wITH THE I MARINE EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN DESERT SHIELD AND DESERT STORM 3 time in its 58-year history. Although Marines had been deployed to the region a number of timeS since World War II, in later years they found operations there to be frustrating, inconclusive, and at times, tragic. Memories of many Marines were still fresh with the 444-Jay Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81 and the ill-fated attempt to rescue them. More searing was the 1983 disaster at Beirut, Lebanon, where 241 Marines and sailors were killed in a terrorist suicide attack while on a peace-keeping mission.1 By coincidence, some of the members of the staff had recently returned from Florida where they were involved in a U.S. Central Command exercise known as Operation Internal Look. Its scenario was remarkably similar to the one now unfolding in the Gulf. During the course of the problem, Marine forces were assigned to defend the port and industrial complexes around Jubayl (Al Jubayl) in Saudi Arabia's eastern province. Central Command was the unified command that had evolved from the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force. Its primary responsibility involved contingen- cies in the Middle East. It was normally headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, and the billet of its Commander-in-Chief (CinC) alternated between an Army and a Marine general. The current CinC was General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA, a Vietnam war hero who later served alongside Marines as during Operation Urgent Fury on Grenada in 1983. 7th Ma tine ~pedillonaty Brigade Deploys Central Command's spearhead Marine Corps formation was the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade based at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms in California's Mojave Desert. Its leader was Major General John!. Hopkins, a craggy, highly decorated veteran of 34 years service with a raspy Brooklyn-accented voice. The ground combat element (GCE) of this Marine Air-Ground Task Force was Seventh Marines (Reinforced), commanded by Colonel Carlton W. Fulford, Jr. Although his team specialized in combined arms in a desert environment, nearly all of the Marines of the Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, had experienced some form of desert warfare training. ~There is little standardization in the transliteration of Arabic names and places. Thus, Juball, Al Jubayl, and Jubaul are all the same place. The article in front of place names such as Al Mishab, Ar Riyadh, Ad Dammam, and Ash Shu'aybah is usually omitted in English as is Ras (point or headland) in the names of coastal places; e.g., Ras Al Mishab becomes simply Mishab. Hereafter, place names will be rcfcrred to by their common English spellings. If their formal map transliterations differ, they will be placed within parentheses in the first usage; e.g., Safaniyah (Ra's as Saffaniyah) and Kibrit (Abraq al Kibrit). Marine formations deploy as integrated Marine Air-Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs) of various sizes: Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) commanded by a colonel, Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) commanded by a brigadier or major general, and Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) commanded by a lieutenant general. Each has a Command Element (CE), a Ground Combat Element (GCE), an Aviation Combat Element (ACE), and Combat Service Support Element (CSSE).First Page | Prev Page | Next Page | Src Image |