No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy

by Jim Proser

  After their easy victory, Saddam’s elite fighters are highly motivated. They are assured by Saddam that in spite of President George H. W. Bush’s promise to defend Saudi Arabia, America “is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle.”7 It will be months before the Americans arrive, if ever. Saddam directs his commanders to strengthen their fortifications and enjoy the spoils of war, including the Bentley and Mercedes sedans of Kuwait’s fled or dead wealthy class. They have reclaimed Iraq’s historical southern territory and struck a blow against the capitalist tyrants of the West and their Saudi collaborators.

  Saddam has wide support in the Arab world as the “Sunni Shield” against the ethnically Persian and predatory Shiite Iranians and Wahabi Saudis. Tribally, he is seen as the strongman of one of the strongest tribes in the region, the Ba’athists (from the Arabic word for resurrection). With his conquest of Kuwait, he is also now one of the wealthiest. Politically, Saddam’s Ba’ath Party is a socialist dictatorship calling for solidarity among Arabs. Ba’athists seek to erase the arbitrary borders drawn by the British and their puppets, the Saudis, in the 1920s. They want to restore the Ottoman Caliphate.

  After eight years of conflict with the Persian Shiites of Iran, Saddam has lost over 150,000 men but still has nearly a million in his army. He has dragooned every able-bodied boy and man in Iraq to fill his ranks. Many have no weapons or even uniforms, but they are all well motivated to fight by commanders who will shoot them on the spot if they don’t. Those who resisted joining the army, like the “Marsh Arabs” of the Fertile Crescent in the south, have simply been wiped out, their marshland drained and turned to desert so those who survive have nowhere to go but the army. There are few other industries in Iraq by this time.

  For President George H. W. Bush, America’s first objective is to secure Saudi Arabian oil fields. The industrialized world depends on an uninterrupted flow of Saudi oil. Saudi King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud accepts Bush’s commitment to defend his kingdom and dismisses the deep-seated national abhorrence toward foreign troops being on the same soil that holds Islam’s holiest sites. In particular, thirty-three-year-old Osama bin Laden, heir to the multibillion-dollar Saudi-based bin Laden construction conglomerate, feels personally humiliated and enraged at his king. Just two years before, Osama formed his terror group al-Qaeda (in Arabic, “the Foundation”) to finance and train fellow Muslim Afghanis in holy jihad against the infidel Soviet incursion. Now the entire infidel world will have troops and heavy armor just over a day’s drive away from Mecca.

  On August 6, 1990, US forces receive movement orders to Saudi Arabia. Two F-15 fighter squadrons, two carrier battle groups, and the ready brigade of the US Army’s Eighty-Second Airborne Division scramble to the Saudi’s defense. Central Command’s General Norman Schwartzkopf begins planning for the largest and most complex projection of American military power since World War II. In the plans, the First Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), commanded by General Walter Boomer, along with the Army’s Eighty-Second Airborne Ready Brigade, will be the immediate front-line defense against Saddam’s three elite armored divisions.

  Boomer picks the First Division, including Mattis’s 1/7, to be the first to draw battle lines in the sand against Saddam. Mattis’s immediate boss commanding the division is forty-nine-year-old Brigadier General James M. “Mike” Myatt. Myatt’s task of moving the division to the front lines in the Saudi desert is complicated by the facts that it needed to happen fast and the division had not been deployed overseas since Vietnam. The First Marine Division at Camp Pendleton consists of three infantry regiments totaling twelve battalions, supported by one regiment of artillery, one tank battalion, one assault amphibian battalion, one reconnaissance battalion, and one combat engineer battalion. Mattis is about to receive a master class in real-world logistics from General Myatt. It is a lesson that will inform Mattis’s development of “log lite,” or “lightened logistics,” a critical element of maneuver warfare.8

  On August 8, Schwartzkopf gets Secretary of State Dick Cheney’s approval of his initial plans. Together they begin to assemble a coalition force that will eventually exceed 956,000 people from 34 countries, including 700,000 Americans. The desert-trained First Marine Division, including Mattis’s 1/7 and the ready force of the Eighty-Second Airborne, are put on alert. The maritime prepositioning squadron sails from the island of Diego Garcia with 14 supply ships filled with the Marines’ equipment and weapons, including M60A1 tanks, amphibious assault vehicles (AAVs), high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs, more commonly known as Humvees ), trucks, and 155-millimeter M198 artillery.

  In California, Mattis receives movement orders for the 1/7. The battalion is about to play a critical role in what may be America’s last heavy invasion force. Instead of taking the time to say goodbye with a family dinner and squaring away the dozens of personal details that need attention before a deployment, Mattis and his men pack everything they can carry into heavy combat packs, shoulder their personal weapons, and are bussed five miles from Camp Pendleton to the San Diego airport. They board waiting commercial charter airliners bound nonstop direct to Saudi Arabia.

  The supply ships from Diego Garcia leave so quickly that the mechanics who are supposed to prepare the equipment en route arrive on the island after the ships are gone. This causes delays in Saudi Arabia getting the Marines into the field. Also, since the destination of Saudi Arabia’s port of Jubayl is close to the border of Kuwait and could be under direct enemy attack at any moment, it is decided to stage combat units at the port until they are fully prepared to take up defensive positions in the field.

  Over the next seven weeks, the US Army in Europe moves more than 122,000 soldiers and civilians and 5,500 pieces of heavy equipment from Germany to Saudi Arabia. Twenty-one barge loads, 407 trains with 12,210 railcars, and 204 road convoys totaling 5,100 vehicles converge on Germany’s three main seaports and offload onto 115 ships bound for Saudi Arabia. The soldiers take 1,772 buses, followed by 1,008 vehicles carrying their baggage, before boarding 578 aircraft. As Lieutenant General William S. Flynn, commander of the Twenty-First Theater Army Area Command, puts it, “We usually plan all year long to unload two or three ships in one port. For Desert Shield we planned for a week and loaded some 115 ships through three ports and moved more than a corps worth of equipment through the lines of communication.”9

  At the height of the move, more tons of ammunition are moved in one day than the European theater normally ships in one year. Since its collapse, the Soviet Union is no longer seen as a threat against Europe. As a result, America practically empties Europe of defenses, shipping them all to the Middle East.

  In spite of King Fahd’s dismissal of concerns about foreign soldiers on holy ground, his government cannot completely ignore their restive people and Muslim neighbors. The Saudis are the unelected stewards of Islam’s two most holy sites, Medina and Mecca, and must answer for any real or perceived defilement of the sites. Tensions are particularly high this year after 1,426 Muslims were trampled to death a few weeks earlier in a panic during the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Superstition crowds out reason. Is this evil omen Allah’s warning about the heavy foot of infidel soldiers coming to their land?

  On September 10, after delivery of America’s huge military commitment to his nation, King Fahd verbally commits to comprehensive support of the troops. Another six weeks go by before Department of Defense negotiators conclude an agreement allowing “gifts” from Saudi Arabia to the United States, thereby avoiding formal ties. The Saudis agree to pay all costs of US forces—all freshly prepared meals, water, fuel, transportation within Saudi Arabia, and housing facilities, including construction—as of October 30. A first check for $760 million is personally carried back to New York for deposit by a military officer. The total Saudi commitment is valued at approximately $2.5 billion.

  In spite of the financial cooperation, restrictions are placed on the Marines beyond the customary bans on alcohol and pornography
, which includes any printed material showing women with bare arms or legs. They are not allowed to leave the port area. For weeks, while their heavy weapons are being offloaded and serviced for action, the Marines swelter in four overcrowded, overheated, filthy warehouses on a pier of al-Jubayl harbor.

  As more units pour in every day, eventually over 9,000 Marines are jammed into the warehouses. The warehouses have no running water, no working toilets, and no significant ventilation to relieve the 120-degree summer heat. As each Marine unit arrives and is shoehorned into the warehouses, the levels of tension, noise, and discomfort ratchet up. Contractors hired to provide portable toilets are quickly overwhelmed and cannot service or provide sufficient new facilities. The smell quickly becomes horrendous. The warehouses are filthy with dust and rat and bird feces, threatening an outbreak of respiratory illnesses. The sheet-metal walls and iron frames hold the day’s heat and radiate it out at night so that the men wake up drenched in sweat and exhausted. Nerves quickly fray, and the normally high Marine morale wavers.

  Major Michael F. Applegate of the Third Assault Amphibian Battalion later said, “The time we spent in those warehouses was the worst experience of my life. At least in the desert you can move around, and you have the morning and evening breezes.”10

  Mattis’s first combat deployment is a logistical nightmare. As the cases of diarrhea, heat rash, and coughing escalate, staying in the warehouses becomes a threat to the mission. Mattis gives his first public statement as Marine commander to the Alton Telegraph on 7 September 1990. “We’ve had some colds, some gastroenteritis,” he says.

  The unhealthy warehouses prompt a master class in leadership. Mattis’s immediate superior, General Myatt, encourages his commanders to listen to every Marine, particularly the NCOs, the sergeants and lance corporals who carry the burden of the day-to-day work and drive morale at the platoon level. Mattis doesn’t have to listen too closely to hear the mutiny brewing among his outspoken men.

  While the politicians negotiate, the Marines take matters into their own hands. They meet with Saudi Army major general Saleh Ali Aloha and negotiate to move combat units out of the warehouses and into defensive positions north of the port. Mattis’s 1/7 and the 1/5 are first into the field. They begin constructing defensive positions thirty miles north of al-Jubayl at what will become known as the “Cement Factory.”

  A second master class about cooperating with Middle Eastern hosts and fighting alongside them presents itself. Like Saddam’s Sunnis, underneath the Saudis’ affluence and modern infrastructure, they are essentially a religious tribal society. Strength, moral and military, is their most valued currency. With it, things like moving combat troops out of warehouses are negotiable. Without it, nothing is negotiable. Essentially it is the same martial code of honor that Mattis adopted as a Boy Scout, and that drew him to the Marines.

  The Cement Factory is the only large structure in the otherwise mostly featureless Saudi desert, and a natural obstacle. It sits on an elevated ridge line and includes a series of gravel pits that sit on both sides of the coastal highway. Although September is generally the hottest time of year to be digging fighting positions in the desert, the conditions there are still better than in the warehouses. Morale improves as the 1/7 migrates toward a nocturnal schedule like that of most other desert-dwelling creatures. They dig all night and try to sleep during the suffocating 120-degree days, when swarms of flies torment them. Adding to their misery and exhaustion, they know that if Saddam attacks now with his massed armored divisions, casualties will be high. They refer to themselves as “speed bumps” on Saddam’s way to the Saudi oil fields.

  In his first televised interview as a commander, Mattis speaks with NBC’s Tom Brokaw at the Cement Factory defensive line.

  Brokaw: These are Marines but they’re also young kids and they’ve never been in this situation before. Are you having to deal with nerves as well?

  Mattis: No. They’re pretty calm, pretty matter of fact. They know what’s expected of them and they’re all pretty hard chargin’ and they’re ready to go.

  Brokaw then narrates over shots of Marines filling sandbags and digging fighting positions,

  Brokaw: The Marines are a little more candid.

  Brokaw speaks to a young Marine on the front line,

  Brokaw: You guys are what they call the trip wire, you’re the forward elements after all. Make you a little nervous?

  Marine: Yeah. A little bit. You’re nervous a lot at first but then you kind of get used to it. When I first found out . . . Now it’s a week or two later. Now I’m not as nervous as I was when I first found out.11

  Across the border, Saddam’s commanders are not thinking of attacking just yet. They have been working since the invasion on their own defenses of entrenched infantry behind protective barriers, backed up by reserves of captured Kuwaiti tank and mechanized divisions. These are further reinforced by additional new divisions of Republican Guards. Altogether, hundreds of thousands of heavily armed, experienced fighters face the Marines, backed up by artillery, attack aircraft, and tanks.

  Saddam is gambling that he can make the liberation of Kuwait more expensive, in blood, than the American public is willing to pay. From his tribal perspective, civilian control and popular opinion restricting America’s military are exploitable weaknesses. He apparently believes that, as they demonstrated in Tehran in 1979 and have continued to demonstrate ever since, Americans don’t really have the stomach for war, particularly a war of aggression.

  Specifically, he taunts President Bush with his often repeated opinion of America’s weakness: “Yours is a nation that cannot afford to take 10,000 casualties in one battle.”12

  Saddam calculates that Americans are still too timid to risk another South Asian land war like Vietnam. They’ve made their big show of force; now they can honorably withdraw. But he’s miscalculated America’s new resolve.

  * * *

  By mid-September, America’s coalition force has secured the world’s oil supply along a forty-two-mile front, just below Saudi Arabia’s northern border with Kuwait. The front extends from the Persian Gulf inland west to the elbow where the border turns northwesterly. It controls King Fahad Road, the main north-south artery, which runs a few miles inland along the Gulf coast.

  After several weeks of hard labor with pickaxes and shovels at the Cement Factory, the 1/7 has done such an excellent job of building their fortifications that they get to start all over again. They are repositioned twenty miles to the west and give the Cement Factory defense line to the Saudi Joint Forces Command of Arab coalition partners. The 1/7 is now in the center of the coalition defensive line, at the border elbow between the Second Marine Division and the Arab Joint Forces. Anticipating that their defensive posture is temporary, Schwarzkopf positions the Marines where they will be the tip of the spear when the order comes to attack. President Bush, a former military commander himself, agrees with Schwarzkopf. They know that this defensive line will protect Saudi Arabia only as long as the Americans maintain it. Saddam must go.

  On his Thanksgiving visit to First Marine Division headquarters just behind the front lines, President Bush announces his intention to attack and drive Saddam from Kuwait. After frustrating months of sweltering in the desert and eating dust, this news is as welcome as a sudden rainstorm. The Marines are itching to take the fight to Saddam and go home. The mission is now to prepare for the invasion of Kuwait by January 15, 1991—the United Nations’ deadline for Saddam’s withdrawal.

  With the UN resolution, Saddam realizes that America and her coalition partners are not only not going to retreat—they are now authorized to attack. But before they get too far in that line of thinking, he will draw first blood from America’s soft spot. He will send a few dozen Americans home in body bags and see how the fragile American public likes that.

  On January 17, 1991, the American coalition begins air and artillery raids on Iraqi positions, as well as a series of masking maneuvers to confuse the Iraqis abo
ut the real point of attack. Mattis’s 1/7 readies itself to lead the attack, with newly added companies of combat engineers and special breaching equipment. The engineers will clear paths through Iraqi minefields with specially equipped tanks and blow holes through fixed fortifications. Mattis’s first combat action, his baptism by fire, will be at the tip of the spear.

  On January 27, Saddam meets in Basra, Iraq’s southernmost city, with Major General Salah Mahmoud. Mahmoud assures his president that the Saudi Arabian coastal city of Khafji, seven miles inside Saudi Arabia, will be his in three days, and he will have dozens of dead Americans for propaganda purposes. Saddam returns to Baghdad by armed convoy. As an omen of things to come, on the way his convoy is attacked by coalition aircraft, and Saddam narrowly escapes.

  The following day, coalition intelligence sees Iraqi movement at the border in the Arab Forces sector above Khafji. Coalition air and artillery strikes escalate throughout the day. Warnings about a possible attack are forwarded to Schwarzkopf at Central Command. Coordinating the pre-invasion air campaign is taking priority with Schwarzkopf and his staff, so the warning is relegated to lower importance.

  * * *

  Cross-training with the Arab coalition forces began soon after the First Division finished building the Cement Factory defense line. In assuming the line at the Cement Factory from the division, the Saudis became responsible for protecting the division’s right flank. Recognizing the Saudis’ now vital role in the war, General Myatt assigned the assistant division commander, Brigadier General Thomas V. Draude, to coordinate the critical cross-training between Marine and Saudi fighters. The training included the Royal Saudi Army, the fledgling Saudi Marine Corps, and the Saudi Army National Guard, as well as Qatari, Pakistani, Moroccan, and Bangladeshi units.