Rating: 
Summary: 13 years later, the full impact of Khafji
Review: Sometime it takes years for veterans to fully comprehend the big picture of war. That was the case with the first Gulf War, quickly celebrated for "kicking the Vietnam Syndrome" but hardly seen for more than a good 'ole thumping for the U.S. The Iraqi military loomed larger than life, combat-proven and deeply entrenched in Kuwait behind 12-foot tall sand walls, hoping to bog down the American-led invasion in oil-filled fiery traps so their deadly artillery can shred them to pieces. Well that didn't happen due to a premature face-off at the Kuwait-Saudi Arabia border. The Iraqi military turned out to be (now twice) the most incompetent enemy our country has ever defeated-42 days and 21 days.
On the night of January 29, 1991, news quickly filtered to Al Jubayl Air Base (where I was) some 100 miles south of Khafji that the Iraqis were rolling down the coast. There would have been minimal deterrence all the way to Bahrain. Luckily, there was a trip wire called RECON there...and a few Air Force A-10s, proven to be more fatal to U.S. Marines than the Republican Guard.Morris brings readers to the front lines where the best of the best Marine infantry-RECON-are led by junior officers and NCOs as they repel an overwhelming Iraqi intrusion. With all the details and perspectives from commanders and grunts, STORM is the best battle book and combat narrative to come out of Operation Desert Storm. Morris joins the elite ranks of former leathernecks with a literary flair. Don't be surprised to see STORM in a movie theater down the road or another book by him soon. Semper fi.
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Summary: Read this book you like John Krakauer or Shelby Foote
Review: Storm On The Horizon was a joy to read. As someone who does not read much on current events, I rarely venture into the world of military history, but with recent changes in the political landscape of the Middle East and Africa, I've become more intrigued. I picked up Storm out of curiosity, read the prologue, and was immediately drawn into an amazing story about Kahfji, the most significant battle of Desert Storm. I loved the book because of it's amazing detail into the back stories of the Marines involved, and it's inclusion of the tasty morsels of shenanigans and behind the scenes chaos that can occur with soldiers in the midst of the Fog of War. The story does an amazing job of bringing such a complex story together, and as a reader that sometimes has trouble visualizing as I read, I was pleasantly suprised as the story led me down a path of vivid imagery as the action played out. From a military history viewpoint I would compare the amazing flow of writing and storytelling to Shelby Foote's 'Stars In Their Courses'. As a history major I had to read 'Stars', and was suprised to find that I enjoyed the tremendous literary elegance of the book, and it's ability to tie details and story together. Storm on the Horizon is by far the best book on a military subject I have read since 'Stars'. I was also amazed to find a striking parallel to the world of the Marines at war, and the world of mountaineering and adventure. It might seem unfair for me to compare the high stakes of war with the obssesive pastime of the climber, but how the Marines in the book deal with the friendly fire incidents in Kafji is not unsimilar to the conundrum that high altitude mountaineers face when disaster strikes in the Death Zone, having to make decisions that can affect the lives of close buddies at a moments notice. I felt that in many ways the book read more like a John Krakauer story than a traditional military history book. As a fan of adventure writing, this made the story enjoyable and enlightening. I would highly recommend this book to folks like myself who may not normally venture into the genre of war.
Rating: 
Summary: Immediate You-are-there history of the battle of Khafji
Review: There are any number of books on the US Marine Corps in various wars, and in peacetime. There have only been a few books, however, that focus on the first Gulf War, and most of those are broad-horizon views of things from the point of view of the Theater Commander or at least a corps or division leader. There are relatively few tactical studies that look at the individuals who fought the battles and skirmishes of the war, and discuss what they did and felt and saw.
David Morris was a Marine officer for four years in the mid-90s, and left the Corps to get a degree and become a writer. This, his first book, is a detailed account of both ends of the Battle of Khafji, dealing on the one end with the fighting in Khafji itself, and on the other hand with the Iraqi armored attack on the Light Armored Infantry units of the USMC. The author describes the latter first. The battle included a deep reconnaissance platoon, which was occupying the border post at a break in the berm the Saudis used prior to the start of the war to thwart smugglers. Behind them were deployed a company of LAV-25s, fast and lightly armored Marine pseudo-tanks which were unsuited for anything other than hit-and-run tactics when confronted with real tanks.
The Deep Reconnaisance Platoon was stranded in contact with the Iraqis when the attack began, and it took them sometime to decide to retreat. While they had the transport to get out, they were also thinking they should perform their duties by reporting the attack as it occurred, and enumerate such things as number of vehicles and direction of advance. Unfortunately, their radios didn't work, and so they were unable to. The LAV company decided to move in to extract the Recon guys, but because of recon's radio troubles, they wound up not doing so. Instead, recon extracted themselves, and the LAV's fought a skirmish with the Iraqis. One LAV armed with TOW missiles shot and destroyed another, killing all four crewmen, and a second LAV full of Marines was knocked out, apparently by an Air Force A-10 overhead. The Iraqis inflicted no casualties, and the American forces retreated. Next morning, the Iraqis withdrew across the border, and the Americans reoccupied their positions.
In Khafji, there were two Air Naval Gun Liason Company teams, called ANGLICOs. Each was trained to control air and naval support assets, and was consequently well-equipped with radios for communication. When everyone else evacuated the city of Khafji, they stayed, hidden in buildings, watching the Iraqi forces and calling down artillery strikes and air attacks on the unsuspecting enemy forces.
These two series of events are related with intelligence and you-are-there immediacy, and they're very interesting. However, prospective readers should be aware of the author's bias. The author is a former Marine, and most of the narrative focuses on Marines also. This leads to the typical "The Marines Rule and everyone else Sucks!" attitude that is pervasive in Marine literature. The army is depicted as a bunch of cowardly (even the Special Forces), incompetent, over-equipped buffoons. The Air Force is obsessed with their toys, and just spread the ordinanace they carry around the battlefield indiscriminately, bombing both friend and foe. The Arabs (both Iraqi opponents and Saudi and Qatari allies) are depicted as greedy children, horrible shots who never train and try to leave all the fighting to the Americans, then take credit for anything good that happens. Only the Marine Corps has anyone who actually fights competently and doesn't run away. The main attack that liberated Kuwait (the armored thrust that followed the "Hail Mary") is dismissed as "anti-climactic."
Bias like this is more useful (in my mind) when the book is immediate. The soldiers (or Marines) involved in the actual combat tell you what happened when they were fighting, what they felt and thought and saw and smelled and feared. As time passes, it becomes less and less instructive, because objective analysis becomes more realistic and reasonable. This book reads as if it were written the week after the battles, or perhaps months later. That makes it valuable, but of course we still have to wait for something that tells us both sides of the battle. It's interesting to compare it, by the way, with the Army's official history, which barely mentions the Marine participation the war, if I remember correctly.
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Summary: Yet another story to come out of the First Gulf War
Review: This book is a good telling of the battle that convinced the U.S. and Coalition militaries that the Iraqi Army was not ten feet tall and had a number of weaknesses. It is well told through the eyes of those who were there, and where possible, the author interviewed the American participants. One participant that he was unable to interview directly was Melissa Coleman (nee Rathbun-Nealy), the first American servicewoman to become a POW since World War II. It would have been nice if she had been able to give the author a first-hand account of her capture and imprisonment in Iraq. The attitudes of the Saudi and Gulf Arab forces, the Marines, and of senior commanders are all treated. An unfortunate aspect of the battle is the friendly-fire incidents-this began an unfortunate trend in the First Gulf War. It's a shame it took twelve years for someone to tell this story.
Rating:
Summary: A moment in time.........
Review: This book scares me. As a reader, I have not made it past page 110 and I have owned this book for a year. You see, not only is this a story about a long forgotten battle, it is a story about "My battle!" I was there the ugly night of January 29th. I know that Marines fight and die in combat and for that I hold the highest regard. (My EGA flies high every day for those 11 men and all others since 1775). But leaving Tull on that deserted battlefield that night, injured, has haunted me for awhile. On the morning of January 29th, I helped police up the various body parts of my fellow DD's. But the fact that we left a live one behind makes me feel like we failed our mission. David Morris tells this story from the first person account. He opens up all the closets and casts a light on the skeletons some wish not to be exposed. If you want a gripping tale of what "True" combat is like, David Morris has captured that like no other author has. I applaud him for his literary excellence and for not casting a shadow on a moment in time that shall live in Marine Corps history forever......SEMPER FIDELAS...........
Rating:
Summary: A moment in time.........
Review: This book scares me. As a reader, I have not made it past page 110 and I have owned this book for a year. You see, not only is this a story about a long forgotten battle, it is a story about "My battle!" I was there the ugly night of January 29th. I know that Marines fight and die in combat and for that I hold the highest regard. (My EGA flies high every day for those 11 men and all others since 1775). But leaving Tull on that deserted battlefield that night, injured, has haunted me for awhile. On the morning of January 29th, I helped police up the various body parts of my fellow DD's. But the fact that we left a live one behind makes me feel like we failed our mission. David Morris tells this story from the first person account. He opens up all the closets and casts a light on the skeletons some wish not to be exposed. If you want a gripping tale of what "True" combat is like, David Morris has captured that like no other author has. I applaud him for his literary excellence and for not casting a shadow on a moment in time that shall live in Marine Corps history forever......SEMPER FIDELAS...........
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Summary: I felt as I was there
Review: This book shook me up. It brought me back to old and seemingly buried memories from my own World War II days, and events I experienced or witnesssed in Viet Nam. Although I sat in my chair, I WAS THERE with the author and the other jarhheads. Truly a gifted writer, this young Captain of the US MArines. He has an uncanny feeling of what to stress, even though it seems to the uninitiated to be only a small point. Yet, he does equal justice to the so wrongly called "Big Picture", the cameos and the clerly described wasteland of the Northern Saudi desert areas. I am a jaded reader, rarely find a book I desire to buy and keep. This is one of those that I will keep and give my grandson when he is old enough to understand what sacrifice for one's country really means, and understand the despair when you see a buddy buy the farm (yes, I know this term dates me). I will make him read it so he can also respect those who are willing to die for the rest of us. I wasn't a Marine, but SEMPER FI!
Rating:
Summary: A Marvelous War Story
Review: This book starts slow, it is history, and becomes a page-turner, it is a marvelous war story. Monumental innovations act as hinges, opening doors that will lock behind. The Battle of Hastings always comes to mind first for me: the Normans "simply" added stirrups to their saddles, giving them a longer lance reach and a more powerful stand in the saddle. With this the course of western history was altered and Britain was never the same. "Little" Khafji arises as a big monolith. This book is bound to become a movie just because of the characters and sheer power of the human story line. Battle documentation is not the only story here. Not since I read "On Wings Eagles" by Ken Follett have I enjoyed such unlikely and true story line of operations in the enemy's camp. But, these are not mercenaries, these are listening-post U.S. soldiers attacked on point by an enormous experienced armored column exploiting a potential deadly flaw. Saddam Hussein invades Saudi Arabia over U.S. units. Some of our men are trapped by the invasion force. The book points to so many important benchmarks that it would have perhaps been another generation before we recognized them had Mr. Morris not interviewed over 100 soldiers who participated in a battle most people would not recognize by name. We would have lost the human touch so important in understanding the power of this new warfare unleashed by well-trained and "braveheart" men who understood in many cases better than their commanders the power in their hands, and volunteered to use it when their odds were amazingly long. As a former soldier I laughed out loud many times and gripped my book many other times. Yet my wife is militarily challenged and still steadily plows through "Khafji" as I write this review. After Khafji, wars will never again be fought the same by armies who own the weapons used by the Allies against Iraq. Part of the weaponry, and the unique insights from the book document this, is not just hardware but the heart and mind of the forward observer, the "special forces" grunt if you will, who directs now not only just artillery but also ordinance on an order of magnitude greater in power and accuracy. You will be introduced to the men who did their job well like David against Goliath. This book is R-Rated for language, the language of soldiers. The words change a little from generations, but this portrays troop life since soldiers camped and fought. If you read this book you will not forget the last chapters and the characters reciting them to Dave Morris.
Rating:
Summary: A THOROUGHLY-RESEARCHED AND WELL-WRITTEN ACCOUNT
Review: This is a very exciting account about a much forgotten battle. I found it very engrossing and hard to put down. It does a great job at conveying the chaos and devastating lethality of modern combat. Also recommend:
"Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad"
"The March Up: Taking Baghdad With The 1st Marine Division"
Rating:
Summary: A virtually unknown battle, until now.
Review: This is a very exciting account about a much forgotten battle. I found it very engrossing and hard to put down. It does a great job at conveying the chaos and devastating lethality of modern combat. Also recommend:
"Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad"
"The March Up: Taking Baghdad With The 1st Marine Division"
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