“There will be no morale problems in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force because I say there will be morale,” Gen. Alfred Gray declared in remarks to Marines at Landing Zone Foss, site of a detachment so forward-based that its tents are half-buried in the sand.
“There also will be no boredom,” announced Gray, who began his military career in the Korean War. “Suck in that gut,” he advised his troops. “Buy that pride.”
Gray, known for his crusty demeanor, was the first senior U.S. commander to address what is fast becoming a serious problem: the sagging morale among the tens of thousands of American troops deployed in the Persian Gulf crisis.
The rising level of discontent has become a source of serious concern for senior commanders. It calls into question their ability to maintain a sharp fighting edge on troops that President Bush has declared will be here indefinitely–as long as it takes to counter Iraqi aggression against Kuwait and restore stability to a strategically vital region.
Also, flaring up less than eight weeks into the deployment, it represents a potential embarrassment for the concept of an all-volunteer military, which Pentagon officials like to tout as the key to producing the best-trained, most professional force ever put in the field by the United States.
“George Patton would probably turn over in his grave to hear any complaints, or even talk of morale problems, after just two months,” said Martin Binkin, a Brookings Institution expert on military manpower. “But it’s not wrong to worry about morale.”
Grousing is as old as soldiering, of course. And, compared with the hardships and suffering that American troops have endured in the past, conditions in Saudi Arabia may not be severe.
Nonetheless, neither military commanders nor outside experts think the present morale problems can be brushed aside.
Binkin and others warned that, given the uncertain quality of the present stalemate and the barren conditions in the Arabian desert, boredom and “losing the edge” are potentially serious problems.
“It’s difficult not to have those conditions blunt that edge,” said Joseph Zengerle, who served from 1979 to 1981 as assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower, reserve affairs and installations.
The unanswerable question of how long they may remain deployed seems to prey particularly hard on the minds of U.S. troops here. When Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Saudi Arabia two weeks ago he was besieged with soldiers’ questions about when they might go home.
In addition, the fact that these soldiers lack almost all the traditional recreational outlets makes it all the more difficult to manage the tensions that always build up among troops in the field.
“So it’s not just a question of boredom. It’s boredom plus,” Zengerle said.
While the military successfully blunted earlier concerns by winning approval for free mail, combat pay and the transmission of Armed Forces Radio news and sports programming, commanders have made little progress on more enduring causes of discontent.
In a setting in which alcohol is banned because of Islamic strictures and Saudi women are off-limits, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of U.S. forces here, has said that he has begun to cast around for a way to provide soldiers with a satisfactory respite from the desert.
But the most direct solution to the problem–a regular system of providing rest and recreation trips out of Saudi Arabia, to neighboring Bahrain, for example, or even further afield–is not expected to be implemented for months.
The Pentagon has committed itself publicly to such a rotation program but it has said that no specific commitments can be made now, a sore point for soldiers who say that the duty would be far more tolerable if only they knew when it would end.
The rotation issue is potentially sensitive for the Bush Administration. Even to talk of instituting a regular system of R&R; would suggest that the United States plans to be in the gulf region for a long time, Brookings’ Binkin said.
That in turn could stir new concern among some of the Administration’s allies and shake American public support for the deployment. “People are going to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute,’ ” Binkin said. “I think they’d be wise not to even discuss it, at least at this point. On the other hand, if the troops don’t know, that could exacerbate the morale problem because people don’t like uncertainty.
“So you’ve got to weigh these two against one another. It’s a very difficult situation, with a lot of political ramifications,” he said. Zengerle agreed: “Manpower rotation policies need to be carefully considered.”
As the adrenaline-charged days of digging in against a possible Iraqi attack have given way to hours of endlessly repetitive work, the evidence of discontent becomes steadily more apparent.
On tents and barracks walls, hand-lettered signs complain of “No Beer, No Boose, No Babes.” A piece of cardboard, prominently displayed at a Marine sentry post, proclaims: “Hotel Saudi–You can check in, but you can never leave.”
Moreover, with access to troops tightly controlled by the military and most interviews monitored, some soldiers have said privately that morale problems run even deeper than is readily apparent.
“I’m trying to keep busy, so I’m surviving,” one Army sergeant said. “But there’s a lot of these guys here–already they’ve had enough.”
With soldiers deployed under a scorching sun and surrounded by miles of featureless desert, the physical conditions alone are inhospitable. What compounds the unpleasantness is boredom mixed with constant uncertainty, creating an atmosphere that soldiers complain is neither exhilarating nor relaxing.
In addition, some soldiers say that their training makes the current watch-and-wait assignment especially frustrating. They openly look forward to the prospect of combat. Others, however, make clear in interviews that when they joined the military–which has tended to advertise itself to potential recruits as a vocational training school for civilian life–they never expected to end up at the brink of war.
In the field, commanders have sought to blunt discontent by keeping troops busy while working at the same time to bring air conditioning, mobile PX units and sports facilities to the remote desert.
At a Patriot missile battery on scorching sands, Army Capt. Pete Vlahos said in a recent interview that his plan to maintain morale in the months ahead revolves around the construction of a basketball court, with asphalt provided by an Air Force unit across the road.
But the strain of life in Saudi Arabia is clearly taking its toll. Asked the other day if his unit faces any shortages, one senior commander at first shot back a denial, then stopped himself. “Beer,” he said.
And with the Middle East crisis stretching toward what could be months of stalemate, other commanders have expressed considerable apprehension about the likely long-term morale of an army forced to remain indefinitely alert, dry and celibate.
The uncertainty of the current crisis has complicated planning, and in his visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday the Marine commandant carried with him the message that the Pentagon is not yet ready to make any promises.
By focusing his remarks on the exhortation against bellyaching, the general appeared determined to slam the door on the kind of complaints that could undermine U.S. public support for the military effort.
The dug-in base visited by the commandant was located in a flat area of desert and surrounded in part by a sand-wall barrier. It is the home to a a Camp Pendleton-based combat service support detachment and helicopter and reconnaissance units based in Keneohe Bay, Hawaii.
In interviews with a small pool of reporters, many Marines described the high point of their day as the three-minute shower in a converted chemical decontamination unit.
The troops, part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said that they had been in place for about a month and had not yet been rotated to rear units. But most said they are gradually adjusting to the conditions.
In his 45-minute pep talk, Gray, his four stars glistening on the collar of his desert fatigues, cut off inquiries about rotation and relief from the outset of his visit. “I don’t want to hear about any more questions about how long you’re going to be here,” he said.
Indeed, he warned, he might just extend the commitments of Marines whose enlistments expire.