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Liberating Kuwait
even existed. More disturbing, the plan called for using the Marines in a manner similar to an Army corps, rather than in a way consistent with Marine Corps doctrine. General Boomer quickly formed a team on his own staff and instructed them to work closely with the Army staff as the new plans were developed. Colonel James D. Majchrzak was the I Marine Expeditionary Force plans officer; he later summarized the mission as follows: When directed by U.S. CinCCent [commander, U.S. Central Command], U.S. MarCent [U.S. Marine Forces Central Command] conducts U.S. CentCom [Central Command] supporting attack to fix and destroy Iraqi operational reserves in southeastern Kuwait to preclude their employment against USCentCom main attack in the west; isolate Kuwait City for EPAC [Eastern Province Area Command]/multinational MOUT [military operations in urban terrain] operations. Be prepared to continue the attack north to support USCentCom offensive operations.50 President Bush’s announcement on 8 November shifted the planning paradigms as the U.S. Army’s heavy VII Corps deployed from Europe to Saudi Arabia in order to increase the forces available to liberate Kuwait. The unpopular one corps plan was consequently abandoned, and Lieutenant Colonel Purvis’s Jedi Knights now produced a two corps plan that called for a wide, westward sweep of the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps as the mechanized divisions of the VII Corps swept through southern Iraq toward Basrah and smashed the Republican Guard.51 General Schwarzkopf chose the Marines to evict the Iraqis from Kuwait proper, fighting with Arab members of the Coalition on either side. On the Marines’ west flank, the Saudi Arabians, Egyptians, and Syrians formed Joint Forces Command–North, while on the east flank the Saudi Arabians of Joint Forces Command–East advanced along the coast.52 The Jedi Knight two corps plan originally had the Marines executing a “fixing” attack, holding Iraqi forces in place as the two Army corps enveloped them on the left. But the Marine plan called for evicting the Iraqis from Kuwait directly. General Boomer later said, “There was never any doubt in my mind that that’s what we were going to do. We weren’t going to play around with them on the border in some sort of fixing attack; we were going to retake Kuwait, and General Schwarzkopf didn’t have a problem with that.”53 On 10 December, General Boomer’s staff and sen-
ior commanders received a briefing on the Iraqi military from retired Lieutenant General Bernard E. Trainor (see appendix G). He had retired from the Marine Corps in 1985 after a career that included combat service in Korea and Vietnam, and then he went on to become a war correspondent for the New York Times. Lieutenant General Trainor went to Iraq in the winter of 1987–88 to report on the Iran-Iraq War, and his status as a retired senior officer convinced the Iraqis to grant him unusual access to the front lines and their operational units. His briefing focused on his direct observations of the Iraqi military’s capabilities. Most of the briefing proved prescient, especially when he predicted that the number of Iraqi prisoners would be “enormous.”54 General Trainor’s lecture was useful, but for Marine planners the primary question was how many breeches to create in the Iraqi fortifications. The ideal solution would have been to create a breech for each division, allowing for a broader advance, but the Corps lacked the required amounts of engineering equipment to force two breeches through the minefields and obstacles. Instead, the 1st Marine Division would breach the Iraqi defenses, while the 2d Marine Division followed. After the fortifications were passed, the 2d Marine Division would pass through General Myatt’s Marines and advance to the al-Jahra road crossing while the 1st Marine Division continued on to Kuwait International Airport. The 4th and 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigades remained afloat in the Persian Gulf on board the ships of U.S. Navy amphibious ready groups, providing a seaborne threat in order to tie up Iraq resources along the shoreline as well as a strategic reserve for Central Command.55
Trading Desert Rats for Tigers Throughout Operation Desert Shield, the I Marine Expeditionary Force was paired with the initial British contribution to the ground forces, Brigadier Patrick Cordingley’s 7th Armored Brigade, the famous Desert Rats. This brigade’s tanks provided General Boomer with an armored punch that complemented the 1st Marine Division’s traditionally high percentage of infantry. The Marines and the British troops trained together for months, and built a great deal of camaraderie. When the assault on Kuwait happened, General Boomer was counting on the British tanks to help counter the large Iraqi armored formations in Kuwait. Not everyone was happy with the British forces being linked to the Marines, however. The Jedi Knight planners thought the British tanks should
