Word: 82nd
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America's amazing August charge into the desert of Saudi Arabia could have been a military disaster. The first troops to arrive were ill-equipped and vastly outnumbered by the Iraqi tank army poised in occupied Kuwait. Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division were told to expect to go directly into combat, though they carried nothing more effective against tanks than puny Dragon rockets and risky-to-use TOW missiles...
...soldiers from the 82nd Airborne's Second Infantry Brigade are in their third day of training in the desert heat. Before their arrival they had been warned that they might go into combat as soon as their planes landed. Now they are finding it hard to adjust to the waiting game as U.S. troops stream into the country and Iraq's army settles into defensive positions in Kuwait. "A lot of my men feel like we're wasting time," says the sergeant. "That's the basic consensus: Let's get the show on the road or get out of here...
...fight in about 30 days -- as soon as all the guys are here. By mid-September we should have about 100,000 troops. They're telling us to expect to take Kuwait." He adds that the troops have been told that if Saddam Hussein withdraws from Kuwait, the 82nd will go home without fighting. "I hope that's what he'll do," says the private. "If we go into Kuwait, I'm going...
...approaching Iraqi vehicles. But another soldier appears out of the darkness and tells the machine gunners that their platoon has ended up in the wrong place. It is too close to the road. In fact, it turns out that the platoon would be in the fire zone if the 82nd were to launch a mortar attack...
...deterrence is ultimately psychological. From Saddam's point of view, it had to appear that the American deterrent went into effect as soon as the ^ first group of 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers and F-15 interceptors touched down in Saudi Arabia. To make the point, one F-15 squadron flew nonstop, with midair refueling, from its base in Virginia. From the moment the planes landed at Dhahran, the Iraqis were on warning that if they launched their tanks into Saudi Arabia, they would find themselves in a war with...