Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 26, 1991 TAG: 9102260323
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WITH U.S. FORCES IN KUWAIT LENGTH: Long
The Iraqi soldiers, smiling and shouting "Greetings," trudged in docile little parades toward the advancing Marines. Signaling the war was over for them, they waved white flags stark against a sky darkened by scores of burning oil wells belching flame across the Umm Qudair oil field.
The 1st and 2nd Marine divisions - led by a spearhead of M-60 tanks, Humvee-mounted antitank-missile launchers and Cobra helicopter gunships - had sliced through Iraq's first two defensive lines within nine hours of the moment Operation Desert Storm accelerated into the long-awaited ground offensive against Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait. By mid-afternoon, the 1st Division had overrun its first day's objective - about 30 miles northeast of where they breached the first Iraqi defense line - still expecting a fight.
But what they found was surrender, the same sort of wholesale Iraqi collapse they had encountered from the instant their advance began in the predawn gloom of a rainy Sunday. Mechanized Marine shock forces secured an air base here early Monday and moved northward, leaving infantry units behind to clean out networks of defensive bunkers around the base in which a few Iraqis still held out.
What lay ahead on the road to Kuwait City remained unknown, but the conscript Iraqi Popular Army troops manning the two defense layers along the Kuwaiti border barely had put up a fight. Marines manning the lead M-60 tanks and Humvees said the only significant resistance came as they approached the second defensive line - and that ended quickly.
"Most of them stuck their arms out of the firing holes and just waved white flags," said Cpl. Raymond Campbell, 24, an antitank-missile operator from Sherman, Texas. The reasons were plain to see. Casings from U.S. cluster bombs lay scattered about the desert, evidence of the devasting allied bombing campaign under way since Jan. 17. Unexploded bomblets poked out of the sand; bomb craters left by other, much larger explosives measured about 50 feet across.
Close behind the Marine advance, supporting 155mm artillery rained destruction down on Iraqi rear positions. Overhead, Cobras cruised purposefully, pouncing now and then toward the desert floor with Hellfire missiles that struck with a sickening whuummp against Iraqi tanks that dared to move. Spotter planes whined across the clear skies, seeking out more targets; F-A-18 Hornet and Harrier ground-attack planes roared in behind them to blast Iraqi artillery positions.
Against the onslaught of modern technology, Iraq's defenses seemed meager. Despite prewar descriptions of massive earthen berms, mine fields and oil-filled trenches, Iraqi troops were found to be dug in largely around aging Soviet-made T-55 tanks surrounded by rudimentary trenchworks and bunkers that seemed designed primarily as defenses against bombing attacks.
In some cases, the Iraqis had buried in the sand what appeared to be room-sized oil tanks or hot-water heaters to serve as individual bomb shelters. Other bunkers were dug deep into the desert pan and broadened into a number of interconnected rooms, but nowhere were they concentrated or organized well enough to slow the Marine advance.
At one point along the first Iraqi defense line, poorly laid anti-personnel mines could be seen sticking out of the sand in neat rows, making them easily disposable by U.S. combat engineers. With no resistance to speak of at the first defense line and little at the second, the engineers swiftly cut lanes through a number of mine fields in their path, and Marine spearhead and support traffic moved smoothly from the moment of attack.
"We drove right through them," said Staff Sgt. Robin Stacks, an artilleryman from Mount Pleasant, Texas. "Didn't nothing happen to us."
Cpl. Mark Thieme, 21, of Alexandria, Va., said his Humvee raced through the first defensive line so fast that "we were through before we realized what was going on." At the second, however, Iraqi artillery began to crash down around his vehicle. "The momentum picked up during the approach to the second breach," he said.
While U.S. artillery and air strikes took out Iraqi batteries as they revealed themselves ahead of the rolling front, Thieme centered an Iraqi T-62 tank in his missile sights. He fired before the tank, and the T-62 went up in smoke.
As young Marines began to realize what they had done, elation replaced the fear and grim determination that had earlier lined their faces. "One down," said a Marine of an Iraqi soldier lying prone in the sand, "500,000 more to go."
Another Marine jumped out of his truck near the air base and shouted to his companions: "Oh, man, I love this. Isn't this great?"
"Yeah," shouted his friend.
"I'm going to re-enlist," the first Marine shouted back with a laugh.
The jubilation contrasted sharply with the apprehension most of the young Marines said they felt the night before the attack. At a battlefield Mass on the eve of the assault, the youths prayed for their safety and that of their friends, and the Marine Corps Hymn that closed the service came out in a subdued whisper.
Monday, wherever Marines concentrated their vehicles, groups of Iraqi prisoners could be seen sitting in rows under armed guard. Iraqi boots, AK-47 assault rifles, rifle-propelled-grenade launchers and stylish berets emblazoned with the Iraqi Eagle lay strewn about the desert. Abandoned Iraqi pillboxes, foxholes and bunkers were cluttered with weapons, gas masks and other equipment that was gathered up by triumphant Marines.
by CNB