How Desert Storm began

http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2016-02/marines-desert-victory


Marines Desert Victory



With the U.S.-led allied coalition’s heaviest forces deployed to the west, two Marine divisions were poised to drive into central Kuwait and rout the occupying Iraqis. But they first faced a complicated and dangerous problem: breaching two formidable minefields.

U.S. Marine Major General James M. “Mike” Myatt suddenly had a problem.

The 1st Marine Division commander had just received word from his superior, Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, that President George H. W. Bush had agreed to give Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev additional time to try to convince Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to end his forcible occupation of Kuwait. That meant a possible delay in the planned start of the ground-war phase of Operation Desert Storm, the international coalition’s offensive to liberate Kuwait. As a result, Boomer, commander of I Marine Expeditionary Force, told Myatt that no coalition forces were to penetrate into Kuwait. During the 22 February 1991 conversation, Boomer relayed a warning from the coalition supreme commander, U.S. Army General H. Norman Schwarzkopf: Myatt must “be careful here. Don’t do anything irreversible. The President’s offered Saddam one more chance to get out by noon.”

Myatt’s problem was that he already had two regiments with more than 3,000 Marines and Navy corpsmen about 12 miles inside of Kuwait, some of whom had passed through the first of two Iraqi minefields, assaulted enemy bunkers, and taken prisoners. About 20 miles north of the rest of the division and with no tanks, the two infantry units would be vulnerable to an attack by Iraqi heavy forces.