PIN : 085144–000
The Rucksack War

☆ ☆ ☆
Rangers, ladened with rucksacks, 

in Grenada
Contingency Operations Series

The Rucksack War

U.S. Army Operational Logistics in Grenada, 1983

by

Edgar F. Raines Jr.

CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY

UNITED STATES ARMY

WASHINGTON, D.C., 2010
iv

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Raines, Edgar F. 

 The rucksack war : U.S. Army operational logistics in Grenada, 1983 / 

by Edgar F. Raines Jr. 

 p. cm. 

 Includes bibliographical references and index. 

 1. Grenada—History—American Invasion, 1983—Logistics. 2. United 

States—Armed Forces—Grenada. I. Title. 

 F2056.8.R35 2010 

 972.9845—dc22 

 2010029384

First Printing

CMH Pub 55–2–1
v

Contingency Operations Series

Richard W. Stewart, General Editor

Advisory Committee

(As of 9 July 2010)

U.S. Army Center of Military History

Jeffrey J. Clarke, Chief of Military History

Chief Historian Richard W. Stewart

Chief, Histories Division Joel D. Meyerson

Chief, Publishing Division Keith R. Tidman

Reina J. Pennington (Chair)

Norwich University

William T. Allison

Georgia Southern University

James J. Carafano

The Heritage Foundation

Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr.

U.S. Army Combined 

Arms Center

Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan

U.S. Military Academy

John F. Guilmartin Jr.

Ohio State University

Brig. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland

U.S. Army Command and

General Staff College

Michael S. Neiberg

University of Southern Mississippi

Mark P. Parillo

Kansas State University

Lt. Gen. John E. Sterling Jr.

U.S. Army Training and 

Doctrine Command

Larry Stubblefield

Deputy Administrative Assistant

to the Secretary of the Army

Col. Bobby A. Towery

U.S. Army War College

Steve Vogel

The Washington Post 

Paul M. Wester Jr.

National Archives and Records 

Administration

vii

Contents

No. Page

1. Behind the Scenes 1

 On the Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

 Grenadian Armed Forces and Cuban Workers . . . . . . . . . . .16

 Eastern Caribbean Neighbors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

 U.S. Policy Shifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

 Chain of Command Complexities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29

 Caribbean Concept Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36

 XVIII Airborne Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39

 Corps Logistics System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

 Contingency Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

 82d Airborne Division . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49

2. Policy and Initial Planning, 13–24 October 1983 . . . . . . . . . 71

 Washington and Norfolk, 13–19 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72

 Death by Revolution, 19–20 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79

 Reaction in the United States, 19–20 October . . . . . . . . . . . 83

 Washington, Norfolk, and the Caribbean, 21–22 October . . . . .90

 XVIII Airborne Corps and 82d Airborne Division, 

 19–22 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96

 A 75-Percent Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97

 Atlantic Command and Army Planning, 22 October . . . . . . . 100

 Presidential Party, Afternoon/Evening, 22 October . . . . . . . . 105

 A Concept of Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106

 Special Operations Forces and Ranger Planning, 

 21–24 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108

 Ranger Logistical Plans and Preparations, 22 October . . . . . . .117

 Washington and the Caribbean, 23 October . . . . . . . . . . . .119

3. Final Planning, 22–25 October 1983 127

 Mackmull and the Corps Weigh In, 23–24 October . . . . . . . . 127

 Atlantic Command Final Preparations, 23–24 October . . . . . . 137

 Division Support Command, 23–24 October . . . . . . . . . . . .143

 Engineers, 22–24 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

 Division Artillery, 22–25 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149

 Division Aviation, 22–24 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151

 Communications, 22–24 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

 Medical, 22–24 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

 Service Support Annex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158

 Corps Support Command, 23–25 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

 President Reagan Decides, 24 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

 An Intelligence Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165

 Cuba and Grenada, 23–25 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167
viii

No. Page

4. Loading the Force, N-hour to N+3:30 173

 Ranger Battalions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

 82d Airborne Division, N-hour to N+2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .182

 N+2 Briefing and Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

 Brigade/Battalion Staffs, N+2:30 to N+3:30 . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

 82d Airborne Division, N+2:30 to 3:30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197

5. The Force Sorties, N+3:30 to Liftoff 207

 82d Airborne Division, N+3:30 to N+8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .207

 Aviation Task Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .218

 Communications Preparations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .220

 Medical Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .223

 Decision To Airdrop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .224

 Corps Liaison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .228

 Green Ramp Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229

6. Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983 241

 Initial Assaults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .242

 Point Salines Airhead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

 The Division Arrives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .259

 General Trobaugh Takes Charge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

 Intermediate Staging Base on Barbados . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269

 Point Salines Airfield Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272

 Evacuees, Detainees, and Refugees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

 Medical Reinforcements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .286

7. Division-Rear Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .293

 Division Control and Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .293

 Managing the Airflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

 Green Ramp Congestion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .299

 Yellow Ramp Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308

 3d Brigade Deploys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .310

 Green Ramp Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .317

 Hunter Army Airfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328

8. Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983 333

 General Trobaugh’s Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

 Point Salines Combat and Support, 26 October . . . . . . . . . .338

 Intermediate Staging Base on Barbados . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

 Processing Americans and Third-Country Nationals . . . . . . . .349

 Processing Detainees and Refugees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .355

 Processing Casualties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .360

 Engineer Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .364

 Point Salines Airhead, 26 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .367

 Division G–4 Oversight, 26–27 October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .373
ix

No. Page

9. Corps Support 377

 Managing the Airflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

 Augmenting the Division . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .382

 Augmenting Army Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386

 Airflow Requirements Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

 Sea Line of Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392

 Medical Dilemmas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .397

 Supply System Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .406

 Green Ramp Hand-off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .410

10. Area of Operations, 27 October 1983 417

 Intermediate Staging Base on Barbados . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .417

 Point Salines Airhead, Morning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .420

 Combat and Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .425

 Point Salines Airhead, Afternoon/Evening . . . . . . . . . . . . .442

 Processing Casualties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .445

 Processing Americans and Third-Country Nationals . . . . . . . .449

 Processing Detainees and Refugees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .450

 Maintenance Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .454

11. A Period of Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .459

 Intermediate Staging Base on Barbados . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

 Point Salines Airfield and Pearls Airport . . . . . . . . . . . . . .462

 Final Operations and Departures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .467

 A New Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .472

 Evolving Policies in Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .479

 Soviet and Cuban Embassy Personnel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .480

 Refugees and Detainees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

 Graves Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486

 Transition to Corps Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .488

 Medical Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .489

 Removing Captured Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .496

 General Farris Takes Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501

 The Shift to Peacekeeping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .505

 Nation Building and Peacekeeping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509

12. Grenada in Perspective 515

 Military and Policy Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .515

 A Historical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .524

 Institutional Refinements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539

 Operational Logistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .542

 Military Success, Logistical Excess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
x

 Page

Bibliography 549

Guide to Abbreviations 607

Map Symbols 613

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .615

Charts

No.

1. Grenadian Armed Forces Command Structure, 

 21 September 1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19

2. U.S. Atlantic Command as a Supported Command, 

 October 1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

3. Organization of XVIII Airborne Corps, October 1983 . . . . . . . f. 41

4. Organization of 1st Support Command, October 1983 . . . . . . . f. 43

5. Organization of 82d Airborne Division, October 1983 . . . . . . . .53

6. Organization of 82d Support Command, October 1983 . . . . . . . 56

7. Organization of Forward Area Support Team II, October 1983 . . .61

8. Urgent Fury Task Organization, Atlantic Command, 

 25 October 1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109

9. Organization of Joint Task Force 123, 25 October 1983 . . . . . . .243

10. Organization of Task Force 121, 25 October–2 November 1983 . . .268

Tables

 1. Strength of Grenadian Forces, 0600, 24 October 1983 . . . . . . . .168

 2. Casualties in Operation Urgent Fury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .532

Diagrams

1. Combat Logistics Management Levels in a Theater of 

 Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44

2. Configuration of the Mobile Division Data Center . . . . . . . . . 57

3. 82d Airborne Division Loading Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Maps

1. The Caribbean, 1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

2. Grenada, 1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

3. St. George’s and Vicinity, Grenada, 1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80

4. D-day Airborne Assault, 25 October 1983, 0535–0705 . . . . . . . f. 245

5. Seizure of Point Salines Airfield, 25 October 1983 . . . . . . . . . f. 251

6. Task Force 121 Overnight Positions, 25–26 October 1983 . . . . . f. 275

7. Task Force 121 Logistical Support, 26–28 October 1983 . . . . . . 277

8. Task Force 121 Operations, 26 October 1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . f. 339

9. Task Force 121 Operations, 27 October 1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . .429
xi

 Page

Illustrations

Rangers, ladened with rucksacks, in Grenada . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

Men, materiel, and aircraft at the Point Salines airfield . . . . . . . . . 2

Views of St. George’s harbor and surrounding terrain . . . . . . . . . .11

Pearls Airport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

Aerial view of the Point Salines airfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Bishop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Gairy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Coard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Soviet BTR60PB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Soviet BRDM2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Austin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Member of the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces . . . . . . . . . .21

Cuban construction workers and their camp at Point Salines . . . . . . 24

Lewis, Scoon, and Adams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

General Vessey and the Joint Chiefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32

Atlantic Command headquarters building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

General Mackmull . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38

General Trobaugh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Antigovernment demonstration in 1974 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72

Naval support in Grenada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77

USS Guam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

USS Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78

USS Caron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Ransacked People’s Revolutionary Army office at Fort Rupert . . . . . . 81

Attack on Fort Rupert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81

Marine stands guard at the prime minister’s residence . . . . . . . . . .82

Vice Admiral Moreau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

General Prillaman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

National Security Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86

Seaga with Bush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88

Bourne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95

Shultz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98

Reagan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Residence of the governor general . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114

Fort Rupert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114

Richmond Hill Prison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Radio Free Grenada headquarters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115

Crist as a general . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120

Charles confers with Reagan, Shultz, and McFarlane . . . . . . . . . . 122

Seaga greets Admiral Metcalf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123

Adams watches as Barbadian troops prepare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123

Colonel De War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Colonel Akers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129

Admiral Metcalf and General Schwarzkopf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133
xii

 Page

C–141 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135

C–130 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136

Vehicles, equipment, and helicopters crowd the flight line . . . . . . . .136

Views of Richmond Hill Prison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Major Cleary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145

Schroeder as a brigadier general . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147

Colonel Perkins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147

Point Salines airstrip and control tower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .148

Artillerymen prepare projectiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150

Communications equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155

Gamma Goat, with generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157

General Vessey conducts a briefing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Fidel Castro photograph and training literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Colonel Hagler and his 2d Battalion, 75th Infantry, command group . . . 177

Rangers at the Point Salines airfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181

Men of the 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .186

Paratroopers relaxing and waiting to board aircraft . . . . . . . . . . . 188

A 10,000-pound forklift backs away after placing a CONEX 

on a trailer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .198

An aerial port squadron member uses a forklift . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

A divisional Gamma Goat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203

Colonel Silvasy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .210

Colonel Hamilton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Paratroopers and equipment stand by for deployment . . . . . . . . . .212

Paratroopers with General Wickham and with their gear . . . . . . . . 217

Crew of the 57th Medical Detachment in Grenada . . . . . . . . . . . .220

Using the AN/PRC–77 field radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .222

Air Force personnel study an air crew status board . . . . . . . . . . . .226

Paratroopers board a C–141 for deployment to Grenada . . . . . . . . 232

General Scholtes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

Colonel Cusick talks with General Wickham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .237

Rangers arrive in Grenada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .244

Marines arrive in Grenada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246

Grenadians search for casualties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .248

Rangers in action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253

Military policemen in action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .254

Members of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

UH–60 Black Hawk air ambulance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .258

Paratroopers arrive in Grenada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .262

Reinforcing the division assault command post at Point Salines . . . . .267

A typical K-loader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271

Sign prepared by American students at True Blue Campus . . . . . . . 283

Student evacuees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .283

A paratrooper guards Cuban detainees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .284

Refugees undergo a search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .285
xiii

 Page

Major Archer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .285

Assisting a wounded Cuban national . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

General Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294

Colonel Boylan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .294

Grantley Adams International Airport on Barbados . . . . . . . . . . .306

Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station on Puerto Rico . . . . . . . . . . .306

General Patterson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Green Ramp and Yellow Ramp at Pope Air Force Base . . . . . . . . .309

Shelton as a brigadier general . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

Colonel Scott and Colonel Halley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .318

Colonel Raines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .321

Reverse-osmosis water purification unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .327

A typical erdlator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .327

Marines take charge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

Moving out to participate in the Grand Anse rescue mission . . . . . . 336

Entrance to the Grand Anse Campus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .336

Views of the campus following the rescue mission . . . . . . . . . . . .337

Soviet hand grenades and shells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .340

Soviet recoilless rifles and ammunition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340

Paratroopers scan the terrain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344

Paratroopers move down a dirt road . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Processing and repatriating student evacuees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .351

Concertina wire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .358

Cuban detainees inside a containment area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .358

Cuban detainees under guard while awaiting repatriation . . . . . . . .359

Food supplies for Grenadian refugees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .359

307th Medical Battalion prepares to treat Grenadian refugees . . . . . .362

Wounded paratroopers awaiting evacuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

Medical care by a member of the 1st Aeromedical Evacuation 

Squadron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

Artillerymen load and fire their howitzers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .370

Colonel Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

Patterson listens intently to Lewis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .381

General Cavazos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .383

Cuban nationals on their way home to Cuba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .391

Mackmull in Grenada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392

American Eagle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .395

Gamma Goat ambulances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .399

A typical 463L pallet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .401

Compound of Medical Task Force 5 in Grenada . . . . . . . . . . . . .405

New Cumberland Army Depot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .407

Tobyhanna Army Depot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .407

Letterkenny Army Depot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407

Off-loading fuel from a C–130 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .422

Using maps to locate key areas on the island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .425
xiv

 Page

Paratroopers riding in a seized Soviet dump truck . . . . . . . . . . . .427

Paratroopers preparing to board a helicopter and moving out 

on a mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .430

Calivigny training camp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433

A Soviet ZU–23–2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437

UH–60s in flight and on the ground at Point Salines . . . . . . . . . . .440

Damaged UH–60s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440

Marines during and after a mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .441

A marine holding a folded litter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .447

An aid station and a hospital tent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .448

Civilians stand in line to board helicopters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450

Views of a detention compound for Cuban detainees . . . . . . . . . . .451

Members of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452

Refugees in a camp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .453

Motor pool containing seized vehicles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .456

Starling as a major general . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .461

A typical water buffalo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .466

Welcoming home the Rangers at Hunter Army Airfield . . . . . . . . .471

Pfc. Timothy G. Romick of Company A, 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry . . 471

Searching for weapons while on patrol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

Task Force Newman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .474

Paratroopers boarding a C–141 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .477

Paratroopers deplaning in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478

Marsh greeting the paratroopers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .478

Guarding the Cuban Embassy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .481

Guarding officials from the Soviet Embassy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

General Farris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489

Members of Medical Task Force 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492

Colonel Yelland with two nurses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492

Colonel Diskin in the operating tent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .493

Visiting with the nursing staff of St. George’s Hospital . . . . . . . . . .493

A warehouse containing Soviet weapons and ammunition . . . . . . . .498

Assorted Soviet weapons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .499

General Ryan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .503

Conditions in the aftermath of Urgent Fury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .506

Scoon talking to the media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .509

Caches of Soviet military supplies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .517

Vessey with Trobaugh and Metcalf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

Admiral McDonald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519

Colonel Frasché . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520

Major Bishop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .520

Secretary Weinberger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .521

Castro embracing Colonel Tortoló . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524

Returning to the United States at the end of combat operations . . . . .545

Ceremony honoring the paratroopers upon their return . . . . . . . . .545
xv

Illustrations courtesy of the Department of the Defense, except for the 

following: frontispiece and pp. 38, 129, 210, 294, 362, 379, 383, 407, 466, 

and 489, Department of the Army; p. 309, Department of the Air Force; 

pp. 306 (bottom) and 395, Department of the Navy; p. 34, U.S. Joint Forces 

Command; p. 88, George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, National Archives 

and Records Administration; pp. 86, 98, 122, 164, and 433, Ronald Reagan 

Presidential Library, National Archives and Records Administration; pp. 26, 

95, 123 (bottom), and 524, World Wide Photos; p. 177, Col. (Ret.) Robert 

M. Hensler; p. 147 (right), Military Engineer; p. 244 (top), Life Magazine; 

and p. 306 (top), David Crichlow (www.caribpix.net). 

xvii

Foreword

Edgar F. Raines Jr.’s The Rucksack War: U.S. Army Operational Logistics 

in Grenada, 1983, the second volume in the U.S. Army Center of Military 

History’s Contingency Operations Series, provides an account of how Army 

logistics affected ground operations during the Grenada intervention and, in 

turn, how combat influenced logistical performance. Noteworthy is the emphasis on the role of individuals and the decisions they made based on the necessarily incomplete and sometimes misleading information available at the time 

during an unexpected and short-notice contingency operation. The narrative 

ranges from the meetings of the National Security Council, where the president grappled with the question of whether to send in troops, to the jungle 

environs of Grenada, where a sergeant in combat coped successfully with a 

Cuban ambush even though he and his men were handicapped by a lack of 

hand grenades. The considerations that influenced these decisions and others 

like them are discussed at all three levels of war—strategic, operational, and 

tactical. 

Most important, Dr. Raines tells the story of the Army’s operations 

and its logistical effort in Grenada from the joint perspective. He covers not 

only planning and decisionmaking by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Atlantic 

Command, and Joint Special Operations Command but also coordination and 

communications, or lack thereof, between the service contingents in the area 

of operations. The result is a fascinating account of a complex event that provides insight into the myriad issues the Army encountered and will continue to 

face in future contingency operations. Dr. Raines puts forth his conclusions on 

this brief but important campaign not as authoritative pronouncements but 

as a springboard for further professional reflection and discussion. Without 

question, for Army leaders, commanders, and especially logisticians, they offer 

instructive parallels and trenchant observations pertinent in today’s complicated world.

Washington, D.C. RICHARD W. STEWART

17 August 2010 Chief Historian
xviii

The Author

Edgar F. Raines Jr. was born in Murphysboro, Illinois, in 1944. He obtained 

his B.A. and M.A. degrees in history in 1966 and 1968 from Southern Illinois 

University–Carbondale, where his thesis adviser was Professor John Y. Simon, 

editor of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Beginning in 1969, he attended the 

University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he studied with Professor Edward M. 

Coffman, one of the pioneers of the new military history, and in 1976 received 

his Ph.D. in history. After working three years as the assistant academic dean 

at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and fourteen months as a 

historian at the Office of Air Force History, Dr. Raines joined the U.S. Army 

Center of Military History in November 1980. He coauthored (with Maj. 

David R. Campbell) The Army and the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Evolution of Army 

Ideas on the Command, Control, and Coordination of the U.S. Armed Forces, 

1942–1985 (1986) and authored Eyes of Artillery: The Origins of Modern U.S. 

Army Aviation in World War II (2000).

Dr. Raines has written not only numerous unpublished special studies but 

also several articles in military and social history. In 1985 his “The Ku Klux 

Klan in Illinois, 1867–1875” won the Harry E. Pratt Award for the best article 

in Illinois History, and in 2003 his “Disaster Off Casablanca: Air Observation 

Posts in Operation Torch and the Role of Failure in Institutional Innovation” 

won the Army Historical Foundation Award for the best academic article on 

the history of the U.S. Army. In addition, he completed several assignments 

with the Army Secretariat and Staff, including the Army Operations Center, 

October–December 1983, during Operation Urgent Fury; the Deputy Chief 

of Staff for Operations and Plans’ Ad Hoc Committee on Department of 

Defense Reform, November 1985, during the debate over the GoldwaterNichols legislation; the Directorate of Roles and Missions, Office of the Deputy 

Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, 1994–1995, during the debate over 

post–Cold War service roles and missions; and the Secretary of the Army’s 

Realignment Task Force, 2001–2002, during an attempt to adapt the Army’s 

infrastructure to the postmodern digital age. A member of several professional organizations, he is a past president of the Military Classics Seminar of 

Washington, D.C. 
xix

Preface

The relationship between the supply of the armed forces and their ability 

to conduct active operations has long been an issue of concern to writers dealing with military topics. Perhaps the greatest Western commentator, Carl von 

Clausewitz, however, gave the subject only passing notice in his masterwork 

On War:

Of the items wholly unconnected with engagements, serving only to maintain the 

forces, supply is the one which most directly affects the fighting. It takes place almost 

every day and affects every individual. Thus it thoroughly permeates the strategic 

aspects of all military action. The reason why we mention the strategic aspect is that 

in the course of a given engagement supply will rarely tend to cause an alteration of 

plans––though such a change remains perfectly possible. Interaction therefore will be 

most frequent between strategy and matters of supply, and nothing is more common 

than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a 

war. Still, no matter how frequent and decisive these considerations may be, the business of supplying the troops remains an activity essentially separate from their use; its 

influence shows in its results alone.1 

Clausewitz was, of course, profoundly influenced by both the military 

and technological environment of his day and by the relatively constricted 

geography of Prussia in the early nineteenth century. He had served in an 

army in which a march of 100 miles (161 kilometers) represented a major 

strategic movement in a state that maintained both excellent roads and amply 

stocked magazines to supply those forces whether on the march or in camp. 

The military technology of the era––flintlock muskets with a low rate of fire–

–helped ensure that ammunition resupply was not a major concern on the 

battlefields of the period. Given this backdrop, it is easy to understand why he 

essentially dismissed logistics and turned to other matters.

His contemporaries and near-contemporaries in the United States Army 

would have found his attitude difficult to understand even then. Unlike 

Clausewitz, they had to contend with defending a nation that after 1848 

stretched some 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) East to West and 1,500 miles 

(2,414 kilometers) North to South. Much of the land was still wilderness. Few 

first-class highways or supply depots existed, even in the long-settled East. 

Consequently, to deal with the related problems of supply and administration, the Army established highly specialized bureaus within the War 

Department in Washington, D.C. While each bureau developed great skill in 

its own sphere, collectively they presented almost insurmountable problems 

of coordination for the civilian and military heads of the service. The solution in the early twentieth century was to create a general staff that would 

1 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and eds. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, 

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 131.
xx

function as both a coordinating and a planning agency and in the 1960s to 

simply abolish the supply bureaus as separate agencies and go to a wholly 

functional organization. 

Stated in the most general terms, the problem the Army faced was how 

to develop the necessary expertise in often arcane areas while ensuring that 

this knowledge was available in sufficient amounts at the correct time and 

place to conduct effective military operations. In essence, that is the subject of 

this volume, seen through the lens of one short but important late Cold War 

military operation. In the process, I reached rather different conclusions than 

Clausewitz did on the centrality of logistics in military operations.

On 25 October 1983 U.S. land, sea, and air forces, operating in conjunction with ground force contingents from several Caribbean countries, landed 

on the island nation of Grenada in the eastern Caribbean. Operation Urgent

Fury, the code name for this intervention, marked the U.S. Army’s first commitment to combat since the close of the Vietnam war. In point of fact, the 

amount of fighting was slight in comparison with other conflicts during the 

twentieth century, lacking both great intensity and long duration. The logistical effort required to move and sustain two ranger battalions and two brigades 

of the 82d Airborne Division, in contrast, was considerable and not without 

difficulty. The genesis, evolution, and eventual solution of the logistical problems, and especially their impact on combat operations on the island, make 

a fascinating story in their own right. These facets are particularly pertinent 

because of the likelihood that the Army will face other short-notice contingencies in the future in which the same or similar circumstances prevail.

I wrote The Rucksack War: U.S. Army Operational Logistics in Grenada, 

1983, over many years while also completing a large number of other historical 

projects for the U.S. Army Center of Military History. The book is organized 

chronologically but with a focus on logistics and its interaction with operations. The study begins with a consideration of the potential area of operations in 1983, the Grenadian background to the intervention, the organization 

and readiness of the Grenadian armed forces and their Cuban allies, the development of opposition to the Grenadian revolution in the eastern Caribbean, 

and the evolution of U.S. policy toward the island nation. A discussion of 

contingency forces on the eve of Urgent Fury follows, with emphasis on the 

Army’s airborne and ranger formations covering their command, control, 

organization, doctrine, state of training, and available logistical support. This 

approach permits a rough assessment of their state of readiness and serves as 

a baseline to evaluate their subsequent performance in action. The focus then 

shifts to the sudden onset of the political crisis on Grenada, a description of 

American policymaking during the crisis, the state of U.S. intelligence, and the 

initiation of military planning and preparations. Detailed logistical planning 

receives close attention, as do the preparation and movement of forces and 

equipment to the area of operations and the continuous movement of support elements from the United States. The emphasis then turns to the area of 

conflict to include arrival airfield operations; the establishment and operation 

of an intermediate staging base; the distribution of equipment, supplies, and 
xxi

services to the units on the island; the support of detainees and refugees; medical triage, treatment, and evacuation; and graves registration––to mention only 

a few topics. The parallel actions by various headquarters in the United States 

to support and sustain the forces, especially their interaction with those forces 

and the larger logistical community, also receive due attention. The account 

concludes with the return of units, supplies, and equipment to the continental 

United States; the hand-off to a small stay-behind training establishment; and 

attempts by the Army, the Department of Defense, and Congress to parse lessons from the experience.

As noted, Urgent Fury was a relatively brief operation lasting only a 

few days, yet the decisionmaking was highly complex and every bit as important as for a much larger and longer undertaking. This study thus examines 

the key Grenada decisions, from the highest strategic levels involving the 

president, the secretaries of state and defense, the national security adviser, 

and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down to the tactical level, 

where rangers and airborne infantrymen in combat made choices that had 

far-reaching implications for the outcome of the intervention. Policy decisions 

set the parameters for operational planning, which in turn affected logistical 

preparations, and both influenced the conduct of units in battle. This work 

considers logistical decisions, plans, and operations at what Army doctrine 

writers describe as the three levels of war: strategic, operational, and tactical; 

however, most attention goes to the second and third, reflecting the role that 

the Army played on Grenada. Operational-level logistics involved questions of 

what type and amount of supplies, equipment, and services to introduce into 

the area of operations and the timing and sequencing of their arrival. Tacticallevel logistics dealt with the distribution of goods and services already on the 

island to the ultimate users, the units in the field.

I first became involved with Grenada when I was assigned as the historian 

on the crisis action team in the Army Operations Center in the Pentagon during the second week of Urgent Fury. Since that time, I have encountered a 

great many individuals who deserve recognition for their guidance, assistance, 

and support. The chief of the Operations and Contingency Plans Division, 

Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, the late Col. 

Michael J. Lally, went out of his way to make me feel welcome and part of the 

team at what was an extraordinarily busy time, as did the crisis team chief, Lt. 

Col. Aaron M. Royer. Because of Colonel Royer, who had become convinced 

at the outset that a historian should be assigned to the Operations Center, I 

was sent to the Pentagon. Later Royer drafted the directive that ultimately 

resulted in the preparation of not only this study but also the operational history of the Grenada campaign by Maj. Bruce R. Pirnie. During the intervention I worked most closely with Lt. Col. Lois M. Beck of The Adjutant 

General’s Office and subsequently, while taking notes in the records vault at 

the Army Operations Center, with the administrative supervisor, M. Sgt. Jerry 

P. Anglin. I am in their debt.2

2 All ranks are given as of the time I worked with the officers and men in question. Unless 

otherwise indicated, they were members of the U.S. Army.
xxii

This study could not have been written without the support of several 

chiefs and acting chiefs of military history, to include Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Douglas 

Kinnard, Brig. Gen. William A. Stofft, Brig. Gen. Harold W. Nelson, Brig. 

Gen. John W. Mountcastle, Brig. Gen. John S. Brown, Jeffrey J. Clarke, and 

Col. Peter D. Crean. During General Kinnard’s tour I collected documents 

and identified the importance of the logistical story, while General Stofft 

approved and supported the initial project. I am also indebted to the deputy 

chief of military history, Col. Michael D. Krause, who ran interference for me 

when I had problems at the Army Operations Center; the chief historian at 

the time of the operation, David F. Trask; the acting chief historian, Morris 

J. MacGregor, who provided moral support at a low point; Dr. Clarke, who 

reanimated the project when it initially stalled due to classification concerns; 

and the current chief historian, Richard W. Stewart, who reviewed the entire 

manuscript. Dr. Stewart also organized the peer review panel and participated 

in it along with the chief of the General Histories Branch, William M. 

Hammond; a distinguished student of logistical history, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Charles 

R. Shrader; a highly regarded historian of contingency operations, Lawrence 

A. Yates; and the chief of the Publishing Division, Keith R. Tidman. The chief 

of the Staff Support Branch in October 1983, the late Paul J. Scheips, who had 

himself worked in the Army Operations Center over a decade earlier, gave me 

good advice about how to handle myself there. Two chiefs of the Research and 

Analysis Division played a major role in the genesis of the project: Lt. Col. 

Robert Frank and Lt. Col. Gary L. Bounds, as did two chiefs of the Histories 

Division: Dr. Stewart and, currently, Joel D. Meyerson. 

All students of the Grenada campaign are obligated to Alfred M. “Fred” 

Beck. As the acting chief of the Research and Analysis Division during October 

1983, Dr. Beck made extraordinary efforts working closely with Army records 

managers to preserve as much as possible of the contemporary written record. 

Because of the nature of Urgent Fury, that written record is sparse indeed. 

Much of the strength of the study therefore derives from the interviews with 

participants listed in the bibliography who took time out of busy lives to share 

and reflect upon their experiences. I am under a heavy obligation to them 

and their interviewers. Most of the interviews conducted immediately after 

the operation were done by the members of either the 44th Military History 

Detachment from Fort McPherson, Georgia, or the Grenada Work Group 

from the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Through their 

hard work and intelligent questions they created a rich historical record where 

none would otherwise have existed.

During the course of my research I visited not only Forts McPherson and 

Leavenworth but also Forts Lee and Monroe, Virginia, and Fort Bragg, North 

Carolina, and then maintained contact by letter and e-mail with participants 

and historians at these and other installations. Maj. Charles R. Bishop made 

my trip to Fort McPherson both historically profitable and personally enjoyable. I also received support at different times from two command historians of U.S. Army Forces Command, the late Jean R. Moenk and Charles E. 

White. I am particularly beholden to Col. Daniel J. Cleary III, 1st Lt. Kirk 
xxiii

Henry, John S. Duvall, Carol Pilkay, Deborah Nevarez, Air Force Lt. Col. 

Thomas Powers, Air Force Capt. Nathan D. Flint, Sgt. James Markman, John 

W. Aarsen, and Roxanne M. Merritt at Fort Bragg, as well as successive historians of the XVIII Airborne Corps: Robert K. Wright Jr., who was also 

my colleague at the Center at various times; Michael Vice, another fugitive 

from the Center during Pulaski Building days; Cynthia Hayden, who provided 

many leads about where I might find records; and Donna B. Tabor, who did 

yeoman work tracking down materials available only at Fort Bragg and locating the particularly valuable aerial photograph of Pope Air Force Base that I 

used in this volume. At Fort Lee Lynn L. Sims steered me toward much of the 

relevant doctrinal literature; Steven E. Anders ensured that I obtained many 

valuable interviews during my research there; and Col. Robert C. Barrett Jr. 

shared his personal papers from the operation with me. 

I am more obligated than I can say to the late Henry O. Malone, John L. 

Romjue, James T. Stensvaag, Claire S. Samuelson, and Daniel A. Brown at Fort 

Monroe; Carl F. Cannon at Fort Eustis, Virginia; Col. Louis D. F. Frasché, 

William G. Robertson, Lt. Col. Joseph A. Schlatter, Lt. Col. Robert P. Kraynak, 

Lt. Col. Thomas T. Smith, Maj. William E. McElroy, Joseph Goldman, Robert 

H. Berlin, Air Force Col. (Ret.) D. Matt Neuenswander, and Rita Siebenmorgen 

at Fort Leavenworth; the late Ronald Craig at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; 

James W. Williams, R. Steven Maxham, and Jean M. Southwell at Fort Rucker, 

Alabama; Richard Hecht of the U.S. Army Ranger Association; Brig. Gen. 

John M. Bednarek, then the 25th Infantry Division’s deputy commander for 

operations, who generously answered my questions at a time when he was 

preparing to deploy to Afghanistan; Col. (Ret.) John M. Mitchell; Col. (Ret.) 

Lawrence W. Hoffman; Air Force Col. (Ret.) Thomas A. Keaney, now executive director of the Foreign Policy Institute and senior adjunct professor at the 

School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University; Air Force 

Lt. Col. Kenneth E. Coburn, the II Marine Expeditionary Force air mobility 

liaison officer at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Air Force Lt. Col. (Ret.) A. 

Felix Meyer III, who allowed me to make copies of his personal papers; Air 

Force Col. (Ret.) Thomas A. Julian, author of a much anticipated history of 

Air Force aeromedical evacuation; Air Force Capt. Brian M. Mahoney, the air 

mobility liaison officer at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Denis P. Dezso at Fort Sam 

Houston, Texas; Anthony Ricchiazzi and Kevin Toolan at Tobyhanna Army 

Depot, Pennsylvania; Lindsay M. Washabaugh at Letterkenney Army Depot, 

Pennsylvania; Stacy Umstead at New Cumberland Army Depot, Pennsylvania; 

Leo P. Hirrel at Headquarters, Joint Forces Command, Norfolk, Virginia; Dean 

C. Kallander at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois; Janice Missildine at McGuire Air 

Force Base, New Jersey; Daniel R. Mortensen, Air Force Col. John F. Groff, 

and Air Force Col. Donald D. Tharp at the Air Force Research Institute, 

Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and the late William D. 

Mohlenbrock, M.D., of Murphysboro, Illinois, who shared with me some of 

his experiences in military organizations. 

Every author stands on the intellectual shoulders of others, and I am certainly no exception. As an undergraduate, I had an opportunity to hear S. L. 
xxiv

A. Marshall speak and read several of his books as a consequence. He wrote 

about the human side of war, and I aspired to write about the human side of 

logistics. John G. Westover’s Combat Support in Korea is one of the few precursors to The Rucksack War of which I am aware, but the Westover volume is a 

collection of interviews illustrating aspects of the logistical effort rather than 

a sustained narrative. I sought to do more. In 1985, while my research was in 

its early phases, the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute published Gary H. 

Wade’s Rapid Deployment Logistics: Lebanon, 1958. Major Wade attempted 

much the same thing that I planned on doing, but given the relative lack of 

surviving sources, he could essay only a sketch and not develop all the complexities involved. Wade convinced me that I was on the right track.3

 

Eventually, I came to a point in my research when I knew what I wanted to 

do but not exactly how to do it. I drew on a discussion I had had with the late 

Forrest C. Pogue about how the first generation of Army historians had written 

the official United States Army in World War II series. Political and diplomatic 

history provided useful models for the high-level policy and strategy volumes, 

but no one other than Hugh M. Cole, who had written his dissertation in the 

field of military history, was certain about how to proceed with the operational 

volumes. “It’s easy,” he told his colleagues, “just use the five-paragraph field 

order as a model for the types of information that you need to include.” So 

I dutifully taped an outline of the major elements of a five-paragraph field 

order on the wall above my computer before I began writing. It helped me keep 

focused on the big picture as well as the details.

I have indeed been fortunate in the circumstances in which I wrote the initial draft of this study and in particular for the collegial atmosphere of intellectual give and take in the Analysis Branch between 1983 and 1989. I would 

like to thank my then branch chief, Alexander S. Cochran, and the following 

historians: Lt. Col. Peter Kozumplik, Major Pirnie, the late Maj. Lawrence M. 

Goldberg, the late Maj. Charles E. Kirkpatrick, Maj. Thomas Grodecki, Col. 

Jonathan M. House, Maj. William W. Epley, and Lt. Col. Steve E. Dietrich. 

All of them played “Grenada Jeopardy” with me when I confronted an acronym or term in the documents that I did not understand in the days before 

such items were easily accessible through the Internet. All read and commented on an early draft of this manuscript, as did Daniel R. Beaver of the 

University of Cincinnati, a participant in the Center’s visiting professor program. Colonel Kozumplik also loaned me some materials from service schools 

that he had attended to further my understanding of the Army’s logistical 

3 The three books by S. L. A. Marshall that greatly influenced me are: Night Drop: The 

American Airborne Invasion of Normandy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962);The River and the Gauntlet: 

Defeat of the Eighth Army by the Chinese Communist Forces, November 1950, in the Battle of the 

Chongchon River, Korea (New York: Morrow, 1953); and Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting 

Man in Action, Korea, Spring 1953 (New York: Morrow, 1956). For representative samples of the 

kinds of issues Westover addressed, see John G. Westover, Combat Support in Korea, U.S. Army 

in the Korean Conflict. (Washington, D.C.: Combat Forces Press, 1955), pp. 18–23, 38–41, 49–57, 

102–04, 153–59, 199–201, 206–10. For Wade’s approach, see Gary H. Wade, Rapid Deployment 

Logistics: Lebanon, 1958, Combat Studies Institute Research Survey no. 3 (Fort Leavenworth, 

Kans.: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, 1985), pp. 1–41.
xxv

system. Two former colleagues who did original research on the operational 

aspects of the campaign, Lt. Col. (Ret.) George L. MacGarrigle and Major 

Pirnie, were particularly helpful. Stephen Harding proved an often amusing 

colleague who explored medical and public affairs issues but was assigned 

other duties before he could delve very deeply into the sources. Dwight D. 

Oland became the acknowledged expert on all the medical aspects of Urgent

Fury and bequeathed me his files when he retired. He further did the bulk of 

the photographic research for this volume, locating some unique images of key 

personalities and events. 

I also want to thank Lt. Col. Timothy S. Muchmore with whom I served 

in the Directorate of Roles and Missions, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff 

for Operations and Plans, during 1994 and 1995. Colonel Muchmore insisted 

on the Army Staff’s need for an accurate account of the Grenada operation, 

and he inspired me to persist in efforts to bring what became this volume to 

open publication.

When I resumed work on Grenada in 2000, I located and integrated a large 

amount of material not available before, particularly from the Grenadian side 

and the higher policy levels of the Reagan administration. I also benefited from 

Army records that I had missed earlier. During my initial research trip to Fort 

Bragg I was informed that the XVIII Airborne Corps emergency operations 

center records generated during the Grenada crisis had been destroyed. Much 

later the corps historian, Mr. Vice, located them and oversaw their retirement 

to the Washington National Records Center at Suitland, Maryland, where I 

examined them. At Suitland I worked most closely with Michael W. Waesche, 

Elizabeth C. Philpott (Sears when I knew her), and Bryan Warren. At the 

National Archives Building on Pennsylvania Avenue I worked with Rodney 

A. Ross and Richard T. McCulley of the Center for Legislative Archives, 

and at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, most closely with 

Timothy K. Nenninger of the Modern Military Records Branch and the staff

at the Microfilm Reading Room. The staff at the Ronald Reagan Presidential 

Library at Simi Valley, California, was a model of professionalism. Sherrie M. 

Fletcher guided me through the labyrinth of procedures involved in acquiring access to the records as well as pointing me toward the most rewarding 

files. Likewise, Mary Finch on the staff of the George H. W. Bush Presidential 

Library at College Station, Texas, provided invaluable assistance in obtaining 

photographs. Support at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle 

Barracks, Pennsylvania, was outstanding as usual. I particularly want to thank 

Richard J. Sommers, Louise A. Arnold-Friend, John J. Slonaker, and David A. 

Keough for both their professionalism and their friendship.

One of the advantages of living and working in the Washington area is 

the ease of access it provides to other federal agencies and the individuals who 

work there. In particular, I want to thank Maj. Carl A. Strock, then the executive officer for the chief of engineers, who literally rescued from a wastepaper 

basket the operations journal of the 307th Engineer Battalion and asked me 

to see to its eventual retirement to the National Archives; Carrie L. McLeroy 

and LeRoy Jewell at Soldiers Magazine, who were gracious hosts and provided 
xxvi

me with two stunning images of the Grenada operation; John T. Greenwood 

at the Office of The Surgeon General, who enabled me to secure an interview 

with The Surgeon General, Lt. Gen. James B. Peake; the late Dale Birdsell, 

Robert G. Darius, Kim B. Holien, and Stephen W. Lehman at the headquarters 

of the Army Materiel Command; and on the Army Staff, Lt. Col. Daniel E. 

Staber Jr. and Maj. Michael E. Hess of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff 

for Operations and Plans, Lt. Col. Eugene N. Russell and Lt. Col. David A. 

Measles of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Maj. Gary A. 

Oedewaldt of the Office of the Chief of Public Affairs, and more recently Lt. 

Col. Katherine Miller of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff G–8. In the 

late 1980s four Army officers––Lt. Col. Michael A. Anastasio, Lt. Col. Jerry 

Edwards, Lt. Col. Gilbert S. Harper, and Lt. Col. Michael Simmons––attended 

the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and prepared an analysis of Army logistics in Grenada; they very kindly donated both 

a copy of their paper and their backup files to the Center of Military History. 

At what is now the Naval History and Heritage Command Edward J. Marolda, 

Sarandis Papadopoulos, and Curtis A. Utz provided timely assistance about 

matters nautical. The late Herman S. Wolk, Perry D. Jamieson, Jacob Neufeld, 

Roger G. Miller, and Yvonne Kinkaid at the Air Force Historical Studies 

Office gave me information, advice, support, and friendship, while the late 

Benis M. Frank, Marine Corps Maj. (Ret.) Charles D. Melson, and Danny J. 

Crawford at the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine 

Corps, educated me about their service. At the Defense Technical Information 

Center Debra Alexander proved an invaluable resource, as did Charles T. Erb 

on the Joint Staff. At the Joint History Office I benefited from the assistance of 

four fine historians––Graham A. Cosmas, one of my former branch chiefs at 

the Center; Ronald H. Cole, the author of a distinguished study on Grenada; 

David B. Crist, the son of one of the senior U.S. officers involved; and Steven 

L. Rearden, who was at work on a much anticipated study of the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff during the Reagan years. At the Office of the Secretary of Defense 

Historical Office, Alfred Goldberg, the late Stuart I. Rochester, and Diane T. 

Putney made my research there both professionally rewarding and fun, while 

at the Department of State, my former colleague, John M. Carland, provided 

wise counsel. The entire staff of the department’s Classified Reading Room 

was very helpful and opened to me the treasures of the department’s records. 

I thank them all, but especially Margaret P. Grafeld, Jane E. Diedrich, and 

Karen French. At the Defense Intelligence Agency Historical Office Judith 

L. Bellafaire invited me to attend the 25-year retrospective conference on the 

Grenada operation that her organization held in 2008. I particularly want to 

thank the conferees for sharing their recollections with such candor. 

A number of people from outside the Center of Military History critiqued 

portions of the manuscript, including Mr. Wolk, Dr. Mortensen, and the late 

Robert P. Smith in what was then the Office of Air Force History; Theresa L. 

Kraus at the former Naval Historical Center; Jack Shulimson at the Marine 

Corps’ History and Museums Division; Drs. Cole and Rearden at the Joint 

History Office; Dr. Sims, the command historian, U. S. Army Logistics Center; 
xxvii

Dr. Anders, the Quartermaster Branch historian; Dr. Cannon, the command 

historian, U.S. Army Transportation Center; and Col. (Ret.) James W. Dunn, 

then a historian in the Corps of Engineers Historical Office. I am also indebted 

to colleagues in the Histories Division at the Center, where I have been assigned 

since 1989, who took time away from their own projects to read and comment 

on the entire draft: David W. Hogan, William M. Donnelly, and Lt. Col. Mark 

J. Reardon. 

At the Center, the branch chief occupies a particularly key position in 

the research and writing for a historian working on a major volume––a combination of mentor, father confessor, deadline enforcer, and defender of the 

project to higher authority. I had the good fortune to work in succession for 

two highly respected historians as chiefs of the General Histories Branch: Dr. 

Cosmas read and commented on the first two chapters, while Dr. Hammond 

improved context and language after reviewing various drafts of the manuscript enough times to have almost memorized the text.

In addition, Rebecca C. Raines of the Force Structure and Unit History 

Branch read the entire manuscript times beyond counting. Romana M. Danysh, 

the late John B. Wilson, Wayne M. Dzwonchyk, and Lt. Col. (Ret.) Michael 

E. Bigelow also read and commented on portions of the manuscript and provided the firm friendship that any writer in the throes of creation needs. 

Writing often leads a historian into thickets where he realizes that he needs 

more information than he possesses. At the Center of Military History Janice 

E. McKenney, Mr. Wilson, Ms. Raines, Ms. Danysh, Edward N. Bedessem, 

Stephen E. Everett, Jennifer A. Nichols, Joseph R. Frechette, Joseph A. 

Seymour, Kathleen M. Fargey, and Maj. (Ret.) Thomas A. Popa guided me 

through the intricacies of Army unit organization. Over the years a number 

of colleagues in the Defense Acquisition Project and in the Histories Division 

were willing to discuss logistics history with me and otherwise assist with 

the project, including: Air Force Col. (Ret.) Elliott V. Converse III, Walton 

S. Moody, Walter S. Poole, Shannon A. Brown, Philip L. Shiman, Thomas 

C. Lassman, Air Force Lt. Col. (Ret.) Gary A. Trogdon, Bianka J. Adams, 

Jonathan B. Hood, Sgt. Maj. (Ret.) Robert S. Rush, Mark L. Bradley, Erik B. 

Villard, W. Blair Haworth, J. Patrick Hughes, Terrence J. Gough, Stephen A. 

Carney, Jon T. Hoffman, Stephen J. Lofgren, Glenn F. Williams, and Mark 

D. Sherry. I have benefited from both their intellectual stimulation and their 

friendship. 

In the Historical Resources Branch, Hannah M. Zeidlik, Geraldine K. 

Judkins, and Mary L. Haynes gave their unfailing support, as has most recently 

Frank L. Shirer. Walter H. Bradford, Alan Knight, Alan T. Bogan, and James 

A. Speraw of the Center’s Museum Division provided invaluable assistance 

on equipment issues. Several generations of the Center’s library staff, the late 

Carol L. Anderson, Mary L. Sawyer, James B. Knight, Patricia A. Ames, 

Lenore K. Garder, Carrie G. Sullivan, and James A. Tobias, were most helpful 

in securing books on interlibrary loan and studies from the Defense Technical 

Information Center for my use. One of the interns, Kelly McElligott, assisted 

in the photographic research. Over the years I have often received outstanding 
xxviii

support from members of the Center’s administrative staff. I particularly want 

to thank Cathy O. Armstrong, who left her daughter’s wedding celebration late 

one night to let me into the Pulaski Building after the locks had been changed; 

Cheryl D. Eddens, who during the past decade processed the paperwork associated with clearances and access to records; Bryan J. Hockensmith, who kept 

me well supplied with Center publications; Mary M. Thomas, without whom 

this study would have died stillborn; and the late Mildred K. Gee, whose hard 

work, dedication, and puckish sense of humor made working with her a real 

pleasure.

I also benefited from the fine work of the staffs at the Cumberland County 

[North Carolina] Public Library, especially Arletha Campbell; the National 

Library of Medicine, especially Judy C. Jordan; the Army War College 

Library, especially Shellie Glass; the National Defense University Library; the 

Pentagon Library, especially Greta E. Marlatt; and the Library of Congress, 

especially Darren R. Jones.

Bringing a manuscript to publication requires the dedicated work of many 

hands. The chief of the Editorial Branch, Diane Arms, who was originally 

my editor, provided useful commentary on several draft chapters. My editor, 

Joanne M. Brignolo, brought great energy and attention to detail to the project. Over time she gained a real grasp of the technical information and voluminous sources. Her critical queries allowed me to improve both the organization 

and the accuracy of the narrative. Going beyond normal editorial responsibilities, she demonstrated that she has not only a sharp pen but also a fine eye 

for visual images. This volume also benefited greatly from the work of Kate 

Mertes, who prepared the invaluable index; Beth F. Mackenzie, who did the 

handsome layout; S. L. Dowdy, who crafted the maps that are critical for this 

study; Carl E. “Gene” Snyder, who developed the charts and diagrams; and 

Michael R. Gill, who designed the cover.

My deepest appreciation, however, must go to my wife, Rebecca, and my 

son, Eddie, for their kindness, understanding, and unremitting support during the many years this volume was in preparation. Their encouragement and 

humor, love and affection, and Eddie’s graphics assistance made the long slog 

bearable. 

In closing, all of these helpful and supportive individuals, as well as any 

others whom I have neglected to name, deserve my heartfelt thanks and gratitude for their assistance and commitment to the project. Any errors that remain 

are mine alone.

Washington, D.C. EDGAR F. RAINES JR.

17 August 2010
The Rucksack War

☆ ☆ ☆

1

Behind the Scenes

Participants later remembered the heat, the ever-present dust, and especially the noise as successive U.S. Air Force C–141s landed, unloaded, 

and then took off from the partially completed runway. Occasionally a C–130 

would land and break the monotony. Construction equipment and materiel 

cluttered the ramp in front of the shell of a terminal. Inside, members of the 

assault command post of the U.S. Army’s 82d Airborne Division struggled 

to make sense of what was happening from fragmentary radio messages. The 

whining roar of a C–141’s fan jets or the grumble of a C–130’s turbine engines 

reverberated off the raw concrete walls, making it hard to hear or even to think. 

If the scene looked more like a job site than a military airfield at the heart of 

an important U.S. military operation, it was because only hours earlier that is 

exactly what it had been: a large international airport under construction on 

the Caribbean island nation of Grenada.1

As aircraft landed, the troops aboard disembarked and divided by unit. 

They waited in small groups beside the runway until enough men arrived to 

allow their organizations to perform their missions. When that might occur, no 

one could say. In the relatively quiet intervals between takeoffs and landings, 

soldiers could hear the pop, pop of small-arms fire in the distance. A motley 

collection of commandeered local vehicles drove to the edge of the airfield. 

The soldier drivers and any helpers they had brought with them dismounted 

and surveyed the jumbled piles of materiel that passed for supply points. After 

locating what their unit needed, they loaded up and drove back in the direction of the firing. At the far eastern end of the runway, a few weary men and a 

single forklift struggled to unload a C–141 and move its cargo to supply points 

as quickly as possible. They were the only cargo handlers available. When a 

C–130 touched down, it often completed its landing roll at midfield because its 

landings and takeoffs were shorter than those of a C–141. Then if it had any 

equipment or supplies aboard, it had to taxi to the far end where the forklift 

waited. South of the strip stood a berm-protected aviation fuel point consisting 

1 Interv, Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; E-mail, Keaney 

to author, 8 Sep 2005, sub: Sound of C–141 Engines, Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH; Michael 

Duffy, “Grenada,” pp. 20–23, 26–28.

☆ ☆ ☆
Men, materiel, and aircraft at the Point Salines airfield 

The Rucksack War

4

of blivots—large rubberized bags designed to store fuel and other liquids—as 

well as hoses and pumps. Beside the berms, the men waited anxiously and 

scanned the sky for one of the fuel-carrying C–130s, called somewhat irreverently a bladder bird. They also watched for their customers, the pilots flying 

the division’s turbine-engine helicopters that were still en route.2

Meanwhile, above the field, U.S. Air Force transports circled in a giant funnel of slowly descending aircraft that, according to one observer, reached “all 

the way to the ionosphere.” With no parking ramp available, only one C–130 

or C–141 at a time could stay on the runway. Until it took off, the aircraft next 

in line to land had to remain aloft. Unfortunately, no one on the ground knew 

what that aircraft was carrying. When lack of fuel caused a transport to divert 

to another location, which happened frequently, no one waiting below knew 

where it was going or when, if ever, it might return. Such was the Point Salines 

airfield on Grenada in late October 1983.3

Located in the eastern Caribbean Sea, Grenada represented both a culmination and a harbinger for the U.S. Army. It was the site of both the last 

major U.S. military operation of the Cold War involving all the services and 

also the U.S. Army’s first contingency operation since the intervention in the 

Dominican Republic in 1965. As such, the effort foreshadowed the power 

projection role into which circumstance and policy would cast the Army in 

the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall: Panama (1989), Southwest Asia 

(1990–91), Somalia (1992–94), Haiti (1994–95), Bosnia (1995–2004), Kosovo 

(1999–), Afghanistan (2001–), and Iraq (2003–). 

In contrast to those later operations, however, Urgent Fury, the code name 

for the military intervention on Grenada, was unique in a number of ways. 

More than any of the others, it was a come-as-you-are war. Planning time was 

very compressed—not more than three or four days for most staffs. Unlike the 

Canal Zone in Panama, Grenada did not contain any U.S.-controlled enclaves 

with depots. It also lacked the advantage of adjacent friendly territory where 

ground forces could assemble and build up a logistical base in advance of the 

conflict, such as that offered by Saudi Arabia prior to Desert Storm and by 

Kuwait before Iraqi Freedom. Finally, in Urgent Fury, soldiers entered combat almost immediately compared to their counterparts in most of the other 

operations. Rangers parachuted into Point Salines despite intense Grenadian 

antiaircraft fire. Other troops stepped off the ramp of their aircraft and within 

minutes came under fire.4

The troops who parachuted into Grenada or landed shortly thereafter 

had the supplies they carried on their backs and little else. Under these conditions one piece of equipment proved invaluable—the rucksack. A large olivedrab canvas backpack shaped around a light aluminum frame, it could hold 

in excess of seventy pounds of supplies and equipment. Airborne troopers 

2 Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], and Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 3 Duffy, “Grenada,” p. 23 (quoted words); Intervs, Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983, and 

author with Katz, 6 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 4 Interv, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Behind the Scenes

5

carried their rucksacks wherever they deployed and jammed into them almost 

every item they needed in the field. The contents ranged from reserve ammunition to meals, ready to eat (the self-contained field rations in lightweight packaging that the Army had introduced only three years earlier), to spare socks. 

Rucksacks both symbolized and confirmed the ability of airborne infantrymen to go anywhere, fight hard, and sustain themselves.5

That the fighting began as soon as Air Force transports appeared over 

Point Salines made the Grenada operation, especially its logistical support, 

very different and much more difficult than any of the Army’s contingency 

operations after 1983 (see Map 1). Because of the hostile pressure on the 

airhead, the buildup on Grenada required a delicate balancing act among a 

variety of requirements: introducing additional combat units; deploying logisticians to facilitate their arrival and resupply; providing resupply to troops 

already on the island; and determining what the support components, such as 

signal, intelligence, and engineer units, needed to cope with the situation on 

the ground. All were essential, but the proportion of these elements in the total 

force in the airhead at any particular time and their sequence of arrival were 

matters of judgment upon which rested the success or failure of the airborne 

operation. The performance of this balancing act and the decisions that facilitated or hindered it were thus central issues in Army logistical operations on 

the island and, in many respects, in Army combat operations there as well.

Grenada was also the first military operation to occur after the Army began 

transforming from an industrial-era organization to a postmodern one. As late 

as Vietnam, its approach to war required mobilizing large numbers of citizens, 

massing fire, stockpiling supplies, using acetate map overlays and grease pencils in planning, orienting troops by compass headings, and depending on the 

typewriter for administrative support. In contrast, by the end of the century 

the Army deployed relatively small numbers of highly skilled professionals; 

increasingly emphasized precision munitions; depended upon substantially 

reduced stockpiles of supplies and equipment; and widely employed computers linked by a military version of the Internet, global-positioning devices, and 

digital readouts to generate real-time situation maps. This transition, which 

began during the 1970s, promises to remain the norm in the twenty-first century. Urgent Fury offers an indication—a snapshot in time—of how that 

process was proceeding in 1983. 

Operational logistics, the nexus between operations and logistics, especially 

how they interacted with and affected one another, is the focal point of this 

study. Two related questions are involved: How did the logistical effort affect 

the Grenada operation, and, conversely, how did the planning and conduct of 

the operation impinge upon logistical support?

Over the years the meaning of logistics has waxed and waned. During 

World War I one of the most important American theorists of the role of 

5 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; U.S. Army Natick 

Research and Development Command, Items of Combat Clothing and Equipment, p. 102; 

author’s inspection of rucksacks, 1985; Karl E. Cocke et al., comps., Department of the Army 

Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1980, p. 139.
Fort Bragg, N.C.

Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal, N.C.

Fort Stewart/Hunter Army AIreld, Ga.

MacDill Air Force Base, Fl.

Guantánamo

Naval Station

Roosevelt Roads

Naval Station

C aribbean Se a

Gulf

o f

Mexic o

A T L ANTIC

OCEAN

90o

60o

30o 30o

Tropic of Cancer

Turks and Caicos Islands

(U.K.)

Aruba

(NETH.)

Netherland Antilles

(NETH.)

Guadelupe (FR.)

Martinique (FR.)

Anguilla (U.K.)

British Virgin

Islands

(U.K.)

Montserrat

(U.K.)

Virgin

Islands

(U.S.)

Puerto

Rico

(U.S.)

Bermuda

 (U.K.)

COSTA RICA

NICARAGUA

THE

BAHAMAS

DOMINICAN

REPUBLIC ST. KITTS AND NEVIS

DOMINICA

ST. LUCIA

BARBADOS

GRENADA

GUYANA

BRAZIL

SURINAME

TRINIDAD AND

TOBAGO

ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA

ST. VINCENT AND

THE GRENADINES

CUBA

JAMAICA HAITI

PANAMA

VENEZUELA

UNITED STATES

OF AMERIC A

C ANAD A

C O LOMBIA

HONDURAS

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Charleston, S.C.

Jacksonville, Fl.

Miami, Fl.

Santiago de Cuba

HAVANA

PORT-AU-PRINCE

KINGSTON

CARACAS

THE CARIBBEAN

1983

ROBINSON PROJECTION

SCALE 1:23,333,333

U.S. Military Installation

Map 1
Behind the Scenes

7

logistics, Marine Lt. Col. George C. Thorpe, defined the subject as “the means 

of . . . utilizing forces.” Prior to World War II, however, few American military 

officers used the word. There seemed no need for this all-inclusive term. Until 

1942 the highly specialized technical bureaus of the War Department provided 

all the administrative and supply support the Army needed. The advent of 

World War II forced the Army to place a much greater emphasis on the management of resources. Suddenly, logistics went from a word known only to 

specialists to one that enjoyed broad acceptance. Its meaning and daily usage 

now encompassed everything that the Army did except for planning and conducting combat operations.6

Army officers continued to use this broad definition during the early years 

of the Cold War, but the conditions that had buttressed this approach had begun 

to change. World War II had represented primarily a battle of mass industrial 

production, but the Cold War involved a competition between the United States 

and the Soviet Union to design and manufacture technically superior weapons 

systems. This increasing emphasis on research and development led eventually 

to the adoption of another inclusive term, acquisition, referring to the researching, designing, developing, testing, providing logistical support for, and fielding of new weapons systems. Usage was changing at the time of the Grenada 

operation, but the Department of Defense had not codified the new definition. 

For the moment, the word remained a subset of logistics.

7

Officially, logistics in 1983 was “the science of planning and carrying out 

the movement and maintenance of forces.” In its broadest scope, it incorporated four categories of activities—the “design and development, acquisition, 

storage, movement, distribution, maintenance, evacuation, and disposition of 

materiel”; the “movement, evacuation, and hospitalization of personnel”; the 

“acquisition or construction, maintenance, operation, and disposition of facilities”; and the “acquisition or furnishing of services.” The definition of the 

word had thus shrunk from the full extent of its World War II meaning, but 

no overarching term had yet arisen to replace it. For the purposes of this study, 

logistics includes but is not bounded by the traditional core functions of supply; transportation; distribution; maintenance; medical triage, treatment, and 

evacuation; and other services most often associated with active operations in 

the field. Other support categories subsumed by the World War II definition, 

such as engineering, communications, military police, and personnel management, are discussed only to the extent that they affected these core activities 

during Urgent Fury.

8

6 George C. Thorpe, Pure Logistics, pp. 3–5, 9 (quoted words). See also idem, George C. 

Thorpe’s Pure Logistics, pp. ix–xxviii; Richard M. Leighton and Robert W. Coakley, Global 

Logistics and Strategy, 1940–1943, pp. 1–17; TM 20–205, Dictionary of United States Army 

Terms, 1944, s.v. “logistics.” 7 James E. Hewes Jr., From Root to McNamara, pp. 234–35; Shannon A. Brown, 

“Introduction,” in Shannon A. Brown, ed., Providing the Means of War, pp. 5–17; James H. 

Edgar, “The Origins and Impact of the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act 

(DAWIA),” in ibid., pp. 261–79. For the modern usage, see also Glossary: Defense Acquisition 

Acronyms and Terms, 2005, app. B, s.v. “Acquisition.” 8 JCS Pub 1, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 1979, s.v. “logistics.”
The Rucksack War

8

Contingency forces are designed to go to war from a standing start using 

the personnel, equipment, and supplies immediately available. They are instruments created to venture into a great many places and to use violence, if necessary, to execute policy. While these forces are permanent organizations trained 

to react to crises in the abstract, each operation they conduct involves a crisis 

in reality. Going to war in the late twentieth century, as a result, required these 

forces to adapt themselves to the circumstances of the moment.9

The Army’s participation in Urgent Fury began with an airborne assault. 

To achieve an understanding of the logistical effort to support Army forces 

on Grenada thus requires consideration of the unique characteristics of this 

type of military activity. Some analysts have judged amphibious assaults to 

be the most complex of military endeavors, but anyone who has participated 

in or studied airborne operations in depth could make a good case for them 

as strong competitors for the title. The movement of an airborne unit to a 

departure airfield is a complex ballet of men, equipment, and supplies choreographed with almost split-second timing to arrive in a predetermined sequence 

at a departure ramp. There, Army and Air Force logisticians load everyone 

and everything aboard appropriate aircraft. The simple repositioning of an 

airborne unit to its point of departure thus demands detailed coordination 

between the services. Activities in the area of operations are no less intricate 

and are often further complicated by someone shooting at the new arrivals.10

In 1983 the technology did not exist to permit collective updated planning 

en route to an objective. The speed at which an airborne operation was executed, some 500 miles per hour slowing to 120 over the drop zone, put severe 

limits on the ability of commanders to modify plans in the air. In contrast, 

amphibious commanders enjoyed the benefits of a more leisurely approach to 

their objectives that permitted continuous fine-tuning along the way.11

At its peak, an airborne deployment conveys an impression of massive force 

with an almost irresistible momentum. It is as if someone has switched on a 

machine and then needs only to step back and wait for it to produce the desired 

result. Yet such an impression contains a good deal of illusion. Movement to 

contact by air requires commanders on multiple levels to follow critical pathways 

along which good timing is just as crucial to success as good decisionmaking.

The type and quality of logistical support provided to U.S. Army units 

on Grenada depended upon the size and composition of the force dispatched. 

These factors were influenced, in turn, by the location of the potential area of 

operations, possible opposing forces, and an estimation of the type, intensity, 

and duration of any resistance that the Grenadians might mount. One key 

to understanding the operational logistics story of Urgent Fury is thus to 

understand where the troops were going and why.

9 For the evolution of Army thinking about how to conduct contingency operations, see 

Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1860–

1941; idem, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976. 10 On the complexity of amphibious operations, see Jeter A. Isley and Philip A. Crowl, The 

U.S. Marines and Amphibious War, pp. 1–13. 11 RCmts, Reardon, May 2004, Hist files (Drafts), CMH. 
Behind the Scenes

9

On the Island

Grenada, the focus for U.S. contingency forces in October 1983, is the 

smallest and most southerly of the Windward Islands, lying 160 kilometers 

north of the coast of Venezuela and 2,300 kilometers southeast of Key West, 

Florida. The country consists of the large main island of Grenada, some 

311 square kilometers in area, and several smaller island dependencies with 

a combined area of 33 square kilometers (see Map 2). The most important 

of the smaller islands are the Grenadines, a series of islands and islets that 

stretch like stepping stones from the main island some 113 kilometers to the 

north to St. Vincent, the next major island in the Windwards. Of these, only 

the two northernmost islands belonging to Grenada—Petit Martinique and 

Carriacou—are inhabited. In 1983 the total population of the country was 

approximately 91,000.12

The main island is divided into three distinct regions—tropical rain forest 

in the center, coastal plain, and a semiarid zone in the southwest. The rugged interior, with seven peaks over 500 meters in height, is covered by thick 

double-canopy rain forests. Annual rainfall varies from 380 to 510 centimeters. 

The plain, where annual rainfall averages 152 centimeters, serves as both the 

center of commercial agriculture and settlement. All the island’s towns are 

located there. In 1983 the capital, St. George’s, with 7,500 residents, was the 

most populous, more than double the size of the next largest, the fishing village of Gouyave. Both are on the west coast. Most Grenadians, then and now, 

live in rural areas. Pearls Airport, the only operational airfield on the island in 

October 1983, was on the east coast. Its single runway was too short to accommodate large jets and the mountains just to the west made an extension impossible. The airport was connected to the capital by a narrow winding mountain 

road in great disrepair, reputed to be one of the worst in the Caribbean.13

In the island’s extreme southwest, a long peninsula points like a finger 

toward Caracas, Venezuela. The western end is called Point Salines. It was the 

site of the last remnant of a once thriving sugar industry that largely disappeared following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834. Rainfall 

averages only 76 centimeters each year, but thick vegetation, encouraged by the 

region’s oppressive humidity, retards off-road movement. In contrast to the rest 

of the island, the hills on the Point Salines Peninsula are low and rolling.14

12 Sandra W. Meditz and Dennis M. Hanratty, eds., Islands of the Commonwealth Caribbean, 

pp. 349–52; Morley Ayearst, The British West Indies, pp. 350–53; Beverley Steele, “Grenada, an 

Island State,” pp. 5–9; Tony Thorndike, Grenada, pp. xvii–xx; and Plan, Jiri Cerhonek, Jun 1982, 

sub: A Project for Grenada’s Economic Development in the Period 1983–85, Hist files (PDocs/

CGD), CMH. 13 Hugh O’Shaughnessy, Grenada, pp. 29–30; Kai P. Schoenhals and Richard A. Melanson, 

Revolution and Intervention in Grenada, p. 55; Meditz and Hanratty, eds., Islands, pp. 361–62; Plan, 

Cerhonek, Jun 1982, Hist files (PDocs/CGD), CMH; United Kingdom, Central Office of Information, 

Reference Division, Grenada, pp. 2–3. On Pearls, see Rpt, Dellums to Price, [14 Jun 1982], sub: Factfinding Mission—Grenada, CGD Mf 004744, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. 14 Rpt, Dellums to Price, [14 Jun 1982], CGD Mf 004744, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, 

NARA–CP; Michael G. Smith, The Plural Society in the British West Indies, p. 263. 
Military Region IV

Military Region II

Military Region III

Military Region I

C A R I B B E A N

S E A

Grand Etang

Point Salines Runway

Pearls Airport

Little Saint Vincent

Petit Carriacou Is Martinique

Diamond Is

Ronde Is

GRENAD A

G R E N A D I N E I S L A N D S

Gouyave

Victoria

Sauteurs

St. George's

Calivigny

Grenville

St. David's

Grand Mal

True Blue

Grand Anse

Pearls

A T L A NTIC

OCEA N

CARIBBEAN

S E A

Puerto Rico

VENEZUELA TRINIDAD

TOBAGO

GRENADA

BARBADOS

Martinique

Guadeloupe

Anguilla

BARBUDA

ANTIGUA

ST. KITTS

NEVIS

DOMINICA

ST. LUCIA

ST. VINCENT

L E E W A R D I S

W I N D W A R D I S

GRENADA

1983

ELEVATION IN METERS

0 300 600 and Above

0

0

10Miles

10 Kilometers

Military Region Boundary

Map 2
Views of St. George’s harbor and surrounding terrain
The Rucksack War

12

Although independent and a member of the British Commonwealth since 

1974, Grenada remained an economic dependency of Great Britain. Tree 

crops, such as mace and bananas, dominated commercial agriculture. Most 

Grenadians, the descendants of African slaves, were very poor. While many 

citizens were literate, they lacked technical skills, and many were unemployed. 

By 1979 the unemployment rate was close to 26 percent and growing, the product of a stagnant economy and a booming birthrate. In March of that year a 

band of young radicals led by a young London-educated attorney, Maurice 

Bishop, overthrew the outwardly democratic but increasingly authoritarian 

government of Sir Eric M. Gairy and proclaimed a “new democratic structure” that somehow did not include free elections, freedom of speech, an independent press, or an apolitical judiciary.15

With Bishop at its head as prime minister, the People’s Revolutionary 

Government proved widely popular at the beginning, and Bishop, handsome 

and magnetic, a charismatic speaker and a man of proven courage, gained a 

personal following that he never entirely lost. Real power rested not with the 

government ministers but with his party—the New Joint Effort for Welfare, 

Education, and Liberation (JEWEL) Movement—that operated behind the 

15 Frederic L. Pryor, Revolutionary Grenada, pp. 201–06; Plan, Cerhonek, Jun 1982, Hist 

files (PDocs/CGD), CMH; George Brizan, Grenada, pp. 313–54; A. W. Singham, The Hero and 

the Crowd in a Colonial Polity, pp. 72–81, 94–99, 126–27; Michael G. Smith, Stratification in 

Grenada, pp. 238–42; Maurice Bishop, In Nobody’s Backyard, pp. 81–82, 188–90, 257 (quoted 

words).

Pearls Airport 
Behind the Scenes

13

scenes. Its Central Committee, of which Bishop was chairman, made all the 

decisions that counted. For domestic and foreign consumption, however, he and 

his associates assumed the pose of a progressive left-of-center government under 

attack by forces they judged to be imperialist. In their public declarations, they 

held the United States responsible for everything that went wrong on the island, 

including even the most trivial incidents. When the Lesser Antilles Air Transport 

Service lost a tourist’s luggage, for example, Bishop claimed that it was a Central 

Intelligence Agency (CIA) plot to destabilize his nation’s economy.16

Bishop and his associates saw Cuba as both an inspiration and a model 

for what they hoped to accomplish and actively sought the closest possible ties 

with that country and the Soviet Union. Each country ultimately provided considerable assistance. Cuba had started surreptitiously supplying the Grenadians 

with small arms and ammunition within days of Gairy’s overthrow. Cuban military advisers soon appeared and established a training camp at Grand Etang 

in the mountainous center of the island to instruct the Bishop-led People’s 

Revolutionary Army and the People’s Revolutionary Militia. Deputy Prime 

16 See Michael Ledeen and Herbert Romerstein, eds., Grenada Documents, doc. 1; Maurice 

Bishop, Maurice Bishop Speaks, pp. 26–31, 111–17, 228–33; Gregory W. Sandford and Richard 

Vigilante, Grenada, pp. 47–64; Frank V. Ortiz, “Grenada Before and After,” pp. 7, 9, 12; Michael 

Massing, “Grenada Before and After,” pp. 76–87; Chris Searle, Grenada, pp. 53, 68–70; Kwando 

M. Kinshasa, “Prime Minister Maurice Bishop,” pp. 41–59. See also Msgs, Ortiz to SecState, 11 

1203 Apr 1979, sub: Grenada—Meeting with Minister of Finance Bernard Coard; 11 1243 Apr 

1979, sub: Meeting with Prime Minister Bishop and Foreign Minister Whiteman; and 16 1757 

Apr 79, sub: Grenada: PM’s Speech Attacks US “Veiled Threats.” All in Msg files, DoS.

Aerial view of the Point Salines airfield
The Rucksack War

14

Minister Bernard Coard traveled to Moscow and signed the first of a series of 

trade treaties with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in June 1980. Some 

eight months later, in February 1981, the Soviets shipped eight armored personnel carriers and two armored reconnaissance and patrol vehicles to the island; 

even larger shipments of small arms and ammunition followed. Perhaps taken 

aback by a Communist party whose name conveyed no reference to communism 

and a government that proclaimed socialist doctrine to the population by hiring 

professional calypso singers, the Soviets waited until November 1981 to dispatch 

a resident ambassador to Grenada. Other Communist states, including North 

Korea, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Vietnam, contributed 

smaller amounts of arms, equipment, and training.17

17 Memos, Jacobs for FM, Dep PM, and PM, 11 Jul 1983, sub: Grenada’s Relations with 

the USSR; [MofFA] for PM, 29 May 1982, sub: USSR; USSR and Grenada, 27 Oct 1980, sub: 

Agreement Between Governments of Grenada and USSR and Deliveries from USSR to Grenada 

of Special and Other Equipment; 9 Feb 1981, sub: Protocol to Agreement of 27 Oct 1980; 

Frazier for Louison, 9 Oct 1981, sub: Materiel Means Received From Foreign Countries, Within 

the Period 1979–81; [unsigned] for PM, 29 May 1982, sub: Agreements Between Governments 

of USSR and Grenada. All in IDR nos. W1, 000190, 000193, 102170, and 103902, Hist files 

(PDocs/CGD), CMH. See also Searle, Grenada, pp. 53, 78–79; Jiri Valenta and Virginia Valenta, 

“Leninism in Grenada,” p. 8; and Mark Falcoff, “Bishop’s Cuba, Castro’s Grenada,” pp. 67–76, 

Vernon V. Aspaturian, “The Impact of the Grenada Events on the Soviet Alliance System,” 

pp. 41–62, and Charles Gati, “Fraternal Assistance: Eastern Europe in Grenada,” pp. 87–96, in 

Grenada and Soviet/Cuban Policy.

Bishop Gairy
Behind the Scenes

15

The New JEWEL’s economic strategy involved a massive expansion of 

the public sector while simultaneously 

shrinking the private sector until it disappeared. The centerpiece was the construction of a large international airport at Point Salines, where the rolling 

terrain made it feasible. Originally proposed by Gairy as a means of attracting tourists, the idea gained the support 

of Bishop and Coard only after they 

seized power. In 1981 the new administration of President Ronald W. Reagan 

saw the project as a means of extending Soviet and Cuban influence in the 

Caribbean Basin. It sought, with some 

degree of success, to block Grenada’s 

access to capital markets.18

Even without American opposition, the airport construction project 

proved almost too demanding. Salt 

marshes had to be filled, hills leveled, a 

lighthouse dismantled and moved, and 

a large causeway constructed across a 

major inlet. Using Western construction firms and the labor of numerous Cuban 

workers, the People’s Revolutionary Government pressed on. By the fall of 1983 

success appeared to be in sight. The Grenadians hoped to formally open their 

showpiece on the fifth anniversary of the revolution, 5 March 1984.19

Bishop’s policies, coupled with a worldwide economic downturn in the 

early 1980s, produced significant dislocations that threatened the legitimacy 

of his government. Despite this, the New JEWEL Movement had strong continuing support from landless peasants. The regime had confiscated estates 

belonging to Gairy’s closest associates, most of which were south and west of 

St. George’s; divided them into small parcels; and distributed them to families 

without land of their own.20

Ironically, one portion of the capitalist sector, a near neighbor to the resettled 

peasants, continued to be a solid revenue producer for the state: the St. George’s 

University School of Medicine. Founded in 1976 by a group of American 

18 Conference Committee (Bernard Coard et al.), ed., Independence for Grenada, pp. 131–

34; Jay R. Mandle, Big Revolution, Small Country, pp. 22–44. 19 See Rpt, [PRG], c. 1980, sub: International Airport Project, Point Salines, Grenada, CGD 

Mf 008451, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP; Gregory W. Sandford, The New JEWEL 

Movement, pp. 132–33. 20 Thorndike, Grenada, pp. 19–22, 69, 96–105; Chris Searle and Don Rojas, eds., To Construct 

from Morning, esp. pp. 15–34, 94–131, 150–59, and Conference Committee, ed., Independence 

for Grenada, pp. 69–76. 

Coard
The Rucksack War

16

physicians, it was a for-profit institution for Americans rejected by U.S. medical 

schools. The college had two campuses—True Blue, located on the eastern end of 

the new runway at Point Salines; and Grand Anse, just south of the town of St. 

George’s. By the fall of 1983 some 700 American students lived at the two campuses and in off-campus housing, primarily on Prickly Point near True Blue. While 

the income generated by the school represented between 10 and 15 percent of 

Grenada’s gross national product, the institution proved to be a mixed blessing for 

the Bishop regime. Bishop and his associates considered the faculty and students a 

nest of spies in need of monitoring by the Grenadian intelligence service.21

Grenadian Armed Forces and Cuban Workers

In the beginning the Grenadian army was an army in name only. The fortyodd men who overpowered the Gairy government in March 1979 provided a 

nucleus for the force formed hastily in the aftermath of the coup’s success. The 

remainder consisted of party supporters, primarily teenagers, who gradually 

acquired AK47s as Cuban and Soviet arms shipments arrived. The force’s development was so chaotic and unplanned that logistical support initially consisted 

of handouts of food from citizens celebrating Gairy’s overthrow. In the end, the 

People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces with Bishop as the commander in chief 

evolved into three components: the People’s Revolutionary Army, a permanent 

force; the People’s Revolutionary Militia, a much larger reserve establishment; 

and the small coast guard that manned converted fishing boats.22

In 1983 the People’s Revolutionary Army consisted of three small companies—a motorized (in the Soviet sense) company, with 145 men when at full 

strength; a mobile company, with 150 men; and an exploration (reconnaissance) company, with 33 men, 24 drawn from the militia. While the motorized 

company was at 62 percent of full strength, the other two companies were virtually complete. The motorized company was equipped with Soviet armored 

vehicles—eight BTR60PB amphibious armored personnel carriers and two 

BRDM2 amphibious scout cars. The eight-wheel-drive BTRs, with well-sloped 

armor on the sides and overhead armor protection that mounted coaxial 14.5-

mm. and 7.62-mm. machine guns in a small conical turret, had a 3-man crew 

and carried up to 8 fully equipped infantrymen in a rear compartment; the 

BRDMs had the same turret and armament as the BTRs plus one more crew 

member and, with 14-mm. armor, provided about twice the protection as the 

personnel carriers. Although both types were vulnerable to heavy machine gun 

and artillery fire, they were formidable weapons indeed in a region devoid of 

tanks and artillery. The light-infantry mobile company was capable of moving 

21 Linda Wolfe, “Young Doctors at Sea,” pp. 34–39; Plans, MoI, Grenada, n.d., sub: CI 

Operations and Action for Security Forces in Armed Forces Maneuvers, 30 Jan–1 Feb 1981, 

IDR nos. 104968, 105161, Hist files (PDocs/CGD), CMH. 22 Memo, DGofPlanning, PRG, for All Permanent Secs, Dept Heads, and Liaison Offs for 

Cuban Collaboration, n.d., sub: 1983/84 Cuba-Grenada Collaboration Agreement; Rpt, Fraser, 

30 Sep 1983, sub: Logistic Study Commission . . . ; Rpt, [c. 1980], sub: Reorganization and 

Structure of the Armed Forces; Rpt, GS, [Nov 1979], sub: Armament Subgroup; Rpt, Belfon to 

Bishop, 26 Aug 82, sub: Revised Student List for Overseas (Soviet Union) Course. All in CGD 

Mf 003264, 004038, 008543, 008543, 012559, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP.
Behind the Scenes

17

by truck to any threatened sector. The exploration company replaced a rapid 

mobilization company, a militia unit theoretically capable of taking the field 

within twenty-four hours of notification but found wanting in this regard. 

Rounding out the permanent force were an antiaircraft battery, a logistics unit, 

and several platoons assigned to protect and support two high-value targets—

the ministry of defence and interior and the Unified Storeroom. Previously, the 

People’s Revolutionary Army had also fielded a separate mortar platoon and a 

separate antitank platoon, but these crew-served weapons and their operators 

had been distributed among the existing organizations.23

23 Memo, [c. 1980], sub: [Estima]ted Time for Formation of Units in Transition Period; Rpt, 

[unsigned], n.d., sub: Reorganization and Structure of the Armed Forces; Notes, 29 Sep 1983, sub: 

Meeting of Bn Staff; Memo, MoD, 6 Jun 1983, sub: [Strength of General Staff and Units]; Rpt, 

MoD, 15 Oct 1983, sub: Situation, 1200; Notes, MoD, 14 Oct [1983], sub: [Strength of Carriacou 

Bn, St. George’s Bn, St. Andrews Bn]; Chart, [MoD], 21 Sep 1983, sub: Situation of Completion 

of Units; Rpt, Francis to Bishop, 22 May 1983, sub: Specific Aspects That Relate to My Unit. 

All in CGD Mf 008543, 008543, 004032, 004032, 004279, 004416, 004416, 004849, Entry 338 

(UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. On Soviet equipment, see FM 100–2–3, The Soviet Army: Troops, 

Organization, and Equipment, Jun 1991 pp. 5-23 to 5-26, Archives files, CMH. 

Soviet BTR60PB; below, Soviet BRDM2
The Rucksack War

18

Five reserve battalions, consisting of regulars and militiamen, supported 

the permanent force. The regulars served as a command-and-control cadre to 

direct mobilization and training; the remainder of the troops were militiamen. 

All these units were organized as light infantry, and their size fluctuated widely. 

The St. George’s Battalion, with 448 authorized personnel, was the strongest, 

while the Carriacou Battalion, with 256 men and women, was the smallest. In 

practice, the Carriacou Battalion had a strength of only 150; by Grenadian 

standards it was little more than a reinforced company.24

To administer the reserves and to facilitate mobilization, the Grenadian 

General Staff divided the main island and its dependencies into four military 

regions (see Map 2). Military Region I encompassed the southwestern part 

of the main island, which included the capital of St. George’s and the area 

around Point Salines; II, the east coast and the mountainous interior; III, the 

northwestern part of the main island; and IV, Carriacou and Petit Martinque. 

While Military Region I supported two reserve battalions, the other three mustered one battalion apiece.25

All the permanent units and the military regions reported directly to the 

General Staff, which functioned in practice (if not in theory) as a directing body. 

Following a reorganization in June 1983, it consisted of a chief of staff, Maj. 

Einstein Louison, and nine staff sections representing a combination of functional specialties and military branches. The General Staff’s primary functions 

were to prepare military plans and to serve as the connecting link between the 

field forces and the secretary of defence and interior, General Hudson Austin. 

Austin was both the only general officer in the People’s Revolutionary Armed 

Forces and the political head of the ministry, whose political, financial, and logistical sections reported directly to him (Chart 1). His responsibilities as minister 

included not only the care and maintenance of the armed forces but also of the 

internal security apparatus. As with other members of the Bishop government, 

Austin held more than one major ministerial post. In his role as the minister of 

communications, works, and labour, he was responsible for the design and building of the airport at Point Salines. Austin reported directly to Bishop.26

Soldiers in the People’s Revolutionary Army, both officers and enlisted 

men, received individual training in both Cuba and the Soviet Union. The 

bulk of those who trained overseas traveled to Cuba, and the relative few who 

24 Dirs 001, AFofGrenada, n.d., subs: Organization of [Mil] Region I and Organization of 

[Mil] Region IV; Rpt, George to Bishop, 23 May 1983, sub: Combative Disposition and Status 

of Units; Chart, [MoD], 21 Sep 1983. All in CGD Mf 004311, 004067, 004270, 004416, Entry 

338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. 25 Dir, Bishop, [1981], sub: System of Completion and Control of the People’s Militia (Reserves); 

Rpt, Abdulah to Bishop, 24 May 83, sub: Present Situation in Region IV; Chart, [MoD], 21 Sep 

1983. All in CGD Mf 004849, 004849, 004416, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. 26 Order 001, CinC, AFofGrenada, n.d., sub: Instruction Year 1982–83; Rpt, [MoD], [1983], 

sub: Direction of Armed Forces; Galley Proof, n.d., sub: Grenada—Defense Establishment, 

Command Structure, and Force Organization; Chart, [MoD], n.d., sub: [General Staff Structure], 

June 1983–Present Day; Notes, 28 Sep 1983, sub: Meeting of Chiefs of Subcommission of 

Commission #1; Oath, PRA, n.d. All in CGD Mf 003484, 003499, 004032, 004344, 004344, 

006646, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP.
Prime

Minister

Ministry of

Defence and 

Interior Perm 4 Tot 4

Military State

Committee

Perm 7

Tot 7

Administrative

Office

Perm 5

Tot 5

Sappers*

Platoon

Security*

Platoon

Transport

Platoon

Perm 3Tot 3

Service

Platoon

Perm 9Tot 9

Perm 1Tot 1Perm 19Tot 19

Antiaircraft

Platoon

Perm 8Tot 8

Communications

Platoon

Perm 15Tot 17

General

Staff

Perm 34Tot 34

Political

Section

Perm 8Tot 8

Finance

Section

Perm 3Tot 3

Logistics

Section

Perm 6Tot 8

Logistics

Unit

Perm 29Tot 104

Antiaircraft

Platoon

Perm 9Tot 9

Security*

Platoon

Perm 19Tot 19

Military

Region I

Military

Region II

Military

Region III

Military

Region IV

People'sRevolutionaryMilitia

St. George's

Battalion

St. David's

Battalion

St. Andrew's

Battalion

St. Patrick's

Battalion

Carriacou

Battalion (-)

People'sRevolutionaryArmy

Motorized

Company

Perm 91Tot 91

Mobile

Company

Exploration

Company

Perm 12 Tot 34

Antiaircraft

Battery

Perm 45Tot 46

Perm 76Tot 146

Chart 1—Grenadian Armed Forces Command Structure, 21 September 1983

* The Sappers Platoon was an engineer platoon, while the Security Platoon consisted of light infantry.Source: Table, Situation of the Completion of Units, 21 Sep 1983, and Rpt, Fraser, 30 Sep 1983, sub: [Current Status of Logistics] CGO Mf 004032 and 004416, Entry 338 (UO), RG 242, NARA–CP; Bruce R. Pirnie, Operation URGENT FURY, p. 11. All gures are actual troops with

units as of 21 September.

Perm = Permanent Tot = Total (includes mobilized militiamen) 
The Rucksack War

20

went to the Soviet Union benefited 

from longer and more sophisticated 

courses. Beginning shortly after the 

1979 revolution, both countries dispatched training teams to Grenada. 

The Cubans maintained a permanent training team that provided unit 

training; the Soviets, as well as other 

Warsaw Pact nations, occasionally 

assigned teams. By 1983 these efforts 

had produced the rudiments of a professional force.27

Despite the training, technical 

expertise remained in short supply. 

Because Grenadian junior and noncommissioned officers usually held 

more than one position simultaneously, 

it was hard for anyone to excel in any 

one position. Capt. Lester Redhead, 

for example, served as both the commander of the Motorized Infantry 

Company and the chief of the Training 

Section of the General Staff.28

While the troops gained a measure of competence with their individual and crew-served weapons, unit operations were another matter. The Grenadian economy was too poor to permit the extensive field training required to bring the island’s forces to a high 

level of readiness. Conditions in the People’s Revolutionary Militia were even 

worse than in the permanent force. Most reservists never even fired a weapon 

on a range. As a result, much of the army’s and almost all the militia’s training took place in the classroom rather than the field, and much of that class 

time consisted of ideological instruction. Lack of expertise also exacerbated 

training problems. Often the Central Committee selected key commissioned 

or noncommissioned officers on the basis of their technical skills or political connections without regard for their leadership abilities. Even when these 

men and women proved inept, they usually remained in their positions. This 

situation did nothing to foster productive teams.29

27 Ltr, Rodriguez to SecDef/Int, 10 Jan 1983; Rpt, Redhead to Louison, 21 Jul 1983, sub: 

Rpt on Present Situation in the Militia; Rpt, Stroude to Bishop, 4 Sep 1982, sub: Rpt on Training 

Course in Cuba. All in CGD Mf 006921, 008539, 012559, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. 

See also Ledeen and Romerstein, eds., Grenada Documents, docs. 24, 25; John Walton Cotman, 

The Gorrión Tree, pp. 72–104. 28 Ltr, Rodriguez to SecDef/Int, 10 Jan 1983, and Rpt, Redhead to Louison, 21 Jul 1983, 

CGD Mf 006921, 008539, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. 29 Ltr, Rodriguez to SecDef/Int., 10 Jan 1983; Rpt, Redhead to Louison, 21 Jul 1983; Cir, 

Louison to All Officers, NCOs, and Privates, 30 Apr 1982, sub: Wearing of Uniform on the 

Compound; Rpt, Parke, 24 May 1983, sub: Present Situation in Log [Base]; Rpt, Stroude to CinC, 

Austin 
Behind the Scenes

21

The cumulative effect of these influences was that the permanent force 

improved militarily in a curious checkerboard fashion rather than along 

a broad front. While the quality of the Grenadians’ antiaircraft units was 

quite high, that of their antitank teams was low—possibly because most of 

the soldiers had never seen a tank. Whatever the case, by 1983 the People’s 

Revolutionary Army was fully capable of maintaining order against the 

regime’s internal opponents. By contrast, the People’s Revolutionary Militia 

was less a military organization than a patriotic society devoted to developing a sense of nationhood, promoting loyalty to the regime, and serving as 

a point of entry for a job in the public sector. Whether these organizations 

could defeat an external opponent of any strength remained to be seen.30

Logistical units and fixed installations provided support for the permanent 

troops and active-duty militiamen. As of May 1983 a small headquarters at 

True Blue, not far from the American medical school campus, provided command and control over five diverse elements: the Unified Storeroom, located 

5 Oct 1982, sub: Organization of Political/Academic Work [for Year 1982–83]; Rpt, Stroude to 

CinC, 12 Jul 1983, sub: Present State of Party—Political Work in Armed Forces. All in CGD Mf 

006921, 008539, 003064, 004849, 006259, 006942, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. For a 

discussion of the state of the militia, see Kinshasa, “Prime Minister Maurice Bishop,” pp. 48–50. 30 Ltr, Rodriguez to SecDef/Int, 10 Jan 1983, and Rpt, Ad Hoc Cmte, 16 Apr 1983, sub: 

Special Rpt to Security/Defence Committee and Political Bureau, CGD Mf 006921 and 005196, 

Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP.

Member of the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces stands guard in the street.
The Rucksack War

22

at Frequente, which consisted of two large warehouses that handled all classes 

of supply; the Unified Workshop, which served as a centralized repair point 

for all types of equipment; the Medical Post, which treated all casualties; the 

Transportation Company, which controlled the bulk of the wheeled transport 

in the People’s Revolutionary Army; and the Farm, south of St. George’s, where 

soldiers grew food to supplement their army ration and to lessen dependence 

upon imported foodstuffs. By the fall of 1983 the regime had consolidated these 

elements into one logistics unit, with some small reduction in overhead.31

The Bishop government saw itself as the vanguard of the revolution in the 

Caribbean, and this conception influenced all defense policies. As part of its program to defend and foster the revolution, the government surreptitiously opened 

the army’s training facilities to revolutionary parties throughout the Caribbean 

and turned the Unified Storeroom into a transshipment point for arms for the 

newly trained revolutionaries. The danger of this approach was that any effort to 

extend the revolution might invite an attack from counterrevolutionary forces. 

Rhetorically evoking Maoist tenets, Bishop and his supporters publicly stated 

they would resort to guerrilla warfare if an invader attacked and succeeded in 

capturing the island. This approach, however, had little chance of succeeding, 

given Grenadian realities. The country lacked the economic resources and the 

size to make such a campaign practical for an extended period. As a result, the 

Ministry of Defence made little effort to cache arms, equipment, or foodstuffs in 

the interior to support a sustained effort at irregular warfare.32

Bishop planned to neutralize the threat of an American invasion by building popular support for his regime in the United States. Rather than prepare for 

a U.S. intervention, the Grenadians focused on what they considered the most 

likely threat: a landing by one or two CIA-sponsored mercenary brigades, supported at most by a few destroyers and obsolete propeller-driven warplanes. In 

short, with Cuban encouragement, they prepared to refight the Bay of Pigs.33

Detailed planning envisioned that the People’s Revolutionary Army would 

contain any invasion force during the early stages of the operation until the People’s 

Revolutionary Militia could mobilize and overwhelm the intruders through sheer 

weight of numbers. Militiamen would move to concentration points at the center 

of the island where they could deploy in multiple directions depending upon the 

location of the threat. The Grenadians had studied U.S. Marine Corps amphibious doctrine and organization and had some hope of beating back an amphibious assault before the enemy landed. When the islanders ran exercises based on 

these plans, the outcome was always the same. They repulsed the invaders.34

31 Memo, n.d., sub: Principal Role of Log from Peace to War Time, and Rpt, Fraser, 30 Sep 

1983, CGD Mf 003064 and 004038, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. 32 Rpt, James, 16 Mar 1983, sub: National Security . . . , and Memo, MoD, 18 Apr 1983, sub: 

Character of Enemy Actions, CGD Mf 004841 and 012496, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. 33 Rpt, James, 16 Mar 1983, and Memo, MoD, 18 Apr 1983, CGD Mf 004841 and 012496, 

Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. 34 Memo, MoD, 18 Apr 1983; Chart, n.d., sub: MI Bn in Defence; Memo, Bishop, [Apr 

1983], sub: Tactical Task for Realization of Unilateral Tactical Maneuver of Two Grades. All in 

CGD Mf 012496, 004490, 012496, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP.
Behind the Scenes

23

A spring 1983 invasion scare, prompted by a television address by President 

Reagan in which he denounced the construction of an airport at Point Salines, 

sparked a high-level review of defense plans and capabilities of the People’s 

Revolutionary Armed Forces. Both the General Staff and its Cuban military 

advisers considered the Point Salines area as the most likely location for any 

attack. They laid out a well-conceived defense depending upon dispersed light 

machine guns and mortars with interlocking fields of fire. The plan left no 

part of the peninsula undefended by fire from predetermined fighting stations. 

Responsibility for the defense of the area rested with approximately 700 Cuban 

construction workers, whose camp stood on a hill overlooking the west end of 

the new airport’s runway. All were reservists in the Cuban armed forces, but for 

some of the middle-aged members of the group, military training was an everreceding memory. The Cubans organized their camp along military lines, and 

the Grenadians supplied them with light infantry weapons. The Cuban government required all the workers assigned to Grenada to train as a military unit, 

but in October 1983 most were new arrivals and had not yet done so. A realist 

with few illusions when it came to military affairs, Coard concluded that the 

construction workers were the regime’s main defense against external attack.35

Eastern Caribbean Neighbors

Revolutionary Grenada’s relations with its eastern Caribbean neighbors 

were complex to say the least. Politically, Grenada remained a member of the 

British Commonwealth. The governor general under Gairy, Sir Paul Scoon, 

a former school teacher from Gouyave who had studied in Great Britain and 

Canada, continued on as the ceremonial head of state and representative of the 

Queen under Bishop. His reputation as “a very decent human being,” to quote 

Keith Mitchell, a Howard University faculty member, no doubt eased the transition. At the same time, however, the New JEWEL Movement continued fraternal ties with other regional progressive parties that aimed to overthrow the 

governments with which the Bishop regime maintained formal diplomatic ties. 

Economically, however, considerable solidarity existed between the regional 

governments. Grenada remained a member of the Caribbean Community and 

Common Market—an organization of British Commonwealth states in the 

region that sought economic integration; cooperation in such areas as culture, education, and tourism; and coordination of foreign and defense policies. Given Grenada’s orientation toward Havana and Moscow while most 

of the group’s other members looked toward Great Britain and the United 

States, the Bishop regime’s adherence to the last objective was a mere formality with little substance. In 1981 Grenada did join with the other governments of the Windward and Leeward Islands to form the Organization of 

35 Fidel Castro, War and Crisis in the Americas, pp. 128–30; Republic of Cuba, Statements 

by Cuba on Events in Grenada, October 1983, pp. 5–6; Interv, Bishop with Ventura, 1 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Rpt, Ad Hoc Cmte, 16 Apr 1983, and Overlays, subs: [Cuban 

Defensive Positions, Point Salines] and [Disposition of Units for Defense of Point Salines], 

with Map of Grenada, CGD Mf 005196 and 00317(#1)/002761, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, 

NARA–CP.
Cuban construction workers and their camp at Point Salines
Behind the Scenes

25

Eastern Caribbean States, a body associated with the Caribbean Community 

and Common Market but designed to foster the political, economic, foreign 

policy, and defense interests of the microstates it represented. Many of these 

neighbors opposed the Reagan administration’s efforts to block Grenada’s 

access to capital markets.36

Despite this cooperation, Grenada’s Communist affiliations and military 

buildup caused increasing nervousness among its neighbors. Prime Ministers 

J. M. G. M. “Tom” Adams of Barbados, Eugenia Charles of Dominica, 

and Edward Seaga of Jamaica became the Bishop regime’s most dedicated 

local opponents. Largely in response to the military buildup on Grenada, 

Adams took the lead to establish the Regional Security System that included 

Barbados and four members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States: 

St. Lucia, Dominica, the nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the 

nation of Antigua and Barbuda. All signed a memorandum of understanding 

on 29 October 1982 to codify the arrangement—a member state whose security was threatened could call upon the others for assistance—and all agreed 

to draw up contingency plans, to earmark reaction forces (eighty-member 

paramilitary special service units on each island), to arrange for combined 

training, and to create a regional command-and-control apparatus. Barbados 

provided the bulk of the funds and the only trained soldiers; the other islands 

had only police. Col. (later Brig.) Rudyard Lewis, the chief of staff of the 

Barbados Defence Force, became the first coordinator of the regional forces. 

In a crisis Lewis would oversee the actions of the special service units from the 

Barbados Defence Force’s operations center. At the same time that the member states agreed to this limited centralization, they declined to give Lewis the 

more formal powers of command that Adams had hoped to secure.37

No sooner had Adams obtained the defense agreement than he attempted 

to isolate Grenada diplomatically. In November 1982, at the third meeting of the 

Caribbean Community and Common Market heads of government, he pushed 

for a revision of the organization’s basic treaty to commit member states to maintain parliamentary democracy. In response, Bishop displayed formidable political skills. He worked behind the scenes to defuse the issue, giving private assurances that Grenada would hold elections eventually, although not necessarily for a 

Westminster-style parliament. The other heads of state rejected Adams’ proposal 

and instead adopted a resolution recognizing “ideological pluralism” in the region 

and the sovereign right “of all peoples” to select their own path “to social, economic, and political development.” Bishop was at the height of his prestige.38

36 Meditz and Hanratty, eds., Islands, pp. 654–55, 732; Eric Pace, “In the Eye of the Grenada 

Storm,” New York Times, 27 Oct 1983 (quoted words). 37 See William C. Gilmore, The Grenada Intervention, pp. 93–94; Meditz and Hanratty, eds., 

Islands, pp. 414, 417, 599, 622–24. 38 Msg, Bish to SecState, 28 Oct 1982, sub: Antigua to Sign Regional Defense Agreement, 82 

Bridgetown 05457, DoS; Rpt, [MoFA], 23 Mar 1982, sub: Present International and Regional 

Situation and Grenada’s Plans in the Period, CGD Mf 007668, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, 

NARA; Meditz and Hanratty, eds., Islands, p. 417; Tony Martin, ed., In Nobody’s Back Yard, 

2:63–64, 65 (quoted words), 66. 
The Rucksack War

26

U.S. Policy Shifts

For the previous two hundred years Grenada had existed largely outside 

the strategic calculations of the great powers. U.S. presidents had expressed 

security concerns about developments in the major islands of the Caribbean 

extending back at least to President James Monroe in 1823. The United States, 

however, had traditionally demonstrated little interest in the eastern Caribbean 

and its small states. The Grenadian revolution changed all that.39

U.S.-Grenadian relations were strained from almost the beginning of 

Bishop’s rule. From 1977 until 1981 the administration of President James E. 

“Jimmy” Carter Jr. was hardly unfriendly to left of center populist regimes, as 

the New JEWEL Movement portrayed itself. Bishop and his associates, however, believed that the United States exercised a hegemonic, almost demonic, 

influence on the regional economy. This predisposed them to cast in the worst 

possible light anything that the United States or its agents did.40

39 Lester D. Langley, The United States and the Caribbean in the Twentieth Century pp. 281–88. 40 Bishop, Maurice Bishop Speaks, pp. 22, 48–59; Ledeen and Romerstein, eds., Grenada 

Documents, doc. 1; Valenta and Valenta, “Leninism in Grenada,” pp. 2–4; M. Glenn Abernathy 

et al., eds., The Carter Years, pp. 55–59; Flora Lewis, “Spice Island Strains,” New York Times,

28 Feb 1983.

Lewis, Scoon, and Adams (left to right)
Behind the Scenes

27

The Carter administration initially attempted to establish a working relationship with the Bishop government. Bishop’s public attacks and growing 

ties with Cuba, however, caused American policymakers to reduce contacts 

with Grenada and to adopt an approach best described as correct but cool. 

Events on Grenada occurred in a Cold War context of worldwide competition and sometime cooperation with the Soviet Union and its allies. The 

Americans had long considered the eastern Caribbean a British sphere of 

influence, and the attitude persisted years after Great Britain had given every 

indication of desiring to do nothing more than withdraw from the area. Yet 

the 1979 revolution led the Carter administration to revise the American 

policy of benign neglect. Grenada became a very tiny piece—but a piece 

nonetheless—within an “arc of crisis” of expanding Communist influence 

that President Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski perceived as stretching from Afghanistan through the Horn of Africa to Central 

America.41

Given the range of problems it faced abroad, the Carter administration 

could muster only a modest upgrade in local U.S. military capabilities in the 

region. To focus on the northern Caribbean, it created a standing joint task 

force (JTF) that functioned as a planning headquarters reporting to U.S. 

Atlantic Command in Norfolk, Virginia. A second headquarters, U.S. Antilles 

Command, performed a similar mission for the southern Caribbean. The 

administration also increased U.S. economic assistance to friendly governments in the area while pointedly excluding Grenada because of its close ties 

to Cuba.42

Taking office in January 1981, President Reagan adopted a much more 

rigid anti-Communist stance than his predecessor. The new chief executive 

and his senior advisers gave Grenada more personal consideration than had 

the Carter team. Expanding a Carter initiative, U.S. forces made their presence felt in the region through maneuvers and exercises. In addition, acting on 

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger’s instructions, Atlantic Command 

consolidated its two small subordinate commands into one more robust organization, U.S. Forces, Caribbean, with headquarters in Key West, Florida. On 

23 March 1983 the president made the issue of Soviet and Cuban influence on 

Grenada his own in a very public way. In a television address primarily devoted 

to proposing a satellite-based antiballistic missile system, dubbed Star Wars 

by its critics, Reagan displayed a reconnaissance photograph of the airport 

construction at Point Salines as well as other images to illustrate Soviet and 

Cuban penetration in the region. “Who,” he asked, “is it intended for,” noting 

that “Grenada doesn’t even have an air force.” His advisers feared they knew 

the answer to that question all too well. Grenada lay athwart major U.S. shipping lanes in the Caribbean that carried over 40 percent of U.S. oil imports. 

In an emergency, especially one that required the United States to reinforce 

41 Burton I. Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter Jr., pp. 151–66; “The Crescent 

of Crisis,” Time, 15 Jan 1979, p. 18 (quoted words). 42 Robert A. Pastor, Whirlpool, pp. 42–64; Ronald H. Cole et al., The History of the Unified 

Command Plan, 1946–1993, pp. 70–71.
The Rucksack War

28

Western Europe, the island would provide the Soviets with an unsinkable aircraft carrier in a critical area.43

In May 1983 the Crisis Preplanning Group, an interagency committee 

chaired by a senior member of the National Security Council Staff, recommended that the United States go beyond exhortation by adopting a two-track 

policy toward Grenada. One track consisted of opening a dialogue with Bishop 

to lay out U.S. concerns and to encourage him to halt Grenada’s slide into 

the Soviet orbit. If that failed, the second track would begin—a mix of economic, political, and military pressures to achieve the same result. In short, 

the group proposed that the administration “encourage” the St. George’s 

University School of Medicine—the Bishop regime’s primary source of foreign exchange—to relocate to another island with a friendlier political climate. 

At the same time, the United States would covertly fund Bishop’s democratic 

opponents on the island and provide military assistance to neighboring governments threatened by his arms buildup. The group also considered, but rejected, 

unilateral U.S. military intervention to install a new government. Without a 

triggering event, such as an American held hostage by the Bishop regime, the 

diplomatic costs of such a move would far outweigh the benefits.44

Bishop came to Washington in late June 1983 as part of a good will tour of 

the United States and met with Assistant to the President for National Security 

Affairs Judge William P. Clark, popularly referred to as the national security 

adviser, and other American officials. The “straightforward but amicable conversation” gave the Americans an opportunity to size up Bishop and to “see how 

committed he was to his present course.” Bishop argued that his government 

sought only friendly relations with the United States, while Clark emphasized 

that actions were more important than words. Immediately after the meeting, 

Bishop told the media that the Reagan administration was training mercenaries 

to invade his country. Judge Clark was not amused. The administration closely 

monitored the activities of the Bishop regime for ninety days following the meeting. Detecting no change in either rhetoric or behavior, President Reagan signed 

National Security Decision Directive 105 on 5 October 1983. It made the dualtrack approach official U.S. policy. The directive still sat in the national security 

adviser’s in-box awaiting implementation when events on Grenada overtook it.45

43 R. Cole et al., Unified Command Plan, pp. 71–74; Ronald W. Reagan, Public Papers 

of the President of the United States, 1983, 2:440 (quoted words); Issue Paper, [Interagency 

Core Group], [18 May 1983], sub: Grenada, CJCS files (Vessey), 502B (NSC Memos), RNSC, 

NARA–RRPL. 44 Issue Paper (quoted word), [Interagency Core Group], [18 May 1983], and Memo, Hill 

for Clark, 18 May 1983, sub: Grenada, CJCS files (Vessey), 502B (NSC Memos), RNSC, 

NARA–RRPL. 45 Bernard D. Nossiter, “Grenada Premier Establishes ‘Some Sort’ of U.S. Rapport,” New 

York Times, 10 Jun 1983 (A8, quoted words); Ledeen and Romerstein, eds., Grenada Documents, 

doc. 32; George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 324–25. In RNSC, NARA–RRPL, see also 

Memo, Dam for Reagan, 17 Jun 1983, sub: Meeting with Bishop, Country files (Grenada), vol. 

1 (5), box 91,365; Memo, Clark for Reagan, 4 Oct 1983, sub: Grenada, and NSDD 105, Reagan, 

4 Oct 1983, sub: Eastern Caribbean Security Policy, NSDD files, box 91,291; and Memo, Clark 

for Shultz, 15 Jun 1983, CJCS files (Vessey), 502B (NSC Memos). 
Behind the Scenes

29

Chain of Command Complexities

What was happening at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, located some 530 

kilometers south of Washington, D.C., and home of the Army’s main contingency force—the XVIII Airborne Corps and its 82d Airborne Division—would 

have a major impact upon subsequent operations on Grenada. On Friday, 14 

October 1983, Col. Stephen Silvasy Jr., a 41-year-old graduate of the U.S. 

Military Academy (class of 1963) assumed command of the 82d Airborne 

Division’s 2d Brigade at Fort Bragg. For Silvasy it was a homecoming. Almost 

twenty years earlier, he had joined the division as a platoon leader. He rose 

to command a rifle company during the 1965 intervention in the Dominican 

Republic, the last contingency operation conducted by the 82d. Afterward, 

he served in a variety of assignments away from Fort Bragg, including a tour 

in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division. Now, for the first time, he had 

returned.46

Silvasy’s new brigade had a special mission. As the Army’s strategic ready 

force, the XVIII Airborne Corps could dispatch a battalion-size task force 

aboard Air Force transports to a destination anywhere in the world within 

eighteen hours and follow up with increasingly larger elements. Once the men, 

plus equipment and supplies, arrived at their destination, they could, if necessary, parachute onto the objective prepared for combat. This task force was 

formed from the 82d Airborne Division’s brigade with the highest state of 

readiness, Division Ready Brigade-1. The mission rotated among the three 

brigades according to a fixed schedule. As luck would have it, Silvasy’s brigade 

had Division Ready Brigade-1 status on 14 October.47

Yet leading a combat mission was the farthest thing from Silvasy’s mind that 

day. Replacing an officer who had led the brigade for nearly three years, he had 

much to do and to learn before he would feel comfortable in his new command. 

He would have little time, however. Even as he took the flag of the 2d Brigade, 

the Grenada intervention was fast approaching. Silvasy would have a scant ten 

days to reacquaint himself with his old division before the call came.48

The field army to which Silvasy returned in 1983 represented a mixture of 

the old and the new. The operational chain of command provided one ingredient of continuity. It remained exactly the same as it had been in 1965, beginning with the president and the secretary of defense (together, the National 

Command Authority) and then moving down the hierarchy to the commanders 

of the nine unified and specified commands—major multi- and single-service 

organizations with a continuing geographical or functional mission created by 

the president (see Chart 2). Responsibility for transmitting communications 

from the secretary to the nine commanders fell to the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

46 Silvasy Resumé, 20 Apr 1988, GenOff files, CMH; Briefing, Silvasy, 8 Dec 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; “Falcon Brigade Passes Colors to New Commander,” Paraglide, 27 Oct 1983. 47 Briefing, Cole, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. This standard media briefing, which 

was unclassified, formed the basis for all information about the division’s internal procedures, 

including timing. 48 “Falcon Brigade Passes to New Commander,” Paraglide, 27 Oct 1983. 
Chart 2—U.S. Atlantic Command as a Supported Command, October 1983

President

Secretary of 

Defense

Joint Chiefs

of Staff

U.S. Atlantic

Command*

U.S. Pacific

Command

U.S. European

Command

U.S. Southern

Command

U.S. Central

Command

U.S. Readiness

Command

Military

Airlift

Command

Strategic

Air

Command

Aerospace

Defense

Command

U.S. Army

Atlantic

U.S. Navy

Atlantic

U.S. Air

Force

Atlantic

U.S. Marine 

Corps

Atlantic

Joint Special

Operations

Command

U.S. Forces

Caribbean

XVIII Airborne

Corps

82d Airborne

Division

24th Infantry

Division

(Mechanized)

101st Airborne

Division

(Air Assault)

194th Armored

Brigade

197th Infantry

Brigade

Levels of

Command

National

Command

Authority

Staff Support

to National

Command Authority

Unified

Commands

Specified

Commands

Component

Commands

Unassigned

Subordinate

Unified Command

Subordinate

Unified Command

Service

Combatant

Units

CommandControlCommunicationsSupporting commandsMobilizing/assigning forces

* The commander was triple-hatted as the Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Command; Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet; and Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic. Source: Adapted from Ronald H. Cole et al., The History of the Unied Command Plan, 1946–1993, pp. 127–29. 
Behind the Scenes

31

(JCS). In a time-sensitive crisis, the JCS chairman could represent the Joint 

Chiefs in forwarding orders.49

Army General John W. Vessey Jr. had been the chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs since June 1982. Because he had spent much of his career learning the 

gritty realities of soldiering in the field, one newsman proclaimed him a Mud 

Soldier. After enlisting in the Minnesota National Guard in 1939, Vessey had 

served in combat with the 34th Infantry Division during World War II, gaining a battlefield commission at Anzio, Italy, in 1944. His subsequent career had 

involved much troop duty and slow advancement. He had missed the Korean 

war but served in Vietnam. In 1967 his successful defense of Fire Support 

Base Gold against long odds made his reputation. Within eight months the 

Army promoted him from lieutenant colonel to colonel and four years later 

to brigadier general. He was forty-eight. His rise thereafter was rapid: major 

general in 1974, lieutenant general in 1975, and general in 1976. He served 

successively as deputy chief of staff for operations and plans on the Army 

Staff, 1975–1976; commander, U.S. Forces, Korea, 1976–1979; and vice chief 

of staff, U.S. Army, 1979–1982.50

As chairman, Vessey had sought cooperation between the services and 

exerted influence with the Reagan administration behind the scenes rather 

than by courting a high public profile either for himself or the Joint Chiefs as 

an institution. In particular, he had developed a close personal relationship 

with Secretary of Defense Weinberger, who respected his judgment. Vessey 

had a dry sense of humor and a way of expressing large truths in understated 

epigrams: “Don’t get small units caught in between the forces of history” was 

one. The president, too, admired his common sense.51

Unified commands, which reported to the president and the secretary 

of defense through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, constituted the next link in the 

joint chain of command. By definition, they contained substantial elements 

from two or more services, labeled components. Unified commanders in 1983 

exercised only tenuous authority over their component commands in many 

key areas: internal administration, discipline, training, logistical support, and 

tactical employment. Most control in these realms lay with the subordinate 

component commanders. As far as logistics was concerned, law and regulation limited the unified commander to coordinating policies and procedures 

49 Alice C. Cole et al., The Department of Defense, pp. 316–24; JCS Pub 2, Unified Action 

Armed Forces, 1974, chg. 1, pp. 16–19. 50 George C. Wilson, “A ‘Mud Soldier’ for Joint Chiefs,” Washington Post, 5 Mar 1982; 

Clay Blair, “Vessey: A Soldier’s Soldier,” Washington Times, 17 May 1982; Richard Halloran, 

“A Commanding Voice for the Military,” New York Times Magazine, 15 Jul 1984, pp. 18–25, 52; 

Willard J. Webb and Ronald H. Cole, The Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, p. 105, 106–07; 

George L. MacGarrigle, Combat Operations, pp. 127–32; Vessey Resumé, 30 Sep 1985, GenOff 

files, CMH. 51 Wilson, “’Mud Soldier,’” Washington Post, 5 Mar 1982; Blair, “Vessey,” Washington 

Times, 17 May 1982; Halloran, “Commanding Voice,” New York Times Magazine, 15 Jul 1984, 

pp. 18–25, 52; Vessey Resumé, 30 Sep 1985, GenOff files, CMH; Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting 

for Peace, p. 120. For the Vessey quotation, see http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authority/

john_w_vessey_jr.html. 
The Rucksack War

32

through the component commanders; in this manner he was supposed to 

ensure effectiveness and economy and to prevent overlap or duplication of 

functions and facilities among the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine units of 

his command. Many unified commanders believed, however, that coordination

did not give them sufficient authority to achieve those objectives. In their view 

the service departments in Washington exercised more influence than they did 

over the actions of the component commanders.52

In an emergency involving something less than his entire operational area, 

a unified commander normally created an ad hoc joint task force with two or 

more elements from different services to accomplish a specific, limited objective in a relatively brief period of time. Because the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered missions that involved centralized direction of logistics inappropriate 

for operations of short duration, the JTF commanders’ logistical responsibilities remained circumscribed. Each coordinated and controlled the logistics of 

his subordinate commanders only enough to meet needs essential to achieving 

his mission. The service elements determined their own logistical requirements 

and largely established their own priorities.53

In the event of a crisis requiring a commitment of forces from the continental United States, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acting in the name of the 

52 JCS Pub 2, Unified Action Armed Forces, 1974, chg. 1, pp. 38, 47, 49; R. Cole et al., 

Unified Command Plan, pp. 37–91. 53 JCS Pub 2, Unified Action Armed Forces, 1974, chg. 1, pp. 51–52.

General Vessey (sitting) and the Joint Chiefs
Behind the Scenes

33

secretary of defense, would assign the necessary units to a designated unified 

commander (see Chart 2). The Joint Staff, acting in accord with a formal procedure known as the Crisis Action System, would develop a force list of the 

units needed and inform U.S. Readiness Command, which then would notify 

the respective units and at the appropriate time pass them to the operational 

control of the command that would use them.54

Located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, and commanded by Army 

General Wallace H. Nutting, Readiness Command was the joint headquarters that controlled the U.S. strategic reserve consisting of only Army and Air 

Forces units in the continental United States. Its mission included responsibility for developing joint doctrine to guide the actions of elements of two or 

more military services working in conjunction to achieve a common objective. 

With the doctrine in hand, it was expected to organize and train joint task 

forces to execute missions in an appropriate fashion. Finally, when ordered by 

the president (as conveyed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Readiness Command 

was either to conduct operations or to pass forces to the relevant unified commander. Despite having identified discrepancies between Army and Air Force 

doctrine and having tested solutions successfully, it had never become the powerful advocate of joint doctrine envisioned by its early supporters because it 

lacked the authority to impose solutions. As a result, authoritative statements 

on doctrine remained the preserve of the individual services. The command 

could only forward issues to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for negotiation, and 

because the Joint Chiefs followed the rule of unanimity, the negotiations often 

went nowhere.55

Army units in the continental United States, such as the XVIII Airborne 

Corps and the divisions it controlled, came under the U.S. Army Forces 

Command. Headquartered at Fort McPherson, Georgia, and commanded by 

General Richard E. Cavazos, a tough, no-nonsense infantryman, it had the 

primary mission to train units in Army doctrine, and in doing so reported 

directly to Headquarters, Department of the Army. At the same time, when 

activated, it was the Army component of Readiness Command and thus prepared Army units for joint operations. Its Air Force counterpart, the U.S. Air 

Force Tactical Air Command at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, had a similar dual responsibility.56

A predominantly naval entity with no Army and very few Air Force units 

assigned on a permanent basis, Atlantic Command was responsible for contingency operations in the Caribbean, among other regions. Its commander 

also served as commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and as Supreme Allied 

Commander, Atlantic, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization position. Having 

54 AFSC Pub 2B10, Organization and Command Relationships, 1981, and AFSC Pub 1, 

Joint Staff Officers Guide, 1980, copies in CMH. 55 JCS Pub 1, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 1979, s.v. “doctrine 

(DOD, IADB)”; John W. Partin, United States Readiness Command/Joint Deployment Agency 

Command History, 1983–1984, pp. 1–24. See also Interv, Monclova and Lang with Adams, 5–8 

May 1975, SrOffOHist files, CMH. 56 Partin, Readiness Command, 1:1–24.
The Rucksack War

34

one man hold three demanding posts simultaneously, noted one former incumbent, meant that he lacked the time and energy to deal with any one of them to 

the degree that it demanded. His staff was also overstretched: It functioned as 

the staff of both Atlantic Command and the Atlantic Fleet. Given these dual 

responsibilities, it focused largely on naval operations. The staff consisted of 

Navy and Marine Corps officers, with only a few representatives of the Army 

and Air Force added to provide a joint perspective.57

In October 1983 a veteran Navy fighter pilot, Admiral Wesley L. McDonald, 

was at the helm of Atlantic Command. A 1946 graduate of the U.S. Naval 

Academy, McDonald completed flight training in 1950 and flew the first generation of Navy jets that served with the fleet. By August 1964 he was the commander of Naval Attack Squadron 56 and during the Gulf of Tonkin incident led the initial strike on North Vietnam, for which he received the Navy 

Cross. A series of staff and line appointments culminated six years later in his 

57 AnHistRpt, CinC, LANTCOM, 1983, pp. vii–ix, Archives files, CMH; Charles K. 

Duncan, “The Reminiscences of Admiral Charles K. Duncan,” Memoir, 4:1662–98; Memo, 

Hirrel for author, [22 May 2007], Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH.

Atlantic Command headquarters building (2010 photograph)
Behind the Scenes

35

receiving command of a carrier, the USS Coral Sea. Promoted to vice admiral 

in July 1977, he assumed command of U.S. Second Fleet, which was assigned 

to Atlantic Command. Two years later he moved to Washington as a deputy 

chief of naval operations. He took over in Norfolk in September 1982.58

A crisis might require Atlantic Command to direct Army or Air Force 

units. In that circumstance, the commanders of Forces Command and Tactical 

Air Command would normally become McDonald’s component commanders, 

adding yet another possible joint assignment to their duties. In this role they 

became commanders of U.S. Army, Atlantic, and U.S. Air Force, Atlantic, 

respectively. In addition to these two entities, activated only for training or in 

times of danger, one other permanent headquarters that reported to Atlantic 

Command might figure in a regional emergency—U.S. Forces, Caribbean, 

which succeeded both the standing joint task force and the Antilles Command. 

A subordinate unified command, it collected intelligence, prepared plans, and 

conducted operations, if necessary, in the Caribbean. In 1983 R. Adm. Ralph 

R. Hedges headed this organization—essentially a staff without forces under 

its control—from its headquarters in Key West.59

In an emergency Admiral McDonald could also draw assistance from 

another subordinate unified command not normally assigned to him—the 

Joint Special Operations Command established at Fort Bragg by the Joint 

Chiefs in late 1980 in the wake of the hostage crisis in Iran to control future 

military efforts involving special operations units from more than one service. 

If a unified commander decided that he needed such forces, the Joint Chiefs 

would assign the command to him for the duration of the contingency not 

only to plan and conduct intelligence gathering behind enemy lines but also 

to direct missions or raids in concert with any assigned conventional forces. 

Army Maj. Gen. Richard A. Scholtes headed the Joint Special Operations 

Command in October 1983. An officer with an extensive background in mechanized infantry, he had also served as an assistant division commander in the 

82d Airborne Division from 1979 to 1980.60

In the event of a crisis requiring the dispatch of a large Army contingent, 

the XVIII Airborne Corps commander might act as the JTF commander, as 

the ground commander under the JTF commander, or simply as a corps commander under the ground commander. The area of operations, the capabilities 

of the enemy, the mission of the force, and the number of troops deployed 

58 Memo, OofInfo, U.S. Navy, 3 May 1974, sub: R Adm Wesley L. McDonald, Archives 

files, NHHC; “Navy Pilots Tell of Raids,” New York Times, 11 Aug 1964; “NATO Reports 

Appointment of Its Top Naval Commander,” New York Times, 14 Aug 1982; List, Cdrs, Second 

Fleet, Hist files (PDocs/Bios), CMH; E-mail, Knechtmann to author, 20 Feb 2008, Hist files 

(PDocs/Misc), CMH. 59 “Officer Named To Lead Caribbean Task Force,” New York Times, 3 Oct 1979; AnHistRpt, 

CinC, LANTCOM, 1983, p. XIV-7, Archives files, CMH. 60 Charlie A. Beckwith and Donald Knox, Delta Force, pp. 260–65; Francis J. Kelly, U.S. 

Army Special Forces, 1961–1971, pp. 3–18; David W. Hogan Jr., Rangers or Elite Infantry? pp. 

218–19; Susan L. Marquis, Unconventional Warfare, pp. 60–90; Scholtes Resumé, 15 Jul 1982, 

GenOff files, CMH; JCS Pub 1, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 1979, s.v. 

“direct action mission (unconventional warfare).” 
The Rucksack War

36

would determine the corps commander’s role. The 82d Airborne Division, the 

101st Airborne Division (a helicopter-rich air assault division), and the 24th 

Infantry Division (a mechanized division with a large complement of tanks 

and infantry fighting vehicles) were the large units he was most likely to direct 

in combat because he supervised their training in peacetime. His command 

relationship with any special operations forces rested upon the same circumstances that dictated the number and type of divisions and that might vary 

significantly from one situation to another.61

In 1983, although outside the operational chain of command, the 

Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force raised and trained units, developed doctrine, and provided the necessary administrative and logistical support 

to forces in the field. The Department of the Army, in particular, bore heavy 

responsibility for sustaining organizations in extended ground combat, not only 

providing for its own units but also furnishing common items of supply for 

those of other services. The U.S. Army Materiel Development and Readiness 

Command, located in Alexandria, Virginia, and commanded by General Donald 

R. Keith, oversaw the entire spectrum of Army logistics, including the development, testing, purchase, storage, distribution, repair, and disposal of weapons, 

equipment, and supplies. For forces deployed in contingency operations, the key 

subordinate command in this logistical organization was the U.S. Army Depot 

System Command at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, led by Maj. Gen. Henry H. 

Harper. It provided the materiel reserves to sustain ground operations.62

In 1983 the services were largely self-contained entities—or stovepipes, to 

borrow a word that later became popular with analysts—and thus inward looking and highly responsive to their respective doctrines and needs. The Army 

and Air Force enjoyed relatively good relations based on frequently training 

together, but cooperation between the Army and the Navy remained tentative 

and sporadic, with neither service having much understanding of the other’s 

needs and capabilities. Even though the Joint Chiefs of Staff had created exercises in which all the services participated, the Navy worked much more comfortably with the Marine Corps than with the Army. In a sense, the blue water 

headquarters that was Atlantic Command demonstrated just how far all the 

services had to go to effectively conduct joint operations.63

Caribbean Concept Plan

Joint doctrine envisioned a spectrum of conflict in which a unified commander might have to conduct military operations. It could range from a 

61 Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

62 A. Cole et al., Department of Defense, pp. 320–22; Donald R. Keith, “Logistics Initiatives 

Back Fighting Force of 80s–90s,” pp. 66–76; AMCHO, “Brief History of Army Depots, Part 

II,” Paper, 2000, printed copy in Hist files (SStudies), CMH. 63 On Army–Air Force cooperation, see Richard G. Davis, The 31 Initiatives, pp. 65–87. 

Even the contemporary critics were service oriented: Richard A. Gabriel and Paul L. Savage, 

Crisis in Command, pp. 159–76; James Fallows, National Defense, pp. 171–84; and Richard A. 

Gabriel, Military Incompetence, pp. 187–99. For the current usage of stovepipes, see Mark A. 

Olinger, Logistics and the Combatant Commander: Meeting the Challenge, Land Warfare Papers, 

no. 68 (Arlington, Va.: Institute of Land Warfare, 2008), p. 4.
Behind the Scenes

37

noncombat environment, with no armed enemy, for example, disaster assistance, through full-scale nuclear war. Given the various gradations of possible 

combat and the wide expanse of places where a commander might have to 

send his forces, it was impracticable, even for a large, professionally trained 

military establishment, to prepare equally well for all situations. Joint doctrine 

recognized this dilemma and anticipated three potential types of campaigns. 

The easiest contingencies to execute—at least until friendly forces came in contact with the enemy—were those for which detailed operational plans already 

existed. These plans would need only minor revisions before the commander 

could issue orders implementing them. Circumstances in which a staff had 

completed some planning represented a middle range of preparation that 

required considerably more work before the commander could issue orders. 

Totally unanticipated situations constituted by far the most difficult cases 

because no plans existed for them.64

Atlantic Command’s staff had given some thought to the possibility of 

conducting operations in the Caribbean, but conditions had not appeared 

pressing enough to prepare specific operational plans for particular Caribbean 

islands. Instead, in 1975 the command had prepared a broad outline adaptable to any small island. It was known as Concept Plan 2360. A 30 March 

1983 revision, apparently prepared simply as a matter of routine, assumed an 

armed intervention in a number of countries, one of which was Grenada, to 

support U.S. or Organization of American States interests “endangered by a 

deterioration of the political environment.” It provided a range of options that 

extended from evacuation of U.S. nationals to large-scale ground intervention. If a major operation became necessary, overall operational control would 

rest with the commander of U.S. Forces, Caribbean, who would then serve as 

the commander of Joint Task Force 140. Once the Americans had established 

themselves ashore, the commander of U.S. ground forces—to be designated 

Joint Task Force 149—would exercise operational control.65

In his role as the head of Atlantic Command’s Army component, General 

Cavazos had multiple responsibilities under 2360 as he would have had in any 

plan that Atlantic Command had to execute. He and his staff would prepare 

for the logistical and administrative support of Army forces in accordance 

with the plan and any directives from the Department of the Army. He would 

assign an Army officer to serve as the JTF 149 commander and assist in the 

development of a ground plan to support the Atlantic Command design. In 

March 1983 Cavazos selected the XVIII Airborne Corps commander, Lt. Gen. 

Jack V. Mackmull, as both the JTF 149 commander and as the Army component commander under Joint Task Force 140. In the latter role Mackmull 

would not only orchestrate the introduction and sequencing of Army forces 

into the area of operations but also oversee their administrative and logistical support. In accord with current doctrine, he would delegate direction of 

64 AFSC Pub 1, 1980, copy in CMH.

65 Concept Plan 2360–83, LANTCOM, 30 Mar 1983, Grenada files, CmdHO, 

FORSCOM. Numbers were arbitrarily assigned to the joint task forces depending upon parent 

headquarters. 
The Rucksack War

38

tactical operations to his senior ground force subordinate so that he could 

concentrate on these broader responsibilities.66

Atlantic Command normally held one biannual joint exercise, typically in 

odd-numbered years, that involved large numbers of Army and Air Force as 

well as Navy and Marine units. Known by a variety of names since its inception in the 1960s, it was by the mid-1970s called Solid Shield.Each individual 

exercise held after 1973 carried the last two digits of the year in which it was 

conducted. Beginning in the early 1970s, the exercise was staged in the Carolina 

low country. In his role as commander of Atlantic Command, Admiral Charles 

K. Duncan had proposed shifting the site to Puerto Rico to test the logistical 

support more realistically by forcing Army and Air Force units to move some 

distance from their established bases. The Air Force did not concur, citing budgetary reasons, and the exercises remained in the Carolinas.67

In November 1981 Atlantic Command had practiced a scenario involving 

a hostage rescue during Solid Shield 81. In this hypothetical crisis, a hostile 

power known as Costa had first threatened and then invaded a smaller coun66 Ibid.; AFSC Pub 1, 1980, copy in CMH; Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 67 Leo P. Hirrel, with William R. McClintock, United States Atlantic Command Fiftieth 

Anniversary, 1947–1997, pp. 26–27; Memo, Hirrel for author, [22 May 2007], Hist files 

(PDocs/Misc), CMH; Interv, Mason with Train, 3 Nov 1976, Archives files, NHHC; Duncan, 

“Reminiscences,” Memoir, 4:1695–97.

General Mackmull General Trobaugh 
Behind the Scenes

39

try named Ventura, with the United States intervening on behalf of Ventura. 

As the XVIII Airborne Corps commander, with the 82d and 101st Airborne 

Divisions participating, General Mackmull filled the roles of U.S. Forces, 

Ventura, commander and Army Forces commander. In May 1983, during 

Solid Shield 83, Atlantic Command repeated the exercise. The command 

carefully stipulated that the exercise was not intended to test any particular 

operational or concept plan but only to practice general contingency operations. This time, while Mackmull once again acted as the U.S. Forces, Ventura, 

commander, 82d Airborne Division commander Maj. Gen. James J. Lindsay 

served as the Army Forces commander for much of the exercise. The separation of responsibilities proved problematic. Lindsay’s division headquarters, in 

the view of some observers, lacked sufficient staffing to handle the additional 

tasks. Mackmull was dissatisfied with the results and consequently repeated 

the command relationships aspects of the program in a field training exercise 

for the 82d Airborne Division shortly after the arrival in June 1983 of a new 

division commander, Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh. Trobaugh later admitted that the results of the second exercise were also unsatisfactory. He believed, 

however, that all the problems could be solved.68

XVIII Airborne Corps

Since 1958 the XVIII Airborne Corps had been the key Army headquarters 

for executing contingency operations. The idea the corps embodied was even 

older. The concept of using Army units in the continental United States as a 

ready reserve dated back at least to the reforms of Secretary of War Elihu Root 

following the War with Spain. In the immediate aftermath of World War II the 

Army had created a Strategic Striking Force, later redesignated the General 

Reserve, and for the first time had identified specific higher headquarters to 

prepare and lead such units in battle. The Army envisioned that the bulk of 

these troops would move to an area of operations by ship, but the force nonetheless included at least one airborne division. In 1958 the service replaced 

the General Reserve with the Strategic Army Corps. Consisting of the XVIII 

Airborne Corps headquarters, its supporting units, and four (later three) divisions, the new organization was designed to control the movement by air of 

Army fire brigades to trouble spots throughout the world. In that capacity, 

both the XVIII Airborne Corps and 82d Airborne Division had played major 

roles in the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic.69 

By 1983 the corps had become a very different organization from its 

World War II or even Korean war configuration. During those conflicts the 

corps had functioned strictly as a tactical headquarters, with logistical and 

68 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, plus 

Pirnie with T. D. Smith, 3 Apr 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 69 Memo, Todd for Wright, 13 Jan 2008, CofS, Army, Misc Recs, 1907–1916, RG 165, 

NARA–CP; Memo, Edwards for CGs, ASF, AAF, AGF, 8 Sep 1945, sub: Strategic Striking 

Force and the Inactivation of Units, Army-AG Classified Dec. File, 1943–1945, 322 (9–8–45), 

RG 407, NARA–CP; Vernon R. Rawie, “STRAC,” pp. 43–47; Bruce Palmer Jr., Intervention in 

the Caribbean, pp. 1–11. 
The Rucksack War

40

administrative units clustered in divisions and field armies. This arrangement 

had remained standard doctrine throughout the war in Vietnam, but no corps 

had deployed to Southeast Asia. Instead, an improvised headquarters called 

a field force had filled that slot in the chain of command. Unlike the corps, 

it had directed logistical as well as tactical units. Although field forces disappeared from the Army’s lexicon at the end of the war, the Army reorganized 

the corps so that it was a field force in all but name. It became the main external 

source of supplies, equipment, and transportation for the divisions it directed. 

At lower levels this new arrangement was well understood by everyone because 

it was a part of soldiers’ everyday life and training. Arguably, as the Grenada 

intervention approached in October, some senior officers, because of the particular pattern of their careers, had not internalized the new doctrine in their 

thinking and thus lacked such intimate experience with the change.70

During General Creighton W. Abrams’ tour as chief of staff from 1972 

to 1974, the Army had increased the total number of its divisions, but overall troop strength had declined because of budgetary cuts. The Army Staff 

had achieved this apparent sleight of hand by moving combat service support units from the active force to the reserves, by abolishing field armies in 

the continental United States (at least in peacetime), and by consolidating 

many of the remaining corps-level combat service support units. As a result of 

these actions, many divisions in the active force—but not those in the XVIII 

Airborne Corps—could not go to war unless the Army mobilized key reserve 

units. Even the XVIII Airborne Corps could benefit from some roundout from 

the reserves.71

Under the new organizational arrangements, the XVIII Airborne Corps 

provided command and control for up to five divisions and various corps 

support units. In 1983, under General Mackmull, the corps controlled 

five maneuver formations: the 82d Airborne Division; the 24th Infantry 

Division; the 101st Airborne Division, whose men entered combat by helicopter rather than by parachute; the 194th Armored Brigade; and the 197th 

Infantry Brigade. It supported these formations with several more traditional brigade-size units—the 18th Field Artillery Brigade, the 35th Signal 

Brigade, the 20th Engineer Brigade, the 16th Military Police Group, and 

the 525th Military Intelligence Group—and with the division-equivalent 1st 

Support Command. The 18th Field Artillery Brigade tactically controlled 

and supervised three attached field artillery battalions equipped with 155-

mm. towed howitzers; its mission was to reinforce the fire of division artillery. The 35th Signal Brigade, with more sophisticated signal equipment 

than found in divisions, linked corps main with both the forward tactical 

and rear command posts; its communications assets included satellite radio, 

facsimile, and automatic data-processing links both to higher commands 

70 William Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, pp. 187–88; Robert L. Burke, “Corps Logistics 

Planning in Vietnam,” Military Review, pp. 3–11; Intervs, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul and 4 

Aug 1986, and Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 71 Intervs, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul and 4 Aug 1986, and Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Behind the Scenes

41

and to the divisions assigned to the corps. The 20th Engineer Brigade could 

both reinforce existing engineer capabilities in the divisions and provide more 

specialized skills (such as mapmaking), utilities repair (such as water, electrical, and natural gas systems), firefighting, and bridge building; its 548th 

Engineer Battalion was equipped with massive land-transportable construction equipment and its 618th Engineer Company (normally attached to the 

82d Airborne Division) with air-transportable bulldozers, which augmented 

the 548th’s ability to clear and construct forward airfields. As with the 20th 

Engineer Brigade, the 16th Military Police Group and the 525th Military 

Intelligence Group provided provost marshal and intelligence competencies 

not found within a division. Supervision of these support units normally 

fell to the deputy commander, who acted as the direct representative of the 

corps commander (see Chart 3).

72

By 1983 the corps had consolidated its command-and-control elements, two 

smaller combat units, and one combat service support unit under an intermediate provisional headquarters dubbed The Dragon Brigade, an organizational 

innovation that relieved the corps commander and his staff of considerable 

administrative detail. The command-and-control elements included the corps 

headquarters and headquarters company, an air traffic control battalion, and 

a public affairs detachment. The combat units consisted of the 3d Battalion, 

68th Air Defense Artillery, and the 269th Aviation Battalion, which augmented 

divisional troop-lift capabilities. The 1st Chemical Detachment, essentially a 

staff element, advised the corps commander on nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare issues and developed corps-level plans in these areas.73

As corps commander, General Mackmull was a shrewd and magnetic 

leader who had a wealth of experience with Army aviation and airborne units. 

A 1950 West Point graduate, he had served as the General Staff secretary 

at the U.S. Army Aviation Center and School at Fort Rucker, Alabama, in 

the early 1960s, when that organization was the chief institutional advocate 

for the creation of an airmobile division. Moving to Fort Bragg in 1964, he 

assumed command of the 13th Aviation Battalion and deployed with that unit 

to Vietnam. On his second tour in Vietnam, Mackmull commanded the 164th 

Aviation Group of the 1st Aviation Brigade; on his third and final tour he 

became commander of the brigade itself, the last major Army combat unit 

to leave Vietnam. In the mid-1970s he served as an assistant division commander of the 101st Airborne Division. He subsequently had back-to-back 

tours at Fort Bragg, first as chief of staff, XVIII Airborne Corps, and then 

as commander of the John F. Kennedy Center for Military Assistance, which 

gave him a tie to the special operations forces community. Following a stint in 

72 Org Chart, XVIII Abn Corps and Fort Bragg, 11 Jan 1983, Hist files (Graphics), CMH; 

Interv, author with Schroeder, 2 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also TOE 6–401H, 21 

Jun 1972, chg. 16; TOE 52–2H, 20 Jun 1974, chg. 17; TOE 19–262H, 30 Sep 1974, chg. 17; TOE 

5–5101H, 16 Aug 1976, chg. 15; TOE 11–412H, 29 Mar 1978, chg. 11. All in TOE files, CMH. 73 AnHistRpt, XVIII Abn Corps, 1 Oct 1982 to 30 Sep 1983, pp. 9–10, Archives files, CMH; 

FORSCOM PO 99–6, 1st Chemical Det, 9 Jul 1980, OrgHist files, CMH; TOE 3–500H, 24 Jul 

1972, Archives files, MHI.
XVIII Abn

Corps

82 Abn

Div (Inf)

24 Inf

Div (Mech)

101 Abn

Div (AA)

194 Armd

Bde

197 Inf

Bde

18 FA

Bde

3/8 FA

(155T)

Dragon Bde

(Prov)

5/8 FA

(155T)

1/39 FA

(155T)

HHB

HHC

HHC

HHC HHC

20 Engr

Bde

525 CEWI

Gp

Engr Bn

(Prov)(Comp)

63 Engr Co

(Topo)(Corps)

1 Plt, 82 Engr

Co (Survey)

27 Engr Bn

(Cbt)

618 Engr Co*

(LE)

283 Engr Plt

(Ter)(Corps)

89 Engr Plt

(FF)(Fire Trk)

548 Engr Bn

(Cbt)(Hvy)

285 Engr Plt

(Utilities)

90 Engr Plt

(FF)(Fire Trk)

153 Engr Plt

(FF)

72 Engr Plt

(Water Pur)

264 Engr Co

(MGB)

35 Sig Bde

(Corps)

25 Sig Bn

(Opn)

426 Sig Bn

(Area)

(Corps)

50 Sig Bn

(Corps) 327 Sig Bn

514 Sig Co

(Lt)(Tropo)

16 MP Bde

(PM)

503 MP Bn 118 MP Co

21 MP Co 65 MP Co 108 MP Co

58 ATC Bn

(Corps)

269 Avn 

Bn(Cbt) HQ Cmdt 3/68 ADABn

49 PA Plt

(Pub Info)

1 Chem Det

(NBC)

HHC

18 Avn Co

(Helo)(Corps)

196 Avn Co

(AHC)

1 Spt Cmd

(Corps)

Chart 3—Organization of XVIII Airborne Corps, October 1983

*Habitually attached to the 82d Airborne Division. 

 Source: Org Chart, XVIII Abn Corps and Fort Bragg, 11 Jan 1983, Hist les (Graphics), CMH: Active Troop Lists, 30 Jun 1983, pt. 3, pp. 

26–28, and 30 Dec 1983, pt. 3, pp. 25–27, Library, CMH; and AnHistRpt, XVIII Abn Corps, 1 Oct 1982–30 Sep 1983, Archives les, CMH. 

See also FORSCOM PO 131–7, 327th Sig Bn, 2 Sep 1980; DA GO 29, 17 Aug 1983; and Certicates, 3d and 5th Bns, 8th FA. All in 

OrgHist les, CMH. 

AHC Attack Helicopter Company

ATC Air Traffic Control 

CEWI Combat Electronic Warfare

 and Intelligence 

Cmdt Commandant

Comp Composite

FF Firefighting

LE Light Equipment

MGB Medium Girder Bridge

PM Provost Marshal

T Towed

Ter Terrian

Topo Topographic 

Tropo Tropospheric
The Rucksack War

42

command of the 101st Airborne Division, Mackmull assumed command of 

the XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1981.74

For day-to-day corps business, Mackmull relied on his deputy, Brig. Gen. 

Jack B. Farris Jr.; a chief of staff; and the standard General Staff sections. 

General Farris had followed a more conventional career in the Infantry, but 

his experiences complemented Mackmull’s varied background. Most of his 

troop assignments had been in mechanized units, but he had served three 

airborne tours—as a platoon and company commander in the 82d Airborne 

Division early in the 1960s, as the senior adviser with a South Vietnamese 

airborne infantry battalion from May 1965 to July 1966, and as commander 

of a battalion of the 173d Airborne Brigade in Vietnam from April 1970 until 

April 1971. In July 1983, following command of a training brigade, service as 

an assistant division commander in the 4th Infantry Division, and two years as 

deputy director for deployment, U.S. Joint Deployment Agency, MacDill Air 

Force Base, Florida, he arrived at Fort Bragg to become General Mackmull’s 

deputy.75

Army doctrine envisioned that the speed, complexity, and lethality of the 

modern battlefield might require a corps headquarters to divide its command 

post into three separate entities, dubbed the tactical, main, and rear command 

posts. The tactical command post would be the farthest forward of the three, 

located within the combat zone so that the commander could easily control 

his subordinate units and directly influence the battle. Its small size would 

allow him to direct the battle while remaining as inconspicuous to the enemy 

as possible. The senior operations officer (the G–3) usually organized and ran 

the tactical command post, drawing personnel from the intelligence (G–2) and 

G–3 sections and from such other staff specialties as fire support, tactical air 

control, and air defense artillery. Normally, he included at least one junior 

representative from the staff logistical (G–4) section. This individual, however, 

functioned primarily as a liaison officer to corps main, as officers referred to 

the main command post. He kept the logistical planners at corps main up to 

date on changing supply requirements during combat.76 

Located beyond the battle area, corps main contained the bulk of the staff 

and sizeable contingents from the four major staff sections: personnel, intelligence, operations, and logistics. Normally, the senior G–1, G–2, and G–4 officers took station at this site. Organized and run by the corps chief of staff, the 

main command post focused on sustaining current operations and on planning for future ones.77

The rear command post, headed by the deputy corps commander, included 

the entire civil-military operations (G–5) section, as well as representatives from 

the G–1 and G–4 sections; from the offices of the adjutant general, inspector 

74 Mackmull Resumé, 25 Nov 1983, GenOff files, CMH. On Mackmull’s Vietnam service, 

see Interv, Franus with Mackmull, 6 Jun 1969, VNIT files, CMH. 75 Farris Resumé, 17 Jun 1988, GenOff files, CMH. 

76 FM 100–5, Operations, Aug 1982, pp. 7-7 to 7-25, and FM 101–5, Staff Organization and 

Operations, May 1984, pp. 8-4 to 8-5. 77 FM 101–5, May 1984, p. 8-5.
Behind the Scenes

43

general, judge advocate general, and provost marshal; and from Military Airlift 

Command. Typically, this command post provided command and control for 

any administrative and logistical support units assigned to the corps.78

Corps Logistics System

The ways in which corps were organized to perform their newly acquired 

logistical functions were very much a product of how senior Army leaders 

envisioned the next war (see Diagram 1). Reflecting those views, Army doctrine in 1983 focused on a major ground force encounter with the Soviets in 

Central Europe. Its authors believed battle would occur within a well-defined 

combat zone that was much deeper and less linear than ever before. As in 

both world wars and Korea, divisions would occupy the forward area of the 

combat zone while corps would be responsible for the rear. In this context a 

corps support command would provide equipment, supplies, and services to 

nondivisional units located in the corps area, a process referred to as direct 

support. The support command’s primary mission, known as general support, was to keep division-level logistical units farther forward supplied so 

that they could furnish direct support to all units operating within their areas 

of responsibility. It also could provide more sophisticated maintenance services than those available in the divisions. In civilian terms, it operated both 

as a retailer for corps units and as a wholesaler for the divisions under the 

corps’ direction.79

The 1st Support Command performed the main logistical mission in XVIII 

Airborne Corps (see Chart 4). Led by Col. William J. Richardson Jr., a veteran airborne logistician nearing retirement, the unit included a medical brigade, a transportation battalion, a provisional headquarters operations support battalion, a personnel and administration battalion, and a support group 

with a supply and service battalion and a maintenance battalion. The supply 

and service battalion offered a wider range of services than those available in 

any of the divisions; it included, for example, the 101st Chemical Company 

that among other things provided showers to decontaminate both soldiers and 

equipment in the event of a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. The maintenance battalion illustrated the relative weight the command gave to direct as 

opposed to general support; its two companies received and executed repair 

assignments from one of the divisions assigned to the corps as a supplement 

to the division’s own maintenance assets and returned any equipment they 

repaired to the originating unit. At the same time, six materiel maintenance 

centers provided technical advice and general support maintenance—that is, 

they supported the entire corps. They repaired items either too badly damaged 

for the quick turnaround demanded in divisional areas or that required more 

sophisticated tools and techniques than available there. Each center was organized around a particular specialty, such as the combat vehicle and armament 

78 Ibid., pp. 8-5 to 8-6.

79 Org Chart, XVIII Abn Corps and Fort Bragg, 11 Jan 1983, Hist files (Graphics), CMH; 

TOE 54–22H, 28 Jul 1978, TOE files, CMH; Erwin M. Graham Jr., “The Emerging Logistics 

System,” p. 4.
1 Support Cmd

(Corps)

507 Trans

Grp

(Corps)

HHD

HHD HHD

7 Trans Bn

(Motor

Transport)

18 Pers &

Admin Bn

(Field Admin)

126 Trans Co

(Medium

Truck) (Cargo)

166 Trans Det

(Cargo Documentation)

546 Trans Co

(Light Medium

Truck)

19 Replmt 

Holding Unit

(Regulations)

573 Pers Sup

Co (Combat

Admin)

107 Fin Det

(Service)

(Disbursement)

403 Trans Co

(Terminal

Transfer)

172 Trans Det

(Cargo Documemtation)

394 Trans Det

(Cargo Documemtation)

612 QM Co

(Airdrop)

483 Trans Det

(Trailer Transfer Point)

140 Trans Det

(Contract

Supervision)

305 AG Det

(Postal)

46 Support

Grp (Corps)

HHC

HHC HHD

530 Supply & 

Service Bn

(Corps)

(Gen Sup)

189 Maint Bn

(Direct Sup)

(Gen Sup)

(Army)

101 Chem

Det

249 Sup Co

(Repair Parts)

(Gen Sup)

12 Ord Det

(Missile

Maintenance)

58 Maint Co

(Lt Equip Maint)

(Gen Sup)

(Direct Sup) 

259 Field 

Service Co

(Gen Sup)

(Forward)

364 Supply & 

Service Co

(Corps) 

(Direct Sup)

406 Supply Co

(General)

(Gen Sup)

162 Ord Det

(TOW/Dragon

Missile Maint)

30 Engr Det

(Water

Purification)

567 Engr Det

(Water

Transportion)

503 Maint Co

(Forward)

(Direct Sup)

162 Sup Det

(Com Sec)

(Dir Sup)

(Gen Sup)

517 Trans Co

(Aircraft)

(Direct Sup)

600 QM Co

(Airdrop Equip

Repair)

659 Sup Co

(Rear)

(Direct Sup)

251 Maint Det

(Test Station & 

Elec Rep Fac)

HHD

44 Med Bde

5 Mobile Army

Surg Hosp

(Combat Sup)

28 Hosp

(Combat Sup)

32 Med Unit

(Med Supply

& Maint)

36 Med Co

(Clearing)

248 Med Det

(Vet) (Service)

(Sm Animals)

155 Med Det

(Epidemiology)

714 Med Det

(Entomology)

945 Med Det

(Dispensary)

135 Med Det

(Blood

Distribution)

429 Med Co

(Ambulance)

57 Med Det

(Helicopter

Ambulance)

274 Med Det

(Surgical)

HQ Special

Troops

HHC 2 Materiel

Management 

Center

8 Ord Co

(Ammo) (Gen

 Sup) (Dir Sup) 

86 Ord Det

(Missile

Maintenance)

14 Data

Processing

Unit

18 Ord Det

(Emerg Ord

Disposal)

HHD

330 Trans Ctr

(Mvmt Control)

(Corps Sup

Cmd)

261 Trans Det

(Mvmt Control)

264 Trans Det

(Mvmt Control)

329 Trans Det

(Mvmt Control)

(Air Terminal)

380 Trans Det

(Mvmt Control)

592 Trans Det

(Mvmt Control)

(Corps)

Chart 4—Organization of 1st Support Command, October 1983

Source: Org Chart, XVIII Abn Corps and Fort Bragg, 11 Jan 1983, Hist les (Graphics), CMH.
Materiel

Management

Center

Movements

Control

Center

Corps Support

Command

Materiel

Management

Center

Movements

Control

Center

Corps Support

Command

MMC MCC

Division Support

Command

MCC MMC

Division Support

Command

Forward Area

Support Coordinator

Forward Area

Support Coordinator

Forward Area

Support Coordinator

X X

Ports

X X X

XX XX XX

XX

XX

XXX

XX

XX

Continental United States

Diagram 1—Combat Logistics Management Levels in a Theater of Operations

Source: Erwin M. Graham, Jr. “The Emerging Logistics System.” Army Logistician 7 (September–October 1975): 2.
Behind the Scenes

45

center, which meant that the mechanics available had developed great expertise in their particular area. Working within guidelines and priorities communicated to the command by the corps staff, Colonel Richardson exercised 

control of logistical operations through a materiel management center and a 

movement control center that both made extensive use of computers.80

The advent of computers and their role in Army logistics represented one 

of the changes at Fort Bragg since Colonel Silvasy’s last tour. During fiscal 

year 1980 the corps had received upgraded computer capacity in the form of 

an IBM 370 mainframe. Used to run programs that tracked repair parts, supplies, and personnel, it had high reliability, multiprogramming capabilities, and 

greater capacity than the IBM 360 that it replaced. Like the 360, it was mobile 

in name only because it required a C–5A to move the entire van-mounted central processing unit and ancillary equipment. Standard procedure in the corps 

was to leave the computer on post during deployments and send information 

back to Bragg, where it could be entered on IBM punch cards and fed into the 

machine.81

With field armies gone, corps support commands obtained supplies by 

communicating directly with the Army’s logistical system in the continental 

United States. The commands monitored the movement of requisitioned equipment and supplies from depots until they reached the ordering unit, a process 

logisticians called throughput. When the supplies went from the source to the 

consumer bypassing one or more of the traditional echelons of supply, logisticians referred to this as throughput distribution. A product of the reforms introduced in the early 1970s based on experience in Vietnam, the approach in its 

ideal state sought to bypass all the intermediate levels and ship materiel directly 

from the source to the user. As a corollary, the reformers anticipated that most 

resupply would be pull rather push. Users would order supplies and equipment 

based on their actual needs rather than have superior echelons anticipate their 

requirements and ship materiel in advance. This, of course, presupposed the 

existence of timely detailed communications between logistical units in an area 

of operations and depots in the continental United States.82

Contingency Forces

While contingency plans and the operational chain of command represented constants in Colonel Silvasy’s world, the Army’s contingency forces 

80 Graham, “Emerging Logistics System,” pp. 4–5. For comments about Richardson’s experience, see Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and Oland with W. Richardson, 3 Mar 

1988, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; FM 100–5, Aug 1982, pp. 5-1 to 5-11, 7-1 to 7-17; TOE 3–87H7, 

29 Jul 1977, TOE files, CMH. 81 Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Cocke et al., 

comps., DA Hist Sum, FY1980, p. 65. On the IBM 370, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

IBM_System/370. 82 Cocke et al., comps., DA Hist Sum, FY1980, p. 65; Rpt, Joint Logistics Review Board, 

[1 Mar 1970], sub: Logistic Support in the Vietnam Era, vol. 1, p. 69, copy in 228.01 HRC 334 

Boards, Joint Logistics Review, Archives files, CMH; Joseph M. Heiser Jr., Logistic Support, 

pp. 49–51; AR 310–25, Dictionary of United States Army Terms, 1977, chg. 1, s.v. “throughput 

distribution.”
The Rucksack War

46

had changed markedly between 1965 and 1983. In 1965 Army airborne forces 

had consisted of two divisions and various smaller units. All were generalpurpose forces that shared the same ground combat mission with other Army 

units yet were unique in how they arrived in combat. In 1983 these forces still 

existed, but in reduced numbers. Two specialized airborne units had joined 

them: ranger battalions and a company-size counterterrorist unit. The old 

and new formations had one salient trait in common: seizing an objective by 

parachute against opposition. Together with Fleet Marine Forces (Atlantic/

Pacific), they provided the nation with a forced-entry capability.

Within Fleet Marine Forces, the smallest air-ground task force that was 

most readily available in a crisis situation was a marine amphibious unit, operating from a Navy amphibious squadron. Typically, in 1983, a marine amphibious unit consisted of a battalion landing team, the ground maneuver element; a 

composite helicopter squadron, which provided troop lift, gunfire support, and 

a limited capability to resupply by air over short distances; a service support 

group, which handled logistics; and a small headquarters group. At the battalion landing team’s core was a marine infantry battalion, 824 officers and men, 

recently reorganized to enhance its firepower (134 grenade launchers, 32 Dragon 

antitank weapons, and 8.50-caliber machine guns) and mobility (52 jeeps). With 

a field artillery battery and other mission-dictated specialized units attached, the 

landing team could conduct helicopter or surface amphibious assaults or some 

combination of the two. This flexible organization gave Fleet Marine Forces, 

in the words of historian Allan R. Millett, those “capabilities dear to military 

planners—‘mobility,’ ‘flexibility,’ ‘versatility,’ and ‘readiness.’”83

Each type of contingency force offered advantages and disadvantages. 

Marine units, supported and supplied from the sea, usually had some heavy 

equipment (such as tanks) and, in conjunction with the Navy, enjoyed a robust 

logistical support package as long as they did not venture too far from the 

coast. Yet what they gained in tactical and logistical robustness they paid for in 

the loss of strategic mobility, for they could approach a crisis area and reinforce 

units once in theater only as fast as the ships that carried them could steam. 

Conversely, airborne forces traveled by air and moved as light as possible, normally carrying three days of supplies—or, in Army parlance, their basic load. 

Extended operations depended upon how quickly they could build up a support base in-country. They could respond more quickly and traverse greater 

distances, and their points of entry were not restricted to coastal areas. Once 

on the ground, however, their mobility was limited largely to march speed. And 

lacking heavy weapons, they were vulnerable to a better equipped enemy.84

In 1983 the Army’s Ranger organization consisted of two units—the 

1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, at Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, and the 2d 

Battalion, 75th Infantry, at Fort Lewis, Washington. Lt. Col. Wesley B. Taylor 

83 E-mail, Melson to author, 25 Mar 2010, Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH; Ronald H. 

Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, 1983, pp. 1–2; Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis, pp. 547–48 

(quoted words). 84 James A. Huston, Out of the Blue, pp. 47–64; Interv, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 
Behind the Scenes

47

Jr. commanded the former; Lt. Col. Ralph L. Hagler Jr., the latter. As with all 

officers assigned to ranger battalions, they both had already completed successful tours of duty in similar positions with nonranger units.85

Resembling standard airborne infantry battalions, the ranger battalions 

consisted of a headquarters, a headquarters company, and three ranger companies. The companies were somewhat larger than their airborne infantry 

counterparts and equipped with more machine guns and recoilless rifles but 

with fewer and lighter mortars. The larger size of the ranger battalions allowed 

them to control more ground than the airborne battalions, a particularly valuable trait in broken terrain. Conversely, because the ranger battalions were 

designed to operate independently and because the airborne battalions were 

part of a larger combined arms team, the latter could generate more combat 

power by drawing on both internal and external sources.

The ranger battalions’ wartime missions were to plan and conduct longrange reconnaissances, raids, ambushes, and attacks against key targets. Their 

men could maneuver in all types of terrain under all kinds of climatic conditions and enter and depart combat areas stealthily whether by air, land, or sea. 

Designed to operate independently for only short periods of time, ranger battalions contained little logistical capacity of their own. Each possessed the modest 

planning capability provided by a typical battalion logistical (S–4) section and 

the limited medical support offered by a battalion aid station. As a result, these 

units could fight as conventional infantry only if higher headquarters provided 

the artillery, armor, aviation, engineer, signal, intelligence, military police, and 

logistical assets found in standard organizations.86

Much of ranger training focused on airborne and air assaults, with a special concentration on the seizure of airfields. Unlike the 82d Airborne Division 

that emphasized a wide range of general-purpose assignments in its preparations, the Rangers stressed a few special missions. As a result, by devoting 

considerable thought, planning, and training to these commando efforts, they 

achieved a great degree of proficiency.87

Although the concept of ranger operations originated during the early 

colonial period, ranger units had existed in the modern U.S. Army only from 

1942. Since then, they had experienced a checkered history as the Army struggled with the related questions of whether it needed such elite units and, if so, 

how best to organize and employ them. They had functioned as independent 

battalions in World War II, divisional companies in Korea, and long-range 

reconnaissance patrols in Vietnam. The possibility of Soviet intervention in 

the Middle East during the latter stages of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 had 

raised the issue of how quickly the Army could feed forces into that region. 

85 Intervs, author with Taylor, 4 Dec 1986, and Bishop with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. For an overview of the Rangers, see Hogan, Rangers. 86 Memo, Vessey for Cowles, Jan 1974, sub: Ranger Battalion, OrgHist files (1Bn75Inf), 

CMH. See also TOE 7–65H, 30 May 1974; TOE 7–87H, 30 May 1974; TO&E 7–37H, 20 Nov 

1970. All in TOE files, CMH 87 Intervs, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, and with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, plus MacGarrigle 

with Abizaid, 15 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

48

Elite forces lighter than even the 82d Airborne Division that could speedily 

deploy and hold airheads or ports until heavier units arrived appeared to be the 

solution to this problem. In 1974, largely because of the initiative of General 

Abrams who also saw light, easily transportable, elite forces capable of being 

employed anywhere in the world on short notice as an answer to growing terrorist threats, the Army formed two ranger battalions as elements of the 75th 

Infantry. The general officer on the Army Staff most intimately involved in 

getting these units started was General Vessey, who went on to other more 

important assignments but never lost interest in the ranger battalions.88

A continuing and increasingly sophisticated threat from international terrorism led the Army in June 1977 to form an elite counterterrorist unit modeled after the British Special Air Service Regiment. Composed of long-service 

professionals, this unit could conduct company-size and smaller operations 

with a particular focus upon the problem of hostage rescue. Its mission, doctrine, and organization were highly classified. Given the nature of its shortduration operations, the force normally required no resupply because it carried 

all requisite supplies and equipment. Initially, its medical support consisted of 

a small emergency medical cell, but a small surgical suite was added after the 

failure of the Iranian hostage rescue attempt in 1980.89

From World War II through the 1970s a recurring weakness of the Army’s 

handling of special operations forces, such as the ranger battalions and the 

counterterrorist unit, was the failure to establish a higher headquarters to 

provide for systematic training, to develop Army-wide lessons learned, and 

to formulate doctrine. By the early 1980s the Army special operations community included not only the two ranger battalions and the counterterrorist 

unit but also a special aviation unit, various Special Forces groups (whose primary mission in the wake of Vietnam was to train foreign military forces in 

conventional and unconventional warfare), a psychological operations group, 

and a civil affairs battalion. In October 1982 Forces Command provisionally 

activated the 1st Special Operations Command to oversee training and to provide logistical support for these units. At the onset, however, the headquarters 

lacked the communications to support its forces once they deployed.90

These smaller and more specialized units represented an organizational 

compromise because they were more dependent on external elements for 

logistical support than their larger counterparts. As their size decreased, they 

became progressively less flexible, less capable of sustained operations, and 

less able to engage successfully a wide range of enemy forces. They had to be 

more selective in their targets. An airborne division could do a great many 

things well; a counterterrorist unit, only a few yet with remarkable execution. 

88 MFR, Huffman, 22 Jan 1974, sub: Ranger Battalion, OrgHist files (1Bn75Inf), CMH; 

Blair, “Vessey,” Washington Times, 17 May 1982; Ltr, Vessey to Armstrong, n.d., Archives files, 

JHO. 89 Beckwith and Knox, Delta Force, pp. 84–151, 163; Hogan, Rangers, pp. 206–11; Interv, 

author with Peake, 27 Apr 2004, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 90 Michael J. King, Rangers, p. 75; Hogan, Rangers, pp. 217–18; Ross Kelly, “U.S. Special 

Operations Revisited,” p. 32; Richard W. Stewart et al., Standing Up the MACOM, pp. 1–4.
Behind the Scenes

49

A ranger battalion fell between these extremes. The smaller units sacrificed 

firepower for surprise. Requiring operational secrecy, good intelligence, and 

rehearsal time to maximize their strengths, they sought to paralyze an enemy 

by the quickness of their attack and the deftness of their aim. With its greater 

combat power, an airborne division could attain its normal level of operating 

effectiveness with less effort but, of necessity, lacked the precision the ranger 

battalions and the counterterrorist unit had in executing missions in their areas 

of special expertise. At the same time, it could perform many missions that the 

smaller units could not. 

82d Airborne Division

In outward appearance, the 1983 version of the 82d Airborne Division 

was much like the 1965 version in which Silvasy had served as a captain. 

It was still a standard Reorganization Objective Army Division—universally 

referred to as ROAD—modified for the special circumstances of airborne 

warfare. The Army in the early 1960s had recognized that its primary operating environment would be conventional, as opposed to atomic, warfare. The 

ROAD configuration represented the Army’s attempt to ensure staying power 

by providing each division with three powerful maneuver brigades and the 

ability to generate a large volume of fire. At the same time, by maximizing the 

division’s ability to organize around specific tasks, the design allowed commanders great flexibility in combat. The 82d’s primary wartime mission was 

to move by air and “by airborne assault to seize and hold assigned objectives” 

until ground units linked up either through air or amphibious landings or by 

advancing overland.91

The 82d’s organization was thus the product of two antithetical requirements understood by all airborne units: the principle of lightness to enhance 

strategic mobility and the capability to fight independently until relieved. Its 

vehicles, for example, whether tactical or administrative, were relatively few 

in number compared to those of other U.S. divisions of the period. In consequence, however, the 82d’s tactical mobility once on the ground depended 

largely upon the marching skills of well conditioned light infantry. “The ‘star 

of the show,’” remarked one of the battalion commanders, “is the individual 

U.S. Paratrooper.”92

U.S. Army airborne divisions had compiled a distinguished combat record 

in World War II, at which time their vulnerability to enemy armor had led 

Allied commanders to employ them to attain objectives relatively close to the 

front lines rather than to make the deep penetrations envisioned by airborne 

pioneers. Airborne units were particularly useful in screening river crossings and amphibious assaults, as well as in fighting as conventional infantry. 

91 See TOE 57H, 30 Sep 1974, chg. 2 (quoted words), TOE files, CMH, which was still 

in effect as of October 1983; respective MTOE references on UHD Cards, UHD files, CMH, 

governing newly organized divisional elements. On the ROAD division, see John B. Wilson, 

Maneuver and Firepower, pp. 291–322. 92 Abstract (quoted words) attached to George A. Crocker, “Grenada Remembered—A 

Perspective,” Student Paper. 
The Rucksack War

50

During the hot moments of the ensuing Cold War, however, even their tactical 

role became suspect because they had few opportunities to execute parachute 

assaults. Only one jump occurred in Vietnam, for example, and it involved 

just one brigade. That unit was not from the 82d. By Department of Defense 

policy, the 82d Airborne Division was the mainstay of the Army’s strategic 

reserve. All but one of its brigades remained in the United States during the 

Vietnam conflict to handle crises that developed in other areas, including 

domestic riots.93

In the 1960s the airmobile division, which in theory contained enough 

helicopters to move an entire brigade and its supporting units, appeared to 

threaten the airborne’s place in the force structure. Troops that airdropped 

were often scattered over wide areas, but delivering units by helicopter to the 

battle zone ensured that they arrived as intact organizations. The range limitations of rotary-wing craft, however, meant that airmobile units lacked the 

long-range mobility that their airborne counterparts enjoyed courtesy of the 

U.S. Air Force. An airmobile unit could move to an area of operations by 

Air Force transport, but it required a friendly intermediate staging base to 

assemble its machines before it could venture into combat.94

After Vietnam, the Army focused on a European battlefield that required 

heavy mechanized units. The approach proved inhospitable to both the Army 

aviation and the airborne communities. Although the Army Staff carefully 

preserved one division in each specialty to retain their unique competencies, 

the inevitable reductions in force structure came as a shock to professionals 

who had believed they were on the cutting edge of modernity. Airborne officers and their airmobile counterparts had no doubt about their units’ ability to 

succeed on a European battlefield, but they recognized that some of their contemporaries did not agree with them. This awareness, observed Lt. Col. Frank 

H. Akers Jr., who served as the 82d Airborne Division’s G–3 in 1983, coupled 

with the fact that the 82d was the last division in the U.S. Army capable of 

conducting a parachute assault, led the unit’s senior leadership to conclude 

that they must always accept combat missions, no matter how poorly defined, 

and then make them work. To ensure the survival of their organization, they 

could only respond in the affirmative.95

As in all ROAD divisions in October 1983, the command group of the 82d 

Airborne consisted of a commander, General Trobaugh; two assistant division commanders, one for operations and the other for support; and a chief of 

93 Huston, Out of the Blue, pp. 232–56; James M. Gavin, “Cavalry, and I Don’t Mean 

Horses,” Harper’s, April 1954, pp. 54–60; Roy E. Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to 

the Yalu, pp. 654–61.; Billy C. Mossman, Ebb and Flow, November 1950–July 1951, pp. 335-43; 

MacGarrigle, Combat Operations, pp. 112–22. On doubts about airborne divisions, see James 

Hessman and B. F. Schemmer, “The Airborne?” pp. 12–13. On use of the 82d in domestic disturbances, see Paul J. Scheips, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1945–

1992, pp. 184–86, 196, 251, 258, 264, 288, 293, 297.

94 Christopher C. S. Cheng, Air Mobility, pp. 132–34. 95 Intervs, Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], and author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. On the evolution of the Army after Vietnam, see Charles E. Kirkpatrick, 

Building the Army for Desert Storm. 
Behind the Scenes

51

staff. The post of assistant division commander for operations was temporarily vacant; Brig. Gen. James D. Smith was the assistant division commander 

for support, a post he had held since August 1982.96

The exact delineation of responsibilities between the two assistant commanders depended heavily on the desires of the commanding general. Under 

the previous commander, General Lindsay, General Smith had exercised oversight of the 82d Support Command as well as seven separate battalions that 

provided various kinds of support to the division. By October Trobaugh had 

begun to reassign units that he regarded as essential to the maneuver force to 

the assistant division commander for operations, who assumed responsibility for the military intelligence and the air defense artillery battalions. The 

engineer and aviation battalions, however, had remained temporarily under 

Smith’s purview.97

The division staff, directed by the chief of staff, Col. Peter J. Boylan Jr., consisted of seven General Staff sections: G–1, personnel; G–2, intelligence; G–3, 

operations; G–4, logistics; G–5, civil affairs; force development; and comptroller. 

The head of each section was responsible for developing plans and policies, producing estimates and studies of requirements, coordinating staff activities, and 

providing staff oversight in his functional area of responsibility. In addition, thirteen special staff officers gave advice and provided supervision in their technical 

specialties. Five of them held an additional assignment (in the contemporary jargon, they were “dual-hatted”) as commander of a support battalion or, in the case 

of the division fire support coordinator, of the division artillery.98

General Trobaugh was five months into his job as division commander 

when Colonel Silvasy assumed command of the 2d Brigade. A 1955 graduate 

of the U.S. Military Academy, Trobaugh had extensive experience in infantry 

units, including two combat tours in Vietnam. He then assumed command of 

the 2d Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, in Hawaii from 1975 to 1977 and as 

assistant division commander for support of the 9th Infantry Division from 

1978 to 1980. His airborne experience was limited to his time in command of 

the 82d Airborne Division and a few weeks at Pathfinder School in the late 

1950s. He had benefited, however, from a number of high-level staff assignments, including service as executive officer to the commanding general of the 

U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command from 1973 to 1975.99

While General Trobaugh lacked airborne command experience himself, 

many of his senior commanders and principal staff officers had considerable 

airborne experience, several with the 82d Airborne. The assistant division 

96 Interv, author with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

97 Org Chart, XVIII Abn Corps and Fort Bragg, 11 Jan 1983, Hist files (Graphics), CMH; 

Interv, author with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 98 Org Chart, XVIII Abn Corps and Fort Bragg, 11 Jan 1983, Hist files (Graphics), CMH; 

TOE 57–4H3, 1 Nov 1973, chg. 18, TOE files, CMH; Intervs, Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], 

Frasché with Boylan, 21 Nov 1983, and author with Strock, 23 and 30 May 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 99 Trobaugh Resumés, 22 Jun 1983, 28 Feb 1987, 7 Feb 1989, GenOff files, CMH; Interv, 

author with Trobaugh, 7 Feb 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

52

commander for support, General Smith, had served in the division between 

1970 and 1972, first as an infantry battalion commander and then as executive officer of one of the brigades; the division chief of staff, Colonel Boylan, 

as commander of an infantry battalion, as the G–3 on the division staff, and 

as a brigade commander; and both the division artillery commander, Col. 

Fred N. Halley, and the commander of the 82d Support Command, Col. 

William F. Daly Jr., multiple tours. While neither the commander of the 1st 

Brigade, Col. Henry H. Shelton, nor his counterpart in the 3d Brigade, Col. 

James T. Scott, had served in the division prior to their current tours, both 

had airborne experience: Shelton in special forces and the 173d Airborne 

Brigade in Vietnam; Scott as commander of the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry. 

Colonel Silvasy, in addition to his service in the 82d, had commanded an 

airborne company on jump status in Vietnam. Senior officers in the division 

thus fell into three categories of experience—those with an extensive history 

in the division, such as Colonels Boylan, Halley, and Daly; those with a moderate amount of airborne experience, a group that included General Smith 

and Colonels Shelton, Silvasy, and Scott; and General Trobaugh, who had 

a limited airborne background. As one veteran of the division noted, such 

a combination could create excellent synergy by combining new ideas with 

experience.100

As with the corps, the division headquarters could break down into multiple command posts in combat. Because the division staff was smaller and 

its range of functional responsibilities less than the corps staff, normally it 

expected to organize two rather than three command posts—the assault and 

main—with responsibilities similar to their counterparts at corps level. In addition, the division commander could establish an alternate command post, usually a subordinate headquarters, at times when the division’s command posts 

were severely damaged or in the process of changing locations.101

The division’s combat power centered on nine airborne infantry battalions, 

each of approximately 730 officers and men, supported by three field artillery 

battalions armed with 105-mm. howitzers. Three brigade headquarters furnished intermediate command and control for the maneuver elements (Chart 

5). The division also had an armor battalion equipped with M551 Sheridan 

airborne assault reconnaissance vehicles (often referred to as tanks but having less armor) that were capable of being dropped by parachute, and an air 

defense battalion outfitted with Vulcan antiaircraft guns and Stinger missiles. 

The division possessed both an aviation battalion and a cavalry squadron. In 

addition to a installation maintenance company, a headquarters, and a headquarters company, the 82d Aviation Battalion had four combat aviation elements: two lift companies flying the new UH–60 Black Hawk helicopters; one 

general-support aviation company equipped with OH–58 Kiowa observation 

100 Boylan Resumé, 1 Jun 1988; Halley Resumé, 21 Mar 1988; Scott Resumé, 1 Mar 1988; 

Shelton Resumé, 11 Jul 1988; Smith Resumé, 20 Apr 1988; Silvasy Resumé, 20 Apr 1988. All in 

GenOff files, CMH. See also Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; 

RCmts, Reardon, May 2004, Hist files (Drafts), CMH. 101 FM 101–5, May 1984, pp. 8-4 to 8-5.
82 Abn Div

HHC

HHC HHC HHC HHB

1 Bde,

82 Abn Div

2 Bde,

82 Abn Div

3 Bde,

82 Abn Div

1 Bn,

504 Inf

2 Bn,

504 Inf

2 Bn,

508 Inf

Co E, 325

Inf (Antiarmor)

1 Bn,

325 Inf

2 Bn,

325 Inf

3 Bn,

325 Inf

Co E, 504

Inf (Antiarmor)

307 Engr

Bn 

513 Engr Det

(Terrain)(Div)

(Topographic)

3 Bn, 4 ADA

(Vulcan)

(Towed)

82

Sup Cmd

(Div)

82 Avn

Bn

1 Bn,

17 Cav

4 Bn,

68 Armor

82 Abn

Div Arty

1 Bn,

505 Inf

2 Bn,

505 Inf

1 Bn,

508 Inf

Co E, 505

Inf (Antiarmor) 1 Bn, 319 FA 

(105 Towed)

1 Bn, 320

FA 

(105 Towed)

2 Bn, 321

FA 

(105 Towed)

Bty B, 26

FA (Target

Acquisition)

82 MP Co 82 Sig Bn

313 Cbt Elec

Warfare &

Intel Bn 

14 Chem

Det (NBC)

Chart 5—Organization of 82d Airborne Division, October 1983

Source: Org Chart, XVIII Abn Corps and Fort Bragg, 11 Jan 1983, Hist les (Graphics), CMH.

CommandControl
The Rucksack War

54

helicopters and UH–1 Iroquois (Huey) helicopters; and one gun company 

furnished with AH–1 Cobra helicopters. The 1st Squadron, 17th Cavalry, 

consisted of a headquarters, a headquarters troop, a ground cavalry troop 

equipped with jeeps, and three air cavalry troops featuring OH–58 and AH–1 

helicopters.102

In October 1983 Colonel Silvasy’s new command, the 2d Brigade, 82d 

Airborne Division, was organized as a standard light infantry brigade with three 

airborne formations—the 1st, 2d, and 3d Battalions, 325th Infantry (because 

the regiment was not a tactical organization, the units were so designated to 

foster tradition and esprit de corps). The 2d Brigade, like the other two brigades 

in the division, always trained as it planned to fight—as a combined arms task 

force. To enhance its power in battle, the brigade had attachments from the 

various combat, combat support, and combat service support elements within 

the division. Company B, 82d Aviation Battalion, supplied troop and cargo lift 

with its UH–60 Black Hawks. Company B, 4th Battalion, 68th Armor, provided direct fire support, as did the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, from 

the division artillery. At the same time, Company B, 307th Engineer Battalion, 

contributed combat engineering capabilities. The ROAD structure allowed the 

division commander to attach additional divisional or nondivisional assets to 

the brigade if it needed them for a specific mission.103

The division’s 82d Signal Battalion operated and maintained a communications system with separate command, control, fire control, combat support, 

and combat service support radio and radio-teletype networks. These linked 

the division’s main headquarters to a forward or assault command post; to 

one corps artillery group; to an adjacent division, if there was one; and to 

key divisional elements—the three brigade headquarters, the division artillery, 

an artillery signal center, the air defense battalion, the division support command, the military intelligence battalion, and three forward area signal centers 

with net control stations, one for each brigade. Because doctrine envisioned 

that the division would operate independently most of the time, the signal 

battalion required personnel and equipment augmentation to communicate 

with a second adjacent division. In addition, the battalion provided supply 

and maintenance for all secure communications equipment.104

As with the signal unit, the 307th Engineer Battalion had a logistical 

mission. The unit furnished the division with building materiel and potable 

water, although the Army was just beginning the process of transferring the 

water purification function to the Quartermaster Corps. Yet the engineers’ 

102 Robert N. Seigle, “Looking Back at Urgent Fury,” pp. 18–19, 22, 24, 57–58; Intervs, 

author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, and Schroeder, 2 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Org 

Chart, XVIII Abn Corps and Fort Bragg, 11 Jan 1983, Hist files (Graphics), CMH. For a discussion of the Sheridan, see Donn A. Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam, pp. 142–45; TOE 

57–55H, 15 Jun 1974, chg. 4, and TOE 17–27H, 30 Sep 1974, chg. 36, TOE files, CMH; and 

UHD Card, 320th Inf, UHD files, CMH. 103 See John K. Mahon and Romana Danysh, Infantry, pp. 96–100; Interv, author with 

Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 

1984, p. 1, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 104 TOE 11–215H, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 2, TOE files, CMH.
Behind the Scenes

55

contribution to the division’s logistical success encompassed much more. They 

constructed, repaired, and maintained roads, bridges, fords, and culverts; 

removed obstacles in the division’s rear area that hampered the easy movement of supplies and equipment; and carried out limited general construction 

assignments, such as building or repairing assault landing airstrips. Their principal purpose, however, was combat engineer support to the division, such as 

building bridges and constructing defensive positions under fire.105

One battalion, four additional companies, and a division support command rounded out the division. All the commanders of these units worked 

directly for the division commander. The 313th Military Intelligence Battalion 

provided combat intelligence, electronic warfare, and operational security support. The 82d Military Police Company, in addition to its provost marshal and 

internal security functions, enforced traffic control for motor vehicles within 

the division area and established collection points for prisoners of war and 

civilian internees. The 21st Chemical Company furnished “nuclear, biological, 

and chemical reconnaissance and decontamination support,” the latter—like 

the company assigned to the corps—in the form of shower points. The other 

two companies, the 82d Finance Company and the 82d Adjutant General 

Company, received their guidance from the division commander and their 

logistical and administrative support from the 82d Support Command.106

DIVISIONAL LOGISTICS

Colonel Daly’s 82d Support Command held the primary responsibility 

for division-level logistics (see Chart 6). His position gave General Trobaugh 

one authoritative point of contact for combat service support in the division. 

Daly and his staff also provided supply, maintenance, and transportation 

information and advice to the division commander and his staff. In the 82d 

Airborne Division, Daly occupied a position equivalent to an infantry brigade 

commander.107

The 82d Support Command was responsible for five functional areas—

storage, handling, and distribution of supplies; maintenance; transportation; 

computer support; and rear-area security. Its major subordinate elements consisted of the 182d Materiel Management Center, the 407th Supply and Service 

Battalion, the 782d Maintenance Battalion, the 307th Medical Battalion, 

and the Provisional Movement Control Center. The command distributed all 

military supplies and equipment in the division except for those furnished by 

the signal and engineer battalions. A small division data center in the headquarters company provided computer support. Equipped with an IBM 360 

105 TOE 5–25H, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 1, TOE files, CMH; William H. Haight, “Unexpected 

Engineer Missions During Operation Urgent Fury,” Student Paper. 106 TOE 14–37H, 31 Dec 1976, chg. 12; TOE 12–17H, 16 Aug 1976, chg. 13; TOE 3–87, 12 

Dec 1980, chg. 1 (quoted words); TOE 19–17H, 19 Aug 1972, chg. 10; TOE 34–165H, 20 Apr 

1979, chg. 1. All in TOE files, CMH. 107 Lineage and Honors Certificate, HQ&HQ Co, 82d DISCOM, 11 Mar 1976, OrgHist 

files (82SustainmentBde), CMH; Jonathan M. House, Toward Combined Arms Warfare, pp. 

154–60.
The Rucksack War

56

mainframe system, it tracked the same sort of information for the division 

that the computer at the 1st Support Command did for the corps. Unlike the 

corps machine, the 360 was obsolescent (the Army was preparing to replace 

all 360s in divisions) and saturated by peacetime demands. Similar to the 370, 

the 360 was theoretically mobile. It required six vans and two trailers to move 

in a C–5A (the only part of the division that could not move by either C–130 

or C–141) and was adverse to being rattled, an unavoidable component of air 

travel. It also did not react well to heat, humidity, or dust. Once it arrived in an 

objective, it represented exactly sixty-four kilobytes of memory (Diagram 2). 

The division emulated the corps and left its computer at Fort Bragg whenever 

possible.108

The 182d Materiel Management Center, established in 1974 to manage 

materiel assets using computers, represented another institutional innovation—although possibly unnoticed by Colonel Silvasy, focused as he was on 

108 TOE 29–3H, 17 Nov 1975, TOE 29–51H, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 1, and TOE 29–52H3, 15 Jun 

1973, chg. 19, TOE files, CMH; Memo, Hirrel for author, [22 May 2007], Hist files (PDocs/Misc), 

CMH; Waldo W. Montgomery Jr., “Exercising the Division Data Center,” Army Logistician, pp.

20–23; Karl E. Cocke, comp., Department of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1974, p. 

79. On the IBM 360, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360. 

HHC

82d Support

Command

(Division)

182d Materiel

Management

Center

Provisional

Movement

Control Center

82d Adjutant

General

Company

(Admin)

407th Supply

and Service

Battallion

21st Chemical

Company

(NBC

Defense)

307th 

Medical

Battalion

782d 

Maintenance

Battalion

82d 

Finance

Company

Chart 6—Organization of 82d Support Command, October 1983

 Source: Org Chart, XVIII Abn Corps and Fort Bragg, 11 Jan 1983, Hist les (Graphics), 

CMH.

Command

Control
Diagram 2—Conguration of the Mobile Division Data Center

Source: Waldo W. Montgomery, Jr. “Exercising the Division Data Center.” Army Logistician 12 (May–June 1980): 22–23.

M890 M109 M109 M52A2 Tractor

(with low-profile 

35-foot trailer)

Administration

Van

Paper Storage Van Maintenance Van Tape/Disk Library Van

M52A2 Tractor

(with low-profile 

35-foot trailer)

Central Processing Van

M109

Input/Output

Equipment Van

100 kw

Trailer

Generator

Trailer

100 kw

Generator
The Rucksack War

58

learning about the 2d Brigade. The center tracked the location and status of all 

division equipment and supplies other than medical, secure communications 

equipment, and materiel used for rail shipment. It was an invaluable tool for 

Colonel Daly to use in directing logistical operations.109

If the center represented the management side of the equation in the 

82d Support Command, the 407th Supply and Service Battalion represented 

the labor side where strong men and women did much hard physical work. 

It included a headquarters detachment; a main supply and service company; 

three forward supply and service detachments, one for each infantry brigade; 

and a quartermaster airdrop equipment company. The battalion planned for 

and supervised the establishment and operation of all supply points for the 

division and any attached units. It also provided and operated a limited number of motor vehicles to support division logistical and administrative operations. In the process of performing these activities, it generated considerable 

supply data that Colonel Daly and his staff used for planning purposes. The 

407th, like other supply and service battalions, had lost combat support capacity during the 1970s when personnel slots had migrated to the Army Reserve. 

The unit, for example, retained a responsibility to perform graves registration 

for the entire division but could do so only if augmented by reservists—this in 

a unit with the highest level of readiness in the continental United States.110

The members of the 82d Support Command also repaired all equipment 

in the division except secure communications and medical items. Providing 

what was known as direct support maintenance, they made major repairs 

on equipment that required more extensive work than users could conduct 

onsite. If an organization with damaged equipment could not make a quick 

fix, it requested repairs from the support command. Maintenance specialists 

might pick up the entire piece of equipment, such as a 105-mm. howitzer; take 

it back to their maintenance area in division-rear; and restore it to working 

order. Alternatively, they might disassemble the equipment in a forward location, removing only the particular component that needed repair. When they 

completed the repairs, they returned the equipment to the unit from which 

it came. The 782d Maintenance Battalion handled all such maintenance in 

the division. Its internal organization was very similar to that of the 407th, 

consisting of one headquarters company, one main support company, three 

forward support companies, and a missile support company.111

The 307th Medical Battalion was the third battalion in the 82d Support 

Command. Configured like the others to get its services and supplies forward 

109 OrgHist Work Sheet, 182d MMC, and Ltr, Strobridge to AGO, 18 Mar 1980, sub: Unit 

Redesignation, OrgHist files (182MMC), CMH; Memo, Hirrel for author, [22 May 2007], Hist 

files (PDocs/Misc), CMH; Interv, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

Documents in the official file contain conflicting information on the 182d’s designation. Usage 

in this work conforms to official guidance found in TOE 29–53H3, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 19, TOE 

files, CMH. 110 TOE 29–45H3, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 1, TOE files, CMH; Intervs, author with F. Perkins, 14 

Jul and 4 Aug 1986, and Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 111 TOE 29–51H, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 1, TOE files, CMH; AR 310–25, Dictionary of United 

States Army Terms, 1975, chg. 1, s.v. “direct support maintenance.”
Behind the Scenes

59

to the brigades, it consisted of one headquarters and support company and 

three medical companies. It furnished division-level medical support, including patient triage, treatment, and evacuation; medical supplies; and low-level 

first line maintenance of specialized medical equipment. The maintenance it 

provided consisted of inspecting, servicing, lubricating, adjusting, and replacing parts or minor components, as well as small but important activities as 

washing exterior surfaces, tightening bolts, and replacing screws while maintaining an antiseptic environment.112

The table of organization and equipment for an airborne division support command, unlike that of a standard infantry division, did not provide 

for a separate center to both direct and track all vehicles that supported the 

division’s logistical and administrative activities. The 82d Support Command 

surmounted this difficulty by organizing the Provisional Movement Control 

Center in its S–3 section. The relatively small center reported to the executive 

officer, Lt. Col. Ronald F. Kelly. In a related area, the support command provided computer support for the division’s logistical, personnel, and financial 

activities.113

In addition to these logistical functions, the 82d Support Command also 

filled a limited combat role by planning for and conducting operations behind 

the battle zone under the direct control of its infantry battalions. Rear-area 

protection was a response the Army had developed to meet the threat of Soviet 

deep attacks on the central front in a European conflict. Units behind the front 

lines had to be prepared to defend themselves. For this reason, the support 

command provided security within its assigned areas of responsibility against 

enemy incursions, whether raids or more serious coordinated attacks. It had 

to ensure that its logistical units were prepared to defend themselves at all 

times and that they were positioned so that they would confront an attacker 

with interlocking fields of fire. No one expected maintenance or quartermaster units to go into the attack, but in a crisis a division commander might use 

his support command as a fourth maneuver brigade headquarters, assigning 

infantry battalions and their supporting artillery to it to clear enemy interlopers from division-rear.114

Normal command and staff relationships prevailed between the division 

staff and the 82d Support Command. The latter organization provided division logistical planners with data they needed to create the logistical annexes 

of operations plans and to shape command decisions. In turn, the planners 

gave the support command the logistical priorities it required to sustain the 

division plan of action and to build up the materiel necessary for future operations. The division transportation officer, Maj. Frederick C. Perkins, a member 

112 TOE 8–65H, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 30, TOE files, CMH; DA, Subcourse 420, Medical 

Support of Army Divisions, Jan 1982, TechLib. 113 TOE 29–45H, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 1, and TOE 29–55H, 20 Mar 1978, chg. 25, TOE files, 

CMH; Intervs, Wade with Vitucci, [Nov 1983], and author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul and 4 Aug 

1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 114 FM 54–2, Division Support Command and Separate Brigade Support Battalion, chg. 2, 

30 Sep 1976, pp. 4–5; Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

60

of the division’s G–4 section, acted as the commander’s representative for all 

of the division transportation assets, working closely with the Provisional 

Movement Control Center for internal transportation and acting as liaison 

between the 82d and external sources of transportation.115

FORWARD AREA SUPPORT

Logistics doctrine, how the 82d Airborne Division planned to use its logistical elements in combat, had changed greatly between 1965 and 1983. The key 

to the new thinking was an entirely new entity, the forward area support team, 

an innovation devised at the Army Logistics Center at Fort Lee, Virginia, in the 

wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Geared for a mechanized war in Europe, 

the concept encouraged the arming, fueling, and repairing of weapons systems 

as far forward as possible on or near the battlefield. Army planners envisioned 

that a conflict in Europe would involve outnumbered NATO forces battling 

desperately to defend against a Soviet blitzkrieg that could strike with little 

or no warning. They assumed a come-as-you-are war. At the same time, the 

reduced military budgets and rising inflation of the 1970s appeared to indicate 

that American divisions would only have peacetime stockage levels available 

when combat started. The planners had to find an ultra efficient way to sustain the troops, and the forward area support team was their organizational 

response to this highly fluid yet austere environment.116

In 1975 the 82d became one of the first units to field test the new approach. 

Each brigade contained a team that consisted of one major—the Forward Area 

Support Team I, II, or III coordinator—and a small number of “field-oriented 

noncommissioned officers” from the three battalions within the 82d Support 

Command. A team was, in effect, a “minibattalion of specialists.” Over the 

next eight years the command-and-control element remained constant, but 

the rest of the organization grew considerably. By October 1983 the team consisted of a company (or a detachment in the case of the supply and service 

battalion) drawn from each battalion—a total strength of over 350 personnel. 

Forward Area Support Team II, for example, which supported the 2d Brigade, 

consisted of Company C, 782d Maintenance Battalion; Detachment C, 407th 

Supply and Service Battalion; and Company C, 307th Medical Battalion. In 

garrison, these elements were under the control of their parent units, which 

were responsible for their technical training and administrative support, but 

during field operations they would deploy with the brigade (Chart 7).

117

With a functioning team, a brigade commander had a single officer 

responsible for combat service support. For Colonel Silvasy’s 2d Brigade, 

115 Graham, “Emerging Logistics System,” p. 4; Intervs, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, 

and with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 116 Graham, “Emerging Logistics System,” pp. 2–6; “Brigade FASCO,” p. 17; Moorad 

Mooradian, “DISCOM in a ‘Come as You Are’ War,” pp. 41–53; Kenneth C. Sever, “Unit and 

Missions—782d Maintenance Battalion (in Grenada),” pp. 3–6; Intervs, author with Cusick, 24 

Jan 1989, and Oland with Wilson, 6 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 117 “Brigade FASCO,” p. 17 (quoted words); Interv, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH.
Behind the Scenes

61

that officer was an infantryman on Colonel Daly’s 82d Support Command 

staff in garrison, Maj. Daniel J. Cleary III, who served as the forward area 

support coordinator in the field. The initial plan envisioned that a team 

leader would “coordinate and supervise the division support command elements that support the brigade” and also act as a liaison between the two. By 

October 1983, because the scope of his authority had expanded to include 

operational control over all support command elements assigned to the 

brigade area, the coordinator developed detailed plans to meet the supply, 

equipment, maintenance, transportation, and medical needs identified by the 

brigade’s S–4.118

With the forward area support teams providing supplies through regular 

supply points and maintenance and transportation assistance needed in the 

forward areas, the remainder of the division support command would set 

up in the division’s rear area. From there the division support commander 

could concentrate upon managing logistical assets for the force as a whole. 

Depending on the needs of the moment, he might, for example, send additional specialists forward to reinforce one of the teams. The portions of the 

three battalions directly under his purview functioned in roughly the same 

manner. Each set up one company in the rear and maintained limited reserve 

supplies there, ready to refurbish the forward area support teams on short 

notice. The maintenance battalion’s missile repair company was located there 

also to perform more complex repairs than possible farther forward. The 

medical company, which had a limited medical repair capability but mainly 

concentrated on patient care, included an ambulance platoon to evacuate 

patients and a clearing platoon to furnish emergency dental, basic psychiatric, and other specialized treatments. In addition, the clearing platoon 

118 “Brigade FASCO,” p. 17 (quoted words); Mooradian, “DISCOM,” p. 42; Interv, author 

with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Forward

Area

Support

Team II

Det B, 407th

Supply and

Service

Battalion

Co C, 782d

Maintenance

Battalion

Co C, 307th

Medical

Battalion

Chart 7—Organization of Forward Area Support Team II, October 1983

Source: Adapted from Moorad Mooradian, “DISCOM,” p. 42.
The Rucksack War

62

performed initial emergency care for severely injured soldiers who had to be 

evacuated from the division area.119

Although successfully tested eight years earlier, the forward area support 

team had yet to be validated in combat. Even so, field training had provided 

the 82d Support Command with ample opportunities to refine the concept.

TRAINING

Colonel Silvasy’s immediate goals upon taking command of the 2d Brigade 

were to become familiar with his key officers and to determine whether his unit 

could perform its mission. In terms of training, he had joined his unit at an 

opportune time. In the 82d Airborne Division the training cycle consisted of 

three stages: predeployment training, to which all units in the division gave priority; ready-brigade status, when the brigade and its attachments were at their 

highest readiness for deployment; and the deployment support and stand down, 

when the unit stood ready to assist the other brigades to deploy. The 2d Brigade 

had just completed intensive predeployment training and had entered readybrigade status. With its attachments added, it became a brigade task force.120

Silvasy understood that how well the brigade performed in deployment 

exercises and field training would tell him much about the officers and men 

under his command. After the change of command ceremony, he instructed 

his officers and sergeants major to come to brigade headquarters the next 

morning, Saturday, for a transition meeting. He told them he wanted it casual; 

they should wear civilian clothing. The next day, after a seven- or eight-hour 

meeting, he stood and addressed the group. “O.K. guys,” he said, “now we’re 

going to see what you are made of.” He called an alert.121

The battalion S–3s activated their telephone chain, with calls for 2d Brigade 

members to report to their company areas within two hours. Simultaneously, the 

alert set in motion all the support elements from the division and corps support 

commands, installation activities, and the uploading battalion. The calls also 

launched into action the attachments from division artillery and the separate 

battalions and companies that would transform the brigade into a combined 

arms task force. Thereafter, an intricate sequence of events began, designed to 

move the force to the adjacent Pope Air Force Base for boarding C–141s.122

This step-by-step series of actions, known as the notification-hour (or 

N-hour) sequence, was detailed in the division’s readiness standing operating 

procedures, a document constantly refined on the basis of repeated exercises. 

It was one of three divisional standing operating procedures; the others guided 

ground and air operations, to include the actions involved in airdropping or 

119 Interv, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; TOE 29–56H, 20 Mar 

1978, chg. 2, TOE 29–47H, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 7, and TOE 8–65H, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 30, TOE 

files, CMH; DA, Subcourse 420, Jan 1982 pp. 3–1 to 3–38, TechLib. 120 Briefing, Silvasy, 7 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; RCmts, Reardon, May 2004, 

Hist files (Drafts), CMH. 121 Briefing, Silvasy, 8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 122 Ibid.; Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Behind the Scenes

63

airlanding troops, equipment, and supplies. Together they encompassed all 

aspects of the division’s tactical and deployment operations.123

A complete loading exercise, called an Emergency Deployment Readiness 

Exercise, ended with the airborne infantry battalions parachuting into a training area. Because of the costs that Military Airlift Command charged for using 

its aircraft in exercises, the combat service support elements affiliated with a brigade, aside from a few token elements, usually did not participate in the airdrop. 

The medical company supporting a brigade, for example, always packed its 

equipment as if it was going to jump but then moved by truck to the maneuver 

area. Before matters progressed that far, however, Colonel Silvasy had learned 

what he needed to know. Just eight hours after the alert message, he concluded 

that he had a competent, if young, brigade staff and some fine battalion commanders who knew their business and thus terminated the exercise.124

When Silvasy assumed command, the 82d’s mission was to be ready to 

deploy anywhere in the world and to fight upon arrival without extensive 

advance notice. Having the highest readiness status, the 2d Brigade would be 

deployed first in a crisis. In practical terms, this meant that it had to be prepared to sortie its first battalion (Division Ready Force-1) from Pope Air Force 

Base within eighteen hours of an alert message. The company that would lead 

the move, the Initial Ready Company, could depart even more quickly in an 

extreme emergency, for it kept its equipment loaded on vehicles in a holding 

area opposite its company barracks ready for deployment by air. Even so, no 

one wanted to deploy the company ahead of the rest of the battalion because 

it lacked artillery, engineers, aviation, signal, quartermaster, or other supporting elements that amplified ground combat power.125

Each of the division’s nine infantry battalions also received readiness designations that ran from one through nine. The three battalions assigned to Division 

Ready Brigade-1 thus normally included Division Ready Force-1, -2, and -3. 

Following the deployment of the first, the others would deploy in numerical 

order as required. Division Ready Force-9, the last battalion to deploy, functioned as the uploading battalion, providing critical muscle power to assist the 

departing battalions. Just how it would deploy itself without the assistance of 

a support battalion remained an unresolved issue in 1983. The division rarely 

practiced loading as many as two brigades and never rehearsed loading all three. 

Indeed, because of budgetary implications, any exercise involving the Air Force 

involved decisionmakers well above the division commander. In fact, since World 

War II, the 82d Airborne Division had deployed all three of its brigades only 

once, during the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic.126

123 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, and with Cleary, 14 Jul 

1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; William F. Daly and Raymond V. Mason, “The Quartermaster 

Corps in Grenada,” p. 5. 124 Briefing, Silvasy, 7 Dec 1983; Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, with F. Perkins, 14 

Jul 1986, and Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 125 Briefing, Cole, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 126 Ibid.; RCmts, Reardon, May 2004, Hist files (Drafts), CMH; Interv, author with Daly, 

31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. For the Dominican crisis, see Palmer, Intervention in the 
The Rucksack War

64

While the division was theoretically prepared to deploy anywhere in 

the world, to be prepared for everywhere was, in effect, to be prepared for 

nowhere. Successive division commanders had thus concentrated on readying the unit for the most difficult and dangerous contingency that the Army 

faced in the post-Vietnam era, a Soviet invasion of the oil-rich nations of 

the Middle East, particularly Iran. In such a scenario, the division would 

have to deploy quickly and then fight a delaying action until friendly heavy 

forces could arrive. This meant that division troopers had to be able to generate maximum firepower against an enemy certain to have large numbers of 

armored vehicles. The program carried with it an unspoken assumption that 

the skills it taught would stand the division in good stead in other contingencies of lesser difficulty.127

On Monday, 17 October, two days after Colonel Silvasy had ended his 

surprise exercise, Colonel Daly took the 2,200 men and women of his 82d 

Support Command to the post maneuver area for a field training exercise of 

his own. Daly, who had previously commanded the 407th Supply and Service 

Battalion and had served as the senior logistician on the division staff, had 

joined the division support command in August 1983. He was impressed with 

the high level of technical training of the men and women under him. They 

exhibited great competence when doing the jobs prescribed for their various 

specialties. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with their field training. Combat 

service support units, he later observed, were doing the Army a disservice if 

they slighted their combat roles by spending the majority of their training 

concentrating on the technical aspects of their positions. “Many . . . support 

centers would not last one day in combat,” he said, “without the tactical training required to defend their positions.”128

In his opinion, the 82d Support Command was a good unit, but rusty in 

the field. His main goal in the exercise was “to shake out” its field operating 

procedures and tactical operations centers, both at the battalion and division 

support command levels. The effort culminated in a two-day rear-area combat exercise in which the unit defended its position against the 82d Aviation 

Battalion. Early in the exercise Daly observed from his helicopter that his 

aviation fuel system supply point was neither secure nor camouflaged. He 

landed and called the commander, 2d Lt. Eric P. Katz, over to one side. Daly 

explained that in the 82d Airborne Division whenever a unit went into the field 

it assumed that it was operating in a hostile tactical environment. Katz’s unit 

was doing good technical work, but it was unprepared to defend itself and had 

even left some 12,000-gallon bags of aviation gas lying around on the ground. 

These needed to be dug in. Daly asked the lieutenant how soon it would take 

him to organize his position tactically. Katz said two days. Daly promised to 

return and inspect the site again and, before leaving, explained his philosophy: 

Caribbean; Lawrence M. Greenberg, United States Army Unilateral and Coalition Operations in 

the 1965 Dominican Republic Intervention; and Lawrence A. Yates, Power Pack. 127 Interv, author with Quick, [Jun 1998], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 128 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Daly and Mason, 

“Quartermaster Corps in Grenada,” p. 5 (quoted words).
Behind the Scenes

65

“Think war; train for war; and if you don’t have to go, all that you’ve done is 

dig a few foxholes.”129

Unknowingly, Daly had found one of the units most in need of such instruction, because the aviation fuel system supply point had not been tested in the field 

for years. When the colonel returned two days later, he found the gas bags dug in 

and all the approaches to the position covered by well camouflaged foxholes. He 

was satisfied that Katz and his men had learned what to do and how to do it.130

That same week Colonel Silvasy also had an opportunity to discover the 

proficiency of the 82d Support Command. At that time, General Trobaugh 

decided to find out how his new brigade commander handled surprises and 

called an unexpected emergency deployment training exercise for the 2d 

Brigade. Prophetically, Trobaugh selected a timely scenario for the exercise: 

the rescue of American citizens held hostage by a foreign government. As the 

division support commander, Colonel Daly was responsible for loading the 

division in conformity with its standing operating procedures. As a result, 

in the midst of his own exercise, he had to truck some of the support command back from the field to supervise the loading of Silvasy’s brigade onto 

aircraft. Forward Area Support Team II also returned because it was part of 

the brigade task force. Both the 2d Brigade’s deployment exercise and the 82d 

Support Command’s field exercise proved successful. Silvasy remembered his 

first week in command as “very exciting.” Daly, who had to juggle responsibilities for both exercises, could have said the same thing.131

Given his lack of an airborne background, General Trobaugh had 

approached his job with an exacting attention to detail that most of his predecessors had found unnecessary. His recent experience as an assistant division 

commander for support meant that he had joined the division with the importance of logistics firmly in view. In August he had meshed these two threads 

of airborne inexperience and logistical experience to produce a new readiness 

reporting system in the division. In that month he had directed, and General 

Smith and Colonel Daly had designed, a format for readiness reporting. Before 

an audience that included Trobaugh, Smith, Daly, and the appropriate brigade 

commander, each battalion commander had made a formal presentation of 

every possible aspect of his unit: levels of supply, availability of equipment, 

status of training, and numbers and preparation of personnel. The briefings 

covered these topics in minute detail, going so far as to include, for example, 

whether the vaccinations of members of the unit were up to date, an item that 

directly affected the battalion’s readiness to deploy overseas. Division officers 

quickly learned not to take these briefings lightly. When one of the battalion commanders had attempted to obfuscate some embarrassing facts about 

129 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986 (quoted words), and with Katz, 18 Jul 1986, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH; Daly and Mason, “Quartermaster Corps in Grenada,” pp. 4–5. 130 Interv, author with Daly, 30 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Daly and Mason, 

“Quartermaster Corps in Grenada,” p. 5. 131 Daly and Mason, “Quartermaster Corps in Grenada,” pp. 5–6; Intervs, author with 

Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with Cusick, 24 Jan 1989, and Briefing (quoted words), Silvasy, 7 Dec 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 
The Rucksack War

66

his unit’s vehicle maintenance, Trobaugh had exposed the true situation with 

some pointed questions that left the briefer decidedly uncomfortable. The new 

division commander’s emphasis on logistics heartened the senior logisticians 

but caused some combat commanders to grumble that his briefings and their 

preparation cut too much into the time available for more useful operational 

planning and training.132

The 82d was extremely well drilled because General Trobaugh had stressed 

repeated emergency deployment readiness exercises. From the time he assumed 

command, Trobaugh insisted on a minimum of one emergency deployment 

readiness exercise at brigade level each month and often held more. (Previous 

division commanders had not considered it necessary to hold them so frequently.) These exercises, however, focused on the initial brigade’s deployment. Due to the expense and competing budget priorities, higher headquarters had failed to fund larger exercises requiring Air Force participation. As a 

result, members of the division were largely unprepared for the complications 

involved in moving a force comprised of more than one brigade by air from 

neighboring Pope Air Force Base.133

MORALE

These deployment exercises were extraordinarily important to the 82d 

Airborne Division, because of its role as the Army’s fire brigade. The entire 

organization was focused on the problem of deploying the first battalion 

within eighteen hours of an alert and nothing was going to stop it from reaching that goal—not inadequate intelligence, inability to move all its logistical 

assets, poor terrain on the drop zone at the objective, or the possibility of 

meeting superior numbers of enemy forces. American infantry has traditionally possessed a can-do spirit when approaching difficulties and that philosophy was particularly prevalent among light infantrymen in 1983. Nowhere was 

the attitude more concentrated than among light infantrymen who jumped out 

of airplanes. Given their mission and organization, airborne soldiers had to 

believe in the primacy of human qualities—intelligence, training, and will—

over materiel. It was an approach that the 82d Airborne Division went to some 

pains to reinforce. When a member of the unit received an order he did not 

salute and say: “Yes, sir.” He saluted and said: “Airborne, sir,” meaning that 

he would put 200-percent effort into whatever task he received and he would 

accomplish it.134

While the full flowering of the can-do spirit in the division helped enhance 

its readiness, it also worked to exacerbate strains between members of the combat arms and their counterparts in the support units. On the surface, this tension 

132 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with Crabtree, 24 Jan 1989, plus Pirnie and 

author with Akers, [1985]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 133 Interv, author with Cusick, 24 Jan 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; RCmts, Reardon, 

May 2004, Hist files (Drafts), CMH. 134 Interv, Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH, with key reflections 

on impact of emergency deployment readiness exercises. Quoted words based on author’s observations at Fort Bragg (1986 and 1989) and discussions with Army officers.
Behind the Scenes

67

took the form of what seemed normal good natured banter and friendly competition. A hint of raw emotion, however, ran beneath the surface of the humor. 

Airborne infantrymen, on the one hand, regarded logisticians as something less 

than real soldiers, an attitude not uncommon in any maneuver division. The only 

thing that counted from this point of view was the amount of combat power 

a unit brought to bear, most easily calculated by the number of maneuver battalions, artillery batteries, and combat aviation units it deployed. On the other 

hand, logisticians believed that they were unappreciated and that the combat 

arms officers as a whole did not understand the extent to which total combat 

power depended upon their efforts. The awkwardness that resulted surfaced in 

the epithets that the two groups used to refer to one another: Logisticians were 

“loggies,” and thus not altogether serious; combat arms officers were “gunfighters” or “killers,” and thus little more than Neanderthals. Colonel Daly’s command had an unofficial slogan that succinctly summed up the logisticians’ point 

of view: “82d DISCOM: Try Fighting Without Us.”135

The tension between members of the combat arms and the combat service 

support branches also affected relations between the 82d Airborne Division 

and the XVIII Airborne Corps. Many officers and some enlisted men had 

served in both during their careers, mitigating the tensions between the two 

organizations. Even so, a natural rivalry developed simply because both units 

occupied the same post. In addition, most of the corps elements were combat 

service or combat service support units while the division contained a preponderance of combat units. As with the friction between combat arms officers 

and logisticians, this tension remained below the surface in peacetime.136

The strains between fighters and suppliers and between units in close proximity were hardly unique to Fort Bragg. They could be found in one degree 

or another throughout the Army. That the members of the 82d considered 

themselves special and something apart from the rest of the service, however, 

only complicated matters. Duty at Fort Bragg with its constantly demanding 

training came to represent the epitome of field soldiering for many officers 

and enlisted men. Some of them, in a practice referred to as homesteading, 

manipulated the personnel system so that they served in a wide variety of 

units but never left the Fort Bragg area. This meant that officers became highly 

proficient in a fairly narrow range of skills that might be too narrow if the 

Army ever had to mobilize again. Senior leaders at Fort Bragg tolerated this, 

unofficially encouraging homesteading because in their view the complexity of 

airborne operations required such specialization.137

135 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul, 7 Aug 1986, and Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, 

and Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Briefing Slides, 82d DISCOM, 

Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH; author’s observations at Fort Bragg (1986 and 1989) and discussions with Army officers, including a senior logistician. Quoted words from sign in the 82d 

Support Command headquarters. 136 Interv, author with McElroy, 30 Apr 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 137 Intervs, Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], and Pirnie, MacGarrigle, and author with 

J. L. Hamilton, 3 Jun 1985. Both in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also RCmts, Reardon, Sep 

2004, Hist files (Drafts), CMH. 
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68

The practice figured prominently in a rumor that preceded General 

Trobaugh’s arrival at Fort Bragg. The story made the rounds that General 

Cavazos at Forces Command had enjoined Trobaugh to bring the 82d 

Airborne Division back into the Army. For some, the report became more 

plausible as they came to know the general because he did not suffer fools 

gladly. He had very definite ideas about how he wanted things done, often 

made quick judgments, and then held them firmly. As a result, a number of 

officers with long service at the post became concerned about their career 

prospects. This fostered a tendency on the part of some to go no further than 

the letter of any order and to avoid taking the initiative. The command climate that resulted tended to breed suspicion and fear rather than teamwork. 

Whether a real operation would pull the division together remained to be 

seen.138

HEAVY DROP RIG SITE

The members of the 82d Support Command had much more immediate 

concerns as they returned to garrison on Friday, 21 October. Most were not 

thinking of the next work week let alone the politics of promotion. They were 

concentrating on the prospects of the weekend ahead. Colonel Daly insisted, 

however, that before any unit released its personnel it had to return all its 

equipment to “100-percent go-to-war status.” It was an unpopular order, but 

the men and women of the command complied.139

Company E, 407th Supply and Service Battalion, the quartermaster airdrop equipment company, was one of the last units out of the woods. The men 

had to return to the heavy drop rig site, a large factory-type structure in the 

pine barrens northwest of the main post, near Green Ramp on Pope Air Force 

Base. There, they would restore to a deployable condition all heavy equipment needed for any contingency so that the items could be rapidly moved to 

Pope Air Force Base and loaded onto an airplane with little or no additional 

preparation.140

The rig site consisted of two compounds in a clearing, each of which was 

surrounded by a cyclone fence topped with razor wire. The smaller of these 

was a vehicle holding area. A large metal building stood in the center of the 

second enclosure. Inside were six production lines, each equipped with rollers 

and overhead cranes designed to prepare everything from jeeps to bulldozers 

for a parachute landing. Each vehicle, which contained supplies and equipment referred to as bulk ballast because the parachutes required the extra 

weight to open correctly, entered one side of the building, where it moved onto 

rollers to pass through several work stations. Company E riggers first lashed it 

onto a pallet and then cocooned it in energy-absorbing honeycomb material 

as protection for airdrops. The riggers also covered a vehicle with three canvas 

web nets and attached one or more parachutes and static lines before loading 

138 Intervs, Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], and Pirnie, MacGarrigle, and author with 

J. L. Hamilton, 3 Jun 1985. Both in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 139 Daly and Mason, “Quartermaster Corps in Grenada,” p. 5. 140 Ibid.
Behind the Scenes

69

it onto a tractor trailer, normally a forty-foot flatbed trailer pulled by a M915 

tractor, for transportation to Pope Air Force Base.141

Exceptions to these loading procedures were in place for specialized equipment, such as the Sheridans in the 4th Battalion, 68th Armor. Unit personnel, 

versus Company E riggers, would always prepare their own vehicles or heavy 

weapons for airdrop. Although Company E riggers could also load pallets of 

supplies and standard equipment for airdrop, as a rule the unit shipping the 

pallets usually prepared the ones that did not involve vehicles or heavy weapons. The degree of difficulty involved in such normal packing did not require 

the riggers’ special expertise.142

Company E had endured a hard week. As with everyone else in the division support command, the riggers had gone to the field for the exercise only to 

discover that they had to return to support the 2d Brigade’s emergency deployment readiness exercise. Once they completed that mission, they returned to the 

field to finish their rear-area combat problem. The company had a significant 

amount of work to do to recover from the week’s activities. It was still at work 

when word came down the chain of command that there would be another 

emergency deployment readiness exercise on Monday, 24 October. Company 

E was to hold fast over the weekend. Because the rig site was a coveted place to 

work and all the enlisted men were long-service professionals, they grumbled 

at the news, but no one was really upset. It was just another day in the life of 

the 82d Airborne Division.143

The military community at Fort Bragg that Colonel Silvasy rejoined in 

October 1983 showed more continuity than change since his earlier posting 

in 1964 and 1965. The 82d Airborne Division, like other Army contingency 

forces in 1983, might best be described as an enhanced Vietnam-era unit. 

Combined arms still began at the battalion level so that a battalion task force 

constituted the essential building block for any overseas contingency. The division was beginning to receive precision-guided weapons, such as Stinger missiles, but most of its munitions remained the unguided conventional variety. 

Computers, because of their size and complexity, were used more commonly 

in fixed installations than in the field. The units themselves provided most of 

the sense of stability and continuity for the men and women in them. If the 

chain of command remained unaltered, however, the personalities involved 

were clearly different, and this could affect both the content and the style of 

decisionmaking. The planning process also represented a constant even, as the 

plans underwent continuous refinement. 

The division remained an elite unit, part of the nation’s fire brigade ready 

to deploy to crises around the world. Although budgetary constraints placed 

limitations on training, the 82d was better prepared to launch one brigade than 

141 Ibid.; Interv, author with Horton, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 142 Interv, author with Horton, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; RCmts, Reardon, 

May 2004, Hist files (Drafts), CMH. 143 Interv, author with Horton, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
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two in a crisis. The state of the Cold War and the Soviet threat to Iran also 

ensured that the division’s training was more focused on fighting a high-intensity engagement against a mechanized opponent than a low-intensity conflict 

against a predominantly light infantry adversary. Because the same budgetary 

considerations precluded moving logistical units by air during exercises, senior 

commanders and combat arms officers habitually assumed the presence of 

adequate logistical support. Only the senior logisticians understood in detail 

the complexity of flying their units to an objective and what impact their presence might have on the introduction of combat elements.

At the same time Army contingency forces had changed since Silvasy’s 

earlier tour. Four of the most important differences included the creation of a 

variety of such forces; the transformation of the corps into the key headquarters for logistical support; the effort to reduce usage of supplies and equipment; and the transition to delivering logistical support as far forward in the 

battle zone as possible. While the post-Vietnam shift to an all-volunteer force 

was exceptionally important to the Army as a whole, it had little influence 

on Army contingency forces, which had always consisted of volunteers. The 

new types of contingency forces permitted a more nuanced response to crises but introduced additional complexity into the planning and conduct of 

operations not present in 1965. The changes in Army logistics, in particular, 

remained somewhat problematic in 1983 because they had not been validated 

by combat.

In 1983 most soldiers—whether rangers, special operations forces, or airborne troopers—had little to do with planning and no concern for the chain 

of command other than their immediate superiors in their own units. Some 

issues, such as the relationships between the services or the impact of fiscal 

constraints on training, also remained outside their purview. Aside from senior 

commanders and a handful of staff officers, the soldiers lived an isolated existence, endlessly perfecting methods of conducting military operations, but 

little concerned about why or where. This was the world that Colonel Silvasy 

reentered at Fort Bragg. 

At the time that Silvasy returned to Bragg, the small very poor Caribbean 

island nation of Grenada was one possible site for U.S. military intervention, 

but it hardly seemed likely to anyone on the post. The advent of the left-wing 

Bishop government in 1979 and its subsequent development of close ties to 

Cuba and the Soviet Union, its construction of a large international airport 

with potential military as well as civilian uses, and its constant stream of radical rhetoric against the United States had goaded the Reagan administration into reassessing United States policy toward Grenada. In early October 

1983 the administration was on the cusp of initiating a tougher policy that 

could only increase Grenada’s already considerable economic woes. Military 

intervention, however, was as far from the thoughts of the policymakers in 

Washington as it was from the calculations of the soldiers at Fort Bragg.
2

Policy and Initial Planning

13–24 October 1983

The leadership elite on Grenada experienced a growing sense of crisis during 1983. Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard had found it increasingly difficult to work with Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Although they 

had no real policy disputes, evidence of Bishop’s lack of executive abilities had 

accumulated since the 1979 revolution. Bishop was very much the populist 

leader possessing the capacity to sway large crowds with his rhetoric, whereas 

Coard in his role as the New JEWEL’s chief Marxist theoretician was the epitome of an ideologue. The two might have resolved their differences peacefully, 

but their friction occurred against the backdrop of the new government’s failure 

to make much progress in reviving the island’s moribund economy. If Bishop’s 

government had succeeded in projecting a revolutionary image to its sponsors 

abroad, that success came at the cost of local social services. Moreover, the 

regime’s main economic achievement—the decrease in unemployment—was 

due to the creation of a large number of construction jobs that would vanish upon completion of the airport. Underemployment, unemployment, and 

widespread drug use among teenagers thus remained almost as intractable as 

before the revolution. As initial hopes for quick economic success faded, so 

did the leadership’s sense that the government enjoyed broad popular support. 

In fact, subsequent polling suggested that popular support had not declined, 

but the Coard faction of the party perceived that it had.1

In September 1983 Coard and his allies outmaneuvered Bishop in a series 

of Central Committee meetings. Coard wanted a reorganization at the top 

so that both men would nominally share power but where, in fact, Bishop 

acted largely as a figurehead. Distracted by the need to keep the economy 

afloat, Bishop agreed and then departed on an effort to secure capital from 

Eastern Europe. Coard remained behind and consolidated his support in key 

1 Gregory W. Sandford and Richard Vigilante, Grenada, pp. 137–48; Maurice Bishop, In 

Nobody’s Backyard, pp. xxi–xli; Brian Meeks, Caribbean Revolutions and Revolutionary Theory, 

pp. 129–86; Jay R. Mandle, Big Revolution, Small Country, pp. 45–102; Gordon K. Lewis, 

Grenada, pp. 161–63; Frederick L. Pryor, Revolutionary Grenada, pp. 199–254; Courtney A. 

Smith, Socialist Transformation in Peripheral Economies, pp. 235–38; Tony Thorndike, Grenada, 

pp. 176–91; Patrick Emmanuel et al., Political Change and Public Policy in Grenada, 1979–1984, 

p. 23. 

☆ ☆ ☆
The Rucksack War

72

sectors, particularly the People’s Revolutionary Army. During his trip Bishop 

reevaluated what he had conceded and returned determined to contest the 

decision for dual leadership. Almost all the key army officers, however, lined 

up behind Coard, and after a raucous session on Wednesday, 12 October, the 

Central Committee of the party deposed Bishop and ordered his arrest. When 

an attempt to announce Coard’s succession as prime minister sparked a near 

riot in St. George’s, Coard abruptly resigned from the government and went 

into hiding. The Central Committee, meanwhile, opted to cut communications 

with the outside world and to expel all foreign journalists.2

Washington and Norfolk, 13–19 October

Officials in Washington first became aware of a potential crisis on Grenada 

on 13 October. The island briefly surfaced as a subject of discussion between two 

members of the Restricted Interagency Group following a meeting on Central 

America. Consisting of representatives from the Department of State, the Office 

2 Michael Ledeen and Herbert Romerstein, eds., Grenada Documents, doc. 112; “The 

Alienation of Leninist Group Therapy,” Caribbean Review 12 (Fall 1983): 14–15, 48–58; Frank 

J. Prial, “Grenada Curtails Communications to the Outside,” New York Times, 16 Oct 1983; 

R. S. Hopkin, Grenada Topples the Balance in West Indian History, p. 8; Thorndike, Grenada, 

pp. 153–56; Paul Seabury and Walter McDougall, eds., The Grenada Papers, pp. 329–39. See 

also Notes, n.d. sub: CC Meetings; Resolution, PRA Branch, NJM Party, 12 Oct 1983; and 

Ltr, Burke to Bishop, 11 Oct 1983. All in IDR nos. 000136, 100103, 100270, Hist files (PDocs/

CGD), CMH.

Antigovernment demonstration in 1974, led by Bishop (circled) 
Policy and Initial Planning

73

of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council (NSC), the Restricted 

Interagency Group was part of an attempt by the Reagan administration to allow 

mid-level coordination of issues between agencies before they reached the president and his cabinet-level advisers on the National Security Council. The goal, 

mostly achieved, was to provide closer monitoring of issues and to resolve agency 

differences as far down the administrative hierarchy as possible.3

As with many such entities in Washington, however, the Restricted 

Interagency Group’s history had little to do with the tenets of scientific administration. It was the forum through which Secretary of State George P. Shultz 

was seeking to regain control of the administration’s Central American policy 

from a loose coalition of intelligence and defense officials and NSC staffers 

who favored a military solution to the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua as 

opposed to negotiations urged by the State Department. This long-running 

policy clash meant that at the beginning of the Grenada crisis departmental 

representatives within the group were highly sensitive to the need to protect 

the prerogatives of their organizations. As a result, the members exchanged 

information grudgingly and were inclined to find reasons for not doing things 

other agencies regarded as useful.4

The nominal JCS representative in the Restricted Interagency Group was 

assistant to the chairman, V. Adm. Arthur S. Moreau Jr. A nuclear submariner, Admiral Moreau was possibly the most powerful member of the group, 

respected by JCS Chairman General John W. Vessey for his brilliance and 

his judgment. By extension, because General Vessey in turn enjoyed the confidence of both Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and President 

Ronald W. Reagan, his trust gave Moreau influence at the highest reaches of 

the government and made him a very important player in the group. He was, 

however, a very busy man. Unless he judged an issue to be of key importance, 

he usually sent a subordinate to represent him. On 13 October Grenada was 

not even on the agenda and the issues that were there did not rate, in Moreau’s 

judgment, a flag officer’s attendance. Air Force Col. James W. Connally, chief 

of the Western Hemisphere Division, Plans and Policy Directorate (J–5), Joint 

Staff, represented the Joint Chiefs at the group’s meeting.5

3 NSDD 2, Reagan, 12 Jan 82, sub: National Security Council Structure, NSDD files, box 

1, RNSC, NARA–RRPL; Langhorne A. Motley, “The Decision To Assist Grenada,” p. 2; 

Interv, Cole with Connally, 25 Jul 1984, Archives files, JHO. No tape was made of this interview. Connally remembered that Motley approached him on 12 October, but everyone else’s 

recollection was that the meeting occurred on 13 October. The latter appears more in line with 

events on Grenada. 4 Motley, “Decision To Assist Grenada,” p. 2. For a detailed account of the administration’s 

Central American policy, see William M. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, pp. 72–146, 188–96, 

356–57. See also Robert J. Beck, The Grenada Invasion, pp. 93–94. 5 Richard Halloran, “Reagan as Military Commander,” New York Times Magazine, 15 

January 1984, p. 61; idem, “A Commanding Voice for the Military,” ibid., 15 July 1984, pp. 

18–25, 52. For Moreau’s background, Moreau Resumé, 1 July 1986, Archives files, NHHC. On 

the Vessey-Moreau relationship, see Roy Gutman, Banana Diplomacy, p. 138, and Interv, Cole 

with Connally, 25 Jul 1984, Archives files, JHO. 
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74

As the meeting broke up, the group chairman, Assistant Secretary of State 

for Inter-American Affairs Langhorne A. Motley, took Colonel Connally 

aside. Noting that there appeared to be some political unrest on Grenada, 

Ambassador Motley indicated that a military operation might be necessary 

for evacuating American residents on the island and stressed that the Joint 

Chiefs needed to dust off their plans for such a contingency. (Just what was 

the source of Motley’s information remains unclear. The U.S. Embassy in 

Barbados did not cable the news until the following day.) Connally promised 

to pass the ambassador’s concern to his superiors. The State and Defense 

Departments were then embroiled in a dispute over Middle Eastern foreign 

policy. Secretary Shultz believed in a vigorous approach backed by force, while 

Secretary Weinberger wanted to avoid any initiative that might drain political 

support from his primary objective—rebuilding U.S. defenses. Given this context, Connally’s superiors apparently did little more on 13 October than note 

Motley’s concern about Grenada.6

Coincidentally, on 13 October, the senior Latin American specialist on 

the NSC staff, Constantine C. Menges, reacted to the reports about a power 

struggle on Grenada by proposing a military intervention to rescue Americans 

on the island and to restore democratic government. Menges already had a 

reputation as an ideologue at odds with the pragmatists who dominated the 

staff. His initiative appeared to his superiors so wildly out of proportion to the 

situation that he played only a marginal role in the decisionmaking from then 

on. But he did introduce Grenada as a subject in the highest echelons of the 

NSC staff, and his recommendation proved to be a prescient judgment about 

how events might develop.7

That afternoon National Security Adviser William P. Clark, with minimal 

preliminary warning, announced that he had accepted the post of secretary of 

the interior in the president’s cabinet. His deputy, Robert C. McFarlane, would 

succeed him. This stunning announcement to the NSC staff—only McFarlane 

had known in advance—probably slowed the follow-through on the Grenada 

issue. Not until 2000, local time, on 13 October did a lower-level staffer on the 

Latin American desk contact an officer in the Operations Directorate (J–3) of 

the Joint Staff. The staffer had wanted to know what resources were available 

on short notice to safeguard an evacuation of Americans from the island.8

6 Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, pp. 135–74; George P. Shultz, Turmoil and

Triumph, pp. 84, 103; Robert C. McFarlane and Zofia Smardz, Special Trust, p. 248; Interv, 

Cole with Connally, 25 Jul 1984, Archives files, JHO; Msg, Bish to SecState, 14 1508Z Oct 1983, 

sub: Report of a Marxist Coup by DPM Bernard Coard, Msg files, DoS. See also Stephen E. 

Flynn, “Grenada as a ‘Reactive’ and a ‘Proactive’ Crisis,” Ph.D. diss., pp. 103–05, and Ronald 

H. Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 11–12. 7 Constantine C. Menges, Inside the National Security Council, pp. 60–62. The judgment 

about Menges’ subsequent role in the operation is in Beck, Grenada Invasion, pp. 120–21, 

121n56. 8 See McFarlane and Smardz, Special Trust, pp. 258–60, for impact of Clark’s departure. On 

the approach to the JCS, see Msg Extract, JCS, 14 0000Z [Oct 1983], in Misc Master Scenario 

Events List (Planning/Execution Systems), Hist files (PDocs/DoD/JCS), CMH; Cole, Operation 

Urgent Fury, p. 12.
Policy and Initial Planning

75

The next morning, in response to this inquiry, the director of operations 

on the Joint Staff, Army Lt. Gen. Richard L. Prillaman, activated a crisis 

response cell in the National Command Center to monitor the Grenada situation. The quick action reflected the fact that the National Security Council 

was an agency in the Office of the President and hence represented higher 

authority in the chain of command. The crisis response cell consisted of Joint 

Staff officers from the Western Hemisphere Branch, Operations Directorate, 

and the Western Hemisphere Branch, Plans and Policy Directorate, plus 

Foreign Service officers from the State Department with a representative of 

the Defense Intelligence Agency in support. The cell was to assess the situation 

and prepare possible courses of action. It began work at 0800, local time, on 

Friday, 14 October.9

The Restricted Interagency Group held another scheduled meeting on 14 

October, this time with Grenada as a minor agenda item. Ambassador Motley 

repeated for the entire group much of what he had told Colonel Connally the 

day before. In his view Bishop’s arrest, now confirmed, opened the possibility 

of further radicalization of the New JEWEL Party. Such a development might 

pose a threat to the safety of the large number of Americans, estimated at 1,000, 

living on the island. Motley informed the group that the State Department was 

reviewing its standard evacuation procedures and formally requested that the 

Joint Chiefs scrutinize their contingency evacuation plans.10

In response to a “what if” call from the crisis response cell at the National 

Command Center that same day, the Operations Directorate at U.S. Atlantic 

Command headquarters began reviewing contingency plans for noncombatant 

evacuations/show-of-force operations and drafting options specifically related to 

the situation on Grenada. Initially these efforts were interspersed with the normal business of the directorate and proceeded at a somewhat leisurely pace.11

The planners at Norfolk had based all their work on three assumptions. First, 

they took for granted that the National Command Authority would make available all the forces listed in Concept Plan 2360, last updated in March 1983. (As 

one commentator observed, this expectation presumed that Atlantic Command 

chief Admiral Wesley L. McDonald could use some mix of those forces, depending on the circumstances of the moment, that the plan budgeted for Caribbean 

operations). Second, the planners stipulated that neither Cuba nor the Soviet 

Union would intervene militarily. Third, based on the spotty intelligence available, they postulated incorrectly that the bulk of the resident Americans were 

medical students and that they lived on the True Blue Campus of the St. George’s 

University School of Medicine just off the runway at Point Salines.12

9 Msg Extract, JCS, 14 1200Z [Oct 1983], in Misc Master Scenario Events List (Planning/

Execution Systems), Hist files (PDocs/DoD/JCS), CMH; Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 12. 10 Flynn, “Grenada,” Ph.D. diss., p. 105, provides the only available account of this 

meeting. 11 Chronology, encl. 2 to Ltr, McDonald to Vessey, 6 Feb 1984, sub: Operation Urgent

Fury Report, Archives files, JHO.

12 Msg, Bish to SecState, 20 0739Z Oct 1983, sub: Grenada—Attitudes of Grenadian 

Medical School Toward Possible Evacuation of Their Students/Staff, Msg files, DoS; Msg, 
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Admiral McDonald’s staff also fed information into the Joint Staff’s crisis 

response cell. Both sets of planners knew that any noncombatant evacuation 

involved one major inherent risk—the intended evacuees could become hostages instead. The deteriorating security situation on the island compelled both 

policymakers and planners to pay increasing attention to that possibility.13

Three days later, on Monday, 17 October, Motley convened a special meeting of the Restricted Interagency Group devoted solely to Grenada. At that 

time, he reviewed State Department procedures for dealing with a situation in 

a foreign country where American lives might be at risk. The first three, more 

moderate, actions involved dealing with the government in power. Motley 

rejected them because in his view Bishop’s arrest and Coard’s resignation 

meant that no legitimate government remained on Grenada. The only feasible 

response was an evacuation of noncombatants in which the U.S. military would 

be prepared to use whatever force was necessary. Motley pressed for the Joint 

Chiefs to begin immediate planning for such an operation. Colonel Connally 

passed Motley’s concerns on to his superiors. To the Joint Staff, the possibility of intervention appeared remote. The Joint Staff director, Army Lt. Gen. 

Jack N. Merritt, observed that the crisis was “just vibrating.” Nevertheless, he 

ordered the Joint Staff’s crisis response cell to work with Atlantic Command 

and develop a range of evacuation options—from a peaceful evacuation to 

the use of force. In response to the increased level and intensity of work this 

action generated, Atlantic Command activated its own crisis action team on 

18 October.14

As the situation on Grenada began to attract high-level military attention, 

the U.S. Navy Amphibious Squadron Four took on the men and equipment 

of the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit at Morehead City, North Carolina. The 

unit’s intended destination was Lebanon—a normal rotation to relieve the 

Marine garrison there. Commanded by Navy Capt. Carl R. Erie, an aviator of 

wide experience with attack aircraft, the squadron consisted of an amphibious assault ship, the USS Guam, the flagship; an amphibious transport dock, 

the USS Trenton; a dock landing ship, the USS Fort Snelling; and two landing 

ships, the USS Manitowoc and the USS Barnstable County.15

Marine amphibious units were the smallest of the Marine air-ground task 

forces. The 22d, commanded by Marine Col. James P. Faulkner, consisted of 

McDonald to JCS, 20 0616Z Oct 1983, sub: Commander’s Estimate of Situation, Grenada 

Evacuation, encl. to Memo, Merritt for Agency Dirs and Heads, JCS, 30 Jan 1984, Archives 

files, JHO; Interv, Pirnie with Nelson, 9 Jan 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 13 Chronology, encl. 2 to Ltr, McDonald to Vessey, 6 Feb 1984; Rpt, [Harris], 1 May 1985, 

sub: Joint Overview of Operation Urgent Fury. Both in Archives files, JHO. See also Cole, 

Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 11–12; Bruce R. Pirnie, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 63–64. 14 Motley, “Decision To Assist Grenada,” p. 1; Flynn, “Grenada,” Ph.D. diss., pp. 105–

07; Interv, Cole with Merritt, 21 Jun 1984 (quoted words), and Chronology, encl. 2 to Ltr, 

McDonald to Vessey, 6 Feb 1984, Archives files, JHO; Msg Extract, JCS, 18 0000Z [Oct 1983], 

in Misc Master Scenario Events List (Cmd/Control—Task Org), Hist files (PDocs/DoD/JCS), 

CMH. 15 Ronald H. Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, 1983, p. 1; Erie Resumé, Archives files, 

NHHC.
Naval support in Grenada; below, USS Guam
USS Independence; below, USS Caron
Policy and Initial Planning

79

a small headquarters element; a battalion landing team built around the 2d 

Battalion, 8th Marines; a helicopter squadron; and a support group, composed of maintenance, supply, and service units—some 1,900 men in all. By 

Wednesday, 19 October, Amphibious Squadron Four was in the Atlantic en 

route to Lebanon. A powerful battle group from Norfolk, built around the aircraft carrier USS Independence with five destroyers, including the USS Caron, 

and intended to support the marines in Lebanon, was also at sea.16

Death by Revolution, 19–20 October

On the morning of 19 October a crowd, estimated between 3,000 and 

4,000, surged out of Market Square in the center of St. George’s (see Map 3). 

Shouting “No Bishop; no Revo,” the demonstrators moved toward the prime 

minister’s residence at Mount Weldale, some 800 meters north and west of 

the town center. Some of Bishop’s adherents, including three former cabinet 

members and two labor leaders, had remained at liberty and had appealed for 

popular support. They were in the crowd when the demonstrators reached the 

outer courtyard of the residence. Acting under orders from the Coard group, 

members of the People’s Revolutionary Army attempted to bar the entrance. 

The soldiers fired their weapons into the air; however, they melted away when 

the demonstrators stormed into the front courtyard.17

Inside, Bishop’s supporters found their leader strapped to his bed. He 

appeared dazed, reputedly because he had refused all food and water for several days. He had feared, so it was said, that his former Central Committee 

comrades would attempt to poison him. As Bishop and his liberators exited 

the residence, a reporter at the scene asked him for his reaction. Bishop could 

only mutter, “the masses,” before being swept away in a truck.18

Chanting “We want we leader” (the local dialect for “We have our leader”), 

most of the crowd returned to the capital to hear their leader. Others, however, 

accompanied Bishop to Fort Rupert, the location of army headquarters. The 

garrison proved as unwilling to fire on the demonstrators as the guards at the 

residence. Bishop and his lieutenants took charge and released another prisoner and supporter, the deposed army chief of staff Maj. Einstein Louison. 

On Bishop’s orders, Major Louison began distributing Soviet AK47 automatic 

rifles to the crowd.19

Just what Bishop and his supporters intended next remains unclear. Before 

they could act, three Soviet-built armored personnel carriers rolled out of the 

16 Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, 1983, p. 1; Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 18; MFR, 

author, 13 Dec 2006, sub: 22d MAU, Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH. 17 “Leader of Grenada Is Reported Killed by Troops,” New York Times, 20 Oct 1983 

(quoted words); V. S. Naipaul, “An Island Betrayed,” Harper’s, March 1984, pp. 61–72; Frances 

Kay, This—Is Grenada, pp. 35–40; Thorndike, Grenada, p. 143. 18 “Leader of Grenada Is Reported Killed,” New York Times, 20 Oct 1983; Naipaul, “Island 

Betrayed,” p. 72; Alister Hughes, “Island Bloodshed ‘Started with Army Rockets,’ Journalist 

Says,” Washington Post, 30 Oct 1983 (quoted words). 19 Hughes, “Island Bloodshed,” Washington Post, 30 Oct 1983 (quoted words); Kai P. 

Schoenhals and Richard A. Melanson, Revolution and Intervention in Grenada, pp. 76–77; Mark 

Adkin, Urgent Fury, pp. 47–81.
ST. GEORGE’S

BAY

S T. GEORGE’S

HARBOR

MARTIN’S BAY

The Lagoon

The Carenage

St. Johns R

St. J o hns R

to Fort Frederick

1250 Meters

Pime Minister’s

Residence

Queen’s Park

Racecourse

Governor General’s

Residence

Govt

Oces

Prison

Fort Rupert

Market Square

Grenada

Free Port

For t George Point

THE SPOUT

Ross Point

Sans Souci

D’Arbeau

Springs

Paddock

Belmont

Gretna Green

ST GEORGE’S

ST. GEORGE’S AND VICINITY

GRENADA

1983

ELEVATION IN FEET

0 600 1200 and Above

0

0

500 Meters

500 Yards

Map 3
Ransacked People’s Revolutionary 

Army office at Fort Rupert; below,

Attack on Fort Rupert, with Soviet 

BTR60s 
The Rucksack War

82

city. They were manned by soldiers loyal to Bishop’s opponents, men who were 

not afraid to shoot. Who fired first is a matter of some dispute, but not who 

was slaughtered. When the armored personnel carriers opened fire, the crowd 

scattered, leaving a trail of bodies. Estimates of the dead ranged from ten to 

over a hundred. As the shooting started, witnesses remembered that Bishop 

cried out, “Oh God, oh God, they’ve turned their guns on the masses!” Bishop 

and his backers surrendered. Later, the soldiers stood him and seven of his 

prominent supporters against a wall in the inner courtyard of the fort and executed them. One or more of the soldiers also beat to death the former minister 

of education, Jacqueline Creft, who was pregnant with Bishop’s child.20

20 Edward Cody, “Prime Minister of Grenada Dies in a Military Coup,” Washington Post,

20 Oct 1983; Bull, Main Political Dept, NJM Party, 20 Oct 1983, sub: Their Heroism Is an 

Example for Us, IDR 000091, Hist files (PDocs/CGD), CMH; Adkin, Urgent Fury, pp. 69 

(quoted words) and 70–76; On Creft, see Speech, Kenneth W. Dam, 4 Nov 1983, in Department 

of State Bulletin 83 (December 1983): 80. See also Transcript of Hughes Tape Recording, 

Marine stands guard at the prime minister’s residence.
Policy and Initial Planning

83

The head of the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, General Hudson 

Austin, announced over Radio Free Grenada the formation of a sixteen-man 

Revolutionary Military Council with himself as president. Later, he informed 

the nation of Bishop’s death, claiming that the prime minister had died in 

fighting started by his own supporters. He then declared an around-the-clock 

curfew that, in effect, placed all Grenadians and foreigners under house arrest. 

Soldiers, he said, would shoot violators on sight. The council also closed Pearls 

Airport, cutting the island off from the outside world.21

The Soviet Union’s response to events in St. George’s was calm and measured, but Cuba reacted with barely controlled anger. The leadership crisis on 

Grenada had taken Havana by surprise. On 20 October the Cuban Communist 

Party issued an official statement condemning the killings of Bishop and his 

associates and calling for the Revolutionary Military Council to clarify the 

circumstances of their deaths: “If they were executed in cold blood, the guilty 

ones deserve to be punished in an exemplary way.” The Cubans did promise 

to continue their aid as part of their contract with the Grenadian people but 

with an ominous qualification that Cuban relations with the new ruling group 

would require “serious and profound analysis.”22

Reaction in the United States, 19–20 October

On 19 October the U.S. ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean Commonwealth 

nations, Milan D. Bish, reported the rioting and deaths in St. George’s. Even 

before he learned of Bishop’s assassination, Ambassador Bish, working from 

the embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados, believed that these conditions “posed 

an imminent danger to U.S. citizens resident on Grenada.” His cable prompted 

yet another Restricted Interagency Group meeting; this time Admiral Moreau 

attended in person. All the participants agreed not only with Bish’s analysis but 

also that the military needed to immediately begin planning for a noncombatant evacuation. Moreau stated that the Joint Chiefs understood the situation 

and would instruct the relevant commands to monitor it closely. He emphasized, 

however, that only the National Command Authority—either the president or 

the secretary of defense—could task the Joint Chiefs to prepare invasion plans.23

Market Square, St. George’s, Grenada, 19 Oct 1983, in Congressional Record, daily ed. (27 Mar 

1984): S3278–79. 21 Statement, Austin, 19 Oct 1983, sub: Rev Soldiers and Men of the PRA, IDR no. 000091, 

Hist files (PDocs/CGD), CMH; Transcript of Austin Broadcast, 19 Oct 1983, c. 2230, in 

Congressional Record, daily ed. (27 Mar 1984): S3729–80; “Military Council Says It Now Rules 

Grenada,” New York Times, 21 Oct 1983; Cody, “Prime Minister of Grenada Dies,” Washington 

Post, 20 Oct 1983. 

22 Maurice Bishop, Maurice Bishop Speaks, pp. 315 (quoted words) and 316. See also 

Edward Cody, “Cuba Condemns Grenada Coup, Will Review Tie,” Washington Post, 22 Oct 

1983. For an analysis of the Soviet response, see Jiri Valenta and Virginia Valenta, “Leninism 

in Grenada,” pp. 15–22. 23 Msgs, Bish to SecState, 19 2356Z Oct 1983 (quoted words), sub: Planning for Possible 

Emergency Evacuation of AMCITS, and 20 0409Z Oct 1983, sub: Grenada: Bishop Dead/Army 

Takes Over Fully/Imperialism Warned To Keep Hands Off, Msg files, DoS; Intervs, Cole with 

Connally, 25 Jul 1984, and with Moreau, 12 Jul 1984, Archives files, JHO; Flynn, “Grenada,” 

Ph.D. diss., pp. 107–08. 
The Rucksack War

84

Later that day the Joint Chiefs held their formal meeting on Grenada. 

Following an intelligence briefing, they decided to dispatch a warning 

order to Atlantic Command for a possible evacuation of Americans. The 

order, which went out at 2347 local time on 19 October, directed Admiral 

McDonald to prepare an estimate by dawn the next day of the courses of 

action available “to protect and evacuate U.S. and designated foreign nationals from Grenada.” The chiefs envisioned a three- to five-day operation. 

Possible scenarios included a show of force, seizure of evacuation points, 

combat operations to defend the evacuation, and postevacuation peacekeeping. This list encompassed a range of political objectives that extended from 

minimal involvement in the internal affairs of the island nation to creation 

of a posthostilities democracy. The amount of combat power envisioned 

for each increased in line with the scale of the objectives. U.S. Readiness 

Command, as a supporting command that might have to provide forces 

to Atlantic Command (see Chart 2), received an information copy of this 

warning order. Shortly thereafter, the Joint Staff gave the operation the code 

name Urgent Fury.

24

24 Msgs, Vessey to CINCLANT, CINCMAC, and CINCRED, 20 0347Z Oct 1983, sub: 

Warning Order—Grenada NEO, and McDonald to JCS, 20 0616Z Oct 1983 (quoted words), sub: 

Commander’s Estimate of the Situation, both attached to Grenada Timeline, plus Chronology, 

encl. 2 to Ltr, McDonald to Vessey, 6 Feb 1984, Archives files, JHO; Msg Extract, JCS, 18 0000Z 

[Oct 1983], in Misc Master Scenario Events List (Cmd/Control—Task Org), Hist files (PDocs/

DoD/JCS), CMH; Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 13–14.

Vice Admiral Moreau General Prillaman
Policy and Initial Planning

85

The warning order activated neither the Army nor the Air Force component commands of Atlantic Command. The officer who supervised its preparation, General Prillaman, sought in that way to keep the chain of command 

short and simple for what promised to be a quick operation involving minimal 

force. Current procedures gave Admiral McDonald the option of activating 

the component commands upon receipt of the warning order. Possibly for 

much the same reasons that motivated Prillaman, McDonald chose not to 

exercise this option. As a result, Headquarters, U.S. Air Force Tactical Air 

Command, and Headquarters, U.S. Army Forces Command, were effectively 

cut out of the Urgent Fury planning.25

Early on Thursday, 20 October, Admiral McDonald replied to the JCS 

warning order with his estimate of the situation. Later that morning General 

Vessey flew to McDonald’s headquarters at Norfolk, Virginia, where the 

command group briefed him. McDonald’s staff had prepared for both an 

uncontested departure of Americans—a permissive environment as the military styled it—and one in which the Grenadians and possibly the Cubans 

opposed the operation—a hostile environment. If the Grenadians permitted a peaceful evacuation of the Americans and designated foreign nationals, McDonald recommended two courses of action. Following diplomatic 

negotiations, the evacuees would use either chartered commercial passenger planes or Military Airlift Command aircraft. The latter option involved 

positioning a small security detachment at the departure airfield.26

If the Grenadians refused to permit the evacuation, McDonald proposed 

other options, one consisting of a show of force that used Atlantic Fleet 

warships and three others that anticipated ground combat to quickly overpower the Grenadians. The combat alternatives simply employed different 

force mixes to obtain this result. One used the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit 

supported by the Independence battle group, forces that could be ready to go 

by 25 October. The second involved substituting another Marine amphibious unit for the 22d. Atlantic Command would require nine days to position the unit; however, in contrast to the 22d, these marines could remain as 

an occupation force. The third employed one reinforced airborne battalion 

supplied by Readiness Command. Depending on the airborne unit selected, 

it might be available sooner than either of the Marine contingents.27

McDonald indicated that if he had to use force he preferred an all-Marine 

contingent both for the initial landings and for follow-on peacekeeping forces. 

25 Msg, Vessey to CINCLANT, CINCMAC, and CINCRED, 20 0347Z Oct 1983, attached 

to Grenada Timeline; Msg, Nutting to McDonald, 19 Nov 1983, sub: Operation Urgent Fury; 

Memo, Shalikashvili for CofS, Army, 20 Oct 1983, sub: Situation in Grenada. All in Archives 

files, JHO. See also Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 12–13. 26 Msg, McDonald to JCS, 20 0616Z Oct 1983, encl. to Memo, Merritt for Agency Dirs 

and Heads, JCS, 30 Jan 1984; Cover Sheet, Staber for DCSOPS, 21 Oct 1983, sub: Grenada 

Evacuation (Urgent Fury). Both in Archives files, JHO. 27 Msg, McDonald to JCS, 20 0616Z Oct 1983, encl. to Memo, Merritt for Agency Dirs 

and Heads, JCS, 30 Jan 1984; Info Paper, Landers for DCSOPS, Army Staff, 21 Oct 1983, sub: 

Urgent Fury, encl. to Cover Sheet, Staber for DCSOPS, 21 Oct 1983, sub: Grenada Evacuation 

(Urgent Fury). Both in Archives files, JHO.
The Rucksack War

86

National Security Council 

Option two, however, quickly dropped from serious consideration, simply 

because of the lag time involved. Option one became McDonald’s small contingency. Vessey discussed the third option at some length. He proposed that 

McDonald use Army Rangers in the initial assault force because they specialized in seizing airfields. The potential hostage situation also suggested that this 

operation required the special skills possessed by the Pentagon’s hostage rescue specialists—the special operations forces controlled by the Joint Special 

Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Additionally, Vessey 

envisioned the 82d Airborne Division strictly in a follow-on peacekeeping role. 

So modified, this option became McDonald’s large contingency and brought a 

number of Army headquarters into the planning for the first time. After returning to Washington, Vessey also directed the Joint Staff’s Operations and Plans 

and Policy Directorates and the Defense Intelligence Agency to assess the impact 

of McDonald’s revised options on U.S. strategic readiness in the Atlantic. His 

action reflected the fact that, at the time, the military balance between the United 

States and the Soviet Union was of overriding importance to the Joint Chiefs.28

28 Msg, McDonald to JCS, 20 0616Z Oct 1983, encl. to Memo, Merritt for Agency Dirs 

and Heads, JCS, 30 Jan 1984; Info Paper, Landers for DCSOPS, Army Staff, 21 Oct 1983, sub: 

Urgent Fury, encl. to Cover Sheet, Staber for DCSOPS, 21 Oct 1983, sub: Grenada Evacuation 

(Urgent Fury); Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987; and Ltr, Vessey to Armstrong, n.d. 

All in Archives files, JHO. See also Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 14–16; Pirnie, Operation 

Urgent Fury, pp. 63–66.
Policy and Initial Planning

87

McDonald did not consider logistics either during this meeting or at any 

subsequent point in the planning for Grenada. Naval forces were self-contained; they carried the necessary supplies and equipment with them. As a 

result, senior naval leaders, such as McDonald, never had to concern themselves with the subject. When Vessey brought Army forces into the operation, McDonald made the assumption that the XVIII Airborne Corps would 

provide the necessary supplies and other support. As he later commented, he 

“never gave the matter another thought.”29

While Vessey reviewed the Atlantic Command’s plans, news of General 

Austin’s 24-hour shoot-on-sight curfew prompted National Security Adviser 

McFarlane to decide that the crisis required White House oversight. The 

National Security Council replaced the State Department as the lead 

agency in the decisionmaking process. With the shift came a change in the 

name of the coordinating group. At McFarlane’s direction, his deputy, R. 

Adm. John M. Poindexter, convened a Crisis Pre-Planning Group at 0800 

on 20 October. Institutional representation remained the same as in the 

Restricted Interagency Group but with an expanded number of more senior 

representatives.30

As the attendees discussed the deteriorating situation, NSC staff member Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North mentioned that the Independence battle 

group and the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit had recently sailed for the eastern Mediterranean. Ambassador Motley wanted the Defense Department to 

divert them to the eastern Caribbean until the crisis eased. Admiral Moreau 

refused to entertain the idea short of a written presidential order. In the end, 

Admiral Poindexter’s committee urged that the Special Situation Group, a 

committee of the most senior policymakers chaired by Vice President George 

H. W. Bush, assume responsibility for managing the crisis. The president 

accepted this recommendation.31

At 1645 that same day, just as the vice president prepared to enter the first 

meeting of the Special Situation Group, a staff member handed him a copy 

of a cable from Ambassador Bish reporting that Barbadian Prime Minister J. 

M. G. M. “Tom” Adams had requested U.S. assistance in overthrowing the 

Austin junta. Long before the onset of the present crisis, the vice president 

had expressed concern about the airfield construction at Point Salines and 

had directed the Defense Intelligence Agency to provide him overhead photographs of the peninsula on a regular basis. Moreover, he had just returned 

from a four-day visit to Jamaica, where he had received an in-depth analysis of the crisis from the Reagan administration’s favorite Caribbean leader 

and free-market advocate, Prime Minister Edward Seaga of Jamaica. Seaga 

29 Interv, Harvard Fellows with McDonald, [1988], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

30 Menges, Inside the National Security Council, p. 68; Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 

16; Don Oberdorfer, “Reagan Sought To End Cuban ‘Intervention,’” Washington Post, 6 Nov 

1983.31 Interv, Cole with Moreau, 12 Jul 1984, Archives files, JHO; Agenda, 20 Oct 1983, sub: 

CPPG Meeting, Country files (Grenada) I (9), box 90,931, RNSC, NARA–RRPL; Shultz, 

Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 326–27.
The Rucksack War

88

believed that the coup and Bishop’s 

murder posed a threat, by example, 

for all the democratic governments in 

the Caribbean. If the Austin-Coard 

clique remained in place, every adventurer in the area would have a working model for how to take power. Vice 

President Bush led off the meeting by 

reading the Bish cable and then summarized his own conversations with 

Seaga. “These people,” he concluded, 

“are asking us to do something.”32

Detained because he was testifying on Capitol Hill, Secretary Shultz 

entered midway in the meeting and 

outlined the State Department’s plans 

to evacuate American citizens. He also 

noted that U.S. military forces would 

probably have to protect the evacuation. If that became necessary, Shultz 

advocated disarming the Grenadian 

armed forces as a safety measure. 

This was only one step short of outright regime change.33

General Vessey briefed the attendees on the risks of using force and 

the possibilities of Soviet or Cuban 

intervention. The Joint Chiefs “were 

determined,” he said, “to make sure 

that [Fidel] Castro got the message 

that interference was not an option 

for him and that the message was 

clear and early.” If the president 

decided to intervene, they wanted 

to send a pointed message to Cuba: 

“Hands off!” A representative from 

the Defense Intelligence Agency 

informed the group that the People’s 

Revolutionary Army would oppose 

32 Msg, Bish to SecState, 20 1945Z Oct 1983, sub: Barbadian PM Tom Adams Pleas for 

U.S. Intervention in Grenada, Msg files, DoS; Flynn, “Grenada,” Ph.D. diss., p. 111. On the 

vice president’s interest in Point Salines, see MFR, author, 28 Oct 2008, sub: DIA Conference 

on Operation Urgent Fury (Invasion of Grenada), 28 October 2008, Hist files PDocs/Misc), 

CMH. 33 Statement, George P. Shultz, 25 Oct 1983, in Department of State Bulletin 83 (December 

1983): 69; Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 16.

Seaga with Bush in Kingston, Jamaica
Policy and Initial Planning

89

any evacuation but that the Grenadian force was militarily ineffective. On the 

other hand, he added, the Cubans and Soviets simply lacked the means to 

intervene in sufficient strength to affect the outcome.34

The Special Situation Group anticipated that conditions on Grenada 

would continue to deteriorate and that at some point events would compel 

the president to rescue the Americans. Bush and his associates consequently 

decided that the Joint Chiefs should prepare a detailed operational plan for 

this contingency and directed McFarlane to begin drafting a decision directive 

covering such a circumstance for Reagan’s signature. The Situation Group also 

recommended the immediate diversion of the Independence battle group and 

the marines. Shortly thereafter, Secretary Weinberger ordered the diversion 

without waiting for the White House to issue the order.35

Late that evening, about 2100, General Vessey contacted the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, Army Maj. Gen. Richard 

A. Scholtes, on a secure line and informed him that military intervention 

on Grenada was possible. He directed General Scholtes to develop a plan 

and come to Washington and brief him early the next morning. Specifically, 

Vessey wanted to know what targets Scholtes considered essential and how 

in general terms he would envision the operation taking place. At that time, 

Scholtes assumed that his men would be working directly for the chairman 

as they had done in the past with only one exception—the rescue in 1982 

of Army Brig. Gen. James Dozier, kidnapped by the Italian Red Brigade. 

During the search for General Dozier, the special operations forces had 

worked for U.S. European Command.36

For both decisionmakers and planners, the available information about 

Grenada was seriously flawed. The figures on Grenadian and Cuban defenders given to the Joint Chiefs, for example, represented an overestimate on the 

order of 190 percent. The intelligence was the best available but derived from 

inferences rather than hard data. This lack of accurate and up-to-date information was the product of major structural problems in U.S. intelligence agencies and misguided policies in the local American embassy.37

The United States had drastically cut back its intelligence assets in the 

wake of the Vietnam war. In an attempt to economize, for example, the 

Defense Department failed to assign a defense attaché to the U.S. Embassy 

in Bridgetown, Barbados, during most of the period following the Grenadian 

revolution. Finally, in 1982 Army Lt. Col. Lawrence N. Reiman opened a oneman shop. As the Grenada crisis began, intelligence assets in the region were 

34 Ltr (quoted words), Vessey to Armstrong, n.d.; Info Paper, Landers, 21 Oct 1983, sub: 

Urgent Fury; and Memo, Cummings for Current Intel, DIA, [c. 20 Oct 1983], sub: Evaluation 

of the Threat. All in Archives files, JHO. See also Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 16–18. 35 Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, p. 109; Statement, Shultz, 25 Oct 1983, in Department of 

State Bulletin, p. 69; Interv, Cole with Moreau, 12 Jul 1984, Archives files, JHO. 36 Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

37 Jnl, [Grenadian GS], 24 Oct 1983, sub: Strength of the Armed Forces in Terms of 

Permanent, Reserve, and Party Comrades, CGD Mf 005213, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, 

NARA–CP.
The Rucksack War

90

skeletal at best. All the agencies involved had to play catch-up in gathering 

information.38

The State Department was no different. Shortly after taking up his post 

in Bridgetown, Ambassador Bish, a Nebraska businessman with no previous experience in government, had quite reasonably concluded that the 

Bishop regime was Communist. Rather than seeking to obtain more information about what was transpiring on Grenada, however, he had arbitrarily 

directed his staff to drastically reduce even routine visits to the island. 

(This meant that Reiman, for example, concentrated on establishing contacts with friendly forces in the region.) The reporting from Bridgetown 

on events on Grenada during the crisis thus consisted of a composite of 

interviews with American citizens recently there, summaries of local press 

reports, transcripts of Radio Free Grenada broadcasts, and whatever information friendly governments with better sources chose to pass along to the 

embassy. Washington policymakers consequently received little if any special insight into the events or psychology of the key figures on Grenada that 

high-quality diplomatic reporting could have provided. Even more important, unaware of Bish’s embargo on Grenada visits, they assumed that the 

embassy reports were much more solidly based on first person observation 

than they were.39

Washington, Norfolk, and the Caribbean, 21–22 October

On Friday, 21 October, President Reagan formally directed the Defense 

Department to continue contingency planning, enjoined the State Department 

to contact allies and regional governments to determine both their assessment 

of the situation and their willingness to participate in a multilateral intervention if one became necessary, and confirmed the diversion of naval and marine 

elements to the eastern Caribbean. Early that same day General Prillaman 

telephoned General Scholtes and indicated that the Secretary Weinberger 

and General Vessey had decided to make Atlantic Command the supported 

command. Prillaman directed Scholtes to brief Admiral McDonald on the 

concept of operations and the outline plan Scholtes’ staff had developed the 

night before. This directive notwithstanding, McDonald and his staff had one 

important disadvantage when they entered the briefing room: They knew little 

about the missions and capabilities of special operations forces. Scholtes had 

been directed to brief all major combatant commanders shortly after Joint 

Special Operations Command was established; however, after determining that 

Atlantic Command was the least likely command to require special operations 

38 See Christopher M. Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, pp. 350–502; Robert M. 

Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 56–63; Msgs, Ortiz to SecState, 15 1010Z Mar 1979, sub: Query 

re Gairy’s Activities, and 19 1444Z Mar 1979, sub: Grenada: U.S. Presence on the Island, Msg 

files, DoS; Interv, Loendorf with Williams, 14 Dec 1990, SrOffOHist files, MHI. 39 Author’s reading of all Bridgetown cables during the crisis. See Msgs, U.S. Embassy, 

Bridgetown, 12–25 Oct 1983, Msg files, DoS. See also Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 327; Sally 

A. Shelton, “Comments,” in Grenada and Soviet/Cuban Policy, pp. 236–37; Interv, Loendorf 

with Williams, 14 Dec 1990, SrOffOHist files, MHI. 
Policy and Initial Planning

91

forces support, he had not yet made the presentation when events on Grenada 

produced a crisis.40

During the Grenada briefing McDonald became very concerned when he 

learned that Scholtes planned to launch his attack at 0230, the darkest hour of 

the night. How, wondered the admiral, could his men operate in total blackout? McDonald did not realize that special operations forces were equipped 

with night-vision equipment. It took some discussion to convince him that 

the operation was feasible. Once McDonald approved the concept, Scholtes 

directed his staff at Fort Bragg to begin detailed planning.41

The working relationship between Atlantic Command and Joint Special 

Operations Command was rocky in the beginning and then became worse. 

The officers at the two headquarters did not know one another, never having worked together. Tensions immediately developed between the intelligence 

sections of the two staffs. Scholtes’ intelligence officers were used to directly 

communicating with and coordinating actions with Washington intelligence 

agencies. Atlantic Command’s director of intelligence (J–2) was violently 

opposed to Joint Special Operations Command intelligence officers doing this 

and ordered them to desist immediately. Then he discovered that he lacked 

the means to communicate with several of the agencies involved and that he 

had to use Joint Special Operations Command facilities to do so. This was, in 

General Scholtes’ phrase, “a very unfortunate situation.”42

In the meantime, Vessey informed McDonald by secure telephone of the 

decision to expand Atlantic Command’s mission to include neutralizing or disarming the Grenadian armed forces. U.S. forces would disarm the Grenadians 

only if they attempted to interfere with the evacuation. To cloak pending U.S. 

action, Vessey kept to his normal schedule that included a speaking engagement 

in Chicago. Before he left Washington late that same afternoon, he dispatched 

formal guidance to Atlantic Command, Readiness Command, Military Airlift 

Command, and Joint Special Operations Command. It reiterated what he 

had told McDonald. The Joint Chiefs directed Atlantic Command to prepare 

plans either for a rescue of American citizens in the face of military opposition 

or for a small invasion to disarm the Grenadians and Cubans and to evacuate 

Americans and foreign nationals. Moving the marines and the Independence

battle group into the eastern Caribbean would allow them to quickly intervene if necessary. Readiness Command, Military Airlift Command, and Joint 

Special Operations Command would support these efforts.43

40 NSDD 110, Reagan, 21 Oct 1983, sub: Grenada: Contingency Planning, in NSDD files, 

box 1, RNSC, NARA–RRPL; Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 41 Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Chronology, encl. 2 to 

Ltr, McDonald to Vessey, 6 Feb 1984, Archives files, JHO. 42 Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

43 Msg, JCS to CINCLANT et al., 21 1755Z Oct 1983, sub: Contingency Planning for 

Grenada, attached to Grenada Timeline; Note, unsigned, 29 Oct [1983], 1730L, sub: CJCS 

Backgrounder to the Press; and Interv, Cole with Moreau, 12 Jul 1984. All in Archives files, 

JHO. See also Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 19–20; Pirnie, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 

63–68.
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Coordination of planning during a compressed time period by these farflung headquarters posed a problem. The Defense Department had in place 

an early version of the Internet called the Worldwide Military Command and 

Control System (WWMCCS). At this stage of its development, however, it 

was impossible to segregate recipients, so anyone with access to the system had 

access to everything on it. Because security concerns dictated that the planners 

could not avail themselves of this tool, Vessey directed them to coordinate 

their work through secure teleconferences and special category messages.44

This measure came too late to prevent first CBS News and then the 

Associated Press from breaking the story of the diversion of the Independence, 

fifteen ships of its battle group, and five ships of a Marine amphibious force, 

a fact confirmed by a “Defense Department official” during a briefing of 

Pentagon correspondents that evening. In response, “two aides” traveling with 

the presidential party in Augusta stated that the ships were in the area only to 

protect Americans if necessary and that no invasion was contemplated. The 

intended destination of Amphibious Squadron Four made the front pages of 

both the Washington Post and the New York Times the next day. Whatever the 

origins of the report, whether an unintended leak or a calculated indiscretion 

designed to influence the president’s decision, it produced intense concern in 

the White House about operational security.45

While Vessey’s order forestalled any further leaks to the media, it also effectively limited distribution of information about the contingency to a handful 

of key operations planners and intelligence officers on the Joint Staff and at 

the headquarters of the major participating commands. As a consequence, 

it excluded, among others, all logisticians, communications specialists, public 

affairs officers, and many intelligence officers, which meant that key portions 

of the plans never received timely expert review. The Joint Staff logisticians, 

as a result, learned about the Grenada planning shortly before the operation 

began. They only had time to react to specific problems and did not scrutinize 

logistical arrangements for the operation as a whole. The ban on sharing information also cut out the Defense Mapping Agency, hampering the preparation 

of maps in sufficient quantity for the forces involved.46

After Vessey departed for Chicago on Friday, 21 October, the acting chairman, Admiral James D. Watkins, the new chief of naval operations, attended 

a second meeting of the Crisis Pre-Planning Group. New intelligence reports 

suggested that the Cubans as well as the Grenadians might resist. The Cubans, 

according to one inaccurate report, might have introduced 240 combat troops 

44 Rpt, [Harris], 1 May 1985, Archives files, JHO; Perry R. Nuhn, “WWMCCS and the 

Computer That Can,” pp. 16–21. 45 B. Drummond Ayres Jr., “U.S. Marines Diverted to Grenada in Event Americans Face 

Danger,” New York Times, 22 Oct 1983 (first quoted words); Cody, “Cuba Condemns Grenada 

Coup,” Washington Post, 22 Oct 1983 (second quoted words); Fred Hiatt, “U.S. Says Situation 

Still Unclear as Naval Force Nears Grenada,” ibid., 23 Oct 1983; Motley, “Decision To Assist 

Grenada,” p. 2; Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987, Archives files, JHO. 46 Draft Rpt, J–3/OPD, 8 Jan 1984, sub: Operation Urgent Fury—Activation Sequence; 

Intervs, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987, and with Prillaman, 9 Feb 1984. All in Archives files, 

JHO.
Policy and Initial Planning

93

onto the island when the freighter Vietnam Heroica docked at St. George’s on 

6 October. At this point, senior leaders were inclined to believe that Cuban 

machinations lay behind the Coard coup. The intelligence reports hardened 

their agreement that the United States would have to use military force to protect the evacuation and might have to disarm all Grenadians and Cubans, even 

those well removed from the evacuation point.47

With the heightened awareness of security, the Joint Staff’s Operations 

Directorate, contrary to standard procedure, did not generate a force list. 

Its alert order of 22 October to Atlantic Command and supporting commands only identified the Army Ranger units by name. Otherwise, Readiness 

Command was simply to provide “necessary” forces. Quite naturally given the 

time constraints, Admiral McDonald chose to work directly with the XVIII 

Airborne Corps’ 82d Airborne Division, the Army unit that would play a 

role in the large contingency. He neglected, however, to keep the commander 

of Readiness Command, Army General Wallace H. Nutting, and his staff 

informed of the evolution of Atlantic Command’s planning. Upon hearing of 

the potential operation, Nutting, a veteran armor officer with no experience in 

airborne operations, did not send a liaison officer to Norfolk on 19 October. 

In contrast, one of his predecessors, General Paul D. Adams, actually did 

this during the Dominican Republic crisis of 1965, thereby anticipating and 

solving problems. As a consequence of his failure to monitor the situation, 

Nutting first learned of the division’s involvement when Admiral McDonald 

issued his operations order on the night of 23–24 October. Overlooked, the 

Readiness Command logisticians, like their Joint Staff counterparts, had no 

chance to consider the logistical plan or evaluate force structure for Urgent

Fury. As a result, Vessey and McDonald had unintentionally deactivated 

two very important fail-safe devices in the logistical portion of the joint planning process. Atlantic Command was a “blue water” staff, whose Logistics 

Directorate could never provide the same kind of safeguards for the support 

of Army ground operations.48

Reaction in the eastern Caribbean to the dispatch of the Independence 

battle group and the marines was emphatic. The same day as the Defense 

Department announcement, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States 

heads of government met in Barbados. They unanimously agreed to intervene to restore order on Grenada and, because the forces at their disposal 

were minuscule, to request the assistance of both Barbados and Jamaica, delegating the chair, Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica, to approach 

Great Britain and the United States for additional forces. They also prepared 

to make their case to the larger Caribbean community for still more local assistance. Attempts the following day to enlist other nations from the Caribbean 

47 Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 19. 48 Msg (first quoted word), Nutting to McDonald, 19 Nov 1983; Draft Rpt, J–3/OPD, 8 

Jan 1984; and Interv (second quoted words), Cole with Prillaman, 9 Feb 1984. All in Archives 

files, JHO. See also Msg Extract, JCS, 18 0000Z [Oct 1983], Misc Master Scenario Events 

List (Cmd/Control—Task Org), Hist files (PDocs/DoD/JCS); Nutting Resumé, GenOff files, 

CMH.
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proved largely unsuccessful. The prime minister of Guyana, one of the most 

strenuous opponents of military action, purportedly contacted Austin and 

told him of the Charles initiative.49

The U.S. Embassy in Barbados struggled without avail to find a peaceful 

solution to the problem of U.S. citizens on the island. The whole thrust of the 

postcoup diplomatic offensive by the members of the Organization of Eastern 

Caribbean States was to isolate the Austin regime. Ambassador Charles A. 

Gillespie, Ambassador Motley’s new deputy, interrupted an orientation tour of 

the Caribbean to provide Ambassador Bish with on-the-scene advice. Neither 

he nor Bish wanted to undercut this promising diplomatic development, but 

at the same time they had to start a dialogue with Austin, Coard, or whoever 

was in charge to ensure a peaceful evacuation. In short, the Americans had to 

negotiate without seeming to negotiate.50

The use of an administrator at St. George’s University School of 

Medicine both facilitated and obscured the exchanges between the Americans 

and the Grenadians. Initially, Gillespie and Bish relied on the school’s vice 

chancellor, Geoffrey Bourne, as a go-between. They communicated via teletype with Bourne, who then conveyed their views to representatives of the 

Revolutionary Military Council. Austin then took the initiative and on a 

few occasions visited the campus so that he could exchange ideas with the 

U.S. diplomats without the use of an intermediary. After much discussion, 

Gillespie and Bish convinced the Grenadians to allow a consular party headed 

by Kenneth Kurze, a Bridgetown embassy official, to visit the island to check 

on the Americans. Kurze and one other embassy colleague landed at Pearls 

Airport on 22 October.51

Kurze confirmed that the Americans on the island were unharmed, but his 

efforts to negotiate a resolution to the crisis foundered on Grenadian intransigence. While Austin proclaimed the Revolutionary Military Council’s readiness 

to allow all foreign nationals to depart peacefully, the council’s negotiator in 

this matter, Maj. Leon Cornwall, found various objections to each course of 

action proposed. When the Cunard Lines, for example, offered one of their ships 

to evacuate free of charge all foreign nationals who wished to depart, Major 

Cornwall denied the vessel docking privileges and said that the Grenadian 

Army would fire on it if it entered Grenadian waters. The Grenadians appeared 

to favor evacuation by air from Pearls Airport, but their failure to open it to 

commercial flights on 24 October called their good faith into question. The 

senior officials at the Bridgetown embassy came to believe that the Grenadians 

49 Edward Cody, “Caribbean Nations Discuss Response to Violence in Grenada, Washington 

Post, 23 Oct 1983; Frank J. Prial, “American Envoys Going to Grenada,” New York Times, 23 

Oct 1983; Motley, “Decision To Assist Grenada,” p. 2. On the call to Austin, see Lewis, Grenada, 

p. 95. 50 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 333–34; Msgs, Bish to SecState, 21 1723Z Oct 1983, sub: 

Embassy Officers Travel, and 22 2219Z Oct 1983, sub: More Discussion with Eastern Caribbean 

Leaders, Unity Prevails, Msg files, DoS. 51 Msgs, Bish to SecState, 21 2046Z Oct 1983, sub: Apparent Invitation from General 

Hudson Austin To Send USG REP To Discuss the Situation, and 21 2354Z Oct 1983, sub: 

Second Telex/Phone Contact Oct 22 with Medical School Authorities, Msg files, DoS. 
Policy and Initial Planning

95

were already attempting to use the Americans on the island as bargaining 

chips.52

One CIA officer, Linda Flohr, entered Grenada during this period of 

limited access. Flohr spent over two days dodging Grenadian Army patrols 

while surreptitiously reporting via clandestine radio on the situation. The 

Grenadians, she noted, had confined the students to their dormitories and had 

posted sentries to keep them in and everyone else out. In her view, the students 

were already hostages. She urged an immediate invasion.53

So, too, on 22 October did Governor General Sir Paul Scoon, regarded by 

the regional governments as the only legitimate source of authority remaining 

on Grenada. He confided in a British official that he desired an intervention 

to overthrow the Austin clique. The State Department learned of the appeal 

early the next morning.54

52 Msgs, Bish to SecState, 23 0442Z Oct 1983, sub: Travel of Political Counselor and Vice 

Counsel to Grenada; 24 1740Z Oct 1983, sub: Possible Evacuation of American Citizens/Strong 

Media Interest as Well as Concern by Parents. Both in Msg files, DoS. See also Rpt, GWG, 

24 Oct 1983, 0500, sub: Situation in Grenada, GWG, 1983, Accession no. 353–96–0002, DoS; 

Motley, “Decision To Assist Grenada,” p. 2. 53 Duane R. Clarridge and Digby Diehl, A Spy for All Seasons, pp. 250–51. Clarridge 

worked for the CIA as chief of the Latin American Division in the Directorate of Operations. 54 Msg, Bish to SecState, 24 1659Z Oct 1983, sub: Grenada, 24 Oct, Morning, Msg files, 

DoS. Adkin, Urgent Fury, pp. 97–99, has the fullest account of the Scoon appeal, although it 

is wrong in one key detail: Ambassador McNeil did not carry a draft letter for Scoon’s signature 

Bourne looks through the broken glass of his office on the Grenada campus.
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96

XVIII Airborne Corps and 82d Airborne Division, 

19–22 October

Forces Command, which would have to provide Atlantic Command with 

troops in the event of Army involvement, first learned of the possibility of 

operations on Grenada on 19 October. As the Army component command of 

Readiness Command, it received a “heads-up” alert from General Nutting’s 

staff. Forces Command passed the message along to XVIII Airborne Corps 

at Fort Bragg. Atlantic Command had already telephoned the corps directly. 

Marine Lt. Col. David G. Purdy had used a secure communications channel to alert the special duty officer in the corps emergency operations center 

of the “attempted coup” and of Ambassador Bish’s concern that conditions 

might compel the evacuation of U.S. citizens. Colonel Purdy’s information 

was sketchy. Most of the Americans were students at St. George’s University 

School of Medicine “near an airfield.” One of the options under consideration 

would involve the 82d Airborne Division. It should be ready to go on a sixteen- to eighteen-hour notice.55

In turn, XVIII Airborne Corps contacted the 82d Airborne Division. The 

division staff’s operations section also received calls directly from the Army 

Staff and Forces Command inquiring about the division’s state of readiness. 

As a result, a number of people at both corps and division headquarters knew 

that something was happening, but they did not know what degree of importance to attach to the calls. During the 1980s Americans were almost continuously in danger somewhere in the world. As a result, inquiries about the 

division’s readiness, planning for overseas deployments, and even alerts for 

possible deployments happened with enough frequency to become almost routine. The Fort Bragg officers thus had no reason to treat this first stirring of 

interest about Grenada any differently than the others. In practice, heads-up 

calls meant that someone in the operations section of each headquarters had to 

pull the relevant concept plan out of the files and give it a careful reading.56

Late on Friday afternoon, 21 October, the acting assistant chief of staff 

for operations at XVIII Airborne Corps, Lt. Col. William R. Chewning, 

notified the corps commander, Lt. Gen. Jack V. Mackmull, about Atlantic 

Command’s request that an 82d Airborne Division planning team come to 

Norfolk the next day. General Mackmull had his hat in his hand and was 

on his way out of his office for a rare weekend at the beach when Colonel 

Chewning stopped him. He told Chewning to make certain that the corps 

had both good intelligence on the island and a representative on the planning 

to Barbados on 23 October. See Robert J. Beck, “The ‘McNeil Mission’ and the Decision To 

Invade Grenada,” p. 103. 55 Memo (quoted words), Lynn, [19 Oct 1983], in Initial Implementation file, XVIII Abn 

Corps, EOC Recs, Opn UF, Entry 228, UD–06W, RG 338, NARA–CP; Info Paper, Tillman, 19 

Nov 1983, sub: Grenada LL, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 56 Info Paper, Tillman, 19 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH; Intervs, 

Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, and with J. Watson, 22 Nov 1983, plus Pirnie with T. Smith, 

3 Apr 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Policy and Initial Planning

97

team. Instructing Chewning to contact him if anything important developed, 

he left for home.57

Chewning notified his counterpart on the 82d Airborne Division staff, Lt. 

Col. Frank H. Akers Jr., and briefed him about developments. Colonel Akers 

then alerted his commander, Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh, and contacted 

the division staff officers whom he intended to take with him. These included 

Akers’ primary staff assistant for operations, Maj. Thomas D. Smith, and the 

division’s senior logistical planner, Lt. Col. Jack D. Crabtree II. The senior 

plans officer in the corps G–3 section, Capt. Eric D. Hutchings, represented 

General Mackmull.58

As the planning team made preparations for an early departure on 

Saturday, 22 October, Atlantic Command had already begun detailed planning for the employment of the 82d Airborne Division even though the 

Norfolk planners did not include any airborne-qualified officers. Chewning 

and then Akers received telephone calls requesting information about flow 

data and readiness times. The callers always wanted to know when the division could dispatch a task force. Akers suspected that the officers calling did 

not understand airborne terminology. The last inquiry came at 0230 on the 

twenty-second. Roused from his sleep, Akers told the caller that he would 

come to Norfolk no later than 0900 that morning and would answer all questions at that time.59

A 75-Percent Decision

The president later remembered “vividly” that the telephone call came in 

the “early hours” of the morning. Actually, it was sometime between 0400 

and 0515, accounts vary, on Saturday, 22 October. McFarlane telephoned the 

president at the Eisenhower Cottage on the Augusta National Golf Course. 

Reagan, Secretary of State Shultz, and Treasury Secretary Donald Regan were 

in Georgia to enjoy a golf weekend. Because events on Grenada appeared to be 

moving toward a crisis, McFarlane had joined the party at the last minute.60

During the night of 21–22 October Prime Minister Charles in her role 

as chair of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States had formally 

57 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and with Chewning, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 58 Intervs, Bishop with Chewning, 9 Nov 1983, and with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983; Frasché 

with Akers, 22 Nov and [Dec 1983]; and Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985]. All in Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. See also Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 59 Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983; Bishop with Chewning, 9 Nov 1983; Pirnie 

with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 60 The president’s daily diary does not record the time of this telephone call. Reagan remembered 0400, the JCS’s history recorded 0430, and a senior member of the president’s party 

reported 0515. See PDD, 22 Oct 1983, PDD files (1981–1989), box 11, NARA–RRPL; Ronald 

W. Reagan, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1986, 1:245 (quoted words); 

idem, An American Life, pp. 450–51; Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 23; Oberdorfer, “Reagan 

Sought To End Cuban ‘Intervention,’” Washington Post, 6 Nov 1983. See also Shultz, Turmoil 

and Triumph, pp. 328–29; McFarlane and Smardz, Special Trust, p. 261.
Shultz keeps abreast of events in Grenada; below, Reagan takes the wake-up call on 

the situation in Grenada.
Policy and Initial Planning

99

petitioned the United States to intervene on Grenada, with Ambassador 

Bish immediately forwarding her oral request to the State Department. This 

message had precipitated a very early morning meeting of the NSC’s Special 

Situation Group and a call to McFarlane. Shortly after the wake-up call, the 

president, dressed in slippers and robe, met with McFarlane and Secretary 

Shultz in the living room of the Eisenhower Cottage. They briefed Reagan 

on the latest developments. The president’s reaction, recalled Shultz, was 

emphatic: The United States had to respond positively to such a plea from 

small democratic neighbors. And then the danger posed to the Americans 

on the island loomed in the background. Reagan telephoned Washington at 

0558 and spoke with Vice President Bush, who had been chairing the Special 

Situation Group to develop options and to recommend a course of action 

for the president. Next Reagan spoke with Secretary Weinberger, who had 

participated in the meeting.61

Reagan made no irrevocable decisions either then or at an 0900 teleconference with all the senior members of his NSC team. It was, as one scholar has 

observed, at best a 75-percent decision that certainly gave impetus to a military 

intervention. Everyone now agreed that the possibility of a peaceful evacuation of the American residents on Grenada no longer existed, and Reagan 

ordered the Joint Chiefs to draw up plans to intervene militarily.62

Having anticipated such a request, General Vessey already had plans in 

hand. The Joint Staff, working with the Atlantic Command, had prepared two 

force packages for the operation. One consisted of a Marine battalion landing team with Navy SEAL (sea-air-land) teams attached; the other was composed of two battalions of Army Rangers and a contingent of special operations forces from the Joint Special Operations Command. Each package now 

numbered about 1,800 men and could be reinforced by two or more airborne 

infantry battalions from the 82d Airborne Division. The Joint Chiefs anticipated, however, that the airborne units would function primarily as occupation troops in either scenario.63

Secretaries Shultz and Weinberger, both veterans of fighting in the Pacific 

during World War II, expressed concern that these elements were too light for 

the mission. Weinberger insisted that the United States apply overwhelming 

force to minimize casualties. He was determined to avoid the mistakes that led 

to the Desert One disaster, the costly failure in 1980 to rescue American hostages held in Iran, and so he told the Joint Chiefs to double whatever strength 

the theater commander considered adequate. On his own, using a similar rationale, Shultz advised Reagan to double the number of troops the Joint Chiefs 

61 Msg, Bish to SecState, 22 0735Z Oct 1983, sub: Organization of Eastern Caribbean States 

Officially, Formally Resolves Unanimously To Intervene by Force if Necessary, on Grenada 

and Pleads for U.S. Assistance, Msg files, DoS; Oberdorfer, “Reagan Sought To End Cuban 

‘Intervention,’” Washington Post, 6 Nov 1983; PDD, 22 Oct 1983, PDD files (1981–1989), box 

11, NARA–RRPL; Reagan, American Life, pp. 449–52; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 329–

30; McFarlane and Smardz, Special Trust, pp. 261–62. 62 See Beck, “’McNeil Mission,’” p. 101. See also Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 23. 63 Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 23–26. 
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recommended. At this time, the president did not appear to make any final 

determination on the matter.64

The president did decide to send a special envoy, Ambassador Francis J. 

McNeil, a career foreign service officer, to the meeting of the Organization 

of Eastern Caribbean States to gauge just how committed the heads of government were to intervention and to obtain their request in writing. Reagan 

wanted an independent evaluation of the situation “before making a ‘go/no 

go’ decision.” Ambassador Motley remarked to McNeil as he passed on these 

instructions, “It isn’t everyday that we get a request like this.”65

Atlantic Command and Army Planning, 22 October

Even as the policymakers deliberated, subordinate organizations began 

preparing for the potential operation. The Fort Bragg planning team had 

assembled at 0700 on Saturday, 22 October, in the office of the corps G–3, Col. 

James H. Johnson Jr., to receive an intelligence update on Grenada and then 

departed by air for Norfolk. It arrived at Atlantic Command headquarters at 

0930 to discover that the planning session scheduled for 1000 was already in 

progress. One of the first people Colonel Akers saw was his next door neighbor 

at Fort Bragg, Joint Special Operations Command J–3 Army Lt. Col. Richard 

A. Pack. General Scholtes had sent Colonel Pack to Norfolk the day before 

to head the command’s liaison team. Pack brought Akers up to date on the 

planning and then the two lieutenant colonels, the senior Army officers at the 

meeting, worked out an “Army position.” They agreed to recommend that the 

Joint Special Operations Command use special operations forces and ranger 

units for the initial assault. The 82d Airborne Division would act as the followon force. The two proposed that the rangers use C–130s; the 82d Airborne 

Division, C–141s. The characteristics of slower cruising speed, smaller cargo 

capacity (and thus, a quicker airdrop of men or materiel), and smaller silhouette made the C–130 more suitable for a parachute assault than the C–141.66

Following the preliminary meeting, the planners assembled in a larger 

conference room together with a number of senior officers who were dressed 

very casually. One gentleman wearing a jogging suit turned out to be Admiral 

McDonald. The admiral opened the meeting by presenting what he considered 

the two major options for the operation: the use of an all-Marine force or a 

joint force that would include Army units. His remarks suggested that he did 

not consider General Vessey’s guidance two days earlier to plan for a joint 

operation at all binding.67

64 Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, pp. 108–12; Intervs, Goldberg, Matloff, and Rochester 

with Weinberger, 12 Jan 1988, and Goldberg and Matloff with Weinberger, 21 Jun 1988, Archives 

files, OSDHO; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 329. 65 Msg, Shultz to AmEmb, Bridgetown, 23 1833Z Oct 1983, sub: Instructions for Dealing with 

Caribbean Friends, Msg files, DoS; Beck, “’McNeil Mission,’” pp. 93–98, 99 (first quoted words), 

100–22; Francis J. McNeil, War and Peace in Central America, p. 173 (second quoted words). 66 Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983 (quoted words); Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 Apr 

1985; Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 67 Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, and Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Policy and Initial Planning

101

A general discussion ensued that included the issue of whether to appoint 

an overall ground commander. The Army representatives supported this 

position emphatically, but Admiral McDonald appeared to make no decision at the time. McDonald then raised an issue that was to have a profound 

impact on the 82d Airborne Division’s initial planning: What was the earliest time at which the forces involved could arrive on Grenada? The marines 

admitted that they needed three or four more days’ steaming time before 

they could conduct an amphibious operation. The Air Force asserted that 

it would have difficulty positioning crews without going on full alert. The 

Joint Special Operations Command required time to rehearse the special 

operations forces for their portion of the operation. Colonel Akers, speaking for the 82d Airborne Division, was unequivocal: The division could dispatch its first elements from Pope Air Force Base within eighteen hours after 

McDonald gave the order. The 82d could deploy in less time if allowed to 

increase its readiness, but Akers warned that it would be almost impossible 

to mask these preparations, which might endanger the Americans on the 

island. He also contributed a most arresting metaphor to the meeting when 

he compared capabilities: The move from special operations forces to the 

airborne division would be a shift “from the scalpel to the chain saw.” The 

division would accomplish the mission, he added, but it would “be a lot 

messier.”68

In the end, Admiral McDonald favored the joint approach: “I think the 

82d gives us an option that we want to keep,” he said, “because if the M[arine] 

A[mphibious] U[nit] can’t handle it, we’ve got to have other forces available to 

handle the operation.” The officers then became engrossed in a discussion of 

a reconnaissance of the airfield at Point Salines. Sometime during the meeting 

the planners agreed that 0230 would be the optimal hour to land on Grenada, 

given the capabilities of the ranger battalions and the special operations forces. 

At the end of the meeting no one summarized the decisions or the stated and 

implied tasks. It was all too informal for that.69

As the session broke up, Admiral McDonald took Colonel Akers and 

the other Army representatives into a small room filled with senior officers. 

McDonald then contacted General Vessey on a secure phone. The JCS chairman had just briefed the National Security Council and obtained the president’s authorization to proceed. Vessey informed McDonald that to ensure 

security Reagan wanted nothing committed to paper. Vessey and the other 

military officers involved would use secure communications to contact one 

another. Several of the island nations in the region, he said, would contribute military and police forces to a Caribbean Peacekeeping Force, which 

68 Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 Apr 

1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 69 Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 

Apr 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82 Abn Div, n.d., 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation 

Urgent Fury Assessment, p. II-5, Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH.
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would assist U.S. forces in removing the revolutionary government on the 

island.70

Having brought McDonald up to date on events in Washington, Vessey 

approved the large contingency using joint forces. While the remainder of the 

conversation centered on the need to gather more intelligence about the island, 

Vessey noted that the operation would receive whatever logistical support that 

it needed. He emphasized that if the forces involved submitted requests in 

a timely fashion they would receive “depot stocks, war stocks, whatever was 

needed to accomplish the mission.”71

When the Army team departed from Norfolk, its members knew that 

the 82d would be involved in the operation in some capacity, but whether as 

an assault force or a peacekeeping force remained uncertain. Given General 

Vessey’s assurances, logistical support appeared not to be a problem. They 

knew that Admiral McDonald had chosen not to activate Joint Task Force 

(JTF) 140, the headquarters under Concept Plan 2360 through which the 

U.S. Forces, Caribbean, commander would direct the small island operation. 

McDonald believed that the U.S. Forces, Caribbean, headquarters was too 

far away from Norfolk and too preoccupied with training exercises to be able 

to respond to the Urgent Fury assignment in the limited time available to 

stage the operation. Given the very close-hold nature of the operation and the 

speed with which it was mounted, McDonald’s decision had an unintended 

consequence: Army and other service planners had no access to the detailed 

intelligence that U.S. Forces, Caribbean, had accumulated about Grenada, 

including the location of the American residents and particularly the status of 

the Point Salines airfield under construction. Furthermore, they also did not 

realize that McDonald had decided, as was his prerogative as a unified commander, to scrap all of Concept Plan 2360 except the list of the possible forces 

to be employed.72

When the Army planners returned from Norfolk on 22 October, they gathered in Colonel Johnson’s office at corps headquarters. The deputy corps commander, Brig. Gen. Jack B. Farris, sat in, as did General Trobaugh, who was 

the acting corps commander in General Mackmull’s absence, and Trobaugh’s 

chief of staff, Col. Peter J. Boylan Jr. Following a briefing on developments 

at Norfolk, Trobaugh learned from Colonel Akers that no one from Forces 

Command had attended the meeting. “Well,” asked Trobaugh, “you mean my 

boss doesn’t know that I’m involved?” “Yes sir, that’s exactly what the situation is.” Johnson then sent Colonel Chewning out to get General Richard E. 

Cavazos on a secure line. Trobaugh explained the situation to Cavazos, who 

was perturbed that some of his forces would be committed to an operation 

70 Interv, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Draft AAR, Opn 

Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. Akers remembered the soon-to-be-designated JTF commander as being one of the senior officers, but see 

Interv, Brown with Metcalf, 13 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 71 Interv, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

72 Ibid.; Intervs, Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], and Danner and McMichael with 

Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Policy and Initial Planning

103

without his knowledge. Once Trobaugh finished talking to him, Johnson suggested that someone should notify General Mackmull. General Farris telephoned him, and Mackmull started back immediately from the beach.73

Trobaugh decided that, given the operational restrictions, he would activate only a limited planning cell within the division staff and would notify 

only the appropriate brigade and battalion commanders along with those of 

the supporting arms. The possibility that the 82d might have to secure the 

entire island if the president decided to intervene prior to the marines’ arrival 

immediately caught his attention. Clearly, the division would have to flesh out 

its concept plan just in case.74

The division planning team assembled in the division’s N+2 Room, where 

the principal commanders would receive a briefing on force composition and 

mission two hours after a notification to begin an operation. Col. Stephen 

Silvasy Jr., the 2d Brigade commander then in Ready Brigade-1 status, attended 

the meeting, as did the division G–2, G–3, and G–4. Two of Silvasy’s battalion commanders, accompanied by their S–2s and S–3s, also participated. The 

commanders of two units that normally supported the 2d Brigade—the 1st 

Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, and Company B, 82d Aviation Battalion—

also sat in. Other officers present included Colonel Johnson, representing 

corps headquarters, and key officers on the division staff. A representative 

from the corps G–2 section provided an update on developments on Grenada, 

Colonel Akers gave a briefing on the two possible missions, and then General 

Trobaugh stood to say a few words about security. Anyone who wanted to end 

his career needed only to talk about the operation. Given General Trobaugh’s 

reputation as a blunt and decisive officer, the planners needed no further convincing. Security remained very tight within the division throughout the planning phase of Urgent Fury.

75

The initial session was brief because the information about the mission 

was still sketchy. The planners thus concentrated on the air assault rather than 

the airland mission. The planners assumed that Military Airlift Command 

would provide transport aircraft to move an airborne brigade task force 

rigged for airdrop in a single lift. Their concept of operations consisted of 

dropping two airborne battalions, one on each of the two airfields on the 

island. The 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, commanded by Lt. Col. Jack L. 

Hamilton, would assault the airfield at Point Salines at the same time that 

the 3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, under Lt. Col. John W. Raines, parachuted 

onto Pearls Airport. Colonel Hamilton would then advance on St. George’s 

73 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, with Chewning, 9 Nov 1983, with Johnson, 

15 Nov 1983, and with Farris, 18 Nov 1983, plus Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983 (quoted 

words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 74 Interv, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

75 For the participants, author relied on accounts by Colonels Johnson, Akers, and Chewning 

because they provided the most detailed information about the division’s planning. Akers and 

Chewning kept notes, which they referred to during their interviews. See ibid.; Intervs, Frasché 

with Akers, 22 Nov 1983; Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983; GWG with Baine, Hernandez, and 

Kellogg, 9 Nov 1983; Parker with Hull, [Nov 1983]; Danner and McMichael with Williams and 

Passaro, 17 Nov 1983; and Briefing, Silvasy, 8 Dec 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

104

from the south, while Colonel Raines moved on it from the east, passing 

through the mountainous interior. If there was resistance, the brigade would 

attack the city using both battalions. Because the planners envisioned using 

less than a full brigade, they anticipated that Colonel Silvasy would direct 

tactical operations and that General Trobaugh would act as the Army Forces 

commander.76

General Trobaugh gave the officers no further guidance. He believed in 

issuing mission-type orders and allowing officers considerable latitude as to 

how to fulfill their assignments. At this point he simply wanted to get the information out to key officers so that they could decide what they needed and brief 

him on their requirements. To preserve operational security, he insisted that no 

one work late hours or come to division headquarters any earlier than usual. 

It was typical for officers in the 82d Airborne Division to work weekends 

when an emergency deployment readiness exercise was imminent. If anyone 

inquired, he said, tell them that the division was simply preparing for another 

exercise.77

Colonel Crabtree observed but did not participate in the meeting. In his 

view the operation’s security restrictions prevented any substantial increase 

in logistical readiness during the planning phase. Limited activities such as 

coordination with key people, identification of certain items that units might 

need to take with them, and checks on unit supply status were all that seemed 

possible. Anything more would have involved logistical operators (truck drivers, warehouse foremen, and riggers), as well as the movement of supplies 

and equipment. While more and more logisticians learned about the operation as the planning continued, the division never included logistical operators in the preparations and thus supplies and equipment never moved.78

The 2d Brigade S–4, Maj. James F. Whittaker, became very busy after 

the meeting with “basic log planning.” He went through staff estimates and 

attempted to identify logistical requirements and what kinds of logistical 

support the brigade could expect to find on the island once it arrived. Major 

Whittaker followed standard procedures in determining the types of supplies to carry and the days of supply required. As with Colonel Crabtree, 

he found it difficult to go beyond these basics, particularly because he was 

the only logistician in the brigade who knew about the operation. The governing factor at this stage was the lack of involvement of the 82d Support 

Command. Neither its commander, Col. William F. Daly Jr., nor any of his 

staff knew of the operation yet. Until they did, logistical planning would 

remain elementary.79

76 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and with Chewning, 9 Nov 1983; Frasché 

with Akers, 22 Nov 1983; and Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 77 Interv, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

78 Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH. 79 Intervs, Wells with Whittaker, 10 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and author with Daly, 31 Jul 

1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Policy and Initial Planning

105

Presidential Party, Afternoon/Evening, 22 October

As these more detailed preparations began, Reagan, Shultz, and McFarlane 

debated whether the president should remain in Georgia and adhere to his 

schedule. They decided ultimately that an early return to Washington would 

lead to intense press speculation. In response, the Revolutionary Military 

Council might seize the Americans living on Grenada as hostages, thus precipitating the very situation the president hoped to avoid.

Such news accounts might also ignite a rancorous public debate that 

would impair the president’s ability to act. Reagan and his senior advisers 

knew that America’s defeat in Vietnam had produced extreme reluctance in 

the country, especially among the policymaking elites, to engage in any foreign military adventures. This complex of ideas and attitudes, often referred 

to as the Vietnam Syndrome, ensured that a public debate over a U.S. intervention on Grenada would occur. The president and his advisers deliberately 

chose to have that debate after rather than before the fact.80

While the president continued his golf, Shultz and McFarlane monitored 

the Grenada situation using a satellite telephone to call Washington. Even the 

efforts of an emotionally disturbed gunman who crashed the security fence at 

Augusta in a Dodge pickup truck and barricaded himself in the pro shop with 

five hostages—including two White House staff members—failed to shake the 

president’s resolve to maintain a facade of normalcy. The Secret Service did 

insist that the president leave the course, while the pro shop crisis gradually 

moved toward a peaceful resolution.81

Reagan did not allow the excitement of the day to divert him from his 

Caribbean concerns. On the evening of 22 October, shortly before 1700, the 

National Security Planning Group, the highest level of the National Security 

Council presided over by the president (in this instance using a secure telephone), formally directed the Joint Chiefs to dispatch an execute order to the 

responsible theater commander. The order authorized, but did not require, 

Admiral McDonald to combine the troops in both options. Earlier in the 

day using a secure phone, General Vessey had suggested this possibility to 

McDonald. The chairman had told McDonald that the chiefs thought he 

needed to beef up the landing force to “intimidate” the Cubans. In the order, 

the Joint Chiefs estimated that the earliest possible time they could stage the 

operation was Tuesday, 25 October. They told the admiral to use that date as 

a target D-day.82

80 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 329–30; Bernard Gwertzman, “Steps to the 

Invasion,” New York Times, 30 Oct 1983; Reagan, American Life, p. 451; Dov S. Zakheim, 

“The Grenada Operation and Superpower Relations,” in Grenada and Soviet/Cuban Policy, 

p. 179. 81 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 330; Francis X. Clines, “Reagan Unhurt as Armed Man 

Takes Hostages,” New York Times, 21 Oct 1983. 82 Interv (quoted word), Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; 

Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987, Archives files, JHO; Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 

26–27.
The Rucksack War

106

A Concept of Operations

On Sunday, 23 October, Admiral McDonald accompanied by General 

Scholtes flew to Washington to brief the Joint Chiefs on his concept of operations. The news of the bombing of the Marine barracks at Beirut International 

Airport at 0620, local time (0020 eastern daylight time), had preceded them. 

Even though the number of casualties was yet unknown, the capital was somber with an undercurrent of high emotion.83

McDonald went over his briefing notes with Scholtes at the Pentagon. The 

admiral planned to advocate the use of a joint special operations task force 

under Scholtes’ command as the land component of the operation. Then they 

went into the JCS conference room (or The Tank). McDonald laid out the 

key targets, the timeline of events, and the airflow. As soon as he had finished, Marine Corps Commandant General Paul X. Kelley turned to General 

Vessey and said: “The Marines must land on the island of Grenada or you 

will have destroyed the Marine Corps.” Scholtes, sitting behind the principals, 

was “shocked.” He had known that the marines were en route to the eastern 

Caribbean, but he had envisioned them as nothing more than a floating reserve. 

He was even more surprised when Vessey acceded to Kelley’s request.84

How much of this hinged on the emotion of the moment—and General 

Kelley certainly was emotional—and how much on calculation is debatable. 

Both Shultz and Weinberger had already advocated dispatching a more robust 

force than McDonald had just recommended. Vessey almost certainly knew 

Weinberger’s views given their close relationship and may have already received 

the secretary’s directive to double the force. Atlantic Command had already 

given considerable thought to how to employ the marines, and McDonald had 

stated on more than one occasion that he much preferred using them to Army 

units. What is surprising is that he did not recommend initially a Marine package, but perhaps he felt constrained by Vessey’s earlier guidance. In addition to 

these factors, the latest intelligence indicated that the People’s Revolutionary 

Armed Forces were mobilizing and that the invaders might confront up to 

4,100 defenders—1,500 army members, 2,000 militia, and 600 Cubans. A more 

robust landing force must have appeared prudent to the Joint Chiefs for this 

reason alone.85

Under the new plan, McDonald envisioned an amphibious landing by the 

marines on the beaches at Grand Anse (the as-yet-unsuspected location of 

the main campus of the medical school), while the rangers seized the airfields 

at Pearls and Point Salines and the special operations forces seized certain 

key targets, such as the governor general’s residence. To this, Vessey objected. 

While theoretically sound, the plan overlooked the fact that the forces had 

never worked together and would have no time to exercise the plan to identify 

83 Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

84 Ibid.; Memo (quoted words), Mellon for Cohen, 4 Sep 1986, sub: Meeting with Maj Gen 

Scholtes, Hist files (Papers/Scholtes), CMH. 85 Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Cole, Operation 

Urgent Fury, pp. 26, 72. 
Policy and Initial Planning

107

and solve coordination problems. He urged McDonald to keep the operation 

“simple.” To illustrate what he meant, he drew a line across the island north 

of St. George’s. The marines should operate north of the boundary, he said, 

and the Joint Special Operations Command south of it. McDonald adopted 

this suggestion. In his formal presentation, he had treated the 82d Airborne 

Division strictly as a follow-on peacekeeping force. The introduction of the 

marines did not change the 82d’s role.86

Although intended solely to solve anticipated operational problems, the 

designation of a boundary had important logistical implications. Joint doctrine stipulated that the services would support their own forces for the first 

sixty days of an operation, after which time the Army became responsible for 

providing common items of supply to the ground forces of the other services. 

Distinct Marine and, ultimately, Army operating areas meant that Army logisticians could assume that, at least initially, they would only have to support 

Army units in the southern half of the island. This allowed them to plan to 

move fewer reserve supplies and vehicles to the island than otherwise would 

have been the case. Under this concept Army elements would never operate 

at any great distance from the airfield where Military Airlift Command aircraft would deliver supplies and equipment, greatly simplifying ground lines 

of communications.87

The Marine presence did change the timing of the operation. The marines 

were much less generously equipped with night-vision devices than General 

Scholtes’ command, and Admiral McDonald thought them incapable of operating at 0230. McDonald also wanted both forces to land as close together in time 

as possible to maximize the shock effect on the defenders. From his perspective, 

0500, twelve minutes before first light, would be ideal for the marines. Scholtes 

was attending the meeting only as an observer rather than as a participant. 

When one of the principals asked him for his assessment, he spoke out strongly 

for the original time. As far as he was concerned, the key point was not what the 

marines could or could not do but the fact that his troops could fight effectively 

then and the Grenadians and Cubans could not. He did not want to throw away 

for any reason this huge tactical advantage. In the end, the Joint Chiefs compromised but with the advantage only slightly weighted toward McDonald. They 

stipulated that the special operations forces would land at 0400 (J-hour) and the 

marines one hour later (H-hour). This left Scholtes’ men a little more than one 

hour of darkness in which to execute their diverse missions.88

Just as the meeting was breaking up, Vessey asked McDonald how he 

envisioned command arrangements now that the marines were involved. 

86 Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 26, 72; Interv (quoted word), Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 

1987, Archives files, JHO; Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 87 Interv, author with Mitchell, 16 Feb 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

88 Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. During his interview 

Scholtes stated that the Marines lacked night-vision devices, but see Eric Hammel, The Root, 

p. 242, for evidence to the contrary. In the same interview Scholtes also misstated the original 

time as 0200 and appears to have comingled some of the events of the 23 October meeting in 

Washington with those of the 24 October meeting in Norfolk. 
The Rucksack War

108

McDonald stated that he had originally intended for Scholtes to command 

the joint task force but, with an amphibious task force now involved, that 

the amphibious task force commander would be in charge. In crafting this 

response, McDonald followed existing joint doctrine to the letter. Vessey’s next 

question was rhetorical: Was McDonald telling him that he wanted Scholtes 

to report to a Marine colonel, someone who was two grades his junior? Vessey 

told the admiral that this was not an acceptable situation. McDonald needed 

“to find a three star” to act as the JTF commander. McDonald did not immediately designate a commander. He said he would have to think about it, and 

the meeting ended on that uncertain note.89

Returning to Norfolk after his meeting with the Joint Chiefs, McDonald 

did not long ponder who to appoint as the overall JTF commander for the 

Grenada operation. The Second Fleet commander, V. Adm. Joseph Metcalf 

III, was then in Norfolk rather than at sea with the Independence battle group. 

A sailor with extensive experience in the surface fleet (he had commanded all 

U.S. Navy surface vessels during the 1975 evacuation of Vietnam), Metcalf 

had a reputation as an energetic, straight-talking officer. (The Washington Post 

called him “colorful.”) Because of his position, he had known that something 

was going on in the eastern Caribbean, but he had deliberately not participated 

actively in the planning and knew none of the details. He had kept abreast 

of general developments, at least, by sending a few members of his staff to 

Atlantic Command headquarters. At 1400, on 23 October, McDonald selected 

him to direct the operation as the JTF 120 commander (Chart 8). The ground 

forces would consist of the ranger units and special operations forces under 

General Scholtes, designated as Joint Task Force 123, and the marines under 

Colonel Faulkner, designated as Task Group 124.2. Amphibious Squadron 

Four, commanded by Captain Erie, became Task Force 124. Scholtes reported 

directly to Admiral Metcalf. Thus, in addition to his other duties, Metcalf 

became the overall ground commander because McDonald had made no provision for such an officer.90

Special Operations Forces and Ranger Planning, 

21–24 October

Early Friday morning, 21 October, Scholtes’ headquarters telephoned the 

1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, commander, Lt. Col. Wesley B. Taylor Jr., and 

directed him to fly from Fort Stewart, Georgia, to Fort Bragg for a meeting 

variously described as a situation briefing or a planning conference. When he 

arrived, Taylor and other officers looked at contingencies for putting a force 

onto Grenada. As more information became available, Taylor concluded that 

89 Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

90 Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987, Archives files, JHO; Matt Schudel, “Joseph 

Metcalf Led Grenada Invasion,” Washington Post, 11 Mar 2007 (quoted word); Chronology, 16 

Apr 1984, in United States, Department of the Navy, Operation Urgent Fury Lessons Learned, 

p. III-3, which gives time of Metcalf’s selection. On keeping abreast of LANTCOM planning, 

see Interv, Brown with Metcalf, 13 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH, and Joseph Metcalf III, 

“Decision Making and the Grenada Rescue Operation,” in Ambiguity and Command, p. 282. 
Chart 8—URGENT FURY Task Organization, Atlantic Command, 25 October 1983

Atlantic

Command

Military

Airlift

Command

Strategic

Air

Command

Readiness

Command

Provisional

Airlift Assets Caribbean

Peacekeeping

Force

Joint Task

Force 120

Task Force

126

Joint Task

Force 123

Task Group

20.5

Task Force

121

Task Force

124

Task Group

124.1

Task Group

124.2

Admiral Wesley L. McDonald 

Brig. Gen. Robert B. Patterson 

Brig. Rudyard Lewis V. Adm. Joseph Metcalf III Brig. Gen. Richard L. Meyer 

Maj. Gen. Richard A. Scholtes Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh Capt. Carl R. Erie USS Independence 

USS Richard K. Turner USS Caron USS Moosebrugger USS Clifton Sprague USS Coontz 

USS GuamUSS Trenton USS Fort SnellingUSS Manitowoc USS Barnstable County

22d Marine Amphibious Unit  Col.Joseph P. Faulkner Battalion Landing Team 2/8  Lt. Col. Ray L. Smith HMM Squadron 261 Service Support Group 22 Source: Adapted from Bruce R. Pirnie, Operation URGENT FURY, p. 78 

CommandControlSupporting commands
The Rucksack War

110

actual armed intervention was highly likely, but he did not come away with any 

sense that action was imminent.91

Upon the conclusion of the meeting, Taylor called his executive officer, 

Maj. Jack P. Nix Jr., and told him to assemble the staff and the company 

commanders on Saturday, 22 October. They would prepare a staff analysis on 

intervention in Grenada. Major Nix, who had been so busy all week that he 

had neither followed the television news nor read any newspapers, was somewhat taken aback. He did not know where Grenada was. Later that night, after 

Taylor returned, he briefed Nix on the general concept of the operation and 

some of the planning details.92

While the conference was still in session, Colonel Pack at Joint Special 

Operations Command had contacted the 2d Battalion, 75th Infantry, commander, Lt. Col. Ralph L. Hagler Jr., and transmitted the Urgent Fury warning order. The 2d Battalion was then in Ranger Ready Force status at Fort 

Lewis, Washington. Pack told Colonel Hagler “that there was a move afoot 

to go in and [that] it was going to be very soon. . . .” Pack directed the battalion commander to report to Fort Bragg the next day with a planning group. 

Hagler assembled his senior intelligence, operations, and logistical officers and 

departed on a commercial flight for the East Coast at 0800, local time, on 22 

October. His executive officer, Maj. Robert M. Hensler, took temporary command of the battalion.93

Three hours earlier, the planning staff and company commanders of 

Colonel Taylor’s 1st Battalion had gathered at Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia. 

The officers first examined the island as a target site and then looked at the 

options. They attempted to identify key terrain and discussed Grenada’s strategic significance. Maj. Joseph J. Maher III, who had just taken over as operations officer on the battalion staff the previous day, remembered from a class 

at the Command and General Staff College that the Grenadians were constructing an airfield on the southern tip of the island. The battalion’s planning 

was limited by what it lacked—knowledge of the precise nature of its mission 

and of the number and type of aircraft available to transport it to its target.94

Approximately two hours into the session, Colonel Taylor received another 

telephone call from Joint Special Operations Command, which directed him 

to bring his planning group to Fort Bragg immediately. After unsuccessfully attempting to obtain an aircraft to fly his officers to Bragg, the planners eventually departed from Hunter in two rental vans, arriving at command 

91 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), 

CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, and author with Taylor, 4 Dec 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 92 Intervs, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, and with Nix, 2 Nov 1983; Interv, author with 

Taylor, 4 Dec 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 93 Prelim AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983 (quoted words), and with Hensler, 

1 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 94 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-1, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, and with 

Maher, 3 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Policy and Initial Planning

111

headquarters at 1800, only about an hour before Colonel Hagler and his planning group arrived from the West Coast.95

Taylor’s logistical planner, Capt. Stanley B. Clemons, remained at 

Hunter. Because experience permitted the calculation of the amount of 

supplies and equipment required for an operation based on the number 

of anticipated days of combat, Captain Clemons could do that at Hunter 

as well as at Bragg. Besides Taylor, who received informational copies of 

the messages about the potential operation, the other expected guest was 

Hagler’s 2d Battalion.96

Colonel Hagler had decided to cancel all training in the battalion, even 

before he departed for Fort Bragg, but he did not immediately announce 

this decision because of operational security considerations. At 0900 (Pacific 

daylight time) on 22 October, however, Forces Command, notified the 2d 

Battalion at Fort Lewis to perform a no-notice emergency deployment readiness exercise.97

Major Hensler had to assemble the battalion, move it to an intermediate 

staging base, and prepare for follow-on operations, tasks made more difficult 

because two key officers, the assistant operations officer for air, Capt. James 

C. Yarbrough, and the assistant logistical officer, Capt. Robert C. Morris, 

were both absent from Fort Lewis. Captain Yarbrough was at the Yakima, 

Washington, Training Center, while Captain Morris was in San Diego attending a wedding. Hensler was able to contact both men without difficulty, and 

they returned immediately. At the same time, Hensler initiated the battalion’s 

eighteen-hour notification sequence and coordinated with I Corps for aircraft. Once he arrived at Fort Lewis, Yarbrough, assisted by Morris, became 

immersed in keeping the sequence on schedule.98

Hensler took every person he could, including rangers preparing to leave 

the battalion within two weeks but who volunteered to go on the operation. 

He also shut down the Ranger Instructional Program, the intense pre-matriculation training required of all soldiers who volunteered for Ranger School. 

He brought engineers and ammunition handlers from the ranger support element and members of the ranger augmentation group, including the battalion’s augmentation surgeon from Madigan Army Hospital. Not knowing the 

nature of the unit’s mission, he also loaded an impressive array of supplies 

and equipment—some of which required repair before it was fully operable. 

Eleven C–141Bs of the 62d Military Airlift Wing, commanded by Lt. Col. 

Robert Mehan, moved the battalion and its logistical support. The first aircraft 

95 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-1; Prelim AAR, 

ibid., 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. See also Interv, 

Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 96 Intervs, author with Taylor, 4 Dec 1986, and Wells with Clemons, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 97 Interv, Bishop with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

98 Prelim AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH; Interv, Bishop with Hensler, 1 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; E-mail, 

Hensler to author, 14 Aug 2007, Hist files (Papers/Hensler), CMH.
The Rucksack War

112

departed McChord Air Force Base, Washington, for Hunter Army Airfield at 

0300 (Pacific daylight time) on Sunday, 23 October.99

When the 1st Battalion’s planners arrived at Fort Bragg on the twentysecond, a Joint Special Operations Command staff officer informed them that 

their unit would receive a warning order at 2100 and that General Scholtes 

expected them to brief him on their plan the next morning. As yet, they still 

lacked a mission statement, but they understood that they should focus on the 

southern part of the island. On that basis, they wrote their own mission statement, specifying that the 1st Battalion would seize the Point Salines airfield 

under construction and then secure the medical school at the eastern end of the 

runway. The planners debated courses of action: amphibious landing, helicopter assault, airdrop, or an airland/airdrop combination. They preferred seizing 

the field by helicopter assault, but when Scholtes’ headquarters notified them 

that the helicopters would be unavailable, they settled for the airland/airdrop 

option, planning to airdrop one company to clear the runway of obstacles 

and airland the follow-on companies. They included considerable flexibility in 

their planning. Colonel Taylor would make the decision based on the tactical 

circumstances at the time as to whether to airdrop one, two, or even all three 

companies and to then airland the balance of the battalion.100

General Scholtes restricted the battalion assault force to a total strength 

of 250 officers and men. The limitation apparently grew out of a misunderstanding that developed between Joint Special Operations Command planners 

and their Military Airlift Command counterparts. Staff officers at Scholtes’ 

headquarters requested aircraft by type, C–130s, rather than stating the mission and size of the ranger force and leaving the determination of composition of the air transport component to Air Force planners. Once Joint Special 

Operations Command determined the type of aircraft, a shortage of C–130 

aircrews trained in night airdrop procedures drove the size of the ranger force 

rather than the number of C–130s available. Had the staff at Military Airlift 

Command possessed the flexibility to choose the type of aircraft, they might 

have been able to provide sufficient planes for the entire battalion—not just 

part of it.101

Because Colonel Taylor thought that seizing the airfield was a complex 

mission that required three maneuver elements, he elected to take all three 

rifle companies at half strength, each about seventy-five men. These, plus a 

small headquarters element, rounded out the planned force. Because the size 

99 Prelim AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983; AAR, ibid., 1st Bn, 75th 

Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-1. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. See also Interv, 

Bishop with Hensler, 1 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Dean C. Kallander and James K. 

Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 34–35. 100 Intervs, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, and with Maher, 3 Nov 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 101 Interv, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH, reports the restriction 

on the size of the battalion. The most in-depth analysis of this problem, which must remain conjectural to some extent until research is possible in Joint Special Operations Command sources, 

is Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, pp. III-17 to 

III-18, Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH.
Policy and Initial Planning

113

of the force was insufficient to establish a continuous defense of the eastern 

and northern sides of the field, Taylor decided to establish a firm defense in the 

east and leave the west open.102

On the twenty-second the 2d Battalion’s planning cell went through virtually the same experience as the 1st Battalion’s, except that Colonel Hagler and 

his staff concentrated on the northeastern sector of the island. The planners 

sought to seize the key terrain feature in the area—Pearls Airport—by airdrop. 

The 2d Battalion worked under the same assumptions as the 1st Battalion: a 

250-man cap on the size of the force, an operation that would last only twentyfour hours or less, and a linkup with a Marine follow-on force. H-hour for both 

battalions was 0230 on Tuesday, 25 October; link-up time between the marines 

and the rangers was 0700 the same day. Joint Special Operations Command 

neglected to not only indicate to Taylor and Hagler who would be the controlling headquarters for the linkup but also provide compatible communications, 

communications-electronics operating instructions (for secure radios), and 

far- and near-recognition signals because neither Atlantic Command nor Joint 

Task Force 120 had made such arrangements. Admiral McDonald’s failure to 

appoint a single ground force commander and to establish a joint communications plan had already begun to disrupt Urgent Fury command and control 

even before the operation kicked off.103

The special operations forces concentrated on the western portion of the 

island, particularly on the area around St. George’s. They were to seize certain high-value targets, such as the governor general’s residence; the People’s 

Revolutionary Army headquarters at Fort Rupert (as late as 19 October); the 

Richmond Hill Prison, where U.S. intelligence believed the Revolutionary 

Military Council was holding political prisoners; and Radio Free Grenada’s 

new broadcast studio and tower. Although heavily outnumbered, the special 

operations teams were highly trained. They planned to land by helicopter at 

night at a time when the Grenadian antiaircraft guns, which lacked radar guidance, would be practically useless and when their own night-vision goggles 

would give them a tremendous tactical advantage. Once they seized their targets, they planned to hold in place until relieved by the rangers or marines.104

Colonel Hagler and his staff officers departed Fort Bragg by rental car 

on 23 October, arriving at Hunter Army Airfield at 1345. Major Hensler, 

already there, briefed the battalion commander on the deployment from Fort 

Lewis. At 1600, while the company commanders learned about the mission, 

Hagler discovered that now the marines would seize Pearls unaided. The 2d 

Battalion would airland at Point Salines after the 1st Battalion seized the airfield and would then advance overland to secure the Cuban military camp on 

the Calivigny Peninsula. Working through the night, 2d Battalion planners 

102 Interv, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 103 Prelim AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983; Final AAR, ibid., 25 

Nov 1983. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 104 Pirnie, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 68–69. Adkin, Urgent Fury, pp. 171–76, has the 

fullest discussion of special operations forces’ preparations. See also David C. Isby, Leave No 

Man Behind, pp. 170–206.
Residence of the governor general; below, Fort Rupert
Richmond Hill Prison; below, Radio Free Grenada headquarters
The Rucksack War

116

prepared an airborne option, which Colonel Hagler coordinated with Colonel 

Taylor at 1000 the next morning.105

Late-breaking intelligence, which suggested that the rangers might face 

stiffer resistance than expected, caused General Scholtes to order the 2d 

Battalion to prepare an airborne option as well. In the event of stiff resistance 

at the drop zone, the 2d Battalion would assist the 1st Battalion in seizing and 

holding the airhead by, in effect, securing the 1st Battalion’s left flank. Colonel 

Hagler coordinated the option with Colonel Taylor at 1000 on Monday, 24 

October.106

If the 1st Battalion’s plan changed, its mission had not. Around 1500 on 

23 October, just an hour after Colonel Hagler arrived at Hunter Army Airfield 

and while Colonel Taylor was still en route from Fort Bragg, Joint Special 

Operations Command notified Major Nix that the battalion would have to 

provide a company to assist the special operations forces on a classified mission. At the same time, the battalion learned that the Air Force would provide 

seven aircraft, three MC–130s and four C–130s, to deliver it to its target. At 

that point, General Scholtes removed the cap on the size of the battalion: 

Colonel Taylor could take as many rangers as he could load aboard the aircraft. Taylor decided to send his Company C to assist the classified mission 

and increased the size of Companies A and B to 159 and 147 men, respectively, 

plus attachments. The headquarters element, divided into two tactical operations centers, contained 31 officers and men. Total strength of the battalion 

stood at 337.107

When the two battalions departed for Grenada on the evening of 24 

October, Taylor planned to use Company A to clear the runway and then 

secure the medical college campus at the eastern end. The company would then 

establish a defensive position on Hill 97 just east of the campus. Company B, 

which had initially drawn the assignment to clear the airport terminal complex, shifted east with the mission of securing the high ground south of the village of Calliste. The company’s position fronted the Cuban compound located 

in a depression north of the village. Eventually, the company would advance 

north and east, tying in its left flank to Petit Cabrits Point on the north shore 

of the peninsula and its right flank to Company A, thereby establishing the 

airhead line.108

105 Intervs, MacGarrigle with Hagler, 27 Feb 1984, and Bishop with Hensler, 1 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Prelim AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 106 Prelim AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Hensler, 1 Nov 1983, with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, and with 

Maher, 3 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 107 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-1, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, and with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 108 Map, Grenada: Island of Spice, 1979, Hist files (Graphics), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent

Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH; Intervs, 

Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, and with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Policy and Initial Planning

117

The eastern shore of the lagoon north of the runway formed the dividing line between the two battalions’ areas of operations. Hagler’s men would 

clear the terminal area and seize the high ground north and east of it before 

passing through the 1st Battalion’s lines and advancing on the Cuban military 

compound on the Calivigny Peninsula. Once Hagler began his advance on the 

Cuban position, Taylor’s left flank would again be exposed. Scholtes’ planners 

optimistically assumed that in seizing the airfield the two battalions would 

have eliminated all organized resistance in the vicinity. No enemy units would 

be left to take advantage of this gap.109

Ranger Logistical Plans and Preparations, 22 October

In contrast to the operational plans, the ranger logistical plans were developed informally, were relatively simple, and never changed. The disparity 

developed from the fact that the ranger battalions were designed for rapid 

deployment and could draw on pre-positioned supply packages. Basically selfcontained, they would be able to sustain themselves for the short time that 

General Scholtes expected them to be in combat. Because of operational security considerations, he wanted to keep the number of agencies involved in providing logistical support for the rangers to a minimum. As a result, 1st Special 

Operations Command, which normally provided this support, monitored but 

did not participate in logistical planning.110

The ranger coordinator at Fort Stewart, Capt. Lawrence W. Hoffman 

II, who functioned as the single point of contact between the rangers and 

the garrison staff, first learned that the 1st Battalion might be involved in an 

operation on 21 October, the same day that Colonel Taylor did. The next day 

Captain Hoffman attended the battalion’s planning session at Hunter Army 

Airfield. He then began his own preparations by meeting with his superior, Lt. 

Col. James R. Childs, the director of plans and training at Fort Stewart, to 

discuss possible scenarios. Because the 1st Battalion was not in Ranger Ready 

Force condition, the elements from the 24th Infantry Division normally used 

to load the force were unprepared to assume that mission immediately. Childs 

and Hoffman considered ways to recall the support personnel without drawing attention to what they were doing. Based on what Taylor had told him, 

Hoffman anticipated that the 2d Battalion would also stage out of Hunter 

Army Airfield. With that settled, he began to consider the kinds of resupply 

the two battalions would need once they entered combat.111

The cooperation of the garrison was absolutely essential to ensuring the 

quiet recall of the support personnel, the phase that Colonel Childs believed 

was most vulnerable to a breach of security. Because of the secrecy surrounding the preparations, Joint Special Operations Command allowed him to 

inform only one of his superiors at Fort Stewart—24th Infantry Division and 

109 Final AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 25 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH. 110 Intervs, Bishop with Sheets and Ferguson, 2 Dec 1983, plus author with Taylor, 4 Dec 

1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 111 Interv, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

118

post commander, Maj. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. Childs had barely 

begun his briefing at Schwarzkopf’s quarters when the general exploded with 

emphatic incredulity. “The United States,” he declared, “would never invade 

that small island.”112

As Fort Stewart geared up for the operation despite Schwarzkopf’s skepticism, two parallel ranger logistical plans emerged from work by Captain 

Hoffman with the two ranger logistical officers, Captain Clemons of the 1st 

Battalion and Capt. Jose G. Ventura Jr. of the 2d. Both units would draw 

supplies from an Army depot in the eastern United States through Hunter 

Army Airfield. Attached to Scholtes’ Joint Task Force 123, Company C, 1st 

Battalion, would draw supplies from Fort Bragg through Pope Air Force Base. 

Although Joint Special Operations Command notified both ranger battalions 

that they would withdraw from the island on the evening of D-day, Captains 

Clemons and Ventura prepared logistical plans to cover thirty days of combat. 

Major Nix and Captain Clemons arranged for the pre-positioning of the first 

two resupply packages at Saber Hall, the ranger marshaling area at Hunter 

Army Airfield.113

The relative stability of the 1st Battalion’s mission during planning made 

Clemons’ task easier than Ventura’s. Clemons planned for the 1st Battalion 

to carry enough supplies to last forty-eight hours. This meant that the unit’s 

first resupply pallet should arrive in the airhead within thirty-six hours. By 

contrast, the changes to the 2d Battalion’s mission meant that Ventura had to 

concentrate primarily on ammunition resupply. At first this posed no problem; 

the battalion could airland ammunition pallets in the airhead. Matters became 

more complicated, however, when the Joint Special Operations Command gave 

the battalion an airdrop option. In reaction, Ventura decided to load as much 

ammunition as possible on the vehicles that would accompany the battalion. 

Because an airdrop implied that conditions on the ground might prevent a 

follow-on airlanding, Ventura had to allow for this contingency by providing a 

larger basic load for individual rangers.114

Medical planning was also less elaborate than the operational planning 

because the physicians involved could follow standard procedures worked out 

over scores of exercises. Colonel Taylor took his battalion surgeon, Capt. James 

A. Pfaff, with the planning team to Fort Bragg. Captain Pfaff was able to contact the Joint Special Operations Command chief surgeon, Lt. Col. Carmelito 

Arkangel Jr., a West Point classmate of Colonel Taylor. Pfaff gained some 

general information about the medical assets available at the command, but 

actual medical planning was just beginning while he was at Fort Bragg. Once 

he returned to Hunter Army Airfield, he intended to monitor medical developments at Bragg and make his own preparations accordingly.115

112 Tel Interv, author with Childs, 21 Jul 2006, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 113 Intervs, Wells with Clemons, 2 Nov 1983, and Bishop with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, and with 

Ventura, 1 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 114 Intervs, Wells with Clemons, 2 Nov 1983, and Bishop with Ventura, 1 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 115 Interv, author with Taylor, 4 Dec 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Policy and Initial Planning

119

In the event, Captain Pfaff experienced extraordinary difficulties communicating with Arkangel and other medical personnel using secure lines. These 

were limited in number and monopolized almost to the exclusion of all else by 

commanders and operational planners who needed to coordinate many things 

very quickly. As a result, Pfaff could not even confirm whether a medical package was coming, let alone its size, specific capabilities, or time of arrival.116

In the absence of definite information about the medical element’s plans or 

capabilities, he decided to establish the battalion aid station at the True Blue 

Campus to stabilize casualties and then to evacuate them by helicopter to the 

USS Guam, the helicopter carrier supporting the Marine landing force. Pfaff 

hoped that some American physicians might be present at the college to assist 

him when he arrived, but he did not count on that. He made arrangements 

for two medical chests to accompany the assault force. He and the battalion 

physician assistant, CWO2 William Donovan, also loaded twenty to thirty 

pounds of medical supplies into their own M5 bags, which they intended to 

hand-carry into the airhead. Pfaff likewise arranged for medical resupply in 

the event the rangers remained in the area of operations longer than contemplated by General Scholtes. The surgeon accompanying the 2d Battalion made 

similar detailed preparations. Thus, having received ample notification and 

following a scenario already rehearsed many times, the ranger logistical and 

medical officers were able to prepare for worst-case situations. Not all Army 

logisticians enjoyed these advantages.117

Washington and the Caribbean, 23 October

Another early morning telephone call, this time at 0239 on Sunday, 23 

October, informed the president of the Beirut bombing. The news convinced 

all concerned that Reagan needed to return to Washington immediately. 

Throughout the day, as information accumulated, the scope of the disaster 

became clearer: 241 U.S. servicemen were dead and another 70 wounded. Much 

of official Washington was in shock. Ambassador McNeil, who had arrived 

in Washington early on Sunday, thought that the Beirut crisis would abort 

the whole Grenada enterprise. Nevertheless, after a State Department briefing 

on the situation in the eastern Caribbean, McNeil and a JCS representative, 

Marine Maj. Gen. George B. Crist, left for Barbados that afternoon. General 

Crist, whose normal post was vice director of the Joint Staff, was to make 

arrangements for military participation by the Caribbean governments.118

Upon arrival in Washington, the president and his advisers embarked on 

a round of almost nonstop NSC meetings that alternated between Lebanon 

116 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. E, app. 1, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH. 117 Intervs, Wells with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, and Bishop with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 118 PDD, 23 Oct 1983, PDD files (1981–1989), box 11, NARA–RRPL; E-mail, Crawford to 

author, 18 Nov 2003, sub: Beirut Casualties, 1983, Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH; Crist Resumé, 

2 Dec 1988, Hist files (Bios), CMH; Beck, “’McNeil Mission,’” p. 99; Interv, Cole with Crist, 16 

Feb 1984, Archives files, JHO.
The Rucksack War

120

and Grenada. As Grenada appeared 

to be progressing without problems, General Vessey concentrated 

on Lebanon and delegated most of 

the Grenada briefings to Admiral 

Moreau. The ghastly news from 

Beirut dampened everyone’s spirits. 

At one point the president hung his 

head in his hands and wondered aloud 

if his administration would suffer the 

same fate as that of President James 

E. “Jimmy” Carter Jr. His advisers 

believed that a Grenada operation 

would only detract from his popularity. General Vessey ventured that with 

the 1984 presidential election only a 

year away, perhaps Reagan should call 

off the invasion. The president shot 

back that he intended to consider this 

operation strictly on its merits.119

The president might have temporarily lost his ebullience but not his 

resolve. The key issue for him was 

that American citizens were at risk. 

As soon as he heard that hostages were involved, he made up his mind that he 

would use military force if necessary. He carefully refrained from telling anyone of that decision, however, because he intended to keep his options open 

until the very last minute. Periodically he asked Vessey if he had made any 

decision that had irreversibly committed him to a military operation. Vessey 

always assured him that he had not reached that point.120

That evening, 23 October, in the White House residence, after his advisers had 

departed, the president signed the National Security Decision Directive 110A 

for the invasion of Grenada. “The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff . . . will land U.S. and allied Caribbean military forces 

in order to take control of Grenada, no later than dawn Tuesday, October 25, 

1983.” Reagan carefully stipulated that the State Department would not notify 

the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States of his decision until after 1800 

on 24 October. The president did not inform his principal advisers of his action 

119 Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987, Archives files, JHO; Memo, North for Poindexter, 9 

Jan 1985, sub: Revised Presidential Corresp, Country files (Grenada), vol. 4, box 91,370, RNSC, 

NARA–RRPL; Oberdorfer, “Reagan Sought To End Cuban ‘Intervention,’” Washington Post, 

6 Nov 1983; Clarridge and Diehl, Spy for All Seasons, p. 254. 120 Oberdorfer, “Reagan Sought To End Cuban ‘Intervention,’” Washington Post, 6 Nov 

1983; Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, pp. 108–15; Ltr, Reagan to Sandford, 8 Jan 1985, and 

Memo, North for Poindexter, 9 Jan 1985, Country files (Grenada), vol. 4, box 91,370, RNSC, 

NARA–RRPL. 

Crist as a general 
Policy and Initial Planning

121

until sometime the next day. The explanation for this reluctance appears to have 

been more personal than political. He was very much aware that a decision to 

intervene would cost lives, and he refused to make that determination until it 

was absolutely necessary.121

The news from the Caribbean continued to pressure the president toward 

military action. Ambassador McNeil arrived in Barbados on 23 October and 

immediately went into a meeting with the Caribbean heads of state that lasted 

almost three hours. Probing their rationale for intervention, he found their 

advocacy thoroughly grounded in the realities of the situation and concluded 

that they were deeply committed to action as the only way to preserve democracy in the area. Following instructions, he gave the prime ministers no hint as 

to what his recommendation would be.122

McNeil also spent some time reviewing all locally available intelligence 

on Grenada with particular emphasis on the medical students. He concluded 

that they were not hostages yet but that this well might be the Grenadians’ 

next step. He believed the situation was deteriorating daily and was dangerous. 

With the fate of his colleagues in Tehran, Iran, during the 1979 takeover of the 

U.S. Embassy very much in mind, he recommended that the president order 

immediate military intervention. His one qualification was that it had to be 

quick, before surprise was lost.123

The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States heads of government, as 

well as Prime Ministers Adams of Barbados and Seaga of Jamaica, knew 

nothing of these developments and frankly doubted American resolve. 

Ambassador McNeil had brought a list of State Department concerns about 

the repercussions of U.S. military action. Based on the discussion of these 

points, the group drafted a formal request for U.S. intervention. As the chair, 

Prime Minister Charles, a 53-year-old woman of keen intellect and forceful 

personality, signed it on the evening of 23 October. She declined to forward it 

to Washington, however, until she received a “final positive U.S. decision.”124

General Crist, meanwhile, coordinated with members of the regional 

military and police forces to organize the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force that 

would participate in an invasion. As had McNeil, Crist emphasized the conditional nature of these preparations. In response, Prime Minister Seaga promised a reinforced infantry company from Jamaica and Prime Minister Adams, 

121 Memo, North for Poindexter, 9 Jan 1985, Country files (Grenada), vol. 4, box 

91,370; NSDD 110A (quoted words), Reagan, 23 Oct 1983, sub: Response to Caribbean 

Governments’ Request To Restore Democracy on Grenada, NSDD files, box 1. Both in RNSC, 

NARA–RRPL. 122 Msg, Bish to SecState, 25 2203Z Oct 1983, sub: Uncleared, Informal Minutes of Meeting 

Between Ambassadors Bish and McNeil with West Indian Heads of Government To Discuss 

the Grenada Situation, Msg files, DoS. 123 McNeil, War and Peace, pp. 174–75; Beck, “‘McNeil Mission,’” pp. 100–101. Prime 

Minister Charles laid out the rationale of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States in 

Statement, Charles, [c. 25 Oct 1983], Accession no. 59–99–0424 (10/13), DoS. 124 Msg (quoted words), Bish to SecState, 24 0541Z Oct 1983, sub: Grenada: Text of Final 

Draft OECS Invitation, Msg files, DoS; Ltr, Charles to Reagan, 23 Oct 1983, Accession no. 

59–97–0323 (4/6), DoS.
The Rucksack War

122

a reinforced infantry platoon from Barbados. The other prime ministers contributed detachments from their police forces. Crist made arrangements with 

the Military Airlift Command to move most of these forces to an assembly 

point on Barbados shortly before U.S. forces landed on Grenada to keep from 

signaling American intentions.125

The prime ministers knew Col. (later Brig.) Rudyard Lewis of the Barbados 

Defence Force, because he doubled as coordinator of the Regional Security 

System, and they selected him to command the Caribbean forces. Their presence was essential to legitimize U.S. actions before the world. Only the Jamaican 

Army and the Barbados Defence Force had received any military training, but 

these units had never worked together. As a result, General Vessey was determined to keep them out of combat. He intended to use them mainly to guard 

prisoners and maintain order in areas already captured by U.S. troops. This 

was an important role because it would reassure the Grenadian people that 

they would soon regain control of their own destiny and that the U.S. presence 

would be of short duration.126

Given the relative poverty of all the countries involved, the United States 

assumed responsibility for supplying the Caribbean forces as soon as they 

left their home islands. Once they arrived on Grenada, the U.S. Navy would 

125 Msg, Bish to SecState, 23 1614Z Oct 1983, sub: Movement of Regional Security System 

Personnel, Msg files, DoS; Interv, Cole with Crist, 16 Feb 1984, Archives files, JHO. 126 Interv, Cole with Crist, 16 Feb 1984; Ltr, Vessey to Armstrong, n.d. Both in Archives 

files, JHO.

Charles (far right) confers with Reagan, Shultz, and McFarlane on Grenada.
Seaga greets Admiral Metcalf; below, Adams watches as Barbadian troops prepare 

for deployment to Grenada.
The Rucksack War

124

provide logistical support. If their stay proved extended, the Army would pick 

up the requirement. Because they were armed with obsolete British Army 

weapons, Crist could only hope that their basic load of ammunition would suffice throughout the operation. No resupply was available from U.S. sources.127

By the early morning hours of 24 October, President Reagan was on the 

verge of making a final decision to intervene on Grenada. He had kept his 

own counsel well. Even at this stage, Secretary Weinberger, a close observer of 

the president since their days together in California politics some fifteen years 

earlier, was not certain what the president would ultimately do. Others, further removed from the center of decisionmaking, were convinced that nothing 

would happen. General Schwarzkopf was hardly the only skeptic.128

General Vessey, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Joint Staff were working 

with great intensity on military preparations as were several subordinate headquarters. They had to because time was short. The president’s insistence on 

stringent security measures had already hindered planning by severely limiting 

the participation of logisticians at multiple levels in the chain of command. 

The real issue on the twenty-third, however, was what type of operation the 

United States was going to conduct. The plan the Joint Chiefs approved envisioned the use of an elite raiding force to capture key objectives in less than a 

day. At the last minute the Joint Chiefs had agreed to incorporate a sizable conventional force, a Marine battalion landing team, to give added punch to the 

initial landings. Given the information that the Joint Chiefs had available, this 

change was prudent. Follow-on elements of the 82d Airborne Division would 

maintain order after the troops that conducted the initial landings departed. 

In this revised plan, Vessey quite rightly focused on the issue of command 

and control that the Marine participation raised, but his solution was less than 

elegant. Charging McDonald with finding a “three star” to lead the joint task 

force, Vessey created an opportunity for command and control to become convoluted, and it quickly did when McDonald selected an admiral to direct a 

land campaign. McDonald’s first solution, to assign a Marine colonel to direct 

the operation, at least had the advantage of putting in charge someone who 

was experienced in land warfare. By following joint doctrine too closely, however, this approach ignored the unique qualities of the Grenada plan. Joint 

doctrine represented the hard-won experience of the amphibious campaigns 

of World War II in Europe and the Pacific. In these operations the amphibious elements coming out of the sea had always constituted the decisive force. 

Giving command of the overall effort to the leader of that contingent was the 

best possible solution. 

On Grenada, however, the approved plan called for ranger units and special 

operations forces to act as the decisive force. In this context the only correct 

127 Interv, Cole with Crist, 16 Feb 1984; Ltr, Vessey to Armstrong, n.d. Both in Archives 

files, JHO. 128 Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, p. 113.
Policy and Initial Planning

125

call was to retain General Scholtes as the JTF commander. This would have 

required making an exception to existing policies and procedures, but one of 

the primary responsibilities of senior officers is to recognize situations that 

require such adjustments and take the necessary actions. General Vessey did 

neither. 

This outcome was more a reflection of the circumstances in which the 

chairman made decisions than with his personal characteristics. Three sets of 

conditions contributed to this outcome. First, service protocol and the circumscribed nature of the chairman’s power may have played a role; however, given 

Vessey’s well-deserved reputation as a field soldier focused on practicalities, 

these considerations were probably minor at most. Second, and a more likely 

explanation, is that Vessey and the Joint Chiefs, given the press of events, did 

not have sufficient time to consider all the implications. Atlantic Command 

was not a real joint headquarters. It lacked the capacity to plan a land campaign involving special operations forces and ranger units. This paucity of 

expertise meant that too many details were unresolved, forcing the most senior 

officers in the armed forces to try to knit them together at the last minute. It 

was almost inevitable that something would be overlooked—and it was. Third, 

the timing of the Beirut bombing meant that Vessey and the Joint Chiefs were 

almost literally running from meeting to meeting on one crisis or the other. 

Given this combination of factors, perhaps the real wonder is not that the final 

plan had flaws but that it was workable at all.

Admiral McDonald’s failure to appoint an overall ground commander likewise hampered operational planning and made coordination of effort between 

special operations forces and ranger units on the one hand and the marines on 

the other problematic at best. McDonald might have inserted Scholtes as the 

ground commander, but he chose not to. At this point, the admiral may have 

felt that command arrangements were becoming too complex for what was a 

minor operation. Given the scheme of maneuver, however, making Scholtes 

the overall ground commander was the next best solution to making him the 

JTF commander. 

Despite these potential problems that emerged on 23 October relating to 

command and control, the military planners had accomplished a great deal in 

a very short time. Nevertheless, they needed to do much more before the first 

soldier or marine landed on Grenadian soil. 

3

Final Planning

22–25 October 1983

Shortly after he returned to Fort Bragg late on Saturday, 22 October, 

XVIII Airborne Corps commander Lt. Gen. Jack V. Mackmull learned 

that he personally would have little to do in the Grenada operation. U.S. Army 

Forces Command notified XVIII Airborne Corps that the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

(JCS) had given U.S. Atlantic Command direct operational control of the 82d 

Airborne Division, bypassing corps headquarters. General Mackmull believed 

that his superiors were concerned about the political reaction if a three-star 

general became the ground forces commander on Grenada. In his words, they 

did not want to give the impression of “hitting a gnat with a sledgehammer.”1

Mackmull’s reaction was that the XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg 

should do all that they could to assist the 82d Airborne Division in accomplishing its mission. His subsequent efforts and those of his staff centered on 

getting the 82d deployed. He postulated that, after the division had arrived in 

the area of operations, Atlantic Command would assume responsibility for 

coordinating all the support that it required. He tried to be very careful to 

avoid influencing Atlantic Command’s operations order because he was not 

in the chain of command. Nonetheless, he wanted to make certain that the 

division was ready to fight when it arrived on Grenada and that the corps did 

everything possible at Fort Bragg to ensure success. One of his first acts after 

he returned Saturday night was to meet with some of his principal staff officers to discuss what little he knew of the operation.2

Mackmull and the Corps Weigh in, 23–24 October

Although General Mackmull scrupulously avoided any hint that he was 

injecting himself and the XVIII Airborne Corps into the operation, his suggestions carried something akin to the force of orders for the officers of the 

82d Airborne Division. He was a very senior lieutenant general with the reputation of being one of the Army’s best tacticians. In addition, he had both long 

experience with airborne units and was familiar with their unique logistical 

and operational requirements. As if that was not enough, he was the rating 

1 Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

2 Ibid.; Interv, author with Schroeder, 2 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

☆ ☆ ☆
The Rucksack War

128

officer of the division commander, Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh, which 

only gave his opinions additional weight with that officer. All these circumstances contributed to make the XVIII Airborne Corps an unofficial senior 

headquarters for the division during the operation.3

Early on Sunday morning, 23 October, Generals Mackmull and Trobaugh 

received a detailed briefing from their staffs on the preparations for the 

Grenada operation. During the meeting Mackmull demonstrated why he 

enjoyed the reputation in the Army as a top-notch airborne officer. First, the 

corps G–2, Col. John D. De War, delivered an intelligence update. The corps 

had not obtained any significant information about the island since the last 

meeting. Second, the division G–3, Lt. Col. Frank H. Akers Jr., described the 

division’s mission and preparations.4

Mackmull commented at length on what he had heard. His observations 

dealt mainly with how to obtain more recent intelligence and with various 

aspects of operational planning, but several concerned logistics. He identified 

flak vests, secure communications equipment, riot gear, and megaphones for 

crowd control as potentially critical items he hoped the division had in sufficient quantities. He also suggested that the division consider flying its Black 

Hawk helicopters directly to the island and asked what survival gear and auxiliary fuel tanks would be necessary if it had to execute this option. Getting 

CH–47 Chinooks to the island, he mused, might be more difficult because of 

their shorter range. Further, he posed some critical questions: Did the division 

intend to keep the helicopters resupplied using C–130 bladder birds? Had it 

made the necessary arrangements with the Air Force for regular flights of these 

aircraft to sustain helicopter operations for however long fighting lasted?5

The operation, Mackmull continued, would probably require heavy engineer and military police involvement. He advised that the engineers should 

make an early assessment of the condition of the runways at both Pearls and 

Point Salines because one or both of them might be damaged and unusable. 

He suggested that if it became necessary to reconstruct the airfields, the division should request the corps’ 618th Engineer Company because it could 

land its equipment using low-altitude parachute extraction. This technique 

required a transport pilot to fly his aircraft five to ten feet from the ground. His 

cargo, protected by energy-dissipating material, would be loaded on a specially 

configured airdrop platform. At the appropriate moment, one to three parachutes would deploy through the open rear cargo hatch and pull the platform 

and its contents out of the aircraft. The chutes would keep everything aligned 

and help brake the load as it slid across the ground. Treated in this manner, a 

bulldozer, even a small one that executed a textbook landing, would make a 

considerable dent when it first hit the ground, especially on an asphalt runway. 

3 Interv, Danner, Frasché, and Bishop with Farris, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

4 Interv, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

5 The most detailed account of this meeting comes from Akers, but many other participants 

mention it at some length. See Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, plus Bishop with 

Johnson, 15 Nov 1983, with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH.
Final Planning

129

Trobaugh would need such a capability only if the Cubans and Grenadians 

had so damaged the airstrip at Point Salines that aircraft could not land. Even 

then, the delivery of engineer equipment in this manner would allow him to 

restore the surface to landing condition more rapidly than would otherwise be 

possible.6

Mackmull continued by noting that the nature of the water system on 

the island could have a major impact on the composition of the forces that 

the division sent to Grenada. If sufficient freshwater was available, the division could use its own erdlators, water purification equipment designed to 

decontaminate freshwater. If freshwater was unavailable in adequate quantities, the division would need reverse-osmosis water purification units from the 

1st Support Command to desalinate seawater. Before General Trobaugh could 

make an intelligent decision on the matter, he needed to know more about the 

available water supplies.7

Mackmull, for his part, wanted to know what kind of telephone system 

the Grenadians had because it would affect both the mix of engineers assigned 

to the island (they would have to repair it) and the type of communications 

package that accompanied the division. He recommended involving a corps 

6 Interv, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; FM 10–500–1, Airdrop 

Support Operations in a Theater of Operations, June 1991, pp. 2-2 to 2-4. 7 Discussion in this and the following three paragraphs is based on Interv, Frasché with 

Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

Colonel De War Colonel Akers 
The Rucksack War

130

unit, the 35th Signal Brigade. He also told the corps G–2 to start filling footlockers with gold or East Caribbean dollars, the currency used in the region, so 

that the division could purchase supplies locally. This would ease the stress on 

the aerial supply line to the island and inject funds into the local economy. 

Mackmull then suggested that it was time to bring the rest of the corps 

staff into the planning. Medical support concerned him. Did the division want 

to take a mobile surgical hospital into Grenada or establish the hospital on 

Barbados, where the patients would be out of the combat zone? What kind of 

medical facilities would the Navy have available to support Army operations? 

At this point, no one knew.

Mackmull emphasized that the 82d Support Command would need a good 

plan to sustain the operation. For the moment, he suggested that Fort Bragg 

serve as an intermediate staging base and that the division place its logistical 

base on Grenada at Point Salines. He raised the issue of establishing a sea line 

of communications by moving heavier equipment, units required for occupation duties, and certain types of bulky supplies by ship rather than by air. 

Who was going to control the port of St. George’s? Would the division need 

a terminal service company there to unload cargo? If so, it needed to find out 

where it could get one.

Although he did not state it explicitly, Mackmull implied that the division 

should not continue to pour combat troops into the airhead once the battle was 

over. Instead, he simply commented that the corps support command and the 

corps and division surgeons should develop the priorities that would determine the 

type of follow-on forces required and the sequence and timing of their arrival.8

Throughout his remarks Mackmull reiterated that the division could not 

take anything for granted. It needed to prepare for the worst case—heavy combat. In that spirit, he suggested that the division plan for employing two brigades rather than just two battalions. He stressed that even though the corps 

was not officially involved in the operation it would do everything that it could, 

whatever happened, to support the division.9

The attendees also discussed the second mission that Colonel Akers had 

brought back from Norfolk: the follow-on peacekeeping mission. The main 

body of the division could plan to airland in C–141s. This would reduce the 

amount of time it would need to prepare to embark because it would not 

have to move equipment to the heavy rig drop site. In this context, General 

Mackmull commented that the division would leave behind its AH–1 Cobra 

helicopter gunships and take only transport helicopters. After weighing all the 

factors, the consensus of the officers present was that the lead elements of the 

division would depart within ten hours of notification. Leaving any earlier 

would require the division to assume a higher readiness status, which might 

compromise operational security.10

8 Interv, Bishop with Chewning, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

9 Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, and Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist 

files, CMH. 10 Intervs, Bishop with Chewning, 9 Nov 1983, and Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 
Final Planning

131

Mackmull scheduled a briefing on the operation for 1100 on 23 October 

to inform the rest of the principals on his staff and his brigade commanders. 

The 1100 meeting also served as a forum for the corps commander to present 

additional insights. Mackmull reiterated the importance of sending in sufficient fuel for the division’s helicopters. The senior logistician on the corps staff, 

the G–4, Col. Corless W. Mitchell, only learned of the operation at this meeting. Even then, security was so tight that Mackmull cautioned him and the 

others that they could not tell any of their assistants about the preparations. 

In Mitchell’s case, this meant that any corps-level logistical planning would 

depend for the moment on him alone.11

At the corps briefing Mackmull had suggested to the division representative that the 82d ought to send a planning team to Atlantic Command, but 

General Trobaugh opted to concentrate his planning efforts at Fort Bragg, 

thus losing an opportunity to enlighten the predominately naval staff at 

Norfolk of the needs of an airborne division. Trobaugh decided not to split 

his staff, given the dimension of having to plan simultaneously for an airborne 

assault and for an airlanding as a follow-on force. Each type of operation was 

far different from the other. Although the likelihood that the division would 

have to parachute onto the island diminished as the arrival time of the marines 

in Grenadian waters neared, planning for an airborne assault had to continue 

because it was such a difficult mission. With that in view, Trobaugh called a 

1600 meeting on the twenty-third to draw an expanded circle of officers into 

the preparations.12

The session opened with a briefing by members of the planning team that 

had traveled to Norfolk on the twenty-second. Trobaugh raised the question 

of increasing the size of the task force. After giving some consideration to 

a one-brigade assault force composed of three infantry battalions, he opted 

for the two-brigade force suggested by General Mackmull. At this point, the 

outline plan called for Division Ready Brigade-1, Col. Stephen Silvasy Jr.’s 2d 

Brigade, to concentrate on the airfield at Point Salines, while Division Ready 

Brigade-2, Col. James T. Scott’s 3d Brigade, assaulted Pearls. Because Pearls’ 

runway was too short to receive C–141s, all follow-on echelons of the 3d 

Brigade would have to land at Point Salines and move overland to Pearls. The 

planners considered flying the 3d Brigade’s follow-on echelons to Barbados, 

transferring them to C–130s, and airlanding them at Pearls. With C–130s committed to the Joint Special Operations Command, however, and believing mistakenly that these aircraft were in short supply, Trobaugh rejected that option 

for the moment.13

Paradoxically, as the number of troopers committed to the operation 

increased, the number of aircraft available to carry them to the area of operations declined. Based on what was undoubtedly a clearer perception of the 

total concept of operations than anyone in the division possessed at that time, 

11 Intervs, Bishop with Chewning, 9 Nov 1983; Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983; and 

author with C. Mitchell, 16 Feb 1989. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 12 Interv, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

13 Ibid.; Interv, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

132

Military Airlift Command had already reduced the number of C–141s available to approximately thirty.14

The need to airland troops drew attention to the condition of the runways at the two fields. The meeting considered the minimum landing distance 

for a C–141. Based on the conclusion that a C–141 could not use Pearls, 

General Trobaugh decided that the engineers should focus on improving the 

field at Point Salines. At this point, no one in the division was certain that the 

new runway would support C–141s, but planning proceeded on the assumption that it could. The engineers would have to prepare some ramps on which 

the aircraft could turn around. Trobaugh directed them to be ready to bring 

in whatever heavy equipment they needed to complete that task and any others that presented themselves by using the low-altitude delivery that General 

Mackmull had suggested. He then listed a number of logistical issues, including the requirement to configure ammunition bundles for the mission and 

the need to stockpile life preservers for the assault battalions. He did not 

intend to take his senior personnel and logistical advisers, the G–1 and the 

G–4, with him in the command group. Following doctrine, he proposed to 

leave them at the division main headquarters at Fort Bragg with his assistant division commander for support, Brig. Gen. James D. Smith, to plan 

for and coordinate reinforcement and resupply of the airhead on Grenada. 

Trobaugh believed that the forward area support teams could handle any 

logistical problems that might arise on the island. Then the meeting broke 

up into planning groups that would report back later with their conclusions. 

When they finished, the division would be prepared for both a one- and a 

two-brigade operation.15

After the Sunday morning briefing at the corps headquarters, General 

Mackmull became concerned about the compartmentalization of planning. 

The Joint Special Operations Command and the 82d Airborne Division were 

preparing to operate in the same area without either having a clear idea of 

what the other intended to do. This was not the way the Army designed an 

operation. In reaction, Mackmull telephoned Admiral Wesley L. McDonald 

at Atlantic Command and suggested that his corps needed to be included 

in the chain of command if only to ensure that Army units received proper 

logistical support. Rebuffed, possibly because McDonald misinterpreted the 

overture as an attempt to take control of the ground portion of the operation, Mackmull then telephoned General Richard E. Cavazos at Forces 

Command and discussed the situation. In the course of the conversation, 

Mackmull suggested that Joint Task Force (JTF) 120 commander V. Adm. 

Joseph Metcalf III needed a high-ranking Army representative on his staff. 

General Cavazos proposed the 24th Infantry Division commander, Maj. 

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., an experienced airborne officer. When 

Mackmull heartily endorsed the choice, Cavazos contacted Army Chief of 

14 Interv, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 15 Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983; author with A. Perkins, 9 and 23 Jun 1986, and 

with Daly, 31 Jul 1986; and Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Final Planning

133

Staff General John A. Wickham Jr., who approved General Schwarzkopf for 

the billet.16

Immediately following the telephone conversation, Mackmull went to 

Army Maj. Gen. Richard A. Scholtes’ Joint Special Operations Command 

headquarters to secure whatever coordination was possible under the circumstances between the command’s preparations and those of the 82d. In doing 

so, Mackmull realized that he had to tread delicately to avoid altering Admiral 

McDonald’s operational concept in any way. By visiting the command, he 

hoped to talk to General Scholtes, who would serve as the JTF 123 commander, and to obtain a clearer understanding of the special operations portion of the invasion. Scholtes was absent when he arrived, but his deputy, Air 

Force Brig. Gen. Edsel R. Field, told the corps commander what he needed 

to know. Mackmull later talked to Scholtes and arranged a meeting with him 

and Trobaugh. The three generals discovered that they shared a similar concern: Much of the Atlantic Command planning appeared to rest on best-case 

16 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. General Cavazos was also the component commander of U.S. Army, 

Atlantic, when either the secretary of defense or the commander of Atlantic Command activated the component headquarters.

Admiral Metcalf and General Schwarzkopf 
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134

assumptions. Scholtes emphasized that he wanted the 82d ready to land just as 

soon as he had his own force in position on the island. When the meeting broke 

up, Trobaugh and Scholtes may not have known all the details of each other’s 

plans, but they did have a better grasp of each other’s concept of operations. 

By his personal intervention, Mackmull had thus bent compartmentalization 

in favor of effective planning, but the effect was only partial. The two staffs 

involved still remained isolated from one another and so could do little to build 

on this newfound rapport. Detailed coordination remained impossible.17

Around 2300 hours while the planning session was still in progress, General 

Mackmull arrived at division headquarters. He informed General Trobaugh 

that General Schwarzkopf would accompany Admiral Metcalf aboard his 

flagship as “an Army adviser” and that Metcalf had scheduled a commanders conference for 0700 Monday morning. The corps commander added that 

Atlantic Command had changed the time of the operation to 0400 and that 

it wanted the division on the ground at 0900, five hours after the initial landing. Based on Mackmull’s information, division planners used 0400 as the 

basis to calculate the sequencing of the 82d onto the island. Finally, without 

explaining why, Mackmull said that he needed to attach a light bulldozer and 

two equipment operators to the 20th Engineer Brigade, a request with which 

Trobaugh was happy to comply. Shortly afterward, the planners departed for 

their homes to avoid the appearance of unusual activity.18

As soon as Mackmull’s G–4, Colonel Mitchell, returned to his office following the Sunday morning briefing, he wrote a series of notes to himself 

on actions that he should take once the operation became public knowledge. 

The first involved Anniston bundles—contingency packages of food, petroleum products, and ammunition maintained at the Anniston Army Depot in 

Anniston, Alabama, and capable of delivery by parachute into an area of operations. Mitchell made detailed plans to pre-position the bundles at the nearest civilian airfield large enough to handle C–141s. Because Forces Command 

controlled the supplies, he intended to call that headquarters immediately after 

the operation began and request permission to move the bundles so that they 

would be immediately available in case of an emergency.19

Mitchell’s second priority involved establishing a sea line of supply to the 

area of operations. To that end, he planned to call Forces Command at the first 

opportunity and to request a roll-on/roll-off ship (RO/RO in Transportation 

Corps jargon) to move heavy tonnage items—ammunition, construction equipment, and building materiel. Mitchell wanted the ship because he suspected 

the capacity of the dockside facilities available at the port of St. George’s was 

too small. In his view, any ship that went to Grenada would have to be able to 

discharge its cargo virtually unaided.

17 Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

18 Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and Bishop with Chewning, 

9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Akers based his discussion of the planned time of the 

operation on his contemporary notes rather than subsequent recollection. 19 Information in this and the following four paragraphs are based on Interv, author with C. 

Mitchell, 16 Feb 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Final Planning

135

Over the next two days Colonel Mitchell worked closely with the division 

G–4, Lt. Col. Jack D. Crabtree II, to define their respective spheres of influence. The two agreed that because the division would be the main force on the 

island, Colonel Crabtree would control the logistics in support of the operation, while Mitchell would serve as the interface between the division and the 

wholesale logistical system. In effect, Crabtree would identify the items of 

equipment and supply that the division needed, and Mitchell would ensure 

that the division received them by contacting the appropriate Army depots 

in the United States. Anticipating that supply problems might develop during 

the course of the operation, Mitchell planned to send a liaison officer with the 

division into the airhead and another to Atlantic Command headquarters. He 

also analyzed the scattered and incomplete data about the airfield available 

from corps intelligence to determine its capacity and turned his conclusions 

over to Crabtree.

When Mitchell left the corps briefing on 23 October, he knew very little 

about the condition of the airfield under construction at Point Salines. He 

spent a good deal of time closeted with Colonel De War, the corps G–2. De 

War knew that the Cuban engineers had experienced problems because the fill 

in the causeway that carried the landing surface across Hardy Bay constantly 

settled. There was a pronounced dip about halfway down its length. Because 

C–141Bs would require the entire airstrip to take off and land, the issue had 

profound logistical implications. If transport aircraft could not use the entire 

strip, the Air Force could substitute C–130s. They needed less room to operate, 

and, depending on the exact location of the declivity, they might be able to use 

the field. C–130s, of course, had a much smaller load capacity. If substituted 

C–141
The Rucksack War

136

for C–141s, they would slow the buildup of forces and supplies. The possibility also existed that the field would not support even C–130 operations. In 

that case, the Air Force would have to deliver supplies and equipment to the 

airhead by parachute, using either standard heavy drops from a considerable 

height or low-altitude parachute extractions.

Mitchell’s appraisal of the capacity of the airfield rested at least as much 

on the logistician’s considerable experience as on the data that Colonel De War 

could provide. De War knew a taxi area was under construction in front of 

C–130; below, Vehicles, equipment, and helicopters crowd the flight line.
Final Planning

137

the partially completed main terminal that stood opposite the midpoint of the 

runway. If the area was available for use, Mitchell assumed for planning purposes that three aircraft might be on the ground simultaneously, what the Air 

Force labeled a MOG (machines on the ground) of three. If it remained closed, 

however, safety requirements would probably prevent landing more than one 

aircraft at a time, a circumstance that would greatly impede the buildup of 

supplies and equipment.

Detailed information about the airfield and its condition remained frustratingly unavailable to Mitchell and De War during most of the planning 

period. Cumulus clouds obscured satellite photographs, which revealed 

only snatches of the field. As a result, calculations about airfield capacity remained at best informed guesses. Mitchell sketched the outline of 

the airfield at its approximate location on a tourist map of the island, all 

that was available at the time. Not until late Monday could De War assure 

Mitchell that C–141s could land. Mitchell kept Crabtree apprised of all 

this, enabling Crabtree to concentrate on logistical issues internal to the 

division.20

Atlantic Command Final Preparations, 23–24 October

The division G–3, Colonel Akers, was at his residence about midnight on 

23–24 October when the staff duty officer called to say that the division had 

received a top secret message from Atlantic Command. Akers told him to bring 

it over, and they sat on the steps of his house and read the operations order for 

Operation Urgent Fury. It designated 0400 (Grenada time) on 25 October as 

J-hour, when Joint Task Force 123 was to seize the Point Salines airfield, and 

0500 (Grenada time) as H-hour, when the marines from Task Force 124 would 

land on the east coast near Pearls Airport.21

The order thus bore out the information that General Mackmull had given 

Trobaugh about the timing of the assault at Point Salines. The Army elements, consisting of the division assault command post, a brigade task force 

headquarters, and two airborne infantry battalions, designated Task Force 

121, would airland on Grenada “on order” from Atlantic Command within 

twenty hours of notification to relieve the rangers, special operations forces, 

and marines and to assume “protection/stabilization responsibilities.” After 

arrival, the task force would establish “a multinational peacekeeping force to 

restore civil order and assist in restoring a friendly government in Grenada,” 

at which time its name would change to Combined Task Force 121. Trobaugh 

would remain on Grenada in command of this new force.22

Although the bulk of the 82d’s planning had envisioned an active combat 

role for the division, the order did not establish a link between the seizure of 

20 Ibid.; Interv, author with Crabtree, 24 Jan 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

21 Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, and Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH; Msg, LANTCOM to JCS et al., 24 0007Z Oct 1983, sub: Urgent Fury

Opn Order, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), CMH. 22 Msg, LANTCOM to JCS et al., 24 0007Z Oct 1983, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/

LANTCOM), CMH.
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the target and the deployment of the airborne task force. Instead, the order 

assumed that the force would enter the country after the close of military 

operations and confine itself to a constabulary role. Moreover, as General 

Trobaugh discerned, the order indicated no awareness of the division’s emergency deployment readiness procedures, which stipulated that the division 

could begin to sortie the first battalion eighteen rather than twenty hours after 

notification. In itself this was not a major problem, yet what was apparent was 

Atlantic Command’s lack of familiarity with airborne operations and general 

inattention to detail, particularly disturbing given the emphasis that Colonel 

Akers had placed on the eighteen-hour sequence during the recent meeting at 

Norfolk.23

The order dealt with logistics very concisely, stipulating that each of the 

services would be responsible for the support of its own forces. Only medical 

support, amid all the logistical specialties, received any elaboration beyond 

this bald statement. Medical units embedded in the forces would provide care 

during the initial operations. Commanders would identify “medical augmentation requirements . . . through normal service command channels.” Admiral 

Metcalf, as the JTF 120 commander, would coordinate these efforts.24

The order also established a medical evacuation chain in concept but not 

in detail. Initially, the wounded would move to naval vessels with surgical 

facilities or to the nearest U.S. shore activity with appropriate medical facilities. From there, they would go to military hospitals in the continental United 

States. When appropriate, Military Airlift Command would evacuate wounded 

directly to the United States, bypassing intermediate stages.25

Late on the evening of 23 October, General Scholtes learned that Admiral 

Metcalf planned a commanders meeting at Norfolk the next morning. Scholtes 

and his planning team would brief the admiral on their portion of the operation. As soon as they arrived at Atlantic Command headquarters on Monday, 

24 October, Scholtes encountered an angry Metcalf. He and Scholtes had 

never met one another, and thus no prior relationship existed to buffer what 

promised to be a very difficult day for both men. With virtually no input to the 

planning, Metcalf felt that McDonald was asking him to execute a concept 

that was problematic at best. Scholtes, on the other hand, was still upset about 

the JCS’s changes to the plan.26

The point of the exchange was that Metcalf, on being notified of his appointment to command Joint Task Force 120, had attempted to contact Scholtes, 

but for reasons not immediately apparent the general had never responded. 

Searching for an answer, Scholtes suspected that Atlantic Command’s obsolescent secure communications gear was unable to link to the modern equipment 

at Joint Special Operations Command. He explained the situation but could 

not restrain himself from emphasizing a key joint doctrine tenet, namely, the 

23 Interv, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

24 Msg, LANTCOM to JCS et al., 24 0007Z Oct 1983, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/

LANTCOM), CMH. 25 Ibid.

26 Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 
Final Planning

139

superior headquarters should establish communications with the subordinate 

headquarters, not vice versa. Scholtes’ observation, gratuitous under the circumstances, left the admiral seething. It was not an auspicious beginning to a 

command relationship.27

Those attending the Atlantic Command meeting on the morning of 24 

October included General Trobaugh; Colonel Akers and one assistant, Maj. 

Thomas A. Bruno; the XVIII Airborne Corps G–3, Col. James H. Johnson 

Jr.; and the XVIII Airborne Corps liaison officer to Atlantic Command, Lt. 

Col. Richard C. Caporiccio. Prior to the meeting Trobaugh talked to General 

Schwarzkopf, who had received a necessarily general briefing on the operation 

on his way to the conference from the Forces Command’s deputy chief of staff 

for operations, Maj. Gen. Richard G. Graves. General Graves left Schwarzkopf 

under the impression that J-hour would be 0300. The Army participants met 

briefly with Admiral Metcalf, who explained his concept of command-andcontrol arrangements. He told them that he planned to make Schwarzkopf the 

overall ground force commander. At this point, Trobaugh objected vigorously 

because Schwarzkopf was junior to him, stating “I told him that . . . I had 

already been told that I was to control the U.S. ground forces in there.” He further added that the corps commander, General Mackmull, should command 

the long-term operation and cited as precedent the Dominican Republic intervention of 1965, where XVIII Airborne Corps commander Lt. Gen. Bruce 

Palmer Jr. had served as the U.S. ground force commander. Schwarzkopf sided 

with Trobaugh. The two left the meeting and telephoned General Mackmull to 

inform him of their recommendation.28

While Mackmull certainly agreed with Trobaugh and Schwarzkopf, evidence is lacking as to what happened to the initiative. Apparently, a host 

of other contentious issues subsumed their idea. Admiral McDonald was 

already on record as opposed to bringing Mackmull into the operation, so 

perhaps that was enough. In any event, Schwarzkopf remained the senior 

Army adviser to Metcalf, and Metcalf continued as the overall ground force 

commander.29

At the conclusion of the call to Mackmull, Trobaugh and Schwarzkopf 

attended a general meeting presided over by Admiral Metcalf. A number of 

high-ranking officers participated, including Admiral McDonald, General 

Scholtes, and Brig. Gen. Robert B. Patterson, who represented Military 

Airlift Command. Several State Department officials, led by Deputy Assistant 

Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs L. Craig Johnstone, were also 

present. The senior Army officers had arrived expecting a fairly structured 

program with formal briefings. Instead, the presentations were informal, more 

like a seminar than a decision briefing. The participants sat around a table and 

27 Ibid.

28 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and Pirnie with Schwarzkopf, 

1 Nov 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, G–3, XVIII Abn Corps, 23 2315 Oct 1983, Corps 

EOC Duty Off, EOC Recs, Opn UF, Entry 228, UD–06W, RG 338, NARA–CP. 29 Intervs, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, and Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH.
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140

talked about the role of their commands in the operation. A fairly freewheeling, sometimes very animated, discussion followed.30

The State Department representatives wanted Scholtes to add another 

objective to his target list—Richmond Hill Prison in St. George’s, where 

the Revolutionary Military Council had detained all political prisoners. In 

Scholtes’ view, given the press of time, a major alteration was not feasible and, 

in addition, the prison was not militarily significant. Yet Johnstone and his 

associates insisted that they had a plan. Scholtes wondered who in the State 

Department was capable of preparing a military plan and why they would 

attempt it. After several increasingly heated exchanges of opinion, McDonald 

intervened and ordered Scholtes to take Richmond Hill Prison. The foreign 

service officers then allowed Scholtes to examine their plan; however, when he 

asked for a copy, they refused to give him one. (Later, he learned that they had 

considered the plan “too highly classified” to do so.) Given Scholtes’ position, 

this rationale was at best Kafkaesque. Scholtes would later maintain that 24 

October was the “most astounding day of my life in the military.”31

In the discussion that followed the briefings, the lack of intelligence on the 

condition of the runway worried all the participants. The Air Force had failed 

in an attempt to insert a Navy special operations team into the Point Salines 

area during the night of 23–24 October. As a result, no one knew whether a 

C–130 could actually land on the partially completed airstrip. Trobaugh was 

also concerned about the timing of the various events. The three Army generals discussed them at length and concluded that the plan as it now stood made 

little sense. Scholtes proposed delaying the operation one day to insert another 

reconnaissance team. After listening in on their discussion, Metcalf agreed. 

One of the State Department representatives, however, strongly opposed 

any delay due to the danger of losing the support of the island states in the 

area. McDonald, who had little respect for the military capabilities of the 

Grenadians, then ended the debate by insisting that the operation proceed as 

planned. The conferees reluctantly went along. In the end, however, McDonald 

delayed J-hour until 0500 to give Scholtes an opportunity to insert one more 

special operations team that evening and to disseminate any intelligence it 

collected to the assault force. With this shift, J-hour and H-hour became the 

same time. This left the special operations forces with only twelve minutes of 

lessening darkness before first light, 0512 Grenada time. They almost certainly 

would be attacking in daylight.32

In the space of one conference the special operations forces, in effect, 

had gone from the supported ground force whose unique characteristics 

30 Intervs, Bishop with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, and with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, plus 

Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; George P. Shultz, Turmoil and 

Triumph, pp. 332–34. 31 Interv, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

32 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, [JTF 120], n.d., Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), 

CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, and with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, plus 

Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, and Pirnie with Schwarzkopf, 1 Nov 1985, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Views of Richmond Hill Prison
The Rucksack War

142

determined the scheme of land maneuver to a supporting force that assisted 

a conventional unit attacking in circumstances that maximized the latter’s 

strengths. Admiral McDonald had achieved this result simply by changing 

the timing of the assault by special operations forces. In both the JCS and 

Atlantic Command plans, the special operations forces and the ranger battalions had responsibility for all but one of the key targets and faced the 

strongest defenses. The Atlantic Command version, however, allowed the 

defenders to see the Americans, whereas the JCS version did not. No wonder 

Scholtes later considered the day “astounding.”33

The underlying premise throughout the conference was that the military capacity of the Grenadians, even when reinforced by the Cubans, was 

so low that, at worst, resistance would be scattered, disorganized, and ineffective. Everyone assumed that the 82d Airborne Division would enter the 

island only after all organized resistance had ceased and that it would perform only a peacekeeping mission. The division’s role appeared so perfunctory 

that Admiral Metcalf not only overlooked asking Trobaugh but also failed to 

address the key logistical issues the concept change raised. In particular, the ad 

hoc medical arrangements, inadequate if U.S. forces sustained mass casualties, 

received no mention.34

With the attack still scheduled for the next day, 25 October, time was 

pressing. Before the conference was half over, Metcalf and Schwarzkopf 

departed. Accompanied by a small staff, they boarded an aircraft and flew 

to Barbados. (Only after their arrival did they learn that the time of the 

attack had slipped to 0500.) A helicopter transferred them from the island 

to the USS Guam, which had become the flagship for Joint Task Force 120. 

By then, the rest of the conferees in Norfolk had scattered to their duty 

stations.35

Two other general officers also left for the eastern Caribbean, but they 

made stops en route. General Scholtes alighted at Hunter Army Airfield, where 

he received a briefing on the plans of the two ranger battalions, before heading on to Barbados. General Patterson went to the Joint Special Operations 

Command headquarters, where he talked to General Field, General Scholtes’ 

deputy. Designated the airlift commander by the Military Airlift Command, 

Patterson was concerned about follow-on airlift requirements and had yet to 

see anything about command relationships. Old friends, the two men made a 

handshake agreement that, as soon as the ranger units had landed, the twelve 

C–130s carrying them would fly to Barbados and revert to Patterson’s control. After the meeting Patterson boarded a C–5A bound for Barbados. It was 

loaded with Task Force 160, whose men and equipment were drawn largely 

from the Army’s 160th Aviation Battalion from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. 

33 Intervs, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999 (quoted word), and Pirnie with Schwarzkopf, 1 

Nov 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 34 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 35 Intervs, Bishop with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, and Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Final Planning

143

As part of General Scholtes’ Joint Task Force 123, the aviators would fly the 

ground elements from Barbados to their objectives on Grenada.36

At the end of the conference General Trobaugh remained concerned that 

Atlantic Command might not understand the notification sequence in airborne 

operations. Before leaving Norfolk, he and Colonel Akers sought out Admiral 

McDonald’s J–3, Navy Commodore Robert S. Owen. A short conversation 

revealed that Atlantic Command headquarters believed its operations order 

required the division to land in the target area within twenty hours of notification rather than depart Fort Bragg within twenty hours, an interpretation at 

variance with the understanding experienced airborne officers had. This meant 

a much earlier departure than the 82d’s planners had assumed. Further discussion led to the conclusion that the division would comply with McDonald’s 

wishes if it could sortie within ten hours of notification. Trobaugh and Akers 

agreed that this was feasible because the division had already completed much 

of its planning, an activity that took up almost half the time in the division’s 

usual notification sequence. The 82d could not, however, pre-position any 

equipment or supplies quite as soon as it normally would because that would 

violate the stringent operational security measures surrounding the preparations. With this point clarified to everyone’s mutual satisfaction, Trobaugh and 

Akers departed for Fort Bragg.37

Division Support Command, 23–24 October

While General Trobaugh and his staff officers attended the Norfolk conference on 23 October, Col. William F. Daly Jr.’s 82d Support Command 

continued detailed logistical planning at Fort Bragg. Preparations had begun 

immediately after Trobaugh’s Sunday afternoon planning conference, which 

Colonel Daly and a few of his key officers had attended. Upon returning to 

his office, Daly directed his staff to develop deployment options to support the 

division’s possible move to Grenada. The staff officers developed four, which 

they briefed to a gathering that included almost all the key logistical specialists in the division, the men who would have to implement the plan finally 

adopted. The assistant division commander for support, General Smith, and 

the division G–4, Colonel Crabtree, attended along with representatives of 

the corps G–4 section. The role of all these men was to monitor the discussions, interjecting pertinent observations when appropriate. The key participants came from the support command. In addition to Daly, they included 

three officers intimately involved in the movement and management of materiel throughout the division: his executive officer, Lt. Col. Ronald F. Kelly; his 

S–3, Maj. Samuel S. Vitucci, who also commanded the Provisional Movement 

36 Intervs, Bishop with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, and with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, plus Hinckley with 

Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Msg, LANTCOM to JCS et al., 24 0007Z Oct 

1983, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), CMH. Task Force 160 also had some assets 

from the 158th Aviation Battalion. 37 Interv, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Commodore was 

the official rank for one-star flag officers in the U.S. Navy from 1983 until 1985, when the title 

reverted to rear admiral lower half.
The Rucksack War

144

Control Center; and the commander of the 182d Materiel Management 

Center, Maj. William M. Causey Jr. Equally important were Daly’s three battalion commanders in charge of the labor force—Lt. Col. John J. Cusick of 

the 407th Supply and Service Battalion, Lt. Col. Kenneth C. Sever of the 782d 

Maintenance Battalion, and Lt. Col. Edward B. Wilson of the 307th Medical 

Battalion.38

Two of the options the staff briefed involved flying directly to Grenada in 

C–141s and the other two to Barbados in C–141s, transferring to C–130s, and 

then flying to Grenada. As circumstances dictated, the division could either 

airdrop or airland onto the island. Both of the Barbados options required the 

division support command to deploy elements in advance of the main body to 

assist in transferring men, equipment, and stores between aircraft.39

Colonel Daly regarded the Barbados options without enthusiasm because 

he disliked the idea of dispatching his logistical units in advance of the rest of 

the division to establish an intermediate staging base. Atlantic Command had 

not allocated any aircraft for the early transfer of such assets to this location, 

meaning that any Barbados scenario would require the command to revise its 

operations order. Given the speed with which it was mounting the operation, 

such a change seemed highly unlikely. More important, the main elements of a 

support command did not normally deploy to the forward area; they operated 

from their home station. Daly anticipated that his headquarters would be fully 

committed to controlling supply operations at Fort Bragg and, through its 

forward area support teams, to supporting the brigades in the area of operations. In the end, he chose to follow General Mackmull’s solution: The division would use Fort Bragg as an intermediate staging base. This became the 

basic concept underlying all subsequent logistical preparations.40

If an intermediate staging base became necessary on Barbados, Daly knew 

that the corps’ 1st Support Command alone possessed the manpower, training, 

and experience to establish it for the division. During all the exercises in which 

the division had heretofore participated, the corps had always identified the need 

for, established, and ran intermediate staging bases. In the rush to get ready, 

however, Daly had paid little attention to the question. Once he and his staff had 

worked out their concept of operations, they focused on the next pressing task at 

hand: the equipment and supply status of the 2d and 3d Brigades.41

38 Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. Documents in the official file contain conflicting information on the 182d’s 

designation. Usage in this work conforms to the official guidance in TOE 29–53H3, 15 Jun 1973, 

chg. 19, TOE files, CMH. 39 Robert N Seigle, “Looking Back at Urgent Fury,” pp. 18–19, 22, 24, 57–58; Intervs, 

author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986, with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, and 

with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Some disagreement exists about the four 

options, probably because of the passage of time. Daly did not remember agreeing to options 

three and four, but both Smith and Perkins did. Their recollections are at least tangentially 

confirmed by Seigle and Rabon. 40 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

41 Ibid.; RCmts, Reardon, Jun 2004, Hist files (Drafts), CMH.
Final Planning

145

On the morning of 23 October, 

while General Trobaugh met with 

the other senior leaders in Norfolk 

and while one of Colonel Akers’ 

assistants, Maj. Thomas D. Smith, 

drafted the division’s operations 

order, the 82d Support Command 

conducted a round of readiness briefings. Following Trobaugh’s instructions, all of the division’s battalion 

commanders appeared and outlined 

every possible aspect of their units’ 

makeup—equipment, supply, training, personnel, inoculations, and anything else that would affect their ability 

to take the field. Normally a two-day 

process, the support command compressed it into one. The brigade commanders attended the briefing only 

while their battalion commanders 

made their presentations, so only Daly 

sat through the entire session. When 

Trobaugh returned and inquired as 

to the division’s readiness, Daly could 

reply with precision that its overall operational readiness rate was at 94 percent. The 82d was ready to go.42

In all the hustle, one critical portion of the plan remained incomplete: 

No one could yet determine whether the Point Salines airfield was capable 

of supporting the effort that Atlantic Command envisioned. As a matter of 

course, the 82d Airborne Division’s logistical section maintained files on all 

airfields in potential areas of operation, but the runway at Point Salines was 

still under construction. The information on it was out of date. In addition, 

cloud cover had obscured the site over the preceding days, prompting all concerned to assume that no further information was available. In fact, Colonel 

Akers had recently acquired new imagery that showed the asphalt runway in 

precise detail, but the heavy security that continued to surround the coming 

assault prevented Colonel Crabtree’s logisticians from obtaining copies of the 

latest aerial photographs, apparently because they lacked the requisite security 

clearances. The same thing happened to the Forward Area Support Team II 

coordinator, Maj. Daniel J. Cleary III. When he attempted to secure an aerial 

photograph of the airstrip on 24 October in hopes of doing some last-minute 

planning, Major Cleary got nothing because he lacked the necessary security 

clearance. As a result, the logisticians supplying the operation had no way to 

plot locations for supply dumps and administrative headquarters on and near 

42 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

Major Cleary
The Rucksack War

146

the airhead. If the distribution points for fuel, ammunition, and other classes 

of supply were located in the wrong places, they could sorely impede landings, 

takeoffs, and other airport operations.43

Engineers, 22–24 October

The confusion about imagery did not affect the commanders. When 

Generals Mackmull and Trobaugh wanted an assessment of the airfield at Point 

Salines, they turned to their engineers. The engineers had begun work on the 

operation at 1500 on Saturday, 22 October, when the corps intelligence officer 

contacted the corps engineer topographic officer to request assistance in requisitioning maps of Grenada. A call to the Defense Mapping Agency revealed 

that it had sent all available copies to “another Fort Bragg agency,” which 

turned out to be the headquarters of the Joint Special Operations Command. 

Meanwhile, the corps engineer, Col. Daniel R. Schroeder, in his role as the 

20th Engineer Brigade commander, had initiated a call-up of selected members of the 63d Engineer Company. By 0030, on 23 October, the company 

had copies of the Joint Special Operations Command map, an Esso road map 

of the island, and had begun work on the first of a series of Grenada maps. 

Throughout the operation, the mapmakers at XVIII Airborne Corps made do 

with the available information and then improved the maps as they obtained 

more data. By Monday afternoon, 24 October, they had produced enough 

maps to sustain the two ranger battalions in the initial assault force.44

Colonel Schroeder had attended General Mackmull’s Saturday night 

meeting for XVIII Airborne Corps staff principals. The corps commander was 

particularly concerned about the engineering implications of the operation. 

The only ways to move a large body of troops into Grenada were either by 

ship or by aircraft. Consequently, he wanted to know in as much detail as possible the special characteristics of the island’s airfields and of the port of St. 

George’s. What, in particular, were their capacities? He also wanted to know 

about special environmental considerations. Was fresh water available in sufficient quantities to sustain a brigade or more of troops? Furthermore, what 

was the climate like? He also indicated that Schroeder needed to look at the 

task organization in conjunction with the corps operations officer to ensure 

that the combined arms team going into Grenada contained the proper mix of 

engineers to support it.45

Colonel Schroeder assigned the task of planning engineer support operations 

for the XVIII Airborne Corps to the assistant corps engineer, Lt. Col. Andrew M. 

43 Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Intervs, author with Cleary, 15 Jul 1986, with Crabtree, 24 Jan 1989, with C. Mitchell, 16 

Feb 1989, plus McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also, in same 

file, Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, which discusses Crabtree’s briefing of the S–4s 

immediately after the division commander’s meeting on Sunday. 44 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. G, pp. I-G-2 to I-G5, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Andrew M. Perkins Jr., “Operation Urgent

Fury,” pp. 86–90; Interv (quoted words), author with Schroeder, 2 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 45 Interv, author with Schroeder, 2 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Final Planning

147

Perkins Jr. Colonel Perkins tailored an engineer support package to supplement 

the engineers organic to the division, adding skills from the 20th Engineer Brigade 

not available among the divisional engineers, such as electricians who could repair 

any battle damage to the Grenadian power grid. At the same time, 283d Engineer 

Detachment terrain analysts, using the latest aerial photographs, began to collect 

detailed and specific information about the port and the airfield.46

The 82d’s engineers first became involved on Sunday evening, 23 October. 

Colonel Akers telephoned the assistant division engineer, Maj. Donald M. 

Tomasik, and told him to come to the headquarters immediately with his boss, 

Lt. Col. Lawrence L. Izzo, who also commanded the division’s 307th Engineer 

Battalion. The two men arrived there at around 2000 and found that the 2d 

Brigade planners were already hard at work. Akers briefly outlined the operation and then asked for both an assessment of the Point Salines airstrip on 

the basis of recent aerial photographs and a plan for an airfield construction 

package to keep the airfield operating.47

From the photos, the field appeared to be in good condition. Normally, 

the airstrip at a major international airport would receive five layers of asphalt 

during construction. Colonel Izzo and Major Tomasik could tell that some of 

46 Ibid.; Intervs, author with A. Perkins, 9 and 23 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

47 Intervs, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, and with Tomasik, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.

Schroeder as a brigadier general Colonel Perkins 
Point Salines airstrip and control tower 
Final Planning

149

the layers did not extend down the length of the runway, so obviously construction on the strip was incomplete. They could not determine how many layers 

the construction workers had applied or where the bearing surface was weakest. As a result, they could not answer two key questions: Was there enough 

asphalt on the runway to support a fully loaded C–141, and was the difference 

in height between the layers so abrupt that it might cause aircraft landing or 

taking off to blow their tires? To deal with the possibility that the surface 

would need further work before C–141s could land, the two officers planned 

for a small airfield construction element, less than a platoon in size, to stand 

by at Fort Bragg. It would deploy only if needed.48

Division Artillery, 22–25 October

When division headquarters summoned a planning group on Saturday, 22 

October, it included one artilleryman—the commander of the 1st Battalion, 

320th Field Artillery, Lt. Col. Duane E. Williams. His unit usually supported 

the 2d Brigade. As long as planners could assume the availability of almost 

unlimited numbers of aircraft to deliver the division to its objective, the 2d 

Brigade Task Force would take all its artillery and mortars with it. On Sunday, 

however, as the number of airframes that Military Airlift Command could 

furnish began to decline, the planners had to confront the issue of whether the 

task force should take mortars or artillery tubes. The steepness of the terrain 

suggested mortars, but greater range and accuracy argued for the tubes. The 

commanders of the 2d and 3d Battalions, 325th Infantry, Lt. Cols. Jack L. 

Hamilton and John W. Raines, concluded that, on balance, the artillery would 

be more useful for the task force. The decision, of course, rested with their 

brigade commander, Colonel Silvasy, who chose to cut the infantry’s 4.2-inch 

mortars completely from the flow and directed that each infantry company 

take only two of its three 81-mm. mortars. Additional fire support would rest 

with two 105-mm. batteries, Batteries B and C, 320th Field Artillery, which 

normally supported the 2d and 3d Battalions, 325th Infantry.49

On Sunday, 23 October, Colonel Williams suggested strongly that the division artillery commander, Col. Fred N. Halley, and the assistant division fire support coordinator, Lt. Col. John J. Ryneska, needed to join the planning team. 

Headquarters demurred, citing the need to restrict the number of planners to 

preserve operational security. It did, however, allow Williams to bring in one additional artilleryman on Sunday evening, his battalion S–3, Maj. Paul V. Passaro.50

Based on the intelligence and the number of aircraft available, Colonel 

Williams and Major Passaro concluded that they could not bring in a full 

48 Intervs, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, and with Tomasik, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 49 Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, p. VII-9, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH. See also Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983]; Danner 

and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983; McMichael with Steele, Glass, Stewart, 

and Henson, 5 Apr 1984; and Bishop with Baine, 10 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 50 Interv, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

150

complement of howitzers, vehicles, and communications equipment. Williams 

emphatically objected to bringing in fragments of batteries, each consisting 

of only three howitzers out of a normal complement of six. One of the things 

that all the planners agreed on was that the division had to have as early as 

possible enough indirect firepower available to support operations beyond the 

airhead. To solve the problem, the two officers decided to use fire direction 

vehicles to tow the tubes. Williams believed that communications would be 

“absolutely essential” and intended to bring every communications specialist 

he could lay his hands on. By using his fire direction vehicles to pull his tubes, 

he would ensure complete batteries and the communications necessary to allow 

firing with full effect. Every constrained loading plan involves some tradeoffs. Williams and Passaro decided to leave some target acquisition equipment 

behind, realizing that accuracy might become a problem in difficult terrain.51

The arrangement meant that the howitzers would be less mobile than normal on the ground but that they could accompany the infantry as it attacked 

toward St. George’s. Initially, they would come under the direct control of 

Colonels Hamilton and Raines, but once the troops reached the vicinity of the 

Grenadian capital, Williams planned to reestablish battalion control.52

One of the real problems that Williams and Passaro faced during the 

planning phase was the need to determine the various kinds and amounts of 

51 Ibid. (quoted words); Scott R. McMichael, “Urgent Fury,” p. 10.

52 Interv, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.

Artillerymen prepare projectiles for their howitzers.
Final Planning

151

ammunition the operation would require. By late Sunday they had decided that 

the division would probably operate in a peacekeeping role. Consulting artillery after action reports from the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic, 

they concluded that the artillery needed fewer high-explosive and special munitions, such as antitank shells, and more illumination rounds. Williams decided 

that a 60 to 40 ratio of high-explosive to illumination rounds would do the job. 

Soldiers at the Fort Bragg Ammunition Supply Point had already packed pallets with various combinations of shells for a variety of contingency operations. 

Over the next two days Passaro began the laborious task of identifying the individual pallets that most closely approximated the division’s needs.53

Division Aviation, 22–24 October

The 82d Aviation Battalion’s S–4, Capt. Jimmie M. Rabon, was not among 

those deemed to have a need to know about preparations for the operation. On 

Saturday, 22 October, however, he received a telephone call to go to the battalion headquarters. Once there, he dealt with a variety of questions about the 

amounts of supplies needed to support the battalion under various circumstances—“If we took this many people to war and we had this many airplanes, 

what would we need?” Captain Rabon answered what he considered hypothetical queries with precise figures on the number of short tons of food, gas, 

ammunition, and repair parts required and then departed. Weekend exercises 

of this sort were all part of life at Fort Bragg, one aspect of the 82d’s intense 

efforts to maintain a high state of readiness.54

Rabon’s battalion commander was Lt. Col. Robert N. Seigle, who doubled 

as the division aviation officer. Colonel Seigle first learned something definite 

about the operation on Sunday morning. Around 0930, on 23 October, he 

received a call from Colonel Akers asking him to come to Akers’ house in 

an hour in civilian clothes. Seigle immediately assumed that the division was 

going to Beirut, a misconception Akers speedily punctured when he arrived. 

The aviator acknowledged that he needed some orientation because he did not 

know Grenada’s exact location. Akers sent Seigle to do his planning at corps 

headquarters, which had the only available map of the region. At this point, 

division headquarters expected that the aviators would fly from Fort Bragg to 

Grenada, using only their UH–60 Black Hawks.55

Seigle contacted his two Black Hawk company commanders, Maj. William 

J. Elder Jr. of Company B, who had attended the Saturday planning session, 

and Maj. Elton S. Sledge Jr. of Company A, and the three went to corps headquarters together. Joined at some point by the battalion S–3, Maj. Lonnie E. 

Weck, and the S–4, Captain Rabon, the group calculated that flying to Grenada 

by helicopter would take two days, sixteen to eighteen hours of actual flight 

time, with all that this implied in terms of wear and tear on men and machines. 

53 Ibid.; Lawrence M. Greenberg, United States Army Unilateral and Coalition Operations 

in the 1965 Dominican Republic Intervention, pp. 31–55; Lawrence A. Yates, Power Pack, pp. 

73–143; Bruce Palmer Jr., Intervention in the Caribbean, pp. 30–68. 54 Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

55 Interv, Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

152

They mapped out a route and passed it on to corps, which would have to 

pre-position fuel along the way. They planned to fly to an isolated field in the 

Florida Everglades and then island hop across the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, the 

Virgin Islands, and ultimately to either Barbados or Grenada.56

They also developed a task force organization built on Major Elder’s 

Company B. Elder would take fifteen Black Hawks with him, a full complement. Nine would come from his own unit and six with their crews from 

Company A to replace those from his company that were undergoing repairs. 

Support elements would fly on C–141s directly from Pope Air Force Base to 

Grenada after Task Force B arrived. That evening the officers briefed General 

Trobaugh, who approved their work but told them to put everything on hold. 

They were to come to work on Monday just as if it were a normal duty day 

unless he told them differently.57

On Monday, 24 October, Colonel Seigle reiterated to division staff members that if General Trobaugh wanted to have aviation support early in the 

operation, the division would have to predeploy aircraft and crews to an intermediate staging base. This observation produced agreement but no orders 

to begin deploying Task Force B. The division counted on the availability 

of the aviation element supporting General Scholtes’ operations, Task Force 

160, until its own aviators arrived. During the afternoon Seigle attended a 

2d Brigade planning meeting, where he noted that the division had allowed 

Colonel Silvasy to include a few more planners and had provided more specific guidance than had heretofore been available. This, plus the continuing 

silence of division headquarters on the aviation task force, caused Seigle to 

conclude that the probability of his battalion’s participation was declining as 

time passed. The aviators were aware of an undercurrent of excitement and 

tension in the division, but during most of the day they heard nothing more 

about Grenada.58

That night, division headquarters directed Seigle and his planning cell to 

continue their work in the division’s emergency operations center until 2200 

and then to depart for home. At this time the colonel learned that if Task 

Force B accompanied the division, it would go in Air Force aircraft. The aviators modified their previous plan in that light. They would break down their 

helicopters, load them aboard five C–5A aircraft (the largest transports in the 

Air Force’s inventory), fly to Barbados (the Air Force did not want to risk 

C–5As at Salines), reassemble their machines, and fly them from Barbados to 

Grenada. Support elements would fly, as before, directly from Pope Air Force 

Base to Point Salines aboard C–141s.59

56 Ibid.; Intervs, GWG with Elder and McWilliams, 14 Dec 1983, and with Weck, [1983], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Seigle, “Looking Back at Urgent Fury,” p. 18. 57 Intervs, Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, and GWG with Elder and McWilliams, 14 Dec 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 58 Intervs, Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, and author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 59 Interv, Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Final Planning

153

Communications, 22–24 October

Atlantic Command’s communications planning for Urgent Fury was conspicuous mainly by its absence. No Signal Corps officers had accompanied the 

division planning team to Norfolk on 22 October, and Atlantic Command did not 

call a meeting of communications planners prior to the beginning of the operation. 

As a result, Admiral McDonald’s staff did not disseminate communications-electronics operating instructions to the participating forces, and hence no assignment 

of frequencies, call signs, code words, and so forth. This was a serious oversight. 

The commander of the 82d Signal Battalion, Lt. Col. Frank G. Stump III, who 

was also the division signal officer, observed that “a 30-minute conference prior to 

the assault would have eliminated almost all the coordination problems.”60

Although Atlantic Command chose not to implement the existing plan 

for Caribbean operations, Concept Plan 2360, it could have executed the plan’s 

communications-electronics annex with minor changes. The annex encompassed 

physical compatibility (high-frequency versus very high-frequency versus ultrahigh-frequency radios) and procedural capability (frequencies, call signs, and 

secure algorithms). The command never stated its rationale for rejecting this 

option, but the difficulty of physically distributing compatible communicationselectronics operating instructions to Joint Task Force 120 in the available time 

may have driven the decision. Once disseminated, each radio required manual 

(as opposed to electronic) adjustment, a further time-consuming process. As an 

alternative, Atlantic Command could have implemented a preexisting communications plan designed to support the activation of the joint task force, but because 

the organization had never been intended for Caribbean operations, most of its 

subordinate elements either did not have copies of the communications plan or 

lacked the procedural information necessary to enter the net. Atlantic Command 

therefore rejected both options and chose to go with no plan, an alternative that 

only made sense if it anticipated no organized opposition to the intervention.61

In his initial operations order, Admiral McDonald specified six communications nets for the conduct of the operation. The command relied on its Command 

Net Alpha, a single-channel tactical satellite net, for joint communications 

involving the ground forces. It was to handle all traffic—operations, intelligence, 

logistics, and administration—and included Admiral Metcalf’s Joint Task Force 

120, General Scholtes’ Joint Task Force 123, General Trobaugh’s Task Force 

121, and several other headquarters. In the scramble to get the operation under 

way, however, Metcalf failed to designate a control station to direct the net. As 

a consequence, all users had to compete for access to a communications satellite 

that linked the system’s users but was designed, absent instructions from a net 

60 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 3-15, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 61 Ibid., pp. 1–2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn 

Corps, [Jan 1984], pp. 4, 7–8, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Rpt, [DCSOPS, DA], 

1985, sub: Lessons Learned Grenada: U.S. Army Lessons Learned from Operation Urgent Fury, p. 

IV-e-1, Hist files (PDocs/DA/DCSOPS), CMH; Draft AAR, [Opn Urgent Fury], JCS, [1984], sec. 

12, pp. 1–7, Hist files (PDocs/DoD/JCS), CMH; MFR, Gibson, 5 Mar 1984, sub: Grenada Lessons 

Learned 28 Feb 1984 Visit to Fort Bragg, N.C., Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH. 
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control station, to give priority to the transmitter with the highest power. Because 

Army radios were much lower in power than their Air Force and Navy counterparts, Army communicators in many instances lacked access to the net.62

Army communications planning began when the 2d Brigade signal officer, 

Maj. Timothy L. Hull, attended the division’s planning meeting on Saturday, 

22 October. Major Hull immediately asked one of Colonel Akers’ assistants, 

Major Smith, to include in the planning both Colonel Stump and the assistant 

division signal officer, Maj. John C. Woloski. Smith told Hull that security 

restrictions made them unavailable at the moment but that they would join at 

the earliest opportunity. Until then, Hull had to do the division-level as well as 

the brigade-level communications planning.63

His basic premise was that the task force would use the standard division communications frequency modulated nets. He requested that the 3d 

Battalion, 325th Infantry (the battalion going into Pearls in the initial plans), 

brigade command post, and division assault command post each take a tactical satellite radio. The 82d Airborne Division tactical command net was, like 

Atlantic Command’s strategic communications net, single-channel, secure, and 

based on a satellite. General Trobaugh could use his satellite radio to communicate with Fort Bragg, while Colonel Silvasy at Salines and Colonel Raines at 

Pearls would need theirs if they were to communicate directly once the operation began. The 2d Brigade was still equipped with obsolescent Nestor secure 

communications gear and was not scheduled to receive more modern Vinson 

equipment until after it rotated out of Division Ready Brigade-1 status. The 

new equipment, when attached to radios, would automatically encode and 

decode digital voice transmissions, provided the user manually inserted the 

correct key code. As long as the operation involved only the 2d Brigade with its 

usual attachments, Hull foresaw no difficulty in using the older system.64

Hull’s reservations about accepting Vinson devices reflected both a natural hesitancy about distributing equipment on which there had been no time 

to train and the degree of difficulty involved in setting the correct key codes 

in the Vinson. The procedure involved aligning a cryptological device over 

the Vinson equipment. It was essentially a black box, divided into two separate compartments. One compartment was empty, while the other contained 

numerous small spring-loaded rods set to various depths. When in position, 

the compartment containing the rods slid down into the empty compartment, 

62 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], pp. 2, 7–8, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; ibid., 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, pp. 1–2, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Rpt, [DCSOPS, DA], 1985, sub: Lessons Learned Grenada . . . , Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/DCSOPS), CMH; Draft AAR, [Opn Urgent Fury], JCS, [1984], sec. 12, pp. 

1–7, Hist files (PDocs/DoD/JCS), CMH. See also Msg, LANTCOM to JCS et al., 24 0007Z Oct 

1983; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, LANTCOM, 6 Feb 1984, encl. III, pp. IV-5 and IV-10. Both in 

Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), CMH. 63 Interv, Parker with Hull, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

64 Ibid.; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], pp. 7–8, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; FM 7–92, The Infantry Reconnaissance Platoon and Squad 

(Airborne, Air Assault, Light Infantry), Dec 1992, pp. E-19 to E-20; RCmts, Reardon, June 

2004, Hist files (Drafts), CMH.
Communications equipment 

in use during Urgent Fury
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which allowed the rods to penetrate the Vinson device to prearranged depths 

and, in the process, move the Vinson keys, which were then locked into place. 

The radio was thus “keyed” to encode and decode transmissions only from 

radios similarly aligned. Because the entire system was mechanical rather than 

electronic, keying radios outfitted with Vinson equipment was a painstaking 

and time-consuming process requiring considerable precision.65

Major Hull’s avoidance of the device proved short-lived. Colonel Stump 

and Major Woloski attended the division staff’s briefing for General Trobaugh 

on the evening of 23 October following his return from Norfolk. The general’s decision to plan for a two-brigade operation immediately called into 

question the assumption that Nestor would suffice. Ease of communicating 

with the 3d Brigade, already outfitted with Vinson equipment, dictated that 

the 2d Brigade immediately convert to the new devices. Hull recommended 

the change to Colonel Stump who approved it, but neither officer addressed 

the larger issue of communications compatibility with the other units participating in the operation. The assistant chief of staff for force modernization 

could have told them that the naval units involved in the operation did not 

have radios compatible with frequency modulated (FM) radios equipped with 

Vinson devices, but the division staff section dealing with force modernization 

had been excluded from the planning. Instead, early the next day, the communications-electronics officers of the 2d and 3d Battalions, 325th Infantry, and 

the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, began a crash conversion program that 

consisted of issuing equipment and training operators. Also excluded from the 

planning, they knew that something was afoot but not exactly what.66

The decision to shift to Vinson equipment was but one of two major communications issues that confronted Colonel Stump when he first learned of 

the plan on Sunday, 23 October. Stump and his staff normally configured the 

communications element that supported the division assault command post 

in the expectation that the XVIII Airborne Corps command post would also 

deploy and provide the sophisticated and powerful radios that the division 

lacked. In the initial planning Stump anticipated, at least implicitly, that the 

corps would be present, and thus he designed the division’s communications 

resources accordingly; however, on Sunday evening the division learned that 

Atlantic Command had removed the corps from the chain of command. It 

was clear that the corps’ radios would not be going to Grenada. 

While the implications of this change on the ability to communicate were 

evident to Colonel Stump, they were not to the rest of the staff. Stump had two 

radio teletypes available to deploy with the assault command post. Both were 

mounted in Gamma Goats, 1 1/4-ton, 6 by 6, three-axle articulated trucks that 

the Army used to haul light loads of moderate bulk. With their trailers, which 

were required to carry the generators, they would occupy an inordinate amount 

of airframe space in the small number of available C–141s. Stump realized that 

65 Interv, author with Reardon, 9 Nov 2004, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

66 Intervs, Parker with Stump, [Nov 1983], with Woloski, [Nov 1983], and with Hull, [Nov 

1983], plus author with House, May 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also RCmts, Reardon, 

Jun 2004, Hist files (Drafts), CMH.
Final Planning

157

this equipment was necessary for the command post to receive and transmit hardcopy messages, but the other staff officers deemed this equipment as too bulky. 

He also suggested that the division move a multichannel radio with a big switchboard onto the island early in the operation, but the staff was unreceptive. Stump 

finally concluded that there were too many imponderables to warrant his pressing 

these equipment issues any further. He did not know whether the division would 

mount a one- or a two-brigade operation, whether the division would airland 

or airdrop (in which case a radio teletype would definitely be in the way), or 

what communications equipment other participating units might have. He thus 

decided to use Major Hull’s plan and send a radio teletype to Grenada only if 

circumstances appeared to warrant its inclusion after troops were on the ground. 

Unfortunately, the limited number of available aircraft also dictated that Task 

Force 121 deploy without the equipment it needed to enter Atlantic Command’s 

backup net, a system of high-frequency radios using yet a third kind of security 

device. In the meantime, Woloski had contacted Atlantic Command and made 

arrangements to reserve certain FM frequencies for the exclusive use of Task 

Force 121, which would ensure that the division could communicate internally 

without interfering with the transmissions of the other participants.67

Medical, 22–24 October

XVIII Airborne Corps surgeon Col. James H. Rumbaugh had attended 

a preliminary briefing for the corps staff in the corps emergency operations 

67 Intervs, Parker with Stump, [Nov 1983], with Woloski, [Nov 1983], and with Hull, [Nov 

1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 3-14, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Ltr, Trobaugh to Vuono, n.d., sub: Feedback on the 

CAC Preliminary Draft, Grenada—Operational LL, Hist files (PDocs/DA/GWG), CMH. 

Gamma Goat, with generator 
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center on Saturday night, 22 October. Like the others, he was enjoined neither 

to tell anyone about the operation nor to call anyone to obtain more information. Colonel Rumbaugh’s initial reaction was to regard the situation as just 

one more exercise, simply a little more realistic than usual. He was convinced 

that the corps G–2, Colonel De War, had outdone himself in preparing briefing 

slides that looked like the real thing. He learned the next day that the potential 

objective was Grenada. Only late in the day, with the marines en route, did the 

fact that this was an actual operation begin to sink in. With that realization, 

Rumbaugh began making mental lists of the things that he would have to do 

when he met with his staff. He also contacted the corps’ 44th Medical Brigade 

commander, Col. Jack R. Wilson II, and Colonel Wilson of the division’s 307th 

Medical Battalion, ascertaining that they “knew something was up.” Without 

violating his instructions and discussing the “something” in detail, Rumbaugh 

assured himself that the two Wilsons were also doing useful ruminating that 

they would share with their staffs at the appropriate time.68

Around 1500, on 24 October, the 82d’s surgeon, Lt. Col. Barry S. Sidenberg, 

learned that the division was preparing to launch a real operation. More details 

were forthcoming an hour later during a briefing by Colonel Daly. Most of the key 

officers in the 82d Support Command also attended, including Colonel Wilson of 

the 307th, the only other medical person present. Daly said that the White House 

would decide whether to launch the operation at 1700 local time. The limitations 

under which Colonel Sidenberg operated were exactly the same as those outlined 

to Colonel Rumbaugh. He was to think about the operation but not talk about it 

or to involve anyone else. Sidenberg’s immediate concern was the immunization 

status of the brigade and whether the troops might need shots to protect against 

plague and yellow fever. Given the injunction about discussions, he did not raise 

this or any other issues with Colonel Wilson as the meeting broke up. Consequently, 

the formal planning phase ended in the corps and the division with a few senior 

medical officers aware of the operation but restricted to contemplating the situation. In effect, neither the XVIII Airborne Corps nor the 82d Airborne Division 

engaged in any medical planning prior to the final decision to go or not go.69

Service Support Annex

Operations Order 15–83, written by one of Colonel Akers’ assistants, Major 

Smith, on 24 October, was the final product of the division’s planning effort.70

In line with standard practice, it contained a service support annex prepared 

by the G–4 section. The annex reflected the support concept developed by 

Colonel Daly and his officers, as well as the contributions by Colonel Crabtree 

and his assistants. It covered the topics expected in such a document: command arrangements for logistical support, the kind and amount of supplies 

that would accompany the brigade task force, a system of requesting resupply 

68 Intervs, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov 1987 (quoted words), and with Wilson, 6 Nov 

1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 69 Interv, Wade with Sidenberg, 14 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

70 Unless otherwise noted, this section is based on Opn Order 15–83, 82d Abn Div, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
Final Planning

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from the continental United States, and a detailed treatment of the various 

categories of logistical support—classes of supply in official parlance.71

The service support annex to the operations order stipulated that either 

the division logistician or his representative in the division assault command 

post would monitor and coordinate logistical support for the force. Within the 

guidance the annex provided, the Forward Area Support Team II coordinator, 

Major Cleary, would conduct actual logistical operations in the objective area. 

He would deploy with the first flight of aircraft and take with him an initial 

complement of sixty people. Standard practice in the 82d assigned the responsibility to organize and direct the resupply efforts centered at Fort Bragg to the 

division support commander. This function was so well understood that the 

order only alluded to it in passing.

The 2d Brigade would deploy with enough supplies to sustain itself until 

resupply flights began. The planners allocated the brigade three days’ supply 

of rations with one day’s supply carried by individual soldiers and two days’ 

packed as ballast aboard the unit’s vehicles: 2,500 two-quart canteens, 200 fivequart canteens, and fifteen days’ supply of munitions, including small-arms 

ammunition, grenades, and mortar rounds. 

Once the brigade had deployed, the 82d Support Command at Fort Bragg 

would seek to maintain a three-day supply level within the troop units and 

build up an additional two-day reserve on the island. The 182d Materiel 

Management Center at Fort Bragg would identify preplanned resupply packages, some originating from the Anniston Army Depot for shipment to the 

area of operations. Initially, Colonel Daly’s staff would estimate the supply 

needs of the units on the ground and dispatch resupply at fixed intervals, a 

procedure known as push logistics. Once those units could identify their needs 

themselves, they would send supply requisitions through the brigade logistician 

to Forward Area Support Team II, which would transmit them to the division 

support command via either tactical satellite radio or messengers on aircraft 

returning to Pope Air Force Base, a process known as demand or pull logistics. 

Given the short lines of communications back to the United States, the order 

stipulated that the brigade task force would use Fort Bragg for direct logistical 

support whenever possible. The division transportation officer, Maj. Frederick 

C. Perkins, would try to obtain daily flights by two dedicated logistical resupply aircraft between Pope Air Force Base and Salines and Pearls airfields.

Medical support received only perfunctory treatment in the service support 

annex, which simply restated the medical portion of the Atlantic Command 

operations order without further elaboration. The division order, however, 

went considerably beyond that of Atlantic Command in several other logistical areas, including water, ammunition, fuel, ground transportation, maintenance, support services, and aerial resupply.

Trobaugh’s headquarters recognized that water could be a problem. As 

a remedy, the service support annex required each member of the brigade 

task force to carry five days’ supply of halazone tablets that could be used 

71 Interv, Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
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to purify local ground water. At the same time, each vehicle accompanying 

the force would carry a minimum of two five-gallon water cans. In addition 

to these measures, designed to provide sufficient drinkable water in the first 

hours after the force landed, the 307th Engineer Battalion would attach two 

water purification teams to Forward Area Support Team II. Each equipped 

with an erdlator capable of purifying 420 gallons of freshwater per hour, 

these teams would travel aboard follow-on aircraft rather than with the initial 

assault force. Finally, if the task force still required additional water after the 

erdlators arrived, 1st Support Command would provide a team equipped with 

one 600-gallon-per-hour reverse-osmosis purification unit capable of making 

brackish water and even seawater potable.72

Class III supplies—petroleum, oil, and lubricants—received even more 

attention than water. Units in Task Force 121 would deploy with normal 

supplies of petroleum, oil, and lubricants. Military Airlift Command would 

provide resupply by two different methods: C–130 bladder birds would each 

deliver jet fuel, JP–4, for the turbine engines of the division’s helicopters, and 

other C–130s would deliver additional JP–4 along with gasoline and diesel 

fuel for ground vehicles in 500-gallon blivots. (One C–130 could carry five 

such blivots.) Forward Area Support Team II would receive, store, and issue 

all petroleum products arriving in the area by deploying two 10,000-gallon 

fuel bags for JP–4 and two 2 1/2-ton trucks, each equipped with a 500-gallon 

bladder, one for gasoline and the other for diesel fuel. The annex estimated 

that daily bulk petroleum, oil, and lubricant requirements would run at 20,000 

gallons of JP–4, 1,000 gallons of gasoline, and 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel.

Ammunition requirements reflected the 2d Brigade Task Force configuration that Colonel Silvasy and his staff had developed. The lack of heavy armor 

or aviation on the island, the low probability of intervention by the Cuban Air 

Force, the dense population, and the desire to minimize collateral damage led 

the 2d Brigade to leave its 4.2-inch mortars and all antitank and antipersonnel mines, except for claymores and TOW (tube-launched optically tracked 

wire-guided) missiles at Bragg and to limit each of its battalions to six Stinger 

portable antiaircraft missiles. The brigade also issued 1,728 rounds of 40-mm. 

high-explosive dual-purpose rounds for use in the M203 grenade launcher; 

28,800 rounds of 7.62-mm. linked ammunition with every fifth round a tracer; 

and five cases of M202 rocket launchers. Each launcher was armed with a 

four-round 66-mm. rocket clip. Because the 66-mm. warheads employed white 

phosphorous, they also functioned as incendiary devices. The munitions in 

this special issue encompassed the kinds of ammunition that would be useful 

in infantry close combat, the only kind of defense the Grenadians could wage. 

To prevent accidents en route to the island, division headquarters directed the 

division support command not to issue grenades to the troops at the ammunition supply point. Companies would carry cases of grenades with them.73

72 Intervs, author with Anderson, 9 May 1986, and with Stewart, 4 Dec 2008, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 73 Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; RCmts, Reardon, Jun 2004, 

Hist files (Drafts), CMH.
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161

The divisional concept for ground transportation provided that the 2d 

Brigade S–4, Maj. James F. Whittaker, and the Forward Area Support Team 

II coordinator, Major Cleary, would establish supply routes and traffic control 

procedures pending the arrival of a control element from division headquarters. Intelligence about the Grenadian road system was good but not perfect. 

The annex noted correctly that the island contained 600 kilometers of asphalt 

highway and 300 kilometers of improved roadway that was either gravel-surfaced or simply graded. The main highway, GS–1, that circled the island contained five bridges that exceeded 30 meters in length. The highway that ran the 

20 kilometers between Pearls and St. George’s, GS–2, had three bridges longer 

than 30 meters, steep gradients, and many hairpin curves. The road net linking 

Point Salines to the rest of the island was even more difficult. Passing along 

information obtained from the intelligence section, the logisticians reported 

that a single unpaved road ran from the airfield to GS–1.

All the highways were narrow, averaging 4.6 to 6.0 meters in width, and 

needed repair. The division G–4, Colonel Crabtree, nonetheless estimated that 

the roads could move at least 6,000 metric tons a day. To carry this volume of 

supplies, he proposed to augment the task force’s ground vehicles by commandeering some of the 980 trucks of various sizes and 26 new buses already on 

the island. Without those assets, the division could advance only at the rate at 

which its troops could march, and the resupply of units located any distance 

from the airfield would become far more complicated.

The division’s maintenance plan resembled the division’s austere ground 

transportation plan. Trobaugh wanted the units in the task force to conduct 

preventive maintenance checks and to service their vehicles prior to deployment 

so as to minimize mechanical failures in the area of operations. Maintenance 

there would be restricted to what was mission-essential. The task force would 

return equipment requiring extensive repairs either to Fort Bragg or to other 

designated locations. For equipment that Task Force 121 could retain and 

repair in country, the service support annex established maintenance priorities 

in the following order: mission-essential weapon systems that could be returned 

to combat readiness in the shortest possible time; communications equipment; 

materiel-handling equipment; petroleum, oil, and lubricant-handling and 

-dispersing systems; and trucks, including Gamma Goats.74

Forward Area Support Team II was to make maximum use of its maintenance personnel by organizing them into contact teams that would go forward 

and repair equipment in unit areas. Organizations on the island would cannibalize equipment that maintenance personnel could not quickly return to service. Mechanics would remove serviceable parts, components, and assemblies 

from equipment needing major repairs to immediately restore similar equipment to a combat-ready condition. As the forward area support coordinator, 

Major Cleary would have to approve cannibalization in advance.

74 TM 9–2320–242–35–P, Sep 1970, Direct Support, General Support, and Depot 

Maintenance Repair Parts and Special Tools List for Truck, Cargo, . . . [and] Truck, Ambulance 

. . . , MDC files, CMH.
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Colonel Crabtree warned that conditions peculiar to contingency operations 

could have a major impact on the kind and amount of services that Forward 

Area Support Team II could provide early in the operation. Initially, the support team would be unable to provide bath, laundry, or clothing exchange 

services. Only after the follow-on aircraft arrived would it be able to issue two 

sets of jungle fatigues to each member of the task force. In the interim, the 

troops would have to depend on their A-bags for changes of underwear, socks, 

razors, and various other sundries. After the entire team deployed and received 

additional 1st Support Command specialists, it would establish and stock a 

limited central issue facility that would distribute, exchange, inspect, repair, 

and dispose of the troops’ clothing and equipment. Even so, Fort Bragg would 

still do major repairs.

Colonel Crabtree recognized the importance of graves registration in a 

situation that might involve combat. His annex dealt with the subject in a 

separate subsection of the support services section. Units became responsible for the recovery and transport of human remains to a central collection 

point that Forward Area Support Team II would establish near the brigade 

trains. 1st Support Command would provide one officer to assist the team, 

until it could assume responsibility. At the time, U.S. Army graves registration doctrine required that Army units care for their own dead but not 

for those of the enemy. Like the doctrine, the order did not address the 

question of what to do with decomposing enemy bodies within American 

lines.75

The service support annex outlined the various logistical functions and 

services that would support the tactical fight on the island, but something 

was lacking. Under normal circumstances, many of those functions would 

have been performed concurrently with corps elements. Because Admiral 

McDonald had removed the corps from the chain of command, the division 

could no longer count on corps units arriving without being summoned. This 

had become the responsibility of General Trobaugh in his new role as Army 

Forces commander. The annex did not address the responsibilities imposed 

by this role. In their haste to meet a short suspense, the 82d’s logisticians had 

brought forth a document well conceived to satisfy the needs of a force operating under the direction of a corps headquarters but not one where the corps 

headquarters was absent from the chain of command.

Corps Support Command, 23–25 October

Whatever the case, corps-level units would be necessary if Atlantic 

Command conducted the operation. The key logistical unit in any contingency 

involving the corps and its components was the 1st Support Command, which 

became tangentially involved in planning for Urgent Fury on 23 October. 

The removal of XVIII Airborne Corps from the chain of command left this 

critical headquarters on the periphery of events. The commander of the 1st 

Support Command, Col. William J. Richardson Jr., and a team of officers that 

75 Interv, author with C. Mitchell, 16 Feb 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Final Planning

163

included his newly arrived deputy, Col. Robert C. Barrett Jr., spent the weekend of 22–23 October in New Orleans, Louisiana, working on contingency 

and operational plans with the 377th Support Command, an Army Reserve 

unit. Returning by air late on Sunday, 23 October, Colonel Richardson found 

a note from the corps chief of staff waiting for him. While the other officers 

went home, he reported to the corps emergency operations center, where he 

received a briefing on the Grenada planning. General Mackmull told him to 

prepare a plan to support the division.76

Later that evening Colonel Richardson discussed the operation with his 

chief of staff, Lt. Col. Rudolph Baker, and his deputy, Colonel Barrett. Given 

the security restrictions, Richardson could not justify bringing any more of his 

staff into the planning at this juncture. As it was, he and his two subordinates 

had only a sketchy understanding of the operation. Lacking maps and having 

only a tentative grasp of the island’s size and the complexities of its terrain, 

they assumed that Grenada was somewhat larger than it later proved to be. 

Knowing little, moreover, about the composition of the forces involved, they 

also made erroneous planning assumptions that would affect the performance 

of the 1st Support Command throughout the operation. In particular, they 

thought that Urgent Fury would require a two-division force—the 82d and 

101st Airborne Divisions reinforced by marines—and that XVIII Airborne 

Corps would command the entire force.77

The three officers worked through the night on preliminaries. The next 

morning, 24 October, Richardson decided to bring other key officers into the 

planning, using the movement of a two-division force to Honduras as a cover 

story. It was only at 0415 on Tuesday, 25 October, less than an hour before the 

scheduled airborne assault by ranger units, that he finally revealed the true 

objective to his staff.78

President Reagan Decides, 24 October

Although President Ronald W. Reagan had signed the National Security 

Decision Directive for the Grenada intervention on the evening of 23 October, 

he remained uncommitted to the operation. Shortly after 1200 on 24 October 

he met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to ask each member individually to give 

his personal assessment of the plan. Did he agree with it? Was something more 

needed? The chairman, General John W. Vessey Jr., and the chiefs of service 

were unanimous on two points. First, they preferred a negotiated, peaceful 

evacuation of the students to armed intervention. Second, if the situation 

required intervention, they were satisfied with the plan and the forces committed to its execution. The meeting broke up with the president reassured about 

the plan but with his option of whether to execute still open.79

76 Intervs, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and author with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. See also Briefing, Barrett, 9 Sep 1986, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH. 77 Interv, author with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Briefing, Barrett, 9 Sep 

1986, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH. 78 Chronology and Briefing, Barrett, 9 Sep 1986, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH.

79 Ronald H. Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 39.
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Listening to this exchange, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger 

became convinced that Reagan had concluded to invade the island barring 

a last-minute diplomatic breakthrough. That afternoon, the president confirmed that this was his decision and gave the secretary the signed directive. 

Weinberger immediately returned to the Pentagon. With a military operation 

looking ever more likely, he delegated to General Vessey, in his capacity as the 

JCS chairman, full power to conduct the operation acting in the secretary’s 

name. This decision reflected both the president’s and the secretary’s confidence in Vessey’s professional abilities and their affinity for his low-key operating style. With this decision, Vessey gained more control over U.S. military 

operations than any uniformed officer since the Korean war.80

That evening Secretary Weinberger, General Vessey, and the Joint Chiefs 

went to the White House for a meeting with the president, the other members of the National Security Council, and the House and Senate leadership. 

At that time, President Reagan asked Secretary of State George P. Shultz to 

describe the situation on Grenada for the group. General Vessey followed with 

a briefing on the rescue plan. In the discussion that followed, Speaker of the 

House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill and Senate Minority Leader Robert C. Byrd 

80 Ibid., pp. 28–40; Msg, Bish to SecState, 24 1659Z Oct 1983, sub: Grenada—Meeting with 

Seaga and Adams, 24 Oct, Morning, Msg files, DoS; Msg, LANTCOM to JCS et al., 24 0007Z 

Oct 1983, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), CMH; Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 

1987, Archives files, JHO; Richard Halloran, “A Commanding Voice for the Military,” p. 18.

General Vessey conducts a briefing for congressional leaders. 
Final Planning

165

expressed their unhappiness with the idea of military intervention but could 

offer no alternative. Without another option, the president observed that the 

intervention seemed like the only recourse and that he would approve it.81

As the meeting broke up, Reagan took Vessey aside and asked about the 

decision timeline. When did he need to decide to launch the operation? What 

was the latest time at which he could abort? Vessey told him that if he wanted 

to stage the operation the next day, 25 October, he had to make the decision 

immediately. Planes, ships, and troops were already deploying to launch positions. Vessey said that the latest time for an abort would be shortly before 

0500, Grenada time, when U.S. aircraft would first enter Grenadian airspace. 

With that information in hand, the president said “Go.”82

Just at that moment the national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, 

walked over and told Reagan that he was activating the White House situation 

room. The president could come there at any time during the night and receive 

a briefing on the latest information from Grenada. Reagan turned to Vessey 

and asked what he intended to do that evening. Vessey responded that first 

he was going to make a call to the Pentagon to set the operation in motion. 

Thereafter, unless the president decided to call off the operation, neither of 

them could do anything further that evening. Vessey said he planned to go 

home and go to bed so in the morning, once the troops were on the island, he 

would be fully rested and alert. At that time, he might be able to do something 

to assist them, and he wanted to be ready. President Reagan replied that he 

intended to do the same.83

An Intelligence Problem

At the time he issued his order, President Reagan and the other decisionmakers and planners in Washington, Norfolk, and Fort Bragg believed that 

nearly all of the Americans on Grenada were at the True Blue Campus of the 

St. George’s University School of Medicine. This assumption was incorrect 

because it overlooked the even larger Grand Anse Campus and the sizable 

collection of students and tourists living near Prickly Point. The misapprehension was due to two factors. The decision to remove the XVIII Airborne Corps 

from the operation had introduced considerable confusion into intelligence 

circles just as it did in the operational chain of command. Related to this was 

a failure by Atlantic Command to double-check the information about the 

Americans’ location.

The removal of the corps also meant that Colonel De War and his G–2 subordinates could not tap into the national intelligence database maintained by 

the Defense Intelligence Agency because they lacked an official need to know. 

Evidence of whether General Vessey or Admiral McDonald had notified the 

agency’s leadership that XVIII Airborne Corps was no longer in the chain 

of command is lacking. Consequently, no one in the agency realized that the 

81 Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987, Archives files, JHO.

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid.
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82d Airborne Division might require a packet of all the available intelligence 

information on Grenada. Complicating matters, division G–2 officers had 

always focused on the tactical level and never had an opportunity to develop 

contacts and expertise by working with the Defense Intelligence Agency, the 

Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency as had their 

corps counterparts. Now they were suddenly confronted with having to deal 

with these national intelligence agencies. They not only had very little time to 

do so but also lacked such basic knowledge as what questions about Grenada 

they should submit to which agency. What should have been routine contact 

with national intelligence agencies thus became for the division G–2 officers 

a needless drain of energy and thought that could have been better applied to 

other issues. Indeed, the bureaucratic fog that had developed as a result helped 

divert everyone from a key question: Were all the Americans at True Blue?84

The answer was hardly a state secret. Because U.S. Forces, Caribbean, 

had the mission of conducting operations in the Caribbean, intelligence officers at Key West had already developed detailed information on the location 

of American residents on Grenada as a precautionary measure in case their 

evacuation became necessary at some future date. When Admiral McDonald 

decided not to use this headquarters to direct Urgent Fury, however, he 

cut these intelligence assets out. His senior intelligence officer should have 

requested all information compiled by U.S. Forces, Caribbean, and distributed 

it to the participating headquarters, but he did not. Located at Norfolk, he was 

undoubtedly just as confused about the new command arrangements and as 

oppressed by deadlines as his counterparts at Fort Bragg.85

Despite Ambassador Milan D. Bish’s prohibition on routine visits to 

Grenada, his staff at Bridgetown also knew the general location of the students. 

On 20 October Bish had outlined to the State Department where the students 

lived, but he did not send an information copy to the National Command 

Center, so the message never reached military intelligence authorities. A copy 

did eventually come to rest in the records of the State Department’s Grenada 

Working Group. The military liaison officer from the Pentagon with this group 

should have passed on the information, but no record exists of when the working group received the message; it may have arrived after the fact or with a 

mass of other cables. Although Bish devoted considerable space to describing 

the students’ domiciles, his subject line only referred to their attitudes about 

evacuation. Given the time pressures of the moment, members of the working 

group could easily have overlooked this buried information.86

Intelligence officers also neglected to use two other obvious sources of 

information about the students. Most of the Americans at the medical school 

received federally guaranteed student loans. The Department of Education, 

84 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. B, p. I-B-5, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; ibid., 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 2-2, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 85 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

86 Msg, Bish to SecState, 20 0739Z Oct 1983, sub: Grenada—Attitudes of the Grenadian 

Medical School Toward the Possible Evacuation of Their Students/Staff, Msg files, DoS. 
Final Planning

167

which oversaw the program, had the street addresses of these students, including those who lived off-campus. Because the department was reviewing the 

school’s accreditation, it had prepared a chart that listed all the students by 

name with their addresses alongside. The school’s registrar had even more 

information, but no intelligence officers went to his office in Bay Shore, Long 

Island, to collect this material.87

Quite by accident at the very last moment, the Defense Intelligence Agency 

learned of the Grand Anse Campus. At the National Security Agency a secretary casually mentioned to an analyst that she had a brother studying on 

Grenada and that she had recently visited him at the Grand Anse Campus, 

where she took photographs. The analyst, who was involved with tracking 

events on Grenada, immediately recognized the significance of her remarks 

and arranged for her to meet an official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. She 

brought along her photos. A flurry of research confirmed the existence of a 

second campus. At 1800, on 22 October, a Joint Special Operations Command 

intelligence analyst picked up a package containing the new material and flew 

with it to Fort Bragg, arriving there late that same evening. At the same time, 

the Defense Intelligence Agency dispatched similar packages to two other 

intelligence offices, including Atlantic Command’s. The next day an analyst 

briefed General Vessey on the second location.88

What happened next remains unclear. Somehow, what appeared so 

straightforward to the analysts in Washington became ambiguous to the analysts at Fort Bragg. Information overload, fatigue, tight deadlines, and stress 

undoubtedly played a role. At Joint Special Operations Command the reigning 

assumption in the intelligence shop remained that 90 percent of the students 

were at True Blue. The other 10 percent were clustered somewhere, but no one 

acknowledged that an actual second campus existed. As a result, no plans were 

changed, and the information never reached the units preparing to invade the 

island.89

Cuba and Grenada, 23–25 October

As news of the regional opposition and the dispatch of U.S. naval forces 

filtered into St. George’s, the People’s Revolutionary Government attempted 

to reassure the Reagan administration and other governments about the safety 

of their nationals. At the same time, it stressed the cost of invasion to any 

hostile force. The head of state security, Lt. Col. Liam James, announced over 

Radio Free Grenada that any assault on the island would mean “the loss of 

several thousand innocent lives.” On 23 October the Revolutionary Military 

Council placed the Grenadian army on alert and called up the reserves. For 

87 Interv, author with Hardman, 31 Jan 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Ltr, Hardman 

to Modica, 22 Jul 1983, box 90,118, Roger W. Fountaine files (Grenada) 1983 (1), 

NARA–RRPL. 88 Interv, Pirnie with Nelson, 9 Dec 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; MFR, author, 28 Oct 

2008, sub: DIA Conference on Operation Urgent Fury (Invasion of Grenada), 28 October 

2008, Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH. 89 Interv, Pirnie with Nelson, 9 Dec 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

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deterrence, Radio Free Grenada broadcast bogus accounts of thousands of 

militia reporting for duty. In truth, only a handful stepped up—257 militia 

and 58 untrained “party comrades”—to reinforce the 463 men and women of 

the permanent force (Table 1). Behind the scenes, Grenada scrambled to heal 

relations with Cuba. The council president, General Hudson Austin, wanted 

the Cuban engineers at Point Salines placed under Grenadian military control. 

He also wanted reinforcements from the Cuban army. He got neither.90

From Havana, the Revolutionary Military Council’s strategic predicament 

appeared hopeless. Even if Cuba’s relationship with the new government had 

been impeccable, U.S. naval and air superiority made reinforcement a forlorn 

90 William C. Gilmore, The Grenada Intervention, pp. 93–94; Edward Cody (first quoted 

words), “Caribbean Nations Discuss Response to Violence in Grenada,” Washington Post, 23 

Oct 1983; Maurice Bishop, Maurice Bishop Speaks, p. 319; R. S. Hopkin, Grenada Topples the 

Balance in West Indian History, p. 22; Jnl (second quoted words), [Grenadian GS], 24 Oct 1983, 

sub: Strength of the Armed Forces in Terms of Permanent, Reserve, and Party Comrades, CGD 

Mf 005213, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, NARA–CP. See also Gordon K. Lewis, Grenada, pp. 

83–84. 

Table 1—Strength of Grenadian Forces, 0600, 24 October 1983

Permanent Reserve Party

Comrades Total

Command Post 18 2 - 20

Logistics 45 - - 45

Fort Rupert 28 2 - 30

Independent Company 102 - - 102

Motorized Company 148 15 - 163

Prison 39 - - 39

Reserved Company (310) 28 43 9 80

Calivigny Base 4 - 1 5

Region II 23 27 19 69

Security Platoon - 23 - 23

Personal Security 15 - 19 34

Reserved Company (106) 1 106 - 107

Region III 12 39 10 61

Total 463 257 58 778

Source: Jnl, [Grenadian GS], 24 Oct 1983, sub: Strength of the Armed Forces in Terms 

of Permanent, Reserve, and Party Comrades, CGD Mf 005213, Entry 338 (UD), RG 242, 

NARA–CP. The table reflects the administrative confusion of the People’s Revolutionary Armed 

Forces. The units were apparently listed in the order telephoned rather than conforming to any 

administrative hierarchy. Some elements were omitted with no explanation, such as Region 

I. Arithmetic errors have been corrected. The parenthetical figure that follows each Reserved 

Company entry gives the total number of militia members at full mobilization.
Final Planning

169

hope. The only available alternative was a prolonged war of national resistance 

in the mountains and jungle. Yet the Coard faction in killing Maurice Bishop 

and his associates had alienated not only the people, whose support alone made 

such a strategy possible, but also Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba, who had considered Bishop a friend and protégé. Castro suggested that the new government 

could investigate and arrest those responsible for the murders and in this way 

mend the breach between itself and the general population. Such a solution, 

as Castro well knew, was impossible for Grenada’s new leaders because they 

were the very ones responsible. Cuba could thus do little more than deplore the 

situation that had placed its considerable investment on the island at such risk. 

Castro did offer one bit of advice that the Grenadians could and did follow. 

They should, he said, stay away from the medical school. Any attempt to seize 

hostages would only make a U.S. intervention inevitable. The Grenadian leadership was shocked by Castro’s refusal to act. One anonymous member of the 

Revolutionary Military Council could only conclude that “the deep personal 

feeling between Fidel & Maurice . . . has caused the Cuban leadership to take a 

personal and not a class approach to the developments in Grenada.”91

Despite its objections to the Austin clique, the Cuban government 

agreed to defend the Point Salines area in a limited way. Castro confined 

91 Bishop, Maurice Bishop Speaks, pp. 313–16, 319–21; Memo (quoted words, with emphasis), 21 Oct 1983, sub: On Cuba’s Response to the Issue, IDR no. 00015, Hist files (PDocs/

CGD), CMH.

Fidel Castro photograph and training literature found during the intervention.
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the construction workers to their work sites and directed them to fire only if 

fired on. Garbled communications between Havana and Point Salines led the 

Cubans on Grenada to believe that he meant for them to remain in their camp. 

Further, Castro instructed them not to oppose any attempt by the Americans 

to evacuate the medical students peacefully. Just in case the Reagan administration decided to invade militarily, he also sent a former head of the Cuban 

mission on Grenada, Col. Pedro Comas Tortoló, to take command of the 

workers and organize them for defense. Colonel Tortoló arrived on Grenada 

on 24 October. He divided the workers into squads led by Cuban advisers, 

whom he pulled away from their duties with the People’s Revolutionary Army. 

Unfortunately from his point of view, the forty-three members of the Cuban 

advisory team were mainly technical specialists with only a few infantrymen 

in the group. Given the Cuban Army’s ongoing participation in Africa’s civil 

wars, however, those who were veteran infantrymen were very savvy indeed.92

The Grenadians deployed to cover the western end of the new airport’s 

runway only. Castro’s restrictions on the Cubans, at least as interpreted locally, 

meant that the central and eastern portions of the runway remained uncovered 

by fire. Moreover, Castro’s instructions forced the erstwhile Cuban defenders 

to concentrate in one vulnerable location. They could not disperse to their prepared fighting positions. Under orders from Havana, the Cubans also forbade 

the Grenadians from entering their zone. All but abandoned, the Grenadians 

steeled themselves to resist. At 0455, on 25 October 1983, Radio Free Grenada 

announced that an invasion was imminent.93

Overall, President Reagan’s insistence on extra security for the operation and General Vessey’s acquiescence in it, while understandable given the 

political climate, were most unfortunate. The decision affected all the services 

adversely. The situation, in which the four senior medical officers in the XVIII 

Airborne Corps and the 82d Airborne Division were reduced to contemplating the medical phase of the operation but prohibited from committing anything to paper or even discussing it among themselves, represented an extreme 

circumstance. Nevertheless, all the planners were affected to some degree. 

The administration’s excessive concern for security had a particularly chilling 

effect on the exchange of information among units of the different services. 

Coordination of effort suffered as a result.

The decision to cut the XVIII Airborne Corps from the chain of command had possibly even more adverse consequences for the Army than the 

president’s preoccupation with security. The decision took place in at least 

four stages. First, the warning order from the Joint Staff J–3, Army Lt. Gen. 

92 Bishop, Maurice Bishop Speaks, pp. 323, 329–36; Mark Adkin, Urgent Fury, pp. 

205–06. 93 Bishop, Maurice Bishop Speaks, p. 325; Memo, 21 Oct 1983, sub: On Cuba’s Response to 

the Issue, IDR no. 00015, Hist files (PDocs/CGD), CMH; John Walton Cotman, The Gorrión 

Tree, p. 219; Draft Chronology, n.d., sub: Grenada, 1498–1983, Hist files (Chronologies), CMH. 

Frederick L. Pryor, Revolutionary Grenada, p. 284, notes Austin’s abuse of Coard.
Final Planning

171

Richard L. Prillaman, to Atlantic Command did not activate the component 

commands. Second, Admiral McDonald had the authority to activate these 

commands when he received the warning order but chose not to do so. Had 

either the order or McDonald activated Forces Command, it, in turn, would 

in all probability have activated XVIII Airborne Corps. At the very least, with 

General Cavazos involved in the planning process at Atlantic Command, the 

corps would have gained a strong advocate for its inclusion in the operation. 

Third, McDonald opted to discard the existing concept plan that required participation by the corps. Fourth, when Vessey recommended the 82d Airborne 

Division as a follow-on force without mentioning XVIII Airborne Corps, 

McDonald accepted the suggestion without question.

The rationale for these decisions were never committed to paper, and none 

of the participants recollect specifically addressing the role that the corps 

should or should not play in the operation. Given this context, the removal of 

the corps appears to be the by-product of decisions to develop a plan for the 

operation from scratch instead of using the existing concept plan, to emphasize special operations forces and ranger units rather than more conventional 

formations, to add a brigade from the 82d Airborne Division as insurance, and 

to keep the chain of command simple. Only the concern about the public relations problems posed by General Mackmull’s high rank addressed the issue 

of corps involvement directly. In effect, the move to cut the corps from the 

operation was not the result of a formal decision but of a series of steps by a 

heavily bureaucratized chain of command focused on other issues. It was not 

so much a reasoned judgment as a compounding of unintended consequences 

best encapsulated by the phrase “bad things happen.” 

However formulated, the decision had major consequences. It tore apart 

all the working relationships defined by doctrine and developed by years of 

practice in both garrison and field exercises. It ignored the post-Vietnam evolution of the corps headquarters into an important component of the Army 

logistical system and the diminution of the ability of divisions to act independently of a corps base. To describe the situation in nautical terms, for Admiral 

McDonald to send elements of the 82d Airborne Division to the Caribbean 

without involving the XVIII Airborne Corps was roughly equivalent to ordering a squadron of naval attack aircraft to operate over Grenada from an 

unprepared base in Barbados while the squadron’s carrier remained moored 

at Norfolk. 

The more interesting question is why no one in the Army recognized the 

problem before Operation Urgent Fury began. Security restrictions and 

the compressed planning time provide part of the explanation, but the backgrounds of the officers were also to blame. In the Pentagon, three senior Army 

officers, Generals Vessey, Wickham, and Prillaman, reviewed the plan. All 

were skilled officers by both training and experience, and all their time and 

attention during the planning phase went to operational concerns. Not one of 

them had commanded a corps. Moreover, the emphasis on a quick raid in the 

JCS’s approved plan meant that no one focused on what might happen should 

the special operations forces require conventional backup.
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In the same way, the exclusion of the Joint Staff’s Logistics Directorate 

until the last minute meant that the logistical implications of the plan did not 

receive the same scrutiny at the joint level as the operational aspects. The other 

senior headquarters that might have questioned the excision of the corps, U.S. 

Readiness Command, did not participate meaningfully or take any initiative 

because the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Atlantic Command kept it at arm’s length. 

Finally, XVIII Airborne Corps itself failed to address the problem early in the 

planning because the process was so vague and communications so hampered 

by security concerns that no one realized at first that the corps would be out of 

the loop. In fact, it sent a representative to the first planning session at Norfolk 

on 22 October simply because it assumed it would take part. By the time the 

situation became clear, General Mackmull was faced with a fait accompli. Any 

attempt to insert the corps into the chain of command at that late hour might 

have proved more a detriment to the operation than an asset. 

On the evening of the twenty-fourth, however, Admiral McDonald’s most 

controversial and perhaps most consequential decision was his change in the 

timing of the operation: The special operations forces would be facing combat in daylight. The 0500 start time produced a subtle shift in emphasis from 

unconventional to conventional forces. With this change went an increasing 

role for logistics in determining the final outcome. McDonald’s determination to avoid a one-day postponement of the invasion was an integral part 

of this revision of the plan. His resolve was based on his conviction that the 

Grenadians would not fight. If this premise proved mistaken, then the question would become how quickly the Americans could knit together their disparate forces into a coherent operation. The helter-skelter nature of the preparations created an opportunity for McDonald’s senior subordinates to reflect 

that coherence might not occur effortlessly.
4

Loading the Force

N-hour to N+3:30

Both the Rangers and the 82d Airborne Division followed similar 

approaches to deploy a force into combat by air. Upon notification, 

both went through a time-sequence checklist, known as the N-sequence. The 

letter N denoted the time of notification, plus the time of discrete actions 

expressed in the hours and minutes after notification. An airborne division 

was larger and more complex than a ranger battalion, and thus the 82d’s readiness standing operating procedures, bound in a bulky volume, were longer and 

more elaborate. The ranger battalions encountered some difficulty but fewer 

problems than divisional elements, and their assembly and dispatch proceeded 

with almost textbook efficiency. While by no means complete, information on 

Grenada was readily available from the Joint Special Operations Command, 

and ranger logisticians became involved early in the planning cycle. Plans for 

the battalions changed markedly, but the overall mission did not: seizing one 

or more airheads against possible resistance. 

In contrast to the ranger battalions, the effort to load the 82d Airborne 

Division proved problematic, if only because the force was so large with many 

elements to coordinate but also because information on Grenada was less 

readily available with the XVIII Airborne Corps removed from the chain of 

command. Division logisticians became involved relatively late in the planning, and the division’s understanding of its mission oscillated between a combat assault to seize an airhead and a follow-on force to maintain the peace. 

Despite these handicaps, the 82d succeeded in dispatching the 2d Brigade Task 

Force more quickly than normal, but only by taking shortcuts that carried 

certain risks. 

Ranger Battalions

The director of plans and training at Fort Stewart, Lt. Col. James R. 

Childs, and the ranger coordinator, Capt. Lawrence W. Hoffman II, learned 

on 22 October that Lt. Col. Ralph L. Hagler Jr.’s 2d Battalion, 75th Infantry, 

was coming to Hunter Army Airfield. In response, they made arrangements 

for 24th Infantry Division support elements to go on alert; readied Saber Hall 

for receipt of the 2d Battalion, which included evicting not only a Boy Scout 

troop camping in the area but also Ninth Air Force elements engaged in Joint 

☆ ☆ ☆
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174

Exercise Quick Thrust; and established an emergency operations center in the 

facility. Once completed, Captain Hoffman immediately took additional steps 

to ensure proper support if the 1st Battalion had to deploy.1

The Hunter Army Airfield deputy commander, Lt. Col. Eugene P. 

Semmens, was serving as acting installation commander in the temporary 

absence of Brig. Gen. Bernard M. Herring Jr. As yet, Colonel Semmens knew 

nothing of the Grenada preparations, but he recognized the signs that a major 

operation was beginning. He concluded that the 1st Battalion might have to 

assemble on short notice. At that time, almost all the personnel of the unit 

charged with loading the ranger battalion, the 260th Quartermaster Battalion, 

were in Florida to participate in Joint Exercise Bold Eagle. They included the 

commander, Lt. Col. Ronald V. Bila. His executive officer, Maj. Gregory D. 

Gibbons, commanded the rear detachment, which consisted of himself, one 

noncommissioned officer, and approximately ninety privates. Semmens asked 

Major Gibbons whether he could support the call-up with the personnel on 

hand. Gibbons quickly responded in the affirmative.2

At 2130 on Saturday, 22 October, Joint Special Operations Command 

issued a warning order to the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, for an operation 

on Grenada. Over two hours later, at 2355, the battalion executive officer, 

Maj. Jack P. Nix Jr., then with the planning team at Fort Bragg, called the 1st 

Battalion personnel officer, the S–1, Capt. John M. Bednarek, who was acting 

as the rear detachment commander, to provide him with specific instructions 

about recalling the battalion. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Wesley B. 

Taylor Jr., he said, wanted to start the N-sequence early enough “to catch our 

deer hunters.” It was a weekend, and the battalion was not on ready status. 

Captain Bednarek called in the company commanders and told them that at 

0500 the next day, 23 October, he would order a Bravo Notification, which 

required the companies to assemble. This was the first stage of the loading 

process.3

The alert went out as scheduled, using a practice assembly as a cover. By 

the time the company commanders departed for the planning sessions at Fort 

Bragg at 0900 that same day, 80 percent or more of all ranger personnel in the 

three rifle companies had reported for duty. Because of the impending arrival 

of the 2d Battalion, the units assembled in their company areas rather than at 

the Saber Hall complex. To maintain security, Bednarek posted guards under 

cover at strategic points. By then he had briefed the company executive officers on the operations order from U.S. Atlantic Command. The troops knew 

that they were not taking certain types of equipment, such as arctic mittens, 

and that they could requisition whatever equipment for a tropical climate that 

their organizations needed. Meanwhile, they zeroed in their personal weapons, 

1 Intervs, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, and author with Semmens, 14 Aug 1987, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 2 Interv, author with Semmens, 14 Aug 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

3 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-1, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, and with Nix, 2 Nov 1983 

(quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Loading the Force

175

which involved firing test rounds over targets at known distances and making 

necessary adjustments to their sights.4

Major Gibbons proved as good as his word. Working with great intensity, his 260th Quartermaster Battalion-Rear personnel performed their duties 

in the noticeable absence of commissioned and noncommissioned officers. 

Colonel Bila returned in the midst of these preparations. Years later, one of 

Hoffman’s most vivid memories of the operation was Bila personally helping set up tents for the incoming 2d Battalion. Success depended also on the 

support the 260th received from the Victory Brigade, a provisional organization specifically designed to support the 24th Infantry Division and other 

units assigned to Fort Stewart when they went into the field. The brigade commander, Col. John H. Mayer, placed his entire force at Gibbons’ and later 

Bila’s disposal.5

Between 1230 and 1600 on 23 October the 2d Battalion arrived. The rear 

detachment commander, Maj. Robert M. Hensler, also the battalion executive officer, had used an emergency readiness deployment exercise as a cover 

for the battalion’s departure from Fort Lewis. Captain Hoffman, who had 

expected 500 rangers, was somewhat surprised at the size of Major Hensler’s 

force. However, he had no difficulty in supporting the additional 160 men that 

arrived. The sixty-three pallets of supplies, twenty-three of them ammunition, 

that accompanied the battalion proved somewhat more difficult to accommodate. Hoffman had to decide where to break down the pallets to redistribute 

the contents. The battalion’s mission did not require such a massive quantity 

of materiel. Moreover, much of it needed repair and reconditioning before 

use.6

Major Hensler had departed Fort Lewis before his men could confirm 

the accuracy of their weapons. They did so on the 1st Battalion’s range at 

the Saber Hall complex. Hoffman made arrangements with the 24th Infantry 

Division for the unit to test-fire its 90-mm. recoilless rifles and 60-mm. mortars 

at Fort Stewart, a forty-five minute drive from Hunter Army Airfield. The 1st 

Battalion also zeroed in its crew-served weapons at Fort Stewart ranges but 

not without some friction because other Army elements arrived at the same 

time to participate in Quick Thrust.

7

By 1800 both battalion commanders, Colonels Taylor and Hagler, had 

reached Hunter. They exchanged liaison officers and proceeded with detailed 

planning. Taylor and his executive officer, Major Nix, gave the 1st Battalion 

S–4, Capt. Stanley B. Clemons, special guidance on the amount of ammunition 

4 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-1, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH; Intervs, Wells with Clemons, 2 Nov 1983, and Bishop with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 5 Interv, author with Semmens, 14 Aug 1987, and Tel Interv, author with Hoffman, 21 Dec 

2004, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 6 Prelim AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH; Interv, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 7 Intervs, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, and with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH; Prelim and Final AARs, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 and 25 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH.
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176

the battalion should carry. Because the operation was supposed to last not more 

than twenty-four hours, Taylor calculated that a three-day load of mortar, 

machine gun, and rifle ammunition would suffice. Clemons issued enough water 

and rations for two days per man. Each ranger received two quarts of water 

and two C-rations, although by Ranger standards two C-rations amounted to 

only a one-day supply. Taylor calculated that the men would be too excited to 

eat much. He did not anticipate a problem with water because the battalion 

was attacking into a construction site, where the work crews could be expected 

to maintain an ample supply. Following standard Ranger procedure, the battalion’s vehicles nonetheless carried an additional day’s supply of water and 

rations. This would give Taylor greater flexibility if he needed it.8

Colonel Hagler also brought three days of supplies for the operation. Like 

Taylor, he instructed his 2d Battalion S–4, Capt. Jose G. Ventura, concerning what to take. Due to the constant mission changes that plagued the unit, 

Captain Ventura faced a more difficult task than Captain Clemons—first 

airland and then airdrop, first Pearls Airport and then Point Salines airfield. 

Each of these options required a different configuration of supplies. In the 

airland variant, most could be shipped on pallets. If the battalion had to airdrop because the Cubans obstructed the runway, Ventura would have to shift 

much of the supplies off the pallets and onto the backs of the rangers. For 

this he needed more load-bearing harnesses than Major Hensler had brought 

from Fort Lewis. In the end, Ventura borrowed what he needed from the 1st 

Battalion and the 24th Infantry Division. Harnesses were but one of several 

items of equipment in short supply in the 2d Battalion. When Major Hensler 

left the West Coast, he had not known what mission his unit would have. As a 

result, he had packed a wide array of supplies and equipment. Once at Hunter, 

he discovered that quantities of some items were insufficient while others were 

simply unsuitable for the operation at hand.9

Neither Clemons nor Ventura, of course, could allow himself the luxury of 

thinking of only a three-day operation. Once they had their battalions’ basic 

loads ready, they began to prepare supply pallets to cover days four through 

six and to plan for resupply to sustain their units through thirty days of combat. Anniston Army Depot in Alabama necessarily figured into these computations because it held contingency stocks to support one deployed ranger 

battalion. Operation Urgent Fury, however, involved two battalions. Even so, 

the lack of capacity at Anniston appeared to pose little problem both because 

of the amount of supplies that Hensler brought with him and because the 

combined strength of the two battalions slated to deploy totaled slightly less 

than one fully manned battalion.10

8 Intervs, Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, and author with Taylor, 4 Dec 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. C-rations were designed to provide 3,000 calories daily, sufficient for a “moderately active” man. See William F. Ross and Charles F. Romanus, The Quartermaster Corps, p. 130. 9 Interv, Bishop with Ventura, 1 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

10 Ibid.; Interv, Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn 

Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. D, app. 2, p. D-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), 

CMH. 
Loading the Force

177

During the evening of 23 October, sometime after XVIII Airborne Corps 

commander Lt. Gen. Jack V. Mackmull conferred with Joint Task Force 123 

commander Maj. Gen. Richard A. Scholtes, Scholtes’ staff requested bulldozers and equipment from XVIII Airborne Corps operators to support the airdrop at Point Salines. Mackmull and Scholtes wanted the engineers available 

if the Point Salines airfield needed additional work before follow-on forces 

landed. U.S. intelligence already knew that the Cubans had placed “some odd 

kinds of engineer machinery” on or in the vicinity of the runway. The engineers could move the equipment off the runway to prevent it from acting as an 

obstacle to the attacking forces. After that, they could use it to prepare defensive positions for the rangers if the need arose.11

The 20th Engineer Brigade commander, Col. Daniel R. Schroeder, who 

was also the corps engineer, directed the 548th Engineer Battalion commander, 

Lt. Col. Frederick G. Ernst, to select four equipment operators for special 

assignment and to rig a Case 1150 bulldozer that would accompany them for 

possible low-altitude parachute extraction. Colonel Schroeder also had to prepare for the possibility that conditions on the airstrip might preclude such 

a method of delivery, in which case the engineers would have to airdrop a 

bulldozer. The Case 1150, however, was unsuitable for airdrop, and Colonel 

Ernst’s battalion did not have any bulldozers that were. The 618th Engineer 

11 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and author with Schroeder, 2 Jun 1986 

(quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 

1984], sec. II, an. C, pp. II-C-1 to II-C-7, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH.

Colonel Hagler (center) and his 2d Battalion, 75th Infantry, command group. From 

left to right: Capt. Mark S. Crowson (S–5), Capt. Jose G. Ventura (S–4), Maj. 

Monte T. S. Hess (S–3), Maj. Robert M. Hensler (Executive Officer), Maj. Henry 

J. Salice Jr. (S–2), and Capt. Benjamin R. Clark (S–1). 
The Rucksack War

178

Company, the corps unit permanently attached to the 82d Airborne Division’s 

307th Engineer Battalion, had such a machine—the D–5.12

Acting in his capacity as corps engineer, Colonel Schroeder telephoned 

the 307th’s commander, Lt. Col. Lawrence L. Izzo, who was also the division 

engineer, and asked him to come to his office for a meeting. Once Colonel Izzo 

arrived, Schroeder told him that he needed two equipment operators and a D–5 

bulldozer rigged for airdrop. A short time later the 618th Engineer Company 

commander, Capt. James G. May, walked into his company’s dayroom. It was 

a typical Sunday evening. Some men were watching television; others were 

playing cards. From among them Captain May selected Spec. William R. 

Richardson, a young soldier who had just completed jump school but had a 

wealth of experience around heavy equipment. The company, May explained, 

had a requirement to support a Ranger exercise; Specialist Richardson and the 

D–5 would fly to Hunter Army Airfield. A few minutes later, Sgt. Charles E. 

Spain, a very experienced airborne soldier and equipment operator just beginning to assume managerial responsibilities, walked into the barracks. May 

ordered him to accompany Richardson.13

The two went to corps headquarters. There they met their counterparts 

from the 548th Engineer Battalion and a ranger operations officer who loaded 

them and their bulldozers aboard an Air Force aircraft that carried them from 

Pope Air Force Base to Hunter Army Airfield. Sergeant Spain was experienced enough to suspect that something more than a simple training mission 

was involved, but he could think only of the marines buried under the rubble 

in Beirut. Not until the rangers had the engineers locked in a secure area did 

he and his compatriots learn that they were going to Grenada. If an airdrop 

proved necessary, Spain and Richardson would parachute in with Colonel 

Taylor’s lead company. The Air Force would then airdrop the D–5 if the situation required it. No one wanted this to happen unless it became absolutely 

necessary. A D–5, even one apparently gliding gently to earth with perfectly 

functioning parachutes, would gouge a rather large hole in an asphalt airstrip like that at Salines. The four other equipment operators, also rigged 

for an airdrop, would follow along with their Case 1150 after the infantry. 

A low-altitude parachute extraction would cause much less damage than an 

airdrop; however, an airlanding was still the preferred option for the two 

bulldozers.14

As the engineers journeyed to Hunter Army Airfield, some rangers prepared to move in the opposite direction. Company C, 1st Battalion, 75th 

Infantry, commanded by Capt. David W. Barno, was supposed to fly by helicopter to Fort Bragg on Sunday night to support special operations forces on 

classified missions. His unit moved to its departure point, but the CH–47s to 

12 Intervs, author with Schroeder, 2 Jun 1986, and McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 13 Intervs, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, author with Anderson, 9 May 1986, and 

Wells with Spain, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; “Combat Jumpers,” p. 28. 14 Intervs, author with Schroeder, 2 Jun 1986, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, and Wells 

with Spain, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Loading the Force

179

carry them never arrived. Severe weather had curtailed air operations, so the 

troops spent the night in the riggers shed. At 0500, 24 October, the company 

boarded a C–141 for the flight to Pope Air Force Base. Captain Barno took 

his company’s three-day basic load of supplies with him. Only after he reached 

his destination and learned about the mission would he be able to configure his 

company’s basic load to the task at hand.15

Because Hunter Army Airfield was not designed to load more than one 

ranger battalion at a time, Captain Hoffman had to improvise a loading plan 

that would accommodate two battalions. He arranged for the 2d Battalion to 

board aircraft from Saber Hall, the normal departure point for a ranger unit. 

The 1st Battalion, for its part, would move from its barracks to Hangar 850 

at the airfield and board there. By Monday morning, 24 October, the facility’s normal occupant, the 132d Aviation Company, had vacated the structure. After lunch the 1st Battalion moved into the hangar, completing the shift 

within an hour. By then Captain Clemons had positioned ammunition inside 

the building and had broken it down by company. By 1500 Clemons had distributed all specialized equipment and ammunition to the men.16

If the notification sequences of both battalions proceeded smoothly, the 

loading aboard Air Force C–130s did not. The main difficulty was a lack of 

accurate information. Because no single point of contact existed, Captain 

Hoffman and the Air Force airlift control element received contradictory airflow information from the various agencies involved in the process. In previous exercises Joint Special Operations Command had always sent staff officers 

to Saber Hall to assist the rangers with their planning. The command failed 

to do so during Urgent Fury. Hoffman received word on Sunday to expect 

thirty C–130s. Instead, only sixteen arrived. Then, the airlift control element 

could not determine which aircraft were to load what battalions. This prevented preparation of a detailed parking plan for the aircraft and a loading 

plan for the units. In the end, Hoffman improvised a plan that would allow the 

battalions to load first come, first served, without knowing specific aircraft tail 

numbers. It became the one the rangers used.17

On Monday afternoon other information critical to the deployment 

became available. The battalion commanders learned that a Joint Special 

Operations Command medical unit would accompany their units; that the 

Military Airlift Command would dispatch three MC–130s and four C–130s 

for the 1st Battalion and five C–130s for the 2d Battalion; and that the time 

for the invasion had changed. General Scholtes arrived in the afternoon 

for a final briefing by both battalion commanders. After they finished their 

15 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-1, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, and with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, plus 

author with Barno, 20 Aug 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 16 Intervs, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, and with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 17 Intervs, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, and with Hensler, 1 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. C, app. 10, p. 

C-10, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH.
The Rucksack War

180

presentations, Scholtes casually mentioned, “Oh, by the way, did you hear that 

there’s a 21⁄2-hour delay in the t[ime] o[n] t[arget]?”18

In their briefings both Taylor and Hagler had assumed an H-hour of 0230 

on 25 October. They now knew that the time for the assault would be 21⁄2 hours 

later at 0500. Hagler decided to stick to the times in his original loading plan 

up to the point that his men were to board the aircraft. Then they would hold 

in place until the C–130s arrived. Taylor opted to start his loading sequence 

21⁄2 hours later to account for the delay. Given 61⁄2 hours’ flying time from 

Hunter Army Airfield to Grenada, this meant a departure time of 2230 on 24 

October. Making use of the delay, Major Nix ordered Captain Clemons to get 

a hot meal for the troops. Soon they were eating.19

The last of the sixteen C–130s that the Air Force had dispatched to carry 

the rangers and the special operations medical unit to Grenada (fourteen mission aircraft and two backups) reached Hunter Army Airfield at 1700 on 24 

October. After taxiing to the Saber Hall complex, the aircrews departed by bus 

for their mission briefing. Captain Hoffman anticipated refueling the aircraft 

and then loading the battalions. Instead, upon returning from their lengthy 

briefing and well in advance of the 2230 take-off time, the aircrews taxied their 

craft to the loading ramps. Colonel Hagler’s men were ready to board, but 

Colonel Taylor’s were not.20

By then the 1st Battalion’s jumpmasters had given their briefings, and 

Colonel Taylor was talking to the troops preparatory to issuing parachutes 

and then actually loading. The battalion S–3, Maj. John J. Maher III, had 

noticed a conflict in an Air Force message with the 2230 departure time and 

the 0500 time on target. He was in the process of sending someone over to 

air operations to straighten out the confusion when he heard the sound of 

taxiing aircraft. He went outside just as the craft stopped, and encountered 

Captain Hoffman and an Air Force major. Hoffman explained that the Air 

Force wanted to load immediately. Major Maher and the Air Force officer 

argued loading times without coming to any agreement.21

Maher walked out to the aircraft to talk to a senior Air Force officer to 

clarify the situation. At the same time Air Force mission commander Maj. 

Gen. William J. Mall Jr., who also commanded the Twenty-third Air Force, 

was striding in the opposite direction. General Mall wanted to talk to Colonel 

Taylor about the same topic. The gist of both conversations was brief and 

to the point: Did the rangers want to be late for the war? Because the obvious answer was no, the battalion sprang into action. The jumpmasters hastily 

18 Intervs, Bishop with Maher, 3 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, plus 

Wells with Miller, 3 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th 

Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 19 Intervs, Bishop with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, and with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 20 Intervs, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, with Nix, 2 Nov 1983, and with Maher, 3 Nov 

1983, plus author with Semmens, 14 Aug 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent

Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH.

21 Interv, Bishop with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Rangers at the Point Salines airfield, gathering their gear and listening to Admiral 

Metcalf
The Rucksack War

182

organized the battalion into chalks, aircraft-size loads of men and equipment, 

and issued parachutes. Then the troops sprinted for their assigned aircraft. 

They loaded so quickly that the first aircraft carrying Capt. John P. Abizaid 

and elements of the airfield-clearing team from his Company A, 1st Battalion, 

departed Hunter Army Airfield at 2130, an hour in advance of the take-off 

time Joint Special Operations Command had led them to expect.22

Obviously, General Mall and Colonel Taylor were working with different times. The problem apparently originated when an Air Force Staff officer 

prepared an execution checklist, which enumerated the key events and their 

times in order of occurrence for the aircrews assigned to the Grenada mission. The officer was cognizant of the three-hour difference between eastern 

daylight time and Greenwich standard mean time (or, in military parlance, 

Zulu) and that Grenada was in the Atlantic standard time zone, one time zone 

to the east. When he made his calculations, however, he neglected to take into 

account that Grenada was not observing daylight savings. Consequently, until 

the night of 29–30 October, when the East Coast reverted to standard time, 

Grenada, Fort Bragg, and Washington, D.C., were at Zulu minus 3, the same 

time. The discrepancy accounted for General Mall hustling the 1st Battalion 

aboard his aircraft with great intensity.23

82d Airborne Division, N-hour to N+2

Shortly before 2030 hours, on the night of 24 October, XVIII Airborne 

Corps received the execution order from Atlantic Command. The corps’ acting G–3, Lt. Col. William R. Chewning, telephoned the 82d Airborne Division 

and said that the corps recommended beginning the loading sequence at 2300 

using an emergency deployment readiness exercise as a cover. The division 

headquarters duty officer, Maj. Thomas D. Smith, the assistant G–3 for operations, saw no point in delaying the notification an additional two hours; the 

division needed all the extra time it could get. He set the notification hour 

(N-hour) at 2100, a judgment with which the division commander, Maj. Gen. 

Edward L. Trobaugh, strongly concurred once he learned of it.24

At 2100 division headquarters issued a formal call-up over a secure 

line to the forces involved, virtually every subordinate element in the division. In response, some of the units, such as the 82d Aviation Battalion, 

sent companies that reported directly to brigade headquarters. Others, 

22 Ibid.; Dean C. Kallander and James K. Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 35; AAR, Opn 

Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. C, app. 15, tabs A–C, pp. A-15 to C-15, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 23 Interv, Bishop with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent

Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. C, app. 15, tabs A–C, pp. A-15 to C-15, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH; Execution Checklist (Air Staff copy), Hist files (PDocs/DAF/

DeptHQ), CMH. 24 Intervs, Bishop with Chewning, 9 Nov 1983, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, and 

Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See List, FORSCOM, n.d., sub: 

Implementing Orders and Directives [in Urgent Fury], Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), 

CMH, which gives the date and time of Mackmull’s emergency deployment readiness exercise 

notification to Trobaugh.
Loading the Force

183

including field artillery, engineers, signal corps, and military police, attached 

elements directly to the 2d Brigade’s two infantry battalions, each of which 

was organized as a task force. Logistical units in Col. William F. Daly Jr.’s 

82d Support Command sent detachments as part of Forward Area Support 

Team II, whose coordinator reported to the brigade commander, Col. 

Stephen Silvasy Jr. The message took many officers involved by surprise, for 

they had anticipated that Grenada would prove a false alarm like so many 

crises in the past.25

For the next several hours the only time that mattered for the members of 

the 82d was the N-hour time. It became a key criterion of success or failure—

the main indicator for whether a person or organization had successfully performed his, her, or its assigned task at the appropriate time in the loading cycle. 

As everyone strained to meet the target of N+10, they of necessity developed 

tunnel vision as they focused on the immediate tasks.26

Only a fraction of the units involved in the operation actually deployed 

to Grenada. The job of supplying and equipping the brigade task force and 

moving it to Pope Air Force Base required the efforts of the 82d Support 

Command, especially its Provisional Movement Control Center; the 182d 

Materiel Management Center; and the 407th Supply and Service Battalion, 

augmented by work details drawn from other divisional units. Three hours 

after the N-sequence began, for example, the Division Ready Force-9, the 

2d Battalion, 508th Infantry, passed to control of the support command. 

The unit’s soldiers would perform much of the backbreaking physical labor 

involved in loading the task force aboard aircraft.27

The effort to move the 2d Brigade also required assistance from elements 

outside the division—the XVIII Airborne Corps, especially its 1st Support 

Command, and the Directorate of Industrial Operations at Fort Bragg. 

Corps headquarters, however, remained unaware that the division had initiated its N-sequence two hours early and adhered to a notification time 

of 2300. This discrepancy could have complicated the loading immensely 

because logistical support elements in division and corps had to work closely 

together on a precise schedule. If the corps units began their alert two hours 

out of synchronization with the division, the possibility of monumental confusion loomed at the very beginning of the operation. Nothing of the sort 

happened, however, because of redundancy built into the division’s readiness 

standing operating procedures and the hard work of the division transportation officer, Maj. Frederick C. Perkins. The readiness procedure required 

25 See Briefing, Cole, 15 Jul 1986; Intervs, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, and with 

Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, plus Bishop with J. A. Hamilton, 16 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. See also John J. Cusick and Mark J. Flavin, “’Golden Griffins’ Pave the Way,” pp. 

28–31. 26 Interv, author with Reardon, October 2005, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

27 Briefing, Cole, 15 Jul 1986, and Interv, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. Documents in the official file contain conflicting information on the 182d’s designation. 

Usage in this work conforms to the official guidance found in the TOE 29–53H3, 15 Jun 1973, 

chg. 19, TOE files, CMH.
The Rucksack War

184

that the division contact each unit in the 1st Support Command from which 

it needed support for the deployment. Major Perkins did so and verified that 

each had received notification. He then made certain that their trucks and 

other equipment arrived at designated points at the required times. Although 

the 1st Support Command’s units received a delayed alert message through 

their own chain, Perkins found that all were “online” at the earlier time and 

ready to go.28

Division logisticians were concerned about how little equipment was 

available from corps, particularly from the 507th Transportation Group 

that normally provided the 82d with trucks and with such materiel-handling 

equipment as forklifts. Because most of this equipment was in Florida supporting Bold Eagle, Major Perkins worked directly with the group’s 7th 

Transportation Battalion, with the Fort Bragg motor pool, and with XVIII 

Airborne Corps headquarters to make certain that they committed every 

vehicle capable of movement from whatever source to the operation. He 

could not make up for all the materiel in Florida, but his effort significantly 

reduced the deficiency.29

After receiving the alert message, noncommissioned officers began telephoning officers and men who lived off post to report to their units. Many of 

the recipients of these tidings had just settled down to watch Monday night 

football. They hastily collected personal items required for extended service in 

the field and departed, leaving wives and girlfriends in various emotional states 

to participate in yet another emergency deployment readiness exercise. Many, if 

not a majority, of the members of the division, however, suspected something 

different. Soon the All-American Highway leading to Fort Bragg was a snarled 

mass of traffic.30

The 2d Brigade began to assemble. In line with the division’s readiness 

standing operating procedures, Division Ready Force-1, Lt. Col. Jack L. 

Hamilton’s 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, posted guards to secure its unit area 

at 2200, one hour after notification. By 2300, the same time that the corps 

alerted its units, the battalion was supposed to be completely assembled. All 

except one of the rifle companies met the deadline, and it was over 90 percent present. The tardy 3d Brigade unit was Company B, 2d Battalion, 505th 

Infantry, commanded by Capt. Mark D. Rocke. Colonel Hamilton unofficially 

redesignated it Company C, 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, for Urgent Fury

to avoid the confusion of two B companies in the same battalion. The real 

28 Intervs, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983]; McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 

17 Jan 1984; Bishop with Chewning, 9 Nov 1983; author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986 (quoted 

words); and Wade with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also AAR, Opn 

Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. B, pp. I-B-1 to I-B-2, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 29 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-29, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Interv, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 30 Briefing, Cole, 15 Jul 1986; Intervs, Wells with Withers, 10 Nov 1983; Burdett with D. 

Davis, [Nov 1983]; Hicks with Pitts, [Nov 1983]; McMichael with Ryneska, 18 Nov 1983; Danner 

and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Loading the Force

185

Company C was still in training and not combat-ready. Captain Rocke’s company replaced it at the last moment.31

The process by which Captain Rocke and his men became involved in the 

marshaling of forces illustrated how competing peacetime missions and the 

operation’s tight security adversely affected even the readiness of the most 

combat-ready battalion in the U.S. Army. In 1981 Army Chief of Staff General 

Edward C. Meyer had introduced Project COHORT (cohesion, operational 

readiness, and training) in an effort to develop more stable and combat effective units. The Army recruited individuals who would train and serve together 

in a single company for an entire three-year enlistment. Testing the concept 

began in twenty companies assigned to selected units, one of which was the 

82d Airborne Division. While well conceived to bolster unit esprit de corps, 

the concept posed particular difficulties for any unit required to maintain a 

high level of readiness. A COHORT company needed six months to complete 

individual and unit training, but brigades in the 82d rotated to the highest alert 

status on a ninety-day cycle. These two recurring events on dissimilar time 

schedules made inevitable the possibility that a battalion assigned a COHORT 

company might also find itself in Division Ready Force-1 status with only two 

rather than three combat-ready rifle companies. This was Colonel Hamilton’s 

circumstance on 24 October 1983.32

Initially, planners in the division had tapped Lt. Col. John W. Raines’ 

3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, to provide a company to round out Colonel 

Hamilton’s force, but this solution became unworkable early in the planning 

when Atlantic Command indicated that it wanted two airborne battalions. 

The next battalion in the readiness sequence, Division Ready Force-3, could 

supply the company. That unit, the 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry, however, 

was training to rotate to the Sinai in January 1984 as part of a multinational 

peacekeeping force required by the 1978 Camp David Accords. A battalion’s 

preparations for service in the Sinai were so complex and time-consuming that 

General Trobaugh decided he did not want to involve that unit in what might 

prove to be an open-ended commitment on Grenada. When the planners briefly 

considered using a one-brigade force of three battalions on Sunday, they designated Lt. Col. Keith M. Nightengale’s 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, from 

the 3d Brigade, as the round-out unit for Colonel Silvasy’s task force. Thus, 

when Atlantic Command directed the division to supply a one-brigade force 

of two battalions, General Trobaugh quite naturally selected one of Colonel 

Nightengale’s companies to replace the COHORT company. The company’s 

presence in the division seriously distracted Trobaugh and his staff when other 

issues of great importance demanded their attention.33

31 Briefing, Cole, 15 Jul 1986; Intervs, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, and with 

Rocke, 19 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 32 Karl E. Cocke et al., comps., Department of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 

1981, pp. 9–10, 46.

33 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and Danner and McMichael with Williams 

and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d 

Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 3, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
The Rucksack War

186

Sometime Monday afternoon the 3d Brigade commander, Col. James T. 

Scott, told Captain Rocke that his company would be attached to Colonel 

Hamilton’s battalion for an emergency deployment readiness exercise. At 1900 

Rocke met with Hamilton, who gave the captain the same logistical guidance 

that all the other company commanders in the initial force had received: He 

could take a jeep and a trailer. Rocke was to load two 81-mm. mortar tubes, 

all his night-vision goggles, and several large RC–292 antennas. Each antenna 

weighed about thirty pounds and was roughly the size of a large gym bag, but 

it significantly increased the range of the radio to which it was attached. He 

could pack any remaining space in the vehicle and trailer with ammunition, 

spare parts, and whatever else he might consider important. It was an assignment that left the captain somewhat bemused, a common reaction for company commanders in similar circumstances: “I’ve got a table of organization 

and equipment,” commented Rocke, “that’s about sixteen pages long.”34

Rocke prepared his packing list, made a roster of the men in his company 

who were not available to participate in the exercise, and worked out a series of 

actions that the company would have to take once it received an alert message. 

Then he drove over to his battalion commander’s home; he wanted Colonel 

Nightengale to critique what he had just done. Rocke was there when the alert 

34 Intervs, Bishop with Rocke, 19 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and with J. L. Hamilton, 10 

Nov 1083, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Men of the 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, in Grenada
Loading the Force

187

came. The message, of course, traveled through 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, 

channels. The battalion executive officer could not tell Rocke whether Hamilton 

wanted just him or the entire company. Rocke had to drive to Hamilton’s headquarters to find out. Consequently, Company C, 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, 

did not begin its alert procedures until 2130. A late start, however, proved less 

important than the unit’s readiness status. Because it was lower than the other 

companies in the 2d Brigade, the unit took longer to assemble. The last straggler reported in at 0130 on 25 October, N+4:30, under the circumstances, a 

highly creditable performance for all involved.35

Normally, Division Ready Force-2 would have attained the same status 

21⁄2 hours later at 0500 on 25 October. Sometime prior to the alert, however, 2d 

Brigade headquarters had notified Colonel Raines that the 3d Battalion, 325th 

Infantry, would have to complete its assembly five hours ahead of schedule—

by 2400 on 24 October. Raines had immediately passed this information along 

to his company commanders. As a result, by 2300 his battalion’s concentration 

was much further along than usual.36

At this time the commander of Company A, 3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, 

Capt. Danny W. Davis, reached his company area. He found that his men had 

already drawn their weapons and field gear and had begun packing personal 

issue items (extra pairs of socks, underwear, and spare uniforms) and necessities (toothpaste, hand soap, toilet paper, and razors) into their rucksacks. Any 

overflow went into their A-bags, enlarged versions of the World War II barracks bags of somewhat lighter construction. While the men would carry their 

rucksacks, the Air Force would bring the A-bags separately. Because his unit 

was well along with its preparations, Captain Davis went on to battalion headquarters. There Colonel Raines gave Davis, the other company commanders, 

and the battalion staff a preliminary briefing on what he knew about the mission. Raines still expected his battalion to parachute into Pearls Airport.37

The 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry, commanded by Lt. Col. Bobby R. 

Hurst, remained the Division Ready Force-3 at this juncture. While Colonel 

Hurst and his key subordinates may have realized that their unit would not 

participate in the assault phase of the operation, they were probably as yet 

unaware of General Trobaugh’s decision to exclude them entirely because of 

the Sinai mission. After posting guards at key installations as required by the 

readiness standing operating procedures, Hurst sent his air movement officers 

to assist the brigade staff in planning. Hurst’s men immediately began work on 

the brigade’s vehicle priority list, the order in which the unit’s vehicles would 

arrive in the area of operations. Each would carry the maximum feasible load 

of equipment, supplies, or ammunition. In some cases these loads, referred 

to as bulk ballast because in an airdrop their weight was needed to open the 

heavy parachutes strapped to the vehicles, provided reserve supplies of items 

35 Interv, Bishop with Rocke, 19 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

36 Interv, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], and Briefing, Cole, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 37 Intervs, Burdett with D. Davis, [Nov 1983], and Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH.
Paratroopers relaxing and waiting to board aircraft for deployment to Grenada
Loading the Force

189

that the troops in the assault phase had already taken with them: small-arms 

ammunition, rations, and water. Other vehicles carried or towed equipment 

too heavy for troops to manhandle into position such as mortars, large radios, 

and artillery ammunition and tubes. At times a vehicle’s priority for deployment depended as much on what it carried as on what it could do.38

Over the weekend Hamilton’s and Raines’ planning cells had prepared 

priority lists for their own vehicles. As the troops from both units would arrive 

before their follow-on supplies and equipment, Silvasy’s staff had to determine how to distribute the vehicles from the two battalions, their attached 

elements, and the brigade command post in the airflow. While the staff could 

conduct preliminary work on the priority list in the first two hours of the 

N-sequence, preparation of a definitive list depended on receipt of the division’s operations order and the commanding general’s guidance at the N+2 

briefing.39

In the supporting battalions, the organizations normally associated with 

the 2d Brigade—Company B, 307th Engineer Battalion; Company B, 82d 

Aviation Battalion; Batteries B and C, 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery; 

Forward Area Support Team II (Detachment C, 407th Supply and Service 

Battalion; Company C, 782d Maintenance Battalion; and Company C, 307th 

Medical Battalion); 2d Platoon, 82d Military Police Company; and elements 

of the 82d Signal Battalion—assembled and went through the same procedure 

as the infantrymen. Because the engineer battalion commander, Colonel Izzo, 

had been involved in the early planning at division headquarters and had at 

least an idea of what was really happening, he could read between the lines of 

what seemed to be merely an order for another emergency deployment readiness exercise. Able, as a result, to anticipate what the division needed, he alerted 

an equipment platoon of the 618th Engineer Company to prepare to deploy. 

He knew that it might have to prepare the airstrip at Point Salines to receive 

fixed-wing aircraft.40

The 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, commander, Lt. Col. Duane E. 

Williams, planned that his two batteries, initially attached to Hamilton’s and 

Raines’ battalions, would ultimately revert to battalion control. Consequently, 

Colonel Williams prepared to deploy with a very lean command group. 

Almost immediately he had to shuffle his staff. Because a new officer had just 

taken over fire support officer duties and because the previous officer, Capt. 

Lawrence Henson Jr., was serving in that role on Williams’ staff, Raines went 

to Williams to ask that Henson be returned to him. Williams agreed, although 

he first contemplated acting as brigade fire support coordinator himself but 

then assigned one of his assistant S–3s, Capt. August J. Fucci, to fill this role. 

38 Interv, Burdett with Hurst, [Nov 1983], and Briefing, Cole, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 39 Interv, Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, and Briefing, Cole, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 40 Lawrence L. Izzo, “Divisional Engineer Support During Operation Urgent Fury,” pp. 

24–25; Robert N. Seigle, “Looking Back at Urgent Fury,” pp. 18–19, 22, 24, 57–58; Interv, 

Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

190

Captain Fucci had recently commanded a battery and had previously served 

as the 2d Brigade fire support officer.41

Coincidentally, the assistant division fire support coordinator, Lt. Col. 

John J. Ryneska, had just arrived at division headquarters. The assistant G–3, 

Major Smith, greeted him with the news that this was an actual deployment, 

that he would accompany the division assault command post as its fire support officer, and that he could not take any vehicles with him—a fact that 

limited the number and power of any radios he might use. Smith could not 

tell Ryneska where the division was going; that would come at the division’s 

formal N+2 briefing. Then Smith, who was extraordinarily busy, hurried off. 

To Ryneska, division headquarters had the appearance of an ant hill that had 

just been stirred with a stick. He stayed a few moments in a futile quest for 

more information and then retreated to his own office to collect his thoughts 

and pack his gear. If he was going to operate effectively, he decided, he would 

need “a whole bunch of radios.”42

The units assigned to support the loading prepared to do so. The signal 

battalion put its outloading communications plan into effect by setting up 

internal telephone links and radio nets. It also disconnected most of the commercial telephones on post to ensure operational security. Company A, 407th 

Supply and Service Battalion, which provided transportation support for the 

entire division, marshaled drivers and trucks. The 407th’s Company E, the 

riggers, were already in place at the heavy drop rig site. The Division Ready 

Force-9 commander, Lt. Col. Ralph E. Newman, and his command group 

were mustering the support details for the personnel holding area, the corps 

marshaling area, the central loading area control center, Green Ramp, and 

all the other locations where the battalion supplied manpower for the heavy 

physical labor of loading a task force.43

As the troops assembled, the battalion S–1s, not only those in the two 

infantry battalions designated to participate in the operation but also those in 

the battalions that contributed contingents to the brigade task force, became 

especially busy. Predictably, the N-sequence proceeded most smoothly in 

the 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, which maintained the highest readiness of 

any battalion in the division. The battalion S–1, Capt. George K. Withers 

III, monitored the rate at which the men arrived in the company areas for 

Colonel Hamilton and prepared a list of those who would fly to the island in 

the assault phase.44

Personnel officers in battalions with a lower readiness status faced more 

complex problems. They checked whether the soldiers had signed wills and 

powers of attorney and made arrangements to store personal vehicles and 

41 Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, and McMichael 

with Steele, Glass, Stewart, and Henson, 5 Apr 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 42 Interv, McMichael with Ryneska, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

43 Intervs, Parker with Woloski, [Nov 1983], and with Costa, [c. Nov 1983], plus author with 

Henry, 15 Jul 1986, and with Horton, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Cusick and Flavin, 

“‘Golden Griffins,’” pp. 28–31. 44 Interv, Wells with D’Arbonne, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Interv), CMH.
Loading the Force

191

property. A number of young troopers who had not taken these requirements seriously discovered too late the need for them and left wives behind 

who had no way to cash a paycheck. Some soldiers, instead of storing their 

automobiles in a secured area as intended, left them in the battalion parking 

lots where they were vandalized. One officer recalled that “the amount of 

car keys and house keys that were literally thrown to me off the back of a 

deuce-and-a-half as they were pulling away was absolutely incredible.” This 

problem was apparently greatest in the supporting battalions, and all the 

officers could do for those in the initial contingent was to catch the keys. By 

the time division called for follow-up forces, however, they and their counterparts had put the laggards to work making wills and filling out powers of 

attorney. The paperwork thus generated tied up the division legal office for 

the next several days.45

The task facing the 2d Brigade S–1, Capt. Gregory M. D’Arbonne, was 

less diffuse. About two hours before notification, the brigade commander, 

Colonel Silvasy, called Captain D’Arbonne into his office and told him that 

the division was going to Grenada with the same mission it had had in the 

emergency deployment readiness exercise of the previous week—to rescue 

American hostages. D’Arbonne would process U.S. nationals through customs when they left the island. Because the division G–1, Lt. Col. Edward R. 

Throckmorton, would remain at Fort Bragg, D’Arbonne would be the senior 

personnel representative on the island. As such, in addition to his other duties, 

he would advise the division commander on all manpower issues. D’Arbonne 

returned to his office and began to gather the forms he would need to function as the brigade S–1 and as an acting customs official. He soon discovered that he did not have enough room for everything he needed in his own 

rucksack and that of his assistant. The surplus went into A-bags. Colonel 

Throckmorton, who learned of the operation only when the N-sequence 

began, visited D’Arbonne’s office and made some suggestions about things 

to do on Grenada, as did a representative from the division adjutant general’s 

office. By then several hours had passed. D’Arbonne and his assistant left to 

draw their equipment and to join the brigade command group at the departure airfield.46

The alert also initiated intense activity in the battalion logistical sections, 

where the operation came as a surprise. In the 3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, for 

example, Colonel Raines briefed his battalion S–4, 1st Lt. Randall L. McClure, 

on the operation only after the N-sequence began. Lieutenant McClure ran 

through a checklist covering the classes of supply, transportation, and maintenance trying to come up with recommendations for the colonel and the operations staff on what the battalion would need to parachute onto Pearls Airport 

and defend the airhead unaided. They had already prepared a vehicle list and 

worked out a partial list of supplies during the planning sessions over the 

45 Intervs, Wells with Withers, 10 Nov 1983, and with D’Arbonne, 9 Nov 1983, plus GWG 

with S. Moran, [Nov 1983] (quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Moran provides the best 

description of S–1 functions. 46 Interv, Wells with D’Arbonne, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

192

weekend, but these had to remain tentative until Raines received the division’s 

mission statement, operations order, and scheme of maneuver at the division 

commander’s N+2 briefing.47

McClure issued warning orders to his noncommissioned officers. He 

instructed the sergeant responsible for minimum mission-essential equipment to contact the 82d Support Command and arrange transportation for 

all equipment not held in the companies. The division and its support command followed a “contingency island” policy for all materiel listed on a unit’s 

table of organization and equipment, with the division storing weapons and 

individual-issue field equipment in company areas and the support command 

keeping the remainder in warehouses for delivery to the heavy drop rig site for 

preparation for shipment by air as bulk cargo.48

The 82d Aviation Battalion logisticians were leaning forward, the term 

they often used to describe being both mentally and materially prepared. The 

battalion S–4, Capt. Jimmie M. Rabon, had participated in the planning on 

Sunday and knew what he had to do. On Monday morning he had directed 

his senior noncommissioned officer, Sgt. William Labor, to start filling out 

requisition forms for items that the battalion would have to draw from corps 

and division contingency warehouses when it deployed. At Captain Rabon’s 

instruction, Sergeant Labor had left the date and requisition number on each 

form blank. At the same time Rabon had had other members of his section 

check to make certain that they had on hand all the various forms that a unit 

might need in the field. Throughout the day he had remained silent about the 

reason for this activity, which remained very low-key to avoid attracting attention. His men had moved no supplies, but they were poised to do so as soon as 

General Trobaugh issued his operations order.49

The logisticians in the other battalions were not nearly as well prepared 

because they knew nothing of the impending operation. “Logistics,” observed 

Rabon later, “runs on paper.” Because his section had prepared its paperwork, 

his battalion would enjoy a competitive advantage over other battalions. He 

could send representatives to corps and division warehouses before the other 

units could. Even so, as with every other logistician in the division, he needed 

the definitive guidance provided by the first critical milestone in the loading 

process, the N+2 briefing.50

Although General Trobaugh’s perception of security requirements had 

precluded any real medical planning, Company C, 307th Medical Battalion, 

the medical unit normally associated with the 2d Brigade, had perhaps the 

easiest assembly of any unit in the task force. It was already positioned at a 

nearby field site and could move as a unit to Green Ramp. The division alert 

message at 2100 finally allowed the battalion’s commander, Lt. Col. Edward 

B. Wilson, to brief his staff on the operation. Fifteen minutes later Colonel 

Wilson alerted the company for movement back to the battalion area. He also 

47 Interv, Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

48 Ibid.; Interv (quoted words), Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Interv), CMH.

49 Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

50 Ibid.
Loading the Force

193

called the corps surgeon’s office but discovered that the corps had not yet sent 

an alert message. This meant that security requirements continued to prevent 

the corps surgeon, Col. James H. Rumbaugh, and the 44th Medical Brigade 

commander, Col. Jack R. Wilson II, from briefing their staffs, let alone moving 

any units. At this point, medical preparations at corps and division were not 

synchronized.51

N+2 Briefing and Concerns

At 2300, on 24 October, General Trobaugh and his staff conducted the 

critical N+2 briefing for which everyone was waiting. All concerned received a 

copy of the division’s operations order (which, for security reasons, still read 

Macapa, the division’s imaginary location for emergency deployment readiness exercises) with a map of Grenada attached. The division G–2 provided 

an updated account of what was happening on Grenada and confirmed that 

the 2d Brigade could expect only light resistance. Then Trobaugh gave further guidance to his senior subordinates. Both the 2d and 3d Battalions, 325th 

Infantry, would land at the Point Salines airfield to relieve the rangers in place. 

Colonel Raines thus learned for the first time that his battalion would not 

assault Pearls Airport but would follow Hamilton’s battalion into the peninsula. However, whether the task force would fly directly to Point Salines or 

whether it would transfer onto C–130s on Barbados was still not clear.52

Trobaugh emphasized that he wanted to put as much infantry and as little 

equipment as possible aboard the first aircraft because he believed that the 

enemy was a light infantry force and because available lift for the first contingent had shrunk to twelve C–141s. Hamilton received seven of the planes 

for his battalion and the division and brigade command posts, while Raines 

obtained five for his battalion. These first twelve would contain only troops. 

All vehicles for the force would come with the follow-up aircraft. The artillerymen from Batteries B and C, 320th Field Artillery, would go in as infantry, and 

their howitzers would come later.53

The operations order from Atlantic Command clearly used the word 

airland. General Trobaugh was unhappy with such a rigid stipulation given 

all the imponderables. Normal procedure in the 82d Airborne Division 

was to configure the lead battalion for airdrop even if no opposition was 

anticipated. While Trobaugh did not modify the order at that time, before 

the meeting broke up the participants discussed the location of assembly 

areas for the various units in the event of an airdrop. The 407th Supply and 

Service Battalion commander, Lt. Col. John J. Cusick, could not resist one 

last question: Was the operation a real one or was this just another exercise? 

51 Interv, Oland with Wilson, 6 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

52 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and with R. Newman, 16 Nov 1983; Pirnie 

with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985; Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983; Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983]; 

and McMichael with Ryneska, 18 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 53 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983; GWG with Baine, Hernandez, Hamilton, 

Barajas, 9 Nov 1983; and McMichael with Halley, 15 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.
The Rucksack War

194

The entire briefing had followed closely the division’s standardized format. 

Trobaugh paused and looked at his watch. “The frogmen went in the water 

two hours ago.” The room was completely silent while the import of this 

information sank in. Then the participants returned to their commands to 

brief their subordinates. What one officer labeled as “the most professional 

meeting” he had attended in his almost three years in the division had lasted 

only thirty minutes.54

The recently arrived division surgeon, Lt. Col. Barry S. Sidenberg, was 

nonetheless surprised and dissatisfied with the briefing—surprised that more 

had not been said and dissatisfied because it had sounded like an information 

briefing. No one had directed either Colonel Sidenberg or Colonel Wilson to 

develop a medical task organization. “It was presented almost as a fait accompli.” Moreover, Sidenberg had no idea either of how much medical support the 

rangers would have or of what the Navy might provide. As the meeting broke 

up, he stopped Colonel Silvasy in the hall and said that he was not clear as to 

what his role as division surgeon should be in the operation. Silvasy told him 

not to worry, for his 2d Brigade surgeon, Capt. Colin S. McKenzie, was aware 

of everything that was going on.55

Unhappy with this response, Colonel Sidenberg sought out General 

Trobaugh and repeated his concern. Sidenberg was disturbed because the 

operation was proceeding without what he considered normal medical involvement. He also observed that he was a board-qualified general surgeon. His 

skill as a physician would be needed on the battlefield, and he ought to accompany the task force personally. Trobaugh told him that the USS Guam would 

be offshore and that anyone injured would be flown there. He did not elaborate 

further.

Colonel Sidenberg was not the only officer to come away from the 

N+2 briefing with concerns about his role in the operation. The division 

G–5, Maj. William D. Archer, had attempted without success to become 

involved in the early planning. Consequently, he was “somewhat surprised” 

when Trobaugh mentioned toward the end of the briefing that Archer was 

to play an important role in the initial stages of the operation, particularly 

in matters related to refugees. First, under the instructions he received, his 

priority was to look into the possibility of food shortages on the island. 

Second, he was to go to the True Blue Campus of St. George’s University 

School of Medicine and determine the situation there. Finally, he was to 

discover what multinational forces were involved “and establish liaison 

with them.”56

At least one other officer, the division staff judge advocate, Lt. Col. Quinton 

W. Richardson, was particularly impressed by General Trobaugh’s remarks 

54 Intervs, McMichael with Halley, 15 Nov 1983; Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985; Hicks 

with Barrett, [Nov 1983]; Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983; and author with Cusick, 24 Jan 1989 

(quoted words). All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 55 For this and the following paragraph, see Interv, Wade with Sidenberg, 14 Dec 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 56 Interv, Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Loading the Force

195

about refugees. As Colonel Richardson listened to the briefing, it became obvious to him “that there were going to be a number of JAG-related problems.” 

These included the need to form a new Grenadian government, to commandeer vehicles, and to billet troops. He also anticipated that any fighting would 

generate a large number of refugees and prisoners, or rather detainees since 

the United States was not at war with either Cuba or Grenada. Under joint 

doctrine the Army had responsibility for the maintenance of prisoner-of-war 

or, as on Grenada, detainee compounds. Shortly after the meeting, Richardson 

voiced his concerns to the division chief of staff, Col. Peter J. Boylan Jr., who 

added him to the assault command post roster and assigned him and Major 

Archer to the sixth aircraft.57

Brigade/Battalion Staffs, N+2:30 to N+3:30

Colonels Silvasy, Hamilton, and Raines and their S–3s went directly to 2d 

Brigade headquarters to meet with the commanders of all their attached units. 

They discussed briefly the brigade’s scheme of maneuver. Because Silvasy was 

not as sanguine as Atlantic Command planners about the amount of resistance 

that U.S. forces could expect, he decided to request a double-load of ammunition for his men. The reduction of aircraft from Sunday night required both 

Hamilton and Raines to revise the vehicle priority lists for their battalions. 

Raines, in particular, was convinced that water would be a problem and made 

certain that all of his 21⁄2-ton trucks scheduled for early deployment pulled 

water trailers.58

After first passing on the results of the division and brigade meetings, the 

two battalion commanders sat down with their staffs to prepare battalion loading lists, by-name rosters of the members of the units going on the first twelve 

aircraft, and an inventory of the equipment they would take with them. Each 

battalion task force would consist of three rifle companies; the reconnaissance 

platoon from the Combat Support Company; a battery with Stinger missile 

teams from the 3d Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery; an engineer platoon 

from Company B, 307th Engineer Battalion; a combat electronic warfare 

and intelligence element; a Marine team from the 2d Air and Naval Gunfire 

Liaison Company; and a headquarters element. In addition, Raines decided 

to take the antitank platoon from his Combat Support Company organized as 

a reinforced rifle platoon.59

The colonel also made special arrangements in case his 3d Battalion had 

to use an intermediate staging base, still an option at the time of the N+2 briefing. He directed his S–4, Lieutenant McClure, to remain at Fort Bragg and 

57 Interv (quoted words), Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, pp. 1–2, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 58 Intervs, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, and Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 59 Intervs, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, and with Baine, 10 Nov 1983; Burdett 

with Clawson, [Nov 1983], and with Raines, [Nov 1983]; Parker with Costa, [Nov 1983]; and 

Hicks with Mason, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

196

to expedite the movement of the battalion’s vehicles and resupply to Grenada 

after the unit deployed. To assist McClure, Raines left his assistant S–3 for 

air, who was slated to depart soon for another assignment. The colonel took 

his headquarters company commander, who had logistical experience, and 

his new assistant S–3 for air with him to handle any intermediate staging 

base operations on Barbados. They could ensure that the 3d Battalion, if 

diverted to Barbados as Raines expected, made the most efficient use of any 

C–130s.60

When the leader of the 2d Platoon, 82d Military Police Company, 1st 

Lt. David B. Lemauk, stopped at the 2d Battalion headquarters, Colonel 

Hamilton said that he would like to have the entire platoon attached to his 

battalion rather than the usual one squad. As justification, Hamilton cited 

the need to evacuate large numbers of Americans from the area of operations 

and the possibility of capturing a substantial number of prisoners of war. 

Somewhat later, when Lemauk visited the 3d Battalion headquarters, Colonel 

Raines asked him for a military police squad in addition to those going with 

the 2d Battalion for the same reasons. Due to the initiative of the battalion 

commanders, the 2d Brigade deployed with four military police squads instead 

of the normal two.61

Although much of the last-minute flurry of work in the battalion 

headquarters related to logistics, logistical planning was essentially complete when Hamilton and Raines returned from brigade headquarters 

and delivered copies of the division’s operations order to their staffs. 

Logistical officers in turn briefed the officers and men of their S–4 sections. Noncommissioned officers prepared necessary paperwork, and then 

the members of the sections scattered to the corps and division warehouses 

to requisition the supplies and equipment that their battalions would need 

for the mission.62

They could do this so quickly because their predecessors had done the 

bulk of the logistical planning within each battalion long before the alert 

notification or even the first Joint Chiefs of Staff message warning about a 

possible operation on Grenada. Over time, using historic rates of wartime 

consumption, data drawn from exercises and computer simulations, battalion logistical officers had estimated unit usage rates according to the type 

of conflict—guerrilla, conventional, or nuclear. Based on these calculations, 

they had developed “packages” for various classes of supply. Once they knew 

the type of operation, they only had to send their men to retrieve the appropriate packages.63

If a battalion commander deployed, his executive officer ordinarily assumed 

command of the rear detachment. Until that time, the executive officers assisted 

60 Interv, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

61 Interv, McMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and Gyurisko, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 62 Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, and author 

with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 63 Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Loading the Force

197

the load preparations, often concentrating on items known to be in short supply. Thus, the 82d Aviation Battalion executive officer, Maj. George S. Eyster 

IV, personally attended to drawing over-water contingency items, such as life 

vests and life rafts. Supply officers at the warehouse had no difficulty in filling 

his initial requests, but in so doing they essentially depleted the existing stocks 

at Fort Bragg. Unless the Army’s wholesale supply system replenished the Fort 

Bragg warehouses in remarkably short order, any subsequent helicopter flights 

would have to proceed without this equipment.64

82d Airborne Division, N+2:30 to N+3:30

Meanwhile, out in the black North Carolina night, an intricate fast-paced 

ballet began. When the commander of the 182d Materiel Management Center, 

Maj. William M. Causey Jr., returned from the N+2 briefing, he directed that 

the bulk ballast ammunition and certain contingency items that he knew were 

ready “begin rolling.” With that the 2d Battalion, 508th Infantry, dispatched 

trucks, drivers, and working parties to support the loading. Trucks and drivers from the deploying battalions, segregated from their parent units at N+2, 

moved to divisional warehouses to pick up minimum mission-essential equipment. The 82d Military Police Company established traffic control points and 

secured division headquarters. One military police platoon assumed responsibility for protection of ammunition convoys. The division staff had already 

activated the emergency operations center at division headquarters to monitor 

the activities of U.S. forces in the Grenada area.65

The alert notification sent sleepy soldiers from the 1st Support Command 

and the 82d Support Command along with civilians from the Directorate 

of Industrial Operations to their respective contingency warehouses, many 

of which dated from World War II and lacked electricity. As a result, work 

details groped through the blackness searching with flashlights and lanterns 

for the items they needed. More often than not the materiel turned up in some 

cramped and all but inaccessible corner. The working parties formed long 

human chains to pass it to the loading docks by hand. The shortage of trucks 

caused a long but temporary delay until transportation arrived to move the 

materiel to the corps marshaling area. In the interim, the work parties moved 

to the next warehouse and repeated the process.66

Ammunition constituted a separate problem. The division used heavy and 

bulky aluminum shipping containers, called CONEX (or Containers, Express), 

the size of small rooms to store ammunition. Some confusion existed initially 

as to what kind of ammunition mixture the division actually desired. Officers 

of the 8th Ordnance Company, the corps unit in charge of the ammunition 

64 Interv, Baribeau with Eyster, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

65 Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983 (quoted words); Bishop with J. A. Hamilton, 16 

Nov 1983; McMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and Gyurisko, [Nov 1983]; and Briefing, Cole, 15 

Jul 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 66 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-29, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Intervs, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and with Kelly, 18 Nov 

1983, plus author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

198

supply point, knew that they needed to start the ammunition flowing as quickly 

as possible. Not until after the N+2 Briefing, however, did they receive authoritative information about the division’s needs in the form of the ammunition 

plan developed by the S–3 of the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, Maj. 

Paul V. Passaro. Then an additional problem presented itself. Although Major 

Passaro had attempted to identify each individual CONEX that contained 

the desired mixture of high-explosive and illumination shells, the ammunition 

supply point did not contain enough to satisfy the 2d Brigade’s requirements. 

Consequently, the men and women of the 8th Ordnance Company opened 

additional CONEXs, removed the unwanted ammunition, and replaced it 

with the types required—a difficult and demanding task given the type of containers used. One officer estimated that reconfiguring the ammunition cost the 

division three to four hours.67

The ammunition-filled CONEXs required 10,000-pound rough-terrain 

forklifts to load them on flatbed trucks for movement to the airfield. Because 

Fort Bragg lacked a sufficient number, the 82d Support Command made do 

with a few 6,000-pound rough-terrain forklifts and a somewhat larger number of 4,000-pound models designed for use on shop floors. The 6,000-pound 

lifts were an acceptable substitute, but the extender bars for the fork were not 

67 Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and with Mason, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.

A 10,000-pound forklift backs away after placing a CONEX on a trailer.
Loading the Force

199

An aerial port squadron member uses 

a forklift to move pallets to a C–130 

supporting Urgent Fury.

available. Consequently, the CONEXs 

were always threatening to fall off the 

lift, an undesirable event because they 

were filled with live ammunition. The 

lighter 4,000-pound forklifts were 

even worse. Like the 6,000-pound 

models, they needed extender bars 

to ensure that a CONEX remained 

in the fork. With extender bars and a 

full load, however, they showed a distressing tendency to tip over onto the 

ammunition-filled CONEX.68

Although loading of the ammunition proceeded gingerly, the first 

CONEXs nonetheless left the division 

ammunition supply point at 2400, 

N+3. Some went directly to Green 

Ramp, where they were loaded onto 

C–141s for shipment. Other CONEXs, 

containing bulk ballast ammunition 

intended for the task force’s vehicles, 

went to the division’s heavy drop rig 

site. Whether airlanded or airdropped, 

this ammunition would provide a valuable reserve for the task force during 

the crucial initial stages of the operation before aerial resupply built up a large stockage on Grenada.69

Had the division planned to airdrop into Grenada, the heavy drop rig 

site would have been a center of hectic activity. As it was, Company E, 407th 

Supply and Service Battalion, commanded by Capt. Bernard Slayton, was 

busy enough. The riggers broke out the ammunition and loaded it aboard the 

vehicles that the division planned to take to Grenada. Normally, the battalions 

would have been responsible for loading their own vehicles, but the special 

equipment available at the heavy drop rig site and the specialized training of 

the riggers meant that they could complete the task more quickly.70

To offset the reserve ammunition lost when division planners severely 

restricted the number of vehicles accompanying the 2d Brigade, the 82d 

68 Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul and 7 Aug 

1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. For an authoritative discussion of forklift capabilities in a 

slightly different context, see AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-23, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 69 Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with 

Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 70 Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and author with Henry, 15 Jul 1986, and with 

Horton, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; author’s observations at Fort Bragg (1986 and 

1989) and discussions with Army officers.
The Rucksack War

200

Support Command increased the number of ammunition CONEXs shipped by 

air. Division load planners in Maj. Samuel S. Vitucci’s Provisional Movement 

Control Center had sufficient time to alter their standard load plans to meet 

this contingency. Using the Automated Airload Planning System, a computer 

program that allowed units to develop general load plans for a variety of aircraft, they prepared a gross estimate of the number and type of aircraft by 

mission. The system as it existed in 1983 was rigid in that it would only accept 

information from its official database and was not deployable. The database 

was physically located in a central processing unit at a university in California 

and was tied to the terminals in the Provisional Movement Control Center by 

insecure telephone and micrwave connections, which meant that anyone with 

the proper equipment could monitor the transmissions. Without an override 

provision for recording real data, such as the actual weight of equipment to be 

loaded on the aircraft, the program lacked operational flexibility. Furthermore, 

because the Army used the computer on a time-sharing basis with the university’s faculty and students whose work took precedence, results often arrived 

very slowly. Using a field expedient, division load planners overcame these 

deficiencies by printing out airload planning data and then manually writing 

individual manifests for aircraft carrying the 2d Brigade Task Force.71

One other aircraft load issue that involved Forward Area Support Team 

II coordinator Maj. Daniel J. Cleary III surfaced at this time. Major Cleary 

had learned about the operation sometime before the alert; however, he did 

not know any of the details until he and Forward Area Support Team III 

coordinator Maj. Christopher O. Watson had received a briefing early in the 

N-sequence. Each team consisted of a supply and service detachment, a maintenance company, and a medical company drawn from its parent battalion in 

the 82d Support Command. Because of size, each had to move into an area 

of operations in phases. Over the previous months Cleary and Watson had 

worked out the sequence in which their personnel and equipment should arrive 

at an airhead and had developed standardized personnel and equipment force 

packages. The first of these, named Alpha Echelon, could provide a minimal 

level of logistical support to a brigade task force for a few hours.72

Major Cleary used the information in the briefing, particularly the fact that 

he would have only two C–141s available, to adjust the Alpha Echelon configuration to best support the 2d Brigade’s mission on Grenada. Alpha consisted 

of thirty-five officers and men, including Major Cleary, equipped with two 

forklifts, a command-and-control jeep, a maintenance truck loaded with tools 

and spare parts, and a five-ton truck and trailer carrying the forward support 

fueling system. Cleary needed the forklifts to unload supplies and equipment 

71 LL, DALO–PLO, 5 Jan 1984, sub: Use of Deployable Mobility Execution System, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/DCSOPS), CMH; Interv, Wade with Vitucci, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 72 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-23, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, and with S. Green, 5 Aug 

1986, plus Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983, and with C. Watson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.
Loading the Force

201

from aircraft, while the jeep, loaded with radios, allowed him to direct logistical operations scattered around a 2,800-meter airstrip. Because the 2d Brigade 

was bringing few vehicles, Cleary dispensed with the automotive repair truck 

Alpha Echelon normally brought with it. A ten-man repair team, headed by 

S. Sgt. Sammie L. Harris, from Company C, 782d Maintenance Battalion, 

replaced the vehicle. The group could provide only essential services until the 

remainder of the forward area support team arrived. Cleary told Sergeant 

Harris to bring whatever spare parts his men could carry.73

The aviation fuel system supply point, manned by 2d Lt. Eric P. Katz’s Class 

III Platoon, Company A, 407th Supply and Service Battalion, was essential if 

the division needed to mount air assault operations on the island or even to 

stage administrative flights. Because the UH–60s in Company B, 82d Aviation 

Battalion, would carry no extra JP–4, they would have to rely on local supplies. 

The aviators would fly out of a major international airport on Barbados with 

ample stocks; however, they would depend wholly on whatever fuel the Air 

Force could deliver to Grenada. The fueling system, which General Trobaugh 

expected to be operational within twelve hours of its arrival, would drain Air 

Force tankers and store and then dispense the fuel as needed.74

Cleary had two major concerns about the composition of Alpha Echelon. 

They had to do with the type of forklifts available to his advance element and 

whether the brigade would allow him to bring them early enough. His table 

of organization and equipment gave him two 4,000-pound forklifts. He knew 

from his experience in Joint Exercise Bright Star in Egypt that he needed 

forklifts capable of handling ammunition-filled CONEXs on the first equipment aircraft, and he was also aware of the limitations of the 4,000-pounders. 

In his professional opinion, he needed a 6,000-pound forklift with extender 

bars in the airhead just as soon as possible.75

Around 2400, on 24 October, Cleary succeeded in borrowing a 6,000-

pound forklift. He then rushed to brigade headquarters to secure a place for it 

in the airflow. Everyone was tired and working under great pressure. Colonel 

Silvasy remembered the discussion that ensued:

Dan, as we were getting ready to go, came into my office, got about two inches from 

my face, and started ranting and raving, telling me that . . . the first aircraft that went 

in there with equipment on it better have some forklifts. . . . If it didn’t, we would be 

in terrible straits. My S–3 got about two inches from my face and said: “Sir, you got to 

be kidding me. We got to get gunjeeps in there. We got to get command-and-control 

73 Intervs, Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983, and author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Kenneth C. Sever, “Units and Missions—The 782d Maintenance Battalion (in 

Grenada),” p. 4. Cleary stated immediately after the operation and again, almost three years 

later, that Alpha Echelon had thirty-five members, including himself, whereas Sever reported 

thirty-eight. 74 Intervs, author with Katz, 18 Jul 1986, and with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 75 Intervs, Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983, and author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

202

vehicles, medical things. Who are we kidding about materiel-handling equipment?” 

Cleary was very persistent, kept yelling and screaming.

In the midst of this conversation, the colonel suddenly recollected a forklift’s 

utility when he was a company commander during the 1965 intervention in 

the Dominican Republic. Because of that half-forgotten memory Silvasy said, 

“Dan, I’ll tell you what. We’ll go ahead and let you take that.” His response 

proved to be one of the key command decisions of the campaign.76

At the same time division staff officers and battalion executive officers 

gathered at division headquarters to learn the composition of the division 

assault command post. It remained very light, approximately forty officers 

and men with only limited communications equipment. The officers discovered, however, that General Trobaugh wanted two officers who would normally remain at Fort Bragg, the division aviation officer and the division engineer, to go forward with him. The general intended to use Task Force 160 that 

accompanied General Scholtes’ special operations forces to furnish air support 

for the 2d Brigade until Major William J. Elder’s Company B, 82d Aviation 

Battalion, arrived in-country. The division aviation officer and 82d Aviation 

Battalion commander, Lt. Col. Robert N. Seigle, would provide the expertise 

to do this intelligently. Colonel Izzo, on the other hand, could prepare a firsthand assessment of the condition of the airfield at Salines, upon which would 

depend the success of the division’s reinforcement and resupply efforts. Given 

the general lack of information about the magnitude of the tasks facing the 

unit’s engineers, Izzo was quite happy to go. On Grenada, better than anywhere else, he could determine the size of the engineer component needed and 

make his recommendations directly to the division commander.77

At this meeting the division G–4, Lt. Col. Jack D. Crabtree II, discovered 

that General Trobaugh did not intend to include a logistical staff officer in the 

division assault command post. Crabtree argued very strongly that the general 

would need a logistical specialist with him and carried the point. Crabtree 

selected his ammunition officer, Capt. James A. Rosebrock, to accompany the 

assault wave as the G–4 representative.78

Although the division planned to take Stinger antiaircraft missile teams 

attached to the field artillery batteries to Grenada, General Trobaugh decided 

not to include anyone from the division’s airspace management element in the 

assault command post. The officer in charge, Capt. Harry L. McIntosh Jr., 

stayed at Fort Bragg, where he served as a liaison officer between division 

and corps headquarters. Trobaugh’s decision rested on two perceptions: first, 

that the Cuban air threat on Grenada was minimal; second, that the assault 

command post needed to be kept as small as possible. The need to coordinate 

76 Interv, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986; Briefings (quoted words), Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 

1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 77 Intervs, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, and Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. Task Force 160 also had some assets from the 158th Aviation Brigade. 78 Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH. 
Loading the Force

203

artillery fire plans with aerial operations still remained, and this responsibility 

devolved as an additional duty upon one of the staff officers who accompanied Trobaugh.79

Back at Green Ramp, Major Cleary continued to modify the configuration 

of the Forward Area Support Team II advance element based on the availability 

of space for his men and equipment in the airflow. He wanted to take a Gamma 

Goat filled with medical supplies in Alpha Echelon just as he normally did, but 

the idea that the Navy would have ample medical facilities just offshore meant 

that it was an obvious candidate for bumping back to the team’s follow-on 

force package, the Bravo Echelon. The vehicle was designed both to reinforce 

capacities in Alpha and to add some others not present but needed as the 2d 

Brigade built up at Point Salines. Suspicious of overly optimistic assumptions, 

Cleary expressed reservations about the medical information he had received; 

79 Interv, McMichael with McIntosh, 5 Apr 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

A divisional Gamma Goat used during the operation.
The Rucksack War

204

however, on obtaining assurances that it was accurate, he moved the vehicle 

further back in the loading sequence. At this point the real medical planning—

as far as the division was concerned—began at Green Ramp. Colonel Wilson 

and his staff from the 307th Medical Battalion became heavily involved in 

putting together an advanced medical element that would accompany Cleary 

and precede the Alpha Echelon of Company C, 307th Medical Battalion, the 

company normally associated with Forward Area Support Team II. The group 

would consist of the division orthopedic surgeon, Lt. Col. Joseph P. Jackson 

Jr., and five medics. Cleary asked the Company C commander, Capt. Vincent 

E. Ashley, to give him his best medics. The individuals selected loaded themselves down with as many medical supplies as they could carry.80

Colonel Wilson thus succeeded in slipping one surgeon in addition to the 

battalion surgeons into the deploying force. Although not technically a part of 

Forward Area Support Team II, Colonel Jackson accompanied the team’s five 

medics. As Colonel Sidenberg later reported, the lack of equipment restricted 

Jackson to the role of “a smart aidman.” After talking to Cleary at Green 

Ramp at 0300 on 25 October, Jackson did obtain more supplies than this comment suggests. Even so, they were not everything that he wanted. Almost as 

worrisome as the shortage of materiel was the absence of any defined medical 

mission for the operation. Jackson deployed without any details on the medical mission.81

Ranger logistics, similar to ranger tactical operations, were characterized by 

professionalism and displays of personal initiative. Major Hensler, for example, 

without any guidance about the 2d Battalion’s mission, brought more supplies 

with the battalion when it deployed to Hunter Army Airfield than it needed, 

but in so doing he offset the shortage of ranger supplies at the Anniston Army 

Depot. The 260th Quartermaster Battalion-Rear, first under Major Gibbons 

and then Colonel Bila, operated in the same spirit. One observer likened its 

efforts readying the 1st Battalion for departure to the movements of a fine 

Swiss watch—“intricate, regular, precise.” The actions of Colonel Childs, the 

director of plans and training at Fort Stewart; Captain Hoffman, the ranger 

coordinator at Hunter Army Airfield; the Victory Brigade from Fort Stewart; 

and the officers and men in battalion-rear when Colonel Taylor and his planners were at Fort Bragg were also worthy of note.82

The only real problem in the loading process occurred with the confusion 

over time on target between General Mall and Colonel Taylor. The mix-up 

stemmed from an error on Mall’s execution checklist that recorded Grenada 

80 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, plus Oland with Wilson, 6 Nov 1987, and 

with Nolan, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Chronology, Hist files (Papers/

Wilson), CMH. 81 Intervs, Wade with Sidenberg, 14 Dec 1983 (quoted words), and Pirnie with Jackson, 23 

May 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Diary, Jackson, 24 Oct 1983, Hist files (Papers/Jackson), 

CMH. At the end of this entry Jackson wrote, “Maj Cleary gave invaluable aid.” 82 Interv, author with Semmens, 14 Aug 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Loading the Force

205

time as Zulu minus 2 instead of minus 3. It was the kind of minor mistake 

that sometimes occurs in the course of frequent mission and time changes 

of the sort that dogged the Grenada operation. Although such discrepancies can cause grave problems during military operations, in this instance no 

long-lasting problems resulted. Instead, the confusion provided yet another 

opportunity for the rangers, Hunter Army Airfield ground support personnel, 

and Military Airlift Command aircrews to demonstrate their highly developed 

resourcefulness.

The 82d Airborne Division’s record over the same time period was somewhat mixed. Once again, senior leaders failed to give medical questions the 

close attention they deserved. At the N+2 briefing General Trobaugh and his 

staff addressed the problem of detainees and refugees for the first time in a 

substantive fashion. Aside from the injunction to Major Archer to look into 

food shortages once the division arrived on the island, however, Trobaugh and 

his staff framed the issues as legal and civil affairs subjects rather than as 

logistical ones. The exclusion of the civil affairs officer and the staff judge 

advocate from pre-alert planning meant that their concerns had not surfaced 

earlier and that these officers had not had any opportunity to interact with 

the division logisticians. Of course, Trobaugh anticipated that an air line of 

communications back to the continental United States would give him a great 

deal of logistical flexibility. His optimism rested on the assumption that the 

airflow from Pope Air Force Base to the Point Salines airfield would suffer no 

major disruptions. Time constraints and the exclusion of many staff principals 

meant that no one had examined the logistical consequences of either a reduction or complete stoppage of flights into Point Salines for any length of time. 

Adequate supplies for any considerable number of detainees or refugees, to say 

nothing of sustained military operations, depended on the plan surviving its 

contact with Grenadian realities.

5

The Force Sorties

N+3:30 to Liftoff

Preparations to deploy the division assault command post and the brigade task force proceeded at high speed following the N+2 briefing. 

Logisticians focused on executing the division’s readiness standing operating 

procedures. Meanwhile, several of the division’s specialized elements—aviation, signal, and especially medical—faced additional challenges because of 

their unique equipment and missions.

82d Airborne Division, N+3:30 to N+8

Thirty minutes after the meeting about the makeup of the assault command 

post, at 0030 on 25 October, the commander of the 82d Support Command, 

Col. William F. Daly Jr., gave his N+3:30 briefing on the loading plan. The 

briefing constituted the second major logistical milestone in the notification 

sequence. Representatives of the units directly involved in the loading process 

attended: the 2d Brigade executive officer, Lt. Col. William J. Ely Jr., and the 

S–4, Maj. James F. Whittaker; the Division Ready Force-9 commander, Lt. 

Col. Ralph E. Newman of the 2d Battalion, 508th Infantry, and the S–3, Maj. 

John A. Hamilton; the commander of the 182d Materiel Management Center, 

Maj. William M. Causey Jr., and six of his principal staff officers; and officers 

from the deploying battalions. The assistant division commander for support, 

Brig. Gen. James D. Smith; the division G–4, Lt. Col. Jack D. Crabtree II; 

and liaison officers from XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters and 1st Support 

Command also participated. According to one participant, it was “the best 

attended” division support command briefing in three years.1

Colonel Daly explained that the loading would be completed in ten hours 

rather than the normal eighteen and outlined the changes needed to achieve 

that objective. Deploying fewer antiarmor weapons and their ammunition 

helped. Based on the amount and type of supplies and equipment specified in 

1 Intervs, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, and with Daly, 31 Jul 1986; Frasché with McClure, 

16 Nov 1983; Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983 (quoted words); Bishop with J. A. Hamilton, 16 

Nov 1983; and Briefing, Cole, 15 Jul 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Documents in the 

official file contain conflicting information on the 182d’s designation. Usage in this work conforms to official guidance found in TOE 29–53H3, 15 Jun 1973, chg. 19, TOE files, CMH.

☆ ☆ ☆
The Rucksack War

208

the service support annex of the operations order, he directed modifications in 

the number and size of Division Ready Force-9 work details. Some required 

more people; others were unnecessary. He also announced that, because of 

security considerations, Division Ready Force-9 would not be on the division 

support command’s radio net used to coordinate the loading process. The 

force would establish its own radio net. Daly reviewed general problems that 

had developed in previous exercises, designating the equipment supply issue 

point and the marshaling area for vehicles.2

Although the N-sequence appeared to be operating smoothly, Colonel 

Daly remained concerned after the briefing ended. The abbreviated nature of 

the sequence, the length of time required to transport heavy and bulky pieces of 

equipment from warehouses to the departure airfield, and the large quantity of 

supplies that had to make the same journey required everything to work almost 

flawlessly for the loading to remain on schedule. Fortunately, some of this heavy 

equipment was already loaded on pallets and rigged for airdrop, which markedly reduced preparation time. For the next several hours, the division support 

commander had to pay close attention to all of the work details.3

When a unit assumed Division Ready Brigade status, it submitted a list of 

standard-issue items that it needed. Concurrent with Colonel Daly’s briefing, as 

prescribed in the 82d’s readiness procedures, property book personnel from the 

182d Materiel Management Center began to collect this critical equipment, primarily from Division Ready Force-9. Colonel Newman and all the officers and 

men of the 2d Battalion, 508th Infantry, proved very cooperative, and the operation went “very, very smoothly.” Several of the deploying units requested exotic 

chemical and biological warfare gear; however, knowing this contingency did 

not require such gear, the center commander, Major Causey, dissuaded them.4

Also at 0030 on 25 October the 2d Brigade commander Col. Stephen 

Silvasy Jr., his staff, and the men of the 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, began 

their movement to the personnel holding area located in a series of World War 

II–era barracks on a hill near the Pope Air Force Base gate adjacent to Green 

Ramp. Surrounded by concertina wire and guarded by a detail from Division 

Ready Force-9, the area provided a secure location for units to receive classified briefings and to work out plans at the company level. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jack L. Hamilton, his staff, and Company A, commanded by 

Capt. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., moved by motor convoy to the area first, followed 

by Company B, commanded by Capt. Michael F. Ritz. Capt. Mark D. Rocke’s 

newly designated Company C, which had to come from the 2d Battalion, 505th 

Infantry’s barracks, arrived somewhat later.5

At this point the leading elements of the division were only thirty minutes 

ahead of the normal eighteen-hour loading sequence (Diagram 3). The 82d 

2 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and Bishop with 

J. A. Hamilton, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 3 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

4 Interv, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

5 Intervs, Burdett with Keene, [Nov 1983], Bishop with Rocke, 19 Nov 1983, and Wells with 

Farbes, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
DIVISION AND 

CORPS SUPPORT

UNIT

AREA

PERSONNEL

HOLDING AREA

EQUIPMENT SUPPLY

ISSUE POINT

PRE-JUMP

TRAINING

AREA

CENTRAL LOADING

AREA CONTROL

AMMUNITION

CENTER

HOLDING AREA

PAX

SHED

ARRIVAL/DEPARTURE

AIRFIELD CONTROL

GROUP

HEAVY DROP

RIG SITE

PIKE FIELD

SCALES

UNIT LOADING

AREA CONTROL

CENTER

AIR ITEM

STORAGE

POST AMMUNITION

SUPPLY POINT

CMA

MATERIEL PERSONNEL VEHICLES

INDIVIDUAL ISSUE

AMMUNITION

CONTAINER DELIVERY

SYSTEM

BALLAST

AIRLAND

VEHICLES

HEAVY DROP

VEHICLES

CMA Corps Marshaling Area

Source: 82d Airborne Division, Readiness Standing Operating Procedures: Planning and Preparation (Fort Bragg, N.C.: 82d Airborne Division, 1995), p. 1-6.

Diagram 3—82d Airborne Division Loading Sequence
The Rucksack War

210

Airborne Division commander, Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh, calculated 

that the task force could make an N+10 departure in part by cutting out much 

of the planning time for low-level units, particularly those attached to the brigade for this operation. Not all subordinate unit planning could be finessed, 

however. The 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, still confronted an extraordinarily 

important tactical issue: Would it parachute into the objective or would it 

debark from C–141s after landing?6

The battalion commander, Colonel Hamilton, anticipated that the division would follow its readiness standing operating procedures and therefore 

had his battalion prepare for an airdrop. He was anxious for the 182d Materiel 

Management Center to distribute contingency items and to issue ammunition 

to soldiers as quickly as possible. Then he could proceed with pre-jump training, the next stage in the readiness sequence: The men, using C–130 mockups 

equipped with static lines, would practice boarding aircraft, actions in flight, 

exiting the aircraft under the direction of a jumpmaster, and finally parachutelanding falls—that is, how to hit the ground without breaking any bones. At 

0300, N+6, Hamilton issued his battalion operations order. He was ready for 

his men to draw their equipment and ammunition.7

6 Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

7 Ibid. See also Intervs, Wells with Farbes, 9 Nov 1983, and with Barajas, 10 Nov 1983; Wade 

with Causey, 16 Nov 1983; and author with Reardon, 4 Apr 2007. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Colonel Silvasy Colonel Hamilton
The Force Sorties

211

In addition to the shortage of trucks, several factors conspired to slow 

this portion of the loading sequence more than either Colonel Hamilton or 

Major Causey had anticipated. The first of these was the extreme secrecy 

under which the division made its preparations while cloaking them with a 

facade of normalcy. When Causey moved to the central loading area control 

center, where his men would distribute contingency items to the departing battalions, he found it filled with vehicles and equipment from one of the XVIII 

Airborne Corps’ signal battalions that had just returned from Joint Exercise 

Bold Eagle. Not knowing of the impending operation, the battalion had as 

normal simply locked its vehicles and departed with the keys. Not until 0200 

on 25 October, N+5, did Causey with Hamilton’s assistance finish clearing the 

area.8

Then there was the simple fact that moving ammunition and equipment 

took time—and some of that materiel had to come from XVIII Airborne 

Corps. Because the corps began its N-sequence two hours after the division, 

coordination between elements of the two organizations proved difficult. The 

first contingency items, C-rations, arrived at 0200, and others soon followed. 

Flak jackets, especially valuable if the troops had to do any fighting in a builtup area, such as St. George’s, were, however, slow to appear. Aware that time 

was running out, Hamilton had decided to proceed without them when they 

finally arrived.9

Major Causey’s executive officer exercised direct control over the equipment 

supply issue point and the individual issue ammunition point. The officers and 

senior noncommissioned officers manning these stations came from the 182d 

Materiel Management Center and Division Ready Force-9. Each battalion in 

Colonel Daly’s 82d Support Command provided a detail of approximately ten 

soldiers. Division Ready Force-9 supplied working parties to unload the trucks 

bringing the equipment, supplies, and ammunition to the central loading area 

control center.10

Colonel Daly’s decision to remove Colonel Newman’s Division Ready 

Force-9 from the division support command’s radio net was a source of confusion within the loading battalion. The outload net, as logisticians referred 

to it, furnished secure communications for all the major elements involved in 

the division’s loading—the heavy drop rig site; the ammunition supply point; 

the 182d Materiel Management Center; and Provisional Movement Control 

Center, which served as the net control center. The links it provided gave logisticians great flexibility, allowing Daly, for example, to move around the post to 

handle crises while remaining in contact with all aspects of the loading operation. Without it, Newman could not easily contact his far-flung work details 

because he had just given up most of his radios to fill gaps in the deploying 

battalions’ equipment. Newman’s communications-electronics officer eventually established a net; however, because of equipment shortages, it did not 

8 Interv, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

9 Ibid.; Jack L. Hamilton, “Operation Urgent Fury,” Student Paper, p. 11. 10 Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and Burdett with Morris, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Paratroopers and equipment stand by for deployment, waiting in a light utility vehicle 

on the tarmac and loading a truck aboard a C–141
The Force Sorties

213

become secure until the night of 25 October, too late to assist the loading of 

the 2d Brigade. Moreover, the net only included elements of the battalion. 

Newman and his staff, for example, could not use it to talk to the Movement 

Control Center and so continued to experience great difficulty in providing 

timely assistance to Daly’s command.11

Soon after the division issued the alert, personnel from its support command began painting signs designating issue points for specific types of equipment and supplies—C-rations, poncho liners, atropine, canteens, bug spray, 

flak jackets, jungle boots, and jungle uniforms, among other items. All these 

articles arrived in time except the jungle boots and uniforms, a circumstance 

that forced most 2d Brigade troopers to deploy in standard-issue battle dress 

uniforms (or, in military parlance, BDU) and field boots rather than tropicalweight clothing.12

The division’s operations order had assumed that the XVIII Airborne 

Corps would provide jungle fatigues. The request for these items had produced a minor crisis for corps logisticians: The corps maintained only enough 

such uniforms and boots at Fort Bragg to outfit one ranger battalion, but for 

Urgent Fury two ranger battalions were deploying. The shortage, moreover, 

was not confined to the post; it was system-wide. The Army was in the process 

of replacing the Vietnam-era cotton uniforms with new ones made from synthetic fiber. The 82d Airborne Division had received the polyester upgrades, 

which became the official duty uniform. The Rangers, however, retained the 

old apparel for the moment.13

This situation had arisen because the Department of the Army had elected 

to spread the expense of purchasing the new uniforms over several fiscal years. 

The uniforms came in four variants for different environments—temperate, 

desert, tropical, and arctic. With the Army focused on deterring Soviet aggression in Western Europe, it chose to procure the medium-weight woodlandpattern battle dress uniforms first. It had gambled that the 82d would not have 

to conduct a contingency operation in either cold or hot climates during the 

transition to the new clothing. Grenada meant that the department had lost 

the wager because no tropical outfits were in stock as of October 1983, and 

the corps’ 1st Support Command could not order what did not exist. What 

remained to be seen was what price the troops would have to pay.14

As soon as Colonel Daly realized that the corps could not provide the articles requested, he sent details to scour the division warehouses. They discovered enough of the old design boots to supply the organizations that deployed 

11 Interv, Burdett with Morris, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Interv), CMH.

12 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-26, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and Hicks with Mason, [Nov 

1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 13 Interv, Hicks with Mason, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Opn Order 

15–83, 82d Abn Div, [24 Oct 1983], an. F; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, 

p. 4-26. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 14 Karl E. Cocke et al., comps., Department of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 

1982, p. 93; Intervs, author with McElroy, 30 Apr 1984, and with C. Mitchell, 16 Feb 1989, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

214

after the 2d Brigade. They also turned up a limited number of jungle fatigues. 

Meanwhile, the corps G–4, Col. Corless W. Mitchell, requested Vietnam-era 

jungle uniforms from the Army’s national depot supply system. He eventually secured over six thousand and shipped them to the Caribbean, but they 

arrived on Grenada well into the operation.15

By N+6, 0300 hours on 25 October, Colonel Hamilton’s battalion had filed 

into the equipment supply issue point. The area was dimly lit, almost eerie in a 

lightly misting rain, and very crowded. Colonel Daly’s support command had 

dropped any pretense of property accountability; no one signed hand receipts 

for the equipment. It was barely possible to maintain accountability in a full 

eighteen-hour sequence and clearly impractical in a ten-hour one. The personnel 

of the issue point worked at top speed; their objective was to move Hamilton’s 

men through as quickly as possible. Initially, the 182d Materiel Management 

Center maintained reasonable control of the process despite the lack of paperwork; however, as it proceeded and the pace did not slacken, Major Causey had 

to depend on the deploying units to make certain that all their men received the 

necessary supplies and equipment. It was, said Causey, “organized chaos,” but 

Hamilton’s battalion drew its equipment and moved out on time.16

As soon as the unit had what it needed, it moved to the individual issue 

ammunition point. There it encountered a new set of difficulties that reflected 

larger problems in the logistical system. Colonel Silvasy’s request for a double load had greatly slowed the response of the 8th Ordnance Company at 

the post’s ammunition supply point because now the unit had to provide 

seven CONEXs of ammunition to supply the battalion and its attachments. 

Unloading the containers was slow because the small size of the individual 

issue point made it very difficult to maneuver the forklifts needed to hoist 

the CONEXs off the trailers on which they arrived. Just getting them on the 

ground and opened took forty-five minutes. Later, Major Causey accelerated 

this process by dispensing entirely with CONEXs and moving ammunition by 

pallet load.17

The 182d Materiel Management Center had worked out a system for the 

issue of individual ammunition by giving each soldier a card that listed by type 

and amount the ammunition he was supposed to receive. With so many troops 

in such a restricted area and with so many more pushing up behind them, this 

procedure proved unworkable. In the end, Major Causey’s personnel had to 

issue the ammunition as fast as possible to make certain that the next unit 

received its load on schedule.18

15 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-26, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. See also Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983; Hicks with Mason, 

[Nov 1983], with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983; and author with C. 

Mitchell, 16 Feb 1989. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 16 Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983 (quoted 

words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 17 Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and Hicks with Mason, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 18 Interv, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Force Sorties

215

Even as the men of Colonel Hamilton’s rear company under Captain 

Rocke were drawing the last of their ammunition, the next battalion arrived. 

Lt. Col. John W. Raines’ 3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, had moved to the personnel holding area at N+5, 0200. Its leading element, Capt. Danny W. Davis’ 

Company A entered the equipment supply issue point at N+8, 0500. Causey’s 

troopers hardly had time to draw a deep breath before they were once again 

plunged into organized chaos.19

Overall, Hamilton’s and Raines’ battalions received a double load of 

M16 ammunition and approximately a load and a half of M60 machine gun 

ammunition. The precise amount issued to each company varied, however, 

according to the sequence in which the different companies of the two organizations arrived at the issue point and the stocks immediately available at that 

time. Companies A and C of the 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, for example, 

received generous amounts of M16 ammunition—240 rounds each. On the 

other hand, Captain Ritz’ Company B happened to reach the area immediately after Company A but before the arrival of more CONEXs, and the riflemen received 210 M16 rounds apiece. In Raines’ battalion, Claymore mines 

and .45-caliber ammunition became the critical items. When the lead unit, 

Company A, passed through the issue point, no Claymores were available. 

By the time the last element, the Combat Support Company, arrived, 82d 

Support Command personnel had refurbished the Claymore supply, but no 

.45-caliber rounds were available. One of the unit’s privates gave the company 

commander, Capt. Ben F. Clawson, exactly half of the shells that he had 

drawn—1 round. Captain Clawson was concerned, for he had seventeen men 

armed only with .45s in his antitank platoon. Fortunately, he bumped into 

the Forward Area Support Team II coordinator, Maj. Daniel J. Cleary III. 

Informed of the situation, Major Cleary located enough .45-caliber ammunition to give Clawson’s men their basic load in a plane-side issue just before 

takeoff.20

Major Causey had anticipated problems at the individual issue ammunition 

point and thus assigned his senior noncommissioned officer there. Although 

Causey’s responsibilities encompassed the entire post, he spent all his time 

during this portion of the loading process troubleshooting between the equipment supply issue point and the individual issue ammunition point. Some of 

the problems he encountered were the result of simple misunderstandings. A 

number of senior noncommissioned officers in the deploying battalions, for 

example, objected to the amount of M16 ammunition they had received. Their 

basic load in Vietnam had been 500 rounds. Now they were getting less, and it 

was called a double load. Causey had to explain that they were in fact receiving 

a true double load. If he gave them as much ammunition as they wanted, he 

observed, he would not have any left for follow-on units.21

19 Ibid.; Interv, Burdett with D. Davis, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

20 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986; Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983; Hicks with Kelly, 

18 Nov 1983; Wells with Capetillo, 17 Nov 1983; and Burdett with Clawson, [Nov 1983], with D. 

Davis, [Nov 1983], and with Pederson, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 21 Interv, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

216

General Trobaugh had decided not to issue grenades at the individual issue 

ammunition point because of safety concerns during the flight to Grenada. 

Instead, the company commanders received boxes of grenades that they stored 

in their follow-on vehicles. Distribution to the troops would occur after they 

reached the island. The sole exception was Captain Ritz. The supply of grenades was exhausted at the ammunition point when Ritz’s Company B passed 

through, so he and his men received none.22

Given conditions at the individual issue ammunition point—dim light, 

milling crowds, and the rapid pace—not every officer in the deploying battalions found a division support command representative to whom he could 

explain his problems. As a result, some remained unresolved. In addition, lack 

of a systematic method for distributing information in the central loading area 

control center about how the loading was proceeding proved unsettling for 

senior officers passing through the area. The commander of Company C, 2d 

Battalion, 508th Infantry, Capt. James M. Morris IV, who oversaw Division 

Ready Force-9 details in the area, quickly recognized the problem: Junior and 

noncommissioned officers were having difficulty completing their assigned 

missions because they were constantly having to stop and answer questions 

from senior officers. To free his men to perform their assigned tasks with minimal distractions, Captain Morris spent several hours acting as an unofficial 

briefer.23

Once the troops received their basic load, they moved back to where they 

had dropped their rucksacks and A-bags. Unit commanders then had to decide 

what the men were going to pack in their rucksacks. Some decisions were easy. 

Because the men were going to a warm climate, they could leave behind cold 

weather clothing and sleeping bags. Based on the type of opposing force they 

would face, they would not need C-pods, chemical protective overgarments 

with rubber boots. Into this extra space the men thrust ammunition and food. 

Some companies requested only two C-rations per trooper; others asked for 

four, a two-day supply. The troops ended up removing the rations from their 

cardboard containers, discarding the boxes and some of the accessories, and 

fitting the cans into any available space.24

Items not placed in the rucksack, such as bed rolls and sundries, went 

into the A-bag. Work parties loaded the A-bags by company onto standard 

Air Force 463L aluminum pallets, which the riggers then lashed, netted, and 

labeled as to unit and contents. As soon as he could, Major Causey dispatched 

the pallets to the appropriate marshaling area at Pope Air Force Base for shipment aboard follow-on aircraft.25

Soldiers could carry some equipment on their persons. Besides one twoquart and two one-quart canteens of water, almost every trooper carried a 

light antitank weapon (LAW) and some men had two or three. They had to 

22 Ibid.; Interv Burdett with Pederson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

23 Intervs, Burdett with D. Davis, [Nov 1983], and with Morris, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 24 Interv, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

25 Interv, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Paratroopers with General Wickham prior to their deployment and with their gear 

ready to board an aircraft for Grenada 
The Rucksack War

218

remember at this point, however, that an airdrop might be an option. They 

could not afford to weigh themselves down too much or make themselves so 

bulky that they could not fit into a parachute harness. Flak jackets presented a 

particular problem: They were bulky and took up excessive space in the rucksacks, but if worn they made it difficult to strap on the harness.26

In the two battalions of the 2d Brigade preparing to depart, personal 

equipment and supplies hardly exhausted a soldier’s load. Because the companies had so few vehicles accompanying them, the men had to carry company 

equipment: mortars, aiming stakes and circles for mortars, plotting boards, 

wire reels, and telephones. Then the battalion commanders formed their commands into chalks, aircraft-size loads, a maximum of 126 men per C–141 in 

case General Trobaugh decided on an airdrop. It was easier to prepare for an 

airdrop option and then shift to an airland configuration than to do the opposite. Anticipating the possibility of a parachute assault, Colonel Hamilton 

cross-loaded his battalion—that is, he divided his companies and placed elements from each on every aircraft. Cross-loading, part of the division’s readiness standing operating procedures for an airdrop, ensured that the loss of a 

single plane to enemy fire would not mean the destruction of an entire unit or 

the loss of numerous key leaders. Finally, division support command officers 

inspected each chalk. They looked for too much weight or bulky items that 

would put excessive strain on parachute harnesses, and almost everyone had 

to shed some items to pass inspection.27

At 0500 on 25 October, N+8, Colonel Hamilton’s battalion left the holding area and marched through the mist to Green Ramp. Encumbered by 

heavy loads, both officers and enlisted men moved with considerable effort. 

Normally, during an exercise, the 82d Support Command provided trucks to 

ferry the troops to the departure airfield. In the past, lack of motor transport 

had sometimes produced loud complaints from the troops. This time, with all 

trucks committed to other tasks, the troops marched in silence.28

Aviation Task Force

Maj. William J. Elder’s Company B, 82d Aviation Battalion, followed the 

same general procedures as the other units but with a few significant modifications. The personnel holding area, as it stood in 1983, lacked sufficient space to 

accommodate an aviation unit in addition to the 2d Brigade. Indeed, the area 

was hard pressed to service simultaneously even two infantry battalions. As 

a result, Major Elder used his company’s hangar at Pope Air Force Base as a 

personnel holding area. Unit supplies came directly to the area from the division and corps warehouses. Members of the battalion’s logistical section then 

26 Ibid.; Intervs, GWG with Jacoby, [Nov 1983], and Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 27 Intervs, Pirnie, MacGarrigle, and author with J. L. Hamilton, 3 Jun 1985, and Hicks with 

Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 28 Intervs, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983; Wells with Barajas, 10 Nov 1983; Hicks 

with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983; and McMichael with Schmidtke, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.
The Force Sorties

219

separated individual issue supplies and ammunition. It was a huge job for a 

small group of men. The battalion S–4, Capt. Jimmie M. Rabon, recalled that 

fatigue gave the passing hours a dreamlike quality: “I remember laying down 

on the ramp out there at Pope, on this concrete ramp, and sleeping. It felt like I 

had slept forever, and I had really only slept for ten minutes. A guy came along 

and kicked me. . . . And I would get up, and I would kick [Sgt. Eric] Rodwell, 

and he would kick [Sgt. William] Labor. And we would just kind of get up and 

. . . start loading supplies on the pallets again.” Only after they completed this 

task could the 82d Support Command move the materiel to the central loading area control center for distribution to the troops. The excess went to Green 

Ramp for shipment in follow-on aircraft.29

Only one minor problem marred the company’s otherwise flawless loading. Its UH–60s needed door gunners. In contrast to customary practice in 

Vietnam, the Army no longer included door gunners on the tables of organization and equipment for aviation units. To fill the vacancies, the battalion S–1, 

Capt. Ronald A. Putnam, requested and received a draft of machine gunners 

from division headquarters. Because aviators usually carried a .38-caliber pistol (versus the .45-caliber Colt automatic) as their regulation sidearm, Captain 

Rabon was totally surprised when the door gunners appeared with the .45s 

that were standard in their parent units. He had no suitable ammunition to 

give them, and he learned of the discrepancy too close to departure to obtain 

any from the division support command. The door gunners had to draw their 

ammunition after they arrived on Grenada.30

While Captain Rabon supervised the preparation of pallets of equipment and supplies, aircrews operating under the direction of Company A and 

Company B air movement officers, CWO2 William A. Rudd and 1st Lt. Scott 

A. Stangle, disassembled the Black Hawks for shipment via Air Force C–5As 

to Barbados. It was a laborious and time-consuming task. Despite the feverish 

intensity with which they worked, the crews did not complete breaking down 

the helicopters until approximately 1000 on 25 October, N+13.31

By this point, two medical evacuation crews from the 57th Medical 

Detachment had joined Major Elder’s men. The 57th, an XVIII Airborne Corps 

air ambulance unit commanded by Maj. Arthur W. Hapner, was also equipped 

with UH–60s. At 0100 on 25 October the unit received an alert to prepare for 

a mission, and by 0900 that same day it had completed its preparations. As 

requested by the division, Major Hapner sent two pilots, CWO2 Robert L. 

Beaty and CWO3 William C. Garmond, and their aircraft to Company B’s 

hangar at Pope Air Force Base. Before they left, Hapner told them that the 

division would provide them with communications and maintenance support. 

On this assurance, Beaty and Garmond left their unit area without any radios 

only to discover on arrival that no one knew anything about providing support 

29 Intervs, Baribeau with Eyster, 9 Nov 1983, and author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986 (quoted 

words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 30 Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

31 Intervs, Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, and author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

220

to the 57th Medical Detachment. The next six hours proved difficult, but by 

working at the pilot-to-pilot level Beaty and Garmond obtained the supplies 

and equipment they needed. By then Elder had received official notification 

that the two pilots would accompany his task force to Grenada. Sometime 

later a third helicopter and crew joined them from the 57th.32

Communications Preparations

Although the communications-electronics officers of the 2d and 3d 

Battalions, 325th Infantry, 1st Lt. Andrew P. Costa and 1st Lt. Carl Prantl Jr., 

respectively, had a head start in attaching Vinson encryption equipment to unit 

radios, they had not completed their preparations by the time the division’s 

assistant G–3 for operations, Maj. Thomas D. Smith, called the division alert. 

Lieutenant Costa had all of his Vinsons mounted, but two were not working 

properly. Aside from trips to brigade and battalion headquarters for meetings, 

he spent the first few hours of the N-sequence getting these radios ready.33

32 Arthur W. Hapner, “’Dustoff’ in Grenada,” pp. 62–64, 66; Interv, Wade with Beaty and 

Garmond, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 33 Intervs, Parker with Costa, [Nov 1983], and Prantl, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.

Crew of the 57th Medical Detachment in Grenada
The Force Sorties

221

Lieutenant Prantl, by contrast, had the good fortune to draw equipment 

that needed no adjustment. As a result, he began work that Lieutenant Costa 

had to defer—preparing secure nets and training radio operators. First, Prantl 

went to the 2d Brigade signal officer, Maj. Timothy L. Hull, to obtain the 

brigade’s cryptological variable so that the 3d Battalion headquarters could 

connect to the brigade’s secure net. To do this, he manually keyed the variable 

into some of the battalion’s radios. Next, he manually created and entered a 

second variable into the battalion’s radios, a precise and lengthy task completed only after the battalion vehicles had moved to the central loading area 

control center. Fortunately, Prantl and his platoon sergeant had received training on the Vinson, but there was no time for them to train the radiomen. All 

they could say was: “Turn that knob on. It makes it work.” The radiomen did 

as instructed, and every radio worked. They could “talk secure.” Prantl’s only 

comment was: “We got lucky.”34

Lieutenant Costa had received some training on the Vinson months before 

but had not looked at the equipment since then. In the S–3 section he found a 

sergeant who had previously used Vinson equipment and, with his help, was 

able to train the radio operators. When they ran into difficulties keying in the 

variables, a sergeant from the 82d Signal Battalion, acting as a troubleshooter, 

helped them through their difficulties. Nonetheless, they had only completed 

keying in the variables on some of the vehicle-mounted radios at 0600, N+9, 

when the Air Force loaded the trucks and jeeps aboard a C–141.35

As soon as the alert notice came, the commander of the 1st Battalion, 

320th Field Artillery, Lt. Col. Duane E. Williams, told his communicationselectronics officer to put Vinsons on every radio in sight. The commander of 

the 82d Aviation Battalion, Lt. Col. Robert N. Seigle, had much the same reaction. He directed his communications section to put secure devices on all the 

helicopters deploying with Major Elder. These preparations took time, leaving 

communications-electronics officers in those organizations with too little time 

to establish secure nets and train radio operators.36

Not everyone who needed a secure radio received one. 1st Lt. David B. 

Lemauk’s 2d Platoon, 82d Military Police Company, for example, had no way 

to communicate securely. The military police could only tie into the administrative/logistical net that the division established after arrival on Grenada.37

Sometimes, lack of secure devices reflected a difference of opinion between 

the officers and men deploying and the writers of their units’ tables of organization and equipment. The 2d Brigade’s senior fire support noncommissioned 

officer, Sfc. Thomas Steele, spent the first hour of the N-sequence borrowing radios, AN/PRC–77s, from Battery A, which was not deploying, because 

34 Intervs, Parker with Prantl, [Nov 1983] (quoted words), and author with Reardon, 9 Nov 

2004, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 35 Interv, Parker with Costa, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

36 Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, and Baribeau 

with Eyster, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 37 Interv, McMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and Gyurisko, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 
Using the AN/PRC–77 field radio during Urgent Fury
The Force Sorties

223

Steele was certain that the brigade fire support element needed more radios 

than authorized. He could not obtain Vinsons for all of them. The radio he 

carried to the island lacked a secure device, which meant that he could not 

talk directly to Colonel Williams, who had one. This was inconvenient, but the 

battalion had Vinson-equipped AN/PRC–77s covering the most critical communications links in the fire support net when it deployed to Grenada.38

Medical Planning

In contrast to the other specialties, medical preparations lagged. After the 

N+2 briefing, the commander of the 307th Medical Battalion, Lt. Col. Edward 

B. Wilson, returned to his headquarters. Soon thereafter, the operations officer 

from the corps surgeon’s office, Maj. Andrew D. Beckey, arrived to assist the 

division’s medical planning effort. From that point “the planning escalated.” 

Shortly after midnight, N+3, Colonel Wilson went to the quarters of the corps 

surgeon, Col. James H. Rumbaugh, where he found the 44th Medical Brigade 

commander, Col. Jack R. Wilson II, and his S–3, Maj. Jack R. Rodin Jr., 

along with Colonel Rumbaugh. Sitting around the kitchen table, the four men 

planned the Army’s medical effort on Grenada. They had no official maps of 

the island, but Rumbaugh, who was an avid reader of National Geographic, 

remembered seeing an article on the Grenadines. He located it among his back 

issues and pulled out a map that proved quite accurate.39

At this stage Edward Wilson assumed that Alpha Echelon of the 307th’s 

Company C would deploy with the rest of Forward Area Support Team II. 

After some discussion of what medical elements the division should dispatch 

to Grenada, Rumbaugh and Jack Wilson concentrated on determining just 

what portion of the 44th’s surgical hospital should go to the island to support 

the division’s medical effort. The results remained preliminary because none 

of the participants could answer some very fundamental questions. Was this, 

for example, a real operation? Rumbaugh tended to think it was, but some 

of the others were more skeptical. What number of U.S. casualties was probable? No one knew, in part, because none of the medical planners knew how 

much of the division would deploy. What medical staff at higher headquarters 

was planning medical operations? No one knew because no one was certain 

which higher headquarters was directing the operation. The meeting broke up 

with much accomplished but with considerable ambiguity about how much 

remained to be done.40

One key medical officer, the division surgeon, Lt. Col. Barry S. Sidenberg, 

did not attend even though he had the responsibility for the 82d’s medical 

planning. After his failure to make any impression on General Trobaugh 

or Colonel Silvasy following the N+2 briefing, Colonel Sidenberg thought: 

38 Interv, McMichael with Steele, Glass, Stewart, and Henson, 5 Apr 1984, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 39 Intervs, Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987 (quoted words), with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov 1987, 

and with Wilson, 6 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 40 Intervs, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov 1987, and with Wilson, 6 Nov 1987, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

224

“Okay, fine. They’ve said what they’re going to take. Okay, it’s accomplished. 

That’s it.” Because one brigade was involved and thus only one medical company, he judged that the operation involved no division-level medical issues 

and for the moment withdrew from the action. Sidenberg, like Rumbaugh 

and the two Wilsons, was new to his position. Unlike them, however, he had 

spent his entire career with Special Forces and had scant familiarity with large 

units. “I’m still learning this new animal,” he would later remark. As a result, 

Edward Wilson, who enjoyed a strong background in this area, had to explain 

to him both the structure of a medical battalion and its capabilities. In the end, 

Sidenberg decided to defer to his medical battalion commander.41

Decision To Airdrop

Around 0400 on 25 October, N+7, the first C–141s designated to carry the 

division began arriving at Pope Air Force Base. The division G–3 section had 

requested airlift support as it normally did through XVIII Airborne Corps. 

U.S. Atlantic Command’s Joint Operations Center had validated it and passed 

it onto Military Airlift Command. In fact, Atlantic Command had directed 

Military Airlift Command to honor all the division’s requests for aircraft 

and to inform it later. The initial request for aircraft fell under this blanket 

approval. XVIII Airborne Corps informed the division transportation officer, 

Maj. Frederick C. Perkins, that once the airflow started Twenty-first Air Force 

would rotate the same aircraft between Fort Bragg and Grenada as long as the 

division needed them. This arrangement freed Major Perkins to concentrate 

on follow-on transportation requirements. He had no need to become heavily 

involved in requesting support for the initial deployment because the airframes 

required to transport the force would arrive and depart automatically.42

The arrival of the C–141s meant a very different thing for General 

Trobaugh. He had to decide whether to follow Atlantic Command’s operations order and airland or to immediately reconfigure the task force in preparation for a possible airdrop. At 2300 on 24 October Atlantic Command had 

tentatively approved an airdrop option but had notified only Military Airlift 

Command of this decision. By the time the C–141s began arriving at Pope, however, Atlantic Command had rescinded its earlier approval and had instructed 

Military Airlift Command to assemble aircraft configured for airlanding.43

Uninformed of these developments but concerned about the original order, 

XVIII Airborne Corps commander Lt. Gen. Jack V. Mackmull stopped at 

division headquarters to confer with General Trobaugh. Very insistent on the 

41 Intervs, Wade with Sidenberg, 14 Dec 1983 (quoted words), and Oland with Nolan, 10 

Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 42 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. II, an. A, p. II-A-7, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Draft Rpt, DCSOPS, DA, [1984], sub: Grenada 

Lessons Learned Urgent Fury, tab M, Hist files (PDocs/DA/DCSOPS), CMH; Rpt, GWG, 

CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, pp. III-19 to III-20, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH; Interv, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 43 Interv, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Dean C. Kallander 

and James K. Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 57, 61, 138.
The Force Sorties

225

need to get combat power onto the ground quickly, General Mackmull wanted 

the division to jump in and then airland its supplies and equipment. Trobaugh 

directed the assistant G–3 for operations, Major Smith, to telephone Atlantic 

Command. Smith talked with a Navy captain in Atlantic Command’s Joint 

Operations Center about modifying the order with to read airdrop/airland, but 

was not successful. Unfamiliar with ground operations, the captain simply did 

not understand the significance of what Smith was trying to convey.44

When Smith learned that the C–141s were arriving with no static lines 

rigged, he awakened General Trobaugh, who was catching a quick nap on his 

office sofa. Trobaugh decided to disregard the Atlantic Command order and 

directed the 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, the brigade command post, and the 

division assault command post to prepare for in-flight rigging. These arrangements ensured that they could jump onto the airfield if the tactical situation 

dictated it. This order did not affect supplies and equipment belonging to 

those organizations. Their materiel was scheduled to arrive on later aircraft. 

To prepare it for an airdrop would have meant sending all the materiel accumulated at the central marshaling area and Green Ramp back to the heavy 

drop rig site, already surrounded by vehicles with loads awaiting preparation 

for shipment by air. By including only troops in his airdrop order, Trobaugh 

avoided both the creation of a monumental traffic jam and a significant delay 

in the division’s deployment.45

To convert General Trobaugh’s order into action, division headquarters 

had to communicate its requirement to the Air Force, but the Air Force crews 

selected for the operation had parked their aircraft, locked them, and departed 

to base operations. No one could prepare the aircraft for airdrop until someone 

located the crews and unlocked the planes. Trobaugh called the commander of 

the Twenty-first Air Force’s 317th Tactical Airlift Wing, Col. Frank E. Wills, at 

Pope Air Force Base. Wills agreed to prepare the planes for airdrop and did so 

despite a subsequent Atlantic Command message reconfirming the decision to 

airland rather than airdrop.46

General Trobaugh next needed to alert his own command to the change. 

He called his division support commander, Colonel Daly, who happened to be 

at Green Ramp at that time. “Bill, I’m going to get you to issue me parachutes. 

We’re going to go in possibly parachute assault.” Colonel Daly’s response was 

heartfelt: “Holy Lord, boss. That’s one Hell of a change.”47

The N-sequence presumed that certain events would take place in a specific order. In a normal eighteen-hour progression, the division commander 

44 Intervs, Pirnie, MacGarrigle, and author with Akers, [1985]; Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 

Nov 1983; Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 45 Intervs, Pirnie, MacGarrigle, and author with Akers, [1985]; Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 

Nov 1983; Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. The 82d’s chief of 

staff, Col. Peter J. Boylan Jr., made some particularly pertinent observations about this decision. 

See Interv, Frasché with Boylan, 21 Nov 1983, in ibid. 46 Interv, Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Kallander and 

Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 138. 47 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986 (quotations), Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

226

would announce his airdrop decision no later than his N+2 briefing. This time 

frame gave Colonel Daly’s support command personnel sufficient opportunity to assemble and issue all the equipment—main parachutes, reserve parachutes, load-bearing harness, kit bags, lowering lines, and so forth, collectively 

known as air items. These air items would be needed if heavily armed men 

had to parachute out of aircraft and into battle. It was now seven hours after 

notification in an abbreviated loading sequence in which the first C–141 was 

scheduled to take off in only three hours. General Trobaugh’s decision to prepare for airdrop at this point ran a real risk of disrupting other parts of the 

loading process. These circumstances explain the note of surprise and emotion 

in Daly’s initial reaction. But then Daly said that he would do it, and he did.48

When General Trobaugh made his decision, the 2d Battalion, 325th 

Infantry, had not yet arrived at Green Ramp. Virtually everyone there was 

already fully involved in some critical aspect of the loading. The uncommitted 

included a chaplain, a chaplain’s assistant, a few drivers, some miscellaneous 

personnel, and, of course, Colonel Daly himself. They immediately began 

loading bomb carts with parachutes, reserves, kit bags, and other items for 

issue to the troops in flight and then covered everything with plastic. It was still 

raining. When the 2d Battalion arrived, the troops did not have individual air 

items that they would have normally already received, such as lowering lines 

used to hang a trooper’s rucksack under his reserve chute. Daly had to send 

back for them.49

48 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Interv), CMH.

49 Interv, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Interv), CMH.

Air Force personnel study an air crew status board 
The Force Sorties

227

He also sent back for help, but his 82d Support Command was already fully 

committed. As news of what was happening at Green Ramp filtered through 

the post, individuals not involved in the loading arrived to assist, including 

students attending the advanced airborne school. Once dismissed from class, 

they reported to Green Ramp and went to work rigging M47 Dragons, a wireguided man-portable antitank missile system. Late intelligence about what 

Colonel Daly termed “a whole lot of armored vehicles down on the island” 

caused General Trobaugh to direct Daly’s command to issue a large number 

of these weapons to the brigade task force at the last minute. Unfortunately, 

the lack of time did not permit Colonel Daly to bring forward life preservers 

for the troops. If a jump occurred, any paratrooper who landed in the water 

would lack a flotation device.50

The decision to prepare for in-flight rigging settled one major uncertainty 

for the division, but others remained. Where was it going? Was the task force 

flying directly to Grenada in C–141s or was it going first to Barbados, transferring into C–130s, and then flying to Grenada? If there was opposition to the 

operation, would the Air Force risk the speedier but larger and more expensive C–141s over the drop zone or would it insist that the division use the 

more maneuverable C–130s? The C–130s, with a smaller payload, could drop 

all their passengers and equipment in one pass, but the larger C–141s would 

have to make multiple passes over any drop zone the size of the Point Salines 

airfield. When Major Smith had called Norfolk for General Trobaugh, he had 

raised the question of destination, but the Navy captain could not tell him 

where Atlantic Command wanted the division to go. No one at Norfolk knew 

anything more about the load-bearing surface of the runway than they had 

at the commanders conference on 24 October. The attempt to insert special 

operations forces into the Point Salines Peninsula—the reason that the commander of Atlantic Command, Admiral Wesley L. McDonald, had proposed 

delaying the operation until 0500—had again failed. Whether C–141s could 

even land at Salines was yet to be determined.51

One way that General Trobaugh could cope with the uncertainties was to 

ensure that he had sufficient force available no matter what he encountered. 

The division, of course, had not alerted the 3d Brigade, its Division Ready 

Brigade-2, when it called in the 2d Brigade. Nevertheless, key 3d Brigade 

officers learned what was happening to their sister brigade over the next few 

hours. As a result, no one in the 3d Brigade command group was really surprised when Trobaugh ordered their unit to begin its N-sequence at 0400 on 

25 October, seven hours after the original alert. For the present, he had no 

50 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986 (quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Tng Cir 

23–24, Dragon Medium Antitank Assault Weapon System M47, Aug 1974, pp. 3–8, MDC files, 

CMH. 51 Interv, Pirnie with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Bruce R. Pirnie, 

Operation Urgent Fury, p. 89. For performance characteristics of the two aircraft, see Gordon 

Swanborough and Peter M. Bowers, United States Military Aircraft Since 1909, pp. 383–89, 

399–400. On the key differences between the C–130 and the C–141, see E-mail, Flint to author, 

20 Dec 2005, sub: Grenada Follow-up, Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH.
The Rucksack War

228

intention of bringing the brigade into the operation, but he wanted it ready 

to deploy if the need arose. Once again, duty sergeants pulled out rosters and 

began telephoning unit members. The whole alert process started anew.52

Corps Liaison

While General Trobaugh weighed the relative advantages and disadvantages of a parachute assault, General Mackmull directed his staff and the corps’ 

1st Support Command to assist the division and anticipate what he thought 

would happen once the operation started. He believed that events would force 

Atlantic Command’s Admiral McDonald to reinsert XVIII Airborne Corps 

into the chain of command and that once the fighting ended the corps would 

have to provide personnel for a U.S. forces headquarters on Grenada. In the 

meantime, Mackmull directed that both corps headquarters and 1st Support 

Command provide liaison officers to accompany the division onto the island. 

They would enable Fort Bragg to anticipate the division’s logistical requests 

during combat and at the same time assist Trobaugh in designing a headquarters and mix of logistical elements to further U.S. objectives during the postconflict phase.53

The corps G–4, Colonel Mitchell, sent three liaison officers to the central loading area control center, where they contacted logistical officers in the 

division assault command post. The most junior liaison officer, Capt. Henry 

R. Fore, was airborne qualified. When Trobaugh decided to prepare for a possible airdrop, Captain Fore volunteered to accompany the lead elements. The 

other officers decided to fly in later. Fore thus found himself on the first aircraft out of Pope Air Force Base, the only corps liaison officer in the assault 

force.54

Col. William J. Richardson Jr.’s 1st Support Command also sent a liaison 

team to the division, headed by deputy commander Col. Robert C. Barrett Jr. 

Around 0530 on 25 October, the same time that the rangers jumped at Point 

Salines, Colonel Richardson called Colonel Barrett aside at the command’s 

planning session to inform him that he would be in the advance element of 

corps headquarters. Richardson wanted Barrett to go because he was airborne 

qualified. After collecting his personal equipment at his quarters, Barrett met 

with his driver and a sergeant and drove to the central loading area control center. The three men, a jeep, and a trailer constituted the nucleus of what would 

become 1st Support Command–Forward I, the headquarters on Grenada. At 

the loading area Barrett discovered that, except for Captain Fore, the advanced 

echelon of corps headquarters had been pushed back in the airflow. Because 

Richardson wanted his deputy to get down to Grenada as quickly as possible, 

52 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983; Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983; and 

McMichael with McFarren, 17 Nov 1983, and with Lang, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. N-hour times given in this work refer to the division’s initial alert on 24 October rather 

than the 3d Brigade’s alert on 25 October. 53 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and author with Baker-Kimmel, 18 Jul 

1986, and with Fore, 3 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 54 Interv, author with Fore, 3 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Force Sorties

229

he made arrangements for Barrett to join Major Elder’s task force from the 

82d Aviation Battalion at the corps arrival-departure area, Yellow Ramp, and 

fly with Elder to Barbados.55

Green Ramp Operations

Supplies began accumulating at Green Ramp well before any units arrived. 

Shortly after 0130, N+4:30, the executive officer of Company A, 407th Supply 

and Service Battalion, 2d Lt. Anita L. Baker-Kimmel, roared out of the heavy 

drop rig site with the first load of artillery ammunition for Green Ramp. 

Delayed only slightly by the trailer brakes catching on fire, which she extinguished, Lieutenant Baker-Kimmel dropped her large trailer outside the gate 

and went back for another. The reduced notification time required that the 

drivers leave their trailers and immediately return for other cargo, not waiting 

until the Green Ramp personnel unloaded the original delivery. By the time 

Colonel Hamilton’s battalion arrived, a number of ammunition trailers had 

accumulated outside the gate.56

Up until this point, the entire loading process had been focused on moving a specified number of combat-equipped and -supplied airborne troops to 

Green Ramp, where they would board C–141s. Men, equipment, and supplies 

approached the ramp by a narrow, two-lane asphalt road that paralleled Pope 

Air Force Base’s perimeter, delineated by a cyclone fence topped by barbed 

wire. A narrow gate and guard post marked the precise spot where men or 

materiel left Bragg and entered Pope, passing from Army to Air Force control. 

Just beyond the gate were scales, where representatives of an Air Force airlift 

control element and an Army arrival-departure airfield control group from 

7th Transportation Group weighed each chalk of men and equipment to make 

certain that it did not exceed an aircraft’s allowable cargo load. U.S. Army 

Forces Command normally attached the 7th to 1st Support Command during 

exercises and operations. Some hundred meters to the left, down a gradual 

slope and beyond yet another cyclone fence, was the operations building, a 

one-story metal structure that served as the headquarters for the Air Force 

airlift control element, the Army arrival-departure airfield control group, and 

the 1st Support Command’s 330th Transportation Center.57

Normally the center, working with the Air Force, regulated the flow of all 

Army units to the area of operations. It maintained records of the manifests of 

each aircraft and tracked the position of the flight until it arrived at its objective. If an aircraft aborted, went down, or had to divert, the center possessed 

55 Interv, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and author with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. See also Chronology and Briefing, Barrett, 9 Sep 1986, Hist files (Papers/

Barrett), CMH. 56 Intervs, author with Baker-Kimmel, 18 Jul 1986, and GWG with Baine, Hernandez, and 

Kellogg, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, 

n.d, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 57 Author’s observations at Fort Bragg (1986 and 1989) and discussions with Army officers; Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
The Rucksack War

230

the information needed to replace its cargo. When the N-sequence began, most 

of the center’s personnel, including its commander, Maj. David L. Boggs, were 

in Florida supporting Exercise Bold Eagle. Admiral McDonald’s decision to 

remove XVIII Airborne Corps from the chain of command had the effect of 

taking the 330th Transportation Center out of the picture. Its personnel withdrew from Green Ramp early on the morning of the twenty-fifth.58

Of course, the 82d Support Command also maintained records about aircraft cargoes, although usually not as complete as those kept by the 330th 

Transportation Center. In an effort to meet the goal of “wheels up” in ten 

hours, Colonel Daly’s soldiers had dispensed with much of their paperwork. 

The effect of Admiral McDonald’s decisions to require the division to be prepared to deploy in ten hours and to remove XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters from the chain of command was thus to destroy, even before the operation 

began, the Army’s system of double-entry bookkeeping to manage the flow of 

men, supplies, and equipment to Grenada.59

Complicating matters further, Maj. Samuel S. Vitucci’s Provisional 

Movement Control Center that reported to Daly’s executive officer, Lt. Col. 

Ronald F. Kelly, was tiny compared to the 330th Transportation Center. The 

Movement Control Center was located in the personnel holding area, from 

where Colonel Kelly and Major Vitucci could easily direct ground movement 

of Army units and cargoes to Green Ramp but not readily coordinate with the 

Air Force on air movement to Grenada. By 0500, N+8, as Colonel Hamilton’s 

battalion marched toward Green Ramp, the center had largely completed its 

work with the 2d Brigade and was just starting on the 3d. As long as everything 

happened exactly as planned and chalks formed at the personnel holding area 

did not require subsequent modification at either the scales or the plane, the 

Movement Control Center could handle the increased responsibilities Admiral 

McDonald’s order required. This assumed, however, that Kelly, Vitucci, and 

their subordinates realized that they had such duties, but no one had informed 

them of their expanded mission or that the 330th had left Green Ramp. For 

the moment, as the first elements of the 2d Brigade reached the scales, all went 

well, but Movement Control Center personnel were not working face to face 

with their Air Force counterparts. In a fast-moving operation the need to communicate by telephone rather than in person created a potential for confusion 

and misunderstanding.60

When Colonel Hamilton arrived at Green Ramp, he learned that his battalion would prepare for an airdrop after all. This meant that he would take ten 

to fifteen fewer men per aircraft. The troops boarded the airplanes as normal, 

58 Intervs, Wade with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983; McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 

1984; and author with McElroy, 30 Apr 1984. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 59 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983; Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983]; 

McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984; and author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986. All in 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 60 Intervs, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, plus Wade 

with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983, with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], and with Vitucci, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
The Force Sorties

231

carrying their main and reserve parachutes, and some last-minute shuffling of 

chalks occurred. General Trobaugh decided to take most of the key members 

of the division command group on the first aircraft with him. To make room 

for them, all the members of Companies B and C shifted to other craft. One 

platoon from Company A and the company command group, including its 

commander, Captain Jacoby, accompanied Trobaugh. Colonel Hamilton had 

initially intended to ride in the same aircraft; however, when Colonel Silvasy 

learned of Trobaugh’s decision, he directed otherwise to mitigate the chance 

of losing his division commander and the commander of his lead battalion at 

the same time. Hamilton and the men forming his battalion tactical operations 

center thus boarded the second aircraft.61

Shifting the command group had one other unintended consequence. 

During the loading process some of the 2d Brigade’s fire support element personnel got lost in the dark and boarded the wrong aircraft, a mistake that 

prevented work on the fire support plans while the task force was en route to 

Grenada.62

Problems proliferated as the departure time neared. The division, for example, had requested a Marine team from the 2d Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison 

Company, but had indicated that it wanted a “light package,” that is, the normal complement of detachments but with equipment and vehicles reduced 

to a minimum. The marines interpreted the message to mean that the division wanted less than a full complement of detachments, each at full strength. 

They thus sent elements to support the two battalions but none for the brigade 

or division headquarters. In the case of the 2d Battalion, this meant that its 

detachment, led by Capt. Peter Velzeboer, appeared with all three of its vehicles, more than the battalion load planners had provided for, shortly before 

boarding. As a result, the battalion staff had to cut some vehicles from the 

airflow at the last moment to accommodate the late arrivals. One of the vehicles bumped was Company B’s jeep and trailer, which, of course, included the 

unit’s mortars. The second detachment, intended for the 3d Battalion, arrived 

later still, after Colonel Raines’ men had departed for Grenada. These developments would prove much more important than they seemed at the time.63

Sometime that night the 3d Brigade commander, Col. James T. Scott, came 

forward to Green Ramp to receive any last-minute instructions from General 

61 Intervs, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, and with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983; 

Wells with Farbes, 9 Nov 1983; and GWG with Jacoby, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. See also Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 62 Interv, McMichael with Steele, Glass, Stewart, and Henson, 5 Apr 1984, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 63 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, LANTCOM, 6 Feb 1984, encl. III, p. III-4, Hist files (PDocs/

U&SCmds/LANTCOM), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 

3-11, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. See also Intervs, Danner and McMichael with 

Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983; McMichael with Steele, Glass, Stewart, and Henson, 5 

Apr 1984, and with Schmidtke, [Nov 1983]; Bishop with Baine, 10 Nov 1983; and Burdett with 

Raines, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Velzeboer deployed out of Camp Lejeune, 

North Carolina, with only two hours’ notice and no briefing on the operation. See Hamilton, 

“Operation Urgent Fury,” Student Paper, p. 12.
Paratroopers board a C–141 for deployment to Grenada
The Force Sorties

233

Trobaugh. He found Trobaugh and 

the other senior division officers huddled around a tactical satellite radio 

in the operations building at Green 

Ramp listening to the transmissions 

of both Joint Task Force 120 and Joint 

Task Force 123. They heard the latter’s commander, Maj. Gen. Richard 

A. Scholtes, decide to make an aerial 

reconnaissance of the Point Salines 

airfield, so they knew that the attempt 

to introduce a special operations team 

onto the peninsula had failed. They 

also learned of the rangers’ decision 

to make a parachute assault. Once 

General Trobaugh transferred to a 

C–141, he continued to monitor the 

unfolding operation by tactical satellite radio. The marines got ashore in 

the face of minimal opposition, but 

the rangers landed in the face of heavy 

antiaircraft fire. The Grenadians even 

repulsed some of the special operations forces. The fragmentary radio 

messages suggested that the issue on the ground was in doubt. During these 

moments Trobaugh suffered agonies of indecision: Should he order the brigade to rig for airdrop while still on the ground and possibly delay take off? 

Finally, he decided to continue with the current plan—rig for airdrop while 

airborne. So long as he made the decision 21⁄2 hours out from Grenada, the 

troops would have the time they needed to prepare for a parachute assault.64

Impatient to get the division launched, General Mackmull was also at 

Green Ramp. When the rangers had to jump, he turned to General Trobaugh 

and said: “Hell, go ahead and get ready to jump that other battalion in also.” 

The division commander decided to follow his corps commander’s advice. 

Trobaugh’s decision caused another burst of frantic activity. The division support command and the volunteers who had helped the 2d Battalion load parachutes and bring forward individual air items performed the same services for 

the 3d Battalion.65

Colonel Raines was at Green Ramp and his men were on the tarmac preparing to board their aircraft when he learned that his battalion would have 

to prepare for possible airdrop. Because he had organized all his chalks for 

airlanding, Raines immediately had to decide which people to leave behind 

64 Intervs, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983; Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, with J. L. 

Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, and with Baine, 10 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 65 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983 (quoted 

words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

General Scholtes 
The Rucksack War

234

and whether to divide his companies and his tactical operations center among 

several aircraft. After talking to the assistant division commander for support, General Smith, he opted not to cross-load as normal during an airdrop 

because it would slow the battalion’s departure.66

By the time the news about Grenada filtered down to the companies, word 

of mouth had transmogrified it into: “The rangers are in trouble, and there’s 

armor on the island.” The loading, confused already because of the last-minute changes, became even more so as company officers hastily attempted to 

increase their antiarmor capability and repair any deficiencies in the ammunition distributed at the individual issue ammunition point. One company commander obtained five Dragons. Because he did not have the time to rig them 

for airdrop, he simply told his men to carry them by hand. His men had just 

finished loading two when he was ordered not to take them. Thus he left the 

other three at Green Ramp.67

In another instance a company commander obtained a case of fragmentation grenades. Given the new information, and in contravention of General 

Trobaugh’s orders, he decided to distribute them to his men before they 

boarded their planes. He was in the process of doing so when Colonel Daly 

appeared and told him to stop. A heated argument ensued that attracted the 

attention of the brigade executive officer, Colonel Ely. Ely backed Daly and 

collected the grenades. Some of the troopers, however, had already boarded 

their aircraft and carried grenades with them to Grenada.68

The battalion commanders also had to make adjustments after the division commander decided on a possible airdrop option. For example, Colonel 

Raines went to each of the aircraft carrying his unit and gave a case of grenades to the senior officer aboard, who was to distribute them to the troops 

just before they exited the planes. Both battalion commanders attempted to 

get jump-rigged Dragons onto their aircraft.69

Before leaving the central loading area control center, the 2d Brigade’s fire support personnel learned that armor was on Grenada. At Colonel Williams’ direction, the fire support noncommissioned officer, Sergeant Steele, unsuccessfully 

attempted to obtain some white phosphorous rounds. He was able to secure a few 

more armor piercing rounds for the brigade at the last minute with the help of the 

officers on the division artillery staff. The limited time before departure meant that 

the division support command could only partially satisfy these requests.70

Slowed by the need to prepare for an airdrop, the troopers of the 2d 

Brigade, 82d Airborne Division, boarded twelve Air Force C–141s at Green 

66 Interv, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

67 Interv, Burdett with D. Davis, [Nov 1983] (quoted words), and with Pederson, [Nov 1983], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 68 Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and Burdett with Pederson, [Nov 1983], Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 69 Interv, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], and with Keene, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 70 Interv, McMichael with Steele, Glass, Stewart, and Henson, 5 Apr 1984, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 
The Force Sorties

235

Ramp somewhat after N+10. Then a long wait ensued for the order to 

launch. Aboard the lead aircraft General Trobaugh contemplated the situation. “It appeared to me that [planning to have two brigades] was a pretty 

wise move. . . . There’s no point in getting in a fair fight if you don’t have 

to. If you can make it unfair in your favor, you probably ought to do that 

because it’s less expensive.”71

Meanwhile, General Mackmull watched the scene with barely contained 

impatience. He knew that General Scholtes had wanted the division task 

force to land immediately behind Joint Task Force 123 and that Scholtes had 

met more resistance than he expected. Mackmull considered calling Admiral 

McDonald directly but then decided against it, realizing McDonald had more 

than enough to keep him busy with a major operation just kicking off. The fact 

that he was out of the chain of command also made him pause, especially if 

Atlantic Command had a well-considered reason for its course of action.72

Initially, Atlantic Command had planned for the division to arrive at 

Grenada four hours after the ranger battalions went in (N+12), but then it 

changed the concept. Under the new scenario, the division would depart Fort 

Bragg four hours after the first landings and arrive on the island approximately 

eight hours (N+16) after the rangers jumped. The first design permitted the 

division to reinforce fairly quickly the airhead seized by the rangers, while the 

second envisioned that the brigade task force would act as a ready reserve at 

Bragg until departure to begin occupation duties. By 1000 (N+13) almost five 

hours had passed since the opening of operations. The order to launch finally 

came, and the first C–141 lifted off at 1007. Six others soon followed. After a 

pause caused by Colonel Wills’ attempt to find airdrop qualified flight crews, 

the remaining four aircraft departed. The twelfth plane left Pope at 1303.73

The loading and dispatch to Grenada of the 82d Airborne Division’s 2d 

Brigade Task Force provided a major test of the division’s readiness standing 

operating procedures and its underlying philosophy: meticulous and detailed 

planning, endless repetition in training, and decentralized execution. During 

71 Interv, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983 (quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

Sources disagree on the number of aircraft involved. The most contemporary document (Msg, 

Mackmull to Cavazos, 25 2043Z October 1983, sub: Urgent Fury, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH) reports twelve; the 2d Brigade commander (Briefing, 

Silvasy, 8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH) indicates thirteen; the lead battalion commander 

(Interv, Bishop with Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH) states fourteen; and 

finally Briefing Slide, 82d Abn Div, n.d., records a total of nineteen, which may include chalk 

loads subsequently cut from the flow by General Trobaugh. 72 Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Msg, LANTCOM 

to ARLANT et al., 24 1956Z Oct 1983, sub: Urgent Fury Opn Order, chg. 1, Hist files (PDocs/

U&SCmds/LANTCOM), CMH. The division’s mission remained to deploy “on order.” 73 Interv, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent

Fury, 82d Abn Div, pp. 1–2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. The Air Force gives the 

takeoff time as one minute later. See Msg, TAC Opn to LANTCOM, 19 2306Z Nov 1983, sub: 

Urgent Fury AAR, Hist files (PDocs/DAF/TAC), CMH.
The Rucksack War

236

the loading phase General Trobaugh, Colonel Daly, and the logisticians under 

their command demonstrated that this procedure was not simply a rigid lockstep routine but a supple instrument that could be adapted to the operational 

needs of the moment. This flexibility was possible because all the members 

of the division and the supporting elements from XVIII Airborne Corps and 

the Fort Bragg installation were so well drilled in the normal procedures. 

Improvisation with a logistical team less well prepared might have produced 

total chaos. 

Based on the need to maintain operational security, Atlantic Command’s 

direction to restrict the alert time to ten rather than eighteen hours and 

General Trobaugh’s last-minute determination to rig for airdrop made the 

departure anything but routine. Time pressures, facilities inadequate for the 

tempo required, security considerations, supply shortages, and the glitches 

that attend all human endeavors contributed to make the effort less than perfect. Still, it was very impressive. 

Security considerations affected the division’s performance more during 

the loading than was normal during an exercise. Colonel Daly’s decision, for 

example, to omit the Division Ready Force-9 from the division outload net 

provided perhaps a marginal gain in security but at the cost of considerably 

degrading his ability to efficiently coordinate the battalion’s activities. The 

major factor in preventing his 82d Support Command from meeting the tenhour deadline was General Trobaugh’s decision toward the end of the tenhour sequence that the men of the task force should prepare for an airdrop.

Given General Trobaugh’s knowledge of the situation on Grenada at the 

time he made his determination, preparing for an airdrop option was the only 

sensible thing to do. He showed considerable moral courage by countermanding the order of his direct superior, Admiral McDonald. Even so, Trobaugh 

waited far too late in the N-sequence to make the move. The last flurry of confusion at Green Ramp as the 2d and 3d Battalions, 325th Infantry, struggled 

to prepare for an airdrop came as a direct consequence of his timing. Colonel 

Daly and the logisticians under him were able to complete this task successfully only with a great deal of volunteer help. That General Trobaugh made 

the correct decision speaks to his grasp of the tactical situation, but his timing 

revealed his lack of prior experience with airborne units. He understood the 

operational implications of his order but not its ramifications for the loading 

process and consequently the need for an earlier resolution. An officer with 

more airborne experience might have recognized both. 

The decision to prepare for an airdrop did not, however, delay the time at 

which the task force actually deployed, because Colonel Silvasy’s men were 

ready to go before Atlantic Command dispatched the execution order. Atlantic 

Command’s delay ensured that the battalions could not conduct any extensive 

advance on 25 October beyond whatever airhead line the ranger battalions 

had already seized. The 2d Brigade would arrive on Grenada with only a few 

hours of daylight left. General Trobaugh interpreted the rules of engagement, 

designed to minimize casualties among Grenadian civilians, as precluding any 

extensive nighttime ground operations.
The Force Sorties

237

The question of whether to prepare for an airdrop and the timing of that 

decision became issues because Atlantic Command stipulated that the division 

would land and then debark. As in the decision to remove XVIII Airborne 

Corps from the chain of command, Atlantic Command thoughtlessly substituted at the last minute a new arrangement for a long-standing and muchpracticed procedure without really understanding the consequences of its 

action, and it demonstrated an unfortunate tendency to overcentralize decisionmaking on issues better left to subordinate commands. Once more this 

predominately naval headquarters proved that it was ill-prepared to direct the 

operations of an airborne division. 

Down at the working level in the logistical units, the loading appeared a 

genuine success. The assessment of the 407th Supply and Service Battalion commander, Lt. Col. John J. Cusick, reflected this perspective. He later observed 

that for him the real meaning of Urgent Fury was epitomized in a scene 

repeated with variations many times on the night of 24–25 October. At “0 dark 

hundred hours” an officer had some important supplies that, according to the 

readiness standing operating procedures, had to go to Green Ramp almost 

immediately. Out of the night lurched a tractor and trailer with a tired, somewhat frightened nineteen-year-old in the cab. Once the cargo was loaded, the 

officer was torn between the thought that this kid could not possibly accomplish such an important mission on his own and the knowledge that he or she 

was a well-trained soldier. (Youngsters of both sexes had the duty that night.) 

Colonel Cusick talks with General Wickham, followed by Generals Smith and 

Mackmull, during the paratroopers’ deployment.
The Rucksack War

238

To cover his nervousness, the officer might quiz the driver about the cargo’s 

destination. A few answers revealed that “the kid” knew the way. Then he or 

she roared off and delivered the materiel on time and in the right place. Many 

such kids demonstrated that they were men and women that night.74

At 1007 on 25 October, as the aircraft carrying General Trobaugh lifted 

off from the Pope Air Force Base runway, this sense of triumph, of hard work 

well and properly done, probably represented the dominant mood among the 

men and women involved in the logistical operation. This assessment was in 

many respects justified, particularly given the demanding circumstances surrounding the loading. However, those same circumstances meant that a number of difficulties, so small at the moment as to be almost invisible to anyone 

other than someone directly affected, had the potential of becoming major 

problems under the right conditions. 

First, based on the information that General Trobaugh had at hand, the 

likelihood that the two battalions might have to jump into a “hot” landing 

zone on Grenada was real. Because Colonel Hamilton had organized his 

chalks with an airdrop in mind, his battalion was prepared for such an assault. 

On the other hand, Colonel Raines, possibly lulled by his orders to airland and 

by the fact that his would be the fourth infantry battalion to arrive at Point 

Salines (after the two ranger battalions and Hamilton’s unit), had organized 

his chalks to move as entire units. When Trobaugh’s order came to prepare 

to parachute in, Raines lacked the time to cross-load his companies. Unlike 

Hamilton, he thus faced the real possibility that he might lose an entire company if the Grenadians or the Cubans shot down one of the aircraft carrying 

his men.

Equally important, the lateness of General Trobaugh’s order meant that 

Colonel Daly’s command could not in the brief time available provide individual flotation devices to the members of the two battalions. This lack of 

water wings meant that Trobaugh, unless faced with a major tactical emergency, could consider landing his command only in the conventional manner. 

The possibility of mass casualties due to drowning if the jumpers fell into the 

water was simply too great. The absence of flotation devices thus negated from 

the very beginning General Mackmull’s suggestion to airdrop the troops and 

airland the equipment to speed the buildup.

The speed of the loading and the failure of the division and corps to coordinate their notification sequences caused some units to receive ample supplies 

and equipment while others obtained less than what they needed. Most notable 

in this respect was Captain Ritz’s Company B, 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry. It 

deployed without either grenades or mortars. The removal of the corps from 

the chain of command meant that the 330th Transportation Center was not 

present to record the makeup of each chalk. At the same time, the need for 

speed caused the 82d Support Command to dispense with its recordkeeping 

function altogether. The shortfalls during the issue of supplies and equipment 

and adjustments to chalks during the loading process meant that some units 

74 Interv, author with Cusick, 24 Jan 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Force Sorties

239

were accumulating deficiencies, invisible to everyone except the men directly 

affected. Furthermore, when a higher headquarters bumped a company’s supplies and equipment off of follow-on aircraft, even the commander of the 

affected unit may not have understood what had happened. In short, the division support command and by extension the division leadership had lost visibility of what was going to the area of operations in any detailed way before 

the first aircraft lifted off.

In and of itself, this lack of visibility did not have to produce major problems. Colonel Daly and his subordinates had just demonstrated their ability to 

improvise creatively, and this skill based on deep experience had not deserted 

them. But Daly had been operating in a communications-rich environment. 

The outload net had allowed him to range the post throughout the loading 

process, identify problems, and provide solutions on the spot. But as the 82d’s 

aircraft left the runway they passed into a twilight zone where messages were 

sparse, fragmented, and often undeliverable. General Trobaugh and his men 

had entered Atlantic Command’s zone of operations, where no communications plan was in effect and where logistical problems could metastasize out of 

control without anyone able to implement a timely solution. 

6

Area of Operations

25–26 October 1983

Grantley Adams International Airport on Barbados, only 275 kilometers 

from the Point Salines Peninsula on Grenada, provided a staging area 

for selected special operations forces. From there, they were to move by helicopter against several sensitive targets. These objectives included Richmond 

Hill Prison to rescue political prisoners, the broadcast studio and transmitter 

of Radio Free Grenada to prevent the regime from calling for popular resistance to the landings, the headquarters of the People’s Revolutionary Army 

at Fort Rupert to disrupt command and control, and the governor general’s 

residence to protect Sir Paul Scoon and his family.1

The airlift commander for Operation Urgent Fury, Brig. Gen. Robert B. 

Patterson, left Pope Air Force Base on a C–5A at 2208 on 24 October en route 

to Barbados. On board he met the Task Force 160 commander, Col. Terrence 

M. Henry, whose Army aviation element built largely around the 160th Aviation 

Battalion would be supporting the special operations forces in Maj. Gen. Richard 

A. Scholtes’ Joint Task Force (JTF) 123. Colonel Henry was concerned about the 

time. He insisted that the task force would be arriving late on Barbados. General 

Patterson realized that Henry was following the old schedule of events and told 

him that U.S. Atlantic Command had slipped the hour for beginning the assault 

from 0400 to 0500. Even so, Henry worried aloud whether his aviators could 

launch the attack successfully. He definitely did not want to fly against Grenadian 

antiaircraft defenses during daylight when the Grenadians could see to shoot.2

Colonel Henry’s apprehensions proved prescient. The effort to unload the helicopters, to prepare them for flight, and to arm their weapons consumed more time 

than anticipated. Task Force 160 aviators had assumed that they would be ready 

for flight within an hour of landing, but rebuilding the partially disassembled aircraft took much longer. The confusion that always accompanies the establishment 

of an intermediate staging base with no support elements in place only added to 

the problem. Because planners had deliberately sacrificed forklifts and logistical 

1 Robert N. Seigle, “Special Operations in Grenada,” Student Paper, pp. 8–9; Richard 

Sandza, “Death Waits in the Dark,” p. 24. 2 Interv, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Task Force 160 

also had some assets from the 158th Aviation Battalion.

☆ ☆ ☆
The Rucksack War

242

support personnel in the hope of achieving tactical surprise, the helicopter crews 

had to manhandle pallets of equipment and supplies off the aircraft on their own. 

The 0500 time for the assault left a leeway of only twelve minutes before first light. 

It was not nearly enough. Rebuilding and then test-flying the aircraft extended well 

beyond their planned time to launch the force. The helicopters finally took off at 

0530, half an hour after the Americans were supposed to be over their objectives 

on Grenada and starting their attacks. By then, it was light enough for Grenadian 

antiaircraft gunners to identify and track targets.3

During these preparations General Patterson could offer limited assistance. He had brought only a combat control team and twelve maintenance 

men with him on the first flight, and they had their hands full simply servicing Air Force aircraft. As Task Force 160 helicopters disappeared over the 

horizon, Patterson followed the progress of JTF 123’s assault over the longdistance satellite radio in the combat control team’s van. It soon became clear 

that the other prong of General Scholtes’ attack force, the rangers, was also 

having difficulties (Chart 9).

4

Initial Assaults

En route to the drop zone, the rangers received additional information about 

the Point Salines airfield: The Cubans had placed obstacles on the runway. Based 

on this intelligence, sometime between 2200 and 2300 on 24 October, the 1st 

Battalion, 75th Infantry, commander, Lt. Col. Wesley B. Taylor Jr., decided that 

his entire unit would have to airdrop. Only his lead element, Company A under 

Capt. John P. Abizaid, was rigged for airdrop. Flying thirty minutes ahead of the 

rest of the force in two aircraft, the company had the mission to clear the airfield. 

It was one thing for Colonel Taylor to make the decision and another 

for his men to execute it. Only his and the two MC–130s carrying Captain 

Abizaid’s company had hatch-mounted radios that allowed the passengers of 

the different aircraft to speak directly to one another. Taylor had a limited 

ability to communicate with the rangers aboard the other aircraft. On them, 

messages had to pass through the pilots, often with a crew chief acting as a 

relay between the cockpit and the rangers in the cargo compartment. This 

procedure lengthened the time to disseminate information and increased the 

potential for misunderstanding. Nevertheless, Taylor had made the decision 

early enough for everyone to have time to prepare for the parachute assault.5

3 Ibid.; Seigle, “Special Operations,” Student Paper, pp. 8–9.

4 Interv, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Seigle, “Special 

Operations,” Student Paper, pp. 8–9; Mark Adkin, Urgent Fury, p. 183 (departure time source). 

Prime Minister Tom Adams had just arrived at the airport and snapped a photograph of the 

helicopters as they flew toward Grenada. 5 Intervs, Bishop with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, and with Nix, 2 Nov 

1983; MacGarrigle with Abizaid, 15 Dec 1983; and Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984. All in 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Co A, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 7 Nov 1983, 

External Portion, pp. 1–5, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH; Command and Control section 

of Draft Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1984], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, pp. 

IV-B-3 to IV-B-4, Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH, which has different verbiage than found 

in the final 1985 report.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

243

Joint Task

Force 123 1 Special

Opns Wing

8 Special

Opns Squadron

16 Special

Opns Squadron

Provisional

Airlift

Assets

1 Bn (Ranger),

75 Inf (-)

Co A, 1 Bn

(Ranger),

75 Inf

Co B, 1 Bn

(Ranger),

75 Inf

Co C, 1 Bn

(Ranger),

75 Inf a

Task Force

160b

Special

Operations

Forces

2 Bn (Ranger),

75 Inf 

Co A, 2 Bn

(Ranger),

75 Inf

Co B, 2 Bn

(Ranger),

75 Inf

Co C, 2 Bn

(Ranger),

75 Inf Command

Supporting Elements

Chart 9—Organization of Joint Task Force 123, 25 October 1983 

a

 Joint Task Force Reserve

b

 Drawn largely from the 160th Aviation Battalion but reinforced with assets from the 158th Aviation Battalion.

Source: Adapted from Bruce R. Pirnie, Operation URGENT FURY, p. 78. 

Maj. Gen. Richard A. Scholtes Col. Hugh L. Hunter Brig. Gen. Robert B. Patterson 

Lt. Col. Wesley B. Taylor Jr. Lt. Col. Ralph L. Hagler Jr. Capt. David W. Barno Lt. Col. Terrence M. Henry 

Capt. John P. Abizaid 

Capt. Clyde M. Newman 

Capt. Francis Kearney 

Capt. Thomas E. Sittnick 

Capt. Mark L. Hanna 

At 0425, 25 October, he sent a second message that confirmed the battalion 

airdrop based on the latest intelligence; however, on at least three planes, this 

message was garbled. Hearing airland rather than airdrop, the rangers on these 

aircraft began to derig. Because Colonel Taylor and Captain Abizaid could talk 

without intermediaries, Company A remained prepared to jump. As the lead 

MC–130 carrying Abizaid and his men went on final approach, however, its 

inertial navigation system and radar went out. Without these systems, the pilot 

needed to see the horizon to be able to make the drop. First light was still some 

minutes away, and the pilot had to abort. Flying in a command-and-control 

aircraft, General Scholtes did not want to leave one planeload of rangers alone 
Rangers arrive in Grenada, making their parachute assault on the morning of 25 

October and then their foot advance
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

245

on the ground without support and ordered the second aircraft to abort also. 

The two planes circled back and went to the rear of aircraft number 4, the last 

aircraft carrying members of the 1st Battalion, for a second attempt.6

The third MC–130 arrived over the drop zone at 0530, and the first rangers—Colonel Taylor, his primary tactical operations center, and some Company 

B soldiers—jumped in the face of moderate antiaircraft fire that rapidly grew in 

intensity (see Map 4). The battalion S–3, Maj. John J. Maher III, was one of the 

last rangers to exit the plane. Looking down at his feet “like every good airborne 

trooper,” Major Maher saw tracers below his toes. “When I checked my canopy, . . . tracers [were] above my canopy and . . . through my suspension lines.” 

Looking back at the MC–130, he saw “tracer fire in front of it, over it, beyond 

it, under it, and behind it.” The aircraft made a hard right turn and dove for 

the ocean surface, leveling off considerably below an altitude of 100 feet (30.5 

meters), and departed the area. It escaped damage. On the ridgeline, just north 

of the field, Maher could see antiaircraft guns firing from seven to ten positions. 

Miraculously, neither he nor any other ranger was injured in the jump.7

General Scholtes had prepared for just such an eventuality. He had three 

Air Force AC–130 Spectre gunships, each armed with a 105-mm. howitzer 

and multiple smaller caliber weapons, loitering in the area ready to suppress 

antiaircraft positions. One soon silenced an antiaircraft gun. Meanwhile, 

Colonel Taylor, the members of his primary tactical operations center, and a 

few Company B rangers found themselves on the ground amid a great number 

of agitated Cubans and Grenadians.8

The center was designed to be low profile, with no tents to erect. It consisted of nothing more elaborate than some small maps, suitable for reading 

while spread over a knee, some lightweight radios packed in rucksacks, and 

a few radio operators plus Colonel Taylor and key members of the battalion 

staff. The Headquarters Company commander, Capt. John M. Mitchell, who 

had accompanied Taylor on the third aircraft, quickly set up the center in a 

little fold of ground out of the direct line of Grenadian fire. The defenders 

made his task easier by directing all their rounds at the airplanes overhead 

rather than at the rangers already on the ground.9

Almost simultaneously with the ranger attack, a marine rifle company, 

Company E, 2d Battalion, 8th Marines, successfully landed by helicopter 

6 Intervs, Bishop with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, and with Nix, 2 Nov 

1983; MacGarrigle with Abizaid, 15 Dec 1983; Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984. All in 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 7 Intervs, Bishop with Maher, 3 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, 

plus Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Rpt, Roper to Cdr, 507th 

TACW, 17 Nov 1983, sub: Grenada Report w/encl Major Roper’s Narrative, Hist files (PDocs/

DAF/TAC), CMH. For the pilots’ perspectives, see Dean C. Kallander and James K. Matthews, 

Urgent Fury, pp. 37–46. 8 Intervs, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, and Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH; Rpt, Roper to Cdr, 507th TACW, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/DAF/

TAC), CMH; Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 37–46. 9 Interv, Bishop with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, and Tel Interv, author with Mitchell, 10 Jul 2006, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
I I

75

Initial Location

R

0535–0605

1

I I

75

Second Location

R

0605–0705

1

Hill 97

Break-o Point

Initial Flights

Break-o Point

Final Flights

TROU JA B (DEVIL’S

BAY)

DEGRA BAY

B AGADI

B AY C AT O BAY B L A C K BAY

C ANOE BAY

GRAND BA Y

PRICKL Y BA Y

M OUNT

HARTMAN

B A Y

WOBURN BA Y

HARD Y B A Y

TRUE BL UE BA Y

GRAND ANSE

B A Y

M ORNE ROUGE BA Y

Control Tower

Sugar

Mill

Golf

Course

Quarry

Sugar Factory

Fort

Radio

Station

St. George’s University

School of Medicine

St. George’s University School of Medicine

Fuel Storage

Tanks

Tower

Tower

Towers

G r a n d A n s e B e a c h

L an ce aux Épines Beach

Parc à Boeuf Beach

P or t ici Beach

Morne Rouge Beach

Magazin Beach

Pingouin Beach

HOG ISLAND

Point Salines

Madame Jardin

Laissé Point 

Blow Hole

Ships Deck

Quarantine Point

Petit Cabrits Point

True Blue Point

Prickly Point

Mt Hartman

Point

(Mace Point)

GLOVER ISLAND (RAMIER ISLAND)

True Blue

Frequente

Calliste

Ruth Howard

Mt

Hartman

Estate

Woburn

Golands

Grand

Anse

Lance

aux

Épines

Woodlands

Estate

The Cli

D -DAY AIRBORNE ASSAULT

25 October 1983

0535–0705

0

0

500 1000 Meters

500 1000 Yards

Axis of Air Assault

Tactical Operations Center

Grenadian/Cuban Antiaircraft Positions

Point Salines Runway

ELEVATION IN FEET

0 200 400 and Above

Map 4
Marines arrive in Grenada, off-loading from a CH–53 helicopter at Pearls Airport 

and later driving by a town wall with graffiti welcoming the Americans as liberators
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

247

south of Pearls Airport on the east coast of Grenada and began pushing overland toward the airport. Grenadian antiaircraft guns fired only a few erratic 

bursts before Marine Cobra gunships silenced them. At 0630 Company F, 2d 

Battalion, 8th Marines, captured the nearby town of Grenville in an unopposed helicopter assault. Forty-five minutes later Company E secured the airstrip. Grenadian soldiers guarding the complex fired a few rounds from their 

automatic weapons and fled. The only immediate danger faced by the marines 

was the high-spirited enthusiasm of the local inhabitants who welcomed the 

Americans as liberators.10

The helicopter assault by the special operations forces in the St. George’s 

area, well after dawn, provoked the most effective opposition. The pilots of 

the two UH–60s dispatched to rescue Governor General Scoon and his family 

could not locate the official residence from the air. Pulling away under heavy 

fire, they landed on the USS Guam to refuel. They then made a second attempt. 

This time they succeeded, and a rescue party rappelled to the ground. The 

helicopters then withdrew. The plan was to await the appearance of friendly 

ground forces, but a Grenadian attack force arrived first. The assault team had 

no weapons capable of stopping armored personnel carriers. The Americans 

had excellent radios but not the correct frequencies and settings to contact 

General Scholtes, who remained overhead in a command-and-control aircraft. 

(Someone had changed all the frequencies, call signs, and manual settings for 

secure transmission as a security measure but neglected to inform some of 

the ground teams.) Finding a telephone inside the residence, one of the team 

members used a credit card to call his wife at Fort Bragg. He told her who to 

contact at the post to request air support. That support, when it arrived, was 

devastatingly effective. A combination of Marine attack helicopters, Navy A–7 

Corsair II attack aircraft, and Air Force Spectre gunships kept the Grenadians 

at bay throughout the day and into the night. The need to relieve the force, 

however, meant that the JTF 120 commander, V. Adm. Joseph Metcalf III, 

continued to press his ground commanders for rapid action.11

Other attacks were even less successful. Special operations forces succeeded in capturing a radio studio north of St. George’s, but the assumption 

that control of the location would take Radio Free Grenada off the air proved 

mistaken—the station possessed an alternate studio for local broadcasts. When 

the Grenadians counterattacked, the Americans found themselves as defenseless against light armored vehicles as their counterparts defending Scoon. Like 

them, the men at the studio were unable to contact anyone with their radio, 

which meant that they were without air support. As a result, they had to disengage hastily and retreat before the Grenadians overran their position. They 

spent the rest of the day playing hide-and-seek with the Grenadian army in the 

jungle. That evening they swam out to sea and after hours in the water made 

10 Ronald H. Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, 1983, p. 7. 11 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, [JTF 120], n.d., Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), 

CMH; Bruce R. Pirnie, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 114–18, 120; MFR, author, 28 Oct 2008, 

sub: DIA Conference on Operation Urgent Fury (Invasion of Grenada), 28 October 2008, 

Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH.
Grenadians search for casualties in a severely damaged mental hospital, accidently 

hit by a bomb during the air attacks.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

249

contact with one of the destroyers in the naval task force supporting the invasion, the USS Caron, which took them aboard.12

Antiaircraft fire drove off the helicopter assaults at Richmond Hill Prison 

and Fort Rupert, damaging every helicopter in Colonel Henry’s Task Force 

160, most of them severely. Two crashed. One pilot, Capt. Keith J. Lucas, 

died in the wreck of his UH–60 Black Hawk. In addition, the Grenadians 

shot down two Marine Cobras that attempted to suppress antiaircraft fire 

from Fort Frederick. Three of the four aviators aboard these aircraft were 

also killed.13

About noon Admiral Metcalf accepted a proposal from his Army adviser, 

Maj. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., to use the marines to conduct an 

amphibious assault north of St. George’s as a means of relieving pressure on 

the special operations forces. Communications difficulties between ship and 

shore prevented the battalion landing team commander, Lt. Col. Ray L. Smith, 

from learning of the mission until 1500. The process of planning the operation 

and moving the ships into position then delayed the effort until 1830. In the 

interim, in what General Schwarzkopf considered “one of the decisive moves 

of the battle,” Metcalf directed naval aircraft to attack Fort Frederick, which 

by then appeared to be the Grenadian command-and-control center. The air 

attacks certainly shook the defenders (and also severely damaged a nearby 

mental hospital); however, because the leaders of the Revolutionary Military 

Council were apparently out of contact with their units throughout the fighting, the degree to which the bombing and strafing disrupted the coordination 

of the defenders is debatable. Rather, the attack was one of a series of hard 

knocks that the Americans delivered on the twenty-fifth. Even when repulsed, 

the special operations teams had exacted a heavy price. The cumulative effect 

of these blows was such that the defense became progressively less cohesive as 

the day wore on.14

Point Salines Airhead

After a shaky start on the morning of 25 October, the ranger attack at 

Point Salines quickly built up momentum. The Cubans had cluttered the airstrip with bulldozers, wire, and other objects. Because the Grenadians and 

Cubans manning the antiaircraft positions ignored the rangers on the ground, 

Colonel Taylor was able to organize two-man teams to clear the obstacles. The 

rangers had brought cables to jump-start the equipment but discovered that 

the construction workers had thoughtfully left the keys in most of the ignitions. As the 1st Battalion’s senior Air Force forward air controller, Maj. James 

12 Adkin, Urgent Fury, pp. 181–83, provides the fullest account of this action. For corrections to Adkin’s account, see MFR, author, 28 Oct 2008, Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH. 13 Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, pp. 10–12, provides a vivid account of the loss of the 

Marine helicopters. 14 Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, pp. 7–9; Interv, Bishop with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983 

(quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Adkin, Urgent Fury, pp. 166, 245, 293. Adkin, who 

interviewed the defenders after the battle, is the source of the Revolutionary Military Council’s 

conduct during the battle. 
The Rucksack War

250

E. Roper, sprinted across the runway toward the assembly point for Taylor’s 

tactical operations center, he noted a ranger already driving a steamroller off 

the runway.15

The battalion S–3, Major Maher, had landed the farthest from the rally 

point, in fact, dangerously near the Cubans. Nevertheless, he raced to the 

southeast verge of the runway without drawing fire. As soon as he arrived, 

Colonel Taylor put him in charge of the clearing operation. Taylor then walked 

to the tactical operations center and radioed General Scholtes. 

At that moment the fourth transport, a C–130, appeared overhead and 

provoked a storm of antiaircraft fire. Maher estimated that the fusillade was 

twice as intense as the one his own aircraft had endured. Despite the opposition, the pilot flew slow and level. By 0552 all but seven of his passengers had 

succeeded in exiting the aircraft while it was over the drop zone. The newcomers were rangers from Capt. Clyde M. Newman’s Company B. Again, no 

one was injured during the jump and the aircraft, maneuvering wildly, sped 

off without damage. Aircraft five through seven aborted their approaches 

because of heavy enemy fire and because not all the rangers had had time to 

rerig.16

As the Grenadians threw up their barrage, Maher ordered his runway 

teams to drop their tools and take the antiaircraft guns under fire. The 

Americans’ small-arms fire failed to suppress the defenders, but the shots 

alerted them to the presence of the rangers on the airstrip. The Grenadians 

and Cubans responded with their first effective fire of the day. Major Roper, 

in turn, contacted the AC–130 gunship overhead and requested that it 

eliminate the antiaircraft positions. With an intensive hail of gunfire, the 

Spectre did just that, making it possible to resume the airdrop. Grenadian 

and Cuban small-arms fire, however, remained a problem for the troops on 

the ground.17

Starting at 0625, Lt. Col. Ralph L. Hagler Jr.’s 2d Battalion and the remainder of the 1st Battalion successfully parachuted into the drop zone. By 0730 

the 2d Platoon of Captain Abizaid’s Company A, 1st Battalion, had secured 

the True Blue Campus at the east end of the runway, and a platoon of Captain 

Newman’s Company B, 1st Battalion, had cleared the airport terminal complex. Company B also captured the Cuban construction camp, taking some two 

hundred prisoners. Meanwhile, Colonel Hagler had sent one company to clear 

the heights north of the airfield, where it captured an additional twenty-two 

Cubans. A second company had moved northwest to link up with Newman’s 

15 Interv, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Rpt, Roper to Cdr, 

507th TACW, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/DAF/TAC), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st 

Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 16 Interv, Bishop with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Rpt, Roper to Cdr, 

507th TACW, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/DAF/TAC), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st 

Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 17 Interv, Bishop with Maher, 3 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Rpt, Roper to Cdr, 

507th TACW, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/DAF/TAC), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st 

Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

251

men at the terminal. Hagler, the senior officer on the ground, reported the 

Point Salines airfield secured at 0735 (see Map 5).

18

While these operations were continuing, the 1st and 3d Platoons of 

Captain Abizaid’s company and Company B of the 2d Battalion, assisted by 

two engineers from the 307th Engineer Battalion, Sgt. Charles E. Spain and 

Spec. William R. Richardson, concentrated on clearing the airfield. In addition to the debris, the Cubans had driven steel reinforcing rods in rows about 

15 meters apart along the entire length of the runway. Sergeant Spain and 

Specialist Richardson drove eight asphalt rollers off the runway, and then a 

ranger used one of them to flatten the rods. All attempts, however, to airdrop 

the 618th Engineer Company’s bulldozer failed. After circling fruitlessly for 

more than thirty minutes, the C–130 carrying it diverted to Barbados. By this 

time, General Scholtes knew that the Cuban construction equipment was both 

plentiful and operable, so the Air Force made no further attempts to deliver 

the bulldozer. Military Airlift Command pilots flew it back to Fort Bragg. The 

bulldozer rigged for low-altitude extraction suffered the same fate.19

By 0700 the rangers, with the assistance of Sergeant Spain and Specialist 

Richardson, had the eastern end of the runway sufficiently clear to allow 

C–130s to land. Aircraft were stacked up over Point Salines waiting for authorization. Lacking a list of priorities from General Scholtes, the commander of 

the three-member Air Force combat control team that had parachuted in with 

the rangers, M. Sgt. Robert L. Kelly, simply directed the plane at the bottom 

of the holding pattern to land. The first C–130 touched down at 0736, carrying 

the standard Joint Special Operations Command medical package. The medical team’s arrival disappointed the rangers who had wanted their gunjeeps to 

land as quickly as possible.20

While clearing operations continued to prepare the runway for C–141s, 

Hill 97 north of the True Blue Campus remained in enemy hands. From there, 

enemy snipers could fire onto the east end of the runway. About 0730 Captain 

Abizaid assembled his company to take the hill. A white pickup truck drove 

down the hill and onto the runway. The rangers stopped it with fire. Two shaken 

but unhurt People’s Revolutionary Army soldiers emerged. Making a routine 

delivery to the field, they had not heard that there was a war on. They reported 

that many Cubans were on the hill. Abizaid began his assault, but the effort 

proved slow going despite effective close air support from two Marine Cobras. 

At 0840 he saw S. Sgt. Manous F. Boles Jr., a member of the runway clearing 

team, driving a Cuban bulldozer along the edge of the runway. Stopping the 

18 Prelim AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983; AAR, ibid., 1st Bn, 75th 

Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-2. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. See also Interv, 

Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Rpt, Roper to Cdr, 507th TACW, 17 

Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/DAF/TAC), CMH. 19 Intervs, Wells with Spain, 17 Nov 1983; Bishop with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983; and MacGarrigle 

with Abizaid, 15 Dec 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 

1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. C, p. C-18, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 20 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. E, p. E-1, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH.
I

1–75 R B

I

2–75 R B

I

2–75 R C

I

2–75 R A

I

1–75 R A

TROU JA B (DEVIL’S

BAY)

DEGRA BAY

C AT O BAY B L A C K BAY

C ANOE BAY

GRAND BA Y

PRICKL Y BA Y

M OUNT

HARTMAN

B A Y

WOBURN BA Y

HARD Y BA Y

TRUE BL UE BA Y

GRAND ANSE

B A Y

M ORNE ROUGE BA Y

B AGADI

B AY

Hill 97

Golf

Course

Radio

Station

St. George’s University

School of Medicine

Tower

Sugar Factory

St. George’s University

School of Medicine

Sugar

Mill

Quarry

Tower

Fuel Storage

Tanks

Fort

Towers

Control Tower

G r a n d A n s e B e a c h

L an ce aux Épines Beach

P or t ici Beach

Morne Rouge Beach

Parc à Boeuf Beach

Magazin Beach

Pingouin Beach

HOG ISLAND

Point Salines

Laissé Point 

Blow Hole

Quarantine Point

Petit Cabrits Point

True Blue Point

Prickly Point

Mt Hartman

Point

(Mace Point)

GLOVER ISLAND (RAMIER ISLAND)

Madame Jardin

True Blue

Frequente

Calliste

Mt

Hartman

Estate

Lance

aux

Épines

Woodlands

Estate

Golands

Grand

Anse

The Cli

Woburn

Ruth Howard

SEIZURE OF POINT SALINES AIRFIELD

25 October 1983

0

0

500 1000 Meters

500 1000 Yards

Axis of Ground Attack

U. S. Positions

Planned Night Defensive Position,

1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th Ranger

Cuban Compund

Point Salines Runway

ELEVATION IN FEET

0 200 400 and Above

Map 5
The Rucksack War

252

sergeant, Abizaid directed Boles to raise the machine’s blade to protect himself 

from small-arms fire and to drive it up the hill. Using the bulldozer as cover, a 

squad from the 3d Platoon followed and secured the height.21

The rangers’ vehicles—motorcycles and gunjeeps—arrived during the 

course of the morning. One gunjeep drove off the back of a C–130 and headed 

east per plan to establish an outpost 200 meters beyond the True Blue Campus. 

The college was located in a hollow that was not indicated on ranger maps. As 

a result, the five rangers in the jeep passed the buildings without seeing them. 

The team went some distance toward the village of Ruth Howard before the 

men realized their mistake. Turning back, they started to retrace their journey when a Grenadian army patrol ambushed them. Four rangers died in the 

vicious firefight. One badly wounded survivor, Pvt. Timothy Romick, staggered into American lines an hour later carrying a Soviet light machine gun.22

By midmorning the rangers had seized all the hills that commanded the 

airstrip. Colonel Taylor placed Company A a short distance east of the True 

Blue Campus. One of its platoons had pushed north to make contact with 

the Cuban survivors of the fight for Hill 97. The survivors, who had taken 

refuge in a Cuban army compound located in a valley north of the village of 

Calliste, had mortars that could have brought the airfield under fire. Taylor 

decided against requesting an air strike on the compound because civilians 

might be present. Instead, using a captured antiaircraft gun to good advantage 

from their commanding hilltop position, the rangers compelled the Cubans to 

remain under cover. At one point the defenders came into the open to fire their 

mortars, but the rangers quickly drove them back into the buildings. They 

did not repeat the effort. Shortly after 1400 Company B elements replaced 

Company A’s platoon. Nearly an hour later the company commander, Captain 

Newman, assisted by Spanish-speaking Cpl. Jose Filguieras, persuaded 150 

Cubans in the compound to surrender. Approximately 80 diehards continued 

to hold out, but they posed little threat from then on. The rangers had seized 

the airfield and neutralized the Cubans at a cost of 5 killed, 4 of whom died in 

the ambush of the gunjeep.23

The unexpected intensity of the Cuban and Grenadian resistance meant 

that the buildup at Point Salines proceeded more slowly than Army and Air 

Force planners had anticipated. The Air Force had estimated that it would 

move Joint Task Force 123 into Salines in three hours and four minutes. 

Instead, it took six hours and fifty-two minutes. The rear element of the task 

force, Capt. David W. Barno’s Company C, 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, still 

21 Ibid., an. A, p. A-3, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1Bn75Inf), CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Abizaid, 

1 Nov 1983, and Frasché with J. Watson, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 22 Pirnie, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 109–10. 23 Intervs, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, and Wells with C. Newman, 2 Nov 1983, and 

with Cayton, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Pirnie, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 110. 

See also the draft narrative by Charles R. Bishop and E. Kathleen O’Brien, “FORSCOM/

ARLANT Participation in Operation Urgent Fury, Grenada, 1983,” pp. 138–39, Hist files 

(PDocs/DraftMs), CMH, which contains a wealth of tactical detail not found in the final published version.
Rangers in action, preparing to fire mortars and guarding Cuban detainees 
Military policemen in action, escorting Cuban detainees and standing guard at a 

holding facility
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

255

attached to the special operations forces, landed and took position at the far 

western end of the runway at about 0800. There Army aviators assembled 

diminutive AH–6 Little Bird gunships flown in by C–130s. General Scholtes 

landed and established his headquarters in one of the terminal buildings. The 

minimal logistical support suitable for a raiding force also arrived, and the 

task force’s logistical support element began unloading C–130s in front of the 

terminal.24

Shortly after he parachuted into the airhead, the 2d Battalion’s S–4, 

Capt. Jose G. Ventura Jr., began collecting prisoners and interrogating them. 

Because a state of war did not exist, they were officially detainees. The Cubans 

reported that on 21 October the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces headquarters in Havana had ordered them to fight to the death. Two days later a 

garbled transmission indicating that they were only to fire if fired on apparently countermanded that directive. Captain Ventura asked the obvious question: “If those were your orders, why did you fire?” “Well,” they replied, “we 

have our problems too. We’ve got these guys who are gung ho . . . , who want 

to kill Americans. And we couldn’t control them. They were running out and 

shooting.” Ventura remained responsible for the detainees until 1200, when 

he turned them over to members of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force under 

Brig. Rudyard Lewis of Barbados.25

During Urgent Fury preparations the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff (JCS), General John W. Vessey Jr., had recognized that the 300-man 

Peacekeeping Force’s lack of military training meant that it should not be 

committed to combat. He still believed, however, that it would be useful in a 

politico-military role in St. George’s and for guarding detainees. With these 

objectives in mind, Admiral Metcalf on 24 October contacted the JCS liaison 

with the Caribbean contingent, Marine Maj. Gen. George B. Crist. Metcalf 

wanted General Crist to meet with Brigadier Lewis to arrange for his command’s movement either to Pearls or to St. George’s once combat ended. 

On the twenty-fifth, with JTF 123’s attack on St. George’s in trouble and the 

assault on Point Salines meeting unexpectedly stiff resistance, the Caribbean 

Peacekeeping Force constituted JTF 120’s only immediately available ground 

reserve. Metcalf decided to commit the Peacekeeping Force to Point Salines, 

and Crist accompanied it.26

When the lead elements of the force arrived at Salines at 1115 on 25 

October, Colonel Hagler was initially shocked to see troops in Cuban-style 

uniforms disembarking from an Air Force C–130. Stifling an impulse to open 

fire, he soon learned from Crist the identity of the reinforcements and their 

mission. By 1200 about 100 men from the force had arrived and assumed 

24 Intervs, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984; Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, and with 

Ventura, 1 Nov 1983; and Wells with Clemons, 2 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See 

also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-3, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH. 25 Interv, Bishop with Ventura, 1 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

26 Interv, Cole with Crist, 16 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Cole, Operation Urgent

Fury, pp. 42–43; Pirnie, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 110.
The Rucksack War

256

responsibility for some 50 Cuban 

and Grenadian detainees and some 

150 Grenadian civilians who had 

been driven out of their homes by the 

fighting. Appropriating many of the 

Cuban trucks that the rangers had 

cleared from the runway, the peacekeepers moved the detainees and 

refugees from the terminal toward the 

western end of the field.27

Captain Ventura’s first thought 

after relinquishing the detainees was 

to obtain a share of the captured 

vehicles for the 2d Battalion. Some 

of the members of the Caribbean 

Peacekeeping Force, he noted, were 

quite adept at jump-starting trucks. 

One of them helped him start a number of vehicles that he wanted—two 

water trucks full of potable water and 

a big Soviet dump truck that could 

be used for hauling supplies. Ventura 

also found a large gasoline truck, but 

it stubbornly refused to start. He had 

drivers from the battalion bring their 

vehicles to the truck and refueled them using buckets. He then reported to 

General Scholtes’ command post to arrange for resupply. The staff officer with 

whom he spoke told him not to worry about any shortages because the rangers 

would return to the United States the next day. While Ventura had taken care of 

the water and fuel problems, he had no rations to give the men. As he exited the 

headquarters, however, he “found” an unguarded pallet of rations, loaded it in 

the back of his new dump truck, and drove it back to the 2d Battalion area.28

Captain Ventura’s counterpart in the 1st Battalion, Capt. Stanley B. 

Clemons, did much the same thing, but slightly later. Captain Clemons helped 

operate and provide security for the battalion’s alternate tactical operations 

center until midafternoon. Once released, he immediately went in search of 

vehicles to equip the battalion’s train. Eventually he located two trucks, one 

of which contained spare batteries, water, and rations. He then drove to Hill 

97, removed the body of the ranger killed during the assault, and provided for 

the return of the remains home. Finally, he went forward to the companies to 

check on their status.29

27 Cole, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 42–43; Pirnie, Operation Urgent Fury, p. 110; Interv, 

Bishop with Ventura, 1 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 

75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-3, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 28 Interv, Bishop with Ventura, 1 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

29 Interv, Wells with Clemons, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Members of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

257

Similarly to Ventura, Clemons discovered that General Scholtes’ headquarters was disinclined to order resupply for the rangers because of their 

anticipated return to the United States. This concerned Clemons more than 

Ventura because the 1st Battalion faced a more acute ammunition resupply 

problem than the 2d. Both Companies A and B of the 1st had done considerable firing in the initial assault, and, through some misunderstanding, 

the Air Force had failed to deliver two of Company A’s gunjeeps and their 

attendant stores. The problem eased at 1600, when General Scholtes released 

Company C to the battalion’s control. The unit retained the bulk ammunition 

that it had carried with it from Fort Stewart. This allowed Clemons and a sergeant to break down the company’s munitions pallet and distribute the rounds 

evenly among the three companies. There was even enough to hold a portion 

in reserve at the battalion’s ammunition supply point.30

As the logisticians sorted out the supply situation, the ranger medical teams 

dealt with the injured. Eight members of the 1st Battalion were wounded the 

first day. They received their initial treatment in the field from their company 

medics, often under fire. The medics provided basic first aid, started intravenous fluids as quickly as possible, and then evacuated the men to the battalion 

aid station in a jeep or flatbed truck. As planned, the 1st Battalion surgeon, 

Capt. James A. Pfaff, established an aid station in the medical school buildings 

at True Blue. Captain Pfaff and the other two members of his medical team 

stabilized the casualties before evacuation. Those requiring immediate surgery 

went to the Guam.

31

Pfaff and his team, assisted by some of the medical students, established 

a triage station in the school cafeteria. They created a heliport on an outdoor 

basketball court by bending down the hoops so that a UH–60 could land. 

When they needed a helicopter evacuation, Pfaff had only to radio the Guam

to summon a Black Hawk.32

Almost immediately, the captain and his medics confronted a potential 

supply problem. They had brought two medical chests with them, but they 

could find only one after the Air Force landed the battalion’s supplies. This 

posed a problem not so much with the quantity of supplies available but with 

the types. The medical team had not cross-loaded the chests. The one they 

received contained dressings; the missing one held drugs. Fortunately, the 

stocks the team’s members carried with them and the few supplies available on 

campus sufficed to care for the eight wounded rangers. That morning, however, 

Pfaff realized for the first time that he might have more than just Americans 

to treat. His physician’s assistant, CWO2 William Donovan, escorted a group 

30 Ibid.; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-4, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 31 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st AES, 14 Feb 1984, p. 2, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/

MAC), CMH; ibid., Surg, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH; Intervs, 

Wells with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, and with Donovan, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 32 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Surg, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), 

CMH; Intervs, Wells with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, and with Donovan, 2 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.
The Rucksack War

258

of Grenadian refugees carrying four badly wounded Grenadian militiamen 

to the aid station. Because Atlantic Command’s policy on medical evacuation 

envisioned only transporting wounded Americans, Pfaff decided to care for 

the Grenadians onsite. He also saw this as a learning situation for the medical 

students, who were all in their first year. Donovan organized them into shifts 

of ten and rotated them through the aid station. Pfaff showed them some of 

the wounds and the kinds of physiology involved and then discussed treatment. In turn, the students proved tremendously eager to help. They shifted 

beds, hung intravenous fluid bags and tubing, and ripped up sheets for bandages. For the moment, conditions were still relaxed at the aid station, but the 

four wounded Grenadians were but the first of many non-American casualties to arrive.33

Neither Captain Pfaff nor the Navy surgeons on the Guam had a clear 

understanding of evacuation procedures after casualties reached the ship 

because Atlantic Command had failed to disseminate a detailed medical evacuation plan. The surgeons on the Guam assumed that they would retain the 

most critically injured until they recovered. In the absence of any formal guidance, Pfaff put the more lightly wounded patients aboard C–141s that flew to 

Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina, the home station of the aircrews. 

33 Intervs, Wells with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, with Clemons, 2 Nov 1983, and with Donovan, 2 

Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

UH–60 Black Hawk air ambulance during Urgent Fury
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

259

There the Air Force transferred them to the naval hospital at the Charleston 

Naval Air Station.34

The airlift commander, General Patterson, flew from Barbados to Grenada 

late in the morning to inspect the airfield. Arriving at Point Salines at 1130, 

he discovered four steamrollers parked too close to each other on opposite 

sides of the runway. Because C–130s would have insufficient clearance for 

their wings and C–141s would be unable to land, Patterson directed one of the 

Army engineers to clear the area. The surface of the runway itself posed no 

problems for C–141s. The Cubans had paved the first 1,524 meters from west 

to east with up to five layers of asphalt. Beginning at the 1,524-meter mark 

where the fill for the causeway over Hardy Bay began, the Cubans had used 

tarmacadam, a mixture of gravel and oil. Military Airlift Command engineers 

tested the last 914 meters after the rangers removed the construction debris 

and pronounced it fit. Even so, the taxi area in front of the terminal was still 

clogged with equipment, materiel, and trash. Until the engineers cleared this 

apron, the number of aircraft, whether C–130s or C–141s, that the Air Force 

would allow on the ground at one time remained at exactly one. This was the 

number established by Patterson based on the recommendation of the Air 

Force combat control team commander, Sergeant Kelly. With that decided, 

Patterson opened the field for C–141 traffic at 1200.35

The Division Arrives

Shortly after he landed at Point Salines on the morning of 25 October, 

General Scholtes had to decide whether the 2d Battalion should attempt to 

complete its second mission: the seizure of Calivigny Barracks. Having experienced problems at St. George’s and facing tougher resistance at Point Salines 

than expected, he told Colonel Hagler to forego the Calivigny mission and 

to continue clearing houses and providing security for the airfield. Scholtes 

would hand over the defense of the airfield to the 82d Airborne Division when 

it arrived. At this point, the airhead perimeter resembled a shallow S, with 

Colonel Taylor’s battalion manning the front line and Colonel Hagler’s men 

systematically searching rear areas. The last aircraft carrying JTF 123 elements 

touched down at 1322. Shortly thereafter, at 1400, the first aircraft containing 

units of the 82d arrived. Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh and his command 

post were on board.36

As he left Pope Air Force Base, General Trobaugh knew that he would 

have to make a decision to rig for airdrop 21⁄2 hours before the division 

34 Intervs, Wells with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, and author with A. F. Meyer, 16 Jun 2000, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 87–88. 35 Intervs, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Kallander and 

Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 57–58; Combat Service Support section of Draft Rpt, GWG, CAC, 

TRADOC, [1984], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, p. IV-G-9, Hist files (PDocs/DA/

CAC), CMH. 36 Intervs, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, and Bishop with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-3, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH.
The Rucksack War

260

arrived in the airhead. To make an informed decision, he needed to monitor the situation on Grenada while en route, but communications proved 

difficult. He had a satellite radio and a hatch-mounted antenna aboard the 

lead aircraft that permitted him to monitor JTF 123 message traffic in the 

area of operations and to talk directly with General Scholtes when the need 

arose. Once bolted into place, the antenna was not adjustable. Intermittently 

throughout the flight, when the aircraft changed direction, the antenna lost 

its fix on the satellite and Trobaugh lost communications. Trobaugh thus 

knew bits and pieces of what was happening on the island, but he did not 

enjoy a continuous flow of information. At 1120 the satellite antenna was 

sufficiently aligned for him to radio Scholtes for the latest situation report. 

Scholtes reported ranger casualties, “lots of Cubans,” and the airfield clear 

enough that the division could land. As to whether it should remained a 

question mark.37

The case for airdrop was simple and persuasive: mass. It would allow the 

division to quickly insert a great deal of combat power into the area of operations. Without further delay, the 82d could then concentrate on landing its 

heavy equipment and supplies. The rapid logistical buildup that resulted would 

facilitate a speedy attack out of the airhead. By contrast, landing the entire 

task force in a normal manner would take much longer.38

The case against an airdrop was more diffuse but also persuasive. From 

what General Trobaugh and his principal staff officers could determine from 

the much interrupted flow of communications, there was no combat emergency on Grenada. They knew that the drop zone was very small and that a 

great deal of water was nearby. They also knew through radio traffic that one 

of the rangers had landed in the water during the initial airdrop. While 82d 

Support Command personnel had succeeded in getting sufficient parachutes 

aboard every aircraft before the division left Fort Bragg, they had not had 

time to provide flotation devices. A single unexpected crosswind could turn a 

routine jump into a major disaster, and Trobaugh realized that his superiors 

neither expected nor wanted a large number of Cuban and Grenadian casualties let alone American. Well aware that the rules of engagement stressed 

the importance of limiting enemy and civilian casualties and that unexpectedly large numbers of casualties could adversely affect U.S. public opinion, 

Trobaugh asked his G–3, Lt. Col. Frank H. Akers Jr., what he recommended. 

“If we can land,” said Colonel Akers, “we want to land. We can get everybody 

there. It will take us longer, but we’ll get everybody there.” Trobaugh decided 

to airland.39

Captain Abizaid, whose company was defending the east end of the runway and the True Blue Campus, first realized that a new unit was entering 

his area when a C–141 taxied to a halt at the end of the runway and a major 

37 Intervs, Frasché with Boylan, 21 Nov 1983, and with Akers, 22 Nov 1983 (quoted words), 

plus Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 38 Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

39 Intervs, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 

Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

261

general emerged. It was Trobaugh. The rangers were still receiving scattered 

sniper fire. Abizaid was concerned at first that his men in Vietnam-era camouflage uniforms and the airborne troopers in medium-weight battle dress 

uniforms might mistake one another for the enemy and fall into a firefight, 

but no snipers fired during the early stages of the linkup, allowing everyone 

to learn one another’s identity. Abizaid quickly informed Trobaugh of the 

situation on his front and escorted him and his staff to Colonel Taylor, who 

briefed the general on the disposition of the entire 1st Battalion. Colonel 

Hagler happened to be in the area, so Trobaugh also learned about conditions 

along the whole perimeter. After meeting with Hagler, he and his staff rode 

in a captured vehicle to General Scholtes’ headquarters for a formal briefing 

on the operation.40

Surprised at the intensity of the resistance, Scholtes was no longer certain 

about the accuracy of his intelligence on the size and disposition of enemy 

forces. When Trobaugh asked “what he had hold of,” he replied that “he really 

wasn’t too sure.” He was preoccupied with the fate of his isolated units in the 

St. George’s area and his relative inability to do anything to help them. Task 

Force 160 had suffered extensive battle damage and had only two UH–60s 

capable of extended flight. Scholtes was very impressed by the professionalism 

of the antiaircraft defenders of the Grenadian capital. He favorably compared 

the Grenadians to the North Vietnamese. The latter had always scattered upon 

the approach of helicopters; the Grenadians had concentrated and massed 

their fires.41

The fragmented radio traffic Trobaugh and his staff had monitored on 

the trip down poorly prepared him for the situation at Point Salines or the 

extent of JTF 123’s reverses in the St. George’s area. In one transmission 

Scholtes had declared that the airfield was secure, leading the division commander to believe the rangers had completed the occupation of the entire peninsula as planned. At this juncture, the rangers had secured only the first line 

of hills around the airfield and had one company positioned further forward 

to monitor the Cuban compound near Calliste. Contrary to what Trobaugh 

had assumed, Scholtes had one nearly full-strength battalion and a second of 

only three half-strength companies. Planning to use Task Force 160 for aviation support until his own helicopters arrived, Trobaugh discovered that the 

unit was no longer able to conduct combat operations. All the division’s planning, moreover, anticipated that the airfield would accommodate five aircraft 

on the ground at any one time, but existing conditions permitted only one, a 

circumstance that would profoundly affect the rate at which Trobaugh could 

build up his own task force. As Trobaugh listened to Scholtes’ presentation, 

40 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, with Hagler, 30 

Oct 1983, and with Abizaid, 1 Nov 1983, plus Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 41 Only 82d Airborne Division participants have recorded accounts of this meeting. See 

Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983 (quoted words); Frasché with Akers, [Dec 1983], 

and with Boylan, 21 Nov 1983; and Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985]. All in Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 
Paratroopers arrive in Grenada, assembling near the Point Salines runway, carrying their 

gear to the marshaling area, preparing to go on patrol, and bivouacking at a beach near 

the airfield

The Rucksack War

264

the situation at 1500 on 25 October was hardly calculated to put Trobaugh in a 

positive frame of mind. He now concentrated on getting his men on the island 

as quickly as possible.42

Scholtes imparted some additional information that was stunning in both 

its implications and in the uncertainties that it introduced for the ground force 

commander. In seizing the True Blue Campus the rangers had not rescued all 

the medical students. Almost immediately after the rangers reached the college 

at the end of the runway, the students there had told them of a second campus, 

in fact, the main campus at Grand Anse, a village on the west coast of the island 

just 3 kilometers south of St. George’s and 900 meters northeast of Frequente. 

This complex housed an even larger group of Americans than True Blue.43

Trobaugh was definitely unprepared for what Scholtes next proposed. The 

JTF 123 commander was quite prepared to turn the Point Salines airhead 

over to Trobaugh, but he wanted to remain on the island and finish the battle 

of St. George’s, where his team at the governor general’s residence was still 

pinned down. Trobaugh expected to take command of all Army forces upon 

his arrival. To him this looked like a wholly unnecessary complication in an 

already complex chain of command. His reaction was emphatic: “If you special f—kers get out of the way, we’ll win this war.”44

After the meeting broke up, General Crist guided Colonel Akers to the 

proposed site of General Trobaugh’s headquarters—a large mansion atop a 

high hill. Akers inspected the location. The house was ideal in the sense that it 

provided a roomy and comfortable working space for the staff but unsatisfactory in other respects. Given the shallow depth of the U.S. position, however, 

it was very exposed to the front lines. Its distance from the airfield also meant 

that the effort to provide security for both the airfield and the headquarters 

might prove a problem. The alternative was to set up in the terminal complex 

not too far from General Scholtes. This made particular sense because, while 

Trobaugh was senior to Scholtes, the two were to operate as equals and to coordinate their efforts as long as Scholtes remained on the island. Proximity would 

make cooperation easier. On Akers’ recommendation, Trobaugh adopted the 

airport option.45

Meanwhile, the 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, continued to arrive. The 

companies were cross-loaded, but each of the first three aircraft contained 

the nucleus of one unit. Capt. Charles H. Jacoby Jr. and his Company A were 

aboard Chalk 1 with General Trobaugh and his principal staff; Capt. Mark E. 

Rocke and his redesignated Company C, along with battalion commander Lt. 

42 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 43 Intervs, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, and Bishop with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 44 Only 82d Airborne Division participants have recorded accounts of this meeting. See 

Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983; Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov and [Dec] 1983, and 

with Boylan, 21 Nov 1983; and Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985] (quoted words). All in Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH 45 Interv, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov and [Dec] 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

265

Col. Jack L. Hamilton and his primary tactical operations center, on Chalk 

2; and Capt. Michael F. Ritz with Company B and brigade commander Col. 

Stephen Silvasy Jr., on Chalk 3. Although Captain Jacoby had only twenty 

members of his own company on the first aircraft, he used them immediately 

to reinforce the rangers north of the True Blue Campus. Colonel Hamilton 

coordinated with his close friend, Colonel Taylor, before attempting a relief 

in place of the rangers. Colonel Silvasy made it his job to establish assembly areas and put someone in charge of each to tell new arrivals where their 

companies had gone. This continued until all seven aircraft carrying members of the battalion had landed. With Jacoby already committed north of the 

airstrip, Hamilton sent his Company C south of the airstrip to backstop the 

ranger positions around True Blue.46

Captain Rocke’s Company C was not fully in position at 1530, when 

three BTR60s attacked. The armored personnel carriers sped down the road 

that led toward the True Blue Campus directly into the defenses of Captain 

Abizaid’s Company A, 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry. The attackers—members 

of the Grenadian Army’s Motorized Infantry Company—sprayed the landscape with fire, forcing Rocke to redeploy most of his men to a reverse slope. 

With Grenadian rounds hitting all around them, the infantrymen could not 

return fire without hitting Abizaid’s men. The fire momentarily disrupted both 

Colonel Hagler’s tactical operations center and the 2d Battalion’s aid station. 

Rangers and the few airborne troopers with a field of fire leveled their weapons 

and responded in kind. A hail of light antitank missiles and 90-mm. recoilless rifle rounds sailed toward the BTRs. Faced with this intense fire, the first 

two vehicles collided and their occupants fled, leaving two dead behind. The 

third armored personnel carrier immediately reversed course and sped away 

from Abizaid’s men but not out of sight of an Air Force Spectre circling overhead. It destroyed the vehicle within minutes of the attack. While that ended 

the armor threat, Abizaid’s men remained in contact with Grenadian infantry 

until nightfall. For a time it appeared as if the Grenadians were attempting to 

maneuver seaward around Abizaid’s flank, but Rocke deployed his company 

to a blocking position and disposed of the threat.47

Within the preceding 41⁄2 hours General Trobaugh had made two operational decisions—to airland rather than to airdrop and to locate the division 

assault command post in the airport terminal—that had tremendous logistical 

consequences. Now he made a third. As the Grenadian attack fell apart, he 

contacted the Guam and spoke to Admiral Metcalf’s military adviser, General 

Schwarzkopf. Trobaugh told Schwarzkopf that he needed reinforcements. 

Schwarzkopf responded that Trobaugh had two battalions of the 82d on hand. 

This was more than ample force for the mission. Undeterred by this advice and 

knowing that Schwarzkopf had no command authority over him, Trobaugh 

contacted Fort Bragg by satellite radio: “Send me battalions until I tell you to 

46 Intervs, GWG with Jacoby, [Nov 1983], and Bishop with Hamilton, 16 Nov 1983, plus 

Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 47 Intervs, Bishop with Abizaid, 1 Nov 1983, with Rocke, 19 Nov 1983, and with Hensler, 1 

Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

266

stop.” This order for immediate reinforcements coupled with unanticipated 

airflow problems meant that in effect he truncated the 2d Brigade Task Force, 

which would not receive all the attached elements and supplies called for in 

Colonel Silvasy’s plan.48

General Trobaugh Takes Charge

As the afternoon of 25 October wore on, General Trobaugh needed to 

set up his headquarters and to secure a resolution of the command situation 

in southern Grenada from higher authorities. Would the special operations 

forces, rangers, and JTF 123 headquarters remain on the island as General 

Scholtes wanted or would they depart as the original plan had specified? 

The division staff sorted itself out and began its work at Port Salines almost 

effortlessly, the product of many training exercises. By the time Trobaugh’s 

chief of staff, Col. Peter J. Boylan Jr., was established inside the terminal, 

most of the members of the division assault command post had linked up 

with the advance party that had arrived on the first plane. They assembled 

south of the runway and then moved across to the terminal. Trobaugh took 

Colonel Boylan aside and told him that, in addition to his duties as chief of 

staff, he would act as the assistant division commander for support in the area 

of operations. Boylan was to focus on the buildup of forces, leaving Trobaugh 

free to concentrate on tactical operations. It was a decision that defined their 

respective roles throughout the period of combat.49

The building that housed Trobaugh’s command post was hardly the terminal its name implied. It was, quite simply, the shell of what would, some 

day, be a terminal. It had concrete walls and floors and a roof. Otherwise, the 

interior was entirely unfinished, a work site with tools and building materials 

scattered all about and with construction ladders providing the only access 

to the second floor. Several inches of concrete dust on the floor contributed 

to the general unpleasantness. Noise from taxiing aircraft reverberated off 

the unfinished walls. When an aircraft moved down the main runway, normal conversation became impossible. The site had no lights, water, or latrines. 

The staff worked on boards placed atop saw horses. The work area was overcrowded and “extremely chaotic with just ourselves [there].” Moreover, no one 

walked outside more than absolutely necessary during the first twenty-four 

hours because of the danger of drawing fire, both enemy and friendly.50

48 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 25 Oct 1983, 1530, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Interv, Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983 (quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. For 

amplification, see Intervs, Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], and Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 

Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 49 Intervs, McMichael with Ryneska, 18 Nov 1983; Frasché with Boylan, 21 Nov 1983; Wade 

with Archer, [Nov 1983]; Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983]; and Pirnie with Schwarzkopf, 

1 Nov 1985. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 50 Intervs, Frasché with Boylan, 21 Nov 1983, and with Akers, [Dec 1983]; Burdett with Q. 

Richardson, [Nov 1983] (quoted words); Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983]; and McMichael with 

Schieman, 5 Apr 1984. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 

Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, p. 2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. On conditions at the terminal, see Briefing, Frank, 8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

267

During the night Admiral Metcalf resolved the dispute over whether 

General Scholtes and his special operations forces would remain on the island 

in favor of adhering to the original plan. General Trobaugh, however, wanted 

to retain the two ranger battalions as part of Task Force 121 after the rest 

of Joint Task Force 123 departed (see Chart 10). The decision to airland 

meant that his division had to build up slowly, increasing his concern about 

the security of the airfield. The situation seemed manageable so long as the 

82d’s battalions remained in place at or near the field, but would change once 

they began moving off the peninsula. He still needed a force at hand capable 

of defending the field, the terminus of his line of supply back to the United 

States. Normally, the 82d Support Command, charged by doctrine with rear 

area protection, would have performed this role. However, except for Forward 

Area Support Team II’s Alpha Echelon, the support command remained at 

Fort Bragg, and the echelon’s thirty-five men would be hard pressed to keep 

the airfield operating, let alone defend it. The rangers were the only readily 

available force capable of performing that mission.51

51 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983; Frasché with Akers, [Dec 1983]; Pirnie with 

Smith, 3 Apr 1985, and author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

Reinforcing the division assault command post at Point Salines
The Rucksack War

268

For his part, General Scholtes did not agree. Once Admiral Metcalf 

decided to withdraw Joint Task Force 123, Scholtes believed that he had a 

moral obligation to bring the rangers out with him. They had done everything 

that he had asked of them, he insisted, and they were not equipped, supplied, 

or manned for sustained operations. He told Trobaugh that he intended to 

fight the issue through channels, and he did, but again Metcalf agreed with 

Trobaugh. The 82d assumed operational control of the ranger battalions.52

It was fortunate that Admiral Metcalf allowed General Trobaugh to keep 

the rangers. Trobaugh knew that he had a fight on his hands, and he wanted 

infantry. As far as he was concerned, the troops could not arrive fast enough, 

and during the evening and night of 25 October they arrived very slowly. The 

last element of Colonel Hamilton’s 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, landed on 

the airstrip at 1637. Approximately twenty minutes later, after circling Point 

Salines for three hours, the aircraft carrying the first element of Lt. Col. 

John W. Raines’ 3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, touched down. Its passengers 

52 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983; Frasché with Akers, [Dec 1983]; and Pirnie 

with Smith, 3 Apr 1985. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st 

Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-4, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH.

Task Force

121

82 Abn

Div (-)

1 Bn

(Ranger),

75 Inf* 

2 Bn

(Ranger),

75 Inf*

2 Bde, 

82 Abn Div

2 Bn,

325 Inf

3 Bde, 

82 Abn Div

Command

Control

3 Bn,

325 Inf

2 Bn,

508 Inf

1 Bn,

505 Inf

1 Bn,

508 Inf

2 Bn,

505 Inf

Chart 10—Organization of Task Force 121, 25 October–2 November 1983

*Chopped from JTF 123 to TF 121 evening of 25 October 1983; departed 28–29 October 1983. 

Source: Adapted from Bruce R. Pirnie, Operation URGENT FURY, p. 79

Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh 

Lt. Col. Wesley B. Taylor Jr. Lt. Col. Ralph L. Hagler Jr. Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh 

Col. Stephen Silvasy Jr. 

Lt. Col. Jack L. Hamilton Lt. Col. John W. Raines Lt. Col. Ralph E. Newman 

Col. James T. Scott 

Lt.Col.George A.Crocker Lt. Col.Hubert S.Shaw Jr. Lt.Col.Keith M.Nightengale 
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

269

included the battalion commander, key members of his staff, and Company 

A. (Colonel Raines had not divided each of his companies among several 

aircraft as Hamilton had done.) The planes immediately following, carrying 

the remainder of the 3d Battalion, diverted to the intermediate staging base 

on Barbados because they were low on fuel. There the other companies and 

attached units had to transfer to C–130s.53

Intermediate Staging Base on Barbados

On 25 October the airlift commander, General Patterson, had decided 

to suspend C–141 operations into Point Salines during the hours of darkness and to depend solely on the smaller C–130s instead. His decision was 

based on several factors. First, the Air Force had only low-intensity lights 

available to illuminate the airfield. Second, rubble still littered the surrounding area, making for a very unforgiving landing zone. Third, C–130 pilots, 

unlike C–141 pilots, were trained to land at night using low-intensity lighting. For Colonel Raines’ battalion, the decision had two major ramifications. Aircraft loads on C–130s were smaller; one aircraft would not hold 

a single company. As a result, the entire loading process was longer. The 

last elements of the battalion did not close at Point Salines until 0236 on 26 

October.54

Having anticipated that his battalion task force might have to divert to 

Barbados and shift to C–130s, Colonel Raines had trained air movement officers with him. The XVIII Airborne Corps, which maintained a school for air 

movement officers using its own funds and personnel, typically assigned young 

Army lieutenants to the school, where they learned how to work with the Air 

Force personnel to load aircraft. The corps’ investment paid off the night of 

25–26 October. When each C–141 load became two C–130 loads, the air movement officers in cooperation with Air Force load masters had to ensure that 

at least those units smaller than a company, certainly a squad but hopefully a 

platoon, maintained their unit integrity and that all the members loaded on 

the same aircraft. The air movement officers also had to supervise the breakdown of pallets of supplies and equipment so that what the men needed to 

function in combat accompanied each planeload of airborne infantry. Often 

the C–130s designated to carry one C–141 serial were not positioned side by 

side on the same ramp; sometimes they were more than a quarter of a mile 

apart. Coupled with the darkness and disarray, the shifting and hauling made 

for an interesting evening for the 3d Battalion. For sure, no one got any sleep. 

Still, the unit transited Barbados with no more confusion than what normally 

53 Interv, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, 82d Abn Div 

Assault CP, 25 Oct 1983, 1637, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 54 Msg, McDonald to JCS, 26 0127Z Oct 1983, sub: Urgent Fury Situation Report, Team 

Chief Top Secret file, Hist files (PDocs/DA/AOC), CMH; Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 

1983], and Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, 82d Abn Div 

Assault CP, 25 Oct 1983, 1637, 1652, and 26 Oct 1983, 0246, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH. On the Military Airlift Command’s perspective, see Kallander and Matthews, Urgent

Fury, p. 117.
The Rucksack War

270

accompanied transfers between different-size aircraft in a strange place on a 

dark night.55

The relative efficiency with which Colonel Raines’ battalion transited 

through Barbados reflected not only the standard of training in the battalion 

but also the speed with which General Patterson and his airmen had established 

a working intermediate staging base there. At 0900 local time on 25 October 

some twenty members from the 317th Tactical Air Wing’s 317th Airlift Control 

Element, led by M. Sgt. James J. Morrow, landed at Grantley Adams.56

Airlift control elements were provisional Air Force organizations established 

“to provide operational control and support” to air units and air personnel at 

aviation facilities during not only planned and no-notice exercises but also contingency operations. They directed the loading and unloading of aircraft; coordinated the ground movement of aircraft with combat control teams at military 

installations and improvised landing fields or with air traffic controllers at civilian airports, such as Grantley Adams; supplemented support facilities at airfields 

(if any existed); established liaison with arriving aircrew and airborne units; and, 

working closely with a combat control team, provided movement control of 

ground vehicles and units at an airfield. Four hours after Sergeant Morrow and 

his men stepped onto the tarmac at Grantley Adams, the 317th Airlift Control 

Element’s “self-contained miniature command post” and its commander, Maj. 

Raymond E. A. Longo, landed. By 1415 local time, well before the arrival of 

Raines’ battalion, the 317th began to supervise the unloading of aircraft.57

The personnel who did the actual physical labor of loading and unloading aircraft came from the 317th Tactical Air Wing’s 3d Mobile Aerial Port 

Squadron at Pope Air Force Base. On 25 October a twelve-member contingent 

from the 3d arrived. By the end of the day the men had unloaded and assembled 

their equipment—one 25,000-pound tactical air cargo loader, usually referred 

to as a K-loader, that was capable of being used in uneven terrain; one 10,000-

pound all-terrain forklift, also useable on rough surfaces; and one 10,000-pound 

standard forklift, designed to operate on parking ramps and shop floors.58

A crucial piece of equipment in the 317th’s repertoire was the K-loader, a 

truck with the cab placed on one side. Often seen at civilian as well as military 

airports, it featured a large bed with rollers that could be raised or lowered to 

accept up to three of the Air Force’s standard 463L aluminum pallets from a 

forklift. The rollers allowed ground crews, using muscle power alone, to shove 

the cargo aboard C–130s or C–141s without any further resort to materielhandling equipment.59

55 Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], and author with Reardon, 18 Sep 2006, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 56 Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 120–22. 57 Ibid., p. 122 (second quoted words); FM 55–9, Unit Air Movement Planning, Aug 1981, 

p. B-1 (first quoted words), Archives files, CMH. See also E-mail, Goff to Hukill, 14 Jun 2010, 

Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH. 58 Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 120–21. 59 FM 55–9, Aug 1981, pp. 5-2 (quoted words) and 5-3; April 2005, app. F, fig. F-8. Both 

in Archives files, CMH. Unlike the 1981 edition, the 2005 version includes line drawings and 

descriptions of materiel-handling equipment.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

271

Aircraft equipped with roller and locking systems on their cargo floors, 

K-loaders, and pallets designed with slots to fit into the locking devices were all 

components of the Air Force’s 463L Cargo System. The system maximized the 

speed and efficiency with which ground crews could handle air cargo, and the 

members from the 3d Mobile Aerial Port Squadron set about doing just that. 

No matter how quickly they worked, however, the aircraft kept coming.60

For Air Force maintenance personnel on Barbados, many of the diverted 

aircraft arriving at Grantley Adams to take on fuel turned their first day into a 

foot race. For example, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the initial Air 

Force maintenance team at Grantley Adams soon sported a mass of blisters on 

his feet. He had no ground transportation and had spent the entire day running 

up and down the flight line servicing aircraft. During daylight hours General 

Patterson’s ground crew simply refueled the aircraft, which then resumed their 

positions at the top of the queue in the holding pattern over Point Salines. 

These side trips to Barbados, while naturally frustrating to the air crews and 

the passengers involved, provided one very positive benefit: Patterson, who 

was monitoring the radio traffic from Grenada, could add items in short supply on the island to the cargoes of the aircraft as they refueled.61

60 FM 55–9, Aug 1981, p. 5-2, Archives files, CMH; Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury,

pp. 120–21; Interv, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 61 Interv, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

A typical K-loader, here shown loading equipment aboard a C–5A during an 

exercise
The Rucksack War

272

During the afternoon of 25 October, for example, he received a message 

that the force at Point Salines was running short of water. Working through the 

U.S. Embassy at Bridgetown, his contracting officer obtained 10,000 gallons of 

water, and the embassy arranged for the local fire department to fill all available receptacles. The embassy also purchased 438 5-gallon plastic water bottles 

locally, but Patterson’s staff found that they were contaminated with sulfuric 

acid. Nevertheless, the purchase of other containers ensured that every C–130 

that departed Barbados for Grenada that afternoon and evening carried water as 

an additional load. The next day Patterson’s pilots flew several water buffalos—

400-gallon metal water tanks on trailers—into the Point Salines airhead, but the 

troops soon discovered that the water was undrinkable because of mold. Finally, 

on 27 October, the Air Force delivered the first mold-free water buffalo.62

The 317th Airlift Control Element’s arrival on Barbados on the morning of 

25 October had marked just the first step in a rapid buildup of Air Force personnel and equipment at Grantley Adams. That General Patterson was able to 

handle the water problem so expeditiously was yet another indication of how 

quickly the Air Force had developed a base structure on the island. Indeed, by 

the evening he had built up the Air Force contingent to over 800 personnel, 

and his staff had even arranged bus transportation and lodging so that pilots 

could obtain adequate rest in their off hours. Nor did he overlook his blisterfooted mechanics. Within days he gathered 68 mechanics at the airport simply 

to service airplanes. Any problems that arose on Barbados were simply the 

natural consequence of creating a large organization in virtually a day. The 

contrast with the Army could not, however, have been more striking: At 2400 

the number of Army personnel assigned to the island was just one—the liaison 

officer attached to Patterson’s headquarters, Maj. Richard C. Anshus.63

General Patterson’s purview extended, of course, beyond Grantley Adams 

to include all the bases involved in the airlift operation. To meet his needs, 

Military Airlift Command on 25 October dispatched additional airlift control 

elements to Pope Air Force Base, Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station (Puerto 

Rico), and Hunter Army Air Field to strengthen existing capacities at those 

locations. It also deployed a small airlift control element to Point Salines 

but without any materiel-handling equipment, such as it sent to Barbados. 

Apparently, the constricted size of the Point Salines airhead made Military 

Airlift Command wary of committing any materiel-handling equipment there, 

where it might be damaged in ground combat.64

Point Salines Airfield Operations

The combat power that General Trobaugh envisioned bringing into 

Grenada depended on efficient airfield operations at Point Salines. On 25 

62 Ibid.; Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 115–16. See also TM 9–500, Trailer, 

Tank: Water, 11⁄2-Ton, 2-Wheel, 400 Gal., M107, M107A1, and M107A2, 11 Sep 1962, MDC 

files, CMH. 63 Interv, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Kallander and 

Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 120–21. 64 Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 121.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

273

October two Army officers played critical roles in preparing that terminus to 

receive men and materiel—division engineer Lt. Col. Lawrence L. Izzo, and 

Forward Area Support Team II coordinator Maj. Daniel J. Cleary III. Of the 

two, Colonel Izzo reached Point Salines first aboard Chalk 6 immediately after 

the Grenadian counterattack. He had deployed strictly as a staff officer—not 

in his capacity as the 307th Engineer Battalion commander—taking only one 

assistant. The only other engineers en route were the two platoons of the battalion’s Company B, which were normally attached to the 2d and 3d Battalions, 

325th Infantry, during deployments, plus the company commander, who would 

function as the brigade engineer, and a small command post.65

Colonel Izzo had wanted to be on the scene so that he could determine 

exactly what engineer assets would be needed to support the operation and 

advise General Trobaugh as to what reinforcements to call forward. Izzo 

brought no vehicles or radios. Engineer equipment and supplies consisted of 

what he and the assistant division engineer, Maj. Donald M. Tomasik, could 

carry in their rucksacks.66

They reported to the assault command post upon arrival, and then Colonel 

Izzo set out on foot to survey all 2,743 meters of the airfield’s runway. He also 

examined the construction equipment that the rangers had shoved to the side 

of the airfield. The quantity and variety of what he saw—“several dozers, several loaders, a couple of cranes, a backhoe”—convinced him that he needed 

additional personnel rather than heavy equipment. The hike took some little 

time, but he could report to General Trobaugh that the airfield could support 

extended C–141 operations and that the runway had suffered no damage during its seizure by the rangers and was immediately usable.67

As Colonel Izzo saw it, his most important mission was to provide security 

for the division assault command post. The truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon was very much on his mind, and at the side of the runway the 

remains of the Grenadian army truck destroyed by the rangers in the morning 

emphasized just how shallow the lodgment at Point Salines really was. A few 

strategically placed satchel charges could destroy not only the command post 

but also the runway and halt the buildup of men and supplies proceeding even 

as Izzo made his survey. He did not waste any time before acting on this analysis. When he saw two rangers driving bulldozers, he immediately put them to 

work cutting trenches across the roads leading to the command post. Those 

excavations would ensure that no truck bomber would enjoy an unimpeded 

approach to the operation’s nerve center. The rangers finished their task, well 

into the night, and Izzo had them park the bulldozers on the access roads as 

added protection.68

65 Interv, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

66 Ibid.; Interv, McMichael with Tomasik, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Lawrence 

L. Izzo, “Divisional Engineer Support During Operation Urgent Fury,” pp. 24–28. 67 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 25 Oct 1983, 1528, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; 

Intervs, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983 (quoted words), and with Tomasik, 18 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Izzo, “Divisional Engineer Support,” pp. 24–28. 68 Interv, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 83; Izzo, “Divisional Engineer Support,” p. 26. 
The Rucksack War

274

Colonel Izzo was not alone in his assessment of the seriousness of the 

threat. That night the division staff, armed with M16s, manned a series of 

outposts surrounding the terminal. It was totally dark, and the positions were 

under intermittent sniper fire. Everyone was edgy. They still had peacetime 

reflexes; they were not yet used to being shot at. One member of the staff 

recalled walking down the runway and hearing snipers firing. He did not know 

where they were, and, suddenly, he realized he was running. So was everyone 

else. The troops debarking from aircraft came down the ramps at a run, trying 

to reach cover as quickly as possible. They, too, were very nervous during their 

first hours on the island, ready to shoot anything that moved. It was a tribute 

to their discipline that they did not.69

At the time he made his initial survey, Colonel Izzo realized that if he had 

had a larger staff, more vehicles, and better communications, he could have 

inventoried the captured equipment and issued it to arriving units on an equitable basis. A solution even more in line with existing responsibilities within 

the division, he mused, would have been to give the task to Major Cleary or his 

representative because the 82d Support Command managed ground transportation. The only problem with this scenario was that Cleary and his advance 

elements—the Alpha Echelon of Forward Area Support Team II—had yet to 

arrive, and like the division engineer he did not have such a task as part of his 

mission.70

Izzo’s lack of assets and Cleary’s placement in the airflow were the result 

of the division planners’ failure to think through the implications of seizing an 

airfield. The staff officers assumed that the division would bring its own vehicles with it, as it always had before. They did not envision a situation in which 

a constrained airflow might force the 82d to make do with whatever equipment 

the troops found at hand on the ground. In October 1983 the division’s field 

standing operating procedures treated captured enemy equipment as an asset 

for intelligence officers to exploit rather than as something for soldiers to use 

to complete their mission. In the absence of any directions on the matter, the 

division’s units, like the two ranger battalions and the Caribbean Peacekeeping 

Force before them, took whatever vehicles they could find—and start—on a 

first-come basis.71

Colonel Izzo saw the problem clearly and realized what the solution 

entailed. Implementing it, however, was beyond his resources, so he turned to 

something he could do: locate drinkable water. He had no real worry about 

this issue; Point Salines was a construction site and he had no doubt that there 

69 Intervs, Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983]; McMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and 

Gyurisko, [Nov 1983]; and Wells with D’Arbonne, 9 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

See also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, p. 2, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 70 Interv, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

71 Ibid.; Intervs, McMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and Gyurisko, [Nov 1983], Burdett with 

Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; 

AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, pp. 3-8 and 4-21, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; ibid., XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. II, an. C, p. II-C-11, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

275

were ample supplies. By now it was after dark, and he still had no vehicle. He 

started out on foot for another survey of the area but soon encountered the 

recently arrived Major Cleary, who had a jeep. Cleary offered him a ride. He 

was also surveying the field.72

Major Cleary may have arrived at Point Salines much later than Izzo, but 

he counted himself lucky to be there at all. His aircraft had taken off well after 

the C–141s carrying General Trobaugh and the infantry battalions. With only 

one plane allowed on the field at a time, however, the transports had stacked 

up over Point Salines in a slowly rotating giant funnel with the earliest arrivals 

circling at lower altitudes and later arrivals at higher altitudes. Cleary’s craft 

had been at the very top. Slowly the plane had descended. Ahead of it in the 

traffic pattern, pilots had begun to report that they were running low on fuel. 

The Air Force air traffic controller then ordered them to divert to alternate air 

bases in the Caribbean.73

Cleary’s C–141 had been next in line to land when the crew chief delivered 

news about a firefight at the east end of the runway. The Air Force controller had advised them to divert to Barbados. Cleary had pushed his way to 

the cockpit to explain how absolutely essential the 6,000-pound rough-terrain 

forklift on board was, stating: “You cannot divert this aircraft. If you do, 

this operation will come to a screeching halt.” In response the pilot declared: 

“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll get you there.” And he did, coolly flying into what he 

thought was ground combat. Fortunately, by the time he had landed, the airfield was not receiving fire.74

When Major Cleary got off the aircraft at the east end of the runway, it was 

dark enough to see tracers in the sky but light enough to make out objects on the 

ground. He quickly located the two battalion commanders from the 2d Brigade 

to check on the tactical situation. They were easy to find: Colonel Hamilton 

had established his command post just north of where Cleary debarked, while 

Colonel Raines had established his just to the south. They indicated the location of their lines and described the day’s action (see Map 6).

Major Cleary also conferred with the logisticians who had deployed with 

the battalions, 1st Lt. Mark J. Eshelman with the 2d Battalion and 1st Lt. 

Samuel P. Perkins with the 3d. They needed grenades, water, and certain types 

of additional ammunition. Remembering his year in Vietnam, Cleary had 

stacked ten cases of grenades in the back of his jeep before he left Fort Bragg 

and was able to provide the grenades immediately. He also described for them 

the conditions under which resupply would have to occur. Knowing that it was 

going to take some time to build up a logistical base and that at least initially 

he did not have enough men to oversee all the supply points, he emphasized 

that the units had to share the available resources. No battalion was to stockpile more than a single day’s worth of supplies. They were in this fight together, 

he told them, and they had to act that way. In addition, Cleary told them that 

72 Intervs, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, and author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 73 Interv, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

74 Ibid.
The Rucksack War

276

given his lack of manpower, he could not transport supplies to the battalion areas. The battalions would have to pick up their supplies with their own 

vehicles. That night Lieutenants Eshelman and Perkins organized the vehicles 

operated by their respective units, referred to as the battalion trains, and stationed them at the edge of the runway, ready to pick up stores and cart them 

back to their organizations.75

Major Cleary sought out the brigade headquarters and reported his presence and what he had been doing. He told Colonel Silvasy that he intended to 

establish his coordination cell in the general vicinity of the terminal, close but 

not too close to the division assault command post. Then he started his jeep 

and drove toward the terminal. He soon discovered just what he wanted—a 

small temporary building, “a shack,” standing just off the north side of the 

runway at the entrance to the apron in front of the terminal. Looking inside, 

Cleary saw “a plumber’s heaven.” It was full of various lengths of pipe, elbows, 

and plumbing tools. He and his small command-and-control group cleared a 

space for their operations. The shack gave them a good view of the entire runway. It was also close enough to the assault command post to provide him with 

easy access to the tactical satellite radio there but far enough away to ensure 

that division concerns would not distract from logistical operations.76

One of Cleary’s first tasks was to organize the airfield, which he had to do 

without benefit of any preplanning and on the basis of one moonlit jeep trip 

down the length of the runway. The fact that he had one 6,000-pound forklift to 

unload aircraft determined his plans to a great extent. He did not want to have 

to move pallets of supplies any great distance from the unloading point. The 

farther the forklift had to carry pallets, the greater the likelihood that it would 

break down. In an airlift in which all supplies had to be handled by one forklift 

with no backup, one breakdown would be one too many (Map 7). 

The design of the runway determined how Cleary planned to unload supplies. It was very narrow. Only at the ends was it wide enough for C–141s to 

turn around. The prevailing winds dictated that most landings would be from 

west to east, so the east end was where most C–141s would turn around. That 

would be the natural unloading point. The C–141 could begin its takeoff roll 

from there, avoiding unnecessary taxiing and thus conserving fuel. Moreover, 

a large area of fairly flat but debris-strewn ground abutted the field’s east 

end, providing space for supply dumps (or, in Army parlance, supply points). 

Cleary arranged to position most classes of supply there, as close to the edge 

of the asphalt as he dared. To save his forklift, he initially sought to unload 

both C–130s and C–141s at that location, an arrangement to which the commander of the 317th Tactical Air Wing’s 317th Combat Control Team, Air 

Force Capt. Stephen R. Scott, agreed. Captain Scott and his five men had 

75 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul and 7 Aug 1986; Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983; 

Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983; and Wells with Withers, 10 Nov 1983. All in Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 76 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986 (quoted words), and with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH; Map 3 [Point Salines], in Briefing Slides, 82d DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/

Daly), CMH.
X X

82(-)

TF 121

II(-) FAST

I I

III(-) FAST

I I

USAF

C C T

82(-) SPT

X

82

X X

ASP

82 Avn

I I

ASP

CEB

DET

Initial Location

DET

Second Location

57

3 Helos

TROU JA B

(DEVIL’S

BAY)

DEGRA BAY

B AG ADI

B AY

C AT O BAY

B L ACK BAY

CANOE BAY

GRAND BA Y

HARD Y BA Y

TRUE

B L UE BA Y

Control Tower

Fort

Fuel Storage

Tanks

St. George’s University

School of Medicine

Tower

Towers

Tower

Parc à Boeuf Beach

P or t ici Beach

Magazin Beach

Pingouin Beach

Point Salines

Laissé Point 

Blow Hole

Ships Deck

True Blue

Frequente

Calliste

TASK FORCE 121 LOGISTICAL SUPPORT

26–28 October 1983

00

500 Meters

500 Yards

ELEVATION IN FEET

0 200

P

400 and Above

oint Salines Runway

Map 7
The Rucksack War

278

taken over air traffic control responsibilities from Sergeant Kelly and his two 

men. To maximize the controllers’ ability to see incoming aircraft, Scott had 

positioned them atop the partially completed forty-foot control tower near the 

shell of the terminal.77

When Major Cleary had stepped off the C–141 that had brought him to 

Grenada, he had found an ad hoc arrival-departure airfield control group, the 

name the Army gave to ground personnel who unloaded and loaded aircraft, 

waiting to assist Alpha Echelon remove its supplies and equipment. The ground 

crew consisted of artillerymen from the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, 

assigned to support the infantry of the 2d Brigade in this operation. Their commander, Lt. Col. Duane E. Williams, had preceded Cleary into the airhead. None 

of the howitzers or other equipment belonging to Colonel Williams’ battalion 

had yet arrived. Williams had a theory, based on hard experience in repeated 

exercises, that the easiest way to prevent his materiel from going astray was to 

have his own men unload each of the airplanes. He detailed some of them to put 

his theory to the test and placed his S–3, Maj. Paul V. Passaro, in charge. 

Major Cleary knew Major Passaro from previous exercises and was quite 

comfortable on arrival to have most of the Alpha Echelon members, no matter 

what their specialty, join Passaro’s so-called box handlers—the more inelegant but 

also more graphic way of describing their function. Cleary planned to concentrate 

his manpower in this fashion only until the rest of Team II arrived—at most, he 

hoped, a few hours. But the fact that he did so demonstrated his appreciation of 

the crucial role these men played in airfield operations. Unless they quickly emptied an aircraft and moved its cargo off the runway, landing operations would 

stop until they did so, materially affecting the division’s ability to rapidly build up 

combat power. Physically, box-handling was a demanding task. The men had to 

break down pallets and distribute loads among various supply points.78

Major Passaro continued to direct the unloading on the runway because 

Major Cleary had not brought an extra officer with him. The Alpha Echelon 

members barely had time to sort themselves out and Cleary to identify supply 

point locations when the next C–141—a resupply aircraft, known colloquially 

as a log bird, loaded with food, ammunition, and other consumables—landed. 

The 6,000-pound rough-terrain forklift immediately proved its worth by moving the pallets off the runway. Without it, the arrival-departure airfield control 

group and the aircrew would have been forced to shove everything onto the 

runway and then break down the cargo and hand-carry it piece by piece to the 

side of the asphalt. Soon, the turnaround area would have become so clogged 

with supplies that it would have been unusable by aircraft.79

77 Interv, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul and 7 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Kallander 

and Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 116–17, 120. 78 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, and Danner and McMichael with Williams and 

Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Kenneth C. Sever, “Units and Missions—The 

782d Maintenance Battalion (in Grenada),” p. 5; Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 

116. 79 Sever, “Units and Missions,” p. 5; Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Williams and 

Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

279

For a few brief hours, Alpha Echelon enjoyed this substantial reinforcement of artillerymen. Then the 1st Battalion began receiving enough howitzers and other equipment to actually form firing batteries. At that point, one 

of Cleary’s senior noncommissioned officers replaced Passaro, the artillerymen departed, and the logisticians were on their own.80

Major Cleary established two major supply points at the east end of the 

runway—one for ammunition (Class V) and the other for rations (Class I). The 

food, being inert, posed no particular problem. The location of the ammunition point, however, as Cleary well knew, represented at best a bad compromise. On the one hand, the danger that an explosion or fire might set off the 

entire dump argued for the supply point to be established at a considerable 

distance from the field so that aircraft would not be damaged; on the other 

hand, the need to keep the forklift in good condition dictated that it be placed 

directly beside the asphalt. Finding a slight depression a short distance south 

of the runway on a spit of land separating Hardy and Bagadi Bays, he had 

the arrival-departure airfield control group stack the munitions there. The site 

was still too close for safety’s sake but also too far away from the perspective 

of forklift maintenance. Cleary viewed both an explosion and a breakdown as 

catastrophes, each capable of shutting down the airflow, but he regarded the 

breakdown as much more probable and acted accordingly in balancing the 

risks. At least the dip in the ground ensured that in the event of an explosion 

most of the force would be dissipated into the atmosphere. He had to admit, 

however, that a combination of the shock wave, flaming debris, and exploding 

rounds would probably destroy any aircraft at the east end of the runway.

A second safety problem was also associated with the site, but in this case 

Cleary had no alternative and hence no decision to make. Because corps had 

responsibility for establishing and operating ammunition supply points and 

divisions lacked the manpower to do so, Cleary had to make do with the people he had: one sergeant to man the ammunition supply point. About all he 

could hope to do was to consolidate all the ammunition in one place. The 

sergeant alone could not sort out the ammunition by type as both doctrine 

and safety required. Cleary’s directions were clear and succinct: Point all the 

rockets out to sea. That way, if they exploded, they would not hit the runway. 

For the first two days of the operation, the precaution hardly mattered because 

the battalions drew ammunition about as quickly as it arrived.81

Given all that had transpired, Major Cleary had yet to reconnoiter the west 

end of the runway when the first resupply aircraft landed. Shortly afterward, 

however, as he set out to do so, he saw Colonel Izzo and volunteered to help him 

locate sources of potable water. The new agenda required a tour of the entire 

field. Almost immediately the two came across one of the medical students, 

who had watched the entire operation from the top of his dormitory and told 

them all that he had seen. He also informed them that most Grenadian houses 

80 Interv, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 81 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul and 7 Aug 1986, with Farris, 14 Apr 1989, and with 

Cusick, 24 Jan 1989, plus Wade with C. Watson, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

280

on the peninsula depended on large cisterns located under them for drinking 

water. Izzo and Cleary could not be certain how potable the water was; but they 

agreed that they could pump the cisterns dry if necessary and that the troops 

could then use halazone tablets to ensure the water’s purity. Further investigation of the construction area revealed a large section of concrete culvert pipe 

standing on end with its lower portion cemented shut. In its side was a spigot. 

This was how the construction workers got their water on the job site.82

During the tour Colonel Izzo pointed out where he would like to locate 

his battalion’s water purifiers when they arrived. He was bringing in erdlators, 

used to purify freshwater, but he could also call for a reverse-osmosis water 

purification unit, used to purify saltwater, if one was needed. Major Cleary, 

in turn, selected locations for an aviation refueling point for Army helicopters 

and for the division’s medical clearing station. Both needed to be close to the 

airfield. At an airfield with a limit of one aircraft on the ground at a time, he 

did not want either to load patients or unload fuel from aircraft sitting on 

the runway, but his reconnaissance revealed no alternatives. He chose an area 

directly south of the runway opposite the terminal for the clearing station. 

It was a large flat piece of ground free of vegetation, though not of debris, 

that would allow medical evacuation helicopters to land easily. He intended 

to establish the fuel point slightly to the west of the clearing station, where a 

short asphalt ramp perpendicular to the runway extended to the south. It was 

not large enough for an aircraft to pull completely off the runway, but one 

could do so partially. Because he could not entirely discount the possibility of 

a successful Cuban or Grenadian mortar attack, he had to keep in mind what 

might happen if one of the Air Force bladder birds exploded and burned. The 

less burning aircraft wreckage on the main runway, the better.83

Directly opposite this short ramp, a much longer ramp ran to a small hangar on the north side of the runway. Although capable of accommodating 

an entire bladder bird, the longer ramp was so covered with stones and other 

debris that Cleary missed it. In the moonlight, it looked the same as the surrounding terrain.84

The C–141 carrying the Class III Platoon, Company A, 407th Supply and 

Service Battalion, under 2d Lt. Eric P. Katz landed at Point Salines at 2330 on 

25 October. The first person that Lieutenant Katz saw after he left the airplane 

was Major Cleary. He helped Katz and his men unload their aircraft, which 

included ammunition for the infantry battalions. For the moment, Katz and 

his men reinforced the Forward Area Support Team II defensive perimeter.85

Cleary received one more reinforcement and a major responsibility that 

night. At the same time that Katz arrived, another team from Company A of 

the 407th brought in equipment to refuel ground vehicles. Still later, Cleary 

82 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, and McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 83 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul and 7 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

84 Ibid.; Interv, author with Katz, 6 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

85 Intervs, author with Katz, 18 Jul and 6 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also 

marginal notation on Briefing Slides, 82d DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

281

learned that the rangers were going to be attached to the division. He immediately sought out both Colonels Taylor and Hagler, identified himself, and gave 

them the location of his headquarters. He also talked to their S–4s. He told 

them that he considered any units under the division’s temporary control to be 

as much a part of the 82d as the units normally assigned to it. He would treat 

them all the same. 

Shortly afterward, he had an opportunity to demonstrate that he meant 

what he said. About 0400 the S–4 of the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, Captain 

Clemons, went down to the main terminal and took some cases of rations 

“borrowed” from the Joint Special Operations Command. He also found a 

400-gallon water trailer that had just arrived and that he thought belonged to 

his battalion. Later he learned that the trailer belonged to the 82d Airborne 

Division. Clemons immediately went to Cleary to explain what had happened, 

but Cleary told him not to worry. He believed in treating any unit attached 

to the division the same as a unit assigned to it permanently, and he knew 

Clemons’ battalion needed the water. Because of Cleary’s approach, the handoff of the rangers from the Joint Special Operations Command to the 82d 

Airborne Division occurred without any logistical friction. The only problems 

the rangers encountered involved resupply for special weapons, such as 90-mm. 

recoilless rifles, that were not normally part of the division’s inventory, and for 

items, such as Vinson batteries, for which there was a shortage throughout the 

Army.86

As the division continued its buildup, Major Cleary found himself sharing the ground adjacent to the runway with even more combat units. General 

Trobaugh continued to be concerned about the security at the east end of the 

runway and the possibility of another Grenadian attack breaking through. 

One armored personnel carrier loose on the runway could cause a tremendous 

amount of damage in a very short time. As a result, when the howitzers of 

the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, began to arrive, Trobaugh directed the 

commander, Colonel Williams, to position at least one battery at the east end 

of the runway, ready to provide direct fire support to the infantry there.87

At that time, Colonel Silvasy requested that Colonel Williams position 

at least one battery so that it could hit the Cuban compound north of the 

field. After surveying the terrain, Williams concluded that the airhead was too 

shallow to put the battery where Silvasy wanted. That left him with only one 

option. He placed both batteries together (initially each had three guns) north 

of the runway and east of the terminal complex. From there he could provide 

indirect fire support for Colonel Hamilton’s battalion opposite the compound 

without firing across the runway, which would halt all landings and takeoffs.88

86 Intervs, Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983; author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, and with 

Taylor, 4 Dec 1986; Wells with Clemons, 2 Nov 1983 (quoted word); and Bishop with Ventura, 

1 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 87 Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, and McMichael 

with Halley, 15 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 88 Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, and McMichael 

with Halley, 15 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

282

Evacuees, Detainees, and Refugees

The 2d Brigade’s S–1, Capt. Gregory M. D’Arbonne, arrived in the airhead on the evening of 25 October. Responsible for overseeing the evacuation 

of American and foreign nationals, he proceeded directly to the True Blue 

Campus. There he discovered that the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, had security well in hand. Earlier, the students had briefly experienced danger during 

the Grenadian counterattack, but the battalion physician’s assistant, CWO2 

Donovan, who was a Vietnam veteran, had kept everyone calm. The slight 

depression in which the school rested, however, had allowed most of the rounds 

aimed at the airfield to pass unimpeded directly overhead. Subsequently, 

Donovan, battalion surgeon Captain Pfaff, and battalion chaplain Capt. Don 

B. Brown had talked to the students and requested that they gather at a single 

point in the school. Their efforts had essentially completed the first phase of 

D’Arbonne’s assignment.89

When Captain D’Arbonne arrived there, he met with the four members of 

the student council and laid out the requirements for evacuation. He needed 

a list of all students by name, he told them, and also their passports to verify that they were Americans, Grenadians, or other foreign nationals. While 

D’Arbonne could offer seats on aircraft to any third-country nationals as well 

as Americans who desired to leave, no Grenadians would be evacuated. Space 

would be limited, he counseled, and the evacuees could take only one small 

bag with them. He added that he expected to begin processing passengers at 

0600 the next morning so that he could put them aboard an early morning 

flight.90

Captain D’Arbonne’s next stop was the 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry. He 

contacted a physician and the military police platoon leader, 1st Lt. David B. 

Lemauk, who was accompanying the battalion, and brought them back to 

the school. While the doctor examined the Cuban and Grenadian wounded, 

Lieutenant Lemauk assessed the security situation and how to best handle the 

students in the morning. He and D’Arbonne had worked together in the 2d 

Brigade emergency deployment readiness exercise the week before that had 

featured hostage rescue, so both felt very comfortable with the preparations. 

Then Lemauk brought up two squads of his platoon to provide security, relieving Company A, 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, of that mission.91

In taking responsibility for the students, Lieutenant Lemauk also inherited some fifty detainees and several refugees who had gathered at True Blue 

for safety. Since its arrival on the 82d’s first three aircraft, Lemauk’s platoon 

had been removing civilians from houses near the front lines both because 

of the proximity to danger and because none of the Americans knew who 

89 Intervs, Wells with D’Arbonne, 9 Nov 1983, and with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Jump/Loading Manifest, Aircraft 3, Hist files (Papers/Mitchell), CMH. 90 Intervs, Wells with D’Abronne, 9 Nov 1983, and with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, plus Wade with 

Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 91 Intervs, Wells with D’Abronne, 9 Nov 1983, and McMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and 

Gyurisko, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Sign prepared by 

American students at 

True Blue Campus; 

below, Student evacuees 

learn details of their 

impending repatriation.
A paratrooper guards a group of Cuban detainees.
Refugees undergo a search as a division patrol approaches; below, Major Archer 

talks with members of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force.
The Rucksack War

286

was friendly and who was not. Lemauk assembled everyone at a house out 

of the line of fire on a ridge overlooking the school. Moving the Cubans and 

Grenadians at True Blue to that site as a temporary stopgap was easy.92

Lieutenant Lemauk’s dealings with refugees and detainees represented 

only one small piece of a much larger problem for the 82d. The number of 

refugees in the airhead increased rapidly during the late afternoon and evening 

of 25 October as Colonel Hamilton’s men moved civilians out of the danger 

area around the Cuban compound. That same afternoon the division chief of 

staff, Colonel Boylan, dispatched the 82d’s G–5, Maj. William D. Archer, to 

establish initial contact with the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force commander, 

Brigadier Lewis. Major Archer discovered that Lewis’ chief concern was not 

refugees but detainees. The brigadier needed to find a better location for the 

captured Cubans than the grassy verge beside the runway, especially if the 

runway became a target of enemy fire, as seemed likely. Boylan and Archer 

discussed the situation after Archer returned, and Boylan concluded that the 

best available location was the Cuban workers camp on one of the hills overlooking the airport terminal. Moving the Cubans to the new location became 

one of his top priorities on 26 October.93

By the end of the first day of combat, senior officers on the division staff 

realized that the 82d faced a detainee and refugee problem of some magnitude. 

For the moment, however, it appeared manageable with the resources available 

to General Trobaugh.

Medical Reinforcements

The first notable medical reinforcement for the rangers was in the form of 

the surgical suite from the Joint Special Operations Command medical augmentation package. Consisting of a team of doctors and nurses and the equipment and supplies necessary to set up operating and recovery rooms, it provided a sophisticated ability to treat trauma cases. Earlier in the week, the team 

had assembled at Fort Bragg and drawn its previously prepared medical chests 

with great efficiency. Coordination with the Air Force at Pope Air Force Base 

was much more ad hoc, an approach deemed necessary because of the stringent security surrounding any actions involving the Joint Special Operations 

Command. A senior Army medical officer had approached the 1st Aeromedical 

Evacuation Squadron commander, Air Force Lt. Col. A. Felix Meyer III, on 24 

October to request an aircraft to transport the surgical team to an undisclosed 

objective. Colonel Meyer was perplexed by the out-of-channels request. It was 

not the way the Air Force operated. He attempted to explain the proper procedure to his Army counterpart. Before the day ended, however, Meyer had not 

only discovered that this was the way things happened in the shadowy world 

of special operations but also had found himself and a small Air Force team 

aboard the very same aircraft with the members of the augmentation package. 

92 Intervs, Wells with D’Abronne, 9 Nov 1983, and McMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and 

Gyurisko, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 93 Interv, Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

287

Meyer was to serve as the joint medical regulating officer for the entire operation, but he still did not know specifically where he was going.94

The aircraft flew to Grantley Adams, where the surgical team quickly set 

up to receive patients, but none came. Colonel Meyer reported his contingent’s 

arrival to the airlift commander, General Patterson. He set up a medical control 

element and had two C–141 hospital aircraft standing by to evacuate patients 

out of the area of operations. Lacking guidance from Atlantic Command, he 

planned to move casualties in the C–130s from Grenada to Barbados; transfer 

them to C–141s; fly them to Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina; and 

then take them by ambulance to the hospital at Charleston Naval Air Station. 

Because no medical holding facilities were available at Grantley Adams, Meyer 

had to have one of the C–141s on the ground at all times ready to receive 

patients. In effect, one aircraft became a hospital ward containing postoperative patients until its companion returned to take up that duty.95

As with all special operations units, the surgical team enjoyed excellent 

communications. Team members monitored their radios and knew there were 

casualties on Grenada. Its commander eventually decided that if the patients 

were not going to come to the doctors, the doctors would go to them. On 

the afternoon of 25 October the team flew to Grenada, landing shortly after 

General Trobaugh.96

One of the surgeons, Col. James B. Peake, was helping unload medical 

supplies from the rear ramp of the C–130 when the Grenadian armored personnel carriers began their attack. Suddenly, machine gun rounds were hitting 

the runway, and a mortar shell exploded thirteen meters from one of the wingtips of the aircraft. The Air Force pilot, Maj. Dale Stevens of the 39th Tactical 

Airlift Squadron, immediately began taxiing away from the fighting with the 

ramp still down. Thinking that the pilot had gone into a takeoff roll, Colonel 

Peake frantically threw medical supplies off the plane and then leaped to the 

ground. Major Stevens, however, paused at midfield to load wounded before 

taking off. Meanwhile, surgical team members hastily commandeered a vehicle 

and pursued the plane. They collected both Peake and the supplies, which were 

scattered along the verge of the runway, and then joined the ranger surgeons 

and the medical students at the True Blue Campus.97

The arrival of the Joint Special Operations Command surgical team 

constituted a major addition to the medical support available on the island. 

Because of the secrecy surrounding the command, it is unclear whether any of 

the senior medical personnel in either the XVIII Airborne Corps or the 82d 

Airborne Division at Fort Bragg knew that the unit was on the ground.

94 Intervs, author with A. F. Meyer, 16 Jun 2000, and with Peake, 27 Apr 2004, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 95 Intervs, author with A. F. Meyer, 16 Jun 2000, and with Peake, 27 Apr 2004, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Draft AAR, [Opn Urgent Fury], JCS, [1984], sec. 10, pp. 31–33, Hist files 

(PDocs/DoD/JCS), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. E., app. 

1, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 96 Interv, author with Peake, 27 Apr 2004, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

97 Ibid; Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 86–87.
The Rucksack War

288

The division also began to get some of its own medical assets on the 

island. The 2d Brigade surgeon, Capt. Colin S. McKenzie, and some medics 

were able to land at Point Salines on 25 October. The 82d’s advance medical 

team, consisting of division orthopedic surgeon Lt. Col. Joseph P. Jackson Jr. 

and five medics from the 307th Medical Battalion, provided additional medical reinforcements. The team landed at Point Salines around 2200. Jackson 

spent about two hours looking for brigade headquarters, without success, 

in hopes of learning the brigade’s concept of operations for 26 October. 

Eventually, he found the Forward Area Support Team II headquarters. The 

coordinator, Major Cleary, let him set up a mini-aid station to one side of 

the support team headquarters, which was located in a “filthy plumbing 

storage shed,” as Jackson noted, without lights or water. The site had three 

advantages: cover (the advanced medical element did not even have a tent), a 

radio, and vehicles. By 0600 on the twenty-sixth Jackson was ready to receive 

patients. Neither he nor Cleary was aware of the ranger aid station at the 

True Blue Campus.98

Throughout 25 October and the early hours of the twenty-sixth Grenadian 

and Cuban casualties arrived at the ranger aid station. By dawn the total number of patients had grown to fifty or sixty, of whom no more than five or 

six were Grenadian civilians. The most seriously injured suffered from chest 

wounds, abdominal wounds, head wounds, and traumatic amputations. The 

battalion surgeon, Captain Pfaff, took over one of the student dormitories as a 

holding area for ambulatory and stable patients. The intermingling of Cubans, 

some only slightly wounded, with students—in other words, potential hostage takers with potential hostages—made both the rangers and Lieutenant 

Lemauk of the security detail uneasy. Pfaff, however, considered the situation 

manageable, and his view prevailed.99

Even before the number of wounded peaked, officers at the division assault 

command post had become concerned about the situation. Major Archer, the 

division’s G–5, had noted the growing number of wounded Cubans when he 

visited True Blue on 25 October. When he returned to General Trobaugh’s 

headquarters, he suggested using Cuban medical personnel, about whom he 

had learned earlier when he visited the detainee holding area to inspect the 

Cubans and Grenadians. The chief of staff, Colonel Boylan, approved the 

idea, and the division staff judge advocate, Lt. Col. Quinton W. Richardson, 

who had spent most of his time trying to segregate peaceable Cubans from 

those captured with arms in hand, coordinated the action with the Caribbean 

Peacekeeping Force.100

98 Diary (quoted words), Jackson, 26 Oct 1983, Hist files (Papers/Jackson), CMH; Interv, 

Pirnie with Jackson, 23 May 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 99 Intervs, Wells with Donovan, 2 Nov 1983, and with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, plus McMichael 

with Lemauk, Webb, and Gyurisko, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 100 Intervs, Wells with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983; Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983]; and Burdett with 

Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 

Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, pp. 2–3, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; ibid., 

Surg, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, n.d, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

289

Captain Pfaff first learned about 

the plan when Major Archer brought 

in nine Cubans whom he introduced 

as medical personnel. Pfaff decided 

not to use them because of the security 

problem they posed. Furthermore, he 

could not be certain that they were 

who they claimed to be. In Pfaff’s 

view, lack of medications rather than 

lack of personnel constituted his real 

problem.101

Despite Colonel Jackson’s arrival, 

by dawn of 26 October the Army’s 

medical capabilities on the island 

were about to drop precipitously 

because the medical augmentation 

package was to return to the United 

States with General Scholtes. Before 

departure, Colonel Peake, the senior 

surgeon in the trauma element, transferred medical supplies to Jackson. 

Under the circumstances, it was the 

best that he could do. Jackson tried 

to convince the senior Joint Special 

Operations Command medical officer, Lt. Col. Carmelito Arkangel Jr., 

to stay until more of the division’s medical support arrived, but Scholtes’ order 

left the officer with no discretion.102

Apparently no one at Fort Bragg protested the medical team’s removal 

from Grenada, possibly because few knew it was there. Of more importance, 

General Trobaugh did nothing about it, either because he had no idea it was 

on the island or because he had no one readily at hand who might advise him 

on the problem or even recognize that one existed. His senior medical advisers were still back at Fort Bragg, and Colonel Jackson was totally focused on 

patient care. The supplies that Colonel Peake left behind were only a stopgap, 

but that was the best that anyone could do.103

Before the surgical team left, one of its members mentioned that the 

1st Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron had two C–141s on strip alert on 

Barbados, something of which the doctors in the 82d had been unaware. 

They had deployed without any knowledge of plans for the medical chain of 

101 Intervs, Wells with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, and Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 102 Intervs, author with Peake, 27 Apr 2004, and with Taylor, 4 Dec 1986, plus Pirnie with 

Jackson, 23 May 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Diary, Jackson, 26 Oct 1983, Hist files (Papers/

Jackson), CMH. 103 Interv, author with Peake, 27 Apr 2004, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Assisting a wounded Cuban national
The Rucksack War

290

evacuation other than the fact that they could send severely wounded patients 

to the Guam, so this was welcome news.104

The withdrawal of the special operations forces, in effect, precipitated the 

first aeromedical evacuation on 26 October. As General Scholtes prepared to 

depart without alerting Colonel Meyer, who was overseeing patient evacuation, 

he insisted that operational security required wounded members of his command to go to Womack Army Hospital at Fort Bragg. Scholtes was concerned 

that the wounded might say something under anesthesia that would reveal special operations tactics, techniques, or procedures, so he wanted them treated 

by medical staff he knew and trusted. Due to his intervention, the first flight 

proceeded to Pope Air Force Base rather than Charleston, South Carolina. 

The question involved issues of more than academic interest. Because Atlantic 

Command had not included Womack in its preparations, the hospital was not 

ready to treat the gravely wounded men when they arrived. In addition, the 

staff had absolutely no advance warning. The doctors learned about their new 

patients when they came through the door. Ultimately, the patients had to be 

transferred to another facility to receive the level of care they required.105

On the whole, U.S. operations on 25 October were very successful. Not 

only had land- and sea-based aircraft isolated Grenada, preventing any Cuban 

reinforcement, but the marines’ seizure of Pearls Airport coupled with the rangers’ capture of Point Salines airfield ensured a steady buildup of U.S. combat 

power. Most of the special operations missions failed for two reasons: They 

were conducted in daylight rather than at night as originally planned, and the 

Grenadians offered unexpectedly stout resistance. The most important of these 

missions, at least politically—the rescue of the governor general—counted as 

a partial success. Because the special operations forces remained surrounded 

at the governor general’s residence, the handoff of command from General 

Scholtes to General Trobaugh proved a little more ragged than expected. Even 

with that friction, Trobaugh was fully in control and prepared to execute the 

campaign plan by dawn on 26 October.

The logistical side of the equation was mixed, but still on the whole successful. The advance echelon of the 2d Brigade’s Forward Area Support Team 

II with its priceless 6,000-pound rough-terrain forklift had arrived, and Major 

Cleary had organized Army logistical operations at the airfield after dark. His 

feat highlighted the importance of having in charge well-trained, experienced 

logistical officers who could improvise on the spot. It was also a testament to 

the education and training that the Army required all officers to have before 

they could command forward area support teams. Meanwhile, Colonel Izzo 

104 Ibid.; Interv, Pirnie with Jackson, 23 May 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 105 Draft AAR, [Opn Urgent Fury], JCS, [1984], sec. 10, pp. 31–33, Hist files (PDocs/

DoD/JCS), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st AES, 14 Feb 1984, pp. 1–11, Hist files (PDocs/

U&SCmds/MAC), CMH. See also Intervs, author with Peake, 27 Apr 2004, and with A. F. 

Meyer, 16 Jun 2000, plus Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 1999, and Briefing, A. F. Meyer, [1984], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 25–26 October 1983

291

had determined that the runway at Point Salines could bear heavy traffic and 

had located the primary source of available potable water onsite. It would be 

difficult to overstate the importance of Cleary’s and Izzo’s actions to the overall success of Army operations on Grenada. 

Even so, two important logistical failures occurred on 25 October and in 

the early morning of the following day: the breakdown in the control of the 

flow of patients from the combat area to fixed treatment facilities in the rear, 

and the inability to retain the surgical suite from the Joint Special Operations 

Command medical augmentation package until comparable medical assets 

arrived from the XVIII Airborne Corps. In each instance, several factors were 

involved. Atlantic Command failed to produce a well-defined chain of medical 

evacuation. It then neglected to disseminate the principles its medical staff had 

developed to guide evacuations to all the units involved. Complicating matters 

further, in 1983 U.S. special operations forces were accustomed to working 

independently of conventional forces. They thus did as they always did and 

evacuated their patients as if no conventional forces were involved.

The same mindset, which included placing the highest possible value on 

operational security, contributed to the premature withdrawal of the surgical suite. The failure of General Trobaugh to protest suggests that he did 

not realize the capacity that he was losing. In this case, operational security 

obscured what was happening not only from America’s enemies but also from 

the commander of Task Force 121. The circumstance might not have arisen, 

however, if Atlantic Command had not developed and the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff approved an overly complicated chain of command. Instead of sending 

General Trobaugh to replace General Scholtes while combat operations were 

ongoing, Atlantic Command should have left Scholtes on Grenada with the 

authority to call on the XVIII Airborne Corps for reinforcements as needed. 

In this scenario, General Trobaugh and his staff would have come to the island 

to run the occupation only after hostilities ceased. That, at least, was General 

Vessey’s critique of the operation—an oversight for which he accepted full 

responsibility.106

106 Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987, Archives files, JHO.

7

Division-Rear Support

The departure of the first two battalions of Col. Stephen Silvasy Jr.’s 2d 

Brigade, 82d Airborne Division, to Grenada did not end the problems 

that Col. William F. Daly Jr.’s 82d Support Command faced at Fort Bragg. 

In many ways, it simply marked their beginning. At the time, however, this 

was not the perception of senior leaders at the post. To them, the operation 

appeared to be progressing smoothly. In fact, communications problems, particularly in the opening stages of the intervention, resulted in events at Fort 

Bragg and events on Grenada occurring in two different spheres with seemingly little interrelationship.

Efforts in the United States to sustain Operation Urgent Fury logistically fell into three major phases. First were the attempts of the 82d Airborne

Division-Rear at Fort Bragg to control the movement of supplies and units 

to Grenada. Equally important, but less visible, were exertions by the XVIII 

Airborne Corps to facilitate and guide the division’s work. Finally, a disparate collection of logistical activities facilitated the overall success of the mission. They included the provision of supplies and equipment by the Army’s 

major depots in the continental United States, resupply efforts for the ranger 

battalions originating from Hunter Army Airfield, and, ultimately, the transfer of control of the airflow from the division to the corps. The success of 

all these logistical activities rested on a happy resolution of the first phase, 

where success depended heavily on the intelligence, professional skills, and 

energy that the officers and enlisted personnel of division-rear brought to 

their assignments. 

Division Control and Security

When the C–141 carrying Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh departed Pope 

Air Force Base on 25 October, command of the 82d’s elements remaining at 

Fort Bragg devolved upon the assistant division commander for support, Brig. 

Gen. James D. Smith. General Smith operated out of the division headquarters building, which housed both the division emergency operations center 

and the AN/URC–101 tactical satellite radio that linked him and his staff to 

General Trobaugh’s assault command post on Grenada. Because he was able 

to talk many times during the day to both Trobaugh and his chief of staff, Col. 

☆ ☆ ☆
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294

Peter J. Boylan Jr., Smith thought he had a good idea of what the troops on 

the island needed. Conversely, he was able to keep both Trobaugh and Boylan 

closely informed on the status of deploying units, particularly when the 3d 

Brigade prepared to move to the island. These assumptions were based on two 

further beliefs: that the division was operating in the context of the Caribbean 

operations contingency plan developed by Admiral Wesley L. McDonald’s 

U.S. Atlantic Command, and that Smith’s experience during previous emergency deployment exercises was an adequate guide to what was happening 

beyond Fort Bragg. Yet on the first day, unbeknownst to Smith, airflow problems were making a shambles of his presuppositions.1

The normal Army routine during an operation contributed to General 

Smith’s sense that he knew everything he needed to know. He attended two 

formal briefings on Grenada that his staff conducted each day, one in the 

morning and the other in the evening. The briefings became forums to discuss 

problems and possible courses of action. Then Smith made the necessary command decisions. During the early stages of Urgent Fury he often participated 

in as many as two additional meetings with selected staff members, which provided venues for focusing on critical and time-sensitive issues.2

1 Intervs, author with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986, and Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 2 Intervs, author with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986, and F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.

General Smith Colonel Boylan 
Division-Rear Support

295

General Smith also sat in on a daily briefing on Grenada at the XVIII 

Airborne Corps headquarters. At that time he shared his concerns with the 

corps commander, Lt. Gen. Jack V. Mackmull, who in his opinion was “very 

supportive” of the division. General Mackmull’s attitude encouraged Smith to 

be very frank about problems, operational as well as logistical. According to 

Smith, the range of issues included alerting follow-on forces, aircraft requirements, and the “unknowns” that might impinge on the type and amount of 

logistical support required.3

Smith spent the remainder of his time in the division area. He tried to visit 

Green Ramp at least once every day. He also made it a point to brief each 

battalion commander on the current tactical situation on the island before his 

unit deployed to Grenada. When Smith was away from division headquarters, 

he carried a handheld radio that he could use to contact his Air Force counterpart at Pope Air Force Base should any problem suddenly arise.4

Security was one of General Smith’s first concerns. Although Fort Bragg 

contained some of “the most strategically important units” in the United States 

armed forces, it was an open post. “Reporters, enemy agents, and curiosity 

seekers,” to use General Mackmull’s expressive phrase, had almost complete 

access, which made maintaining operational security during any deployment 

extremely difficult. On 25 October family members of some of the troopers 

demonstrated just how little control the division exercised over its own area. 

Many wives drove to the personnel holding area and called across to their husbands, who, contrary to regulations, answered back. Soon after Mackmull had 

assumed command of the corps in August 1981, he had pressed to have Fort 

Bragg converted into a closed post. The Department of the Army, disagreeing, 

withdrew the funds that Mackmull had set aside for automobile decals, denied 

additional personnel needed to administer such a program, and reduced the 

number of military police at the post. Because of the recent bombing of the 

Marine barracks in Beirut (bodies were still being recovered on the twentyfifth), Smith was particularly sensitive to a terrorist attack. In his view, the 

division was most vulnerable at its headquarters that housed irreplaceable 

communications nets. Although Fayetteville was certainly not Beirut, he knew 

that one truck bomb could seriously disrupt the operation.5

Smith based his subsequent actions on the magnitude of the possible 

damage rather than the likelihood of the threat. He knew that vehicles could 

approach the headquarters in two ways—via a narrow winding lane behind 

the headquarters building or through the front drive that opened on the 

post’s main street only a short distance from a public highway. A normal military police post, provided for in the division’s readiness standing operating 

3 Interv, author with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

4 Ibid.; Intervs, author with Strock, 30 May 1986, and Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 5 Msg (quoted words), Mackmull to Cavazos and Wickham, 5 0520Z Jan 1984, sub: Personal 

Assessment of the Grenada Campaign, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Intervs, 

Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, GWG with Bruning, [Nov 1983], and author with J. 

Smith, 4 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

296

procedures, stood at the far end of the lane. The headquarters guard would 

have ample time to react before any intruder approaching from that direction 

could pose a threat to the security of the building. The main entrance was 

quite a different matter. Smith directed the divisional armored battalion, the 

4th Battalion, 68th Armor, to station three M551 Sheridans there, positioning 

them so that any driver approaching the headquarters had to slow to follow 

a zigzag route. He posted a machine gun team to cover the area and told the 

sergeant in charge that, while he did not want deliverymen or nervous spouses 

shot, he also did not want truck bombs coming through the front door. The 

sergeant was to use his judgment, and Smith would support him. To avoid 

incidents, Smith circulated information about these arrangements throughout 

the entire division. As a result, for the next few days members of the division 

approached headquarters only when necessary.6

Managing the Airflow

Following the arrival of the initial C–141s at Pope Air Force Base, Military 

Airlift Command notified XVIII Airborne Corps that the corps would have to 

request additional aircraft without clarifying what procedure it should follow. 

Because XVIII Airborne Corps was not in the chain of command for Urgent

Fury, this message caused some confusion. Around 1130 on 25 October someone from the Installation Transportation Office called the division transportation officer, Maj. Frederick C. Perkins, and passed along the information.7

During peacetime the division used two procedures for requesting aircraft—

one for joint Air Force tactical training missions and a second for special assignment air missions. The first provided for Air Force–funded training missions 

involving the two services; the second, for Army-funded training missions. The 

division G–3 for air requested the first type through corps, which was how the 

division had obtained the initial twelve aircraft that carried General Trobaugh 

and the 2d Brigade Task Force to Grenada. The second type required the division transportation officer to initiate the request and send it to the Installation 

Transportation Office, which in turn contacted Military Airlift Command. In 

the absence of specific guidance, the Installation Transportation Office wanted 

Major Perkins to follow the special assignment air missions request format.8

In making its assessment of what Military Airlift Command desired, the 

personnel at the Installation Transportation Office demonstrated considerable knowledge of the system. The special assignment air missions format 

delivered very real advantages for the most efficient use of a finite number 

of airframes, requiring the customer to specify what needed to be moved—

“personnel, vehicles, equipment, supplies” by quantity, type, weight, volume, 

and required arrival time of each aircraft at the destination airfield. Using 

this information, Military Airlift Command could plan backwards to develop 

requirements for the number and type of aircraft needed. Any other system 

6 Interv, author with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

7 Interv, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent

Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-18, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.

8 Interv, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Division-Rear Support

297

would result in aircraft being underloaded and delayed excessively at departure airfields.9

While well adapted for efficient peacetime operations, these procedures suffered from only one flaw in Major Perkins’ view—they were too cumbersome 

to work effectively under wartime conditions. Perkins realized this truth even 

as he took the first call from the Installation Transportation Office. Special 

assignment air missions required much paperwork and a long lead time. 

Perkins’ three-man office had no time even if it could cope with the paperwork. At that moment 82d Support Command personnel were building pallets at Green Ramp. Under special assignment air missions rules, these would 

have to be disassembled, documented, and reassembled prior to submitting 

a request for additional aircraft. Marshaling these arguments as he drove to 

the Installation Transportation Office, Perkins delivered his assessment of the 

situation to the office head, Marcelle Truelove: Special assignment air missions 

were simply impossible under existing conditions.10

After considerable discussion of the intricacies of the problem, Truelove 

decided that she would give Major Perkins a block of special assignment air 

missions Atlantic Command had already allocated to XVIII Airborne Corps. 

From then on, whenever Perkins needed more, he could request blocks of 

twenty-six missions from the Installation Transportation Office. This sounded 

workable to Perkins. He asked for the first block and said that he would need 

another twenty or thirty missions just to get going. Then he could start forecasting. While Truelove and her staff worked on obtaining the next block, 

Perkins returned to his office at division headquarters.11

About two hours later, 1330 on 25 October, General Mackmull decided 

to remove the Installation Transportation Office from the airlift request process. This was because the office reported to him as post commander, but he 

was no longer in the chain of command and had no authority to dictate the 

composition of the airflow. His decision had a practical as well as a legal component. Aside from General Mackmull and his principal staff officers, very 

few people in the corps headquarters, let alone the Installation Transportation 

Office, knew much about the operation. They needed in-depth knowledge of 

the scheme of maneuver to act as anything more than a rubber stamp for the 

division. Moreover, by this time the ranger battalions had also completed their 

deployment to Grenada. Mackmull envisioned that most of the aircraft flying 

to the island would carry personnel, equipment, and supplies belonging to the 

82d Airborne Division, which would then be the logical organization to control this movement. The effect of General Mackmull’s decision was to remove 

one layer of administrative overhead from the airlift request process.12

Someone at the Installation Transportation Office called Major Perkins 

and informed him of the new arrangements. Henceforth, he would have to 

9 Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, p. X-15, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH. 10 Interv, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.; Interv, author with F. Perkins, 4 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

298

request and plan for the loading of all flights that left Pope Air Force Base 

for Grenada. Perkins replied, “Hey, fine, I don’t care. Whatever I have to do 

to get the division moving and going down there.” Perkins’ words belied his 

mood, which was one of elation. He and other division logisticians considered 

Mackmull’s decision a vote of confidence. Moreover, they regarded themselves 

as the best protectors of the division’s interests. Believing that their job was to 

give the division commander exactly what he wanted when he wanted it, they 

did not intend to “force” units, equipment, or supplies on him that he neither 

needed nor desired. From that moment on, Perkins’ office took all requests 

from corps and 1st Support Command units for air movement to the area of 

operations, prioritized them in accord with the commander’s guidance, and 

determined the proper sequence to fly cargoes to Grenada. Then it notified the 

units that they were booked and the time at which they should arrive at Green 

Ramp.13

When Major Perkins took over responsibility for ordering airlift for Fort 

Bragg, he sought guidance on the procedure for making requests. “There was 

much confusion,” noted division G–4 Lt. Col. Jack D. Crabtree, “at XVIII 

Airborne Corps headquarters and the Installation Transportation Office as to 

who ordered and who validated aircraft.” Perkins contacted Military Airlift 

Command to determine if it had sufficient airlift available, called Atlantic 

Command to seek validation of his request, and then notified Military Airlift 

Command when he had it. Later, after the initial deployments to Grenada, 

the office dealt directly with the Military Airlift Command’s Airlift Control 

Center for validation and, still later, once more with Atlantic Command. As 

Crabtree commented, the shifts “created confusion and increased the potential 

for delayed airflow.”14

While Major Perkins exercised control over cargoes leaving Fort Bragg, 

other installations sought to ship men, equipment, and supplies to the island 

without reference to division logisticians. In 1983 joint doctrine provided guidance to major commands on the steps necessary to validate aircraft requests. 

Because Atlantic Command had no one on its staff with the requisite training to validate and prioritize airlift requests, it played no role in the process 

at first. Various headquarters contacted Military Airlift Command directly 

about obtaining transportation to Grenada. It, in turn, contacted Atlantic 

Command, which directed Military Airlift Command to consider all requests 

valid no matter what agency requested the aircraft. The 82d Airborne Division 

became just one among many competing agencies and Pope Air Force Base 

just one point of origin among many. By doctrine, Atlantic Command should 

have determined the date, destination, and arrival time of each aircraft load to 

ensure that the most critical items arrived first. When it gave a blanket validation to all requests, it abdicated this responsibility and any control over the 

13 Intervs, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul (quoted words) and 4 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 14 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-18 (quoted words), Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Interv, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.
Division-Rear Support

299

airflow. Because no other command had authority to establish priorities, no 

one ensured that the airflow supported General Trobaugh’s scheme of maneuver. Military Airlift Command established the sequence of aircraft in the flow 

on the basis of the time at which it received individual requests rather than on 

the contents of the aircraft. Aircraft and their cargoes thus entered the airflow 

without the knowledge of either General Smith and his subordinates at Fort 

Bragg or General Trobaugh and his staff at Point Salines.15

The Joint Deployment System, a computer program belonging to the 

Joint Deployment Agency located at MacDill Air Force Base, was available 

to any logistician with a computer and access to the agency’s mainframe. On 

the surface, it appeared to offer a solution to the aircraft validation problem 

and provide a means for Atlantic Command’s director of logistics to maintain 

oversight of the airflow. Unfortunately, the system’s state of development in 

the fall of 1983 precluded its use in Urgent Fury. Originally intended to aid 

in the movement of the entire U.S. Army to Belgium and Germany in the event 

of a conventional conflict in central Europe, the computer program required 

a deliberate planning cycle and was not flexible enough to aid in a quick-reaction operation such as Urgent Fury. Even if the Joint Deployment Agency 

had adapted it for such contingencies, Atlantic Command’s J–4 could not have 

used the program because he lacked secure communications links.16

Green Ramp Congestion

Once the twelfth aircraft in the initial flight departed, C–141s carrying men, 

equipment, and supplies for the 2d Brigade continued to leave Green Ramp at 

Pope Air Force Base for twenty-one hours. However, during this time the base 

could only dispatch twelve aircraft on direct flights to Grenada, an average of 

one aircraft every hour and forty-five minutes. Problems at Point Salines—the 

low capacity of the partially finished airfield and a Grenadian counterattack 

around 1530 on 25 October that closed the runway for a time—rather than 

lack of aircraft or crews at Pope Air Force Base accounted for the slowness of 

the airflow. The Air Force loaded many more aircraft than actually departed 

during this period. The excess planes loaded with troops remained parked on 

the tarmac at Green Ramp.17

15 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, LANTCOM, 6 Feb 1984, encl. III, pp. V-4 and V-5, Hist files 

(PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), CMH; Rpt, [DCSOPS, DA], 1985, sub: Lessons Learned 

Grenada: U.S. Army Lessons Learned from Operation Urgent Fury, p. IV-f-9, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/DCSOPS), CMH; Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation Urgent

Fury Assessment, pp. III-19 to III-20B, X-15 to X-17, Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH; 

AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-18, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH. 16 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, LANTCOM, 6 Feb 1984, encl. III, p. V-2, Hist files (PDocs/

U&SCmds/LANTCOM), CMH; Intervs, author with Mickelson, 23 Sep 1986, and with J. 

Smith, 4 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 17 Msg, Mackmull to CINCARLANT DCSOPS and DCSLOG, 28 1155[Z] Oct 1983, 

sub: Urgent Fury Airflow, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 

Airflow messages must be used with caution. The aircraft numbers and takeoff times seem to 

be accurate, but the cargoes itemized––projected rather than actual load––are suspect. The 
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300

While the troops waited aboard C–141s, their round-out supplies and 

equipment, including all the division, brigade, battalion, and company vehicles, remained at Green Ramp. Only after the troops departed could the Air 

Force free up sufficient ramp space to load this materiel. During the delay a 

number of unanticipated problems surfaced. One was bumping, a term that 

referred to the practice of placing units or individuals scheduled for late or 

even no deployment ahead of units or individuals slated for earlier departure. 

Sometimes bumped units or individuals would simply move further back in 

the line of chalks waiting to deploy. In other instances, they might not deploy 

at all. 

Most legitimate bumping occurred when the staff in the assault command 

post shifted priorities based on the situation on Grenada. Upon arrival at 

Point Salines, for example, the 82d assumed custody of an unexpectedly large 

number of Cuban detainees whom the rangers had captured around the airfield. General Trobaugh radioed back to request the immediate deployment of 

a full-size Spanish-speaking interrogation team to question them. The original 

plans for rounding out Task Force 121 called for the interrogation team to 

deploy later in the airflow. Now it went earlier. This was the kind of adjustment that occurred in every airborne operation. Veteran airborne officers considered it normal.18

During Urgent Fury, however, other kinds of bumping also occurred. 

With General Smith and his key subordinates unaware that the 1st Support 

Command’s 330th Transportation Center was missing from the Green Ramp 

operations area, the division relied on training to maintain control. In the 

center’s absence, Smith initially lacked any means to supervise the order of 

the 82d’s chalks between the time when they passed the scales at the entrance 

to Green Ramp and the time when they actually boarded their aircraft. The 

constant repetition of emergency deployment readiness exercises had ensured, 

however, that division personnel knew their respective responsibilities. Even 

so, as the operation progressed, this system tended to break down due to a 

number of factors: The slow movement of aircraft to the island made everyone frustrated and anxious to board the next departing C–141; officers, at 

times correctly, considered the specialties provided by their own units crucial 

to the overall success of the operation; individuals seeking to enhance their 

careers inevitably pushed to secure space on the next plane “smoking south”; 

and, finally, units from outside the division and even civilians began appearing on Green Ramp with movement orders signed by “higher authorities”—

everyone from the president on down—authorizing immediate transportation 

to Grenada. These newcomers, of course, were unfamiliar with the division’s 

accuracy of cargo descriptions improved when XVIII Airborne Corps G–4 became responsible 

for tracking major equipment items that left Pope Air Force Base sometime on 26 October. 

See Interv, author with Bishop, Jul 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 

XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. D., p. I-D-1, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), 

CMH. 18 Interv, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Division-Rear Support

301

procedures but were adamant about the overriding importance of their own 

missions.19

A few officers pulled rank to displace chalks ahead of them commanded by 

their juniors. On the afternoon of 25 October, for example, someone attempted 

to bump the Class III Platoon from Company A, 407th Supply and Service 

Battalion, commanded by 2d Lt. Eric P. Katz. The platoon had the very important task of refueling the 82d Aviation Battalion once it arrived on the island. 

Fortunately, the Forward Area Support Team II coordinator, Maj. Daniel J. 

Cleary III, although ahead of Lieutenant Katz in the chalk order, had yet to 

depart and was able to get the platoon reinserted in its proper place.20

The commander of the 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry, or Division Ready 

Force-3, Lt. Col. Bobby R. Hurst, and his staff continued to play a major role 

in load planning once the 2d Brigade staff departed. Essentially, they manned 

the 2d Brigade cell of the Provisional Movement Control Center located in the 

personnel holding area. While the 2d Brigade was loading, Colonel Hurst had 

sent his S–3, Maj. Richard T. Keene, to make certain that everyone remained 

in the correct chalk order and found the correct aircraft. To this limited extent, 

Hurst had assumed by default the movement control functions normally exercised by the 330th Transportation Center. Working out of the operations building at Green Ramp but with most of his staff in the personnel holding area, he 

lacked the manpower to ensure the same level of close supervision as performed 

by the 330th’s transportation specialists. As members of a line battalion, he and 

his staff also did not possess the wealth of experience and detailed knowledge 

of loading aircraft and working with the Air Force that the corps transportation 

specialists had. Among the senior members of the division remaining at Fort 

Bragg, however, Hurst alone seems to have realized that the 330th Transportation 

Center was missing from Green Ramp. His and his officers’ initiative and hard 

work kept the system moving during the first critical day.21

 Despite Colonel Hurst’s intervention, perhaps the most important flaw in 

command and control procedures at Fort Bragg on 25 October was the lack of 

an Army officer recognized by all to be the single point of contact with the Air 

Force for Green Ramp operations. Such a representative needed to maintain 

continuous communications with both the 82d’s emergency operations and 

movement control centers. In short, to quote one of the participants, the effort 

lacked a “honcho [for] that whole Green Ramp thing.”22

Major Cleary could solve Lieutenant Katz’s problem because he was still 

at the airfield when it surfaced. As Urgent Fury progressed and senior officers from the division departed for Grenada, more junior officers assumed 

19 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983; Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and 

with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983; Wade with Vitucci, [Nov 1983], and with Rhodes, [Nov 1983]; author 

with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986 (quoted words), and with Strock, 30 May 1986; and McMichael 

with Baggett, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 20 Intervs, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul and 4 Aug 1986, and with Baker-Kimmel and Katz, 

18 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 21 Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and with Mason, [Nov 1983], plus Burdett with 

Keene, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 22 Interv, Hicks with Mason, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

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positions of authority in division-rear. “At times,” noted one, “it seemed as if 

the only officers left in the division were General Smith and a lot of captains.” 

They lacked the insight into the operation possessed by their seniors because 

General Trobaugh had excluded most of the younger officers from the planning. Although they were well grounded in their branch specialties and well 

aware of what their units needed to operate, they lacked broad experience. 

Often, they equated the success of the division with the success of their own 

commands and set out with great energy to ensure that their units succeeded. 

While various individuals often solved problems, their actions on the whole 

contributed to a certain formlessness in Green Ramp operations.23

The lack of a clearly defined and well-understood channel of communications to call forward additional supplies, equipment, and support units and to 

establish priorities among them exacerbated the bumping problem. At Point 

Salines, for example, General Trobaugh often dealt directly with his principal 

staff officers about critical items of resupply. At the end of these meetings 

these officers frequently took the initiative and contacted division-rear without 

coordinating with either the division G–3, Lt. Col. Frank H. Akers Jr., or the 

G–4 representative, Capt. James A. Rosebrock. They followed no uniformity 

in how they addressed these messages. Many went directly to the rear elements 

of their own battalions; others went to the division emergency operations 

center; still others went to the Division Ready Force-3 commander, Colonel 

Hurst, or to the 82d Support Command executive officer, Col. Ronald F. Kelly, 

who was operating out of Maj. Samuel S. Vitucci’s Provisional Movement 

Control Center. Initially, no one in division-rear realized what was happening. Committed to supporting the division commander (all these requests used 

General Trobaugh’s name), division-rear officers simply reacted as they had 

been trained to and used all their guile and rank to move resupply packages to 

the head of the line at Green Ramp.24

The failure by division-rear leaders to recognize the problem was understandable. By the time the first twelve aircraft left, many of the senior officers had been awake over thirty consecutive hours. With Trobaugh’s departure, General Smith immediately addressed the issue of sleep deprivation and 

decreed that the division would operate on twelve-hour shifts. As the 182d 

Materiel Management Center commander, Maj. William M. Causey Jr., 

observed, division-rear leaders had to ensure rest for themselves and their men 

if they were to sustain the troops on Grenada over the long term. The transition to the new schedule was anything but easy. Leaders who drew the first shift 

faced a total of forty-two hours without sleep. Even those who drew the first 

twelve hours of rest often obtained less sleep than their men. Major Causey, 

for one, got just two hours of sleep during the night of 25–26 October. Others 

23 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983; Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983; Wade with 

Vitucci, [Nov 1983]; and author with Anderson, 9 May 1986, with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, with 

Harding, 24 Jun 1986 (quoted words), with Ramey, 6 and 18 Jun 1986, and with Strock, 30 May 

1986. All in Historians files, CMH. 24 Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH.
Division-Rear Support

303

obtained more or less, depending on the number of officers and noncommissioned officers available as a backup for them in their specialties. Many, like 

Smith, slept on a cot at their duty station. Given the high tempo of activity, it 

is at least questionable how much real rest they obtained.25

Congestion at Green Ramp became a problem as the operation progressed 

and contributed to the bumping phenomenon by making the chalk order 

ambiguous. Military Airlift Command gave General Smith a twenty-minute 

turnaround time as a planning factor for unloading aircraft at Salines. He used 

it to determine the rate at which the division moved units and equipment to 

Green Ramp. According to this schedule, sixty-three aircraft should have left 

Pope between 1400 on 25 October and 1100 on 26 October instead of the 

twelve that actually took off. The result was that units built up at Green Ramp 

much more quickly than they could depart for Grenada.26

Military Airlift Command, of course, knew a great deal about the airflow and conditions at Point Salines because air intelligence officers at Pope 

debriefed returning aircrews. Air Force officers, however, did not pass this 

information on to their Army counterparts in division-rear. Conversely, division-rear officers passed little information to the Air Force. While General 

Smith dealt directly with his counterpart at Pope Air Force Base, it was on 

a problem-by-problem basis. The fault lay not with individuals but with the 

system, specifically inadequate doctrine and an absence of appropriate organization. Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg lacked a joint intelligence center 

to fuse intelligence from Air Force and Army sources into a single product 

for use by commanders. Doctrine did not prescribe such an organization at a 

departure airfield. General Smith’s lack of knowledge of what was happening 

in the airflow, information that such a center could easily have provided, contributed to the retention of Army units awaiting transport at Green Ramp for 

excessively long periods of time.27

The even greater congestion outside the gate leading to Green Ramp was 

another exacerbating factor. On the night of 25 October the division chief of 

staff, Colonel Boylan, radioed back from Grenada that the division needed 

immediate resupply of such essentials as food, water, gasoline, ammunition, 

and communications equipment. The division’s readiness standing operating 

procedures and the deployment plan, however, did not provide for any resupply 

aircraft until after the 2d Brigade Task Force completed its movement to the 

area of operations. The division G–4, Colonel Crabtree, had planned to send 

two resupply aircraft daily once the 2d Brigade closed at Point Salines, one 

less than Colonel Boylan wanted. Coordinating with 82d Support Command 

25 On the need for division-rear leaders to rest, see Interv, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Intervs, author with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986, and with Daly, 31 

Jul 1986, in ibid. 26 Interv, author with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

27 Ibid. For the type of information available in Air Force channels, see Msgs, MAC Intel 

Center, Scott AFB, to DIA, 26 1800Z, 27 2130Z, and 27 2142Z Oct 1983, Grenada Msg file, and 

MAC Intel Center, Scott AFB, to DIA, 26 1530Z Oct 1983, ODO Significant Events file. Both 

in Hist files (PDocs/DA/AOC), CMH.
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304

logisticians, Crabtree had worked out the amount and type of supplies to dispatch. He balanced his knowledge of what supplies and equipment the 2d 

Brigade had taken and not taken against what he anticipated the brigade 

would consume rapidly. As a result, except for some of the communications 

gear, he did not have to make any drastic changes in the mix of supplies that 

the support command had prepared. He only had to augment it by one chalk. 

Even so, at the time Boylan alerted Crabtree to the needs of the troops on 

Grenada, these resupply packages had yet to reach the airfield. They were still 

outside the gate waiting to cross the scales.28

Crabtree went to Green Ramp to expedite matters, but he had a difficult 

time threading his way onto the air base. Men, supplies, and equipment flowed 

into a single major road and then all traffic funneled to the right. There, everyone and everything had to pass over the scales in aircraft-size loads. With only 

one set of scales, the amount of congestion was “almost impossible” to sort 

through. While design of the approaches to the gate played a major role in 

the crush, the speed with which 82d Support Command personnel worked––a 

product of the shortening of the readiness cycle from eighteen to ten hours––

significantly contributed to the problem. Some drivers had dropped their trailers at the first open space and then departed in their cabs to pick up new loads. 

Other drivers had removed the webbing from their loads before leaving, which 

meant trailers could not be moved without their cargoes shifting and had to 

be unloaded where they sat. Trailers were so tightly packed that forklifts could 

not maneuver among them, rendering their cargoes temporarily inaccessible. 

Further complicating matters, supplies and equipment for the departing units 

were intermingled with follow-on supplies. Thus, it took considerable time and 

effort to assemble resupply chalks and move them across the scales.29

Leaving others to bring the chalks forward, Colonel Crabtree went directly 

to Air Force operations so that he could explain the division’s requirement. 

The Air Force officers on duty located three empty aircraft for him and were 

particularly helpful in getting the airlift control element “to pull together about 

eight or nine workers, two K-loaders” (the trucks with adjustable beds used to 

load and unload aircraft), “and two forklifts.” Once the resupply packages 

arrived, Crabtree could load his aircraft.30

In October 1983 the procedure for controlling chalks once they crossed 

over the scales consisted of two stages. The corps arrival-departure airfield 

control group, acting under the direction of the 330th Transportation Center 

(which by this time had withdrawn from Green Ramp), moved the chalk in 

proper sequence to the edge of the apron, where the Air Force airlift control element guided the chalk to its aircraft and loaded it sometimes with the 

28 Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d.; AAR, ibid., 82d Abn Div, 6 

Feb 1984, p. 4-20.Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. See also Interv, Hicks with 

Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 29 Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH. 30 Ibid. (quoted words); Jim Adams, “Larger Loader Improves Base Deployment Mission,” 

Hilltop Times, 10 Feb 2000. 
Division-Rear Support

305

assistance of Army personnel. Colonel Crabtree’s experience on Tuesday night 

suggested that the system was “cumbersome [and] . . . not conducive to even 

flow.”31

Another difficulty soon surfaced. A noncommissioned officer assigned to 

accompany one of the loads handed Colonel Crabtree a computerized load list 

based on the allowable aircraft load––the amount of cargo and the number of 

passengers by volume and weight––calculated by the Air Force airlift control 

element for this flight. It was much less than Crabtree thought he could put 

aboard a C–141. He took the soldier and all the supplies, now stored in the 

K-loaders and two Gamma Goats, and moved them to the front of the line of 

chalks. There, Crabtree found the senior Air Force loadmaster and told him 

what he wanted. The loadmaster looked at the loads and asked if he could do 

some readjusting. Crabtree replied in the affirmative, and the loadmaster said 

that he could do it with no problem. When the first log bird departed around 

1700 on 25 October, Crabtree was certain that it had a full load of what the 

division needed most on the island—ammunition, rations, and water.

Initially, division-rear logisticians assumed that once the airlift control element 

loaded an aircraft at Pope Air Force Base the plane would arrive at Point Salines 

in a reasonable amount of time. Events established that this expectation was too 

optimistic. Because of the congested airflow, aircraft sat on the ground at Pope for 

up to seven hours before departing. Unfortunately, with so many planes at the air 

base, division logisticians found it nearly impossible to track an individual chalk. 

Once aircraft finally took off, the problem only got worse. The initial slow 

turnaround time of the planes at Point Salines meant that many resorted to 

circling until they could land. Some ran low on fuel and had to divert to either 

Grantley Adams International Airport on Barbados or Roosevelt Roads 

Naval Air Station on Puerto Rico. Once an aircraft flew out of the airspace 

controlled by Pope Air Force Base, which extended in a radius of some 160 

kilometers from the base, the plane came under the direction of the Military 

Airlift Command’s Airlift Control Center on Barbados, which reported to 

the airlift commander, Brig. Gen. Robert B. Patterson. Because personnel at 

Green Ramp could not communicate directly with the Airlift Control Center, 

no one could track diversions. Once an aircraft left the Point Salines airspace, 

it might, after refueling at Grantley Adams or Roosevelt Roads, either return 

to the holding pattern above Salines or unload its cargo and passengers at 

the refueling point for subsequent shipment to Grenada aboard a C–130. The 

original C–141 could then return to the United States for another load. 

To further complicate matters, the Army lacked a direct communications 

link between its facilities at Green Ramp and the arrival airfield at Point Salines. 

This situation compromised Colonel Hurst’s and, later, Colonel Kelly’s ability 

to pass information about cargoes to Major Cleary and, conversely, for Cleary 

to keep them informed about what was actually arriving and when. Kelly had 

31 For this and the following three paragraphs, see Draft AAR (quoted words), Opn Urgent

Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Interv, author with 

Crabtree, 24 Jan 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Grantley Adams International Airport on Barbados; below, Roosevelt Roads Naval 

Air Station on Puerto Rico 
Division-Rear Support

307

to telephone the division emergency 

operations center on a secure line; 

duty officers there then forwarded 

his message via satellite radio to the 

division assault command post; and 

finally a runner hand-carried a written 

copy to Cleary at his converted tool 

shed on the edge of the Point Salines 

runway. This circuitous arrangement 

was not only very cumbersome but 

also poorly controlled, providing 

multiple opportunities to distort the 

information. As a result, participants 

used the procedure as infrequently 

as possible, which meant that no one 

in either division-rear at Fort Bragg 

or division-forward at Point Salines 

could predict what the airflow would 

bring. Every aircraft load that landed 

at Point Salines was, in effect, a surprise package.32

The size of those surprise packages also changed over time, and the 

change itself was a surprise. Initially, 

Military Airlift Command established a maximum aircraft allowable load of 

50,000 pounds for C–141s. This enabled each plane to fly to Grenada to unload 

and take on new cargo and then to fly to Barbados to refuel before returning 

to the United States, all the while maintaining a sufficient fuel reserve to meet 

unexpected contingencies. When JP–4 reserves at Grantley Adams began running low on 27 October, the Air Force contracted for a tanker to bring in more. 

The ship broke down en route and had to be towed. Several days later the 

vessel finally reached port. Separating seawater from the fuel proved a greater 

problem than anticipated, further delaying a return to normal operations.33

In the interim, the Air Force reduced the maximum aircraft allowable load to 

35,000 pounds. This permitted a C–141 to land at Point Salines and return directly 

to the United States without refueling. The decision was unavoidable given the circumstances; however, in the confusion of the moment, Military Airlift Command 

did not inform either division-forward or division-rear. Division logisticians on 

32 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-19; Draft AAR, ibid., G–4, 82d 

Abn Div, n.d. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. See also Intervs, author with 

Crabtree, 24 Jan 1989; Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983; and author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul and 7 

Aug 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 33 Draft Hist, MAC, [1985], ch. 4, pp. 1–2, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/MAC), CMH; Rpt, 

GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, pp. X-6 to X-7, 

X-19 to X-21, Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH; Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and 

with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

General Patterson
The Rucksack War

308

Grenada realized what had happened only after a succession of aircraft with light 

loads landed at Point Salines. Reduction of maximum allowable aircraft loads 

had a profound impact on the division’s rate of resupply and reinforcement.34

Although the Air Force restocked JP–4 supplies at Grantley Adams, General 

Patterson could not immediately increase the maximum allowable aircraft load. 

His inability to respond quickly reflected a condition that had developed while 

stocks were low. The ramps had become so clogged with aircraft and supplies that 

the airport had reached its saturation point. Clearing Grantley Adams depended 

on increasing the number of aircraft the Air Force allowed on the ground at Point 

Salines, which was exactly one C–141 as of 25 October and thereafter for several 

days. Unfortunately, due to a variety of reasons, most notably because the 82d 

Airborne Division would not permit the ramp to be cleared in front of the main 

terminal, the Air Force was not able to increase the capacity at Point Salines until 

2 November, and Grantley Adams remained congested beyond that date.35

Yellow Ramp Activities

As division-rear grappled with the confusion at Green Ramp, Military Airlift 

Command prepared to fly six C–5As to Barbados from Yellow Ramp at Pope 

Air Force Base. Yellow Ramp was the corps departure area located some distance from Green Ramp. The passengers included an arrival-departure airfield 

control group from Capt. Harley C. Barr II’s 403d Transportation Company, 

7th Transportation Battalion; Col. Robert C. Barrett Jr.’s advance party from 

the 1st Support Command; and Maj. William J. Elder Jr.’s Task Force B from 

the 82d Aviation Battalion with two medical evacuation helicopters from the 

57th Medical Detachment attached.36

Of these disparate elements, the aviators experienced the most difficulty 

making arrangements to depart. Once Major Elder’s men had broken down their 

helicopters at Green Ramp, they moved them by truck to Yellow Ramp where 

the C–5As were expected. In the confusion of the moment, however, someone 

forgot to notify the 57th’s two pilots, CWO2 Robert L. Beaty and CWO3 William 

C. Garmond, of the move. The 57th’s maintenance officer finally located Task 

Force B and secured transportation to take the stranded pilots and their helicopters to Yellow Ramp. After a three-hour interval, Beaty and Garmond rejoined 

Elder’s task force. Although the 82d Aviation Battalion did not issue a written 

operations order, the pilots received a detailed briefing on the deployment plan. 

By 1200 on 25 October the task force and its attached element were in chalk 

order and ready to load. The only things lacking were C–5As.37

34 Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, pp. X-19 

to X-21, Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH; Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and Wade 

with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 35 Interv, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

36 Msg, Mackmull to Cavazos, 26 0742[Z] Oct 1983, sub: COSCOM CSS Units Committed 

to Urgent Fury, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 37 Intervs, Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983; GWG with Elder and McWilliams, 14 Dec 

1983; author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986; and Wade with Beaty and Garmond, [Nov 1983]. All in 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Division-Rear Support

309

The first of the six C–5As did not arrive at Pope Air Force Base until 

approximately 1800 on 25 October. By then, transport aircraft from all over 

the country were lining the base’s ramps. Each was surrounded by knots of 

men and equipment. The situation that greeted the C–5A crews when they 

reported to the operations building appeared even more confused. The pilots 

requested their loads, but Air Force operations told them that the Army was 

not ready. The aircrews departed for supper, but when they returned they 

found that nothing had changed. Air Force operations thought that the 82d 

Aviation Battalion personnel were still disassembling their helicopters. Clearly 

Green Ramp and Yellow Ramp at Pope Air Force Base 
The Rucksack War

310

communications had broken down somewhere between the battalion and the 

Air Force.38

One C–5A departed Yellow Ramp as early as 2124 on 25 October carrying 

Captain Barr and his arrival-departure airfield control group that would assist 

with unloading the battalion at Barbados. Three of the passengers aboard the 

flight, however, had nothing to do with the deployment of the 82d Aviation 

Battalion and everything to do with the 1st Support Command’s control of 

Yellow Ramp. The commander of the 1st Support Command, Col. William 

J. Richardson Jr., had despaired of getting Colonel Barrett’s advance team 

from Green Ramp to Grenada in a timely fashion given the torpid nature of 

the airflow to the island. Colonel Richardson, however, calculated that Barrett 

could fly from Yellow Ramp to Barbados, hitch a ride on a C–130 to Point 

Salines, and arrive on Grenada more quickly than if he waited for a direct 

flight from Green Ramp. Consequently, he arranged for Barrett, his sergeant, 

and his driver to ride with Barr.39

The first C–5A carrying elements of Major Elder’s command, however, 

did not depart until almost three hours later, 0019 on 26 October, while the 

last one carrying helicopters left at 0900 that same day. Although the original 

aviation plan called for Task Force B’s maintenance personnel to fly by C–141 

directly to Grenada, the presence of an additional C–5A and the slow movement of C–141s out of Green Ramp led the aviation battalion’s rear commander, Maj. George S. Eyster IV, to send some of them and their vehicles on 

the sixth C–5A. It took off at 1149 on 26 October.40

3d Brigade Deploys

First light on 25 October revealed a problem to Major Causey and the men 

and women manning the supply lines at the equipment supply issue point and the 

individual issue ammunition point: litter. Pieces of packing material and discarded 

boxes covered the entire area as though the place had been the site of a gigantic 

beer bash the night before. Between the personnel holding area and Green Ramp, 

82d Support Command soldiers found evidence that some 2d Brigade members 

had considered a double load of ammunition too heavy. The debris they had left 

behind along the road consisted primarily of discarded munitions. One dumpster 

was also full of a wide assortment of live rounds. While ordnance specialists collected the ammunition, Causey put fatigue parties to work clearing the area in 

anticipation of more customers. He did not have long to wait.41

38 Interv, Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Seigle talked to the 

aircrew shortly after they arrived in Barbados to find out the reason for the delay. 39 Intervs, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and author with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 40 Msg, Mackmull to CINCARLANT DCSOPS and DCSLOG, 28 1155[Z] Oct 1983, Win 

Telecon Msgs (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH; Interv, Baribeau with Eyster, 9 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. Eyster does not comment about the incident other than to mention the 

difficulty of deploying maintenance personnel and equipment from Green Ramp. The Military 

Airlift Command history of the operation does not treat this episode. 41 Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and author with Baker-Kimmel and Katz, 18 

Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Division-Rear Support

311

The 3d Brigade had completed its assembly by 0700 on 25 October. At this 

time the commander, Col. James T. Scott, met with his battalion commanders 

to brief them on Urgent Fury.He opined that the brigade had a less than 

50-50 chance of participating in the operation but told them that he would 

know more after the division’s advance elements were on the ground. Colonel 

Scott had spoken too quickly. General Trobaugh and the first infantrymen 

from the 2d Brigade reached Point Salines at 1405. At 1530, almost simultaneous with the attack by Grenadian armored personnel carriers, Trobaugh 

radioed General Smith his open-ended request for reinforcements. Smith had 

no doubt as to Trobaugh’s meaning. Trobaugh wanted the 3d Brigade as soon 

as possible.42

Almost six hours later, at 2120, General Trobaugh sent a more formal 

request for reinforcements to the Joint Task Force 120 commander, V. Adm. 

Joseph Metcalf III, specifying another brigade headquarters and four additional infantry battalions. Admiral Metcalf radioed back that “at the present time no additional forces are authorized” but promised further information in the morning. Later that night Trobaugh decided that he needed all of 

Company D, 82d Aviation Battalion, and an additional platoon of UH–60s. 

While evidence that he radioed this requirement back to Fort Bragg is lacking, 

Trobaugh seems to have included it when he passed his concept of operations 

to Metcalf at 2345.43

Admiral Metcalf forwarded the request for reinforcements to Admiral 

McDonald, who in turn sent it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the early morning hours of 26 October Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger approved 

the deployment of an additional brigade task force of two airborne infantry 

battalions to commence at 1100 the same day. At 0817 the U.S. Army, Atlantic, 

commander, General Richard E. Cavazos, informed General Mackmull that he 

was to deploy the force. Ten minutes after the deployment began, McDonald 

notified U.S. Readiness Command that Secretary Weinberger had amended his 

earlier order to read four airborne infantry battalions. The secretary also gave 

some specific guidance as to the sequence of deployment, requesting “that 

Cobra gunships and Black Hawk helicopters be afforded a high priority in the 

loading schedule.”44

These decisions lay behind an N-sequence for the 3d Brigade that lasted 

more than twenty-four hours. In the early afternoon of 25 October Colonel 

Scott met once more with his commanders and indicated that the brigade, 

organized as a task force, was going to move to the corps marshaling area. 

42 Intervs, McMichael with McFarren, 17 Nov 1983; Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983; and 

author with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Jnl, 82d Abn Div 

Assault CP, 25 Oct 1983, 1405–1655, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 43 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 25 Oct 1983, 1955–2335 (quoted words), 2345, and 26 Oct 

1983, 0025, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 44 Ibid.; Msgs, USCINCLANT to RHCLUAAA/CINCMAC, 26 0846Z Oct 1983, and 

USCINCLANT to USCINCRED, 26 1510Z Oct 1983 (quoted words), ODO Significant Events 

file, Hist files (PDocs/DA/AOC), CMH. While the order in McDonald’s 1510Z message states 

“the Secretary of Defense directs,” the evidence suggests that General Vessey may have made 

this decision in the name of the secretary.
The Rucksack War

312

Lt. Col. George A. Crocker’s 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry, would go first, 

followed by the Lt. Col. Hubert S. Shaw Jr.’s 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry. 

Lt. Col. Keith M. Nightengale’s 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, would bring 

up the rear. Because Colonel Nightengale had contributed the round-out 

company for Colonel Hamilton’s battalion, he had only two rather than the 

normal three rifle companies in his unit. Colonel Scott also announced that 

the 1st Battalion, 319th Field Artillery, the unit habitually associated with the 

brigade, would deploy by half batteries just as the 2d Brigade’s artillery battalion had done. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Freddy E. McFarren, first 

learned of this deployment scheme at the meeting.45

Colonel Scott planned for Colonel Crocker’s battalion to lift off at 2400 

on 25 October and for the remainder of the brigade to depart by 1000 on 

26 October. Colonel McFarren, who had just returned from Green Ramp, 

however, was skeptical of the deployment schedule. He suspected that the Air 

Force did not have enough aircraft on hand to support this schedule. He was 

right. The 3d Brigade’s departure time was changed three or four times in the 

next few hours. The brigade command post and Crocker’s battalion finally 

moved to the personnel holding area about 1900.46

The 3d Brigade’s move to Green Ramp constituted for the soldiers manning and replenishing the supply points yet another wave of troops needing to 

draw contingency items. After the 2d Brigade’s two battalions had departed, 

the intensity of the effort at the supply points declined markedly albeit briefly 

until the 3d Brigade arrived. The slowing pace reflected in part the growing 

fatigue of the 82d Support Command personnel, most of whom had begun 

twelve-hour shifts around midday on 25 October while some had remained on 

duty from the night before. They eventually had to work in the rain and cold 

for over forty-eight hours before being relieved. In one respect the weather 

aided the operation; everyone had to keep active just to stay warm. Fortunately, 

despite their exhaustion, no one collapsed.47

The actual loading followed the same pattern as the 2d Brigade’s deployment but without the terrible time pressures that had confronted Colonel 

Silvasy and his men. As a consequence, the 3d Brigade’s S–1, 1st Lt. Michael 

A. Rizzo, was able to prepare a by-name roster of the members of the brigade 

who actually boarded the aircraft. Vinson gear was no problem for the unit 

either. The brigade had converted to the new equipment prior to the operation, so the unit avoided scenes of frantic last-minute secure radio instruction 

in the personnel holding area. Colonel Scott even managed to have hot food 

served to the troops before they departed.48

45 Intervs, Bishop with Nightengale, 16 Nov 1983, and McMichael with McFarren, 17 Nov 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 46 Intervs, McMichael with McFarren, 17 Nov 1983, and Wade with Rizzo, [Nov 1983], Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 47 Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and with 

Vitucci, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 48 Intervs, Wade with Rizzo, [Nov 1983], and Hicks with Pitts, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Division-Rear Support

313

Unlike the 2d Brigade, moreover, at least some of the men of the 3d 

Brigade were able to draw jungle uniforms and boots once they reached the 

equipment supply point. No 81-mm. mortar ammunition was available, however. One battalion commander elected to take his mortars anyway in the hope 

that he would receive ammunition after he arrived on the island; the other two 

left theirs behind. The individual issue ammunition point once again ran short 

of .45-caliber ammunition. In a few instances, the 82d Support Command 

had to issue fewer bullets plane-side at Green Ramp than the men who carried .45s desired. Otherwise, the equipment and ammunition issue proceeded 

without incident. Colonel Scott decided not to try to bring A-bags, and the 

men packed all their issue into rucksacks, which weighed between seventy and 

eighty pounds when they finished loading them. The lead C–141, carrying 

Colonel Scott, his S–4, Capt. Joseph Pitts Jr., and Colonel Crocker, left Green 

Ramp promptly at 1100 on 26 October.49

Not until 2100, when General Smith received an informational copy of 

General Trobaugh’s message to Admiral Metcalf calling for a brigade headquarters and four infantry battalions, did General Smith know definitely that 

Trobaugh wanted more than simply the 3d Brigade deployed. Trobaugh’s 1530 

“send me battalions” message, however, had a certain open-ended quality 

about it that led some officers to consider what battalions the division could 

send after the 3d Brigade departed. Aside from Colonel Scott’s command, 

four infantry battalions remained on post: the 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry, 

from the 2d Brigade, and the three battalions of the 1st Brigade—the 1st and 

2d Battalions, 504th Infantry, and the 2d Battalion, 508th Infantry. Before his 

departure General Trobaugh had decided that the 1st of the 325th would not 

participate in the Grenada operation because of its upcoming mission in the 

Sinai. He also requested that the Department of the Army rescind orders for 

the 1st Brigade headquarters and the 1st of the 504th to participate in a North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization exercise in early November, but as of 2120 on 

25 October it had not announced a decision. Meanwhile, U.S. Army Forces 

Command had scheduled the 2d of the 504th for Arctic training in Alaska 

beginning in mid-November. That left only Col. Ralph E. Newman’s 2d of the 

508th, which was acting as the loading battalion.50

The 1st Brigade commander, Col. Henry H. Shelton, became concerned as 

soon as General Trobaugh indicated that he required reinforcements. Colonel 

Shelton talked to General Smith about the situation and began to monitor 

events closely. Three considerations figured into any decision to change the 

order in which the 1st Brigade’s battalions would deploy. Colonel Newman’s 

men had just done much of the heavy manual labor required in an emergency deployment readiness exercise; they were physically spent; and, equally 

49 Intervs, Hicks with Pitts, [Nov 1983], and with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, plus Wade with 

Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d 

Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 50 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Intervs, Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985] (quoted words), and Bishop with Trobaugh, 

30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

314

important, they had given up weapons and equipment to fill deficiencies 

in the deploying battalions. Naturally, 

Shelton preferred to send a fresh battalion supplied at or close to the levels prescribed by its table of organization and equipment. Regarding 

the progression of unit preparedness 

established by the division-ready system essential to the 82d’s sense of 

professionalism and esprit de corps, 

he strongly believed that deploying 

Newman’s battalion next rather than 

as the last in the sequence might shatter the morale of the units bypassed 

and set a terrible precedent.51

By the night of 25 October, 

with the division still waiting for the 

Department of the Army to respond, 

Colonel Shelton reluctantly decided 

that he could wait no longer. He thus 

shifted Colonel Newman’s battalion 

to Division Ready Force-7 status and 

redesignated the 1st Battalion, 504th 

Infantry, as the outloading battalion. Once General Trobaugh’s request for 

four additional battalions arrived, however, General Smith reassigned the 

mission to the 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry, Colonel Hurst’s unit. This had a 

domino effect on Shelton’s battalions: Newman’s battalion became Division 

Ready Force-6; the 2d Battalion, 504th Infantry, Division Ready Force-7; and 

the 1st Battalion, 504th Infantry, Division Ready Force-8, without ever having 

performed the mission.52

Around 2200 on 25 October an officer in the 1st Brigade’s S–3 section 

telephoned Colonel Newman, explained the situation, and asked if his battalion could deploy if the division had to send a sixth battalion. Newman did 

not hesitate. “You bet I can. We are the ones that ought to go.” The officer was 

quick to emphasize that the discussion was for planning purposes only, but 

Newman nonetheless called his company commanders together to give them a 

warning order. That night they put together a list of their minimum missionessential equipment and identified their equipment deficiencies. Newman told 

his commanders that troops not committed at that moment to supporting the 

loading of the task force should pack their rucksacks.53

51 Interv, author with Shelton, 18 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

52 Ibid.; Msg, HQDA to Cavazos, 28 1745[Z] Oct 1983, sub: CRISEX 83, WIN Telecon 

Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 53 Intervs, Bishop with R. Newman, 16 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and with J. A. Hamilton, 

16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Shelton as a brigadier general
Division-Rear Support

315

At 0700 on 26 October Colonel Newman received another call from brigade headquarters directing him to execute the handoff of the outloading mission to the 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry. He still had work details scattered all 

over the post, but by 0900 Colonel Hurst’s men had relieved them. Newman 

immediately went to Green Ramp to talk to Colonel Scott, but current news 

was difficult to obtain. As Newman later reported, “We were to the point 

that . . . they would ask the crews [of aircraft returning from Grenada], ‘Hey, 

what is going on on the ground? Any action going on down there now?’” All 

information in division-rear came from the emergency operations center duty 

officers who monitored radio traffic. Scott told Newman what little he knew. 

Cuban resistance was stronger than expected. Newman’s battalion would be 

attached to the 3d Brigade. “I don’t have any idea what your mission is going 

to be down there,” Scott said, “but when you get on the ground I will have a 

guide to meet your aircraft.” Newman told Scott that he would be in his battalion’s lead aircraft. At this point, he had no idea whether his force would deploy 

as a body or in “bits and pieces.”54

Newman’s unit, the 2d Battalion, 508th Infantry, was unusual compared to 

most other U.S. Army battalions in October 1983 because almost all of its officers but one had worked together for over a year. The one exception was the 

commander of Company B who had joined in the fall of 1983. All the others 

knew both their jobs and one another. Consequently, they could accomplish 

the mission with a minimum of supervision and no friction. 

They also had willing workers. The men’s morale shot up once they learned 

they were going to Grenada. As a result, within seven hours of General Smith’s 

alert, the battalion had assembled; moved to the personnel holding area; and 

drawn its equipment, supplies, and ammunition. Even if the troops were very 

professional, however, they were also very tired. Colonel Newman also knew 

from his recent visit to Green Ramp that conditions there were such that his 

unit could not deploy anytime soon. What his men needed most of all was a 

good night’s rest. He convinced Smith to allow the battalion, now fully armed 

and equipped, to return to its barracks.55

The next morning the men, now rested, moved to Green Ramp. There the 

deployment went smoothly. The battalion assistant S–3 for air, 1st Lt. James 

R. Lunsford, a veteran of many air movements, knew all the Army and Air 

Force transportation personnel at Green Ramp on a first-name basis. He succeeded in getting six aircraft scheduled for the battalion so that it could move 

as a unit. Even so, Colonel Newman had to leave all his vehicles behind, and 

he received no assurances as to whether or when any of them, with their loads 

of ammunition, radios, and supplies, would deploy. He only knew that his rear 

detachment would forward them in accord with a priority vehicle list he had 

drafted before he departed. He was, nevertheless, very fortunate because his 

entire battalion actually deployed as a group. In contrast, some elements of 

Colonel Shaw’s and Colonel Nightengale’s battalions were still at Green Ramp 

54 Interv, Bishop with R. Newman, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

55 Ibid.; Interv, Wells with Quinones, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

316

when the last of Newman’s men left. Both of these units were supposed to 

precede the 2d Battalion, 508th Infantry, but the congestion of the airflow and 

competing priorities fragmented them even before they left Pope Air Force 

Base.56

The problems at Green Ramp were not restricted to the Army. The constant arrival and departure of aircraft, the taxiing of planes from one position 

on the ramp to another, and the entry of new Army units to the area produced 

confusion in Air Force loading procedures as well. Capt. James M. Morris IV’s 

Company C, 2d Battalion, 508th Infantry, for example, had a not untypical 

experience when it attempted to board a C–141 on 27 October. An airlift control element guide led the unit’s 139 men past a long line of C–141s. Captain 

Morris was concentrating so hard on making certain that no aircraft taxied 

into his men that he only belatedly realized that the aircraft around him were 

C–130s, not C–141s. He called to the airman, “Hey, pal, what [tail] number are 

you looking for?” The airman told him. Morris queried further: “A C–141?” 

When the airman responded in the affirmative, Morris pointed out that only 

C–130s were in the vicinity. “Oh, yeah,” said the airman, “that’s right.”57

The company countermarched to a row of C–141s. The airman led the 

troops to the third aircraft, which was so well camouflaged that Captain 

Morris could not read the tail number. He prepared to board his men, only to 

discover that the aircraft was full of people. The airman tried to call the airlift 

control element headquarters, but his handheld radio refused to work. “Of 

course,” remembered Morris, by this time “my troops are looking at me like I 

don’t know which end is up.” Morris told them to sit down and instructed the 

airman to return to the airlift control element’s operations office to find out 

which aircraft the company was supposed to board.58

Eventually the airman returned. “[It] is just like I said. It was the one that 

we were headed out to the first time.” So Captain Morris and his company 

retraced their steps yet again. They passed beyond the C–130 parking area 

and began to turn into the tarmac to reach their designated aircraft. A C–141 

taxied into the gap through which Morris intended to march his men. They 

circled the obstacle. Another C–141 taxied into the company’s approach route. 

Only on the third attempt did the unit reach its goal, but the aircraft was 

already fully loaded. Morris had his men sit down while he collected himself. 

All around units were boarding whatever empty aircraft they could find. He 

found a partially loaded aircraft and convinced the crew, after some negotiations, to load his entire company. The new passengers exceeded the seating 

capacity, and Morris ended up standing. The effort was worth it, however, 

because the aircraft soon took off for Grenada. The loading system had broken down, but initiative and hard work at the small-unit and aircrew level kept 

reinforcements flowing to the Caribbean.59

56 Intervs, Bishop with R. Newman, 16 Nov 1983, and with J. A. Hamilton, 16 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 57 Interv, Burdett with Morris, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.
Division-Rear Support

317

Green Ramp Solutions

The 82d Support Command personnel’s speed, intensity, and focus on myriad deployment tasks meant that neither Colonel Daly nor his executive officer, 

Colonel Kelly, became aware of the 330th Transportation Center’s departure 

from Green Ramp until early Wednesday morning, 26 October. Upon learning 

this information, Kelly went forward and relieved Colonel Hurst of the movement control responsibility. Kelly found a very difficult situation: “Everybody 

that thought they were somebody felt that they were next and that was a major 

problem.” In effect, they wanted precedence over what General Trobaugh had 

ordered to go to Grenada.60

Colonel Kelly’s first concern was to transfer the Provisional Movement 

Control Center from the personnel holding area to Green Ramp, where little if 

any room was available. After “a slight turf dispute,” Kelly took over a lounge 

belonging to the corps arrival-departure airfield control group. A small cubical, 

admirably suited to accommodate the coffee breaks for which it was designed, 

the room had to be wired for telephones. It took Kelly two days to get the 

communications gear he needed in place. By 29 October he had commercial 

telephones and Vinson-equipped radios giving him not only dedicated secure 

channels to General Smith’s office and the G–3 and G–4 sections at division 

headquarters but also access to the common-user secure net, the Worldwide 

Military Command and Control System. He eventually acquired a facsimile 

machine. Because the division assault command post at Point Salines obtained 

similar equipment on the same day, Kelly now could fax to Major Cleary messages that gave the departure time, tail number, number of passengers, and 

cargo of each aircraft as it took off. General Smith offered to move the AN/

URC–101 tactical satellite radio from division headquarters to the Provisional 

Movement Control Center, but Kelly demurred. Limited space was a real consideration, and the facsimile machine was all that he needed.61

Brilliant improvisation though it was, all this took days, and in the interim 

Colonel Kelly had only limited means to exercise effective control at Green 

Ramp. He was the single point of contact for the loading process that the 

Army so desperately required, but, because the arrangements were ad hoc, it 

took time for him to establish effective working relationships with the busy 

men and women at the departure airfield. He became an effective single point 

of contact only when everyone recognized his role and began to deal with him 

accordingly.62

The arrival of Colonel Scott and the 3d Brigade at Green Ramp put additional pressure on command and control in the area. When Scott appeared, much 

of the round-out supplies and equipment for the 2d Brigade had yet to depart. 

60 Interv, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

61 Ibid. (quoted words); Intervs, Wade with Vitucci, [Nov 1983], and with Causey, 16 Nov 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 62 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-13, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and author with Daly, 31 Jul 

1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

318

The change in priority––from the combat support and combat service support 

elements of the 2d Brigade Task Force to the four infantry battalions of the 3d 

Brigade––meant that loads that had already crossed the scales onto Green Ramp 

had to be completely altered, some as many as three times in one hour.63

Aside from the additional labor involved, the changes produced two unfortunate results. First, up to this time division logisticians may have lacked a precise 

count of every item they sent; however, because they were following a scenario 

often exercised using largely prepackaged equipment and supplies, they could 

accurately estimate the amounts shipped in each class of supply. The confusion and strain that resulted from substituting new 3d Brigade chalks for those 

of the 2d Brigade—some already aboard planes—became so great that the 82d 

Support Command personnel lost track of what was at Green Ramp.64

The second difficulty centered on the Automated Airframe Load Planning 

System, which proved too slow and too imprecise to handle the task at hand. 

The Provisional Movement Control Center load planners contacted Military 

Airlift Command representatives, who loaned them the software program 

called Deployable Mobility Execution System that produced load plans and 

manifests using actual weights and dimensions. The program could not generate an estimate of the number of aircraft needed to lift specified forces and 

63 Interv, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

64 Ibid.; Intervs, Hicks with Mason, [Nov 1983], and Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH.

Colonel Scott (right) and Colonel Halley (left) discussing operational details with 

Colonel Boylan (center)
Division-Rear Support

319

their accompanying equipment—for this the load planners continued to rely 

on the Automated Airframe Load Planning System—but it did aid immensely 

in planning the loads of individual aircraft.65

When Colonel Crabtree went to Green Ramp on the night of 25 October, 

the resupply packages that he found outside the entrance to the ramp were 

examples of what logisticians referred to as push packages. A logistician in 

the rear area sent forward supplies he expected the troops would require in the 

area of operations. For certain kinds of consumables such as water and food, 

historical data combined with knowledge of the terrain, the climate, and the 

number of deployed troops to permit an accurate projection of consumption 

rates per day. Other commodities, such as ammunition, required the monitoring of operational message traffic to determine usage. Logisticians assumed 

that almost all resupply would be of the push sort early in an airborne operation. Only when a forward headquarters expanded, communications improved, 

and logistical elements built up in the area of operations would resupply shift 

to a demand system, where the unit involved requested the kinds and amounts 

of supplies and equipment it needed.

Resupply problems—both the composition of push packages and the necessity to replenish quickly stocks at Fort Bragg—dominated Colonel Daly’s thinking on the night of 25–26 October. He spent most of the night in the 182d Materiel 

Management Center at the personnel holding area. In the course of discussing 

the supply situation with Major Causey, Daly asked him to arrange a meeting 

with all the key logisticians or their representatives for the next morning.66

The logisticians gathered at 1100 on 26 October in the division G–4’s office. 

In addition to Colonels Daly and Crabtree and Major Causey, participants 

included the corps G–4, Colonel Mitchell; a liaison officer from the U.S. Army 

Materiel Development and Readiness Command, Lt. Col. Richard G. Kurtz; 

and an officer from 1st Support Command representing Colonel Richardson. 

The group discussed the amount of materiel in each class of supply forwarded 

to the area of operations, how current and future operations would affect 

demand, and what they would have to do to keep pace. Just as the meeting 

broke up, Daly and Crabtree learned that General Trobaugh had ordered them 

to deploy to Grenada as soon as possible.67

Neither officer had anticipated that he might join the assault command 

post. The division’s field standing operating procedures assumed that both 

the G–4 and the division support commander would remain in division-rear. 

Trobaugh’s message suggested that he had realized that at least part of the 

82d’s logistical problems came from his end of the airflow.68

65 LL, DALO-PLO, 5 Jan 1984, sub: Use of Deployable Mobility Execution System, filed 

with Interv, author with Mickelson, 23 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 66 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 67 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Briefing Slides, 82d DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH. 68 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.
The Rucksack War

320

Of the two, Crabtree had the easier task than Daly. He and several G–4 

section members caught an aircraft at Green Ramp and arrived on Grenada 

the same day. In addition to his responsibilities as division transportation 

officer, Major Perkins assumed Crabtree’s duties at Fort Bragg. Daly, for 

his part, deciding that to be effective he would need a small staff, took some 

time to assemble the requisite officers and equipment. He appropriated not 

only Major Causey’s executive officer, Capt. Gary L. Pasquale, to be dualhatted as his executive officer and as the division materiel center-forward commander but also some of Causey’s key assistants (including one specializing 

in petroleum, oils, and lubricants) and four noncommissioned officers. From 

his staff, Daly brought his assistant S–3, Capt. Raymond V. Mason; his S–1; 

and his communications-electronics officer. Colonel Kelly succeeded Daly to 

oversee the 82d Support Command-Rear. To allow Kelly to concentrate on 

Green Ramp, which Daly now regarded as the number one logistical problem 

in division-rear, Daly told Causey that he was to act as the primary logistician 

for interaction with the Army’s wholesale supply system. Although he coordinated closely with Kelly during the next two weeks, Causey operated with a 

good deal of autonomy.69

RESUPPLY AND REINFORCEMENT

Shortly after the aircraft carrying Colonel Scott and the 3d Brigade advance 

elements departed, the airflow mysteriously stopped. Lacking a direct communications link with Grenada at this time, Colonel Kelly had no way of finding 

out what had happened. He just knew that aircraft were stacking up at Pope 

Air Force Base while units backed up at Green Ramp. In fact, the Air Force 

had closed the airfield at Point Salines when General Trobaugh launched an 

airmobile operation to rescue medical students at Grand Anse. For the movement control officer, an already difficult situation became worse when various outside agencies—among them the White House, the State Department, 

and the Central Intelligence Agency—pressed to send certain very important 

people to Grenada immediately. It appeared to Kelly that the Federal Bureau 

of Investigation was the only government agency not attempting to put people 

aboard an airplane bound for Grenada. Eventually, the Air Force opened the 

Point Salines airfield again and flow of flights resumed. Even so, the delay 

kept Colonel Daly and his staff from boarding an outbound aircraft until 27 

October.70

Remaining continuously at Green Ramp during this period, eating and 

sleeping at odd moments, Colonel Kelly attempted to anticipate what items the 

troops in the area of operations would consume most rapidly and to rig pallets 

of those supplies. He placed one or more of these pallets in whatever odd space 

was left once an aircraft was loaded. Water, an important item on the first 

resupply aircraft that Colonel Crabtree loaded on the evening of 25 October, 

69 Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, plus author with 

Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with F. Perkins, 14 Jul and 4 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also 

Briefing Slides, 82d DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH. 70 Interv, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Division-Rear Support

321

continued to be a primary concern. It 

went south in 5-gallon cans and in 50- 

and 500-gallon collapsible rubberized 

bladders. At Kelly’s direction, 82d 

Support Command personnel also 

handed 5-gallon cans to departing 

troopers in the 3d Brigade for them to 

carry to the island.71

The demand for drinking water 

on the Point Salines Peninsula 

became so great that the 3d Battalion, 

325th Infantry, S–4, 1st Lt. Randall 

L. McClure, was able to load his battalion’s vehicles on aircraft headed 

south despite Trobaugh’s decision 

to cut off the movement of the 2d 

Brigade round-out equipment and 

supplies. Because his battalion commander, Lt. Col. John W. Raines, had 

directed him to load the unit’s vehicles 

and trailers with water, Lieutenant 

McClure used a combination of his 

own guile, forcefulness, previous outloading experience, and history of 

good relations with the Army and Air Force personnel at Green Ramp plus 

widespread knowledge of the shortage to ensure that essentially all his battalion’s transport arrived on the island. He even got the marines and vehicles 

from the 2d Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company assigned to support his 

unit shipped south when they arrived at Green Ramp. The 3d of the 325th thus 

became the only infantry battalion in the operation that received virtually all 

of its vehicles and the supplies they contained.72

Priorities at Green Ramp could and did shift with dramatic speed. On 

the evening of 26 October division-forward radioed General Smith to stop 

sending artillery. Colonel Kelly had aircraft loaded and ready to take off filled 

with 105-mm. howitzers. He had to pull them out of line, unload the guns, 

and load something else in their place. This was the third major reconfiguration of aircraft loads in two days. An hour later Major Cleary radioed back 

from Grenada (using the AN/URC–101 in the division assault command post) 

that the division needed additional ammunition, particularly 105-mm. shells, 

in anticipation of a three-battalion push north the following day. Kelly was 

surprised, for the message traffic monitored by emergency operations center 

duty officers did not suggest that the division was expending sufficient artillery 

71 Ibid.; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], pp. 8–9, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 72 Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], and Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH.

Colonel Raines
The Rucksack War

322

shells to require resupply. Consequently, while Kelly had ample amounts of 

other types of munitions available, he had to order the desired mix of illumination, antitank, and high-explosive rounds from the ammunition supply 

point.73

The change caused a series of modifications down the line. The 8th 

Ordnance Company at the ammunition supply point had to break down prepared pallets and build and net new ones to match the order before the resupply package could move to Green Ramp. In the meantime, two empty aircraft 

that air operations had dispatched to Green Ramp had to wait a considerable 

amount of time before the ammunition arrived. Then air operations had to 

hold up two aircraft ready to depart so that the two aircraft with the shells 

could take off. Incidents such as this convinced Military Airlift Command 

officers that the 82d Airborne Division had little idea of how to make the most 

efficient use of its airlift.

The demand for a large number of shells on the night of 25–26 October 

clearly indicated that General Trobaugh believed that his task force had some 

heavy fighting ahead of it. In addition to Colonels Crabtree and Daly, Trobaugh 

also ordered his artillery commander, Col. Fred W. Halley, to fly south with his 

staff, a further indication of the division commander’s assessment of what lay 

ahead—a combined arms battle for the capital of St. George’s. Colonel Halley 

encountered the same difficulties that Daly did with the airflow. In fact, Daly, 

having at last secured space for himself and his staff aboard a C–141, offered 

to give Halley and his men a ride. They departed for Grenada together.74

In the midst of efforts to get the ammunition resupply sorted out, several commercial trucks forced their way onto Green Ramp. The drivers began 

unloading cases of soda pop for immediate shipment, they said, to the troops 

on Grenada. A high-ranking officer had contacted the manufacturer, who had 

donated the beverage. Colonel Kelly intervened personally and directed his 

people to stack the soda to the side. He shipped a case at a time on a spaceavailable basis once air movement resumed, but only after each aircraft had 

received its planned load.75

Colonel Kelly followed much the same procedure when ration supplement sundry packs, consisting of personal hygiene items, began arriving 

on 28 October. The troops had carried very few of these articles with them 

when they left for Grenada. Instead, the division G–4, Colonel Crabtree, had 

requested them shortly after the division’s arrival on Grenada. Capt. Richard 

F. Rachmeler in the corps G–4 section attempted unsuccessfully to obtain the 

packs from the Defense Personnel Support Center, which required sixty to 

73 For this and the following paragraph, see Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983]; 

Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983; author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul and 7 Aug 1986; Wade with 

Cleary, 19 Nov 1983, and with Causey, 16 Nov 1983; and McMichael with Baggett, [Nov 1983], 

and with McFarren, 17 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Draft AAR, Opn 

Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 74 Interv, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

75 Ibid. For more of the descriptive details, see Interv, author with McElroy, 30 Apr 1984, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Division-Rear Support

323

ninety days advance notice to procure, assemble, and distribute them. Captain 

Rachmeler also learned that, according to policy, only units in combat for at 

least thirty days were eligible for these amenities. Blocked in official channels, 

General Mackmull made funds available for the wives’ associations on post 

to purchase the articles at the Fort Bragg commissary. The women went to 

work at 1145 on 28 October and by 1630 had packed one hundred boxes, each 

containing amenities for fifty men. 82d Support Command personnel then collected the boxes. Despite Kelly’s reluctance to handle the sundry packs while 

conditions at Green Ramp remained confused, he overcame his distaste and 

succeeded in sending ninety boxes into the area of operations the next day.76

The soda pop and the sundry packs were concrete evidence of how much 

people in the United States wanted to help the troops on Grenada. Neither 

one was a bad idea, even though hot soda on a tropical island was hardly the 

best of morale boosters. The somewhat exaggerated reaction of 82d Support 

Command personnel to the appearance of these morale items reflected their 

fatigue and the strain under which they worked rather than the difficulty of 

moving either soda or sundry packs to the area of operations. On the other 

hand, the fact that people tried to force these items through the bottleneck at 

Green Ramp indicated how little anyone not actually present at the ramp knew 

of conditions there. This was not surprising. Until the very end of the operation, information about the logistical situation remained difficult to obtain. 

The dearth of reports reflected the logisticians’ lack of participation in the 

early planning for Urgent Fury. They had to react constantly to crises, and 

as a result they were almost always one crisis behind.

There were, of course, some exceptions. Colonel Kelly, for one, suspected 

that the 2d Brigade would need a communications repair shelter early in the 

operation. He attempted to deploy one with a crew of technicians but ran into 

objections from the division-rear staff. General Trobaugh’s need in their view 

was for infantry, not a maintenance shed. Kelly fought the issue “tooth and 

nail” but lost out until 27 October, when division-forward began demanding 

more AN/PRC–77 radios. Those in the area of operations were going out of 

commission at an alarming rate. Although Kelly did send additional radios, he 

solved the real problem by forwarding the repair shelter. When it arrived, the 

technicians quickly reduced the backlog of inoperable radios.77

As the operation became less hectic, Kelly began attending the evening briefings for the corps and division commanders. In describing the loads that he was 

sending to Grenada during the next twenty-four hours, he learned quickly that 

he needed to choose his words very carefully. If he said, “military police,” for 

example, he usually found himself in a long, involved explanation on why that 

particular chalk was necessary. If he said, “guards for the prisoners of war,” no 

one raised any objections. Kelly also discovered that he had to worry about the 

76 Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and author with McElroy, 30 Nov 1984, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. D, I-D-1 

and I-D-7, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; ibid., 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 

4-27, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 77 Interv, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

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reactions of headquarters higher than XVIII Airborne Corps. As the operation proceeded, for example, public health became a concern for the soldiers, 

detainees, and refugees in the restricted area at Point Salines. In response, the 

colonel inserted a decontamination squad from the 21st Chemical Company 

equipped with a portable shower into the line at Green Ramp. Everyone on 

the corps and division staffs at Fort Bragg understood the rationale, and no 

one raised any objections when he noted the squad’s imminent departure at 

the evening briefing. As normal, XVIII Airborne Corps sent a synopsis of the 

briefing to Forces Command and an information copy to Atlantic Command. 

Atlantic Command immediately objected, but by then departure times had 

improved, and the decontamination squad had already left.78

The arrival on Grenada of Colonel Barrett’s advance party from the 1st 

Support Command had an immediate and positive impact on logistical support. 

Soon after Barrett stepped off the C–130 that carried his team from Barbados, 

he began identifying deficiencies. Using the AN/URC–101 in the assault command post, he radioed his observations back to Colonel Richardson at Fort 

Bragg. This information allowed Richardson to forecast some of the logistical 

requirements in the area of operations and act accordingly. Barrett discovered 

one problem almost immediately. The division needed an explosive ordnance 

disposal team. Forces Command had already anticipated this requirement and 

directed the commander of the 542d Ordnance Detachment located at Fort 

Dix, New Jersey, Maj. Alan L. Borchers, to prepare to deploy both his unit 

and the 48th Ordnance Detachment from Fort Jackson, Mississippi. General 

Cavazos attached them to the 1st Support Command for the duration of the 

operation.79

The two detachments arrived at Green Ramp, ready to deploy at 1300 

on 26 October. It was, as Colonel Richardson noted, an impressively speedy 

response, but then the detachments got caught up in the congestion there. 

To get some explosives experts to the island, Colonel Kelly had to divide the 

group. An advance party led by Major Borchers, consisting of a two-man control element and one three-man response team deployed on 29 October. The 

remaining personnel followed on 2 November.80

Even before Colonel Barrett deployed to Grenada, Colonel Richardson 

had anticipated that the 2d Brigade Task Force would need graves registration 

support at an early stage. He alerted the corps graves registration team at 0715 

on 25 October and attached it to 82d Support Command’s 407th Supply and 

Service Battalion. The team arrived at Green Ramp at 1500 the same day, and 

there it sat for over forty-eight hours. With the corps out of the chain of command, 1st Support Command could not force this or any other unit on the 

78 Ibid.

79 Interv, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Msg, Cavazos 

to Richardson, 27 0037Z Oct 1983, sub: Command Relationship of EOD Element, WIN 

Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH; Chart, Urgent Fury Airflow, Hist 

files (Papers/Barrett), CMH. 80 Intervs, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and with Borchers, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Chart, Urgent Fury Airflow, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH.
Division-Rear Support

325

division. After he took over at Green Ramp, Colonel Kelly put as many body 

bags and forms for the disposition of remains as he could on aircraft that had 

extra room. In so doing, he acted entirely on his own initiative and without any 

knowledge of Richardson’s action, but Kelly was an experienced logistician 

and knew they would be needed.81

In the waters off Grenada, Admiral Metcalf reached the same conclusion 

as Colonel Richardson and directed the 82d Airborne Division to provide a 

graves registration unit. Informed by the division assault command post that 

such units belonged to the XVIII Airborne Corps, Metcalf on 26 October sent 

the request to Atlantic Command, the same day that Colonel Barrett confirmed the need to 1st Support Command.82

Metcalf’s request finally worked its way through the chain of command to 

the XVIII Airborne Corps on 27 October. Wondering what the holdup was, 

Metcalf queried Atlantic Command early the same day on the status of the 

Army graves registration unit. As a consequence, pressure from the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff to send the team on the next aircraft came at almost the same time as 

authorization to move it. Air traffic out of Pope Air Force Base was in a glacial 

phase at that point. Colonel Kelly rushed the unit’s personnel and equipment 

to the head of the line at Green Ramp, stopped a C–141 as it taxied toward 

its takeoff position, and put the team members and their materiel aboard. The 

C–141 took off at precisely 2038 on 27 October. No one in the airlift control 

element protested these somewhat irregular proceedings. It was war, and the 

Air Force was trying to do everything the Army wanted within reason.83

The bottleneck at Green Ramp frustrated more than just 82d Support 

Command personnel. An officer from the 35th Signal Brigade, an XVIII 

Airborne Corps unit, became so upset about waiting that he approached 

the airlift control element and convinced the Air Force officers in charge 

that his unit had the highest priority and should depart on the next aircraft, 

which it did. Colonel Kelly and his team learned of what had happened 

only after the plane left. In effect, the corps unit had commandeered (some 

division logisticians said “hijacked”) part of General Trobaugh’s airflow. In 

fact, given the communications tangle afflicting the airflow, the anonymous 

Signal Corps officer involved may have been correct in concluding that what 

the division needed most were the high-powered radios with teletype capability that his unit possessed. He had absolutely no authority, however, to 

do what he did. If other officers had done the same, the result would have 

been chaos.84

81 Intervs, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and McElroy with Richardson and 

Barrett, 17 Jan 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Chart, Urgent Fury Airflow, Hist files (Papers/

Barrett), CMH. 82 Intervs, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, plus author 

with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 83 Intervs, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Chart, Urgent Fury Airflow, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH. 84 Intervs, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986; Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983; and Hicks 

with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983 (quoted word). All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

326

REVERSE-OSMOSIS WATER PURIFICATION UNITS

On 26 October the 82d’s division engineer, Lt. Col. Lawrence L. Izzo, 

became concerned about the quantity of bacteria-free drinking water available 

to U.S. forces at Point Salines and spoke to General Trobaugh about the situation. Colonel Izzo recommended that the division bring forward two reverseosmosis water purification units (ROWPU) and two erdlators. When the general agreed and told him to do it, he radioed the orders to the 307th Engineer 

Battalion-Rear. The battalion S–3, Maj. Carl A. Strock, was handling resupply requests. The erdlators, used to purify freshwater, proved no problem; they 

were part of the unit’s normal equipment. At Green Ramp, Colonel Kelly 

expedited the shipment. He was well aware of the water crisis on the island.85

The reverse-osmosis water purification units, used to desalinize and decontaminate seawater, were another matter. One, belonging to the 1st Support 

Command, was near at hand. The water purification detachment had just 

returned from Egypt, and its equipment needed repair before it could deploy. 

No one in the detachment, however, mentioned the equipment’s condition 

to Major Strock. Strock personally shepherded the detachment through the 

loading process. Meanwhile, the 307th’s S–4, Capt. Gregory A. Harding, spent 

most of the night guiding the very bulky and hard-to-maneuver machines 

through all the clutter to the scales at Green Ramp. In all, it took the engineers 

approximately twenty-four hours to prepare the personnel and equipment for 

deployment.86

Colonel Kelly and his subordinates were surprised when the first reverseosmosis water purification unit arrived at Green Ramp, because a request had 

never gone through operational channels and they knew immediately that the 

ten-man detachment and its equipment would fill an entire C–141. They had 

heard the phrases “General Trobaugh wants . . .” and “a number one priority” many times since the operation began, and they greeted Major Strock’s 

incantation of this formula with cynical incredulity: “Oh, sure he does. A 

ROWPU!” Strock stood his ground and refused to budge. By force of personality and by taking advantage of the good relations he had developed with 

the transportation officers during earlier readiness deployment exercises, he 

eventually forced the water purification detachment to the head of the chalk 

line. The unit deployed to Grenada on 27 October, a day on which the airflow 

was at its sluggish worst.87

85 Lawrence L. Izzo, “Divisional Engineer Support During Operation Urgent Fury,” p. 26; 

Interv, author with Strock, 30 May 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 

82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-22, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 86 Intervs, author with Strock, 30 May 1986, and with Harding, 24 Jun 1986, plus McMichael 

with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 

1984, p. 4-22, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Izzo, “Divisional Engineer Support,” p. 

26. 87 Intervs, author with Izzo and Strock, Aug 1986; author with Strock, 30 May 1986 (quoted 

words); and McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Izzo, 

“Divisional Engineer Support,” p. 26; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 

4-22, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
Reverse-osmosis water purification unit; below, A typical erdlator 
The Rucksack War

328

The departure of the water purification unit constituted a last straw for 

Colonel Kelly. He announced that in the future he would not honor any request 

from the area of operations for units or major items of equipment that had 

not passed through the normal chain of command and that General Smith 

had not personally assigned a priority. When Smith strongly supported Kelly 

and news of the change percolated from the rear detachments forward to the 

area of operations, the officers involved in making the requests modified their 

behavior. In this manner, Kelly brought the division’s pull logistical system 

under control.88

The appearance at Green Ramp of the second reverse-osmosis water purification unit, which came from outside the corps, did not create comparable 

consternation or impact on logistical operations. Once beyond the scales, 

however, the personnel and equipment lingered on the edge of the tarmac a 

very long time, awaiting transportation to Grenada. By then, Major Strock 

had departed for the island, and no one of equivalent rank and experience 

remained in the 307th Engineer Battalion’s rear detachment to press the case 

for the unit’s speedy departure. At the same time, the freshwater situation on 

the island had improved since Colonel Izzo’s initial request, so less urgency 

existed for the unit’s expedited movement.89

Hunter Army Airfield

The ranger coordinator at Hunter Army Airfield, Capt. Lawrence W. 

Hoffman II, was one of many people seeking to send supplies to Grenada, 

but he had little success in this endeavor. Working out of the Joint Special 

Operations Command communications center established at Hunter Army 

Airfield, Captain Hoffman had to refer all questions requiring a decision to 

the command’s headquarters at Fort Bragg. At the same time, before they flew 

south, the ranger battalion S–4s, Capt. Stanley B. Clemons of the 1st and 

Capt. Jose G. Ventura Jr. of the 2d, had arranged for their units to receive 

two resupply aircraft eighteen to twenty-four hours after the beginning of the 

operation. Instead, the Joint Special Operations Command, anticipating the 

early withdrawal of the battalions, canceled these aircraft on 25 October.90

Captain Hoffman knew that the rangers needed ammunition, food, and 

water, both because he monitored their message traffic in the communications 

center and because the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, rear detachment commander at Hunter, Capt. John M. Bednarek, had direct communications with 

the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Wesley B. Taylor Jr., on Grenada. Hoffman 

did not become too worried because Joint Special Operations Command 

88 Intervs, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, and Wade with Vitucci, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Draft AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, G–4, 82d Abn Div, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 89 Intervs, author with Strock, 30 May 1986, and with Harding, 24 Jun 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-22, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH 90 Intervs, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, and with Ventura, 1 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Division-Rear Support

329

had notified him that an aircraft out of Puerto Rico would provide what was 

needed. Yet neither Taylor nor his 2d Battalion counterpart, Lt. Col. Ralph 

L. Hagler Jr., was informed of the change. Then the scheduled aircraft from 

Puerto Rico was canceled without notice to anyone. The battalion commanders did not report its nonarrival because they did not expect it, while the logisticians at Hunter Army Airfield, hearing nothing further, assumed that it had 

landed at Point Salines. The next resupply for the rangers remained as planned 

for 27 October.91

Aside from some equipment peculiar to Rangers, such as 60-mm. mortars, 

the resupply became unnecessary on the evening of 25 October. Admiral Metcalf 

directed General Trobaugh to assume control of the 1st and 2d Battalions, 75th 

Infantry. From then on, the 82d Airborne Division assumed responsibility for 

their support. Hoffman and other ranger logisticians soon learned of this command shift, but they were unable to confirm the new logistical arrangements 

and remained concerned. Troubled about the rate of consumption in his unit 

as reflected in the Grenada message traffic monitored at Hunter, one of the 2d 

Battalion’s assistant S–4s who had remained behind, Capt. Robert C. Morris 

Jr., convinced Captain Hoffman to speed up the resupply by several hours. 

As a result, the aircraft arrived at Point Salines at 0310 on 27 October before 

the beginning of that day’s operations. From a practical standpoint, given the 

82d’s problems with the airflow, the arrival of the supplies provided a margin of 

safety for the rangers that they had not possessed earlier.92

The 82d Airborne Division’s readiness standing operating procedures 

sought to control the movement of men and materiel from barracks and warehouse to plane-side by providing a well-scripted scenario that put the various 

parts of the organization through a set sequence of actions, with each step taking an estimated period of time. When the division attempted to speed up the 

process during Urgent Fury, however, some activities in the sequence proved 

more capable of acceleration than others. The profusion of loaded trailers 

outside the gate at Green Ramp bore mute testimony to the fact that moving materiel from various holding areas, warehouses, and the heavy drop rig 

site was easier than unloading and organizing it into chalk order. The problems that resulted were hardly the fault of the 82d Support Command personnel who loaded those trailers or of the drivers who brought them. They were 

doing their jobs. The issue was lack of coordination—a senior officer provided 

with sufficient communications and suitable staff capable of monitoring the 

parking area and of modulating the flow of vehicles to Green Ramp. Colonel 

Daly had the authority and ability to do this. That he did not suggests that 

91 Interv, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, and Tel Interv, author with Bednarek, 18 Jul 

2006, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 

1983, an. D, apps. 4 and 5, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 92 Intervs, Bishop with Hoffman, 30 Oct 1983, with Ventura, 1 Nov 1983, and with Sheets 

and Ferguson, 2 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th 

Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. D, app. 5, Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH.
The Rucksack War

330

the problem had never materialized in the 82d’s many emergency deployment 

readiness exercises, at least to this degree, and that the division’s logisticians 

expected a certain measure of congestion as a matter of course until the airflow gained momentum. 

Even if Colonel Daly had posted a subordinate in the parking area to 

monitor the situation continuously, that officer could have had an impact only 

on the volume of traffic, not on the movement of specific loads. Indeed, the 

rain, the darkness in which the initial movement to Green Ramp occurred, 

and the heightened security meant that any officer posted there would have 

had only a limited view of what was happening. To coordinate the movement 

to Green Ramp, Daly would have had to monitor continuously all loads from 

their points of origin to the specific aircraft identified by tail number that would 

carry materiel to Grenada. The Army had taken its first tentative steps in that 

direction, but the equipment was still in its infancy. The Army had introduced 

bar codes as a means of providing inventory control in one of its commissaries 

during fiscal year 1981, but the technology was dependent on mainframe computers and restricted to fixed locations. No one, moreover, had made the leap 

of imagination required to use bar coding to control major items of supply 

and equipment in transit. The memory-rich Internet-linked personal computers that would make such a solution possible were at least fifteen years in the 

future. Given the tools available to control the movement of men and supplies 

to Green Ramp, how division-rear could have managed that movement any 

better than it did is difficult to see.93

General Trobaugh’s decision to call up the 3d Brigade and General Smith’s 

interpretation of that order to mean that the unit would deploy before the 2d 

Brigade had received all of its supporting elements and supplies increased the 

confusion at Green Ramp. While Smith undoubtedly understood Trobaugh’s 

intent, his decision to exercise no judgment in the matter severely handicapped 

the 2d Brigade. Lacking some of its attached units and most of its vehicles, 

the unit was unable to develop the enhanced combat power that the task force 

configuration should have given it. At the same time, the elements left at Green 

Ramp contributed to the congestion, confusion, and frustration there. 

Neither Smith nor Trobaugh, moreover, had understood what was happening to the airflow between takeoff at Pope Air Force Base and landing at 

Point Salines. They only knew that the movement of men and supplies forward was very slow. Because the reasons for the delay remained mysterious, 

the possibility existed that the airflow might resume at the planned rate just as 

mysteriously. None of the senior Army officers at Fort Bragg with logistical 

responsibilities––Smith, Crabtree, or Daly—realized that 2d Brigade elements 

were scattered: some on Grenada, others on Puerto Rico, and still others on 

Barbados. In fairness, however, their failure to grasp the situation may be 

explained by the fact that a joint intelligence center was not established at the 

departure airfield. Without such an organization to fuse intelligence, senior 

93 Karl E. Cocke et al., comps., Department of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 

1981, p. 139.
Division-Rear Support

331

Army officers at Fort Bragg lacked the means to find out what was happening 

either in the airflow or at the arrival airfield on Grenada. This information 

shortfall contributed to the crush of men and equipment at Green Ramp, a 

problem that only became worse with the decision to dispatch the 3d Brigade 

before the 2d Brigade had completed its deployment. In the end, that decision 

and the manner in which General Smith executed it caused the Army logisticians at the ramp to lose track, even in general terms, of what had gone to 

Grenada. In that moment, they lost intellectual control of the airflow.

Furthermore, General Mackmull made two decisions that adversely affected 

the division’s ability to manage the airflow. He pulled the 330th Transportation 

Center out of Green Ramp and removed the Installation Transportation Office 

from the airflow requisition process. These decisions came as a direct consequence of Atlantic Command’s order removing XVIII Airborne Corps from 

the chain of command, but Mackmull appears never to have considered giving 

the division operational control of the two units for the duration of the intervention. The Installation Transportation Office handed off its responsibilities 

to the Provisional Movement Control Center in a professional manner, but 

the 330th Transportation Center did nothing of the sort, perhaps because its 

senior leaders were absent on an exercise. As a result, the division unknowingly 

took risks that it never should have incurred, but Colonel Hurst and the division’s transportation specialists in the Provisional Movement Control Center 

rose to the occasion. 

As the 3d Brigade began to deploy, General Trobaugh concluded that he 

wanted his senior staff and commanders with him in the airhead. The timing proved unfortunate in terms of the sequence of events in division-rear. 

Just as major problems started to surface at Fort Bragg, the most senior and 

experienced logisticians were distracted by the need to secure transport and, in 

Colonel Daly’s case, to organize a staff to deploy forward. 

Once General Trobaugh and his staff reached Grenada, they needlessly 

complicated the task force’s operations by establishing multiple channels of 

communications between division-forward and division-rear. Trobaugh apparently used his chief of staff, Colonel Boylan, much like an assistant division 

commander from the beginning of the operation, which meant that Boylan was 

distracted from coordinating the staff at Point Salines. (The Department of 

the Army, in fact, promoted Boylan to brigadier general and officially assigned 

him to the position of assistant division commander while he was still on the 

island.) In the end, it required a lieutenant colonel at Fort Bragg with a great 

deal of moral courage to solve the problem. Colonel Kelly insisted in the face 

of orders from his division commander that cargo requests should go through 

proper command channels. His action was absolutely necessary to restore a 

measure of control over Green Ramp operations.

While the 82d Airborne Division-Rear grappled with the airflow problems, it received no assistance from Atlantic Command. Admittedly, Admiral 

McDonald and his staff were neither trained nor equipped to conduct major 

ground operations. If time constraints had permitted, the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff could have augmented the admiral’s staff with the needed expertise, but 
The Rucksack War

332

the rush to stage Urgent Fury meant that his headquarters lacked the tools 

and insight he needed to exercise effective control. Atlantic Command’s decision that the act of asking for air transportation to the island would automatically validate the request represented not the exercise of command but its 

abdication. 

Even so, whatever the appearances, the operations of the 82d Airborne 

Division-Rear must be judged a success. In the absence of positive control, 

mid-level and junior officers made estimates of the situation and then exercised initiative. Colonel Hurst took over the movement control function when 

he discovered that the 330th Transportation Center was missing from Green 

Ramp, and Colonel Kelly succeeded Hurst when he became aware of the situation. Major Perkins and his assistants kept the aircraft coming. At the battalion level, Major Strock and Captain Harding moved essential equipment, 

the reverse-osmosis water purification unit, to the head of the chalk line and 

then loaded it aboard an aircraft at a time when the airflow to the island was at 

its worst. Similarly, Lieutenant McClure ensured that his battalion received its 

vehicles with all the equipment and supplies they carried, and Captain Morris 

got his men aboard an aircraft despite the confusion on the field. The sum 

total of all these decisions was highly positive. 
8

Area of Operations

26–27 October 1983

The situation in the St. George’s area shifted dramatically in favor of the 

United States and its eastern Caribbean allies on 26 October. Unknown 

to the U.S. commanders, the special operations forces surrounded at the radio 

station north of the capital had escaped through the Grenadian lines during 

the afternoon of 25 October and successfully hid in the jungle from their pursuers. Eventually the Americans swam out to sea, where the destroyer USS 

Caron rescued them late that night. Even better, Company G, 2d Battalion, 

8th Marines, commanded by Capt. Robert K. Dobson Jr., had conducted 

an amphibious assault at Grand Mal Bay without opposition shortly after 

1830 on the twenty-fifth, securing a shallow beachhead. Reacting to reports 

that strong forces, possibly Cuban, were establishing a defensive line north of 

St. George’s, the battalion landing team commander, Lt. Col. Ray L. Smith, 

ordered Company F to reinforce Company G. The unit began arriving by helicopter around 0400, 26 October, but an extremely small landing zone meant 

that the buildup proceeded slowly. While the lead elements of Company F 

were still in the air, Colonel Smith decided to attack south under the cover of 

darkness. As the only force at hand, Captain Dobson drew the assignment. 

Leaving a platoon north of the landing zone to block any enemy counterthrust 

from that direction, the captain mounted the remainder of his company in 

amphibious tractors and headed toward St. George’s. Three M60 main battle 

tanks led his task force. Smith instructed Company F to follow as soon as it 

assembled.1

The M60s had no ammunition for their main guns. Their 105-mm. shells 

remained aboard the ships in the Amphibious Squadron Four, known as Task 

Force 124 in the Grenada operation, stored underneath other equipment and 

supplies. The task force commander, Navy Capt. Carl R. Erie, had declined 

to move the cargo piled on top of the shells. Despite this handicap, the armor 

proved decisive because the Grenadians north of St. George’s had no way of 

1 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, [JTF 121], n.d., Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), 

CMH; Ronald H. Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, 1983, pp. 9–12; MFR, author, 28 Oct 2008, 

sub: DIA Conference on Operation Urgent Fury (Invasion of Grenada), 28 Oct 2008, Hist 

files (PDocs/Misc), CMH.

☆ ☆ ☆
Marines take charge, patrolling the town of St. George’s and standing guard over 

captured members of the People’s Revolutionary Army 
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

335

knowing about the lack of 105-mm. rounds. When they saw the tanks, they 

fired a few shots and fled. Their panic and defeatism soon spread to the capital itself. As British journalist Hugh O’Shaughnessy reported from inside the 

city, soldiers “who had been fighting throughout the previous day and night 

started to throw away their uniforms and do their best to melt into the civilian 

population in what clothes they could find.” In this, they copied their leaders, 

who also decamped as quickly as they could. Captain Dobson captured Fort 

Frederick, which during the battle had replaced Fort Rupert as the commandand-control center of the Grenadian leadership, without resistance. Then he 

and his men advanced to the governor general’s residence, where they relieved 

the special operations forces at 0710. Less than two hours later Governor 

General Sir Paul Scoon and his wife arrived safely aboard the USS Guam and 

met with the Joint Task Force (JTF) 120 commander, V. Adm. Joseph Metcalf 

III. The marines spent the remainder of the day consolidating their position 

in St. George’s.2

General Trobaugh’s Plan

Even as the Joint Special Operations Command prepared to depart, the 

82d Airborne Division and Task Force 121 commander, Maj. Gen. Edward 

L. Trobaugh, was contemplating his next step. His instructions to his assistant 

division fire support coordinator, Lt. Col. John J. Ryneska, on the evening of 

25 October embodied his long-range estimate of the situation. He turned to 

the colonel and said: “Ryneska, you keep bringing in 105 ammunition until 

you can’t bring in any more, until I tell you to stop. Start bringing it in because 

on Day One we’re going to fight. We’re going to stay here to fight for a couple 

of weeks. And we’re going to shoot thousands of rounds of 105. . . .” Using the 

assault command post’s tactical satellite radio, Captain Ryneska immediately 

contacted division artillery-rear at Fort Bragg to pass this information along. 

At that moment no artillery tubes had yet arrived in the airhead. The first 105-

mm. howitzer landed at Point Salines around 0100 on 26 October.3

General Trobaugh’s overriding concern that evening was to secure the 

Grand Anse Campus of the St. George’s University School of Medicine and 

rescue the students. The rangers, of course, had learned of the presence of 

that site on the twenty-fifth as soon as they secured the True Blue Campus and 

spoke to the students. Trobaugh benefited from a good deal of information 

that the rangers had collected. The senior ranger in the airhead, 2d Battalion, 

75th Infantry, commander Lt. Col. Ralph L. Hagler Jr., immediately began 

assembling as much intelligence as possible about the students and the location of Grenadian forces in the surrounding area. In this he was aided by both 

2 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, [JTF 121], n.d., Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), 

CMH; Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, p. 12; Hugh O’Shaughnessy, Grenada, p. 24 (quoted 

words); Grenada Summary, encl. to Memo, Hamby for Frasché, 25 Jun 1983, sub: Visit to 22d 

Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU), Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH; Briefing, Frank, 8 Dec 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 3 Intervs, McMichael with Ryneska, 18 Nov 1983 (quoted words), and Bishop with 

Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Moving out to participate in the Grand Anse rescue mission; below, Entrance to the 

Grand Anse Campus
Views of the campus following the rescue mission 
The Rucksack War

338

the Americans at True Blue Campus and by the island’s commercial telephone 

system, which was still working. He was able to telephone the Americans at 

Grand Anse and talk to them. During the night he sent a long-range patrol 

that penetrated almost to the outskirts of the campus. The essence of all the 

information gathered indicated that the Grenadians were manning positions 

facing south. They were not prepared for an attack from the sea.4

At the moment General Trobaugh had no way to rescue the students, 

because Grand Anse was well within Grenadian lines. Col. Terrence M. Henry’s 

Task Force 160 was immobilized by battle damage, and the division’s own 

helicopters, although eagerly anticipated, had yet to arrive. The Grenadians 

appeared to have ignored the Grand Anse Campus to that point. He could 

only hope that they would continue to do so.5

Meeting with his commanders at 0630 on the twenty-sixth, Trobaugh 

announced that he intended to make a limited attack that day to consolidate 

his hold on the airfield and to build up forces inside the airhead. In the process he planned to gain all the first-day objectives assigned to Lt. Col. Wesley 

B. Taylor Jr.’s 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry. Then, on the twenty-seventh, he 

would make his major push out of the peninsula. The general hoped that the 

delay between the two steps would demoralize the defenders. He wanted them 

to have an entire day to watch aircraft landing continuously and to know that 

they could do nothing to stop them or the combat power that their arrival 

represented.6

In line with Trobaugh’s plan, 2d Brigade commander Col. Stephen Silvasy 

Jr. instructed Lt. Col. John W. Raines’ 3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, to make a 

limited attack directly east of the True Blue Campus. Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Jack 

L. Hamilton’s 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, would pivot on Colonel Raines’ 

left flank until it established a continuous line across the peninsula. Colonel 

Hamilton, in turn, planned for his left flank unit, Company B under Capt. 

Michael F. Ritz, to move north of Calliste and seize the compound harboring the Cuban holdouts. Capt. Charles H. Jacoby’s Company A would attack 

toward the village of Frequente, with Capt. Mark D. Rocke’s Company C following in reserve. Captain Rocke’s company would reinforce the hinge between 

the other units if the Grenadians attempted a counterattack.7

Point Salines Combat and Support, 26 October

Colonel Silvasy planned for the 2d Brigade’s attack to jump off at 0630 on 

26 October. Action began, however, considerably earlier. Shortly before dawn 

a firefight broke out between elements of Captain Ritz’ Company B and the 

4 Interv, Bishop with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

5 Interv, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

6 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 25 Oct 1983, 1955, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 

See also Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983; Frasché with Akers, [Dec 1983]; Pirnie 

with T. Smith, 3 Apr 1985; and author with Taylor, 4 Dec 1986; plus Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 

1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 7 Map Overlay, 2d Bn, 325th Inf, 25 Oct 1983, 2200, sub: Plan of Attack for 260630, Hist 

files (PDocs/Graphics), CMH; Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

339

Cubans in the compound. It quickly spread to include one of the neighboring 

units, Captain Jacoby’s Company A. Both sides threw a large volume of smallarms fire at one another with little result (see Map 8).

8

On Colonel Hamilton’s left flank, a firefight of more serious import 

occurred. Captain Ritz led an officers’ patrol on the northwestern flank of the 

Cuban position, the direction in which he intended to attack. Cubans manning an outpost ambushed the patrol, killing Ritz in their first burst of fire 

and severely wounding Sgt. Terry Guinn. The company first sergeant temporarily assumed command because he believed that all of the platoon leaders 

had accompanied the patrol and no one had yet returned. He thus directed 

Sgt. Rodolfo Capetillo to take the 3d Platoon in the direction of the firing. A 

Vietnam veteran, Sergeant Capetillo advanced very cautiously up a hill on the 

company front. The platoon soon came upon two deserted recoilless rifle positions. Numerous AK47s and much ammunition were scattered on the ground. 

Capetillo detached his 1st Squad, led by Sgt. Gary L. Epps, to guard the area.9

Capetillo did not like his position at all. His platoon had only limited supplies of M16 ammunition and no mortars. The artillery back at the airfield 

was not yet ready to lend support. Moreover, Company B was the one company that had failed to receive hand grenades at Green Ramp. The platoon 

had managed to acquire some of the grenades that the Forward Area Support 

Team II coordinator, Maj. Daniel J. Cleary III, had brought into the area of 

operations, but this amounted to only one grenade per man. Convinced that 

someone was waiting in ambush somewhere on the seemingly deserted hill, 

Capetillo fell back on a technique that he had used successfully in Vietnam. 

“I figured, rather than getting anybody killed, I was going to do a little bit of 

reconnaissance by fire.” He brought one of his rifle grenadiers up and had him 

fire an M203 grenade about twenty meters to the front. Capetillo continued 

to advance using basic infantry tactics—one squad moving and one in overwatch with the grenadier firing each time before a squad moved. The platoon 

was close to the top of the hill when the third rifle grenade finally flushed the 

ambush. The Cubans opened fire prematurely, and Capetillo immediately went 

on the attack. The 3d Platoon captured the hilltop but continued to receive a 

high volume of Cuban fire. By then the men had used almost all their grenades. When M16 ammunition also began to run low, Capetillo had to tell 

his men not to fire unless they actually saw a target. Fortuitously, one soldier 

exploring the enemy position found several boxes of Soviet hand grenades. 

Uncertain about the fuzing, Capetillo had everyone stand back while he tossed 

the first grenade down the hill. After a four-second delay, it exploded. “I told 

them . . . they were good to go.” The Americans started pitching Soviet grenades toward the Cubans and, almost immediately, the Cuban fire slackened. 

In the face of this grenade barrage, the Cubans obviously were not going to 

retake the hill.10

8 Interv, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

9 Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, plus Intervs, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, 

and Wells with Capetillo, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 10 Interv, Wells with Capetillo, 17 Nov 1983, covering this and the next paragraph.
I I

3 325

I I

75 R 2

X X

82(-)

TF 121

I I

2 325

X

2 82

I I

75 R 1

2 B/307

B

A

I

TROU JA B (DEVIL’S

BAY)

DEGRA BAY

C AT O BAY B L A C K BAY

C ANOE BAY

GRAND BA Y

PRICKL Y BA Y

M OUNT

HARTMAN

B A Y

WOBURN BA Y

HARD BA Y

TRUE BL UE BA Y

GRAND ANSE

B A Y

M ORNE ROUGE BA Y

Hill 97

Golf

Course

Radio

Station

Tower Tower

Sugar Factory

Sugar

Mill

Quarry

St. George’s University

School of Medicine

Fort

Fuel Storage

Tanks

Towers

Control Tower

St. George’s University

School of Medicine

G r a n d A n s e B e a c h

L an ce aux Épines Beach

P or t ici Beach

Morne Rouge Beach

HOG ISLAND

Point Salines

Laissé Point 

Blow Hole

Ships Deck

Quarantine Point

Petit Cabris Point

True Blue Point

Prickly Point

Mt Hartman Point

(Mace Point)

GLOVER ISLAND (RAMIER ISLAND)

True Blue

Frequente

Calliste

Mt

Hartman

Estate

Lance

aux

Épines

Golands

Grand

Anse

Woodlands

Estate

The Cli

Woburn

Ruth Howard

TASK FORCE 121 OPERATIONS

26 October 1983

0

0

500 1000 Meters

500 1000 Yards

Axis of Air Assault

Axis of Ground Attack

Objective

U.S. Positions

Tactical Operations Center

Cuban Compund

Point Salines Runway

ELEVATION IN FEET

0 200 400 and Above

Map 8
Soviet hand grenades and shells; 

below, Soviet recoilless rifles and 

ammunition 
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

341

One of Sergeant Capetillo’s men was wounded during the firefight. 

Someone also found Sergeant Guinn at the first ambush site. He had a sucking 

chest wound from an AK47 round that had penetrated one of his lungs. The 

Cubans had stripped him of his flak jacket and left him to bleed to death. As 

a medic worked on the wounded, Capetillo received orders to withdraw. His 

battalion commander, Colonel Hamilton, had obtained a strike by naval air 

on the compound. Because the 3d Platoon was too close to the target area, 

it needed to pull back before the aircraft arrived. Despite some halfhearted 

efforts by the Cubans to interfere, Capetillo successfully broke contact and fell 

back on the 1st Squad. There he found that the squad leader, Sergeant Epps, 

had attempted to fire one of the captured Soviet recoilless rifles. The round 

had exploded prematurely, killing Epps and wounding five squad members. 

Capetillo had to send back for help to handle the casualties. By the time he and 

his men and the wounded reached the main company position, the Cubans 

in the compound had already surrendered. The 3d Platoon’s fight for the hill 

at Calliste proved to be the most intense close combat for any element of the 

82d Airborne Division during Urgent Fury. If it revealed the real supply 

problems that the accelerated deployment schedule at Fort Bragg posed, it also 

showed how a shrewd and experienced combat veteran could overcome those 

limitations.

The successful Cuban ambush of Captain Ritz’s patrol had disrupted 

Colonel Hamilton’s plan of attack. As the time approached for the 0630 

attack, and with still no word from Ritz, Hamilton had ordered his assistant 

S–3, Capt. Michael C. Okita, to take command of Company B. The colonel 

then called for artillery fire and Navy fighter-bomber strikes on the Cuban 

compound. Both were on target, but the compound was sizable. Most of the 

Cuban fire appeared to be coming from a relatively undamaged portion of the 

installation. One building in that area still flew a large Cuban flag. Hamilton 

asked the Marine officer in charge of the detachment from the 2d Air and 

Naval Gunfire Liaison Company supporting the 2d Battalion to direct Navy 

A–7s to target the building. The first strafing runs were exactly on the mark. 

All Cuban small-arms fire ceased immediately, and white flags blossomed from 

every window. For perhaps fifteen minutes nothing more happened, but then 

figures began appearing with their arms raised. Hamilton sent his reconnaissance platoon down into the valley to collect the prisoners.11

As the unit moved toward the compound, Colonel Hamilton saw three 

men attempting to work their way to a draw in the rear of the buildings. He 

had Captain Jacoby’s machine guns fire a burst down the draw to dissuade 

them. The gunfire caused the Cubans in the compound to dive for cover. Only 

after some coaxing did they hesitantly reappear, but then the three figures 

started edging for the draw once more. Another burst of fire produced the 

same reaction by both groups of Cubans. After the third iteration of these 

11 Intervs, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, and with Okita, 16 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, S–3, 2d Bn, 325th Inf, 26 Oct 1983, 0520–0845, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
The Rucksack War

342

events, Hamilton decided that it was more important to secure the main body 

of Cubans. When the three men started once again for the draw, Jacoby’s 

men held their fire. One of the three was the commander of Cuban forces on 

the island, Col. Pedro Comas Tortoló, who was attempting to save sensitive 

communications gear and code books. He and his secret materials ultimately 

reached sanctuary in the Soviet embassy. By 0835 Hamilton’s battalion had 

secured the compound.12

In the aftermath of the morning’s action, Colonel Hamilton decided to 

revise his concept of maneuver. Detaching his engineer platoon to guard the 

compound, he sent Company B up a finger of land on the left toward the site of 

Radio Free Grenada, which had gone off the air following an AC–130 attack 

the previous afternoon. Meanwhile, Company A advanced up the draw behind 

the compound in pursuit of the three fleeing Cubans. With the terrain causing his two companies to move on slightly divergent lines, Hamilton brought 

Company C out of reserve to attack up the center toward Frequente.13

Company A passed east of the Cuban compound and climbed a hill, 

almost immediately suffering five heat casualties. Captain Jacoby evacuated 

them without difficulty to the battalion aid station that was setting up just 

below him in the Cuban compound. Recognizing, however, that he might have 

a problem if his company had any more casualties once it advanced further 

into the bush, he instructed his men to remove their flak jackets and tie them to 

their rucksacks. Company A suffered no further heat casualties and made no 

further contact with the enemy before setting up a perimeter defense shortly 

before sunset.14

Responding to Colonel Hamilton’s orders, Captain Rocke moved his 

Company C in attack formation toward Frequente. Earlier in the day the 

battalion S–3, Maj. William E. Baine, had taken Rocke to a height and had 

showed him his route. Consequently, Rocke had no difficulty navigating 

across country even though the village remained hidden behind a ridge. Once 

he reached a point at which he could see the village, however, he had a surprise: Beside it stood a large complex surrounded by chain-link fence topped 

with barbed wire. Half of the area contained a large vehicle park, the other 

half a large number of warehouses. Rocke and his men advanced cautiously, 

carefully searching each building. After the one sentry on duty promptly surrendered, they found enough weaponry inside the compound to equip six 

infantry battalions.15

Colonel Hamilton established his command post on a hill overlooking 

Frequente, while Captain Rocke deployed his company to a ridge east of the 

warehouses. Hamilton joined him, and the two surveyed the terrain to their 

front. Suddenly, they heard a burst of fire. Down in the valley before them, 

12 Intervs, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, and author with Farris, 14 Apr 1989, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, S–3, 2d Bn, 325th Inf, 26 Oct 1983, 0845, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 13 Interv, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

14 Interv, GWG with Jacoby, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

15 Interv, Bishop with Rocke, 19 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

343

on a road parallel to their position, they could see the five gunjeeps of the 

battalion’s reconnaissance platoon that Hamilton had sent ahead to scout. 

Oblivious to the presence of Rocke’s company, Cubans had ambushed the 

patrol, allowing the first two gunjeeps in the column to pass and then opening 

fire on the last three. The lead vehicles immediately did a U-turn and sped back 

to the ambush site, machine guns blasting. Almost simultaneously, Rocke’s 

company opened fire with every weapon that it could bring to bear, sending a 

curtain of fire onto the Cubans. Following U.S. rules of engagement designed 

to limit civilian casualties by requiring battalion commanders to approve the 

use of mortars, artillery, and airstrikes, Rocke turned to Hamilton and asked 

permission to use his two mortars. When Hamilton gave his assent, the first of 

twenty-nine mortar rounds sped on its way to the Cuban position. Given this 

almost instantaneous American response and establishment of fire superiority, it is difficult to say who felt more victimized by the ambush. The Cubans 

broke contact and withdrew, leaving four dead on the field. The Americans 

sustained no casualties.16

Captain Okita’s Company B was the last to jump off. It took two hours to 

reassemble the company’s equipment, left behind during the combat, and to 

bring in the dead and wounded. The assistant battalion S–4, 1st Lt. Mark J. 

Eshelman, established a water point inside the Cuban compound at Calliste, 

and Okita made certain that everyone both drank their fill and replenished 

their canteens before the company jumped off. The unit then moved toward 

the radio station through vegetation so dense that the men had to hack trails 

to move. Okita could see little more than a foot in any direction and had to 

maneuver his platoons by radio. Although the straight line distance to the radio 

station was only 1,100 meters, the terrain consisted of a series of steep ridges 

that resembled nothing so much as the back of an old-fashioned washboard. 

The battalion’s Cmd. Sgt. Maj. Catalino Barajas, a Vietnam veteran a few 

weeks short of his forty-seventh birthday, accompanied Okita. Barajas found 

the going “rough,” but he still set an example of toughness for the twenty-yearolds in the company.17

Tension ran high within the unit, with everyone expecting a tough fight 

at the radio station, but what they encountered was another kind of enemy. 

That morning, most of the troops had seen the bodies of men killed in combat for the first time. In addition, the air hung motionless and heavy with 

humidity in the dense vegetation; the polyester battle dress uniform the men 

wore did not breathe, and their flak vests added another twenty pounds to 

their loads, already heavy because of their rucksacks. The company suffered 

some thirty heat casualties and covered the ground so slowly that it did not 

reach the vicinity of the radio station until 1500. When Colonel Hamilton 

learned about the heat casualties, he ordered everyone in the battalion to 

16 Intervs, Pirnie, MacGarrigle, and author with J. L. Hamilton, 3 Jun 1985, plus Bishop 

with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, and with Rocke, 19 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 17 Intervs, Bishop with Okita, 16 Nov 1983, and Wells with Barajas, 10 Nov 1983 (quoted 

word), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. For a slightly different approach to this issue, see James M. 

Dubik and Terrence D. Fullerton, “Soldier Overloading in Grenada,” pp. 38–47.
The Rucksack War

344

take off their flak vests. The unit suffered no more heat casualties during the 

operation.18

At about 1600 Okita’s company approached the radio station, only to discover that the defenders had withdrawn. But the day held one further surprise 

for Company B, because at 1605, as the men consolidated their position at the 

radio station, the low ground to their front suddenly erupted with artillery 

fire. Once the barrage lifted, they had a spectacular view from their ridgetop 

position of the rescue of the Grand Anse students by the 2d Battalion, 75th 

Infantry, and the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit’s Marine Medium Helicopter 

Squadron 261.19

The students had posed a delicate tactical problem for General Trobaugh. 

If he pushed overland, his advance might force the defenders back into the campus area, where a firefight might kill the very people he had come to save. He 

concluded that he needed to make a heliborne assault behind the Grenadians, 

but his task force still had no helicopters. To expedite their arrival, his aviation officer, Lt. Col. Robert N. Seigle, flew to Grantley Adams International 

Airport on Barbados early on the morning of 26 October. Colonel Seigle 

hoped to discover what had happened to his 82d Aviation Battalion’s Task 

18 Intervs, Bishop with Okita, 16 Nov 1983, and with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, plus 

Wells with Barajas, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 19 Interv, Bishop with Okita, 16 Nov 1983, and Wells with Barajas, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 

Paratroopers scan the terrain from a vantage point in Grenada.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

345

Force B and to hasten its movement into Point Salines. His report, when it 

came, was not heartening. He had anticipated that Maj. William J. Elder Jr.’s 

task force would leave Pope Air Force Base at 1200 on 25 October; instead, 

it had left twelve hours later at 2400. Given conditions at Grantley Adams, 

the task force could not possibly arrive until 27 October. Then, compounding 

Trobaugh’s dilemma, at 1100 on 26 October the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) 

directed Trobaugh to rescue the students that day.20

Even before he received this assignment, with both his battalions committed and no elements of the 3d Brigade as yet in the airhead, General 

Trobaugh had decided to assign the mission to Colonel Hagler’s ranger battalion. The task was, after all, a raid, the kind of mission at which Rangers 

excelled, and Hagler understood the terrain. While he prepared for an 

overland approach, if necessary, Trobaugh talked by radio to the senior 

Army adviser to Admiral Metcalf, Maj. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. 

General Schwarzkopf, who could look out a porthole aboard the Guam and 

see Marine helicopters on the flight deck, suggested using them as the lift 

force. When Trobaugh proved agreeable, Schwarzkopf raised the issue with 

Admiral Metcalf, who liked the idea. The admiral chaired a planning meeting attended by himself, Schwarzkopf, Trobaugh, 22d Marine Amphibious 

Unit commander Col. James P. Faulkner, and a few staff officers who would 

20 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH.

Paratroopers, with their weapons and a field radio, move down a dirt road on patrol. 
The Rucksack War

346

work out the details. With that done, Hagler and the Marine Medium 

Helicopter Squadron 261 commander, Lt. Col. Grenville R. Amos, prepared 

a detailed plan for the assault. Colonel Hamilton and his battalion, for their 

part, learned almost nothing of these developments and did not even know 

that students were nearby. Trobaugh was using Hamilton’s assault to distract the Grenadians and keep them facing southwest, away from the real 

line of attack.21

The rescue operation kicked off at 1615, 26 October, following the artillery 

preparation and air strikes by Navy A–7s and an Air Force AC–130 Spectre 

that were designed to isolate the campus from defending Grenadian forces. 

Then the helicopters went in. From their ridgetop vantage point, Captain 

Okita and his men witnessed an almost textbook perfect rescue operation. 

While two ranger companies secured a perimeter, one company led 233 evacuees from the school’s main administration building to the waiting helicopters. 

The Grenadian defenders, with their defenses facing south toward Hamilton’s 

battalion, mustered only a brief and scattered resistance before fleeing. One 

ranger was slightly wounded, and the helicopters were hit by rifle fire in a 

few nonvital locations. The most serious problem arose when one CH–46 helicopter clipped a palm tree while landing on the extremely small beach and 

crashed at the surf’s edge. The remaining helicopters lacked sufficient space 

for everyone, and eleven rangers had to stay behind. After dark they took a 

rubber raft from the helicopter and paddled out to sea, where the Caron picked 

them up.22

In contrast to the experiences of both Hamilton’s and Hagler’s battalions, 

Raines’ 3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, spent a less eventful day. After a stressful 

and sleepless night getting onto the island, the battalion needed such an interlude. Raines’ men assumed responsibility for guarding the approaches to the 

Grand Anse Campus and the adjacent eastern end of the runway from Capt. 

John P. Abizaid’s Company A, 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, which went into 

reserve. On division order, Raines then advanced east to the first ridgeline to 

protect the evacuation of the students from the True Blue Campus. One sniper 

opposed the advance. After fruitlessly trying to talk the man into surrendering, 

the Americans killed him and moved on. From the new position a platoon from 

the battalion’s Company A engaged a Grenadian BTR60 at long range without 

result. Otherwise the day passed without incident. By sunset the 82d Airborne 

Division held the line across the Point Salines Peninsula that the initial plan had 

assigned to Colonel Taylor’s ranger battalion as its first day’s objective.23

21 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 26 Oct 1983, 1000 (item 75), Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Prelim AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/1SOC), CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, and 

with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, plus Pirnie, MacGarrigle, and author with J. L. Hamilton, 3 

Jun 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 22 Interv, Bishop with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. For an excellent discussion of the operational issues involved, see Bruce R. Pirnie, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 

139–45. 23 Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], and with Pederson, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

347

Intermediate Staging Base on Barbados

While the airlift commander, Brig. Gen. Robert B. Patterson, built up 

the Air Force component at the intermediate staging base on Barbados, the 

only remaining unit from XVIII Airborne Corps’ plan for a complementary 

Army component landed at Grantley Adams in the early morning hours of 

26 October. The arrival-departure airfield control group from Capt. Harley 

C. Barr II’s 403d Transportation Company, 7th Transportation Battalion, 

alighted from the same C–5A as Col. Robert C. Barrett Jr.’s advance party 

of 1st Support Command. To Colonel Barrett’s experienced eye, operations 

on Barbados were about what they should be under the circumstances: “It 

looked about as reasonably well organized as you can expect for a place 

where you’re just landing and building up.” Barrett, his sergeant, and his 

driver soon departed, but Captain Barr and the airfield control group 

remained behind to help unload helicopters. It was well that they did. When 

the first Black Hawks of Task Force B arrived at Grantley Adams before 

dawn on 26 October, Major Elder had expected to find elements of the 82d 

Support Command already on the island and an intermediate staging base 

in operation. But no Army officers were present other than Elder’s task force 

members; Barr; the Army liaison officer on General Patterson’s staff, Maj. 

Richard C. Anshus; and the transient Colonel Barrett, who was waiting for 

a C–130 ride to the Point Salines airfield. The Army organization needed to 

ensure the orderly transfer of men and materiel between aircraft had yet to 

be established.24

Preparing helicopters to fly after they had arrived as cargo in an Air Force 

transport plane was a complex and laborious business. The helicopters had 

been tied down in the cargo compartment of the aircraft. Then, following 

standard procedure, the loaders back at Fort Bragg had stacked pallets of 

supplies and equipment and secured some of the company’s trucks around the 

helicopters. Personnel from the airlift control element used forklifts to offload 

the pallets, while members of the task force used a winch and brute strength to 

move the helicopters down ramps to the tarmac, hand guiding them the entire 

distance.25

Once the fuselages reached the ground, Army aviators faced three particularly 

difficult tasks to prepare them for flight: They had to unfold the main rotor blades, 

unfold the rear rotor, and refit the stabilators. Unfolding the main rotor blades 

alone took seven or eight men because each blade weighed over 300 pounds and 

was over 25 feet long. Five or six men lifted a rotor blade and placed one end into a 

bracket in the rotor head while two men sat on the head and guided the blade into 

the bracket, “banging on it” until it was lined up and then inserting a pin to hold 

it in place. The aircrews had to repeat the operation four times for each UH–60. 

24 Robert N. Seigle, “Looking Back at Urgent Fury,” pp. 22, 24; Interv (quoted words), 

author with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Msg, Mackmull to Cavazos et al, 

28 1155Z Oct 1983, sub: Urgent Fury Airflow, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/

FORSCOM), CMH. 25 Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

348

After all three tasks were complete, a crew member had to attach various kinds 

of hardware. This required only one man and a screwdriver for each machine, but 

it took time. Then the crews topped off the Black Hawks’ gas tanks—they had 

arrived three-quarters full—and made a test flight around the field. Once the helicopters landed and refueled, they were ready to fly to Grenada.26

 The 82d Aviation Battalion’s S–4, Capt. Jimmie M. Rabon, had accompanied Major Elder’s task force. Captain Rabon and Company B’s first sergeant, 

Sgt. Jimmie Dew, set up locations for the pallets and trucks and obtained a 

count of all the men. Then Rabon and the only S–4 section member with 

him, Sgt. Eric Rodwell, responded to the task force’s logistical needs. Rabon 

contacted the Shell Oil Company representative at Grantley Adams to refuel 

the helicopters with JP–4, and, because the temperature was high and the men 

were thirsty, also located a water buffalo and towed it to the battalion area. 

While Rabon was thus engaged, Sergeant Dew discovered that the Air Force 

had inadvertently left a pallet containing the battalion’s C-rations at Pope Air 

Force Base. In response, Rabon managed to secure from Air Force stocks on 

Barbados some meals ready to eat, which were the new field ration that had 

not yet reached Fort Bragg. They were thus something of a treat for the soldiers. Rabon also obtained from Air Force sources additional ammunition for 

the battalion. Lacking forklifts, he and a working party had to manhandle 

the ammunition aboard the helicopters, which lengthened the time needed to 

prepare them for the flight to Grenada.27

Refueling ground vehicles was a particularly time-consuming task. Because 

fuel expands at higher altitude, the division’s air standing operating procedures 

involved filling the tanks of any vehicles it took on long flights to only about 

40-percent capacity. The members of the 82d Aviation Battalion, uncertain 

whether any gasoline awaited them on Grenada, wanted to take the maximum 

amount of fuel with them, and the short hop at a low altitude from Barbados 

to Grenada permitted filling the tanks to about 80 percent. The Shell Oil 

Company jobber at Grantley Adams, however, lacked an electric pump, so the 

soldiers had to hand pump gasoline and diesel fuel out of 55-gallon drums.28

Refueling time for fixed-wing aircraft was much shorter and less arduous 

because Grantley Adams had very modern equipment for the process. Shell, 

however, was unequipped to handle the sudden rush of aircraft that came with 

the operation. Three or four Shell employees worked around the clock to refuel 

the arriving aircraft. Even so, at least thirty always seemed to be in line.29

As Captain Rabon performed these tasks, conditions on the airfield became 

increasingly chaotic. Similar to the Shell jobbers, the civilian airport authorities 

26 Ibid. (quoted words); Interv, Wade with Beaty and Garmond, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 27 Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also David Wood, 

“Troops’ Thirst for Water Drains Supply Resources,” Army Times, 11 Aug 2003, which contains 

a good description of a water buffalo. 28 Intervs, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, and with Reardon, 18 Sep 2006, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 29 Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

349

found themselves overwhelmed by the sudden and unexpected surge of aircraft 

landing at Grantley Adams. Perhaps even more important, the Army lacked 

a command-and-control element on Grenada to coordinate with General 

Patterson and the airport authorities. Rabon’s commander, Colonel Seigle, had 

arrived on Barbados early on 26 October to discover “a virtual labyrinth of 

confusion. Black Hawks folded for loading and their deployment kits and parts 

were interspersed with C–130s all over the ramp. . . . About every thirty minutes 

someone would run up to a worn-out crew chief who was attempting to reinstall 

his tail stabilator and tell him that all the Black Hawks had to move so a C–130 

could get out for Grenada.” Attached to the rear rotor pylon, the stabilator was 

a fixed articulated horizontal surface fourteen-feet wide and four-feet deep at 

center that was intended to keep forward flight stable. Part of the tail feathers, 

as pilots describe the aft end of the fuselage, it was not difficult to mount, but it 

did require a few minutes of time. So did the other items of equipment the crew 

chiefs needed to reconnect. The need to clear a taxiway for Air Force transports 

forced the entire task force to shift its location four times. Crews had to move 

individual helicopters on innumerable other occasions.30

With all 82d Support Command elements absent, Colonel Seigle used his 

own initiative and appointed Rabon, a promotable captain, to be commander 

of Army Forces, Barbados, with the mission both of off-loading C–5As and 

of “pushing troops, support vehicles, and aircraft to Grenada.” Working with 

the airlift control element, Rabon arranged for Air Force C–130s to fly the 

task force’s ground crews, supplies, and equipment to Barbados. He would 

not, however, accompany it to Grenada. Responding to General Trobaugh’s 

call for more aircraft, elements of four units were preparing for departure and 

deployment through Barbados: Maj. Elton S. Sledge Jr.’s Company A, 82d 

Aviation Battalion; Capt. Bernardo C. Negrete’s Company D; CWO George 

R. Morrison’s command-and-control section from Company C; and a support 

platoon from Capt. Leonard J. Rodowick’s Company F. Rabon would have to 

remain on Barbados to shepherd these elements to Grenada.31

Major Elder’s men finished rebuilding their UH–60s just before dusk on 26 

October. With General Trobaugh’s approval, Elder decided not to hustle the 

bone weary men to Grenada immediately. They lay down in their sleeping bags 

just off the edge of the runway to take a few hours of fitful rest punctuated by 

the sound of jet aircraft landing and taking off.32

Processing Americans and Third-Country Nationals

As planned, the 2d Brigade S–1, Capt. Gregory M. D’Arbonne, started 

processing the students at 0600 on 26 October at the True Blue Campus. 

30 Seigle, “Looking Back at Urgent Fury,” p. 24 (quotation); Interv, author with Rabon, 27 

Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; E-mail, Maxham to author, 13 Sep 2006, sub: Black Hawk 

Question, Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH. 31 Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Seigle, “Looking Back 

at Urgent Fury,” p. 24 (quoted words). 32 Intervs, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, plus Wade with Beaty and Garmond, [Nov 

1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Arthur W. Hapner, “’Dustoff’ in Grenada,” pp. 62–64, 66.
The Rucksack War

350

Everything went smoothly. He put them in the school cafeteria and had them 

walk two at a time to a room at the other end of the facility, where he and 

the physician’s assistant from the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, CWO2 William 

Donovan, searched them for drugs and other contraband. Captain D’Arbonne 

then assembled the students in an auditorium to explain the evacuation process. He did not know what the port of entry would be; he thought possibly 

Pope Air Force Base. He had packed forms releasing the United States government of any liability for damage to their property, but those papers were 

still in his A-bag back at Green Ramp. As a substitute, he read the waiver 

aloud and asked if anyone disagreed. When no one did, he collected everyone’s 

name, social security number, and passport number. Four of the students were 

Iranians. Three had entry visas to the United States; the fourth did not. After 

securing clearance from the State Department, D’Arbonne permitted him to 

accompany his compatriots.33

With the paperwork required for evacuation complete, Captain D’Arbonne 

kept the students in the school auditorium until they could leave. Outside the 

war was going on, “bombs and explosions and machine gun fire.” He made 

certain the shutters were closed to minimize the danger of flying glass if a shell 

exploded nearby. He was surprised at how few students there were. From television reports he had envisioned perhaps 1,000. Excluding Grenadian nationals, however, only 140 were residing at the True Blue Campus. At 1000 General 

Trobaugh came down to assess the situation and told D’Arbonne to put the 

students on the next aircraft going north. The captain put 71 on the first and 

69 on a second.34

Almost all these students had been in their first semester at the St. 

George’s University School of Medicine. They were the least acculturated 

to Grenadian society of any of their peers, and most were shocked by the 

events that brought about their flight to the mainland. Their work assisting the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, surgeon, Capt. James A. Pfaff, with 

the wounded made them feel that they had contributed to their own rescue 

and to the success of the operation. The first to be rescued, they had considerable energy and were not shy about expressing themselves. All these 

factors combined to create an emotional homecoming when the first C–141 

landed at Charleston Air Force Base at 1719 on 26 October. Before meeting the press, the students asked for a moment of silence in honor of the 

rangers who had died saving them. The students were outspoken in their 

praise of the Army. They noted the care that the troops had taken not to 

shoot civilians and how many Grenadians would have lost their lives without such fire discipline. The most important event, however, at least as far 

as the American people were concerned, was not what the students said 

but what one of them did. As he came down the steps from the aircraft, 

he fell to his knees and kissed the tarmac. That moment, captured in a 

33 Interv, Wells with D’Arbonne, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

34 Ibid. (quoted words); Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 77, 80. The Air Force 

provided the statistics on the number of students on each flights.
Processing and repatriating student evacuees from Grenada to the United States



Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

355

photograph distributed by the Associated Press, built a firewall of public 

support around the administration’s Grenada policies.35

After dark, about the time the second C–141 with students from the True 

Blue Campus touched down at Charleston Air Force Base, a group of 233 

students from the Grand Anse Campus and their rescuers—the rangers of 

Colonel Hagler’s 2d Battalion, 75th Infantry—arrived at Point Salines aboard 

Marine helicopters. It was a dramatic scene. The aircraft, landing lights flashing when they had not been shot out, disgorged their excited passengers while 

the rangers of Colonel Taylor’s 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, cheered. The 

evacuees congregated on the south side of the runway opposite the terminal 

complex, where a State Department representative and the division staff judge 

advocate, Lt. Col. Quinton W. Richardson, attempted to process them. With 

no electricity and thus no lights, the preparation of the manifests for the group 

became an exasperating experience for all involved.36

As the paperwork progressed, Colonel Richardson faced another daunting task: persuading the 317th Tactical Airlift Wing’s 317th Combat Control 

Team to taxi C–141s from the east end of the runway after unloading their 

cargoes to the midpoint in the runway, where the students would board. The 

aircraft then had to taxi to the west end, where the tarmac was wide enough 

for the planes to turn around. Because prevailing winds dictated east to west 

takeoffs, the aircraft had to taxi all the way back to the east end of the runway 

and turn around again before they could take off. The control team was concerned about the amount of fuel the planes would waste in all this taxiing. For 

his part, Richardson was certain that one or more of the students would be 

injured, possibly seriously, if they attempted to walk to the C–141s along the 

rubble-strewn verge of the runway in the half-light conditions provided by the 

Air Force’s emergency runway lights. In the end his arguments prevailed.37

Once the first aircraft reached midfield, one more bureaucratic hurdle 

remained before any of the students could depart. An Air Force officer insisted 

that the Army frisk each passenger, but Colonel Richardson considered this 

requirement superfluous as the students had arrived with only the clothes on 

their backs. Again he prevailed, and the students boarded the C–141 without 

being searched. The first flight departed about 2100 on 26 October.38

Processing Detainees and Refugees

On the morning of 26 October, around the same time that Captain D’Arbonne 

started processing the first group of evacuees, Brig. Rudyard Lewis’ Caribbean 

Peacekeeping Force began moving civilian refugees, Cuban construction workers and soldiers, and People’s Revolutionary Army members to the Cuban 

35 Memo, Hrinak for Motley, 31 Oct 1983, sub: Grenada Evacuation—The Charleston 

Perspective, in GWG, 1983, Accession no. 353–96–0002, DoS. See Kallander and Matthews, 

Urgent Fury, pp. 80–81, for the administration’s concerns about the students. 36 Interv, Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Kallander and 

Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 85, give arrival times of flights at Charleston. 37 Interv, Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

38 Ibid.
The Rucksack War

356

Workers Camp overlooking the terminal. The detainees went into the camp, 

located at the top of a hill, while the refugees clustered in and around houses 

on the slopes. The JCS liaison officer with the Caribbean contingent, Marine 

Maj. Gen. George B. Crist, met with General Trobaugh that day and briefed 

him on the detainee situation. General Crist emphasized that the Caribbean 

Peacekeeping Force was responsible for the mission, that the force reported to 

him, that he reported directly to Admiral Metcalf, and that the Navy would 

provide whatever support was needed. Circumstances soon changed, however, 

when supplies that Crist had anticipated did not arrive. The general immediately 

turned to Major Cleary’s Forward Area Support Team II and demanded food 

and water. Although somewhat breathless at the suddenness of the requirement 

that had dropped on him, Cleary was able, just barely, to fill it. The 82d Airborne 

Division thereafter provided supplies for the detainees and refugees, a situation 

that continued for the remainder of the operation.39

General Trobaugh realized, as he remarked on 26 October to his staff, that the 

detainees and refugees involved “sticky administrative problems,” but he lacked 

the command authority, the manpower, and the logistical assets to bring about 

any fundamental changes in the near term. Army officers could advise members of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force about proper procedures for running 

detainee camps, and the division could supply food and water, but these efforts 

could amount to no more than holding actions until the 82d finished deploying 

its combat units. If the command group was preoccupied with combat operations, it nonetheless assigned two officers—the division staff judge advocate, 

Colonel Richardson, and the division G–5, Maj. William D. Archer—to work 

on the detainee and refugee problems in addition to their other duties. Both 

had arrived without any assistants or vehicles, so coordination and consultation 

depended upon how fast they could walk between the division assault command 

post and the headquarters of Brigadier Lewis. In addition, General Trobaugh 

dispatched a squad from the 2d Platoon, 82d Military Police Company, to assist 

the Peacekeeping Force in managing the detainee camp.40

General Trobaugh became aware of how sticky the issue could be during his first night in the airhead. The American officers who worked with the 

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force generally gave high marks to the soldiers from 

Jamaica and Barbados, but much of the force consisted of policemen who had 

suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves in a war zone. A number were 

hardly enthusiastic about the duty, and their attitude affected their performance. While the policemen-turned-soldiers were quite adept in their dealings 

with the civilian refugees, the handling of detainees was something that fell 

outside both their training and experience. Lack of concertina wire to cordon off the detainees contributed to the problem. During the night of 25–26 

39 Ibid.; Intervs, Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983]; author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986; Wells 

with D’Arbonne, 9 Nov 1983; and Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983. All in Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 40 Interv (quoted words), Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, pp. 2–3, 5, 7, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

357

October some of the Peacekeeping Force guards at the detainee camp stacked 

their rifles and went to sleep, and later a number of Cubans escaped with some 

of the weapons. The rangers and Hamilton’s battalion recaptured a few of the 

escapees before morning.41

Questions of responsibility and techniques of managing the detainees, 

however, were of much less importance than supplying basic human needs—

food, water, shade, and latrines. Neither the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force 

nor the 82d Airborne Division possessed the resources needed to improve 

immediately conditions at the camp, which were not good. The camp had 

a kitchen and limited supplies of food and water. It also had electrical wiring and could be illuminated at night once maintenance personnel restored 

the electrical generators to service. Despite these advantages, the facilities 

were miserably inadequate. Suitable for a maximum of three hundred people, 

they soon became badly overcrowded with double that number of occupants. 

Because of this, many of the detainees remained out of doors both day and 

night. Sanitary facilities were also “negligible.” Forced by overcrowding to 

squat on a hard concrete surface, some Cuban detainees defecated in their 

pants.42

Both Colonel Richardson and Major Archer visited the compound on 

the morning of 26 October. They saw the need for an entirely new detainee 

camp, but they also realized that at the moment the division faced two unanswerable questions—where could it put such a facility, and where could it 

obtain the resources to build one? The airhead was too shallow at that time, 

and the division was having some difficulty providing logistical support 

to its own combat units. The supply situation eased somewhat when more 

resources arrived later in the day, but distribution still remained a problem. 

The engineers were able to establish a water point on the twenty-sixth, but 

its effect was limited because of a severe shortage of water trailers. No more 

would arrive for two days.43

On 26 October the refugee population grew until its size almost equaled 

the number of detainees. By the end of the second day some five hundred 

Grenadians were present, with more arriving by the hour. It became increasingly difficult for a few nervous Caribbean Peacekeeping Force guards to keep 

the detainees separated from them. The American advance had produced the 

influx. As the infantrymen swept the countryside in pursuit of the Cubans and 

the Grenadian fighters, they sent the peaceful inhabitants of the peninsula to 

the rear to keep them out of harm’s way. The civilians arrived in groups, usually under the escort of one or two infantrymen. One officer remembered “this 

41 Intervs, Wade with Lombardo, [Nov 1983], and with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH; Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 25 Oct 1983, 1855, Hist files (PDocs/DA), CMH. 42 Intervs, Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983] (quoted word); author with BakerKimmel, 18 Jul 1986; Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983]; and McMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and 

Gyurisko, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 43 Intervs, Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], and 

with Lombardo, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 27 Oct 

1983, 1520, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
Concertina wire; below, Cuban detainees inside a containment area
Cuban detainees under guard while awaiting repatriation; below, Food supplies for 

Grenadian refugees 
The Rucksack War

360

huge number of refugees just coming out of the woods . . . , twenty, thirty, 

forty people at a time.” When he asked them why they had come, most did 

not know. They said “a man” had told them where to go. Once they reached 

the airfield, they would sit in clusters along the side of the runway watching 

the aircraft land and the troops and supplies disembarking. Either Colonel 

Richardson or Major Archer would arrange with Major Cleary for transportation to the improvised refugee camp next to the detainee compound. The 

transportation was something of a problem. For want of anything better, it 

meant riding in the back of one of the Soviet dump trucks. Their designers 

had never intended them to carry people; the cargo compartments had “tremendously huge” sides that the Grenadians had to climb over. But they did it, 

men, women, and children.44

Nightfall brought the promise of improvement. Late on 26 October 

the Disaster Assistance Relief Team from U.S. Forces, Caribbean, arrived. 

Experienced in dealing with displaced civilian populations, it set up near 

Major Archer and arranged for the shipment of a pallet of supplies for the 

refugees. At approximately the same time, Company A, 96th Civil Affairs 

Battalion, consisting of four officers and three enlisted men, reached Point 

Salines and began to work with the refugees. The company commander was 

energetic and a hard worker, but he lacked assets. Although he was able to 

obtain food and water for the refugees, he could get, for the moment, little 

else.45

Processing Casualties

When General Trobaugh visited the students on the morning of 26 October, 

he told the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, surgeon, Captain Pfaff, that the division planned to turn wounded Cubans and Grenadians over to the Cuban 

medical team, which would work out of the detainee camp. In response to a 

query from Pfaff about evacuating badly wounded Cubans and Grenadians 

who needed more sophisticated care than available on the island, Trobaugh 

said that division policy was to evacuate any Cuban or Grenadian so designated by the Cuban doctors.46

That afternoon the division G–5, Major Archer, arrived at True Blue with 

a convoy of Soviet dump trucks and moved the wounded to the Cuban camp. 

Captain Pfaff and his medical team then relocated to the vicinity of the 1st 

Battalion’s command post south of the runway. At about that time, the team 

44 Intervs, Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983] (quoted words), and Wade with 

Lombardo, [Nov 1983], and with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn 

Urgent Fury, Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, pp. 2–3, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH. 45 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, p. 4, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Interv, McMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and Gyurisko, [Nov 1983], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 46 Intervs, Wells with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, and Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, p. 3, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; ibid., Surg, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, n.d., Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), 

CMH.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

361

recovered its missing medical chest, which the Air Force had given to the 

2d Battalion, 75th Infantry, by mistake. To that point the 2d Battalion had 

incurred no serious casualties.47

The situation for the 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, however, was a different 

matter. Its fight at Calliste had produced the 82d Airborne Division’s first serious casualties in Urgent Fury. One of the most grievously wounded, Sergeant 

Guinn, reached the 82d’s aid station on 26 October. The scene made a vivid 

impression on Major Cleary:

I had a young man lying in front of me on a packing crate. He had been shot through 

the lungs. The medic and the doctor were working on him hard, trying to keep him 

from dying. He had a sucking chest wound. I had a Navy ship right off the shore. I 

could see the ship. [It] had a MEDEVAC [medical evacuation] bird on it. . . . The only 

radio the Navy would turn on that we could communicate with them on was a high 

frequency. . . . Now we had one high frequency radio with us in the division and that 

was at division headquarters. It was not working very well. It took me a half an hour 

to get through to that ship to get that MEDEVAC chopper in. 

Cleary had a frequency-modulated radio, and the Guam had ten of them on 

board. He sent a major to the Guam to ask the Navy to turn them on. He 

returned and told Cleary that the Navy had refused; it was not the way they 

operated. Actually, the major had misunderstood the situation. The Guam’s 

radios had older model encryption devices and could not mesh with the 

Vinsons used in the 82d. “Men who were dying and needed help” had to pay 

the price for the decision at U.S. Atlantic Command not to prepare a communications plan for the operation.48

At 1200 the first element of Alpha Echelon, Company C, 307th Medical 

Battalion, arrived. It consisted of the company executive officer, 1st Lt. 

Douglas S. Phelps, and the staff, equipment, and supplies for an admission 

and disposition section and one ward. Lieutenant Phelps set up south of the 

runway, about midway between the control tower and the terminal, at a point 

selected by Major Cleary that would easily accommodate medical evacuation helicopters. Phelps found some heat casualties awaiting him there. They 

looked terrible, but all were receiving intravenous fluids and wanted to return 

to their units. As soon as his men erected a tent, he shooed them inside to get 

them out of the sun.49

Lieutenant Phelps was surprised that Alpha Echelon’s other contingent, 

which had departed Pope Air Force Base earlier, still had not arrived on 

Grenada. All attempts to contact the C–141 had failed, making it seem as if 

the plane and its contents had vanished into the Urgent Fury information 

47 Intervs, GWG with Kane, [Nov 1983]; Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983]; and Wells with 

Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 48 Interv, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

49 Interv, Dwight Oland with D. Phelps, 2 Mar 1988, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Chronology, 

Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH.
The Rucksack War

362

void. The disappearance stunned Phelps, because the passengers and cargo 

aboard that aircraft represented a much greater medical capacity than his own 

party: an operating room, all necessary support equipment including a light 

set and generator, and a surgical team led by Lt. Col. Richard A. Hall.50

The 82d’s advance medical team, consisting of the division orthopedic surgeon, Lt. Col. Joseph P. Jackson Jr., and five medics, relocated from Major 

Cleary’s headquarters and joined Company C about 1430. Other than the brigade surgeon, Colonel Jackson was the only doctor with the division in the 

airhead. He had last slept some fifty plus hours earlier and had been stabilizing patients almost continuously for the past eight hours. He looked and was 

exhausted, but he was also calm and decisive. When Lieutenant Phelps told 

him about the missing operating room and asked what they were going to do, 

Jackson said firmly that they were going to do the best they could with what 

they had. This notwithstanding, the surgeon also stressed that Phelps’ first 

priority was to locate the missing contingent. Eventually, coordinating with 

Major Cleary, he did. Colonel Hall’s aircraft had run low on fuel while in the 

holding pattern over Point Salines and had diverted to Barbados, but no one 

knew when the group might catch a flight to Grenada.51

Even with Lieutenant Phelps’ reinforcements, what Colonel Jackson had to 

deal with was primarily a list of deficiencies. During the twenty-sixth he and the 

medics had used almost all the consumables—for example, blood, fluids, sutures, 

50 Interv, Oland with D. Phelps, 2 Mar 1988, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

51 Ibid.

307th Medical Battalion prepares to treat Grenadian refugees.
Wounded paratroopers awaiting evacuation; below, Medical care by a member of the 

1st Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron
The Rucksack War

364

and dressings—that they had brought with them. The C–141 that carried the 

operating room had included those types of supplies on its manifest. Phelps’ plane 

had not. Jackson collected materiel donated by Captain Pfaff. Then, because the 

needs of the Cuban doctors were great, he shared his small horde with them. 

After Colonel Hamilton’s battalion captured the Cuban compound near Calliste, 

the Cubans drew heavily on the medical supplies stored there.52

In theory, the presence of the 1st Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron’s 

two C–141s on strip alert on Barbados would reduce the amount of time 

required to arrange the evacuation of critically wounded personnel to modern 

trauma wards in Puerto Rico or the United States. To make use of these assets, 

Colonel Jackson had only to radio the squadron on Barbados. The efficacy of 

this arrangement, however, depended upon effective communications between 

Point Salines and Barbados, which as far as the medical community was concerned did not exist on 26 October. To remedy the situation, the squadron 

commander, Lt. Col. A. Felix Meyer III, attempted to monitor message traffic, but his effort floundered upon operational security measures that kept 

him from receiving the wide range of high-level messages he needed. Colonel 

Meyer sought to arrange the receipt of copies of relevant messages transmitted to the Defense Attaché Office at the Bridgetown Embassy on Barbados. By 

the time the information reached the embassy, however, some of the messages 

were eighteen hours old. In the end, Meyer was reduced to depending upon 

rumors about casualties in scheduling evacuation flights into Grenada.53

Engineer Operations

Early on the morning of 26 October the division engineer, Lt. Col. Lawrence 

L. Izzo, located the elements of Company B, 307th Engineer Battalion, that 

had accompanied the 2d Brigade into the Port Salines airhead. Colonel Izzo 

took one certified equipment operator and two other soldiers who professed to 

have some knowledge of how to handle machinery back with him to the division assault command post and released the rangers he had used the previous 

night. He had a number of critical tasks for the three men. They would have to 

secure the command post by building barriers; to dig in the ammunition supply point and the fuel point; to clear a dozen or so pieces of equipment away 

from the periphery of the runway, thus creating a staging area for helicopter 

operations; and to build latrines. With the memory of the Beirut bombing still 

fresh, Izzo gave first priority to building a truck-proof barricade on the ramp 

in front of the terminal. The engineers had only to move the precast concrete slabs that already existed on the ramp and pile them neatly in continuous 

stacks to form a crude but effective obstacle. Initially, they had to depend upon 

the 6,000-pound forklift from the arrival-departure airfield control group to 

52 Diary, Jackson, 26 Oct 1983, Hist files (Papers/Jackson), CMHJ; Chronology, Hist files 

(Papers/Wilson), CMH. See also Intervs, Pirnie with Jackson, 23 May 1985; Hicks with Ashley 

and D. Phelps, [Nov 1983]; and Oland with Wilson, 6 Nov 1987. All in Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 53 Briefing, A. F. Meyer, [1984], Hist files (Interv), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st 

AES, 14 Feb 1984, p. 6, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/MAC), CMH.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

365

stack the slabs, and they could use the machine only in the intervals when it 

was not unloading aircraft. Once maintenance specialists from the forward 

area support team repaired some of the captured front-end loaders, the engineers used them as well. Employment of the captured bulldozers, however, was 

out of the question because their tracks would cause extensive damage to the 

surface of the taxiway.54

Construction of the barricade also provided a secondary benefit, namely, 

clearing at least a portion of the ramp that was a necessary prerequisite for 

C–130 operations. Yet Major Cleary and the commander of the 317th Combat 

Control Team, Air Force Capt. Stephen R. Scott, remained impatient. They 

realized that motor vehicles could still approach General Trobaugh’s headquarters, albeit gingerly and with many turns, whereas C–130s could not use 

the ramp as long as the barricade was in place. Once the engineers finished, 

they focused on clearing construction equipment and debris from the ramp. 

The work, nevertheless, continued very slowly due to equipment shortages and 

the plethora of other missions.55

The effort to supply clean water was also a priority for the engineers. The 

first of four erdlators capable of purifying freshwater arrived that day. Colonel 

Izzo also began pumping out the cisterns of the houses around the airfield. At 

the same time he requested two reverse-osmosis water purification units capable of desalinating seawater. Further exploring the airfield complex, he and his 

assistant, Maj. Donald M. Tomasik, eventually located a tank in the fuel farm 

near the airport on which the Cubans had been conducting a percolation test 

to check for leaks. Upon testing, the water inside proved to be pure.56

The erdlators and the percolation tank plus the water that Colonel Izzo 

had discovered the night before, the 5,000-gallons in 5-gallon containers that 

the 82d Support Command executive officer, Lt. Col. Ronald F. Kelly, shipped 

from Green Ramp each day, and the water that General Patterson supplied 

from Barbados provided all that the troops in the airhead needed. As with the 

detainees, the problem became distribution. Normally, units would bring their 

water buffalos to water points in division-rear. Because General Trobaugh had 

ordered the 3d Brigade’s deployment before the 2d Brigade received its vehicles, 

however, none of the battalions had their buffalos. In their absence, battalion 

S–4s improvised, refilling 5-gallon cans and any other available receptacle and 

hauling them forward in captured trucks.57

The mid-deployment alterations in the 2d Brigade’s task force configuration also had an impact on the engineers’ ability to perform their mission. All 

54 Interv, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Lawrence L. Izzo, 

“Divisional Engineer Support During Operation Urgent Fury,” p. 26. 55 Interv, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Izzo, “Divisional 

Engineer Support,” p. 26. 56 Intervs, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983; McMichael with Tomasik, 18 Nov 1983; 

author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also AAR, Opn Urgent

Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-22 to 4-23, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.

57 Interv, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, Hist files (Interv), CMH; Izzo, “Divisional 

Engineer Support,” p. 26; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-22 to 4-23, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
The Rucksack War

366

their own vehicles, as well as their hand tools and gloves, were still at Green 

Ramp. About the only tools most had with them were pocket knives. Again, 

the engineers improvised with what they found at the airfield. Even so, because 

the particular tools they needed were not always immediately available, the 

simplest tasks were often extremely difficult. For example, in building latrines, 

Colonel Izzo drew upon his Vietnam experience and ordered his men to cut off 

the tops of 50-gallon drums. Solid waste could be burned in the cans. Without 

the proper tools, however, cutting the tops off the drums was a protracted 

assignment. By comparison, the lack of gloves appeared at first to be only a 

minor inconvenience, but it soon proved otherwise. With the men having to 

work with their bare hands in the germ-rich semitropical environment around 

the airfield, every cut and abrasion quickly became infected. Even without 

infections, just picking up a metal tool heated by a semitropical sun could 

cause considerable pain. The work slowed as a consequence.58

At first light on 26 October Major Cleary indicated the general area where 

he wanted to set up the fuel point, leaving the exact location to the discretion of 

2d Lt. Eric P. Katz, whose Class III Platoon specialized in aviation fuel operations. Lieutenant Katz and his two noncommissioned officers marked off the 

amount of space that they would need and then requested engineer assistance 

through Cleary. Given the other engineer missions, it took some time before 

a lieutenant and an equipment operator arrived with a bulldozer. They dug 

in the platoon’s two 10,000-gallon bladders, and at the same time built berms 

that in case of an accident would keep jet fuel from flooding over the runway. 

A pair of concrete posts left by the construction workers still posed a hazard 

for helicopters, so Lieutenant Katz requested a forklift to knock them down. 

Demand was high, and Katz had to wait until almost sunset before an engineer 

and forklift arrived to demolish the posts. In the interim, the platoon members 

cut the tall grass in the area to make the ground more suitable for a helicopter 

landing zone.59

The delay in obtaining forklift support did not mean any cessation of labor 

for Lieutenant Katz and his men. They worked around the clock. The men had 

to clear their area of all debris that might be sucked into jet engines. They did 

it by hand. In addition, Katz set up and maintained a full perimeter defense, 

and the men kept themselves camouflaged and out of sight except when preparing the fuel point for operation.60

Excluding the wait for the forklifts, total elapsed time from when the 

engineers first broke ground to completion was five or six hours. “If we had 

not practiced the previous two times in September and October,” concluded 

Lieutenant Katz, “it would have taken a long time.” Normally, he could not 

run a test on the system until the arrival of the first Air Force bladder bird. 

The platoon, following standard procedure, had not brought any fuel with it. 

However, with the assistance of the G–4 representative at Point Salines, Capt. 

58 Interv, McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

59 Intervs, author with Katz, 18 Jul and 6 Aug 1986, and McMichael with Izzo, 14 Dec 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 60 Interv, author with Katz, 18 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

367

James A. Rosebrock, Katz secured two partially full 500-gallon blivots of jet 

fuel from Joint Special Operations Command. He could not use the fuel until 

he had his own equipment set up, because the command had already shipped 

its pumps back to the United States. The two blivots, however, allowed him to 

test his fuel system before the bladder bird arrived.61

Based on the estimated amount of time needed to establish the aviation 

fuel point, Major Cleary had submitted a request for a delivery of fuel before 

leaving Fort Bragg. However, at 0400 on 27 October, when Major Elder’s Task 

Force B arrived from Barbados with fuel tanks on its helicopters approaching 

empty, the first bladder bird had yet to arrive from Roosevelt Roads Naval 

Air Station, Puerto Rico, where the Air Force had stationed the tankers on 

standby alert.62

Point Salines Airhead, 26 October

The men of the arrival-departure airfield control group worked under fire 

on the morning of 26 October as rounds from the fight at the Cuban compound passed over their heads. Occasionally, they also came under sniper fire, 

but the snipers did not shoot straight. No member of the arrival-departure 

team was wounded, but it took a while for the men to affect indifference to the 

experience.63

The Forward Area Support Team II headquarters was, noted Major 

Cleary, “a gathering point for everybody and anybody” at the Point Salines 

airfield. As a result, it became an information center for logisticians. Cleary, on 

his own initiative, attempted to keep the infantry and ranger battalions, as well 

as the supporting units, informed about what supplies were arriving in the airhead.He assigned an enlisted man to work continuously at the unloading site 

to monitor what was coming in and to report back to him. By keeping the brigade and battalion S–4s posted, Cleary ensured that they could send someone 

to pick up what they needed. Many came to his office not only for information 

about where the classes of supply were located but also for transportation. He 

had a few vehicles under his control and very shortly found himself running a 

taxi service.64

Some officers, enlisted men, and civilians who arrived in the airhead could 

be very demanding. On 26 October, for example, Military Airlift Command 

deployed a team to install and maintain a visual approach slope indicator and 

portable lights—systems designed to permit safe takeoffs and landings during 

darkness or inclement weather. The Air Force officer commanding the team 

announced their arrival to Major Cleary with some abruptness: “We’re here. 

61 Intervs, author with Katz, 18 Jul (quoted words) and 6 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 62 Intervs, Baribeau with Elder, 9 Nov 1983, and with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, plus author with 

Katz, 6 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Seigle, “Looking Back at Urgent Fury,” p. 24. 63 Kenneth C. Sever, “Units and Missions—The 782d Maintenance Battalion (in Grenada),” 

p. 5. 64 Interv, Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983 (quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH; 

Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 117, 120.
The Rucksack War

368

We were told that you’d provide us with vehicles, transportation, food, shelter, 

everything.” Cleary did it, but only with difficulty.65

Unlike their counterparts at corps headquarters, General Trobaugh and 

his staff officers lacked experience in dealing with the pressures an army forces 

headquarters encountered during a contingency operation. Various offices 

and agencies lobbied higher headquarters to deploy specialized units whose 

activities would contribute little or nothing to winning the battle at hand but 

whose presence might greatly promote the larger purpose of winning the Cold 

War. On 26 October Trobaugh anticipated further resistance and wanted more 

infantry and a sufficient logistical base to sustain an offensive. The specialized 

units interfered with the deployment of the reinforcing infantry battalions. 

Equally important, those that arrived without any field equipment also cut 

into the ability of Forward Area Support Team II to support the division. The 

division staff was extremely unhappy about this and conveyed its displeasure 

to the arriving units. In one case the division chief of staff, Col. Peter J. Boylan 

Jr., met an aircraft carrying an intelligence task force from the XVIII Airborne 

Corps’ 525th Military Intelligence Group commanded by Maj. Lawrence J. 

Kimmel. Expecting to find infantry aboard, Colonel Boylan was very disappointed. Major Kimmel had orders directly from the National Command 

Authority (meaning that either the president or the secretary of defense had 

signed them) to collect information on the island, and his men were outfitted 

for field service. Boylan told Kimmel quite bluntly that he would have preferred them back at Fort Bragg.66

The reinforcements that Colonel Boylan had so anxiously anticipated were 

en route. The first C–141, somewhat command heavy, departed Pope Air Force 

Base at 1010 on 26 October. Aboard were the commander of the 3d Brigade, 

Col. James T. Scott; the commander of his lead formation, Lt. Col. George 

A. Crocker of the 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry; the officers and men of their 

respective primary tactical operations centers; and one rifle company, Company 

A, 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry. On arrival over the Point Salines airfield their 

C–141 seemed to circle interminably. Captain Scott’s 317th Combat Control 

Team had closed the runway to load Task Force 160 helicopters, and some 

sort of difficulty had developed with one of them. The crew chief aboard the 

C–141 informed Colonels Scott and Crocker of these circumstances and that 

their aircraft would soon have to divert to Barbados for fuel. Furthermore, he 

said, the airfield was about to be closed because of an operation—the Grand 

Anse rescue mission.67

As with the 2d Brigade the day before, the 3d Brigade had no capability 

for in-flight communications. Colonel Scott hobbled up to the cockpit—he 

had one foot in a cast because of a recent jump injury—and asked the pilot 

65 Interv, Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

66 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983; Frasché with Boylan, 21 Nov 1983; and 

author with Baker-Kimmel, 18 Jul 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Msg, Metcalf 

to McDonald, 26 1720Z Oct 1983, ODO SitRpts, Hist files (PDocs/DA/AOC), CMH. 67 Interv, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; George A. Crocker, 

“Grenada Remembered—A Perspective,” Student Paper, p. 10.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

369

to put him in contact with the Air Force combat control team on the ground. 

Using the cockpit radio, he identified himself and told the control team that 

he had to land. The control team commander, Captain Scott, checked with the 

division assault command post, and shortly thereafter Colonel Scott’s plane 

landed. Then Captain Scott closed the Point Salines airfield for the Grand 

Anse operation, and the long string of C–141s carrying the rest of the brigade 

had to divert to Barbados. Because these airfields soon filled up, some of the 

aircraft had to return to Pope Air Force Base. The result was a very disrupted 

and confused buildup for the 3d Brigade. By 2400 on 26 October Colonel Scott 

had only one half of Colonel Crocker’s battalion in the airhead. A campaigner, 

nonetheless, he told General Trobaugh that he would accept a mission for that 

battalion the next day.68

The shipment of Task Force 160 helicopters back to the United States 

was not the only impediment to the arrival of C–141s at Point Salines on the 

twenty-sixth. General Patterson suspended air operations during the Grand 

Anse operation in part because Marine helicopters were landing and taking 

off next to the runway. Once again, aircraft in the landing pattern circled until 

they ran low on fuel and then diverted to alternate landing sites, their destinations unknown to anyone at either Fort Bragg or Point Salines.69

In the intervals when the airfield was open, moreover, more than just 

infantry was arriving. During the daylight hours of 26 October Battery B, 1st 

Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, assembled some six howitzers; Battery C of 

the same battalion received two additional tubes, giving it a total of five. In the 

end, the arrival of these pieces overtaxed the available area north of the runway suitable for gun positions. One battery had to move south of the runway 

and, consequently, actually fired over the runway in the artillery preparation 

for the Grand Anse operation, a circumstance that contributed to the decision 

to close the field to aircraft. That night “bits and pieces” of the 1st Battalion, 

319th Field Artillery, began to land at Point Salines, joining the elements of 

the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, already there. The 319th’s commander, 

Lt. Col. Freddy E. McFarren, also arrived at about 0200 on 27 October. What 

confronted McFarren and his 320th counterpart, Lt. Col. Duane E. Williams, 

was in Williams’ graphic phrase “a potential zoo.” Neither officer had all his 

command-and-control elements. So with the approval of General Trobaugh, 

Colonels McFarren and Williams rigged a “bastardized artillery task force.” 

They called the ad hoc organization the Force Artillery Command, reporting 

directly to the division commander rather than to the brigade task force commanders. As the senior officer, Williams took charge. The artillery task force 

eventually controlled sixteen howitzers.70

68 Interv, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, 82d Abn Div 

Assault CP, 27 Oct 1983, 0850, and 28 Oct 1983, 1440, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH. 69 Interv, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

70 Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983] (quoted words), 

and McMichael with McFarren, 17 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Crocker, “Grenada 

Remembered,” Student Paper, p. 12.
Artillerymen load and fire their howitzers during Urgent Fury
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

371

Ammunition stocks, although slowly increasing, remained low for any 

prolonged action. The two batteries involved in the attack on the Cuban compound near Calliste on the morning of 26 October had 128 shells available 

per howitzer. Of these, 75 were high explosive and the remainder, illumination rounds intended for anticipated nighttime attacks that never occurred. 

In the Calliste operation the gunners expended 50 high-explosive shells per 

tube. Logisticians managed to increase the ammunition stockpile to 225 highexplosive rounds per tube by the time of the late-afternoon attack on Grand 

Anse, during which the gunners fired 100 rounds per tube. By the end of the 

day supplies had built up to 200 rounds per tube, but the officers in the division fire support element remained concerned about the low level of stocks if 

serious trouble occurred.71

The major problem at the arrival airfield from General Trobaugh’s perspective was the slow rate at which the division could mass its resources: both men 

and materiel. The major cause was the limitation of only one aircraft on the 

ground at any time. The solution, as the corps and division logisticians saw it 

during the planning process, was to clear the ramp in front of the terminal so that 

additional aircraft could park there. In accord with this plan, Colonel Izzo had 

begun clearing the ramp on the morning of 26 October. Colonel Boylan halted 

the effort, however, because of the noise involved. The whine generated by idling 

C–130s reverberated through the shell of the terminal, threatening to drown out 

the division staff’s fragile communications links with the outside world.72

Another complication arose because both ranger battalions had bivouacked south of the runway after they went into reserve, while Colonel Scott 

on orders from General Trobaugh had established his headquarters south of 

the eastern end of the runway. The units, but especially the brigade headquarters, generated heavy vehicular traffic. Oblivious to the dangers of crossing an 

active runway, many Army drivers followed the Euclidian rule that a straight 

line is the shortest distance between two points. In response, Air Force combat 

control team members sped up and down the sides of the runway mounted on 

three-wheel mopeds attempting, often without success, to deter them. Several 

C–141s also had to abort their takeoff rolls, and others that were landing had 

to break off approaches and circle. Luckily, no accidents occurred, but the 

situation hardly increased interservice amity.73

If some airflow problems were self-inflicted, others lay beyond the division’s 

ability to control. When Air Force technicians first set up the visual approach 

71 Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983; McMichael 

with Schieman, 5 Apr 1984; author with Cleary, 15 Jul 1986; and Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983. 

All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 72 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983; Frasché with Boylan, 21 Nov 1983; Hicks 

with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983]; McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984; and 

author with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also LL[draft], GWG, 

sub: Impact of Force Structure on Provision of Combat Service Support to Committed Army 

Forces, Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH; E-mail, Keaney to author, 11 Mar 2005, sub: C–130s 

and Grenada, Hist files (PDocs/Misc), CMH. 73 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Kallander and 

Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 120.
The Rucksack War

372

slope indicator on 26 October, for example, the equipment failed to work. 

They then rewired it, but the lights proved too bright, blinding pilots on final 

approach. General Patterson, nevertheless, decided to risk night operations 

with C–141s because by dusk the area around the airfield was much clearer 

of debris than it had been the previous evening. At 1700, as the takeoffs and 

landings proceeded, an Air Force surveillance aircraft detected an antiaircraft 

battery east of the airfield. Unaware that these guns had been captured by the 

rangers on the first day, Patterson immediately halted air operations into Point 

Salines. Communications between the services was so poor at the time that 

Major Cleary learned something had happened only when the aircraft stopped 

arriving. It then took time to discover why the airflow had halted and the personal intervention of General Trobaugh to get it started again. The next plane 

landed at 0405 on 27 October, after an eleven-hour interval.74

On the evening of the twenty-sixth the body of an American killed in action 

arrived at Major Cleary’s headquarters. Alpha Echelon lacked a graves registration specialist. So, in fact, did the entire forward area support team until 

augmented by corps. Cleary, an infantry officer with a secondary specialization 

in transportation, and everyone else in Alpha Echelon were hazy about how 

to handle the remains, but help came from a corps G–4 officer, Capt. Henry 

R. Fore, who had flown down on the same C–141 with Cleary. Because there 

appeared to be little call for his services as a liaison officer to the division, 

Captain Fore had volunteered to help unload aircraft. He also was a quartermaster officer, a branch that included graves registration. While that was not his 

particular specialization, he was very familiar with the procedures involved and 

offered to handle the identification and evacuation of deceased personnel.75

Major Cleary designated a small shed close to his headquarters as the collection point for all remains that reached the airfield. As required by Army 

doctrine, the combat units brought their dead to the collection point. There, 

Captain Fore checked the dog tags and identification cards of the deceased. 

If a unit had not filled out the appropriate forms, he did so and ensured that 

they accompanied each body. He then contacted the Air Force combat control 

team and shipped the remains on the first available aircraft returning to the 

United States without passengers. He noted the aircraft’s tail number and then 

radioed division-rear to expect the shipment.76

This system broke down at least once. Before the 2d Brigade S–1, Captain 

D’Arbonne, learned about the collection point, he personally brought the 

remains of an airborne trooper to the airfield and loaded it aboard an aircraft. 

74 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 27 Oct 1983, 0215 and 0420, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Msg, Metcalf to McDonald, 27 0825Z Oct 1983, sub: Urgent Fury Situation Report, 

ODO SitRpts, Hist files (PDocs/DA/AOC), CMH; Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 75 Tel Interv, author with Fore, 3 Sep 1986, Hist files (Interv), CMH; “Graves Detail Has 

Grim Task,” Fayetteville Observer, 24 Nov 1983. 76 Tel Interv, author with Fore, 3 Sep 1986, Hist files (Interv), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent

Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, pp. 4-5 to 4-6, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; AR 

638–30, Deceased Personnel: Graves Registration Organization and Functions in Support of 

Major Military Operations, 1980.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

373

Because D’Arbonne had provided the proper paperwork, the body entered the 

normal mortuary channels for burial when it reached Fort Bragg. The event 

nevertheless underscored the coordination problems that a lack of logistics 

planning could produce.77

On 26 October sleep began to be a problem for the thirty-five members 

of Forward Area Support Team II’s Alpha Echelon, most of whom had had 

their last real rest forty-eight hours before. As long as they were on their feet 

and moving, the men were all right, but once a trooper stopped and sat down 

he would pass out from exhaustion. The two forklift operators worked without relief for the first seventy-two hours in the airhead. Worried about accidents, Major Cleary tried to give other members of the unloading detail brief 

rest periods, but he was so short of men that he could never find anyone to 

relieve the sergeant at the ammunition point. Eventually, the sergeant became 

so fatigued that Cleary told him to take a break. After first showing the operator of the 6,000-pound rough-terrain forklift where to position the pallets of 

ammunition, the sergeant curled up and went to sleep beside a stack of ammunition. Cleary was in exactly the same situation himself. The bare bones manning of forward area support teams did not provide for an executive officer, and 

Cleary’s Alpha Echelon was even smaller. Somehow, he stayed awake. Later, he 

could not remember exactly when he finally got an opportunity to sleep, simply 

indicating “Thursday or Friday” (27 or 28 October). When additional logisticians finally arrived, Alpha Echelon members were completely burned out.78

Division G–4 Oversight, 26–27 October

The division G–4, Lt. Col. Jack D. Crabtree II, and selected members of 

his section arrived in the airhead around 2300 on 26 October. After reporting 

to the division assault command post, Colonel Crabtree set out to tour the 

airfield. When not engaged with the latest crisis, the division-forward G–4 representative, Captain Rosebrock, had spent considerable time before Crabtree 

arrived just trying to find out where things were located. Making his reconnaissances on foot because he had no vehicle, he had collected the necessary 

information but had yet to prepare a map showing the location of the various 

classes of supply and other logistical facilities. Crabtree, stepping in, had one 

prepared for distribution to battalion and brigade staffs. He did not stand on 

ceremony or wait for instructions. He saw quite clearly that the division needed 

to improve its logistical efforts and detailed the men he had brought to the 

island to Major Cleary, who continued to oversee Army logistical operations 

in the airhead. Crabtree also assigned one of his officers, Capt. Carl Johnson, 

to take charge of unloading aircraft and designated a food service specialist 

to run the heretofore unmanned rations supply point. Turning to the ammunition supply point, he sent two sergeants to assist the one already there.79

77 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, pp. 4-5 to 4-6, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 78 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14 (quoted words) and 15 Jul 1986, and Wade with Cleary, 

[Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 79 Interv, author with Crabtree, 24 Jan 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

374

Acting as a logistics troubleshooter, Colonel Crabtree then concentrated 

on solving major problems that required individual attention. As a result, 

dawn of 27 October found him on Barbados, searching stocks there for medical supplies that were running short in the Point Salines airhead. Although he 

found none, the brief trip to Grantley Adams illustrated the informal and very 

direct way he dealt with logistical concerns over the next few days.80

The arrival of Colonel Crabtree’s section provided little physical relief 

for Forward Area Support Team II’s Alpha Echelon. Crabtree did not have 

enough men with him to allow Major Cleary to establish real shifts so that the 

logisticians could sleep. The new arrivals did, however, inject some additional 

strength and enthusiasm into Alpha Echelon’s efforts, the sort of psychological reinforcement the members of the group needed if they were to hang on 

until real relief arrived. As the next day began, neither Crabtree nor Cleary 

knew when that would happen.81

By midnight on 26 October the military situation on Grenada had greatly 

improved, but General Trobaugh’s plan for a rapid breakout from the airhead 

on the twenty-seventh had fallen apart because of the disruption of the airflow 

into Point Salines. Trobaugh had two complete maneuver battalions from the 

2d Brigade but only half a battalion from the 3d, the equivalent of a reinforced 

company. He could break out of the airhead but without the strength he had 

anticipated. 

In general, airflow problems at Point Salines reflected the absence of 

XVIII Airborne Corps from the chain of command and the lack of good communications between the airhead and Fort Bragg. Nevertheless, three decisions by General Trobaugh and his staff greatly complicated matters on the 

twenty-sixth. First, Trobaugh’s decision to airland rather than airdrop meant 

that many more aircraft would have to land before the division completed its 

movement to Grenada. Second, Colonel Boylan’s order not to clear the ramp 

in front of the terminal limited the total number of aircraft the Air Force 

would permit on the ground at Point Salines. Third, Trobaugh’s determination 

to insert the 3d Brigade into the airflow before the 2d Brigade had completed 

its deployment meant that Forward Area Support Team II remained skeletal.

General Trobaugh clearly understood that his decision to airland rather 

than to airdrop would have implications for logistics, but he made the judgment that operational considerations should take precedence. The other decisions—not clearing the ramp in front of the terminal and giving the 3d Brigade 

precedence over the 2d—were not nearly as well-thought through. Instead of 

increasing the operational tempo, they thwarted Urgent Fury’s immediate 

objective: the rapid buildup of U.S. combat power in the airhead. In part, this 

reflects the failure to produce and to brief fully a logistical plan before the 

operation began, but in part it also illustrates the low valuation the command 

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid.; Interv, Wade with Cleary, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 26–27 October 1983

375

group placed on its G–4 staff. Indeed, the division-forward G–4 representative, 

Captain Rosebrock, was so junior in rank that Trobaugh or Boylan appear 

never even to have consulted him in any meaningful way. Colonel Crabtree’s 

arrival late on the twenty-sixth brought a logistical officer of stature and experience to the scene and produced a chance for change, but the opportunity 

never developed. Crabtree assumed the role of logistics troubleshooter, a job 

that meant he was out of the headquarters more often than not when decisions 

were under discussion. 

Despite these problems, logistical operations continued. The division was 

fortunate that Major Cleary and his men were still able to unload aircraft, for 

by midnight on the twenty-sixth Cleary had gone more than sixty hours without sleep. The major, for his part, was too focused on his own tasks to realize 

that lack of coordination with the Air Force combat control team posed real 

difficulties for his operations. He dealt with problems on a case-by-case basis 

and was too tired to pay any attention to the bigger picture. In essence, he and 

the division had stumbled into a real gap in joint doctrine—the need for a 

forward area support team headquarters and a combat control team either to 

locate their headquarters side-by-side or, if not practical, to establish a dedicated communications link for coordination. Instead, he and his Air Force 

counterpart operated in virtually separate spheres with little communication 

between them. The closure of the airfield on the night of 26–27 October might 

well have happened even if Cleary and the combat control team commander, 

Captain Scott, had functioned as one, but Trobaugh could certainly have gotten the airflow started again much sooner if they had. 

9

Corps Support

While the commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, Lt. Gen. Jack V. 

Mackmull, was not in the formal chain of command, he remained 

officially (as well as unofficially) involved because of his role “as executive 

agent for administrative and logistical support for U.S. Army forces employed 

in Operation Urgent Fury.” General Mackmull was the single point of contact for U.S. Atlantic Command to request Army support and coordinated the 

response. To do so efficiently, XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters needed to 

be able to monitor the flow of information being sent to and originating from 

Atlantic Command. Only in this way could Mackmull’s staff follow the operation and thereby anticipate and act upon the administrative and logistical 

requirements of Army forces on Grenada. Atlantic Command, however, did 

not automatically include the corps headquarters as a recipient of information 

copies of its message traffic. Mackmull had to appeal personally to the commander of Atlantic Command, Admiral Wesley L. McDonald, to gain access 

to this information for the corps. The corps’ logistical sustainment of Army 

units during the intervention thus paralleled and complemented the efforts of 

the 82d Airborne Division-Rear.1

Managing the Airflow

XVIII Airborne Corps had activated its emergency operations center 

around 2200 on 23 October, some thirty-two hours before the first landings 

on Grenada. As General Mackmull recalled, “I had intelligence people and 

operations people on every radio keeping logs so that we could get ahead of 

the power curve.” The headquarters was thus able to monitor the in-theater 

communications of the task force commanders during the initial deployment 

phase. This enabled corps personnel to alert units, put them into marshaling 

areas, seal them off, and outfit them even before the 82d Airborne Division 

commander, Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh, officially called for them. They 

1 Jnl, G–3, XVIII Abn Corps, 23 2200 Oct 1983, Corps EOC Duty Off, EOC Recs, Opn UF, 

Entry 228, UD–06W, RG 338, NARA–CP; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 

1984], sec. I, an. C, pp. I-C-6 (quoted words) and I-C-10, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), 

CMH; Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

☆ ☆ ☆
The Rucksack War

378

could forecast the division’s needs so well because, in addition to having excellent communications, Mackmull was very experienced. “I am so familiar with 

these exercises and these kinds of operations, because I’ve done them for seven 

straight years right here at Fort Bragg. I can tell you what is going to happen 

next.”2

At Mackmull’s direction, the XVIII Airborne Corps’ 35th Signal Brigade 

established a “tactical field secure telephone system” on post. This network 

allowed members of the general’s staff to talk directly to their division-rear 

counterparts—the corps G–1 to the division G–1, the corps G–2 to the division G–2, and so forth. Mackmull and his staff could also talk in secure mode 

to the airfield at Point Salines and the Directorate of Industrial Operations at 

Fort Bragg. This was a vast improvement over the peacetime norm, when they 

had only one secure telephone in the entire headquarters.3

General Mackmull could only use this communications equipment to 

anticipate and suggest what units should deploy to Grenada and when and in 

what order they should go. He could not direct. On only two occasions did he 

step beyond this boundary. When the Joint Chiefs of Staff early in the operation ordered Mackmull to deploy a Spanish-speaking interrogation team to 

the island, he dutifully sent one to Green Ramp. Coincidentally, the arrival of 

such a team requested around the same time by General Trobaugh appeared to 

division-rear as merely an exceptionally quick reaction by the corps. The second occurrence concerned the intermediate staging base on Barbados. Fully 

aware that he had no authority there, Mackmull nevertheless decided not only 

to dispatch a colonel and a small command element but also to announce the 

move after the fact to see if anyone higher up objected. Shortly thereafter, 

on 31 October, the 507th Transportation Group commander, Col. James D. 

Starling, and a few staff officers departed for Barbados. Everyone welcomed 

the order and system the colonel brought to the Army side of Barbados operations. Colonel Starling and his team became known as 1st Support CommandForward II. Starling remained with his authority intact until the Army discontinued its activities on the island in November.4

XVIII Airborne Corps was not the only Army headquarters in the continental United States to enjoy the advantages of modern communications 

and the ability to monitor message traffic during Urgent Fury. U.S. Army 

Forces Command and the Department of the Army did likewise. The staffs 

at these headquarters required XVIII Airborne Corps to respond to queries 

about the tactical situation and other developments generated by the “great 

2 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. C, pp. I-C-7, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Interv (quoted words), Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 3 Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

4 Ibid.; Interv, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983; McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 

17 Jan 1984; and Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See 

also Msgs, Cdr, XVIII Abn Corps (Maj Nielson) to ARREDOP S1 (Capt Otto), 26 1022[Z] Oct 

1983, sub: IPW Teams, and Richardson to Cavazos, 31 1483[Z] Oct 1983, sub: Update of 1st 

COSCOM Support to Urgent Fury, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), 

CMH.
Corps Support

379

number of conversations overheard 

by higher headquarters.” Because 

XVIII Airborne Corps was not in the 

chain of command, its initial ability 

to answer these queries was no greater 

than that of the officers posing them. 

Still, General Mackmull wanted the 

questions handled in-house. He saw 

that the corps could serve as a giant 

“blocking dummy” for the division, 

absorbing all distractions. This would 

allow General Trobaugh to concentrate on the ground battle and the 

division-rear commander, Brig. Gen. 

James D. Smith, to focus on his support mission at Fort Bragg. As a 

consequence, Mackmull permitted, 

besides himself, only his corps G–3, 

Col. James H. Johnson Jr., to contact the division-forward staff on 

Grenada. Mackmull and Johnson 

talked with Trobaugh and his staff to 

find out what was going on, what they 

needed most, and what their informal 

reaction was to various proposals. To handle queries from higher headquarters, Mackmull expanded the role of his headquarters so that it could monitor 

unobtrusively the actions of the division. On 26 October, for example, Johnson 

directed the corps G–4, Col. Corless W. Mitchell, to station an officer at Green 

Ramp to keep a record of airflow data.5

Relations between corps and division at the highest level was one thing, 

but relations between the two organizations at the action officer level was 

something altogether different. Because the corps was not in the chain of command, it could not maintain its customary relationship with the 82d. Instead, 

the staffs and subordinate units of each had to work out a new basis of dealing 

with one another while reacting to events in a high-pressure operation requiring almost instantaneous responses. Despite underlying friction, the newly 

improvised arrangements worked rather well.

The nadir of the new arrangements undoubtedly came when one element 

of the 35th Signal Brigade deployed from Green Ramp prematurely and out of 

turn. The incident provoked hard feelings within the division. It also reflected 

disquiet within the corps. Some officers at corps level did not understand why 

General Mackmull had taken the 330th Transportation Center out of Green 

5 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. C, pp. I-C-1 and I-C-7 

(first quoted words), Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Interv (second quoted 

words), Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Colonel Johnson 
The Rucksack War

380

Ramp or why XVIII Airborne Corps had failed to establish unit movement 

priorities; lacking knowledge of actual events, they ascribed the general’s 

actions to lack of confidence in their professional abilities. Other officers, who 

knew the circumstances and understood the reasons for Mackmull’s decision, 

were no less critical of the way in which the division managed the airflow and 

faulted not the individuals involved but the system in which they were attempting to work.6

Within this group one of the most frustrated officers was the commander 

of the 1st Support Command, Col. William J. Richardson Jr., an even older 

hand at airborne operations than General Mackmull. Experience gave him a 

good idea of the sequence in which support units needed to be introduced into 

the area of operations. The bottleneck at Green Ramp, or more precisely, the 

difficulty of flying C–141s with men, equipment, and supplies directly from 

Pope Air Force Base to the Point Salines airfield, thwarted him just as it did 

everyone else.7

While division-rear had established progressively tighter control of the 

movement of cargoes out of Green Ramp, Colonel Richardson noted that 

division staff officers had paid little attention to what entered Grenada through 

Barbados. Until this juncture, because of congestion at the Point Salines airfield, transshipments through Grantley Adams International Airport on 

Barbados consisted of the various task forces of the 82d Aviation Battalion 

and cargoes of diverted C–141s. Thereafter, C–130s at Grantley Adams flew 

men, equipment, and supplies from Barbados to Grenada. Richardson had 

already succeeded in getting the 1st Support Command advance party under 

Col. Robert C. Barrett Jr. to the airhead by flying first to Barbados and then 

to Grenada on a C–130.

Colonel Richardson began shipping combat service support units from 

the 1st Support Command to Barbados via the corps departure area at Pope 

Air Force Base known as Yellow Ramp. They could then deploy to Grenada 

aboard C–130s on a space-available basis. If the division discovered that it 

needed one of the corps units, it would be located close at hand and ready for 

immediate movement to Grenada. Richardson used this method of introducing support units, supplies, and equipment into the island as long as the direct 

airflow from Pope Air Force Base to Grenada remained congested. Because 

of the confusion, division-forward and division-rear never discovered what he 

was doing.

At the same time, the flow of units from Barbados was not as completely 

outside divisional control as Colonel Richardson had thought, largely due 

to the efforts of the Army liaison officer attached to Brig. Gen. Robert B. 

Patterson’s airlift headquarters, Maj. Richard C. Anshus. Once Army units 

and supplies began building up on Barbados, Major Anshus flew daily to 

Point Salines with a list of what was waiting for transshipment to Grenada. 

6 For the prickly nature of relations between division and corps, see Intervs, Bishop with W. 

Richardson, [Nov 1983], and Wade with Zakszeski, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 7 For this and the following two paragraphs, see Intervs, Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 

1983], and McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Corps Support

381

Based on guidance from General Trobaugh’s staff, the Forward Area Support 

Team II coordinator, Maj. Daniel J. Cleary III, recorded the assigned priority. 

Cargoes shipped through Barbados thus passed to divisional control fairly 

quickly. Richardson and any other officer who depended upon monitored message traffic for knowledge of actions in the area of operations remained ignorant of these arrangements because, given the poor communications between 

Army elements on Grenada and Barbados, Cleary and Anshus conducted all 

of their business face to face.8

Although the confusion and animosity brought on by the shift in command arrangements threatened to spark incidents serious enough to impede 

Army command and control, the friction never reached such levels. This speaks 

to the professional competence and attitude of all the officers involved and 

especially to the example of professional conduct set by General Mackmull, 

General Smith, and Brig. Gen. Jack D. Farris Jr. As deputy corps commander, 

General Farris was often the person who conveyed Mackmull’s “suggestions” 

about the airflow to Smith and the division staff. While Farris was often forceful in arguing the corps’ point of view, he never forgot that the commander on 

the ground, General Trobaugh, “called the shots” and that Smith spoke for 

8 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Patterson listens intently to Lewis and an unidentified naval officer.
The Rucksack War

382

him. Smith on the other hand looked to corps for assistance and advice, but 

he always remembered that Trobaugh set the priorities. While Smith could be 

and was very tough about defending the division commander’s prerogatives, 

he did so in a manner that did no damage to relations with corps. Ultimately, 

it was Mackmull, the corps commander, who exerted the greatest influence by 

his conduct. In October 1983 he was a very experienced officer approaching 

the end of a distinguished career when Fate offered him the opportunity to 

which all professional soldiers aspire—high command in war. And then Fate 

just as capriciously relegated him to an observer status. He wasted no time in 

recriminations but did everything in his power—and sometimes, strictly speaking, beyond his power—to assist Trobaugh in making the operation a success. 

He also insisted that his officers do the same, and the vast majority did.9

Augmenting the Division

XVIII Airborne Corps did many things that contributed to the success 

of Army operations on Grenada. One of the most important was the preparation of an augmentation package to give the division-forward staff sufficient manpower to function as the U.S. Forces, Grenada, headquarters once 

combat ended. General Mackmull and Colonel Richardson took care that the 

package was sufficiently robust to assume the mission once General Trobaugh 

and his headquarters returned to the United States. While Atlantic Command 

did not have such a mission in mind for XVIII Airborne Corps, Mackmull 

believed that the course of events would create it. On 24 October he accordingly alerted his own headquarters to prepare to deploy to Grenada. He also 

directed Richardson to begin planning for combat service support units to 

accompany the headquarters when it did so. To obtain the necessary communications support, Mackmull had to order signal units already at Fort Stewart 

in support of Joint Exercise Quick Thrust to return to Fort Bragg. Otherwise, 

the corps elements went through the same routine as other units preparing for 

deployment.10

Two days later General Richard E. Cavazos, in his role as commander of 

U.S. Army, Atlantic, validated the wisdom of General Mackmull’s decision. 

He directed Mackmull to prepare a plan to augment General Trobaugh’s headquarters by using XVIII Airborne Corps staff members to establish Combined 

Forces, Grenada, headquarters referred to in the Atlantic Command operations order. Combined Forces, Grenada, whose American members would 

function simultaneously as U.S. Forces, Grenada, headquarters, would 

“accomplish the Grenada mission after hostilities cease[d]” and would include 

all necessary combat service support units. While the combined headquarters 

9 Almost everyone who served in division-rear offered comments about one or more of 

these three officers and their impact on Urgent Fury. In particular, see Intervs, Bishop with 

Farris, 18 Nov 1983; Burdett with J. Smith, [Nov 1983]; author with J. Smith, 4 Sep 1986 (quoted 

words), with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986; Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983; 

and Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 10 Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and with Farris, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Corps Support

383

would control and, when necessary, 

support the armed forces of the eastern Caribbean nations participating 

in Urgent Fury, the U.S. headquarters would control American forces 

only.11

General Cavazos envisioned 

three phases. Phase I would involve 

the deployment of additional support units to conduct peacekeeping 

operations. Phase II would consist 

of the withdrawal of some combat 

formations of the 82d Airborne 

Division, the retention of support 

elements introduced during Phase 

I and the arrival of a commandand-control “element” from XVIII 

Airborne Corps. Phase III, if necessary, would occur after all units from 

the 82d Airborne Division and XVIII 

Airborne Corps had withdrawn and 

would consist of a peacekeeping force 

“tailored specifically for the mission.” 

Good fortune had nothing to do with 

the fact that Generals Cavazos and Mackmull were in such close agreement, 

for they were merely following the often exercised Concept Plan 2360 for small 

island operations in the Caribbean. Diplomatic considerations precluded the 

establishment of the combined headquarters, but most of the mission and all 

logistical responsibilities fell to the U.S. Forces headquarters.12

Events the next day, 27 October, confirmed the wisdom of General 

Cavazos’ and General Mackmull’s preparations. The Joint Task Force 

(JTF) 120 commander, V. Adm. Joseph Metcalf III, pointed out to Admiral 

McDonald that the administrative and logistical burden on the tactical commander would increase drastically as Urgent Fury proceeded. In a separate 

message to Mackmull, he asked that XVIII Airborne Corps prepare to establish the Combined Forces, Grenada, headquarters contemplated in Atlantic 

Command’s operations order. Because Mackmull was out of the chain of 

command, he lacked the necessary authority to act and so informed Metcalf. 

The corps commander knew, however, that he would receive such a directive 

from Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger just as soon as the admiral 

submitted his request through proper channels. Further information about the 

composition of such a headquarters and supporting units came that day. The 

11 Original message to XVIII Airborne Corps may have been oral, summarized in Msg, 

USCINCARLANT to USCINCLANT (Attn: LNO Singer), 27 1851[Z] Oct 1983, WIN Telecon 

Msgs, (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 12 Ibid.

General Cavazos
The Rucksack War

384

Forces Command liaison officer at Atlantic Command, Maj. James C. Singer, 

warned that Admiral McDonald wanted to re-embark the Marines and send 

them to Lebanon as quickly as possible. “We need to plan,” said Major Singer, 

“how we will replace the support” provided by Joint Task Force 120.13

Originally General Mackmull had thought that the entire corps, including 

the 101st Airborne Division, might have to go to Grenada, but toward the end 

of the first day he perceived that fighting was diminishing and concluded that 

it would not need to deploy. In addition, the Joint Chiefs of Staff indicated 

to Admiral McDonald that more headquarters on the island were undesirable. They were concerned that the American public might misinterpret the 

establishment of a separate Combined Forces, Grenada, headquarters to 

mean that the United States intended to create a long-term occupation force. 

In a conference call sometime after Major Singer’s message of 27 October, 

McDonald, Cavazos, and Mackmull thus agreed that the Grenada occupation 

would not be a corps operation. A lower-ranking general would suffice to take 

the headquarters element to the island and would replace General Trobaugh 

upon his departure. Mackmull turned to his deputy, General Farris, and said, 

“Well, alright Jack, you can go.” Mackmull gave Farris a blank check as far 

as the structuring of the headquarters was concerned but stipulated: “Keep it 

reasonable.”14

Planners attempted to scale back the original XVIII Airborne Corps combat service support package, but it nonetheless came under criticism because 

it seemed too large for the mission assigned to it. In part, the excess reflected 

the original planning assumption that the package would have to support the 

entire corps, but it also derived from a paucity of good information about 

facilities and conditions on the island and uncertainty about the nature of 

future Army operations there. For a time, indeed, a sustained counterinsurgency campaign appeared a genuine possibility.15

Complicating matters further, officers in XVIII Airborne Corps, like their 

counterparts in the 82d Airborne Division, saw participation in the Grenada 

operation as a means of enhancing their prospects for promotion. This reinforced a tendency to dispatch more troops than needed, especially headquarters larger than the situation required. General Mackmull and his principal 

13 Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Msg, CJTF 120 

to USCINCLANT, 27 0927Z Oct 1983, sub: Cuban Citizens on Grenada, ODO Significant 

Events file, Hist files (PDocs/DA/AOC), CMH, in which Metcalf also emphasized the problem. 

See also Msg (quoted words), USCINCARLANT LNO (Maj Singer) to USCINCARLANT, 

27 1253[Z] Oct 1983, sub: Upcoming Events, WIN Telecon Msgs, (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), 

CMH. 14 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and author with Farris, 14 Apr 1989 

(quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Msg, Mackmull to McDonald (Attn: Maj Singer), 27 

2028[Z] Oct 1983, sub: Combined Forces Grenada HQ, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 15 Briefing, Barrett, 9 Sep 1986, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH; Msgs, Cavazos to 

Mackmull, 28 1306[Z] Oct 1983, sub: Combined Forces Grenada HQ, and 28 1549[Z] Oct 

1983, sub: Deployment of HQ Augmentation Support Package, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 
Corps Support

385

subordinates were fully aware of all the temptations to which professionals 

were subject and tried hard to tie force structure decisions closely to the mission requirements. The 20th Engineer Brigade, for example, planned to send 

a reinforced engineer company, Company C, 548th Engineer Battalion, to the 

island. The unit’s commander, Capt. Roderick A. Chisholm, learned that brigade planners intended to send a large engineer headquarters element as well 

but considered this organization excessive because only a single company was 

involved. He went to the corps engineer and brigade commander, Col. Daniel 

R. Schroeder, to protest. Colonel Schroeder heard him out and then observed, 

with the wit that made him popular with junior officers, that it sounded like 

“an overreaction force” to him. When the assistant corps engineer, Lt. Col. 

Andrew M. Perkins Jr., flew to the island on 29 October, Schroeder ensured 

that he took only modest-sized engineer section with him.16

The dispatch of an engineer task force of appropriate size did little to save 

corps engineers from after-the-fact criticism. It was not so much the number 

of men involved that gave rise to this sniping as the amount of equipment that 

they brought. As Captain Chisholm and his men prepared to depart by C–141, 

the airflow to Grenada was still materially restricted by the low ramp capacity 

at the Point Salines airfield. To solve this problem, Generals Mackmull and 

Farris planned to build an entirely new ramp at the east end of the runway. 

The prospect of this major construction project caused the 548th Engineer 

Battalion to ship by sea Company C’s heavy earth-movers, whose weight and 

bulk prohibited air movement. By the time the cargo reached St. George’s, 

division and corps logisticians working with Air Force ground personnel had 

greatly improved airfield operations. At the same time, the failure of an insurgency to develop meant that the number of aircraft landing at the airfield was 

much less than earlier anticipated and that neither the new ramp nor Company 

C’s equipment was needed. The company returned its equipment to Fort Bragg 

without even unloading it.17

The episode illustrated the difficulties that the logistical support planners 

at Fort Bragg confronted while grappling with partial information and changing requirements. If Colonel Schroeder had been able to send a liaison officer 

to Grenada early in the operation as Colonel Richardson did, he might have 

learned sooner about the availability of engineer equipment on the island. 

Unlike Richardson, however, Schroeder did not control a ramp at Pope Air 

Force Base and had no way to slip a party into the airhead. Even with an 

engineer liaison officer on the ground, he could hardly have anticipated such 

a dramatic improvement in airfield operations. The best that he and his staff 

officers could do was take a rational, dispassionate approach to each problem 

as it developed and hope for the best. Their responses were carefully calculated, but the end result sometimes left them dissatisfied. Such was the nature 

of quick-reaction contingency operations.

16 Intervs, author with Ruehe, 26 Jul 1986 (quoted words), with Chisholm, 15 Jul 1986, and 

with Schroeder, 2 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 17 Intervs, author with Chisholm, 15 Jul 1986, and with Schroeder, 2 Jun 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

386

At 1046 on 28 October General Cavazos confirmed that Atlantic Command 

planned to designate General Trobaugh as commander of Combined Forces, 

Grenada, as soon as Urgent Fury was officially terminated, at which point 

the Marines would resume their journey to Lebanon. XVIII Airborne Corps 

would provide Trobaugh’s headquarters with additional support “in the functional areas of administration, logistics, and communications” and would send 

General Farris to serve as Trobaugh’s deputy. In a subsequent message the 

same day, Cavazos warned General Mackmull that he would have to deploy 

this augmentation package no later than 0001 on 31 October so that Trobaugh 

could provide the necessary support for the forces under his command. That 

evening the corps received the movement order signed by Secretary of Defense 

Weinberger that Cavazos had anticipated.18

Initially, the members of the corps reinforcement element attempted to 

use the same marshaling area the 82d was using, but this caused some confusion. XVIII Airborne Corps then reverted to its own readiness standing 

operating procedures, which called for corps units to assemble at Fort Bragg 

in a field at the corner of Armistead and Letterman Streets. General Farris 

and the advance elements of his headquarters departed Pope Air Force Base 

on 29 October. By the thirty-first the headquarters portion of the augmentation package had arrived on Grenada. Corps units followed as fast as the airflow allowed and the need for their services on the island demanded. Captain 

Chisholm’s engineer task force, as a result, did not leave Pope Air Force Base 

until 5 November.19

Augmenting Army Communications

General Trobaugh had landed on Grenada with the bare minimum of 

communications equipment required to direct Army operations on the island. 

Consequently, one of XVIII Airborne Corps’ foremost efforts during Urgent

Fury and the subsequent peacekeeping phase was to enhance the ability of 

General Trobaugh and later General Farris and their staffs to communicate 

with the headquarters of other services and with Army logistical support elements in the United States. XVIII Airborne Corps had performed exactly 

the same function in exercises of Concept Plan 2360, but for Urgent Fury

General Mackmull was not in the chain of command and could not order 

communications equipment into the area of operations.20

18 Msgs, Cavazos to Mackmull, 28 1446[Z] Oct 1983, sub: Command of Combined Forces 

Grenada; 28 1549[Z] Oct 1983, sub: Deployment of HQ Augmentation Support Package 

(quoted words); and 28 2328[Z] Oct 1983, sub: Deployment Order Augmentation Package 

Urgent Fury. All in WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. See 

also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], pp. 4–5, Hist files (PDocs/DA/

XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 19 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], p. 5, and sec. I, an. A, pp. I-A-1 

and I-A-5, an. B, p. I-B-1, an. C, p. I-C-1, an. E, p. I-E-1, and sec. II, an. C, p. II-C-4, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Interv, Bishop with Farris, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 20 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], pp. 5, 7–9, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH.
Corps Support

387

The 82d Airborne Division’s standard light-communications package to 

support its assault command post consisted entirely of voice radios rather than 

the more bulky equipment needed to send and receive secure teletype or facsimile messages. This was standard practice, successfully used in innumerable 

exercises. In those exercises, however, XVIII Airborne Corps had always been 

present to provide hard-copy capabilities. The corps’ absence during Urgent

Fury produced a real communications void, because the Navy and the Air 

Force relied much more heavily on teletype and facsimile messages than did the 

Army. The division had planned to bring its own hard-copy equipment to the 

airhead on 26 October, but the constricted nature of the airflow and General 

Trobaugh’s decision to bring in more infantry battalions preempted it. The 

same day the Joint Communications Support Element from MacDill Air Force 

Base deployed a joint airborne command-and-control package configured for 

ground operations, but the equipment failed to function with any degree of 

reliability once at Point Salines. Eventually, General Trobaugh succeeded in 

borrowing facsimile equipment. On 26 October he began to send handwritten 

messages to Fort Bragg over the single channel tactical satellite net. As soon 

as the messages arrived, corps emergency operations center personnel typed 

them into proper format and retransmitted them to the addressees.21

Corps teletype messages addressed to Task Force 121 at Point Salines 

went by courier utilizing C–141s from Green Ramp. At the outset of Urgent

Fury all national-level intelligence went to General Trobaugh via this manner. However, lack of a system at Green Ramp for identifying and establishing 

priorities for critical couriers meant that in many cases division-rear either 

cut couriers or shifted them further back in the airflow. In much the same 

way, couriers from Fort Bragg maintained contact between Joint Task Force 

120, only twelve kilometers offshore, and Task Force 121. Satellite access was 

so difficult that direct voice radio communications was virtually nonexistent. 

Admiral Metcalf remained unaware for a time that General Trobaugh had 

only voice radios. As a result, many early hard-copy messages went from Joint 

Task Force 120 to Atlantic Command, then to Fort Bragg, and finally (by courier) to Task Force 121 at Point Salines. Later, Metcalf sent couriers directly 

to Trobaugh.22

21 Ibid., plus sec. 1, an. B, p. I-B-12, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; AAR, 

Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, pp. 3-15 to 3-16, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH. See also Interv, Parker with Hull, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Rpt, [DCSOPS, 

DA], 1985, sub: Lessons Learned Grenada: U.S. Army Lessons Learned from Operation 

Urgent Fury, p. IV-e-6, Hist files (PDocs/DA/DCSOPS), CMH; Msg, 82d Abn Div LNO (Maj 

Watson) to Mackmull, Smith, and Richardson, 28 0210[Z] Oct 1983, sub: Teletype Capability 

to the 82d Abn Div, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH; MFR, 

Gibson, 5 Mar 1984, sub: Grenada Lessons Learned 28 Feb 1984 Visit to Fort Bragg, N.C., and 

Notes, [unsigned], sub: Corps Communications-Electronics, 28 Feb 1984, Hist files (PDocs/DA/

CAC), CMH. 22 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. 1, an. B, pp. I-B-9 and I-B12, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; ibid., 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, pp. 3-15 to 

3-16, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

388

Airflow problems severely restricted the size of the communications support that XVIII Airborne Corps could provide. The initial planning guidance 

to the 35th Signal Brigade commander, Col. John D. Wakelin, was to prepare to 

support XVIII Airborne Corps-Forward, the 1st Support Command-Forward 

(soon to be redesignated as Forward I), the two airfields, and the American 

embassy to be established after the completion of combat operations. Using 

this guidance, on 25 October the brigade prepared to send thirty-seven C–141s 

to Grenada, fully loaded with men and equipment. The next day divisionrear provided new guidance, and brigade planners did the detailed and timeconsuming work to reconfigure the package to fit into seventeen aircraft. On 

27 October the planners learned they had only seven aircraft. The following 

day the number fell to five: The brigade was to send a signal element designed 

to support only corps-forward. At the same time the brigade received so little 

information about conditions on Grenada that it was impossible to adequately 

plan or control communications support. As a consequence, Colonel Wakelin 

planned for a large communications package leaving all ancillary equipment 

and supplies at Fort Bragg. Not until the U.S. Forces, Grenada, signal officer, 

Maj. William H. Bell II, arrived with General Farris on 29 October did the 

brigade planners begin to receive the breadth and depth of information they 

needed.23

Like the other participants in the operation, members of the 35th Signal 

Brigade were very frustrated by the glacial movement of their chalks through 

Green Ramp. The low point came when someone in authority bumped them 

in favor of an aircraft load of Astroturf for the U.S. Forces, Grenada, headquarters at the Grenada Beach Hotel. The first plane carrying elements of the 

35th Signal Brigade, built around Capt. Martin E. Mendoza’s Company B, 

50th Signal Battalion, landed at Point Salines on 29 October, the same day as 

Major Bell; the fifth, on the thirty-first. Using their standard equipment and 

AN/TSC–85A and –93A multichannel tactical satellite radios provided by the 

Joint Communications Support Element, Mendoza’s men supplied General 

Trobaugh with limited but reliable hard-copy capability as early as 30 October 

and much more sophisticated multichannel communications by 1 November. 

In addition, a tactical automatic switching system became operational that 

same day and linked the U.S. Forces, Grenada, commander; the two brigades 

at Point Salines; and Fort Bragg. Although inadequate during the opening 

days of Urgent Fury, external communications had improved considerably 

as combat ended.24

XVIII Airborne Corps provided crucial support to the division in a number of other communications areas. At the beginning of Urgent Fury the 

23 Interv, Parker with Mendoza, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn 

Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. II, an. D, p. II-D-1, Hist files (PDocs/DA/

XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 24 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. II, an. D, pp. II-D-1 and 

II-D-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Rpt, [DCSOPS, DA], 1985, sub: Lessons 

Learned Grenada . . . , p. IV-e-1, Hist files (PDocs/DA/DCSOPS), CMH; Interv, Parker with 

Bell, 24 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Corps Support

389

division headquarters at Fort Bragg had only one secure telephone line. The 

35th Signal Brigade almost immediately installed a secure multichannel radio 

system between corps and division headquarters. The installation communications-electronics office also made arrangements with the American Telephone 

and Telegraph Company for a special secure line from Fort Bragg to Atlantic 

Command. The normal lead time for establishing such a leased circuit was 

ninety days. The installation communications office, however, fortuitously discovered a four-wire secure circuit that had been recently disconnected but was 

not yet removed. As a result, the telephone company made the connection in 

eight days. As more of its units deployed, XVIII Airborne Corps discovered 

that AN/URC–101 radios needed for satellite communications were not available on post or in Army supply channels. The corps thus purchased the sets 

directly from the manufacturer.25

Finally, realizing the equipment from the Joint Communications Support 

Element was unlikely to remain available to XVIII Airborne Corps for as 

long as needed, General Mackmull began early to search for replacement 

hardware. On 24 October personnel of the Corps Automation Management 

Office flew to the headquarters of the National Security Agency to investigate the interface between the Compass computer, an early portable desktop 

machine manufactured by the Grid Systems Corporation of Mountain View, 

California, and the AN/URC–101 tactical satellite terminal, a crucial element 

in the transmission of hardcopy data using satellites. Anticipating Mackmull’s 

authorization to procure Compass computers by one day (the computers and 

their software cost over $10,000 apiece), the Corps Automation Management 

Office on the twenty-sixth ordered parts to construct AN/URC–101 interface 

boxes. At first, failure to receive all parts with the initial order, faulty construction of computer cables, and serious problems in meshing the interface box 

with cryptographic equipment attached to the radio, delayed the deployment 

of the Compasses to Grenada. With the assistance of communications specialists from XVIII Airborne Corps, Joint Special Operations Command, and the 

National Security Agency, however, the automation office overcame all difficulties. By 20 November, less than a month after the office began investigating 

the Compass, the computers were online on Grenada, well before it became 

necessary to replace the equipment provided by the Joint Communications 

Support Element.26

Airflow Requirements Shift

The division staff on Grenada had little knowledge of the airflow problems, reacting only to the resulting confusion. Necessary supplies and reinforcements, intermingled with low-priority equipment and units, arrived at 

25 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. II, an. D, p. II-D-2, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 26 Ibid., sec. I, an. M, pp. I-M-1 to I-M-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; 

Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Richard A. Shafer, 

“Riding the Success of Hot Product, Osborne Computer Is Going Public,” Wall Street Journal,

19 Jan 1983.
The Rucksack War

390

Point Salines very slowly and on an apparently random basis. At first, General 

Trobaugh gave his undivided attention to the tactical direction of Army forces 

on the island. About the fourth day of the operation, however, the condition 

of Cuban and Grenadian detainees in the Point Salines airhead reached crisis proportions. Since 25 October, their numbers and the number of civilians 

displaced by the fighting had grown rapidly. Pre-operation planning had never 

considered the question of how to house and sustain detainees and refugees. 

The omission reflected the compressed time for planning, the limited participation by logisticians, and the optimistic assumption by Atlantic Command 

that U.S. forces would meet only token resistance.27

Army doctrine assigned responsibility for detainees to the corps. 

Organizationally, the military police needed to control them and the intelligence 

personnel required to interrogate them belonged to corps, as did much of the 

materiel to construct a prisoner of war compound. None of these resources 

were in the airflow on 25 October, however, and the corps itself had no role to 

play at that point in the operation. When General Trobaugh stepped off his 

aircraft at Point Salines, he discovered that he and his division had assumed 

that role by default and were responsible for over 500 Cuban and Grenadian 

detainees and several hundred refugees. By late on 27 October these groups 

had grown to 1,100 and 1,300 respectively.28

Given the administration’s desire to avoid major complications with either 

Cuba or the Soviet Union over Grenada, the Department of State was particularly sensitive about the Cuban detainees and pushed for their early repatriation. In contrast, the Department of Defense wanted to extract as much 

military information from them as possible before sending them home. In 

this context of interdepartmental disagreement, the State Department on 27 

October arranged for the International Committee of the Red Cross to oversee 

the detainees’ return. In the process of preparing for the Red Cross representatives’ arrival, local State Department officials discovered less-than-satisfactory 

conditions in the detainee camp. The State Department brought great pressure 

to bear to have the situation rectified immediately.29

State’s concerns burst upon a division-forward staff totally preoccupied 

with winning the campaign. At Green Ramp the executive officer of the 82d 

Support Command, Lt. Col. Ronald F. Kelly, learned of the problem firsthand from General Trobaugh who called and gave him a list of the materiel 

required: 800 rolls of concertina wire, 100 general-purpose medical tents, 5 sets 

27 For the view of the airflow from the division assault command post, see Intervs, Bishop 

with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and Frasché with Akers, 22 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 28 On detainees, see Interv, Bishop with Ventura, 1 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; 

Msg, McDonald to JCS, 27 0946Z Oct 1983, sub: Cuban Citizens on Grenada, ODO Significant 

Events file, Hist files (PDocs/DA/AOC), CMH; and Msg, AmEmb, Bridgetown, to SecState, 27 

1352Z Oct 1983, sub: Emergency Assistance, Msg files, DoS. 29 Msg, Royer to HQ FORSCOM EOC, 26 2230[Z] Oct 1983, sub: Deployment of MP 

Company, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH; Msgs, SecState to 

U.S. Mission, Geneva, 27 2238Z Oct 1983, sub: Grenada, ICRC Access to Prisoners, and 27 

2333Z Oct 1983, sub: Grenada, Request for ICRC Assistance in Repatriation of Cuban Dead 

and Wounded, ODO Significant Events file, Hist files (PDocs/DA/AOC), CMH.
Cuban nationals on their way home to Cuba, finalizing paperwork under the scrutiny 

of a Red Cross representative and boarding an Air Cubana plane under guard of Air 

Force security police
The Rucksack War

392

of lights, and 5 generators. Trobaugh 

wanted to see the lights and generators “first thing off the next airplane 

that lands.” Given the problems in the 

airflow, literal obedience of the order 

would have required the immediate 

diversion of all aircraft in the air to 

airfields other than Point Salines, the 

halting of all transshipment of supplies through Barbados, and the closing of operations at Green Ramp. 

Instead, Colonel Kelly interpreted the 

order to mean that General Trobaugh 

wanted the materiel as quickly as 

possible.30

Colonel Kelly personally went to 

the airlift control element at Green 

Ramp and after no little discussion 

secured an agreement to put the 

lights and generators into the airflow. 

At the same time, personnel from the 

182d Materiel Management Center 

made a series of “midnight raids” 

on unit supply rooms, taking whatever equipment they needed to fill the 

order and passing out hand receipts 

in exchange. The division had used 

large amounts of concertina wire to 

secure sensitive areas at Fort Bragg. 

With none immediately available, Kelly shipped ten reels of light gauge wire to 

Grenada and secured concertina from the U.S. Army Materiel Development 

and Readiness Command. To make certain that the lights and generators actually reached Grenada, Kelly arranged that they would go out on an aircraft 

carrying General Mackmull to the island for a firsthand view of the situation. 

As Kelly suspected, no one dared to divert the corps commander’s aircraft to 

Barbados.31

Sea Line of Communications

Concern about the sluggishness of the airflow led General Smith, at the 

behest of Col. William F. Daly Jr. of the 82d Support Command, to request 

on 27 October that XVIII Airborne Corps, still the Army point of contact for logistical support, consider opening a sea line of communications 

to the island. Colonel Daly’s 1st Support Command counterpart, Colonel 

30 Interv, Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

31 Ibid.

Mackmull in Grenada
Corps Support

393

Richardson, had already anticipated the need. He envisioned landing supplies 

and equipment over the beach—logistics over the shore—and off-loading captured enemy equipment the same way. He knew that on 26 October the 82d 

Airborne Division’s 2d Brigade had captured a large warehouse complex filled 

with Soviet materiel, including munitions. Uncertain about the stability of the 

munitions, Richardson planned to avoid densely populated areas on Grenada 

while moving them to U.S. ports.32

Although Army Maj. Gen. Harold I. Small’s Military Traffic Management 

Command knew as early as 20 October that Atlantic Command was preparing for the possible evacuation of American citizens from Grenada, it had 

no official role until the twenty-sixth when it received a copy of the Urgent

Fury operations order and alerted its Eastern Area Command to prepare to 

support possible redeployments and resupply efforts. Two days later, to assist 

planning for surface movement to the island, it provided Forces Command 

(and, ultimately, 1st Support Command) with a detailed description of port 

characteristics and capabilities on Grenada.33

While Colonel Richardson still favored loading a ship anchored offshore 

to avoid the hazard of accidental explosions, the 28 October message led him 

to give more serious consideration to use of the island’s port. That same day 

he requested a team from the 7th Transportation Group to assist his staff 

in planning for port operations. A terminal service group reporting directly 

to Forces Command, the 7th Transportation Group normally assisted 1st 

Support Command in contingency operations. Because XVIII Airborne Corps 

was not in the chain of command, however, the Forces Command message 

alerting the 7th for possible deployment to Grenada did not attach it to 1st 

Support Command as usual. Anticipating that command relationships would 

soon change, Richardson telephoned the responsible staff officer and vigorously protested the “oversight,” as he termed it. Although Forces Command 

acceded and attached the transportation group to the 1st Support Command, 

the latter was still outside the Urgent Fury chain of command. The move, 

however, increased Richardson’s ability to “force” units onto the island using 

ships in addition to aircraft.34

At the same time Colonel Richardson wanted a roll-on/roll-off ship, a 

vessel whose design would facilitate both discharging and loading cargo over 

a beach. Lack of shallow draft watercraft off Grenada for use as lighters 

eventually precluded the beach option and the planners reverted to unloading the ship conventionally at dockside. On 30 October General Mackmull 

32 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I an. D, pp. I-D-1 to I-D-3, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Intervs, Wade with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], and 

Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 33 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, MTMC, 30 Jan 1984, p. 8, Hist files (PDocs/DA/MTMC), 

CMH; Msg, Small to Trans Div, DCSLOG, FORSCOM, 28 1745[Z] Oct 1983, sub: Port 

Capability—Grenada, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 34 Intervs, Oland with W. Richardson, 3 Mar 1988, and McElroy with W. Richardson and 

Barrett, 17 Jan 1984 (quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also USATC PO 150–2, 31 

Oct 1983, OrgHist files, CMH.
The Rucksack War

394

formally requested a vessel from Military Traffic Management Command. 

Planning went ahead for using a roll-on/roll-off ship to carry equipment for 

the 20th Engineer Brigade, the 110th Quartermaster Company from Hunter 

Army Airfield, the 35th Signal Brigade, the 7th Transportation Group, the 

1st Support Command, and a few miscellaneous units from Fort Bragg. At 

the same time, staffers at General Small’s headquarters identified the Military 

Sealift Command’s American Eagle as the likely candidate for this mission. 

With the ship identified, Richardson’s planners turned their attention to preparations to handling the captured equipment and munitions. They had very 

little information about the availability of lumber on Grenada and so included 

a large shipment for dunnage and banding of captured ammunition.35

Military Transport Management Command required units selected for 

deployment to provide basic movement data to permit “determination of vessel requirements, planning for proper cargo stowage, and efficient port operation.” Normally, units transmitted information of that sort in a standardized 

format via a computer network, but the short advance notice precluded the 

procedure. General Small and his staff were prepared to respond to requests 

over secure telephone, but often the information that came by that means 

was either incomplete or incorrect. Once units actually arrived at the Sunny 

Point Military Ocean Terminal, near Wilmington, North Carolina, these data 

deficiencies added markedly to the actual loading time. Fortunately, logisticians were not required to combat load the vessel, which would have involved 

arranging equipment and supplies for easy access in the sequence required for 

the mission, and they could position the cargo to make maximum use of the 

space. Space, however, was hardly a consideration. The American Eagle was so 

large that the equipment dispatched took only 25 percent of its cargo space. 

The real savings as far as this movement was concerned was in the loading 

time. Combat loading would have further delayed the American Eagle’s sailing time because it would have required much more detailed planning than a 

conventional loading scheme.36

General Small and his staff worked with such efficiency that they caused 

unexpected problems for the deployment. The American Eagle arrived at Sunny 

Point on 1 November, within four days from the time that XVIII Airborne Corps 

identified the need for it. To expedite loading, Military Traffic Management 

Command required deploying units to have their equipment and supplies at 

Sunny Point by 31 October. Some units, such as Captain Chisholm’s Company 

C, 548th Engineer Battalion, could use trucks available at Fort Bragg for the 

task, but the movement was so hurried that vehicle inspection was perfunctory 

35 Interv, Hicks with Hunter, [Nov 1983], and with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], plus 

McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn 

Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. D, pp. I-D-1 to I-D-2, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 36 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, MTMC, 30 Jan 1984, pp. 3–4 (quoted words), Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/MTMC), CMH; ibid., XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. D, p. I-D-13, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Interv, Wade with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Corps Support

395

at best. Two of the trucks moving Chisholm’s equipment broke down en route. 

Other units needed commercial trucks to move their equipment, most notably 

four large cranes at Fort Eustis that belonged to the 7th Transportation Group. 

Working around the clock, Marcelle Truelove and her staff in the Installation 

Transportation Office at Fort Bragg made the necessary arrangements in time.37

The Eastern Area Command exercised control over the flow of cargo to 

the ports. Normal procedure required the Eastern Area port commander to 

issue a port call message and then to coordinate directly with the deploying 

unit or its installation transportation office. A port call message providing 

general guidance was issued, but many unit commanders, given the time constraints under which they operated, set their own arrival time with virtually 

no coordination with the Eastern Area port commander. Others, who tried to 

coordinate but discovered that they could not meet their movement schedules, 

reached Sunny Point up to six hours late. The result was that both convoys and 

commercial trucks appeared at all times of the day and night with little or no 

advance notice. The influx overwhelmed Sunny Point and its bare-bones facilities, which consisted mostly of parking lots and ship berths.38

The units arrived with little or no knowledge of the facilities and services 

available at the port. Even though their units had made no arrangements in 

advance, convoy drivers expected to obtain food and billets before they returned 

home. In the absence of advance notice and given the number of arriving convoys, Sunny Point could provide neither. Units also assumed that it would 

37 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, MTMC, 30 Jan 1984, pp. 3–4 (quoted words), Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/MTMC), CMH; ibid., XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. D, p. I-D-13, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Intervs, Wade with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], and author 

with Chisholm, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 38 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, MTMC, 30 Jan 1984, pp. 3–4, Hist files (PDocs/DA/MTMC), 

CMH; RCmts, Reardon, May 2005, Hist files (Drafts), CMH.

American Eagle
The Rucksack War

396

have port cranes available at all hours for the reassembly of equipment, again 

without prior coordination. Meanwhile, Sunny Point had an ample supply of 

gasoline on hand to refuel arriving convoys, but Fort Bragg, unaware of this, 

sent a gasoline tanker to the port. It refueled the trucks. In the same way, the 

Sunny Point provost marshal as a matter of standard procedure posted guards 

to protect arriving convoys, but several units brought guards of their own and 

were reluctant at first to dispense with them when requested.39

Notwithstanding these problems, all of the units involved met very close 

deadlines and succeeded in loading their equipment so that the ship could 

sail on time. The cost was confusion, tired drivers sleeping in the cabs of their 

trucks, some missed meals, and the need to load the ship by the seat-of-thepants at dockside without reference to loading plans. The result offended professional sensibilities and would have been dangerous if resistance on Grenada 

had been more vigorous and prolonged, but it met mission requirements. The 

American Eagle departed port on 3 November and arrived four days later.40

Although Military Airlift Command began flying selected captured equipment to Pope Air Force Base for inspection by technical intelligence teams 

beginning on 29 October, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) perceived that it 

would be necessary to move the bulk of the captured materiel by sea. On 

30 October, following a conference between JCS chairman General John 

W. Vessey, Admiral Metcalf, and General Trobaugh aboard the USS Guam, 

General Vessey ordered the SS Dolly Thurman to sail for St. George’s to load 

the Soviet equipment and supplies. The conferees were unaware of Colonel 

Richardson’s arrangements for the American Eagle.

41

That night the 7th Transportation Group was surprised to receive a message directing it to “provide the necessary terminal services to facilitate retrograde of captured materiel” on the Dolly Thurman, due to arrive at St. 

George’s on 1 November. The news also took the 1st Support Command staff 

at Fort Bragg unawares. Colonel Richardson had planned to have elements of 

Maj. William J. Neff’s 24th Transportation Battalion, consisting of the 368th 

and 567th Transportation Companies with attachments from other organizations, sail with their equipment aboard the American Eagle. Instead, Forces 

Command directed the members of the battalion to fly out of Langley Air 

Force Base to meet the Dolly Thurman. They departed 2 November.42

39 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, MTMC, 30 Jan 1984, pp. 3–4, Hist files (PDocs/DA/MTMC), 

CMH. 40 Ibid., plus 8–9, Hist files (PDocs/DA/MTMC), CMH; Interv, author with Chisholm, 15 

Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 41 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. D, pp. I-D-1 to I-D-2, 

I-D-13, and I-D-15, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 42 Ibid., sec. I, an. D, p. I-D-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; USATC 

PO 150–2 (quoted words), 31 Oct 1983, OrgHist files, CMH; Msg Extract, CINCLANT, 01 

1848Z [Nov 1983], in Misc Master Scenario Events List (Logistics Structure—Movement), Hist 

files (PDocs/DoD/JCS), CMH. See also Msgs, Mackmull to Cavazos, 29 2323Z Oct 1983, sub: 

Captured Enemy Equipment, and 30 2307Z Oct 1983, sub: Urgent Fury Troop List Request; 

Msg, Cavazos to McDonald, 30 0617Z Oct 1983, sub: Deployment Planning—Urgent Fury. All 

in WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH.
Corps Support

397

Forces Command’s deputy chief of staff for logistics, Maj. Gen. Vincent 

M. Russo, visited Fort Bragg on 1 November to provide guidance for XVIII 

Airborne Corps logisticians and to obtain an in-depth picture of the logistical 

situation. While there, General Russo learned for the first time about the Dolly 

Thurman. Convinced that the ship represented excess capacity, he attempted 

to cancel its visit to Grenada by working through channels but without success. Instead, Admiral McDonald considered canceling the American Eagle. 

After holding her in the Port of Wilmington for an extra day, he allowed her 

to sail.43

Medical Dilemmas

As with communications, medical reinforcement and resupply posed significant dilemmas for the 82d Airborne Division. The absence of a well-defined 

medical command structure in the area of operations exacerbated the problems. Underlying some of the resulting controversy was an unresolved issue 

of what type of officer was best fitted to command a medical unit in combat. 

One school of opinion held that the leader must always be a Medical Corps 

officer, the senior physician available, who had rarely, if ever, served with the 

unit previously. Most doctors assigned to medical units in peacetime had only 

a paper association with these organizations, and their continuing responsibilities as practicing physicians at Army hospitals usually overrode any training 

requirement. The opposing viewpoint was that the officer who led and trained 

a unit in peacetime, normally a Medical Service Corps officer, should command. Medical Service Corps officers were logisticians, not medical doctors. 

The first perspective assumed that the best guarantee of good clinical practice 

in the field was to put a doctor intimately familiar with such issues in charge. 

The second argued that a unit was most likely to succeed if it functioned in war 

as it trained in peace.44

Between 1000 and 1600 on 25 October doctors, nurses, and medical technicians from Fort Bragg’s Womack Army Hospital reported to augment the 

307th Medical Battalion for field service, received a mission briefing, and prepared to deploy. Their inclusion into any medical organization getting ready to 

go to war was difficult, not just because of the issues of command. They were 

suddenly called to embed themselves in tactical units with which they had no 

real previous experience and whose equipment and supplies were fixed by tables 

of organization and equipment that had changed little since the Vietnam conflict. Because these professional fillers had state-of-the-art apparatus at Army 

hospitals, they quite naturally wanted to use only those things with which they 

were familiar. A Medical Service Corps officer who refused to honor their 

requests risked causing them a good deal of frustration at the very beginning 

of an operation. However, anyone who did attempt to change out his inventory 

43 Msg Extract, JCS, 02 1200Z [Nov 1983], in Misc Master Scenario Events List (Logistics 

Structure—Movement), Hist files (PDocs/DoD/JCS), CMH; Interv, Wade with Rhodes, [Nov 

1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. 

I, an. D, p. I-D-3, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 44 Interv, Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

398

had to divert considerable effort away from unit deployment preparations and, 

in the end, usually only duplicated existing medical capabilities.45

The 82d Airborne Division normally contained an institutional remedy to 

the dilemma of having to rapidly integrate professional fillers into the 307th 

Medical Battalion, namely, division orthopedic surgeon Lt. Col. Joseph P. 

Jackson Jr. Unlike his peers, Colonel Jackson had participated in division field 

exercises and senior officers trusted him. At the same time, he had the credentials and the experience to assuage the doubts of the medical professionals 

just reporting in. He should have been available to provide guidance for them. 

However, because of the restrictions on airflow and the need to get at least 

some treatment capability into the area of operations in addition to the battalion aid stations, Jackson was already at Green Ramp by the time medical 

personnel began reporting to the battalion. At 2100 on 25 October he flew to 

Grenada.46

On reporting in, the doctors found Medical Service Corps officers in 

charge at both the battalion and company level, with Lt. Col. Edward B. 

Wilson in command of the 307th Medical Battalion and Capt. Vincent M. 

Ashley of its Company C assigned to support the 2d Brigade on Grenada. 

In accordance with existing Army regulations, the division surgeon, Lt. Col. 

Barry S. Sidenberg, believed that as the senior board-certified Medical Corps 

officer he would assume command of the battalion once war began. Colonel 

Sidenberg, however, was new to the division and something of an unknown 

as far as General Trobaugh and his chief of staff, Col. Peter J. Boylan Jr., 

were concerned. They believed that existing regulations gave them a measure 

of discretion and decided to exercise it. They did not want to relieve Colonel 

Wilson from command of the battalion, particularly in the midst of a deployment that placed a premium on his skills as a logistician. They also clearly 

believed that their discretion applied to the company level as well. They knew 

even less about the doctors reporting as fillers in the company than they did 

about Sidenberg. As a result, Trobaugh made no provision in his orders to the 

307th for the relief of Medical Service Corps officers by Medical Corps officers. Captain Ashley considered himself, quite correctly, in command of the 

company until formally relieved. The doctors assumed, however, that once the 

company deployed the senior physician automatically assumed command of 

the unit. In the rush to prepare to deploy, these conflicting interpretations of 

where command lay remained submerged.47

By 1600 on 25 October the Alpha Echelon of Company C was at Green 

Ramp. Alpha Echelon, commanded by company executive officer 1st Lt. 

Douglas S. Phelps, was the smallest portion of the company capable of providing complete patient care. It consisted of three ambulances, a cargo Gamma 

Goat, and three trailers that together carried an admissions/dispositions tent, 

45 Chronology, Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH; Intervs, Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, 

and Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 46 Interv, Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

47 Ibid.; Intervs, Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983], and author with Cleary, 14–15 

Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Corps Support

399

where the doctors performed the initial triage; an operating room; a twentybed ward; and X-ray and laboratory facilities. Even with two M718 field litter 

ambulances substituted for the larger Gamma Goat ambulances, this was a 

bulky package. Given the problems at Green Ramp, an air movement control 

officer bumped the medics. Lieutenant Phelps protested to the officer, who 

told him that the Guam would provide all of the needed medical support. As 

out-loading proceeded, Phelps became increasingly concerned and confronted 

a series of officers senior in rank to him about the implications of leaving 

medical support behind. Eventually a lieutenant colonel threw Phelps out of 

his office when Phelps asked him if he wanted people dying for lack of treatment. None of these encounters appeared very fruitful. Their chief result was 

an increasingly frustrated Medical Service Corps lieutenant.48

At 0300 on 26 October, about the time Colonel Kelly took charge of 

the Army side of Green Ramp operations, Lieutenant Phelps deployed with 

two vehicles, carrying the admissions/dispositions tent and one ward. Two 

hours later a third vehicle, carrying the operating room, also left. The 3d 

Brigade’s deployment bumped the fourth vehicle before it could board an 

aircraft. It carried X-ray equipment, a surgical light set (another light set 

48 Chronology, Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH; Intervs, Oland with Wilson, 6 Nov 

1987, and with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, plus Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.

Gamma Goat ambulances
The Rucksack War

400

had already departed in one of the earlier vehicles), tent poles, and various 

medications.49

Faced with inadequate transportation to move the remainder of the company, Company C’s commander, Captain Ashley, reconfigured the load on 

the fourth vehicle, removing not only the light set but also some medical supplies not duplicated in the cargoes on the first three vehicles to make room for 

materiel from vehicles remaining behind. Part of the problem that he faced 

in reconfiguring Alpha Echelon’s fourth vehicle arose from an attempt by the 

307th Medical Battalion to cross-load vehicles in conformity with division 

policy. Each vehicle contained part of the supplies needed by the other functions; thus, supplies for the operating room were on all four vehicles. On the 

positive side, this meant that Lieutenant Phelps would have some laboratory 

equipment when his three vehicles arrived, even though the X-ray was not 

en route. On the negative side, neither the vehicle carrying the admissions/

dispositions tent nor the one conveying the operating room had all requisite supplies. Some were on the bumped vehicle. Because all the battalion’s 

deployment plans presupposed that the Alpha Echelon of the lead medical 

company would deploy intact, no one had a precise record of what supplies 

were on which vehicle.50

The cross-loading policy and the lack of record keeping immensely complicated the resupply problem for the battalion S–4, Capt. John R. Chambers, 

and the acting division medical supply noncommissioned officer, Sgt. Floyd 

M. Runyon. The battalion’s planned resupply, its push packages, also assumed 

that the entire Alpha Echelon would deploy. With part of this contingent cut 

from the flow, circumstances appeared to demand that battalion-rear would 

have to depend upon detailed requests from medical personnel in the area of 

operations for resupply rather than upon push packages. The vagaries in the 

airflow, the multiple channels of communications between division-forward 

and division-rear, and the bottleneck at Green Ramp, however, conspired to 

ensure that battalion-rear treated repeated requests for the same thing as multiple requests: As Colonel Wilson noted, “Certain requirements were filled 

three or four times, while others were filled once.”51

The cross-loading problem resulted from the division’s failure to require 

that the medical battalion exercise loading procedures in peacetime. Because 

the officers had no practical knowledge of Green Ramp operations, they had 

little idea of how to manipulate the system to their own advantage. The battalion might at least have attached one or two medics carrying duffel bags full of 

supplies to each aircraft load of troops, as Colonel Daly noted in retrospect, 

but through lack of experience, no one in the battalion thought of even this 

49 Interv, Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Chronology, 

Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH. 50 Intervs, Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983], and Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 51 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-9 (quoted words), Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Intervs, Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, and with Wilson, 6 

Nov 1987, plus author with Nolan, 22 Nov 1988, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Corps Support

401

partial solution at the time. During Urgent Fury the 307th Medical Battalion 

S–3, Capt. David L. Nolan, discovered that while he could not easily move a 

medical platoon (ten men and a Gamma Goat full of supplies) into the flow at 

Green Ramp, he could dispatch a 463L resupply pallet with a Gamma Goat’s 

load of supplies and equipment accompanied by five men. If he had thought 

of this solution sooner, then Company C’s Alpha Echelon could have moved 

out of Green Ramp much earlier than it did. It would have arrived on Grenada 

without some of its ambulances—the only major drawback.52

The successful movement of resupply pallets was also an art requiring 

experience. With 82d Support Command personnel unable to attach invoices 

to pallets because of the pressure of events, responsibility for marking each 

pallet to make it easily identifiable fell on a battalion’s rear echelon. A simple 

red cross sufficed for the medical battalion. For best results, however, the unit 

also needed to send one or more officers or enlisted men to accompany the 

package.53

The first attempt at resupply reflected the battalion’s level of experience. When 

an urgent message requisitioning additional supplies and equipment arrived from 

Colonel Jackson, one member of the battalion escorted the unmarked pallet 

through Green Ramp to the designated aircraft. He told the Air Force loadmaster 

52 Intervs, Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, and author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 53 Interv, Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

A typical 463L pallet, here shown being transported by a 15,000-pound forklift 
The Rucksack War

402

its contents, saw it loaded aboard, and returned to the battalion-rear area. The 

pallet became lost in the resupply system for days. One such mistake sufficed to 

produce much more careful identification and supervision of resupply packages 

by battalion-rear. It was the only medical pallet lost during the operation—once 

again the result of training deferred by the Department of the Army.54

The medical battalion’s lack of training in the loading process not only 

affected the internal operations of the battalion in the field but also had an 

impact upon the actions of the division command group and the line battalions. Some bulky medical packages were critical and had to go forward 

without delay. One of Captain Ashley’s primary concerns after Alpha Echelon 

deployed, for example, was to get whole blood, needed for transfusions, down 

to the island. Whole blood, however, requires refrigeration. Ashley could not 

get anyone to give him the airspace he needed and suffered repeated rebuffs 

when he pressed his claims. The Guam, he was told, would take care of everything. Passages of arms between Medical Service Corps and Medical Corps 

officers and combat arms officers at Green Ramp inevitably came to a similar conclusion. When one senior medical officer attempted to force a Gamma 

Goat loaded with medical supplies into the chalk order, a senior combined 

arms officer told him: “Get the hell out of my way before I run over you.” 

The incident accurately encapsulated relationships at Green Ramp. In contrast senior commanders, like the members of the battalion, showed a learning 

curve once they became aware a problem existed.55

As early as Wednesday morning, 26 October, both Colonels Wilson and 

Sidenberg were concerned about how much medical support had made it to 

Grenada. They knew that Colonel Jackson was there but could not be certain about what equipment and supplies had arrived. Wilson planned to send 

either his executive officer or his operations officer to the island to report on 

the situation, but Sidenberg suggested that this was a task more appropriate 

for him as division surgeon. He then went to division-rear headquarters and 

convinced General Smith that he should deploy. Sidenberg flew out of Pope 

Air Force Base late the next day, 27 October.56

Colonel Wilson’s initial unease was caused by the absence of information. Later he learned more, and his concern increased. He had assumed that 

Company C would deploy on schedule, so once Lieutenant Phelps and his men 

were locked up at Green Ramp, he had turned his attention to other problems. 

It was only late on 26 October that he learned that Company C was still at 

Green Ramp. He located the division support commander, Colonel Daly, and 

told him that the division had to get more medical capacity into Grenada. 

While Daly carried this message to division headquarters, Wilson bumped into 

the corps surgeon, Col. James H. Rumbaugh, and repeated the news.57

54 Ibid.

55 Intervs, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov and 23 Dec 1987, and Hicks with Ashley and 

Phelps, [Nov 1983] (quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 56 Interv, Wade with Sidenberg, 14 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Chronology, Hist 

files (Papers/Wilson), CMH. 57 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Corps Support

403

Based on what he had heard at the daily corps briefing on the operation, 

Colonel Rumbaugh was already disturbed about the medical situation on the 

island. One officer had spoken about the Navy proceeding on to Lebanon as 

soon as hostilities ceased. Knowing how dependent the ground forces were on 

the Guam, Rumbaugh asked whether the ship would remain on station after 

the rest of the fleet departed. The officer giving the briefing did not know. 

Rumbaugh also picked up something that shook his confidence in all the medical information he had received to date. Briefers had always described the 

Guam (which was, in fact, a helicopter carrier) as a hospital ship, but in this 

briefing an officer noted that the Army had provided whole blood to the vessel when her supply ran low. Rumbaugh knew that if the Guam was a hospital 

ship, or even if it was a vessel with substantial medical capacity, it would not 

have run low on whole blood so early in the operation.58

Now thoroughly alarmed, Colonel Rumbaugh went directly to General 

Mackmull. The corps surgeon told the corps commander that if the weather 

turned sour, the Guam went off station, casualties went up, or any number 

of other variables changed over which the Army had no control, a medical 

“embarrassment” might occur on the island. Mackmull, who was extraordinarily busy, appeared not to react, but he rose and left his office almost immediately. On his way out, he saw Colonel Wilson and asked him how the medical 

situation was. “Not worth a damn, medically,” replied the colonel. Mackmull 

went directly to division-rear headquarters. He told General Smith that the 

division had to get more medical capability onto the island.59

As a result of Colonel Daly’s report and General Mackmull’s intervention, General Smith at 0100 on 27 October agreed to give higher priority to 

medical elements. A sluggish airflow that day rather than a deliberate decision 

limited the amount of medical elements that could deploy south, but the final 

portion of Alpha Echelon flew out at 2330. The following day the remainder 

of Company C moved to Green Ramp and left Pope Air Force Base at 0600 

on 29 October. That same day Company A, 307th Medical Battalion, which 

the division had alerted to support the 3d Brigade, moved to Green Ramp and 

deployed in its entirety between 2000 and 2200. As the company moved forward, its Medical Service Corps commander, Capt. Stephen S. Bradley, noted 

that most of Forward Area Support Team II, less all its medical elements, was 

still in the corps holding area waiting to deploy.60

Concern about division-level assets within the area of operations was 

not restricted solely to the division. On 27 October, the same evening that 

Colonel Sidenberg deployed, the Department of the Army queried the 82d 

about how much of its organic medical support was on the island. Attempts 

to contact Sidenberg by radio to obtain his assessment failed. Colonel Wilson 

decided to send his S–3, Captain Nolan, to Grenada after all. Nolan was to 

58 Interv, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

59 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and Oland with Rumbaugh, 23 Dec 1987 (quoted 

words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 60 Chronology, Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH; Interv, Wade with Bradley, [Nov 1983], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 
The Rucksack War

404

provide him with an estimate of the medical situation so that the battalion 

commander could make appropriate decisions on what else needed to deploy. 

On the twenty-eighth Nolan left for Grenada, where he discovered that a personality clash between Sidenberg and Jackson was hampering medical operations. When Wilson received Nolan’s report he decided to deploy and left for 

Grenada on the twenty-ninth.61

While Company C slowly deployed, Colonels Wilson and Rumbaugh 

attempted to clarify how much medical support the Navy could provide from 

ships off Grenada. After telephoning Atlantic Command, whose surgeon, R. 

Adm. James A. Zimbel, was in Beirut dealing with the medical crisis there, 

Rumbaugh learned that Admiral McDonald intended to redirect the Guam

to the Mediterranean. The officer with whom Rumbaugh spoke did not know 

whether McDonald planned to replace the Guam but filled him in on her medical capacity—one operating room, one ward with twelve beds, one board-certified surgeon, and one partially trained surgeon. Hearing this news, Colonel 

Wilson also became very concerned. He suspected that General Trobaugh’s 

decisions about the medical portion of the operation were based on totally 

erroneous information. To try to clarify the question of the Guam’s replacement before he departed Fort Bragg, Wilson contacted both the Office of The 

Surgeon General in Washington, D.C., and one of Forces Command’s liaison 

officers at Norfolk but gleaned nothing definitive.62

At the same time that Colonel Wilson and division medical personnel 

sought to ensure continuity of care for wounded soldiers in the short term, 

Colonel Rumbaugh and his officers at corps level grappled for a long-range 

solution. The outline of the desired outcome was clear: The Army needed 

to move medical assets to Grenada comparable to those of a real hospital 

ship. On this, General Mackmull and Colonels Richardson and Rumbaugh 

had agreed from the start of Urgent Fury. In practice, it meant moving some 

portion of the 44th Medical Brigade’s 5th Surgical Hospital from Fort Bragg 

to the island, but as the operation evolved so did the estimate of what elements 

of the 5th needed to deploy.63

The 44th Medical Brigade commander, Col. Jack R. Wilson II, had attended 

a 1st Support Command briefing at 1000 on 25 October that gave him the mission to provide medical support for a two-brigade operation of up to seven 

battalions. Based on this guidance, the brigade staff had initially planned to 

move a portion of the brigade headquarters, the entire 5th Surgical Hospital, 

and other “major medical functions” to the island. Colonel Wilson had passed 

the appropriate taskings along to the units involved, and they had begun palletizing equipment and supplies and processing the deploying personnel.64

On 26 October 1st Support Command had revised the 44th’s mission to 

medical support of a four- to five-battalion operation. Two days later the 

61 Interv, Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

62 Ibid.; Interv, Oland with Wilson, 6 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Chronology, 

Hist files (Papers/Rumbaugh), CMH. 63 Interv, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

64 Ibid.; Chronology (quoted words), Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH.
Corps Support

405

mission changed again to “minimum essential” medical support built around 

a nucleus from the 5th Surgical Hospital with attachments from the 44th’s 

other elements. Consequently, the units involved had to reconfigure their supplies and equipment, tearing down the old pallet loads and building new ones. 

In the process the number of corps medical personnel deploying dropped from 

350 to 156. The 5th took the full range of its capabilities, but each was downsized to take into account the relatively small force it would be supporting.65

The 5th Surgical Hospital commander, Lt. Col. Joseph J. Costanzo Jr., led 

the reinforcement, designated as Medical Task Force 5. By 2000 on 28 October 

Colonel Costanzo had assembled it in the corps marshaling area. Twenty-five 

hours later he moved personnel, equipment, and supplies to Green Ramp and 

began the loading process aboard C–5As. At 0400 on 30 October two of those 

aircraft departed carrying three UH–60 Black Hawks, equipment belonging to 

the 5th Surgical Hospital, and 56 members of Task Force 5. The Air Force canceled a third C–5A flight because none of the equipment remaining at Green 

Ramp was outsized. The 100 members of the task force still present changed 

their load plans for movement by C–141 and then unloaded and rearranged the 

65 Chronology, Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH.

Compound of Medical Task Force 5 in Grenada
The Rucksack War

406

equipment and supplies once more. They departed late that same day. General 

Mackmull’s and Colonel Rumbaugh’s enhanced medical capability was finally 

en route to Grenada five days after Urgent Fury began.66

Supply System Management

The airflow to Grenada—and particularly Green Ramp operations—

gripped the attention of most senior officers in the corps and division-rear. 

The airflow by no means, however, encompassed all the important logistical support activities at Fort Bragg. Division-rear had to learn how to make 

use of the Army’s national depot supply system in the continental United 

States. At the same time that supplies and equipment were flowing out of Fort 

Bragg to Grenada and Barbados, similar items were moving to the post from 

Army depots. In his role as commander of 1st Support Command, Colonel 

Richardson believed that some parts of the national depot system were initially slow to react to Urgent Fury. Conversely, in the 82d Support Command 

the officer who dealt directly with these national agencies on a day-to-day 

basis, Maj. William M. Causey Jr. of the 182d Materiel Management Center, 

concluded that everyone in the system wanted to be very responsive to the division’s requirements.67

Effective management of the flow of supplies in an operation of the size 

and complexity of Urgent Fury required the exchange of liaison officers 

at several levels. Paul Brown of the Materiel Development and Readiness 

Command’s liaison office at Fort Bragg, for example, put in fifteen- and sixteen-hour days at the 182d Materiel Management Center to cut through red 

tape and to get supplies and equipment routed to the post. Once the national 

centers activated their crisis action systems, their respective logistical staffs, 

both uniformed and civilian, devoted comparable effort to the task. More than 

half the supplies shipped to Grenada originated at the New Cumberland Army 

Depot near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The depot activated its quick-reaction 

force of employees who worked around the clock filling high-priority orders 

for same day shipment. Tobyhanna Army Depot at Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, 

provided communications equipment. U.S. Army Depot System Command 

consolidated all materiel bound for Grenada at Letterkenny Army Depot in 

Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, before forwarding it to the island. In a short 

time, Major Causey discovered that he could submit a requisition at 0100 on 

a weekend and know that the materiel he had requested would be en route to 

the affected unit by 0300.68

To facilitate information sharing with the 182d Materiel Management 

Center on the supply status of 1st Support Command units and to mitigate 

66 Ibid.; Interv, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Chronology, 

Hist files (Papers/Rumbaugh), CMH. 67 Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 68 Intervs, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, and Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-1, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; “Depot Supports Grenada Force,” p. 40.
New Cumberland, Tobyhanna, and Letterkenny Army Depots
The Rucksack War

408

problems, Colonel Richardson assigned a liaison officer to Major Causey’s 

organization. Causey found that officers in corps-level units were very helpful and always responsive, possessing more than enough expertise to answer 

his queries. His problem, he later recalled, was that he often lacked sufficient 

experience with the national depot system to know exactly what questions to 

ask. He wished the officers in the corps support command had felt free to offer 

unsolicited advice. He attributed their reticence to the removal of the corps 

from the chain of command. Staff officers and subordinate commanders were 

uncomfortable with the unfamiliar command relationships and hesitated to 

overstep the bounds of permissible behavior.69

Certain difficulties, moreover, involved both the entire wholesale system 

and specific items of supply. Systemic problems centered on the assignment 

of a JCS project code and a Department of Defense activity address code to 

deploying units. The units used project codes to track costs associated with 

individual exercises, but the numbers also permitted respective national inventory control points to identify materiel and supplies required to support a particular operation. Joint planning doctrine did not mandate the assignment of 

a JCS project code during the planning phase; however, shortly after Urgent

Fury began, the Joint Staff J–3, Lt. Gen. Richard L. Prillaman, realized that 

one was needed. At his request, the Joint Materiel and Priority Board assigned 

one, but the normal dissemination time precluded its immediate use. Initially, 

Major Causey’s 182d Materiel Management Center used a high-priority requisition, an 01 code, as a substitute to ensure that the Army depots met the division’s needs promptly. Causey independently requested a project code through 

Materiel Development and Readiness Command channels on 25 October. As 

soon as he received it the next day, he began using it to request both low- and 

high-priority items. This confused some inventory control personnel who had 

become accustomed to seeing the 01 code on all Grenada-related items. After 

a considerable number of telephone calls to Causey’s organization, all parties 

resolved their difficulties.70

Lack of a project code for the operation meant that supporting commands 

had to replace any equipment or supplies they furnished for Urgent Fury

by using their own appropriated funds rather than money earmarked for the 

operation. This consideration apparently played a role in the several days’ 

hesitation by the XVIII Airborne Corps staff to provide jungle fatigues and 

jungle boots to the division out of corps contingency stocks. The same problem even more clearly affected the Navy’s relations with the Army. On D-day, 

69 Interv, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent

Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-1, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.

70 Interv, Wade with Causey, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Rpt, [DCSOPS, DA], 

1985, sub: Lessons Learned Grenada . . . , p. IV–b–4, Hist files (PDocs/DA/DCSOPS), CMH; 

AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. D, p. I-D-8, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/XVIIIAbnCorps); ibid., 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-1, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH. Forces Command independently requested a project code on 26 October. See Msg, Cdr, 

FORSCOM (Lt Col Deitz), to AOC, HQDA (Attn: Maj Hamner), 26 2214Z Oct 1983, sub: 

Logistics Information, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 
Corps Support

409

when Admiral Metcalf received a message apparently from Department of 

the Navy headquarters, Washington, D.C., directing him not to refuel Army 

helicopters until someone decided who would pay, the JTF 120 commander 

growled “that’s the most ridiculous goddammed thing I have ever heard in my 

life” and ignored it. Joint Task Force 120 continued to refuel the aircraft.71

The concomitant failure to assign address codes to units deploying to the 

Point Salines airhead compounded the inconvenience and confusion. The 

codes indicated where materiel and supplies should be shipped. The director 

of logistics on the Atlantic Command staff should have requested an activity 

address code for the units involved in the operation prior to D-day but failed 

to do so. The oversight had two unfortunate effects: It introduced an element 

of uncertainty about the intended destination of supplies, and it made supporting commands hesitant to provide materiel for the operation.72

Lack of the address code meant that the item managers had only the 82d 

Airborne Division’s and the ranger battalions’ old continental United States 

address codes. If a requested item was in stock, the item manager directed the 

depot to ship it to the requesting unit’s old address at Fort Lewis, Fort Stewart, 

or Fort Bragg rather than to Grenada. Once supplies and equipment arrived at 

Fort Bragg, the 182d Materiel Management Center had to determine whether 

they were for the two brigades on Grenada, the battalion and support elements 

that remained at Fort Bragg, or a battalion that deployed to Spain for a North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization exercise in the middle of Urgent Fury. Major 

Causey and his men could usually arrive at the correct decision, but the lack of 

proper address codes made it harder to keep track of where materiel was in the 

line of communications that ran from stateside Army depots to Grenada.73

Shortages of individual items also posed some special problems for Major 

Causey. Some of these stemmed from the inadequate size of the division’s 

Class II/IV Warehouse. The building, which stocked clothing, individual 

equipment, tents, tool kits, and administrative and housekeeping stores (collectively, Class II supplies) and construction materials (or Class IV supplies), 

had space for only sixty-six of the seventy-six items required for a contingency 

operation. Body bags were the most pressing necessity among the ten missing items. While they arrived at Fort Bragg within twelve hours of the 182d 

Materiel Management Center placing an order, this timely response hardly 

compensated for the failure to have them immediately available on post.74

Problems posed by the lack of BA–5590 batteries were of an altogether 

different origin—a supply shortage throughout the Army. The Department 

of Defense had only recently funded the batteries, which powered the Vinson 

secure devices for the AN/URC–101 and AN/PRC–3 (satellite) radios. Although 

71 Interv, Bishop with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH, in which the 

general recalled the admiral’s pointed comment. 72 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. II, an. A, p. II-A-4, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 73 Ibid.

74 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-31, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
The Rucksack War

410

their lithium base gave these batteries a longer life in the field than normal batteries, their high rate of usage on Grenada produced an average battery life of 

only twenty-four hours. As a consequence, the operation almost immediately 

consumed all stocks available to the Army. At the same time, manufacturing 

problems delayed the production of new ones.75

At Fort Bragg, members of the Directorate of Industrial Operations’ 

Materiel Management Unit worked to solve the battery problem for the division in close cooperation with the item managers. The personnel at the post 

called in emergency requisitions and continually monitored the progress of 

the batteries through follow-up calls. Because this took time, the corps G–4, 

Colonel Mitchell, bridged the gap by sending members of his section into 

Fayetteville to purchase rechargeable batteries and chargers at local hardware 

stores. Through a combination of such extraordinary measures, the 82d’s 

radios stayed on the air.76

Green Ramp Hand-off

A general exodus of senior officers to Grenada occurred as Operation 

Urgent Fury progressed. In part, the movement reflected a genuine need for 

experienced people to cope with problems on the island, although professional 

ambition undoubtedly played a role as well. So many Signal Corps officers 

departed, for example, that the 82d Support Command data chief eventually 

became the senior person in that specialty remaining at Fort Bragg. As a result, 

he assumed signal officer responsibilities for division-rear.77

Both division and 82d Support Command logisticians were particularly 

stretched between managing the airflow from Fort Bragg to Point Salines 

and the best use of the materiel on Grenada. When ground transportation 

management on the island threatened to become a major problem, General 

Trobaugh directed the division transportation officer, Maj. Frederick C. 

Perkins, to take charge. He departed for the Port Salines airfield on Saturday, 

29 October, and left behind two young transportation officers to order aircraft. 

With radio communications improving, they had no difficulty in contacting 

Major Perkins when difficulties arose. While Perkins was satisfied with the 

arrangement, one of the seasoned transportation officers with the 1st Support 

Command nonetheless detected a marked fall-off in the division’s efficiency in 

ordering aircraft. Perkins, he observed, was a very capable and efficient officer 

who understood both the Army and the Air Force sides of the system and 

could use his knowledge to get what he wanted. His replacements were bright 

and hardworking but new. They had to learn the airlift request system as they 

went along.78

The 82d Support Command experienced exactly the same process. Almost 

all of its senior officers deployed to Grenada, creating a severe imbalance 

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.; Interv, author with C. Mitchell, 16 Feb 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

77 Intervs, Wade with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

78 Intervs, author with F. Perkins, 14 Jul 1986, and Wade with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Corps Support

411

between the leaders and the led. By 29 October its executive officer, Colonel 

Kelly, had charge of three-fourths of the organization’s personnel at Fort 

Bragg. Meanwhile, on Grenada his boss, Colonel Daly, suffered from a severe 

shortage of so-called box handlers, the enlisted men and women required in an 

operation of this scope to do the necessary physical and clerical work. Kelly 

began deploying as many as possible, filling whatever space that remained in 

each cargo-loaded aircraft. His success in doing this meant that as the operation proceeded 82d Support Command-Rear had not only a lack of senior 

leaders but also a diminishing capability for box-handling.79

On 30 October, the day after Major Perkins’ departure for Grenada, the 

1st Support Command’s 330th Transportation Center commander, Maj. David 

L. Boggs, returned from Joint Exercise Bold Eagle in Florida. The next day 

Colonel Richardson proposed to General Mackmull that his 1st Support 

Command assume control of air movement to Grenada. The corps commander 

demurred because the existing chain of command could not support it.80

During the next week, however, the situation changed. Operation Urgent

Fury officially ended, and General Trobaugh became commander of U.S. 

Forces, Grenada. On 2 November Major Boggs began working very closely 

with Colonel Kelly at Green Ramp, the first step in the transfer of movement responsibility to the 330th Transportation Center. Two days later, when 

Trobaugh assumed command, the 330th officially replaced the 82d Support 

Command at Green Ramp. Without a simultaneous assumption by XVIII 

Airborne Corps of airflow management, this change meant that the division 

G–4 rear at Fort Bragg continued to set priorities for air movement based 

upon General Trobaugh’s instructions. As a corps unit, however, the 330th 

looked to corps for instruction and was under no obligation to follow this 

guidance. At the same time, the corps had no legal authority to provide any 

direction to the 330th on this issue. The tangled lines of authority represented 

a most unsatisfactory situation.81

On 5 November a number of the principal logisticians at Fort Bragg gathered to discuss the issue. Colonel Kelly was very much in favor of putting the 

corps in charge of the airflow. He simply lacked the officers and men for his 

command to perform the mission adequately. The G–4 rear representative was 

the only person in attendance who questioned the wisdom of the hand-off, 

doubting whether the corps support command would prove as responsive as 

the division support command to the 82d’s needs. Eventually, the 1st Support 

Command representative convinced the G–4 staffer that the division would 

continue to receive a priority commensurate with its combat operations.82

79 Intervs, Wade with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983, and with Rhodes [Nov 1983], plus Hicks with 

Kelly, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 80 Intervs, Wade with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983; Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983; and 

McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 81 Intervs, Wade with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], and with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 82 Intervs, Wade with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983, and with Causey, 

16 Nov 1983, plus Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, 
The Rucksack War

412

That afternoon XVIII Airborne Corps notified all commands of the 

impending change, and at 0001 the next morning it officially replaced the division as the manager of the airflow. Only then could the corps G–4, Colonel 

Mitchell, begin to set transportation priorities based on guidance from 

General Mackmull and to transmit them to Major Boggs at Green Ramp. 82d 

Support Command personnel continued to assist at Green Ramp for two more 

days. They manned the equipment supply issue point and the individual issue 

ammunition point for even longer.83

It took some time for everyone to become accustomed to the new arrangements. The rear detachments of the 82d Airborne Division were perplexed for 

a day or two about the proper channels through which to submit airlift requirements. The division ground liaison officer at Pope Air Force Base, who became 

the acting corps ground liaison officer in the absence of Colonel Anshus, who 

was on Barbados, did not start working directly with Major Boggs until 7 

November. Even then, he persisted in using division channels until long after 

everyone else in the division had adjusted. It took Atlantic Command, for its 

part, until 13 or 14 November to adapt to the new circumstances.84

Major Boggs’ first big task was to order aircraft for the return of the 2d 

Brigade, 82d Airborne Division, and the assault command post from Grenada 

on 4 November. Shortly after Boggs placed the order, a Military Airlift 

Command officer called back: “Listen, forty aircraft are already ordered. 

Twenty-six have already been used. We are not going to lay on these missions.” 

In this manner Boggs first learned that division transportation officers, as 

well as certain corps G–3 and G–4 officers, were continuing to order aircraft 

directly from the Air Force. The problem was resolved only after the transfer 

of the airflow management to corps and a reiteration of the proper aircraft 

ordering procedures to the corps staff.85

The Joint Chiefs of Staff had announced the termination of combat operations with the formal end of Operation Urgent Fury on 2 November. Atlantic 

Command closed its emergency operations center. Simultaneously, Military 

Airlift Command shifted to standard peacetime procedures, designated special assignment airlift missions, and required submission of requests—a fourpage form for each mission—up to seventy-two hours in advance. Whether 

because XVIII Airborne Corps was distracted by the problems associated with 

assuming responsibility for the airflow or because Military Airlift Command 

Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. 1, an. D, p. I-D-3, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Msgs, Cavazos to HQDA and LANTCOM, 7 0252Z Nov 1983, 

sub: Logistics Situation Summary, and Mitchell to Russo, 6 1954Z Nov 1983, sub: Log Update 

Urgent Fury, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 83 Interv, Wade with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Memo, Boggs for 

Richardson, encl. to Ltr, Lindsay to Vuono, [Apr 1984], sub: Opn Urgent Fury LL, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH; Msg, Mitchell to Russo, 6 1954Z Nov 1983, sub: Log Update Urgent

Fury, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH.

84 Interv, Wade with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Memo, G–3 (Air), 

XVIII Abn Corps, for G–3, XVIII Abn Corps, 17 Apr 1984, encl. to Ltr, Lindsay to Vuono, 

[Apr 1984], sub: Opn Urgent Fury LL, Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH. 85 Interv, Wade with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Corps Support

413

expected corps to anticipate its reversion to peacetime rules, the move caught 

corps transportation officers by surprise. As a result, the airlift request process became bogged down over a period of two or three days. Once the 330th 

Transportation Center had the airlift requests moving again, Major Boggs and 

other corps logisticians found the new system too inflexible. It was impossible for them to forecast airlift requirements more than twenty-four hours in 

advance, much less seventy-two hours. On 12 November, for example, Atlantic 

Command decided that it wanted to move more military police to Grenada 

the next day. Boggs needed five C–141s to carry them and their equipment, but 

Military Airlift Command could not provide the aircraft until 14 November.86

On 7 November, with the redeployment of the 2d Brigade completed, 

Major Boggs directed his unit to make an inventory of everything at Green 

Ramp, something Colonel Kelly had never been able to do because of the 

intensity of the operation. Personnel from Boggs’ 330th Transportation Center 

completed the inventory and cleaned up the ramp in just two days. Their most 

difficult task was to differentiate between supplies and equipment needed by 

units on the island engaged in peacekeeping tasks and those items that division elements had returned from Grenada. They had found articles earlier cut 

from the airflow shoved to the side of the ramp, as well as five pallets of the 

division’s A-bags that they then returned to unit areas. Over the next thirty-six 

hours the ramp filled with cargo again, and on Friday, 11 November, Boggs 

cleared it once more. This set the rhythm of Green Ramp operations until midDecember, when the last combat troops left the island.87

Although the airflow became more like a normal peacetime resupply mission, some problems persisted. Military Airlift Command continued to refuse 

to land C–5As at Point Salines, which meant 1st Support Command had to 

rely upon the smaller and somewhat slower C–141s. With the end of combat, 

the Air Force also permitted only daylight landings and takeoffs at Salines, 

restricting the times of the day at which corps could plan on moving supplies 

and equipment out of Green Ramp. Units on Grenada still occasionally had 

difficulty obtaining their supplies and equipment, but this arose from problematic communications on the island rather than complications at Pope Air 

Force Base and Fort Bragg. By the end of the second week of November, the 

airflow took on the efficiency that XVIII Airborne Corps logisticians expected 

of all their operations.88

General Cavazos’ determination to make the XVIII Airborne Corps the 

Army executive agent for administration and logistics during Urgent Fury

86 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. II, an. A, p. II-A-7, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Intervs, Wade with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983, and with 

Rhodes, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 87 Intervs, Wade with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983, and with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 88 Intervs, Wade with Boggs, 15 Nov 1983, and with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.
The Rucksack War

414

was one of the critical decisions for the success of Army logistics during 

the operation. It provided the rationale for General Mackmull to convince 

Admiral McDonald to allow XVIII Airborne Corps to monitor Grenada message traffic. This, in turn, gave Mackmull, his staff, and his principal subordinates the ability to work effectively behind the scenes to facilitate the flow 

of troops, equipment, and supplies into Grenada. The corps’ role extended 

from responding to calls from higher headquarters for information—thereby 

freeing the division to concentrate on fighting the battle—to actually sending 

individuals and units to Barbados. One of Mackmull’s most important early 

contributions was to resolve Admiral Metcalf’s misjudgment that General 

Trobaugh could receive hard-copy message traffic when, in fact, Trobaugh 

lacked that capability. Mackmull’s improvised solution, which involved sending couriers aboard the C–141s flying to the island, may have been a throwback to an earlier century, but it was considerably better than no communications at all. His subsequent purchase of off-the-shelf Compass computers 

emphasized his understanding of the importance of maintaining high-quality 

communications during the transition period between full-scale combat and 

peace. Throughout, he showed an ability to pick out critical elements and to 

act decisively. 

One postfactum criticism was that the corps sent too large a package of 

support elements to the island after combat ended. Given, however, the concern about a postintervention insurgency—an almost axiomatic assumption 

for officers bloodied in Vietnam—and the dearth of any knowledge about 

Grenadian society or politics, the forces and the heavy engineering equipment 

dispatched appear both rational and prudent. At worst, the decisions resulted 

in a lowering of efficiency—much of the equipment was not used—but General 

Mackmull and his subordinates were far more concerned about military effectiveness. On that scale, they had nothing for which to apologize. 

General Mackmull even unwittingly aided the logistical effort when the 

aircraft that carried him to Grenada also carried the materiel for the detainee 

camp—yet another example of Colonel Kelly’s mastery of the airflow. This 

episode also represented one of General Trobaugh’s comparatively few interventions in logistics. The discrepancy in behavior between the two generals

reflects where each officer was located and the tasks that he had to perform. 

At Fort Bragg, Mackmull enjoyed an operational-level perspective on the 

Grenada campaign. He knew what the ground commander needed and the 

rough sequence in which he would need things. Mackmull also had a good idea 

of what assets were available from other commands and from the Army supply 

chain and how soon they would become available. He understood concerns at 

the Pentagon about inserting specialized units onto the island and often knew 

why the president and the secretary of defense needed something done. Such 

insights permitted him to affect the outcome of Urgent Fury positively by 

balancing these competing concerns and by encouraging the division-rear commander, General Smith, to forward the highest-priority items first. In contrast, 

Trobaugh was located at Point Salines and had to focus intensively on ground 

combat operations. What happened on Grenada and the waters immediately 
Corps Support

415

surrounding the island were his primary and at times only concern. From this 

perspective, he intervened in logistics only when a crisis threatened to disrupt 

operations on the island. His place in the formal chain of command might 

suggest otherwise, but circumstances forced him to concentrate on tacticallevel issues.

Given his position in the chain of command, General Smith was the dutiful assistant, making certain that the commander in the field received what he 

wanted. In part because of his subordination to General Trobaugh, in part 

because of his focus on the technical aspects of his job (exactly what he was 

supposed to do), and in part because XVIII Airborne Corps was shielding him 

from higher headquarters’ concerns, Smith did not have the same perspective 

that General Mackmull had. In addition, because he was a fairly new brigadier 

general, he lacked Mackmull’s depth and breadth of experience and tended to 

follow Mackmull’s suggestions.

Throughout the intervention, General Mackmull set the highest possible 

standards of conduct: focusing on the success of the mission and laying aside 

any personal feelings about how he had been treated. The spirit of professionalism and goodwill that defined his relations with Generals Smith and 

Farris, as well as their relations with him and one another, set the best possible 

example for their subordinates. Their command relationships were a major 

contributing factor to the success of logistical efforts at Fort Bragg. General 

Cavazos’ characterization of the XVIII Airborne Corps—“. . . an extraordinary achievement in light of command-and-control arrangements”—applies 

equally to the 82d Airborne Division-Rear.89 

The provision of medical support constitutes the one exception to this 

generalization, and even there General Mackmull played an indispensable 

role in dispatching Medical Task Force 5. Overall, whether in the planning, 

loading, or sustaining phase, medical units were often ignored and their 

efforts to move to Grenada were sometimes amateurish. While it is true 

that the failure of the Department of the Army to budget sufficient funds 

to allow the units’ members to practice loading and deploying played a 

major role in this outcome, both the senior commanders and the Army’s 

medical community must accept a measure of responsibility as well. The 

failure not only to anticipate that medical vehicles and supplies might be 

bumped at Green Ramp but also to maintain adequate records of what 

supplies were on the vehicles points to a mindset in medical units that loading procedures were a pro forma unpleasantness, a bureaucratic hurdle to 

be endured. Somehow, medical commanders missed the import of their 

readiness training, namely, that loading an airborne division for combat 

was a dynamic process essential to the success of a mission and that officers 

and men had to be prepared in advance to accommodate whatever changes 

would inevitably occur. 

89 Msg, Cavazos to Wickham, 23 2100Z Nov 1983, sub: Lessons Learned, Grenada files, 

CmdHO, TRADOC. In this back-channel message the commander of U.S. Army Forces 

Command gives the Army chief of staff his personal assessment on how Urgent Fury was 

conducted.
The Rucksack War

416

No one attempted to bridge the training gap because no one recognized 

the important issue involved. In part, this reflected how long it had been since 

the division had actually conducted a real contingency operation. The result 

was a failure of imagination in the months and years before Urgent Fury on 

the part of both senior operational and medical commanders. 

Overall, officers in the operational chain too often failed to realize the key 

role that medical units played in Urgent Fury. Here was a campaign whose 

success depended upon the maintenance of public support. The effort to keep 

casualties low among both the troops and friendly civilians represented a sine 

qua non in this action, but even those officers who understood this point had 

difficulty in grasping the logical corollary that followed: Medical units capable 

of providing a wide range of services needed to deploy early. Years of exercises 

where adequate medical support was a given, prejudice against logisticians, and 

the press of events conspired to veil this truth early in the operation. Without 

Colonel Rumbaugh’s impassioned advocacy, Colonel Edward Wilson’s blunt 

honesty, and General Mackmull’s grasp of the overall picture, proper Army 

medical support might never have deployed. Even so, it arrived far later than 

it should have.90

On the whole, the support the 82d Airborne Division received from the 

Army’s national depot supply system was first rate. Certainly, a great many 

mainly anonymous people, military and civilian, worked very hard to make 

it so. The problems that surfaced concerned primarily processes and procedures. The existing joint planning guidance did not require staff officers to 

make requests for or assign project and address codes to an operation before 

it started. The cost of this oversight was a slower response time than expected; 

in some cases, additional work for the 182d Materiel Management Center; 

and confusion, on occasion, about where to send specific items. Major Causey 

and his assistants were able to overcome these difficulties. Because Atlantic 

Command had removed XVIII Airborne Corps from the chain of command, 

they had to learn on the job how to deal with national-level logistical agencies, 

but they became more proficient at their tasks as the operation progressed. 

Finally, the hand-off of control of the airflow from the division to the corps 

was very well executed. Although the timing of Military Airlift Command’s 

revision to peacetime rules unfortunately complicated the transition back to 

corps control, Major Boggs and his assistants handled the changeover as well 

as could be expected given the heavily bureaucratized nature of the Air Force’s 

peacetime airlift request system. 

90 For simulated casualties pre-Grenada, see RCmts, Reardon, May 2005, Hist files (Drafts), 

CMH.
10

Area of Operations

27 October 1983

As the third day of military operations on Grenada began on 27 October, 

the Army’s logistical effort showed small but real improvements. On 

Barbados the Air Force had established a robust intermediate staging base, 

while ad hoc Army actions had provided a framework to manage the transshipment of Army units and equipment to the Point Salines airfield. The scattered nature of the resistance on Grenada during the previous day held the 

promise that combat might continue to be light and place minimal stress on 

the logistical system. At Point Salines cargo-handling was a vulnerable point 

in the air line of communications, but some amelioration of conditions had 

occurred during the last twenty-four hours. The lack of Army medical personnel, equipment, and supplies remained a potential problem. Still, the lessening 

of Cuban and Grenadian resistance suggested that this weakness might be a 

theoretical rather than an actual difficulty. At the same time, coordination and 

communications across service lines continued to be problematic.

Intermediate Staging Base on Barbados

Nowhere was the improvement in the Army’s logistical effort more noticeable than on Barbados. At 0300, on 27 October, the first echelon of seven 

troop-lift helicopters of Maj. William J. Elder’s Task Force B, formed around 

a nucleus from his Company B, 82d Aviation Battalion, departed Grantley 

Adams International Airport for the Point Salines airfield. The remainder 

of the aircraft in the task force left approximately an hour later. Sgt. Jimmie 

Dew remained at Grantley Adams in command of the task force’s support 

element, which eventually made its way to Point Salines aboard fourteen Air 

Force C–141s.1

As Major Elder’s contingent departed, additional Army aviation elements 

arrived on Barbados. Capt. Bernardo C. Negrete’s Company D, 82d Aviation 

Battalion, equipped with AH–1 Cobra attack helicopters, reached Grantley 

Adams on the afternoon of 27 October, and that night Maj. Elton S. Sledge 

Jr.’s Company A, outfitted with UH–60 Black Hawks similar to Company B, 

1 Intervs, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, and Wade with Beaty and Garmond, [Nov 

1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Arthur W. Hapner, “’Dustoff’ in Grenada,” pp. 62–64, 66.

☆ ☆ ☆
The Rucksack War

418

followed. That same day elements of the 1st Squadron, 17th Cavalry, also landed 

at Grantley Adams: the squadron commander, Lt. Col. William J. Miller; the 

squadron assault command post; and the first echelon of Maj. Timothy R. 

Lynch’s Troop B, consisting primarily of AH–1 Cobra gunships and OH–58 

observation helicopters. As the new units appeared, they required the same services that Capt. Jimmie M. Rabon, the acting commander of Army Forces, 

Barbados, had provided for Elder’s task force. Normally serving as the 82d 

Aviation Battalion S–4, Captain Rabon had no dedicated communications and 

only Sgt. Eric Rodwell from his section as an assistant, but the fact that someone was coordinating with the Air Force and the airport authorities, who were 

rapidly adapting to the new situation, produced impressive results. Where it 

had taken Task Force B an entire day to rebuild its helicopters on the twentysixth, it took Company D less than an afternoon. The difference lay not in the 

units, both were equally well trained, but in the fact that Captain Negrete’s unit 

could rebuild its helicopters without the need to move them constantly to other 

locations to make way for incoming aircraft.2

Captain Rabon had more than just Army aviation units to concern him. 

Aircraft diverted from the holding pattern, to say nothing of those dispatched 

from Pope Air Force Base, landed constantly at Grantley Adams. Many unloaded 

their passengers and cargo for transshipment to Grenada. As Rabon noted, “It 

was no particular unit. It was sort of a hodgepodge of people.” The captain set 

up a personnel holding area. Along with his assistant, Sergeant Rodwell, and 

the arrival-departure airfield control group commander, Capt. Harley C. Barr 

II, Rabon would find personnel “wandering around” with no one in charge. The 

three determined the units involved, identified the ranking officer or noncommissioned officer, designated a location at which all members of the unit were 

to assemble, and recorded this information. When they found other members of 

the unit, they thus could direct them to the appropriate location.3

The 317th Tactical Airlift Wing’s 317th Airlift Control Element at Grantley 

Adams filled the gap created by Captain Rabon’s lack of communications. 

Whenever an Army unit wanted supplies that were not on hand, Rabon would 

walk to the control element’s air-conditioned van. An airman would teletype 

the captain’s requests to Pope Air Force Base, which redirected them to the 

corps emergency operations center. The center in turn passed them through 

Army channels to the battalion-rear of the requesting unit. Moving through so 

many hands, messages could become garbled. For example, Rabon requested 

two vehicles and drivers for shipment to the aviation battalion on Grenada. 

One vehicle, two drivers, and the battalion mess team with its three vehicles 

arrived at Point Salines in due course. This, as Rabon observed, was all right 

except for the fact that the mess team did not bring any food, and no local supplies were immediately available.4

2 Intervs, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, and GWG with Miller, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 3 Intervs, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986 (quoted words), and McElroy with Richardson 

and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 4 Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

419

Information passed much less easily from Fort Bragg to Barbados. Captain 

Rabon learned the time of arrival of some companies only when the doors 

of the aircraft transporting them opened and their members walked out. 

Communications with Point Salines were even more difficult. The 317th Airlift 

Control Element had a voice radio link with the division assault command 

post, but Rabon picked up only bits and pieces of information. He knew that 

water was in short supply, and, based upon his experience, he assumed that 

ammunition and repair parts would also be critical items. He and Rodwell, 

as a result, tried to get extra amounts of these commodities on every aircraft 

departing for Grenada.5

Unknown to Captain Rabon, one other channel of communications existed 

between Grantley Adams and Fort Bragg. One of the Army aviators passing 

through Barbados used his telephone credit card at a pay telephone in the terminal to call Fort Bragg. He notified his battalion-rear that his unit had arrived. 

When the division-rear commander, Brig. Gen. James D. Smith, learned of the 

call, he directed that someone on Barbados stay on the line constantly to keep 

the circuit open. Because the connection was insecure, conversations had to be 

guarded and elliptical, but it allowed division-rear to monitor the movement of 

units through Grantley Adams. Constantly on the move, Rabon simply did not 

learn of the existence of this link prior to his departure for Grenada.6

Close Army–Air Force cooperation extended beyond just communications. A scheduled Air Cubana flight was due at Grantley Adams Wednesday 

afternoon, 27 October. The airlift commander, Brig. Gen. Robert B. Patterson, 

could not overlook the possibility that the aircraft might contain unscheduled 

passengers, such as a Cuban commando team. Rather than run the risk, he 

requested the Grantley Adams tower to divert the aircraft to another field. 

The Cuban pilot, however, paid no attention to these instructions. General 

Patterson directed Captain Rabon to get the Cobras ready “to kill Cubans.” 

Rabon contacted Company D’s commander, Captain Negrete, who launched 

two fully armed Cobra gunships. They hovered in defilade waiting for the 

Cuban aircraft to land. In the end, the Cuban pilot circled the island once and 

then departed. The upshot of the episode was that Company D left Barbados 

for Grenada much later on the twenty-seventh than originally planned.7

Sometime during the night of 27–28 October a major from XVIII Airborne 

Corps arrived on Barbados. Captain Rabon briefed him on the situation at 

Grantley Adams, introduced him to the key members of the Army arrivaldeparture airfield control group and the Air Force airlift control element, 

and showed him the location of the personnel and equipment areas. Then, 

shortly after midnight, Rabon and Rodwell drove a small truck belonging to 

82d Aviation Battalion’s S–4 section up the ramp of a C–130 and departed for 

Point Salines.8

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid. (quoted words); Interv, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 8 Interv, author with Rabon, 27 Jun 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

420

Point Salines Airhead, Morning

In contrast to the events unfolding on Barbados, airfield operations at 

Point Salines on the morning of 27 October appeared little changed from the 

evening before. The piecemeal deployment of combat units continued much 

to the chagrin of the 82d’s senior leaders. Elements of the lead battalion of 

Col. James T. Scott’s 3d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division, Lt. Col. George 

A. Crocker’s 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry, continued to arrive well into the 

morning in no particular order. The entire battalion did finally reach the 

island, but the late arrivals had to join the unit at the front because Colonel 

Scott had already committed it to the division’s advance out of the Point 

Salines Peninsula. By then, Lt. Col. Hubert S. Shaw Jr. and his 1st Battalion, 

508th Infantry, headquarters group had arrived, but the battalion itself 

was far from complete. It had elements in transit from locations scattered 

across the Caribbean and eastern United States, wherever their aircraft had 

flown when General Patterson closed the airfield during the Grand Anse 

operation.9

The arrival before first light of Major Elder’s Task Force B from the 82d 

Aviation Battalion at least provided the division with the ability to move its 

infantry by air if necessary. With the fuel tanks on the task force’s UH–60 

Black Hawks running low, however, Elder’s first job was to refuel his helicopters. The Class III Platoon, commanded by 2d Lt. Eric P. Katz, was responsible for dispensing jet fuel but had none to give. Although the Forward Area 

Support Team II coordinator, Maj. Daniel J. Cleary III, had requested JP–4 

for the helicopters before leaving Fort Bragg, the Air Force bladder bird carrying it had yet to arrive. The request had apparently been delayed in channels 

somewhere back in the United States.10

If Lieutenant Katz did not have the needed JP–4, another source was 

readily available—the Navy. The 82d Aviation Battalion commander, Lt. Col. 

Robert N. Seigle, was familiar with the refueling procedures that special forces 

aviators followed when working with the Navy and outlined them to Major 

Elder. Elder immediately sent his weary flyers to the USS Guam to fill empty 

fuel blivots they had carried with them to Grenada, but the men found that 

their hoses and nozzles were not compatible with Navy equipment. In the end, 

the Navy topped off the Army helicopters aboard ship, but this meant that the 

aircraft had to fly out to the Guam one at a time. Elder worked out a schedule 

so that all the craft in his force received fuel.11

The task force rallied on the south side of the western end of the runway 

in the only feasible location for helicopter operations close to the airfield. 

With the helicopters about to start operations, Colonel Seigle talked with the 

9 Intervs, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983, and Bishop with R. Newman, 16 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, 82d Abn Div, 27 Oct 1983, 0850, 1440, 1818, 2025, 2300, and 28 Oct 

1983, 0055, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 10 Intervs, author with Katz, 18 Jul and 6 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

11 Intervs, Baribeau with Elder, 9 Nov 1983, and with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH; Robert N. Seigle, “Looking Back at Urgent Fury,” p. 24.
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

421

commander of the 317th Tactical Airlift Wing’s 317th Combat Control Team 

at Point Salines, Air Force Capt. Stephen R. Scott. The Army aviators did not 

as yet have the control team’s frequencies and call signs, but Seigle assured 

Captain Scott that “until we can get some more permanent rules about which 

way we’ll approach this place and how you guys are going to fly your patterns and all that sort of stuff, count on the fact that my guys will just stay 

clear.”12

This informal agreement held. No Air Force C–141s and C–130s or Marine 

and Navy CH–53s and CH–46s were endangered by Army aircraft. Colonel 

Seigle attributed this ability to operate with safety in violation of standard 

airport operating procedures to the type of training Army pilots received. 

Because of their need to operate from field locations during the Army’s numerous field exercises, they became accustomed to “fly[ing] their helicopter[s] 

without someone telling them which way to go.” Navy, Marine, and Air Force 

pilots, on the other hand, had been trained to make approaches, landings, and 

takeoffs only after someone they recognized as a competent authority “absolutely cleared” them to do so. Although operational necessity dictated these 

relaxed procedures, it was, Seigle admitted, “an unbelievably hairy operation” 

that he never wanted to repeat.13

Operational necessity also required the combat control team to set aside 

another safety rule that mandated a halt to aircraft landings while rotors turned 

at the edge of a runway. Its enforcement would have effectively curtailed all 

C–141 and C–130 operations at the airfield, which was the case when a bladder 

bird landed to fill Lieutenant Katz’s fuel point. Unable to move entirely off the 

landing strip, the C–130 blocked the airfield at its midpoint. As a result, both 

C–130 and C–141 operations were impossible for a time.14

While Lieutenant Katz was still at Fort Bragg, Major Cleary had taken 

him aside to tell him that on Grenada he would need connectors that fit all the 

different sizes of valves that a fuel-carrying aircraft might have. Cleary had 

requested that bladder birds make all fuel resupply deliveries, but he warned 

Katz that he must not anticipate that all the fuel would come from bladder 

birds. If there was no other way to get it, he might have to pump some fuel 

out of a C–130’s own fuel tanks, leaving just enough for it to take off and fly 

to its destination. In this procedure, known as wet wing defueling, Class III 

Platoon personnel connected a hose to the aircraft’s wing tank and pumped. 

Katz and other platoon members knew only the theory; they had never practiced the technique. Accounting procedures initiated in the 1970s required the 

Department of the Army to pay the Air Force for the use of its aircraft and 

crews during training exercises involving the two services. This had discouraged the Army from training with the Air Force, except when there was no 

12 Intervs, Baribeau with Elder, 9 Nov 1983, and with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983 (quoted words), 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 13 Dean C. Kallander and James K. Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 120; Interv, Baribeau with 

Seigle, 9 Nov 1983 (quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 14 Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 120; Intervs, Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, 

and author with Katz, 6 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

422

other way to obtain an essential skill. Wet wing defueling in the view of the 

Department of the Army did not qualify.15

The failure of the bladder bird to arrive led Lieutenant Katz to attempt a 

wet wing defueling. It took almost two hours because the platoon had to rely 

on gravity flow to empty the tanks rather than auxiliary pumps that had not yet 

arrived from Fort Bragg. After this experience, the arrival of the first Air Force 

bladder bird on the twenty-seventh generated feelings of relief. Emptying the 

bladder went better than Katz had dared to hope. The Air Force crew was very 

helpful. Even so, the conversion of theoretical knowledge to practical experience inevitably involved a learning curve. Katz’s men took up to thirty minutes 

to remove the standard load of 5,900 gallons of JP–4 from a C–130 during 

their initial attempts; however, they had reduced their time to ten minutes or 

less by the end of Urgent Fury.

16

The fact that airfield operations had to be temporarily suspended convinced the Air Force combat control team commander, Captain Scott, that 

the Class III aviation fuel point was improperly located. Scott insisted that 

Lieutenant Katz move to a small ramp on the north side of the runway, 

15 Intervs, author with Katz, 18 Jul 1986, and with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 16 Intervs, author with Katz, 18 Jul 1986, with McElroy, 30 Apr 1984, with Cleary, 14–15 

Jul 1986, with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with Crabtree, 24 Jan 1989, plus Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation 

Urgent Fury Assessment, pp. X-46 to X-47, Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH.

Off-loading fuel from a C–130
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

423

where a bladder bird could unload its JP–4 without shutting down the airport. Katz was appalled by the idea, realizing that he would have to drain 

all the fuel out of his system, dismantle it, haul it to the new site, schedule 

the engineers again to dig in the fuel bags and build a new berm, and then 

reassemble the system. Because this process would take a substantial amount 

of time, during which Army helicopters on the island would have only the 

support the Navy could provide, Katz appealed to Major Cleary and found 

support. Both Cleary and Katz appreciated all the deficiencies of the site, 

but a move of the type Scott envisioned was hardly practical at the height of 

active combat.17

Initially, the reordering procedure for bladder bird flights was quite 

cumbersome and time consuming. When the fuel point needed additional 

JP–4, Lieutenant Katz called Major Cleary on the radio and told him, in 

a prearranged code, that he needed so many “drinks” before dinner and so 

many after. A “drink” stood for a flight. The Class III Platoon also reported 

on fuel levels in the 10,000-gallon fuel bag to the Forward Area Support 

Team II headquarters every hour or two so that Cleary might initiate a call 

for more based on a combination of his knowledge of usage statistics and 

the division’s plans for future operations. Usually, he requested another 

refueling mission whenever the fuel level dropped below the 4,000-gallon 

mark.18

It was after Major Cleary passed on Lieutenant Katz’s messages that 

things became complicated. Cleary contacted the division-forward G–4, Capt. 

James A. Rosebrock, who, as soon as he could, used the command satellite 

radio. To radio the division G–4 section at Fort Bragg, Captain Rosebrock 

usually had to stand in line at the division assault command post for a considerable time and wait his turn. Division-rear, in turn, passed the request on to 

U.S. Atlantic Command in Norfolk, which referred the application to the Air 

Force. Response time varied, sometimes running from six to eight hours, long 

enough for the fuel point at Point Salines to run dry. Then, when a flight did 

arrive, the combat control team sometimes tried to land other planes ahead 

of it, because a bladder bird’s arrival would halt air operations. Often Katz’s 

platoon defueled aircraft at night, when the airflow was a little slower and the 

Air Force was more willing to countenance temporary suspension of landings. 

Some relief came after the division G–4, Lt. Col. Jack D. Crabtree, arrived at 

Point Salines. On 27 October Colonel Crabtree began transmitting requests 

directly to General Patterson’s Airlift Control Center on Barbados, alleviating 

many of the procedural difficulties.19

Only a few accidents were associated with bladder bird operations. The 

most serious occurred when a valve on one of the aircraft ruptured and spewed 

17 Interv, author with Katz, 18 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

18 Ibid. (quoted words); Interv, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 19 Intervs, author with Katz, 18 Jul 1986, and with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 4-4, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
The Rucksack War

424

JP–4 all over one of the men. No fire broke out, but the C–130 had to depart 

with most of its fuel still on board. Because the 82d Military Police Company 

had confiscated the airfield’s fire engine to use as a gunjeep, Major Cleary kept 

a bulldozer at the fuel point at all times. He planned to let any fire burn itself 

out and then to shove the wreckage off the field.20

Efforts to refuel the division’s helicopters also complicated airfield operations. Class III Platoon personnel lacked the equipment to service them while 

their engines were running. As a substitute, a helicopter would fly in with a 

500-gallon blivot that Katz and his men would then fill. The entire process 

took only fifteen minutes, during which time Captain Scott as a safety measure 

halted all landings and takeoffs at Point Salines. As soon as the bag was full, 

the helicopter would fly to an arming and refueling site located some distance 

away so that fueling could proceed without further impeding airfield operations. It was hardly a perfect system, but it was the best anyone could do under 

the circumstances.21

In the midst of these fuel-focused activities on the morning of the twentyseventh, Major Cleary’s headquarters assumed the important additional 

role of functioning as the communications center for aeromedical evacuation requests. Once the first two helicopters of the 57th Medical Detachment 

arrived with Major Elder, the two pilots set up separate operations close to 

Cleary’s plumbers shack. Because they lacked radios other than those in their 

UH–60s, Cleary had a land line laid from his headquarters to the detachment. 

The Forward Area Support Team II call sign became the 57th’s call sign as 

well. The new role was not part of the team’s mission; however, it was, like so 

many other tasks during the early days of Urgent Fury, a job that needed to 

be done and Cleary’s team did it.22

Sometime on 26 or 27 October a problem with maps began to surface 

that became acute for Major Cleary once he started acting as a communications center for aeromedical evacuations. The Army, the Air Force, and the 

special operations forces were using maps with grid coordinates 00 on the 

lower left-hand corner; the Navy and Marine Corps, maps with grid coordinates that started at 22 on the lower left-hand corner. Once he realized what 

was going on, Cleary developed a master map that contained both sets of 

coordinates. He then discovered reinforcements arriving with maps using 

a third series of coordinates. As he later remembered, “It created quite a 

problem for us.”23

Having three map grids in use also magnified difficulties for the 82d 

Airborne Division commander, Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh. Part of the 

20 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, and with Katz, 18 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 21 Intervs, author with Katz, 18 Jul and 6 Aug 1986, and Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. The average length of time for closing the airfield is in Rpt, GWG, 

CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment , p. X-21, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/CAC), CMH. 22 Interv, Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

23 Ibid.
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

425

problem was simply determining where units were. Ambiguity about location 

increased the possibility of friendly fire incidents and, on the whole, contributed to the division’s slow advance.24

Combat and Support 

The capture of the Frequente warehouse complex on 26 October had 

allowed several units of the 82d Airborne Division to solve their transportation needs. Lt. Col. Jack L. Hamilton’s 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, which 

was initially in actual possession of the facility’s vehicles, benefited the most by 

augmenting its battalion train with sixteen Soviet dump trucks. The battalion’s 

amateur shade-tree mechanics had hot-wired the trucks in a manner that kept 

their batteries from recharging. As a result, the battalion left a line of stalled 

dump trucks in its wake over the next several days.25

Lt. Col. John W. Raines’ 3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, also drew on the 

Frequente vehicle park for transportation. Colonel Raines’ S–4, Capt. Randall 

L. McClure, no sooner arrived at Point Salines early on 27 October than he 

began trying to augment his battalion train with captured vehicles. The 3d 

Battalion, 325th Infantry, had received more of its own vehicles than any of 

24 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. G, p. I-G-2 to I-G-7, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 25 Interv, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Using maps to locate key areas on the island
The Rucksack War

426

the other battalions in the airhead, but the total was still considerably less 

than the number needed. Captain McClure had a 21⁄2-ton truck to haul supplies from the airhead to the battalion supply point, but each company needed 

either a Gamma Goat or a civilian truck to haul the men’s rucksacks, ammunition, and so forth. The mortar platoons also needed their own vehicles. As 

a latecomer, McClure had relatively less luck than the logisticians who had 

proceeded him, but what he discovered proved ultimately sufficient. He had 

brought a first-class mechanic with him to Point Salines and had sent the soldier on to Frequente. The man’s hot-wiring skills kept the battalion’s commandeered vehicles in service for the rest of the time that the 3d Battalion remained 

on Grenada. McClure also located a Soviet-built sedan and two luggage carts 

of the kind used around airports to carry his unit’s mortar tubes.26

As soon as the 3d Brigade’s S–4, Capt. Joseph Pitts Jr., heard about 

Frequente, he also sent two maintenance warrant officers, all the brigade 

mechanics, and a reinforced squad of infantry to the area. The force traveled 

in two abandoned Soviet dump trucks that brigade members had found near 

the airhead. The maintenance team secured four more small Soviet trucks, 

two “scout type vehicles,” and an ambulance for the brigade. Because this was 

obviously inadequate, the 2d Brigade commander, Col. Stephen Silvasy Jr., 

later transferred more captured vehicles to the 3d Brigade’s control. Even so, 

as mixed as the unit’s train ultimately became, it could not match the variety of 

the 2d Brigade’s equipment. One of its vehicles, driven by the senior logistician 

with the brigade, 1st Lt. Steven R. Jensen, was a somewhat dilapidated Soviet 

dump truck with one forward gear and no reverse. The sight of this conveyance proved particularly memorable for all who came upon it.27

Other units also took advantage of the vehicular windfall. By the time 

Colonel Silvasy brought the division chief of staff, Col. Peter J. Boylan Jr., 

to inspect the complex early on the morning of the twenty-seventh, the entire 

vehicle park was empty except for one Soviet armored personnel carrier and 

one dump truck. Even then, a soldier was transferring the battery from the 

personnel carrier to the dump truck so that he could get the truck started.28

If the capture of Frequente meant more transportation for the logisticians 

with the line units, it had a different meaning for their commanders. Colonel 

Hamilton, for one, concluded from the event that combat was virtually over on 

the island. The amount of weaponry seized and the failure of General Hudson 

Austin’s government to remove it, he reasoned, suggested that the Grenadians 

had no plans for a protracted guerrilla campaign.29

The situation looked much different from the perspective of the division 

assault command post. The persistent resistance at the Cuban compound 

on the morning of 26 October in the face of overwhelming force seemed to 

indicate that the Cubans and Grenadians might mount a stout, if ultimately 

futile, defense of various heavily fortified points throughout the island. If that 

26 Interv, Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

27 Interv, Wells with Whittaker, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

28 Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

29 Interv, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

427

occurred, it could exact a heavy toll from the attackers. Given this analysis, 

the training camp at Calivigny, the Cuban Embassy, Richmond Hill Prison, 

and Fort Rupert looked to present particularly difficult tactical problems for a 

commander under pressure to keep his losses low.30

For most of 26 October, moreover, the division had had very little 

knowledge of what the marines were doing. General Trobaugh and his 

staff, for example, did not learn of the capture of Fort Frederick until 

1922 on the twenty-sixth. This lack of information and a tendency to be 

more heavily influenced by events in the division’s sector than by those 

on the rest of the island drove Trobaugh’s plan for the third day. Under 

it, Colonel Silvasy’s 2d Brigade would attack toward St. George’s with 

Colonel Hamilton’s battalion on the left and Colonel Raines’ battalion on 

the right. Hamilton’s objective would be the Ross Point Hotel, just south 

of St. George’s, where Canadian citizens appeared to be—at least in the 

opinion of their government—in some danger of becoming hostages of 

the Grenadian army; in the process he was to seal off but not to attack 

the Cuban Embassy. Raines would sweep into St. George’s from the south, 

while Hamilton distracted any remaining defenders with his more direct 

approach. Meanwhile, Colonel Scott’s 3d Brigade would attack along the 

south coast to expand the airhead.31

30 Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

31 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 26 Oct 1983, 1525–2355, and 27 Oct 1983, 0028–0200, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA), CMH; Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], and Frasché with Scott, 18 

Nov 1983, plus Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Paratroopers riding in a seized Soviet dump truck
The Rucksack War

428

Even in his planning for the breakout, General Trobaugh continued to 

emphasize a careful, controlled advance. He knew that his men had been 

trained to maximize not minimize fire. By having units advance deliberately, 

he could sweep areas thoroughly for enemy fighters and weapons caches while 

lessening the possibility of friendly fire incidents and the killing or wounding of innocent civilians. He intended to do all that he could to inhibit if not 

to totally prevent the development of an insurgency against a democratic 

Grenadian government after U.S. forces departed.32

A controlled advance also minimized the possibility that Army and Marine 

units would mistakenly fire on one another as they moved to link up. To further 

reduce this risk, General Trobaugh proposed to exchange liaison officers, radio 

frequencies, and call signs with the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit commander, 

Col. James P. Faulkner. Colonel Faulkner refused. He said such coordination 

was unnecessary because Army and Marine units were working in separate, welldefined sectors. Of course, Trobaugh’s point was that the sectors were adjacent and 

the boundary was clearer to staff officers looking at maps than to troops looking 

at terrain in the field. Rebuffed, the general had to rely upon the good judgment 

of his officers and the fire discipline of his troops to prevent tragedies.33

Colonel Hamilton’s 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, advanced into the Grand 

Anse Beach area at 0630 on 27 October (Map 9). The infantrymen found 

discarded People’s Revolutionary Army uniforms and weapons scattered 

throughout the area. Hamilton had expected to meet resistance at a police 

barracks north of the Grand Anse Campus of St. George’s University School 

of Medicine, but the place was deserted. In the end, aside from occasional 

sniping, the battalion encountered no opposition. Capt. Mark D. Rocke’s 

Company C, however, did discover approximately twenty American students in 

the area whom the rangers had not located the day before. Captain Rocke sent 

them down the road to Colonel Raines’ 3d Battalion under escort. Hamilton 

then positioned all three of his companies in line for the push on St. George’s, 

which in the process would liberate the Ross Point Hotel, and waited for the 

3d Battalion to reach its jump-off point and tie in on his right. This proved to 

be such a time-consuming process that the newly appointed Joint Task Force 

(JTF) 120 deputy commander, Maj. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., ultimately turned the Ross Point Hotel mission over to the marines.34

Following in the wake of the combat troops, the 2d Battalion aid station set 

up at Grand Anse, close to the shore. Several hours later the corpsmen manning 

the station were startled when the marines conducted an air assault on Grand 

Anse. Anticipating possible resistance, the marines charged off their helicopters with their weapons at the ready. It was, reflected an ambulance driver at 

the aid station, Spec. Denis Deszo, a very dangerous moment. Fortunately, 

the Marine fire discipline held until Specialist Deszo and his buddies could 

32 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 33 Interv, Frasché with Akers, [Dec 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

34 Intervs, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, with Rocke, 19 Nov 1983, and with 

Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

429

identify themselves as Americans. The marines, Deszo later recalled, “were not 

happy with the news.” Good small-unit training helped avert a potential tragedy, but the incident might never have occurred if the marines had exchanged 

liaison officers with the Army.35

35 Captions to Deszo photographs nos. 98 (quoted words) and 99, and E-mail, Hendricks to 

author, 3 Mar 2010, sub: Material from Denis Deszo, Hist files (Papers/Deszo), CMH; Interv, 

Oland with Deszo, 3 Mar 1988, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Deszo and “Pfc. [Kevin] Remington 

Map 9

X X

82(-)

TF 121

X

2 82

I I

3 325

I I

2 325

I I

1 505

I I

75 R 2

I

1–75 R C

Tm ANGLICO 2

GRAND BAY PRICKLY BAY

WOBURN BAY

GRAND ANSE

B AY

GRAND MAL

BAY

ST. GEORGE’S BAY

ST. GEORGE’S HARBOR

MARTIN’S BAY

St. Johns R

Bon Accord R

Fort

Fort Frederick

Fort Matthew

Fort Adolphus

Radio

Station

Fuel Storage Tanks Cinema

(Drive-in)

Racecourse

St. George’s University

School of Medicine

Tower

Towers

Tower

HOG ISLAND

CALIVIGNY

ISLAND

ADAM

ISLAND

Point Salines

Laissé Point

Blow Hole 

Ross Point

For t George Point

St Eloi Point

Petit Cabris Point

True Blue Point

Prickly Point

Mt Hartman Point

(Mace Point)

GLOVER ISLAND

(RAMIER ISLAND)

True Blue

Frequente

Calliste

Ruth Howard

Mt Hartman Estate

Woburn

Golands

Grand

Anse

Lance

aux

Épines

Petit

Calivigny

Calivigny

Grand

Mal

Molinière

Hermitage

Sans

Souci

D’Arbeau Radix

Mt Airy

Boca

Beaulieu

Springs

Woodlands

Estate

The Cli

Petit Bouc

Mont

Tout

ST GEORGE’S

TASK FORCE 121 OPERATIONS

27 October 1983

ELEVATION IN FEET

0 600 1200 and Above

0

0

1 2 Miles

1 2 Kilometers

Axis of Air Assault

Axis of Ground Assault

Tactical Operations Center

Calivigny Training Camp

Grenadian/Cuban Sniper
Paratroopers preparing to board a helicopter and moving out on a mission
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

431

The bulk of Colonel Hamilton’s support troops remained at the Cuban 

compound. They gave the morning over to burying ten Cuban dead from the 

fighting of the previous day and to moving the battalion’s vehicles to Frequente. 

The shift to Frequente allowed the engineer platoon to provide security for 

both the vehicles and other captured supplies and equipment. Setting up an 

overwatch position on a hill north of the compound, the unit at about 1600 

came under fire from several snipers in nearby houses. The Americans returned 

fire, sparking a firefight that lasted until sunset. Just as twilight turned to night 

a badly frightened Grenadian man entered the unit’s position, reporting that 

several civilians had been caught in the crossfire and that Cubans had used his 

and his neighbors’ homes for cover. The engineers sent a patrol back with him 

and escorted twenty-eight civilians, eight of them wounded, to safety. As a 

result, Hamilton’s support elements had seen more action on 27 October than 

his line companies.36

On Colonel Hamilton’s right flank, Colonel Raines could not identify 

any enemy presence to his front. Although his orders said attack, he viewed 

his maneuver as “movement to contact.” Wary of potential ambushes, he 

intended to feel his way forward, locate the enemy, and then attack. As soon 

as he turned over his position to the lead battalion of the 3d Brigade, Colonel 

Crocker’s 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry, Raines began moving north toward St. 

George’s along the True Blue–Grand Anse road. He expected any resistance 

to occur near a sugar mill in the village of Ruth Howard, some 1,300 meters 

in front of his old position. While the battalion was moving through a densely 

populated area some 300 meters short of Ruth Howard near an old brewery, 

civilians suddenly streamed out of their houses and gave the most joyous welcome that any American troops had received since the liberation of Western 

Europe in World War II. Everyone was laughing and talking, caught up in 

the excitement of the moment, when snipers opened fire. Immediately, crowd 

control became Raines’ number one priority. He did not have a megaphone (he 

had unsuccessfully tried to requisition one before he left Fort Bragg), so it was 

only with great effort that he and his men were able to herd the civilians back 

into their houses and out of harm’s way. It took still more time for troopers 

to work their way into position to fire on the snipers. Then, one light antitank 

rocket launched in the general direction of the snipers proved sufficient to 

silence the opposition.37

About 400 meters northeast of Ruth Howard the road followed by the battalion turned due north toward Grand Anse Beach, the same location already 

occupied by Colonel Hamilton’s battalion. As per order, Colonel Raines 

paused and reoriented his advance due east toward Mont Tout and Petit 

. . . found a 35-mm. Russian camera at ‘Little Havana’ after the fighting stopped. We were able 

to scrounge up some film and take pics of the remaining operation.” See E-mail, Deszo to 

Hendricks, 5 May 2009, sub: Grenada Memories in Deszo Papers, Hist files (Papers/Deszo), 

CMH. 36 Jnl, S–3, 2d Bn, 325th Inf, 27 Oct 1983, 1535, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; 

Interv, Wells with Withers, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 37 Interv, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

432

Bouc, large foothills of the mountainous interior. About this time the students that Hamilton’s battalion had discovered walked into Raines’ position. 

Preoccupied with getting the advance under way, Raines told them that they 

needed only to follow the road back to the airfield. It was all under American 

control. He instructed them to walk in the center of the road so that they 

would be completely visible. They should be prepared to raise their hands if 

necessary to show their pacific intent. Having delivered these informal but sufficient directions, Raines turned back to the task at hand.38

The movement east over Mont Tout and Petit Bouc placed the battalion in the roughest terrain that the division had yet to experience. The area 

had no roads, and only one unimproved track that did not permit access 

to wheeled vehicles. Raines did not expect much resistance. The citizens 

reported that a People’s Revolutionary Army unit had arrived to defend 

the area, but the soldiers had decamped after spending a day listening to 

aircraft arriving at Point Salines. Before leaving, however, they had commandeered clothing from the local civilians at gunpoint and discarded their 

own uniforms.39

Colonel Raines and his battalion headed out on foot. Raines took an Air 

Force air controller with him and, if necessary, had an Air Force Spectre on 

call overhead. The battalion moved in the direction of high ground beyond the 

sugar mill toward a locality known as Woodlands Estate, about 2,200 meters 

east of Ruth Howard, where The Cliff was the dominant terrain feature. From 

atop this height, a force could not only control egress to Calivigny Peninsula, 

site of the training camp that Lt. Col. Ralph L. Hagler’s ranger battalion had 

held off from attacking the first day, but also dominate a good all-weather 

road that would provide the avenue for Raines’ push toward the capital. Only 

a few snipers contested the advance.40

Control of the battalion proved something of a problem in the close terrain. Once the unit passed over the second ridgeline from the Grand Anse 

road, Colonel Raines had only intermittent radio contact with his companies. 

The radiomen had short whip antennas attached to their radios for movement 

through the heavy bush; however, the terrain dictated long whips for communications. During the advance the battalion had to take five- to ten-minute 

halts so that the radiomen could attach the long whips, make radio contact, 

and then reattach the short whips. Given his mission, Raines sacrificed continuous communications for speed. (The solution was a telescopic antenna 

that would permit easy changes in antenna height, but equipment of this type 

was not standard issue in 1983.) The decision came at a price. Raines’ leftflank company for a time became intermingled with Hamilton’s right-flank 

company. As elements of the two battalions maneuvered through the dense 

vegetation, they drew fire. Afterwards no one could be certain whether the 

Grenadians and Cubans had blocked their path or whether the two units had 

38 Ibid.; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, [JTF 120], n.d., Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/

LANTCOM), CMH. 39 Interv, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

40 Ibid.
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

433

Calivigny training camp

fired on one another. The enemy’s defense, if it was that, only momentarily 

stalled the advance.41

Once in the bush, the members of Raines’ battalion soon discovered what 

the other airborne battalions had learned during the operation, namely, that 

their two-quart canteens could not tolerate the bouncing involved in moving 

across country in rough terrain. They split at the seams. When one burst, it 

immediately depleted a soldier’s water reserves by half. As a result, the entire 

2d Brigade had to ration its water.42

Before moving across country, Colonel Raines had instructed Capt. Ben 

F. Clawson to use his Combat Support Company at Ruth Howard to provide security for the battalion’s vehicles, which the battalion’s S–4, Captain 

McClure, was moving up from the airfield. A Marine detachment from the 2d 

Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company was also there, its members sitting in 

a jeep at the Ruth Howard crossroads. The detachment, which had joined the 

41 Ibid.; Intervs, Burdett with D. Davis, [Nov 1983]; Bishop with Rocke, 19 Nov 1983; and 

Parker with Prantl, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 42 Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983]; Wells with Whittaker, 10 Nov 1983; Frasché with 

McClure, 16 Nov 1983; and Hicks with Pitts, [Nov 1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See 

also Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 28 Oct 1983, 0510, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
The Rucksack War

434

battalion only on 26 October, had no direct radio link to the battalion commander even when the short whip antennas allowed Raines to talk to Captain 

Clawson. Because of miscommunication between the division and the Marine 

Corps before anyone left Fort Bragg, none of the Marine detachments usually assigned at brigade or division headquarters had yet arrived on Grenada. 

Lacking these higher-echelon elements to vet fire support requests, the Marine 

team with the 3d Battalion was at that moment entirely on its own, free of all 

effective oversight and control.43

Suddenly the village began receiving automatic weapons fire from both the 

east and the west—areas already cleared by the battalion. More fire followed 

from the south. Captain Clawson thought it was friendly fire in response to the 

initial fusillade. As he tried to stop the fire from the south and his men replied 

to the other bursts, the marines pinpointed the source of some of the hostile 

fire.44

With Colonel Raines out of contact and Captain Clawson preoccupied, the 

team leader exercised initiative and called in an A–7, a carrier-based Vietnamera light attack plane that in 1983 was still the Navy’s aircraft of choice for 

providing close air support. The jet made three perfect dry runs over the target, but on the fourth, the strafing pass, it deviated slightly and hit a prominent 

white house rather than its target. The team immediately halted the action.45

The large white house, unknown to the marines, contained the headquarters of the 2d Brigade. Colonel Silvasy’s 2d Brigade staff had spent the first 

two days on the island under trees and beside walls like the rest of the infantry. 

Brigade staff officers had written orders at night by flashlight under ponchos 

using the top of their Kevlar helmets as their work area. Consequently, it was a 

relief for them on the twenty-seventh when, with the airhead expanding, Silvasy 

had established his command post in a house near the front, where he liked his 

headquarters to be. The euphoria lasted until exactly 1645 when, in the middle 

of a tropical rainstorm, the rounds from the A–7 slammed into the building’s 

roof. Suddenly sixteen staff members needed medical attention, three of them 

very badly. Two of these, Sgts. Harry A. Shaw and Sean P. Luketina, had lost 

both their legs. Although no medics were with the headquarters and no medical evacuation helicopters were immediately available, the injured received 

immediate care because the 82d Airborne Division required all members of its 

maneuver units to take first aid training. Reacting at once, the uninjured and 

slightly injured members of the staff kept the seriously wounded alive until the 

professionals arrived.46

43 Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], and with Clawson, [Nov 1983], plus Frasché 

with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 44 Interv, Burdett with Clawson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

45 Ibid.; Intervs, Burdett with Raines, [Nov 1983], and Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 46 Intervs, Burdett with Clawson, [Nov 1983]; McMichael with Steele, Glass, Stewart, and 

Henson, 5 Apr 1984; and Wells with Farbes, 9 Nov 1983; plus Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983. 

All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, [JTF 120], n.d., Hist files 

(PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), CMH; List, sub: Personnel Injured in 27 Oct 83 Strafing 

Incident, Grenada, encl. to Ltr, Cavazos to McDonald, 28 Mar 1984, sub: Joint Investigation 
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

435

To the south in the 3d Brigade sector of the airhead, Colonel Crocker 

watched the A–7 circle and wondered who was controlling it and why it was 

so close to the American sector. Although the division’s plan had called for 

his 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry, to attack east along the south coast at 0600, 

the colonel had had to wait until Raines’ battalion cleared his front. His lead 

company as a result had not begun its advance until 1100. His objective was 

to expand the airhead perimeter to the east an additional four kilometers. His 

scheme of maneuver was “a series of company bounds” in which one company would move forward while the adjacent one remained stationary, ready 

to engage immediately any opposition that developed while its neighbor was in 

motion. The narrowness of his sector, however, had hampered the maneuver, 

and the densely populated area had made house clearing a time-consuming 

experience. About 1600 one of his companies received heavy automatic rifle fire 

from a house to its front. Crocker attempted to bring the Spectre against the 

target only to learn that the rangers’ foray against the People’s Revolutionary 

Army training center on Calivigny Peninsula had priority. Snipers continued 

to harass his advance the remainder of the afternoon and had to be cleared by 

infantry action. Relief came only in the form of a tropical rainstorm at the end 

of a hot, dusty, and in many ways frustrating day.47

The launch of an air assault against the suspected Grenadian antiaircraft 

school near Egmont on Calivigny Peninsula had not been a part of General 

Trobaugh’s initial concept of operations for 27 October. During the morning, 

however, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) chairman General John W. Vessey had radioed the general directly to express his dissatisfaction with the division’s slow rate 

of advance out of the Point Salines Peninsula. Then at noon Joint Task Force 

120 received “a JCS-directed mission” from Atlantic Command to “seize and 

secure Calivigny Mil[itary] B[arrac]ks and Naval Facility before dark.” Ashore 

at Point Salines when the message arrived, the JTF 120 commander, V. Adm. 

Joseph Metcalf III, and his deputy, General Schwarzkopf, were surprised by the 

order. Everything was going smoothly, and they knew that Trobaugh planned 

to clear the peninsula the next day. Admiral Metcalf attempted to question the 

order, but Atlantic Command only reiterated it. When he learned of it, General 

Trobaugh also protested through channels—with the same result.48

The general then faced a dilemma. He had only three full airborne battalions in the airhead, the two battalions from the 2d Brigade and Colonel 

Crocker’s battalion from the 3d, and they were committed to the breakout from 

of A–7 Strafing on 27 Oct 1983, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/LANTCOM), CMH. Sergeant 

Luketina of Company A, 82d Signal Battalion, succumbed to his wounds on 30 June 1984 in 

the Veterans Administration Hospital, Fayetteville, N.C. See Tom Burgess, “Target Confusion 

Blamed in Air Attack,” Army Times, 23 Jul 1984. 47 Crocker, “Grenada Remembered,” pp. 13 (quoted words), 14–15.

48 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 27 Oct 1983, 1220, Hist files (PDocs/DA), CMH, which 

gives the order as received by the division verbatim. See also Intervs, Bishop with Schwarzkopf, 

21 Nov 1983, and with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, plus GWG with Schwarzkopf, 10 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; and Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987, Archives files, JHO. For 

the most careful elucidation of the genesis of the order, see Ronald H. Cole, Operation Urgent

Fury, p. 66.
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436

the peninsula. Because of the diversion of most of the 3d Brigade on the twentysixth, he had as yet received only fragments of the 3d’s other two battalions. 

The remainder of that force was still en route. Given the rate at which Crocker’s 

men were advancing, the likelihood that the 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry, could 

reach the objective in the time allotted appeared very slim. The overland route, 

moreover, appeared questionable. Intelligence reported that the “r[oa]d into 

area has ambush emplacements.” Unlike the situation on 26 October, however, 

Trobaugh did have the helicopters of Major Elder’s Task Force B available. He 

also had the rangers near at hand. Although he had already relinquished operational control of them to the 1st Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg 

and aircraft assigned to take them home were already en route to Point Salines, 

the force remained in the airhead for the time being. Reasoning that the senior 

Ranger, Colonel Hagler, was very familiar with the target because his staff 

had planned a Calivigny mission on D-day and that the only way to take the 

objective in time was to employ his battalion in a helicopter assault, Trobaugh 

requested and once more received operational control of the rangers.49

One difficulty was immediately apparent: Major Elder had no gunships to 

escort his troop-lift helicopters. Standard operating procedure called for the 

gunships to use suppressing fire to keep any defenders pinned down between the 

time artillery fire or close air support was lifted and the moment troop-lift helicopters touched down in the landing zone. The absence of gunships meant that 

the untrained UH–60 door gunners would have to provide close-in fire support. 

Against any considerable opposition, a pilot’s only hope would be to fly as close 

to the ground as possible at maximum speed and then to set down abruptly in 

the landing zone. That required precision flying, but because of everything that 

had happened to the aviators during their deployment from the United States, 

precision flying was almost unattainable. They were simply too tired.50

The same could have been said of Colonel Hagler’s 2d Battalion, 75th 

Infantry, which had conducted two assaults in as many days. Preparing for 

its supposed imminent return to the United States, moreover, the battalion 

S–4, Capt. Jose G. Ventura, had begun turning ammunition and other supplies 

over to the Forward Area Support Team II. Orders, however, were orders, and 

Hagler and his staff immediately began planning the operation in conjunction with Major Elder’s pilots, the artillery task force, and the 3d Brigade. 

General Trobaugh selected the 3d Brigade commander, Colonel Scott, a former ranger battalion commander known to Hagler and his men, to direct the 

assault. Trobaugh also reinforced the battalion with Company C from the 1st 

Battalion, 75th Infantry. The remainder of that unit would reinforce Hagler 

once his men had set up a perimeter.51

49 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 26 Oct 1983, 1525 (quoted words), and 27 Oct 1983, 1315, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and 

with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 50 Intervs, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983; Baribeau with Elder, 9 Nov 1983; author with 

Rabon, 27 Jun 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 51 Intervs, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983; Wells with Voyles, 1 Nov 1983; and Bishop with 

Ventura, 1 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

437

Everyone was concerned about the amount of opposition that the assault 

force might meet. The most recent intelligence (admittedly from D-day and 

therefore somewhat suspect) estimated that the Grenadians had from four 

to six Soviet two-barreled towed ZSU–23–2 or four-barreled self-propelled 

ZSU–23–4 antiaircraft guns on the peninsula. These were the same type of 

guns that had given the 160th Aviation Battalion so much trouble over St. 

George’s on the twenty-fifth. A battalion of Grenadians, 300 to 400 Cubans, 

and 60 Soviets rounded out the suspected defenders. Naturally, this force 

list made everyone a little chary of the operation. When a member of the 

division informally requested gunship support from the marines, for example, they declined to do so. Army officers suspected that some degree of 

service parochialism was at play. The 22d Marine Amphibious Unit commander, Colonel Faulkner, however, had already lost several helicopters, 

and Grenadian fire had damaged many of those that had participated in the 

Grand Anse rescue. Under pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to depart 

as quickly as possible, Faulkner already was focused on his next assignment—Lebanon—and the need to keep his force intact for the challenges it 

would face there.52

52 Intervs, Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, and Bishop with Scott, [Nov 1983], and with 

Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, which is quite revealing on his satisfaction with keeping aviation support within the division. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

A Soviet ZU–23–2 in place above St. George’s harbor
The Rucksack War

438

The assault planning was rushed, with no time to rehearse. The rangers had 

about fifteen minutes to coordinate with the helicopter pilots before boarding. 

Furthermore, preparatory fire from the division artillery was ragged. The first 

round landed squarely on the target; the others, either close to the target or in the 

surrounding ocean. It was a difficult target to begin with because of two intervening peninsulas and two islands, but the artillerymen in the effort to deploy as 

light as possible had also left essential fire control equipment behind. A strong 

wind, blowing in from the ocean deflected rounds to the left. From the artillery 

position it appeared that most rounds were on target, whereas in fact many overshot the camp. Even more to the point, the artillery had planned a zone sweep 

of the entire area. At the last minute a ranger fire control officer, who had not 

participated in planning the fires, replaced the brigade fire support officer who 

had. He envisioned something different. The result was communication without 

understanding and increasing frustration both in the air and on the ground.53

Aloft in a command-and-control helicopter with Colonels Seigle and 

Hagler, Colonel Scott witnessed the inadequate preparation first hand and 

ordered the air assault delayed for fifteen minutes. Hagler had brought with 

him an air and naval gunfire liaison officer, a Marine reservist, to direct naval 

gunfire to finish the job; however, each time the reservist had a ship ready 

to fire, it failed to do so, to the intense frustration of everyone aboard the 

helicopter. No one realized that Admiral Metcalf, a surface warfare officer 

who distrusted the ability of a Marine reservist to accurately direct a naval 

bombardment, had intervened each time and ordered a check fire. Apparently, 

Metcalf suffered no qualms about the reservist’s ability to direct naval air support. When the Marine vectored A–7s on the target, their bombing was quite 

accurate. As a result, by the time the jets finished working over the camp, all 

the structures there were burning.54

As the helicopters carrying the rangers lifted off from Point Salines, an 

observer looking in the direction of Barbados would have seen tiny black dots 

on the far distant horizon. They were the AH–1 Cobra attack helicopters of 

Captain Negrete’s Company D, 82d Aviation Battalion, arriving just too late 

courtesy of the Cuban airliner to participate in the assault.55

Major Elder’s pilots approached the target area at high speed to avoid antiaircraft fire, skimming over the surface of the sea and then up the headland that 

marked the southern tip of the peninsula. At the top of the abrupt slope, the 

pilots discovered for the first time that the camp and their landing zone were much 

closer to the end of the peninsula than their briefing had led them to believe. The 

helicopters had to flare up to lose airspeed much more rapidly than the aviators 

had planned. With their noses pointed at a high angle, almost motionless as they 

53 Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Halley, 15 Nov 1983; Bishop with Scott, [Nov 

1983]; and McMichael with McFarren, 17 Nov 83, and with Ryneska, 18 Nov 1983. All in Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. 54 Bishop with Scott, [Nov 1983]; Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983; and GWG with Elder 

and McWilliams, 14 Dec 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. In 1983 all air and naval gunfire 

liaison officers came from the Marine Corps Reserve. 55 Interv, Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

439

completed the maneuver, the helicopters became almost perfect targets for anyone on the ground with an automatic weapon. At the same time, their passengers, 

including the door gunners, had to struggle simply to stay aboard.56

The pilots’ difficulty in orienting themselves stemmed at least in part from 

flaws in the division’s maps. Back at Fort Bragg, the XVIII Airborne Corps’ 63d 

Engineer Company had had to make black-and-white reproductions quickly 

from a multicolor original. The cartographers concentrated on landforms, and 

in that respect their reproduction was quite good. The coastline, however, was 

another matter; at some points it was very distinct and at others, indetectable. 

The Calivigny Peninsula was one of the places on the maps where the coastline 

had not reproduced well.57

In the event, the helicopters faced little opposition and no ZSU–23s. At 

most, a caretaker Grenadian force of squad strength opposed the landing. 

Ammunition stores cooking off in the fires started by the air and artillery preparation probably accounted for most of the rounds, although the untrained door 

gunners, once they regained their footing, also may have contributed friendly fire 

to the mix of hazards. The three lead Black Hawks began to receive ground fire 

as they touched down. While at an altitude of about fifteen feet, the third ship in 

line was hit in the tail boom and immediately lost all hydraulics. Lurching to the 

right, it meshed main rotors with helicopter number two. Both crashed. Aircraft 

number four maneuvered to avoid this shambles and unknowingly landed in a 

ditch. Its main rotor struck its tail boom, severing it, but this early UH–60 model 

had no indicator on the control panel to tell the pilot that anything was wrong. 

Once his passengers debarked, he took off. Without the tail boom, his helicopter, rather than his main rotor, spun, and the machine crashed into the confused 

wreckage of ships two and three. It all happened in a matter of seconds.58

The UH–60’s sturdy construction ensured that the rangers who remained 

within their Black Hawks suffered no major injuries. Many, however, had begun 

jumping out even before their ships touched down, as they had been trained to do 

in an opposed landing. The result was a bloody shambles of crushed bodies and 

traumatic amputations as rotors cut a swath through the men. Three rangers were 

killed outright and five severely wounded, including one who lost both legs to a 

rotor blade. Others sustained wounds as well but remained with their battalion at 

56 Ibid.; Intervs, Wells with Voyles, 1 Nov 1983; Bishop with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983; Bishop 

with Scott, [Nov 1983]; GWG with Elder and McWilliams, 14 Dec 1983; plus Briefing, Seigle, 

Miller, Elder, Lynch, and Negrete, 10 Feb 1984. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Map, 

63d Cartographic Co, XVIII Abn Corps, sub: Grenada, Hist files (Graphics/Maps), CMH. 57 Map, 63d Cartographic Co, XVIII Abn Corps, sub: Grenada, Hist files (Graphics/Maps), 

CMH; Intervs, Bishop with Scott, [Nov 1983], and Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. 58 Briefing, Seigle, Miller, Elder, Lynch, and Negrete, 10 Feb 1984; plus Intervs, Frasché 

with Scott, 18 Nov 1983; Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983; GWG with Elder and McWilliams, 

14 Dec 1983, and with Sinibaldi, 14 Dec 1983; Bishop with Hensler, 1 Nov 1983, and with 

Hagler, 30 Oct 1983; and Wells with Hanna, 1 Nov 1983, and with Voyles, 1 Nov 1983. All 

in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. For the Hagler interview, two transcriptions exist: one by Neal 

R. Gross Associates, which omits most of the Calivigny action, and one by the 44th Military 

History Detachment, which is preferable.
UH–60s in flight and on the ground at Point Salines; below, Damaged UH–60s
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

441

Calivigny. The second lift of four Black Hawks did not attempt to land. Taking 

ground fire, the aircraft hovered at a height of eight feet or more as the rangers 

jumped to the ground. The survivors systematically cleared the compound and 

then observed some individuals, no more than ten or twelve, withdrawing to the 

north. The rangers came under small-arms fire from ridges in that direction. The 

air controller accompanying the rangers called in the Spectre, which along with 

naval fighter-bombers suppressed the fire. After evacuating the severely wounded 

and the dead on troop-lift helicopters, Colonel Hagler’s men established a perimeter and remained through the night. They had no further contact.59

In contrast, Marine operations on 27 October continued to meet little 

opposition. The most violent encounter occurred during the night of 26–27 

October, when a Grenadian armored personnel carrier drove into a marine 

patrol in the streets of St. George’s. Both sides were surprised, but the marines 

reacted more quickly, disabling the vehicle. The next day the Battalion Landing 

Team 2/8 commander, Lt. Col. Ray L. Smith, prepared to assault Richmond 

Hill Prison, but two American journalists who had slipped into the city walked 

59 Briefing, Seigle, Miller, Elder, Lynch, Negrete, 10 Feb 1984; plus Intervs, Bishop with 

Scott, [ Nov 1983], and with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983; Baribeau with Seigle, 9 Nov 1983; GWG with 

Elder and McWilliams, 14 Dec 1983, and with Sinibaldi, 14 Dec 1983; and Wells with Hanna, 1 

Nov 1983, and with Voyles, 1 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Marines during and after a mission, looking out from an opening in the wall and 

displaying seized portraits of Communist leaders
The Rucksack War

442

into his lines and reported the place abandoned. Colonel Smith quickly occupied it. Smith’s second objective was a deserted antiaircraft site. The name for 

it on his map, Fort Lucas, rather exaggerated its importance. The third, Fort 

Adolphus, proved on close inspection to be the Venezuelan Embassy. At the 

end of the day Smith’s unit received the Ross Point Hotel mission, and the 

colonel promptly dispatched a company to that location.60

Port Salines Airhead, Afternoon/Evening

As the division prepared to launch the air assault on Calivigny, Captain 

Scott’s 317th Combat Control Team closed the airfield at Point Salines to air 

operations just as it had on the previous day. Lt. Col. Duane E. Williams’ artillery task force had batteries both north and south of the runway, but because 

the target was to the east, they fired parallel to the runway rather than across it. 

The Air Force controller on duty assumed, however, that the batteries were firing across the runway as during the Grand Anse operation and halted air traffic. Because the controller did not know how long the Calivigny attack might 

last, the decision set off a chain reaction all the way back to Pope Air Force 

Base. Takeoffs there stopped and aircraft en route diverted to other fields. The 

aircraft circling Point Salines, meanwhile, stayed in the air until their dwindling fuel levels forced them to divert to Barbados or Roosevelt Roads. Only 

after helicopters evacuated the seriously wounded to the Guam did C–141 and 

C–130 landings and takeoffs resume at Point Salines.61

This time the division learned about the stoppage of the airflow and the 

reason behind it rather quickly. One of the aircraft that had enough fuel 

to continue circling throughout the closure included among its passengers 

Col. William F. Daly Jr. and his 82d Support Command staff. As soon 

as the last medical evacuation helicopter departed, Colonel Daly’s C–141 

landed, and he made it his personal business to find out exactly what had 

happened.62

Colonel Daly discovered that a young airman third class in the 317th 

Combat Control Team had “used his best judgment” and had shut down the 

airflow on his own responsibility. (It should be noted that the Air Force controllers had gotten no more sleep at this point than Major Cleary and his 

men.) Daly made it quite clear to Captain Scott that neither the Army nor the 

Air Force could allow this kind of a situation to arise again. Before anyone 

shut off the airflow completely, Scott should at least consult with an Army 

representative. Daly arranged for the division signal battalion to lay a land 

line between the 317th and Forward Area Support Team II headquarters to 

facilitate such coordination. The line also allowed Major Cleary to pass on to 

the control team information about which cargoes General Trobaugh considered to have the highest priority. As a result, the control team was able to land 

60 Ronald H. Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, 1983, p. 16. 61 Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, and author 

with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 62 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, and with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

443

aircraft from the stack overhead on the basis of need on the ground rather 

than time of arrival in the air space.63

The land line and Cleary’s use of it represented only a partial solution 

to the overall problem. To effectively control the airflow, division logisticians 

needed to monitor the movement of all troops, supplies, and equipment from 

the moment they left Pope Air Force Base until they arrived at Point Salines. 

Such knowledge, referred to as visibility, would have permitted the division 

commander to influence not only what landed first at Salines but also what 

was loaded first at Pope. Cleary, however, could not do so because the designers of the forward area support team concept had not built that capability into 

the organization. Specifically, he needed a dedicated satellite radio to communicate directly with Green Ramp to find out what was aboard each aircraft, 

identified by tail number, and its time of departure. He also required enough 

staff officers to monitor flight patterns, noting any diversions while en route. 

Yet Cleary’s table of organization and equipment authorized neither the radio 

nor additional officers. Still, the new arrangements provided the most positive control to date of the airflow into the airhead and as such constituted a 

great step forward. They also represented the most that Daly and Cleary could 

accomplish with the men and equipment then available.64

Somewhat ironically, the closure of the airfield due to artillery fire had an 

immediate adverse effect upon the buildup of the 82d’s artillery. During the 

night of 26–27 October members of the division fire support element became 

increasingly concerned about a potential shortage of artillery ammunition. 

Their disquiet culminated in a request from Major Cleary via the tactical satellite radio for an emergency resupply during the morning of 27 October. The 

shells were en route even as the rangers prepared for the Calivigny operation, 

but the closure of the Point Salines airfield had delayed their arrival.65

The division artillery commander, Col. Fred N. Halley, was on the same 

aircraft as Colonel Daly. He assumed command of the artillery task force on 

Grenada, and Colonel Williams reverted to his normal role as commander of 

the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery. One additional howitzer arrived after 

Colonel Halley, bringing the total number of tubes on the island to seventeen. 

Very shortly thereafter, Halley directed his executive officer at Fort Bragg, Lt. 

Col. David L. Baggett, to hold off on shipping any more howitzers to the airhead. It was clear by then to both General Trobaugh and Halley that organized 

resistance by conventional forces had all but ended on the island. The amount 

of sniping, however, suggested to them that a protracted campaign against 

guerrillas remained a distinct possibility. Given this prospect, they wanted to 

build up artillery ammunition stocks for the howitzers on hand, which the 

63 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986 (quoted words), and with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 64 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 65 Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983; McMichael 

with Schieman, 5 Apr 1984; author with Cleary, 15 Jul 1986; and Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983. 

All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

444

Grand Anse and Calivigny operations had depleted. The first increment, some 

2,000 rounds in response to Major Cleary’s emergency resupply request, came 

in shortly after the airfield opened following the rangers’ attack and less than 

eight hours after the initial message.66

While arrival airfield operations gradually became more efficient during 

the afternoon, evening, and night of 27 October, the improvements brought 

few immediate benefits for the 3d Brigade, whose problems with the airflow 

continued. Although Colonel Shaw and his 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry, staff 

had arrived during the morning, the closure of the Point Salines airfield for the 

Calivigny operation had scattered both his men and those of Lt. Col. Keith 

M. Nightengale’s 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, across the Caribbean. Once 

the airflow resumed, pieces of each unit landed but in no discernable order. 

Neither force was complete by the end of the twenty-seventh.67

Just when the Air Force ground support units began arriving at Point 

Salines is a subject of some dispute between Air Force and Army accounts. 

The airlift control element dispatched on 25 October may have landed at the 

airfield on 26 October, although the debate over the request for JP–4 for the 

division’s helicopters suggests that this date is too early. At least one piece of 

materiel-handling equipment reached there on the twenty-sixth, when late in 

the day the Air Force apparently had begun limited aerial port operations. 

Air Force historians recorded that one 10,000-pound all terrain forklift, one 

10,000-pound standard forklift, and one 25,000-pound tactical air cargo 

loader—and by implication the twelve airmen who operated them from the 3d 

Mobile Aerial Port Squadron—were on the ground by the end of 27 October. 

An Army lessons learned team, however, concluded that the airlift control element at Point Salines did not begin functioning effectively until some sixty 

hours after the beginning of Urgent Fury, which would be the evening or 

later on 28 October. This discrepancy was of more than academic interest to 

Major Cleary and the weary soldiers of his arrival-departure airfield control 

group who continued to labor around the clock.68

Whenever the airlift control element did land (not necessarily at the same 

time as the materiel-handling equipment), the Air Force lieutenant colonel in 

charge set up his command module next to Major Cleary’s shack and then 

proceeded to ignore him. The materiel-handling equipment, when it arrived, 

66 Intervs, Danner and McMichael with Williams and Passaro, 17 Nov 1983, and with 

Halley, 15 Nov 1983; McMichael with Schieman, 5 Apr 1984; author with Cleary, 15 Jul 86, and 

with Cusick, 24 Jan 1989; and Hicks with Kelly, 18 Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 67 Intervs, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983, and Bishop with R. Newman, 16 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 27 Oct 1983, 0850, 1440, 1818, 2103, 

2300, and 28 Oct 1983, 0055, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 68 Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 121, provide a table showing the types and 

number of materiel-handling equipment at Point Salines by date but combine the figures for 

26 and 27 October. See also Intervs, Wade with Cleary, 19 Nov 1983, and author with Cleary, 

14–15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, 

p. 4-14, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1984], sub: 

Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, p. X-9, Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH, Kenneth C. 

Sever, “Units and Missions—The 782d Maintenance Battalion (in Grenada),” pp. 3–6. 
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

445

was in bad repair. The K-loader came down the ramp awash in hydraulic fluid, 

and the airmen simply put it back aboard for return to its home base. Each 

forklift was so large that even when disassembled it took up the entire cargo 

capacity of a C–141 and then required more than four hours to reassemble. In 

addition, both forklifts apparently required further repair. The Army lessons 

learned team declared that 10,000-pound forklifts were so mechanically unreliable that they should not be deployed in future contingency operations.69

In the interim, the Air Force officer decided to unload cargo from C–130s 

opposite the terminal once his equipment was operational rather than reinforcing Major Cleary’s men. This new location represented the point at which 

these aircraft would normally end their landing roll, but takeoffs almost always 

went east to west because of the prevailing winds. To turn around, the C–130s 

still needed to taxi to the wider east end of the runway, where Cleary had his 

unloading point, and thus did not realize any fuel savings. Nevertheless, the 

Air Force officer announced that his men would unload “Ranger airplanes” as 

opposed to the 82d’s, even though this distinction between C–130s and C–141s 

had ceased to have any meaning after 25 October. He sent members of his 

team to locate Army units and determine what supplies they needed in “catchas-catch-can” fashion, without coordinating his efforts with Cleary who had 

already collected considerable information on this subject. “The patched-up 

system,” reported the Army lessons learned team, “was not particularly well 

coordinated or efficient.”70

Processing Casualties

With the arrival of the first element of Alpha Echelon, Company C, 307th 

Medical Battalion, midday on 26 October, Army medical organization began 

to take shape on Grenada. In the absence of anyone from the division surgeon’s office, Alpha Echelon’s commander and company executive officer, 1st 

Lt. Douglas S. Phelps, had to assume responsibility for overseeing the ordering, 

collecting, and distribution of medical supplies and for coordinating the movement of casualties through the medical evacuation system. The senior Army 

medical officer in the area of operations, division orthopedic surgeon Lt. Col. 

Joseph P. Jackson Jr., also gave Lieutenant Phelps the task of “scrounging” 

more medical supplies locally and of coordinating problems with brigade and 

division headquarters. Because Phelps was very junior in rank and no one at 

either headquarters knew him, he had a difficult time getting a hearing for medical issues amid all the other concerns with which the staffs were contending.71

69 Interv, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Rpt, GWG, CAC, 

TRADOC, [1984], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, p. X-31, Hist files (PDocs/DA/

CAC), CMH. Kallander and Matthews, Urgent Fury, pp. 121–22, do not identify the lieutenant colonel. 70 Interv, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Rpt, GWG, CAC, 

TRADOC, [1984], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, p. X-9 (quotations), Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH. 71 Intervs, Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983] (quoted word), and Pirnie with 

Jackson, 23 May 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Diary, Jackson, 27 Oct 1983, Hist files (Papers/

Jackson), CMH.
The Rucksack War

446

The evacuation of casualties proved the easiest task to perform, largely 

because the Air Force officer responsible for the process, 1st Aeromedical 

Evacuation Squadron commander Lt. Col. A. Felix Meyer III, hitched a ride 

on a C–130 from Barbados to Point Salines on 27 October. Thoroughly frustrated by his communications problems on the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth, 

Colonel Meyer had decided that the only way to deal with the situation was to 

meet face-to-face with his counterparts in the Army and the Navy.72

After the first patients had arrived at the naval hospital at the Charleston 

Naval Air Station on the twenty-fifth, Atlantic Command had ordered Colonel 

Meyer to route future casualties to Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto 

Rico. Because the new hospital was only two hours flight-time away, Meyer 

had decided it made sense to shift his two C–141s to Roosevelt Roads while 

he remained on Barbados. To facilitate this change, he had requested and, on 

the twenty-seventh, received an air-transportable clinic that provided a holding facility for any casualties who might arrive at Grantley Adams. Meyer 

briefed Lieutenant Phelps on both the current evacuation system and the new 

arrangements that would take effect later on the twenty-seventh.73

Alpha Echelon’s operating room, after almost a 24-hour diversion to 

Barbados, arrived at 0400 on 27 October. With it came Lt. Col. Richard A. 

Hall, a general surgeon; Maj. Karl S. Snyder, a family practice specialist; Capt. 

Horace K. Webster, a nurse-anesthetist; and other personnel. The 3d Brigade 

surgeon, Capt. Arthur H. Legate, who landed during the night, agreed with 

Colonel Jackson that it made sense to pool the division’s slender medical 

resources within the airhead and thus joined the medical personnel supporting the 2d Brigade. Once the division received the Calivigny mission, the chief 

of staff, Colonel Boylan, convinced the two ranger battalion surgeons to join 

Jackson’s medical team.74

The operating room had arrived with its surgical lights but without its 

generator. Somehow, during the nighttime transfer on Barbados to C–130s, 

Colonel Hall’s contingent had left the generator behind as well as poles for the 

tent to house the operating room and soda lime for the anesthesia machine. 

Lieutenant Phelps had included in his group a mechanic who had brought 

several heavy-duty batteries with him. Using two of them he was able to coax 

one of the captured Soviet generators to life. Suddenly, the operating room 

had electrical power. While the mechanic worked on the generator, Phelps sent 

one of his men out to cut down a tree. The trooper then shaped poles to the 

desired length to erect the tent. Very quickly, the operating room had shelter. Meanwhile, Colonel Jackson dealt with the lack of soda lime by sending 

Captain Webster to the Guam to beg some from the Navy, as well as by giving 

Major Cleary a list of high-priority supplies that needed to be requested from 

72 Interv, Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; AAR, Opn 

Urgent Fury, 1st AES, 14 Feb 1984, pp. 6–7, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/MAC), CMH. 73 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st AES, 14 Feb 1984, pp. 2–3, Hist files (PDocs/U&SCmds/

MAC), CMH; Interv, Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 74 Intervs, Pirnie with Jackson, 23 May 1985, and Wells with Pfaff, 3 Nov 1983, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Diary, Jackson, 27 Oct 1983, Hist files (Papers/Jackson), CMH.
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

447

Fort Bragg. The success of all these 

initiatives allowed the Army doctors 

to begin practicing medicine the way 

they had been trained.75

The 2d Battalion, 75th Infantry, 

surgeon, Capt. Robert E. Kane, and 

the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, physician’s assistant, CWO2 William 

Donovan, rode in the second wave 

of the ranger assault on Calivigny. 

The rotor blades that caused so much 

damage had scarcely stopped turning 

when the two arrived. The battalion 

medics were already hard at work 

saving survivors, but the planning 

for the operation had been so rushed 

that no one had thought to include 

a representative of the 57th Medical 

Detachment. Normally, for a battalion-size air assault, the detachment 

commander, Maj. Arthur W. Hapner, 

would have had a Black Hawk loitering in the vicinity ready to evacuate 

casualties immediately but the nearest 

one was on the ground at Point Salines. 

As soon as the rangers requested 

aeromedical evacuation, the Black Hawk departed for the peninsula, taking 

five minutes to reach the scene. Upon arrival, however, the pilot did not land 

because the wounded were already being loaded on two UH–60s and because 

the scattered wreckage made it unsafe to land anywhere else. While perfectly 

capable of flying the wounded to the 307th Medical Battalion’s aid station, 

these troop-lift helicopters did not have trained medical personnel aboard to 

treat them en route. Moreover, their use in such a role, when added to the 

three wrecked UH–60s, seriously detracted from the ability of the 2d Battalion 

commander, Colonel Hagler, to rapidly reinforce his men on the peninsula. 

Their ready availability and the needs of the moment, nevertheless, overrode 

all other considerations.76

The 57th Medical Detachment pilots did not have to wait long for another 

aeromedical evacuation request. The strafing of the 2d Brigade’s tactical operations center brought two helicopters in response through a blinding rainstorm. 

The survivors from the brigade staff ripped doors from their hinges and used 

75 Chronology, Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH; Diary, Jackson, 27 Oct 1983, Hist files 

(Papers/Jackson), CMH; Intervs, Pirnie with Jackson, 23 May 1985, and Hicks with Ashley and 

Phelps, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 76 Intervs, Wade with Beaty and Garmond, [Nov 1983], and Wells with Hanna, 1 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

A marine holding a folded litter
An aid station and a hospital tent
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

449

them as stretchers to carry the wounded down a hill to the waiting aircraft. The 

number requiring evacuation proved more than the first radio message estimated. As a result, the wounded had to be packed so tightly on the helicopters 

that the aidmen could not move about to provide treatment during the flight.77

Colonel Jackson was very unhappy about the failure of the remainder of 

Alpha Echelon to arrive, to say nothing of the remainder of Company C. 

He told General Trobaugh exactly what he thought about the medical conditions and the division commander’s responsibility for them. Trobaugh appreciated this plain speaking. Later that same night the division surgeon, Lt. Col. 

Barry S. Sidenberg, arrived and immediately attempted to assume command 

of the 307th Medical Battalion as doctrine prescribed. “This created a morale 

problem,” noted Jackson in his diary, among the medical personnel. Colonel 

Boylan, speaking for Trobaugh, confirmed that Lt. Col. Edward B. Wilson, 

still at Fort Bragg, remained in command of the battalion and announced that 

Jackson commanded the forward element on Grenada. Sidenberg was on the 

island in his capacity as division surgeon to advise the command group as to 

what further medical units the division needed. Despite or perhaps because of 

this decision, relations between the two surgeons remained tense.78

Processing Americans and Third-Country Nationals

On 27 and 28 October the 82d Airborne Division’s staff judge advocate, 

Lt. Col. Quinton W. Richardson, and two young captains from Fort Bragg 

continued to work with the Department of State representative on evacuating Americans and third-country nationals. The division assisted the process 

considerably by moving the collection point to the True Blue Campus of the 

St. George’s University School of Medicine, which was located near the eastern end of the runway. This simplified the Air Force’s problem of picking up 

evacuees, for now C–141s would no longer waste fuel in taxiing to the center of 

the field before returning to the east end to begin their takeoff roll.79

The procedure Colonel Richardson followed was very similar to the one 

employed on the preceding days. He and his assistants recorded the names of 

the evacuees, moved them up the steep hill from the medical school to the edge 

of the runway, and then put them aboard aircraft as soon as they unloaded 

their cargo. The colonel was under constant pressure from the infantrymen 

who escorted the evacuees to assume total responsibility for the processing so 

that they could return to their units. He resisted because he needed the extra 

manpower the infantrymen represented to augment his small team. In the end, 

using the means he had at hand, he and his associates helped evacuate 595 

American students from the island without any complications.80

77 Interv, Wade with Beaty and Garmond, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

78 Chronology, 44th Med Bde, Hist files (Papers/Rumbaugh), CMH; Diary, Jackson, 27 Oct 

1983 (quoted words), Hist files (Papers/Jackson), CMH; Intervs, Pirnie with Jackson, 23 May 

1985, and Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 79 Intervs, Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

80 Ibid.; Interv, Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Briefing Slides, 

82d Abn Div, Hist files (Papers/GWG), CMH.
The Rucksack War

450

Processing Detainees and Refugees

The problems that first surfaced at the detainee camp on the night of 25–26 

October continued through the twenty-seventh. The division G–5, Maj. William 

D. Archer, spent much of the night of 26–27 October tracking down a roll of 

concertina wire in the airhead and then transporting it to the camp. Major 

Archer had anticipated that the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force would use it to 

cordon off the camp to prevent escapes, yet he discovered the roll undisturbed, 

exactly where he had left it, when he returned during daylight on the twentyseventh. The leader of the 2d Platoon, 82d Military Police Company, stationed 

at the Cuban detainee camp, 1st Lt. David B. Lemauk, was very frustrated. 

Lieutenant Lemauk wanted to follow his training and compile a list of the 

names of all the detainees and separate the construction workers from the fighters, but he could only make recommendations. The officers of the Caribbean 

Peacekeeping Force made the final decisions. Colonel Richardson took this particular issue up with the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force liaison officer, a captain 

in the Jamaica Defence Force, on 27 October. Military intelligence teams were 

currently arriving, he told the captain, and could assist in these tasks. The stoppage of the airflow, however, delayed those teams until the following day.81

Many problems arose simply because the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force 

was not trained in military police duties. As Colonel Richardson observed, 

81 Intervs, Burdett with Q. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH.

Civilians stand in line to board helicopters 
Views of a detention compound for Cuban detainees
The Rucksack War

452

American infantry would have faced the same problems. In the end, the 

Peacekeeping Force transferred to internal security duties for which its members were more suited—the mission that the JCS representative, Marine Corps 

Maj. Gen. George B. Crist, had always envisioned for them. The first indication 

of the impending change came on 27 October when, at the request of Governor 

General Sir Paul Scoon, the Barbados Defence Force platoon assumed responsibility for protecting his official residence. This action signaled the imminent 

departure of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force for police duties in St. George’s, 

a prospect that helped minimize controversies with the Americans.82

Major Archer also worked to improve conditions for the refugees. On 

the twenty-seventh, with the area around the detainee camp overflowing with 

civilians displaced from their homes, Archer established a second facility for 

them at the True Blue Campus. The new location possessed two advantages: It 

stood beside the principal road into the peninsula, and the buildings rested in 

a hollow. Grenadians watching C–130s and C–141s landing were out of sight 

of any nervous paratroopers disembarking from those aircraft. Archer wanted 

no shooting of innocents. Eventually, the refugee population in the two camps 

numbered some 1,300.83

The growth in the number of refugees quickly made the provision of 

food an important priority for the U.S. command. Colonel Richardson 

82 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, pp. 2–3, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Interv, McMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and Gyurisko, [Nov 1983], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 83 Interv, Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Members of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

453

and Major Archer discovered the solution independently of one another on 

the twenty-seventh. That morning Richardson visited the Cuban camp once 

again and met with a number of Cuban construction workers. Concerned 

about conditions, they volunteered to do any labor necessary to improve 

the camp and also reported the presence of large quantities of food at the 

Frequente warehouse complex. Richardson immediately passed this information to the division chief of staff, Colonel Boylan, who directed the 82d’s 

G–4, Colonel Crabtree, to organize a motor convoy. The division G–3, Lt. 

Col. Frank H. Akers Jr., arranged a gunjeep escort. Given the importance of 

the issue, Boylan personally led the convoy to the complex and located the 

food—enough to feed 1,000 people for several weeks. The Americans loaded 

what supplies they could carry and returned to the camp. Richardson later 

arranged for the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force to return with Cuban workers for additional supplies.84

Major Archer also stumbled across the food stocks at Frequente. In his 

case, he was investigating what kind of transportation assets the division would 

need to move captured arms and ammunition from Frequente and the Cuban 

compound at Calliste to the airfield. Unaware of Boylan’s and Richardson’s 

earlier visit, he arrived in the afternoon and discovered both the food stores 

84 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, pp. 4–5, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.

Refugees in a camp near the Point Salines airfield
The Rucksack War

454

and some generators, which he prized almost as much as the food because 

they would allow him to restore power at True Blue. He did not think that the 

labor to move these items would be a problem. The members of the 96th Civil 

Affairs Battalion had struck up a good relationship with the refugees, and he 

knew that he had most of the Grenadian work force for the airport scattered 

between the two camps. He was in the midst of these calculations when a burst 

of automatic weapons fire forced him to take cover. He spent the remainder 

of the afternoon pinned down in the firefight between Cuban stragglers and 

the engineer platoon protecting the warehouse complex. Archer and his work 

party did not make it back to Frequente until the next day. In the interim, the 

first of the Disaster Assistance Relief Team’s pallets arrived and helped tide 

over the refugees at True Blue.85

Major Archer was able to solve one additional nutritional problem. On the 

twenty-seventh he discovered that the milk of many of the nursing mothers 

among the refugees, whether in reaction to the stress or to the change in their 

diets, was drying up. He talked to Colonel Crabtree, who put in a rush order 

to Green Ramp for a pallet of baby formula. It arrived within twenty-four 

hours.86

Maintenance Issues

With only a few vehicles in the 2d Brigade Task Force, maintenance had 

been of little concern to Major Cleary. Before departing Green Ramp, Cleary 

and the Company C, 782d Maintenance Battalion, commander, Capt. Brent 

M. Boyles, had divided the ten men in the unit’s Alpha Echelon into three 

teams of three men each under Sgt. Sammie L. Harris. Once the teams arrived, 

Cleary and Captain Boyles kept Sergeant Harris and three men to serve as a 

contact maintenance team to provide minimal repair services. The other six 

men helped unload aircraft. Once the Air Force began aerial port operations, 

Cleary used the maintenance men to act as litterbearers for the Alpha Echelon 

of Company C, 307th Medical Battalion, until that medical unit obtained 

additional personnel from Fort Bragg. Harris had a maintenance truck loaded 

with tools and, he believed, enough spare parts to last until the rest of his company reached the island. Cleary had anticipated that communications would 

be crucial to the success of the operation and that the task force would take 

close to its full complement of radios. As a result, he and Boyles had ensured 

that the appropriate specialists were included in the Alpha Echelon and that 

they took a larger than normal amount of communications-electronics repair 

parts.87

In an effort to maximize the number of combat troops they could load on 

C–141s, however, many line units did not bring their own maintenance sections. 

As a result, Sergeant Harris and the three men concentrated on routine preventive care and adjustment of vehicles and equipment—the level of maintenance 

85 Interv, Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

86 Ibid.; Interv, author with Crabtree, 24 Jan 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

87 Sever, “Units and Missions,” p. 5; Interv, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

455

usually performed by the using organizations—as well as welding repairs. They 

also conducted what was known as direct exchanges, that is, trading broken 

pieces of equipment for similar unbroken ones. Harris and his men then made 

the necessary repairs on each item and then exchanged it for another damaged 

article of the same type. Given this approach, the using unit had no need to go 

without equipment even when its original issue materiel was in the shop.88

If the three three-man teams devoted their full time to maintenance, they 

still were too small to provide onsite repair for the entire range of equipment 

carried by the 2d Brigade. The planners at the 782d Maintenance Battalion 

had anticipated this problem. Sergeant Harris took a surplus of hard-to-repair 

parts with him to Grenada, making it possible for him to set aside any broken items turned in by units until the arrival of more maintenance specialists. 

Keeping the battalion-rear members at Fort Bragg informed of the number 

and type of articles awaiting repair, he depended upon them to push the kinds 

of operable parts that he needed down to Grenada. The battalion commander, 

Lt. Col. Kenneth C. Sever, and his men were old hands at dealing with a congested airflow. They could always find space for one or two more things that 

Harris needed in the odd truck, trailer, or pallet before it was loaded on an 

airplane. In this manner Harris maintained his surplus—his so-called float—

and continued exchanging operable for broken parts until more mechanics 

arrived. Only then did Harris assign someone to repair the difficult-to-mend 

components.89

In some instances direct exchanges were not possible, so a unit had to 

forego the use of a piece of equipment while Sergeant Harris and his teams 

repaired the broken part. Often, moreover, the soldier who turned in an item 

could not wait for completion of the work but had to return to his organization as quickly as possible. To deal with these cases, Harris developed a handwritten log to maintain property accountability and ensure that the correct 

unit received its property after repair. When direct exchange was not possible 

for an item, he also gave a written receipt, redeemable when a representative of 

the using unit returned for the equipment. Large pieces of equipment always 

required one of these receipts because they presented repair problems beyond 

the capabilities of the advance team. Harris sent them back to Fort Bragg on 

the return flights of the log birds.90

Colonel Sever resisted moving his operations to Grenada and used the 

existing shops and repair facilities at Fort Bragg for as long as possible. The 

782d’s maintenance area contained most of the tools and test equipment he 

needed, and, if not, such “back-up systems” as the Post Materiel Maintenance 

Directorate and the Directorate of Industrial Operations were on the installation. As Sever had anticipated, the fort possessed much more materiel-handling 

equipment than the division could succeed in moving into the area of 

88 Sever, “Units and Missions,” p. 5; Intervs, author with Cleary, 14–15 Jul 1986, and with 

Boyles, 2 Mar 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; TM 20–205, Dictionary of United States Army 

Terms, 1944, s.v. “organizational maintenance.” 89 Kenneth C. Sever, “Grenada Revisited/Lessons Learned,” p. 43.

90 Ibid.; Interv, author with Cremisio, 16 Aug 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

456

operations. It was thus easier to move damaged equipment between and within 

repair shops at Bragg than at Point Salines. The logistical pipeline to the post, 

moreover, was already full of repair parts. With superior communications 

facilities available, Sever could contact U.S. Army Materiel Development and 

Readiness Command depots in the United States much more easily than from 

the area of operations. Perhaps most important of all, he was not required to 

break up his repair teams to post perimeter guards. His men could function 

as they had trained, without any concern about noise attracting enemy fire 

and with no need to maintain light discipline after dark. They could work 

under peacetime rather than wartime conditions at Fort Bragg with all that 

that implied in terms of greater effectiveness and efficiency.91

On Grenada, Sergeant Harris and his men at first spent much of their 

time trying to start captured vehicles. The Cubans or Grenadians had disabled a few; the rangers, those that they had attempted to hot-wire. Still 

others had been damaged during the firefight around the airfield or later in 

incidents of vandalism by excited U.S. troops. The capture of the Frequente 

warehouse on 26 October provided a valuable source of repair parts for the 

Soviet vehicles. Although the manuals were in Russian rather than Spanish 

or English, the Americans had little difficulty in figuring out how to restore 

the vehicles to reasonable service. The accomplishment permitted a substantial savings in space on inbound aircraft because it was unnecessary to ship 

comparable equipment from Fort Bragg. Just before the captured vehicles left 

91 Ibid.

Motor pool containing seized vehicles
Area of Operations, 27 October 1983

457

the maintenance compound, Harris’ men added one last touch. They spray 

painted USA on all sides of each vehicle, including the roof, to avoid the danger of friendly fire.92

Ground operations on the third day of combat saw frontline troops 

advancing against only light and scattered resistance. The terrain and climate 

posed a greater check than the Grenadians and the Cubans. The logistical 

lessons of 27 October were the same as the previous days: the fragility of the 

two-quart canteen, the oppressiveness of the standard battle dress uniform 

in a tropical climate, and the need to limit the activity of troops to prevent 

heat stroke. Some support units, engaging small groups of stragglers in firefights, experienced more combat than the line units. Their ability to defend 

themselves attested to the Army’s wisdom in preparing them to fight the rear 

battle. The frequency of these skirmishes and the numerous sniping incidents 

indicated that despite the 82d’s best efforts the heavy vegetation and broken 

terrain permitted individuals and small units to escape even the most diligent 

of searches. These searches, however, were very effective in uncovering hidden arms caches and removing the basis for any prolonged resistance. The 

slow tempo of the advance ensured that ad hoc resupply efforts from the airfield to the maneuver battalions sufficed. General Trobaugh was quite content 

with this gradual pace, although General Schwarzkopf emphatically was not. 

Trobaugh expected resistance to evaporate naturally as the defenders realized 

how hopeless their situation was.93

Although an observer standing at Point Salines on 27 October 1983 might 

have seen little difference between arrival airfield operations on that day and 

those of the two preceding days, in fact, the Army was beginning to impose 

a measure of order on a heretofore disorderly buildup. Army operations on 

Barbados became both more effective and efficient when a single officer—

Captain Rabon—received the authority to control units in transit there. This 

ad hoc arrangement, however, could not fully substitute for a well planned 

and systematically developed intermediate staging base. The lack of any security forces during the emergency caused by the arrival of the Cuban airliner, 

for example, required Captain Negrete to delay the deployment of his attack 

helicopter company to Grenada, which meant that the rangers lost their last 

chance for gunship support during the Calivigny assault.

The belated but effective coordination that Colonel Daly secured between 

the Air Force combat control team and the Army forward area support team 

on the twenty-seventh promised even greater benefits than those derived from 

the Barbados arrangements. It provided the division with a way of avoiding 

unnecessary shutdowns of the airfield and consequent scrambling of the airflow, while also giving General Trobaugh his first truly effective, if still partial, 

control over the arrival sequence of men and equipment at Point Salines. 

92 Sever, “Units and Missions,” pp. 5–6; idem, “Grenada Revisited,” pp. 42–46.

93 Interv, Bishop with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

458

On the debit side, the newly arrived division G–4, Colonel Crabtree, did 

little to press the issue of clearing the ramp in front of the division assault 

command post, the single most important impediment to the airflow within 

the 82d’s control. Instead, from the moment he landed, Crabtree had to deal 

with a succession of logistical problems that required immediate attention. 

None of them, however, matched the importance of increasing the number of 

aircraft allowed on the ground at one time, which not only delayed the arrival 

of the reinforcing maneuver battalions but also seriously retarded the arrival 

of any support elements to relieve Major Cleary and his team. These profoundly fatigued soldiers continued to man the division’s supply points.

Because of the mass casualties generated by the strafing of the 2d Brigade’s 

tactical operations center and the Calivigny assault, 27 October was also a day 

of great challenge for the medical components of all the services involved in 

the operation. The physicians, nurses, medics, and support staff rose to the 

occasion. Colonel Meyer through his own initiative had pieced together an 

effective medical evacuation system and also broadcast its existence through 

face-to-face meetings with the commanders of all the units that would need 

it. Lack of equipment and personnel may have meant that Colonel Jackson 

and his associates could only practice “Civil War medicine,” as Jackson put 

it. Even so, given the recovery rate of the wounded, it was a very high order 

of Civil War medicine indeed. The arrival of medical reinforcements on the 

twenty-seventh added to the effect, giving Army doctors and nurses for the 

first time an ability to provide a higher standard of treatment. In the same 

way, limited treatment facilities may have restricted the number of patients 

the Guam could handle, but the Navy doctors there used those facilities to the 

maximum. Overall, working together, the medical representatives of the three 

services demonstrated that highly trained and motivated experts using good 

judgment and initiative could produce positive results even when administrative arrangements slipped and management oversight failed.94

94 Diary, Jackson, 27 Oct 1983, Hist files (Papers/Jackson), CMH. 
11

A Period of Transition

The lack of any sustained combat on 27 October suggested that the 

Grenadians and Cubans had largely abandoned their attempt to defend 

Grenada by conventional means. The situation was evident even to Maj. Gen. 

Edward L. Trobaugh and his staff, semi-isolated in the division assault command post at the Point Salines. The possibility of an unconventional defense, 

utilizing guerrillas, loomed as a distinct possibility to General Trobaugh and 

his senior and mid-level officers, all of whom were veterans of the Vietnam 

war. The 82d Airborne Division’s emphasis thus shifted from combat operations to pacification. Although in common usage in the military at the time of 

Grenada, the term pacification had no official definition. Its meaning was nevertheless clear to all who used it: the use of military force and other measures 

to defeat an armed insurgency.1

If the counterinsurgency measures proved successful, Army officers envisioned that American efforts would shift to peacekeeping. Also lacking official 

sanction in 1983, the word peacekeeping meant the use of troops to maintain 

an existing peace and forestall the development of an armed insurgency. U.S. 

and Caribbean troops on Grenada would prevent a delayed resort to guerrilla 

warfare by maintaining civil order until the new Grenadian government could 

assume full responsibility for its own internal security.2

Concurrently, President Ronald W. Reagan and his advisers were initiating a series of endeavors, both civilian and military, to assist the new government in reestablishing democratic institutions, the rule of law, a free-market 

economy, and the institutions needed to maintain order. Collectively, albeit 

in very mild form, these measures represented nation building, although no 

one used the term that was political poison in the United States because of its 

1 On the lack of an official definition, see JCS Pub 1, DoD Dictionary of Military and 

Associated Terms, 1979; AR 310–25, Dictionary of United States Army Terms, 1975; and JCS 

Pub 1–02, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 1989. 2 By the 1990s this definition came to be associated with the term peace enforcement. On the 

lack of an official definition, see JCS Pub 1, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 

1979; AR 310–25, Dictionary of United States Army Terms, 1975; and JCS Pub 1–02, DoD 

Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 1989. On the changing definition, see Gordon W. 

Rudd, Humanitarian Intervention, p. 246.

☆ ☆ ☆
The Rucksack War

460

association with the failed American intervention in Vietnam. The administration adroitly abandoned the term but used the concept. For the Army, nation 

building implied a mission to train security forces. This undertaking could 

occur parallel to both pacification and peacekeeping. Ultimately, once combat 

troops withdrew, it would become the sole Army mission until the trainers 

themselves departed.3

 

This four-stage progression of mission had enormous implications for 

Army logisticians. Each phase required not only different types and quantities 

of equipment and supplies but also the deployment of those logistical organizations best fitted to provide the requisite support. The logistical process 

went from a time-imperative, often chaotic, sometimes creative effort utilizing a high density of men and machines to a low-density, routinized, highly 

bureaucratized affair, possibly more efficient but hopefully no less effective in 

its different political and military context than what had gone before. 

Intermediate Staging Base on Barbados 

On 28 October 1983 Lt. Gen. Jack V. Mackmull’s nominee to command 

the Army portion of the intermediate staging base on Barbados, the 507th 

Transportation Group commander, Col. James D. Starling, arrived at Grantley 

Adams International Airport. Colonel Starling and a small staff element, 

known collectively as 1st Support Command-Forward II, found “a little bit 

to unscramble” when they arrived. C–141s low on fuel were constantly leaving 

the holding pattern over the Point Salines airfield and diverting to Grantley 

Adams. Meanwhile, at Fort Bragg the commander of 1st Support Command, 

Col. William J. Richardson Jr., was increasing the number of corps assets he 

was attempting to force through Barbados into Grenada. The units and equipment that he sent represented a projection—an assessment of the future needs 

of the operation based on his long experience. His knowledge carried considerable weight with Starling. Back at Fort Bragg, Colonel Richardson was 

Starling’s boss.4

Conflicting information on available resources and future needs further 

complicated matters. The Forward Area Support Team II coordinator, Maj. 

Daniel J. Cleary III, and the corps liaison officer on the airlift commander’s 

staff on Barbados, Maj. Richard C. Anshus, kept Colonel Starling informed 

of the 82d’s priorities. Although the colonel had the benefit of extremely valuable liaison trips that Major Anshus made to Grenada each day, the mix of 

3 In the 1990s political scientists began to distinguish between the word nation building—

the gathering together of disparate groups throughout a country to create a sense of common 

identity, purpose, and destiny—and the word state building—“the set of actions undertaken by 

national and/or international actors to establish, reform, and strengthen state institutions where 

these have been seriously eroded or missing.” The actions of the Reagan administration more 

clearly fall within the sphere of state building, but in 1983 no one in the U.S. government, least 

of all the members of the U.S. Army, made such a distinction. For an informative discussion of 

the two concepts, see Verna Fritz and Alina Rocha Menocal, Understanding State-Building from 

an Political Economy Perspective, pp. 13 (quotation), 14–15. 4 Intervs, Hicks with Starling, Nov 1983 (quoted words), and McElroy with Richardson 

and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
A Period of Transition

461

forces on the island changed so often 

that the information on the troops 

and their needs Anshus obtained was 

often little more than an intelligent 

estimate. Meanwhile, members of the 

Air Force airlift control element on 

Grenada conducted informal surveys 

of Army units to determine what they 

needed. They passed the results to 

their counterparts on Barbados, who 

in turn forwarded the details to the 

commander of the arrival-departure 

airfield control group at Grantley 

Adams, Army Capt. Harley C. Barr 

II. Captain Barr then informed 

Starling, who had final responsibility for determining the quantity of 

supplies and equipment to ship to 

the island. Fortunately, as Colonel 

Richardson put it, Starling was “a 

strong man.”5

Captain Barr’s information proved 

the most useful to Colonel Starling in 

establishing priorities because it was 

the most timely. On 28 October, however, Richardson pulled Barr out of the 

loop. Without knowing exactly how much cargo-handling capacity existed at 

the Point Salines airfield but suspecting that it might not be sufficient, the 

colonel directed the captain to take a platoon to Grenada to reinforce Forward 

Area Support Team II’s efforts there. Colonel Richardson had built up a large 

arrival-departure airfield control group on Barbados and was confident that 

he could make that move without negative impact on operations at Grantley 

Adams.6

At the same time, Colonel Starling was having to deal with the same episodic communications that had plagued his nominal predecessor as Army 

Forces, Barbados, commander, Capt. Jimmie M. Rabon. XVIII Airborne 

Corps’ 35th Signal Brigade sent two radio operators and their equipment to 

the intermediate staging base. The only frequency available to them, however, 

was the same one used on Grenada by the division assault command post to 

contact Fort Bragg. The division’s heavy traffic virtually precluded the signalmen on Barbados from entering the net. Even when they established communications with Fort Bragg, division-rear had to forward any messages to Colonel 

Richardson’s 1st Support Command headquarters by courier, liaison officer, 

5 Intervs, McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984 (quoted words), and Hicks 

with Starling, Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 6 Intervs, McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984, and Hicks with Starling, Nov 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

Starling as a major general
The Rucksack War

462

or telephone. This proved very time-consuming and frustrating. Because U.S. 

Atlantic Command had cut XVIII Airborne Corps from the Grenada operation, Starling and Richardson could not speak directly to one another.7

Colonel Starling also had to contend with units supposedly in transit to 

Grenada but which remained on hold on Barbados for more than one day 

because of the congested airflow into Point Salines. When he arrived, for 

example, the 82d Aviation Battalion had completed its deployment through 

Barbados, but the task force from Lt. Col. William J. Miller’s 1st Squadron, 

17th Cavalry, was still on the island. Its AH–1s and OH–58s were ready to 

move, but its aviators were still rebuilding the unit’s UH–60s, which had 

arrived on the last of the four C–5As that carried the squadron from Pope 

Air Force Base. Crowding on the ground at Point Salines kept Colonel Miller 

and his men on Barbados until 28 October. They then began deploying to 

Pearls Airport, even though it was still in the Marine Corps sector on that 

date. The last of Miller’s twenty-six helicopters departed Barbados only on 

30 October.8

The need for an intermediate staging base shrank as the focus of military operations on Grenada shifted from combat to pacification and then to 

peacekeeping. The Air Force, as a result, began to reduce its forces at Grantley 

Adams on 8 November, when Brig. Gen. Robert B. Patterson relinquished 

his duties as airlift commander to Air Force Col. Rolland F. Clarkson and 

returned to the United States. Colonel Starling remained in command of 

Army elements on Barbados only one day longer. Returning to Fort Bragg on 

9 November, Starling left behind a ten-man contact team.9

Point Salines Airfield and Pearls Airport

The movement of forces from Pope Air Force Base to the Point Salines airfield showed marked improvement by 28 October. The increased cooperation 

that the commander of the 82d Support Command, Col. William F. Daly Jr., 

had arranged on the twenty-seventh with Air Force Capt. Stephen R. Scott’s 

317th Combat Control Team at the airfield was a major reason. Army personnel at Green Ramp on Pope Air Force Base could alert Major Cleary via the 

division’s single tactical satellite radio link that a high-priority cargo was on 

the way, identifying it by aircraft tail number. The movement of Lt. Col. Ralph 

E. Newman’s 2d Battalion, 508th Infantry, illustrated the efficiency that the 

division’s new ability to influence landing priorities injected into the airflow. 

The unit’s rear-echelon left Pope Air Force Base at 0043 on 28 October and 

arrived at Point Salines at 1000 the same day.10

7 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. II, an. A, p. II-A-11, Hist 

files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 8 Interv, Hicks with W. Miller, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

9 Dean C. Kallander and James K. Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. xvi; Interv, Hicks with 

Starling, Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 10 Intervs, Bishop with R. Newman, 16 Nov 1983, and author with Cleary, 15 Jul 1986, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 28 Oct 1983, 0055, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
A Period of Transition

463

Colonel Daly’s achievement, nonetheless, was limited because the communications link with Fort Bragg remained uncertain. Over the preceding three 

days, moreover, aircraft low on fuel had diverted from the holding pattern 

above Point Salines to other airfields scattered throughout the Caribbean and 

the southeastern United States. By the twenty-eighth many were returning and 

were once again competing to land at Point Salines. None of their departure 

fields, however, had a communications link with the 82d. Major Cleary’s and 

General Trobaugh’s headquarters, as a result, had no idea what was aboard 

these aircraft and could not establish landing priorities for them. Their cargoes 

were all surprises.11

The troopers caught up in this process endured a much more grueling 

journey to Grenada than their counterparts in Colonel Newman’s battalion. 

Both Lt. Col. Hubert S. Shaw Jr.’s 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry, and Lt. Col. 

Keith M. Nightengale’s 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, had departed Pope on 

the twenty-sixth, but the unexpected closings of Point Salines on successive 

days had twice scattered them to airfields across the region and in the United 

States. While both battalions deployed a day before Newman’s unit, their final 

elements dribbled in after Newman’s men. The aircraft carrying the last contingent of Colonel Nightengale’s battalion—the final unit to arrive—landed at 

1109 on the twenty-eighth. Only then did General Trobaugh have the six complete airborne infantry battalions that he had requested on the twenty-fifth.12

General Trobaugh gave Colonel Daly his mission on 28 October. Daly 

was to become “mayor,” to use Trobaugh’s term, of Point Salines. The general wanted the colonel to control the space around the airfield and to determine where late-arriving combat service support units would set up. Daly’s 

job description, in Daly’s view, also included “every conceivable responsibility 

a small city mayor might encounter, and a few he could never imagine,” such 

as police functions, security control, refugee processing, vehicle registration, 

labor management, and dealing with foreign embassies in addition to building 

and land management.13

At the same time, General Trobaugh gave Colonel Daly the rear-area protection mission on Grenada and attached a platoon of the 3d Battalion, 4th 

Air Defense Artillery, to the 82d Support Command. The platoon was the 

first of several combat units that performed this duty under Daly’s direction. 

Although the job appeared widely divergent from Daly’s other tasks, it was 

intimately related to them because the location of units had a great deal to do 

with the establishment of an integrated defense.14

11 Interv, author with Cleary, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

12 Intervs, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983, and Bishop with R. Newman, 16 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 27 Oct 1983, 0850, 1440, 1818, 2025, 

2103, 2300, and 28 Oct 1983, 0055, 1335, 1606, 1925, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 13 William F. Daly and Raymond V. Mason, “The Quartermaster Corps in Grenada,” 

p. 6 (quoted words); Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 29 Oct 1983, 0846, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 14 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Daly and Mason, 

“Quartermaster Corps in Grenada,” p. 6; Jnl, G–3, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 29 Oct 1983, 0846, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH.
The Rucksack War

464

Colonel Daly located his headquarters in a loading dock and maintenance 

bay on the west end of the terminal complex. Although the site was close to 

the Forward Area Support Team II headquarters, he tried very hard to avoid 

usurping the authority of its coordinator, Major Cleary. As Daly conceived 

it, his task was to work for the division commander on division logistics. He 

would set broad guidelines, while Cleary and, when Forward Area Support 

Team III arrived, its coordinator, Maj. Christopher O. Watson, would be the 

operators who ran the day-to-day support effort. Only if they had problems 

were they to come to him for help. Otherwise he gave them their heads. Given 

Daly’s other responsibilities, this was the only way the system could have 

worked efficiently.15

Daly had to personally intervene in the airflow only once. After consulting 

with the artillery task force commander, Col. Fred N. Halley, who indicated 

that he had received much more 105-mm. ammunition than he had any prospect of using, Daly radioed Fort Bragg and shut off all further artillery resupply unless specifically requested. Learning that a soon-to-depart C–141 had 

just loaded artillery ammunition, he directed the 82d Support Command executive officer and rear detachment commander at Fort Bragg, Lt. Col. Ronald 

F. Kelly, to unload the aircraft.16

The establishment of Air Force aerial port operations at midfield allowed 

Major Cleary to return some of the men of his ad hoc arrival-departure airfield control group to their parent units. By 2400 on 28 October the 3d Mobile 

Aerial Port Squadron had assembled two 10,000-pound all-terrain forklifts 

and three 25,000-pound tactical air cargo loaders at Point Salines. Cleary stationed one of his enlisted men at the Air Force’s unloading point. Like his 

counterpart at the Army unloading point, the soldier was to monitor and 

report on cargoes as they arrived so that the major could pass the information 

to the battalion S–4s, who would actually draw any needed supplies.17

This influx of Air Force personnel and equipment also produced the 

only serious friction between Army and Air Force elements during the entire 

operation. The moment, recalled Major Cleary, was “the only time I ever ran 

into [the attitude] that ‘well, I can’t do that, or we’re not supposed to do that 

because regulations say this.’” Specifically, an Air Force lieutenant colonel 

cited doctrine at some length to prove to Cleary that a forward area support 

team, designed to support a brigade, had no business being at a main theaterlevel arrival airfield for strategic air. Cleary knew that, but he was trying to 

deal with the existing situation. No corps units were available to do the job his 

team was doing. Cleary and the Air Force officer parted, with the lieutenant 

colonel observing that Cleary’s “puny little shack” would blow away in a good 

wind.18

15 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

16 Ibid.

17 Interv, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Kallander and 

Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 121. 18 Intervs, Wade with Cleary, [Nov 1983], and author with Cleary, 14 (quoted words) and 15 

Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
A Period of Transition

465

Shortly thereafter, a C–130 revving its engines in preparation for takeoff 

positioned itself so that Cleary’s command post received the full benefit of 

the back blast from its engines. To the men inside the temporary metal building the noise and vibration were almost indescribable, to say nothing of the 

need to avoid falling plumbing fixtures. The first (and only) such incident of 

the campaign, it seemed to last forever—a moment frozen in time. As Cleary 

dodged pipes, he surmised that his earlier conversation with the Air Force lieutenant colonel might have had something to do with his predicament. As soon 

as the C–130 took off and he disentangled himself from the fixtures, he went 

in search of Colonel Daly to complain. Daly ultimately sat both officers down 

and preached the virtues of interservice harmony and cooperation. After the 

incident, everything went smoothly at the arrival airfield between the Army 

and the Air Force.19

Major Watson and the main body of Forward Area Support Team III also 

arrived at Point Salines on 28 October. The division-rear commander, Brig. 

Gen. James D. Smith, had initially intended to dispatch Col. James T. Scott’s 

3d Brigade in the same manner as he had Col. Stephen Silvasy Jr.’s 2d Brigade, 

with combat elements in the lead. That the airhead had become much deeper 

and more secure, however, permitted some deviation from this initial plan. 

Watson was able to introduce some elements of his Forward Area Support 

Team III into the airflow simultaneously with infantry battalions. Because 

he had helped Major Cleary plan the composition of Forward Area Support 

Team II’s Alpha Echelon, he knew what critical pieces to deploy first to satisfy 

deficiencies in the airhead. Once on Grenada, Watson even colocated his headquarters in Cleary’s plumbers shack.20

To cap a wonderful day from the perspective of Army logisticians, the first 

of the division’s water buffalos arrived on Grenada on 28 October. Its presence 

immediately alleviated the water distribution problems in the Point Salines 

airhead.21

Ramp clearing remained an issue. Because of noise, the division chief of 

staff, Col. Peter J. Boylan Jr., had directed that work cease in front of the terminal. Consequently, the 82d’s engineers assessed the possibility of extending 

the size of the turnaround area at the eastern end of the runway in hopes of 

creating parking space for more than one aircraft; however, after examining the 

condition of the ground, they concluded that only a major construction effort 

would suffice and dropped the idea. Then, largely at the urging of the division 

G–4, Lt. Col. Jack D. Crabtree II, ramp clearing resumed on the weekend of 

29–30 October. Enough space became finally available on 2 November, when 

the newly arrived combat control team from the 437th Tactical Airlift Wing 

raised the limit on the number of aircraft on the ground to four: one C–141 

at the eastern end of the runway and three C–130s on the ramp. Because the 

19 Intervs, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, and with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, plus Wade with 

Cleary, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 20 Interv, Wade with C. Watson, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

21 Interv, Hinckley with Patterson, 29 Feb 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Kallander and 

Matthews, Urgent Fury, p. 116.
The Rucksack War

466

division’s truck-proof barricade remained in place on the ramp, the number of 

aircraft allowed was still fewer than the calculations of the corps and division 

logisticians during the initial planning. Until the ramp was completely cleared, 

the airflow remained constricted.22

As soon as the 82d assumed responsibility for the entire island on 31 

October, Major Watson established a forward support base at Pearls Airport, 

with personnel largely drawn from his team, and left a three-man rear detachment at Point Salines to forward the 3d Brigade’s supplies. Pearls was a much 

smaller field with correspondingly less area in which to establish supply points, 

so Watson made arrangements for the Air Force to fly a C–130 into the airport 

every other day with supplies for the 3d Brigade. Because utility helicopters 

were by then available, he was able to support the infantry battalions running 

motorized patrols by delivering sling loads of supplies to agreed-upon landing 

zones at agreed-upon times. To ensure the return of the sling and cargo net for 

use with the next supply request, a support team member always accompanied 

the helicopter crew.23

The combination of rough terrain and bad roads led Major Watson to 

establish a ground vehicle refueling point at Pearls so that 3d Brigade members 

did not have to drive all the way back to Point Salines. A lack of pumps and 

nozzles in the support team’s table of organization and equipment nonetheless 

meant that the best he could do was position a 500-gallon blivot of gasoline 

22 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and C. Mitchell, 16 Feb 1989, plus McElroy with 

Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. This combat control team 

rotated in on 28 October to replace Captain Scott’s men. 23 Interv, Wade with C. Watson, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

A typical water buffalo
A Period of Transition

467

in the back of an Army truck and let gravity work its magic. This was inefficient because gravity would not drain the entire bag. As a result, for refilling, 

Watson had to send partially full blivots back to Point Salines, where Team 

III’s only set of pumps and nozzles were located.24

Rear-area protection at Point Salines became a major responsibility for 

the 82d Support Command after 28 October. The command’s assistant S–3 for 

plans and operations, Capt. Raymond V. Mason, focused on this mission, freeing Colonel Daly to concentrate on logistics. The airfield still received sniper 

fire daily, but in much less volume than before. The problem of rear-area 

defense became much less worrisome at 1213 on 2 November, when General 

Trobaugh placed the 2d Battalion, 508th Infantry, under the division support 

commander’s operational control. The move allowed the unit to take over most 

of the rear-area defense mission so that logistical units at the airfield could 

concentrate on their primary missions. This brought one additional complication, however. Trobaugh’s staff still assigned combat missions to the battalion 

using the support command as an intermediate headquarters. Because Daly 

had once commanded an infantry battalion, he did not find this arrangement 

awkward. Captain Mason and the other support command staff members, 

however, found dealing with rules of engagement and other operational issues 

something of a challenge.25

The situation soon became even more unorthodox. Intelligence reports 

indicated that some Cuban and Grenadian soldiers had taken refuge on several deserted islands off the south shore of Grenada. If armed, they posed 

a threat to aircraft landing at Point Salines. In response, General Trobaugh 

directed the 82d Support Command to “conduct airmobile operations” to 

check out the rumor. Colonel Newman’s battalion ran a series of air assaults 

and confirmed that indeed the islands were uninhabited.26

No sooner had the 82d Support Command taken on the rear-area protection mission than General Trobaugh also assigned it to prepare for redeployment to Fort Bragg. In response, Colonel Daly decided to bring a nucleus from 

the Provisional Movement Control Center to the Point Salines airfield to plan 

the effort. The movement control group’s presence greatly simplified the preparations for the impending return of the 2d Brigade Task Force to Fort Bragg.27

Final Operations and Departures

On 28 October Colonel Silvasy’s 2d Brigade completed the maneuver that 

it had begun the previous day—the advance on St. George’s. The same day 

General Trobaugh emphasized that he was more interested in a careful search of 

24 Ibid.

25 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and Hicks with Mason, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Briefing Slides, Daly, 82d DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH. 26 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and Hicks with Mason, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Briefing Slides (quoted words), 82d DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), 

CMH. 27 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Briefing Slides, 82d 

DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH.
The Rucksack War

468

the countryside to discover and recover all enemy arms caches than in a speedy 

advance. While the People’s Revolutionary Army was disorganized and in flight, 

he wanted to eliminate all possibility of guerrilla warfare. Following resupply, 

Lt. Col. Jack L. Hamilton’s 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, advanced to the Ross 

Point Hotel, arriving at 0730. The infantrymen were as surprised to find the 

marines of Lt. Col. Ray L. Smith’s Battalion Landing Team 2/8 already in possession of the site as the marines were to find the infantrymen approaching. 

Aided by the lack of any opposition, the inability of the soldiers and the marines 

to communicate did not produce a friendly fire incident. Colonel Hamilton’s 

men found a significant cache of small arms not far from the hotel.28

In contrast to the 2d Battalion, the line companies of Lt. Col. John W. 

Raines’ 3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, received no resupply. The lack of a trail 

between Point Salines and the battalion’s position near The Cliff that was passable by wheeled vehicles prevented replenishment. Water in particular was limited. This situation revealed once more the discrepancy between how Grenada’s 

terrain looked on the maps available to the division and the configuration of 

the ground actually experienced by the infantrymen. Colonel Raines remedied 

the problem by sending a company to sweep the road to St. George’s. This move 

would permit the battalion S–4, 1st Lt. Randall L. McClure, to bring supplies 

forward through the capital. Lieutenant McClure had to make arrangements 

personally to move everything through sectors controlled by the 2d Battalion, 

325th Infantry, and the Battalion Landing Team 2/8. Lacking a Vinson device 

on his radio and unable to get anyone to respond to him when he called Colonel 

Hamilton’s battalion and Colonel Smith’s landing team in the clear, he ended 

up performing the coordination in person. In the end, his experiment in resupply through the objective occurred without incident except for some sniping. 

Over the next two days McClure’s battalion train came under further fire a 

number of times, but in each instance the snipers “were bad shots.”29

Colonel Scott’s 3d Brigade moved out more slowly than the 2d on 28 October. 

At 0814 Lt. Col. George A. Crocker’s 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry, the brigade’s 

only complete unit at the beginning of the day, started a sweep of the Lance aux 

Épines Peninsula to investigate whether any Americans were living there and to 

prevent any Grenadian soldiers from seizing them as hostages. Colonel Crocker 

soon discovered that the intelligence was not exaggerated, for his men found some 

202 students plus other non-Grenadians who needed evacuation. Among them 

was an elderly British couple who, uncertain about the proper dress for an evacuation, appeared in “formal attire and jewels.” The UH–60s of the 82d Aviation 

Battalion flew the evacuees to the True Blue Campus to avoid sniper fire en route. 

From there they boarded C–141s for movement to the United States.30

28 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 28 Oct 1983, 0510–1000, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Interv, Bishop with J. L. Hamilton, 10 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 29 Interv (quoted words), Frasché with McClure, 16 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jnl, 

2d Abn Div Assault CP, 28 Oct 1983, 0510–1000, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 30 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 28 Oct 1983, 0814–1000, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; George A. Crocker, “Grenada Remembered—A Perspective,” Student Paper, p. 17 

(quoted words).
A Period of Transition

469

Immediately upon arrival, Colonel Newman’s 2d Battalion, 508th 

Infantry, took charge of airport security by relieving Colonel Shaw’s 

1st Battalion, 508th Infantry. At this time, General Trobaugh detached 

Newman’s men from the 3d Brigade and assigned them to the 2d. Shaw’s battalion jumped off at 1208, with the objective of clearing the Hartman Estates 

on the peninsula due east of Lance aux Épines. Colonel Nightengale’s 2d 

Battalion, 505th Infantry, moved out behind Shaw’s men for Petit Calivigny, 

where Lt. Col. Ralph L. Hagler Jr.’s reinforced 2d Battalion, 75th Infantry, 

had come to grief the previous day. Two of Shaw’s companies ran into snipers at approximately 1600. After an inconclusive firefight of about an hour 

that resulted in the wounding of a single Grenadian soldier, the Grenadians 

broke contact.31

As the 82d continued its slow advance, issues concerning the size, composition, and length of stay of any U.S. forces remaining on the island began to 

come to a head. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), concerned about the global 

posture of U.S. forces, sought to return the division to Fort Bragg as quickly 

as possible. They were also anxious that the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit 

resume its interrupted journey to the Mediterranean and relieve the marines 

stationed at Beirut as soon as possible. In contrast, General Trobaugh, enduring daily sniping incidents at the Point Salines airfield and still anticipating a 

possible protracted guerrilla resistance, hesitated to assume responsibility for 

the entire island with the forces he had at hand and thus radioed the corps commander, General Mackmull, that he would need an additional brigade. With 

headquarters and one battalion of the 1st Brigade, 82d Airborne Division, on 

an exercise in Spain and the 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry, still committed to 

go to the Sinai in January 1984, Mackmull decided he had no choice but to 

put a brigade of the 101st Airborne Division on alert for possible deployment 

to Grenada.32

Up to this point poor communications had partially insulated General 

Trobaugh from the pressure to move out using motor patrols and to occupy 

quickly all towns and villages in the Army sector. The Joint Task Force 

(JTF) 120 deputy commander, Maj. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., with 

the superior communications facilities of the USS Guam at his disposal, 

realized that the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not favor the slow step-by-step 

advance adopted by General Trobaugh; however, he was unable to persuade Trobaugh to change his concept of maneuver. Persuade is the operative word in this situation: Neither the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit commander, Col. James P. Faulkner, nor Trobaugh interpreted Schwarzkopf’s 

appointment by JTF 120 commander V. Adm. Joseph Metcalf III as 

changing their relationship to the general. Indeed, Schwarzkopf was 

junior to Trobaugh in date of rank. In contrast, Schwarzkopf believed 

31 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 28 Oct 1983, 1014, 1109, 1245, 1600, 1652, 1700, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 32 Intervs, Bishop with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, and with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, plus 

author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Daly commented on the sniping 

incidents.
The Rucksack War

470

that as deputy commander he became in effect the single ground force 

commander that the operation had heretofore lacked, a view with which 

Admiral Metcalf concurred.33

Through 28 October, General Schwarzkopf had twice significantly 

altered the conduct of the campaign—the amphibious landing at Grand 

Mal and the use of Marine helicopters in the Grand Anse rescue. Beyond 

that, however, he found himself frustrated. He saw how things might be 

done better but had no ability to make the necessary changes. Only the 

Navy took his position as JTF 120 deputy commander seriously. When, 

for example, Admiral Metcalf had to leave the Guam for a few hours to 

attend a conference ashore, Schwarzkopf, sometime commander of the 

24th Infantry Division, directed naval forces off Grenada. It was a strange 

sort of war.34

On the Calivigny Peninsula the rangers spent an uneventful night 

with an AC–130 flying cover overhead. At 1000 on 28 October Admiral 

Metcalf notified General Trobaugh that Colonel Hagler’s 2d Battalion, 

75th Infantry, and Lt. Col. Wesley B. Taylor Jr.’s 1st Battalion, 75th 

Infantry, were to return to the United States as soon as possible. To that 

end, General Trobaugh began withdrawing the rangers from the peninsula 

by helicopter shortly after 1400. No enemy contact occurred throughout 

the maneuver.35

The next four hours were very hectic at the Point Salines airfield. Upon 

arrival, the two ranger battalion commanders received a briefing on the loading sequence, while their S–4s transferred supplies and ammunition to Forward 

Area Support Team II. Both battalions marshaled at the east end of the runway in chalk loads that included their vehicles and equipment. Colonel Hagler 

and his 2d Battalion boarded first, with the lead C–141 departing around 1830. 

From then on, C–141s arrived at approximately one-hour intervals until all the 

rangers had left. With Colonel Taylor aboard, the final aircraft took off at 

0329 on 29 October.36

Waiting for them at Fort Stewart, Georgia, was Army Chief of Staff 

General John A. Wickham Jr., an infantryman who had commanded an airmobile battalion in Vietnam in 1967. General Wickham shook hands with 

each of the rangers in both battalions on their arrival. The units then formed 

up and moved indoors for formal debriefings. Only after that did the members of the 1st Battalion fall out and receive the special welcome provided by 

33 Intervs, Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], and Bishop with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 

1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 34 Intervs, Bishop with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983, and with Trobaugh, 30 Nov 1983, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Richard M. Butler, “Command Structuring Amphibious Forces,” 

Student Paper, p. 6. 35 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-5; Prelim AAR, 

ibid., 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. 36 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-5; Prelim AAR, 

ibid., 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. See also 

Intervs, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, and with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, plus author with Bishop, 

Jul 1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Welcoming home the Rangers at Hunter Army Airfield; below, Pfc. Timothy G. 

Romick of Company A, 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, receives a Purple Heart from 

General Wickham for wounds received in action in Grenada.
The Rucksack War

472

wives and loved ones on such occasions. The men of the 2d Battalion had to 

wait until the next day for that ultimate accolade in their homecoming at Fort 

Lewis, Washington.37

A New Phase

By the end of 28 October General Trobaugh recognized that the campaign 

had moved into a new phase—pacification. Throughout the preceding twentyfour hours increasing volumes of information indicated that the regime of 

General Hudson Austin had totally collapsed. Local people were not only 

enthusiastically greeting U.S. troops when they arrived but also volunteering 

the location of arms caches and possible hiding places of Cubans and members of the Grenadian army. The enemy appeared preoccupied not with resisting but with safely surrendering. Conditions, in the phrase of Trobaugh’s chief 

of staff, Colonel Boylan, had “changed dramatically.” Trobaugh was now convinced that the 82d’s two brigades already on the island would suffice once the 

marines withdrew. He would not need a brigade from the 101st, and Boylan 

radioed General Mackmull to that effect.38

Reflecting his new estimate of the situation for the twenty-ninth, General 

Trobaugh directed Colonels Silvasy and Scott to refrain from evacuating 

civilians from their homes unless they were in “imminent danger” or actually 

interfering with military movements. Grenada, he emphasized, was a friendly 

nation. All public and private property was to be left unmolested or, if military necessity required it, the United States would provide compensation for 

its use. Through the next day the infantrymen continued to search houses, but 

on the following day Trobaugh limited searches to only suspicious dwellings. 

Eventually, the infantrymen needed probable cause to make a search.39

On 29 October the 2d Brigade continued to search the area around 

St. George’s, while the 3d Brigade pushed along the east coast. General 

Trobaugh organized the division’s first long-range motorized patrol under 

Colonel Newman. Designated as Task Force Newman, it consisted of elements of the 3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, and the 2d Battalion, 508th 

Infantry. Two AH–1 Cobra gunships flew overhead cover for the task force. 

In the two-day reconnaissance of the northern area of the division’s sector, 

Newman’s men seized eleven truckloads of arms and munitions. By this 

time the marines had captured most of the leading figures of the Grenadian 

government and military who were still in the vicinity of the capital. On 

the same day that Newman’s force returned to the division perimeter, the 

37 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 1st Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983, an. A, p. A-5; Prelim AAR, 

ibid., 2d Bn, 75th Inf, 14 Nov 1983. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/1SOC), CMH. See also 

Intervs, Bishop with Taylor, 2 Nov 1983, and with Hagler, 30 Oct 1983, plus author with Bishop, 

Jul 1984, and with Lally, 4 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; William G. Bell, Commanding 

Generals and Chiefs of Staff, 1775–1983, p. 156. 38 Msg, Boylan to EOC, XVIII Abn Corps (Attn: Col Johnson), 30 0757Z Oct [1983], EOC 

Recs, Opn UF, Entry 228, UD–06W, RG 338, NARA–CP. 39 Jnl (quoted words), 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 28 Oct 1983, 2230 and 2239, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Interv, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH.
Searching for weapons while on patrol
Task Force Newman moving out in gunjeeps and civilian dump trucks
A Period of Transition

475

3d Brigade arrested the last important fugitive, General Austin, and two of 

his body guards.40

Arriving early on the morning of 29 October at the Point Salines airfield, 

the JCS chairman, General John W. Vessey, met with Admiral Metcalf, General 

Trobaugh, and Colonel Faulkner. After each officer presented what General 

Vessey later opined as a good account of what he was doing, the chairman 

issued his instructions. Concerned that the marines needed to redeploy to 

Lebanon, he wanted the commanders to “move on” and “get the thing cleaned 

up.” Intelligence suggested that the People’s Revolutionary Army might attempt 

a last stand at Carriacou, a small inhabited island thirty kilometers north of the 

main island. Vessey wanted it taken quickly. He also made it clear to Trobaugh 

his intention to send the 82d Airborne Division and its commander home as 

soon as possible. Then, after a whirlwind tour of the detainee camp, the Cuban 

compound, and the Frequente warehouse, Vessey departed for Washington.41

On 30 October the marines captured Sauteurs on the north shore of the 

main island, the last important town as yet unoccupied by U.S. forces. The next 

day they began returning to their ships as the 82d’s battalions moved by truck 

and helicopter to occupy all parts of Grenada. Admiral Metcalf had planned 

to use the division to seize Carriacou, but General Trobaugh expressed reservations. Because the Marine teams from the 2d Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison 

Company attached to the division had not succeeded in obtaining gunfire 

support from the fleet during the Calivigny assault, Trobaugh distrusted their 

ability to do so in case of an emergency on the small island, which was out of 

range of division artillery on Grenada. The aviators in the division, moreover, 

had been shaken by the experience of Maj. William J. Elder Jr.’s Task Force 

B at Calivigny and did not want to execute the mission unless they had artillery on call. No one appears to have considered emplacing 105-mm. howitzers 

on the small, uninhabited islands off Carriacou. Given these circumstances, 

Trobaugh asked Metcalf to let the marines take the island, and they did so in 

a combined amphibious/air assault at 0530 on 1 November.42

Reports of People’s Revolutionary Army strength on the island proved 

grossly exaggerated. The garrison, consisting of one platoon, had already taken 

the precaution of changing into civilian clothes. As a result, upon arrival, the 

marines found the welcome on Carriacou even warmer than on the main island. 

This was not surprising. Carriacouans had long had a sense of their own separate 

identity and had long been dissatisfied with rule from St. George’s, whether by the 

colonial government or by its successors. Fishing and smuggling, the chief occupations of the island’s inhabitants for centuries, had infused the general population with entrepreneurial values, attitudes that on the main island existed only 

within the middle class. An “airshow” atmosphere soon prevailed. One group of 

40 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 3, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Interv, Frasché with Scott, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 41 Intervs, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987 (quoted words), Archives files, JHO; Interv, 

Danner, Frasché, and Bishop with Farris, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 42 Ronald H. Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, 1983, pp. 17–18; Interv, Hicks with W. 

Miller, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

476

marines gave citizens guided tours of helicopters. Another group composed of 

marines and sailors kicked off a pick-up soccer game with some of the locals.43

At 0700 on 2 November Company B, 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, landed 

on the island to relieve the marines. Unfortunately, the company made an air 

assault rather than an administrative flight. When the troops sprinted from 

their helicopters with their M16s at the ready, only good fire discipline of individual soldiers prevented a tragedy. The episode highlighted once again the 

lack of communications between the Army and the Marine Corps.44

With the fleet about to depart for the Mediterranean, Admiral Metcalf 

reported to the commander of Atlantic Command, Admiral Wesley L. 

McDonald, that hostilities had ceased as of 1500 on 2 November. The next day 

at 1000 Metcalf dissolved Joint Task Force 120. Shortly thereafter, General 

Trobaugh assumed responsibility for military operations as commander of 

U.S. Forces, Grenada, and began moving the 2d Brigade to Point Salines for 

return to the United States. He slated Colonel Newman’s 2d Battalion, 508th 

Infantry, to depart with the 2d Brigade Task Force.45

As a result, on 3 November the battalions and attached elements of the 2d 

Brigade Task Force turned in their equipment, tool sets, administrative and 

housekeeping supplies, and ammunition and went through customs. Because 

many of the men had requisitioned civilian vehicles for movement throughout 

the island, the division support commander, Colonel Daly, had established a 

“civilian car reclamation point.” He assembled all vehicles weighing less than 

2,000 pounds to facilitate their return to the rightful owners. That evening 

the artillery units flew home to Fort Bragg. On the fourth, between 0600 and 

1200, the division assault command post, the brigade tactical operations center, and the three infantry battalions and remaining elements departed. The 

men took with them only those items of military equipment not needed by the 

3d Brigade. Many of the 2d’s vehicles, gun jeeps, and radios stayed behind.46

Waiting to greet the troopers in the rain at Fort Bragg was Secretary of the 

Army John O. Marsh Jr., a former infantry officer who had participated in the 

occupation of Germany at the end of World War II. Like General Wickham, 

Secretary Marsh shook hands with each man as he left the aircraft. In similar 

fashion to the rangers, the units then conducted formal debriefings followed by 

a tumultuous welcome from family and friends.47

43 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 3, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Briefing, Frank, 8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada, 

pp. 23–24, 25 (quoted word). 44 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 2 Nov 1983, 0515; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn 

Div, 6 Feb 1984, p. 3. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. See also Spector, U.S. 

Marines in Grenada, p. 18. 45 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, pp. 3–4, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH. 46 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Briefing Slides (quoted 

words), 82d DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH. 47 Interv, author with Lally, 4 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Nick Hefner, “Division 

Paratroopers Begin Returning Home,” Paraglide, 10 Nov 1983; William G. Bell, Secretaries of 

War and Secretaries of the Army, pp. 158–59. 
Paratroopers boarding a C–141 to return to the United States 
Paratroopers deplaning in the United States; below, Marsh greeting the paratroopers 

upon their return
A Period of Transition

479

Evolving Policies in Washington

As combat wound down, policy considerations defined by senior officials 

in Washington replaced purely military considerations as the primary drivers 

of operations on Grenada. President Reagan’s approach from the beginning 

of the crisis had been to isolate the island to give other powers, specifically the 

Soviet Union and Cuba, no opportunity to intervene either militarily or diplomatically. When the Cubans did become involved, the Reagan administration 

worked to arrange a cease fire between Cuban and American forces as quickly 

as possible. This attempt failed, in part because the Cuban government had 

only intermittent contact with its forces after the rangers landed. The U.S. government then shifted its focus to hastening the departure of any Soviets and 

Cubans on Grenada but in such a manner that their governments could have 

no legitimate grounds for complaint. The administration wanted to avoid any 

incidents that would obscure the conditions that had prompted the intervention by the United States and the eastern Caribbean nations in the first place. 

In short, the motivation of the president and his closest advisers was to win 

not only a military victory on Grenada but also the worldwide propaganda 

war with the Soviets and their allies.48

It followed that humanitarian and policy concerns as well as legal requirements dictated that the U.S. military should show only the most correct behavior toward Soviet and Cuban diplomatic personnel. When the Cuban government demanded the prompt repatriation of all Cuban dead and wounded, the 

Reagan administration readily agreed. Indeed, it went so far as to request that 

the International Committee of the Red Cross inspect the Cuban detainee 

camp on Grenada and assured the Cubans that the U.S. military was affording 

all detainees the full range of rights guaranteed by the Geneva Convention. At 

the same time, however, the administration insisted that no able-bodied detainees would be returned as long as the Cuban military continued to resist. The 

Americans took this position because U.S. intelligence had overestimated the 

number of Cubans on the island by a factor of more than two and mistakenly 

believed that Cubans comprised the majority of the remaining defenders.49

With their full attention on military operations, the 82d’s forward elements learned of the new priorities through a series of directions devoid of 

48 Ltr, Eagleburger to Editor, Washington Times, 2 Jan 1984, quoted in full in Msg, Shultz to 

U.S. Interest Sec, Havana, 28 1828Z Jan 1984, sub: Notice to Cuba of U.S. Action in Grenada, 

84 State 027630; Msgs, Shultz to U.S. Int Sec, Havana, 26 1505Z Oct 1983, sub: Arrangements 

for Cuban Withdrawal, 83 State 305441, and idem to AmEmb, Madrid, 26 2202Z Oct 1983, sub: 

ibid., 83 State 305476. All in Msg files, DoS. 49 Msg, Shultz to U.S. Interest Sec, Havana, 26 1505Z Oct 1983, 83 State 305441; idem to 

AmEmb, Moscow, 26 1608Z Oct 1983, sub: Evacuation of Soviet Personnel from Grenada, 83 

State 305761; idem to U.S. Mission, Geneva, and AmEmb, Bridgetown, 27 2238Z Oct 1983, sub: 

ICRC Access to Prisoners, 83 State 307298; idem to U.S. Interest Sec, Havana, 28 0039Z Oct 1983, 

sub: Evacuation of Cuban Casualties, 83 State 306862; idem to AmEmb, Bridgetown, SecDef, 

and JCS, 28 21246Z Oct 1983, sub: Guidance in Case of Approach by Cuban Representatives 

in Grenada Regarding Repatriation, 83 State 308520; and idem to U.S. Interest Sec, Havana, 29 

2157Z Oct 1983, sub: Evacuation of Cuban Casualties, 83 State 309822. All in Msg files, DoS.
The Rucksack War

480

explanation. Lacking any knowledge of larger policy concerns, the division’s 

senior leaders reacted with incredulity before duly executing these orders. 

General Trobaugh and his division-forward staff suddenly discovered, for 

example, that certain specialties, especially medical, engineer, military police, 

and graves registration, had assumed a much higher priority than they had 

ever assigned them. Indeed, as far as the Joint Chiefs of Staff were concerned, 

moving such units to the island had the highest possible priority.50

Soviet and Cuban Embassy Personnel

By 1 November the Joint Chiefs of Staff had instructed Admiral Metcalf to 

post guards at both the Soviet Embassy and the Cuban Embassy. In the wake 

of the intervention, the Department of State had temporarily established an 

American embassy on Grenada. The department directed the new U.S. envoy, 

Ambassador Charles A. Gillespie, to tell his Soviet and Cuban counterparts 

that their personnel had to remain in their respective compounds. Two embassy 

officials might go outside to purchase food, but only under military escort.51

General Trobaugh and his staff approached the mission of mounting 

guards at the embassies with a good deal of caution. They were convinced that 

on 25 October an antiaircraft gun mounted on the Soviet Embassy roof had 

shot down the Marine Cobra gunship. They also suspected that some Cuban 

fighters had taken refuge in the two compounds and believed that some of 

those soldiers were sneaking out to waylay individual Americans and then 

darting back to their sanctuaries.52

An incident on 27 October about one mile south of St. George’s, near the 

Soviet Embassy, only deepened their mistrust. On that day an infantryman from 

Company B, 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, Spec. Brent Taylor, was guarding a 

road when he was attacked by three enemy soldiers of undetermined nationality. Through good luck, good equipment, and hard fighting Taylor survived to 

tell his tale, and General Trobaugh and his advisers became ever more vigilant 

about the potential threat inside the Soviet and Cuban compounds.53

One good result came out of this episode. Early in the action, Specialist 

Taylor took an AK47 round in his Kevlar helmet, knocking it and his glasses 

off. Much later, after a three-hour firefight in which he was twice wounded, he 

retrieved his helmet and discovered that the slug had remained lodged in the 

Kevlar. The helmet had saved his life. Once this story made the rounds, the new 

Kevlar helmets became very popular with the troops.54

The embassy issue did not take long to resolve. Governor General Sir 

Paul Scoon had already indicated his intent to break relations with the governments in question. Immersed in forming a provisional administration and 

50 Interv, Frasché with Boylan, 21 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

51 Msg, Shultz to U.S. Interest Sec, Havana, 1 1431Z Nov 1983, sub: Status of Cuban 

Embassy in Grenada, 83 State 311160, Msg files, DoS. 52 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

53 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

54 Jason Brady, “Ordeal: Helmet Saves Soldier’s Life,” Fayetteville Observer, 28 Nov 1983; 

Interv, author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
A Period of Transition

481

weeding ardent supporters of the previous regime from the Grenadian Civil 

Service, he delayed making a formal announcement until 1 November. Then 

he insisted that Soviet and Cuban embassy personnel and all other nationals 

from the Soviet bloc should depart as soon as possible. Suspecting that the 

Soviets and Cubans had played a role in Prime Minister Maurice Bishop’s 

removal from office and assassination, Scoon would have liked for them to 

depart within twenty-four hours. This goal, however, proved too ambitious. In 

Washington, the president’s National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane 

insisted that all non-Soviet citizens who had taken refuge in the Soviet 

Embassy should surrender themselves to military authorities. He argued that 

none of the Cuban fighters in the Soviet compound, among whom was their 

erstwhile commander Col. Pedro Comas Tortoló, enjoyed any diplomatic 

status or right of refuge. To expedite the departure of the Soviets, the State 

Department did not press the point, but the Cubans nevertheless demanded 

that their entire embassy staff remain on Grenada until the United States 

returned all the detainees and the bodies of the dead. Scoon, however, was 

adamant. He allowed the Cubans to leave one lower-ranking diplomat, one 

driver, and one secretary on the island until the repatriation was complete. 

The rest of the mission had to go.55

55 Memo, McFarlane for Motley, 3 Nov 1983; Msg, Shultz to All Diplomatic and Consular 

Posts, 2 1121Z Nov 1983, sub: Grenada Situation Report no. 26, 83 State 312736. Both in 

Msg files, DoS. On Scoon’s suspicions, see Msg, Gillespie to SecState, 8 1635Z Nov 1983, sub: 

Repatriation of Cubans, 83 Grenada 0051, Msg files, DoS.

Guarding the Cuban Embassy
The Rucksack War

482

On 3 November a small column of vehicles led by a gunjeep from the 82d 

Airborne Division wended its way down a road to Point Salines. Behind it 

drove a large black Mercedes limousine bearing Soviet Ambassador Gennady 

Sazhenev, followed by leased buses carrying the embassy staff, families, and 

refuge seekers. Army trucks carrying the party’s baggage brought up the rear. 

The column stopped in front of the little trailer that served as the tactical 

operations center of the 82d Support Command, which was the unit responsible for loading the group aboard three Navy C–9 transport aircraft. The plan 

negotiated by the State Department called for the Navy to fly the Soviets and 

their allies to Merida, Mexico, where they would transfer to Soviet or Cuban 

aircraft.56

What Ambassador Sazhenev did not know as he emerged from his limousine was that the Reagan administration had devised a slight variant to the 

plan. Colonel Daly, in charge of preflight boarding, explained the procedure 

to the ambassador and the members of his party. They would have to enter 

a nearby construction shed and report to various stations, manned by 82d 

Support Command personnel, first to be photographed, then to be fingerprinted, and then to be searched for weapons. Daly did not explain that an 

individual at another station would discreetly observe each person’s visage and 

compare the features to a photo array of known Soviet intelligence agents 

in the Caribbean. Lastly, support command personnel would carefully search 

all baggage. Once this process was completed, Sazhenev and his party could 

depart.57

The ambassador had one word for this plan: “Nyet!” For emphasis, 

he shook his diplomatic credentials in Colonel Daly’s face. Daly stated the 

American position: The Soviets had forfeited their diplomatic status by the 

activities they had countenanced in and around their embassy grounds. An 

impasse developed. The ambassador and everyone else in his party waited on 

the road in the hot Caribbean sun. Night fell. As 82d Support Command personnel unloaded the trucks, they “accidently” dropped one suspicious looking 

wooden crate. It burst open, spilling a variety of weapons on the ground. The 

ambassador remained unfazed and unrepentant, but the disclosure made Daly 

(and behind him the U.S. government) even more determined to prevail.58

Colonel Daly kept General Trobaugh and through him Ambassador 

Gillespie, who was in constant communications with the State Department by 

satellite telephone, fully informed of developments. Meanwhile, the 82d Support 

Command chaplain, Maj. Peter Telencio, a Russian Orthodox priest who 

spoke fluent Russian, circulated among the knots of Soviets apparently meditating. He kept Daly apprised of the tenor of discussions among the Soviets. 

Eventually, he overheard the Soviet deputy ambassador suggest to Sazhenev 

56 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, pp. 3–4, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Loren Jenkins, “U.S. 

Troops Search Diplomats Leaving Grenada,” Washington Post, 5 Nov 1983. 57 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Jenkins, “U.S. Troops 

Search Diplomats,” Washington Post, 5 Nov 1983. 58 Interv, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
A Period of Transition

483

that perhaps he ought to bend a little. The State Department reaction to this 

news was to keep the pressure on. Finally, Sazhenev conceded all the American 

conditions, and support command personnel confiscated a large collection of 

weapons. Even the embassy typewriters contained small concealed pistols. The 

Americans also found the weapon that they believed had shot down the Marine 

Cobra. When Colonel Tortoló and the Cuban contingent arrived in Havana to 

a heroes’ welcome presided over by Premier Fidel Castro, they had no weapons 

to brandish for the benefit of the world’s television cameras. Castro could only 

proclaim “a moral victory” on Grenada sans props.59

By then Colonel Daly had flown to Fort Bragg with General Trobaugh’s 

headquarters staff. Trobaugh wanted Daly to concentrate on returning the 

division to a high state of readiness. Meanwhile, the Forward Area Support 

Team III coordinator, Major Watson, oversaw the evacuation of the Cuban 

Embassy, less the small contingent that Governor General Scoon had agreed 

to tolerate. The Cubans left in stages between 7 and 10 November. Watson 

simply followed Daly’s precedent. The Cubans realized what was coming. 

They made a pro forma protest and then submitted to search.60

59 Ibid.; Interv, author with Boyles, 2 Mar 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Msg, Ferch to 

SecState, 5 2105Z Nov 1983, sub: Cuba Media Highlights, 5 Nov 1983, 83 Havana 06926, Msg 

files, DoS. 60 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and Wade with C. Watson, 18 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH. See also Msgs, Shultz to All Diplomatic and Consular Posts, 8 1059Z 

Nov 1983, sub: Grenada SitRep no. 38, 83 State 319068; Gillespie to SecState, 7 2100Z Nov 

Guarding officials from the Soviet Embassy
The Rucksack War

484

Refugees and Detainees

General Trobaugh and his advisers were well aware that the refugees 

and detainees might pose problems for the division. Of the two groups, the 

refugees clearly represented the greater danger to the long-term success of 

the mission. The last thing that the division commander wanted to do was 

to alienate Grenadian public opinion by mishandling them. Thus, when 

Trobaugh announced the beginning of the pacification phase of operations 

on 28 October, he directed the division to return all refugees to their homes 

and enjoined both brigades to assist them. The next day, aided by the military police, the division G–5, Maj. William D. Archer, succeeded in emptying 

both refugee camps with only a few minor problems. Although Army civil 

affairs teams continued to work with the Grenadians, U.S. civilian agencies 

increasingly provided supplies to support the locals, relieving Army logisticians of this responsibility. By 31 October the U.S. Agency for International 

Development had shipped between six and seven tons of foodstuffs as well as 

other supplies to the island.61

For the detainees, 28 October was also a key date. On that day control 

of their compound passed from the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force to the 

118th Military Police Company, an XVIII Airborne Corps unit attached to 

the division. Not until then did anyone compile a by-name list of the detainees. 

Learning that a number of innocent foreign nationals had been swept up by 

mistake, the military police released them immediately.62

 Possibly as early as 28 October, General Trobaugh also recognized that 

camp facilities were inadequate for the number of detainees and requested 

construction materials for a new compound. The material, however, did not 

arrive in time to avert a deluge of criticism. Almost every senior officer who 

landed on the island inspected the detainee camp and found conditions wanting. Each reported his findings to the division and subsequently thought that 

his influence had been decisive in bringing about a favorable resolution. Of 

these, the officer with the best claim to focusing the attention of Trobaugh and 

his staff on the question was undoubtedly General Vessey. He told Trobaugh 

to get the detainees out of the sun and to get the camp “policed up.”63

1983, sub: Departure of Women and Children in the Cuban Embassy, 83 Grenada 0039; idem, 

8 1220Z Nov 1983, sub: Repatriation of Cubans, 83 Grenada 0040; idem, 8 1621Z Nov 1983, 

sub: ibid., 83 Grenada 0048; idem, 8 1635Z Nov 1983, sub: ibid., 83 Grenada 0051; and Ferch 

to SecState, 8 0800Z Nov 1983, sub: ibid., 83 Havana 07000. All in Msg files, DoS. 61 Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 28 Oct 1983, 2230 and 2239, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH; Interv, Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Msg, Shultz to All 

Diplomatic and Consular Posts, 2 0622Z Nov 1983, sub: Further Grenada Talking Points, 83 

State 312329, Msg files, DoS. 62 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Staff JA, 82d Abn Div, 9 Nov 1983, p. 6, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Interv, MacMichael with Lemauk, Webb, and Gyurisko, [Nov 1983], 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 63 Intervs, author with Perkins, 9 and 23 Jun 1986, and Wade with Archer, [Nov 1983], Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH; Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987 (quoted words), Archives files, JHO; 

Jnl, 82d Abn Div Assault CP, 28 Oct 1983, 2230 and 2239, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), 

CMH.
A Period of Transition

485

The International Committee of the Red Cross also played a role. Shortly 

after the corps surgeon, Col. James H. Rumbaugh, arrived at Point Salines on 

29 October, he learned that two Red Cross representatives, Georges Heumann 

and Gerard Peytrignet, were preparing to go back to Geneva via Cuba to 

denounce the United States. In accordance with the Geneva Convention, 

it was their responsibility to make certain that the Americans were treating 

detainees humanely. Heumann and Peytrignet had attempted unsuccessfully 

for two days to gain access to the detainees, but the division-forward staff had 

been “too busy” to talk to them. Colonel Rumbaugh and the division orthopedic surgeon, Lt. Col. Joseph P. Jackson Jr., intervened and personally escorted 

one Red Cross representative to the detainee camp on 1 November. He was 

inclined to criticize the medical treatment the Cubans were receiving until he 

inspected the operating room of Company C, 307th Medical Battalion. When 

he saw how U.S. casualties were treated and learned that the Cubans had better housing than the U.S. casualties, he ceased to complain about the Cuban 

situation.64

The division G–3, Lt. Col. Frank H. Akers Jr., selected the site for a new 

camp, a level area approximately 150 to 200 meters wide and 300 meters long 

near the fuel storage tanks. To the north the area adjoined the ocean and to 

the south the portion of Hardy Bay that was north of the causeway. The 307th 

Engineer Battalion drew the mission of constructing the camp. On 1 November 

the commander, Lt. Col. Lawrence L. Izzo, the battalion S–3, Maj. Carl A. 

Strock, and an assistant S–3, Capt. John L. Ramey, met with a military police 

captain to find out exactly what the military police wanted. Then Captain 

Ramey, the military police officer, and the engineer noncommissioned officer 

in charge of the construction site prepared a detailed design. Actual construction began the next day. Ramey had nine or ten Spanish-speaking noncommissioned officers and about 100 Cuban construction workers. The U.S. troops, 

who removed all their weapons, worked side by side with the Cubans under the 

overwatch of a military police gunjeep posted on a nearby hill. (This caused 

some comment from the Americans because if the gunjeep had needed to open 

fire there would have been no way to separate them from the Cubans.)65

The camp required lights for night security. The engineers hoped to use 

scavenged spotlights from the Frequente warehouses and a Soviet generator 

(“big as a car”), but they could not get the generator to start. Eventually, they 

had to use a generator belonging to the battalion that Izzo had hoped to save 

for night construction around the airfield. Running water was also a problem 

until Ramey placed an 800-gallon tank on top of the hill occupied by the 

military police gunjeep and ran a pipe from there into the camp. The most 

difficult construction problem, however, was explaining to workers who spoke 

no English how to erect forty U.S. Army general-purpose medium tents. That, 

64 Intervs, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov 1987 (quoted words), and Pirnie with Jackson, 

23 May 1985, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 65 Intervs, author with Strock, 30 May 1986, and with Ramey, 6 and 18 Jun 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH. Colonel Izzo confirmed the details of Captain Ramey’s account in a conversation at Fort Leavenworth in August 1986.
The Rucksack War

486

remembered Captain Ramey, “was a real trick.” The new camp opened for 

occupancy on 3 November, but the Cuban detainees had little time to enjoy 

their new facilities. Repatriation started the next day, when the first one hundred Cubans boarded Air Force C–130s to fly to Barbados for transfer to an 

Air Cubana aircraft, and ended on the ninth.66

Graves Registration

Colonel Richardson’s 1st Support Command had provided a graves registration team for Urgent Fury; however, as with many other units, airflow 

problems delayed its deployment. The six-man team, led by M. Sgt. Michael 

Ortego, an eighteen-year Army veteran, finally arrived at Point Salines at 0500 

on 28 October. The State Department wanted the unit deployed as quickly as 

possible to recover and return the Cuban dead to Cuba. The team also located 

and made provision for burial of the Grenadian dead. The corps liaison officer who had been handling graves registration up to this point, Capt. Henry 

R. Fore, coordinated the team’s activities on the island until its withdrawal in 

December.67

General Trobaugh estimated that forty-two Cubans had been killed in 

combat, but the Cuban government could confirm that only twenty-five of its 

citizens were missing. It insisted that its forensic experts would positively identify any remains before they were shipped to Cuba. Governor General Scoon 

demurred, for he wanted no more Cubans introduced into Grenada whatever 

the rationale. As a compromise, the government of Barbados allowed the 

Cubans to conduct forensic examinations on its soil. A Red Cross representative was always present to ensure that no one mutilated the dead and that 

they received proper respect. Often a Cuban embassy official also attended 

the exhumations; however, because his presence frightened off all potential 

Grenadian workers, the graves registration team members had to do the requisite labor themselves.68

Recovery of the bodies was a slow and laborious process. In some 

instances combat units had hastily buried the enemy dead and had failed to 

adequately mark the graves; in others they were never buried, and animals 

66 Intervs, author with Strock, 30 May 1986, and with Ramey, 6 (quoted words) and 18 Jun 

1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Colonel Izzo confirmed the details of Captain Ramey’s account 

in a conversation at Fort Leavenworth in August 1986. See also Kallander and Matthews, 

Urgent Fury, pp. 93–94. 67 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 1984, pp. 4-5 to 4-6, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Msg, Ferch to SecState, 28 2135Z Oct 1983, sub: Evacuation of Cuban 

Casualties, 83 Havana 6735, Msg files, DoS; “Graves Detail Has Grim Task,” Fayetteville 

Observer, 24 Nov 1984; Steve Moore, “Corps Soldier Takes Initiative in Return of Cuban 

Remains,” Paraglide, 24 Nov 1984; Tel Interv, author with Fore, 3 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 68 Tel Interv, author with Fore, 3 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. On the presence of the 

Red Cross observer, see Craig Nesbit, “Sgt. Rivero’s Job Gruesome But Necessary,” Fayetteville

Times, 1 Dec 1983. For the agreement concerning removal of the Cuban dead, see Msgs, Shultz 

to All Diplomatic and Consular Posts, 2 0104Z Nov 1983, sub: Grenada SitRep as of 1800 Hrs 1 

Nov 83, 83 State 312282, and Swaebe to SecState, 1 1710Z Nov 1983, sub: ICRC and Grenada, 

83 Geneva 9950, Msg files, DoS.
A Period of Transition

487

and a tropical climate had done their hasty work. On 29 October, for example, 

Admiral Metcalf told the press that U.S. forces had just discovered a field 

“full of bodies” but given their state of decomposition no one was anxious to 

go out among them and count them. Anxious or not, Captain Fore and his 

team recovered them and sent those tentatively identified as Cubans to Point 

Salines, where Forward Area Support Team II and the Air Force airlift control 

element loaded them on Air Force transports bound for Barbados. There the 

Cubans identified twenty-five bodies as Cuban and returned the remainder to 

Grenada.69

One of the factors slowing recovery of the enemy dead was a rumor that 

the Cubans had booby-trapped the bodies. In fact, they had not, but one 

incident early in the recovery of the remains apparently sparked the rumor. 

The graves registration team found the body of a Grenadian officer on the 

Point Salines Road just beyond the True Blue Campus. He had apparently 

died in action in the attack on the twenty-fifth. Captain Fore judged the 

remains so badly decomposed that cremation in place represented the only 

safe method of disposal. After taking down all the information that might 

aid in a subsequent identification, Captain Fore ordered the team to douse 

the body with gasoline and set it alight. Given the possibility that rounds 

of live ammunition might be on the corpse, Fore was careful to move everyone well away from the fire to the far side of their ambulance. He was 

not expecting, however, what happened next: The body exploded. Later 

Fore hypothesized that the officer had been killed in the act of throwing a 

hand grenade, with the pin already pulled. As the fire consumed the body, 

the weight of the body on the depressed lever gradually diminished and 

eventfully the grenade exploded. The resulting rumor did have the salutary 

benefit of inhibiting souvenir hunters bent on stripping the Cuban and 

Grenadian dead.70

The island was also awash in rumors about the number of casualties 

from the coup. The State Department was interested in doing everything 

possible to strengthen the case for the intervention and so wanted rumors 

of mass graves investigated. Captain Fore and his team received the task. 

Their most important exhumation, however, involved body fragments from 

five individuals buried in a pit in a garbage dump. Three of the bodies were 

definitely male. The Department of Defense dispatched an Armed Forces 

Institute of Pathology team to the island to examine the remains amid 

speculation that Fore had located the grave of Prime Minister Bishop. The 

team could not make a positive identification on any of the remains, but 

personal effects in the pit suggested that one of the bodies was that of 

Fitzroy Bain, who had died with Bishop on 19 October. None of the long 

bones recovered were consistent with someone of Bishop’s stature. That 

69 Tel Interv, author with Fore, 3 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. On Metcalf’s remarks, 

see Loren Jenkins, “Reporters Still Trying To Come Up With Definitive Toll from U.S. Mission,” 

Washington Post, 12 Nov 1983. 70 Tel Interv, author with Fore, 3 Sep 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Nesbit, “Sgt. Rivero’s 

Job Gruesome,” 1 Dec 1983, recounts the rumor.
The Rucksack War

488

was as precise a conclusion as the forensic science of the period would 

permit.71

Transition to Corps Control

On 29 October the advance element of the XVIII Airborne CorpsForward command post headed by the deputy corps commander, Brig. Gen. 

Jack B. Farris, arrived at Point Salines in response to General Trobaugh’s 

request for an augmentation of his assault command post. On the thirtieth, 

following his conference that day with General Vessey, General Trobaugh 

told General Farris that the chairman had instructed him to return to the 

United States as soon as possible and that, upon his departure, command 

of U.S. Forces, Grenada, would devolve to Farris. Until then, Trobaugh 

wanted Farris, temporarily designated as his deputy, to handle civil-military 

relations, which were much more important now that the campaign had 

entered the pacification phase. Farris would work directly with Ambassador 

Gillespie, attend all the country team meetings, and coordinate U.S. activities with those of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force, which reported directly 

to the governor general. Although in Farris’ opinion “there really wasn’t 

enough work for two . . . generals,” he did not want to lose his feel for the 

environment by returning home and then coming back in four or five days. 

Given his duties, he decided to locate his headquarters in close proximity to the U.S. Embassy and the Agency for International Development. 

Trobaugh’s headquarters remained at Point Salines.72

The assault command post of the 82d Airborne Division and the 2d Brigade 

began redeploying to the United States at 0300 on 4 November. To accommodate the visit of a congressional delegation, General Trobaugh remained 

behind temporarily and began transferring various command responsibilities 

to key subordinates. He continued to concentrate on tactical problems associated with pacification, while General Farris took over the peacekeeping and 

nation-building missions. On 4 November, following the departure of the 2d 

Brigade, Trobaugh relinquished many of his U.S. Forces, Grenada, responsibilities to Farris and all of his Army Forces, Grenada, responsibilities to the 

3d Brigade’s Colonel Scott.73

The 2d Brigade’s return to Fort Bragg meant that Forward Area Support 

Team III had to add the work of Forward Area Support Team II to its own 

responsibility of operating an advance base at Pearls Airport. As a result, 

Major Watson shifted his headquarters and most of his men from Pearls to 

Point Salines. The 82d Support Command continued to handle the rear-area 

protection mission until the next day, when it too departed. Colonel Daly had 

already left for Fort Bragg on 4 November with the division assault command 

71 Rpt, AFIP, 12 Dec 1983, sub: Consultation Report on Identification of Remains, 

Grenada, West Indies, Hist files (PDocs/DoD/AFIP), CMH. 72 Interv, Danner, Frasché, and Bishop with Farris, 18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 73 Briefing Slides, 82d DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH.
A Period of Transition

489

post. Major Watson picked up the 

mission.74

Given all the shifting, it was perhaps inevitable that services would 

suffer. On 6 November the 3d Brigade 

passed responsibility for supporting nondivisional units to Colonel 

Barrett’s 1st Support CommandForward I, but that unit was not yet 

in a position to support nondivisional 

elements. How those organizations 

remained supplied until subordinate 

elements of the 1st Support Command 

could assume responsibility depended 

upon the initiative of their members. 

The commander of the advance party 

from the 525th Military Intelligence 

Group, Maj. Lawrence J. Kimmel, 

for example, happened to see his 

wife, a lieutenant in the 82d Support 

Command, get off an airplane at 

Point Salines on 7 November. As soon 

as possible, Major Kimmel had her 

cut the divisional patch off her sleeve 

and loan it to his supply sergeant. She and the sergeant then requisitioned the 

necessary supplies for the 525th from Forward Area Support Team III.75

Colonel Barrett’s 1st Support Command-Forward I slowly built up at Point 

Salines, beginning with the arrival of Lt. Col. Joseph J. Costanzo Jr.’s 5th Surgical 

Hospital from Col. Jack R. Wilson II’s 44th Medical Brigade on 2 November. 

Shortly thereafter, the 7th Transportation Group’s port package reached Grenada, 

followed by the bulk of Barrett’s staff on 7 November and his command’s last 

element––the so-called logistics package––the next day. In each case a quartering 

party, with the mission of making living arrangements, preceded the main body. 

“A big scramble” ensued to assist the quartering parties, showing them their locations and getting them settled once the main bodies arrived.76

Medical Support

Initially very sparse, medical elements began to build up on 29 October, 

when the main and follow-on echelons of Company C, 307th Medical 

74 Intervs, Wade with C. Watson, 18 Nov 1983, and author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH; Briefing Slides, 82d DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH. 75 Intervs, Wade with C. Watson, 18 Nov 1983, and author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and 

with Baker-Kimmel, 18 Jul 1986. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Briefing Slides, 82d 

DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH. 76 Chart, Urgent Fury Airflow, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH; Interv (quoted words), 

Hicks with Barrett, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

General Farris
The Rucksack War

490

Battalion, landed at Point Salines. The company commander, Capt. Vincent 

E. Ashley, arrived with the main body. The XVIII Airborne Corps surgeon, 

Colonel Rumbaugh, accompanied by his operations officer, a preventive medicine officer, and one noncommissioned officer, also landed at Point Salines 

to survey the medical situation and to determine long-term medical needs. 

Rumbaugh’s observations would help Colonel Wilson’s 44th Medical Brigade 

to configure its medical package. Early the next day Capt. Steven S. Bradley’s 

Company A, 307th Medical Battalion, reached Point Salines and set up next 

to Company C.77

Soon after his arrival, Captain Ashley disagreed with one of the surgeons 

assigned as a professional filler as to who was in command of the company. 

The surgeon put Ashley under “tent arrest.” When Major Cleary learned of 

this, he was shocked that anyone would expect someone who had never served 

with a unit to relieve an experienced company commander who had trained 

that organization before it entered combat. Like most officers not in one of the 

medical branches, he did not realize that doctrine required the senior medical 

officer to take command of deployed medical units. He sat down with the two 

officers, urged cooperation for the sake of the mission, and restored Ashley to 

duty. As far as Cleary was concerned, Ashley was the company commander, a 

view not necessarily held by everyone in the airhead. Ambiguity in this command relationship continued, but with no further difficulties.78

It was in this context, however, that Colonel Daly decided that he needed the 

307th Medical Battalion commander, Lt. Col. Edward B. Wilson, at Point Salines. 

Hearing of the friction back at Fort Bragg, especially the contretemps between 

division surgeon Lt. Col. Barry S. Sidenberg and division orthopedic surgeon 

Colonel Jackson over who was in command of division medical assets at Point 

Salines, Colonel Wilson had reached the same conclusion on his own. Shortly 

after Wilson’s arrival on the island, Colonel Sidenberg returned to Bragg.79

Army medical operations improved not only because command relationships became somewhat clearer and more personnel and equipment arrived 

but also because the medical staff at Atlantic Command headquarters began 

to influence the medical aspects of Urgent Fury in a serious way. During the 

first days of preparation the Navy medical officers had been completely shut 

out of the planning; they received no questions, only orders. Complicating 

matters further, the Atlantic Command surgeon, R. Adm. James A. Zimbel, 

had been in Lebanon when the initial assaults began on Grenada. His absence 

had made it difficult for the medical staff to gain a hearing about medical 

issues from senior members of the Atlantic Command staff.80

Things changed when Admiral Zimbel returned to Norfolk. Zimbel 

infused the medical effort to support Urgent Fury with energy and a sense 

77 Chronology, 307th Med Bn, Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH.

78 Intervs, Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 1983], and author with Cleary, 14 Jul 1986 

(quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 79 Intervs, Pirnie with Jackson, 23 May 1985, and Hicks with Ashley and Phelps, [Nov 

1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 80 Intervs, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov and 23 Dec 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
A Period of Transition

491

of purpose. He strengthened the medical evacuation chain by moving physicians and nurses to the naval hospital at Roosevelt Roads. Then, he settled a 

problem that had worried Colonel Rumbaugh almost from the beginning of 

the operation by making certain that the Army would continue to have naval 

medical facilities offshore once combat officially ended and the fleet departed 

for the eastern Mediterranean. As a result, the USS Saipan relieved the Guam

on 31 October and stood off Grenada for as long as the Army needed it.81

By then, Army medical reinforcements were also en route. On 29 October at 

General Trobaugh’s request, Colonel Richardson began dispatching Medical 

Task Force 5 (built around the 5th Surgical Hospital) to Barbados. Waiting to 

deploy since 25 October, the unit’s advance element included its commander, 

Colonel Costanzo; its chief surgeon, Lt. Col. Graham Yelland; its chief nurse, 

Lt. Col. Patricia Diskin; and ten senior noncommissioned officers. Upon 

arrival, the group crowded into a small area with only limited facilities at 

Grantley Adams. The members were not permitted to dig latrines. Fortunately, 

an airline allowed the nurses to use one of its bathrooms and a shower. “Since 

we were in limbo about when to deploy,” noted Colonel Diskin, “we could 

only set up some sleeping tents and eat cold C-rations.” Meanwhile, Colonels 

Yelland and Diskin began coordinating with Air Force Lt. Col. A. Felix Meyer 

III’s 1st Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, which was providing treatment 

for casualties evacuated from Grenada, and a number of the task force’s nurses 

volunteered to assist the squadron. Most of the task force members, however, 

held back to be able to move as quickly as possible to Grenada.82

Medical Task Force 5 slowly built up as Colonel Richardson found space 

for additional members on Barbados-bound aircraft, but complications 

developed. On 30 October some twenty-nine personnel in the fourth echelon 

departed aboard the wrong aircraft, which flew directly to Grenada rather than 

to Barbados. Arriving after dark, the group slept on the floor at 1st Support 

Command-Forward I headquarters. In the morning General Trobaugh’s staff 

discovered that seven female nurses were part of the group. General Trobaugh’s 

policy was not to permit women to enter the area of operations, based on the 

interpretation by the division staff of the Department of the Army’s Combat 

Exclusion Policy of 1977, amended in 1982, that barred women from entry 

into direct combat. This was an odd interpretation of the law given that female 

Army nurses had worked in the forward combat areas from World War II on. 

An additional practical consideration—lack of space—also played a role. The 

division support commander, Colonel Daly, reported that the airfield did not 

81 Chronology, Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn 

Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. J, pp. I-J-1 to I-J-5, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; 

Intervs, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov and 23 Dec 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 82 Rpt, Diskin, n.d., sub: Notes on Grenada, p. 2 (quoted words); Rpt, Davis, n.d., sub: 

[Urgent Fury], pp. 3–4; and AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Nursing Methods Analyst, 5th MASH, 

6 Dec 1983, p. 3. All in Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. See also DF, Cdr, 5th 

MASH, to Cdr, 44th Med Bde, 28 Oct 1983, sub: Troop Manifest for 1st Echelon (as of 1500 

Hrs), Hist files (Papers/Oland), CMH; Interv, McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 

1984, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Members of Medical Task Force 5 on Grenada; below, Colonel Yelland with two 

nurses
Colonel Diskin in the operating tent; below, Visiting with the nursing staff of St. 

George’s Hospital
The Rucksack War

494

have any room to position another medical unit. The area around the runway 

was simply too crowded. As a result, the division sent the seven female nurses 

to Barbados by helicopter. The male members of the contingent followed that 

evening.83

By then, officers on General Trobaugh’s staff were having second thoughts 

and debating the wisdom of bringing Medical Task Force 5 to Grenada at 

all. The issue came to a head the next day, 31 October, when Trobaugh visited 

the medical facility at True Blue. The general arrived when the senior surgeon, Colonel Jackson, was treating a gunshot wound. As with all the other 

medical professionals, Jackson realized that bad weather could prevent use 

of the Navy’s facilities afloat. Given that circumstance, he told Trobaugh, the 

307th Medical Battalion would need the XVIII Airborne Corps’ 5th Surgical 

Hospital as back up. Trobaugh responded, “Send them in, but no females.”84

That same day the rear echelon of Medical Task Force 5 arrived on 

Barbados. Based on the information he had received from the Air Force, 

Colonel Costanzo configured his equipment and personnel for transport by 

C–130s. Notified that he would take an all-male contingent to Grenada on 

a larger C–141 departing at 1400, he shuffled his personnel, reconfigured his 

equipment, and reported to the plane, only to be told after boarding that the 

task force’s departure was postponed. At Fort Bragg Colonel Richardson had 

discovered that Trobaugh had stripped all the females out of the task force. 

He went to the corps commander, General Mackmull, and protested vehemently: It made no sense to send the task force to Grenada and leave most 

of the nurses on Barbados. Mackmull agreed and said he would take care of 

it. Following his intervention, with the women once again attached and after 

yet another reconfiguration of equipment, the lead element of the task force 

finally departed Barbados in the first hour of 2 November aboard a C–130; the 

rest of the task force deployed to Grenada before dawn of the same day. By 

then neither space nor gender was any longer an issue.85

With most of the fighting ended, Colonel Rumbaugh went into St. 

George’s to check on health conditions. He was appalled by what he 

observed. Refuse was scattered all over the streets, because units of the 82d 

Airborne Division had commandeered all the civilian garbage trucks in an 

83 Intervs, McElroy with Richardson and Barrett, 17 Jan 1984, plus author with Daly, 

31 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Mary Ellen Condon-Rall, comp., Department of the 

Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1983, pp. 60–62. On the nurses’ experiences, see Rpt, 

Millie, n.d., sub: [Urgent Fury], pp. 1–2; Rpt, Johnson, n.d., sub: Reflections on Grenadian 

Experience, pp. 1–3; Rpt, Diskin, n.d., sub: Notes on Grenada, pp. 2–4; Rpt, Davis, n.d., sub: 

[Urgent Fury], pp. 3–4; and AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Nursing Methods Analyst, 5th MASH, 

6 Dec 1983, p. 3. All in Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH. 84 Chronology, 44th Med Bde, Hist files (Papers/Rumbaugh), CMH; Interv (quoted words), 

Oland with Rumbaugh, 23 Dec 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Diary, Jackson, 31 Oct 

1983, Hist files (Papers/Jackson), CMH. 85 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, Nursing Methods Analyst, 5th MASH, 6 Dec 1983, p. 3; Rpt, 

Diskin, n.d., sub: Notes on Grenada, pp. 3–4. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), 

CMH. See also Chronology, Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH; Interv, Oland with W. Richardson, 

3 Mar 1988, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
A Period of Transition

495

overenthusiastic effort to improve their mobility. Rumbaugh believed that 

cholera might break out if he did not act immediately. On his representation, 

General Trobaugh’s headquarters instructed the units to return the garbage 

trucks at once.86

The issue of potable water also became a major concern, and Colonel 

Rumbaugh’s preventive medicine officer traveled all over the island to test 

water sources for potability. He found one spring so badly polluted that he 

suspected deliberate poisoning. His work took him into the general population, where he constantly picked up leads about senior members of the previous government and the location of arms caches. He turned them over to the 

82d Airborne Division intelligence for further investigation. He also developed 

useful medical information on the levels of chlorine in the various municipal 

water systems, leaks in several sewage treatment systems, and beaches that 

were contaminated and should be off limits. The information, however, came 

at a price. He was sniped at on several occasions, with a round at one point just 

missing his foot.87

As part of the survey of long-term medical needs, Colonel Rumbaugh visited the civilian hospital in St. George’s. Only one physician but all the nurses 

had stayed to care for their patients. Badly injured survivors of the coup as 

well as people wounded during the more recent fighting filled the wards to 

overflowing; lack of supplies and personnel meant that the staff could provide 

only minimal care. Rumbaugh had a fully equipped mobile surgical hospital on the island and recognized that from a humanitarian point of view the 

Army needed to take control of the civilian hospital and reinforce its resident staff. He hesitated, however, because the move was without precedent in 

his experience. After contacting State Department representatives, he decided 

to seek permission from the Grenadian Ministry of Health. The minister, a 

member of the old regime, had fled, but his deputy remained at his post. He 

regarded Rumbaugh’s suggestion as inspired and hastened to provide written 

authority. Rumbaugh immediately began moving people and equipment into 

the building; however, once inside, one of the Grenadians mentioned that an 

arms cache was somewhere in the structure. Rumbaugh immediately pulled 

the Army medical staff out and requested assistance. In response, a 2d Brigade 

unit searched the building, located the arms in a tunnel, and placed a guard 

over them until they could be hauled away. Rumbaugh and his staff resumed 

their work. Surgeons from Medical Task Force 5 and the division performed 

eight hours of surgery every day for over two weeks to help alleviate the medical backlog from gunshot and other trauma wounds at the St. George’s civilian 

hospital. Civilian patients requiring more specialized treatment went through 

the military medical evacuation chain to Puerto Rico and then, if necessary, 

to the United States.88

86 Intervs, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov and 23 Dec 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

87 Ibid., 23 Dec 1987, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

88 Chronology, Hist files (Papers/Wilson), CMH; ibid., 44th Med Bde, Hist files (Papers/

Rumbaugh), CMH; Intervs, Oland with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov and 23 Dec 1987, plus Wade with 

Bradley, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

496

Colonel Rumbaugh sought to ensure that the Grenadians continued to 

receive medical support after he returned to Fort Bragg. He asked Ambassador 

Gillespie to solicit medical support for the civilian population by writing a letter to the new U.S. Forces, Grenada, commander, General Farris, who had 

been promoted to major general upon assuming command. Gillespie had 

no difficulty composing such a request. Secretary of State George P. Shultz 

was already on record favoring generous medical assistance to the Grenadian 

population. Beyond concerns for basic humanity, everyone understood that 

to maintain local support for the new government the United States had to at 

least match the Cuban medical outreach to the civilian population. It had been 

one of the most popular programs fostered by the regime of Maurice Bishop. 

Gillespie’s letter gave Farris the opening to do this. In its wake, Rumbaugh 

initiated a program of mobile medical clinics that crisscrossed the island treating minor medical problems and referring more serious cases to the hospital 

at St. George’s.89

Removing Captured Equipment

The mass of captured Soviet equipment on Grenada served as a powerful 

magnet for a variety of U.S. intelligence agencies, both uniformed and civilian. 

As those organizations competed for control of the materiel, the 82d’s G–4, 

Colonel Crabtree, made and then remade plans for moving it to the mainland. 

Complicating matters for him, corps and division logisticians on the scene had 

discovered early in the operation that the island lacked sufficient light craft to 

load a vessel standing offshore. Worried about the possibility of an accident 

when moving the equipment and munitions through densely populated areas 

like St. George’s, however, they did not want to use the port’s docks. They still 

hoped to load the cargo off a lightly populated beach, a concept known as 

over-the-shore logistics.90

At Fort Bragg the corps G–4, Col. Corless W. Mitchell, proposed using 

barges from Barbados as lighters. Although this appeared feasible, the roads 

between the Grenadian supply complex and either the beach or the port were 

in terrible shape and needed improvement before the Army could move anything potentially unstable over them. Division logisticians planned for Army 

engineers to improve the roads. Then U.S. Forces, Grenada, would move the 

materiel by truck to a beach and use lighters procured from Barbados or elsewhere to load the SS Dolly Thurman, the chartered freighter the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff had dispatched to the island for that purpose. The impending arrival of a 

congressional delegation led to one amendment: General Vessey directed that 

the loading cease until after the departure of the VIPs because the quantity 

89 Memo, McKinley for Hill and Stanford, 1 Nov 1983, sub: Aeromedical Evacuation for 

Civilians on Grenada, Hist files (Papers/Oland), CMH; Chronology, 44th Med Bde, Hist files 

(Papers/Rumbaugh), CMH; Interv, Oland with Rumbaugh, 23 Dec 1987, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 90 Msg, Cavazos to HQDA, 4 0634Z Nov 1983, sub: Logistics Situation Summary, WIN 

Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH; Intervs, author with C. Mitchell, 16 

Feb 1989, and with Crabtree, 24 Jan 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
A Period of Transition

497

of materiel available for them to view would appear more impressive if left 

undisturbed. This was the approved plan when Crabtree left with the division 

assault command post on 4 November.91

That same day, General Trobaugh received an order to ship by air certain 

representative arms for displays in New York at the United Nations and in 

Washington, D.C. This amounted to only a small portion of the total, so the 

logisticians on Grenada still planned to move the bulk by sea. The corps logisticians at Fort Bragg introduced one change in Crabtree’s plan. They would 

move munitions by helicopter sling load to the docks at St. George’s and then 

use forklifts to load the rounds and any equipment brought by truck onto 

the Dolly Thurman. This meant that the ammunition would travel by air and 

relieve the engineers from undertaking any extensive road repairs, thus speeding the departure of the captured materiel. In general, the newly named Army 

Forces commander, Colonel Scott, would be responsible for locating and collecting the materiel; the commander of Task Force 525 (built around the 525th 

Military Intelligence Group), Col. John F. Stewart, would oversee its classification and inventorying; and the commander of 1st Support CommandForward I, Colonel Barrett, would be responsible for operating the collection 

points, preparing the materiel for shipping, and loading it aboard the ship.92

Meanwhile, the American Eagle, the roll-on/roll-off vessel carrying heavy 

equipment for the anticipated counterinsurgency campaign, arrived off St. 

George’s. Because the port had a limited capacity and could accommodate 

only one large vessel at a time, the Dolly Thurman steamed into the outer harbor and anchored to allow the Eagle to discharge her cargo. The anticipated 

guerrilla warfare never developed, so much of the equipment on that vessel was 

unnecessary and returned with her when she sailed for Wilmington. As a consequence, the Dolly Thurman did not regain the berth until 13 November.93

While the Dolly Thurman waited in the outer harbor, the plans to load the 

captured materiel suddenly became academic. Shortly after the departure of 

the congressional delegation on 5 November, General Trobaugh received a 

message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff directing that he move the equipment 

and munitions by air to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, to arrive no later 

than 14 November. The administration desired to put it on public display to 

emphasize the degree of Soviet involvement on the island. The earlier division 

of responsibility largely held, but to meet the deadline Trobaugh had to drop 

the separate classification and inventorying stage. To expedite shipment, the 3d 

Brigade collected materiel and ammunition at the cache sites and moved it to 

91 Msgs, Cavazos to HQDA, 4 0634Z Nov 1983, and idem to Mackmull, 5 1821Z Nov 

1983, sub: Captured Arms Special Shipment Request, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/

DA/FORSCOM), CMH. 92 Msgs, Mitchell to Russo, 6 1954Z Nov 1983, sub: Logistics Update—Urgent Fury, and 

Cavazos to McDonald, 7 1717Z Nov 1983, sub: Retrograde/Disposition of Captured Foreign 

Materiel, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH; Interv, Wade with 

Barrett, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 93 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. D, p. I-D-15, Hist files 

(PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH.
A warehouse containing Soviet weapons and ammunition
Assorted Soviet weapons
The Rucksack War

500

the racetrack north of St. George’s, where Colonel Scott held it under guard 

preparatory to its movement to Point Salines by helicopter. Colonel Barrett 

received the mission to prepare for shipment one example of each major piece 

of equipment captured and “all small arms, weapons, uniforms, and other 

miscellaneous equipment located at Frequente,” to inventory and load all 

materiel and ammunition, and to report the contents and time of departure 

of each aircraft. Because he had very few 1st Support Command resources at 

this point, he used every corps unit that he could lay his hands on to do the 

job. One unit was the 7th Transportation Group, which was attached to the 

1st Support Command for the operation. Barrett called upon the 7th’s port 

specialists, who had arrived at Point Salines on 1 November, and put them to 

work at the Frequente warehouse complex.94

The corps engineer, Col. Daniel R. Schroeder, was on Grenada at that 

time to assess the long-term engineer support U.S. Forces, Grenada, might 

require. When a corps engineer task force built around Capt. Roderick A. 

Chisholm’s Company C, 548th Engineer Battalion, began to arrive at Point 

Salines, Colonel Schroeder volunteered its services for palletizing and loading captured ammunition at the airfield. Consequently, Captain Chisholm and 

the lead task force element arrived at 2330 on 6 November (the final echelon, 

two hours later) to find themselves pressed into service as instant stevedores. 

With their assistance, the first C–141 carrying captured munitions departed 

Point Salines on 8 November. For the next three days the engineers loaded 

aircraft, catching what little sleep they could on the ground beside the runway. 

“Everybody,” recalled Chisholm, “was pretty tired after that.”95

The departure of the materiel for the Andrews display still left a substantial residue of equipment at Frequente and munitions as well as arms in other 

caches that the 3d Brigade was still discovering. For these, Trobaugh could 

revert to the Crabtree plan as modified by corps logisticians. Once the munitions were collected, inventoried, classified, and packed, UH–60s carried them 

by slings to the docks at St. George’s, while trucks hauled the equipment overland to the port for standard loading. When the Dolly Thurman finally sailed 

on 18 November, the amount of materiel the ship actually carried was considerably less than initially planned due to the shipments by air.96

94 Msg, JCS to LANTCOM, 6 1955Z Nov 1983, sub: Static Display of Captured Arms 

and Equipment, and Info Paper (quoted words), AOC, 6 Nov 1983, sub: Display of Captured 

Items, Hist files (PDocs/DA/AOC), CMH; Msgs, Sills to Barrett, n.d. 1435 local, Hist files 

(Papers/Barrett), CMH; and Msg, Cdr, U.S. Forces, Grenada (Chewning), to USCINCLANT, 

6 1858Z Nov 1983, sub: Arms/Equipment for United Nations in Washington, D.C., Display, 

WIN Telecon Msg, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH. For the visit of the congressional delegation, see Stokes, “A Grenada Diary,” 4–5 Nov 1983, Congressional Record, daily ed. 

(16 Nov 1983): H5581–82. 95 Msgs, Mackmull to Cavazos, 6 2047z Nov 1983, and 7 2252Z Nov 1983, subs: Engr SitRpts, 

WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII 

Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. II, an. C, pp. II-C-1 to II-C-2, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), 

CMH; Interv (quoted words), author with Chisholm, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 96 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corps, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. B, p. I-B-1, and an. D, 

p. I-D-15, Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; Msg, JCS to LANTCOM, 6 1955Z 
A Period of Transition

501

The various stops and starts and changes of direction involved in shipping 

the captured materiel to the United States appeared utterly confusing at times 

to logisticians on Grenada. What happened made sense only in the context of 

the larger competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and 

the Reagan administration’s commitment to win the public relations war over 

the meaning of the Grenada intervention. This episode also illustrated a truth 

that American soldiers have had to relearn in every conflict since the founding of the Republic: For the soldier in the field, national policy is like a force 

of nature. It can change abruptly, virtually without warning, and be seemingly unrelated to the situation on the ground. Although the planner may rail 

against the instant conversion of his well-considered schemes to waste paper, 

and the soldier may curse labor uselessly expended, they both must in the end 

accommodate themselves to the change and go on with as much good cheer as 

they can muster—and so they did on Grenada. 

General Farris Takes Command

On 9 November General Trobaugh returned to the United States, leaving 

General Farris as U.S. Forces, Grenada, commander. The same day Farris 

directed Colonel Barrett to assume responsibility from Forward Area Support 

Team III for the protection of the airfield at Point Salines. Barrett had known 

for several days that his 1st Support Command-Forward I would receive the 

mission, which was not at all unusual for this type of organization. Corps 

units, because of their number of personnel and the amount of their equipment, required much more ground than the divisional units they replaced. As 

a result, the rear-area protection plans and defensive zones worked out by 

Captain Mason became obsolete with their arrival. Barrett’s first move in this 

situation was to contact his boss at Fort Bragg, Colonel Richardson, to try 

to obtain a rear-area operations center team. An entity responsible for coordinating rear-area protection, it was particularly valuable because of its large 

communications capability. Because all units of this type were in the reserve 

components, Richardson could only send him one if the president proclaimed 

a national emergency. Faced with making do with units already available, 

Barrett gave the task of preparing a rear-area defense plan to his provost marshal, Capt. Michael Pearson, and an engineer officer on his staff, Maj. Hubert 

L. Gibson. The two completed it by the time 1st Support Command-Forward 

I assumed the airfield defense mission.97

Devising that plan was only the first and easiest part of the exercise. 

Colonel Barrett’s next priority was to make certain that the defense itself was 

Nov 1983, and Info Paper, 6 Nov 1983, Hist files (PDocs/DA/AOC), CMH; Msg, Mitchell to 

Russo, 6 1945Z Nov 1983, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH; 

Interv, Wade with Rhodes, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Msg Extracts, CINCLANT, 

04 0130Z [Nov 1983], and JCS, 05 0034Z [Nov 1983], in Misc Master Scenario Events List 

(Logistics Structure—Movement), Hist files (PDocs/DoD/JCS), CMH; “Public To See Arms 

Seized on Grenada,” New York Post, 9 Nov 1983. 97 Intervs, author with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986, and Wade with Barrett, [Nov 1983], Hist files 

(Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

502

prepared. Because division units were pulling units out while corps elements 

were arriving, a division unit might appear to be manning a sector on a reararea map when in fact it was deplaning at Fort Bragg. To avoid such complications, Barrett and his staff had to carefully coordinate arrivals and departures. 

They also had to get everyone on the same communications nets, and this took 

time. 1st Support Command-Forward I also held daily practice alerts simulating attacks that allowed the staff to identify all kinds of practical complications and problems. U.S. Forces, Grenada, for example, had established a post 

exchange at the airfield, and a question immediately arose as to what customers were supposed to do when an alert sounded. The 82d Support Command 

had hired Grenadians to clear the rubble, and a similar question surfaced 

as to where they were to go. The alert procedure itself required redundancy. 

Captain Pearson used three methods of alerting people—radio, visual, and 

siren. Everyone heard or saw one, but no one heard or saw all three.98

Experience soon allowed Major Gibson and Captain Pearson to further 

refine their plan. Some problems they identified came about because U.S. 

Forces, Grenada, had suddenly established a military airport operating under 

wartime conditions in the midst of a peaceful civilian community. Units, for 

example, selected the most defensible terrain when laying out their sectors. In 

one case, this meant running concertina wire through the middle of a village. 

Because the place had only one well, this cut half of the residents off from their 

water supply. The Americans could build a gate, but gates had to be manned 

twenty-four hours a day. Given 1st Support Command-Forward I’s manpower 

limitations, the overarching reason for not creating another entrance was maintaining good security; fewer points of access provided greater control over 

who entered the airfield. In this instance, however, the needs of the villagers 

prevailed. To identify who was and who was not a member of the community, 

the Americans hired one of the residents to stay by the gate and identify local 

inhabitants.99

The type of fuel used by area residents in their cook stoves—propane—

also posed a security problem. Because the Beirut bombing was rumored to 

have involved a propane truck, to allow such a vehicle inside the airfield perimeter to replenish local supplies caused the military police grave concern. Again 

the needs of the local inhabitants won out, but Colonel Barrett allowed the 

truck through the gate only if a householder met it and accompanied it to his 

home under careful observation by the military police.100

Initially Barrett’s headquarters found it difficult to handle the rear-area protection mission because it had little communications capability of its own. While 

one AN/URC-101 radio was available for contacting Fort Bragg, the channels it 

used were saturated with other traffic. The 35th Signal Brigade planned to provide internal as well as external communications, but it was unable to do so until 

10 November. As a consequence, Barrett’s staff spent inordinate amounts of 

98 Interv, author with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

99 Ibid.; Briefing, Barrett, 9 Sep 1986, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH.

100 Interv, author with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; Briefing, Barrett, 9 

Sep 1986, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH.
A Period of Transition

503

time coordinating actions, such as the arrival and departure of units and establishing security procedures around the airfield. Such activities detracted from 

what Barrett identified as his staff’s main job: preparing plans for the systematic 

withdrawal of all corps support command elements to the United States.101

Barrett’s headquarters was located at the Cuban compound, about 1,300 

meters from the terminal. When the colonel became responsible for airport 

security, he decided to move his headquarters back to the terminal and did so 

on 10 November. Although absolutely necessary from a tactical and communications standpoint, the new site presented problems. Because general officers 

arrived continually on Grenada and always via the airport, Colonel Barrett 

found himself spending much of his own time briefing and escorting them. 

The commander of the Military Airlift Command, General Thomas M. Ryan 

Jr., for example, arrived much concerned about the safety of his C–141s. He 

wanted a briefing on airfield security. U.S. Army Forces Command’s deputy 

chief of staff for logistics, Maj. Gen. Vincent M. Russo, arrived to conduct an 

inspection. Barrett stayed with him throughout the entire four-hour tour.102

101 LL, sub: Communications, and [MFR], Barrett, 9 Nov 1983, sub: COSCOM Planning, 

Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH; Interv, Wade with Barrett, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 102 Intervs, Hicks with Barrett, [Nov 1983]; Oland with W. Richardson, 3 Mar 1988; and 

Hicks with Starling, Nov 1983. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Chart, Urgent Fury

Airflow, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH.

General Ryan accepting a T-shirt upon his arrival at Point Salines
The Rucksack War

504

Field sanitation was another major issue facing Colonel Barrett. He 

emphasized improving unit waste disposal when he took control of airfield 

operations, but the real problem was the accumulation of wastes that had been 

generated by the masses of soldiers, refugees, and detainees between 25 October 

and 9 November. Grenada’s rural poor followed casual practices of personal 

waste disposal and too many of the troops followed their example. Visitors 

to the airfield, as a result, had to watch where they stepped once they left the 

asphalt surface of the runway if they wanted to avoid human excrement. One 

officer found feces next to the supply point, where the corps support command 

stocked food. Although the rations were boxed and sealed to prevent any possibility of contamination, the juxtaposition was disconcerting.103

During his brief stay on Grenada, the division surgeon, Colonel Sidenberg, 

had attempted without success to convince the 82d’s command group to devote 

the resources necessary to remedy the problem. Rather than making field sanitation a matter of command emphasis, the attitude of General Trobaugh and 

his senior advisers was one of “boys will be boys.” Division engineers and some 

logistical units had built latrines, but these were used only by staffs and units in 

fixed locations. Usually on the move, infantry battalions had enjoyed no such 

luxuries. The proper procedure for them was to have the troops dig catholes 

and cover up the waste, but whether the men followed this procedure depended 

largely upon command emphasis, which was lacking in some instances. For 

many troopers personal hygiene, in the expressive phrase of one officer, “zeroed 

out” in the field, a truth immediately apparent to the visitor who stepped off a 

C–141 at the eastern end of the runway and inhaled deeply.104

The trash normally generated by military units, the mess associated with 

an active construction site, and the widespread battle damage compounded 

the poor field sanitation. All of these factors contributed to the magnitude 

of the clean-up effort required at Point Salines. Early in the operation the 

82d Airborne Division’s contracting officer began hiring local workers to collect and dispose of garbage and to clean up the airfield, but they were often 

diverted to such other tasks as clearing land where units arriving in theater 

planned to set up. Concerns about security, moreover, helped to keep the work 

force small. All workers had to be checked by military intelligence before 1st 

Support Command-Forward I hired them. In fact, shortly before Colonel 

Barrett took over on 9 November, the military police had discovered five New 

JEWEL members among the workers. These supporters of the Austin regime 

had sabotaged military equipment at the airfield.105

103 Intervs, author with Farris, 14 Apr 1989, with Cleary, 7 Aug 1986, and with BakerKimmel, 18 Jul 1986, plus Oland with W. Richardson, 3 Mar 1988, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

See also AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 44th Med Bde, n.d., an. N, Hist files (Papers/Rumbaugh), 

CMH; Briefing, Barrett, 9 Sep 1986, Hist files (Papers/Barrett), CMH. 104 Intervs, author with Boyles, 2 Mar 1989, and with Cleary, 7 Aug 1986; Wade with Barrett, 

[Nov 1983]; Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983], and with Mason, [Nov 1983]; Oland with W. 

Richardson, 3 Mar 1988, and with Rumbaugh, 23 Dec 1987; and Burdett with Clawson, [Nov 

1983]. All in Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also Charles T. Lanham, “Urgent Fury Grenada,” 

p. 11 (quoted words), printed copy in Hist files (PStudies), CMH. 105 Interv, Wade with Barrett, [Nov 1983], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
A Period of Transition

505

On 11 November an impending visit by the commander of Forces 

Command, General Richard E. Cavazos, a veteran infantry officer who 

would know exactly what the rotting excrement around the airfield implied 

about unit discipline, apparently precipitated what happened next. General 

Farris, who had been immersed in civil-military concerns in St. George’s since 

his arrival, came to the airfield and was dissatisfied with the conditions. He 

relieved Colonel Barrett of command and sent him back to Fort Bragg on the 

next plane.106

These two were highly competent officers but with very dissimilar personalities. Farris was an aggressive high-energy individual, very much the prototypical commander; Barrett was highly intelligent, analytical, and detached, the 

epitome of the staff officer. These differences appear to have weighed heavily 

with Farris, but to him the issue was quite simple: He had told Barrett to clean 

up the airfield, and the colonel had not done it during the two days he had 

held command. Instead, he had offered excuses, mainly about the magnitude 

of the task and the size of the work force. At Fort Bragg Colonel Richardson 

was outraged when he learned of Farris’ action, believing that Farris had made 

Barrett a scapegoat for the failings of others. Richardson flew to Grenada to 

personally protest the relief, but by the time he arrived Barrett’s replacement, 

Colonel Starling, was already on the island.107

The Shift to Peacekeeping

Colonel Starling arrived at Point Salines on 12 November and immediately conferred with General Farris. The general gave him two missions: secure 

the airfield, and clean up the mess. The first was not an easy one because the 

units involved had a difficult time subordinating their primary operational 

missions to a higher headquarters not normally in their chain of command—a 

common occurrence in base defense and other rear-area operations. Over time 

Colonel Starling developed a good working relationship with all the people at 

the airfield. As far as the second mission was concerned, Starling had inherited 

“a tremendous mess.” He developed a two-phase plan to deal with it––hiring 

more contract workers, and making tenant units responsible for the cleanup 

of a sector of the airfield and surrounding terrain––and made a specific unit 

responsible for every portion of the ground inside the defense perimeter.108

It took about a week to get these two missions under control. Once 

accomplished, Colonel Starling turned to what he regarded as his real mission: providing combat service support for all the units on the island. Starling 

brought in “real experts” from corps who understood logistical operations in 

Class I (subsistence), Class II (clothing and textiles, individual equipment, 

organizational tool sets and kits, and administrative and housekeeping supplies and equipment), Class III (petroleum fuels, lubricants, hydraulic and 

106 Intervs, author with Barrett, 18 Jul 1986, and with Farris, 14 Apr 1989, Hist files (Intervs), 

CMH. 107 Interv, Oland with W. Richardson, 3 Mar 1988, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. The description of their personalities is based on the author’s personal observations of the two men. 108 Interv, Hicks with Starling, Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Conditions in the aftermath of Urgent Fury
A Period of Transition

507

insulating oils, and so forth), Class IV (construction materials), and Class V 

(ammunition).109

In the end, at least from the perspective of Forward Area Support Team 

III, the new people also interjected great amounts of paperwork into logistical operations that had run until then on a wartime basis with a minimum of 

red tape. The team coordinator, Major Watson, for example, almost got into 

a fistfight with a Class I officer who refused to issue rations unless Watson 

presented forms filled out in quadruplicate. All of Watson’s forms were back 

at Fort Bragg, and the troops had eaten his entire stock of rations. Eventually, 

the 3d Brigade adapted to the new paperwork requirements. 1st Corps Support 

Command-Forward I assumed responsibility for direct support of divisional 

units on 23 November, when Forward Area Support Team III deployed back 

to the United States.110

XVIII Airborne Corps continued to support the forces on Grenada using 

an air line rather than a sea line of communications. In part, the decision was 

political. President Reagan had promised that the U.S. presence on the island 

would be of short duration, and General Mackmull was concerned lest the 

news media misinterpret the establishment of a sea line as a signal for a longterm American commitment.111

The air line of communications gave Colonel Starling more flexibility 

in calling forward supplies, but it cost more and was subject to disruption 

by weather or by diversions of aircraft to higher-priority missions. XVIII 

Airborne Corps planned to dispatch two log birds each day to Point Salines, 

for example, but on some days no aircraft arrived. Army logisticians had built 

up a sizable logistical base on Grenada by then and could draw upon it when 

necessary. This and the slow drawdown of Army strength, which kept the 

costs of an air line of communications bearable, meant that General Farris 

and Starling did not have to worry about a few days’ disruption in the line of 

supply.112

Pacification and nation building were by far the most important U.S. 

Forces, Grenada, missions during November and December 1983, but 1st 

Support Command-Forward I played only a minor role. Other agencies—

the Agency for International Development and the U.S. Forces, Caribbean, 

Disaster Assistance Relief Team—provided and distributed supplies for the 

civilian population, although General Farris gave Colonel Starling the mission of supplying potable water to the hospitals and prisons. Because this was 

not an anticipated mission, it became an additional duty for the logisticians. 

Starling had to use his own command’s resources, but he did it and still managed to discharge his other responsibilities. 1st Support Command-Forward I’s 

greatest contribution to pacification and nation building was entirely indirect. 

109 Ibid. 110 Intervs, Hicks with Starling, Nov 1983, and Wade with C. Watson, 18 Nov 1983, Hist 

files (Intervs), CMH; Brief Slides, 82d DISCOM, Hist files (Papers/Daly), CMH. 111 Interv, Hicks with Starling, Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 112 Ibid.; Msg, Cavazos to McDonald and HQ DA, 15 2226 Z Nov 1983, sub: Logistics 

Situation Summary, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH.
The Rucksack War

508

It pumped money into the Grenadian economy by contracting for goods and 

services from local individuals and businesses.113

Contracting also had a direct benefit: It permitted a rapid reduction in 

the number of combat service support troops. When Colonel Starling arrived, 

1st Support Command-Forward I consisted of 928 men and women. By 

25 November Starling had reduced that number to 450, and those soldiers 

were providing direct support to the divisional as well as corps units on the 

island.114

By 18 November General Farris’ intelligence officers had accounted by 

name for all the Cubans assigned to Grenada at the time of the intervention 

and for all but twenty-five People’s Revolutionary Army soldiers. The last sniping incident of the campaign occurred four days later on the twenty-second. 

By then, Farris was convinced that Grenada was no longer a military problem 

but a police problem. Even so, the Grenadian police had virtually ceased to 

exist as a separate professional force during the years in which Maurice Bishop 

was in power. Reconstituting and training the force became a key determinant 

in the withdrawal of American ground forces. Until a local constabulary was 

ready to assume police functions, infantrymen had to man checkpoints and 

search houses and cars for weapons. These were tasks that made most of the 

Americans, from commanding general to private, profoundly uneasy because 

in the United States a real if unstated line divided the military and civilian 

spheres under all but the most extraordinary conditions. In the context of 

Grenadian history, however, these were extraordinary conditions, and under 

the Grenadian constitution the actions were legal.115

Governor General Scoon had reestablished the Grenadian government in 

St. George’s on 28 October with a radio address to the nation. From that point 

on, U.S. forces remained on the island at the invitation of the Grenadian government and hence operated within the framework provided by the Grenadian 

constitution and laws. So the infantry soldiered on, apologizing for car searches 

and leaving notes with happy faces scrawled on them to tell absent householders they had conducted a search—and perhaps walked the dog and cleaned up 

his mess as happened in one instance—while they were out.116

As the inability of remnants of the Grenadian army to sustain a guerrilla war became increasingly evident, General Farris reduced his combat 

113 Intervs, Hicks with Starling, Nov 1983, and Danner, Frasché, and Bishop with Farris, 

18 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH; SitRpt no. 23, GWG, 31 Oct 1983, sub: Situation in 

Grenada as of 1700 EST, GWG files, DoS. 114 Intervs, Hicks with Starling, Nov 1983, and Danner, Frasché, and Bishop with Farris, 18 

Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 115 Intervs, Danner, Frasché, and Bishop with Farris, 18 Nov 1983, and author with Farris, 

14 Apr 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. See also SitRpt no. 16, GWG, 28 Oct 1983, sub: Situation 

in Grenada as of 0500 EST; SitRpt no. 18, GWG, 29 Oct 1983, sub: Situation in Grenada as of 

0500 EST; and SitRpt no. 20, GWG, 30 Oct 83, sub: Situation in Grenada as of 0500 EST. All 

in GWG files, DoS. 116 Intervs, Danner, Frasché, and Bishop with Farris, 18 Nov 1983, and author with Farris, 

14 Apr 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. Geoffrey Wagner, Red Calypso, pp. 174–85, comments 

on his personal experiences with U.S. forces. 
A Period of Transition

509

forces. Colonel Shaw’s 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry, departed for Fort Bragg 

on 12 November. Colonel Scott, his 3d Brigade headquarters, and Colonel 

Crocker’s 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry, left ten days later. The 2d Battalion, 

505th Infantry, commander, Colonel Nightengale, succeeded Scott as Army 

Forces, Grenada, commander. Nightengale’s battalion became the last U.S. 

combat unit on the island. It withdrew on 12 December. Three days later 

General Farris turned command over to the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force. 

All remaining U.S. troops, except for a residual training detachment, redeployed to Fort Bragg at that time.117

Nation Building and Peacekeeping

The completion of Operation Urgent Fury and the withdrawal of the 

last of the 82d Airborne Division’s infantry battalions did not end the U.S. 

Army’s involvement with Grenada. By December 1983 one of the Reagan 

administration’s major goals still remained unfulfilled—the establishment of 

a stable and democratic government on the island, or, in effect, nation building, although the term was not used. The Army’s mission was to assist the 

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force in maintaining internal security so that the 

117 AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, XVIII Abn Corp, [Jan 1984], sec. I, an. C, pp. I-C-1 to I-C-2, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/XVIIIAbnCorps), CMH; AAR, Opn Urgent Fury, 82d Abn Div, 6 Feb 

1984, pp. 3–4, Hist files (PDocs/DA/82AbnDiv), CMH; Msg, Mackmull to Russo, 8 1501Z Nov 

1983, sub: Redeployment, WIN Telecon Msgs, Hist files (PDocs/DA/FORSCOM), CMH.

Scoon talking to the media as head of the new government
The Rucksack War

510

Grenadians could establish democratic institutions. The Joint Chiefs of Staff 

named the peacekeeping mission Operation Island Breeze.

118

In the wake of the successful intervention by the United States and its eastern Caribbean allies, Governor General Scoon decided against reconstituting 

the Grenadian army. The People’s Revolutionary Army by its participation in 

the coup that had overthrown Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and its complicity in his assassination had given military organizations an odious reputation 

on Grenada. Instead, Scoon proposed that a reorganized and expanded Royal 

Grenadian Police Force assume the internal security role. Although the police 

had been able to maintain an identity separate from the regime during the 

years of New JEWEL control, Scoon nonetheless wanted all supporters of the 

old regime removed from the force so that they could never become a threat 

to some future democratically elected government. Because the standards of 

police conduct under both Bishop and his predecessor, Sir Eric M. Gairy, had 

been less than satisfactory, Scoon also wanted the force to be thoroughly reorganized and retrained.119

The Reagan administration and its allies adopted a two-fold plan in the 

Caribbean. Expanded to some 350 people, the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force 

would assume the internal security mission when U.S. combat troops redeployed to the United States. At the same time, British and Barbadian policemen would train the Grenadian police, while a small U.S. Army Special Forces 

team would create an elite Special Services Unit inside the rejuvenated national 

force. Organized along military lines, this 80-man paramilitary unit would provide internal security for the island once a democratically elected government 

came to power and all the foreign troops returned to their homelands.120

This plan posed problems. All the Caribbean forces involved were 

equipped with British weapons, many of them long obsolete, that the United 

States could not support logistically. Only Jamaica and Barbados, moreover, 

had contributed trained military forces to the intervention. The remainder of 

the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force consisted of police contingents in various 

states of readiness, most of which lacked training for the internal security mission that the plan asked them to perform. The Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed 

to solve the problem by providing modern American weapons, equipment, and 

training to the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force. The U.S. Army could then sustain the force during peacekeeping operations without difficulty. This solution 

also involved equipping and training any replacements that the island nations 

substituted for their original contingents on Grenada.121

118 “Operation Island Breeze Was Not a Breeze,” pp. 20–21. 119 Msg, Bish to SecState, 31 1731Z Oct 1983, sub: OECS Meeting, 83 Bridgetown 06858; 

Msgs, Gillespie to SecState, 9 2042Z Nov 1983, sub: Governor General’s Speech, 83 Grenada 

0076; idem, 10 2230Z Nov 1983, sub: Emergency Powers Regulations, 83 Grenada 0106; and 

idem, 12 1435Z Nov 1983, sub: Status of Grenada Judicial System, 83 Grenada 0139. All in 

Msg files, DoS. 120 “Operation Island Breeze,” pp. 20–21; Charles H. Schafer, “Logistics Support of the 

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force,” p. 22. 121 “Operation Island Breeze,” pp. 20–21.
A Period of Transition

511

The reequipping and training of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force began 

even before the combat troops left the island. This was necessary in order for 

the Caribbean contingent to be ready to perform internal security functions 

by mid-December 1983. Once U.S. combat forces departed and U.S. Forces, 

Grenada, headquarters dispersed, the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave R. Adm. 

Ralph R. Hedges’ U.S. Forces, Caribbean, responsibility for the supervision of 

the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force. A group of some 250 military police, communications specialists, and logisticians from XVIII Airborne Corps remained 

on the island to provide technical assistance. The corps kept them supplied 

from Fort Bragg.122

Logistical support for the Caribbean forces, however, came from a different source. The U.S. Army Depot System Command, with headquarters at 

Letterkenny Army Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, performed the mission initially. The command shipped supplies, equipment, and spare parts drawn 

from the Defense Logistics Agency and from Army depots located throughout 

the United States to Letterkenny, where workers packaged and dispatched the 

materiel by truck to Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. Air Force transports, usually C–5s or C–141s depending on the cargo and destination, then flew it to airports in either Jamaica, Barbados, or Grenada. The Depot System Command 

also organized “hand-off teams” and deployed them to the airports. The teams 

issued the requisite equipment to the peacekeeping contingents. Because many 

of the smaller islands lacked runways able to accommodate large jet aircraft, 

the teams reconfigured supplies for transshipment by C–130. This was a physically demanding task, one of “the most difficult” a team faced. The members 

would then fly to one of the small islands, distribute the materiel, and provide 

any necessary training the Caribbean forces required.123

In total, the teams consisted of some twenty-one specialists drawn from 

the Letterkenny, Tobyhanna, and New Cumberland Army Depots. Lt. Col. 

James R. Tally, the director of supply at Letterkenny, led the mission. The issuing depots tested the equipment before they shipped it. Tally’s teams tested it 

again just before issue to ensure that it had not been damaged in transit. The 

teams also provided training packages so that the island nations could maintain the equipment and request resupply when necessary.124

The amounts of materiel involved were substantial. For example, 

Tobyhanna Army Depot at Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, specialized in electronic equipment. It shipped some twenty tons of radio-transmitter-receivers, 

antennas, batteries, and power supplies to the Caribbean. On Grenada, the 

teams used the People’s Revolutionary Army’s empty warehouse complex at 

Frequente to store supplies when they arrived.125

122 Ibid.; AMCHO, “A Brief History of Army Depots, Part II,” Paper, 2000, printed copy 

in Hist files (SStudies), CMH. 123 AMCHO, “A Brief History of Army Depots,” Paper, printed copy in Hist files (SStudies), 

CMH; “Operation Island Breeze,” pp. 20–21. 124 “Operation Island Breeze,” pp. 20–21. 125 Schafer, “Logistics Support,” p. 22; AMCHO, “A Brief History of Army Depots,” Paper, 

printed copy in Hist files (SStudies), CMH.
The Rucksack War

512

Letterkenny ran the operation from November through mid-December, 

by which time it had completed the initial equipping of the Caribbean forces. 

Concurrently, it gradually shifted functions to the New Cumberland Army 

Depot near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which specialized in security assistance 

support. In mid-December New Cumberland took over the whole job. The 

Army Quartermaster School at Fort Lee, Virginia, then fielded two technical assistance teams to aid in maintaining U.S. equipment and in providing 

on-the-job training in U.S. supply procedures. One worked on Grenada. The 

other, based on Barbados, covered all the other nations involved. The team 

from Barbados also constructed training facilities on the island of St. Kitts for 

use by a Special Forces mobile training team.126

Complex administrative procedures and unfamiliar supply organizations 

posed challenges. Army trainers complained about the islanders’ overbureaucratized and, hence, slow decisionmaking. Their Caribbean counterparts could 

have made a similar comment about the at times bewildering complexity of the 

U.S. arrangements. Patience, flexibility, and a sense of humor helped everyone 

to cope.127

Other problems were more mundane. Climate and geographic conditions, for example, produced greater wear-and-tear on U.S. equipment than 

Army logisticians expected. Premature brake wear on U.S. vehicles resulted 

from steep hills, narrow, winding roads, and a complete lack of shoulders and 

sidewalks, which meant that pedestrians mingled with traffic on most of the 

islands. Neither this nor any of the other problems was major. The participants solved them all by being tolerant of one another and by making adjustments as experience revealed flaws in initial planning.128

The U.S. contingent on Grenada began withdrawing in stages during 

the spring of 1985. The last sixty soldiers from the XVIII Airborne Corps 

departed on 11 June 1985 following a ceremony at the newly completed Point 

Salines International Airport, only recently opened to civilian air traffic. The 

U.S. Forces, Caribbean, security assistance team, consisting of twenty-five 

members, remained on the island until 30 September to continue to train the 

Grenadian police.129

By the end of the first week in November 1983 the logistical situation 

on Grenada was much improved. A corps headquarters element was on the 

island, soon to assume command of U.S. Forces, Grenada. XVIII Airborne 

Corps had taken charge of the Army portion of the aerial resupply effort. 

Forward Area Support Team III, the major logistical unit remaining on the 

island, was supporting the 82d Airborne Division’s 3d Brigade as prescribed 

126 Schafer, “Logistics Support,” pp. 22–26; “Depot Supports Grenada Force,” p. 40. 127 Schafer, “Logistics Support,” pp. 22–26. 128 Ibid. 129 Dwight D. Oland, Department of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1984, pp. 

244–45; “60 Soldiers Leave Grenada; Last of U.S. Invasion Force,” New York Times, 13 Jun 

1985.
A Period of Transition

513

by doctrine as units from 1st Support Command arrived to provide direct support to nondivisional units. In effect, as General Mackmull had foreseen, the 

course of events had compelled Atlantic Command to implement Conceptual 

Plan 2360 despite its earlier disinclination to do so. That move strengthened 

the Army’s logistical effort. 

Although the Army’s logistical arrangements designed to support Army 

trainers and foreign armies appeared both overly complex and arcane to outsiders, the system was familiar to Army logisticians and one in which they 

worked easily. The training of the Grenadian security forces and those of the 

other eastern Caribbean nations moved toward a successful conclusion on 

budget and on time at least in part due to the smooth functioning of the logistical system. Great confusion in supply operations at the beginning thus gave 

way to an almost textbook, if routine, performance at the end.

12

Grenada in Perspective

The Grenada intervention sparked numerous inquiries both inside and 

outside the Army, which in several instances led to major changes in policy. These remained a living legacy of the 1983 campaign, even as the details 

faded in both public and professional memories. Subsequent events in Panama, 

Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq became in their 

turn seemingly more salient and relevant than Grenada. In addition, the passage of time has provided a larger perspective in which to assess Operation 

Urgent Fury and the Army’s logistical effort.

Military and Policy Consequences

The return of Army combat units from Grenada to the continental United 

States precipitated a round of debriefings. These provided the basis for all the 

organizations involved to prepare after action reports and lessons learned. One 

of Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh’s finest moments came when he insisted 

upon a wide-open, far-ranging critique of Operation Urgent Fury within the 

82d Airborne Division. As a result, the unit’s logistical, communications, and 

medical problems received detailed examination. In particular, the division 

thoroughly reviewed its plans and procedures for boarding aircraft and deploying and made revisions to its N-sequence based on its Grenada experiences.1

XVIII Airborne Corps and its other subordinate units went through the 

same process. In addition, the corps commander, Lt. Gen. Jack V. Mackmull, 

resolved that he would never again permit the kind of confusion that had 

dogged Urgent Fury to develop in another airflow. He insisted that for any 

future contingency the XVIII Airborne Corps commander should control the 

movement of troops and equipment off the installation whether or not he was 

in the chain of command based upon his authority as post commander. This 

somewhat strained interpretation of command relationships indicated just 

how determined corps headquarters had become to avoid repeating the sort of 

problems the operation on Grenada had entailed.2

1 Intervs, author with Daly, 31 Jul 1986, and with Cleary, 15 Jul 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

2 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and Oland with W. Richardson, 3 Mar 

1988, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

☆ ☆ ☆
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516

General Mackmull had one other pressing concern: to find out who was 

responsible for the order sending the rangers into Calivigny on the afternoon 

of 27 October. In his view the deadline for executing the mission had served 

no valid military purpose, resulting only in the death and maiming of some 

great young soldiers. The 82d Airborne Division could have easily secured the 

peninsula by advancing overland on the twenty-eighth—the very approach 

that General Trobaugh, given the slow buildup of the 3d Brigade in the Point 

Salines airhead, had planned to adopt. Over the next several weeks Mackmull 

pressed his inquiry informally, ultimately to no avail. He could find no evidence 

that the order had originated with the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) or the Joint 

Staff. He was also convinced that the commander of U.S. Atlantic Command, 

Admiral Wesley L. McDonald, had not ordered the attack. His best guess 

was that an Atlantic Command staff officer, knowing that senior officers were 

impatient with the tempo of the airborne division’s operations, had added the 

deadline and had inserted the phrase “JCS directs” for emphasis.3

Mackmull also strongly supported Trobaugh’s scheme of maneuver on 

Grenada. He believed that it represented a well-thought-out solution to the 

problems posed by the terrain, the climate, the level of resistance, the state of 

training in the 82d Airborne Division, the initial lack of wheeled transport 

in the airhead, and the fragile political support in the United States for the 

intervention. The lack of support, in particular, meant that Trobaugh had to 

try to avoid excessive military and civilian casualties on all sides. His slow and 

systematic advance had the added benefit of allowing the division to uncover 

numerous caches of Soviet arms and military supplies, many of which would 

have remained hidden if the force had moved more rapidly. In fact, after the 

82d took responsibility for the entire island, it located several caches that the 

fast-moving motorized patrols of Lt. Col. Ray L. Smith’s Battalion Landing 

Team 2/8 had missed. Trobaugh’s concept of operations had thus supported 

one of the major objectives of the intervention by eliminating the arms and 

other materiel needed to sustain any future insurrection. The ensuing civil 

peace had aided in the establishment of a stable democratic government on 

the island. For Mackmull, the lesson of Grenada was that higher headquarters physically far removed from an area of operations could not direct the 

tactical fight. They simply could not grasp the realities on the ground no matter how good the communications system. Calivigny was a prime example of 

what could happen when such a headquarters attempted to micromanage an 

operation.4

JCS Chairman General John W. Vessey had a slightly different view of 

the meaning of Calivigny. While he had on more than one occasion expressed 

dissatisfaction with the 82d’s sluggish advance in contrast to the free-wheeling 

Marine motorized columns, he had at no time issued an order requiring the 

division to seize Calivigny by the evening of the twenty-seventh. In General 

3 Intervs, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, and Hicks with W. Richardson, [Nov 1983] 

(quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 4 Interv, Bishop with Mackmull, 29 Nov 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Caches of Soviet military supplies
The Rucksack War

518

Vessey with Trobaugh and Metcalf (center background)

Vessey’s view, a commander in receipt of a foolish or out-of-date order had a 

responsibility to the men under his command to protest that order to the very 

highest levels if necessary. General Trobaugh had protested the order to his 

immediate superior, Joint Task Force (JTF) 120 commander V. Adm. Joseph 

Metcalf III, who was entirely sympathetic, and then to Admiral McDonald at 

Atlantic Command. Unsuccessful, however, he went no further. Evidence as 

to whether he had enough time to do so is lacking, but the deadline certainly 

constrained his freedom of action to pursue the protest.5

In Washington, the Joint Staff likewise reviewed its role in Operation 

Urgent Fury. Given the confusion rife in the Grenada intervention, its members concluded that they needed to integrate logisticians and communications 

experts much earlier into future contingency preparations.6

Responsible for developing doctrine for land warfare, the Department 

of the Army likewise engaged in a wide-ranging review with the Army Staff, 

collecting the reports and recommendations prepared by the Army units 

involved. Army Chief of Staff General John A. Wickham, however, decided 

to go beyond standard lessons learned and directed the U.S. Army Training 

and Doctrine Command to prepare an in-depth report of the operation. To do 

the data collection and analysis, the commander of the U.S. Army Combined 

Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Lt. Gen. Carl E. Vuono, charged 

5 Ibid.; Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987, Archives files, JHO.

6 Briefing, White and Wening, 18 Nov 1986, Archives files, JHO.
Grenada in Perspective

519

the director of the Combat Studies Institute, Col. Louis D. F. Frasché, with 

creating an ad hoc team. Designated the Grenada Work Group, the team was 

“to capture . . . Army lessons learned in terms of doctrine, training, organization, materiel, and leadership.” At about the same time, General Richard E. 

Cavazos at U.S. Army Forces Command ordered Maj. Charles R. Bishop’s 44th 

Military History Detachment to collect documents pertaining to Grenada and 

to conduct interviews with key participants. Once Colonel Frasché and Major 

Bishop became aware of one another’s activities, they coordinated their work 

and shared the information they collected.7

The result was not only an archive of materials of unparalleled richness 

and depth that would otherwise have been lost but also, from Colonel Frasché’s 

team, one of the best analyses of a Cold War–era military operation. The team 

concluded that Grenada validated existing Army doctrine and that difficulties 

mostly arose when individuals ignored it and tried to operate outside of established practices and procedures. The most disturbing conclusions centered on 

joint doctrine. Many soldiers did not know that it existed in certain areas, and 

many of those who did know had misunderstood it. Clearly, this was a subject 

7 Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, p. 

ix (quoted words); E-mail, Frasché to author, 4 Aug 2010. Both in Hist files (PDocs/DA/

CAC), CMH. See also Charles R. Bishop and E. Kathleen O’Brien, FORSCOM/ARLANT 

Participation in Operation Urgent Fury—Grenada, 1983, ed. Jean R. Moenk, FORSCOM 

Historical Monograph Series (Fort McPherson, Ga.: U.S. Army Forces Command, Military 

History Office, 1985), pp. i–ii.

Admiral McDonald
The Rucksack War

520

that offered ample room for improvement in current professional military education programs and unit training.8

As the Army sought to refine and improve doctrine and training, the 

Grenada operation in the wider policy arena served paradoxically as both 

a model for future military operations and as a cautionary tale necessitating fundamental military reform. In the wake of the intervention, Secretary 

of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger concluded that Operation Urgent Fury

served as a positive example for the future, while the war in Vietnam and the 

failed 1980 Iranian hostage rescue effort gave ample evidence of how not to 

formulate policy. He developed six major tests for determining whether to conduct a military operation. First, vital U.S. national interests had to be at stake. 

Second, the national administration had to be willing and able to commit sufficient military force to gain U.S. objectives—or, as the secretary succinctly 

phrased it, “to win.” Third, before proceeding, the United States had to have 

clearly defined political and military objectives and the administration needed 

to know “precisely” how to achieve those goals. Fourth, the president and the 

secretary of defense had to continually assess “the size, composition, and disposition of U.S. forces” in the light of national objectives and changing conditions and make adjustments when needed. Fifth, the administration needed 

8 Rpt, GWG, CAC, TRADOC, [1985], sub: Operation Urgent Fury Assessment, pp. ix–x, 

Hist files (PDocs/DA/CAC), CMH.

Colonel Frasché Major Bishop
Grenada in Perspective

521

to do all that it could to secure support for the operation from Congress 

and the American people, preferably 

before it began. Sixth, decisionmakers needed to remember that the commitment of U.S. forces to combat 

should always be the last rather than 

the first resort in any crisis. Only if an 

operation met all these tests should 

an administration proceed to action.9

Given the imprecision of intelligence and decisionmaking in the 

real world, rigid adherence to these 

provisions would have ensured that 

the United States never used military 

force again. Certainly, the standards 

set the bar very high for military intervention, which was undoubtedly the 

secretary’s intent given the political 

climate in which he drafted them. At 

the same time, the various elements 

provided a useful mental checklist 

for presidents, secretaries of state and 

defense, congressmen, senators, and 

citizens as they debated whether to order military interventions in the case 

of presidents, authorize them in the case of Congress, or support them in the 

instance of citizens.

Taken together, these dicta constituted what the press labeled the 

Weinberger Doctrine and somewhat later the Powell Doctrine, after another 

strenuous advocate of moderation in the use of force, General Colin L. Powell. 

(Powell, in fact, had served as Weinberger’s military assistant while the secretary crafted the doctrine.) Whatever the name, this collection of ideas profoundly shaped U.S. national security strategy from 1984 until 2001, when on 

11 September terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.10

Ironically, Secretary of State George P. Shultz drew diametrically opposed 

conclusions from Weinberger. Whereas the secretary of defense believed that 

President Ronald W. Reagan had exhausted all of his diplomatic options when 

he ordered the military to intervene, the secretary of state disagreed, maintaining further negotiations were possible on 25 October. Shultz did not criticize 

the president for premature use of the military option, but asserted that he 

had acted wisely. The military was much more likely to rescue the students 

unharmed, as in fact happened, by moving earlier while the students were only 

9 Speech, 28 Nov 1984, reprinted in Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, pp. 433–45. 10 Ibid., pp. 401–03. On Powell, see Karen DeYoung, Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell (New 

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), pp. 140–42.

Secretary Weinberger
The Rucksack War

522

lightly monitored rather than waiting until force was the only remaining alternative and they were in close confinement. In this way, Grenada also became a 

precedent for the doctrine of preemption that the administration of President 

George W. Bush adopted as the basis of U.S. national security strategy in the 

wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.11

As an example of military mismanagement, Grenada gave great impetus 

to efforts to not only reform the Joint Chiefs of Staff but also provide greater 

authority to unified commanders. The Senate Armed Services Committee staff 

report on Department of Defense reorganization, known informally as the 

Locher Report, found that the operation revealed “major deficiencies in the 

ability of the Services to work jointly when deployed rapidly” and proposed 

major changes. The resulting Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense 

Reorganization Act, signed by President Reagan on 1 October 1986, strengthened the power of the JCS chairman and unified commanders and attempted 

to ensure that in future operations senior officers had a joint as opposed to a 

single-service outlook. As a consequence of this legislation, Grenada exerted 

an influence on subsequent military operations disproportionate to its size, 

duration, and immediate results.12

Despite superficial appearances to the contrary, Grenada had little impact 

on Army logistical organization or doctrine. In 1984 the Department of the 

Army started to reorganize support commands by replacing those functional 

battalions that supported Operation Urgent Fury—supply and service, 

maintenance, medical—with mixed battalions containing functional companies. In the changeover, the forward area support teams became redundant 

and were eliminated. The reorganization addressed the pre-intervention concerns of the critics who found two major flaws in the support teams. They 

were, it was said, weak in command and control. Moreover, as organized, 

they compelled the coordinator to try to serve two masters: the division support commander and the brigade commander. Neither problem had surfaced 

on Grenada. While an expanded headquarters element equipped with a satellite radio with a dedicated channel would have greatly improved Forward 

Area Support Team II coordinator Maj. Daniel J. Cleary III’s ability to affect 

the flow of men, equipment, and supplies to the island, his difficulty in getting his entire team to Grenada suggests that an enlarged contingent would 

have simply added to the congestion back at Fort Bragg without improving 

the situation at Point Salines. The second perceived failing, divided authority, never became an issue. In effect, Major Cleary ran a division-level rather 

than a brigade-level supply operation and took his orders directly from the 

division assault command post. Once the commander of the 82d Support 

Command, Col. William F. Daly Jr., arrived, he gave Cleary a free hand and 

11 George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 344–45. For the Bush doctrine, see Office of 

the President, The National Security Strategy of the United States, September 2002, pp. 13–16. 

See also Edgar F. Raines Jr., “Grenada Revisited,” pp. 6–20. 12 United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Defense Organization—

The Need for Change, pp. 363–70 (quoted words); Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense 

Reorganization Act of 1986, Public Law 99–433, 99th Cong., 2d sess. (1 Oct 1986).
Grenada in Perspective

523

intervened only when the major needed the support that the colonel’s rank 

and position provided.13

Grenada created one more controversy for the 82d Airborne Division 

commander, General Trobaugh. The return of all the division’s combat units 

did not mean that all the supplies and equipment shipped to Grenada had 

come back as well. Large stocks remained on the island, where Colonel Daly’s 

support command was responsible for reconditioning the materiel and returning it to storage. This involved months of backbreaking labor, twelve hours 

a day, seven days a week. At the same time, the combat troops had slipped 

back into a normal peacetime mode; the contrast made the situation more 

onerous for the logisticians. To maintain morale, the 407th Supply and Service 

Battalion commander, Lt. Col. John J. Cusick, recommended that the division 

send as many enlisted logisticians as possible on short temporary-duty tours to 

Grenada, where they would assist corps troops in preparing materiel for shipment back to the United States. More important, from the morale standpoint, 

they would have an opportunity to see firsthand what Urgent Fury had been 

about and to experience the overwhelming gratitude of ordinary Grenadians 

toward Americans. In the end, the soldiers who went to Grenada returned 

with a new sense of purpose and dedication to completing the mission.14

Colonel Cusick’s second recommendation was a fairly typical military 

response to this type of situation: give liberal awards for demanding work. By 

law, soldiers could not receive overtime pay. In addition, because time was at a 

premium, General Trobaugh could not give additional time off to the troops 

as compensation for the long hours. Soldiers, however, could receive public 

recognition for their sustained effort. When Trobaugh approved the proposal, 

the presentation of the Army Commendation Medal became a usual method 

of rewarding the troops. It was an award a commander could bestow for outstanding service in peacetime on his own authority without prior approval 

by his superiors. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times learned 

about the decorations, however, and ran stories that conflated all awards connected to Grenada with the three days of combat in October. The title of an 

article by critic Jeffrey Record said it all as far as the press was concerned: 

“More Medals Than We Had Soldiers.” The whole affair became a major public relations problem for the Army.15

To Cuba, Grenada was both a humiliation and a foreign policy disaster. 

Shortly after the public welcome to the Cuban veterans of the campaign, 

Premier Fidel Castro ordered that the Cuban ambassador to Grenada be 

stripped of his rank and imprisoned without benefit of trial for his failure 

to detect the impending coup against Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice 

13 For an early criticism of the forward area support team concept, see Moorad Mooradian, 

“DISCOM in a ‘Come as You Are’ War,” pp. 41–53. See also TOE 63L5, 1 Apr 1988, chg. 1, and 

TOE 63L52, 1 Oct 1985, TOE files, CMH. 14 Interv, author with Cusick, 24 Jan 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.

15 Ibid.; Jeffrey Record, “More Medals Than We Had Soldiers: Grenada’s Decoration Glut 

Cheapens Honor and Valor,” Washington Post, 15 Apr 1984; “Grenada and Lebanon Bring a 

Rush of Medals,” New York Times, 5 Dec 1983.
The Rucksack War

524

Bishop. The commander of Cuban 

forces on the island, Col. Pedro 

Cosmas Tortoló, underwent a secret 

court-martial that reduced him to 

private for his inability to mount an 

effective defense. Shipped to Angola, 

he died there in 1986. The colonel’s 

conviction neatly obscured the fact 

that Castro’s directives to Tortoló 

made any coherent defense of Point 

Salines impossible on the day of the 

invasion.16

A Historical Overview

The Grenada intervention of 

1983 was only a minor episode in the 

great sweep of American military history. At best, combat consisted of a 

few firefights against opponents who 

could hardly be rated second or even 

third class. Lacking popular support, even a sense of legitimacy, the 

Grenadian government and army 

were incapable of effectively waging 

a protracted guerrilla campaign once 

defeated in conventional battle. And 

as soon as a substantial number of 

U.S. ground troops seized a lodgment 

on the island, the Grenadian and 

Cuban defeat in conventional battle was assured. From a logistical standpoint, 

however, the intervention was much more interesting. As a no-plan contingency operation, Urgent Fury suddenly placed substantial stress upon the 

U.S. Army’s supply, maintenance, transportation, and medical systems.

Logistical problems in Urgent Fury started at the top of the chain of 

command. At the outset President Reagan’s insistence on extraordinary secrecy 

had a chilling effect at all levels and a significant impact on the shape of the 

Grenada operation. Because of the security restrictions, most commanders 

excluded their logisticians from the early preparations, with the two ranger 

battalion commanders being the only notable exceptions. The result was that 

unexamined assumptions about logistics permeated both joint and Army 

16 Sandra W. Meditz and Dennis M. Hanratty, eds., Islands of the Commonwealth Caribbean, 

pp. 622–34; Joseph B. Treaster, “2 Cubans Involved in Grenada Drop Out of Sight,” New York 

Times, 14 May 1984; Colin McSeveny, “Cuba Said to Court-Martial Commander in Grenada,” 

Washington Post, 19 Jun 1984; James M. Perry and John J. Fialka, “As Panama Outcome Is 

Praised, Details Emerge of Bungling During the 1983 Grenada Invasion,” Wall Street Journal, 

15 Jan 1990.

Castro embracing Colonel Tortoló 

upon his return to Cuba
Grenada in Perspective

525

planning. In the same way, the theater commander, Admiral McDonald, cut 

communications experts out of the planning, effectively crippling the ability 

of the 82d Airborne Division commander, General Trobaugh, to communicate 

with both his higher headquarters and his logistical base. Not until Trobaugh 

and his staff actually arrived on Grenada did they realize that they would have 

only limited communications with Admiral Metcalf’s JTF 120 headquarters, 

next to none with Colonel Smith’s marines, and only episodic interchange with 

division-rear at Fort Bragg. A similar lack of adequate medical coordination 

meant that Army planners had a grossly inflated view of the medical assets 

available in Joint Task Force 120. In the end, seen with the perfect vision of 

hindsight, the only practical military result of Reagan’s insistence on extra 

security was disruption of the preparations of U.S. forces. Modern systems of 

command and control are very flexible and allow the concentration of great 

power, but they are also complex and, on that account, fragile. Even a slight 

disturbance can produce profound and unexpected consequences.

Although time was pressing, the real problem in preparing the intervention was not the lack of planning time but the lack of quality planning. “An 

extremely short time period” requires full disclosure and full coordination 

rather than the opposite. It was the lack of these qualities on multiple levels 

that was, as one officer observed, “the crux of the problem.” Oversensitivity to 

public opinion combined with strategic events to produce a crippling operational security policy that straitjacketed the planners. Urgent Fury was not 

unique in this regard. It was a continuing theme in U.S. military interventions 

during and after the Cold War, although the reasons for the security policies 

varied from case to case.17

For Urgent Fury, the most serious lapse was the intelligence failure to 

identify that St. George’s University School of Medicine had more than one 

campus and that a large number of Americans lived off campus. Excessive 

compartmentalization, the president’s security crackdown that JCS Chairman 

General Vessey passed on unmoderated, and compressed planning appear to 

have severely hampered not only the flow of information within intelligence 

circles but also the collection of readily available information. 

Next to the intelligence failure, Atlantic Command’s inability to coordinate planning by all the disparate ground force elements involved in the operation was the most striking flaw in this phase. The compressed planning time 

was part of the explanation, but only part. The lack of an adequate concept 

of operations at an early stage indicated that the headquarters was not trained 

or manned to mount a small but complicated ground force operation in the 

time allotted. Atlantic Command was geared to transport massive reinforcements and supplies safely across the North Atlantic in the event of a Soviet 

attack in Central Europe. Despite numerous joint exercises involving situations 

17 RCmts (quoted words), Reardon, August 2004, Hist files (Drafts), CMH; Tel Interv, 

author with Yates, 25 Jan 2008, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. On security policy and its effects on 

other operations, see Gary H. Wade, Rapid Deployment Logistics, pp. 15–16; Lawrence A. Yates, 

Power Pack, pp. 56–65; Walter Kretchik, Robert F. Baumann, and John T. Fishel, Invasion, 

Intervention, “Intervasion,” pp. 45–48.
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526

analogous to Grenada, it was simply unprepared for the complexities of its 

task in October 1983. This represented a failure not of individuals but of a 

system. General Vessey and the Joint Chiefs had to intervene far too often to 

produce an acceptable operational plan. The delays this entailed meant that 

Atlantic Command could not provide the planners at lower echelons with 

guidance they needed until very late in the process. As a result, those officers 

expended a great deal of time and effort to little effect. 

The Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a nighttime raid by a small highly 

trained force, but the concern over the status of the airfield at Point Salines 

caused Admiral McDonald to twice slip the time for beginning the operation 

to scant minutes before daylight. This change in timing contributed greatly to 

the less-than-total success the special operations forces enjoyed in achieving 

their first day objectives. Their partial failure on 25 October meant that conventional forces, notably the 82d Airborne Division, would have to carry the 

operation to success. The shift elevated logistical support from a secondary to 

a primary area of concern.

 Admiral McDonald elected not to use Concept Plan 2360, prepared for 

small island interventions. Given his judgment that Second Fleet was the only 

immediately available headquarters capable of controlling the forces involved 

and that it had never exercised this plan, McDonald’s decision may have 

been unavoidable. From the Army’s perspective, however, it was unfortunate 

because the JCS-approved Atlantic Command plan had dispensed with two 

important command-and-control features included in the original plan—the 

designation of one officer to direct all the ground forces no matter what the 

service, and the selection of the XVIII Airborne Corps commander to head 

the Army contingent. Lack of a single ground force commander meant that 

coordination between the Marine Corps and the Army on Grenada was poor, 

and the severing of the corps headquarters from the chain of command complicated the ability of the 82d Airborne Division both to deploy from Fort 

Bragg and to communicate with the other services in the area of operations. 

Furthermore, once the division arrived on the island, the new plan left General 

Trobaugh overloaded with responsibilities as both Task Force 121 commander 

and Army Forces, Grenada, commander.

In deleting the corps echelon, General Vessey, the Joint Staff, and Admiral 

McDonald apparently misunderstood the role of corps headquarters in postVietnam Army organization. They appear to have reverted to a World War 

II–era concept of the corps as an operational headquarters only—one that 

controlled two or more divisions at the tactical level. Displacing a World War 

II–type corps headquarters from the Grenada chain of command would have 

made perfect sense in an operation employing less than a division. The role of 

the 1983 version of the corps with its robust logistical capabilities and operational level of war responsibilities, however, was far removed from that of its 

World War II predecessor.

Admiral McDonald’s decision to delete the corps from the operation—

a shorthand way of describing the underlying bureaucratic reality—had 

other far-reaching effects. It not only slighted the institutional changes that 
Grenada in Perspective

527

had taken place in corps and divisions after the Vietnam war but also overlooked the nature and scope of the responsibilities of the Army Forces commander, which stretched from depots in the United States to the airfield at 

Point Salines. The geographic sweep of these obligations delineated that officer’s role, because by deciding when and in what sequence units and materiel 

entered the combat zone he dealt with the operational level of war. This was 

quite different from the sphere and responsibilities of a tactical commander, 

whose charge involved an airhead a few hundred meters deep centered on the 

Point Salines airfield; there he sought to mass and then maneuver sufficient 

men and materiel to defeat the Grenadians and Cubans on the island. In 

General Mackmull the Army had an officer fitted by both training and experience to act as an Army Forces commander, and at Fort Bragg Mackmull 

had a suitable command post from which he could guide the buildup of men, 

equipment, and supplies in the area of operations. Many of the unfortunate 

events of the campaign stemmed from the exclusion of Mackmull and his 

command post.18

By cutting the corps, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Atlantic Command 

appeared to validate the arguments of critics who claimed that during the late 

Cold War the U.S. military command-and-control structure was too bureaucratized. Experience teaches that the best time to devise and test command 

relationships is in peacetime. In that light, it should be clear that anything that 

would upset often-exercised and workable command relationships should be 

the last, not the first, resort in an actual operation. One of the great strengths 

of the U.S. Navy in the twentieth century derived from its adherence to the 

maxim that the fleet fights as the fleet trains. General Vessey, the Joint Staff, 

and Admiral McDonald forgot that this rule applied equally to armies. 

Not all the problems that surfaced in the days before the troops landed on 

Grenada were centered in the upper reaches of the command structure, but 

senior headquarters did have a major impact on the ability of their subordinates to complete their preparations. In comparison with the two ranger battalions, the 82d Airborne Division, for example, failed to use its planning time 

efficiently. Its logisticians suffered from a major handicap. With the XVIII 

Airborne Corps headquarters removed from the chain of command, they had 

to spend considerable time trying to understand what its replacement—the 

predominantly naval Atlantic Command—wanted. It was not a question of 

one group of officers being more intelligent or more professional than the 

other, but rather the lack of familiarity each had with the other. 

In contrast, ranger commanders and their staffs worked directly with the 

Joint Special Operations Command, a true joint headquarters, and all concerned shared a common language and common assumptions. The rangers 

could devote their energy and attention to planning rather than to attempting 

to clarify directives written by individuals unfamiliar with the concepts behind 

airborne operations and the language that expressed them. 

18 Martin Van Creveld, Command in War, provides an introduction to command-and-control issues.
The Rucksack War

528

Although their objectives shifted during planning, particularly for Lt. Col. 

Ralph L. Hagler Jr.’s 2d Battalion, 75th Infantry, that initially was to seize 

Pearls Airport, the rangers’ mission, unlike the airborne’s, remained constant: 

armed entry into the territory of a sovereign country to rescue American citizens. The 82d’s staff had to prepare for not only this mission but also its 

follow-on role as a peacekeeping force. Although General Trobaugh chose to 

spend much of his planning time on the more difficult but less likely mission 

of airborne assault, the other possibility exerted an influence on the division’s 

preparations, determining, for example, the mix of high-explosive and illumination rounds artillery officers took to Grenada. 

In the same way, if compressed planning time and stringent operational 

security requirements had only a marginal impact on the quality of planning in the ranger battalions, the two factors degraded the 82d’s planning. 

The strict security, for example, and Trobaugh’s own lack of experience in 

airborne operations induced the general include too few planners in his 

Saturday afternoon and evening planning sessions at Fort Bragg. Detailed 

planning only started in the division on Sunday, after General Mackmull 

personally intervened. In contrast, the two ranger battalions had begun such 

planning over a day earlier. The 82d Support Command, the key element for 

detailed logistical planning in the division, became involved only on Sunday 

afternoon.

Limited time led the division support commander, Colonel Daly, and the 

division G–4, Lt. Col. Jack D. Crabtree II, to concentrate on those areas that 

had proven troublesome in previous emergency deployment readiness exercises. 

In the process they overlooked areas that later became bottlenecks: the confusion about the establishment of an intermediate staging base on Barbados; the 

failure to make General Trobaugh or his chief of staff, Col. Peter J. Boylan Jr., 

aware that the airfield layout at Point Salines would determine the rate at which 

the 2d Brigade Task Force could complete its deployment to Grenada and 

secure resupply; and the service support annex’s omission of any discussion of 

Trobaugh’s increased administrative and supply responsibilities as the Army 

Forces commander. If Col. William J. Richardson Jr.’s 1st Support Command 

staff and Trobaugh’s division staff could have freely exchanged information 

or if the planning time had been longer, someone would have almost certainly 

identified and rectified these problems. In the rush to deploy the task force, 

however, no one did.

Of these issues, the lack of an arrival airfield plan had the most important 

impact, because it impinged upon the overall success of the entire logistical 

effort. A combination of bad luck, shortage of time, and excessive operational security were central to what happened but hardly the only causes. The 

bad luck came in the form of cloud cover over the Point Salines Peninsula, 

which led to the lack of recent photographs of the airfield in logistical channels. Given time constraints, waiting for the skies to clear was not possible. 

Furthermore, airfield planning competed with other equally important issues 

for staff time. A combination of too much security and too little time kept 

Colonel Crabtree from discovering that the division G–3, Lt. Col. Frank H. 
Grenada in Perspective

529

Akers Jr., had good photographs of the airfield available. Even with the known 

available resources, however, more might have been accomplished if Crabtree 

had chosen to devote greater effort to the problem. Older photographs could 

have provided the dimensions of the field’s layout if not the current status of 

construction. For these details, the division needed onsite human intelligence. 

The planning failure carried with it two consequences. First, the Forward 

Area Support Team II coordinator, Major Cleary, would have to improvise a 

layout of airfield operations after he arrived on Grenada. Second, Crabtree 

would have little opportunity to apprise the command group of the important logistical issues affected by the airfield layout. The design would have 

a significant impact on one of General Trobaugh’s major responsibilities as 

Army Forces commander, his ability to obtain reinforcements and supplies. 

Trobaugh’s chief of staff, Colonel Boylan, addressed the issue at least obliquely 

once on the island when he made the decision to keep the ramp in front of the 

terminal closed to air traffic, but he did so without the benefit of the perspective that a briefing on the subject at Fort Bragg could have provided.

Given the circumstances, the actions of the XVIII Airborne Corps G–4, 

Col. Corless W. Mitchell, and Colonel Crabtree were entirely understandable. 

In working closely together on logistical intelligence issues, the two officers did 

what they had done countless times before on emergency deployment readiness exercises. With the XVIII Airborne Corps out of the chain of command, 

however, Colonel Mitchell did not have access to all the available sources of 

intelligence. As with the other Fort Bragg staff officers who knew about the 

operation, he and Crabtree could only react to events. They lacked the leisure 

to meditate on how the removal of the corps from the chain of command had 

changed their own institutional relationship. Admiral McDonald’s decision to 

remove the corps, plus the compressed time available, made some breakdown 

in the 82d’s staff work almost inevitable. The failure to prepare an airfield 

arrival plan was a by-product of these circumstances.

The different ways in which operational security affected the rangers and 

the airborne forces during the planning phase of the operation also deserve 

comment. Reporting directly to their task force commander, the 1st and 2d 

Battalions, 75th Infantry, possessed the advantages of small size and simplicity. 

The respective commanders, Lt. Col. Wesley B. Taylor Jr. and Colonel Hagler, 

knew all their officers personally, and they did not hesitate to share information with them when they learned of their mission. Contrast their situation 

with the problems that General Trobaugh faced: He was three or four levels 

removed from some of the key logistical planners in his division. He could not 

know and hence trust his officers in the same manner that Taylor and Hagler 

could and, as a result, did not confide in his officers as the ranger commanders 

did. Given the circumstances under which it was completed, ranger planning 

for the operation thus came very close to the textbook model while airborne 

planning fell well short of the ideal. 

The irony of this situation lay in the fact that in 1983 the 82d Airborne 

Division was a unique organization in the U.S. Army. The division’s great 

strength was its sense of community. Officers serving in the division tended to 
The Rucksack War

530

return for repeat tours, while key noncommissioned officers might spend an 

entire career at Fort Bragg. Shared experiences created intense esprit de corps. 

Division members possessed that sense of unit loyalty and identity long before 

reformers urged the reintroduction of a regimental system to foster those values in the entire Army. General Trobaugh, however, had no experience in the 

division before he assumed its command. He had never had the opportunity 

to know his subordinates in the same manner as an officer who had spent 

multiple tours at Fort Bragg and who had met some of them on earlier assignments. Such service might have given Trobaugh sufficient trust in his officers to 

involve them earlier in detailed planning. Lacking previous associations with 

the unit, he acted like the commander of any other division.

As conceived by the theater commander and his staff and approved by 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Urgent Fury plan assumed that U.S. forces 

would meet little or no opposition. Under this best case assumption, Atlantic 

Command planners allowed the ranger battalions and the airborne brigade 

to arrive at Point Salines in a leisurely fashion over a long day. They made no 

attempt to mass combat power or to muster the logistical support that would 

be required if a fight occurred. Admiral McDonald’s order directing the 82d 

Airborne Division to airland rather than giving its commander the option to 

airland or airdrop depending on circumstances was entirely consistent with 

this approach. In the end, Trobaugh quite correctly insisted upon ensuring 

that the initial brigade task force had an airdrop option, but he made this 

determination so late in the loading sequence that it was disruptive. His next 

decision, en route to Grenada, to airland was probably correct, given the need 

to guard against large numbers of casualties and to ensure the long-term success of the operation. It exacted, however, a heavy operational and logistical 

price by impeding the ability of the Air Force to build up men and materiel in 

the airhead quickly.

The lack of an arrival airfield plan began to make itself felt on the night of 

25–26 October. Once the Forward Area Support Team II coordinator, Major 

Cleary, reached Grenada, he had to decide where to place supply points based 

on a single moonlit ground reconnaissance of the airfield. Daylight revealed 

that he had not always selected the best sites. As a result, Air Force Capt. 

Stephen R. Scott’s 317th Combat Control Team closed the airfield each time 

a bladder bird discharged fuel at the aviation fuel point or a C–130 loaded 

patients from the 307th Medical Battalion for evacuation. Given the problems 

of the airflow as a whole, however, these were at most marginal difficulties. 

In the absence of a briefing on an arrival airfield plan, neither General 

Trobaugh nor key members of his staff were aware of the importance of clearing the ramp in front of the terminal. Without a clean ramp, the successive 

combat control teams could not allow more than one aircraft on the ground at 

a time, a fact that, in turn, seriously compromised the ability of the division to 

reinforce and resupply itself. Tactical considerations initially led the division 

G–3, Colonel Akers, to select the airfield terminal as the site for the assault 

command post, but the situation persisted longer than it should have. The 

noise generated by idling C–130s led the chief of staff, Colonel Boylan, to halt 
Grenada in Perspective

531

the ramp clearing so that the division staff could direct the fight. This decision 

was probably unavoidable in view of the circumstances. It was nonetheless so 

important given its impact on the airflow that Trobaugh rather than a colonel should have made it. To make an informed judgment, however, he would 

have needed a senior logistician to lay out the adverse logistical consequences. 

But no senior logistician was assigned to his assault command post, which 

was configured to direct a battle rather than an airflow. The condition of the 

ramp at Point Salines was the single most disruptive influence on the airflow to 

Grenada, and it was capable of correction by unilateral Army action—if only 

someone had thought to make the move.

At this point another fundamental problem in the initial concept of operations arose. General Trobaugh and his staff were understandably distracted 

by the need to establish the assault command post in the airhead and to pick 

up the threads of a battle already in progress. This problem existed because 

the Urgent Fury plan called for Trobaugh’s headquarters to replace Maj. 

Gen. Richard A. Scholtes’ Joint Special Operations Command headquarters. Such a changeover made sense only within the context of the initial 

assumptions—that little or no resistance would occur and that all fighting 

would be over by the time the 82d Airborne Division arrived. In fairness, 

Admiral McDonald may not have felt free to change that portion of the 

plan (even though the assumptions on which it had been based had proven 

invalid) because the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to keep the methods and 

organization of U.S. counterterrorist units secret and were pressuring him 

to remove the Joint Special Operations Command and its special units and 

equipment before the news media arrived. In retrospect, General Vessey considered this the main flaw in the original plan, for it virtually guaranteed 

a pause in ground force operations while Trobaugh and his staff assumed 

control of the intervention from Scholtes. From the logistics perspective, 

the transfer of command was yet another factor that kept key problems—

such as the need to clear the ramp—from receiving the attention that they 

demanded.19

General Trobaugh’s decision to limit the 2d Brigade Task Force’s contribution to purely combat units also seriously affected the ability of Forward Area 

Support Team II to organize the airfield, thereby ensuring that Alpha Echelon 

received no immediate reinforcements. At best, the advance elements managed 

to cope only by clustering supply points along the edge of the airfield in various stages of disarray. Without relief, working twenty-four hours a day, the 

members became less and less effective. Trobaugh’s focus on combat elements 

also meant that the division’s own medical assets were long delayed in arriving 

and that the division remained heavily dependent upon the Navy for medical 

support throughout the combat phase of the operation. During Urgent Fury

the number of casualties never exceeded the ability of the division assisted by 

the Navy to treat the wounded, but it did come close.20

19 Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 1987, Archives files, JHO.

20 Interv, author with Crabtree, 24 Jan 1989, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

532

In all, nineteen American servicemen died (one ten months later), twelve 

from the Army. The Rangers suffered the bulk of these losses. They had eight 

killed and sixty-nine wounded. The 82d Airborne Division lost three dead, 

thirty-six wounded, and twenty-five injuries not related to combat. In addition, one trooper died in a noncombat-related fatal shooting. His loss is not 

included among the Grenada combat fatalities (Table 2).

21

Another problem with the airflow arose from the initial lack of coordination between the forward area support team coordinator and members of both 

the Air Force combat control team and the Air Force airlift control element 

at Point Salines. Lack of well-defined doctrine about the relationship between 

Army and Air Force ground units needed to operate an arrival airfield contributed to this situation, but the fact that each group was fully engaged by 

its service responsibilities clearly played a role. Major Cleary and his small 

advance party were overwhelmed with work. The stress and fatigue they experienced meant that effective coordination became less likely as the operation 

progressed. Several Air Force decisions that adversely affected the airflow—

for example, the halt to landings at Point Salines for four hours on the night 

of 25–26 October—might have been modified if good communications had 

existed between the Army and Air Force components at the airfield. In the 

end, the arrival of the division support commander, Colonel Daly, an officer 

who was not only experienced but also rested, made the difference. Discerning 

the problem as soon as he arrived and possessing the rank and personality 

to ensure that effective coordination occurred, Daly started an exchange of 

information that allowed the 82d Airborne Division for the first time to exert 

effective control over cargoes dispatched from Fort Bragg to Grenada. It was 

a major turning point for the Army’s logistical effort.

21 Hannah Fischer, Kim Klarman, Mari-Jana Oboroceanu, American War and Military 

Operations Casualties, p. 5; Bruce R. Pirnie, Operation Urgent Fury, pp. 160, 170.

Table 2—Casualties in Operation Urgent Fury

Army Marine Corps Navy Air Force

Killed in Action 12a 3b 4c 0

Wounded in Action 108 15 0d 2

Total 120 18 4 2

a Sgt. Randy E. Cline, S. Sgt. Gary L. Epps, Spec. Philip S. Grenier, Sgt. Kevin J. Lannon, 

Capt. Keith J. Lucas, Sgt. Sean P. Luketina (died of wounds, 30 June 1984), Pfc. Marlin R. 

Maynard, Sgt. Mark A. Rademacher, Capt. Michael F. Ritz, Pfc. Russell L. Robinson, Sgt. 

Stephen E. Slater, Spec. Mark O. Yamane 

b Maj. John P. Gigure, 1st Lt. Jeffrey R. Scharver, Capt. Jeb Seagle

c MM1 Kenneth Gary Butcher, MM1 Kevin P. Lundberg, HT1 Stephen L. Morris, ENCS 

Robert R. Schamberger

d No reportable wounded in action

Source: Statistics supplied by each service’s Office of Casualty Affairs, 8 Jun 1988.
Grenada in Perspective

533

At the other end of the airflow, conditions at Green Ramp on Pope Air 

Force Base were also chaotic. Projected turnaround times for aircraft never 

matched reality, which led to overcrowding as units awaiting transportation 

stacked up. A variety of factors were involved: the early removal of corps control elements from the ramp, the failure of Atlantic Command to establish 

positive control over the airflow, the lack of a means of tracking aircraft in the 

airflow from departure to destination, the inability of 82d Support Command 

personnel at Green Ramp to communicate directly with members of forward 

area support teams at Point Salines, and the absence of a joint intelligence 

center at the departure airfield. The way the division assault command post 

operated on Grenada also played a role. General Trobaugh told his staff 

members which units and equipment to deploy, and they communicated these 

instructions directly to the rear detachment commanders without anyone else 

knowing anything until members of the detachments arrived at Green Ramp 

clamoring for space in the airflow.

The Army’s failure to establish an intermediate staging base on Barbados 

was the final major problem in the airflow. Again, it reflected the consequences 

of Admiral McDonald’s decision to cut XVIII Airborne Corps from the chain 

of command. Under normal circumstances, Colonel Richardson’s 1st Support 

Command would have set up an intermediate staging base. It had the manpower, training, and expertise to do so. Removed from the chain of command, 

however, the corps lacked the authority to direct Richardson to do this. Thus, 

Colonel Daly’s 82d Support Command correctly focused its much more limited resources on getting into Point Salines quickly and with as much force as 

possible. Nevertheless, on the basis of past exercises, Daly assumed that the 

corps would do as it always did, create a base if needed. In the rush to deploy, 

no one recognized that the two organizations were operating from different 

assumptions.

The lack of a staging base had one further consequence. Combined with 

the failure of the Air Force at Pope Air Force Base to load and to deploy 

promptly the first task force from the 82d Aviation Battalion, it significantly 

delayed that unit’s movement to Grenada. The organization’s late arrival, the 

dearth of fuel at the aviation point, the lack of crew rest during the deployment (attributable again to the lack of a staging base on Barbados), and the 

decision not to include escort gunships contributed to the disaster that befell 

the aviators and rangers at the Calivigny training camp. In that case, however, 

the most important component was the order from a higher headquarters to 

capture the camp by nightfall. Even if all the logistical elements had been in 

place and had worked perfectly, this intervention in tactical operations by a 

headquarters far removed from the scene still might have sufficed to produce 

enough confusion to cause what happened.

Not all Army logistical problems centered on the airflow. A number of 

units performed below the quality of their personnel primarily because they 

had not had the opportunity to train in peacetime for a portion of their wartime mission. Had the Class III refueling platoon had an opportunity to practice unloading bladder birds in peacetime, 2d Lt. Eric P. Katz and his men 
The Rucksack War

534

would not have had to learn entirely on the job. Moreover, if the division had 

actually deployed the 307th Medical Battalion during peacetime emergency 

deployment readiness exercises, perhaps more of the battalion’s Company C 

could have worked its way through Green Ramp and onto aircraft sooner—

and possibly some of the infantry commanders, however grudgingly, would 

have conceded their right to be there. 

Another problem the medical battalion had to solve was the question of 

command once it deployed. In theory, the confusion on the issue ended on 

21 November 1983, when the Department of the Army issued a follow-on 

manual to Field Manual 54–2, The Division Support Command and Separate 

Brigade Support Battalion, which removed any hint that a division commander possessed any discretion as to who commanded his medical battalion 

in wartime. The new publication, Field Manual 63–2, Combat Service Support 

Operations—Division, provided that “during combat the medical battalion 

commander must be a physician.” A larger question nonetheless remained. 

Where was the wisdom when a combat deployment began by replacing the 

Medical Service Corps officers who had trained units in peacetime with physicians who had little or no previous contact with them? Conceived broadly, 

this question also highlighted concerns about the command of medical companies, where the same policy prevailed. The XVIII Airborne Corps surgeon, 

Col. James H. Rumbaugh, tried to address the issue by ensuring that, once 

the 307th Medical Battalion commander, Lt. Col. Edward B. Wilson, left for 

his next assignment, a Medical Corps officer replaced him and devoted full 

time to command of the battalion. This solution, however, was only partial. 

It did not address the issue of medical company commanders in the 307th. 

From the perspective of the entire Army, units that would require some time 

to prepare before commitment to combat would not face the stark dilemma 

that confronted the 82d Airborne Division on Grenada. There the prospective 

commanders and unit members would have an opportunity to get to know one 

another before deploying. Units (such as the 82d) with the mission of deploying on no-notice or short-notice contingency operations or rapidly reinforcing 

overseas theaters, however, faced a very real predicament under this policy.22

Some medical problems transcended any one service. Difficulties in 

coordinating medical support stemmed from the haste with which Atlantic 

Command put Urgent Fury together and the failure of the planners to adequately consult the command surgeon. The absence of adequate facilities for 

Admiral Metcalf’s JTF headquarters on the USS Guam also played a role. It 

meant that Metcalf could not bring a complete staff on board. In particular, 

he lacked a senior surgeon to serve as a single source of contact and coordination for all the service medical elements in the operation. Eventually, Air 

Force, Army, and Navy doctors on the ground, coupled with intervention by 

the Atlantic Command surgeon, R. Adm. James A. Zimbel, sorted things out; 

22 Intervs, Oland with Nolan, 10 Nov 1987, and with Rumbaugh, 18 Nov and 23 Dec 1987, 

Hist files (Intervs), CMH; FM 54–2, The Division Support Command and Separate Brigade 

Support Battalion, 1969, pp. 8-1 to 8-2; FM 63–2, Combat Service Support Operations—

Division, 1983, p. 3-19 (quoted words). 
Grenada in Perspective

535

however, if provided with the proper staff organization and oversight, the JTF 

headquarters could have easily avoided much of the confusion.

If enough things went wrong to make the Grenada campaign worthy of 

criticism, there is no denying that the operation was also a victory for the 

United States and its allies. Credit for this result again begins at the top of 

the chain of command and runs to the very bottom. Once he made his decision, President Reagan did not waiver. Vacillation at the very highest level 

could well have made success much more problematic. General Vessey, the 

Joint Chiefs, and Admiral McDonald recognized that given the disparity of 

forces available, the United States only had to bring overwhelming force to 

bear to seize the island in a relatively bloodless fashion. The operation that 

resulted, while certainly flawed, achieved the desired result. Of course, more 

time for preparation would have allowed the participants to perfect their plans 

and preparations, but the paucity of available information suggested that the 

Grenadian government was in considerable disarray—creating not only a 

period of maximum danger for the students but also one of great opportunity 

for their rescuers. On 24 October, while attending the commanders conference 

at Norfolk, McDonald had the occasion to weigh opportunities against risks. 

His subordinates wanted him to postpone the operation, but he decided to 

proceed. That resolution left the Cubans and Grenadians insufficient time to 

organize a sustained and effective defense. 

This overall operational success rested upon a considerable logistical 

achievement that was all the more notable because of the difficulties that the 

Army had to overcome in pulling it together. How it happened can be summed 

up under five headings: planning, training, initiative, professionalism, and 

hard work. 

The way that the operation developed demonstrated that the preliminary planning embodied in the Army portion of Concept Plan 2360 was well 

thought through. By the end of Urgent Fury all major components of that 

plan were in place and functioning well. What problems there were came 

not from the plan but from its hesitant, piecemeal, and ad hoc execution by 

Atlantic Command over the course of the operation. 

When logistical units performed the tasks for which they had trained, they 

accomplished their missions in fine style. The loading of a division assault 

command post, a brigade headquarters, and two infantry battalions with 

attachments in a twelve-hour period when the standard was a one battalion 

task force in eighteen hours was a considerable achievement, one in which 

Colonel Daly and his subordinates could justifiably take pride. It was matched 

but not surpassed by the skeleton units at Fort Stewart, which, with many key 

people in Florida, nevertheless loaded the two ranger battalions at Hunter 

Army Airfield on schedule. In both cases success validated good training and 

sound doctrine, particularly the notification sequences at the two posts that 

had been refined by repeated emergency deployment readiness exercises. The 

ease with which 82d Support Command elements performed the rear-area 

protection mission at Point Salines testified to the utility of the field training 

that, largely at Colonel Daly’s initiative, they had regularly received at Fort 
The Rucksack War

536

Bragg. Daly’s impulse to get logistical units out of garrison and into the field 

had paid off.

One of the most impressive characteristics of the U.S. Army on Grenada 

was the willingness of officers and men to exercise their own initiative—to go 

beyond the limits of their orders to ensure the success of the operation. When 

plans broke down or the unexpected happened, individuals acted. Examples of 

this ranged in scope from General Trobaugh’s decision to insist that the initial 

brigade have an airdrop capacity to Lieutenant Katz’s repeated trips to Pope 

Air Force Base to ensure that his Class III platoon had the correct hoses and 

couplings to defuel aircraft. In the same way, Lt. Col. Bobby R. Hurst went to 

Green Ramp to direct the airflow; Lt. Col. Ronald F. Kelly imposed order on 

the call-back process; Lt. Col. Robert N. Seigle on his own authority appointed 

a commander, Army Forces, Barbados; Capt. Jimmie M. Rabon acted on his 

somewhat dubious charter to bring a measure of efficiency to Army operations on the island; still later, General Mackmull, with no authority whatsoever, 

sent Col. James D. Starling to assume command of Army Forces, Barbados; 

and Sgt. Rodolfo Capetillo solved his platoon’s supply deficiency by capturing 

Russian grenades and having his men throw them at the Cubans.

Professionalism in the sense of technical expertise honed by experience 

was present, of course, throughout the Army resupply and reinforcement 

effort. The word, however, also can convey a special meaning: the ability to 

make judgments on the basis of this technical expertise in a detached and 

entirely rational or clinical manner without regard for personal consequences. 

This was the stance that General Mackmull adopted and that both his deputy, 

Maj. Gen. Jack B. Farris Jr., and General Trobaugh’s deputy, Brig. Gen. James 

D. Smith, emulated at Fort Bragg. Given the cross currents of misinformation, 

unit loyalties, and injured professional pride that flowed from the removal of 

XVIII Airborne Corps from the chain of command, a possibility existed that 

an attitude of pervasive noncooperation would prevail between corps and division. Generals Mackmull, Farris, and Smith never allowed it to happen. No 

prima donnas reigned at Fort Bragg; the mission prevailed. General Cavazos at 

Forces Command considered the work of Mackmull and his staff “an extraordinary achievement in light of command and control arrangements.”23

Finally, everyone involved in the logistics system worked hard. Their labor 

began after Atlantic Command issued the execution order, when the first items 

of equipment were pulled from the warehouses, and ended months after the 

return of the combat troops from Grenada, when the last pieces of equipment, cleaned and repaired, were warehoused. Through it all, no one toiled as 

hard as Alpha Echelon’s 35 members of Forward Area Support Team II; the 

advance party worked to exhaustion, doing the work of two forward area support teams (or 700-plus personnel) and in the process sustaining more than five 

infantry battalions plus attachments. The fact that Major Cleary and his men 

23 Msg, Cavazos to Wickham, 23 2100Z Nov 1983, sub: Lessons Learned, Grenada files, 

CmdHO, TRADOC. In this back-channel message the commander of U.S. Army Forces 

Command gives the Army chief of staff his personal assessment on how Urgent Fury was 

conducted. 
Grenada in Perspective

537

should never have been placed in this position is beside the point. They were, 

and they responded in a fashion well beyond expectation. The foundation of 

the Army’s successful logistical effort on Grenada rested on their sweat and the 

sweat of many thousands of other anonymous soldiers and civilians.24

Any overall evaluation of Army logistics on Grenada depends heavily 

upon the context in which the judgment is cast. Arriving at a realistic assessment of what happened on Grenada is, however, complicated by the lack of 

studies of operational logistics at comparable levels. Even so, what we know 

about earlier deployments—from the V Corps’ to Santiago, Cuba, in 1898 to 

the 82d Airborne Division’s to the Dominican Republic in 1965—suggests that 

the problems that surfaced on Grenada were by no means unique to Urgent

Fury.

25

In forming conclusions, three additional factors warrant consideration: 

Urgent Fury was an airborne operation, a joint operation, and a short-notice 

contingency operation. Airborne assaults are almost always among the most 

complex of military operations, being heavily dependent upon both ample 

time to prepare and good intelligence. A case in point is the 11th Airborne 

Division’s rescue of American civilians at the Los Baños Internment Camp 

south of Manila in 1945. It is generally considered a model of an airborne 

raid, but the division’s staff had some eighteen days to collect detailed information and to prepare plans before actually committing troops. By contrast, 

the rangers and marines had four days of planning time for Grenada; the 82d 

Airborne Division, just three. The intelligence available to the troops was also 

much sketchier on Grenada. Compared to the 11th Airborne, the troops landing in the Caribbean did not even know the location of all the people they were 

supposed to rescue, let alone enemy strength, dispositions, or intentions.26

Unlike the raid in 1945, the attack on Grenada was a joint operation. It is 

true that the Army Air Forces was almost a separate service in 1945, but everyone still wore the same Army uniform and ground officers generally outranked 

by two grades the air officers who coordinated with them. These factors, present in 1945 but not in 1983, assisted smooth cooperation. By and large, however, the Army and the Air Force continued to work well together in the field 

after the Air Force became an independent service in 1947, with Grenada carrying on that tradition. On the other hand, the Army and Navy did not always 

work well together. Correspondent and essayist Arthur T. Hadley posited 

the existence of a fundamental psychological difference between officers of 

the two services that seems to be rooted in their day-to-day experiences. The 

24 Interv, author with Cleary, 14 July 1986, Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 

25 For an in-depth treatment of earlier deployments, see Graham A. Cosmas, An Army for 

Empire, pp. 192–201; Stephen D. Coats, Gathering at the Golden Gate, pp. 11–138, 217–256; 

Allan R. Millett, “The General Staff and the Cuban Intervention of 1906,” pp. 113–19; James 

J. Cooke, The All-Americans at War, pp. 1–40; George F. Howe, Northwest Africa, pp. 32–85; 

Samuel B. Griffith II, The Battle for Guadalcanal, pp. 22–55; Thomas S. Grodecki, “From 

Powder River to Soyang,” Monograph, pp. 1–52; Wade, Rapid Deployment Logistics, pp. 1–41; 

Yates, Power Pack, pp. 55–71. 26 E. M. Flanagan Jr., The Los Banos Raid, pp. 45–67, 107–20.
The Rucksack War

538

captain of a ship needs only to pass the order to his helmsman, for example, 

for the vessel and all those aboard to change course 180 degrees. By contrast, 

the number of messages required for a major Army combat unit to perform 

a similar maneuver and to coordinate with adjacent forces boggles the imagination. In addition, prior to 1983 Army and Navy officers, because of their 

very different operating environments, had little interaction; this meant they 

lacked appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of each other’s service. 

The good working relationship that developed between Admiral Metcalf and 

his Army adviser, Maj. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., demonstrated that 

such cooperation was possible. Even so, that rapport had to develop after 

rather than before Urgent Fury began.27

Equally important, the 11th Airborne Division planners were all members 

of one organization, with months of experience working together in combat. 

Those for Urgent Fury worked for multiple organizations, some having only 

episodic experience with one another, and none of the officers involved had 

any recent combat experience. The surprise is not that the Grenada operation 

failed to meet the gold standard established by the 11th Airborne Division but 

that it worked as well as it did.

One of the earliest critics of the intervention, William S. Lind, a member of 

the staff for the Congressional Military Reform Caucus, considered Grenada 

an example “of the standard JCS approach to military operations, one that 

turns them into a pie-dividing contest among the services.” Resting upon the 

concept of bureaucratic politics, which can be a valuable tool in analyzing 

organizational behavior in some situations, Lind’s analysis found its way into 

most critical treatments of Urgent Fury.

28

The Joint Staff’s defense of the Grenada planning suggested that professional considerations rather than bureaucratic turf battles—the changing mission, availabilities and varying capabilities of units, and their times of arrival 

into the area of operations—drove the makeup of the forces the United States 

committed to the operation. If the disparity of forces by the end of the fighting was much greater than the situation appeared to warrant, this outcome 

was hardly an outcome of bureaucratic logrolling. It came as a result of an 

exaggerated view of enemy capabilities, a less-than-optimum employment 

of the initial forces committed to the assault, and a JCS decision to get the 

job done quickly by bringing overwhelming force to bear. Considerable truth 

underscores this assessment, which relies heavily on a rational actor model of 

decisionmaking, but it too is incomplete.29

27 For the psychological perspective, see Arthur T. Hadley, The Straw Giant, pp. 68–70. For 

the doctrinal perspective, see Edgar F. Raines Jr. and David R. Campbell, The Army and the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, pp. 176–77. 28 Rpt, Lind to Cong. Mil Reform Caucus, 5 Apr 1984, p. 2 (quoted words), Archives files, 

JHO. On the role of “bureaucratic politics” as an analytical perspective on military operations 

and a case study in how to apply such a model, see Graham T. Allison, The Essence of Decision, 

pp. 144–244. 29 Rpt, Lind to Cong. Mil Reform Caucus, 5 Apr 1984, pp. 1–5; Rick Atkinson, “Study 

Faults U.S. Military Tactics in Grenada Invasion,” Washington Post, 6 Apr 1984; Benjamin 

F. Schemmer, “JCS Reply to Congressional Reform Caucus’ Critique of the Grenada Rescue 
Grenada in Perspective

539

What the Joint Staff’s defense left out was the pressure from the secretary 

of defense to increase the force based on his reading of the lessons of the 

failed 1979 hostage rescue mission in Iran, the emotional climate created by 

the Beirut bombing, and the major revision in the concept of the operation 

that flowed from Admiral McDonald’s changes in the start time. The alterations at Norfolk reflected Atlantic Command’s lack of expertise in conducting ground operations. This situation had existed for years. It was the system, 

rather than the individuals in it, who were at fault. The real culprits for the 

losses during the first day were those individuals who years earlier had created 

a single-service headquarters and then called it joint. In that sense, Atlantic 

Command was an accident waiting to happen if it had to direct a land campaign, and Grenada simply became the occasion for that outcome.

The final major complicating factor was that Urgent Fury was a shortnotice contingency operation. Time was an all-consuming concern. The participants had to do everything correctly the first time with virtually no opportunity to fix anything later. That many things were either not or only partially 

done during the planning process goes without saying. In this effort, moreover, 

the 82d Airborne Division had to respond to a tighter deployment schedule 

than it was trained to follow. Its logisticians had to cut what they recognized 

were important steps—the preparation of invoices for pallets of supplies, the 

by-name rosters of the men on particular aircraft, and so forth—simply to 

meet the revised deadlines. While the mistakes that resulted were in many 

respects unique to the Grenada campaign, errors are almost inevitable in any 

large, complex military operation in which participants have only partial and 

inaccurate information about the objective. 

If, however, the nature of airborne operations, joint operations, and contingency operations helps explain some of the problems that surfaced in the 

Army’s logistical effort on Grenada, it does not explain all of them. Another 

array of problems, such as the failure at all levels of command during the 

planning process to give adequate attention to logistical needs, the failure of 

the 82d’s G–3 and G–4 sections to share aerial photographs of Point Salines, 

Colonel Boylan’s decision not to clear the ramp in front of the terminal quickly, 

and the inability by both Atlantic Command and the division to identify and 

deploy appropriate medical assets at the start of the operation represented 

a systemic flaw in both the U.S. Army’s and the larger joint community’s 

approach to war in 1983. Too many senior leaders simply took logistics for 

granted.

Institutional Refinements

With the development and acquisition of the first electronic computer, 

the electrical numerical integrator and computer (or, as it became known to 

Invasion,” p. 12; “JCS Analysis of the Lind Report,” pp. 12–14, 18, 99. Other critics include: 

Jeffrey Record, “Famous Victory,” Baltimore Sun, 5 Jun 1984; Edward N. Luttwak, The Pentagon 

and the Art of War, pp. 50–57; Richard A. Gabriel, Military Incompetence, pp. 149–86; Mark 

Adkin, Urgent Fury, pp. 125–44, 340; John Lehman, Command of the Seas, pp. 291–305. On 

rational actor models, see Allison, Essence of Decision, pp. 10–38.
The Rucksack War

540

history, The ENIAC) at the end of World War II, the Army had begun the 

transition from an industrial age organization to what would become known 

eventually as a postmodern institution. This result did not represent the working out of some grand design. A succession of civilian and uniformed leaders 

made a series of decisions to deal with immediate and practical problems and 

established a trajectory of change that led where no one in authority suspected 

in 1945 or even in 1983. The cumulative effect of these changes in 1983 meant, 

perhaps, a dimly perceived promise but nothing more.30

In 1983 two of the major military components of the postmodern era, 

computers and precision-guided weapons, had arrived but in too primitive 

a form or in too reduced numbers to yet have a major impact. Computers 

had begun to streamline logistical processes; however, for the XVIII Airborne 

Corps and the 82d Airborne Division, computers still signified mainframes, 

fixed installations, unsecured telephone lines, and computer-time sharing. The 

military version of the Internet was too rudimentary for planners to exchange 

information prior to the Grenada intervention, although it was certainly utilized once Urgent Fury began. Precision-guided munitions had arrived on 

the battlefield in the early 1970s, but they were still the very expensive exception rather than the rule. The troops possessed only a few such munitions—the 

light antiarmor weapon and the Stinger missile are examples—but in the main 

their armament was of the unguided variety. Grease pencils, acetate map overlays, compasses, and typewriters also suggested continuity with the past. 

At the same time, the Grenada intervention abounded with elite forces, 

the third major component of postmodern warfare. In the main though, the 

marines, rangers, airborne, and special operations forces who fought in the eastern Caribbean had achieved their elite status the old-fashioned way through 

hard, sometimes specialized, training. They lacked the technological edge that 

their successors of twenty years later enjoyed over their opponents. The one 

exception to this generalization was the special operations forces’ night-vision 

devices, but these were so little known and understood outside a narrow group 

of officers and men that Admiral McDonald negated this potentially decisive 

military advantage by opting for daylight military operations.

In many ways, then, the troops who participated in Urgent Fury had more 

in common with the soldiers who splashed ashore in Vietnam eighteen years 

earlier than with their successors who landed in Saudi Arabia for Operation 

Desert Shield in 1990, only seven years after Grenada. In short, while Army 

contingency forces had begun to move toward a battlefield in which small elite 

forces use precision-guided weapons and rely heavily upon computers, in 1983 

the change had barely begun.

This larger perspective on institutional change since 1945 reveals just how 

far the Army had progressed from its industrial roots but does little to illuminate 

30 For the ENIAC story, see Scott McCartney, ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of 

the World’s First Computer (New York: Berkley Books, 2001). Postmodern theorizing became 

popular a decade later with Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the 

Dawn of the 21st Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), which perhaps had the greatest impact 

on the Army’s leadership.
Grenada in Perspective

541

how the Grenada intervention unfolded—with one important exception from 

the logistical perspective. Admiral McDonald’s decision to execute a daylight 

invasion transformed the role of Army logisticians. As long as special operations forces constituted the primary attack force, resupply during the combat 

phase was a minor concern at best. The deployed forces would carry virtually 

all that they needed with them. Once the special operations forces became just 

another component in a daytime mission, however, resupply became critical 

and Army logisticians became central players along with operators in determining the final outcome.

The shorter timeline also highlights other key issues. On the surface, it is 

ironic that the first major military campaign conducted by the Army after the 

implementation of its post-Vietnam logistical reforms involved a push resupply system, in which Fort Bragg logisticians dispatched materiel based on estimated rates of expenditure. Reformers had envisioned, instead, a pull resupply 

system that required deployed units to request what they needed. The push-pull 

dichotomy, however, was only superficial as far as Grenada was concerned. 

The writers of the new logistical doctrine had crafted it for the European theater, where well-stocked depots already existed. If the corps warehouses at 

Fort Bragg were considered an integral part of the operation as the authors 

of Concept Plan 2360 envisioned, then the new doctrine actually explained 

much of what happened in Urgent Fury. Resupply came to Fort Bragg via 

the Army’s national depot supply system on a pull basis but then went from 

Fort Bragg to Point Salines in a push mode. The post-Vietnam Army doctrine for logistical support had always envisioned that this shift would occur 

during a buildup from a bare base—the minimal logistical support structure 

needed to sustain operations, defined by the Army as a facility “having a runway, taxiway, and parking areas which are adequate for the deployed force 

and possess[ing] . . . an adequate source of water that can be made potable.” 

Airborne operations were quintessential bare-base efforts.31

Of course, logisticians in the Grenada campaign knew that to send too 

much of a critical commodity was wasteful but to send too little would have 

been, in their eyes, criminal. In the absence of accurate up-to-date knowledge 

of battlefield conditions, the logisticians at Fort Bragg chose to err on the side 

of waste. At a strategic level, the excess that resulted probably had little or no 

impact due to the small scale of the operation and its employment of primarily light infantry units. In the end, all that can be said with any certainty, is 

that if logistical conservation is possible it is nonetheless difficult to achieve 

without careful consideration and close attention to detail. Moreover, while 

conservation is desirable, success in military operations must receive a higher 

priority. Where lives, the success of a campaign, and the nation’s reputation 

are at stake, logistical efficiency must give way to combat effectiveness.

These considerations touch on a larger theme: Can the Army successfully implement a policy of logistical conservation when America remains a 

consumer-oriented throw-away society? To some extent a nation’s army must 

31 AR 310–25, Dictionary of United States Army Terms, 1975, s.v. “bare base.”
The Rucksack War

542

reflect the culture from which it is derived. Because Grenada was but one event 

in the history of American military institutions, it can give only bits and pieces 

of evidence toward an answer. Certainly, Army emphasis on supply and equipment conservation long antedated Urgent Fury, but the retrograde of excess 

materiel from Point Salines long after the operation ended reinforced the point 

that more needed to be done. To frame the issue in the larger cultural context 

suggests that Grenada was simply one stage in an evolutionary process that 

involves refinement of logistical techniques. There may be no ultimate solutions, only room for continual improvement.

Operational Logistics

This study began with the query as to how Army logistics influenced the 

conduct of operations in the Grenada campaign, and, conversely, how the 

conduct of operations influenced logistics. The greatest impact on operations 

came from the constricted airflow into Point Salines. This meant that the 82d’s 

battalions arrived much more slowly than anticipated, usually in fragments, 

and often excessively fatigued. Lt. Col. John W. Raines’ battalion, for example, 

landed intact, but its members were exhausted by the diversion to Barbados 

and the need to reconfigure loads to transfer to C–130s. By the time the men 

reached Point Salines early on 26 October, aside from catnaps en route, they 

had gone about forty-five hours without sleep, and like all new arrivals they 

were soon enervated by the tropical heat and humidity. These were good reasons for General Trobaugh not to use the unit too aggressively during its first 

day in the airhead—and he did not do so. His decision also meant that he 

did not overstress the somewhat sketchy logistical base that Major Cleary had 

organized around the airfield.

Of course, General Trobaugh’s entire concept of operations hinged on psychologically destabilizing his opposition with a demonstration of overwhelming 

force rather than by physically eliminating the Cuban and Grenadian fighters. 

The slow advance out of Point Salines that resulted meant that the airflow problems caused no major revisions to Trobaugh’s plans. The slow and erratic buildup 

of his force probably retarded his advance out of the peninsula, but it had other 

more important consequences. Had Trobaugh been able to sustain only a slightly 

faster pace, his troops would have been close enough to the Calivigny Peninsula 

by noon on 27 October to make an overland advance feasible. In this case, he 

would have had no reason to mount an air assault with its tragic results.

The airflow’s influence on the composition of Trobaugh’s usable force was 

greater than its impact on the tempo of operations. With his buildup proceeding so slowly, for example, the general had to retain control of the ranger battalions and use them for special missions when the need arose. This worked 

to his advantage on 26 October at Grand Anse; rescue missions were a ranger 

specialty. Because the Rangers also specialized in raids, Trobaugh had a logical reason on the twenty-seventh for selecting the in-theater ranger units over 

an airborne battalion, even if one had been available, to go into Calivigny. 

Trobaugh’s inability to convince Atlantic Command to rescind the attack 

order, however, all but ensured the fatal outcome of the mission.
Grenada in Perspective

543

At the time, criticism of Army operations focused on the speed of the 

division’s foot advance as compared to the progress of the marines’ motorized 

patrols. Whatever the case, in landing at Pearls Airport the marines had the 

good fortune to enter the most antiregime area on the island. In contrast, the 

rangers and airborne entered in the south where the People’s Revolutionary 

Government had not only concentrated its public works programs and military installations but also resettled landless peasants on land seized from supporters of the previous regime. General Hudson Austin and his associates were 

not popular with the majority of the population there, but they still had the 

support of a committed minority. The numerous sniping incidents in the Point 

Salines area that continued days after the rangers made their assault demonstrated the depth of that local feeling. All else being equal, whether the local 

inhabitants throw grenades or flowers makes a real difference in operational 

tempo.

From the Grenadian point of view, the rangers had assaulted a key area—

one of their centers of gravity, to borrow Carl von Clausewitz’s term—essential for their defense of the island. Having no prospect of conducting sustained 

guerrilla operations, the People’s Revolutionary Army had to defend its supply 

base or suffer complete defeat. This fact alone explained its sharp reaction at 

Point Salines on 25 October in contrast to its lack of response at Pearls. In the 

end, the Grenadians sustained their defense in the Salines area longer than 

in any other portion of the island because the stakes there were so high for 

them.

General Trobaugh, of course, intended not only to demoralize the enemy 

but also to ensure that no insurgency could develop once U.S. troops left. A 

careful step-by-step advance permitted him and his troops to scour the countryside. The many arms caches they uncovered convinced him of the wisdom 

of his approach. Whether widespread Grenadian revulsion against General 

Austin and Bernard Coard would have allowed any insurgency to get off the 

ground will remain unknowable, but the sniping around the division assault 

command post certainly suggested that individuals were present who were 

willing to make the attempt if they had the means at hand. Despite the displeasure of his superiors, from which he was partially insulated because of the 

communications problems associated with the early phases of the operation, 

Trobaugh persisted in this objective until he succeeded. For all of his problems 

with the airflow, his conduct of operations once he arrived on the island was 

well conceived. Colonel Akers, who later became a general, summed up this 

phase by declaring that Trobaugh was the best tactician with whom he had 

ever served, high praise indeed from an officer who had once been an aide to 

the highly regarded General William E. DePuy.32

The very success of General Trobaugh’s operations had a paradoxical 

effect by making Colonel Richardson’s prudent efforts to put the heavy equipment needed to support a counterinsurgency campaign in place as soon as 

possible appear wasteful. This, however, was the wisdom of hindsight. What 

32 Interv, Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
The Rucksack War

544

was wasteful was the decision to dispatch two ships to Grenada, but the only 

way to prevent this lack of coordination would have been to keep the XVIII 

Airborne Corps in the chain of command.

The other major operational decision that had a deep impact on the 

Army’s logistical effort was General Trobaugh’s call for infantry battalions “until I tell you to stop.” By cutting off the support elements of the 2d 

Brigade’s two battalions in the act of deploying, he substantially weakened 

the combat power of Col. Stephen Silvasy Jr.’s formation. Furthermore, 

by halting the reinforcement of Forward Area Support Team II’s Alpha 

Echelon, he ensured that he would have adequate logistical support only 

by the barest of margins and then only through the extraordinary efforts 

of those few logisticians on the ground. Had Task Force 121 engaged in the 

intensity of combat that Trobaugh had anticipated, his logisticians would 

have been overwhelmed.33

In a more abstract and theoretical vein, the Grenada experience demonstrated that logistics at the tactical level of war functions in much the 

same way as it does at the operational level of war. British political scientist 

Thomas M. Kane, the author of one of the most sophisticated treatments 

of the interaction of operations and logistics at the theater level, opined 

that logistics frames operations, establishing what is doable and not doable. 

Logistics is, to quote Kane directly, “the arbiter of opportunity.” One may 

argue, however, that logistics and operations are different at the tactical 

level. Because of shorter distances, smaller forces, and a greater compression of time in which to achieve local decisions—and in tactics all combats 

are local—logistics at that level has none of the solidity that the word frame

implies. Logistical capacity (and, concomitantly, the combat potential of 

the supported maneuver forces) can be, and certainly was on Grenada, a 

very dynamic force that expands or contracts with amazing speed depending 

or such diverse and apparently mundane decisions as whether to remove or 

retain in place a concrete barrier at a ramp, to locate an aviation fuel point for 

Army helicopters immediately adjacent to a runway, or to call for reinforcements at the expense of logistical units. Throughout Urgent Fury the actions 

of logisticians affected the ability of combat units to perform their mission, 

such as the failure of the 82d Support Command to supply Company B, 

325th Infantry, with sufficient hand grenades prior to its processing through 

Green Ramp. At the same time, actions viewed as strictly operational, such 

as General Trobaugh’s decision to insert additional maneuver battalions into 

the airflow ahead of his support units, had a major impact on the quality of 

logistical support available and, paradoxically, probably lowered the combat 

potential of the U.S. forces on the ground. These examples serve to illustrate 

that logistical decisions had operational dimensions and that operational 

decisions had logistical dimensions. As Clausewitz aptly observed in war, 

everything affects everything else. To treat either operations or logistics narrowly is to court unexpected and unwelcome consequences. At the very least, 

33 Interv, Pirnie and author with Akers, [1985], Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 
Returning to the United States at the end of combat operations; below, Ceremony 

honoring the paratroopers upon their return
The Rucksack War

546

serving soldiers and practicing historians should avoid assuming logistics as 

a given.34

Military Success, Logistical Excess

As noted earlier, one of the major after-the-fact criticisms of Army logisticians in Operation Urgent Fury was that they oversupplied the force. In 

fact, the supplies and equipment that the XVIII Airborne Corps and the 82d 

Airborne Division shipped to Grenada turned out to be in excess of requirements largely because the Coard faction proved unable to mount a sustained 

insurgency based on geographic, economic, cultural, political, and military factors. The small size of the island made such an option difficult to exercise. In 

addition, the island did not produce enough food in peacetime to sustain its 

own population, which made any protracted guerrilla resistance by even a firstclass force, which the People’s Revolutionary Army was not, problematic at 

best. When landing on the island, U.S. forces also found a population largely 

disposed in their favor. A sizeable community of Grenadian expatriates in the 

United States who were in constant contact with family and friends on the island, 

to say nothing of the medical students there, ensured that Americans were not 

some unknown threatening “other” despite over four years of propaganda by 

the regime of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. The lack of any coveted natural 

resources, such as oil or natural gas, added to the effect, contributing to a willingness by the locals to ascribe benign objectives to the intervention. The fact 

that the Grenadians spoke English was likewise a factor because it promoted 

the mainly harmonious relations between the troops and the islanders by minimizing misunderstandings. Reinforcing everything, Austin’s interim government had essentially given up all claim to legitimacy in the opinion of the vast 

majority of Grenada’s citizens by murdering Bishop and his key supporters.

The outcome of conventional military operations also contributed to 

the result. By winning the opening battles quickly, American soldiers and 

marines largely destroyed the only prop left to Coard and Austin—the People’s 

Revolutionary Army. Then, General Trobaugh’s care in locating and guarding 

the regime’s arms caches removed the physical means that might have allowed 

any zealots who remained to continue the fight. The prompt establishment 

of a military presence throughout the island also contributed to this result. 

Although the 82d Airborne Division’s 3d Brigade may have added only marginally to the tactical fight because of its delayed landing, its arrival meant 

that the occupation forces could be strong everywhere. The troops’ presence 

and generally good behavior toward the inhabitants (sanitary discipline aside) 

ensured civic peace until Governor General Sir Paul Scoon could organize a 

successor government. 

Only an analyst with a fine-grained and up-to-date knowledge of 

Grenadian society could have predicted that these elements would combine 

34 Thomas M. Kane, Military Logistics and Strategic Performance, pp. 1–14, 171–80. Kane 

first uses the phrase “the arbiter of opportunity” on page 10 and repeats it many times thereafter. See also Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and eds. Michael Howard and Peter Paret 

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 158.
Grenada in Perspective

547

in the way that they did to produce peace rather than a prolonged guerrilla 

war. Even so, given the pre-invasion fulminations of the regime, he or she 

could not have had a high degree of certitude about any such prediction. 

Only hindsight permits such knowledge. Thus, the logisticians who had to 

make decisions about moving forces and equipment to the island had had 

little choice but to proceed under the common sense assumption that a period 

of low-intensity combat might follow the fighting of 25–26 October. Their 

preparations to defeat an insurgency proved unnecessary once conventional 

operations ended. On Grenada, military effectiveness and military efficiency 

were at opposite poles, and in war the importance of the first far outweighs 

the second.

One question lingers: What would have been the impact on Operation 

Urgent Fury if the Grenadian army had been first class? The conventional 

phase would probably have lasted longer and produced more casualties—

American and Grenadian, both military and civilian. Greater Grenadian proficiency, however, would not have reversed the ultimate outcome, given the 

overwhelming and readily available military power of the United States and 

its ability to reinforce its troops on the island virtually at will while denying its 

opponents the opportunity to do the same. Premier Fidel Castro’s judgment 

on this matter is surely instructive. He chose not to reinforce the defenders 

when he had a fleeting opportunity to do so with first-class units from the 

Cuban army. 

Certainly, more intense and lengthy conventional operations would have 

strained the Army’s jury-rigged logistical effort, possibly to the point of breakdown. Conversely, in such a circumstance, Army logistics might have received 

high-level attention and remedial action sooner than it did in the actual 

event. 

The impact of Grenadian professional military expertise on a guerrilla 

phase might well have been less than in conventional operations. Much 

would have depended upon the timing with which the Grenadians transitioned from conventional to unconventional operations. The defenders 

would have wanted to fight conventionally long enough to give the invaders a bloody nose—and thereby encourage their own troops—but to break 

contact before the Americans employed their crushing firepower. Presuming 

perfect timing for the sake of argument, what then? The Grenadians would 

have been able to begin guerrilla operations, but the same factors of a 

restricted area of operations, lack of local food stocks, and overwhelming 

opposition by the inhabitants would in all likelihood have enabled a U.S. 

counterinsurgency campaign to succeed in a matter of weeks. Of course, an 

analyst might also presume a population supportive of the guerrillas, but 

such a supposition would presuppose no coup, no assassination of Bishop, 

and thus no threat to Americans living on the island—factors that sparked 

the U.S. intervention.

A short, successful American counterinsurgency effort would have affirmed 

the wisdom of Army logisticians by justifying the supply buildup they actually 

undertook. Instead of having to suffer ridicule in some quarters, they would
The Rucksack War

548

have received praise for their anticipation of the need to support continuing 

military operations on the island.

Although the basic concept of Urgent Fury—to seize Grenada by a 

coup de main—was sound, the plans to carry it out and their execution were 

impaired. All the services suffered because of the president’s desire for excessive secrecy and Atlantic Command’s consequent failure to allow joint communications planning. For the operators, perhaps the most significant problems were flawed intelligence, particularly on the location of the students, 

Atlantic Command’s failure to mass its forces at the opening of the operation, 

the delay of the operation until daylight hours, and the requirement to pass 

control of ground operations from the Joint Special Operations Command to 

the 82d Airborne Division in the midst of combat. For logisticians, Atlantic 

Command’s removal of XVIII Airborne Corps from the chain of command, 

the failure—for a variety of reasons—to clear the ramp in front of the terminal at Point Salines expeditiously, and General Trobaugh’s order to send the 

infantry of the 3d Brigade to Grenada before the support elements of the 2d 

Brigade constituted the major errors. These mistakes were redeemed by sound 

doctrine, good training, and hard work by junior officers and men. General 

Schwarzkopf summed up the argument: “Grenada, once again, . . . proved 

that even though higher headquarters screws it up every way you can possibly 

screw it up, it’s the individual initiative and valor on the part of the small units, 

the small unit leadership, and the soldiers on the ground that will win for you 

every time if they are well trained.” This was true no less of the logisticians 

than of the men in the line units. Capt. Steven L. Bradley Jr., the commander 

of Company A, 307th Medical Battalion, was speaking about the doctors, 

nurses, medics, and medical service personnel when he observed that most of 

the good things that happened on Grenada occurred because of the enthusiasm, dedication, and training of individuals. In fact, his observation applies 

equally to all the Army logisticians involved: “When a mission was perceived, 

people would go out and do it.”35

Afterward, the commander of the 2d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division, 

Colonel Silvasy, mused about the importance of his decision to take the 

indispensable 6,000-pound forklift with his unit: “Now and again when I see 

[Major] Cleary I kind of insinuate that he did a good job. Can’t be too nice 

to support guys you know.” Silvasy’s evaluation applies to more than just the 

Forward Area Support Team II coordinator. Despite the confusion caused by 

factors beyond their control, Army logisticians in Operation Urgent Fury

“did a good job.”36

35 Intervs, Bishop with Schwarzkopf, 21 Nov 1983 (first quoted words), and Wade with 

Bradley, [Nov 1983] (second quoted words), Hist files (Intervs), CMH. 36 Briefings, Silvasy, 7–8 Dec 1983, Hist files (Intervs), CMH.
Bibliography

The Grenadian revolution was controversial from its inception. The brief 

tenure of Maurice Bishop as prime minister and the dramatic way his 

regime came to its end followed almost immediately by the U.S. intervention 

have inspired authors representing a wide spectrum of views. Fortunately, 

scholars of more than one ideological persuasion have produced good work, 

and the serious student can benefit from immersion in all perspectives.

Research for The Rucksack War: U.S. Army Operational Logistics in 

Grenada, 1983, commenced while the Grenada intervention was still in progress, long before the National Archives and Records Administration received 

any of the captured official records or before individuals donated materials in 

their possession to research libraries. As a consequence, whenever possible, I 

copied many original documents because I did not know whether or when they 

might otherwise become available. These copies, which in some instances are 

undoubtedly the only surviving record, constitute the disproportionately large 

documentary evidence identified as Historians files in the custody of the U.S. 

Army Center of Military History (CMH) in Washington, D.C. Within three to 

five years after the publication of this volume, the respective Grenada-related 

materials will be retired to the National Archives’ new facility at College Park, 

Maryland, and incorporated into Record Group 319, Records of the Army 

Staff.

The intense collection effort began during Operation Urgent Fury in 

October 1983 with my assignment to the Army Operations Center in the Office 

of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans at the Pentagon. In the 

end, however, many people contributed to this project. Shortly after the operation ended, CMH historians George L. MacGarrigle and Stephen Harding 

joined me to work on a comprehensive military history of the intervention. After 

we completed a partial draft, the chief of military history decided in July 1984 

to discontinue this project. My division chief, Lt. Col. Robert Frank, believing 

that the Center would have to produce a definitive history of the operation, 

permitted me to continue to collect documents as time allowed. Beginning in 

the fall of 1984, a uniformed historian at the Center of Military History, Maj. 

Bruce R. Pirnie, supplemented the materials the team had collected with his 

own extensive research and then produced the monograph Operation Urgent

☆ ☆ ☆
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Fury: The United States Army in Joint Operations, an account that concentrated on combat operations. Still later, CMH historian Dwight D. Oland and 

I began further research on the conflict; he focused on medical support while I 

addressed logistics generally. In addition, three professional colleagues—Maj. 

Charles R. Bishop, commander of the 44th Military History Detachment at 

Fort McPherson, Georgia; Col. Louis D. H. Frasché, a member of the Grenada 

Work Group at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; and Ronald H. Cole, a senior historian at the Joint History Office—shared many documents and interviews that 

they and, in the case of Major Bishop and Colonel Frasché, their teams had collected. Various members of the Army Staff, knowing that the Center of Military 

History had one or more Grenada projects under way, provided Grenada documents from time to time. Finally, four Army officers pursuing graduate studies 

at Harvard University—Lt. Col. Michael A. Anastasio, Lt. Col. Jerry Edwards, 

Lt. Col. Gilbert S. Harper, and Lt. Col. Michael Simmons—collected further 

materials relating to the Grenada intervention and bequeathed their research 

files to the Center. In short, over time the Historians files burgeoned by accretion. In many instances I was unable to ascertain where the researchers had 

located some materials. As a result, aside from keeping the Harvard Fellows 

and Dwight D. Oland Papers as distinct subgroups, I elected to organize the 

Historians files by agency of origin.

Along the way, of course, I encountered a few setbacks. Perhaps the greatest and most unfortunate surprise was to learn that someone had destroyed all 

U.S. Atlantic Command and U.S. Atlantic Fleet records from 1946 through 

the early 1990s as waste paper. Furthermore, after relinquishing command of 

Atlantic Command and retiring from the Navy in late 1985, Admiral Wesley 

L. McDonald granted one interview about Grenada but then consistently 

turned down further interview requests through February 2009, when he died. 

These two factors made obtaining an Atlantic Command perspective on the 

operation difficult at best.

This bibliography, supplemented by the more detailed Historians files finding aid, will guide readers and future researchers to the various sources of 

information that form the basis of my volume. The ensuing sections—Archival Records, Primary Studies, Primary Books, Primary Articles, Secondary 

Studies, Secondary Books, Secondary Articles—provide full reference details 

for the sources. In the footnotes, because of space concerns and to reduce 

duplication, I followed some basic rules of economy and adopted a minimalistic style that reflects essential components of both unpublished and published 

sources. From the outset I used contractions, acronyms, and initialisms, which 

are fully explained in the Guide to Abbreviations (the umbrella term abbreviation covers all three). Published works listed in the footnotes do not repeat all 

the details found in the bibliographical entries, but are limited in the initial 

citation in each chapter to the full name of the author; the complete main title 

of the book, article, and dissertation/thesis/student paper/memoir, with the 

latter identified as such to avoid any confusion; and relevant page numbers. 

Once a document or work is cited in each chapter, subsequent references thereafter are further shortened.
Bibliography

551

Archival Records

National Archives And Records Administration (NARA–CP)

College Park, Maryland

Record Group 242, National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 

1685–1983, specifically in Entry 338 (UD), contains the microfiche copies of 

Grenadian documents seized by U.S. Army and Marine Corps units during 

the October 1983 intervention and organized by the Defense Intelligence 

Agency (originally accessioned to Record Group 373, Records of the 

Defense Intelligence Agency). The collection, which consisted of approximately 6,400 microfiches when I examined it, varies qualitatively probably 

because of the speed with which the copies were made. Some frames are 

quite good and others are completely illegible. I could not discern any functional organization; apparently DIA personnel had copied the documents 

as they were located and assigned numbers beginning with 2000 and running through 12650, but with one large numerical gap for material falling 

within the range from 3500 to 3999. Many microfiche contain more than 

one document, although some documents can be quite lengthy––running 

over a hundred pages––in which case the document requires more than one 

fiche. In the footnotes I used the abbreviation Mf for the word microfiche, 

followed by the number.

Information on captured Grenadian records may also be found below under 

the section titled U.S. Army Center of Military History, subsection Historians 

Files: Primary Documents, letter H. Captured Grenadian Documents.

Record Group 338, Records of U.S. Army Operational, Tactical, and Support 

Organizations (WWII and Thereafter), specifically in Entry 228, UD–06W, 

contains the Urgent Fury records of the XVIII Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, 

North Carolina, including daily journals maintained at the Corps Emergency 

Operations Center during the Grenada intervention (23 October to 15 December 

1983) and secret and below message traffic during the same period. 

I used these records while they were still under Army custody at the 

Washington National Records Center in Suitland, Maryland. The footnotes, 

however, reflect their subsequent transfer to control of the National Archives 

and Records Administration and assignment to Record Group 338.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA–RRPL)

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Simi Valley, California

These very comprehensive and well-organized records from the Office of the 

President contain much that is invaluable for the student of the development of 

U.S. policy toward Grenada. The following subseries of files proved most useful:

• Office of the Counsel to the President files

• President’s Daily Diary (15–28 October and 7 November 1983)

• Records of the National Security Council (RNSC)
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552

	 • Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), files

	 • NSC memoranda

	 • Country files (Grenada), vols. 1–4

	 • Crisis Management Center, Grenada files

	 • Intelligence Directorate, Grenada files

	 • National Security Decision Directives (NSDD)

• William P. Clark files

• Roger W. Fountaine files (Grenada)

• Donald R. Fortier files (Grenada)

• Christopher M. Lehman files (Grenada)

• Douglas McMinn files

• Edwin Meese III files (Grenada) 

Department of State (DoS)

Washington, D.C.

I located the material listed below in the Classified Reading Room of the 

Department of State. Incoming and outgoing messages are stored in a classified 

database, and are relatively easy to retrieve by embassy and date of transmittal. 

The other files consist of paper records in essentially the state they were in when 

they were removed from the file cabinets of the officials handling the crisis.

The material is quite valuable, but the Grenada Working Group collection 

is indispensable for the period October–November 1983. The Collective Action 

File includes many Grenada documents, while the St. George’s University 

School of Medicine File contains a broader range of materials than the name 

implies. The accession numbers were assigned when the records were physically moved to the Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland, 

where they remain in the custody of the State Department. 

• Messages, U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C.,October–December 

1983

• Messages, U.S. Embassy, Bridgetown, Barbados, 1979–1983 

• Messages, U.S. Embassy, Grenada, November–December 1983

• Messages, U.S. Embassy, Kingstown, Jamaica, October–November 1983

• Messages, U.S. Interest Section, Havana, Cuba, October–November 1983

• Messages, U.S. Mission, United Nations, October–November 1983

• Collective Action File, Accession no. 90 D551, #2141

• Grenada Working Group (GWG), 1983, Accession no. 353–96–0002 

• St. George’s University School of Medicine File, Accession no. 59–97–0323 

U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH)

Fort McNair, D.C.

In addition to the voluminous Historians files, detailed separately below, I 

used some of the Center’s operational and archival resources contained in the 

following:

• Archives files, encompassing annual reports and/or annual histories of 

various Army commands, field manuals, and Army regulations
Bibliography

553

• General Officer (GenOff) files, consisting primarily of official resumés of service prepared by the Army Public Affairs Office for public 

distribution

• Vietnam Interview (VNIT) files, including an interview with then Col. 

Jack V. Mackmull concerning his command of the 1st Aviation Brigade 

in Vietnam 

• Senior Officer Oral History (SrOffOHist) files, containing interviews that 

were particularly useful in helping the establish the larger context of the 

post-Vietnam Army

• Organizational History (OrgHist) files, providing information about the 

organization and history of the units that participated in Urgent Fury

• Table of Organization and Equipment (TOE) files, describing how the 

U.S. Army units in the operation were organized and equipped

• Unit Historical Data (UHD) cards, identifying the modified TOEs and 

the home stations of participating units

• Museum Division Collection (MDC) files, containing technical manuals 

and other official documents relating to material culture

Although the Army had a formal records management system in place during the Grenada intervention, units did not always fully comply with the complex 

recordskeeping procedures, partly because of the exigencies of an operational 

environment and because of the absence of trained administrative personnel. 

The acting chief of the Research and Analysis Division at the Center, Alfred 

M. Beck, met with the archivist of the Army and helped craft a message to the 

field reiterating the need to preserve records related to the operation. Although 

I was granted access to the Army Operations Center while the intervention was 

ongoing, I was not allowed to photocopy any documents. I was, however, permitted to take notes. My notes were simply handwritten transcriptions of the 

documents on note cards, because I understood neither the jargon nor the acronyms that the documents contained. I knew that I could easily miss something 

important if I was less than comprehensive. When my colleagues MacGarrigle 

and Harding joined the collection effort a few weeks later, they found themselves 

under the same restrictions, but eventually we were permitted to make a few copies. We soon received an additional assignment, when the deputy chief of staff 

for operations and plans tasked the Center to prepare an Urgent Fury chronology for inclusion in the Department of the Army’s report on Grenada lessons 

learned. Various Army Staff contacts then began sending us relevant material.

Fortunately, both the 44th Military History Detachment from Fort 

McPherson, Georgia, and the Grenada Work Group from Fort Leavenworth, 

Kansas, operated under fewer restrictions. The 44th met many of the units as 

they returned from Grenada and copied all relevant documents; the Grenada 

Work Group found additional records, which members copied in the course 

of preparing a lessons learned report for the Army chief of staff. Both organizations shared their records with one another and with me. I supplemented my 

initial collection effort with trips to Forts Leavenworth, McPherson, Bragg, 

and Lee in 1984, 1985, and 1988. Further, both Oland and the Harvard fellows 
The Rucksack War

554

collected additional materials. The result is a large and rich, if not entirely 

comprehensive, collection of papers related to the Grenada operation.

The organization of the bulk of these materials is described below. In 

addition, I created separate small categories to cover the following: primary 

studies, biographies, secondary studies, drafts, and graphics.

HISTORIANS FILES: PRIMARY DOCUMENTS

In several instances, the files contain earlier drafts of reports as well as the final 

version. The careful researcher will note that the drafts are sometimes more 

forthright about problems than the final reports. 

A. Department of Defense

Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP)

• Consultation Report

Office of the Secretary of Defense History Office

• Public Statements of Secretary of Defense, 1983 (Extracts)

For anyone writing about defense issues, the OSD History Office has 

these statements in a very useful four-volume collection of primary 

documents.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)

Joint Staff

	 • Chronology

	 • Draft Presidential Memorandum (concerning the withdrawal of forces)

	 • Draft Lessons Learned, Operation Urgent Fury

	 • Miscellaneous Master Scenario Events List, a large binder containing

synopses of messages received by the JCS Message Center and arranged 

in chronological order within twenty-seven subject areas (Command and 

Control—Task Organization; Command and Control—Communications 

Structure/Capabilities; Planning/ Execution Systems; Logistics Structure—

Movement; Logistics Structure—Supply, etc.) by date-time groups 

	 • Paper (Response to Lind Report)

Joint History Office (JHO)

	 • Secretary of Defense testimony, 25 October 1983

	 • Memorandum for Directors and Heads of Agencies, OJCS, 30 January

1984

• U.S. Atlantic Command Annual Historical Reports, FY 1981–1984

(Extracts)

	 • XVIII Airborne Corps Chronological Summary of Events

	 • J–3/OPD Draft Report on Urgent Fury (Extracts)

	 • Lessons Learned

	 • NSC System

	 • Briefing

	 • AT&T Credit Card Story

	 • Lind Report
Bibliography

555

The archives suffered major damage in the attack on the Pentagon of 11 

September 2001. Fortunately, I had done extensive research there before 

that date. In several instances, the originals from which I made copies or 

took notes did not survive.

B. Unified and Specified Commands (U&SCmds)

Military Airlift Command (MAC)

• After Action Report

• Lessons Learned

• Messages

507th Tactical Air Control Wing

	 • After Action Report

1st Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron [see also Meyer Papers below]

	 • After Action Report

Strategic Air Command

• After Action Report

U.S. Atlantic Command (LANTCOM)

• After Action Report Joint Exercise Solid Shield, 1983 (notes only)

• After Action Report/Lessons Learned

• Concept Plan 2360, 30 March 1983

• Chronology

• Operations Orders

Joint Task Force 120

	 • After Action Report

	 • Messages

	 • Situation Reports (notes only)

Commander, U.S. Forces, Grenada

	 • Messages

U.S. Readiness Command

• After Action Report

• Urgent Fury Implementing Orders and Directives

C. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)

• Conference on the Grenada Intervention, 2008

• DIA, Lines of Communication on Grenada (Extracts)

D. Department of the Army (DA)

Academy of Health Sciences

• Extract, Subcourse 420, Medical Support of Army Divisions, January 

1982
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556

Military Postal Service Agency (DoD entity under Army for administrative 

purposes)

• Lessons Learned

Military Traffic Management Command (MTMC)

• After Action Report

• Chronology

Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence

• Lessons Learned

Office of the Chief of Staff, Army

• Backchannel Messages

Army Studies Group, Office of the Chief of Staff, Army

	 • Report on 1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry, in Urgent Fury

Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans (DCSOPS)

• Chronology

• Grenada Message Traffic, November–December 1983

• Information Papers

• Lessons Learned

• Messages

Army Operations Center (AOC)

	 • Grenada Message file

	 • ODO (operations duty officer) Significant Events file

	 • ODO Situation Reports

	 • OD (officer of the day) Master file (situation and operational reports)

	 • Grenada Media Messages

	 • Grenada Message Retransmittal

	 • Team Chief Top Secret file

	 • Significant Events file

	 • DCSOPS Joint Actions file

	 • Unidentified Top Secret file

	 • Grenada—Future Operations file

• Grenada—Miscellaneous Records

	 • Miscellaneous CRC (Crisis Response Cell) Administrative Records

The above categories reflect the organization of the records when I used 

them. Aside from a handful of photocopies, only my handwritten transcriptions are available.

U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (CAC)

• Grenada Work Group (GWG) Correspondence

• GWG Drafts (Grenada Chronology/Lessons Learned Report/Executive 

Summary)
Bibliography

557

• GWG Comments on Draft Lessons Learned Report

• GWG Final Report

• GWG Team Memorandums for the Record

• Various Lessons Learned

• Various Briefings and Briefing Slides

• U.S. Forces, Grenada, Commander Message

The GWG draft report contains descriptive detail that is particularly 

valuable, but it should be used only in conjunction with the participants’ 

comments. The GWG final report, although less detailed, is an excellent analysis based on extensive research by experienced officers, many 

of whom were on the faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General 

Staff College. However, the map showing the locations of logistical units 

must be treated with great caution because it identifies five forward area 

support teams at the Point Salines airfield. In fact, only two deployed for 

Urgent Fury.

U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM)

• Backchannel Message

• Lessons Learned

• Messages

• Urgent Fury Implementing Orders and Directives

• WIN (Worldwide Intercomputer Network) Teleconference Messages

U.S. Army Foreign Science and Technology Center

• After Action Report

U.S. Army Infantry School

	 • Memorandum, sub: Grenada Debriefing

U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command

• After Action Report

U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center

• After Action Report/Lessons Learned

• Miscellaneous Reports

U.S. Army Materiel Development and Readiness Command

• After Action Report

• Messages

U.S. Army Nurse Corps

• After Action Reports

U.S. Army Troop Support and Materiel Readiness Support Command

• Messages
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558

1st Special Operations Command

• Lessons Learned

4th Psychological Operations Group

	 • After Action Report

358th Civil Affairs Brigade

	 • After Action Report

1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry

	 • After Action Report/Lessons Learned (including S–3 Chronology)

	 • Surgeon, After Action Report

	 • Surgeon, Operations Orders

Company A, 1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry

	 	 • After Action Report

Company B, 1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry

	 	 • Operations Order

2d Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry

	 • After Action Report

XVIII Airborne Corps

Corps Headquarters

	 • After Action Report

	 • Lessons Learned

	 • Messages

1st Support Command (Corps)

	 • Messages

	 • Operations Order

	 • Personnel Movement Orders. Movement orders written subsequently

to document the participation of units in the Grenada intervention, 

and include not only by-name rosters of individuals but also dates of 

deployment and theater departure.

82d Airborne Division

Division Headquarters

	 • After Action Reports (headquarters staff elements and subordinate

units)

• G–3 Staff Journals (one with all messages sent and received by the

assault command post until 1300 on 28 October; the other with all 

messages to and from higher headquarters beginning at 1300 on 28 

October)

	 • G–4 After Action Report

	 • Operations Orders

	 • Staff Judge Advocate After Action Report
Bibliography

559

• Extract, Readiness Standing Operating Procedures, vol. 1, Planning and 

Preparations, 1995

82d Aviation Battalion

	 • After Action Report. Unsigned but apparently from the commander

of the 82d Aviation Battalion detailing its role in the air assault on the 

Calivigny Barracks

307th Engineer Battalion

	 • Staff Journal and Message File

2d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division

	 • After Action Report

2d Battalion, 325th Infantry

	 • Operations Order

• S–1 Staff Journal

	 • S–3 Staff Journal

	 • S–4 Staff Journal

101st Airborne Division

• Message

E. Department of the Air Force (DAF)

Department Headquarters

• Draft Paper on Air Force in Urgent Fury

• Execution Checklist (airdrop at Point Salines)

• Lessons Learned

• Miscellaneous Records

• Working Paper (evacuation of diplomats from Grenada)

Tactical Air Command

• After Action Report

• Lessons Learned

• Messages

• Narrative Reports

Twelfth Air Force

	 • After Action Report

F. Department of the Navy (DN)

Office of Program Appraisal

• Lessons Learned
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560

Medical Officer, U.S.S. Guam

• After Action Report

U.S. Navy History and Heritage Command (NHHC)

• Memoranda

G. Miscellaneous (Misc)

Topical files consist of e-mail correspondence, some original documents, and 

excerpts from relevant technical and other publications concerning specialized 

organizations, military rank, etc. Included are such subjects as U.S. casualties 

and remains, ANGLICO (Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company), Cuban/

Soviet sources, media exclusion, Exercise Exotic Palm, intelligence, and special operations forces. Other files cover equipment and technique, including 

Air Support, Battle Dress Uniforms, Bladder Birds, BRDM2 Amphibious 

Scout Car, BTR60 Armored Personnel Carrier, C–130, C–130 Antenna 

Issue, C–130 vs. C–141, C–141, Commodore, Compass Computers, Erdlator, 

Flechette Round, Gamma Goat, Green and Yellow Ramps, KY–57 (Vinson), 

Kevlar Helmet, LAPES (Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System), M47 

Dragon, Rucksacks, UH–60 Black Hawk, Water Buffalo, and the WWMCCS 

(Worldwide Military Command and Control System). Still other folders contain complementary information, such as the Amnesty International Report, 

2007.

H. Captured Grenadian Documents (CGD)

Released by the Department of State and the Department of Defense, these 

photocopies of selected Grenadian documents are usually more legible than 

the microfiche copies in Record Group 241. The term Individual Document 

Released (IDR) comes from the initial cover memorandum from the two 

departments. The releases occurred at least four separate times, the last of 

which was quite large.

IDR I, nos. 000015–000194 

IDR II, nos. 100003–100363 

IDR III, nos. 100012–103025, plus unnumbered documents

IDR IV, letters A–VV and nos. 00084–123448.

The first release contains most of the documents concerning Grenadian and 

Soviet agreements; the last three releases came with detailed indices of the 

documents in each. 

Information on Grenadian records may also be found under the section titled National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 242, 

National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1685–1983, which contains the microfiche copies of the Grenadian documents seized by U.S. Army 

and Marine Corps units during the intervention and organized by the Defense 

Intelligence Agency.
Bibliography

561

HISTORIANS FILES: PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPTS

• Premier Fidel Castro, 26 October 1983

• Admiral Wesley L. McDonald, 28 October 1983

• Caspar Weinberger and General John W. Vessey, 28 October 1983

• Unattributed backgrounder, 25 October 1983, 1200 hours

HISTORIANS FILES: INDIVIDUAL PAPERS

The individual papers, arranged alphabetically below, consist primarily of 

copies of materials held by former participants in the Grenada intervention. 

Other documents collected by the Harvard Fellows during the course of their 

studies and by Dwight Oland during the course of his related medical research 

project are included as subgroups. 

Abizaid, Capt. John P. 

• Air Liaison Officer information

• Chalk 1 personnel manifest

• Maps with planned phase lines

• Operations Order for Company A, 1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th 

Infantry

• Fire Support Annex

• Situation Report (handwritten, undated)

• Time Schedule/Sequence of Events

Anders, Steve E.

• E-Mail concerning logistics reorganization in the 1960s.

Barrett Jr., Col. Robert C. 

• Draft After Action Reports/Lessons Learned

• Chronology

• Diagrams and Tables

• Messages

• Correspondence (XVIII Airborne Corps logistics)

• Briefing Outline, Slides, and Notes

Chisholm, Capt. Roderick 

• Organization Chart, Company C Task Force, 548th Engineer Battalion

• Report on the task force’s operations on Grenada

Cleary III, Maj. Daniel J. 

• Briefing script, [1984]

• Office of the Chief of Public Affairs, Modular Speech Material (January 

1984)

• Report, Public Affairs Office, 82d Airborne Division, 12 January 1984

• Correspondence

Craig, Ronald (Historian, Military Police School) 

• E-mail concerning military police on Grenada

• Overview of the operation

Cusick, Lt. Col. John J. 

• Schematic of equipment and supplies earmarked for the 82d’s Division

Ready Brigade
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562

Daly Jr., Col. William F. 

• Briefing Slides on 82d Support Command’s actions during Urgent Fury

Deszo, Spec. Denis 

• E-mails

• Photographs

Flint, Air Force Capt. Nathan (Air Movements Liaison Officer, XVIII 

Airborne Corps)

• E-mail in 2005 on contrasting characteristics of the C–141 and the C–130

Griffee, James (Resident Assistant, St. George’s University School of Medicine)

• Handwritten account describing his experiences

Hardman, Joseph M. 

• Documents

• Correspondence

Hardman, as chief of the College Eligibility Unit, Department of 

Education, had responsibility for reviewing the status of the St. George’s 

University School of Medicine.

Harvard Fellows Collection 

• Deployment of the Assault Follow-on Echelon

• Discriminate Deterrence

• Health Service Support

• Honduran Deployment

• Index of LDS (Leadership Development Study) Proposals

• Initiation and Concept Development for Joint Operational Plans

• Joint and Combined Operations at the Operational Level of War

• Joint and Combined Warfare

• Joint Doctrine Master Plan

• Joint Education

• Joint Task Force Planning and Guidance Process

• JOPES (Joint Operation Planning and Execution System) Logistics Concept

• Logistics for Joint and Combined Operations

• MAGTF (Marine Air-Ground Task Force) 2–88 Playbook

• Marine Corps Command and Staff College Program of Instruction

• Maritime Prepositioning Force

• Plan Development, Plan Review, and Supporting Plans

• Organization and Command Relationships

• Sources of Change in the Future Security Environment

Lt. Col. Michael A. Anastasio, Lt. Col. Jerry Edwards, Lt. Col. Gilbert S. 

Harper, and Lt. Col. Michael Simmons were fellows at Harvard’s John F. 

Kennedy School of Government. For ease of use, I integrated the interviews 

and articles, both primary and secondary, that the fellows collected with those 

types of materials collected by the other Grenada researchers. The abovelisted categories thus represent only a portion of the fellows’ collection. Aside 

from those materials gathered in the process of writing their own paper, the 

collection now consists of postintervention doctrinal material, reflecting the 

impact of Urgent Fury on joint and service thinking, and a series of papers 

on the subject of educating officers to participate in contingency operations. 
Bibliography

563

Hecht, Ronald (Association Webmaster)

• E-mail concerning name of the rear detachment commander at Fort

Stewart for the 2d Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry

Hensler, Maj. Robert M. 

• E-mails, 2007–2008, concerning the operation

Hoffman II, Capt. Lawrence W.

• Extensive e-mails concerning the operation

• Copies of contemporary notes made at planning sessions on concept of

the operation and logistical support

Jackson Jr., Lt. Col. Joseph P. 

• Photocopy of his diary covering the operation

Maxham, R. Steven (Director, U.S. Army Aviation Museum)

• E-mail concerning UH–60 Black Hawk helicopter

Martin, Capt. Herman L.

• E-mail concerning his role in planning for family assistance

Merritt, Roxanne (Director, John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Museum, 2006) 

• E-Mail concerning location of various participants in the operation

Mitchell, Capt. John M. 

• After Action Report, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st

Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry

• Map, showing intended ranger battalions zones of operation, 25 October

1983

• List of key personnel on Aircraft 1, 2, and 3, 25 October 1983

• Jump/Loading Manifest, Aircraft 3

• E-mail correspondence about the operation, 2006.

Nix Jr., Maj. Jack P., et al.

• Joint Briefing Slides

The other briefers were Col. James T. Scott, Lt. Col. Wesley B. Taylor Jr., 

and Maj. Joseph J. Maher III.

Oland (Dwight D.) Medical Collection

• After Action Reports/Lessons Learned

• Disaster Area Survey Report for Grenada, 4 November 1983

• Field Manuals

• Maps

• Medical Chronologies

• Published Materials and Draft Article

• 44th Medical Brigade S–3 (Lt. Col. Jack Rodin) Files

Perkins Jr., Lt. Col. Andrew M. 

• Map (with annotations by Perkins)

• Briefing slides on Urgent Fury

Quirion, Spec. 4 Michael P. (Company C, 1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th 

Infantry)

• E-mail concerning resupply operations from Hunter Army Airfield

Rumbaugh, Col. James R.

• Time lines for the medical aspects of the operation.

• Map
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564

• List, sub: Professional Officer Backfill

• Chronology of Major Events

• Report, OIC, Disaster Area Survey Team, 8 November 1983

Scholtes, Maj. Gen. Richard A.

• Memo for Senator William S. Cohen, 4 September 1986

Schroeder, Col. Daniel R.

• Correspondence concerning personnel involved in Urgent Fury

Trujillo, Pvt. Stephen

• E-mail concerning 2d Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry

Vessey, General John W. 

• Letter to the director of Joint History Office concerning Urgent Fury

Wick, 1st Lt. Gregory J.

• E-mail concerning his role in the operation

Wilson, Lt. Col. Edward B. 

• Medical chronology

Wright, Maj. Ann

• Messages

• Notes

• Briefing Slides

• Speech

HISTORIANS FILES: INTERVIEWS

To capture the events and to clarify aspects of the Grenada intervention, I 

conducted numerous interviews. Those conducted by my historian colleagues 

and team members of the 44th Military History Detachment and the Grenada 

Work Group are also included. Most of the interviews are preserved as transcripts; others, as tapes, notes, and/or memoranda for the record. The interviews listed below provide the name, rank, position(s) and/or role during the 

operation, and the date(s) interviewed. In addition, the complete transcripts of 

briefings on the operation are included in the list below. Briefing slides, on the 

other hand, are included in the personal papers section.

Abizaid, Capt. John P., Commander, Company A, 1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th 

Infantry: 1 November 1983, 15 December 1983

Acebes, 1st Sgt. William H., Company C, 1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry: 

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The Rucksack War

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The Rucksack War

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Commander, U.S. Forces, Grenada: 30 November 1983, [1988], 7 February 

1989

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1983

Undedunk, Pvt. Robert S., Medic, 3d Platoon, Company B, 2d Battalion 

(Ranger), 75th Infantry: 1 November 1983

Vail, Brig. Gen. Nathan C., Deputy Director, Operations, Readiness, and 

Mobilization Directorate, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for 

Operations and Plans, Army Staff: 9 November 1983

Ventura, Capt. Jose G., S–4, 2d Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry: 1 November 

1983

Vessey, General John W., Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff: 25 March 1987

Vitucci, Maj. Samuel S., S–3, 82d Support Command (Division): [November 

1983]

Voyles, Cmd. Sgt. Maj. James E., 2d Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry: 1 

November 1983

Ward, Lt. Col. William E., Commander, 530th Supply and Service Battalion: 

18 July 1986

Warnock, CWO2 Michael T., 313th Military Intelligence Battalion 

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The Rucksack War

576

Watson, Maj. Christopher O., Coordinator, Forward Area Support Team III, 

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Watson, Maj. Jerome A., Assistant G–3, 82d Airborne Division: 22 November 

1983

Weaver, M. Sgt. (Acting Sgt. Maj.) Jackie, 5th Surgical Hospital (Mobile 

Army): 2 March 1988

Weck, Maj. Lonnie E., S–3, 82d Aviation Battalion (Combat): [1983]

Weinberger, Caspar W., Secretary of Defense: 12 January 1988, 20 January 

1988, 8 March 1988, 7 April 1988, 21 June 1988

White, Sfc. Larry C., 1st Sergeant, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 

2d Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry: 1 November 1983

Whittaker, Maj. James F., S–4, 2d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division: 10 

November 1983

Wick, 1st Lt. Gregory J., Division Fire Support Element, 82d Airborne 

Division: 5 April 1984

Wigfall, Spec. Michael, Medical Supply Specialist, 32d Medical Depot: 3 

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November 1983

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Williams, S. Sgt. Michael, Utilities Equipment Repair Instructor: 2 March 

1988

Wilson, Lt. Col. Edward B., Commander, 307th Medical Battalion: 6 November 

1987

Withers III, Capt. George K., S–1, 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry: 10 November 

1983

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[November 1983]

Woolman, SFC Thomas, Senior Operating Room Technician, Company C, 

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of Medical Corps Affairs, Office of The Surgeon General: 19 November 

1988

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1984): 3–4. Barrow was the prime minister of Barbados from 1966 to 1976 

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Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery, that supported the 2d Brigade, 82d 

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Hippolyte-Manigat, Mirlande. “What Happened in Ocho Rios: Last Chance 

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1983 interview with Bishop.

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Field Artillery Journal 53 (March–April 1985): 8–13, 53. Major McMichael, 

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occupation and an analysis of a certain fundamental disconnect between 

the American and Grenadian perception of the intervention.

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Ortiz, Frank V. “Grenada Before and After.” Atlantic 253 (June 1984): 7–14. 

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Caribbean at the time of the Grenadian revolution.

O’Shaughnessy, John F. “Interrogation: Grenada.” Military Intelligence 11 

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Radin, Robert M., and Bell, Raymond A. “Combat Service Support of 

Operation Urgent Fury.” Army Logistician 16 (November–December 

1984): 16–19.

Rawie, Vernon R. “STRAC.” Armor 48 (May–June 1959): 43–47.
The Rucksack War

586

Sanchez, Nestor D. “What Was Uncovered in Grenada: The Weapons and 

Documents.” Caribbean Review 12 (Fall 1983): 21–23, 59. Sanchez was the 

deputy assistant secretary of defense for inter-American affairs.

Schafer, Capt. Charles H. “Logistics Support of the Caribbean Peacekeeping 

Force.” Army Logistician 17 (September-October 1985): 22–26. Captain 

Schafer was team chief of the Army Technical Assistance Team on 

Barbados from October 1984 to April 1985.

Schemmer, Benjamin F. “Grenada Highlighted One of DoD’s Major C3 

Problems, But Increased Funding Is Bringing Solutions.” Armed Forces 

Journal International 121 (February 1984): 50, 52–53.

Schemmer, Benjamin F., ed. “JCS Reply to Congressional Reform Caucus’ 

Critique of the Grenada Rescue Operation.” Armed Forces Journal 

International 121 (July 1984): 12.

Scherman, Tony. “What It Was Really Like: One U.S. Soldier’s Moving Account 

of Those First Few Days on Grenada.” Family Week (11 March 1984): 

4–5, 7. In-depth interview with Sgt. Matthew Ide, 2d Battalion (Ranger), 

75th Infantry.

Seigle, Lt. Col. Robert N. “Looking Back at Urgent Fury: Army Aviation in 

Grenada.” Army Aviation 32 (December 1983): 18–19, 22, 24, 57–58.

Seiter Jr., Eugene D. “All-Source Production Section: Grenada.” Military 

Intelligence 11 (January–March 1985): 11–13.

Sever, Kenneth C. “Grenada Revisited/Lessons Learned.” Ordnance Magazine 

1 (Fall 1984): 42–46.

––––––––. “Units and Missions—The 782d Maintenance Battalion (in 

Grenada).” Ordnance Magazine 2 (Winter 1984): 3–6.

“Statement by the Cuban Party and Revolutionary Government on the 

Imperialist Intervention of Grenada.” Black Scholar 15 (January–February 

1984): 33–40.

Steif, William. “Reagan’s Island.” Progressive 48 (January 1984): 18–20. Steif 

visited the island during the occupation.

Stewart, John F. “Operation Urgent Fury: The 525th MI Group Perspective.” 

Military Intelligence 11 (January–March 1985): 8–10. Stewart commanded 

the 525th during the operation.

Szulc, Tad. “Radical Winds in the Caribbean.” New York Times Magazine, 25 

May 1982, pp. 16–19, 56–57, 70–73.

“This Was the Cuban Personnel in Grenada.” Black Scholar 15 (January–

February 1984): 40. 

Thompson, Dale L. “The Guard in Grenada,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings

109 (November 1984): 65–69. Lieutenant Commander Thompson commanded the Coast Guard squadron assigned to patrol Grenadian waters 

once Urgent Fury officially ended.

Wickham, John A. “GIs Clearly Ready in 1 Action of Decade: Soul of Army 

Is Alive and Strong.” The Officer 60 (April 1984): 18–21.

Wolfe, Linda. “Young Doctors at Sea: Learning Medicine at Those New 

Caribbean Schools.” New York Magazine, 25 April 1983, pp. 34–39. 

Wylie, Scott. “CBI: One Year Later.” Business America, 7 January 1985, pp. 2–4.
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(Winter 1983–1984): 29.

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53–56. Zeybel wrote the first squadron-level AC–130 tactics manual.

Zunes, Stephen. “A Revolution That Could Have Worked.” Progressive 48 

(January 1984): 21. A political scientist at Beacon College, Zunes was one 

of twenty-one protestors arrested for staging a sit-in to protest the Grenada 

invasion at Speaker of the House Thomas O’Neill’s Boston office.

Secondary Studies

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excellent, short account of the organizational changes between 1973 and 

2000. Printed copy available in Hist files (SStudies), CMH.

Broyles, Thomas F. “A Comparative Analysis of the Medical Support in 

the Combat Operations in the Falklands Campaign and the Grenada 

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Institute, U.S. Army War College, 1996. Online at http://handle.dtic.

mil/100.2/ADA309437.

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Command.” Student paper, School of Advanced Military Studies, U.S. 

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Flynn, Stephen E. “Grenada as a ‘Reactive’ and a ‘Proactive’ Crisis: New 

Models of Crisis Decision-Making.” Ph.D. dissertation, Fletcher School 

of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, 1991. Flynn, a Coast Guard officer who was a staff assistant to the White House Military Office director 

during the George H. W. Bush administration, was able to conduct interviews with many participants involved in the decision to intervene and 

provides information available nowhere else.

Foraker III, Joseph C. “Operational Command and Control: Lessons for 

Today’s Joint Force from Grenada, Somalia, and Kosovo.” Student paper, 

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Field Artillery in Korea: A Case Study of the Integration of the Reserve 

Component Into the Active Force.” Monograph, U.S. Army Center of 

Military History, 1989.

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Hicks, Wayne. “Operation ‘Urgent Fury’: Military Police (MP) in Grenada.” 

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March 1988.” Monograph, U.S. Army Center of Military History, 

1989.

Kunkel Jr., Robert W. “Comparison Between Black Hawk Components Hit by 

Small Arms Projectiles in Grenada and Geometric Model Interrogation 

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by the Grenadian Documents, 1979–1983.” Student paper, U.S. Army War 

College, 1985. 

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Loendorf, Walter M. “Intelligence Communications: Have We Put into 

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thesis, University of Miami (Florida), 1982.

McGuire, Colleen L. “Military-Media Relations and the Gulf War: A 

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Secondary Books

Abernathy, M. Glenn, Dilys M. Hill, and Phil Williams, eds. The Carter Years: 

The President and Policy Making. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984.

Adkin, Mark. Urgent Fury: The Battle for Grenada. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington 

Books, 1989. By far, the most detailed account available by a former British 

Army major on loan to the Barbadian Defence Force at the time of the 

intervention. First rate on the Caribbean background and on events in the 

island but shaky at times on the details of U.S. combat operations.

Aguilar, Luis E., ed. Latin America, 1983. World Today Series. Washington, 

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intelligence history.

Appleman, Roy E. South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (June–November 

1950). United States Army in the Korean War. Washington, D.C.: Office 

of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1961.

Aspaturian, Vernon V. “The Impact of the Grenada Events on the Soviet 

Alliance System,” in Grenada and Soviet/Cuban Policy: Internal Crisis and 
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U.S./OECS Intervention, pp. 41–62. Edited by Jiri Valenta and Herbert J. 

Ellison. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986.

Ayearst, Morley. The British West Indies: The Search for Self-Government. 

New York: New York University Press, 1960.

Beck, Robert J. The Grenada Invasion: Politics, Law, and Foreign Policy 

Decisionmaking. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993. Beck covers in 

depth the three subjects in his title.

Bell, William G. Commanding Generals and Chiefs of Staff, 1775–1983: 

Portraits and Biographical Sketches of the United States Army’s Senior 

Officer. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1983.

––––––––. Secretaries of War and Secretaries of the Army: Portraits and 

Biographical Sketches. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military 

History, 2003.

Birtle, Andrew J. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations 

Doctrine, 1860–1941. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military 

History, 1997. 

––––––––. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 

1942–1976. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2006.

Bishop, Charles R., and Kathleen O’Brien. FORSCOM/ARLANT Participation 

in Operation Urgent Fury, Grenada, 1983. Fort McPherson, Ga.: U.S. 

Army Forces Command, 1985.

Blair, Clay. Ridgway’s Paratroopers: The American Airborne in World War II. 

Garden City, N.Y.: Dial Press, 1985. With a focus on the development of 

the American airborne tradition in combat during World War II, this book 

emphasizes the roles and personalities of key pioneers, including Matthew 

B. Ridgway, James M. Gavin, and Maxwell D. Taylor. 

Borch, Frederic L. Judge Advocates in Combat: Army Lawyers in Military 

Operations from Vietnam to Haiti. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Judge 

Advocate General and Center of Military History, United States Army, 

2001. Includes an excellent chapter on the Grenada operation.

Brizan, George. Grenada: Island of Conflict from Ameridians to People’s 

Revolution, 1498–1979. London: Zed Books, 1984.

Brown, Shannon A., ed. Providing the Means of War: Perspectives on Defense 

Acquisition, 1945–2000. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military 

History and Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 2005. Brown’s introduction provides a brief but essential account explaining the rise of the 

term acquisition in competition to the meaning attached to logistics at the 

end of World War II.

Burns, Alan Cuthbert. History of the British West Indies. 2d ed. London: Allen 

and Unwin, 1965.

Burrowes, Reynold A. Revolution and Rescue in Grenada: An Account of the 

U.S.-Caribbean Invasion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1988.

Cannon, Lou. President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. New York: Simon 

and Schuster, 1991. By far, the best account of the Reagan presidency.

Cheng, Christopher C. S. Air Mobility: The Development of a Doctrine. 

Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Bibliography

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Coakley, Robert W., and Richard M. Leighton. Global Logistics and Strategy, 

1943–1945. United States Army in World War II. Washington, D.C.: Office 

of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1968. This volume rounds out the authors’ magisterial account of U.S. Army logistics on 

a global scale during World War II.

Coats, Stephen D. Gathering at the Golden Gate: Mobilizing for War in the 

Philippines, 1898. Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute 

Press, 2006.

Cocke, Karl E., comp. Department of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 

1974. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1978.

Cocke, Karl E., Ronald H. Cole, Romana M. Danysh, Detmar H. Finke, 

Terrence J. Gough, James E. Hewes Jr., Vincent C. Jones, Billy C. Mossman, 

Edgar F. Raines Jr., and Ronald H. Spector, comps. Department of the 

Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1980. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army 

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F. Raines Jr., Paul J. Scheips, and Billy C. Mossman, comps. Department 

of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1981. Washington, D.C.: U.S. 

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Jr., Edgar F. Raines Jr., and Dwight D. Oland, comps. Department of the 

Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1982. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army 

Center of Military History, 1988.

Cole, Ronald H. Operation Urgent Fury: The Planning and Execution of Joint 

Operations in Grenada, 12 October–2 November 1983. Washington, D.C.: 

Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

1997. An essential and path-breaking study prepared almost entirely from 

primary sources containing much information found nowhere else.

Cole, Ronald H., Walter S. Poole, James F. Schnabel, Robert J. Watson, and 

Willard J. Webb. The History of the Unified Command Plan, 1946–1993. 

Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

1995. A good starting point for understanding something of the complexity of command arrangements during Urgent Fury.

Condon-Rall, Mary Ellen, comp. Department of the Army Historical Summary, 

Fiscal Year 1983. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 

1990.

Cooke, James J. The All-Americans at War: The 82d Division in the Great 

War. Westport Conn.: Praeger, 1999

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Spanish-American War. Columbus, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 

1971.

Cotman, John Walton. The Gorrión Tree: Cuba and the Grenada Revolution. 

American University Studies, Political Science Series. New York: Lang, 

1993. Gott provides a detailed account of the relations between Cuba and 

the Grenadian revolutionaries.

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Davis, Richard G. The 31 Initiatives: A Study in Air Force–Army Cooperation. 

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Devlin, Gerald M. Paratrooper! The Saga of U. S. Army and Marine Parachute 

and Glider Combat Troops During World War II. New York: St. Martin’s 

Press, 1979.

Doughty, Robert A. The Evolution of U.S. Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946–1976. 

Leavenworth Papers, no. 1. Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: U.S. Army Combat 

Studies Institute, 1979.

Dunn, Peter M., and Bruce W. Watson, eds. American Intervention in Grenada: 

The Implications of Operation Urgent Fury. Westview Special Studies in 

Military Affairs. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985.

Edgar, James H. “The Origins and Impact of the Defense Acquisition Workforce 

Improvement Act (DAWA).” In Providing the Means of War: Perspectives on 

Defense Acquisition, 1945–2000, pp. 261–79. Edited by Shannon A. Brown. 

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History and Industrial 

College of the Armed Forces, 2005. A detailed study of the legislation that 

mandated the current U.S. defense acquisition policies.

Emmanuel, Patrick. Crown Colony Politics in Grenada, 1917–1951. Institute 

of Social and Economic Research (Eastern Caribbean), Occasional Papers 

Series, no. 7. Cave Hill, Barbados: University of the West Indies, 1978.

––––––––. General Elections in the Eastern Caribbean: A Handbook. Institute 

of Social and Economic Research (Eastern Caribbean), Occasional Papers 

Series, no. 11. Cave Hill, Barbados: University of the West Indies, 1979.

Emmanuel, Patrick, Farley Brathwaite, and Eudine Barriteau. Political Change 

and Public Policy in Grenada, 1979–1984. Cave Hill, Barbados: Institute of 

Social and Economic Research, 1986.

Erisman, H. Michael, ed. The Caribbean Challenge: U.S. Policy in a Volatile 

Region. Westview Special Studies on Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Boulder, Colo., Westview Press, 1984.

Falcoff, Mark. “Bishop’s Cuba, Castro’s Grenada,” in Grenada and Soviet/

Cuban Policy: Internal Crisis and U.S./OECS Intervention, pp. 67-76. 

Edited by Jiri Valenta and Herbert J. Ellison. Boulder, Colo.: Westview 

Press, 1986.

Fallows, James. National Defense. New York: Random House, 1981.

Ferguson, James. Grenada: Revolution in Reverse. New York: Monthly Press, 

1990.

Fischer, Hannah, Kim Klarman, Mari-Jana Oboroceanu. American War and 

Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics. Washington, D.C.: 

Congressional Research Service, 2007.

Flanagan Jr., E. M. The Los Banos Raid: The 11th Airborne Jumps at Dawn. 

New York: Jove Books, 1987.

Fritz, Verna, and Alina Rocha Menocal. Understanding State-Building from 

a Political Economy Perspective: An Analytical and Conceptual Paper on 

Processes, Embedded Tensions, and Lessons for International Engagement. 

London: Overseas Development Institute, 2007.
Bibliography

593

Gabriel, Richard A. Military Incompetence: Why the American Military 

Doesn’t Win. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985. Contains a chapter on 

Urgent Fury that focuses on intelligence and operational lapses.

Gabriel, Richard A., and Paul L. Savage, Crisis in Command: Mismanagement 

in the Army. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978.

Gati, Charles. “Fraternal Assistance: Eastern Europe in Grenada,” in Grenada 

and Soviet/Cuban Policy: Internal Crisis and U.S./OECS Intervention, 

pp. 87–96. Edited by Jiri Valenta and Herbert J. Ellison. Boulder, Colo.: 

Westview Press, 1986.

Gilmore, William C. The Grenada Intervention: Analysis and Documentation. 

New York: Facts on File, 1984.

Gott, Richard. Cuba: A New History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University 

Press, 2004. An important work, based on information not available immediately after the end of the Cold War.

Greenberg, Lawrence M. United States Army Unilateral and Coalition 

Operations in the 1965 Dominican Republic Intervention. Historical Analysis 

Series. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1987. An 

important reference point for the Grenada operation, focusing on policylevel decisions.

Griffith II, Samuel B. The Battle for Guadalcanal. New York: J. B. Lippincott, 

1963.

Gutman, Roy. Banana Diplomacy: The Making of American Policy in Nicaragua, 

1981–1987. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.

Hadley, Arthur T. The Straw Giant. Triumph and Failure: America’s Armed 

Forces. New York: Random House, 1986.

Hammel, Eric. The Root: The Marines in Beirut, August 1982–February 1984. 

New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1985. Hammel provides the best 

description of the organization and equipment of Marine amphibious 

units in the early 1980s.

Harding, Stephen. Air War Grenada. Missoula, Mont.: Pictorial Histories 

Publishers, 1984.

Hargrove, Edwin C. Jimmy Carter as President: Leadership and Politics of 

the Public Good . Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 

1988.

Haulman, Daniel L. “Crisis in Grenada: Operation Urgent Fury.” In Short 

of War: Major USAF Contingency Operations, 1947–1997. Washington, 

D.C., and Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.: Air Force History and Museums 

Program and Air University Press, 2000, pp. 135–44.

Heine, Jorge, ed. A Revolution Aborted: The Lessons of Grenada. Pittsburgh, 

Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.

Henry, Paget, and Carl Stone, eds. The Newer Caribbean: Decolonization, 

Democracy, and Development. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of 

Human Issues, 1983.

Herbert, Paul H. Deciding What Has To Be Done: General William E. DePuy 

and the 1976 Edition of FM 100–5, Operations. Leavenworth Papers, no. 

16. Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, 1988. 
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Hewes Jr., James E. From Root to McNamara: Army Organization and 

Administration, 1900–1963. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of 

Military History, 1975.

Hill, Donald R. The Impact of Migration on the Metropolitan and Folk Society 

of Carriacou, Grenada. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum 

of Modern History. New York: Museum of Natural History, 1977.

Hirrel, Leo P., with William R. McClintock. United States Atlantic Command 

Fiftieth Anniversary, 1947–1997. USACOM Special Historical Study. 

Norfolk, Va.: Office of the Command Historian, Headquarters, 

Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Command, 1998. A valuable command history, especially since a detailed scholarly work will never be written because of the destruction of Atlantic Command and Atlantic Fleet 

records for most of this period.

Hogan, Jr., David W. Rangers or Elite Infantry? The Changing Roles of the U.S. 

Army Rangers from Dieppe to Grenada. Contributions in Military History, 

no. 128. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1992. An important work for 

understanding the development of the modern Rangers.

House, Jonathan M. Combined Arms Warfare in the 20th Century. Modern War 

Studies. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. House provides an 

insightful look at the development of combined arms in Western armies.

––––––––. Toward Combined Arms Warfare: A Survey of 20th Century Tactics, 

Doctrine, and Organization. Research Survey, no. 2. Fort Leavenworth, 

Kans.: U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, 1984.

Howe, George F. Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West. United 

States Army in World War II. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of 

Military History, Department of the Army, 1957.

Huston, James A. Out of the Blue: U.S. Army Airborne Operations in World 

War II. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Studies, 1972. An older 

study, with a focus on the development of the American airborne organization, doctrine, tactics, and technique during World War II. 

Hybel, Alex Roberto. How Leaders Reason: U.S. Intervention in the Caribbean 

Basin and Latin America. Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990.

Imai, Kesaharu, ed. D-Day in Grenada: The 82nd Airborne Division in Action. 

Alexandria, Va.: World Photo Press, [1984].

Isby, David C. Leave No Man Behind: Liberation and Capture Missions. 

London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2004. A good introduction to U.S. 

special operations forces and missions.

Isley, Jeter A., and Philip A. Crowl. The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War: 

Its Theory and Practice in the Pacific. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University 

Press, 1951.

Jones, Charles O. The Trusteeship Presidency: Jimmy Carter and the United 

States Congress. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 

1988.

Kallander, Dean C., and James K. Matthews. Urgent Fury: The United States 

Air Force and the Grenada Operation. Scott Air Force Base, Ill.: Military 

Airlift Command, 1988.
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Kane, Thomas M. Military Logistics and Strategic Performance. Edited by 

Colin Gray and Williamson Murray. Cass Series: Strategy and History. 

Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 2001. Important but often overlooked, Kane’s 

study analyzes the role of logistics in framing strategic and operationallevel possibilities. 

Kaufman, Burton I. The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr., American 

Presidency Series, Donald R. McCoy, Charles S. Griffin, and Homer E. 

Socolofsky, eds. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.

Kay, Frances. This––Is Grenada. 2d ed. St. George’s, Grenada: Carenage Press, 

1979.

Kelly, Francis J. U.S. Army Special Forces, 1961–1971. Vietnam Studies. 

Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1973.

King, Michael J. Rangers: Selected Combat Operations in World War II. 

Leavenworth Papers, no. 11. Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: U.S. Army Combat 

Studies Institute, 1985.

Kirkpatrick, Charles E. Building the Army for Desert Storm. Land Warfare 

Papers, no. 9. [Arlington, Va.]: Institute of Land Warfare, Association of 

the United States Army, 1991.

Knight, E. Gittens, comp. The Grenada Handbook and Directory, 1946. 

Bridgetown, Barbados: Advocate Company, 1946.

Knight, Franklin W. The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism. 

2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Knight provides a valuable overview of the history of the Caribbean.

Kretchik, Walter, Robert F. Baumann, and John T. Fishel. Invasion, Intervention, 

“Intervasion”: A Concise History of the U.S. Army in Operation Uphold

Democracy. Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: U.S. Army Command and General 

Staff College Press, 1998.

Langley, Lester D. The United States and the Caribbean in the Twentieth 

Century. 4th ed. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989. A good introduction to U.S. relations in the Caribbean area, supplemented by Robert 

Pastor’s Whirlpool (cited in Primary Books).

LeoGrande, William M. Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central 

America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 

LeoGrande, who gives the essential context of the Reagan administration’s 

Central America policy, is highly critical of the Grenada operation.

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Digging in for a Long Stay.” Newsweek, 21 November 1983, p. 63.

Whitaker, Mark, Ron Moreau, Linda R. Prout, Elaine Sciolino, Elaine 

Shannon, Knolly Moses, Vern E. Smith, Vincent Coppola, John Walcott, 

Kim Willenson, and Anne Underwood. “The Battle for Grenada.” 

Newsweek, 7 November 1983, pp. 66–69, 72, 75–76.

“Why Grenada?” Ordnance Magazine 1 (Winter 1984): 3.

Williams, Gary. “Prelude to an Intervention: Grenada 1983.” Journal of Latin 

American Studies, 29 (February 1997): 131–69. Provides the most detailed 

description available of the implosion of the Grenadian Revolution prior 

to the U.S. intervention.

Williams, Gary. “Brief Encounter: Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop’s 

Visit to Washington.” Journal of Latin American Studies 34 (August 2002): 

659–85. An exhaustive, well-researched, and fair-minded account that 

comes to slightly different conclusions than I did on the subject. Well 
The Rucksack War

606

worth reading as an example of the new wave of archival-based scholarship on the Reagan years. 

Wright, Jr., Robert K. “Airborne Forces and the American Way of War.” Army 

History, Summer 2009, pp. 36–48. A particularly interesting meditation on 

airborne contingency operations and their relationship to the idea of “the 

American way of war” as propounded by Professor Russell F. Weigley.

Younghaus, Paul, and J. Haligan. “The 22d MAU Comes Home.” Leatherneck

67 (July 1984): 30–31.

Zunes, Stephen. “A Revolution That Could Have Worked.” Progressive 48 

(January 1984): 21.
Guide to Abbreviations

AAF Army Air Forces

AAR after action report

Abn airborne

AES Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron

AFB Air Force Base

AFofGrenada Armed Forces of Grenada

AFIP Armed Forces Institute of Pathology

AFSC Armed Forces Staff College

AG adjutant general

AGF Army Ground Forces

AGO Adjutant General’s Office

AMC U.S. Army Material Command, Fort Belvoir, Va.

AMCHO Army Material Command Historical Office

AmEmb American Embassy

an. annex

ANGLICO Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company

AnHistRpt annual historical report

AOC Army Operations Center

app. appendix

AR Army Regulation

ASF Army Service Forces

Bde brigade

BDU(s) battle dress uniform(s)

Bn battalion

Brig. Brigadier

Brig. Gen. Brigadier General

Bull(s) bulletin(s)

CAC U.S. Army Combined Arms Center

Capt. Captain

Cdr Commander

☆ ☆ ☆
The Rucksack War

608

CGD captured Grenadian documents

CG(s) commanding general(s)

CGSC Command and General Staff College

ch. chapter

chg. change

CI counterintelligence

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CinC commander in chief

Cir circular

CJCS Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

Cmd command

CmdHO Command Historian’s Office

Cmte committee

CMH U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, 

 D.C.

Co company

CofS chief of staff

Col. Colonel

Comdt commandant

Conf conference

Cong. Congress; congressional

Corresp correspondence

COSCOM Support Command (Corps)

CP command post

CWO Chief Warrant Officer

DA Department of the Army

DAF Department of the Air Force

DCSLOG Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics

DCSOPS Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans

Dec. decimal

Dep deputy

Dept(s) department(s)

Det detachment

DF disposition form

DG director general

DIA Defense Intelligence Agency

Dir(s) directive(s); director(s)

DISCOM Support Command (Division)

Div division

DivofPA Division of Public Affairs

DN Department of Navy

DoD Department of Defense

DofOpns director of operations

DoS Department of State
Abbreviations

609

encl. enclosure

ENCS Senior Chief Enginemen

Engr engineer

EOC Emergency Operations Center

esp. especially

Evac evacuation

fig. figure

FM field manual; foreign minister; frequency modulated

FORSCOM U.S. Army Forces Command, Fort McPherson, Ga.

Fwd forward

G–1 Personnel

G–2 Intelligence

G–3 Operations

G–4 Logistics

G–5 Civil Affairs

GenOff General Officer files

GO General Orders

GS General Staff

GWG Grenada Working Group; Grenada Work Group

Hist historians; history; historical

HMM Marine Medium Helicopter

HT1 Hull Technician First Class

HQ headquarters

IBM International Business Machine

ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross

IDR individual documents released

Inf infantry

Intel intelligence

Interv(s) interview(s)

J–2 Intelligence

J–3 Operations

J–4 Logistics

JA Judge Advocate

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff

JEWEL Joint Effort for Welfare, Education, and Liberation

JHO Joint History Office, Washington, D.C.
The Rucksack War

610

Jnl journal

JSOC Joint Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, N.C.

JTF joint task force

LANTCOM U.S. Atlantic Command, Norfolk, Va.

LL lessons learned

LNO liaison officer

Log logistical; logistics 

Lt. Lieutenant

Lt. Col. Lieutenant Colonel

Lt. Gen. Lieutenant General

Ltr letter

MAC Military Airlift Command

Maj. Major

Maj. Gen. Major General

MASH Surgical Hospital (Mobile Army)

MAU Marine Amphibious Unit

MC Medical Corps

MDC Museum Division Collection files

Med medical

Memo memorandum

Mf microfiche

MFR memorandum for the record

MHI U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pa.

Mil military

Misc miscellaneous

MM1 Machinist Mate First Class

MMC Materiel Management Center

MoD Ministry of Defence, Grenada

MofFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs

MoI Ministry of Interior, Grenada

MoU memorandum of understanding

MP military police

MSC Medical Service Corps

Msg(s) message(s)

MTMC Military Traffic Management Command

MTOE modified table of organization

NARA–CP National Archives and Record Administration, College 

 Park, Maryland

NARA–RRPL ––––––, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, 

 Calif.

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCO noncommissioned officer
Abbreviations

611

NCOIC noncommissioned officer in charge

n.d. no date

NHHC U.S. Navy History and Heritage Command, Washington, 

 D.C.

NICP(s) National Inventory Control Point(s)

NJM New JEWEL Movement

NSC National Security Council

NSDD National Security Decision Directive

OD officer of the day

ODO operations duty officer

OECS Organization of Eastern Caribbean States

OIC officer in charge

Off(s) officer(s)

OofInfo Office of Information

Opn operation; operations

Org organization

OrgHist Organizational History files

OSDHO Office of the Secretary of Defense History Office, 

 Washington, D.C.

PDocs primary documents

PDD President’s Daily Diary

Pfc. Private First Class

PM prime minister

PO Permanent Orders

PRA People’s Revolutionary Army

Prelim preliminary

PRG People’s Revolutionary Government

pt. part

Pub publication

RCmts reader comments

Rec(s) Record(s)

RG Record Group

rev. revised

RNSC Records of the National Security Council

ROAD Reorganization Objective Army Division

RO/RO roll-on/roll-off ship

ROWPU(s) reverse-osmosis water purification unit(s)

Rpt report

S–1 Personnel

S–2 Intelligence
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S–3 Operations

S–4 Logistics

S–5 Civil Affairs

Sec section; secretary

SecDef/Int Secretary of Defense and Interior

SecState Secretary of State

sess. session

Sgt. Sergeant

Sig Signal

SitRpt(s) situation report(s)

SOC Special Operations Command

SOTI security, operations, training, and intelligence

Spec. Specialist

SrOffOHist Senior Officer Oral History files

Sqdn squadron

S. Sgt. Staff Sergeant

SStudies secondary studies

sub(s) subject(s)

Sum summary

Surg surgeon

TAC Tactical Air Command

TACW Tactical Air Control Wing

TechLib Technical Library, Fort Lee, Va.

Tel telephone

Telecon teleconference

TM technical manual

TOE table(s) of organization and equipment

Tng training

TRADOC U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Monroe, 

 Va.

Trans transportation

UHD Unit Historical Data cards

USATC U.S. Army Transportation Center

U&SCmds unified and specified commands

USMC United States Marine Corps

V. Adm. Vice Admiral

VNIT Vietnam interview

WIN Worldwide Intercomputer Network

WWMCCS Worldwide Military Command and Control System
Unit Type

Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company

Airborne Infantry Unit

Ammunition Supply Point

Aviation Fuel Supply Point

Clothing Exchange and Bath

Clothing, Individual Equipment, Tentage,

 Organizational Tool Sets Supply Point

Detainee Camp

Engineer Construction Supply Point

Engineer Unit

Forward Area Support Team

Fuel Supply Point

Graves Registration Collection Point

Hospital/aid station

Joint Task Force

Maintenance

Medical Unit

Personal Demand Supply Point

Map Symbols

☆ ☆ ☆

CEB

ASP

ANGLICO

J T F

F A S T

DET
The Rucksack War

614

Ranger Unit

Repair Parts Supply Point

Subsistence Supply Point

Air Force Combat Control Team

Water Point

Unit Size

Division

Brigade

Regiment

Battalion

Company

Platoon/Detachment

Section

Squad/Team

Examples

Headquarters, Joint Task Force 123 . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Headquarters, 82d Airborne Division (Task Force 121) . . . . . .

Headquarters, 2d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division . . . . . 

Headquarters, 82d Support Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Coordinating Element, Forward Area Support Team II . .

2d Battalion, 325th Infantry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Company C, 1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry . . . .

57th Medical Detachment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

2d Platoon, Company B, 307th Engineer Battalion . . . .

Team, 2d Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company . . . . . . . .

Ammunition Supply Point, 82d Aviation Battalion . . . . . .

R

USAF

C C T

I

III

I I

X X

X

I I

2 325

I

1–75 R C

2 B/307

I I F A S T

I I

Tm ANGLICO 2

57

82 Avn

I I

ASP

JTF 123

X X

X X

82

TF 121 X

2 82

82 SPT

X
Abizaid, Capt. John P., 182, 242–43, 250–52, 

260–61, 265, 346

Abrams, General Creighton W., 40, 48

Acquisition, definition of, 7

Adams, J. M. G. M. “Tom,” 25, 87, 121

Adams, General Paul D., 93

Address codes, 408–09

Adjutant General Company, 82d, 55

Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, 1st, 286, 

289, 364, 446, 491

After action reports, 151, 515

Air Command. See Tactical Air Command.

Air Cubana, 419, 438, 457

Air Defense Artillery Battalions

3d, 4th Air Defense Artillery, 195, 463

3d, 68th Air Defense Artillery, 41

Air Force–Army relationship, 421–22, 

464–65

Air Force Bases

Andrews (Maryland), 497, 500

Charleston (South Carolina), 258–59, 290, 

350, 355

Dover (Delaware), 511

Langley (Virginia), 26, 33, 396

MacDill (Florida), 33, 42, 299, 387

McChord (Washington), 112

Pope. See Pope Air Force Base, North 

Carolina.

Air Force squadrons. See Aeromedical 

Evacuation Squadron, 1st; Mobile 

Aerial Port Squadron, 3d; Tactical 

Airlift Squadron, 39th.

Air Forces

Ninth, 173–74

Twenty-first, 224, 225

Twenty-third, 180

Air line of communications, 205, 417, 507

Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company, 2d, 

195, 231, 321, 341, 433–34, 438, 475

Air standing operating procedures, 348

Air traffic, 325, 442, 512, 529

Air traffic control, 41, 270, 275, 278

Airborne assault. See Airland versus 

airdrop.

Airborne Brigade, 173d, 42, 52

Airborne Corps, XVIII, 39–43

air movement officers school, 269

airlift support requests, 224, 296–98, 

412–13

alerted to intervention planning, 19–22 

October, 96–97

assessment of Grenada intervention by, 

515

Automation Management Office, 389

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force, technical 

assistance for, 511

composition of, 40–41

corps commander, 35–36, 41–42

corps engineer, 146

corps surgeon, 157–58, 223–24

deputy corps commander, 42

in Dominican Republic, 39

emergency operations center, 96, 163, 377, 

387, 418

friction in, 67

G–1 (Personnel), 42, 132, 378

G–2 (Intelligence), 42, 128, 130, 135, 165, 

378

G–3 (Operations), 42, 97, 128, 379

G–4 (Logistics), 42, 132, 228, 379, 410, 

412, 529

G–5 (Civil-Military Operations), 42

graves registration unit request, 325

headquarters of, 42–43

liaison officers, 42, 207, 228–29

N-sequence, role in, 183–84

organization of, 39–40

planning phase. See Planning phase.

relations with 82d Airborne Division, 40, 

379

Index

☆ ☆ ☆
The Rucksack War

616

Airborne Corps, XVIII —Continued

removal from chain of command

assessment of Grenada intervention 

and, 515, 526–27, 529, 533, 536, 

544, 548

operational consequences of, 228, 230, 

238–39, 374, 379, 408, 461

in planning phase, 156, 162, 165, 

170–71, 173

role in Urgent Fury, 293. See also Corps 

support.

as strategic ready force, 39–40

transition of command of U.S. Forces, 

Grenada, to, 488–89, 501–05

withdrawal from Grenada, 512

Airborne Division, 11th, 537–38

Airborne Division, 82d, 49–70

1st Brigade, 52, 313–14, 469

2d Brigade, 29, 54, 62

corps support, 412

N-sequence, 183, 189, 193, 234–35. See 

also Notification-sequence.

planning phase, 131, 144, 149, 152, 

154, 160

return to U.S., 488

transition period, 467

3d Brigade, 186, 227–28, 294

area of operations, 368–69, 420, 436, 

444

division-rear support, 310–18, 330

N-sequence, 311–12

planning phase, 131, 144

alerted to intervention planning, 19–22 

October, 96–97

area of operations. See Area of 

operations.

arrival in area of operations, 259–66

assault command post, 52, 202–03, 228, 

264, 266, 274, 319, 476, 530–31

assessment of Grenada intervention, 515, 

527, 529–30

assistant division commanders, 50–51, 293

chief of staff, 51

command climate in, 36

composition of, 52–55

comptroller, 51

corps support for. See Corps support.

deployment options, 143

divisional logistics, 55–60, 159

division aviation officer, 151, 202

division commander, 39, 50

division engineer, 147, 202

division orthopedic surgeon, 288

division signal officer, 153

division staff judge advocate, 194–95, 288, 

355

division surgeon, 194

division transportation officer, 59

in Dominican Republic, 39

emergency operations center, 152, 197, 

293, 302, 307, 315, 321

force development, 51

forward area support, 60–62

friction in, 66–67

G–1 (Personnel), 51, 378

G–2 (Intelligence), 51, 103, 166, 193, 378

G–3 (Operations), 50, 51, 52, 103, 182, 

190, 224, 296, 317, 412, 530, 539

G–4 (Logistics), 51, 60

area of operations, 373–75, 423

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

528, 539

corps support, 411, 412

division-rear support, 303, 317, 320, 

322

N-sequence, 184, 202, 207

planning phase, 103, 161

G–5 (Civil Affairs), 51, 194–95, 288, 450

medical team, 288–89

morale in, 66–68

N-sequence. See Notification-sequence.

peacekeeping role envisioned for, 86, 107, 

124, 130, 137–38, 142

planning phase. See Planning phase.

readiness reporting system in, 65

rear support for. See Division-rear 

support.

relations with XVIII Airborne Corps, 40, 

379

in Solid Shield, 38, 39

training, 62–66

transition period. See Transition period.

Airborne Division, 101st, 29, 36, 39, 40, 42, 

163, 384, 469

Airborne divisions, capabilities and 

organizing principles, 39, 48–50, 

59

Airborne operations, concept of, 8, 537

Airborne school, advanced, 227

Aircraft. See also Helicopters.

A–7 Corsair II, 247, 341, 346, 434–35, 

438

AC–130 Spectre, 245, 247, 250, 342, 346, 

435, 441

bladder birds, 530, 533

dangers of explosion of, 280

defined, 4

planning phase, 128, 160

refueling issues, 366–67, 420, 421–23

C–5A Galaxy, 45, 56, 142, 152, 219, 241, 

308–10, 347, 349, 405, 413, 462, 

511
Index

617

C–9B Skytrain II, 482

C–130 Hercules, 1–4, 56

area of operations, 25–26 October, 

250, 251, 255, 256, 259, 269, 270, 

276

area of operations, 26–27 October, 347, 

349, 365, 371

area of operations, 27 October, 421, 

442, 445

corps support, 380

decision to airdrop, 227

division-rear support, 305, 310, 316

medical evacuations, 287

N-sequence, 179, 180, 193, 210

planning phase, 100, 112, 116, 128, 

131, 135–36, 142, 144, 160

transition period, 465, 466, 486, 494, 

511

C–141B, 111, 135

C–141 Starlifter, 1–4, 56, 62

area of operations, 25–26 October, 

251, 259, 269, 270, 273, 275, 

276–78

area of operations, 26–27 October, 355, 

368–69, 372

area of operations, 27 October, 421, 

442, 445, 449

corps support, 380, 387, 388, 405, 413, 

414

decision to airdrop, 224–27

division-rear support, 299, 300, 305, 

307, 310, 313, 316, 325

medical evacuations, 258, 287, 289–90, 

446

N-sequence, 179, 193, 198, 210, 218, 

221, 229, 233, 234

planning phase, 100, 130, 131–32, 134, 

136, 137, 144, 147, 152, 156

transition period, 460, 465, 470, 494, 

500, 503, 511

inertial navigation system of, 243

log birds, 278, 305, 455, 507

MC–130 Combat Talon I, 116, 179, 242, 

243, 245

noise generated by, 1, 266, 371, 465, 

530–31

refueling, 348, 366–67, 420, 421–23

Airdrop. See Airland versus airdrop.

Airfield construction, 15, 23, 27

Airfield reconnaissance, 233

Airfields. See Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia; 

Point Salines airfield.

Airhead, 5

Airland versus airdrop. See also Equipment, 

airdrop.

assessment of Grenada intervention, 530

decisions regarding, 224–28, 230–31, 

233–34, 236–37, 238, 259–60

N-sequence, 176, 193, 199, 210, 218

planning phase, 112, 118

Point Salines airfield, airdrop operation 

at, 176, 242–45

Airlift Control Element, 317th, 270, 272, 325, 

418, 421, 442, 461, 487

Airlift Squadron. See Tactical Airlift 

Squadron, 39th.

Airlift Wings

62d Military, 111

317th Tactical, 225, 270, 276, 355, 418, 

421

437th Tactical, 465

Airmobile division, 50. See also Airborne 

Division, 101st

Akers Jr., Lt. Col. Frank H., 50

airland versus airdrop, 260

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

528–29, 530, 543

division-rear support and, 302

headquarters, choice of, 264

planning phase, 97, 100, 101, 103, 128, 

137–38, 143, 145, 147, 151, 154, 

158

refugees and detainees, 453, 485

American Telephone and Telegraph 

Company, 389

Ammunition

7.62-mm., 160

40-mm., 160

.45-caliber, 215

66-mm., 160

81-mm, 313

105-mm. (high explosive), 151, 333–35, 

371, 464

105-mm. (illumination), 151, 371

Airborne Division, 82d, 195

basic load, 46, 118, 124, 176, 179, 

215–16

bulk ballast, 68, 187, 197, 199

CONEX (containers, express), 197–200, 

201, 214, 215

double load, 195, 214–15, 310

illumination, 151, 198, 322, 371, 528

individual issue ammunition point, 211, 

214, 215–16, 234, 310, 313

levels of supply, 321–22, 371, 443–44

loading, 197–200

M16 rounds, 215, 339

M60 rounds, 215

plan, 150–51, 160

ranger battalions, 175–76

resupply, 321–22

white phosphorous rounds, 160, 234
The Rucksack War

618

Ammunition supply point

Fort Bragg, 151, 160, 198, 199, 211, 214, 

322

Grenada, 257, 279, 364, 373

Amos, Lt. Col. Grenville R., USMC, 346

Amphibious landing

compared to airborne operations, 8

Grenada Peoples’ Revolutionary Army 

ability to defeat, 22

Amphibious Squadron Four, U.S. Navy, 

76–79, 92

Amphibious tractors, 333

Amphibious Units, Marine

22d, 76–79, 85, 87, 101, 344, 345, 428, 437, 

469

composition of, 46

Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, 497, 500

Angola, 524

Anniston bundles, 134

Anshus, Maj. Richard C., 272, 347, 380–81, 

412, 460–61

Antennas. See under Equipment, 

communications.

Antiaircraft fire, 4, 233, 245, 249, 250, 438

Antigua and Barbuda, 25

Arab-Israeli war (1973), 60

Archer, Maj. William D.

area of operations

25–26 October, 286, 288–89

26–27 October, 356, 357, 360, 450

27 October, 450–54

N-sequence, 205

planning phase, 194–95

transition period, 484

“Arc of crisis” concept, 27

Area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 241–91

Airborne Division, 82d, arrival of, 

259–66

assessment of, 290–91

Barbados intermediate staging base, 

establishment of, 269–72

evacuees, detainees, and refugees, 

255–56, 282–86

helicopter deployment delays, 241–42

initial assaults, 233, 234, 242–49

Point Salines airhead, taking of, 

249–59

Point Salines operations, preparation 

for, 272–81

request for reinforcements, 265–66, 

311, 313–14, 544

St. George’s, battle for, 247–49, 264, 

290

Trobaugh headquarters, establishment 

of, 266–69

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 333–75

assessment of, 374–75

Barbados intermediate staging base, 

operations at, 346–49

casualties, processing, 360–64

detainees and refugees, 355–60

evacuation of medical students, 

349–55

Point Salines arrival-departure airfield 

control group operations, 367–73

Point Salines combat operations, 

338–46

Point Salines engineer operations, 

364–67

St. George’s, battle for, 333–35

Trobaugh’s plans for, 335–38

27 October, 417–58

assessment of, 457–58

Barbados intermediate staging base, 

operations at, 417–19

Calivigny Peninsula assault, 435–41, 

442

casualties, processing, 445–49, 458

combat operations plans for, 426–28, 

435

Crocker’s battalion, 431, 435–36

Frequente warehouse complex, capture 

of, 425–26

Hamilton’s battalion, 427, 428, 431, 

432

maintenance issues, 454–57

Marine operations, 428–29, 437, 

441–42

Point Salines airhead, afternoon/

evening, 442–45

Point Salines airhead, morning, 

420–25

Raines’ battalion, 427, 431–35

28 October, 467–70

30 October, capture of Sauteurs, 475

1 November, capture of Carriacou, 475

effective end of armed combat phase, 426, 

458

Arkangel Jr., Lt. Col. Carmelito, 118–19, 

289

Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, 487

Armor Battalion, 4th, 68th Armor, 54, 69, 

296

Armored Brigade, 194th, 40

Armored vehicles

BRDM2, 16

BTR60PB, 16, 265, 346

M60 main battle tank, 333

M551 Sheridan, 52

Arms caches, 22, 428, 457, 468, 472, 495, 500, 

516, 543, 546
Index

619

Army Commendation Medals, 523

Army Depots, 406–10

Anniston (Alabama), 134, 159, 176, 204

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force, logistical 

support for, 511–12

Letterkenny (Pennsylvania), 406, 511–12

National Depot Supply System, 214, 406, 

408, 416, 541

New Cumberland (Pennsylvania), 406, 

511–12

Tobyhanna (Pennsylvania), 406, 511

Army Forces, Barbados, commander, 349, 

418, 461, 536

Army Forces, Grenada, commander, 488, 

509, 526

Arrival airfield operations. See Point Salines 

airfield.

Arrival airfield plan, lack of, 528–29, 530

Ashley, Capt. Vincent E., 204, 398, 400, 402, 

490

Assessment and impact of Grenada 

intervention, 515–48

airborne nature of operation, 537

airflow management, 530–33, 542

archives and interviews collected and 

conducted by Army, 519–20

area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 

290–91

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 

374–75

27 October, 457–58

Barbados intermediate staging base, 457, 

528, 533

Calivigny air assault, 516–18, 542

casualties, 531–32

corps support, 413–16

division-rear support, 329–32

failures, 524–35

Grenadian point of view, 543, 546–47

joint nature of operation, 537–39

Locher report, 522

logistics

historical overview and assessment, 

524–25, 535–36, 537–39

institutional evolution and, 539–42

military review of, 522–23

operational, 542–46

medical issues, 525, 534–35, 548

military review, 515–20, 522–23

N-sequence, performance of, 205, 235–39

planning phase, 170–72, 525–31

policy review, 520–22

removal of corps from chain of 

command, 515, 526–27

security requirements, 524–25, 528, 529

short-term contingency nature of 

operation, 539

successes, 535–37

timing of initial assault, 526

transfer of command, 531

transition period, 512–13

Associated Press, 92, 355

Astroturf, 388

Atlantic Command. See U.S. Atlantic 

Command.

Augusta National Golf Course, Georgia, 97, 

105

Austin, General Hudson, People’s 

Revolutionary Army, 18

arrest of, 475

collapse of regime, 472

coup (October 1983), 83, 87, 88, 94

Cubans and, 168, 169

Frequente warehouse complex, American 

capture of, 426

popular support for, 543, 546

Automated Airframe Load Planning System, 

200, 318–19

Aviation Battalions

13th, 41

82d, 52, 54

area of operations, 344–45, 349, 

417–18

division-rear support, 301, 308–10, 

311

N-sequence, 182, 189, 192, 197, 201, 

218–20, 229

planning phase, 103, 151

transition period, 462

160th, 142, 241, 437

269th, 41

Aviation Company, 132d, 179

Aviation fuel point, 280, 366–67, 420–24

Baby formula, 454

Bagadi Bay, Grenada, 279

Baggett, Lt. Col. David L., 443

Bain, Fitzroy, 487

Baine, Maj. William E., 342

Baker, Lt. Col. Rudolph, 163

Baker-Kimmel, 2d Lt. Anita, 229

Barajas, Cmd. Sgt. Maj. Catalino, 343

Barbados

Army Forces, Barbados, commander, 349, 

418, 461, 536

assault options involving, 144, 152, 193

Bishop regime, opposition to, 25

Bridgetown, 83, 89, 90, 94, 168, 272, 364

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force, 121–22, 

356, 510, 512
The Rucksack War

620

 Barbados—Continued

decision to intervene in Grenada, 93, 

121–22

Grantley Adams Airport. See Grantley 

Adams International Airport, 

Barbados.

intermediate staging base. See under

Intermediate staging base.

police training for Grenada, 510

Barbados Defence Force, 25, 122, 452

Bar codes, 330

Bare base, definition of, 541

Barno, Capt. David W., 178–79, 252–55

Barrett Jr., Col. Robert C.

Barbados intermediate staging base, 347

corps support, 380

division-rear support, 308, 310, 324–25

N-sequence, 228–29

planning phase, 163

transition period, 489, 497, 500, 501–05

Barr II, Capt. Harley C., 308, 310, 347, 418, 

461

Bath, laundry, and clothing exchange, 162

Battalion aid station, 47, 119, 257, 342, 

398

Battalion Landing Team 2/8, 441, 468, 516

Battalion load lists, 305

Battalions, functional versus mixed, 522

Battalion trains, 276, 425, 468

Bay of Pigs, 22

Bay Shore, Long Island, 167

Beaty, CWO2 Robert L., 219–20, 308

Becky, Maj. Andrew D., 223

Bednarek, Capt. John M., 174, 328

Beirut. See Lebanon.

Bell II, Maj. William H., 388

Bila, Lt. Col. Ronald V., 174, 175, 204

Bish, Milan D., 83, 87, 88, 90, 94, 96, 166

Bishop, Maj. Charles R., 519

Bishop, Maurice

arrest and death of, 79–83, 169, 481, 510

body of, failure to recover, 487–88

coup (October 1983), 71–72, 75, 76, 79 

coup against, failure to detect impending, 

523–24

medical outreach program, 496

police force under, 508

revolution (1979) and New JEWEL 

government, 12–16, 18, 22, 25–28

Bladder birds. See under Aircraft.

Blivots, 4, 160, 367, 420, 424, 466–67

Boggs, Maj. David L., 230, 411–13, 416

Boles Jr., S. Sgt. Manous F., 251–52

Booby-trapped casualties, 487

Borchers, Maj. Alan L., 324

Bourne, Geoffrey, 94

Box handlers, 411

Boylan Jr., Col. Peter J., 51–52

area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 266, 

286, 288

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 368, 

371, 374, 375

27 October, 426, 446, 449, 453

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

528–29, 530–31, 539

corps support, 398

division-rear support, 294, 303, 304, 331

N-sequence, 195, 225n45

planning phase, 102

transition period, 465, 472

Boyles, Capt. Brent M., 454

Bradley, Capt. Stephen S., 403, 490, 548

Bravo notification, 174

Bridgetown, Barbados, 83, 89, 90, 94, 168, 

272, 364

Brigades

Dragon, 41

Victory, 175, 204

Britain, 9, 12, 23, 27, 468, 510

Brown, Capt. Don B., 282

Brown, Paul, 406

Bruno, Maj. Thomas A., 139

Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 27

Bulgaria, 14

Bumping, 300–301, 388

Burn out, 373

Bush, George H. W., 87–89, 99

Bush, George W., 522

Byrd, Robert C., 164–65

Calivigny Peninsula, Grenada

assessment of air assault, 516–18, 542

delay of original planned assault on, 259

gunfire support problems, 475

medical evacuations, 441, 447

order for air assault, 435, 437, 516

overland assault plan, 432, 516

planning phase, 113, 117

ranger air assault, 435–41

tactical problem presented by, 427

Calliste, Grenada, 338, 343, 364, 371, 453

Canadian citizens in Grenada, 427

Cannibalization of equipment, 161

Canteens, 213, 216, 343, 433, 457. See also

Equipment, individual.

Capetillo, Sgt. Rodolfo, 339–41, 536

Caporiccio, Lt. Col. Richard C., 139

Captured equipment and vehicles

area of operations

25–26 October, 256, 274–75
Index

621

26–27 October, 339, 341, 365

27 October, 425–26, 456–57

assessment of Grenada intervention, 536

displays of captured arms, 496–97

removal of, 496–501

sea line of communications and, 393, 396

Cargo equipment. See Equipment, cargo.

Cargo System, 463L, 270

Caribbean, 23–25, 119–24

Caribbean Community and Common 

Market, 23, 25

Caribbean Concept Plan. See Concept Plan 

2360.

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force

captured vehicles, use of, 256, 274

detainees, responsibility for, 255–56, 286, 

355–57, 450–52, 484

formation of, 101–02

Grenada under, 509–12

logistical support for, 121–24, 511

mission, 122, 452

relations with U.S. forces, 256, 288, 452, 488

U.S. re-equipping and training of, 510–12

Carriacou, Grenada, 9, 18, 475–76

Carriacou Battalion, People’s Revolutionary 

Militia (Grenada), 18

Carter Jr., James E. “Jimmy,” 26–27, 120

Castro, Fidel, 88, 169–70, 483, 523–24, 547

Casualties. See also Graves registration; 

Medical evacuation.

body bags, 325, 409

booby-trapped, 487

coup (October 1983), 487–88

Cuban, 288, 360, 431, 479, 486–87

Grenadian civilian, 288, 431, 486, 495

Grenadian military, 288, 346, 360, 486

heat stroke, 342, 343

limitation efforts, 260, 343, 416, 428, 516

processing, 360–64, 445–49, 458

recovery and identification of remains, 

486–88

U.S.

25 October, 249, 252, 256

26 October, 339, 341, 342, 343, 361

27 October, 434, 439–41, 447

assessment of Grenada intervention in 

terms of, 531–32

Casualty estimates, 223

Causey, Maj. William M.

corps support for supply system 

management, 406, 408, 409, 416

division-rear support, 302, 310, 319, 320

N-sequence, 197, 207, 211, 214–16

planning phase, 144

Cavalry squadron, 1st, 17th Cavalry, 53, 418, 

462

Cavazos, General Richard E., 33, 37, 68

assessment of Grenada intervention, 519, 

536

corps support, 382–84, 386, 413–14, 

415

division-rear support, 311, 324

field sanitation situation and impending 

visit of, 505

N-sequence, 132, 133n16, 171

planning phase, 102–03

CBS News, 92

Centers of gravity, 543

Central collection point (human remains), 

162. See also Graves registration.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 73, 95, 

166, 320

Central issue facility, 162

Central loading area control center, 190, 211, 

216, 219, 221, 228, 234

Chain of command

operational, 29–36, 291

removal of XVIII Airborne Corps from. 

See under Airborne Corps, XVIII.

Chalk order, 264–65, 301, 304–05

Chalks, 182, 238, 301

Chambers, Capt. John R., 400

Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, 36, 406, 511

Charles, Eugenia, 25, 93–94, 97–99, 121

Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina, 

258–59, 290, 350, 355

Charleston Naval Air Station, South 

Carolina, 259, 287, 446

Chemical Companies

21st, 55, 324

101st, 43

Chemical Detachment, 1st, 41

Chewning, Lt. Col. William R., 96–97, 102, 

182

Childs, Lt. Col. James R., 117–18, 173, 204

Chisholm, Capt. Roderick A., 385–86, 

394–95, 500

Cholera, 495

Civil Affairs Battalion, 96th, 360, 454

Civilian car reclamation point, 476

Civil-military relations, 479–80, 488

Clark, William P., 28, 74

Clarkson, Col. Rolland F., USAF, 462

Classes of supply

I (subsistence), 279, 505

II (clothing, individual equipment, tents, 

tool sets, and administrative and 

housekeeping stores), 409, 505

III (petroleum, oil, lubricants), 160, 

505–07

IV (construction materials), 409, 507

V (ammunition), 279, 507
The Rucksack War

622

Clausewitz, Maj. Gen. Carl von, Prussian 

Army, 543, 544

Clawson, Capt. Ben F., 215, 433–34

Cleary III, Maj. Daniel J., 50n95, 61

area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 

273–76, 278–81, 288, 290, 291

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 339, 

356, 360–62, 365–68, 372–75

27 October, 420–24, 442–45, 446, 454, 

458

assessment of Grenada intervention, 522, 

529, 530, 532, 536–37, 542, 548

corps support, 381

division-rear support, 301, 305, 307, 317, 

321

N-sequence, 200–204, 215

planning phase, 145, 159, 161

plumbers shack headquarters, 276, 424, 

444, 464–65

transition period, 460, 462–65, 490

Clemons, Capt. Stanley B.

area of operations, 256–57, 281

division-rear support and, 328

N-sequence, 175–76, 179–80

planning phase, 111, 118

The Cliff, Grenada, 432, 468

Clothing. See Uniforms and clothing.

Coard, Bernard

assessment of Grenada intervention and, 

543, 546

coup (October 1983), 71–72, 76, 79

impending intervention and, 87, 93, 94, 

169

revolution (1979) and New JEWEL 

government, 14, 15, 23

Cold War, 4, 7, 27, 50, 70, 368, 501, 519, 525, 

527

Combat arms officers, friction with 

logisticians, 66–67

Combat Control Team, 317th, 276, 355, 365, 

368–69, 371, 442, 457, 462

Combat effectiveness vs. logistical efficiency, 

541

Combat Exclusion Policy of 1977, 491

Combat operations. See Area of 

operations.

Combat service support units, 40–41, 54, 64, 

67, 318, 380, 382, 463, 505–07

Combat Studies Institute, 519

Combat Support Company, 195, 215, 433

Combat support units, 54, 58, 195, 318

Combined Forces, Grenada, 382–84

Command-and-control issues

assessment of Grenada intervention, 522, 

526, 527

planning phase, 108, 124–25, 139

removal of XVIII Airborne Corps from 

chain of command. See under

Airborne Corps, XVIII.

Commandeered vehicles, 1, 161, 195, 287, 

325, 426, 432, 476, 494

Command Net Alpha, 153–54

Command of medical units, controversy over, 

397–98, 490, 534

Command posts

assault, 82d Airborne Division, 52, 202–

03, 228, 264, 266, 274, 319, 476, 

530–31

main, 42, 52

rear, 42–43

tactical, 42

Communications. See also Equipment, 

communications.

Barbados intermediate staging area, 

418–19, 461–62

corps support, 377–79, 386–89

division landing decision, 260

division-rear support, 293–94, 302, 305–

07, 317, 320, 330–31

initial assaults, 247

light-communications package, 387

medical evacuations, 361, 364, 424

medical unit, U.S. JSOC, 287

N-sequence, 220–23

outload net, removal of Division Ready 

Force-9 from, 208, 211–13, 236

planning phase, 153–57

Point Salines airfield, 443, 463, 502–03

repair shelter, 323

U.S. Atlantic Command, 113, 138–39, 

153–57, 361, 377

Communications-electronics annex, 153

Communications-electronics operating 

instructions, 113, 153

Communications-electronics plans and 

preparations, 153–57

Component commander, Army, duties of, 

37–38

Component commands, 31–32, 35, 85, 97, 171

Computer programs

Automated Airframe Load Planning 

System, 200, 318–19

Deployable Mobility Execution System, 

318–19

Joint Deployment System, 299

Computers, 45, 539–40

Compass, 389

ENIAC, 539–40

IBM 360, 45, 55–56

IBM 370, 45, 56

personal, 330
Index

623

Concept Plan 2360, 36–39

assessment of Grenada intervention, 526, 

541

Cavazos and Mackmull following, 383, 

386, 513

planning phase, 75, 76, 102, 153

CONEX (containers, express), 197–200, 201, 

214, 215

Congressional delegation to Grenada, 488, 

496, 497, 500n94

Congressional leadership informed of 

Urgent Fury, 164–65

Congressional Military Reform Caucus, 538

Connally, Col. James W., USAF, 73–74, 75

Constabulary mission, 138, 508

Construction, airfield, 15, 23, 27

Construction equipment. See Equipment, 

construction.

Containers, express (CONEX), 197–200, 201, 

214, 215

Contingency island policy, 192

Contingency operations, 4, 5, 8, 29, 45–49, 

70, 524, 539

Contracting, 508

Cornwall, Maj. Leon, People’s Revolutionary 

Army, 94

Corps Automation Management Office. See 

under Airborne Corps, XVIII.

Corps support, 377–416

airflow management, 377–82, 410–13, 416

airlift support requests, 412–13

assessment of, 413–16

augmentation package, 382–86

communications, 377–79, 386–89

detainee camp materiel requirements, 

389–92

Green Ramp. See Green Ramp.

medical issues, 397–406, 415–16

sea line of communications, establishing, 

392–97

supply system management, 406–10

transition period, 488–89, 501–05, 507

Corps support command. See Support 

Command (Corps), 1st.

Costa, 1st Lt. Andrew P., 220–21

Costanzo Jr., Lt. Col. Joseph J., 405, 489, 

491, 494

Counterinsurgency campaign. See also

Guerrilla warfare.

assessment of Grenada intervention 

regarding, 443, 543, 546–48

fears of/preparation for, 384, 385, 414, 

428, 459, 468, 497

Counterterrorist unit, 46, 48–49, 531

Coup (October 1983), 71–72, 75, 79–83, 

487–88

Couriers, 387, 414, 461

Crabtree II, Lt. Col. Jack D.

area of operations

26 October to dawn 27 October, 373–74, 

375

27 October, 423, 453–54, 458

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

528–29

division-rear support, 298, 303–05, 319–

20, 322, 330

N-sequence, 202, 207

planning phase, 97, 104, 135, 137, 143, 

145, 146n43, 158, 161–62

transition period, 465, 496–97, 500

C-rations, 176, 211, 213, 256, 348. See also

Rations, under Supplies.

Creft, Jacqueline, 82

Crisis Action System, 33, 406

Crisis Preplanning Group

activated for Urgent Fury, 87, 92

two-track policy toward Grenada, 28

Crist, Maj. Gen. George B., USMC, 119, 

121–22, 255–56, 264, 356, 452

Crocker, Lt. Col. George A.

area of operations, 368–69, 420, 431, 

435–36

division-rear support, 312, 313

transition period, 468, 509

Cross-loading, 218, 234, 238, 257, 264, 400

Crowd control. See Equipment, crowd 

control.

Cuba

accounting for all Cubans assigned to 

Grenada, 508

Calivigny Peninsula military compound. 

See Calivigny Peninsula, Grenada.

construction workers and engineers, 15, 

23, 168–70, 250, 453

impact of Grenada intervention on, 

523–24

impending intervention, government and 

military reaction to, 167–70

Point Salinas, resistance at, 245, 249–52, 

338–46, 426

political alignment with Bishop 

government in Grenada, 13

training of Grenada’s military forces by, 

13, 18–20

U.S. policy toward Grenada and, 479

Cuban Air Force, 160

Cuban casualties, 288, 360, 431, 479, 

486–87

Cuban Communist Party, statement on the 

death of Bishop, 83

Cuban detainee camp, Grenada. See

Detainees.
The Rucksack War

624

Cuban Embassy, ambassador, and staff, 

Grenada, 427, 479, 480–83, 523

Cuban medical personnel, 288–89, 360, 364

Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, 92–93, 

117, 142, 168, 255, 437, 481

Cunard Lines, 94

Curfew, Grenada, 83, 87

Cusick, Lt. Col. John J., 144, 193, 237–38, 

523

Customs, 191, 476

Czechoslovakia, 14

Daly Jr., Col. William J.

Airborne Division, 82d, organization and 

responsibilities, 52, 55, 58, 64–65, 

67, 68

area of operations, 27 October, 442, 443, 

457

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

522–23, 528, 532, 533, 535–36

corps support, 392, 400, 402, 403, 411

division-rear support, 293, 317, 319–20, 

322, 329–31

“mayor” of Point Salines, 463

N-sequence, 183, 207–8, 211, 213–14, 

225–27, 230, 234, 236, 238, 239

planning phase, 104, 143–45, 158, 159

transition period, 463–65, 467, 469n32, 

476, 482–83, 488, 490, 491

D’Arbonne, Capt. Gregory M., 191, 282, 

349–50, 355–56, 372–73

Davis, Capt. Danny W., 187, 215

D-day, 118, 408–9, 436–37

Defense attaché, U.S. Embassy, Bridgetown, 

89, 364

Defense Intelligence Agency, U.S., 75, 86–89, 

165–67

Defense Mapping Agency, U.S., 92, 146

Defense Personnel Support Center, 322

Department of Defense. See U.S. 

Department of Defense.

Department of State. See U.S. Department 

of State.

Deployable Mobility Execution System, 318–19

Depots. See Army Depots.

DePuy, General William E., 543

Deszo, Spec. Denis, 428–29

Detainees

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force 

responsibilities, 255–56, 286, 355–

57, 450–52, 484

corps support providing camp materiel 

for, 389–92

Cuban Embassy demands regarding, 479, 

481

first detainees taken, 25 October, 255–56, 

282–86

growing numbers and worsening 

conditions, 26–27 October, 355–57, 

390

improving conditions for, 27 October, 

450–52

interrogation team for, 300, 378

planning for, 195, 205

Red Cross inspections, 390, 479, 

485–86

repatriation of, 486

transition period, 479, 484–86

Dew, Sgt. Jimmie, 348

De War, Col. John D., 128, 135–37, 158, 

165

Disaster Assistance Relief Team, 360, 454, 

507

Diskin, Lt. Col. Patricia, 491

Division Ready Brigades. See also Emergency 

Deployment Readiness Exercise; 

Notification-sequence.

1, 29, 63, 103, 131, 154

2, 131, 227–28

concept of, 29, 63, 208

Initial Ready Company, 63

N-hour, 62–63

Division Ready Forces

1, 63, 184, 185

2, 63, 187

3, 63, 185, 187, 301, 302

6, 314

7, 314

8, 314

9, 63, 183, 190, 207, 208, 211, 216, 236

Division-rear support, 293–332

airflow management, 294, 296–99

airlift support requests, 224, 296–98, 

331–32

assessment of, 329–32

communications issues, 293–94, 302, 

305–07, 317, 320, 330–31

control issues, 293–95

deployment of 3d Brigade, 310–18, 330

Green Ramp. See Green Ramp.

Hunter Army Airfield, 328–29

resupply management, 320–25

security issues, 295–96

Support Command (Division), 82d, rear 

area support mission of, 59, 159, 

293

Yellow Ramp, 308–10

Division support command. See Support 

Command (Division), 82d.

Dobson Jr., Capt. Robert K., USMC, 

333–35
Index

625

Doctrine

assessment and impact of Grenada 

intervention, 522–23

departure field organization, lack of 

doctrine for, 303

joint. See Joint doctrine.

Powell doctrine, 521

of preemption, 522

U.S. Army, 33, 42, 43, 372, 390, 519–20, 

541

Weinberger doctrine, 521

Dominica, 25, 93

Dominican Republic, U.S. intervention in 

(1965), 4, 29, 39, 63, 93, 139, 202

Donovan, CWO2 William, 119, 257–58, 282, 

350, 447

Double-entry bookkeeping, 230

Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, 511

Dozier, Brig. Gen. James, 89

Dragon antitank weapons, M47, 46, 227, 234

Dragon Brigade, 41

Duncan, Admiral Charles K., USN, 38

Eastern Area Command. See Military Traffic 

Management Command.

East Germany, 14

Echelons

Alpha, 782d Maintenance Battalion, 454

Alpha, Company C, 307th Medical 

Battalion, 398, 400–403, 454

Alpha, Forward Area Support Team II

area of operations, 267, 274, 278–79, 

361, 372–74

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

531, 536–37, 544

N-sequence, 200–201, 204, 223

transition period, 465

Bravo, Forward Area Support Team II, 

203

Eighteen-hour loading sequence. See

Notification-sequence.

Elder Jr., Maj. William J.

area of operations

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 345, 

347–49

27 October, 417–18, 420, 421, 424, 436, 

438–39

division-rear support, 308, 310

N-sequence, 202, 218–20, 221, 229

planning phase, 151–52

transition period, 475

Electrical equipment. See Equipment, 

electrical.

Electrical numerical integrator and computer 

(ENIAC), 539–40

Ely Jr., Lt. Col. William J., 207, 234

Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercise, 

63, 66, 69. See also Division Ready 

Brigades; Division Ready Forces; 

Notification-sequence.

assessment of Grenada intervention and, 

528, 529, 534–35

division-rear support, 300, 313, 330

Initial Ready Company, 63

N-hour, 62–63

N-sequence, 182, 184, 186, 189, 191, 193, 

282

planning phase, 104, 111

pre-jump training, 210

Emergency operations center

Airborne Corps, XVIII, 96, 163, 377, 387, 

418

Airborne Division, 82d, 152, 197, 293, 

302, 307, 315, 321

Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, 174

U.S. Atlantic Command, 412

Engineer Battalions

307th, 54–55, 147, 160, 178, 189, 195, 251, 

326, 328, 364–65

548th, 41, 178, 385, 394, 500

Engineer Brigade, 20th, 40, 41, 134, 146, 147, 

385

Engineer Companies

63d, 146, 438

618th, 41, 128, 177–78, 189, 251

Engineer Detachment, 283d, 147

Engineering equipment, 365–66, 385

Engineer operations, 364–67

Engineer planning, 146–49

ENIAC (electrical numerical integrator and 

computer), 539–40

Epps, Sgt. Gary L., 339, 341

Equipment, airdrop

load-bearing harnesses, 176

parachutes, 226, 231, 260

reserve parachutes, 226, 231

Equipment, captured. See Captured 

equipment and vehicles.

Equipment, cargo

cargo net, 466

cargo sling, 466, 497, 500

cranes, 68, 273, 395–96

forklifts, 304, 347, 348, 366

4,000-pound, 198–99, 201

6,000-pound, 198–99, 201–02, 275, 

276, 278, 290, 364–65, 373, 548

10,000-pound, 270, 444–45, 464

extender bars, 197–98

K-loaders (25,000-pound tactical air 

cargo loaders), 270–71, 304, 305, 

444–45, 464
The Rucksack War

626

Equipment, communications

AN/PRC–3, 409–10

AN/PRC–77, 221–23, 323

AN/TSC–85A, 388

AN/TSC–93A, 388

AN/URC–101, 293, 317, 321, 324, 389, 

409–10, 502

facsimile, 40, 317, 387

frequency modulated (FM) radios, 156, 

157, 361

hatch-mounted antenna, 242, 260

high-frequency radios, 153, 157

long-whip antennas, 432

Nestor, 154, 156

radio teletypes, 54, 156, 157, 387

RC–292 antennas, 186

satellite radios, 40, 153–54, 260, 443

secure, 154–56, 389

short-whip antennas, 432, 434

telephones, 129, 218, 317, 378, 389

training, 221

Vinson, 154–56, 220–21, 223, 281, 312, 

317, 361, 409, 468

Equipment, construction

backhoe, 273

bulldozers, 41, 128, 134, 177–78, 251, 273, 

424

steamrollers, 250, 259

Equipment, crowd control

megaphones, 128, 431

riot gear, 128

Equipment, electrical

generators, 156, 357, 362, 392, 446, 454, 

485

light sets, 392, 399–400

Equipment, engineering, 365–66, 385

Equipment, flotation devices

life preservers, 197, 238, 260

rafts, 197, 346

Equipment, fuel

nozzles, 420, 466–67

pumps, 348, 422, 466–67

Equipment, individual

A-bags, 187, 191, 216, 313, 350

canteens, 213, 216, 343, 433, 457

chemical warfare, 41

flak vests, 211, 213, 218, 341, 342, 343

Kevlar helmets, 434, 480

rucksacks, 4–5, 187, 216–18, 313

Equipment, maintenance, 454–55

Equipment, returned to U.S., 523

Equipment, vehicular. See Vehicles (ground) 

and equipment.

Equipment, water

erdlators, 129, 160, 280, 365

halazone tablets, 159–60, 280

percolation tank, 365

reverse-osmosis purification unit, 129, 

160, 280, 326–28, 332, 365

water bladders, 321

water buffalos, 272, 365, 465

water cans, 160, 321, 365

water trailers, 195, 256, 272, 281, 357

Erie, Capt. Carl R., USN, 76, 108, 333

Ernst, Lt. Col. Frederick G., 177

Eshelman, 1st Lt. Mark J., 275–76, 343

Esso road map, 146

Evacuation, medical. See Medical 

evacuation.

Evacuees, 282–86, 349–55, 449, 468

Exchange of information, 170, 532

Executive agent for administrative and 

logistical support, 377, 413–14

Exercises. See Joint Exercises.

Explosive ordnance disposal team, 324

Eyster IV, Maj. George S., 197, 310

Farris, Brig. Gen. Jack V., 42

assessment of Grenada intervention, 536

corps control, handover of Grenada to, 

488, 496, 501–09

corps support, 381–82, 384–86, 388, 415

planning phase, 102–03

Faulkner, Col. James P., USMC, 76, 108, 345, 

428, 437, 469, 475

Federal Bureau of Investigation, 320

Field, Brig. Gen. Edsel R., USAF, 133, 142

Field Artillery Battalions

1st, 319th Field Artillery, 369

1st, 320th Field Artillery, 54, 103, 149, 

156, 189, 193, 221, 278, 281, 369, 

443

Field Artillery Brigade, 18th, 40

Field force, 18, 40

Field Manuals

54–2, The Division Support Command 

and Separate Brigade Support 

Battalion, 534

63–2, Combat Service Support 

Operations—Division, 534

Field sanitation/latrines, 357, 366, 504–05

Field standing operating procedures, 274, 319

Filguieras, Cpl. Jose, 252

Finance Company, 82d, 55

Fire fighting, 424

First aid, 257, 434

Fleet marine forces, 46

Flohr, Linda, 95

Flotation. See Equipment, flotation devices.

Follow-on forces

N-sequence, 173, 177, 203, 215
Index

627

planning phase, 85–86, 111, 112, 113, 118, 

124, 130, 131, 171

Food

Class I (subsistence) supplies, 279, 505

rations. See under Supplies.

refugees and detainees, 356, 357, 360, 

452–54, 484

Food shortage on Grenada, 194, 205

Force Artillery Command, 368

“Force” units, 298, 398

Fore, Capt. Henry R., 228, 372, 486–87

Forklifts. See under Equipment, cargo.

Fort Bragg, North Carolina, 29

Ammunition supply point, 151, 160, 198, 

199, 211, 214, 322

central loading area control center, 190, 

211, 216, 219, 221, 228, 234

Class II/IV warehouse, 409

contingency warehouses, 192, 197, 541

corps marshaling area, 190, 197, 311, 377, 

386, 405

Directorate of Industrial Operations, 183, 

197, 378, 455

heavy drop rig site, 68–69, 190, 192, 199

Installation Transportation Office, 296–98, 

331, 395

motor pool, 184

personnel holding area, 190, 208, 295, 

403

Point Salines, communications link with, 

442–43, 463

Post Materiel Maintenance Directorate, 

455

Womack Army Hospital, 290, 397

Forts (other)

Adolphus, Grenada, 442

Campbell, Kentucky, 142

Dix, New Jersey, 324

Eustis, Virginia, 395

Frederick, Grenada, 249, 335, 427

Jackson, Mississippi, 324

Leavenworth, Kansas, 518

Lee, Virginia, 60, 512

Lewis, Washington, 46, 110, 111, 113, 175, 

176, 409, 472

Lucas, Grenada, 442

McPherson, Georgia, 33

Rupert, Grenada, 113, 241, 249, 335, 427

Stewart, Georgia, 108, 117, 118, 173, 175, 

204, 257, 382, 409, 470, 535

Forward Area Support Teams, 60–62

II, 60, 65. See also Echelons.

area of operations, 25–26 October, 267, 

273, 274, 288, 290

area of operations, 26–27 October, 339, 

356, 367, 368

area of operations, 27 October, 423, 

424, 442, 457

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

522, 529, 530

corps support and, 381, 403

division-rear support and, 301

N-sequence, 145, 159–62, 183, 189, 

200, 203, 204, 215, 223

transition period, 461, 470, 487, 488

III, 60, 200, 464, 465, 483, 488, 489, 501, 

507, 512–13

post-Grenada elimination of, 522

Frasché, Col. Louis D. F., 519

Frequente, Grenada, 22

area of operations

25–26 October, 264

26–27 October, 338, 342

27 October, 425–26, 431, 453, 456

transition period, 475, 500, 511

Friendly fire incidents, 425, 428–29, 432–34, 

439, 457, 468

Fucci, Capt. August J., 189–90

Fuel

aircraft, refueling, 348, 366–67, 420, 

421–23

aviation fuel point, Point Salines, 280, 

366–67, 420–24

equipment. See Equipment, fuel.

supplies. See under Supplies.

vehicles, refueling, 348, 466–67

wet wing defueling, 421–22

G–1 (Personnel), 42, 51

G–2 (Intelligence), 42

G–3 (Operations), 42

G–4 (Logistics), 42

G–5 (Civil Affairs), 42

Gairy, Sir Eric M., 12, 13, 15, 16, 23, 90n38, 

510

Garbage, 259, 310, 494–95, 504–5

Garmond, CWO3 William C., 219–20, 308

General Staff, Grenadian. See People’s 

Revolutionary Army, Grenada.

General support, 43, 52

Geneva Convention, 479, 485

Gibbons, Maj. Gregory D., 174–75, 204

Gibson Jr., Maj. Hubert L., 501–02

Gillespie, Charles A., 94, 480, 482, 488, 

496

Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense 

Reorganization Act, 522

Gouyave, Grenada, 9

Governor general’s residence, Grenada, 113, 

241, 247, 264, 290, 335

Grand Anse, Grenada, 106, 428, 431, 470
The Rucksack War

628

Grand Anse Campus. See under St. George’s 

University School of Medicine, 

Grenada.

Grand Anse–True Blue road, 431–32

Grand Etang, Grenada, 13

Grand Mal Bay, Grenada, 333

Grantley Adams International Airport, 

Barbados

casualties, handling, 287, 446, 491

division-rear support and, 305, 307–08

intermediate staging base at. See under

Intermediate staging base.

Task Force B at, 344–45

transshipments from, 380

Graves, Maj. Gen. Richard G., 139

Graves registration, 58, 162, 324–25, 372–73, 

486–88

Great Britain, 9, 12, 23, 27, 468, 510

Green Ramp

airflow management, 298, 379–80

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

533–34, 536, 544

aviation task force supplies, 219

communications, 387, 388

congestion

problem of, 299–308, 325, 329–31

solutions to, 317–20

decision to airdrop, 225, 226, 227

deployment of 3d Brigade, 312, 313, 

315–18, 330

detainee camp supplies, dispatch of, 390–92

inventory, 413

medical dilemmas, 398–403, 405–6, 415

N-sequence

N-hour to N+3:30, 190, 192, 199, 203, 

204

N+3:30 to N+8, 208, 218, 229–30

N+8 to N+10, 230–35

Point Salines, need for communications 

link with, 443, 463

resupply management, 320–25

reverse-osmosis purification unit, 

shipment of, 326–28

Smith’s efforts to visit Green Ramp for 

purposes of, 295

transfer of control from division to corps, 

410–13, 416

transition period, 462

Transportation Center, 330th

handover of Green Ramp to, 411

removed from Green ramp, 229–30, 

300, 301, 304, 317, 331, 332, 

379–80

Grenada, 9–16

army. See entries for People’s 

Revolutionary Army.

assessment of intervention from point of 

view of, 543, 546–47

coup (October 1983), 71–72, 75, 79–83, 

487–88

curfew, 83, 87

defense planning in, 23

economy of, 12

evacuation of foreigners, failure to 

arrange, 94–95, 99

food shortage on, 194, 205

highways and roads in, 146, 161

impending intervention, government and 

military reaction to, 167–70

invasion scare of spring 1983, 23

medical support for, 495–96

militia. See entries for People’s 

Revolutionary Militia.

People’s Revolutionary Government, 12, 

167. See also New Joint Effort for 

Welfare, Education, and Liberation 

(JEWEL) Movement Party.

police force, 508, 510

ports and docks, 134, 393, 496, 497, 500

rainfall, 9

regions of, 9

Revolutionary Military Council, 83, 113, 

167–69, 249

revolution (1979) in, 12–16

telephone system, 129

U.S. intelligence weaknesses regarding, 

89–90, 102

U.S. intervention in (1983). See Operation 

Urgent Fury.

Grenada Work Group, Combat Studies 

Institute, 519

Grenada Working Group, U.S. Department 

of State, 166

Grenades. See under Weapons.

Grenadian workers, employed by U.S. 

military, 486, 504, 505, 508

Grenadines, 9, 223

Grenville, Grenada, 247

Grid Systems Corporation, 389

Ground force commander, single, lack of, 

526

Guam. See under Ships and other vessels.

Guerrilla warfare. See also

Counterinsurgency campaign.

assessment of Grenada intervention 

regarding, 508, 524, 543, 546–47

Bishop’s threat to resort to, 22

factors affecting difficulty of mounting, 

546

logistics planning for, 196, 497

possibility of, 426, 443, 468, 508

U.S. expectation of, 459, 468, 469
Index

629

Guinn, Sgt. Terry, 339–41, 361

Gulf of Tonkin incident, 34

Guyana, 94

Hadley, Arthur T., 537

Hagler Jr., Lt. Col. Ralph L., 47

area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 

250–51, 255, 259, 261, 265, 281

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 281, 

335, 345–46, 355, 432

27 October, 436, 438, 439, 441, 447

assessment of Grenada intervention, 528, 

529

division-rear support, 329

N-sequence, 173, 175, 176, 180

planning phase, 110–11, 113–17

transition period, 469, 470

Hall, Lt. Col. Richard A., 362, 446

Halley, Col. Fred N., 52, 149, 322, 443, 

464

Hamilton, Lt. Col. Jack L.

area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 265, 

268–69, 275, 281, 286

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 338, 

339, 341–43, 346, 357, 364

27 October, 425–28, 431–32

division-rear support, 312

N-sequence

N-hour to N+3:30, 184–87, 189, 190, 

193, 195, 196

N+3:30 to launch, 208, 210–11, 214–15, 

218, 229, 230, 231, 238

planning phase, 103, 149, 150

transition period, 468

Hamilton, Maj. John A., 207

Hand-off teams, 511

Hapner, Maj. Arthur W., 219, 447

Harding, Capt. Gregory A., 326, 332

Hardy Bay, Grenada, 135, 259, 279

Harper, Maj. Gen. Henry H., 36

Harris, S. Sgt. Sammie L., 201, 454–57

Hartman Estates, Grenada, 469

Heat stroke, 342, 343

Heavy drop rig site, 68–69, 190, 192, 199

Hedges, R. Adm. Ralph R., 35, 511

Helicopter landing zone, 366

Helicopters. See also Aircraft.

AH–1 Cobra, 54, 130, 249, 311, 417, 418, 

419, 438, 462, 472

AH–6 Little Bird, 255

CH–46 Sea Knight, 346, 421

CH–47 Chinook, 128178–179

CH–53 Sea Stallion, 421

deployment delays, 241–42, 344–49

main rotor blades, 347, 438

medical, 219, 308, 361, 405, 434, 447

OH–58 Kiowa, 52–54, 418, 462

rear rotor, 347

stabilator, 347, 349

UH–1 Iroquois (Huey), 54

UH–60 Black Hawk, 52, 54

area of operations, 25–26 October, 247, 

249, 261

area of operations, 26–27 October, 

347–49

area of operations, 27 October, 417, 

420, 436, 439–41, 447

division-rear and corps support, 311, 

405

N-sequence, 201, 219

planning phase, 128, 151–52

transition period, 462, 468, 500

Heliport, 257

Henry, Col. Terrence M., 241, 249, 338

Hensler, Maj. Robert M., 110, 113, 175–76, 

204

Henson Jr., Capt. Lawrence, 189

Herring Jr., Brig. Gen. Bernard M., 174

Heumann, Georges, 485

H-hour, 107, 113, 137, 140, 180. See also

Timing.

High-priority requisition, 408

Hill 97, Grenada, 116, 251–52, 256

Hoffman II, Capt. Lawrence W.

division-rear support, 328–29

N-sequence, 173–75, 179–80, 204

planning phase, 117

Homesteading, 67

Honduras, 163

Hospitals

Charleston Naval Air Station, South 

Carolina, 259, 287

Madigan Army Hospital, Washington, 

111

Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, Puerto 

Rico, 272, 305, 367, 369, 442, 446, 

491

St. George’s, Grenada, 495–96

Surgical Hospital, 5th, 404–05, 489, 491, 

494

Womack Army Hospital, North Carolina, 

290, 397

Hostage crisis, Iranian, 99, 520, 539

Hull, Maj. Timothy L., 154, 156–57, 221

Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia. See also

Forts (other), Stewart, Georgia.

deputy commander, 174

division-rear support, 293, 328–29

emergency operations center, 174
The Rucksack War

630

Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia—Continued

Hanger 850, 179

N-sequence, 110, 112, 113, 117, 118, 142, 

173–74, 175, 176, 178–80, 182, 204, 

205, 535

planning phase, 110, 112, 113, 117, 118, 

142

roll-on/roll-off ship for equipment from, 

394

Saber Hall, 118, 173, 174, 175, 179, 180

strengthening existing capacities at, 272

Hurst, Lt. Col. Bobby R., 187, 301–2, 305, 

314–15, 317, 331, 332, 536

Hutchings, Capt. Eric D., 97

Impact of Grenada intervention. See

Assessment and impact of Grenada 

intervention.

Independence battle group, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 

108

Industrial warfare, 5, 540

Infantry Battalions

1st, 325th Infantry, 54, 185, 187, 301, 313, 

314, 315, 469

1st, 504th Infantry, 313, 314

1st, 505th Infantry, 312, 368, 420, 431, 

435–36, 468, 509

1st, 508th Infantry, 312, 420, 444, 463, 

469, 509

2d, 325th Infantry, 54

area of operations, 264–65, 273, 282, 

338, 361, 428

N-sequence, 184, 187, 190, 193, 208, 

209, 215, 220, 225, 226, 236, 238

planning phase, 103, 149, 156

transition period, 469

2d, 504th Infantry, 313, 314

2d, 505th Infantry, 184, 185, 187, 208, 

312, 463, 469, 476, 509

2d, 508th Infantry, 183, 197, 207, 208, 

216, 313–16, 462, 467, 469, 472

3d, 325th Infantry, 54

area of operations, 54, 269–69, 273, 

338, 346, 425–26

division-rear support, 321

N-sequence, 185, 187, 191, 193, 195–

96, 215, 220, 236

planning phase, 103, 149, 154, 156

transition period, 468, 472

Infantry Brigade, 197th, 40

Infantry Divisions

4th, 42

24th, 36, 40, 117, 132, 173, 175, 176, 

470

34th, 31

In-flight rigging, 225

Information, exchange of, 170, 532

Initial Ready Company, 63. See also Division 

Ready Brigades; Division Ready 

Forces; Emergency Deployment 

Readiness Exercise; Notificationhour.

Installation Transportation Office, Fort 

Bragg, North Carolina, 296–98, 

331, 395

Insurgency. See Counterinsurgency 

campaign; Guerrilla warfare.

Intelligence. See Military intelligence.

Intermediate staging base

Army helicopters at, 241–42

Barbados

assessment of, 457, 528, 533

corps representatives at, 378

establishment of, 241, 269–72

operations at, 347–49, 417–19

planning stage, 144, 196

transition period, 460–62

concept, 50, 111, 144, 152

Fort Bragg, 130, 144, 195

International Committee of the Red Cross, 

390, 479, 485–86

Internet (Worldwide Military Command and 

Control System or WWMCCS), 92, 

317, 540

Interrogation team, 300, 378

Invasion scare of spring 1983 (in Grenada), 

23

Inventory control, 195, 330, 408, 413, 497, 

500

Invoices, 401, 539

Iran

hostage crisis, 99, 520, 539

medical students from, 350

potential Soviet invasion of, 64, 70

Izzo, Lt. Col. Lawrence L.

area of operations

25–26 October, 273–75, 279–80, 

290–91

26–27 October, 364–66, 371

detainee camp, construction of, 485, 

486n66

division-rear support, 326, 328

N-sequence, 178, 189, 202

planning phase, 147

Jackson Jr., Lt. Col. Joseph P.

area of operations

25–26 October, 288–89

26–27 October, 362–64

27 October, 445–46, 449, 458
Index

631

capabilities of, 398

N-sequence, 204

resupply requests, 401–2

Sidenberg and, 404, 449, 490

transition period, 485, 490, 494

Jacoby Jr., Capt. Charles H., 208, 231, 264–

65, 338, 339, 341–42

Jamaica, 25, 93, 121, 122, 356, 510

Jamaica Defence Force, 450

James, Lt. Col. Liam, People’s Revolutionary 

Army, 167

JCS. See U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff

Jensen, 1st Lt. Steven R., 426

J-hour, 107, 137, 139, 140. See also Timing.

Johnson, Capt. Carl, 373

Johnson Jr., Col. James H., 100, 102–3, 139, 

379

Johnstone, L. Craig, 139–40

Joint Chiefs of Staff. See U.S. Joint Chiefs of 

Staff.

Joint Communications Support Element, 

387, 389

Joint Deployment System, 299

Joint doctrine

Concept Plan 2360, 37

division-rear support, 298, 375

forward area support team/combat 

control team coordination, 375

N+2 briefing, 195

on operational chain of command, 33, 

36

planning phase, 107–08, 124, 138–39, 171

soldierly knowledge of, 519–20

supply system management, 408

Joint Exercises

Bold Eagle, 174, 184, 211, 230, 411

Bright Star, 201

Quick Thrust, 174, 175, 382

Solid Shield, 38, 39

Joint intelligence center, lack of, at departure 

airfields, 303, 330, 533

Joint logisticians

U.S. Atlantic Command, J–4 (Logistics), 

409

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, J–4 (Logistics), 

172

Joint operations, 537–39

Joint Special Operations Command. See

U.S. Joint Special Operations 

Command.

Joint Staff. See under U.S. Joint Chiefs of 

Staff.

Joint Task Force (JTF)

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

534–35

commanders’ logistical responsibilities, 32

creation of standing northern Caribbean 

JTF, 27, 35

overall commander, 108, 124–25

Joint Task Force units

120

area of operations, 233, 247, 256, 335, 

384, 387, 428, 435

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

525

corps support, 409

dissolution of, 476

planning phase, 108, 113, 132, 138, 

142, 153

Schwarzkopf’s command of, 469–70

123

area of operations, 241, 242, 252, 256, 

259, 260, 261, 266, 268

division-rear support, 311

N-sequence, 233, 235

planning phase, 108, 118, 137, 143, 

153

140, 37, 102

149, 37

JP–4, 160, 201, 307–08, 367, 420–24, 444

JSOC. See U.S. Joint Special Operations 

Command.

JTF. See Joint Task Force.

Kane, Capt. Robert E., 447

Kane, Thomas M., 544, 546n34

Katz, 2d Lt. Eric P., 64–65

area of operations

25–26 October, 280

26–27 October, 366–67

27 October, 420–24

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

533–34, 536

division-rear support, 301

N-sequence, 200

Keene, Maj. Richard T., 301

Keith, General Donald R., 36

Kelley, General Paul X., USMC, 106

Kelly, Lt. Col. Ronald F., 59

assessment of Grenada intervention, 536

corps support for, 399, 411, 413, 414

detainees, 390–92

division-rear support, 302, 305–06, 317, 

320–26, 328, 331–32

N-sequence, 230

planning phase, 143

transition period, 464

Kelly, M. Sgt. Robert L., USAF, 251, 259, 

278

Kimmel, Maj. Lawrence J., 368, 489

K-loaders. See under Equipment, cargo.
The Rucksack War

632

Korean war, 31, 39, 47, 164

Kurtz, Lt. Col. Richard G., 319

Kurze, Kenneth, 94

Labor, Sgt. William, 192, 219

Lance aux Épines Peninsula, Grenada, 468, 

469

Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, 26, 33, 

396

Latrines/field sanitation, 357, 366, 504–05

Leaning forward, 192

Lebanon

Marine barracks, bombing of, 106, 119–

20, 273, 365, 404, 502

redeployment of Marines in Grenada to, 

384, 386, 403, 437, 469, 472, 475

Leeward Islands, 23

Legate, Capt. Arthur H., 446

Lemauk, 1st Lt. David B., 196, 221, 282, 286, 

288, 450

Lesser Antilles Air Transport Service, 13

Lessons learned. See Assessment of Grenada 

intervention.

Levels of war

operational, 414, 526, 527, 544

strategic, 541

tactical, 166, 526, 544

Lewis, Col. Rudyard, 25, 122, 255, 286, 

355–56

Lighters, 393, 496

“Light package,” confusion over meaning of, 

231

Lind, William S., 538

Lindsay, Maj. Gen. James J., 39, 51

Line of communications

air, 205, 417, 507

sea, 130, 392–97, 507

Loading and dispatch. See Notificationsequence.

Locher report, 522

Log birds, 278, 305, 455, 507

Logistical conservation, 541–42

Logistical plans, 93, 117–19, 374

Logistical policy (contingency island policy), 

192

Logistical readiness, 104

Logistical support packages, 46, 196, 489

Logisticians

corps G–4 (Logistics), 42, 132, 228, 379, 

410, 412, 529

daytime versus nighttime missions and 

role of, 541

deployment of, 319, 331

division G–4 (Logistics). See under

Airborne Division, 82d.

friction with combat arms officers, 

66–67

information center at Point Salines, 367

joint

U.S. Atlantic Command, J–4 

(Logistics), 409

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, J–4 

(Logistics), 172

Logistics

area of operations, successes and failures 

in, 290–91

assessment of. See under Assessment and 

impact of Grenada intervention.

corps logistics system, 43–45

corps support. See Corps support.

definition of, 5, 7

divisional logistics, 82d Airborne 

Division, 55–60

division-rear support. See Division-rear 

support.

institutional evolution and, 539–42

medical, 397–406, 415–16

operational, 5–8, 542–46

over-the-shore, 496

paperwork preparation, importance of, 

192

phases of, 293

planning phase. See under Planning 

phase.

public relations and politics affecting, 

501

pull or demand logistics, 45, 159, 328, 

541

push logistics, 45, 159, 319, 541

ranger logistical planning and 

preparation, 22 October, 117–19

transition period, 460

Trobaugh’s emphasis on, 65–66

Longo, Maj. Raymond E. A., 270

Los Baños Internment Camp, 537

Louison, Maj. Einstein, People’s 

Revolutionary Army, 18, 79

Low-altitude parachute extraction, 128–29, 

251

Lucas, Capt. Keith J., 249

Luketina, Sgt. Sean P., 434, 435n46

Lunsford, 1st Lt. James R., 315

Lynch, Maj. Timothy R., 418

MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, 33, 42, 299, 

387

Machines on ground (MOG), 137

Mackmull, Lt. Gen. Jack V., 37–42

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

515–16, 527, 528, 536
Index

633

corps support and, 377–86, 389, 392, 393–

94, 403, 404, 406, 411, 412, 414–16

division-rear support and, 295, 297–98, 

311, 323, 331

N-sequence, 177, 182n24, 224–25, 228, 

233, 235, 238

planning phase, 96–97, 103, 127–34, 137, 

139, 163, 171, 172

transition period, 460, 469, 472, 494, 507, 

513

Maher III, Maj. John J., 110, 180, 245, 250

Maintenance

direct support, 58

general support, 43, 52

parts surplus, 455

Maintenance Battalion, 782d, 55, 58, 60, 144, 

189, 201, 454–57

Mall Jr., Maj. Gen. William J., 180, 182, 

204

Maps and mapmaking

Calivigny Peninsula assault, 438

Esso road map, 146

grids for, 424–25

National Geographic map of Grenadines, 

223

Marine Amphibious Units

22d, 76–79, 85, 87, 101, 344, 345, 428, 437, 

469

composition of, 46

Marine Battalion, 2d, 8th Marines, 245–47, 

333

Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 261, 

344, 346

Marines

Army-Marine coordination issues, 428–

29, 475, 526

combat operations

25 October, initial assaults, 233, 

245–49

26 October, 333, 344, 345, 427, 441

27 October, 428–29, 437, 441–42

27–28 October, Ross Point Hotel 

mission, 428, 442, 468

30 October, Sauteurs, 475

1 November, Carriacou, 475–76

in Lebanon. See Lebanon.

Marsh, John O., 476

Mason, Capt. Raymond V., 320, 467, 501

Materiel-handling equipment. See

Equipment, cargo.

Materiel maintenance centers, 43

Materiel Management Center, 182d

corps support, 392, 406, 408, 409, 416

division-rear support, 302, 319

N-sequence, 183, 197, 208, 210, 211, 214, 

217

organization and responsibilities, 55, 

56–58

planning phase, 144, 159

May, Capt. James G., 178

Mayer, Col. John H., 175

McChord Air Force Base, Washington, 112

McClure, Capt. Randall L.

area of operations, 425–26, 433

division-rear support, 321, 332

N-sequence, 191–92, 195–96

transition period, 468

McDonald, Admiral Wesley L., 34–35

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

516, 518, 525–31, 533, 535, 539, 

540–41

Calivigny air assault orders, 516

corps support, 383–84, 397, 404, 414

division-rear support and, 294, 311, 331

Mackmull and, 132, 133, 377

N-sequence, 227, 228, 230, 235, 236

planning phase

alert order, 22 October, 93

Atlantic Command planning meeting, 

21 October, 90–91

Atlantic Command planning meeting, 

22 October, 100–102

Atlantic Command planning meeting, 

24 October, 139–40

briefing of JCS chairman, 20 October, 

85–87

briefing of Joint Chiefs of Staff, 23 

October, 106–8

command-and-control issues, 108, 

124–25

communications planning issues, 153

intelligence about Americans in 

Grenada, 166

large contingency, 20 October, 86

review of contingency plans, 14–17 

October, 75–76

small contingency, 20 October, 86

timing of operations, change in, 172

U.S. Army Forces Command, failure 

to activate, 171

warning order, 19 October, 84–85

removal of XVIII Airborne Corps from 

chain of command by, 156, 162, 

165, 170–71, 173, 526–27, 529

transition period, 476

McFarlane, Robert C., 74, 87, 89, 97, 99, 105, 

165, 481

McFarren, Lt. Col. Freddie E., 312, 369

McIntosh Jr., Capt. Harry L., 202

McKenzie, Capt. Colin S., 194, 288

McNeil, Francis J., 100, 119, 121

Medals, controversy over, 523
The Rucksack War

634

Media coverage, 92, 105, 350–55, 507

Medical aid stations, 257–58, 288, 428–29, 

446, 447

Medical augmentation package, 179, 286–88, 

289–90, 291

Medical Battalion, 307th

area of operations, 288, 361, 445–49

assessment of Grenada intervention, 534, 

548

deployment dilemmas faced by, 397–404

N-sequence, 144, 189, 192–93, 204

Red Cross inspection of operating room, 

485

role and responsibilities, 55, 58–59, 60

transition period, 489–96

Medical Brigade, 44th, 158, 193, 223, 404–5, 

489, 490

Medical casualties. See Casualties.

Medical clearing station, 280

Medical consumables. See under Supplies.

Medical Corps, 397, 398, 402

Medical Detachment, 57th, 219–20, 308, 424, 

447

Medical evacuation, 219–20

Calivigny Peninsula, Grenada, 441, 447

chain, 138

communications issues, 361, 364, 424

helicopters. See Helicopters, medical.

Medical Task Force 5, involvement of, 

491

withdrawal of special operations forces 

precipitating, 290

wounded Americans, 257–59, 361–64, 

446–49, 458

wounded Cubans, 360

wounded Grenadians, 258, 360, 495

Medical logistics and deployment, 397–406, 

415–16, 525, 534–35

Medical personnel, Cuban, 288–89, 360, 364

Medical preparation

N-sequence, 192–93, 194, 203–4, 219–20, 

223–24

planning phase, 118–19, 130, 138, 157–58, 

159

Medical school. See St. George’s University 

School of Medicine, Grenada.

Medical Service Corps, 397, 398, 402

Medical students. See St. George’s University 

School of Medicine, Grenada.

Medical support, Grenadian, 495–96

Medical units, controversy over command of, 

397–98, 490, 534

Medicine, preventive, 490, 495

Medics

area of operations, 257, 288, 362, 434, 

447, 458

assessment of Grenada intervention, 548

corps support for, 399, 400

N-sequence, 204

Mehan, Lt. Col. Robert, 111

Mendoza, Capt. Martin E., 388

Menges, Constantine C., 74

Merida, Mexico, 482

Merritt, Lt. Gen. Jack N., 76

Metcalf III, V. Adm. Joseph, USN

area of operations

25 October through dawn 26 October, 

247–49, 255, 265–68

26–27 October, 335, 345, 356

27 October, 435, 438

assessment of Grenada intervention, 518, 

525, 534, 538

corps support and, 383, 396, 397, 409, 

414

division-rear support and, 311, 313, 325, 

329

planning phase, 108, 132, 134, 138–40, 

142, 153

transition period, 469–70, 475–76, 480, 

487

Meyer, General Edward C., 185

Meyer III, Lt. Col. A. Felix, 286–87, 290, 

364, 446, 458, 491

Middle East, U.S. policy toward, 47–48, 64, 

74

Military Airlift Command, 63

bulldozer, return of, 251

corps support and, 396, 412–13, 416

division-rear support and, 259, 272, 296, 

298–99, 303, 305, 307–08, 318, 322

N-sequence, 179, 205, 224

planning phase, 91, 103, 107, 112, 132, 

138, 142, 149, 160

transition period, 503

visual approach slope indicator 

installment, 367

Military History Detachment, 44th, 519

Military intelligence

Grenada, U.S. intelligence weaknesses 

regarding, 89–90, 102

location of medical students, 165–67, 264, 

525

People’s Revolutionary Army, assessments 

of, 88–89, 106, 142

Point Salines airfield, 110, 140, 145–46

Military Intelligence Battalion, 313th, 55

Military Intelligence Group, 525th, 40, 41, 

368, 489, 497

Military Police Companies

82d, 55, 189, 196, 197, 221–23, 234, 356, 

424, 450

118th, 484
Index

635

Military Police Group, 16th, 40, 41

Military Regions I–IV, Grenada, 18

Military Traffic Management Command, 

393, 394–95

Miller, Lt. Col. William J., 418, 462

Millet, Allan R., 46

Ministry of Defence, Grenada, 17, 22

Ministry of Health, Grenada, 495

Mitchell, Col. Corless W.

assessment of Grenada intervention, 529

captured equipment and vehicles, removal 

of, 496

corps support, 379, 410, 412

division-rear support, 319

N-sequence, 131, 134–37, 214, 228

Mitchell, Capt. John M., 245

Mitchell, Keith, 23

Mobile Aerial Port Squadron, 3d, 270–71, 

444, 464

MOG (Machines on ground), 137

Monroe, James, 26

Mont Tout, Grenada, 431–32

Morale, 66–68, 314, 323, 449, 523, 543

Moreau Jr., V. Adm. Arthur S., 73, 83

Morris IV, Capt. James M., 216, 316

Morris Jr., Capt. Robert C., 111, 329, 332

Morrison, CWO George W., 349

Morrow, M. Sgt. James J., USAF, 270

Mortuary affairs. See Casualties; Graves 

registration.

Motley, Langhorne A., 74, 75, 76, 87, 94, 100

Motor vehicles. See Vehicles (ground) and 

equipment.

Mount Weldale, Grenada, prime minister’s 

residence at, 79

N+2 briefing, 103, 189, 190, 192, 193–95, 

197, 198, 205, 223, 226. See also

Notification-sequence.

N+3:30 briefing, 207–08. See also

Notification-sequence.

N+10, 183, 210, 235. See also Notificationsequence.

National Command Authority, 29, 75, 83, 

166, 368

National Depot Supply System, 214, 406, 

408, 416, 541

National Geographic map of Grenadines, 

223

National policy, 501

National security adviser, 27, 28, 74, 87, 165

National Security Agency, 166, 167, 389

National Security Council (NSC)

Crisis Preplanning Group

activated for Urgent Fury, 87, 92

two-track policy toward Grenada, 28

leadership crisis between Bishop and 

Coard, initial reaction to news of 

(13–19 October), 73, 75

Special Situation Group, 87, 89, 99

staff, 28

National Security Decision Directive 

(NSDD) 105, 28

National Security Decision Directive 

(NSDD) 110A, 120–21, 163, 164

National Security Planning Group, 105

Nation building, 459–60, 488, 507–08, 509–

12. See also Peacekeeping.

Navy. See Ships and other vessels; U.S. Navy 

units.

Neff, Maj. William J., 396

Negrete, Capt. Bernardo C., 348, 417–19, 

438, 457

New Joint Effort for Welfare, Education, and 

Liberation (JEWEL) Movement 

Party, 12–15

Central Committee, 13, 71–72

defense policies, 22–23

economic strategy of, 15

leadership crisis between Bishop and 

Coard, 71–72

police force and, 510

relationship to revolution in the 

Caribbean, 22, 23–25

sabotage at Point Salines Airfield by, 504

U.S., hostility toward, 13, 26, 546

Newman, Capt. Clyde M., 250, 252

Newman, Lt. Col. Ralph E.

division-rear support, 313–16

N-sequence, 207, 208, 211, 213

planning phase, 190

transition period, 462–63, 467, 469, 472, 

476

New York Times, 92, 523

Nicaragua, 73

Nightengale, Lt. Col. Keith M.

deployment of battalion, 312, 315, 444

planning phase, 185, 186

transition period, 463, 469, 509

Nix Jr., Maj. Jack P., 110, 116, 118, 174, 175, 

180

Nolan, Capt. David L., 401, 403–4

North, Lt. Col. Oliver L., USMC, 87

North Korea, 14

Notification-hour (N-hour), 62–63. See 

also Division Ready Brigades; 

Emergency Deployment Readiness 

Exercise.

Notification-sequence (N-sequence), 173–

239

N-hour to N+2, 182–93
The Rucksack War

636

Notification-sequence—Continued

N+2 briefing, 103, 189, 190, 192, 193–95, 

197, 198, 205, 223, 226

N+2:30 to N+3:30, 197–204

N+3:30 briefing, 207–8

N+3:30 to N+6, 208–13

N+6 to N+8, 213–18

N+10, 183, 210, 235

N+13, 235

assessment of performance, 205, 235–39

aviation task force, 218–20

communications preparations, 220–23

corps liaison arrangements, 228–29

defined, 173

deployment of 3d Brigade, 311–12

equipment supply issue point, 208, 211, 

214, 215, 310

individual issue ammunition point, 211, 

214, 215–16, 234

medical preparation, 192–93, 194, 203–4, 

219–20, 223–24

order to launch, 235

personnel holding area, 208, 215, 218, 

230

property book personnel, role of, 208

ranger battalions, 173–82, 204–5

staff meetings, N+2:30 to N+3:30, 

195–97

training for, 62–63

U.S. Atlantic Command understanding 

of, 143

NSDD (National Security Decision 

Directive) 105, 28

NSDD (National Security Decision 

Directive) 110A, 120–21, 163, 164

N-sequence. See Notification-sequence.

Nutting, General Wallace H., 33, 93, 96

Occupation duties, 130, 235

Okita, Capt. Michael C., 341, 343–44, 346

O’Neill, Thomas P. “Tip,” 164–65

Operational chain of command, 29–36, 

291

Operational logistics, 5–8, 542–46

Operation Desert One, 99

Operation Desert Shield, 540

Operation Desert Storm, 4

Operation Iraqi Freedom, 4

Operation Island Breeze, 510

Operation Urgent Fury, 4–8

airfield reconnaissance, 233

area of operations. See Area of 

operations.

assessment of. See Assessment and impact 

of Grenada intervention.

assignment of name, 84

Atlantic Command planning conference, 

22 October, 100–102

boundary issue, 107, 428

compared to other late– and post–Cold 

War operations, 4, 5

corps support for. See Corps support.

division-rear support for. See Divisionrear support.

end of armed combat phase, 426, 458

execute order, 105, 182

force packages, 99, 200, 203

formal end of, 412

Grenadian forces. See entries for People’s 

Revolutionary Army; People’s 

Revolutionary Militia.

impact of. See Assessment and impact of 

Grenada intervention.

intelligence estimates. See Military 

intelligence.

loading and dispatch phase. See

Notification-sequence.

logistics issues. See Logistics.

McDonald’s briefing to Joint Chiefs of 

Staff, 23 October, 106–08

media coverage of, 92

no-plan contingency campaign, 524

operations order, 137, 158–59

planning for. See Planning phase.

political situation prior to

in Caribbean, 23–25

in Grenada, 9–16, 71–72

U.S. policy on, 26–28

removal of XVIII Airborne Corps from 

chain of command. See under

Airborne Corps, XVIII.

single ground force commander, lack of, 

526

slow and systematic advance favored by 

Trobaugh, 428, 435, 457, 469, 516, 

542–43

timing of initial assault, 107, 113, 134, 

137, 143, 172, 179–80, 241, 526

transition period following. See Transition 

period.

U.S. forces. See specific units by branch or 

function.

warning order for, 84–85, 170–71, 175

Ordnance Company, 8th, 198

Ordnance Detachments

48th, 324

542d, 324

Organization of American States, 37

Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, 

23–25, 93–94, 97–100, 120

Ortega, M. Sgt. Michael, 486
Index

637

O’Shaughnessy, Hugh, 335

Owen, Commodore Robert S., 143

Pacification, 459–60, 462, 472–76, 488, 

507–9

Pack, Lt. Col. Richard A., 100, 110

Palmer Jr., Lt. Gen. Bruce, 139

Panama, intervention in (1989), 4

Pasquale, Capt. Gary L., 320

Passaro, Maj. Paul V., 149–51, 198, 278–79

Patterson, Brig. Gen. Robert B., USAF

area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 241–

42, 259, 269, 270–72

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 347, 

349, 365, 369, 372

27 October, 419–20, 423

corps support and, 380

division-rear support and, 305, 308

planning phase, 139, 142

relinquishment of duties and return to 

U.S., 462

Peacekeeping. See also Caribbean 

Peacekeeping Force; Nation 

building.

Airborne Division, 82d, role envisioned 

for, 86, 107, 124, 130, 137–38, 142

Barbados intermediate staging base, 

declining need for, 462

definition of, 459

Farris concentrating on, 488

General Cavazos on, 382–83

Operation Urgent Fury, as phase in, 

459–60

phases, 382–83

Peake, Col. James B., 287, 289

Pearls, Grenada, 161, 256

Pearls Airport, Grenada

assessment of Grenada intervention, 543

closure of, 83, 94

ground vehicle refueling point, 466–67

marine seizure of, 245–47, 290

planning and expectations, 103, 106, 113, 

131–32, 137, 159, 176, 187, 191

transition period, 462, 466–67

Pearson, Capt. Michael, 501–02

People’s Revolutionary Army (Grenada), 

16–23

accounting for soldiers of, 508

alerted to impending intervention, 

167–68

Carriacou Island, 475–76

Fort Rupert headquarters, 113, 241, 249, 

335

General Staff, 18

intelligence assessments of, 88–89, 106, 

142

logistical support for, 17, 21–22

overthrow and death of Bishop, role in, 

79–83, 510

Scholtes’ opinion of antiaircraft 

capabilities, 261

strength of resistance from, 245, 249–52, 

261, 426, 432, 437, 547

training of, 13, 18–20

People’s Revolutionary Army units/

installations (Grenada)

antiaircraft, 17, 21

antitank, 17

exploration (reconnaissance) company, 

16–17

Farm, 22

Logistics, 17, 21–22

Medical Post, 22

mobile company, 16–17

motorized company, 16, 265

rapid mobilization company, 17

Unified Storeroom, 21–22

Unified Workshop, 22

People’s Revolutionary Government 

(Grenada), 12, 167. See also New 

Joint Effort for Welfare, Education, 

and Liberation (JEWEL) 

Movement Party.

People’s Revolutionary Militia (Grenada), 16

capabilities of, 21

defense strategy, role in, 22

Military Regions I–IV, 18

training and conditions, 13, 20

People’s Revolutionary Militia units 

(Grenada)

Carriacou Battalion, 18

St. George’s Battalion, 18

Perkins Jr., Lt. Col. Andrew M., 146–47, 385

Perkins, Maj. Frederick C., 59–60

corps support, 410–11

division-rear support, 296–98, 320, 332

N-sequence, 144n39, 159, 183–84, 224

Perkins 1st Lt. Samuel P., 275–76

Personal issue items, 187

Personnel holding area

division-rear support, 295, 301, 310, 312, 

315, 317, 319

N-sequence, 208, 215, 218, 230

Perspective on Grenada intervention. 

See Assessment of Grenada 

intervention.

Petit Bouc, Grenada, 431–32

Petit Cabrits Point, Grenada, 116

Petit Calivigny, Grenada, 469

Petit Martinique, Grenada, 9, 18
The Rucksack War

638

Peytrignet, Gerard, 485

Pfaff, Capt. James A., 118–19, 257–58, 282, 

288–89, 350, 360, 364

Phelps, 1st Lt. Douglas S., 361–64, 398–400, 

402, 445–46

Pitts Jr., Capt. Joseph, 313, 426

Planning phase, 71–125, 127–72

alerting of XVIII Airborne Corps and 82d 

Airborne Division, 19–22 October, 

96–97

Americans in Grenada, anticipation of 

danger to, 74, 75, 76, 83, 89, 99, 

101, 166

artillery, 22–25 October, 149–51

assessment of, 170–72, 525–31

aviation, 22–24 October, 151–52

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force, assembly 

of, 121–24

Command-and-control issues, 108, 124–

25, 139

communications, 22–24 October, 151–52

compartmentalization of, 93, 113, 132–34, 

525

crux of planning problem, 525

death of Bishop and formation of 

Revolutionary Military Council, 

reaction to, 19–20 October, 83–90

engineers, 22–24 October, 146–49

formal contingency planning, 21–22 

October, 90–95

initial assumptions, 75, 530

leadership crisis in Grenada, assessment 

and review of, 13–19 October, 

72–79

logistics

Airborne Corps, XVIII, 23–24 

October, 134–37

initial lack of attention to, 87, 104, 

132, 172, 323

operations order, 138

Ranger plans and preparations, 22 

October, 117–19

service support annex, 158–62, 208

Support Command (Division), 82d, 

23–24 October, 143–46

Mackmull’s briefings and input from 

XVIII Airborne Corps, 23 October, 

127–37

McDonald’s concept of operations, 23 

October, 106–08

medical planning, 118–19, 130, 138, 

157–58, 159

medical students, assumptions regarding 

location of, 165–67

presidential meetings, decisions, and 

activities. See under Reagan, Ronald.

Rangers

logistical plans and preparations, 22 

October, 117–19

operational planning, 21–24 October, 

108–17

security requirements during, 101, 170, 

524–25, 528, 529

Special Operations Forces operational 

planning, 21–24 October, 108–17

Support Command (Corps), 1st, 183, 184, 

197, 207, 228

U.S. Atlantic Command

conference, 22 October, 100–103

final preparations, 23–24 October, 

137–43

review of contingency plans, 14–17 

October, 75–76

Poindexter, R. Adm. John M., 87

Point Salines, Grenada, 9, 15

Point Salines airfield, 1–4

aerial photographs of, 145, 147, 233, 539

airdrop operation at, 176, 242–45

arrival-departure operations

25 October preparation for, 272–81

26 October, 367–73

27 October, afternoon/evening, 

442–45

27 October, morning, 420–25

transition period, 462–66

aviation fuel point, 280, 366–67, 420–24

causeway, 15, 135, 259, 485

combat operations, 26 October, 338–46

communications, 443, 463, 502–03

constricted airflow at, 274

construction of, 15, 23, 27

Cuban agreement to limited defense of, 

169–70

engineer operations, 26 October, 364–67

engineering assessment of, 146–49

establishment of airhead at, 249–59

Grenada’s geography and, 9

helicopter landing zone, 366

intelligence on, 110, 140, 145–46

landing/holding pattern at, 251, 271, 

275, 305, 362, 369, 418, 421, 460, 

463

“mayor” of, 463

planning phase, 132, 135–37, 189

planning to seize, 106, 112, 137

ramp issues, 280, 365, 374, 385, 458, 465–

66, 530–31, 539

rear-area protection, 463, 467, 501–03, 

536–37

runway issues, 276–78

security issues, 273–74, 501–03

taxi area at, 259
Index

639

temporary closures, 320, 368–69, 420, 

442–43, 444, 532

terminal, 250–51, 255, 264, 265, 266, 276, 

281, 371, 503, 530

transition period

arrival-departure operations, 462–66

rear-area protection, 467, 501–03

truck-proof barricade, 273, 364–65

turnaround area, 278, 465

visual approach slope indicator, 367, 371–72

Police force, Grenadian, 508, 510

Policy issues. See Reagan, Ronald W., and 

Reagan administration

Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, 62, 63, 

66, 68–69

area of operations and

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 241, 

259, 270, 272, 286, 290

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 261, 

268, 345, 348, 350, 369

27 October, 418, 442, 443

assessment of Grenada intervention, 533, 

536

corps support, 380, 385, 386, 396, 402, 

403, 412, 413

division-rear support, 293, 295, 296, 298, 

299, 300n17, 303, 305, 308, 309, 

316, 320, 325, 330

Green Ramp. See Green Ramp.

N-sequence, 178–79, 183, 205, 216, 218, 

219, 224, 225, 228, 229, 235, 238

planning phase, 101, 118, 152, 159

transition period, 462–63

Postmodern warfare, 5, 540

Potable water. See Water.

Powell, General Colin, and Powell doctrine, 

521

Prantl Jr., 1st Lt. Carl, 220–21

Predeployment, 62, 152

Preemption, doctrine of, 522

Preventive medicine officer, 490, 495

Prickly Point, Grenada, 16, 165

Prillaman, Lt. Gen. Richard L., 75, 85, 90, 

171, 408

Prisoners, political, 79, 113, 140, 241

Prisoners of war, 55, 122, 195, 196, 250, 255, 

323, 341. See also Detainees.

Professionalism, 536

Project codes, 408–09

Project COHORT (cohesion, operational 

readiness, and training), 185

Propane, 502

Property book personnel, 208

Property log, 455

Provisional Movement Control Center. See

Support Command (Division), 82d.

Public health, 324, 494–95

Public opinion and support, 105, 260, 323, 

350–55, 384, 484, 501, 546

Purdy, Lt. Col. David G., USMC, 96

Putnam, Capt. Ronald A., 219

Quartermaster Battalion, 260th, 174, 175, 

204

Quartermaster Company, 110th, 394

Rabon, Capt. Jimmie M.

area of operations

26–27 October, 348–49

27 October, 418–19, 457, 461

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

536

N-sequence, 192, 219

planning phase, 144n39, 151

Rachmeler, Capt. Richard F., 322–23

Radio Free Grenada, 83, 90, 113, 168, 170, 

241, 247, 333, 342–44

Raines, Lt. Col. John W.

area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 

268–70, 275

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 338, 

346

27 October, 425, 427, 428, 431–35

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

542

division-rear support, 321

N-sequence

N+3:30 to launch, 215, 231, 233, 234, 

238

N-hour to N+3:30, 185, 187, 189, 

191–93, 195–96

planning phase, 103–04, 149, 150, 154

transition period, 468

Rain forest, 9

Ramey, Capt. John L., 485–86

Ranger Battalions, 46–49

1st, 75th Infantry, 46–47

area of operations, 25–26 October, 242, 

250, 265, 281

area of operations, 26–27 October, 338, 

346

area of operations, 27 October, 436, 

447, 470–72

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

529

division-rear support, 328, 329

N-sequence, 174, 176, 178–79, 180, 

182

planning phase, 108–17, 118
The Rucksack War

640

Ranger Battalions—Continued

2d, 75th Infantry, 46–47

area of operations, 25–26 October, 

250

area of operations, 26–27 October, 335, 

344, 355, 361

area of operations, 27 October, 447, 

470–72

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

528, 529

division-rear support, 329

N-sequence, 173, 174, 175, 176, 179

planning phase, 110, 111, 112–17, 118, 

119

Ranger coordinator, 117, 183, 204, 328

Ranger ready force, 110, 117

Rangers

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

527–28, 529

combat operations

Calivigny Peninsula assault. See

Calivigny Peninsula, Grenada.

Grand Anse Campus students, rescue 

of, 344–46, 542

hand-off to 82d Airborne Division, 

281

initial assaults, 233, 234, 242–45

Point Salines airhead, establishment of, 

249–59

retention of Rangers on Grenada, 

267–68

division-rear support, 328–29

N-sequence and loading process, 173–82, 

204–05

planning phase

initial planning by special operations 

forces and rangers, 21–24 October, 

108–17

logistical planning and preparation, 22 

October, 117–19

return home, 470–72

Rations. See under Supplies.

Ration supplement sundry packs, 322–23

Readiness reporting system, 65

Readiness standing operating procedures, 

183–84, 295–96, 303

Reagan, Ronald W., and Reagan 

administration

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

520–22, 524–25, 535

Beirut bombing, 119–20

meetings and decisions

20 October, 87

23 October, 119–24

24 October, 163–65

policy toward Grenada

postintervention, 459–60, 479–80, 509, 

510

pre-intervention, 15, 23, 25, 27–28, 70

return to Washington, 105, 119

security requirements during planning 

stage, 101, 170, 524–25, 528

75-percent decision, 97–100

signing of execute order, 105

signing of NSDD 110A to launch 

invasion, 120–21, 163, 164

Soviet Embassy personnel, departure 

requirements for, 482–83

Vessey, relationship with, 73, 120, 

163–65

Rear-area protection, 463, 467, 501–3, 

536–37

Record, Jeffrey, 523

Red Brigade, 89

Red Cross, International Committee of the, 

390, 479, 485–86

Redeployment, 265, 393, 413, 467, 475, 488, 

509, 510

Redhead, Capt. Lester, People’s 

Revolutionary Army, 20

Refugees

first appearance of, 25 October, 256, 

282–86

growing numbers and worsening 

conditions, 26–27 October, 355–60, 

390

improvements in conditions, 27 October, 

452–54

planning for, 194–95, 205

transition period, 472, 484–88

Regan, Donald, 97

Regional Security System, 122

Reiman, Lt. Col. Lawrence N., 89, 90

Reorganization Objective Army Division 

(ROAD), 49–50, 54

Research and development, 7

Restricted Interagency Group, 72–73, 75, 76, 

83, 87

Resupply packages, 118, 159, 302, 304, 319, 

322, 402

Resupply through the objective, 468

Revolutionary Military Council, Grenada, 

83, 113, 167–69, 249

Richardson, Lt. Col. Quinton W.

area of operations

25–26 October, 288

26–27 October, 355, 356, 357, 360

27 October, 449–53

planning phase, 194–95

Richardson Jr., Col. William J., 43–45

assessment of Grenada intervention, 528, 

533, 543
Index

641

corps support, 380–81, 382, 385, 393–94, 

396, 404, 406, 408, 411

division-rear support, 310, 319, 324–25

N-sequence, 162–63, 228–29

transition period, 460–62, 466, 491, 494, 

501, 505

Richardson, Spec. William R., 178, 251

Richmond Hill Prison, St. George’s, 

Grenada, 113, 140, 241, 249, 427, 

441–42

Ritz, Capt. Michael F., 208, 215, 216, 238, 

265, 338–39, 341

Rizzo, 1st Lt. Michael A., 312

Rocke, Capt. Mark D.

area of operations, 25–27 October, 264, 

265, 338, 342–43, 428

N-sequence, 184–87, 208, 215

Rodowick, Capt. Leonard J., 349

Rodwell, Sgt. Eric, 219, 348, 418–19

Romick, Pvt. Timothy, 252

Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, Puerto Rico, 

272, 305, 367, 442, 446, 491

Root, Elihu, 39

Roper, Maj. James E., USAF, 250

Rosebrock, Capt. James A., 202, 302, 367, 

373, 375, 423

Ross Point Hotel, Grenada, 427, 428, 442, 

468

Round-out supplies and equipment, 300, 

317–18, 321

Round-out units, 185, 312

Royal Grenadian Police Force, 510

Rubbish, 259, 310, 494–95, 504–05

Rucksacks, 4–5, 187, 216–18, 313

Rudd, CWO2 William A., 219

Rumbaugh, Col. James H.

assessment of Grenada intervention, 534

medical deployment and resupply, 402–04, 

406, 416

N-sequence, 157–58, 193, 223–24

transition period, 485, 490, 491, 494–96

Runyon, Sgt. Floyd M., 400

Russia. See Union of the Soviet Socialist 

Republics

Russo, Maj. Gen. Vincent M., 397, 503

Ruth Howard, Grenada, 252, 431–33

Ryan Jr., General Thomas M., USAF, 503

Ryneska, Lt. Col. John J., 149, 190, 335

S–1 (Personnel), 190–91

S–2 (Intelligence), 103

S–3 (Operations), 59, 62, 103

S–4 (Logistics), 47, 61, 196, 367, 464

Sabotage, 504

Sandinista Revolution, Nicaragua, 312

Sauteurs, Grenada, 475

Sazhenev, Gennady, 482–83

Scholtes, Maj. Gen. Richard A., 35

area of operations, 25–26 October

arrival of 82d Airborne Division, 

259–61, 264

initial assaults, 241–44, 245, 247

medical reinforcements, 289–90

Point Salines airhead, 250, 251, 

255–57

replacement of Scholtes with 

Trobaugh, 291

retention of rangers on Grenada, 

266–67

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

531

N-sequence, 177, 179, 180, 202, 233, 235

planning phase

final planning, 22–25 October, 133–34, 

138–40, 142–43, 152, 153

initial planning, 13–24 October, 89, 

90–91, 100, 106–8, 112, 116–19, 

124–25

Schroeder, Col. Daniel R., 146, 177–78, 385, 

500

Schwarzkopf Jr., Maj. Gen. H. Norman

area of operations, 249, 265–66, 345, 428, 

435, 457

assessment of Grenada intervention, 538, 

548

planning phase, 118, 124, 132–34, 139, 

142

transition period, 469–70

Scoon, Paul, 23

postintervention policies of, 452, 480–81, 

483, 486, 508, 509, 546

request for intervention by, 95

rescue of, 241, 247, 290, 335

Scott, Col. James T., 52

area of operations

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 

368–69, 371

27 October, 420, 427, 436, 438

deployment of 3d Brigade, 311–13, 315, 

317–18, 320

N-sequence, 186, 231–32

planning phase, 131

transition period, 465, 468, 472, 488, 497, 

500, 509

Scott, Capt. Stephen R.

area of operations

25–26 October, 276–78

26–27 October, 365, 368–69, 375

27 October, 421–24, 442

transition period, 462, 466n22, 530

Seaga, Edward, 25, 87–88, 121
The Rucksack War

642

Sea line of communications, 130, 392–97, 

507

SEALS (sea-land-air), 99

Searches of Grenadian homes and cars, 472, 

508

Security concerns

effect upon Urgent Fury planning, 101, 

170, 524–25, 528, 529

Fort Bragg, 295–96

Point Salines airfield, 273–74, 501–03

Seigle, Lt. Col. Robert N.

area of operations, 344–45, 349, 420–21

assessment of Grenada intervention, 536

division-rear support, 310n38

N-sequence, 202, 221

planning phase, 144n39, 151–52

Semmens, Lt. Col. Eugene P., 174

Senate Armed Services Committee, 522

September 11, 2001, 521, 522

Service support annex, 158–62, 208

Sever, Lt. Col. Kenneth C., 144, 179, 201n73, 

455–56

Shaw, Sgt. Harry A., 434

Shaw Jr., Lt. Col. Hubert S., 312, 315, 420, 

444, 463, 469, 509

Shell Oil Company, 348

Shelton, Col. Henry H., 52, 313–14

Ships and other vessels

American Eagle, 394–97, 497

lighters, 393, 496

roll-on/roll-off, 393–94, 497

SS Dolly Thurman, 396–97, 496–97, 500

USS Barnstable County, 76

USS Caron, 79, 249, 333, 346

USS Coral Sea, 35

USS Fort Snelling, 76

USS Guam

area of operations, 25–26 October, 247, 

257–58, 265, 290

area of operations, 26–27 October, 335, 

361

area of operations, 27 October, 420, 

442, 446, 458

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

534

captured materiel conference on, 396

medical support, 399, 402–04, 491

operational timing, 142, 194

planning phase, 76, 119

transition period, 469, 470, 491

USS Independence, 79

USS Manitowoc, 76

USS Saipan, 491

USS Trenton, 76

Vietnam Heroica (Cuban), 93

Short-notice contingency operations, 539

Shultz, George P.

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

521–22

medical assistance for Grenada, 496

planning phase, 73, 74, 88, 97, 99, 105, 

106, 164

Sidenberg, Lt. Col. Barry S.

field sanitation, concerns regarding, 504

Jackson and, 404, 449, 490

medical situation on Grenada, concerns 

regarding, 402, 403

medical unit command, controversy over, 

398, 449

N-sequence, 158, 194, 204, 223–24

Signal Battalions

50th, 388

82d, 54, 189, 190

Signal Brigade, 35th

corps support, 378, 379, 388, 389

division-rear support, 325

planning phase, 40–41, 130

transition period, 461, 502

Silvasy Jr., Col. Stephen, 29, 52

area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 265–

66, 276, 281

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 338

27 October, 426, 427, 434

assessment of Grenada intervention, 544, 

548

division-rear support, 293, 312

N-sequence, 183, 185, 189, 191, 194, 195, 

201–02, 208, 214, 223, 231, 236

planning phase, 103, 104, 154, 160, 162

training goals, 62–65

transition period, 465, 467, 472

Sinai peacekeeping force, 185, 187, 313, 469

Singer, Maj. James C., 384

Slayton, Capt. Bernard, 199

Sledge Jr., Maj. Elton S., 151, 349, 417

Sleep deprivation, 219, 302–03, 312, 373, 375, 

436, 532, 542

Small, Maj. Gen. Harold I., 393–94

Smith, Brig. Gen. James D.

Airborne Division, 82d, organization and 

responsibilities, 51, 52, 65

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

536

corps support for, 379, 381–82, 392, 402, 

403, 414–15

division-rear support

airflow management, 294, 299

assessment of, 330–31

control and security issues, 293–96

deployment of 3d Brigade, 311, 313, 

314, 315, 330
Index

643

Green Ramp congestion, 300, 303, 317

priorities, 328

resupply issues, 321

sleep deprivation, 302–03

N-sequence, 207, 234

planning phase, 132, 143, 144n39

transition period, 419, 465

Smith, Lt. Col. Ray L., USMC, 249, 333, 

441–42, 468, 516, 525

Smith, Maj. Thomas D., 97, 145, 154, 182, 

190, 220, 225, 227

Snyder, Maj. Karl S., 446

Soda pop, 322, 323

Souvenir hunters, 487

Soviet Embassy, ambassador, and staff, 

Grenada, 14, 342, 480–83

Soviet Union. See Union of the Soviet 

Socialist Republics

Spain, Sgt. Charles E., 178, 251

Special Air Service Regiment (British Army), 

48

Special Forces, 48, 420, 510, 512

Special Operations Command, 1st, 48, 117

Special operations forces, 48, 540. See also

specific forces.

Grenadian police force, Special Services 

Unit within, 510

landing and initial assault phase, 233–34, 

247–49

planning phase, 86, 108–17, 140–42

Special Situation Group, 87, 89, 99. See also

National Security Council.

St. George’s, Grenada, 9, 18

battle for

25 October, 247–49, 264, 290, 437

26 October, 333–35, 441

27 October, 427, 428

28 October, 467

civilian hospital, 495–96

coup (October 1983), 72, 79

planning phase, 103–04, 130, 146, 161

St. George’s Battalion, People’s Revolutionary 

Militia (Grenada), 18

St. George’s University School of Medicine, 

Grenada, 15–16

combat exposure of students, 279, 282

diplomatic use of vice chancellor, 94

Grand Anse Campus, 16

closure of airfield to allow for student 

rescue, 320, 368–69, 420

evacuation of, 355

military awareness of, 165, 167, 264, 

335–38, 525

planning phase, 106, 165, 167

ranger rescue of students from, 344–

46, 542

intelligence regarding location of students, 

75, 165–67, 264, 525

medical treatment provided by students, 

258, 350

ranger plans for, 116, 119

registrar’s office, 167

rescue and evacuation of students, 282, 

349–55, 428, 432, 449, 468, 521–22

True Blue Campus, 16

evacuation of, 346, 349–55, 468

as evacuee collection point, 349–50, 

449

medical aid station in dormitory of, 

288

planning phase, 75, 119, 165–67, 194

refugee facility at, 452

secured by rangers, 250, 252, 264, 265, 

282

U.S. encouragement to relocate, 28

St. Kitts, 512

St. Lucia, 25

St. Vincent and the Grenadines, 9, 25

Standing joint task force, 27, 35

Stangle, 1st Lt. Scott A., 219

Starling, Col. James D., 378, 460–62, 505–8, 

536

State building, versus nation building, 

460n3

State Department. See U.S. Department of 

State.

Steele, Sfc. Thomas, 221–23, 234

Stevens, Maj. Dale, USAF, 287

Stewart, Col. John F., 497

Stovepipes, 36

Strategic Army Corps, 39

Strategic reserve, 50

Strock, Maj. Carl A., 326, 328, 332

Students. See St. George’s University School 

of Medicine, Grenada.

Stump III, Lt. Col. Frank G., 153, 154, 

156–57

Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal, North 

Carolina, 394–96

Supplies

ammunition. See Ammunition.

batteries, BA–5590, 409–10

body bags, 325, 409

classes of. See Classes of supply.

corps logistics system for obtaining, 45

fuel, 348

diesel, 160

gasoline, 160

JP–4, 160, 201, 307–08, 367, 420–24, 

444

propane, 502

maintenance, 454–55
The Rucksack War

644

Supplies—Continued

medical consumables

blood, 362, 402, 403

dressings, 364

fluids, 362

scrounging for, 445

soda lime, 446

sutures, 362

rations

Barbados intermediate staging base 

lack of, 418

C-rations, 176, 211, 213, 256, 348

field sanitation issues, 504

meals ready to eat, 348

returned to U.S., 523

sundry items, 322–23

water bottles, 272

wire

concertina, 350, 356, 390

light gauge, 392

Supply points, 1, 58, 61, 275, 276, 278–79, 

312, 458, 466, 530, 531

Supply and Service Battalion, 407th, 55, 58, 

60, 68–69

division-rear support, 301, 324

N-sequence, 229, 237

planning phase, 144, 183, 189, 190, 201

return of supplies and equipment to U.S., 

523

Support Command, 377th, 163

Support Command (Corps), 1st, 40, 43–44. 

See also Corps support.

advance party, 308, 324, 380

assessment of Grenada intervention, 528, 

533

Forward I, 228, 388, 489, 491, 497, 501, 

502, 507–8

Forward II, 378, 460

N-sequence, 183, 184, 197, 207, 228

planning phase, 129, 162–63

Support Command (Division), 82d

deployment options for, 143–44

detailed logistical planning, 23–24 

October, 143–46

division data center, 55–56

division-rear support provided by. See

Division-rear support.

executive officer, 59, 143, 230, 302, 317, 

320, 365, 390, 411, 464

Forward Area Support Team II 

detachments, 183

Mackmull’s suggestions for, 130

“mayor” of Point Salines, 463

N-sequence, 197, 230

planning, lack of involvement in, 104, 

528

Provisional Movement Control Center, 55, 

59, 60, 143–44, 183, 200, 211, 230, 

301, 302, 317, 318, 331, 467

rear-area support mission of, 59, 159, 293. 

See also Division-rear support.

rear detachment at Fort Bragg, 174, 464

rear detachment commander, 320, 464, 

533

return to U.S., 488

senior officers deployed to Grenada, 410–11

standard responsibilities, 55–60

training, 64–65

transition period, role in. See Transition 

period.

Surgical Hospital, 5th, 404–05, 489, 491, 

494

Tactical Air Command, 33, 35, 85

Tactical Airlift Squadron, 39th, 287

Tactical Airlift Wings. See under Airlift 

Wings.

Tactical operations center

area of operations, 25–27 October, 231, 

234, 245, 250, 256, 265, 368, 447, 

458

field training exercise, 64

planning phase, 116

return to U.S., 476

Soviet Embassy staff at, 482

Take-off time, confusion over, 180, 182

Tally, Lt. Col. James R., 511

Task Forces

2d Brigade (82d Airborne Division), 137, 

149, 200, 324, 454, 467, 476, 528, 

530

5, Medical, 405–06, 415, 491–94

121, 137, 153, 157, 160, 161, 267, 291, 300, 

387, 526, 544

124, 108, 137

160, 142, 152, 241–42, 249, 261, 338, 368, 

369

525, 497

aviation, 218–20, 229

B, 152, 308–10, 344–45, 417, 418, 420, 

436

Newman, 472

Task Group 124.2, 108

Taylor, Spec. Brent, 480

Taylor Jr., Lt. Col. Wesley B., 46–47

area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 

242–45, 249–50, 252, 259, 261, 

265, 281

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 338, 

346, 355
Index

645

assessment of Grenada intervention, 529

division-rear support, 328–29

N-sequence, 174–76, 178, 180, 182, 204

planning phase, 108–12, 118

return to U.S., 470

Telencio, Maj. Peter, 482

Third-country nationals, evacuation of, 282, 

350, 427, 449

Thorpe, Lt. Col. George C., USMC, 7

Throckmorton, Col. Edward R., 191

Throughput distribution, 45

Timing. See also Notification-sequence.

H-hour, 107, 113, 137, 140, 180

initial assault, 107, 113, 134, 137, 143, 

172, 179–80, 241, 526

J-hour, 107, 137, 139, 140

N-hour, 62–63

Tomasik, Maj. Donald M., 147, 273, 365

Tortoló, Col. Pedro Comas, Cuban Army, 

170, 342, 481, 483, 524

Traffic control points, 197

Training

Airborne Division, 82d, 62–66

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force, 510–12

communications equipment, 221

Cuban construction workers, 23

fighting, relationship to, 527

joint Army–Air Force, 421–22

joint doctrine, 519–20

N-sequence, 62–63

People’s Revolutionary Army and Militia 

(Grenada), 13, 18–20

Support Command (Division), 82d, 

64–65

Training camp at Calivigny Peninsula. See

Calivigny Peninsula, Grenada.

Transition period, 459–513

assessment of, 512–13

Barbados intermediate staging base, 

460–62

captured equipment and vehicles, removal 

of, 496–501

combat service support, provision of, 

505–07

corps control, handover to, 488–89, 

501–05, 507

detainees, 479, 484–86

Farris, assumption of control by, 501–05

final operations, 28 October, 467–70

graves registration, 486–88

medical support during, 489–96

nation building, 459–60, 488, 507–08, 

509–12

pacification, 459–60, 462, 472–76, 488, 

507–09

peacekeeping. See Peacekeeping.

Pearls Airport, Grenada, 462, 466–67

phases of, 459–60

Point Salines airfield

arrival-departure operations, 462–66

rear-area protection, 467, 501–03

rear-area protection, 463, 467, 501–03

refugees, 472, 484–86

return of troops to U.S., 469, 470–72, 476, 

488–89, 508–09, 512

Soviet and Cuban Embassy personnel, 

479, 480–83

U.S. policy toward Grenada, 479–80

Transportation Center, 330th

handover of Green Ramp to, 411, 413

removal from Green Ramp, 229–30, 300, 

301, 304, 317, 331, 332, 379–80

Transportation Groups

7th, 184, 229, 308, 347, 393, 395, 396, 489, 

500

507th, 184, 378, 460

Trash, 259, 310, 494–95, 504–05

Trobaugh, Maj. Gen. Edward L., 50, 51–52, 

55

area of operations

25 October to dawn, 26 October, 259–

61, 264, 265, 266–69, 272–73, 275, 

281, 286–91

26 October to dawn, 27 October, 344–

46, 349–50, 356, 360, 365, 368, 369, 

371, 372, 374–75

27 October, 424, 427–28, 435–36, 442, 

443, 449, 457

Army Commendation Medals, 523

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

542–44, 546, 548

historical overview and analysis, 525, 

526, 528–31, 533, 536

military review, 515–18

thorough critique, insistence on, 515

Combined Forces, Grenada, commander 

of, 386

command style of, 65–66, 68

corps support and

airflow management, 377–79, 381–82

assessment of, 414–15

communications, 386–88

detainees, providing for, 390–92

Green Ramp control, 410, 411

medical dilemmas, 396, 398, 404

decision to airdrop, 224–28, 231, 233

division-rear support

airflow management, 296, 299

assessment of, 330, 331

communications and control, 293–94

deployment of 3d Brigade, 311, 

313–14
The Rucksack War

646

Trobaugh, Maj. Gen. Edward L.—Continued

Green Ramp congestion, 300, 302

logisticians, deployment of, 319, 331

rangers, resupply and support of, 329

resupply efforts, 320, 321, 323, 325

reverse-osmosis purification unit, 

shipment of, 326

field sanitation, 504

field training exercise results, 

unsatisfactory, 39

N-sequence

N+3:30 to launch, 210, 216, 218, 223, 

224–28, 231, 233–36, 238, 239

N-hour to N+3:30, 182, 185, 187, 

192–94, 201–3, 205

planning phase

final planning, 128, 129, 131, 132, 134, 

137–43, 145, 152, 154, 156, 161, 

162

initial planning and policy, 97, 102–03, 

104

replacement planning, 384

request for reinforcements, 265–66, 311, 

313–14, 544

return to U.S., 501

slow and systematic advance favored by, 

428, 435, 457, 469, 516, 542–43

transition period

captured equipment and vehicles, 497, 

500

corps control, handover to, 488, 501

Cuban and Soviet Embassy personnel, 

480, 482–83

effective end of combat operations, 

459

final combat operations, 469–70, 472, 

475, 476

graves registration, 486

medical support, 491, 494–95

Point Salines airfield operations, 463, 

467

refugees and detainees, 484

U.S. policy priorities, 480

True Blue, Grenada, 21, 282–86, 360

True Blue Campus. See under St. George’s 

University School of Medicine, 

Grenada.

True Blue–Grand Anse road, 431–32

Truelove, Marcelle, 297, 395

Unified commands, 31–32. See also U.S. 

Atlantic Command; U.S. Readiness 

Command.

Uniforms and clothing

bath, laundry, and clothing exchange, 162

battle dress uniforms, 213, 343, 457

jungle boots and fatigues, 213–14, 408

People’s Revolutionary Army (Grenada) 

soldiers, 428, 432

Vietnam-era jungle uniforms, 213–14, 

261

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

ambassador to Grenada and embassy 

personnel, 14, 342, 480–83

military aid to Grenada, 14, 18–20

rioting and death of Bishop, response to, 

83

suspected troops at Calivigny Peninsula, 

437

U.S. policy toward Grenada and, 479

United Kingdom, 9, 12, 23, 27, 468, 510

United Nations, display of captured 

equipment at, 497

U.S. Agency for International Development, 

484, 488, 507

U.S. Antilles Command, 27, 35

U.S. Army Aviation Center, 41

U.S. Army Depot System Command, 36, 406, 

511

U.S. Army doctrine, 33, 42, 43, 372, 390, 

519–20, 541

U.S. Army Forces Command, 33

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

519–20

deputy chief of staff for logistics, 397, 

503

deputy chief of staff for operations, 31, 

139

initial planning, lack of involvement in, 

85, 96, 102

McDonald’s failure to activate, 171

message traffic, monitoring, 378–79

U.S. Army graves registration doctrine. See

Graves registration.

U.S. Army Logistics Center, 60

U.S. Army Materiel Development and 

Readiness Command, 36, 319, 406, 

456

U.S. Army Quartermaster School, 512

U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, 

518–20

U.S. Atlantic Command

airland versus airdrop, 224–25, 227, 

236–37

airlift support requests, 224, 331–32

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

525–26, 527, 530, 534, 539, 548

authority for intervention given to, 

90–91

briefing for JCS chairman, 20 October, 

85–87
Index

647

Calivigny Peninsula assault, 435, 516, 542

command surgeon, 490, 534–35

communications issues, 113, 138–39, 

153–57, 361, 377

decontamination squad, objections to, 324

emergency operations center, 412

graves registration unit request, 325

J–2 (Intelligence), 91

J–3 (Operations), 143

J–4 (Logistics), 409

JTF reporting to, 27

large contingency, 20 October, 86

medical evacuation plan, failure to 

disseminate, 258

medical staff, involvement of, 490

in operational chain of command, 33–35, 

37

planning phase. See under Planning 

phase.

small contingency, 20 October, 86

U.S. Air Force, Atlantic, 35

U.S. Army, Atlantic, 35

U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 33, 34

U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, 

friction with, 90–91

warning order from JCS, 19 October, 

84–85, 170–71, 175

U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, 75, 86–89, 

165–67

U.S. Defense Mapping Agency, 92, 146

U.S. Department of Defense

acquisition, codification of, 7

address codes, 408

BA–5590 batteries, funding for, 409

contingency planning, 90

detainees, interrogation of, 390

diversion of Marines from Mediterranean, 

87, 93

forensic examination of possible Bishop 

remains, 487

Grenadian intelligence weaknesses, 89–90

Locher report and reorganization of, 522

Middle Eastern foreign policy, wrangle 

with State Department over, 74

Restricted Interagency Group, 72–73

strategic reserve policy, 50

WWMCCS, 92

U.S. Department of Education, student loan 

information, 166–67

U.S. Department of State

air flights to Grenada, 320

Americans abroad and, 76, 166

assistant secretary of state for interAmerican affairs, 74

Defense attaché, U.S. Embassy, 

Bridgetown, 89, 364

deputy assistant secretary of state for 

inter-American affairs, 139–40

detainee conditions, concern over, 390

formally directed to contact allies and 

regional governments, 90

Grenada Working Group, 166

Grenadian intelligence weaknesses, 90

Middle Eastern foreign policy, wrangle 

with Defense Department over, 74

Restricted Interagency Group, 72

U.S. Forces, Caribbean, 27, 35, 37, 102, 166, 

360, 507, 511, 512

U.S. Forces, Grenada, 382–83, 388, 476, 488, 

496, 501, 502, 511

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff

alert order, 22 October, 93

assessment and review of situation, 13–19 

October, 73–76

assessment of Grenada intervention, 518, 

522, 526, 527, 535, 538–39

Calivigny Peninsula assault, orders for, 

435, 437, 516

on Combined Forces headquarters, 384

Grand Anse Campus students, order to 

rescue, 345

graves registration unit request, 325

Joint Staff

crisis response cell, 75, 76

J–3 (Operations), 74, 86, 408

J–4 (Logistics), 172

J–5 (Plans and Policy), 86

Materiel and Priority Board, 408

McDonald’s briefing of, 20 October, 

85–87

military preparations, 24 October, 124

in operational chain of command, 29–33

personal assessments of plan, 23 October, 

163

postintervention U.S. policy and priorities 

of, 480

president briefed by, 22 October, 99

warning order, 19 October, 84–85, 170–71, 

175

U.S. Joint Deployment Agency, 299

U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, 

35

airlift support requests, 224

American students, knowledge of location 

of, 167

Army/Atlantic Command planning 

meeting, 22 October, 100–101

assessment of Grenada intervention, 527, 

531, 548

briefing by, 21, October, 89, 90–91

chief surgeon, 118

concept of operations, 23 October, 107
The Rucksack War

648

U.S. Joint Special Operations Command—

Continued

formal guidance from Joint Chiefs, 91

frictions, 90–91, 138–39

hostage rescue skills, 86

J–3 (Operations), 74, 100, 170–71, 408

Mackmull’s outreach to, 133–34

medical augmentation package, 179, 

286–88, 289–90, 291

operational planning, 21–24 October, 

108–17

timing of assault, change in, 140–42

U.S. Navy units

Amphibious Squadron Four, 76–79, 92

Second Fleet, 35

U.S. Readiness Command, 33, 91, 93, 96, 

172, 311, 319

Vehicle priority list, 187–89, 191–92

Vehicles, armored. See Armored vehicles.

Vehicles, personal, 190–91

Vehicles (ground) and equipment. See also

Captured equipment and vehicles.

21⁄2-ton trucks, 195, 426

amphibious tractors, 333

civilian car reclamation point, 476

commandeered, 1, 161, 195, 287, 325, 426, 

432, 476, 494

cross-loading of, 400

Gamma Goats, 156, 161, 203, 305, 398, 

399, 402, 426

garbage trucks, 494–95

jeeps/gunjeeps, 46, 54, 252, 343, 424

M718 field litter ambulances, 399

mopeds, 371

plan, 161

refueling, 348, 466–67

water trailers, 195, 256, 272, 281, 357

Velzeboer, Capt. Peter, USMC, 231

Venezuelan Embassy, Grenada, 442

Ventura Jr., Capt. Jose G., 118, 176, 255–57, 

328, 436

Vessels. See under Ships and other vessels.

Vessey Jr., General John W., 31

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

291, 516–18, 525, 526, 527, 531, 

535

Calivigny Peninsula assault, 435, 516–18

Caribbean Peacekeeping Force put in 

charge of detainees by, 255

planning phase

American students, briefed on location 

of, 167

Army/Atlantic Command planning 

meeting, 22 October, 100, 101–02

authority to conduct operation given 

to, 164

command-and-control issues, 108, 

124–25

go-ahead for initial planning, 21–22 

October, 90–92

McDonald briefing, 20 October, 

85–87

McDonald briefing, 23 October, 

106–08

military preparations, 24 October, 

124

NSC meeting, 20 October, 88

presidential briefing, 22 October, 97

relationship with Reagan and 

Weinberger, 73, 120, 163–65

review and approval of plan by, 171

Scholtes briefing, request for, 20 

October, 89

request for reinforcements, 311n44

visit to Grenada, 475, 484, 488

Victory Brigade, 175, 204

Vietnam, 14

Vietnam-era jungle uniforms, 213–14, 261

Vietnam syndrome, 105

Vietnam war

Airborne Division, 82d, 50

basic load in, 215

corps in, 40, 526–27

counterinsurgency concerns and, 459

industrial warfare of, 5, 540

jungle fatigues, 213, 214, 261

nation building and, 460

parachute assaults, 50

policy lessons, 520

Rangers in, 47

reconnaissance by fire, 339

throughput distribution, 45

UH–60 door gunners, 219

waste disposal, 366

Visual approach slope indicator, Point Salines 

airfield, 367, 371–72

Vitucci, Maj. Samuel S., 143, 200, 230, 302

Vuono, Lt. Gen. Carl E., 518–19

Wakelin, Col. John D., 388

Warehouses, contingency, Fort Bragg, North 

Carolina, 192, 197, 541

Warfare. See also Levels of war.

industrial, 5, 540

postmodern, 5, 540

Washington. See Reagan, Ronald W., and 

Reagan administration.

Washington Post, 92, 108, 523

Waste disposal, 259, 310, 494–95, 504–5
Index

649

Water (potable). See also Equipment, water.

distribution issues, 365

division-rear support, 320–21

engineer operations, 365

Grenadian civilian access to, 495, 507

N-sequence, 176

planning phase, 129, 159–60

Port Salines Airfield operations, 272, 

279–80, 365

refugees and detainees, 356, 357, 360, 485

Water bottle supplies, 272

Water points, 343, 357, 365

Watkins, Admiral James D., 92

Watson, Maj. Christopher O., 200, 464, 465–

67, 483, 488–89, 507

Weapons

air defense

Stinger missiles, 52, 69, 160, 195, 202

Vulcan antiaircraft guns, 52

ZSU–23–2 antiaircraft guns (Soviet), 

437, 438

ZSU–23–4 antiaircraft guns (Soviet), 

437, 438

antitank

90-mm. recoilless rifle, 175, 265, 281, 

339, 341

light antitank weapon (LAW), 216, 

265, 431

M47 Dragon antitank weapons, 46, 

227, 234

TOW (tube-launched optically tracked 

wire-guided) missiles, 160

artillery

105-mm. howitzers, 52, 58, 245, 321, 

335, 475

155-mm. howitzers, 40

howitzers, 150, 193, 278, 279, 281, 369, 

371, 443–44

grenades, 160, 216, 234, 275, 339

M203 launcher, 46, 160, 339

Soviet, 339

machine guns, 341, 343

.50-caliber, 46

Soviet, 252

mines, Claymore, 160, 215

mortars, 149, 218, 343

4.2-inch, 149, 160

60-mm., 175, 329

81-mm., 149, 186

pistols

.38-caliber, 219

.45-caliber Colt, 219

precision-guided, 540

rifles

90-mm. recoilless, 175, 265, 281, 339, 341

AK47, 16, 79, 341, 480

rocket launchers, M202, 160

Soviet and Cuban Embassy personnel, 

confiscation of weapons from, 

482–83

Webster, Capt. Horace K., 446

Weck, Maj. Lonnie E., 151

Weinberger, Caspar W.

assessment of Grenada intervention, 

520–21

augmentation package directive, 383, 386

planning phase, 73, 74, 89, 90, 99, 106, 

164

reinforcements approved by, 311

U.S. Forces, Caribbean, creation of, 27

Vessey’s relationship with, 31

Weinberger doctrine, 520–21

Wet wing defueling, 421–22

White House situation room, 165

Whittaker, Maj. James F., 104, 207

Wickham Jr., General John A., 133, 171, 470, 

476, 518

Williams, Lt. Col. Duane E.

area of operations, 278, 281, 369, 442, 443

N-sequence, 189, 221, 223, 234

planning phase, 149–51

Wills, Col. Frank E., 225, 235

Wilson, Lt. Col. Edward B.

assessment of Grenada intervention, 534

casualties, processing, 449

corps support, 400, 402–04, 416

medical unit command, controversy over, 

398

N-sequence, 144, 158, 192–93, 204, 223–24

transition period, 490

Wilson II, Col. Jack R., 158, 193, 194, 223–

24, 404, 489–90

Windward Islands, 9, 23

Wire. See under Supplies.

Withers III, Capt. George K., 190

Woloski, Maj. John C., 154, 156, 157

Women in combat, 237, 491–94

Woodlands Estate, Grenada, 432

World Trade Center, 521

Worldwide Military Command and Control 

System (WWMCCS), 92, 317, 540

Yarbrough, Capt. James C., 111

Yelland, Lt. Col. Graham, 491

Yellow Ramp, 229, 308–10, 380

Yom Kippur war, 47

Zimbel, R. Adm. James A., 404, 490–91, 534
PIN : 085144–000