ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOrATED BIBLIOGRAPHY                                     137

Papa Bear.    This gave the combat engineers the ability to haul their own line
charges and it gave them the mobility they needed on that particular battlefield.

Proceedings: What units were in these Task Forces?

Myatt: Task Force Ripper had the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines [1/5], 1/7, the 3d
Tank Battalion, and Headquarters 7th Marines. Task Force Papa Bear consisted
of 1/1, 3/9, and the 1st Tank Battalion.  Task Force Grizzly had 2/7, 3/7, and
Headquarters 4th Marines. We gave them names because it was easier for a guy
from 2/7 to identify with Task Force Grizzly than to identify with the 4th
Marines.

Proceedings: Did the remotely piloted vehicles [RPVS] provide intelligence?
How else did you employ them?

Myatt: The RPVs were in direct support of the division when we went into the
campaign.     They're just super.  It was the most timely information that we
received--I'm a big fan.  We found out--rediscovered, I guess, since we should
have known--that you can adjust artillery fire with RPVs.  The air wing put a
remote receive station inside a Huey so they could see what was out in front of
them when they were deploying the Cobras.       We used a Pioneer RPV as a
spotter for the naval gunfire when the 16-inch guns were firing on Kuwait
International Airport.

Proceedings: What happened as you pressed forward?       You got through the
minefields.   How did your weapons work?

Myatt: The weapons all worked, and we've got to draw the right lessons from
this.   We didn't have to fire TOW missiles over water on this particular
battlefield.   It was undulating terrain, and the Iraqis were very clever on
reverse-slope defenses with decoys, but everything we had worked.
   The thermal night sight for our light armored vehicles proved instrumental
to our weapon effectiveness.  When General [Alfred] Gray [the Commandant of
the Marine Corps] visited us at Christmas, he saw what a problem we had
because our LAVs lacked thermal night sights.     He went back to the United
States, got the engineers at [Marine Corps Logistics Base] Albany, Georgia,
working on the project, and by the end of January we had thermal night sights
on our LAVs.

Proceedings: You mention LAYs.        Did you lose any Marines to air strikes
because of misidentification?

Myatt: I lost 14 Marines to friendly fire.  Thirteen of the 14 were killed prior
to G-Day.     Eleven of those 13 were killed on 29 January.