136                                    U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULP, 19~1991

the battalion level at the same level of proficiency as a regular battalion, but
they came on strong.  They came in right after Christmas.   I think it was 27
December.

Proceedings: How about reserve artillery batteries?

Myatt: They arrived about the same time.    We had Hotel and India Batteries
from the 3d Battalion, 14th Marines.   Hotel Battery on G+ 1 used direct fire to
destroy a tank and an Iraqi rocketAaunching system that was about 800 meters
from their position.

Proceedings: The role of the reserves is a major issue. Is it easier for a regular
division such as yours to accept smaller units rather than larger ones?

Myatt: It worked well.  A lot of the Marines who were in these batteries had
not been off active duty all that long, and the remainder--the majority of them,
I think--were college students.  We pulled a lot of people out of colleges to do
this.   They were superb.   Many of them are in the PLC [Platoon Leader
Candidate] program, and I suspect you'll see them as officers.

Proceedings: What about getting ready to breach the mine fields? General
Schwarzkopf certainly gave both Marine divisions high marks for that.

Myatt: Of course, we had built up the obstacle belts to be more than they really
were.   We didn't have a very good picture of what they really looked like until
I sent in reconnaissance teams; [General] Bill Keys also did that.
    I had reconnaissance teams in there for three days to look at the first obstacle
belt.  When they came out, we had a much better picture of what they were.
There was a high density of mines in there, and there were mines of all
kinds--Italian, Soviet--it was a hodgepodge. You could almost see the boundary
of a brigade or a boundary between divisions based on particular portions of the
obstacle belt-the better the division, the better the obstacle belt; the less
disciplined the division, the less sophisticated the obstacle belt.  We could see
the mines from the ground, because either they didn't bury them or over time
they didn't maintain them.  The wind had blown the sand off the top of them.

Proceedings: How effective was your mine-clearing capability?

Myatt: We had what we needed in terms of the explosive line charges.         The
difficulty was that some of the mines cannot be exploded by a sympathetic
detonation; these must be mechanically breached.  Some of the equipment came
in late. We put the track-width mine plows on our tanks, and we installed the
threeshot line charges on our AAV-7 assault amphibians.  I mechanized the 1st
Combat Engineer Battalion with AAV-7s and split the battalion into two
obstacle-clearing detachments to support Task Force Ripper and Task Force