ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY                                     105


Storming the Desert with the Generals

by Molly Moore

The Washington Post, 14 April 1991


   Three days before the Desert Storm ground campaign began, the Marines'
top general in the Persian Gulf invited me into his command post for what
turned Out to be the rest of the war.
   Lt.Gen. Walter Boomer's official letter of invitation promised no "major
scoops or revealing insights" and warned me to "expect some dead periods
when there will be little to report."
   There were no dead periods.    Life with the top brass of the Marines was an
unforgettable experience.  In the postwar euphoria of what has been hailed as
a quick and easy victory, it may be forgotten that there was nothing quick or
easy about this operation for the troops who fought it or the commanders who
directed it.
   The charts at the daily Riyadh press briefings made the victory appear almost
effortless, a smoothly run war of maneuver and speed against a clumsy and
overmatched enemy.  But the battlefield reality was vastly different, a string of
intense episodes punctuated by split-second decisions and last-minute revisions
that the generals sometimes mapped on the backs of cardboard boxes as their
troops swept through the desert.
   The cameras have shown smiling troopers waving triumphantly as Desert
Storm roared onward.  But the videotaped scenes simply do not reveal the raw
emotion that bound the troops and their commanders together--a thick mix of
pride, camaraderie and elation seldom encountered in civilian life.
   I joined the generals the night before the ground assault began, reaching
Boomer's compound after a seven-hour journey in the back of a military van
from a base deep in the rear. The Marine headquarters was a collection of tents
buried within sand berms, fighting vehicles and supply transports just a few
miles from the Iraqi lines.
   From Boomer down to the greenest grunt, everyone faced--and had to face
down--the fear of dying.   That fear became real in the days leading up to the
ground war, when the Marines began swallowing fistfuls of pills--including
nauseating nerve-gas antidotes    and anthrax  inhibitor--to ward off possible
chemical or biological warfare by the Iraqis.  Later, when the troops charged
into the Iraqi minefields in stiff chemical suits, they did so thinking they might
die, twitching like cockroaches, in the fine mist of a chemical attack.


Copyright 1991 The Washing~on Posi. Reprinted with Permission