Veteran recalls build up before Desert Storm operations : vi

Veteran recalls build up before Desert Storm operations
Examiner-Enterprise
5/15/2021
Joe Todd
© Jordan, ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. Army launch Rocket System fires rockets into Iraq from Saudi Arabian Desert, Feb. 16, 1991, during Operation Desert Storm. Operated by "B" Battery, 6th field Artillery, 1st Infantry Division.
This is the second installment of an interview that historian Joe Todd did with Lt. Col. Mark Holt (retired) on April 28, 2021, in Tulsa. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
(The interview picks up with Holt discussing his training education.)
© Courtesy
Joe Todd
Todd: When were you commissioned?
Holt: 1977, ROTC, Oklahoma State University. I took a position as a training officer in an Army Reserve Battalion in Stillwater that did Infantry Basic and AIT. I was in a small group of 12 guys, and eight of them were drill sergeants. We had a drill sergeant, a supply sergeant, an admin sergeant, a first sergeant and me. I was a second lieutenant company commander, which happens a lot in Basic Training. I did that for four years. They picked up the TOW Missile and we had to learn how to do it. Carter was president and didn’t have any money to send anyone to be trained, so we were shifted over to the National Guard to a TOW light anti-tank battalion, which was in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. My first actual summer camp was with the Guard. They taught some TOW missile training at Ranger School. We had 16 jeeps in that platoon, 2nd of the 180th TOW Light Anti-Tank Battalion. Their lineage is from the 7th Cav, our famous Custer’s cavalry. Their job was to go to Germany and fire TOW Missiles down the autobahn at Russian tanks. Pulling a trigger on a TOW is $4,000 exercise. They had really great simulators. You pull the trigger and an explosion went off in the empty fiberglass tube, and as long as you kept the optical sight on the target, the TOW would go to it, unless you fired over a barbed wire fence, underneath a powerline or over a pond. In which case, the TOW had a little wire that dragged the ground that told it where it was, but if it went over a barbed wire fence, it would just smash into the ground. If it went under a powerline, the electricity would get messed up and just take off; over water, it would short out and slam into the water. It was designed to be fired down at autobahn and worked really well at that. It worked well when fired down a range that had been mowed down. I was supposed to have 44 guys in that platoon and I had 16 guys in 1977; it was a hollow Army. No one wanted to be in the Army, the draft was over and Vietnam was over and everyone was sick of war. No one was getting into ROTC except us poor boys who couldn’t afford to go to college, unless we got a little money from the government.

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