracks
that had been traversed earlier by hundreds of tanks and trucks. Straying
even a few inches off the traveled path could mean death from an undetected
mine.
Periodically, commanding generals rolled their vehicles to desert
rendezvous points, consulting over maps and paper cups of luke-warm coffee.
They traded war plans as calmly as they traded throat lozenges to beat back
the hacking coughs and sore throats brought on by the short, frigid nights and
long, stressful days.
They tramped across the sand from mobile communications vans to tent
command centers to satellite linkups--listening, planning, coordinating,
fretting. Clutching folded maps, they summoned up radio voices at distant
command posts and war rooms with code names like Gray Oak, Denver Foxtrot,
Pitbull, Top Gun and Cobra. When communications links failed, they fumed and
cursed and sent young enlisted men scurrying in all directions. In between
strategy sessions and radio conversations, they paced the sand, pondering and
worrying.
Boomer's closest adviser in the field was his operations chief, or G-3 in
military parlance: Col. Bill Steed, a Mississippian with a deep drawl and an
unflappable demeanor. Boomer consulted often with Maj. Gen. William Keys,
commander of the 2nd Marine Division, whose own G-3 was a man with a different
Southern accent, Col. Ron Richard, a Cajun from Basile, La. Periodically,
Kuwaiti Col. Mahmaud Boushahri advised the generals of potential hiding places
and ambush points for the Iraqi military around Kuwait City. He accurately
predicted that Iraqis could leap out of burning oil fields and hide artillery
and tanks behind ridge lines west of the city.
The headquarters' drivers and radiomen and other enlisted troops were a
study in frustration: Here they were, confined to a command convoy and forced
to watch others pull the lanyards on the howitzers and fire the tank cannons
on nearby horizons. While generals and colonels directed the war from a few
yards away, the enlisted men slumped against their armored vehicles and
Humvees, or whiled away the time trying to raise the BBC on shortwave radios
in hopes of gleaning details about the war that was going on all around them.
When it became apparent the Iraqis would rather give up than fight, the
persistent fear of unexpected disasters over the next sandy knoll prevented
the commanders from sharing much of the early exhilaration of the combat
troops. The life and death demands of fast-paced war brought a sharpness and
finality to their decisions that seemed alien to the peacetime military
bureaucracy of the Pentagon. The mood of the brass remained as grim as the
backdrop of the
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battlefield, where flaming oil from sabotaged wellheads shot skyward across
the horizon and a thick gray cloud spit flecks of black oil on everything
below.
On the second night of the war, the command convoy was suddenly
surrounded by armed Iraqis. Confused radiomen screamed warnings about
"dismounted infantry!" Some iraqis appeared ready to surrender, others
remained prone behind sand berms with rifles pointed toward the convoy. It
turned out that the Iraqis were indeed surrendering, but the convoy was
immobilized for three hours while the Marines rounded them up.
The night was so black that when the driver of one Humvee stepped out the
door to relieve himself, a Marine with the same plan from another vehicle
bumped into him.
"I was so scared, I nearly shot him," the shaken driver said when he
returned to the Humvee.
When the convoy finally began to move again, the inky darkness created by
the thick layers of oily smoke forced traffic directors carrying faint red
flashlights to physically walk the hulking armored vehicles and trucks through
fields of mines and unexploded bombs.
The movements became so treacherous that the convoy finally pulled into a
small campsite that had been cleared of explosives. As armed Humvees formed a
safety circle around a small patch of sand, their drivers warned us not to
step beyond the ring because of the mine dangers, Marines began setting up a
makeshift radio command center. Forbidden to use any light except dim red
filters because of fear of discovery by enemy troops, the young Marines worked
by feel in virtual blindness.
During the brief nightly respites from the race through Kuwait, the
troops slept beneath their Humvees or inside their armored personnel carriers.
For the most part they lived on adrenaline and MREs, the packaged military
rations called Meals Ready to Eat. MREs developed a major following among the
desert's rats and mice. During a stay at one Marine supply center near the
Kuwaiti border before the ground war, half a dozen large rats invaded our tent
nightly, waking us as they gnawed through the brown plastic pouches and
nibbled their way through the contents.
Months of desert living had taught troops to adapt to austerity. With
several weeks between showers, many men shaved their heads bald to avoid dirty
hair: the women brushed baby powder through their locks to absorb the oils of
gritty, showerless days. I never did--I never had any baby powder. I just
wore my camouflage hat. The companies that produce baby-wipes must have
prospered during the war--no commanding general or grunt left for a desert
tent or fox-hole without the moist towelettes that became invaluable in a
waterrationed environment.
In three days of rolling through the Kuwaiti battlefields, there was
something strangely missing--bodies, casualties of war. Eventually hundreds
of Iraqi bodies would be found half buried in bunkers and draped over burning
vehicles, but during the fast-paced campaign, entire areas of the battlefield
appeared devoid of death.
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There were, however, grim reminders of the Iraqi troops who once manned
the now-burning tanks and artillery: combat boots sitting beside foxholes,
pots with halfeaten portions of rice perched atop charred rocks and twigs,
makeshift tables set for the next meal.
Across the desert, Iraqi troops emerged from hundreds of bunkers waving
white undershirts and white toilet paper streamers in surrender. They flocked
toward the Americans, kissing the troops and wailing thanks.
One young Marine corporal drove a truckload of prisoners into a rear
American base camp after a long trip from the front lines and flagged down his
commander, Brig. Gen. Charles Krulak. "Watch this, general," he ordered. The
Marine then turned to the assembled captives and raised his voice: "Old
McDonald had a farm....' He paused and pointed to the Iraqi soldiers. They
responded in unison, "E-i, E-i, O."
On the battlefield one afternoon, Boomer peered through binoculars at an
endless line of humanity stretching across the desert horizon. Unable to
contain his curiosity, he ordered his driver to head for the spot.
Military police had been so overwhelmed by prisoners of war that they had
fashioned a makeshift prison camp from coils of concertina wire and herded
about 3,500 tired and hungry Iraqi soldiers into the corral.
As Boomer paced the perimeter of the encampment, trailed by bodyguards
and a reporter, a buzz of whispers rose from the rows prisoners squatting on
the sand. I asked a Kuwaiti officer accompanying the Americans to interpret
the prisoners' comments. "They're saying, "Look, there's a woman over there,"
he replied.
On what would become the final night of the ground war, after allied
troops had encircled Kuwait City, Boomer was awakened by a frustrated voice
outside his tent: "It's the [expletive] president. He's trying to reach the
[expletive] CG [commanding general] and we can't get a connection!"
"As smart as these kids are," Boomer said later, sometime you'd think
they know only one word."
When the war came to an abrupt halt after President Bush ordered a
ceasefire that Wednesday morning (Feb. 27), a large percentage of the ground
troops who swept through Kuwait and Iraq had seen little combat. Over the
next few hours some expressed disappointment over the ease of the victory.
But they also felt guilty for feeling that disappointment. In the same
breath, they were relieved that few of their buddies had fallen in combat.
The commanders, after praising the plans, the weapons and the troops,
then paused to reflect their awe at the relatively light number of American
casualties. "I would like to tell you we're that good," said one commander.
"But we're not. The only thing I can attribute it to is luck and lots of
prayers."
When the first American troops, who had been stationed at desert outposts
since August, reached the outskirts of Kuwait City early Wednesday morning
after the initial ceasefire, they were almost incredulous. One young Marine
peered out the window of his truck as it approached the city, "Hey, there's
grass out there." A few minutes later he pointed to the horizon, "They even
have trees here--I haven't seen a tree in months.'
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As the convoy rolled into Kuwait City and was surrounded by throngs of
jubilant, tearful Kuwaitis, the same young Marine swiveled his head in all
directions: "Look--they have women here and they don't wear veils!"
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
As Commanding General, 3d Marine Aircraft Wing, Lieutenant General Moore
commanded all Marine aircraft assigned to I Marine Expeditionary Force. In
this interview, he discusses the significant aspects of Marine Corps air
operations during Desert Storm, including the effectiveness of air control and
planning measures, the performance of various types of aircraft, and the role
of Marine Aviation in intelligence collection.
Marine Air: There When Needed
interview with Lieutenant General Royal N. Moore, Jr., USMC
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, November 1991.
PROCEEDINGS: The Joint Force Air Component Commander (JFACC) concept has been
controversial and dates at least to the single-manager concept in Vietnam. As
Marine air built up over the months, how did the JFACC concept work? What are
your opinions on the air tasking order (ATO)?
Moore: [Lieutenant] General Charles A. Horner [U.S. Air Force, the JFACC],
Vice Admiral Stan Arthur [commanding naval forces], and General Boomer are
reasonable individuals. When reasonable men come to a course of action, they
can work out reasonable solutions. Yes, it wasn't always right with doctrine
on either side, either green doctrine or blue doctrine, but we made it work.
[See "Stop Quibbling: Win the War," PROCEEDINGS, December 1990, pages 38-45.]
The JFACC process of having one single manager has its limitations, as
does every system. It does not respond well to a quick-action battlefield.
If you're trying to build a war for the next 72 to 96 hours, you can probably
build a pretty good war. But if you're trying to fight a fluid battlefield
like we were on, then you need a system that can react.
The JFACC process can't do that if you're talking about command. If
you're talking about general control or, more important, if you're talking
about coordination, which is really what the commander-in-chief [CinC] wants,
along the correct course of action and in accord with his guidance, then
that's exactly what the process did out there in the battlefield. We
coordinated the process so that General Horner knew where I was going, knew
where the Navy was going, and obviously knew where he was going. The effort
was focused where the CinC wanted it. When he wanted to change that effort,
he would shift the weight, and we all responded.
We, in essence, had control of the air space over our Marines much as you
would have a ground area of operations. We called them high-altitude
reservation areas, and as we moved forward, we would uncover the air space
over our Marines that we needed to influence the battle.
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General [H. Norman] Schwarzkopf, as a ground officer, wanted to prepare
the battlefield; this was very important in the evolution. He was not willing
to let any of us go off and shoot down airplanes, or conduct deep strikes at
the cost of preparing that battlefield in front of the Army, Marines, and
Coalition forces. When it came down to that, General Schwarzkopf really
directed all of us to start concentrating on different areas, and we
responded.
The ATO process is very cumbersome. That document was upwards of 300
pages. What I did to make it work for us--and I think the Navy did the same
thing--was write an ATO that would give me enough flexibility to do the job.
So I might write an enormous amount of sorties, and every seven minutes I'd
have airplanes up doing various things--and I might cancel an awful lot of
those. This way I didn't have to play around with the process while I was
waiting to hit a target. I kind of gamed the ATO process. The ATO we used,
for example, two days prior to G-Day, would be good today. I would tailor it
at the Tactical Air Command Center by saying, "I'm not sending that aircraft.
Cancel that one. Cancel that one." This eliminated any requirement to add on
a bunch of sorties.
I tried to make the ATO process work--because it will not respond to the
type of campaign we had in Southwest Asia. It is a coordination process and
we needed that. That we had no blue-on-blue air engagements and no midair
collisions attest to the coordination aspect of the process.
PROCEEDINGS: How big a liaison team did you have in Riyadh?
Moore: We had a very heavy one, including Colonel Joe Robben, an air command
and control officer. Of course we had Major General Jed Pearson there all the
time, really as Marine Central Command liaison; and then Major General Norm
Ehlert came in after him. We had a very heavy target cell of four or five
people as we worked through the original concept of Desert Storm. We worked
all these issues, and the Air Force, in turn, gave us an officer to work just
the ATO process; he was very valuable to us. Major Robert Sands did a super
job for us. He is an A-10 pilot and his father was a Marine. He stayed with
us the whole six months. He knew the process and how to do what we needed to
do to influence the process, and it worked.
Joint operations like Desert Storm badly needed our Marine air command
and control. We told them that they would need us, that they couldn't do
everything, that machines like the AWACS and Aegis cruisers would get
saturated, that all needed to play, and that proved to be true. I think they
understood it. Our system is the only way that they can really get data link
and pure information from the ships into the Air Force system and vice versa.
That proved very beneficial.
PROCEEDINGS: The Navy was not able to receive the ATO electronically. Maybe
it was a little easier for Marines ashore, but could you receive the ATO
electronically? How did you get the ATO to the various air groups?
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Moore: We had computers but old ones, and it was a very slow and cumbersome
process. I've got to tell you, once I sent my ATO in--and we talked to Riyadh
all the time and said, "You have any troubles with it? We're executing it."--
we didn't worry about it from there on, because we knew we had enough
flexibility in that system that we could do anything we wanted. We paid
attention to the special instructions at the bottom of the ATO, because we
coordinated the whole thing. It was a fait accompli evolution.
The Navy's trouble was that they tried to do it very honestly and write
just what they were going to fly. They did that for a few days and then they
started to use the same process we did. Also, their trouble was getting that
passed out to the individual carriers, all the Aegis cruisers, all the rest of
the support ships. When you try to do that electronically, it really becomes
a burden on the communications system. They, more than anybody else would
have to build a system that gamed the ATO process, put enough flexibility in
so the commander could do whatever he wanted to, and just read the special
instructions. That's the way they did it at the tail end.
PROCEEDINGS: Were all U.S. Marine Corps air assets covered by the ATO --
Harriers on the hot pad or attack helicopters? Or did you handle all of that
separately?
Moore: All the fixed-wing guys were in the ATO, but we wrote it more in a
generic fashion so that a particular squadron didn't know that the two F/A-18s
at 0200 were theirs. We wrote them in as a generic evolution. As you get
down to the helos, you've got a real saturation problem on your hands. We, in
essence, just let the Air Force know what was going on. You just have too
many sorties going on. Marine air flew, for the 44 days or so, 18,000
sorties. We had only about 500 airplanes. We flew 9,000 of those sorties in
the last five days. When you start to put those kinds of numbers in the
system, you just clog it up.
PROCEEDINGS: You started out on 16 January with interdiction. When you
shifted back closer to the front lines and the ground attack actually began,
were the sorties available to the Marine Corps commanders?
Moore: Yes. The original Desert Storm plan included 50 percent of the
F/A-18s, all the A-6s, and only two KC-130 tankers. So that left me--and
General Schwarzkopf did this himself--the remaining F/A-18s, all the Harriers,
all the attack helos, and--on the Air Force side--airplanes like A-10s, some
of the F-16s, and some of the others I think General Horner put in his pocket.
The Army provided attack helos. We knew, even though we had a fourphase
evolution, that Phase I (the strategic phase), Phase II (the SEAD--suppression
of enemy air defenses), and Phase III (the preparation of the battlefield)
would all probably go at the same time. That's exactly what happened. Even
though we were running strikes to Baghdad, the enemy didn't sit there without
shooting artillery, and a lot of the other stuff. So, in essence,
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Phases I, II, and III kicked off within two hours of one another. SEAD never
stops.
Right at D-Day in mid-January, the Harriers started to fly, two hours
after the big strike started. The Iraqis started to shoot artillery, to move
around the battlefield, and we started to hit them. So that process stayed
tight, and we really had a solid script for the first 36 hours. After that,
we started weaning out assets, and pretty soon, with General Schwarzkopf's
acknowledgement, about 15 days prior to the ground campaign, we were into
battlefield preparation. At that time, if a target didn't do something for
the I MEF and battlefield preparation, we weren't going. The Air Force
understood that.
Of course, they were being pressed by General Schwarzkopf, who said, in
effect, "Start preparing the land in front of those Army corps. Start pulling
back out of these great MiG sweeps and deep air war and start preparing the
battlefield." That was General Schwarzkopf's guidance. It fell right in with
ours, and by that 15-day period, we had weaned ourselves out of any deep
strike support. When I say weaned ourselves, we made some tradeoffs. General
Horner would come to me and say, "Hey, Royal, if you can hit these tall yards
or you can hit this power line, I will give you 75 A-10 sorties as a tradeoff.
If you can give me one more strike group late in the afternoon or in the
morning, I will give you these F-16s or these F-15Es." So there were
tradeoffs back and forth as we worked through the air war.
Map of Air Control Zones During the Air Campaign, January 1991
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PROCEEDINGS: How good was your intelligence support during the Gulf War?
Moore: No commander is happy with the intelligence support he receives, you
can never get enough. Having said that, the intelligence folks did a fair
job. There are some major difficulties that we have within the Marine Corps
with regard to intelligence support, that we're taking a very hard look at
now.
We also need to take a look at our national assets--the Central
Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency--to see that information
gets to the individual commanders. Schwarzkopf told Congress that he was very
unhappy with the intelligence support that he received.
Let me cite an example. Two days prior to the beginning of the actual
ground campaign, we finally got pictures of the actual minefield breaching
sites brought to us by two officers--one from the 1st [Marine] Division, one
from the 2d [Marine] Division--we had sent to Washington. That ought to tell
you that the flow of information just wasn't there. I am sure that CinCPac
[Commander in Chief, Pacific], CinCLant [Commander in Chief, Atlantic], and
other commands had a lot of great photos, but they weren't getting to us.
One of the major shortfalls was the photo-type intelligence and the verbiage
that accompanied them. It never got any better.
We also had elaborate prototype systems like the Joint Surveillance and
Target Attack Radar System [JSTARS]. The idea offers potential, but we could
not make any tactical decisions based on its output. It was in early
development during the Gulf War and had an enormous slewing problem.
Frequently, when we sent an aircraft to verify possible targets detected by
JSTARS, the targets turned out to be Coalition forces on the move. We have a
lot of work to do in intelligence and the flow of intelligence before we step
off in another operation like this.
PROCEEDINGS: What provided your most reliable intelligence?
Moore: Our own aircraft supplied us with our best intelligence. We had 177
airplanes at Shaik Isa, both Air Force and Marines, and some Air National
Guard RF-4Cs. I retired the last Marine Corps RF-4B two days before I left
California in August 1991. We looked very hard at bringing those RF-4Bs back;
we just could not do it. But we had the same old problem of getting that
information to the squadrons. It had to go up through the Central Command and
back down through it. By the time it did that, it was no longer valuable.
PROCEEDINGS: We have heard from some infantrymen that they depended on the
OV-10, particularly the OV-10D with the forward-looking infrared [FLIR] system
out there at night to look out for them. Could you comment on that?
Moore: The grunts always love the OV-10, but they're picking the wrong
airplane. The intelligence they were getting was from the F/A-18D that
operated deep into the battlefield. It is true I kept the OV-10s up there,
but I did this primarily so that any ground commander who got into trouble
could use
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them to relay back to me so we could help. They got very little intelligence
from the OV-10. As you know, we brought VMFA(AW)-121 into theater, to do
nothing but forward air controller/tactical air coordinator airborne (FACA/-
TACA) missions. No night attack, no other fancy stuff, just FACA/TACA. [See
"F/A-18Ds Go to War," PROCEEDINGS, August 1991, page 40.] (reprinted in this
anthology.)
During the ground campaign, late in the afternoon, an F/A-18D or two
would come into the fray with no other mission than to look at the
battlefield. They would go on in, run in the 2d Division area, run in the 1st
Division area, look at the Saudis' area, look at all of Kuwait, come back,
tank, go back, and report to us. They had a direct line to the Tactical Air
Command Center. The crews knew that Colonel Bill Forney, Colonel Charlie
Carr, or I would be at the desk, and they could tell us what was happening on
the battlefield. We would then catapult them back in--on a couple of
occasions with night-vision goggles--to look at the battlefield. After that
report--a quick kind of hot look in the air to us--they passed many other hot
looks through the system. When they landed, the crews were driven to the
Marine Aircraft Group-11 operations center where they picked up the phone and
talked directly to one of us with a detailed report.
We had brought some very smart Army intelligence guys from Fort Huachuca
[Arizona] who prepared the battlefield. We knew if a particular [Iraqi] tank
unit started to move, that it had to come through a particular choke point.
The area in Kuwait was very, very small for a pilot, and all our guys, by this
time, after 38 days of combat, knew that area cold. They had names for
everything, so they could pick up the phone and say: "We've got 25 tanks just
west-southwest, five clicks [kilometers] from the ice tray."
I would take that information and, every four hours, contact all the
commanders--Lieutenant General Boomer, the 1st and 2d Division commanders, the
logistics commanders--via satellite communications. I would say to them for
example that, on a pure time-distance factor, "There is nobody that can get to
you within a certain period of time." That was of enormous value to those
ground commanders. That was the only thing that they were getting, and it
allowed them to bring artillery through, to bring regiments through the
breaching areas, to span them out, to rearm, resupply, all those things that
they needed to do in the battlefield.
PROCEEDINGS: What about remotely piloted vehicles [RPVS] such as Exdrone or
Pioneer?
Moore: We used RPVS. Without the RF-4s and a lot of good information coming
from the top, we used everything we had.
We used the Pioneer system extensively. We had all the Pioneer companies
out there. [EDITOR'S NOTE: These systems are assigned to the Marine
divisions, not the aircraft wings.] Aviation had walked away from those guys
because we had the RF4Bs. We walked back because we found that we needed the
RPVS. General Boomer and Major General Mike Myatt and Major General
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Bill Keys allowed me to have those vehicles for set periods of time so that I
could run them out there purely for an air look at the battlefield. For
example, the RPVs caught some SA-6s coming down the road to Jabar and we
knocked them stiff.
We had a couple of slewing problems that we didn't pick up right away,
but we got those corrected.
PROCEEDINGS: Were these Pioneers, specifically, or Pointers?
Moore: These were primarily Pioneers.
PROCEEDINGS: The RPVs are, of course, division assets. Do you think that's
the best place for them?
Moore: They really became more Marine Expeditionary Force [MEF] assets than
division, because we had two divisions out there. But they were too much
oriented toward the ground. We found that we have to share the information,
and depending on the flow of the battlefield, it may be 80 percent in support
of the air and 20 percent in support of the ground, and then as the ground
combat starts to go, it may be 90 percent in support of the ground and 10
percent in support of the air. You have to weigh where you are on the
battlefield, and we did that fairly well.
PROCEEDINGS: How about battle damage assessment (BDA)?
Moore: Getting BDA out of pilots is very, very tough. We put enormous
pressure on the crews: "You go right to the S-2 [intelligence section]. Grab
a bottle of water and sit down with that guy and not only tell him what you
did on the battlefield, but tell him what you saw on the battlefield." That
became the most critical asset of the whole campaign. We computerized this
information and hot reports were funneled to us.
One day we caught a battalion of Iraqi artillery moving out of the oil
fires to take the 2d Division under fire, and we hammered them. We diverted
attack airplanes, and diverted F/A-18Ds to direct them. We did this based on
pilot reports. It took an enormous amount of discipline.
Most important, the air crews could tell us how well we were doing on the
battlefield. As you go through a campaign like this, you really start to get
a feel for it, like you do in a football game. You develop a feel for how
well it's going, your passing game is going good, your running game is not
going worth a damn. The pilot reports gave us a feel for the battlefield, and
I could then go to Boomer, to Myatt, to Keys, and tell them, "This is what I
feel is on the battlefield."
Going into Kuwait City is a good example. The last day we had the Iraqis
breaking contact with us. We didn't know if they were breaking contact to get
out of there or breaking contact to actually go into Kuwait City and go into a
very nasty battle--a house-to-house evolution. Because we knew the
battlefield--all of us had a feel for it--we were able to give General Boomer
a "Walt, let
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them disengage, because they are running, and they are flowing through Kuwait
International [Airport]. Let them go, because that's the best possible world
for the artillery, tank, and air guys, and don't worry as much that they're
going to stop and put up a fight in Kuwait City." Luckily, that's what
happened. That is the type of feel for the battlefield.
PROCEEDINGS: The Iraqi fighter threat went away fairly early. How much did
all the antiaircraft artillery [AAA] and surface-to-air missiles [SAMs] in
your area of operations influence the tactics that were used by fixed-wing and
helicopters?
Moore: You're right, the air-to-air threat did go away early. In fact, it
lasted probably only two hours or so. That is about what we thought was going
to happen. We thought, if they put up their best fight, this whole air-to-air
campaign would last probably a day and a half.
I base that on the fact that on 24 August 1990, the Marines picked up
responsibility for a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week combat air patrol (CAP)
over the Gulf. We provided CAP for our Marines all the way up to 16 January
1991 [the beginning of the air campaign] and never dropped a sortie. We did
that initially for two reasons. First, the Navy was outside the Gulf and was
having a difficult time covering the Northern Gulf CAP; the Air Force was out
to the west. Second, and most important, we put a CAP over our Marines. As
we went through that CAP and that long process, we got several chances to see
the Iraqis come down [south], and we got within seven or eight miles of them,
and saw their tactics and how aggressive they were. We had electronic
airplanes out there. We had all 12 EA-6Bs there. They were running up and
down. We had the Air Force F-4G Wild Weasels out there with us at the same
base. So we knew how this guy was going to react. I've got to tell you--and
I'm not trying to be smart--we didn't get any surprises out of him from an air
standpoint.
The Iraqis really are trigger pullers; you saw all that on CNN. They
just unloaded and filled the sky with flak and SAMs. Keep in mind that less
than 1 percent of my pilots had ever seen combat. That surprised me, but the
time has gone by, and in MAG-11, with 13 squadrons, only four Marines were
Vietnam veterans. So when these young kids go up there and they've got an
SA-6, an SA-2, or whatever shot at them, they come back and it's kind of tough
for me to tell them, "Hey, don't worry about it. That was all unguided."
When a missile goes over the top of your canopy, you get concerned. The
discipline in these young men was just fantastic.
We had not dropped a lot of real bombs in Southwest Asia. We knew we
could have the high sanctuary, so we came in high. Our pilots would rock in
as high as 30,000 feet, coast on downhill, pick up the target, acquire, and
pull, and get out of there. We bottomed out at 12,000 feet; then 10,000; then
8,000. As we started to beat down the air defense system and the Iraqis
started to run out of ammunition, we were then able to start coming in lower,
stay in the area a little longer, and work the battlefield.
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When we got around to the ground campaign, I went around to each one of
my commanders and said, "Okay. This is the time to start earning your flight
pay. Now we have Marines in contact. We have to start pressing." But it was
also the right time to do that because we had beaten down the air defense
system. We learned from the A-10s that, as soon as somebody shoots at you,
turn and rock in, and dump on him. So if we got some AAA out of some area,
we'd jump on that guy right away and pound him. Because of that, as soon as
the first guy started to turn on him, they'd stop shooting. You're always
learning on the battlefield.
But we stayed high. We didn't do any of the pop-ups [low-level run-in
followed by a sharp pitch-up to roll-in altitude] that we practiced for so
many years.
PROCEEDINGS: What about the Cobras and the OV-10s supporting the ground
troops? What was their experience with AAA and hand-held SAMS? What kind of
air defense was up close to the front lines?
Moore: They really lucked out. Because of the smoke and haze, I've got to
tell you that we fought the ground campaign over the worst four flying days of
the whole war. Two things happened to us. First, General Schwarzkopf and
every weather guy in Southwest Asia promised us 72 hours of good weather, but
we probably didn't get 72 minutes. The most important thing that happened was
that the wind changed; instead of coming out of the northwest, it was out of
the southeast. I walked out of my trailer about 0200 on G-Day and the wind
was blowing in my face. I just looked up at the sky and said, "Hey, are you
listening up there? We need good weather."
But the wind-shift helped us. The two large oil fields on fire are
awesome. I've walked the ground, I flew it in a helicopter, I flew it in
fixed-wing, and it didn't matter whether you saw it left, right, center,
upwind, downwind, it is an awesome sight--and the wind blew all that smoke
right back across the battlefield.
PROCEEDINGS: How long did the wind hold for you there?
Moore: It held the whole four days. In fact, it held till about day six or
so after the campaign started, and then started blowing back again. So if you
look at the battlefield, where those oil fires were, I was betting that I
would have that northwest wind and that it would blow the smoke, so that after
the 1st and 2d Division came out of their second breach the area that they
would go into would be clear of smoke, where I could really influence the
action and give them intelligence and lots of air support. Well, the weather
changed that. I had six or eight Cobras air-taxiing down highways in Kuwait
with their landing lights on to get into the 1st and 2d Division area to help
them out. That's how bad it was.
Second, there was a high-altitude jet stream that just stayed there.
About every four to six hours, the weather would go down, then come up, then
go
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down. It was like a North Carolina front passing through there coupled with
smoke. We were lucky. Every time the ground guys got into a bad situation,
somebody could get to them. When the counterattack took place in the 1st
Division's area, some F/A-18s and AV-8s got in to help them out, but, more
important, the Cobras got in.
Mike Myatt (1st Division commander] got in front of some of his
battalions a little bit, just south of his reconnaissance teams, and they
started coming back through his party, and all of a sudden he looked up and
here come Iraqi tanks. He said the greatest sight he ever saw was a flight of
four Cobras that came up right up behind his command vehicles and started
firing on the Iraqis.
The same thing happened in the 2d Division area. They ran into some very
stiff battalion-sized blocking positions about the end of the third day, and
we pounded them. So whenever we needed it, the weather lifted just enough
that somebody got in to them.
PROCEEDINGS: The Navy has commented that in its type of war it needed more
precision-guided ordnance and didn't have enough on board ship. How did the
ordnance you had on your attack helicopters and on your fixed-wing turn out?
Did it work as advertised, or did you have any problems?
Moore: There are guys walking around saying, "We need precision this and
precision-that," and that's okay, but sustainability won the battle for us.
Yes you need some precision stuff, but I almost ran out of bombs. On
Thanksgiving Day, I wrote a message with me as the action officer to everybody
who was in the bomb-family chain of command. "Okay. Here are the assets we
have out here. Here is the threat we're going against. We have looked at
that threat from every angle, and this is the ordnance that I need for 60
days."
Well, we got a great bureaucratic runaround out of that message. We
received a reply that said, "Well, wait a minute. The Third Wing is a Pacific
wing, so he can have only Pacific allocation; he can't have the Atlantic
allocation." We would go back to them and say, "We've got Atlantic and
Pacific squadrons. This is war." Well, you know, ten days, 15 days would go
by. Then I'd hear, "Well, we don't think he needs as many Mk-82 [500--pound]
bombs." It was really frustrating.
At one point in the war, I got down to a day and a half of bombs left for
Mk-83 1,000-pounders and half-a-day of Mk-82s before a resupply ship got to
us.
Now, as to the ordnance, about 25 percent of my sorties went out with the
wrong ordnance, meaning lower kill probabilities. So instead of sending
Mk-83s, I might send Mk-82s and Rockeye cluster bombs. We dropped an enormous
amount of Rockeye out in the desert, and it proved to be a good weapon. But
we had to do some ballistics on it because we didn't have the high-altitude
delivery tables for those weapons. We had to develop that for the F/A-18 and
the AV-8.
But I've got to tell you, I ended the war with 14 days of ordnance left
of a 44-day war. I got an awful lot of help from Headquarters Marine Corps.
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[Lieutenant General] Wills [director of Marine aviation] turned into a
three-star ordnance officer.
General Schwarzkopf became an ordnance officer himself, because he
allocated it within theater. So we got some ordnance from the Air Force, and
we got some ordnance from the Navy. They were told to cough it up. We
dropped more than 29 million tons of ordnance during the war.
PROCEEDINGS: The Navy said there were never enough tankers to go around.
We've heard it may not be tankers so much as hoses. How well did the Marine
tankers work? Did you use Air Force tankers much, or did you stay with the
KC-130s?
Moore: Tankers are very rare. You've got to be careful how you use them.
All in all, I would give General Horner high marks on the use of tankers. We
did use a lot of Air Force tankers. Plugging on the KC-135 in any of the
airplanes is no thrill at all, and I did it. I came home with them. But
doing it in combat when it's a must-pump night-time evolution is really no
fun.
For example, on the CAP, working up to the war, the Air Force provided us
tankers during the day. They were either KC-135s or KC-10s, probably KC-135s
about 90 percent of the time. At night we used all our KC-130s, because
plugging on a KC-135 at night is just too damn hard, too high risk, and I
didn't want to lose an airplane because of that evolution.
I had 18 KC-130s. On any battlefield, you're tied to your shortest
asset--FA-6Bs, KC-130s, OV-10s, F/A-18Ds--and you depend on those assets.
I've run out of tankers during stateside exercises because of over-commitment,
and that's a very painful process. I wasn't going to do it again.
So what we did do was offer to the Navy emergency tanking anytime they
needed it. They could get to our airborne tanker and divert to Shaik Isa,
where we had a complete Marine aircraft group to help them, and we did help
them. We got a lot of airplanes through there and changed engines for them
and so forth. It worked out. But I didn't volunteer a lot of airplanes out
there, because I needed them. We needed to keep EA-6Bs and F/A-18Ds on
station, so I set up two separate Marine-only KC-130 tanker orbits--and
General Horner let me do this, in the great tanker scheme--that were available
24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week to give us flexibility. When those tankers
got down to a 24,000--pound giveaway and somebody [who needed fuel] was on the
way to them, we scrambled the alert tanker and put it into the system.
PROCEEDINGS: A Navy pilot told us that a Marine KC-130 saved his bacon once
when a control agency vectored him to a tanker he didn't realize was
available.
Moore: We did an awful lot of that. Especially for the first 36 hours, I
wanted to make sure we had enough emergency tankers so anybody who was coming
south could get a drink of gas and kind of cool off a little bit and think
about things before he had to come in. We put an awful lot of tankers up
there and they did a magnificent job.
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PROCEEDINGS: How about maintenance? You had pretty good facilities, from what
we've read, unusual in some respects--at least you had ramps and some hangars.
Did the T-AVB aircraft maintenance ships contribute much under the
circumstances?
Moore: First of all, we did have some fairly good facilities, but we outgrew
them very quickly. I cannot say enough good things about the Seabees.
They've always been very close to the Marines, especially Marine air. They
helped us lay in excess of three million square feet of AM-2 aluminum matting
all over the place. The F/A-18s and A-6Es had it down at Shaik Isa, and we
housed five AV-8B squadrons plus OV-10s on the mat up at Jabayl. We built a
spot for a whole helo group. At Tanajib we did the same thing. We went out
to Lonesome Dove, which was 145 miles out in the desert, and we built three
fields for the CH-46s and the CH-53s, and the Seabees and Marine Wing Support
Squadrons and logistics personnel put that together.
The T-AVBs worked out magnificently. The concept was right on target.
We had some trouble getting one of the ships there, so the supply packages we
built had to stay on line about three weeks longer than we planned. Marines
fixed the ship that broke down and the ship's captain sent a great letter to
the Commandant. We recognized those individuals who did the job. The T-AVBs
unloaded just what we needed at the air groups, nothing more. They kept the
rest on board; they can operate 180 maintenance vans. The new concept worked
in fine fashion, and as the second T-AVB came in, we offloaded an enhanced
capability to each one of the air groups and let the ship go on to Jubayl. We
ended up with one ship in Bahrain and one ship at Jubayl. The ship at Jubayl
supported primarily AV-8Bs and helicopters, and the ship at Bahrain supported
A-6s and F/A-18s.
Let me just give you the bottom line. On G-Day, after 38 days of
combat--and I clearly understand that the whole focus of parts and everything
was coming our way--my mission-capable rate was 86 percent. That included old
helicopters and new F/A-18s. You would expect that out of F/A-18s and
Harriers, but this was across the span. That's an enormous compliment to all
the people--the Naval Air Systems Command, Naval Air Forces Pacific and
Atlantic, Marine Aircraft Wings--who funneled parts to us.
PROCEEDINGS: How did the helicopters hold up in the desert?
Moore: Initially we had some problems. We were trying to fight the desert
until we found some smart helicopter guys in the oil companies. They told us,
"You cannot fight the desert and win. First, you have to take care of your
machines. You have to wash them down, scrub them, keep them at high
readiness. Most important in our world, you have to operate them off clean
sites."
We put it this way to the ground commanders: "We'll give 100 percent
direct support to your Marines. You can use it in a couple of fashions, but
here's the way we recommend using it. When you truly need it, no kidding, got
to get in
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there on the sand and do it, we'll do it. But also keep in mind that when you
put sand down those engines, especially the small engines, we're only going to
be able to do it for about four or five days and we're out of there." We
started getting compressor stalls, and fire coming out the front of that damn
thing. I mean, we were getting all kinds of stuff. You would come out with
an engine that was rated to 86 percent or 90 percent and, after four days of
operating in the sand, if you were picking up a battalion and moving it
somewhere, just rehearsing, we'd come back and find it was 78 percent.
PROCEEDINGS: This was a short war. What are the implications for a longer one?
Moore: We learned those lessons early on. We would pick a road and say,
"Okay, that's where we'll pick up the battalion. We're going to take them
into the sandy area." We started washing down the engines. We taped all the
blades, both tail rotors and main rotors. We learned how to live with the
desert, and the ground guys learned how to help us. I think we would have
been okay for up to 60 days.
What I didn't want to do was use up assets early. I wasn't going to get
too tangled up in the first two phases of the air war. I planned to be at
maximum efficiency on G -Day minus one. That's really where I wanted to be.
So I was very careful to ensure that we would have plenty left when the ground
war started. I slowed down OV-10 operations. They're getting old and
Map of Air Control Zones During the Air Campaign, February 1991
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tired, and I had only 18 of them. When you start to run those 24 hours a day
in maybe two different fashions and maybe two of them up at any one time, that
gets very hard on that airplane. So I found myself, after 20 days saying,
"Whoops. I've got to slow down. I talked to everyone and said, "You're not
going to get this support. You don't need it right now. I'll give it to you
this hour and this hour and this hour, but I need to rest these guys a little
bit. I need to maintain them. It worked out well.
PROCEEDINGS: So it was not just the threat, but also maintenance hours and
flight hours on the OV-10s that caused you to change some of your procedures?
Moore: It was a lot of things. As I've said, I really held a very tight rein
on some airplanes, a tight rein in the regard that I wanted to have them when
I needed them, and the OV-10 was one of these. I told the OV-10 air crews,
who were flying a slow but very valuable airplane--if you use it correctly--
that, because of the shoulder-fired missiles and AAA we were seeing, I wanted
them to stay south of a particular line. I said, "Don't go above that line
because the threat starts to get too heavy. And, oh, by the way, I don't need
to extend you above that line, because you can do all that I want done on the
battlefield without going above that line."
I did the same thing a little bit to the AV-8s; "Until I can get you
dedicated EA-6B support, I want you to stay below this line. Oh, by the way,
there are plenty of targets to work down there, so I don't need you to go
above that line." Those are the type of things I did.
PROCEEDINGS: The EA-6Bs are probably the best jamming aircraft going, and the
Marine Corps can take a lot of pride in what it has done in the electronic
warfare field over the years. But does this cause them to be fragged by the
Air Force? Could you get them when you wanted them?
Moore: The EA-6B is very dear to my heart. Early on, the Air Force, because
of lack of assets--and I would have done the same thing; this isn't anything
bad to say about it--came to me and said, "We want to unite all the EF-111s
and EA-6Bs."
I said, "Hey, that's fine, but let me tell you. I spent a lot of time
with Jack Daley [General, USMC, now Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps]
and others going to North Vietnam in support of somebody else, and I will not
let (nor did it happen) any Marine airplane go north without EA-6B support."
The guy looked at me like I [had] shot him in the chest. I said, "That will
just not happen." Now, if that means that we can send him back to a tanker
and he can come up and support an Air Force strike and we can work out
something, then that's fine. But not a Marine airplane went north without
Marine EA-6Bs and, in some cases, some Air Force EF-111s with them. But we
always had a Marine EA-6B up there. They did do a magnificent job. But they
didn't try anything fancy. Just good, brute noise shut the Iraqis down.
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PROCEEDINGS: Did the EA-6Bs jam close to the front lines? Do we need some
jamming capability in helicopters?
Moore: Every time the artillery guys went on an artillery raid, we went up
there and supported them with the EA-6B against counter-battery fire. We
tracked every radar that could possibly be on the battlefield and passed that
information on. When the 1st Division fired--and they did some great
artillery work--we had an EA-6B constantly on station alerting that guy. We
had high-speed antiradiation missile [HARM] shooters to take the radar down,
and we put that thing together very well. The EA-6Bs are scarce assets; we
had only 12 of them.
Do we need to put jammers into helicopters for the close-in battle? I
don't think we do. I think as long as we keep the focus on making sure that
the EA-6B is a Marine air-ground task force asset, and the air guy will get
down and talk to the ground guy to determine what he needs, I think we're in
good shape in that area.
PROCEEDINGS: What were the rules of engagement? How did Marines operate with
all those attack helicopters at night? Did the Marine Corps use any different
procedures?
Moore: Unfortunately, we have at least two cases where we believe the Marine
Corps had blue-on-blue engagements. One air-to-ground for sure, and there may
be another, a HARM shot, that we're still investigating. In any scenario, one
such encounter is unacceptable to any commander. But you need to understand
the battlefield.
We put enormous time and energy into the blue-on-blue, both air and
ground. It's to everybody's credit that we had no blue-on-blue air
engagements, let alone midair collisions. I've got to tell you, we had
enormous numbers of airplanes running around up there. From my own
experience, I can tell you it was busy.
But the battlefield was such that people lost situational awareness.
When they did that, then we had trouble and the system broke down,
unfortunately.
PROCEEDINGS: Were you under positive control when dropping within so many
meters of the friendlies? Were people cleared in to hunt for the enemy?
Moore: Of all the missions we had, the one I am aware of is where an A-6 hit
an artillery group that was coming south; the A-6 pilot and
bombardier-navigator just missed that they were south of Kuwait and not north.
You say, "Hell, that's pretty easy to tell." But when you're making the final
attack, you've got the radar narrowed down. He really thought he was about
eight miles from where he was. That's a very unfortunate thing. He just lost
situational awareness. He was eight miles from where he really should have
been, and he was south of the border instead of north of the border.
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But the rest were all positive control. Here's what we did in the 3d
Marine Aircraft Wing. Every hour on the hour we got hold of our liaison guys
for the 1st and 2d Division and found out exactly where they were. We put a
flash message out on the wire, and we called each one of the groups and told
them where everybody was. Most important, for any outside stuff, such as
pilots reporting that they saw tanks north of this line (and they were our
tanks), we tried to mark them as best we could with panels and everything
else.
What we've got to do now is work out some systems--identification friend
or foe [IFF], flashing lights, beacons--to make sure that we can identify
troops on the ground.
PROCEEDINGS: Were you supporting units other than the Marine Corps?
Moore: On G-Day we flew more close air support missions than anybody else in
theater. We were only about ten missions short of the Air Force on the second
day of the war.
We supported primarily at that time the 1st and 2d Divisions, and on
occasion we would send guys over to help the Saudis on our right flank. So,
in essence, we were supporting those three. What we did, we built an air
command and control system that put two airplanes in the stack every
seven-and-a-half minutes. Marines, as you know, try to husband assets, and we
tried to make sure that they were quickly catapulted forward to one of the two
divisions. If they couldn't use them, we handed them off to the OV-10s for
short battlefield interdiction, and if they couldn't use them, we'd catapult
them forward.
We could turn up the wick, and we did on the last day of the war. We
turned up so that eight airplanes showed up every 15 minutes and we ran them
through that system. If we got Air Force or Navy airplanes in the system, we
said, "Okay, you go to this forward point and you go here, there everywhere.
We built the system and we rehearsed it before we started the air campaign and
everybody was familiar with it. Most important, we briefed everybody: every
battalion commander, every company commander, the A-10 squadrons, the Aegis
cruisers, the AWACS. Everybody was briefed on the total plan, what the 1st
Division was going to do, what the 2d Division was going to do, what I was
going to do, how support would flow.
PROCEEDINGS: I believe the Marine Corps lost five AV-8Bs. Four, I was told,
were to infrared (IR) missiles; one was at the time undetermined. Of course,
the Harrier has the nozzles there under the wing, instead of tail feathers, so
if it takes a hit, it's in a tough place. How about the vulnerability of the
Harrier?
Moore: First, we did not lose five; we lost four, and the 4th Marine
Expeditionary Brigade, which was under the Naval Commander, Central Command
control, lost one on the last day. You're right, four of them were hit by
shoulder-fired IR missiles. The cause of one of the losses is undetermined,
but I think that probably was also shoulder-fired. You have the hydraulics,
the fuel,
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the wing, the engine, the controls, everything in the nozzle area. There are
some things we need to do to a lot of our airplanes, and we need to diffuse
the Harrier's heat source. We have done that on the helos before, so it's not
a hard thing to do. We need to increase the IR flare capability in all of our
airplanes.
But to get back to the real question, there is some work we have to do in
the Harrier. It is not a fragile airplane. We turned that thing in excess of
two to four times a day for almost the whole campaign, so it really stayed up.
I got exactly what I wanted out of it. We did a lot of forward basing with it
and the F/A-18. Half the AV-8B sorties stopped at Tanajib instead of going
back to Aziz, where the Harriers were based, and half the F/A-18 sorties came
back and stopped at Jubayl instead of going all the way back to Shaik Isa. So
we used a lot of concepts. I'm very happy with the Harriers' performance, but
we've got some work to do.
PROCEEDINGS: We heard that you had all these staffs and you had to meld them
together; that at one time there were extra colonels and generals. Was it a
problem?
Moore: On the wing level, I went out very light. I took four people. That's
what I ended up on the desert with, and I stayed with that for about two weeks
and then slowly started bringing out people. I still had a wing to run back
at El Toro. I probably stayed too small, too long, and it hurt me a little
because I had to run my people a bit. But still, the whole wing headquarters
never exceeded about 125 people. So I stayed very small.
The MEF headquarters, by the very nature of what they had to do, probably
got bigger than General Boomer would like.
But on my side, the only trouble I had was standing up MAG-13, getting
the right Harrier expertise out there, and getting Colonel John Bioty [the
group commander] some staff. That took a little longer than we thought
because they started this old troop-strength ceilings that we had in Vietnam.
But that all went away in November and December, 1990.
PROCEEDINGS: What took most of your time?
Moore: This business on ordnance probably didn't take as much of my time as
much as worrying about it every inch of the way. In everything I did, the
sustainability of the force bothered me. As the air campaign started, the
ground guys still had 38 days to work out their ground campaign, and I was one
of the key players. So we spent an awful lot of time going up and sitting
down with the divisions, sitting down with the MEF, and going through their
ground concept of operations, how they were going to do the amphibious
planning, etc. That didn't surprise me, but it took lots of my time--time not
available for me to be in the Tactical Air Control Center (TACC), for example.
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PROCEEDINGS: How about the Harriers coming off the boat? Did you control them
in any way or just coordinate?
Moore: No. We had talked to them; we brought them ashore; we had rehearsed
with them; and as they came ashore, they came into our command-and-control
system. So they were completely in our control system; we had plans for
supporting any amphibious landing and for bringing them into our system as
boon as they came ashore. As you know, the whole 5th MEB did come ashore, and
portions of the 4th MEB came ashore. I got a helo squadron out of them, a
very valuable Cobra squadron--HMLA-269.
PROCEEDINGS: Have you recommended any key changes for training or equipment?
Could you comment on some of the things that you think we need to change as a
result of what you saw out there?
Moore: Marine Air Weapons and Tactics Squadron-1, of course, sent almost all
its instructors to me. They were a major portion of the targeting cells, the
operations department, liaison, command and control, and air intelligence.
PROCEEDINGS: They weren't just there studying the war--they were actually part
of your staff?
Moore: They were out there really helping me and on my staff. They did start
piecing together how to train and how to do business later on. They helped me
an enormous amount in the air command-and-control area.
PROCEEDINGS: How about night flying? Were you ready for it?
Moore: We trained constantly. We're not as good at night as we think we are,
and that means everybody--Marine Corps, Air Force, Navy, Army. You've heard
these guys say, "We live at night. . . we're the Ninjas at night," and all
this other stuff. Well, I've got to tell you, we're not as good as we think
we are.
Every night when the sun went down, I sat there and I spent a lot of
hours in the TACC. When that sun would go down, I'd cringe, because some of
your assets are weaker players at night than others. I double-cycled the
A-6s, which we'd been doing for years in exercises; they would go out with a
load of bombs or whatever, come back, and we'd just load them back up again
without ever shutting them down. We did a lot of laser work to get the A-10s
and Harriers and F-18s in there, but I've got to tell you, I was a happy
camper every day when the sun came up.
All those systems have some limitations, and they are not as good as the
good old eyeball during the daytime. We can get a lot better at night.
That's one of the things that I would push very hard.
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Communications is another area that we've got to get a lot better on. We
got ourselves caught a little bit when the Marine Corps was going to a new
system, but I don't think there's any commander out there that doesn't have a
major communications gripe.
Joint communications is another area we've got to grow in--but good old
communications. We've got to stop this fancy stuff and the very expensive
stuff. We've got to get down to some basics. I told my guys, "I just want to
talk to all the commanders, and all the rest of the guys can use that same
node." We built redundancy into the system. Luckily, it stayed up. I was
never out of communications for long with anybody I needed to talk
to--somehow, some way, I could get to them.
PROCEEDINGS: Did the aircraft use secure voice with the ground units, or were
they in the clear?
Moore: We did use a lot of secure communications. Almost constant secure
communications in the CAP world, and at the Direct Air Support Center and
TACC, and the control agencies. But we realized early on that the Iraqis were
not ten feet tall. In some cases, we were being so cute, with all these
changing frequencies and call signs, that we were outdancing ourselves. We
said, "Okay. We are going to lock-down frequencies, call signs, and all this
stuff for a lot of days in a row." For example, the ground campaign, we
locked-down all this. We didn't change. We used the same call signs so you
knew Playboy-something or-other was an EA-6B. The other thing we decided was
to stop getting so cute in the close air support arena; once we got to that
final controller, we went in the clear. If that guy is smart enough to move
out from underneath that bomb in the last four minutes, then we're fighting
the wrong guy. But most important is having clear and reliable
communications. The communications in the desert was stretched to its
maximum. We kept it simple, and that really paid off.
PROCEEDINGS: We haven't talked about the troops much. What impressed you the
most?
Moore: As the media guys came out and talked to them, most of the comments
that I got were, "We cannot believe that Private Doe came on the air and he
was bright . . . she was intelligent. Boy, did they come across well." They
are smart, they know what to do, they know how to do it, and they are
dedicated.
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Major General Myatt commanded the 1st Marine Division. In this interview,
General Myatt comments on a number of subjects, including the integration of
Marine air and ground forces during the 1st Marine Division's drive to Kuwait
City, and the division's efforts to solve the problem of friendly fire
casualties.
The 1st Marine Division in the Attack
interview with Major General J. M. Myatt, USMC
U.S. Naval Institute PROCEEDINGS, November 1991
PROCEEDINGS: You had barely assumed command of the division when you went to
war. How well did you know your individual commanders?
Myatt: When we got into Desert Storm, I knew all but one of the regimental
commanders very well. One had worked for me on a previous assignment, and I
had known another for years. I also knew General [William M.] Keys, who
commanded the 2d Marine Division, and two of his regimental commanders. When
Marines go to war, it seems as if everybody knows each other.
PROCEEDINGS: How did you deploy your division initially?
Myatt: We were capped at 14,500 Marines for Desert Shield. We were there to
defend Saudi Arabia's economic center of gravity, as well as the Central
Command's center of gravity, in the sense that both the Jubayl and Dammam port
complexes and the airfields that supported them were vital to our forces.
PROCEEDINGS: I asked General [John] Hopkins when he was ready to defend and he
said 25 August.
Myatt: His brigade would have been something to contend with. I have to tell
you that they would have been in there earlier, or could have been, if the
decision had been made to deploy the MPF early enough, but that decision was
not made, as I recall, until Friday, 10 August.
PROCEEDINGS: When did you get to Saudi Arabia?
Myatt: I got there on 25 August.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
PROCEEDINGS: How was your intelligence support when you first went in? What
did you depend on?
Myatt: Everybody's shooting himself in the foot over the intelligence. It's a
difference in what you need and what you want. I guess you're never going to
get everything you want. That we've been training people to deal with
uncertainty is the right focus. It wasn't all bad that we painted him to be
ten feet tall, because we prepared our Marines to fight somebody ten feet
tall.
PROCEEDINGS: When you got over there, the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade
[MEB] was in position and the 1st MEB was arriving. How did you fit the units
back into the division?
Myatt: We got additional forces, such as the 1st Battalion, Sixth Marine
Regiment, a tank company, an assault amphibian vehicle platoon from Okinawa,
an artillery battery from Okinawa, and we just melded all the ground combat
element portions into the 1st Marine Division.
PROCEEDINGS: How about setting up ranges and training?
Myatt: In dealing with the Saudis initially, it didn't look as if we'd ever be
able to live-fire our weapons. But the M60A1 tanks that we got from the MPS
ships were new, and had never been fired before. First, we had to test-fire
those tanks and second, we had to become familiar with the discarding-sabot
ammunition that our Marines had never been allowed to fire. By 16 September,
I believe, we had fired our weapons on Leatherneck Range.
Because this went well, we then made progress in obtaining permission to
fire live ammunition in Saudi Arabia at what I consider a remarkable pace,
knowing that we were asking to fire into areas where the bedouins moved camels
and sheep.
PROCEEDINGS: Are these ranges now off-limits because of unexploded ordnance?
Myatt: The ranges in Saudi Arabia were shut down at the conclusion of the
training phase. After Desert Storm, we policed up all the unexpended ordnance
and blew it in place. Theoretically those places are now clean.
We were fortunate that the British 7th Armored Brigade brought a very
experienced 40-man training section with them when they joined us in October.
They set up a combined-arms range that was finished by January-Devil Dog
Dragoon Range-where we maneuvered while firing artillery and bringing in air
strikes. What we were working on, of course, was the breaching of the
obstacle belts as supported by air and artillery.
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Map of Iraqi Force Deployments, 21 February 1991
PROCEEDINGS: What other kinds of training did you do?
Myatt: We had several sand-table drills. We started each of the processes with
a complete intelligence preparation of the battlefield [IPB] exercise, where
we went through the applicable templates. When we got the IPB process doing--
and it's almost a continuous process as long as the enemy situation changes--
then we had a series of map exercises, staff exercises, and sand-table drills.
The sand-table drills were conducted frequently, and the biggest one we
had was on G-5, I believe, that included all my commanders and their staffs.
We used a huge sand-table, probably 40 meters by 40 meters, where we actually
had put in the obstacle belts. General [Royal] Moore, commanding the 3d
Marine Aircraft Wing, was there with his group and squadron commanders, as was
the Direct Support Group commander, Colonel Alex Powell and his commanders and
staff. We actually went through each phase of the battle and the decision
points that we saw, where we would have to make decisions based on what
happened. We have all this on videotape.
Among things you'll see [on the videotape] is General Moore modifying how
he's going to support the division based on this sand-table briefing, where
each of the commanders briefed what he intended to do in certain situations.
We were concerned about speed and building momentum going north to get through
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
those two obstacle belts, because the worst thing that could happen would be
to get trapped between them. We knew that more than 700 Iraqi artillery
pieces could range us while we were going through the obstacle belt.
We knew that if we got hit by artillery between the obstacle belts,
especially chemical rounds, they could really hurt us. We also knew that our
artillery was going to be out-ranged because the first and second belts were
about 18 kilometers apart. So we had to create lanes in those obstacles to
move the artillery through to support the breach of the second obstacle belt.
Here's where General Moore instructed his F/A-18D fast forward air controllers
(Fast-FACs) on what to do on the Quickfire radio channel if we wok incoming
artillery rounds in the two belts. We had AN/TPQ-36 counter-battery radars,
set to locate the Iraqi firing positions, linked directly with the Fast-FACs,
who in turn directed attack aircraft onto the target. Of course our own
artillery was also tied into this net.
PROCEEDINGS: Were aircraft on airborne alert when you attacked?
Myatt: Absolutely. Between 0600 and 1400 on that first day, we had 42
instances of incoming artillery that we handled this way. The TPQ-36 picked
up the source grid, and we were able to use our artillery, or the 2d
Division's artillery--the 10th Marines--to attack 24 of the 42 targets. The
remainder were attacked by Marine AV-8B aircraft within a few minutes of the
artillery fire being detected. I am very proud of that air-ground
coordination.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you have AH-1 Cobras with you, working with your battalions
or companies?
Myatt: We had Cobra support, but we believe that the Cobras are most effective
when they're used en masse. We had Task Force Cunningham, which could range
from 40 AH-1W Cobras plus Harriers down to whatever size you wanted. But we
tried to avoid putting out a section [two AH-1Ws] here and a section there and
piece-mealing the Cobras. We wanted to use the aviation combat clement as a
maneuver element.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you ever have as many as 40 aircraft on a particular
operation?
Myatt: I think that when we were counter-attacked on G + 1, we had virtually
all the Cobras working with us. We were counterattacked by a brigade of armor
against Task Force Papa Bear and a brigade of armored infantry.
PROCEEDINGS: What about OV-10 support?
Myatt: The OV-10s initially went forward and then [Lieutenant Colonel] Cliff
Acree was shot down. They really weren't very much of a player for us after
that. I believe the Cobras and the Fast-FACs were much more effective.
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PROCEEDINGS: How about at night? We've heard that some units relied on the
OV-10Ds with forward-looking infrared [FLIR] systems or F/A-18Ds with a FLIR--
General Moore said it was usually the F/A-18Ds that came up with intelligence
at night.
Myatt: It was the F/A-18D, because the OV-10s, being so vulnerable, stood back
so far south of the fire support coordination line [FSCL]. I don't believe
they were players after about five days into the air campaign.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you use them for airborne radio relay?
Myatt: We thought that they could do that. There's supposed to be an
automatic retransmission capability. It never worked for the UHF frequencies,
and was spotty for the VHF frequencies.
PROCEEDINGS: Were pilot reports a good source of intelligence?
Myatt: Yes. The pilots actually became so familiar with what I would call the
MEF zone of action after they had been flying over it for three weeks, that
they were able to sit down with my commanders and talk about what they had
seen and what we were going to face. That is much more valuable to me than
any kind of written report. The paperwork would have overwhelmed us, so the
personal contact--when General Moore would send his folks out--was invaluable.
I remember he sent a couple of Harrier guys out, because the Harriers
were put in direct support of the 1st Marine Division, while the F/A-18s
supported the 2d Marine Division for the operation. Of course the F/A-18Ds
supported both divisions. There is no substitute for the pilots actually
coming down and talking to my folks. That ought to be standard operating
procedure.
PROCEEDINGS: What was Task Force Troy?
Myatt: A lot of people talked about how the plan changed over the course of
time. I said nobody ought to be apologizing for that, because the enemy
situation changes, and so you have to update your estimate of the situation.
We tried to deceive the Iraqis and create a lot of ambiguity as to where and
when we were coming. Task Force Troy was the deception task force put
together under General Tom Draude's [the 1st Division's assistant commander]
tutelage, and he actually worked for the MEF--he was the brains behind this.
At one point, we were going to put them up in what we call the Elbow, where
the Kuwait-Saudi Arabian border changes from a north--south to a more westerly
direction. That's the closest point to Kuwait City, by the way, a very
sensitive area to the Iraqis, and we knew that.
As the plan changed, we would move Troy around for what we called the
ambiguity phase. There was a whole series of ambiguity operations, including
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probably a dozen combined-arms raids into Kuwait. Tom understands deception--
that is, whatever you do has to be believable.
PROCEEDINGS: He mentioned that he had some very innovative reserve officers
working for him.
Myatt: In fact, we took this ad hoc group that Tom assigned to Lieutenant
Colonel Charles Kershaw, and they came up with a lot of ideas on how to trick
the enemy--and everybody agrees that tricking the enemy is a good thing to do.
Seabees built mock-up tanks. They built mock-up M198 155mm. artillery
pieces out of lumber and put them under camouflage nets. Then the Task Force
would put together an actual force of tanks and artillery, supported by EA-6Bs
and some security elements, and conduct a combined-arms raid into Kuwait. I
don't believe the Iraqis knew what we had there, but we knew that some of the
observation posts could see our decoys.
PROCEEDINGS: Did General Draude have any dedicated forces?
Myatt: He had a very small cadre of tanks, artillery pieces, some security
infantry, and a company of light armored vehicles. Tom arranged for
helicopters supporting either the 1st or 2d Division to stop in at Troy,
making it look like a division. He also used radio transmissions to mimic
actual nets.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you use electronic warfare units?
Myatt: The Radio Battalion was very effective. We ought to get more
LAV-mounted mobile electronic warfare support systems, in my opinion. They
did a good job. Of course, they're most effective in a passive mode, and they
have to be passive for a while to know what the situation is. The Iraqis were
very, very active for the first three weeks after 17 January [when the air
campaign began] with their own electronic warfare capability. They were able
to impact on what we were doing.
PROCEEDINGS: General Moore mentioned that the air wing pushed for standard
call signs and frequencies, rather than changing daily. How did that work?
Myatt: It worked. If you've got secure radio nets, why do you have to change
all the time? We simplified the process. We went to plain name call signs.
Everybody knew Tom Draude was Sage, my G-3 was Silver, his operations officer
was Coach, Carl Fulford was Ripper, John Admire was Taro with the 3d Marines,
and Jim Fulks, who had one of the infiltration rigs, was Grizzly.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you have reserve units in your division?
Myatt: Yes. We had the 1st Battalion, 25th Marines [1/25], one of the most
can-do outfits I've ever seen. Of course, you can't expect them to start out
on
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the battalion level at the same level of proficiency as a regular battalion,
but they came on strong. They came in right after Christmas. I think it was
27 December.
PROCEEDINGS: How about reserve artillery batteries?
Myatt: They arrived about the same time. We had Hotel and India Batteries
from the 3d Battalion, 14th Marines. Hotel Battery on G + 1 used direct fire
to destroy a tank and an Iraqi rocket-launching system that was about 800
meters from their position.
PROCEEDINGS: The role of the reserves is a major issue. Is it easier for a
regular division such as yours to accept smaller units rather than larger
ones?
Myatt: It worked well. A lot of the Marines who were in these batteries had
not been off active duty all that long, and the remainder--the majority of
them, I think--were college students. We pulled a lot of people out of
colleges to do this. They were superb. Many of them are in the PLC [Platoon
Leader Candidate] program, and I suspect you'll see them as officers.
PROCEEDINGS: What about getting ready to breach the mine fields? General
Schwarzkopf certainly gave both Marine divisions high marks for that.
Myatt: Of course, we had built up the obstacle belts to be more than they
really were. We didn't have a very good picture of what they really looked
like until I sent in reconnaissance teams; [General] Bill Keys also did that.
I had reconnaissance teams in there for three days to look at the first
obstacle belt. When they came out, we had a much better picture of what they
were. There was a high density of mines in there, and there were mines of all
kinds--Italian, Soviet--it was a hodgepodge. You could almost see the
boundary of a brigade or a boundary between divisions based on particular
portions of the obstacle belt-the better the division, the better the obstacle
belt; the less disciplined the division, the less sophisticated the obstacle
belt. We could see the mines from the ground, because either they didn't bury
them or over time they didn't maintain them. The wind had blown the sand off
the top of them.
PROCEEDINGS: How effective was your mine-clearing capability?
Myatt: We had what we needed in terms of the explosive line charges. The
difficulty was that some of the mines cannot be exploded by a sympathetic
detonation; these must be mechanically breached. Some of the equipment came in
late. We put the track-width mine plows on our tanks, and we installed the
threeshot line charges on our AAV-7 assault amphibians. I mechanized the 1st
Combat Engineer Battalion with AAV-7s and split the battalion into two
obstacle-clearing detachments to support Task Force Ripper and Task Force
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Papa Bear. This gave the combat engineers the ability to haul their own line
charges and it gave them the mobility they needed on that particular
battlefield.
PROCEEDINGS: What units were in these Task Forces?
Myatt: Task Force Ripper had the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines [1/5], 1/7, the 3d
Tank Battalion, and Headquarters 7th Marines. Task Force Papa Bear consisted
of 1/1, 3/9, and the 1st Tank Battalion. Task Force Grizzly had 2/7, 3/7, and
Headquarters 4th Marines. We gave them names because it was easier for a guy
from 2/7 to identify with Task Force Grizzly than to identify with the 4th
Marines.
PROCEEDINGS: Did the remotely piloted vehicles [RPVS] provide intelligence?
How else did you employ them?
Myatt: The RPVs were in direct support of the division when we went into the
campaign. They're just super. It was the most timely information that we
received--I'm a big fan. We found out--rediscovered, I guess, since we should
have known--that you can adjust artillery fire with RPVs. The air wing put a
remote receive station inside a Huey so they could see what was out in front
of them when they were deploying the Cobras. We used a Pioneer RPV as a
spotter for the naval gunfire when the 16-inch guns were firing on Kuwait
International Airport.
PROCEEDINGS: What happened as you pressed forward? You got through the
minefields. How did your weapons work?
Myatt: The weapons all worked, and we've got to draw the right lessons from
this. We didn't have to fire TOW missiles over water on this particular
battlefield. It was undulating terrain, and the Iraqis were very clever on
reverse-slope defenses with decoys, but everything we had worked.
The thermal night sight for our light armored vehicles proved
instrumental to our weapon effectiveness. When General [Alfred] Gray [the
Commandant of the Marine Corps] visited us at Christmas, he saw what a problem
we had because our LAVs lacked thermal night sights. He went back to the
United States, got the engineers at [Marine Corps Logistics Base] Albany,
Georgia, working on the project, and by the end of January we had thermal
night sights on our LAVs.
PROCEEDINGS: You mention LAVs. Did you lose any Marines to air strikes
because of misidentification?
Myatt: I lost 14 Marines to friendly fire. Thirteen of the 14 were killed
prior to G-Day. Eleven of those 13 were killed on 29 January.
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PROCEEDINGS: Could you describe what happened?
Myatt: It happened when the Iraqis attacked out of the southernmost and
southwest corner of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. They came out with 50 tanks and
they were met there by the 1st and 3d LAI Battalions-Task Force Shepherd.
That night, in the course of the battle--and recognize that there were a lot
of vehicles on the battlefield--an LAV was hit by a Maverick missile fired by
an A-10. I lost seven Marines. The other LAV we lost was hit by a TOW
missile from another LAV up close to the border. So that was a true
fratricide issue, too.
PROCEEDINGS: Did you see anything that showed some promise for the future, to
help the shooters identify what they are shooting at?
Myatt: No. The problem was identified early on. In fact, the MEF sent
messages back Stateside in October saying, "See if R&D [research and
development] can do anything." We tried several things. Some of them worked,
but they almost worked too well. On top of each of the vehicles, of course,
we had the air panels, but those don't help at night.
When we went into the ground campaign, we had infrared beacons that were
pointed directly up, so that if you were wearing night-vision goggles flying
your aircraft, you could pick out our vehicles.
The problem was that Iraqis with night-vision goggles could also pick
them out because the beacon tended to silhouette the vehicle. They were so
bright, there was an aura of light that was following our vehicles around.
After the first night, our people turned them off.
PROCEEDINGS: The danger seems to be from direct-fire weapons at night. Did
your Marines have any close calls from artillery?
Myatt: We had cases where the friendly artillery came close to our folks, but
we had no casualties. We were always able to shut it down quick enough.
To have two divisions attack abreast the way we did, with no instances of
friendly fire between us--even though we had units cross in front of each
other--is a tribute to the performance and situational awareness of the young
company commanders and platoon commanders. They were coordinating and talking
with each other. The coordination between the 10th and 11th Marines
[artillery regiments] was superb.
PROCEEDINGS: How useful was the global positioning system [GPS]? Did you feel
you knew where you were most of the time?
Myatt: We did have some GPS and we had the position locating and reporting
system [PLRS]. I had a lot of people that doubted the PLRS capability; when
the war was over, we had a lot of PLRS fans. You can program the system to
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Map of I Marine Expeditionary Force in Kuwait, 24-27 February 1991
tell you when you go over a boundary, for example, even when it would be
impossible to define the boundary with terrain features. Where PLRS would go
out, GPS would fill the gap; of course, there are times during the day when
GPS is not effective. But it was still important.
With that kind of capability, you can give somebody almost a north-south
grid line as a boundary, rather than a piece of terrain, and they'll be able
to know where they are and coordinate it at the company level.
PROCEEDINGS: Describe the tank battle at the airfield.
Myatt: Up there it was kind of interesting, because you couldn't see. For six
months, we had watched the winds. The wind had come out of the northwest all
the six months previously, and there were times, no longer than 12 hours,
where as a front passed through the wind would shift around and then come back
out of a predominant direction of northwest. When we began the campaign in
our area, the wind, for four straight days, was out of the southeast, so it
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pushed the smoke from the burning wellheads in the Iraqis' faces; they simply
couldn't see us.
On G + 2, as we were moving north, talking with Carl Fulford there at
Task Force Ripper, he could see from 40 to 150 meters in most cases--it
varied. It was like three total eclipses. We had to use flashlights to be
able to read the maps at noon. It might clear up a little bit more than that
in certain areas.
But we were moving forward and couldn't see well on G + 2, and Carl
Fulford started engaging T-72 tanks 15 minutes after he moved out; that's the
first time we had encountered T-72s. Until then it had always been the T-55s
and T-62s. That's when I knew that he was running into the Iraqi 3d Armored
Division, and he pretty much fought that 3d Armored Division all the way
north, and he needed some help.
Lieutenant Colonel Mike Kurth, who had HMLA-369, had managed to acquire,
even before we left the States, a forward looking infrared capability, as well
as a laser designator that he mounted in two Hueys. It allowed him to
designate and see from a Huey and guide his Cobras in. So here's Carl
engaging the 3d Armored Division and needing some help, and you've got Mike
Kurth flying from the area south of all the smoke, in a Huey, guiding a
division of helicopters under three big high-tension wire systems, flying
under them, going up north to support Task Force Ripper. He could see using
the FLIR and designate for the Cobras to fire their Hellfire missiles. He
then turned them south, guided them out, and brought in another division of
Cobras. That's how it worked there.
PROCEEDINGS: General Moore mentioned that you like Cobras.
Myatt: We were counterattacked at my command post by an Iraqi mechanized
infantry brigade. Cobras were actually over my CP firing TOWs at the BTR-60s
and the BMPs of that Iraqi brigade. It's kind of humorous now. The radio
operators rolled up the sides of the tent up so that they could actually see
what the action was--about 300 meters from my CP. We had a light armored
infantry company working with the Cobras, what I call Task Force Cunningham,
just like they had trained to do for the last previous six months. It was
great to see how it all worked.
PROCEEDINGS: Were any Marines walking at all? Was everybody riding in
something?
Myatt: I had two regiments on foot. These two regiments started infiltrating
into Kuwait on G-2, so by the time the ground war started, we already had two
regiments 18 and 20 kilometers inside Kuwait. General Schwarzkopf called
General Boomer and said, "I've got to be careful here. Don't do anything
irreversible. The President's offered Saddam one more chance to get out by
noon. Of course, noon in Washington, D.C., was 2000 in Saudi Arabia, and
General Boomer and I laughed. We said, "It's not irreversible, because we can
bring them back out."
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Map of I Marine Expeditionary Force in Kuwait, 24-27 February 1991
Then we started moving Task Forces Grizzly and Taro through the first
obstacle belt. They were on foot; when they finished that mission, they had
to walk a long way. I moved Task Force Grizzly by truck in to clear Jaber
airfield, which was MEF objective Alpha, so that I didn't have to tie up our
mechanized assets. I moved Task Force Taro, which had infiltrated on the
right flank, by truck all the way up to Kuwait International Airport on the
morning of G + 3 so that they could clear all the buildings and the airport.
They probably captured another 150 Iraqis hiding inside with all the weapons.
Taro is what you'd call the lucky plant of Hawaii. It turned out to be a good
name for them.
PROCEEDINGS: What happened at the airfield?
Myatt: We had Task Force Ripper, the division's focus of effort, in the lead,
more or less on the divisional left flank and tied in with the 2d Division's
right flank. They were heading north to seal off the western-most exits out
of Kuwait
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City by Kuwait International Airport. We had to move Task Force Papa Bear,
which was the division reserve, up adjacent to Task Force Ripper as Ripper
started getting heavily engaged with the 3d Armored Division.
By the evening of G + 2, we had sealed off Kuwait International Airport.
Task Force Shepherd--the 1st and 3d Light Armored Infantry Battalions--then
went around to the right of the airport after midnight and sealed it off on
the east side. They took their LAVs inside the airfield about 0430 and
secured it---without going into the buildings-by daylight. That's when we
brought up Task Force Taro. They were right there to go on into those
buildings and clear them. We used infantry for that.
PROCEEDINGS: How long into the attack were you still concerned that they were
going to hit you with chemical weapons?
Myatt: We had the Fox vehicle, a chemical detector, and it kept going off. I
still have Marines who are convinced that we did get some mustard gas used on
Map of I Marine Expeditionary Force in Kuwait, 24-27 February 1991
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
us, but the false alarms were probably triggered by the heavy smoke from the
oil fires. We were not sure even after the cease-fire that the Iraqis might
not do something dumb to try to pay us back for what had been for them a very
embarrassing situation.
PROCEEDINGS: What concerned you most out there?
Myatt: I think the thing that we were most concerned with was preparing to
breach the obstacles, because we couldn't find in our history where anybody
had gone through the kinds of obstacles that we expected. That the obstacles
weren't as sophisticated as we expected was a blessing. We worried about
those obstacles, getting through and building speed and trying to get in
behind the Iraqis.
I told my folks: "We're not going to fight anybody we don't have to
fight." We wanted always to try to find a flank someplace, to get in behind
them. We wanted to use that period from the beginning of the air campaign
until we started the ground campaign as the time to start attacking their
will. The 3d Marine Aircraft Wing air is what did it for us going into
Kuwait, not JFACC [Joint Force Air (component commander)].
That was a key part of it, but I also believe the combined arms raids
that we conducted was a part of it, and--about 25 January--we hurt a brigade
headquarters of the Iraqis so badly with our artillery that it prompted a
counter-attack. That included the one that went into Khafji on the morning of
30 January.
The night of the Khafji battle, there were really three attacks. One was
the battalion of tanks that came out of Kuwait through Umm Hujul, which hit
us. The second one was a smaller-size force that came out of the Al Wafra
down into Saudi Arabia and hit the 2d Division. The third was the brigade
that went into Khafji unopposed because the Coalition forces did not have
anything up that far forward, except for some of our reconnaissance teams.
So here we have Colonel Turki, who commanded the Saudi Arabian King Abdul
Aziz Brigade, and a major from the Omani forces who were meeting at a place
called Long Rifle, a checkpoint. John Admire walked in and they were
discussing whether or not they would counterattack the Iraqis. John Admire
told them that we still had two recon teams in there and that we would support
them with air and artillery and whatever had to be done. Colonel Turki turned
to him and said, "That's enough for me." So they conducted an initial probe
with a planned withdrawal to ascertain the enemy dispositions. Then they
conducted a very successful counterattack.
We knew that the Iraqis weren't as good as everybody had portrayed them
to be at that point. John Admire knew those two commanders, and there's no
substitute for knowing who you're going to fight with.
PROCEEDINGS: So based on Admire's support, they said, "We're ready to go?"
Myatt: Yes, I think it's because with each of those brigades we also had
supporting liaison teams and Air-Naval Gunfire Liaison teams (ANGLICO]. We
all knew each other. The Coalition business isn't just common procedures;
more
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important is you've got the interface with your liaison teams. I think
ANGLICO is a key element in that. Cross-training, where we had Marines going
up and training those Saudi folks in artillery, engineering, mine warfare-that
was important too.
PROCEEDINGS: What made things work for you?
Myatt: I rank it in this order: people, ideas, and equipment. We've got
really bright people and they've got a lot of ideas, and they're trying to
make equipment work. If you look at a PRC-77 radio, technically it's supposed
to communicate about 3.5 kilometers; our high-powered gear on the vehicle
mounts is supposed to go up to 20 kilometers. We were stretching, from the
first element of my division to the rear, about 100 kilometers. We were able
to communicate because of the ideas people had. Putting a division Marine
aboard the airborne direct air support center the whole time allowed us
communicate, as did a lot of effort on setting up relays. You don't always
have to be able to talk to somebody if they know what has to be done, and they
can keep quiet unless they really have a problem.
Yes, technology worked and equipment worked, but a lot of the equipment
couldn't accommodate what we needed done. But people had the ideas that made
it work. A young warrant officer and a sergeant designed what is called a
fascine, and we made our own and mounted them on our AAVs.
I would temper the technology thing. It's ideas that make the equipment
work. I'll give you another example--Quickfire, a non-doctrinal communications
net. We put an air officer with the 11th Marine Artillery Regiment to set up
the nets from the TPQ-36 fire-finder radars right to the FastFACs. If we had
not done that--and used the normal doctrinal procedures through regiment,
division, etc.--we'd never have gotten the job done.
PROCEEDINGS: There's been a lot of talk about maneuver warfare in the last 10
or 15 years. Has this affected the Marine Corps?
Myatt: I don't really like the term. I think we ought to talk about fighting
smart. If you focus first on the enemy and decide that you're not going to
meet them head on, you're going to try to find a flank or get behind them--
because once you're behind somebody, by and large, most people will quit--then
fighting smart is what FMFM-1 talks about. Fighting smart is what a lot of
people have been saying all along, which to me makes sense, rather than just,
"Well, there are a lot of forces there. Let's just attack. "I say attack,
but attack from a position of advantage.
So I think that's what General Gray was after, and I think that's what
our lieutenants are trained to do, that's what most of our captains are
trained to do. We have some people in more senior grades who want to put a
label on it and say they don't want any part of it because it's new. I think
that it's, "Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way." I think we all
need to concentrate on fighting smart.
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PROCEEDINGS: How important do you consider the concept of the "commander's
intent?"
Myatt: I think that's the whole business of fighting smart. That applies both
to garrison as well as what we saw in Desert Storm. If people know what your
vision is, what you intend to happen, then they will take the initiative. It
doesn't make any difference if they're in communications with you or not.
PROCEEDINGS: Has any particular lesson stuck with you?
Myatt: I think that we need to look very carefully at the Marine air command
and control system--what works and what doesn't--and what we invest in it.
Some very innovative things were done over there with how we give a direct air
support center [DASC] capability to both the divisions. They put an air
support element for people right in my CP. There was none of this remote
stuff, where people were separated. I would like to see us break down some
barriers here, and decide what our Marine air command and control system from
the DASC point of view is going to look like in the future.
They had liaison teams right down with the regiments. It works, and I'd
just like to see us explore that.
PROCEEDINGS: is there anything that we've missed that you really wanted to
talk about?
Myatt: I think what we can't dismiss is the level of effort put into the
defenses along the beaches by the Iraqis. I have to tell you that they were
concerned from day one about a threat from the sea. When you get down and you
look at the really fine engineering effort that was done on defense of the
beaches and defense in-depth against an attack coming from the sea, it tied up
at least six of the 11 Iraqi divisions that were facing I MEF. I would say
probably 40 percent to 50 percent of the Iraqi artillery pieces were pointed
to the east in defense of this perceived real threat--an attack from the Gulf.
There were literally hundreds of antiaircraft weapon systems laid in a direct-
fire mode from Saudi Arabia all the way up way above Kuwait City to defend
against the amphibious threat.
So when people start agonizing over "There was no amphibious assault,"
you must remember that what amphibious forces did accomplish was magnificent.
There are four kinds of amphibious operations, and our forces afloat did
demonstrations and they did raids. They played a very key role, and I think
it saved a lot of Marine lives.
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Major General Keys commanded the 2d Marine Division. With the U.S. Army's
Tiger Brigade attached, the 2d Division packed more combat power than any
other division in Marine Corps history. In this interview, General Keys
discusses the experience of the 2d Marine Division in the Persian Gulf
conflict, including the last minute decision to have the 2d Division create
its own breach through the Iraqi defenses.
Rolling With the 2d Marine Division
interview with Lieutenant General William M. Keys, USMC
U.S. Naval Institute PROCEEDINGS, November 1991
PROCEEDINGS: The Marine Corps bases on the West Coast started emptying out
almost immediately, once the balloon went up. What was going on at Camp
Lejeune?
Keys: Everyone was tracking the situation, and some units were getting ready
to go. Initially, all that mounted out was the 4th MEB [Marine Expeditionary
Brigade], which was in process of loading out for Norway, to conduct an annual
NATO exercise in the Teamwork series. After a little reconfiguring, they
deployed to the Indian Ocean.
The ground combat element of the 4th MEB was the 2d Marine Regiment,
which left me with two infantry regiments--the 6th Marines and 8th Marines.
Since it was quite possibly headed for combat, we let the 4th MEB go out a lot
heavier than we should have--particularly in the combat service support
elements. I guess we figured that someday we'd link up out there, but I never
saw the 2d Marines again, for the duration of Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
In the meantime they were floating around with assets that the rest of us
would need when the time arrived for us to mount out. There's a lesson in
there somewhere.
Between August and December, we tried to track developments in Southwest
Asia through situation reports and intelligence briefs. We received several
warning orders that were later canceled: first, to send another regiment;
next, to mount out another MEB, this one designated to marry up with gear
carried into the theater of operations by an MPS [Maritime Prepositioning
Ships] squadron. Late in November, we got the word that the entire 2d Marine
Division would go over there and fight under command of I MEF [Marine
Expeditionary Force], which in effect would become a corps-level command.
When we received the mount-out order, I still had the two active-duty
regiments--the 6th Marines and the 8th Marines. The rest of the 2d Division
was filled out with reserves, about 4,000 of them. We filled up our holes and
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added an extra Reserve tank battalion. We had a comprehensive individual
training program for each reservist: rifle range, gas mask, Code of Conduct--
the whole works. At the same time, we were giving the same training to the
reservists who were destined to join the 1st Marine Division, already deployed
to Southwest Asia. We put about 15,000 reservists through this program in
roughly one month. Camp Lejeune looked like it must have looked during World
War II, with Marines reporting at all hours of the day and night, finding
temporary billeting in a tent or barracks, then starting out the first thing
next morning to train for combat.
We began flying the 2d Division to Saudi Arabia around 12 December. The
shipping for our heavy gear and supplies (one MPS squadron plus 18 break-bulk
ships) had begun sailing around the last of November and continued through
December. All our gear had arrived by the middle of January; all the troops
were there by year's end.
PROCEEDINGS: Then you got some reinforcements in Saudi Arabia, didn't you?
Keys: We took operational control of a U.S. Army tank brigade--the "Tiger
Brigade" [1st Brigade, 2nd Armored Division]. They came fully equipped with
M-1 tanks and were a first-class outfit. They had been together as a unit for
about two years, and had been through the National Training Center (the Army's
stateside equivalent of the Marine Air-Ground Combat Center in the Mojave
Desert]. Their commander and officers really knew their stuff.
We spent the first few days getting to know each other, getting briefed
on each other's procedures. That was much less of a problem than you might
think. We go to their schools; they go to our schools. A lot of our training
and doctrine is the same. Before long, we were one tight division. Right at
the beginning, I told the Tiger Brigade that they were my third regiment, and
would be treated the same as the other two. This made a great difference to
them and paid off greatly later. Those Army tankers now wear the 2d Marine
Division patch on their right sleeves--to signify their service with the
Marines in combat. At the time we assumed operational control, they were
located about 80 miles away, in a relatively good training area. I saw no
point in moving them closer, so they stayed there until the first week in
January and conducted their own training exercises. We'd go down there to
observe and to coordinate some things with them that I wanted to do.
PROCEEDINGS: When did you begin moving toward your eventual attack positions?
Keys: About 28 December, the first elements of the division moved north. I
wanted to move units into the field as soon as they got their equipment, and
get on with some serious training. We moved into a place called the Triangle
area--which was in fact a triangle, lying between three hard-topped roads-
about 50 miles north of Al Jubayl. Within two weeks, the entire division was
up at the Triangle.
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Map of Iraqi Force Deployment, 21 Feb 1991
We built a training range that could handle all the weapons of a
mechanized and armored assault force, and we developed a complex of obstacles
for use in training for breaching operations. In addition to their other
work, every unit went through a standard syllabus that took about five
training days. About the middle of January, we moved northwest to the left of
the 1st Marine Division, about 12 miles below the border with Kuwait. We
stayed there about two weeks, and--as we did everywhere we stopped--we kept on
training. This is where we had our first significant contact with Iraqi
forces. Some of our light armored vehicles had a skirmish with Iraqi tanks
along the border and killed five, as I recall.
PROCEEDINGS: What were the Iraqis doing at this time? Were they trying to run
any probes, any reconnaissance missions?
Keys: They would come up to the border at night, and if they did anything
beyond that, it didn't go very deep. It was the same with us. CentCom didn't
want anybody in the I MEF sector launching combat-reconnaissance missions into
Kuwait at this point. The concern was starting the ground war early.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
PROCEEDINGS: What was your scheme of maneuver at this time?
Keys: Our plans changed as circumstances changed. About the first week of
February, General [Walter E.] Boomer [Commanding General, I Marine
Expeditionary Force] approved a plan that called for the 1st Marine Division
to conduct the breaching operation. The 2d Division would pass through the
1st Division's lines and become the exploitation force. At the time, we were
driven to the one-division breach concept of operations because we didn't seem
to have enough heavy breaching equipment to support two divisions.
There were many, many problems associated with this plan. For one, it
was difficult to get the two divisions together for training and rehearsing.
When we finally did some passage-of-lines rehearsing, it did not go well.
Since both divisions were heavily mechanized, we might have had a column of
vehicles stretching back 30 miles, just getting lined up for the attack. I
personally did not care for this plan, but would have supported it if we were
driven to it by the lack of breaching equipment.
But by 7 or 8 February, some additional equipment from the Israelis and
the U.S. Army had arrived. In addition, my Tiger Brigade had some built-in
breaching capability, and knew how to use it--in fact, they gave us a lot of
help in planning the entire assault. So I went to General Boomer and asked
him to consider my alternative plan. He agreed, and I showed him what I
wanted to do. It was rather radical. It called for moving the 2d Division
another 80 miles to the northwest and breaching right through one of the Iraqi
oil fields. The field we picked was supposedly one of the worst, because of
heavy concentrations of hydrogen gas. But we had two or three Kuwaiti
resistance fighters with us, and one--who had worked in that field--said that
we could probably get through it. If things got too bad, we could always use
our gas masks. They were not the most effective filtering devices for
hydrogen, but they would do in a crunch.
As I presented this plan to General Boomer, I related my confidence in my
subordinate unit commanders and the Marines and soldiers of the 2d Division
and I guess it showed through--because he approved the plan (pending General
Schwarzkopf's approval). This brought about a major change in the I MEF
concept of operations.
PROCEEDINGS: It also brought about a major change in the logistical support
concept, didn't it?
Keys: It sure did. Brigadier General [C.C.] Chuck Krulak [commanding the
Direct Support Command] was there, and General Boomer asked him if he could
support the new plan. Chuck said he could, but not from his current location.
So in two weeks he carved out a massive logistical support area in the desert,
where he was able to support both divisions. I just want to add this about
General Krulak and his Direct Support Command. They were right up there with
us the entire way, and we owe a large part of our success in the attack to
Chuck Krulak as an individual and to the superb performers in his command.
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Next, General [H. Norman] Schwarzkopf [Commanding General, the Central
Command] came down. We briefed him and he said the plan sounded good. So we
were cleared for action. As another aside, I think General Schwarzkopf was a
superlative commander--a commander's commander. You could just tell that he
knew what he was doing. He instilled a lot of confidence in his general
officers. I have a lot of respect for the man as an individual, a soldier,
and a commander.
PROCEEDINGS: What happened next?
Keys: I directed the 6th Marine Regiment to prepare to conduct the breach. We
would do a one-regiment breach, with each battalion, in turn, cutting two
lanes through the barrier. We moved the 6th Marines into a sterile area and
started to construct an exact replica of the barrier line that we would have
to breach. We gathered all the intelligence we could on the area. We sent
people back to CentCom headquarters, and we even sent the Division Engineer
back to the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., for anything they
could find. From photos and imagery we developed a schematic map with a scale
of 1:25,000.
The Division Engineers did a superb job of building a barrier to scale, in
a short time. Then their commanding officer, Colonel Larry Livingston,
Commanding Officer of the 6th Marines, took his units through, battalion by
battalion. After one week of training, he reported that he was ready to go.
I cant say enough about the way he put it all together.
Next, we moved everybody some 80 miles to the breach area. Our moves
over there were mostly self-moves. I had an extra truck company attached to
the division, and a total of 672 trucks at my disposal--and I needed every one
of them. At times when I needed more, I could rely on our Force Service
Support Group and even contracted civilian trucks--but as we got closer to the
war, the civilian trucks got less dependable. My point is that--especially in
the desert--you need trucks and logistical vehicles to accomplish your
mission, and the only vehicles you can count on in every situation are the
ones that actually belong to you.
PROCEEDINGS: Once you got near the breach site, how did you organize your
forces for the attack?
Keys: I put the division in a laydown site, in the order they would go into
the assault. The 6th Marines were right in front of the area to be breached.
The second unit through would be the Tiger Brigade, followed by the 8th
Marines. I sent the Army tank brigade second--to lead the exploitation
forces--because they were totally equipped with night-vision devices. The
Marines were limited in this regard, but every soldier had what he needed and
every Army vehicle had what it needed, and it was the best gear on the market.
They truly had an exceptional night-fighting capability, and it made a
difference. My thinking was that if the initial penetration by the 6th
Marines went slowly, and dragged into
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Map of I Marine Expeditionary Force in Kuwait, 24-27 February 1991
late afternoon or evening, the Tiger Brigade could move up and complete the
breach during hours of darkness.
My overall aim was to push as much combat power as possible through those
two breach lanes, as quickly as possible. Going into the assault, the 2d
Marine Division had a strength of about 20,500, with 257 tanks, including 185
M-1s. It was probably the heaviest Marine division--with the most combat
power--ever to take the field.
The assault was scheduled for 22 February. General Schwarzkopf asked if
we'd be ready to go. I said, "Yes. I'd like to have more time, but I'll be
ready to go into the assault then, if that's the date."
He said, "What I'm more concerned about is the weather."
We delayed the assault for two days, waiting for better weather. The
weather just got worse. So we put our heads down and kicked off the assault
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on 24 February, even though the weather was still rotten. The night before,
we had made 18 cuts in the berm line with artillery, so we were ready for a
fast start. But the morning fog was so dense that we couldn't see 100 yards
ahead. With visibility that bad, we couldn't count on much in the way of
close air support--but we punched on through. Contrary to some reports, the
Iraqis were still there, waiting for us. They fired about 300 rounds of
artillery as we worked to breach the minefields, but they had no forward
observers to coax the fire on target, so we could discount the prospect of
heavy casualties from their shots in the dark. Aside from mines, Iraqi
artillery had been my major concern, so I felt early on that we were off to a
good start.
We punched on through the barrier, and by the evening of the first day
all of the 6th Marines, the Tiger Brigade, and four battalions of artillery
had moved through the breach. The following morning, I brought the 8th
Marines through,
Map of I Marine Expeditionary Force in Kuwait, 24-27 February 1991
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
and we prepared to continue the attack that afternoon with the Tiger Brigade
on the left, the 6th Marines in the center, and the 8th Marines on the right.
Light armored vehicles, which had entered Kuwait early (CentCom's policy had
changed late in the game), performed scouting and reconnaissance missions on
the left flank, while units from the division's reconnaissance battalion
screened the right flank.
I need to digress again. The light armored vehicles, in their first
combat test with the Marines, really proved their worth--shooting and moving,
shooting and moving. They killed more Iraqi tanks than we realized at first,
and they took the first Iraqi prisoners. An Iraqi general we captured on the
second day told us that he misidentified the first infiltration of light
armored vehicles as the main armored attack, even though we had planned it as
more of a diversionary attack.
Intelligence sources told us that we would probably come into contact
with the 80th Iraqi Tank Brigade, their operational reserve force, attacking
into our center. But large-scale attacks never materialized, and we now think
that the 80th Brigade was just folded back into the Iraqi 5th Mechanized
Division, which both the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions eventually chopped to
pieces.
We captured 5,000 Iraqi prisoners the first day. They would take us
under fire. We would return fire with effect--killing a few--and then they
would just quit. That proved to be the pattern for the entire 100-hour war.
once we took them under heavy fire, they'd fire a few more rounds, then quit.
On the morning of the third day, General Boomer cleared me to drive on
Kuwait City, using the Tiger Brigade to envelop to the west, sealing off an
area called Al Jahar. Around 1000 that morning, I called in my subordinate
commanders to give them mission-type orders. I didn't give them much time to
prepare, but they still managed to jump off around noontime. When we got
within ten miles of Kuwait City, I cut the Tiger Brigade loose to envelop to
the left. They sealed a major intersection on the escape route to Iraq, and
trapped thousands of fleeing Iraqis. By the evening of the third day, we were
poised to enter the city the next morning. In the morning, the word came
down: "Don't go."
The Coalition forces from the region had been selected to enter Kuwait
City. The following evening, we met with them at Al Jahar, to coordinate the
passage of lines. We held onto a line called the Six-Ring Road; they passed
through our lines and entered the city. That was the plan all along.
PROCEEDINGS: What about the timing of the cease-fire?
Keys: I think it probably came at the right time. At least it seemed that way
when the word came down. In retrospect, it is clear that we could have done a
lot more damage to the Iraqi forces if we had pressed on more quickly. It now
appears that they started bugging out of Kuwait as soon as we crossed the
southern border. But at the time it would not have made sense to expose our
forces to counterattacks by overextending ourselves, under the assumption that
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Map of I Marine Expeditionary Force in Kuwait, 24-27 February 1991
the enemy would never fight. That's how it looked at division level, anyway.
Overall, I tend to agree with the President: If we had pursued the retreating
forces into Iraq, we'd still be in Iraq now--and would probably be there for
the next hundred years. We didn't manage to nail the major culprit in all of
this, but we did what we had set out to do.
PROCEEDINGS: A few questions still linger, after the war. How effective was
your intelligence support?
Keys: At the strategic level, it was fine. But we did not get enough tactical
intelligence--front-line battle intelligence. The RPV [remotely piloted
vehicle] worked very well, but we needed many more of them, plus Systems to
disseminate their information to all units that needed it. In my opinion, the
RPV is going to be our best tactical intelligence-gathering vehicle in the
future, and we need to develop that program.
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Our electronic warfare assets--for example, the Radio Battalion-worked
very well. We also received a lot of information from Marine aviation.
They'd fly a mission, and when they got back they'd immediately call the
division's combat operations center to report whatever they saw. That was
close to real-time intelligence support.
I guess that our biggest overall intelligence shortcoming was in building
Saddam Hussein and his forces into a monster that just wasn't there. Going
into the battle, this made us more gunshy than we should have been.
Certainly, the Iraqis had more equipment and capability than any force we've
ever faced. But the fighting spirit just was not there. The individual
foot-soldiers were badly abused by their leaders--not necessarily their
military leaders, but their government--and low morale was the result. I
think their senior military leaders knew what they were doing. After we
seized Kuwait City, we uncovered several sand tables depicting their defenses
that were incredibly detailed. They were fully prepared for us. They had
thousands of weapons and millions of rounds of small-arms and tank
ammunition--so they could have put up one hell of a fight if they had wanted
to. Their defensive areas were well organized, and had they chosen to put
their hearts into it, we would have had a real fight on our hands.
I guess it all boils down to the fact that the individual Iraqi soldier
did not measure up to, say, the North Vietnamese soldier. The Iraqis were not
ready to die for what they believed in--whatever that was.
And that's it in a nutshell.
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Brigadier General Krulak commanded the 2d Force Service Support Group, based
in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, when Desert Shield began. In Saudi Arabia,
this unit and the 1st Force Service Support Group pooled their resources into
a single logistical support effort. General Krulak commanded the Direct
Support Command, which was responsible for the direct logistical support of
frontline units.
A War of Logistics
interview with Brigadier General Charles C. Krulak, USMC
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, November 1991
PROCEEDINGS: When did you start to crank things up for the move?
Krulak: In the fall of 1990, the word came down to prepare for a rotation of
forces in Saudi Arabia. We would be relieving the 1st FSSG, which had begun
to arrive there in August and had stood up its headquarters early in
September. We began to run a series of command-post exercises, to simulate
the laydown of the 1st FSSG forces in Southwest Asia. As I began to place my
people on the map, the way [Brigadier General] Jim Brabham had his situated on
the ground, I decided that if a rotation of forces was ordered, I'd try to
take my entire FSSG. Jim had taken a slice of his headquarters from the 1st
FSSG in Camp Pendleton and placed it on top of two composited brigade service
support groups that had entered Saudi Arabia with the 7th and 1st Marine
Expeditionary Brigades. He and his people were doing a superb job, but as we
continued to run our command-post exercises it became obvious that if we
shifted to offensive operations, we would need the more extensive command-and-
control capability of a full FSSG. When the word came that we were going to
reinforce the 1st FSSG--and not replace it by rotation--I stuck to the same
concept of going to Southwest Asia with a full FSSG.
Once we got there, we established ourselves as a Direct Support Command,
with the 1st FSSG assuming the general support role. Jim Brabham, who was
senior to me, became the senior Marine logistician in country. Just before
Christmas, Lieutenant General [Walter E.] Boomer directed me to locate a place
up north where we could start putting in a logistic support area, big enough
to support a division-sized breach of the Iraqi barriers and minefields along
the southern border of Kuwait. I went north and found a place called Kibrit,
about 50 kilometers inland from Al Mish'ab. It was an old, abandoned
runway--very desolate. After I reported my find to General Boomer, he gave me
the go-ahead to set up a combat service support area, with seven days of ammo
and supplies to support the attack. I sent up my big earth-moving equipment,
and by 2 February 1991 Kibrit was ready to go. It had a big fuel farm, the
largest
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ammunition supply point in Marine Corps history, and all the supplies I MEF
needed for the attack into Kuwait.
PROCEEDINGS: Seven days for a Marine division--that's a lot of ammunition.
Krulak: In this case, we're talking about seven days for two Marine divisions,
plus the Army's armored Tiger Brigade, which was operating with the 2d Marine
Division. Those forces generate a very large ammunition requirement, which
made this staging operation one heck of a gamble on General Boomer's part.
Why? Because we were staging our ammo far forward of any Marine ground forces.
But General Boomer wanted to ensure that he had his support up where it would
do him some good when the push into Kuwait began. At the time we started to
build up Kibrit, the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions were some 100 kilometers
south of us. They did not come north until late January 1991. North of
Kibrit, all we had was a screening force of Saudis and Qatars. At the time of
the Iraqi move on the abandoned coastal town of Khafji, we were still the
northernmost Marines in town, although Major General [William M.] Keys and the
2d Marine Division were by then only ten miles or so to our southwest.
The Iraqi attack on Khafji was three-pronged, and we were in danger of
being attacked. I took every bit of ground defense I had and put it around
the ammo dump. I felt that I could lose everything but the ammo. If we lost
that, our offensive capability would cease to exist. I called General Keys
and he sent up some reinforcements from the Tiger Brigade, who screened us for
the next few days while the Khafji fight was going on. Those were interesting
times, as the Chinese might say. [EDITOR'S NOTE: "May you live in interesting
times" is regarded by the Chinese as a curse.]
PROCEEDINGS: So the Kibrit gamble paid off.
Krulak: The whole support problem was simple, as long as we were at Kibrit.
It was only 50 kilometers from the coast--handy for ammunition resupply. In
addition, it had its own water source--a well of its own. But things changed.
For the logisticians, the war didn't begin on G-Day--24 February--with the
start of the ground assault; it really began about three weeks earlier, when
General Boomer decided to breach the Iraqi defenses in two places with two
Marine divisions, instead of a single breach with one division.
On or about 4 February, I went to see General Keys. I had been his
assistant division commander at one time, so it was no big deal-I just dropped
by. Entering his tent, I saw General Boomer, as well. They were looking
intently at a map.
General Boomer looked up at me and asked, "What would you think of a
two-division breach?"
Well, I had thought about that possibility a lot, as had most of the
general officers out there. I went through the laundry list of reasons to do
it: complicating the enemy's defensive problem by attacking on two fronts;
avoiding a
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passage of lines, especially if the sole breaching attack bogged down; making
better use of supporting arms--all of the things Marines think about. But I
wasn't telling General Boomer anything he didn't already know. He looked at
me and said, "Yes, I agree and we're thinking about doing it."
Then he said, "And I'm thinking about doing it here. He put his hand on
the map--not on the southern part, but the western part--maybe 150 kilometers
northwest of Kibrit. Then he said, "Can you support that?" [EDITOR'S NOTE:
About 40 years earlier, Brigadier General Krulak's father, then the G-3
(Operations) Officer of the Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, was asked whether the
Marines could provide a division to reinforce embattled forces in Korea, as
requested by General Douglas MacArthur. Then-Colonel (later Lieutenant
General Victor Krulak let his faith in the Marines override the discouraging
numbers then at his disposal, and said that the Corps could support. Within
three months, the 1st Marine Division, with two of its three regiments
comprised mostly of reservists, landed at Inchon and changed the course of the
war.]
I thought to myself, "I'm not sure I can support that!" But what I said
was, "I know I can't support that from Kibrit. I need to find another
location for the combat service support area."
"Okay, go look for another place," General Boomer said.
I went back to my staff and they went out and looked. They came back and
said, "There's a location called the Gravel Plains, about nine miles west of
the Kuwait border, which would be perfect to support General Boomer's scheme
of maneuver," they said.
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We had our new spot. I named it Al Khanjar--the dagger. We started
building this miracle in the desert on 6 February and had it completed by 0100
on 20 February. Al Khanjar encompassed 11,280 acres--just think of it. The
ammunition supply point alone covered 780 acres, with 151 separate cells for
ammunition stowage--protected by some 24 miles of berm. One stray artillery
round wouldn't burn up the whole works, as happened more than once in Vietnam.
We also had 5,000,000 gallons of fuel on deck at Al Khanjar, the largest fuel
point the Marine Corps had ever seen. We also had 1,000,000 gallons of water
stowed there--as well as the third-largest Navy hospital in the world, in
terms of operating rooms. In deference to Iraqi artillery capabilities, all
of this was dug in--none of it was above ground.
During those 14 days, the 8th Motor Transport Battalion drove more than a
million miles. Back at Camp Lejeune, 8th Motors drives roughly half a million
miles a year. During those two weeks, the engines of the trucks, the
bulldozers, the road graders, and other key vehicles were never turned off.
We just replaced the drivers. Despite the heavy equipment operating tempo,
our equipment readiness rate for the period remained above 94 percent.
PROCEEDINGS: No overheating?
Krulak: No. It was just amazing. And during this time frame, we were also
assisting the SeaBees in building Khanjar International Airport (in reality,
two C-130 airstrips), and helping the air wing build Lonesome Dove, a large
helicopter support facility. We also built the Khanjar Expressway, a
four-lane superhighway through the desert, running from the breach sites
through both division areas, and back to Khanjar. At the end of those two
weeks, we had 15 days of supply at Khanjar, three days with each of the direct
support groups, and a day with each of the mobile combat service support
detachments--in addition to whatever the divisions were carrying themselves.
I'm not a logistician by trade, so I set this up from a infantryman's
viewpoint: "How would a division commander want to be resupplied?"
The answer was fairly obvious. If I shot a bullet, I'd want to reach
back and have someone hand another bullet to me, so I could stay on the line.
I wouldn't like having to drop my rifle and leave the firing line, in order to
go back and get another bullet. I wouldn't even want to take the time to ask
for another bullet; it should just show up automatically. What that implies,
of course, is that the guy who supplies me the bullet and the guy who
eventually brings up more bullets for him to give to me both must be able to
keep up with me, the bullet-shooter. The intent was that the user would never
experience any loss of capability. It was a total "push" system.
PROCEEDINGS: As opposed to a pull system, where the user has to request
resupply. . .
Krulak: Total push. Nobody requested anything. Each regiment of the 2d
Marine Division had its own mobile combat service support detachment, with
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a day's worth of all classes of supply, moving right along with it. Each task
force in the 1st Marine Division had the same setup. If a machine gun went
down, we wouldn't keep the gunner waiting while we tried to fix it; we'd just
pull a replacement off the rack of machine guns the detachment carried, and
hand it to that gunner. The same thing would apply if we lost a wire-guided
missile launcher or a light armored vehicle. We had detachments from the
maintenance battalion up forward, and they would begin repairing equipment
immediately, but no one had to wait while they worked. This responsiveness of
the combat service support system was something new--and it worked.
PROCEEDINGS: Was your medical support geared to work far forward, in the same
way?
Krulak: We had surgical support--trauma specialists--right up with the mobile
combat service support detachments. They could sort casualties out and
perform immediate lifesaving procedures--the same as regular surgeons, only
more capable. Then, with the direct support groups, right up there on the
border, we had the casualty collecting and clearing companies in place.
Behind them, we had the trauma centers--at Al Khanjar, Kibrit, and Al Mish'ab.
We thought that if we were going to take a lot of casualties, it would be
during the early stages of the breaching operations, so we kept our surgical
support teams up close to the advancing units and planned for overland
evacuation of casualties to the rear. As things turned out, we had relatively
few casualties and helicopters could in fact fly over the battlefield, so we
loaded our medevacs at a forward landing zone--just like Vietnam--and overflew
the border medical facilities to take the casualties directly back to Al
Khanjar. It wasn't that far-you could actually see the border from Al
Khanjar.
We were set up to handle a worst-case situation. Each of the mobile
support detachments had a collecting and clearing company mounted on trucks.
If we started taking casualties, we could have driven up there and set up
operating rooms right next to the battle. Everything was mobile and ready to
go. Thank God we didn't have to use that capability.
PROCEEDINGS: Desert Storm was probably the first time since World War I that
Marines faced the possibility of mass casualties from chemical or biological
attacks. How did that affect the way you set things up?
Krulak: It played a major role. It required us to stage a lot more water,
because that's what we were going to use for decontamination. We brought up
as many water-carrying vehicles as we could. They weren't all tanker trucks;
they were anything that could carry containers of water. All the mobile
support detachments had decon water with them, as did the collecting and
clearing companies and the hospitals. Wherever we set up to treat casualties
we had decontamination water nearby. If you bring a contaminated casualty
into an operating room, you wipe out that OR--and we just couldn't have that.
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Also preparing for the worst case, we had the surgeons, wearing individual
protective clothing, practice dealing with contaminated casualties.
PROCEEDINGS: How did the combat service support troops hold up under the high
tempo of operations?
Krulak: They did fine. The infantrymen--and I'm one--train in specific
tactics for specific missions that have a beginning and an end. But every day
is the same for a wrench-turner. He might be working on hard stand back at
Camp Lejeune or in the sand of Saudi Arabia, but he still turns that wrench
the same way every day. So getting our guys up to speed for their combat
service support jobs in the desert was relatively easy compared, say, to
training and equipping the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions to make those historic
breaches of the Iraqi barriers and minefields.
For us, the really different thing was that nobody had ever mounted out a
full force service support group before. Most thought it couldn't be done.
But we deployed as a full FSSG to Al Jubayl, moved to Al Mish'ab, from there
to Kibrit, from there to Al Khanjar, and then on to Al Jaber, in Kuwait. Then
we rolled back to Al Khanjar, then to Kibrit, then to Al Mish'ab, and finally
back to Al Jubayl. The whole shooting match--the whole damned FSSG. That is
something to accomplish!
PROCEEDINGS: Back at Camp Lejeune, the FSSG would have its share of female
Marines, doing everything from punching typewriters to running heavy
earth-moving equipment. As you moved farther and farther forward in a combat
environment, did you have to make allowances for the females, and leave them
in the rear?
Krulak: We took all of them with us. They were magnificent. The first Marine
out of the 2d FSSG to be recommended for a Bronze Star medal was a woman. My
G-1 [personnel officer] was a female lieutenant colonel; my G-2 [intelligence
officer] was a female major. The noncommissioned officer in charge of our
communications center was a woman; 50 percent of the communications watch
sections were women. We had female platoon commanders. After dark on the
first day of the ground attack, ten of my female truck drivers went through
the breach to bring back enemy prisoners, so they actually cleared the breach
ahead of some of our hard-charging infantry units. I had a couple hundred
female Marines up north with me, and none of them ever shied away from
anything. None of them went home on emergency leave--zero! None of them got
pregnant in Southwest Asia--zero! The women, as well as the Marine Corps
Reservists, did a truly phenomenal job.
I'm a firm believer in the capabilities of our female Marines to perform
under pressure. I'm not saying that they should be infantrymen, but there is
a role for them in combat--certainly in the combat service support arena.
They did a great job.
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PROCEEDINGS: Is there a question I didn't ask that you would like to answer?
Krulak: I've been an infantry officer for 26 of my 27 years in the Marine
Corps. But as a temporary logistician, I have never been prouder of any group
of men and women than my FSSG. Nobody who was not there will ever know what
it took to build the support area at Al Khanjar. General Boomer had never
seen anything like it. It was so big that you could not see from one end to
the other; it faded into the horizon. And the Marines who put that together
in two weeks didn't stop to rest on their oars; they went through the breach
with the combat units and continued to do their thing.
You can talk all you want about the air and ground campaigns, and--God
bless them--those warriors did a magnificent job. I'd never begin to take
anything from them. Ten years from now, however, when historians and
strategists and tacticians study the Gulf War--what they will study most
carefully will be the logistics. This was a war of logistics.
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Brigadier General Admire commanded the 3d Marines during the Persian Gulf
conflict. In this, the second of two articles, General Admire describes
training and fighting with Arab allies during Desert Shield, emphasizing the
importance of close personal relationships between allies in coalition
warfare. "Task Force Taro" is an allusion to an edible plant common in
Hawaii, the home port of the 3d Marines.
The 3d Marines in Desert Storm
By Brigadier General John H. Admire
MARINE CORPS GAZETTE, September 1991
When the 3d Marines deployed to Saudi Arabia in mid-to-late August 1990,
they immediately displaced to base camps and forward defensive positions. A
rear area was established at Ra's Al Ghar, which was a Saudi Marine recruit
training facility south of Jubail. This created unique opportunities for the
Hawaii Marines. This association with fellow Marines provided the 3d Marines
with the training areas and ranges needed to conduct weapons firing and field
training. Initially, ordnance restrictions and training area constraints
delayed field exercises for most American forces. But the bond of cooperation
between Saudi and American Marines enabled us to begin a cross-training
program that eventually expanded considerably.
MajGen James M. Myatt, commanding general, 1st Marine Division,
encouraged and directed the 3d Marines to become the division's focal point
for cross-training initiatives with the Arab Coalition forces. (See author's
article in MCG, Aug91.) Consequently, in October 1990 the regiment, which
became known as Task Force Taro, began training with the Saudi Arabian King
Abdul Aziz Brigade. The Saudi brigade was located on the Saudi and Kuwaiti
border and training with them allowed us to operate on terrain in which we
would later conduct combat operations.
From October through December the 3d Marines rotated company (-)
reinforced units of 150-200 U.S. Marines forward to train with the Saudis.
These 8- to 10-day training periods focused on the complete spectrum of
military subjects: tactics, weapons, leadership, and maintenance, among
others. We were very conscious and careful, however, to present the
cross-training as a mutually supporting and reciprocal effort. We
acknowledged the Saudi expertise in desert tactics and asked them to teach
desert survival, desert navigation, and desert tracking classes. Throughout
the next three months the exchange of tactical knowledge and procedures
enhanced the capabilities of both forces. In the process, however, a
significantly more vital relationship began developing. Arab and American
friendships emerged founded on the common bond of the brotherhood of arms.
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A unique camaraderie developed as a natural result of the challenges and
sacrifices of desert life. American Marines were invited into Saudi Bedouin
tents for meals and began to experience Arab culture and hospitality. Marines
hosted Arab Coalition Forces during our traditional Marine Corps Birthday
Ceremony and acquainted Arabs with the heritage of our Corps. The friendships
grew into a special trust and confidence between Arabs and Americans and
became the foundation for future battlefield success.
In January 1991, partially because of the Task Force Taro and the Saudi
brigade relationship, the 3d Marines displaced forward to Al Mish'ab. The
area had been previously an exclusively Arab sector for combat forces.
Nonetheless, because of this special rapport, Task Force Taro became the
northernmost forward-deployed Marine combat force in Saudi Arabia.
At this phase in the deployment, the 1st Marine Division and its combat
forces were located approximately 80 to 100 kilometers south and to the rear
of Task Force Taro. Therefore, we adopted the concept that if the war were to
suddenly be initiated by the enemy, Task Force Taro would fight with and
alongside Arab Coalition Forces instead of the 1st Marine Division.
Consequently, cross-training with the Arab Coalitions Forces expanded and
intensified. Positioned in the midst of Saudi Army, Marine, and National
Guard Forces, as well as Qatari, Pakistani, Moroccan, Bangladeshi, and later
the Afghan "Freedom Fighters" (the MUJAHADIN), Task Force Taro began training
daily with coalition units.
The Task Force's primary mission was to plan and prepare for
helicopter-borne assaults as the 1st Marine Division's helo assault force.
But once committed the regiment's tasks would focus on defeating Iraqi
armor/mech counterattack forces. Therefore, as a basic infantry force with
mobile anti-armor assets limited to TOWs and heavy machineguns, antitank
tactics became critical to Task Force Taro. We had no access to American
armor/mech assets; the Arabs had the only antiarmor assets in the area. Task
Force Taro provided the helicopters and Arabs provided the tanks for helo
assault and infantry-versus-tank classes, respectively. These cooperative
training programs further strengthened the bonds of professional and personal
friendships and contributed significantly to preparations for the approaching
war.
On 17 January 1991 the allied air campaign was initiated. In response,
the Iraqi Army conducted supporting arms attacks into Saudi Arabia. As the
most forward-deployed U.S. combat unit, Task Force Taro became the first
American unit to receive Iraqi artillery, rocket, and missile fire. As a
counter to the Iraqi threat, however, Task Force Taro initiated the first
ground-oriented attacks against Iraqi positions in Kuwait by conducting an
artillery raid on 20-21 January. (See "Artillery in the Desert, 1991: Report
#1" MCG, Apr91, for more details on raids of this type.) Arab Coalition Force
observers were invited to participate and subsequent American Marine
instruction and rehearsals with the Arabs prepared them for the conduct of
similar raids. Thereafter, artillery raids and border skirmishes were
conducted randomly and frequently.
In retaliation for American and Arab artillery raids, the Iraqi Army
attacked Saudi Arabia. The Iraqis conducted two coordinated attacks during
29-31
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
January. To the west an Iraqi assault was defeated by the 1st Light Armor
Infantry (LAI) Battalion. To the east the Iraqis attacked and seized the
coastal town of Khafji. The town had been evacuated and abandoned by the
Saudis because of its close proximity to the border and the frequent enemy
artillery barrages into the city. The sustainment of civilian casualties was
unnecessary and Khafji's citizens were temporarily relocated to safety.
Tactically, the town was undefended, with a defensive line established to the
south of the city. This created a buffer zone between the Iraqis and the
Americans and Arabs in which any Iraqi advance could be engaged by supporting
arms fire. In essence, Khafji became a trap, and the Iraqis fell for it.
Prior to sunset on the day the Iraqis captured Khafji, we conferred with
Arab Coalition Force leaders to develop plans for a counterattack. We advised
Col Turki, the Saudi brigade commander, and the Qatari commanders of proposed
actions, explaining that two Task Force Taro reconnaissance teams had remained
in Khafji to continue their intelligence collection tasks and engage the
Iraqis with artillery fire and air strikes. We offered that the Marine recon
teams could remain undetected for 36-48 hours, but that thereafter their
positions would probably be compromised.
For me, the Battle of Khafji involved one of the most difficult decisions
I've ever had to make. As a Marine, as a leader of Marines, one waits a
career for such an opportunity to execute a major counterattack, to recapture
an enemy-seized objective, to validate months of arduous training and
preparations in actual combat. It truly was the opportunity of a lifetime for
a Marine. I believed in my Marines, and I was confident in our capabilities.
But it was also an opportunity for us as Americans to demonstrate our belief,
our trust, our confidence in the Arab Coalition Forces.
Therefore, with MajGen Myatt's concurrence and support, we deferred to
the Arab Forces. We encouraged them to be the main attack. We accepted the
secondary role as the supporting force. Khafji was in the Arab area of
operations, and for us to preempt the Arabs with an American dominated attack
would have been, at least in my opinion, counterproductive to the four months
of cross-training we had accomplished with the Arab Coalition Forces. Khafji,
therefore, was truly an Arab victory. It was a difficult decision to defer to
the Arab Forces, but it was the right decision. The Battle of Khafji was a
tactical victory for the Arabs; it was a strategic victory for the Americans.
Task Force Taro planning initiatives focused on the Saudi and Qatar
forces conducting the main attack with their armor and mech forces.
Concurrently, American Marines would support the assault with antiarmor
weapons systems and infantry security forces as well as air-naval gunfire
liaison teams. But, more important, Task Force Taro would provide the
supporting arms fire, primarily artillery, as well as the critical air
support.
The plan agreed to, Col Turki ordered the attack. Within hours the
Saudis and Qataris, with American Marine support, executed a night probing
attack to determine Iraqi Army unit dispositions and reactions within Khafji.
Then, after a planned withdrawal and the finalization of the plan, we
counterattacked and within 6 to 12 hours routed the Iraqi units in Khafji,
recaptured the city, and
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
safely recovered the American Marine recon teams. In the process, over 600
Iraqi enemy prisoners of war (EPWs) were captured and over 90 Iraqi tanks and
armored personnel carriers were destroyed.
The statistics, however, were secondary to the true consequences of the
Battle of Khafji. To understand its true meaning, one must appreciate the
preceding circumstances and situations. At the time Col Turki courageously
announced, "We attack," the Iraqi Army was the fourth largest army in the
world. It was reported to be the most combat tested, experienced military in
the world as a result of its eight-year war with Iran. Furthermore, in the
vicinity of Khaiji, intelligence analysts estimated the Iraqis had
approximately four to six times the number of tanks we had and six to eight
times the artillery pieces.
Meanwhile the Saudi military had minimal experience in conventional
battles in modern times, especially ones with the technical and sophisticated
weapons on today's modern battlefield. Similarly, the Qataris, to our
knowledge, had never deployed from their sovereign borders to participate in
combat. It truly was a situation of David versus Goliath. But in the Arab
Coalition Forces slingshot was the support of the American Marines. The
mutual trust and confidence among the respective forces ensured a crushing
Iraqi defeat and a crucial American and Arab victory. From that point on
there was absolutely no question regarding the courage and conviction of the
Arab Coalition Forces.
There were other consequences of the Battle of Khafji as well. First,
the confidence and morale of the Arab Coalition Forces were enhanced
immeasurably. Second, we concluded that the Iraqi Army had no resolve. We
advised Gen Myatt that if we hit the Iraqis hard and fast they would quit--and
quit early. We surmised that the Iraqis had no desire to stand toe to toe and
engage in a slug-fest with a dedicated opponent. Consequently, Gen Myatt
decided to pull battalions off the line and to assign them the principal task
of EPW collection and control. This would contribute to a rapid and unimpeded
attack by Marine forces and free them from anticipated administrative and
logistical burdens. Third, the Arab Coalition Forces requested a major
modification to the ground campaign scheme of maneuver. It was this third
consequence that proved critical to the subsequent assault into Kuwait and
Iraq.
Previously, the ground scheme of maneuver called for U.S. Marines to
attack north in the eastern and central portion of Kuwait. The U.S. Army and
British and French forces would also attack north from positions to the west.
Meanwhile, the majority of the Arab Coalition Forces would follow in trace of
the attacking Americans and Europeans. The American Marines would then
encircle Kuwait City and secure all entrances and exits to the city. At this
point the Arab Forces would conduct a passage of lines and clear the city by
house-to-house and door-to-door fighting.
But after the Battle of Khafji victory, the Arab command advocated that
they attack as equal partners with the American and multinational forces. The
Arabs acknowledged that if the Americans were to breach the formidable Iraqi
defenses, they too would assault the barriers and attack on line with the
Marines. Therefore, this proposal resulted in the Arab Coalition Forces,
primarily Saudi and Qatari, attacking north in the eastern avenue of approach
centered on the
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Iraqi Force Deployments, 21 February 1991
coastal road. The American Marines-the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions-shifted
their attack to the west and were now able to concentrate their forces for a
rapid and massed assault directly toward Kuwait International Airport.
Furthermore, the U.S. Army and European forces, supported by Egyptian and
Syrian forces, displaced farther to the west to conduct what Gen Norman
Schwarzkopf, USA, Commander-in-Chief, Central Command, termed the "Hail Mary"
or end-around flank attack. This classic maneuver warfare tactic surprised
the Iraqi Army and contributed to an incredulously rapid attainment of
established political and military objectives. The genesis of this final
alignment was the cross-training with Arab Forces, the friendships and trust
and confidence that developed, and the combined operations that characterized
the Battle of Khafji. The consequences of the Battle of Khafji were truly
pivotal.
As the Kuwait and Iraq assault plans were prepared for execution, Task
Force Taro received orders to displace approximately 100 kilometers to the
west to rejoin the 1st Marine Division for the first time in almost two
months. Prior to executing the movement, Task Force Taro Marines bid farewell
to their Arab comrades in arms. A letter was personally delivered to Col
Turki from MajGen Myatt, congratulating him for the superb Khafji victory and
thanking him for assisting in the recovery of the two Marine recon teams.
On 19-21 February 1991, Task Force Taro displaced from Al Mish'ab to
assembly areas from which to launch the attack into Kuwait. In the course of
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displacement we received a new mission as an infiltration force to secure the
1st Marine Division's right flank. Previously, the Task Force had trained in
virtually every conceivable mission, but the infiltration task was never a
focus. Although we had from our other training an appreciation of how the
infiltration task might contribute to the main attack forces--Task Force
Ripper and Task Force Papa Bear--the new mission was somewhat of a
psychological shock to Task Force Taro. We were encouraged by MajGen Myatt's
confidence in assigning us such a critical task with minimum notice and
accepted our supporting attack role with the understanding that we would have
no armor, no assault amphibious vehicles, no major mechanical or explosive
breaching assets. We would simply infiltrate at night on foot, with bayonets
and rifles as our principal weapons.
The evening of 22 February we crossed the border into Kuwait on foot to
attack positions south of the Iraqi defensive barrier. Throughout the
daylight hours of 23 February we remained undetected in harbor sites and
prepared for the infiltration. Then, the evening of 23 February, crawling on
hands and knees, Task Force Taro infiltration forces penetrated the
substantial Iraqi minefields, barbed-wire obstacles, tank traps, and earthen
berms. By sunrise the lead elements had penetrated the barrier and initiated
the clearing and proofing of three vehicle lanes for follow-on forces.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The success of the infiltration mission by Task Force Taro and Task Force
Grizzly, on the division's right and left flanks, respectively, had
significant impact. We penetrated the Iraqi defenses, surprised the enemy
forces, operated behind enemy lines to distract the enemy's attention from the
main assault, and secured the flanks from anticipated Iraqi armor/mech
counterattacks. The confidence and morale of the main assault forces were
enhanced significantly with the knowledge that the attack had been
successfully initiated and was proceeding as planned.
Thereafter, the main assault task forces executed the primary breach on
the Iraqi first defensive barrier. We had anticipated that the Iraqis would
defend relatively lightly at the first barrier, but would defend in strength
at the second barrier. Consequently, we deduced that once we had penetrated
the first barrier and were consolidating to attack the second barrier, the
division's advance would be vulnerable to Iraqi artillery fire and armor/mech
counterattacks. The enemy's numerical superiority in armor and artillery
assets rendered it imperative that the attack proceed with utmost speed
between the two barriers. The rapid and continuous attack was dependent upon
Marine close air support to neutralize Iraqi massed armor counterattacks and
supporting arms fires.
Unfortunately, the prevailing northeasterly thunderstorm winds and the
massive smoke clouds from the approximately 600 oil wells that had been
exploded and ignited by the Iraqis reduced ground visibility to about 100
meters and neutralized the crucial Marine air support. As if by divine
intervention, however, approximately one hour prior to the required decision
time for the execution or delay of the attack on the second barrier, the winds
shifted from the south and clouds disappeared and the skies cleared. The
attack continued as planned. The second barrier was assaulted and secured.
On 25 February, Task Force Taro conducted the only Marine helicopterborne
assault of the war. Assaulting into the flaming inferno of the Burgan
oilfields, Task Force Taro elements expanded the security and screen of the
division's right flank. Then on 26 February, the task force executed an
all-night movement to attack positions south of Kuwait International Airport.
At sunrise on 27 February, in trace of the 1st LAI Battalion, Task Force Taro
secured the airport and the Marine Corps' final objective of the war. A
cease-fire was proclaimed on 28 February and negotiations were initiated for
Iraqi compliance with the United Nations resolutions as a prelude to peace.
This article has focused almost entirely on the Hawaii Marines, Task
Force Taro. The victory on the Arabian Peninsula was achieved by the
contributions of all our Nation's Military Services as well as the Arab and
multinational forces. It was a joint and combined effort. We are
appreciative of the contributions of all concerned and proud to have played
our small part in the ultimate outcome.
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Captain Padilla served as a weapons and sensors officer with Marine All
Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 121, which flew the F/A-18D Hornet during
Desert Storm. In this brief article, Captain Padilla describes his squadron's
preparations for war and the techniques used in combat.
F/A-18Ds Go to War
by Captain Rueben A. Padilla, USMC
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, August 1991
Marine All-Weather Fighter-Attack Squadron 121 began trading in its A-6Es
for two-seat night-attack F/A-18Ds on 27 April 1990 at home base in
California, and left for Saudi Arabia on 1 January 1991--five days later, six
aircraft and 118 Marines were at Shaik Isa air base in Bahrain.
By the end of January the whole squadron was there--12 F/A-18Ds and 204
Marines, including 34 pilots and WSOs (weapons and sensors officers).
A lot happened before we got to the Middle East. The new aircraft
arrived at a rate of two per month and we trained constantly. The aircraft
has many capabilities and missions, some of which are:
> Air-to-air
> Air-to-ground
> Night attack
> Combined arms control and coordination
> Reconnaissance
In July 1990, the squadron was preparing to send a six-plane detachment
to Turkey to participate in Exercise Display Determination and was scheduled
to send a detachment to Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, in early August to
prepare for the exercise. On 2 August Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait; two days
latter the detachment flew up to Fallon--and on 9 August was recalled to El
Toro.
Aircrew training became paramount as small detachments deployed to MCAS
Yuma, Arizona, to take advantage of the desert terrain. Crews began intensive
night operations, with lunar illumination cycles determining deployment
schedules. The squadron trained 18 pilots and WSOs to employ the nightattack
Hornet's weapons systems, and the crews concentrated on deep air support
missions, flying low-level routes, and attacking targets throughout the
desert.
Target tactics varied from low-level weapons deliveries to the Hornet
high-popup maneuver--a low-level run-in, an afterburner climb to roll-in
altitude, and a 45 degrees dive attack. All of these missions were conducted
using Catseye night-vision goggles, and--when they were available--forward-
looking
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
infrared systems (FLIR) for navigation. In the Middle East, both navigation
and targeting FLIRs were available.
The squadron became fully operational in September 1990 and conducted two
full squadron deployments during October and November to Yuma and Nellis Air
Force Base, Nevada.
When the call came to deploy to the Middle East, we were assigned a
primary mission of combined arms control and coordination--specifically, the
squadron flew tactical air coordinator (airborne) [TACA] and forward air
controller (airborne [FAC(A)] missions. This included spotting for artillery
and naval gunfire. The services sometimes use slightly different terms to
describe similar functions, but the squadron's mission is best described as
that of a fast FAC, as distinct from the turboprop-powered OV-10DS.
High speed was our best defense against infrared (IR) surface-to-air
missiles (SAMs) while high-speed antiradiation missiles (HARM) carried by
escort Hornets suppressed radar-guided SAMs. In addition, EA-6Bs provided
standoff jamming support for all aircraft in the Kuwait theater of operations.
Our squadron was largely involved in preparing the battlefield and
supporting ground units in the battle to retake Kuwait. The U.S. Central
Command established kill zones in which we operated. These zones, squares of
terrain about 15 miles on a side, were used as limits for aircraft operating
within them. Each zone had an alpha-numeric designation but these rapidly
gave way to geographical references--the golf course, the Pentagon, the ice
cube tray, and arty (artillery) road--as the aircrews became familiar with the
area.
Armed with kill-zone charts, 2.75-inch rockets and white phosphorous
warheads, and 20-mm. ammunition, we flew our first mission into southern
Kuwait on 18 January.
Aircrews launched and proceeded directly to a Marine Corps KC-130 tanker
to top off with fuel before heading into their assigned area. Prebriefed
targets were reconnoitered to determine which were active, and then the
F/A-18Ds marked the targets for the strike aircraft. Priorities--in order--
were: artillery and rocket launchers, armor, troops, and trench lines. FAC
aircraft remained on station for about 30 minutes, working as many as 21
strike aircraft during that time.
After the first period, FACS cycled back to the tanker and then returned
to their assigned area for another 30 minutes before heading home. Typical
target areas were more than 200 miles from Bahrain.
We used high-altitude tactics during the early part of the war
identifying targets through 7- and 10-power binoculars. Secondary explosions
after initial strike aircraft runs often confirmed active Iraqi positions.
Aircrews flew around the clock, using night-vision goggles when required. On
the night of 29 January, when Iraqi forces moved south toward Khaiji and other
Coalition positions, fast FACs used goggles to provide accurate marks for a
section of A-6Es to lay a string of Rockeye antiarmor submunitions across a
column of advancing Iraqi armor, and stop it dead in its tracks. Marines on
the ground then captured the Iraqi forces.
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
During the 100-hour ground campaign, the fast FACs roamed ahead of
advancing Coalition forces and continued to mark targets for a wide variety of
strike aircraft. What had once been no-man's land--Al Wafra, Al Jabar, arty
road--quickly turned into friendly territory. It was a combined arms effort.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The artillery raid has received little attention in recent years. rating only
the most cursory mention in schools and manuals. Yet, during Desert Storm,
the artillery raid proved to be one of the artillery's most important
missions, and almost the only form of ground combat between 16 January and 24
February. In this article Lieutenant Colonel Sachtleben describes how the 5th
Battalion, 11th Marines, which he commanded, prepared for and executed
artillery raids.
Artillery Raids in Southwestern Kuwait
by Lieutenant Colonel James L. Sachtleben, USMC
FIELD ARTILLERY, October 1991
During early January 1991, the commanding general of I Marine
Expeditionary Force (I MEF) decided that ground forces would be involved in
pre-G-Day operations to deceive and disrupt Iraqi forces operating in the
defensive belts along the southwestern Saudi-Kuwaiti border. As the 1st
Marine Division analyzed its portion of this mission, the artillery raid
seemed tailor-made for the situation. It allowed for surprise, maximum
destruction of enemy equipment and a certain psychological impact on the Iraqi
troops. If conducted from Saudi Arabia, we could accomplish all this without
the political ramifications of having ground forces conduct cross-border
operations before G-Day.
Forces
As the 1st Division Commander discussed the mission with the commanding
officer of the 11th Marines (the division's artillery regiment), it became
apparent that the logical unit for the raid mission was the 5th Battalion,
11th Marines (5/11), the division's general support (GS) battalion.
This was true for two reasons. First, as the GS battalion, 5/11 had more
positioning flexibility than the direct support (DS) battalions that had to
remain in a position to provide fires for their supported maneuver task
forces. Secondly, 5/11 had an M109 battery. At this point, because we still
respected the Iraqi counterfire capability, it seemed wise to employ the M109
battery because of its overhead protection, on-board ammunition storage and
rapid displacement capability.
The battalion had completed the transition from self propelled (SP) to
towed in June 1990. However, the conversion of the battalion's associated
prepositioned equipment aboard the maritime prepositioning ships (MPS)
squadrons wasn't complete. Therefore, 5/11 had two batteries of M198s
(155-mm, towed howitzers) one battery of M109A3s (155-mm, SP) and one battery
of M110A1s (203-mm) in SWA.
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
The division commander asked me to analyze the mission in detail and determine
what external assets we'd need. Rather than trust a "paper analysis," we ran
through some practice missions to determine what our needs would be.
Security for the raid force became the most obvious. Fortunately, Task Force
(TF) Shepherd, composed of elements of the 1st and 3d Light Armored Infantry
(LAI) Battalions was already screening in our proposed operating area. TF
Shepherd provided a company for security and a very close relationship
developed. The commanding officer of Company B of TF Shepherd was integrated
into the planning effort early-on and provided invaluable assistance both
during planning and execution of the raids. This close association was to
prove valuable later on as 5/11 supported TF Shepherd during a pre-G-Day Iraqi
spoiling attack and, again, during the attack into Kuwait.
We also needed help moving our SP howitzers over the long distances from
the battalion's position area to the final raid assembly area. Reliable
navigational aids were a must. We'd be operating well outside the position,
location and reporting system's (PLRS') range, and accurate information was
critical.
We asked for an electronic warfare surveillance capability to pick up any
enemy radio traffic that might indicate the Iraqis had detected our movement
or were about to fire on us. On-call, fixedwing air support also seemed to be
a good idea in case we ran into trouble. The 1st Marine Division G2 offered
remotely piloted vehicle (RPV) support to both locate raid targets and to
confirm their final positions as late as possible before firing.
It was apparent that these raids would truly be a combined-arms effort.
The final task organization for the raid force is depicted in Figure 1.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raid Force Task Organization of 5/11
Raid Force
Two Batteries 5/11*
Company B, TF Shepherd (LAI)
Detachment, 3d Assault Amphibian Battalion
Detachment, Motor Transport Battalion, 1st FSSG (HETs)
Detachment, Communications Company, 1st Marine Division (GPS and SATCOM)
Detachment, 1st Radio Battalion, 1st Surveillance, Reconnaissance and
Intelligence
Group (Mobile Electronic Warfare Surveillance)
Supporting Forces
On-Call Fixed Wing Air Support (Close Air and Electronic Warfare Support)
On-Call MEDEVAC Helicopters
*Assignments rotated between the four firing batteries of the battalion.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Figure 1
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Training
After receiving a warning order from the 11th Marines Commander, Sierra
Battery began training for the raid mission. Because we had yet to receive a
specific target for the first raid, the battery only had my commander's
intent: be prepared to move under an LAI screen during hours of darkness to a
point within one or two kilometers of the Kuwaiti border, fire approximately
15 rounds per howitzer at a high-value target and withdraw when rounds are
complete. Some restrictions applied: no lights would be used-no vehicle
blackout lights, flashlights or collimator lights; VHF radio silence was
imposed; no advance party would be used; no soft-skinned vehicles would go
forward of the final assembly area; and speed was essential.
Battery S honed skills to perfection, and soon it was occupying in
complete darkness in less than half the Marine Corps combat readiness
evaluation (MCCRE) time standard for daylight occupation. In addition, the
battery employed several innovative techniques.
Positioning
Because we wanted no soft-skinned vehicles, we looked for a substitute
for the high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle (HMMWV)-mounted position
and azimuth determining system (PADS). We chose the hand-held Rockwell global
positioning system (GPS), an expensive but totally reliable system. We drew
it and an operator from 1st Division's communications company. Normally used
to survey PLRS master stations, it provided 10-meter accuracy and tracked up
to 16 navigational satellites. It never failed to provide positioning data.
A reliable navigational aid was critical in helping the raid force move
into position in the darkness. Just imagine the challenge of navigating
across as much as 25 miles of trackless desert on a moonless night with your
ultimate destination within one or two kilometers of enemy territory. The
reliability of the Rockwell GPS was worth the price. We could have used
cheaper, more readily available GPS models, but they occasionally suffered
outages due to bad satellite "health" or signals interference. We simply
couldn't take the chance.
Directional Control
With its 10-meter accuracy, the Rockwell GPS was good enough for
establishing battery location but not good enough for establishing an accurate
known direction for laying the battery. So the battery trained for two
methods of lay. The first option, if stars were visible, was celestial. If
there were no visible stars, the battery laid magnetically.
Celestial skills were honed to perfection. A computer program was used
to determine azimuths to easily identifiable stars. In a few days, the
battery was establishing directional control in less than one minute, and
accuracy, when compared to PADS, checked within one mil. The battery used the
magnetic
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
method of lay as a backup to celestial when stars were obscured by clouds or
oil smoke. We established a declination station using PADS at the final
assembly area to ensure that aiming circles were as accurate as possible.
Because speed was essential, howitzers were positioned in very close proximity
to each other, expediting the laying process. This also simplified control
and provided a good, tight position, making it easier for the LAI company to
provide security.
Security
Company B of TF Shepherd provided a screen from the final assembly area
to the firing point and cover while the battery was in position. The night
vision and superb weapons capabilities of the light armored vehicle (LAV) were
invaluable. They spotted enemy movement and provided covering fires as the
battery withdrew after its first raid. Additional security was provided by
the .50 caliber and MK19 machineguns mounted on the M109s.
Providing another layer of security and adding to the combined-arms
nature of the raids was fixed-wing aviation from the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing.
Under control of Company B's forward air controller (FAC), EA-6B Prowlers
jammed Iraqi ground surveillance radars as soon as the raid force entered a
radar capabilities fan and continued jamming until the raid was completed.
F/A-18, AV-8B and A-6E strike aircraft were on call to provide support if the
raid force ran into trouble and to attack certain targets in coordination with
the artillery when it was appropriate. The F/A-18s were exceptionally
valuable in a later raid as we refined concepts and devised more innovative
methods.
Meteorological Support
We needed accurate meteorological data if our fires were to be effective.
it would have been very simple to "fly a Met" balloon in the position area
near Al Qaraah before the raid force departed, but the accuracy would have
been poor for two reasons. Some of the raids were conducted as far as 70
kilometers from Al Qaraah, and the raid force often departed as early as eight
hours before the scheduled firing times. The separation in both time and
distance would have rendered the Met useless.
The solution was for the raid force to take the meteorological data
system (MDS) as far as the final assembly area, usually 10 to 15 kilometers
from the planned firing point. In the assembly area, MDS set up and ran a
Met, and delivered the data to the battery fire direction centers (FDCs)
before they departed for the firing points.
The only problem we encountered with Met was one instance when the MDS
tracking frequency was jammed as a Met balloon was being flown, causing us to
loose the top three lines of Met data. We confirmed the jamming was coming
from the Iraqis and devised procedures to work through the jamming should it
happen again. We weren't jammed again on a raid, but interference with Met
frequencies was a common occurrence in several Marine Corps artillery units.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Communications
The raid force used only limited communications. Checkpoints were
reported and emergency messages, such as mission abort codes, were the only
traffic passed. Because of the very long distance involved, the raid force
commander's only link to higher headquarters was via satellite communications
(SATCOM) to the division forward command post (CP), initially some 75 miles
away. SATCOM was used to report the occurrence of key events on the execution
checklist (see Figure 2) and to confirm target location just before the force
departed the final assembly area.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sample Artillery Raid Execution Checklist of 5/11
Codeword Event
Apple Raid Force arrives in Assembly Area
Orange Raid Force at Firing Position
Peach Target Confirmed
Cherry Commencing Attack
Grape Withdrawing Raid Force
Banana Mission Complete; Returning to Battalion Position Area
Chicken Hawk Mission Abort
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Figure 2
Command and Control
When we added a second firing battery to the raid force, we also added a
command element to control the activities of the two-battery force. The
command element had to be very small and light. It consisted of the battalion
commander or executive officer as the raid force commander, a driver, the
battalion sergeant major (doubling as radio operator and navigator) and the
SATCoM radio operator. The command element led the raid force to the final
assembly area and reported, as necessary, to the division forward CP via
SATCOM.
All raids were well-rehearsed and timeliness were established, based on
detailed time and distance studies. Radio transmissions from the command
element to the raid force were seldom needed. All required actions were
executed on the established timeline, and radios were used only by exception.
This detailed planning proved to be the key to success.
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Logistics
The raid force carried only essential items, including only enough
artillery ammunition for one mission. Medical evacuation (MEDEVAC)
helicopters were on strip alert. Two assault amphibian vehicles (AAVS) were
part of the raid force; one carried the FDC, and one was a MEDEVAC vehicle.
To reduce the chance of breakdown, the raid force used heavy equipment
transporters (HETs) to move the tracked vehicles from the initial battalion
position in the vicinity of Al Qaraah to the final assembly area. The 1st
Force Service Support Group (1st FSSG) provided the HETs, and although their
operators weren't specifically trained for such a tactical mission, they
performed very well.
Special care had to be taken, however, because some of the tractors were
commercial vehicles provided by the Saudis. They had no blackout systems, so
the raid force had to disconnect electrical wires to prevent the inadvertent
illumination of a brake light or the honking of a horn at a time when the
enemy could detect it.
On 18 January, 5/11 moved from its position 30 kilometers south of
Safaniya, Saudi Arabia, to the vicinity of Al Qaraah (see Figure 3). Al
Qaraah was to later become quite a busy place, occupied by most of 1st
Division and a sizeable combat service support detachment. However, when 5/11
first arrived, there were only empty revetments built by Seabees in
anticipation of the coming "population explosion." We were very glad to see
the revetments because of the security they provided. At the time, there were
no other units in the vicinity except TF Shepherd, which was screening to the
north. The remainder of the division was still at least 75 miles to the
southeast.
We settled into the revetments, made liaison with TF Shepherd and waited
for our first mission. It came on 23 January.
The Raids
Raid 1: The Police Post at Qalamat
The target was an Iraqi infantry brigade CP near Al Manaqish. To range
the targets, the battery had to be near the border, in this case, very close
to the Kuwaiti border police post at Qalamat, which was occupied by Iraqi
troops. Because of the possible threat from the police post, Battery Q (MI98)
was added to the raid force to fire on enemy positions closest to Battery S.
After midnight, both batteries moved out under LAI screen for their firing
points. Battery Q stopped, laid the howitzers and waited for Battery S to
occupy its position near the berm that marked the border. Battery S started
firing as soon as possible after arriving in position. The first rounds went
down range at 0053, just seconds off the time estimated in the plan. Battery
Q fired as soon as it saw Battery S's muzzle flashes. A 5/11 forward observer
posted on top of the berm spotted enemy activity at another location and
quickly shifted Battery Q's fires.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Figure 3: Batteries of 5/11 participated in
four artillery raids to help deceive Iraqis as
to the location of IMEF's intended attack into
Kuwait. The very successful raids also
demoralized the Iraqi forces in the defensive
belts along the Kuwaiti border.
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
A very unlucky group of Iraqis had just driven into the target area when
Battery Q's rounds impacted on the second target. The dual-purpose improved
conventional munitions (DPICM) destroyed three vehicles and caused two others
to disperse very rapidly. One hapless Iraqi drove across the border into
Saudi Arabia and into Company B's machinegun fire. We couldn't believe the
success we were having but decided to cut it short when mortar rounds started
falling on the friendly side of the berm near Battery S. We shifted Battery
Q's fires to a third target, a suspected D-30 battery, and as S Battery
withdrew, the FAC with B Company called in a pair of F/A-18s with Rockeye
bombs on the brigade CP and the police post just for added security.
We had agreed early-on that enemy incoming would be cause to abort the
mission, at the battery commander's discretion. The assets were too valuable
and the ground war hadn't even started yet; we could raid again another day.
Raid 2: Police Post at Umm Hujul
This was really not an artillery raid but an LAI raid with artillery in
direct support, or as it came to be known, the "drive-by shooting." The same
division fragmentary order that established the 5/11 as the raid force also
tasked 5/11 to be prepared to support TF Shepherd in any raids it might
execute. The raid on the police post at Umm Hujul was such a raid.
Considerable Iraqi activity had been noted near the police post, and the
raid was intended to disrupt enemy activity, spoil his intelligence-gathering
efforts and discourage any further buildup in the area. The concept was very
simple. TF Shepherd slipped up to the border and fired on the police post
with mortar and 25-mm cannons while 5/11 isolated the objective area by firing
on an enemy position behind a low ridgeline just to the east of the post. The
police post and adjacent positions were heavily damaged, and the raid force
received no return fire from the Iraqis.
Raid 3: SIGINT Near Umm Gudair
Iraqi signals intelligence (SIGINT) and ground surveillance radars in the
vicinity of the Umm Gudair oil field were the target of this raid. Battery T,
the M11OA2 battery, and Battery Q, an M198 battery, had the mission. We
needed DPICM for these targets, but one was outside the range of the M109 and
M198. The 22,500-meter range of 8-inch DPICM, as compared to the 17,500
meters of the M109 and M198, proved invaluable here as well as later in the
ground campaign.
I was a little concerned about the M11OA2 as a raiding piece. Its slower
rate of fire and longer emplacement times meant the battery would be in
position longer and, thus, at a greater risk from counterfire. However, the
larger payload of the 8-inch as compared to the 155-mm DPICM meant the battery
could fire fewer rounds and achieve equal or greater effects. Also, by this
time, we started to question the Iraqi counterfire capability.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
We had taken mortar rounds on the first raid, but there was no evidence
the Iraqis could find us with anything other than forward observers in
frontline infantry units who could spot our muzzle flashes. We trusted the
EA-6Bs to handle the Iraqi ground surveillance and counterbattery radars, and
they obviously did. But why were the Iraqis so ineffective with the
sound-ranging systems that were supposed to be so good? We weren't sure, but
our confidence was growing. We decided to fight the urge to stay and shoot
all night and continued to "shoot and scoot." The real ground war was still
days away, and we couldn't afford to risk assets needed later.
Raid 4: Iraqi Batteries
This one appeared to be the most effective-it was a true combined-arms
effort. The targets were two Iraqi artillery batteries. Two M198 batteries
(Q and R) conducted the raid, again moving into position under an LAI screen.
The idea was to stay in position longer than on previous raids, fire more
rounds and see if we could draw some Iraqi counterfire for the F/A-18s to
attack. We did no electronic jamming with the EA6Bs. This time we wanted the
Iraqi ground surveillance and counterbattery radars to find us.
It was a calculated risk, but we had analyzed the enemy artillery in the
area and were pretty sure he couldn't range us with his systems. We were
firing rocket assisted projectiles (RAP), giving us greater standoff distance
and reducing his chances of ranging us.
The plan worked beautifully. Shortly after our rounds impacted, we saw
his artillery lighting up in counterfire. It appeared to be rockets, and we
assumed it to be Astros multiple rocket launchers (MRLs). The airborne FAC
spotted the flashes immediately, and within seconds, the Iraqi racketeers were
visited by a pair of screaming F/A-18s delivering Rockeye. Because of the
flat terrain, we could see the Rockeye impacts from our battery positions. It
was heartwarming, especially knowing that the targets the Rockeyes were
hitting had been trying to put rockets on us.
After 10 February, we stood down from the raid mission and rejoined the
rest of the 1st Division, moving into Al Qaraah and making final preparations
for the attack into Kuwait. The raids had been very demanding on both
personnel and equipment, and we needed at least a short rest.
Results of the Raids
The goals of the raids were to deceive the enemy as to the location of
the coming attack and destroy the morale of the Iraqi forces in the defensive
belts along the border. In the context of the very successful attack into
Kuwait, the raids accomplished their goals. Although the raids were a small
part of the overall deception plan, they can't be gauged by the amount of
damage they inflicted on the enemy. The raid force appeared in the middle of
the night and fired from positions the enemy had every right to believe were
unoccupied. This had to shake his confidence in his intelligence
capabilities.
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Target surveillance by RPVs and other assets showed the raid fires, with
rare exception, to be very accurate. While the Iraqi target acquisition
capability grew more suspect, their frontline troops were being subjected to
fires that were accurate to a degree they couldn't comprehend.
The coordinated counterfire effort between artillery and aviation
displayed in the fourth raid undoubtedly had a demoralizing effect on Iraqi
artillerymen.
Was it partially responsible for the complete inability of the Iraqis to
mount a counterfire threat or to mass fires later during the attack into
Kuwait? This question can only generate speculation, of course, but put
yourself in the place of the Iraqi rocketeers: they fired a counterbattery
volley in response to our artillery fires, and within seconds of their first
and only volley, they were hit by very effective aviation ordnance. Their
morale undoubtedly suffered.
It'll remain difficult to quantitatively measure the effects of these
artillery raids. But there's no doubt that during Operation Desert Storm the
previously insignificant artillery raid became a very significant combat
multiplier.
182
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Major Huddleston was the Executive Officer, 3d Battalion, 3d Marines during
Desert Storm. In this letter, he recounts his impressions of the first few
days of the war.
THE OPENING OF DESERT STORM:
From the Frontlines
by Major Craig Huddleston
MARINE CORPS GAZETTE, April 1991
Welcome to Operation DESERT STORM. Not much time for a long letter, but
I'll give you some thoughts. There is such a thing as "fog of war." We've
already been up and down our alert ladder many times. "They're attacking,"
"They're not," "We're attacking," "We're not" "Gas Gas, Gas!" "All clear."
Lots of information coming in, most of it false.
The start of the operation caught us by total surprise. We were told 25
January or sometime around then would be the kickoff. Here is the sequence of
events from my point of view during the opening hours of DESERT STORM:
- 2210 (17Jan): I had just lain down to go to sleep. News reports
say air is winning war.
- 2215: WHAM--WHAM, WHAM, WHAM! Time to go to work.
- 2217: Arrive at COC (combat operations center). STA (surveillance
and target acquisition platoon), observation post Dragons, and 81s
all report incoming. Several air bursts, no casualties. Regiment
wants to know what's up.
- 2230: TOW section reports 20 to 25 vehicles in column moving south
on main supply route. "What type?" "BTR-60s." Expletive.
- 2245: Regiment orders stand-to to repel ground and sea attacks.
A-10s on station, attacking. Heavy AAA (antiaircraft artillery),
ZSU, and SA-6 fire observed.
- 2330: Vehicles identified as Saudi.
- 0220: (18Jan): Stand-down.
- 0250: WHAM, WHAM-BOOM. More rockets. Company F, 1st Battalion,
12th Marines reports airburst over battery position. "Gas, Gas, Gas!"
Expletive. Several people observe Scud-Patriot intercept.
- 0300: Monitors out.
- 0340: Reports state no agents detected.
- 0600: Sun comes up. Hot chow. Sent out crater analysis.
- 1545: Air alert. Scuds launched.
- 1600: All clear.
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
- 1640: Report of 8 to 10 vehicles moving south--3 tanks. Stand-to
ordered.
- 1710: "All clear." Vehicles identified as friendly.
- 1830: Marine leaving head yells, "Incoming, take cover!" Look up to
see multiple rocket trails. Expletive. We get down. Thirty impact
well west of us. OV-10 and recon observe launch, roll A-6s in, but
nothing there.
- 2100: Try to sleep, but we go on air or Scud alert five times during
night.
- 0800 (19Jan): ordered to rehearse TRAP (tactical recovery of
aircraft, equipment, personnel). No hot chow, but mail arrives in
morning.
- 0900: Write this letter. Think about changing skivvies.
The press is giving accurate, if somewhat inflated, info. They've got
about 10 percent of this story.
The air guys are doing a great job. The Iraqis have not quit, however.
At least at the tactical level. They fight back with what they've got.
Constant OV-10s, remotely piloted vehicles, and other air overhead. Noise of
bomb impacts 24 hours a day.
Capt Murray W. Chapman got first blood for us, assisting on a close air
support mission against Iraqi medium rocket launchers (MRLs). OV-10
controlled, four A-10s attacked to silence the MRLs, temporarily. (A-10s were
on station five minutes after we called for them.)
We're all very tired. Trying to get sleep is hard with various alerts
(air, Scud, artillery, terrorist ground attack) being given every two hours or
so.
Troops, are handling all this quite well. We've been pretty scared
sometimes, but we're responding well.
Before the war, it was neat being the northernmost U.S. unit (excepting
recon and other intelligence units etc.). How we'd be glad for a rear area
Security mission.
A 300mm rocket makes a crater 12 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep. They
have a spectacular signature at night, both during launch and impact. The
launcher can displace in seconds after launch. We've had trouble killing
them, but they're not too accurate.
We need a good E-tool. The shovel has been our best friend so far.
Biggest problem has been identification, friend or foe, on the ground.
Too many vehicles look like the ones Iraq uses, especially at night. We've
had some very anxious moments when things start moving.
No apparent concern in Qatar or Saudi armies about Israeli reaction to
Scud attacks. We've all taken fire from Iraqi artillery and rockets and know
who the enemy is. Closest Qatar unit really mad; they lost field mess to
first rocket attack!
Gotta go. Very busy times. We're all okay so far. I'll send more when
I get a chance. Semper Fi.
184
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Earlier in this anthology, Molly Moore described the war from the perspective
of the commanding general's headquarters. In these articles, Moore takes us
to the opposite extreme, showing what the war was like for the individual
Marine.
Out Front at the Front:
Marines Brace for Task of Clearing Mines
By Molly Moore
THE WASHINGTON POST, 19 February 1991
WITH U.S. FORCES, Northern Saudi Arabia, Feb. 18--One night soon, Marine
Lance Cpl. Stephen Mitchell, 20, expects to drive a 26-ton mine-breaching
personnel carrier across the Kuwaiti border and into a sandy sea of buried
mines.
"I'll be one of the first ones across the line," said the lanky
Washington, D.C. native, unconsciously fingering, the two metal crosses that
hang from a silver chain around his neck-one sent by his mother, the other by
his aunt. "Sometimes I sit and wonder, and try to picture in my mind what it
will be like."
All too frequently the picture is horrifying.
"In training, there is always one little thing that will go wrong," he
said with a shudder. "It gets you down. Will it happen in combat? It's real
hard, real hard."
When the traveling chaplain, or Mitchell's buddies who sleep with him
inside the hulking metal vehicle dubbed "The Big Red One." can't console him,
Mitchell relieves the pressures on his mind by "going to the paper and pen and
writing it down."
Often he mails his deepest thoughts to his girlfriend. He has pasted her
picture inside the personnel carrier that will push his team of mine breachers
ahead to clear the way for the American tanks and infantry units that will
battle Iraqi forces.
For many of the thousands of American troops now moving into their final
positions across the northern Saudi Arabian desert, within sight of the
nightly allied bombing raids against Iraqi forces, the easiest mental escape
from the formidable task that lies before them is simply avoiding the issue.
"Most people don't talk about what happens when we go in," said Navy
medical technician Douglas Smith, 35, of Baltimore, a reservist on the crew of
a mine-plowing tank who wail serve as a medic if his crewmates are injured.
Copyright 1991 THE WASHINGTON POST. Reprinted with Permission
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
"They speculate about when we will go home. They don't talk about that gray
area in between."
Instead, they lose themselves in long card games. They gaze across the
flat Saudi desert now covered with the green fuzz of sparse winter grass, and
fantasize about showers they haven't had for more than a month and hot meals
they left behind weeks ago.
They wiggle into sleeping bags on the cramped floors of personnel
carriers and in tiny tank turrets, and dream of soft mattresses and wives and
girlfriends half a globe away.
But mostly they work, struggling to keep aging equipment operating in the
gritty sand of the desert, miles from the nearest stocks of spare parts and
supplies.
"We are constantly, constantly repairing the tank,' said Sgt. Nelson
Carter, 25, a reservist from Knoxville, Tenn. the senior non-commissioned
officer for one team of 11 specially designed tanks.
Both the men and the machines of these mine-breaching teams have been
patched together from different bases across the United States for a one-time
mission: to slice through the minefields that lie between allied troops and
the deeply entrenched Iraqi forces across the border.
They have stuffed amphibious personnel carriers designed for beach
assaults with the explosives needed to blast mines from the sand, and they
have tacked toothy plows and bulldozer blades to the front of M-60 tanks.
"The manpower came from wherever they could grab them," said Smith, whose
original team included a cook, a welder, two heavy-equipment operators and a
group of Marines usually assigned to rounding up drunken sailors on shore
leave and returning them to their ships.
But in two months, they have trained and equipped potent mine-breaching
teams armed with linecharges that will be fired to detonate mines and create
lanes through them.
Smith, a medical technician in a Baltimore hospital before he was
summoned to active duty late last year, has dubbed his M-80 minescooper
"Genesis" --as in "the beginning. the first one through." Genesis has become
home to a tight-knit crew of four.
The team members have begun hoarding food--military issue as well as cans
of fruit juice, loaves of bread, cookies, sugar and canned meats. It is
enough food, according to the crew, to feed the four for a month if supply
lines are cut.
What they don't need to eat they plan to use for barter. Because their
unit has been culled from several others and finds itself at the bottom of
most equipment-requisition lists, its members have refined their trading
skills. They swapped an ice cooler for the wrenches needed to fix the tank,
and they gave one of their tool boxes in return for batteries.
"We've had to fight for everything," Smith said. "We almost stole the
tanks off the ships in order to get them.
It is the camaraderie forged among these fighting men that helps drive
them during the long hours of waiting through cold, damp nights and hot, windy
days.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
"If we can't do our job, no one else can," Said Mitchell, referring to
the tanks and infantry that will follow his unit into battle.
Many of the Marines have turned to religion, superstition and good luck
charms to give them the mental boost to face those jobs.
Cpl. Robert Stacy, 23, of New York City, has clipped two large safety
pins in a crude cross on the front of his desert-tan Marine hat: "it is a sign
of the cross--or I can use it to fix my clothes when things start getting
ripped up."
The crew of an amphibious personnel carrier dubbed "Blaze of Glory" has
strung a plastic Bart Simpson doll on a string between two rear antenna. A
tape of "Bart Sings the Blues" blares from inside.
For Mitchell, who joined the Marine Corps almost two years ago to escape
his Northwest D.C. neighborhood and travel the world, his greatest fantasy now
is returning to his hometown for a bar-hopping spree through Georgetown and a
welcome-home parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.
He rubbed the cross his mom mailed him--a nickel with a cross cut into
its center. "With this, I can't go wrong."
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
1st Day of War: `As Scary as You Can Get'
by Molly Moore
THE WASHINGTON POST, 17 February 1991
WITH U.S. FORCES near Kuwait City: For a Marine grunt fresh out of boot
camp and infantry training, clearing Iraqi trenches with nothing more than an
M-16 rifle and hand grenades on the first day of war "was scary as you could
get."
The first time Iraqi artillery rounds rained on his infantry unit,
20-year-old Pfc. Martin Santos hugged the ground. And when the skirmish was
over, he was the first member of his team back inside the tracked armored
personnel carrier.
"We just sat there, holding our weapons saying, `I'm alive, you're
alive-are you okay?" recalled the Palm Beach, Fla. native, who arrived in
Saudi Arabia two days before the air war started Jan. 17 and just days after
he had finished basic infantry training.
By the second day of war, however, Santos was recognizing the same fear
in the faces of hundreds of Iraqi prisoners he was tasked with policing.
"The first ones I saw were afraid," add Santos. "They had pictures of
their kids. You would see a tear coming out of their eyes. They'd make
motions like they were washing their hands of war and say, 'I'm done.'"
As Staff Sgt Julien Pierre, 37, leaped out of his armored vehicle with
team members and began raking Iraqi trenches with gunfire, frightened Iraqis
quickly began surrendering. "It was really a confidence boost," he said.
Other Iraqis put up more resistance.
"Not everybody was giving up--some needed encouragement," said Capt. Ray
Griggs, commander of the 6th Regiment Charlie company, adding that many Iraqi
infantry troops "got shredded by shrapnel."
When the infantry troops spotted one Iraqi soldier who was holding a
radio handset to his ear as he called in artillery raids against advancing
Americans, they quickly shot him.
On the second day of combat, the company looked across the horizon to see
a platoon of Iraqi soldiers marching toward them in step, carrying a mammoth
white flag "We just pointed them south," said Griggs.
Copyright 1991 THE WASHINGTON POST. Reprinted with Permission
188
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
If It Didn't Have A White Flag, We Shot It
by Molly Moore
THE WASHINGTON POST, 17 March 1991
JUBAIL, Saudi Arabia: Lt. William Delaney's first view of war turned his
stomach. He pulled up to the first Iraqi minefield inside Kuwait at dawn
three Sundays ago just in time to see tanks behind his platoon firing on
American military trucks to his left. He watched in horror and anger as the
vehicles exploded and burned.
"That almost made me physically sick," said the 26-year-old tank platoon
leader from Bethesda. "Here we were just starting out, and we were already
killing our own troops. Friendly vehicles were hit and burning, and that was
the start of the whole thing.
Although Delaney would later learn no one died in the incident, it
verified his deepest fear as he led the first allied tanks into Kuwait: "I was
prepared to lose some guys very special to me."
As the tanks spearheading Marine Task Force Ripper rumbled forward,
Delaney's men spotted the first Iraqi tanks.
"They knew we were coming. We didn't wait to get closer. We destroyed
them--in all, our company got 15 tanks. It was unbelievable. Tanks blew up
with tremendous explosions. Turrets flipped off. There would be 15 to 20
more explosions as ammo cooked off. Everybody in my platoon got a tank kill.
There were dead bodies all over the place."
As the first day of war progressed, "We just destroyed everything in
front of us," said Delaney. "If it didn't have a white flag, we shot it--
trucks, vehicles bunkers.
"Marines were trying to kill each other to get to these guys. . . . Then
the ground opened up and those guys came out of bunkers--dancing, skipping,
singing with their thumbs up. All some had was white toilet paper to
surrender. Everytime you saw a POW you were relieved. It was one less guy we
would kill or would kill us."
At the end of the first day of combat, troops who had tried to restrain
their jubilation on the radio all day collected around their tanks and "traded
our feeble war stories," according to Delaney.
As dawn of the second day broke, "Morale was high," Delaney said. "We
thought the first day we went through the [Iraqi front lines]. Now we were
getting to the good stuff."
Copyright 1991 THE WASHINGTON POST. Reprinted with Permission
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U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991
Instead, said Delaney, "It was like a road march. . . . One lonely BMP
[armored personnel carrier] opened up on our rear. One guy [Marine] opened up
with a machine gun." American armored personnel carriers "came from every
direction. We were climbing all over ourselves to get a shot at this one guy.
"We were very afraid of getting friendly fire. A tank exploded on the
left--somebody had shot from behind." Delaney said he barked into the radio,
"Sir, tell them we've got friendlies up here!"
On the dawn of the third day, the tank crews awoke at their encampment to
see Kuwait City just ahead. "It felt like the test hadn't started. We
expected it to be hard. On a combat scale of 1 to 10, it was a 1."
The Marines also found themselves surrounded by hundreds of deserted
Iraqi bunkers and fortifications.
"We went in the bunkers. They had taken everything--cheap stereos,
aerobic exercise books. And ominous things like women's underwear--it made
you wonder what was the story behind it."
For Delaney, he had accomplished the mission he had anguished over in
dozens of heartfelt letters to his father over the previous months: "If I'd
lost any of my men, I'd really be hurt. I'd taken these men around the world.
They were my responsibility."
190
ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Kurds are a distinct ethnic minority living in the mountains of Northern
Iraq, Northwestern Iran and Southern Turkey. For years, the Iraqi government
has subjected these people to a deliberate policy of oppression and genocide.
Colonel Jones commanded the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations
Capable), the principal Marine component of the allied effort to provide
humanitarian relief to the Kurds in the wake of Desert Storm.
Operation PROVIDE COMFORT:
Humanitarian and Security Assistance in Northern Iraq
by Colonel James L. Jones
MARINE CORPS GAZETTE, November 1991
Hoping to take advantage of the allies victory over Iraq in DESERT STORM,
dissident factions within Iraq seized on the moment to launch a courageous,
but unsuccessful attempt to topple Saddam Hussein from power this past March.
In the aftermath of his army's defeat, Saddam Hussein unleashed the
still-capable remnants of his battered force against the Kurdish population of
northern Iraq, triggering a desperate human exodus towards sanctuaries in the
bordering nations of Turkey, Iran, and to a lesser extent, Syria.
As the media of the world focused on the developing human tragedy of the
Kurdish people fleeing by the hundreds of thousands before a vengeful Iraqi
Army, worldwide outrage galvanized allied coalition support. From the moment
the decision was made to air drop supplies to the fleeing refugees on 7 April,
it was clear that there was yet another chapter to be written about DESERT
SHIELD/DESERT STORM. It would become known as PROVIDE COMFORT.
As the situation unfolded during March and early April, the Kurds' flight
ended in the mountains of southern Turkey, where an estimated 500,000 refugees
were massed, having been pushed over the border and herded into so-called
"sanctuaries" by Turkish forces. To the east and south, an estimated 1.3
million Kurdish refugees huddled in similar camps along the Iranian border.
The fate of this group has yet to be determined.
It was during the last few days of March that BGen Richard Potter, USA,
was ordered to insert his 10th Special Forces Group into the refugee camps.
At this time there were 12 such camps with an average population of
approximately 45,000. Conservative estimates had approximately 600 people
dying of exposure, malnutrition, and disease daily. In this area of the
world, March is still a winter month and many camps abutted snow-capped peaks.
The many trails from Iraq were littered with abandoned possessions that no
longer served any utility--broken-down cars, appliances, family heirlooms,
furniture, suitcases that had become too heavy to carry, and tragically,
people who were unable to
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withstand the rigors of the march and simply stopped walking, waiting for the
cold to end their suffering.
Within days of its insertion, the 10th Special Forces Group organized and
identified camps and drop zones, provided medical assistance as needed, and
made plans for security requirements. The 10th Special Forces Group formed
the first element of what became Joint Task Force Alpha (JTF-A), whose
principal mission was resupply of the Kurdish refugees. JTF-A was based in
Incirlik, Turkey, along with the headquarters for Combined Task Force (CTF)
PROVIDE COMFORT, initially commanded by MGen James Jamerson, USAF, and
subsequently by LtGen John M. Shalikashvili, USA.
On 9 April, the 24th Special Operations Capable Marine Expeditionary Unit
MEU(SOC)) was into its third month of a planned six-month Mediterranean
deployment when the call went out to respond to the rapidly developing
situation in northern Iraq. Embarked aboard the USS GUADALCANAL (LPH 7), USS
AUSTIN (LPD 4), and USS CHARLESTON (LKA 113), the 24th MEU(SOC) was in the
midst of a landing operation in Sardinia, Italy, when the commander, U.S.
Sixth Fleet, ordered the amphibious ready group to begin backload, depart the
waters of the western Mediterranean, and proceed to the port of Iskenderun,
Turkey, for duty with CTF PROVIDE COMFORT. The backload was completed the
next morning and the three ships arrived on station on 13 April. The
following morning, the 24th MEU(SOC) and Amphibious Squadron 8 (PhibRon-8),
commanded by Capt Dean Turner, USN, reported to MGen Jamerson and his deputy,
BGen Anthony C. Zinni.
The mission was clear. The 24th MEU(SOC) was to establish a forward
support base at Silopi, Turkey, from which helicopters could begin to carry
supplies to refugee camps in the mountains. Implied in the mission was the
establishment of a forward arming and refueling point (FARP) and a Marine air
control detachment to run the airfield. By 15 April, HMM-264, the aviation
combat element of the 24th MEU(SOC), had displaced itself 450 miles inland,
set up its base, and had begun its humanitarian mission with 23 helicopters in
support of BGen Potter and JTF-A (see "Into a Sea of Refugees" insert). During
the following two weeks the Squadron would deliver over 1 million pounds of
relief supplies and fly in excess of 1,000 hours without mishap.
Map.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rapidly changing events revealed that the entire 24th MEU(SOC) would be
required ashore in short time. Within a few days, the unit was operating out
of Silopi, Turkey, preparing to be part of the security force that was to
enter northern Iraq. On 19 April, Marines provided the security element for a
meeting between LtGen Shalikashvili and an Iraqi delegation at the Habur
Bridge border crossing in Iraq. At that meeting, Iraqi representatives were
informed that coalition forces intended to enter Iraq on 20 April; the mission
was to be humanitarian; there was no intent to engage Iraqi forces; Iraqi
forces were to offer no resistance; and a Military Coordination Committee
would be formed for the purpose of maintaining direct communication with both
Kurdish and Iraqi authorities.
While plans to cross the border to the west of the city of Zakhu were
being finalized on 19 April, allied coalition forces received instructions
from their respective governments to proceed towards the Turkish-Iraqi border.
CTF PROVIDE COMFORT responded to the orders of the Supreme Allied Commander
Europe, Gen John R. Galvin, USA, the unified commander in Germany who had
cognizance over all operations in the area, to proceed into northern Iraq and
establish security zones to expedite the safe transfer of refugees from their
mountain havens to the countryside they had originated from. LtGen
Shalikashvili quickly activated Joint Task Force-Bravo (JTF-B), which would be
responsible for this part of the mission. Its focus would be to neutralize
the Iraqi Army in the northern region of Iraq and implement a plan to
reintroduce 500,000 Kurdish refugees back into that country.
The problem for JTF-B was in creating conditions in Iraq that would
entice the refugees to return voluntarily to the region. Climatic conditions
are such that there are only two seasons in the region-winter and summer.
Coalition forces were already witnessing winter's last gasp. Soon the
mountain streams, which were the main source of water for many of the
refugees, would dry up under the intense heat of summer. For obvious reasons,
it was critical that the refugees be out of the hills before this occurred.
On 17 April, MajGen Jay M. Garner, USA, arrived in Silopi from his post
as deputy commanding general, V Corps, in Germany, with the lead element of
what was to become the JTF-B staff. At the outset his troop list consisted of
the 24th MEU(SOC), which was given the task of conducting a heliborne assault
into a valley to the east of Zakhu on the morning of 20 April. Overhead U.S.
Air Force A-10s, F-15s, and F-16s provided air cover, while the Iraqi Army
watched precariously from the high ground surrounding Zakhu. Previously
inserted force reconnaissance Marines and Navy SEALs had established
observation posts along the main avenues of approach and key terrain around
the city. Assault helicopters were deployed carrying Marines from Battalion
Landing Team 2/8 (BLT 2/8), commanded by LtCol Tony L. Corwin, to designated
zones near the city. Reports from the recon units confirmed the presence of a
significant number of Iraqi reinforcements billeted near the MEU command
element. Consequently, LtCol Corwin sent emissaries to the Iraqi positions
with clear instructions concerning the movements he expected the Iraqi Army to
make in withdrawing from the region and the city of Zakhu. As a demonstra-
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tion of humanitarian intent Marines erected 12 refugee tents before nightfall
on 20 April in what was to ultimately become one of the largest resettlement
camps ever built. Patience and firmness paid off within a few days as the
Iraqi Army issued orders to withdraw. By nightfall on 23 April, Marines
occupied the key positions and road network around the city.
MajGen Garner and his JTF-B staff were headquartered along with the
command element of the 24th MEU(SOC) in the deserted headquarters of the Iraqi
44th Infantry Division. Garner immediately directed the bridge and road
leading from the border to Zakhu to be opened for traffic. This was
particularly significant as the Habur Bridge at the border would become the
only means by which surface convoys could pass from Turkey into Iraq.
On 22 April, LtCol Jonathan Thompson, commanding officer, 45th Commando,
Royal Marines (United Kingdom), and LtCol Cees Van Egmond, 1st Air Combat
Group, Royal Netherlands Marines, reported for duty to MajGen Garner, who
placed both units under the tactical control of the 24th MEU(SOC). With a
total force of 3,400 Marines from three nations, MajGen Garner lost no time in
developing a plan to rid Zakhu of Iraqi oppression.
Zakhu, a city of 150,000 under normal times, was a ghost town when
coalition forces arrived there on 20 April. Fewer than 2,000 inhabitants
remained. Those missing were still in the mountain camps of southern Turkey.
Their homes had been looted and vandalized by the Iraqi Army, which continued
pillaging local towns and villages as it retreated south.
Despite agreeing to withdraw his army, Saddam was not about to surrender
Zakhu without a last effort to retain control of the city. He did so by
ordering 300 "policemen" into Zakhu to maintain law and order and protect
coalition forces from Kurdish rebels. Clearly, the few residents left in
Zakhu were still being terrorized. Something had to be done.
Col Richard Naab, USA, the recently assigned head of the Military
Coordination Committee, met daily with BGen Danoun Nashwan of the Iraqi Army
to explain coalition intent and expectations. After several meetings, a
demarche was drafted and released on 24 April. Its key points are listed
below:
Iraqi armed forces will continue to withdraw to a point 30 kilometers in
all directions from Zakhu (in other words, out of artillery range).
Iraqi police will be immediately withdrawn from Zakhu.
Iraq will be allowed no more than 50 uniformed policemen in Zakhu at any
one time. They would have to be indigenous to the region, carry only one
pistol, and display coalition force identification badges at all times.
On 26 April coalition forces will enter Zakhu for the purpose of
verifying compliance and would begin to regularly patrol the city.
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ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coalition forces will establish a security zone complete with checkpoints
within a 30-kilometer radius around Zakhu. No weapons other than those of
coalition forces will be permitted in the zone.
No members of the Iraqi Army will be permitted in the security zone--in
or out of uniform--without approval from the Military Coordination Committee.
Shortly after the issuing of this demarche, the Iraqi police were
observed boarding buses headed south. While the full impact of the demarche
was being studied by the Iraqis, LtGen Shalikashvili and MajGen Garner lost no
time in directing the 24th MEU(SOC) to establish this security zone, which it
was thought would permit the Kurds to consider coming out of the mountains
without fear.
During the hours of darkness on 25 April, BLT 2/8 cordoned off the city
from the south, east, and north, while Dutch Marines sealed off the western
approaches and ensured the integrity of the bridges at the border. British
Royal Marines from 45th Commando, having just arrived from Northern Ireland,
were tasked with patrolling the streets of Zakhu, sending what few Iraqis
remained scurrying for an escape route. By nightfall on 26 April, Zakhu
enjoyed its first taste of freedom.
During this time, the resupply effort continued. On 26 April alone,
HMM-264 delivered 24.5 tons of relief supplies to the refugees. They were
soon augmented by helicopter assets from other coalition forces that had begun
to arrive in the area, making operational the Combined Service Command (CSC)
at Silopi, Turkey. Other reinforcements were forthcoming as well. On the
morning of 27 April, the 3d Battalion, 325th (3/325) Airborne Combat Team,
commanded by LtCol Joh