135                                  U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 199~1991

Proceedings: Could you describe what happened?

Myatt: It happened when the Iraqis attacked out of the southernmost and
southwest comer of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. They came out with SO tanks and
they were met there by the 1st and 3d LAI Battalions--Task Force Shepherd.
`bat night, in the course of the battle--and recognize that there were a lot of
vehicles on the battlefield--an LAV was hit by a Maverick missile fired by an
A-iO.  I lost seven Marines. The other LAV we lost was hit by a TOW missile
from another LAV up close to the border.    So that was a true fratricide issue,
too.

Proceedings: Did you see anything that showed some promise for the luture, to
help the shooters identi~ what they are shooting at?

Myatt: No. The problem was identified early on.      In fact, the MEF sent
messages back Stateside in     October saying,  "See if R&D   [research and
development] can do anything."     We tried several things.  Some of them
worked, but they almost worked too well.    On top of each of the vehicles, of
course, we had the air panels, but those don't help at night.
    When we went into the ground campaign, we had infrared beacons that were
pointed directly up, so that if you were wearing night-vision goggles flying your
aircraft, you could pick out our vehicles.  The problem was that Iraqis with
night-vision goggles could also pick them out because the beacon tended to sil-
houette the vehicle. They were so bright, there was an aura of light that was
following our vehicles around. After the first night, our people turned them off.

Proceedings: The danger seems to be from direct-fire weapons at night.  Did
your Marines have any close calls from artillery?

Myatt: We had cases where the friendly artillery came close to our folks, but
we had no casualties.  We were always able to shut it down quick enough.
    To have two divisions attack abreast the way we did, with no instances of
friendly fire between us--even though we had units cross in front of each
other--is a tribute to the performance and situational awareness of the young
company commanders and platoon commanders.       They were coordinating and
talking with each other.  The coordination between the 10th and 11th Marines
[artillery regiments] was superb.

Proceedings: How useful was the global positioning system [GPS]? Did you feel
you knew where you were most of the time?

Myatt: We did have some GPS and we had the position locating and reporting
system [PLRS].   1 had a lot of people that doubted the PLRS capability; when
the war was over, we had a lot of PLRS fans.  You can program the system to