66                                      U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 19901991

    Q. Could you give us some indication of what ,s happening to the forces left
in Kuwait? what kind of forces are they, their size and are they engaged at the
moment?
    A: You mean these up here?

    Q. No, the ones in Kuwait, the three symbols to the, right.
    A: These right here?

    Q. Yes.
    A: I'm not even sure they're here. I think they're probably gone.      We
picked up a lot of signals of people.  There's a road that goes right around here
and goes out that way.  And I think they probably, more than likely, are gone.
So what you're really faced with is you're ending tip fighting these Republican
Guard heavy mech and armor units that are there, and basically what we want
to do is capture their equipment.

    Q. So they are all out of Kuwait then? So in fact they are all out of Kuwait?
    A: No, I can't say that. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there are not
pockets of people all around here who are just waiting to surrender as soon as
somebody uncovers them and comes to them.       But we are certainly not getting
any internal fighting across our lines of communication or any of that sort of
thing.

    Q: General, not to take anything away from the Army and the Marines on
the breaching maneuvers .
    A: Thank you, sir. I hope you don't.

    Q. But many of the reports that the pools have gotten from your field
commanders and the soldiers were indicating that these fortificallons were not
as intense or as sophisticated as they were led to believe.  Is this a result of the
pounding that they took that you described earlier, or they were perhaps
overrated in the first place?
    A: Have you ever been in a minefield?

    Q. No.
    A: All there's got to be is one mine, and that's intense. There were plenty
of mines out there, plenty of barbed wire.    There were fire trenches, most of
which we set off ahead of time.   But there were still some that were out there.
The Egyptian forces had to go through fire trenches. There were a lot of booby
traps, a lot of barbed wire.  Not a fun place to be. I've got to tell you probably
one of the toughest things that anyone ever has to do is go up there and walk
into something like that-and go through it, and consider that while you're going
through it and clearing it, at the same time you're probably under fire by en-
emy artillery.  That's all I can say.