40 U.S. MARINES IN TllE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991 near Al Jahra, an administrative backload of forces at Jubayl or Mishab for shore-to-shore operations on the southern Kuwait coast, a deliberate defense in- zone to anchor CentCom's main attack to the west; i.e., a hammer and anvil concept. General Boomer selected a combination of the first and third for further development.~ The force's offensive planning also envisioned psychological operations. This need arose out of the desire to destabilize the Iraqi forces along the obstacle belts and to manage a civilian population, some of whom might be Palestinians who had allied themselves with the Iraqis. To accomplish this, on 5 January CentCom placed Element 9-1 of the U.S. Army's 8th Psychological Operations Task Force in general support of MarCent. The element commander, Major Thomas H. Gerblick, USA, had previously completed offensive planning in December and identified the need for additional assets to support MarCent operations. He formed 46 Army and 27 Marine personnel plus Kuwaiti linguists into 26 loudspeaker teams including one carried by helicopter. This represented about 40 per cent of the theater "PsyOps" assets. The MarCent share was the greatest, since the force would be attacking into the highest concentrations of enemy forces and into built-up areas. The teams deployed forward with the ground combat elements and used prerecorded tapes covering various situations as well as live broadcasts by Arabic linguists. Moving to the Offense On 5-6 January 991, Lieutenant General Boomer moved his command post 166 road kilometers northwest. The new location of `,MEF Main" was a few kilometers west of Aramco's Safaniyah (Ras As Safflniyah) oil separation and water distillation plants on the coast, about 67 kilometers southeast of the Kuwait border. The site was a small workers' camp abandoned in 1984 and it required minimal preparation. Its placement on a slight rise favored line-of-sight communication. Certain staff functions including parts of G-1 and G-4, remained at Jubayl. Now for a brief time, the force headquarters was forward of its major subordinate commands. The Jubayl command post at the "Police Station" became I Marine Expeditionary Force (Rear) under the command of Major General John Hopkins. To defend the sprawling Jubayl Vital Area and other key points from both conventional and terrorist attack, Boomer assigned the 24th Marines, the two-battalion Reserve regiment from Kansas City, which had just arrived from Camp Lejeune. Conventional doctrine called for rear area security to be drawn from supported units, and up to this point 1st Force Service Support Group had provided the troops for the mission. But now General Boomer wanted to dedicate that group's specialists solely to the tremendous task of shifting combat service support north for the offensive. The 24th Marines were a ready-made solution to the problem of providing security to many dispersed sites. Each of its companies was capable of independent duty and the companies were unusually cohesive, having trained together for years at local centers throughoutFirst Page | Prev Page | Next Page | Src Image |