ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIoGRAPHY                                           53

at the same time, we launched amphibious feints and naval gunfire in this area,
so that they continued to think we were going to be attacking along this coast,
and therefore, fixed their forces in this position. Our hope was that by fixing the
forces in this position and with this attack through here in this position, we
would basically keep the forces here, and they wouldn't know what was going
on out in this area. I believe we succeeded in that very well.
   At 4 o'clock in the morning, the Marines, the 1st Marine Division and the
2d Marine Division, launched attacks through the barrier system.  They were
accompanied by the US Army Tiger Brigade of the 2d Armored Division.           At
the same time, over here, two Saudi task forces also launched a penetration
through this barrier.   But while they were doing that, at 4 o'clock in the
morning over here, the 6th French Armored Division, accompanied by a brigade
of the 82d Airborne, also launched an overland attack to their objective up in
this area. As Salman airfield, and we were held up a little bit by the weather,
but by 8 o'clock in the morning, the 101st Airborne air assault launched an air
assault deep into enemy territory to establish a forward operating base in this
location right here.  Let me talk about each one of those moves.
   First of all, the Saudis over here on the east coast did a terrific job.  They
went up against the very, very tough barrier systems; they breached the barrier
very, very effectively; they moved out aggressively; and continued their attacks
up the coast.
   I can't say enough about the two Marine divisions.    If I used words like
brilliant, it would really be an underdescription of the absolutely superb job that
they did in breaching the so--called impenetrable barrier.  It was a classic,
absolutely classic, military breaching of a very, very tough minefield, barbed
wire, fire trenches-type barrier. They went through the first barrier like it was
water.  They went across into the second barrier line, even though they were
under artillery fire at the time--they continued to open up that breach.     Then
they brought both divisions streaming through that breach. Absolutely superb
operation, a textbook, and I think it will be studied for many, many years to
come as the way to do it.
   I would also like to say that the French did an absolutely superb job of
moving out rapidly to take their objective out here, and they were very, very
successful, as was the 101st.  Again, we still had the Special Forces located in
this area.
   What we found was, as soon as we breached these obstacles here and started
bringing pressure, we started getting a large number of surrenders. I think I
talked to some of you about that this evening when I briefed you on the evening
of the 24th. We finally got a large number of surrenders. We also found that
these forces right here, were getting a large number of surrenders and were
meeting with a great deal of success.
   We were worried about the weather.     The weather was going to get pretty
bad the next day, and we were worried about launching this air assault.       We
also started to have a huge number of atrocities of really the most unspeakable
type committed in downtown Kuwait City, to include reports that the desaliniza-
tion plant had been destroyed.   When we heard that, we were quite concerned