I was there the night he died. I can’t believe I never knew his name until I was poking around for casualty info for the last post this morning.
Another Marine wrote a book about Gulf One. Into the Storm, by Phillip Thompson. It is by far the best account of the war, perhaps any war, that I have ever read. Its exactly how it happened, as seen and recalled by a regular guy just doing his thing day to day. I highly reccommend it. In the book, on pages 162 and 163, he describes the night Cpl. Pack died from a friendly surface to air radar seeking missile. I was laying under a humvee about 200 yards away.
My machine gun team (three of us) and a squad of riflemen (12 guys) had been detached from our unit to provide security for the command post of the line unit, 3rd Bat. 3rd Marines, who made up Task Force Taro. We were one of two battalion sized task forces, the other being Grizzly, that went thru the border and breached the Iraqi lines in Kuwait on Feb 23, the night before the ground war began. The official start of the ground war was Task Force Ripper, which was the main division sized breach and attack element of the invasion.
Taro and Grizzly were small assaults on either side of the main breach done the night before to ensure flank security for the main assault. No tanks as it was a surprise attack. We actually walked in! I was in a humvee with the gun on the roof (lucky me) so I rode, but the rifelmen had to hump it. There was an element of amtracks with bangalor torpedos on top that blasted the hole in the minefields. There was also an artillery battery, which the author of that book refers too, I think it was 1/12. They were setup right behind the CP, and were hammering the Iraqi lines all night to prep them. The Iraqis were just over a little rise from us, couple miles at most. It was like a 45 minute walk when 3/3 moved out for the assault.
Anyway, we were laying there under the humvee, stoked to have a vehicle for the first time. It was raining so we were happy to be dry. I could see a pair of square cloth back hummers off to our rear left. We knew these to be radar/comm trucks. Then were heard WOOOSH and saw a streak of light and up went a humvee in a ball of flames. We got out from under the vehicle and into our holes pretty quickly. We waited for the Iraqi counter artillery barrage we thought was starting, assuming that was an Iraqi attack on the arty brigade we were camped on top of. We quickly realized that we had SEEN the streak of light come in from our rear, so it was friendly. The next morning we got word that a Marine had been inside. Actually I remeber being told he was sleeping under his vehicle to stay dry. We never slept under a vehicle again.
