U.s. Marines in the Persian Gulf, 1990-1991: Combat Service Support in Desert Shield and Desert Storm

This monograph tells the story of the Marines and sailors of the 1St Force Service Support Group, the 2d Force Service Support Group, Marine Wing Support Group 37, and the 3d Naval Construction Regiment whose combined efforts gave the I Marine Expeditionary Force the ability to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm. This document is part of a preliminary series of official Marine Corps histories that cover Marine Corps operations in the Gulf War. During the Persian Gulf crisis, the History and Museums Division sent a team to Saudi Arabia to produce first-hand accounts of unit operations. In November 1990, five Reserve officers from the Mobilization Training Unit (MTU) (History)-DC-7 arrived in Saudi Arabia, deployed to different commands, accompanied their units throughout the battle, and produced powerful narratives on the operations of I Marine Expeditionary Force, the 1st Marine Division, the 2d Marine Division, and Marine Forces Afloat. Unforeseen circumstances prevented a logistics history from being included in the series, so the Secretary of the Navy recalled Major Steven M. Zimmeck, USMC (Ret), to active duty to complete this account of Marine Corps combat service support in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. This monograph is predominantly based upon documentation collected during and immediately after Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Unit command chronologies and interviews recorded by the Battlefield Assessment Team served as the basis of a comment edition which was sent out to key participants in the events depicted. These comments were then incorporated into the final narrative. This methodology produced a history that approaches the accuracy and vigor of the MTU's first-hand accounts. Please note that this manuscript was prepared using different files which contained missing pages. This was done to ensure that ALL of the pages from the original manuscript are intact.