In
August of 1991, soldiers from the Iraqi Republican Guards invaded
the small Persian Gulf country of Kuwait with the intention of
stealing an entire country. As "Desert Shield"
turned to "Desert Storm," a small group of soldiers were deployed
to the KTO to assist with the defeat of the invading army.
This group of soldiers from the 204th Military Intelligence
Battalion became known as the "Desert Storm Ruffians."
The Ruffians worked as targeting analysts in the
theatre level intelligence center known as the ARCENT TCAE.
They endured Scud attacks, suffocating smoke from oil well fires
ignited by retreating Iraqi forces, sudden sandstorms, tainted food
and water, snipers, and boredom. But the one thing they hadn't
counted on was the lasting effect from the horrors and the sheer
brutality of war that they witnessed.
The Ruffians were tasked with a difficult mission under difficult
conditions, and this book is based on their story.
Anthony Swofford's Jarhead is the first Gulf War memoir by a
frontline infantry marine, and it is a searing, unforgettable
narrative. Amazon Description.
You need to read the customer reviews before you buy
this book. There are a lot of negative reviews particularly
from Marines. However, there are also a lot of positive
reviews.
Black Hawk
Down meets Jarhead in this gripping account by a former Marine
officer about a pivotal, all-but-forgotten battle during the first
Gulf War.
On January 29, 1991, Saddam Hussein launched his three
best armored divisions across the Kuwait border and into the Islamic
Holy Land of Saudi Arabia. Their mission: to disrupt the massive
US-led Coalition preparing to evict them from Kuwait and to bloody
to the Americans on CNN. Caught without warning in the path of this
juggernaut were scattered groups of lightly-armed US Marines and
Special Forces soldiers. This is the story of how these elite
fighting men escaped the Iraqi onslaught and reversed the assault
with an unprecedented combination of high-tech weaponry and American
know-how. This is the story of the first battle of the smart bomb
age. Amazon Description.
Their
mission: To take out the scuds. Eight went out. Five came back.
Their story had been closed in secrecy. Until now. They were British
Special Forces, trained to be the best. In January 1991 a squad of
eight men went behind the Iraqi lines on a top secret mission. It
was called Bravo Two Zero. On command was Sergeant Andy McNab.
"They are the true unsung heroes of the war." -- Lt. Col.
Steven Turner, American F-15E commander. Dropped into "scud
alley" carrying 210-pound packs, McNab and his men found
themselves surrounded by Saddam's army. Their radios didn't work.
The weather turned cold enough to freeze diesel fuel. And they had
been spotted. Their only chance at survival was to fight their way
to the Syrian border seventy-five miles to the northwest and swim
the Euphrates river to freedom. Eight set out. Five came back.
"I'll tell you who destroyed the scuds -- it was the British
SAS. They were fabulous." -- John
Major, British Prime
Minister. This is their story. Filled with no-holds-barred detail
about McNab's capture and excruciating torture, it tells of men
tested beyond the limits of human endurance... and of the war you
didn't see on CNN. Dirty, deadly, and fought outside the rules. From
the Publisher.
In 1990, U.S.
Army Major Martin Stanton was a military advisor stationed in Saudi
Arabia. Encouraged by the Army to broaden his cultural horizons, and
assured by the U.S. embassy that Kuwait was perfectly safe, Stanton
took off for a long weekend there. Roused by gunshots his first
night in Kuwait City, Stanton looked out the window and discovered
he was in the middle of a full-scale invasion.
Iraq’s Gulf War had begun—and in the Kuwait City
Sheraton, overlooking the entire western part of town, the United
States had inadvertently encouraged an Army officer to go
"behind enemy lines". As fighting continued and bullets
hit the hotel’s facade, Stanton began phoning in intelligence
reports to his superiors. He noted the arrival of the first tanks
and their strategic deployment—to places with the most shade—as
well as the Sheraton’s transition from hotel to Iraqi military
headquarters. From the top floor of the hotel, Stanton would scour
the surrounding streets with his binoculars, then descend to the
lobby, where he’d lounge around the door of the Iraqi command
post’s map room—conveniently converted from the Sheraton’s
conference room—gleaning what he could and reporting back
intelligence. Without a doubt, the Pentagon had unwittingly scored a
major coup. Amazon Description.
This definitive account of
the Gulf War relates the previously untold story of the U.S. war
with Iraq in the early 1990s. The author follows the 42-day war from
the first night to the final day, providing vivid accounts of
bombing runs, White House strategy sessions, firefights, and bitter
internal conflicts.
Faith Beyond
Belief is a testimony of the unquestioned, personal faith of David
Eberly, the senior allied prisoner of the Gulf War. We are with him
when his F-15E is hit by a surface-to-air missile, as he evades the
enemy in the Iraqi desert, and as he endures forty-three days and
nights in the cold, dark cells of Baghdad. We descend into a black
hole and witness the courage of a man confronted with fear, dismal
isolation, starvation and psychological torment in Saddam's prisons.
Together, we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and
ultimately, share his journey to freedom.
On
the second day of the Gulf War, Marine pilot Lt. Col. Cliff Acree
was shot down behind Iraqi lines. As squadron commander, Cliff was a
potential gold mine of classified information that the Iraqis
desperately needed. During his forty-eight days of captivity, he was
singled out for mistreatment that included brutal beatings, torture,
and starvation. Throughout it all, he refused to put his fellow
Marines at risk by complying with Iraqi demands.
Back home, Cliff's wife, Cindy, was suddenly thrust
into an international media storm when his battered face was
broadcast on the world's television screens. Dealing with
politicians, Hollywood celebrities, and other concerned people
around the world, she stood poised before the public eye and became
an effective advocate for the war's POW/MIA families. Cindy appeared
strong, but she feared that she would never see Cliff alive again.
After seven long months apart, with the war finally
over, Cliff and Cindy joyously reunited on the tarmac of Andrews Air
Force Base as a grateful nation applauded their loyalty and courage.
Although determined to return to a normal life together, they found
their struggles were far from over. The intense media scrutiny
continued, and the lingering physical and psychological wounds of
Desert Storm tested the bond between them.
In THE GULF BETWEEN US, Cliff and Cindy take turns
telling us about their heart-wrenching and inspiring experiences.
This unique look at war is a timeless story that shows the strength,
patriotism, and devotion of an extraordinary couple.
Every Man a Tiger
by Tom Clancy, with General Chuck Horner (Contributing)
This Tom Clancy real-life
military thriller is more nuance than his novels, because its
object is not simply to dramatize armed conflict but to relate the
life lessons of his source,
jet-pilot-turned-Desert-Storm-air-commander General Chuck Horner.
Horner is no war cheerleader like General "Buck" Turgidson
in Dr. Strangelove. He loathes the arrogance of the backwards,
nuke-happy Strategic Air Command and the madly out-of-touch
Vietnam
War planner Robert McNamara. McNamara confesses his folly in two
books Argument Without End and
In
Retrospect, but Horner's you-are-there account more vividly
demonstrates Vietnam's grim lessons. He flew an F-105 Thunderbird
"Thud" fighter in the Wild Weasels, the unit with the
highest medals-per-aircrew ratio, knew pilots who were stoned to
death by villagers, and realized all the bombing did zero good.
"All we really had to do was befriend Ho," says Horner
sensibly. "Seems he wasn't part of a monolithic Communist plot,
and hated the Chinese more than anything else." Horner is savvy
about the screwups, the achievements, and the political maneuvering
in and after the Gulf War, as leaders and branches of service
battled for PR victories. His idea of a hero is Boomer McBroom's
pilot Captain Gentner Drummond, who won a Flying Cross medal for
refusing AWACS orders to down a jet that turned out to be a Saudi
ally. Horner thinks the interservice and international cooperation
in the Gulf War was way better than in Vietnam, but there's ample
room for improvement. The action scenes aren't quite as brilliant as
those in Black
Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, but Clancy fans will find
plenty to admire. Horner's improbable survival of a 150-m.p.h.
near-crash in Libya in 1962 belongs in a Tom Clancy film.
Amazon.
This is a detailed study
of the Allied ground combat units that served in Operation Desert
Storm. It lists the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, British, French and
Arab units that served in the Gulf and depicts the command
relationships between the units before and during Desert Storm. It
identifies the major types of equipment that were used by these
units, and presents substantial information about the units, such as
identifying the Apache attack helicopter that fired the first shots
of Desert Storm, the first Patriot missile to engage an Iraqi Scud,
and which of them actually saw combat. It compares the Army and
Marine Corps forces deployed to the Gulf and compares Desert Storm
to Vietnam and Korea.
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