ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY                                        3

parties on suspect shipping, operations against terrorists, and amphibious raids,
day or night.5
   This special~perations capability is something the Corps has developed to
a high art, and it has been a particular interest of the present Commandant of
the Marine Corps.       Anyone wishing to understand the Marine Corps must
understand the status of its Commandant.       There has been a Commandant,
designated as such, ever since the United States Marine Corps was authorized
by the Congress and approved by President John Adams on 11July 1798.      The
Corps numbers its Commandants, as kings and popes are numbered.           The
incumbent is the 28th Commandant.    No other service chief seems to have quite
the clear and unequivocal control of his service as that enjoyed by the resident
of the Commandant's House at the Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C. Since
1806, all Commandants have lived in that house, the oldest official residence in
Washington still being used for its original purpose.6
   The present Commandant, General Alfred M. (~Al~F) Gray, is now in the last
year of his four-year tenure. Sixty-two years old, stocky in build, born in
Rahway, New Jersey, and given to chewing tobacco, he spends as little time in
Washington as possible.7 Gray enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1950, reached
the rank of sergeant, was commissioned in 1952, and served with the 1st Marine
Division in Korea.      Trained as an artillery officer, he was soon doing more
esoteric things.   In the early 1960s, as a young major, he was engaged in some
highly  interesting   intelligence operations in Vietnam.  As  a   colonel, he
commanded the ground combat element of the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade
in the 1975 evacuation of Saigon.   Immediately before becoming Commandant
in 1987, he was the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic, and
Commanding General, II Marine Amphibious Force.8 Before that, he com-
manded the 2d Marine Division.      He is imaginative, innovative, iconoclastic,
articulate, charismatic, and compassionate.   His Marines love him.
   Elsewhere in the world on 1 August 1990, the 24th and 26th MEUs were in
predeployment workup training at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.       The 11th
MEU    was  undergoing special~perations training     in California.  The 3d
Battalion, 9th Marines, embarked in the Belleau Wood (LHA-3), was at Seattle,
Washington, taking part in the annual Sea Fair.9 An engineer platoon was
ashore in Sierra Leone, as part of a West Africa training cruise, working with
local forces and keeping an eye cocked towards neighboring Liberia.  A Marine
detachment in the Caribbean was engaged in anti-drug trafficking operations, and
another detachment was operating with other federal agents along our Southwest
border.  A reinforced battalion from the 7th Marine Regiment was undergoing
mountain warfare training in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Elements of
the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade were exercising in Hawaii.
   Then came the second day of August.      At about 0100 local time, in opening
moves reminiscent of North Korea's invasion of South Korea 40 years earlier,
three Iraqi Republican Guard divisions crossed the Kuwaiti border and began
converging on the capital of Kuwait City from the north and west, coordinating
their movement with the landing by helicopter of a special~perations division
in the city itself.  The forces had linked up by 0530 and by nightfall, Kuwait