WITH THE 1ST MARINE DWISION IN DESERT SHIELD AND DESERT STORM            49


during its failed offensive at the end of January made this fact glaringly obvious.
Thus, in anticipation of large numbers of enemy prisoners, General Myatt had
assigned the 1st Battalion, 25th Marines, to handle captured Iraqis and keep the
mechanized task forces unencumbered for a rapid drive toward Kuwait City.
He appropriately called the new task force "Warden."81
   Equally evident was the damage caused by the ceaseless air bombardment.
Throughout this period,  General Myatt was concerned about the enemy's
artillery massing near Jaber Air Base and the Burqan Oilfield. During the
division's drive to the second obstacle belt, the mechanized task forces would
be vulnerable to Iraqi long-range artillery that could not be reached by Marine
counterbattery fire. Intelligence sources estimated the Iraqis had four brigades
of artillery with the potential to inflict large numbers of casualties or even stop
the Marine advance. The sources located the enemy's command and control
system near the Jaber Air Base. Myatt felt that the location was the nerve center
of the Iraqi defenses. By G-Day the targets had been bombarded from the air
and by artillery untit few guns fired against the Marines during the advance. The
enemy never managed to achieve an effective counterbattery posture. Never-
theless, in the days before the ground offensive, no one knew the extent to
which Iraqi defenses had deteriorated. As the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions
swung into position, the enemy showed no intention of withdrawing from
Kuwait. It was clear to all that Kuwait was going to have to be cleared by
ground assault. The sandtable exercise held on 20 February confirmed the
division's concept of maneuver as defined in Frag Order 5-91 to Operation
Order 1~91.82
   On  18 February, General Myatt ordered a reconnaissance effort which
resulted in the insertion of three reconnaissance teams from Company A, 1st
Reconnaissance Battalion, into the first obstacle belt.83 Each team immediately
conducted an assessment of the minefield and enemy defenses in its zone. The
right and left flank teams also searched for a path through the minefield in
preparation for the passages of Task Forces Taro and Grizzly respectively. The
teams encountered few problems, but the team searching for Task Force
Grizzly's lane could not find a path through the minefield.
   The movement of the reconnaissance teams into Kuwait coincided with the
beginning of the effort to cut lanes through the berm. In an effort to distract the
enemy from this activity, Lieutenant Colonel Charles W. Kershaw, commanding
Task Force Troy conducted a combined-arms artillery raid the morning of 19
February. The raid did not provoke an immediate Iraqi response. Two days
later, though, an enemy patrol of BMP-2 vehicles, armed with Sagger anti-tank
missiles and 30mm cannon, drove toward OP 4 to investigate the dust clouds
caused by the Marine engineer and Naval Construction Battalion bulldozers
leveling the berm. A TOW missile fired by a gunner from the 3d Marines
slammed into the lead vehicle, killing its crew, and the remainder of the patrol
turned around and fled. As 3d Marines began moving to its positions on the
division's right flank, Colonel Fulks established Task Force Grizzly's blocking
position about four kilometers inside Kuwait. It was the first allied foothold in
the occupied country.