ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY                                      107

   Take them out.
   The laconic command unleashed a furious assault that scorched the desert
black and silenced the enemy guns.
   The roving headquarters sometimes got closer to the middle of things than
anyone anticipated. At one point, shells from dug-in Iraqi guns were screaming
overhead from somewhere in front of us and answering American fire was rip-
ping overhead in the other direction. In the middle--where we were--there were
prayers that rounds from neither side would fall short.
   Although Boomer's cavalcade stayed on the move, the threat from mines kept
the drivers careful to remain inside the same rutted tread or tire tracks that had
been traversed earlier by hundreds of tanks and trucks.  Straying even a few
inches off the traveled path could mean death from an undetected mine.
   Periodically, commanding generals rolled their vehicles to desert rendezvous
points, consulting over maps and paper cups of luke-warm coffee.  They traded
war plans as calmly as they traded throat lozenges to beat back the hacking
coughs and sore throats brought on by the short, frigid nights and long, stressful
days.
   They tramped across the sand from mobile communications vans to tent
command centers to satellite linkups--listening, planning, coordinating, fretting.
Clutching folded maps, they summoned up radio voices at distant command
posts and war rooms with code names like Gray Oak, Denver Foxtrot, Pitbull,
Top Gun and Cobra. When communications links failed, they fumed and cursed
and sent young enlisted men scurrying in all directions. In between strategy ses-
sions and radio conversations, they paced the sand, pondering and worrying.
   Boomer's closest adviser in the field was his operations chief, or G-3 in
military parlance: Col. Bill Steed, a Mississippian with a deep drawl and an
unflappable demeanor.   Boomer consulted often with Maj. Gen. William Keys,
commander of the 2nd Marine Division, whose own G-3 was a man with a
different Southern accent, Col. Ron Richard, a Cajun from Basile, La. Periodic-
ally, Kuwaiti Col. Mahmaud Boushahri advised the generals of potential hiding
places and ambush points for the Iraqi military around Kuwait City.       He
accurately predicted that Iraqis could leap out of burning oil fields and hide
artillery and tanks behind ridge lines west of the city.
   The headquarters' drivers and radiomen and other enlisted troops were a
study in frustration: Here they were, confined to a command convoy and forced
to watch others pull the lanyards on the howitzers and fire the tank cannons on
nearby horizons. While generals and colonels directed the war from a few yards
away, the enlisted men slumped against their armored vehicles and Humvees,
or whiled away the time trying to raise the BBC on shortwave radios in hopes
of gleaning details about the war that was going on all around them.
   When it became apparent the Iraqis would rather give up than fight, the
persistent fear of unexpected disasters over the next sandy knoll prevented the
commanders from sharing much of the early exhilaration of the combat troops.
The life and death demands of fast-paced war brought a sharpness and finality
to their decisions that seemed alien to the peacetime military bureaucracy of the
Pentagon.  The mood of the brass remained as grim as the backdrop of the