23 Years Ago Today….
Some guy named Saddam Hussein decided he needed the oil and ports that were part of Kuwait, and sent 100,000 troops over the border, taking over the country in less than 48 hours. Most of the Kuwaiti military and government leadership retreated to Saudi Arabia, which at the time it was feared that if Hussein were so inclined to have immediately invaded that nation, he could have done so relatively easily.
While some of the ancillary causes of the invasion may be disputed, what is certain is that the Iran-Iraq war had depleted Iraq’s finances to the tune of some $80 billion, and that Hussein had looked to previously friendly Kuwait (they had provided port space after Basra was closed) to pay at least part of that debt, or at least forgive it. Negotiations in 1988-89 had soured relations between the two countries.
By 8 August, ground troops including the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, and air assets including F-15’s and two CVBG’s were in or on their way to Saudi Arabia. They would be joined by over 500,000 coalition troops by January 1991.
As for me, I wasn’t there–I was floating (sunk) somewhere off the coast of a Pacific Rim nation on op when we got word of the invasion a few days after the event. News on a submarine is a sketchy thing, where headlines and stories are given in a summary of a couple of lines, and that’s only if time is available to receive that after essential message traffic is sent and received. By the time we got back to Yokosuka, Japan just over a month after the invasion occured, the only question we were asking was whether we’d be going or not. We soon found out that there were no plans to have a major submarine presence in the Gulf, although several submarines were ultimately in the region for Desert Storm, including USS Chicago (SSN-721), USS Louisville (SSN-724), and USS Pittsburgh (SSN-720)–all VLS (Vertical Launch System) boats which allowed the latter two boats to launch at least 12 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) whereas my old boat had “conventional” launches out the torpedo tubes.
The history is well known to those here, many of whom were either serving or in the “sandbox” during DS/DS.
Discuss.
Category: Military issues
I am getting old!! Can’t believe that was 23 years ago. To bad we weren’t allowed to finish the job back then!!
Oh, this takes me back. I was sitting at my typewriter outlining a story with the radio turned on to the local classical station, listening to one of Mozart’s lighter moments, when the announcer broke into the music broadcast and said that Kuwait had been invaded and the US was sending support.
After that, I became a news junkie. It was on cable – C-SPAN, I think – constantly, as was the Gulf War shortly thereafter. The weird part is that I drove around for a bit the next day, and went to the grocery store, and it was like nothing was happening at all.
We (3/504) were training the Nasty Guard at Fort Pickett when the call went out to get back to Bragg. We had found a local college town the night before and all had big heads during the ride back. On the ground in Saudi Arabia on 12 Aug if my memory holds.
I was coming back on a Sunday afternoon, driving up I-95 from Prince William Forest Park, next to Quantico, as I have been camping there and heard that Kuwait had been invaded. I think I was a SSgt at the time…. I turned to my friend and said…”We’re going to War..and when I got home I called my unit and they were just telling everyone to stand by.
We had a lot of folks that volunteered to go but our commander and only a few Special Handling (HAZMAT Air Cargo) guys got to be in theater. The rest of us were deployed to backfill Active Duty guys as “Reservists” just weren’t as well trained and were just treated as red headed step children.
We all know how quickly THAT changed is a short time.
I was at Camp Gary Owen in the ROK and was froze there
The next few months were very busy. Thought for sure ol’ Kim would roll across seeing as how many of our forces were in SA
#5 was me
In the following month I was attending a school at Kirtland AFB with a couple of other helicopter maintainers from Moffett, I remember telling them “Yeah, they won’t need a bunch of H-3’s from the Reserves”. In December we were activated and shipped out soon after New Year’s.
Recruiting Command, and I kept chasing kids down at the Mall and on the phone, apparently they had enough Vulcan 20 mm ADA peeps.
Interesting how many stumbled in the door to try in enlist (in Connecticut), and sad how many didn’t qualify. We have a lot of obese, criminal, illiterate citizens wandering around, but with hearts are in the right place. Oh, did I mention asthma?
I remember that one rather well. Happened about 2 weeks before my first USAR AT after leaving active duty the first time. I knew I was going to report in; didn’t really know if it would be for 2 weeks or much, much longer.
Ended up not being selected to deploy that time. I’d guess that’s probably one of the things that made me so damned persistent in seeking to go some 15+ years later.
I remember it well. Doesn’t seem like 23 years! Thank all of you who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. From a much older vet.
I had just returned to Ft. Ord from attending the Master Fitness Course at Ft. Benjamin Harrison, IN. Along with most of the 7th ID(L), I watched it all from my TV as we assumed the RDF mission from the 82nd as they deployed to Saudi Arabia. I say most because I think our combat engineer company deployed. All of us were pretty pissed that we got left behind.
I had just graduated a platoon of cadets at Advanced Camp at Fort Bragg as a TAC NCO and was merrily driving back to Vermont not knowing that by October I would be at Lucius Clay Kaserne, by November we were alerted for Desert Shield (the president told us on the news – I was at the COFT wondering where my IO and crew was) and by January we were in al Jubail waiting for our Brads.
I had just gotten home on leave when my mom told me that my platoon Sergeant called and needed me to call him ASAP. I had been home for 2 hours of my scheduled 2 week leave when I had to turn around and go back….I’m still not sure why they didn’t let me finish my leave, we didn’t go anywhere until September….
I was a junior in HS and I was pissed because I knew it would all be over long before I got out of HS. Fast forward to 2003 and I was juuuuust about to PCS off of Ft Stewart when the stop loss hit and I finally got my wish. We actually had 2 or 3 NCOs in my company that had served in Desert Storm, so they got their CIB 2nd award. In the late 90s I remember reading a interview from someone that was high up in the First Bush presidents’ staff say to the effect that “if we had invaded Iraq and tried to occupy it I’m convinced we would still be there now, 10 years on.”
I was a LCpl out of Lejeune, although we were TAD to 29 Palms, Camp Wilson getting ready for a double CAX. I’ll never forget that a call came into our switchboard from the 2nd FSSG COS and wanted to speak to the BSSG CO. Our operator connected the call and listened in…. so we got the jump on tearing everything down and packing up to go back to the east coast. Word was that when we got to Cherry Point we were going to be issued ammo and then sent over. Never happened though, we returned to our regular units and finally shipped to Al Jubail in late November. I remember turning 21 on the outskirts of a burning oil field in March. Ah, the good ol’ days.
If nothing else, it put a stop to the “peace dividend” BS and force reduction got put on hold. I was sitting in Hanau, Germany thinking we wouldn’t go and ended up helping run Log Base Echo.
@14
I thought both Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom were covered under one CIB?
When this happended I was in my 2nd semester at a junior college. during the spring 1990 semester I had a Poly Sci course on International Relations. I wrote a paper on the most likely conflict the US would get into within the next decade. I was pretty much spot on who, what, why, and where. Missed on the when by about 2 years. My professor was so impressed by my paper, that he showed to a friend at Northwestern University. They actually wanted to talk to me about going to school there. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford it, nor were my grades up to snuff.
It’s funny how an amateur who just read the papers, and paid attention to what was going on in the world could come up with something like this. Our own govrenment got caught flatfooted, eventhough the signs where there if you paid attention. Thank you to all the brave vets of DS/DS, and thank you to the vets of Iraq and Afghanistan.
@17, you are probably thinking of OEF/OIF. I knew a guy in my mortar plt on my second tour that had done a tour in A’stan with 101, then did the invasion of Iraq with 101, then went back to Iraq for OIF II with 1ID. Despite all that he only qualed for one CIB.
I remember watching this on TV as a kid. In 2001 I saw a documentary called Inside The Killbox which was about the Gulf War shortly before I went to bootcamp. In it there was a man discussing what the estimates were regarding Saddam regaining his capabilities. They figured it would be a decade before their military capabilities were back to normal. They were off by a couple of years, but it’s striking how close they were with our involved for round 2 in 2003.
I was in Babenhausen, Germany- a Light Wheel Vehicle Mechanic stuck with the Field Artillery-sadly, as close as I ever got to Combat Arms. I volunteered to go, but my CO told me to keep my mouth shut and get back to the motor pool, he wasn’t going to give up his Shop Foreman…selfish bastard! Fucked it all away and got out right after they lifted Stop Loss…
On the Friday following the invasion, I had just walked into my room at the barracks and my roommate is on the phone saying, “He just walked in” and handed the phone to me. It was my LPO telling me I needed to come back to work. I kept asking him what was up and he just kept saying that I needed to come back. I said okay….about then it dawned on me. I hung up the phone, looked at my roommate and asked him to drive me to the squadron, he asked what was up, and I just said, I think we are going to war…… I got back to the shop he handed me a bunch of paperwork and said we had detachments leaving for the Gulf in 96 hours as part of the 250,000 folks heading that way….
#18…par for the course for the United States. The signs are almost always there…and we almost always get caught with our pants down.
I had just returned from a Hohenfels/Graf rotation with 2-82FA in 3AD. Had picked up my clearing papers and was hoping after 3 years I was gonna get out of Deutschland. I remeber sitting in my port call briefing and a Major walked in with an annoucement that if your departure date was before Sept 1 you could stay for the briefing, if it was after report back to your unit. You were stop-lossed, I spent the entire war at Ft Carson, preparing and volunteering but didn’t go.
I was stationed in Bamberg Germany at the time with HHC, 3rd Brigade, 1st AD.
We were alerted to go to Desert Shield in November and left early December ’90. My MOS was 13B but
I was doing duty as a legal clerk. Ended up being. a driver for an SJA lawyer (Brigade prosecutor) .
#11 I was in the 7th ID (light) from mid 91 to 93. It was back to the gun line for me. I was in Bravo Btry., 6/8th FA. One thing I remember was that 80% of that unit had combat patches,some had for Just Cause and ODS. A few of those guys had volunteered an got accepted into units deployed to ODS. It seems they were going aroung asking for volunteers from Divarty and maybe a few other units in the 7th ID.
Just got back from Panama on Aug 2. First formation at 1200 on Aug 3 (severely hung over BTW) we were told “wash your uniforms and repack everything” less than 24 hours later we were at Camp Wilson (thanks CWO5USMC for clearing out for us)and less than a week after that we were in Saudi guarding the MPS ships as the unloaded. 1/5 was kind of the red headed step child of 7th MEB for a while. And a big thanks to the soldiers of the 82nd Airborne for all of the Humvess y’all provided……
@26…
No problem brother. I still hate going to Camp Wilson…and they have alot more there now than back then.
Jesus am I old already…
Was inbound from an international flight when it started, so got the news in the Miami terminal. It was never a question of if, but when. Still had another week of vacation – which “they” decided I should go ahead and take. Too bad it was at the beach!
My CO decided that he would go with the first wave a few weeks later, so that left me and my chief to argue over which of us would deploy. I finally convinced him that I should go because if he went, I would still be activated, but assigned to do his job. It just made more sense for him to remain behind to do his job and support us from home station. He didn’t like it, but finally accepted that mine was the better argument.
So, I spent the next month or so working my full time job AND more than full time at the base. Finally got in theater in early October. We called ourselves 1st DAWg, since we were the first and only airlift in theater for quite a while, but finally got an official designation months later.
Six months later, we stood there taking bets on how long it would be before we had to return. Consensus was 10 years, max.
I spent Desert Shield/Storm pickin’ up pine cones at Ft. Bragg. My wife at the time said that if they didn’t hurry up an ship my ass over, she was going to load me in the Mercury Sable and drive me over there herself. LOL great days indeed…
Ah, the “four largest army in world”… defeated in the Mother of All Battles six monthes later.
I rode that one out at Holloman AFB, New Mexico. My commander decided that since my husband was deploying and we had kids, I should stay behind. Never mind the Dependant Care we had in place with all bases covered. I’m still pissed that I never went.
Old Tanker: nope. The first Gulf War fell under (believe it or not) the Vietnam CIB period (March 1961 – March 1995). OEF and OIF fall under the GWOT period (Sep 2001 – date TBD). The other CIB periods were were World War II (Dec 1941 – Sep 1945) and Korea (Jun 1950 – July 1953).
Someone serving today could legitimately have CIB with one star if they served in the first Gulf War, Panama, Grenada, or a handful of other post-Vietnam actions in the 1980s/1990s.
However, anyone sporting a CIB with 2 stars better be in their late 80s or older – because that would require service in WW-II, Korea, and Vietnam as an Infantry soldier. The Vietnam CIB period is simply too long for anyone serving today to have a legitimate 3rd award of the CIB. They’d have had to served as infantry in Korea, Vietnam, and the GWOT for that to be legit.
I was in the second CVBG to go over there. My brother was an A6 pilot in the first. I remember my mom knitted sweaters with the beginning date and Operation Desert Storm on them. The smoke from the oil fires was horrible even at sea. Due to my rate I had to beg to get a PCS billet on a ship. Little did I know my first deployment would be immediate. I was on board the USS Lake Champlain at the time.