Preludes to al-Khafji prisoners of war occurred, and the brigades underwent a week of desert training and equipment maintenance before conducting a tactical withdrawal exercise from the beach back to the ships. For most of the Marines in the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, floating in the North Arabian Sea since early September, this would be the highlight of their monotonous Desert Shield and Desert Storm deployment.8
Artillery Raids and Reconnaissance Patrols Very early on 17 January, Major General Salah Aboud Mahmoud of III Corps received orders to begin the preplanned sabotage of the oil fields at al-Wafrah and al-Burqan. He was also ordered to begin artillery strikes against Coalition forces south of the border, the shelling of al-Khafji in particular. The Marines responded to the shelling with air strikes, and it was several days before the fires in the oil fields grew to the point that they were noticeable. Neither tactic spurred the ground combat the Iraqis sought.9 On 20 January, the commander of III Corps was ordered to send troops to raid across the border in order to “capture as many prisoners as they can.” The goal of these raids was to “force the enemy to engage in a major ground battle [where we hope] that the enemy will suffer great losses.” None of these raids captured any Americans, and they cer-
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tainly did not have the intended impact. In fact, many appear to have led to Iraqis surrendering to the Americans. The largest such operation detected by the Marines occurred on the night of 22 January, and while unsuccessful it appears to have been cleverly planned and executed with more enthusiasm than the Iraqi forces usually displayed.10 Marine intelligence received word that a “mass defection” of a company of Iraqi soldiers would occur near Observation Post 6 on the night of 22 January. The 1st Reconnaissance Battalion had a team holding the post who prepared to receive the prisoners, and the 1st Light Armored Infantry battalion prepared a “tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel” force of trucks, High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs, better known as “humvees”), and General Dynamics LAV-25 light armored vehicles to extract the prisoners or aid the outpost as needed. Near midnight, the Marines at the post received small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades instead of Iraqi defectors. They temporarily evacuated the position with the aid of the LAV-25 force. After the evacuation, the Iraqis shelled the empty outpost and fired some illumination rounds. There were no Marine losses in the action, and in the morning they reoccupied Observation Post 6.11 After the air war against Iraq began, I Marine Expeditionary Force began a series of artillery raids
An AAV-7A1 amphibious assault vehicle is driven off a utility landing craft from the amphibious assault ship USS Nassau (LHA 4) in an amphibious beach assault exercise. Sea Soldier IV was the last amphibious exercise conducted by 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade during the Gulf War. Photo by PO1 Ken Mark O’Connell, USN. Defense Imagery DM-ST-92-06923
