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

a day's worth of all classes of supply, moving right along with it.     Each task
force in the 1st Marine Division had the same setup.     If a machine gun went
down, we wouldn't keep the gunner waiting while we tried to fix it; we'd just
pull a replacement off the rack of machine guns the detachment carried, and
hand it to that gunner.  The same thing would apply if we lost a wire-guided
missile launcher or a light armored vehicle.     We had detachments from the
maintenance battalion up forward, and they would begin repairing equipment
immediately, but no one had to wait while they worked.      This responsiveness
of the combat service support system was something new--and it worked.

Proceedings: Was your medical support geared to work far forward, in the same
way?

Krulak: We had surgical support--trauma specialists--right up with the mobile
combat service support detachments. They could sort casualties out and perform
immediate lifesaving procedures--the same as regular surgeons, only more
capable. Then, with the direct support groups, right up there on the border, we
had the casualty collecting and clearing companies in place.  Behind them, we
had the trauma centers--at Al Khanjar, Kibrit, and Al Mish'ab.
    We thought that if we were going to take a lot of casualties, it would be
during the early stages of the breaching operations, so we kept our surgical
support teams up close to the advancing units and planned for overland
evacuation of casualties to the rear.  As things turned out, we bad relatively few
casualties and helicopters could in fact fly over the~bafflefield, so we loaded our
medevacs at a forward landing zone--just like Vietnam--and overfiew the border
medical facilities to take the casualties directly back to Al Khanjar.  It wasn't
that far-you could actually see the border from Al Khanjar.
    We were set up to handle a worst-case situation. Each of the mobile support
detachments had a collecting and clearing company mounted on trucks.       If we
started taking casualties, we could have driven up there and set up operating
rooms right next to the battle. Everything was mobile and ready to go.     Thank
God we didn't have to use that capability.

Proceedings: Desert Storm was probably the first time since World War I that
Marines faced the possibility of mass casualties from chemical or biological
attacks.  How did that affect the way you set things up?

Krulak: It played a major role.        It required us to stage a lot more water,
because that's what we were going to use for decontamination. We brought up
as many water-carrying vehicles as we could.     They weren't all tanker trucks;
they were anything that could carry containers of water.  All the mobile support
detachments had decon water with them, as did the collecting and clearing
companies and the hospitals.    Wherever we set up to treat casualties we had
decontamination water nearby.     If you bring a contaminated casualty into an
operating room, you wipe out that OR--and we just couldn't have that.