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Twenty-five years ago (February 24-28, 1991) ... U.S. and
coalition ground forces rolled across the desert from Saudi Arabia
with the goal of routing Iraqi occupiers out of Kuwait. That mission
took just 100 hours.
Two Desert Storm veterans recounted
their experiences in the Gulf War: a Soldier who led his tank
formation into Iraq, and an Army civilian who, then a Marine, fought
alongside resistance fighters in Kuwait.
Armor Buildup
Lt. Col. Mark Cassel was a second lieutenant when he received orders
to Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield, the buildup phase to Desert
Storm.
In August, the tank platoon leader, assigned to the 2nd Armored
Brigade, 24th Infantry Division, arrived with four M-1 Abrams tanks,
each manned by four Soldiers for a total of 16.
Normally, a
second lieutenant would need to rely on his senior non-commissioned
officer for a lot of advice on how things are done, he said.
However, Cassel was a former enlisted Soldier with the Nebraska Army
National Guard, so he already had a lot of experience "shooting and
driving tanks."
In the months that followed, he would get to
know his men very well, and they him.
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April 1991 -
Soldiers with Battery. A, 5162nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade., hold an FIM-92A Stinger portable missile launcher during Operation Desert Shield. (U.S
Air Force photo by SSGT F. Lee Corkran)
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Their first priority when they arrived, he said, was setting up a
defensive line in Saudi Arabia, because, as the thinking went at the
time, the Iraqis would not stop with the capture of Kuwait. They
would try to take Saudi Arabia and push the U.S. forces out to sea
or neutralize them.
That, of course, didn't happen, so
Soldiers spent months practicing drills and going out on maneuvers,
"but, you can only do so much of that," Cassel said, adding that
"everyone was eager for action."
Then a rumor went around
that "we'd be out before Christmas," he said. "Soon, people were
saying 'Let's just go get this over with.' That was the prevailing
attitude."
They didn't go home for Christmas, but did get
welcome Christmas presents: brand new M1A1 Abrams tanks out of Fort
Stewart, Georgia, to replace their weary M-1 tanks. The nice thing
about the M1A1s, he said, is that they sported 120mm guns that could
shoot farther and more powerfully than the 105mm guns that were on
the M1s.
So they took a two-day training class on how to take
the new 120s apart, clean the breach, and so on, he said. They were
soon ready to go again. When the air and naval bombardment phase of
the war began Jan. 17, heavy equipment transporters arrived and the
men loaded their tanks on them. "You're basically sitting in your
tank on a low-boy trailer, going down the road," toward the border
with Kuwait, he said, adding that it was pretty neat.
For the
next five weeks, they just sat at the border waiting for the word to
cross the line of departure (LD).
Across The Berm
Then on Feb. 24, they were ordered to cross the LD into Iraq.
The brigade's 56 tanks, which included his four, swept far to the
left across the desert in an effort to outflank and cut off the
Republican Guard, Cassel said. Infantrymen in Bradley Fighting
Vehicles were also in the formation.
From the time they crossed the LD to the end
of the first day was a surreal experience, he said. They were
literally driving blind through a ferocious sandstorm where no one
could see anyone else, were it not for their thermal sights.
"You don't really appreciate those sights until you need them,"
Cassel said.
For the first two days they drove deep into
Iraq, driving about five or six hours. Then they stopped for the
fuel tankers to catch up. The tanks with plow and mine roller
attachments gobbled up more fuel than the other tanks, he said, so
when they were down to a quarter of a tank, "we'd stop until they'd
fueled us up and then we'd keep going."
At the time, GPS
wasn't in use so "when I talked to a buddy who was doing the fuel
mission, he said they just followed our tracks [through the sand]
until they caught up to us. We drove a long ways and used lots of
fuel."
From time to time, they heard small splattering sounds
outside their tanks. "At the time, we thought people were test
firing their 50-cals," he said. "We found out we were taking enemy
artillery and mortar fire. It just wasn't impressive" and there was
not much in the way of damage and no injuries.
Their
objective was the Jalibah Airfield in Iraq, Cassel said, some 80
miles west of Basra. They reached it the night of the third day.
The brigade's tanks formed a defensive line and throughout the
night the U.S. artillery and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems "just
pounded the airfield," he said.
The next morning, they
engaged the Iraqi tanks, which were the old Soviet ones, dating back
to World War II.
"Ours was a fairly easy operation," he said.
The Iraqis had their tanks dug in facing south in a defensive line.
"We came around from the west and tore them up. They didn't have the
range to get us and weren't oriented to shoot us," he said.
One of the most interesting parts of the war, he said, was that some
tanks in his unit shot at Iraqi fighter jets on the airfield, in an
attempt to take them out before they became airborne and posed a
threat.
"People were calling in SITREPS [situation reports]:
'This is White Platoon. Destroyed three enemy tanks and one jet
fighter.'" Higher headquarters was incredulous, he said.
The
battle lasted maybe half an hour, he said. "That was it for us." His
unit was ordered not to cross the Euphrates River and continue
northward.
Their next objective was to take the Rumaila oil
fields in southern Iraq. They refueled, rearmed, rolled into the
fields and took up defensive positions, he said. Then the 100-hour
ground war ended.
That the war ended so quickly came as a
huge surprise to everyone, he said. "That's it?" people said. "We
thought we were still in the first phase of the operation."
"'OK guys, we're going home,' I told them."
Everyone was
happy they survived, he added. No one in his unit was killed or
injured.
Although the war was short, the experience bonded
Cassel with his men. Over the years, he said they stay in contact
and have celebrated their 10th- and 20th-year reunions.
Sometimes, Cassel, who works as an Army civilian in G-3 training in
the Pentagon, runs into one of his drivers who also works there.
Cassel plans to retire in June from the Army Reserve, after 31
years of service.
Lack Of Intel
Dr. Scott Moore, who is now the division director for Field
Programs, U.S. Army Center of Military History, or CMH, was a Marine
major with the 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, during the
war.
He
deployed to Jubail, a port in eastern Saudi Arabia on the Persian
Gulf, just before Christmas 1990. From there, he linked up with his
unit at the Kuwaiti border. He was the regimental intelligence
officer.
"My job was to figure out what the enemy was doing,"
he said.
But there was a problem, he said. He wasn't
receiving any useful intelligence.
The only intel they
received came from observers at the border, he said. All they saw
was an empty expanse of desert stretching into the distance.
"We had a sketchy picture of what was out in front of us. We
kind of knew there was an Iraqi army out there. We didn't know near
what everyone thinks we knew."
Surveillance images from
satellites and aircraft "never made it to us," he said. "Most of
that stuff stayed where it was. When we crossed the line of
departure, I had one aerial image. It was just a picture of the
desert."
Moore said he requested an unmanned aerial vehicle
mission be flown six hours before they crossed the LD "to see if
anything had moved in, but for all we knew, it was denied."
A
UAV was out there taking pictures of enemy artillery and other
things on the ground and "somebody had those coordinates, but we
didn't get them. Nobody could tell us where it was." It was
incredibly frustrating, he said. "We just went in blind."
Into Western Kuwait
His unit went into Kuwait on the left side of the 1st Marine
Div., which headed to the Kuwait City International Airport. The 2nd
Marine Div., of which Moore was a part, crossed into western Kuwait,
ending up just south of Al Jahra,
Kuwait, 20 miles west of Kuwait City, he said.
To the left of
Moore's unit was "Tiger" Brigade, 2nd Armored Div., which was
attached to the 2nd Marine Div. "They came through the breach behind
us," he said.
After the first day, Moore said he picked up
intelligence about what was out in front by interrogating prisoners
and using a very useful captured map. "By the second day we had an
idea of what was out in front of us. Using that map, we hit them,"
he said.
By the end of the second day, Marines of his
regiment were operating elsewhere and Moore, along with his driver
and another Marine, were attached to a Kuwaiti resistance fighter
unit and operating independently.
When they reached Al Jahra,
Moore said they "had no idea what was in there."
This caused
a bit of anxiety, because he only had a Humvee and a Kalashnikov
AKMS assault rifle that he found, since Marine officers are not
issued their own rifles, just side arms.
For the last two
days of the ground war, Moore fought alongside the resistance
fighters, who were not all that eager to take risks, he said.
"The Kuwaiti resistance wouldn't go into a building until I
certified it was safe," he said. "So my corporal and I would go into
these buildings just to make sure they weren't booby trapped," he
said. "We had a 17-year-old kid we called 'door kicker.' Every time
we needed a door opened up, we'd ask him to go do it and he'd run
into the door. We were lucky we never found one that was booby
trapped."
Moore said they engaged the enemy several times,
and all came out of it alive and uninjured. They also provided a lot
of useful reconnaissance information to friendly forces.
When
the 100 hours ground war ended, Moore said he "ended up by default
being the liaison officer to the resistance." That lasted for a
couple of weeks. They did a number of useful things for the
Kuwaitis, he said, including bringing engineers in to get their gas
stations up and running. That was one of their priorities.
As
for the Iraqis, many just took off their uniforms and melted away
into the population and others were taken prisoner.
The
resistance fighters turned over 150 prisoners to Moore at one point.
Sgt. Alvin York brought back 132 German prisoners during World
War I and received the Medal of Honor. "I got nothing," he said,
laughing.
When Moore retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2001,
he used his G.I. bill to get his doctoral degree and ended up at
Center of Military History. He said having served gives him a
greater perspective and understanding as a historian for the Army.
"It makes more sense what you're seeing," he said.
By David Vergun, Defense Media Activity - Army
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2016
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