U.S. Marines in the Persian Gulf, 1990-1991


With the I Marine Expeditionary Force
in Desert Shield and Desert Storm

   On 8 August 1990, a long-planned change of command ceremony took place
at Camp Pendleton, California.  Walter E. Boomer pinned on the third star of
a lieutenant general of Marines and then assumed command of I Marine
Expeditionary Force and Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton. The lean officer
with the soft Tidewater accents of his native Rich Square, North Carolina, was
not quite 52 years old. He had been educated at the Randolph Macon Academy,
followed by Duke University, where he had been cadet battalion commander of
the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps.    In his 30 years of service, he had
two combat tours in Vietnam where he was awarded two Silver Stars and two
Bronze Stars for gallantry;    He had commanded platoons,     a company,  a
battalion, and a division. His instructor and staff assignments in Washington
and elsewhere included a term as Director of Public Affairs at Headquarters
Marine Corps. Subordinates found him intelligent, well-read in military history,
an approachable and good listener with a nonmercurial personality.  He was
respected for an uncanny sense of danger and an ability to bring people together
for a common purpose.     General Boomer would command the largest force of
Marines to go into combat in a generation and lead them to the Corps' most
stunning victory in 40 years.
   A major, and unanticipated, crisis had occurred in the Middle East and
Boomer found the staff hard at work under his Chief of Staff, Colonel Eric E.
Hastings, a former commander of an attack squadron, aircraft group, and
expeditionary unit.  Many of the staff had recently joined I MEF in the annual
summer turnover of assignments.    The crisis facing I MEF and the western
world as a whole was the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait on 2 August.
President George Bush, with Congressional approval, had decided to send
American forces to the Gulf' to defend Kuwait's neighbors to the south from
further invasion by Iraq's brutal and unpredictable Baathist dictator, Saddam
Hussein.
   Most vulnerable was Saudi Arabia with its large area and relatively small
armed forces.  Also at risk were the dther members of the Gulf Cooperation
Council, the smaller nation-emirates of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United
Arab Emirates. If proposed economic and political sanctions against Iraq failed,
the President was prepared to employ American forces as part of a multinational
effort to eject Saddam's forces from Kuwait.  To this end, the Islamic kingdom
of Saudi Arabia permitted the stationing of foreign troops on its soil for the first


   Most maps in the English language refer to the body of water in the middle of the world's
greatest petroleum producing region as the Persian Gulf. In Arabic speaking countrics, it is known
as the Arabian Gulf. This account will adopt the English usage or simply "the Gulfl"