40                                      U.S. MARINES IN TllE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991

near Al Jahra, an administrative backload of forces at Jubayl or Mishab for
shore-to-shore operations on the southern Kuwait coast, a deliberate defense in-
zone to anchor CentCom's main attack to the west; i.e., a hammer and anvil
concept.   General Boomer selected a combination of the first and third for
further development.~
     The force's offensive planning also envisioned psychological operations.
This need arose out of the desire to destabilize the Iraqi forces along the
obstacle belts and to manage a civilian population, some of whom might be
Palestinians who had allied themselves with the Iraqis.  To accomplish this, on
5 January CentCom placed Element 9-1 of the U.S. Army's 8th Psychological
Operations   Task Force  in   general   support of  MarCent.     The   element
commander,    Major Thomas H.    Gerblick,   USA, had previously completed
offensive planning in December and identified the need for additional assets to
support MarCent operations.    He formed 46 Army and 27 Marine personnel
plus Kuwaiti linguists into 26 loudspeaker teams including one carried by
helicopter.  This represented about 40 per cent of the theater "PsyOps" assets.
The MarCent share was the greatest, since the force would be attacking into the
highest concentrations of enemy forces and into built-up areas.    The teams
deployed forward with the ground combat elements and used prerecorded tapes
covering various situations as well as live broadcasts by Arabic linguists.

                         Moving to the Offense

     On 5-6 January 991, Lieutenant General Boomer moved his command post
166 road kilometers northwest.  The new location of `,MEF Main" was a few
kilometers west of Aramco's Safaniyah (Ras As Safflniyah) oil separation and
water distillation plants on the coast, about 67 kilometers southeast of the
Kuwait border.   The site was a small workers' camp abandoned in 1984 and it
required   minimal preparation.   Its    placement on    a slight rise favored
line-of-sight communication.  Certain staff functions including parts of G-1 and
G-4, remained at Jubayl.    Now for a brief time, the force headquarters was
forward of its major subordinate commands.
     The Jubayl  command    post at the   "Police Station"  became    I Marine
Expeditionary Force   (Rear)  under the    command     of Major General   John
Hopkins.   To defend the sprawling Jubayl Vital Area and other key points from
both conventional and terrorist attack, Boomer assigned the 24th Marines, the
two-battalion Reserve regiment from Kansas City, which had just arrived from
Camp Lejeune.    Conventional doctrine called for rear area security to be drawn
from supported units, and up to this point 1st Force Service Support Group had
provided the troops for the mission.     But now General Boomer wanted to
dedicate that group's specialists solely to the tremendous task of shifting combat
service support north for the offensive. The 24th Marines were a ready-made
solution to the problem of providing security to many dispersed sites. Each of
its  companies was  capable of independent duty and the companies were
unusually cohesive, having trained together for years at local centers throughout