27 February

They abandon their posts and begin a series of grandstand plays to race for the embassy. Fortunately none are killed by friendly fire.” It is unclear if the “2/8” unit referred to in the report is a Marine or Saudi Arabian battalion. The sources are unclear on whether or not Knowles was justified in taking the embassy, but it is clear that a Special Operations Central Command SEAL and Army Special Forces team had originally been given the mission of securing the embassy. Although the Marines had already secured the embassy, the special operations teams proceeded to conduct the mission as if it were an unsecured location.

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Asked about the controversy 20 years after the fact, General Boomer said, “There actually was a Marine reconnaissance lieutenant who sort of on his own went up and took the embassy, and I was prepared to chew his a–––s out when I finally got my hands on him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t. What are you going to say? Here’s this lieutenant that’s come up the coast and the embassy is a special place. So, he took charge and occupied it. He didn’t have to fight for it.”

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On 27 February, the XVIII Airborne Corps turned east, crossing the Euphrates River valley and advancing to the Tigris River. Led by the 24th Infantry Division, the corps advanced on the Iraqi city of Basrah, destroying hundreds of Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers along its advance and capturing two Iraqi military airfields. The VII Corps continued its advance east toward Safwan and Umm Qasr and against the Republican Guard. The VII Corps destroyed the Guard’s Tawakalna, Medina, and AdnanDivisions as well as the 12th and 10th Armored Divisions. The British 1st Armored Division completed the destruction of the 52d Armored Division. 30

Taking Kuwait International Airport

Task Force Shepherd arrived at the airport over three hours after departing and began its assault at 0430. There was some minor resistance, and many mines were discovered. Since the Iraqis were clearly defeated, the task force commander elected to wait until morning to continue the advance. At 0615, at the break of dawn, Task Force Shepherd resumed its attack. It was joined at 0800 by Task Force Taro’s 2d Battalion, 3d Marines, which helped clear the airfield building and captured 80 Iraqis lurking about the airfield.

Marines of Task Force Shepherd roll into Kuwait International Airport in light armored vehicles after the defeat of Iraqi forces. At right is a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter.

Photo by TSgt David McLeod, USAF. Defense Imagery DF-ST-92-08209

Marine Corps Art Collection Kuwait International Airport by LtCol Keith A. McConnell. A commercial airliner destroyed by a Marine airstrike earlier in the war sits near the control tower of Kuwait International Airport. The smoke from the burning oilfields can be seen in the background.

With the morning, the Marines surrounding the airport gradually realized that offensive operations were ending and only mopping up remained. The 1st Battalion, 7th Marines’ command chronology describes the sunrise:

As the sun rose Kuwait City stood amazingly in front of the battalion. Because of restricted visibility the day prior, many of the Marines didn’t fully comprehend just how close we were. . . . Blowing horns and random shots could be heard throughout our position as jubilant Kuwaitis waved Kuwaiti, British, and American flags in celebration of their liberation. Great pride was written across the faces of our sailors and Marines. Remarkably we made it with no deaths and only minor injuries. . . . [Our battalion] found itself in a strange position as several EPWs [enemy prisoners of war] turned themselves in to us so they would not be killed by Kuwaiti Resistance Forces. We were now protecting the Iraqis.

Some, however, did not want our protection. As Company A 1/7 [1st Battalion, 7th Marines], our detached infantry company with Tiger 3, was conducting a sweep in zone, they came across four wounded Iraqis. While Cpl Kerry Lee was searching one of them, the Iraqi lunged at Cpl Lee and was instantly killed by the Marine standing cover for him.

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Major General Myatt established his command post at the airport at 0900, and the 1st Marine Division spent the rest of the day securing its areas from loose ordnance and policing up Iraqi stragglers. It awaited word of what would happen next: an advance on Baghdad or a cease-fire.

While the 1st Marine Division was securing the airport, the 2d Marine Division was finally making contact with the Egyptian and Syrian forces of Joint Forces Command–North. In the dawn hours, these Coalition forces passed north of the division and moved into Kuwait City to secure it.

The 2d Marine Division spent the day securing its positions as well, but the sweeps took on a more tragic note when a massive secondary explosion occurred in an Iraqi tank being destroyed by combat

engineers. The explosions wounded one Marine and took the life of Sergeant James D. Hawthorne of the 2d Tank Battalion as he assisted the engineers.

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Molly Moore, a reporter for the Washington Post who traveled with the I Marine Expeditionary Force, described some of the 2d Marine Division’s captures: “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.”

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Air Operations

Early on 27 February, an AV-8B from Marine Attack Squadron 331, flying from the USS Nassau, was the last Marine aircraft downed by hostile fire in the Gulf War. Captain Reginald C. “Woody” Underwood’s aircraft was hit by an infrared surface-to-air missile as he flew an air interdiction mission against Iraqi forces retreating north along the so-called Highway of Death. Captain Underwood did not survive the crash, but his body was later recovered.

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In an article written after the war, Major Ben D. Hancock, a pilot who witnessed the event, described how Captain Underwood was lost:

We were at 8,000 feet, doing over 480 knots, and I started a hard left turn away from the highway as I strained to keep my eyes on the target. We rolled out heading southeast, and I was about to roll in when Mystic yelled

“Break! Break! Flares!” It was every man for himself as there was no time to ask questions.

I strained under the G forces and looked around frantically as multiple SAMs [surfaceto-air missiles] were in the air. At least two were streaking toward Woody [Captain Underwood] and one hit him in the left exhaust nozzle of his jet engine, right below the wing. He yelled “I’m hit! I’m hit!” and pulled up into the clouds trailing black smoke. The missiles had been launched from our 7 o’clock and were on us in seconds. Mystic had one SAM chasing him as he disappeared from sight into the clouds. I reversed my turn and came back trying to find Woody. The heat-seeking missile chasing Mystic couldn’t track him through the clouds, and he radioed to Woody to turn his jet to the southeast. Woody’s last transmission was, “I can’t control it!” For what seemed like

Iraqi soldiers surrendering to the 2d Light Armored Infantry Battalion of the 2d Marine Division in Kuwait.

Photo by Sgt J. L. Roberts. Marine Corps History Division Reference Branch photo files

Photo by PO1 Scott Allen, USN. Defense Imagery DN-SC-91-00632 Flight deck crewmen on board the USS Nassau refuel two Marine Corps AV-8B Harriers as a third Harrier comes in to land. The Nassau ended its historic combat deployment as a “Harrier Carrier” on a tragic note when Capt Reginald C. Underwood was killed in action.

an eternity but was probably only about 20 seconds, Peewee and I were looking northwest when we saw Woody’s jet impact the ground in one huge, orange fireball. It was like watching a slow motion movie, only this was the real thing. We never saw a parachute.

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Throughout the day on 27 February, the Iraqi retreat along the northern highway turned from a rout to pure chaos as Air Force, Navy, and Marine attack aircraft continued the destruction they had begun along that route on 26 February. Long after the war, an A-6E pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Michael B. Parkyn, described the highway to a historian: “It’s incredible, hellish, red, orange glow off the fires . . . a ribbon or road, cars and vehicles on both sides, on fire, you could see movement, people scattering. Oil well smoke created overcast, you dropped all your bombs then climbed above the clouds heading home. It was clear, cool and quiet; behind you the clouds were glowing red.”

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After the war, the Coalition air forces received some criticism for the Highway of Death in the media. General Walter E. Boomer described it as he saw it:

We didn’t talk about the “Highway of Death,” but that was misportrayed by the media. There were a couple of pretty horrible scenes, but in the scheme of things, [they were] relatively unimportant. A couple of buses that had escaping Iraqi soldiers were hit, and they were burned. Most of them were smart enough as they saw vehicle after vehicle stopping in front of them, and the line behind them becoming miles and miles long, and our aircraft methodically picking them off, to get the hell out, and they did. They ran over into the marsh and made their way up the coast to get out of Kuwait. We were stopped at about that time, so they did escape.

I was actually on that highway when the Iraqi truck engines were still running. They were so anxious to get out; they slammed on the brakes, put it in neutral, didn’t shut the engine off and ran. The event got blown up in the media and it caused undo concern about us piling on. The question that I saw raised was that, you wanted them to leave Kuwait and they were trying their best and you were killing them as they were leaving. Well, not quite right. They were escaping with

Marine Pilot Flies 719 Combat Missions

Colonel Quilter, the I Marine Expeditionary Force historian, described the record-breaking achievement of the commander of Marine Aircraft Group 11 on 27 February:

Colonel Manfred A. Rietsch, 49, is commanding officer of the Marines’ larger fighter/attack unit, Marine Aircraft Group 11, which arrived at its base in Bahrain in mid-August.

The colorful flyer, who retains the faint accents of his German birth and the call sign

“Fokker,” was already something a legend in

Marine aviation, having flown 653 combat missions in Vietnam. During this war he flew another 66 missions in F/A-18 Hornets.

On the night of 26–27 February, the Iraqis began their frantic retreat from Kuwait. The

A-6E Intruders of his group detected huge numbers of vehicles streaming north which they attacked, helping to bottle up the Iraqis.

Rietsch now increased the surge of his sorties; MAG-11 [Marine Aircraft Group 11] flew 298 missions that day alone.

He himself took off mid-morning in a two seat F/A-I8D of Marine All-Weather Fighter

Attack Squadron 121 with his Weapons System Operator, Major [William C.] Macak, on a Fast Forward Air Controller mission. Bad weather and smoke from burning oilfields were obscuring the choked escape route when the crew found a convoy of about 40 transporters carrying tanks and armored personnel carriers making their way along a parallel dirt track to the west. Sixteen of his Hornets were inbound, but now he had to stop the convoy from getting underneath a thick band of oil smoke which would hide them from visual attack.

He fired a white phosphorous rocket ahead of the lead truck. The drivers, knowing an attack was imminent, piled out of the vehicles. After a few minutes, when no attack was forthcoming, they got back into the trucks and started up. Rietsch repeated the process with the same result. After the convoy started up a last time, he strafed the lead vehicles, which began to burn. This time the Iraqis got the message. Now short on fuel, he handed over control to Major [Kenneth] Bode, who directed the Marine Hornets in an attack pilot’s dream mission: halted tanks and APCs [armored personnel carriers]. Rietsch returned from his last mission. It was his 719th.

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their vehicles and their weapons. They were fair game. It wasn’t the duck shoot that it was portrayed to be.38

As long as the fleeing Iraqis did so in their military vehicles with their weapons, they certainly remained valid targets, and the Marines of the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing, along with their Air Force and Navy comrades, continued to visit destruction upon the fleeing columns throughout 27 February. The War of Logistics Never Ends . . .

Even as Iraqi resistance in Kuwait crumbled, the Marines of the 1st Force Service Support Group and its subordinate Direct Support Command continued to rush supplies forward to the Marines in the field and to truck Iraqi prisoners of war back to the waiting Army compounds. Although the war was winding down, driving through the gaps in the obstacle belts and north through Kuwait remained dangerous. Mines and bypassed Iraqi soldiers kept the logistics soldiers alert on their missions.

The Iraqi prisoners were docile and happy to be out of the war for the most part, but they could be unruly in some situations. One such event occurred when Lieutenant Colonel Thomas S. Woodson, commander of the 8th Motor Transport Battalion, dispatched a 70-truck Logistics Vehicle System convoy from Khanjar in Saudi Arabia to Kuwait on 26 February to help bring prisoners out of Kuwait. The convoy had gotten lost in the night and wisely waited until dawn before continuing its mission; then it loaded approximately 2,000 Iraqi prisoners onto the beds of its vehicles and headed back to Khanjar. Along the way, the convoy met Brigadier General Charles Krulak, and he directed it to Kibrit

*The Logistics Vehicle System is the Marine Corps’ heavy tactical vehicle system. These vehicles are eight-wheel drive and are designed modularly; each can be customized to pull a particular type of load. These trucks came into use in 1985 and can pull up to 22 tons.

Photo courtesy of BGen Granville Amos The “Highway of Death” photographed in March 1991. This was the road to the west of Kuwait City where retreating Iraqi troops and vehicles were concentrated during their retreat.

Official U.S. Marine Corps photo Iraqi prisoners of war being transported to holding facilities in Saudi Arabia on returning Logistics Vehicle Systems of the Direct Support Command’s 8th Motor Transport Battalion.

Photo by SSgt J. R. Ruark. Defense Imagery DM-SC-93-05230 This Iraqi sand table was found in a school gymnasium in Kuwait City. The marked Iraqi positions corresponded to their defense plans and indicated how successful the Marines’ amphibious deception was at distracting Iraqi attention from the Saudi-Kuwaiti frontier.

instead of Khanjar to save time. At Khanjar, Lieutenant Colonel Woodson was informed of the destination change, and he

dispatched his battalion’s executive officer, Major Robert L. Songer, to find the convoy. As Songer neared Kibrit, he noticed that the road was mysteriously covered with thousands of empty milk containers. At CSSD-91 [Combat Service Support Detachment 91], Songer found the convoy and discovered the answer to the riddle of the empty milk cartons. As the convoy carrying the Iraqis approached Kibrit, it stopped to allow the Iraqis to relieve themselves. A passing truck carrying milk cartons slowed down to look at the Iraqis who leaped onto the milk truck and raided its cargo. The convoy drivers quickly restored order and loaded the Iraqis back on the LVSs [vehicles from the Logistics Vehicle System], but not before the thirsty prisoners consumed most of the milk on the truck.

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Combat Service Support Detachment 91, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Linden L. Sparrow, operated the Marines’ prisoner of war holding facility at Kibrit. Reinforced by a medical detachment and a company of Marine Reserve Military Police, they handled the prisoners until they could be turned over to the U.S. Army. According to Brigadier General James Brabham, “They carried out their duties under the stress of overwhelming numbers of enemy prisoners of war, threats of enemy incursion, and an initially unknown length of time before rearward movement would reduce the numbers in the camp.”

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The I Marine Expeditionary Force took approximately 22,308 Iraqi soldiers prisoner during the four day campaign to liberate Kuwait. All of these soldiers were fed, watered, sheltered, and provided with required medical care as they were moved out of the war zone and into Saudi Arabia. There, the Marines turned them over to U.S. Army Central Command’s 800th Military Police Brigade. The last of the Marines’ prisoners of war were

turned over to the military police brigade on 6 March.41

Kuwait Liberated

The Egyptians and Syrians of Joint Forces Command–North and the Saudi Arabians of Joint Forces Command–East met in the middle of Kuwait City, near the city’s water towers. Organized Iraqi resistance was over, and the people of Kuwait came out into the streets to celebrate. General Boomer led a party into the city and to the American embassy, and along the way the crowds of Kuwaitis thanked the Marines and shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great). Many Kuwaitis fired firearms into the air in celebration. The Marines found the contrast with the recent desert battles jarring, contrasting the jubilant civilian population and relative greenery of the city with the harsh desert conditions.

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Molly Moore, the reporter with General Boomer’s mobile command post, later described the scene: “The curbs were alive with gleeful young girls wearing skirts fashioned from green-white-red-and-black Kuwaiti flags, sobbing women in black robes and young men flashing victory signs and pumping clenched fists. They waved flags and tossed candy and shouted thanks. The rooftops of buildings blossomed with teenagers and children waving flags and banners. Robed women streamed out of doorways and flailed their arms through windows.”

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The American embassy was relatively intact; it had been deserted for months but not vandalized. One of the more interesting finds was in a school near the embassy; in the school’s gymnasium the Iraqis had constructed a large sand table detailing the defenses they had placed around Kuwait City, complete with toy artillery pieces, Lego blocks, and small signs identifying Iraqi units. The sand table was very clear evidence of the success of the amphibious deception in diverting Iraqi forces to the coast.

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The I Marine Expeditionary Force held Mutla Ridge and the Kuwait International Airport, controlling entry to and egress from Kuwait City. The sub-

A CH-46 Sea Knight flying over Kuwait City following the city’s liberation.

Photo courtesy of BGen Granville Amos

urbs of the city were ringed by Marines, and all the ground campaign’s objectives had been achieved. Fighting continued in the north of Kuwait, where Marine aircraft continued attacking retreating Iraqi columns through the night, and in southern Iraq, where the Army continued to destroy divisions of the Republican Guard, but on 27 February the primary Marine Corps contribution to Operation Desert Storm came to a successful conclusion.

During the four-day campaign, General Boomer’s forces destroyed the Iraqi III Corps commanded by Major General Salah Aboud Mahmoudand much of the IV Corps commanded by Major General Yaiyd Khalel Zaki. The I Marine Expeditionary Force estimated that it inflicted the following losses on the Iraqis: 460 tanks destroyed; 600 tanks captured; 218 armored personnel carriers destroyed; 390 armored personnel carriers captured; 432 artillery pieces destroyed; 5 free rocket over ground missile sites destroyed; and 1,510 Iraqi soldiers killed (as mentioned above, an estimated 22,308 Iraqis were captured).

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During the evening of 27 February, as the ground war came to a close, General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander in chief, U.S. Central Command, presented the famous “Mother of All Briefings” on live television, describing how the Coalition forces had routed the Iraqi Army. Concerning the Marine efforts in Kuwait, General Schwarzkopf stated:

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.

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