ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOrATED B~LIoGRAPHY                                           153


and we prepared to continue the attack that afternoon with the Tiger Brigade on
the left, the 6th Marines in the center, and the 8th Marines on the right.  Light
armored vehicles, which had entered Kuwait early (CentCom's policy had
changed late in the game), performed scouting and reconnaissance missions on
the left flank, while units from the division's reconnaissance battalion screened
the right flank.
     I need to digress again. The light armored vehicles, in their first combat test
with the Marines, really proved their worth--shooting and moving, shooting and
moving.   They killed more Iraqi tanks than we realized at first, and they took
the first Iraqi prisoners.  An Iraqi general we captured on the second day told
us that he misidentified the first infiltration of light armored vehicles as the main
armored attack, even though we had planned it as more of a diversionary attack.
     Intelligence sources told us that we would probably come into contact with
the 80th Iraqi Tank Brigade, their operational reserve force, attacking into our
center.  But large-scale attacks never materialized, and we now think that the
80th Brigade was just folded back into the Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division, which
both the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions eventually chopped to pieces.
     We captured 5,000 Iraqi prisoners the first day. They would take us under
fire.  We would return fire with effect--killing a few--and then they would just
quit. That proved to be the pattern for the entire 100-hour war. Once we took
them under heavy fire, they'd fire a few more rounds, then quit.
     On the morning of the third day, General Boomer cleared me to drive on
Kuwait City, using the Tiger Brigade to envelop to the west, sealing off an area
called Al Jahar.   Around      1000 that morning, I called in my subordinate
commanders to give them mission-type orders.     I didn't give them much time
to prepare, but they still managed to jump off around noontime.  When we got
within ten miles of Kuwait City, I cut the Tiger Brigade loose to envelop to the
left.  They sealed a major intersection on the escape route to Iraq, and trapped
thousands of fleeing Iraqis.   By the evening of the third day, we were poised to
enter the city the next morning.  In the morning, the word came down:       `Don't
go."
     The Coalition forces from the region had been selected to enter Kuwait City.
The following evening, we met with them at Al Jahar, to coordinate the passage
of lines. We held onto a line called the Six-Ring Road; they passed through our
lines and entered the city.   That was the plan all along.

Proceedings: What about the timing of the cease-fire?

Keys: I think it probably came at the right time.  At least it seemed that way
when the word came down.       In retrospect, it is clear that we could have done
a lot more damage to the Iraqi forces if we had pressed on more quickly.        It
now appears that they started bugging out of Kuwait as soon as we crossed the
southern border.  But at the time it would not have made sense to expose our
forces to counterattacks by overextending ourselves, under the assumption that