Brave New World

Brave New World

Desert Storm

If anything as miserable as war can be said to be the realization of a dream, the Gulf War was it for the United States Marine Corps. A beautifully rebuilt, expensively crafted fighting machine at the peak of its readiness and ferocity was injected into a sudden war with an outrageously evil enemy. The terrain was tailored to the Corps’ slashing mobility. Deployment was near flawless, battle planning and performance even more so. Teamwork was beautiful within and without the Corps. Against a huge, veteran, capable military machine they achieved swift, crushing victory in a key sector. And, most gloriously, casualties were astonishingly low. They returned home to the smashing acclaim that had been withheld after Vietnam. If the battle history of the Marine Corps were to end, this would be an ideal place. Of course that would mean the end of war, or rumors of war. Good luck.

Realization that a maverick dictator suddenly sat securely on 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies and threatened to double that hegemony prompted President George Bush to declare, “This will not stand.”

The Marines were instantly on the move. While one Marine expeditionary brigade deployed from the East Coast loaded for the traditional amphibious missions, two others marched aboard strategic airlifters to fly directly to Saudi Arabia to marry-up with their maritime prepositioning (MPS) ships.

Desert Storm would be the largest single combat operation in Marine Corps history. Nearly 93,000 Leathernecks took part – men and women, aviators and grunts, amphibians and desert rats, staff pukes and snakeeaters. Lieutenant General Walter Boomer commanded more Marines in combat than did Harry Schmidt at Iwo Jima or Roy Geiger at Okinawa.

The 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade flew from California to Al Jubail on August 14.

The next day their five MPS ships arrived from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Within five days the 7th MEB moved north, ready to fight, 15,248-men strong, fielding 123 tanks, 425 artillery pieces and 124 tactical aircraft, both helos and fixed-wing.

Saddam [Hussein] missed a golden opportunity to make an early grab for Saudi Arabia’s economic center of gravity along the east (Gulf ) coast. The 7th MEB and the Army Airborne forces on hand were no match for the hundreds of thousands of first-echelon Iraqi troops stacked up along the Kuwaiti-Saudi border.

As time passed and Saddam failed to respond to diplomatic and economic pressures, President Bush realized that Kuwait would have to be liberated by force from her occupying legions.

An M-60A1 main battle tank equipped with reactive armor and mine-clearing rollers and plows stands by at the head of a column of AAVP-7A1 amphibious assault vehicles as the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force prepares to enter Kuwait at the start of the ground phase of Operation Desert Storm. The Marines’ M-60s may not have been considered as capable as the Army’s Abrams main battle tanks, but they were capable enough to knock out a large number of Iraqi tanks.

DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Masters

Again, the old warhorse, the 2d Marine Division, got the call to combat, its first as a division since Okinawa in 1945. President Bush also called up 23,000 Marine Reservists.

By late January, Boomer commanded what was called the I Marine Expeditionary Force (in reality, a Marine expeditionary corps), which included the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions and an enormous 3d Marine Aircraft Wing. More than 17,000 of Boomer’s Marines were embarked and combat-loaded on board thirty-one amphibious ships in the Persian Gulf, a larger force than those MacArthur had assembled to seize Inchon forty years earlier.

General [Norman] Schwarzkopf had things he wanted to plant in Saddam Hussein’s mind. He wanted Saddam to believe that these Marines would swoop ashore at any minute in the northern Gulf. Saddam bought the stratagem. The grand assault plan took shape. First, the “air supremacy” advocates would be given the opportunity to prove their claim that a smart air campaign would win the war without the need for a single infantryman to seize any contested ground.

Failing that, the half-million Allied troops would retake Kuwait and punch out the Iraqi military the oldfashioned way.

With the amphibious force posing a major distraction in the Gulf, General Boomer would launch his two Marine divisions through the Iraqi barricades into Kuwait, a “fixing attack” in Army lingo, to further divert Saddam’s attention from Schwarzkopf’s main effort, the celebrated “Left Hook” around enemy forces on the left flank by two heavily armored Army corps.

The air war began at 3 A.M. Baghdad time with a spectacular series of strikes by USAF F-117 Stealth bombers and Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles. Marines flying F/A-18 Hornets out of Bahrain joined, taking out radar sites, power plants, and railroad marshaling yards.

Consistent with Air Force policy in Korea and Vietnam, a Joint Forces Air Component Commander in a light blue uniform called all the shots in the air – at first.

Then, according to Major General Royal Moore, commanding the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing, “We started weaning our own assets, and pretty soon, with General Schwarzkopf’s acknowledgement, about fifteen 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.”

Iraqi AAA [anti-aircraft artillery] dominated the lower altitudes where the Marines needed to operate for battlefield preps and close air support. Moore authorized fifty-plane “Gorilla Strikes” in the effort to take out AAA positions in Kuwait.

The abandoned Saudi frontier town of Khafji seemed an unlikely place for the first major ground encounter of the 1991 Gulf War.

During the night of January 29, 1991, the 5th Iraqi Mechanized Division swept across the border and seized the town in a surprise, spoiling attack, abruptly disputing claims by Air Force strategists that the Air War had immobilized Saddam Hussein’s ground forces.

Arab screening forces retreated south before this sudden onslaught. A handful of Marines stayed. Two recon teams from the 3d Marines hid on the roof of a four-story building. The senior NCO, Corporal Charles Ingraham, calmly reported the invasion by radio to his regiment, offering to direct air and artillery strikes against the Iraqis swarming through the streets.

He deployed his troops in firing positions, rigged Claymore mines in the stairwell, and unrolled a large orange panel to alert Allied aircraft that there were “friendlies” on the rooftop. Peeking into the building’s courtyard, Ingraham could see the helmeted heads of Iraqi troops searching the floors below. The Marines hunkered down, sweating out a nerve-racking twenty-four hours.

As keenly as the Marines wanted to move in and rescue their stranded recon teams, they could only offer assistance and wait for Saudi and Qatari mechanized forces to counterattack.

The Arab task force met stiff resistance from Iraqis as they tried to recapture Khafji. Corporal Ingraham made the difference. From his rooftop perch Ingraham called in air and artillery strikes with masterful precision, some rounds impacting so close that one of this men went down with a shrapnel wound.

Then, as the Arabs forged into town and the fighting became localized, Ingraham took advantage of the confusion and led his teams through back streets toward the Allied lines, rifle in one hand, radio in the other, orange air panel in his teeth, furling out behind. Made it.

Marine pilots had a turkey shoot against the armored columns of the Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division trying to reinforce their toehold in Khafji.

[General Bill] Keys asked Boomer to change his plans at the last minute to enable a simultaneous two-divisionsabreast breaching farther west. The Marines should approach this breaching just like an amphibious assault, argued Keys. Land on multiple fronts, keep units in assembly areas until cleared to cross the line of departure, avoid stacking up 40,000 Marines at a single landing point. Substitute “breachhead” for “beachhead.”

Quietly, … Keys and [Division Commander Major General Michael] Myatt began their final preparations for the Marine ground war. Between them they made several dozen cuts in The Berm, the fifteen-foot wall of sand that paralleled the Kuwaiti border, built years earlier by Japanese contractors for the Saudis.

Through these cuts during the dark of night went Marine combat patrols of considerable strength, clearing the most immediate obstacles, reconnoitering Iraqi positions, calling in more artillery and air strikes.

Finally President Bush approved G-Day for February 24. General Boomer sent a message to his huge force poised along The Berm: “May the spirit of your Marine forefathers ride with you. … ”

General Bill Keys’s double-barreled assault strategy would catapult the spearheads of both divisions well clear of the obstacle belts before the demoralized Iraqis could mount serious armored counterattacks.

The 1st Marine Division initiated the Allies’ ground war at 0400, surging across The Berm, the ear-splitting noise of artillery and MLRS rockets masking the telltale sound of tank plows, armored bulldozers, and linecharge-firing AAVs grinding through the minefields.

Myatt met each outburst of fire with immediate counterbattery fire by his 11th Marines or with “Quick-Fire” calls to Marine Harriers stacked up overhead.

Here was Marine close air support as first envisioned sixty years earlier: on station, responsive, loaded for bear. “This is the time we start earning our flight pay,” Royal Moore told his pilots. “Now we have Marines in combat.”

The Ground War occurred during the four worst flying days of the entire war.

The weather was bad; the oil well fires made things worse. Four low-flying Harrier jets would fall to Iraqi shoulder-fired infrared missiles. On several occasions, Marine Cobras resorted to air-taxiing down highways, searching for their targets at almost eyeball level. Darkness notwithstanding, the 3d Wing flew 671 support missions on G-Day, hitting six different Iraqi divisions.

If it was dark and ghostly for the Marines, it was doubly terrifying for the Iraqis.

They were being plastered by everything in the books. Their tanks were getting nailed from impossible ranges, even in the smog. Marine infantry appeared out of nowhere, always on the flanks. Even the winds had turned against them, reversing the normal direction, blowing the smoke north into their faces, a bad omen. Iraqi soldiers began to quit. The 1st Marine Division would capture them by the thousands.

General Keys’s 2d Marine Division launched its attack ninety minutes later. The PsyOps people had rigged their loudspeakers along The Berm for the occasion. “The Marines’ Hymn” burst forth at mega-decibel level.

The 6th Marines led the way through the cleared lanes. Keys kept them moving. “Contrary to some reports, the Iraqis were still there, waiting for us,” he said. “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.”

Since one of Keys’s three infantry regiments (the 2d Marines) had been assigned to the amphibious role for the duration, General Schwarzkopf had assigned him the Army’s Tiger Brigade of the 2d Armored Division.

The Tiger Brigade brought 118 brand-new M1A1 Abrams tanks and a commendable proficiency to the fight. Keys called them “a first-class outfit.” (The Army tankers now wear the 2d Marine Division patch on their sleeves to reflect combat service with the Marines.

The Tiger Brigade streamed through the gaps in trace behind the 6th Marines, then angled north. The superb M1A1s began knocking out dug-in Iraqi T-55 tanks from two miles away.

By dark on G-Day, each division had substantial forces beyond both obstacle belts, with forward-deployed artillery battalions readily in range. The cost had been ridiculously low: three killed, seventeen wounded in action. They had taken 16,000 prisoners.

General Schwarzkopf would exult, “I can’t say enough about the two Marine divisions. If I used words like brilliant, it would really be an under-description of the absolutely superb job that they did in breaching the socalled 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. … A textbook operation, and I think it will be studied for many, many years to come.”

The second day of the ground war brought more bad weather and scattered, intense fighting in central Kuwait. Both divisions encountered large-scale counterattacks, defeated them in wild slugging matches, and consolidated all elements well north of the obstacle belts.

Eastward, the roving task forces of the 1st Marine Division collided in the smoke and fog with Iraqi armored units boiling out of the Burquan Oil Field.

This became a real donnybrook, the largest tank battle in Marine Corps history. A hasty radio message from the division reported “Enemy tanks and troops flushed from Burquan area. Much confusion.”

Marine attack aircraft circled above the smoke, searching fruitlessly for holes in the soup, clear targets to nail. But the forces were too intermixed. Only the AH-1W Sea Cobras could help, although with the ceiling rarely higher than fifty feet the gunships were as vulnerable as ground combat vehicles.

Shortly after dark, Lieutenant Colonel James Fulks led his Task Force Grizzly across the valuable Al Jaber Airfield despite a dozen casualties to Iraqi rocket salvos.

The 2d Marine Division advanced rapidly through Kuwait, the 6th Marines capturing Iraqi defenses in “The Ice Tray,” the 8th Marines taking “The Ice Cube,” both built-up areas laid out in grids that resembled their names. The third day finished crushing the Iraqis in Kuwait. The 1st Marine Division engaged in another enormous and lopsided tank battle at Kuwait International Airport, knocking out an incredible 320 tanks, including 70 of the previously feared Soviet-made T-72s. The 2d Division swung farther north, seizing Mutla Ridge, effectively cutting off the escape of Iraqis from Kuwait City.

Many Iraqis had not bothered to wait for this development; the highway north to Basra was clogged with Iraqi vehicles, military and civilian, laden with booty, trying to escape the hell-bent-for-leather Marines. Here was a rich target for Marine attack aircraft.

Hundreds of Iraqi soldiers met a quick end. Thousands more fled across the sands, leaving their loot behind. The Western media quickly dubbed the carnage “The Highway to Hell.”

The Marines deferred the honor of recapturing Kuwait City to their Kuwaiti and Arab allies, but a Marine recon team flew into the U.S. Embassy early and found the American flag still flying bravely. They replaced it with a large flag that had last flown in Vietnam. Honor restored.

No Marine would ever forget the cheers of welcome and gratitude from the Kuwaitis.

Meanwhile, the Allied main effort unfolded to the west; the Republican Guard divisions either fought and died, or fled north across the Euphrates River. President Bush, quickly accused by the media of “piling on,” ordered a cease-fire at the 100-hour mark.

The Allies had succeeded gloriously, and the Marines had garnered new accolades for their tactical prowess. In their uneven fight in Kuwait, the Marines knocked out 1,040 Iraqi tanks, 608 APCs, 432 artillery pieces, 5 FROG missile sites. They killed about 1,500 enemy troops and took well over 20,000 prisoners.

All this came at the cost of five Marines killed, fortyeight wounded in action. Five Marine aviators were shot down, captured, abused, and released. There were no Marine MIAs left from this war.

Marines en route to the Gulf in 1990 had been diverted to execute Operation Sharp Edge, the emergency evacuation of several thousand U.S. citizens and other threatened nationals from strife-torn Liberia.

Other Marines turned immediately from fighting Saddam’s hapless minions to helping people in extreme need: They conducted Operation Sea Angel in cycloneravaged Bangladesh. And then Operation Provide Comfort, an international relief effort on behalf of 750,000 starving Kurds in northern Iraq. The Marines labored in Kurdistan three months, 500 miles removed from their sea base. “Food Soldiers,” the Kurdish kids called them. …

But death is never far from a Marine, even in the dubious duties of peacekeeping, as they learned in Somalia.

The first Marines landed tactically in Mogadishu on December 9, 1992, and secured the port complex, airport, and the abandoned U.S. Embassy. They were the vanguard of more than 17,000 Leathernecks of the I Marine Expeditionary Force under Major General Charles Wilhelm. A dozen other nations pitched in to help.

The Marines set out to break the gridlock on food distribution by establishing “Humanitarian Relief Sectors” in central and southern Somalia. In each case, the Marines traveled in combined-arms convoys, seized urban centers in harness with Belgian paratroopers or French Foreign Legionnaires. Firefights with bandit gangs and heavily armed “Technicals” – careening light trucks mounting automatic weapons – were frequent.

Under threat and under fire from Somali warlords’ private armies, Marines were forced to defend themselves while trying to feed starving Somalis. Preventative Medicine-Somalia, by Col. Peter Michael Gish, USMCR (Ret.), 1993, oil on canvas.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

Above: Under threat and under fire from Somali warlords’ private armies, Marines were forced to defend themselves while trying to feed starving Somalis. Preventative Medicine-Somalia, by Col. Peter Michael Gish, USMCR (Ret.), 1993, oil on canvas. Left: The collapse of a city and a society are evoked in Welcome to Mogadishu, Somalia, by Capt. Charles G. Grow, USMC, 1993, watercolor on paper.

The collapse of a city and a society are evoked in Welcome to Mogadishu, Somalia, by Capt. Charles G. Grow, USMC, 1993, watercolor on paper.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

A United Nations headquarters took command. Unlike Lebanon, most Marines had departed by the time the mission “crept” from humanitarian assistance to “nation building,” with the obvious implications of taking sides in the civil strife. Disaster was expectable. The ambush and killing of eighteen U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu in October 1993 led to the eventual withdrawal of American ground forces.

By 1995 the United Nations Command despaired of being able to turn Somalia around and called for American assistance in disengaging forces literally under siege in Mogadishu.

The amphibious Marines and Navy got the “911 call.” Marine Lieutenant General Anthony Zinni took command of the combined task force for Operation United Shield.

Ever so carefully Zinni’s Marines relieved the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Italian forces, phasing them back to the ships. In the process the Marines sustained twenty-seven firefights, “everything from snipers to rocket-propelled grenades.” A large armed mob of Somalis threatened the Marines defending the last beach on the last night ashore.

The Marines backed aboard their waiting amphibian tractors, weapons leveled, gunships overhead. They “disengaged” without losing a man – blessed are the peacekeepers.

Meanwhile, Marines had returned to Haiti after a sixty-year absence, this time to intervene against military strongman General Raoul Cédras.

A Marine Expeditionary Unit landed at Cap Haitien on Haiti’s northern coast after months of on-again-offagain threats of U.S. intervention. Army troops swarmed into Port-au-Prince.

But, then again, “operations short of war” were not particularly new to the Leathernecks.

A half-century earlier, Red Mike Edson, the combat giant of the Coco River patrols, Edson’s Ridge, and Tarawa, produced for the Corps his most significant contribution, the marvelously foresightful Small Wars Manual. The Marines have rushed it back into print.

General Tony Zinni, already a veteran of such nontraditional missions in Kurdistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Ecuador, and Rwanda, acknowledged the complexities ahead: “This is the direction the new world disorder is going, and there isn’t anybody else to call upon for help. And these are the kinds of operations we will have to do better.”

That’s one thing Marines have always been able to understand. Learning by doing. Adapting. Doing it better.