Marine Corps Records the Successes--and the Mistakes--of Gulf War : History: Reserve unit prowls the battlefield to document the hows and whys of combat.

Years from now, when time has swept over it like so much sand on the desert wind, how will the Persian Gulf War and its lessons apply to future generations of American fighting men and women?

No one is certain so soon after the war, but Marine Reserve Col. Charles J. Quilter is doing his best to find out. He and a handful of other Marine reservists have assembled in this industrial city to research and begin writing the definitive history of how the Marine Corps fared in combat against Iraq.

Gunfire has given way to the tedium of interpreting and transcribing for posterity the strategies and tactics of combat, its anecdotal glories and shortfalls, the hows and whys.

It is Quilter’s job to ensure that none of it is lost to the ages.

“It was a stunning victory, make no mistake,” said Quilter, 49, of Laguna Beach. “But there were mistakes made. You study history to avoid the mistakes of the past. That’s what we’re doing--taking a critical, objective look at what went on.”

Already, he said, his five-man team of historians has documented lessons to be learned from numerous problems that confounded Marines during the war.

Some communications radios, for example, proved so old as to be useless; backpacks were typically so overloaded with unneeded equipment that riflemen became incapacitated with exhaustion just carrying them; satellite reconnaissance photos often were outdated by the time they filtered down to field units.

Historians from the U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy have embarked on similar studies of the roles played by their own branches of the military.

Among them, however, Quilter’s background and approach to researching what the Marines did and didn’t do may be unique among the services. Tall and gregarious, with steady blue eyes and a crooked smile, Quilter last went to war in the cockpit of an F-4 Phantom jet fighter. After studying East Asian history at UC Berkeley, he flew 252 combat missions over Vietnam and eventually became a Boeing 737 captain for Delta Airlines.

The son of a Marine aviator, Quilter was always interested in World War II aircraft. So, when the commander of his reserve squadron at El Toro asked him a few years ago if he knew anyone who might be interested in writing a history of the “Gray Ghosts,” the Marine Corps’ first night-fighting squadron, Quilter said he jumped at the chance. He finished the 300-page history more than 1,800 hours later.

It was on the strength of that work, along with the absence of a combat flight role for an individual of his rank, that Quilter was given command of the Marine historical detachment. In November, he was sent to the Middle East to chronicle 80,000 Leathernecks in action.

When ground fighting finally flared, Quilter traversed the battlefield freely in a Jeep Cherokee, shooting videotape, snapping photographs and jotting notes in a personal journal.

He prowled freshly abandoned Iraqi trenches, where food still simmered on cook stoves. He collected battlefield artifacts for eventual display at various Marine bases and museums.

After the Marines overran an Iraqi artillery position, Quilter spent a full day disassembling a “fire direction control center” for a 152-millimeter howitzer battery that had fired on the Marines from close range. He hopes the entire center, including radios, target plotting boards and gun log books, will be shipped back to the United States and put on exhibit at the Marine Corps Historical Center outside Washington.

During the course of his research, Quilter was shelled twice, mortared once and suffered two flat tires while driving more than 2,100 miles throughout the combat zone. In the end, his Jeep was caked with mud and thick, Kuwaiti crude oil. But both the vehicle and Quilter were none the worse for wear.

“I would have rather been in a plane,” he admitted, “but this was good for my soul. Wearing a flak jacket, spending a month in the same (clothes) and sleeping in a sleeping bag, you get a better understanding of what life’s like on the ground. It benefited me as a historian.”

In February, the commanding general of the Marine Expeditionary Force, Lt. Gen. Walter E. Boomer, depicted the Marines’ victory as “perhaps the most significant” since World War II, and called on them to preserve all documents “regarding this epic event.”

“The intent,” Boomer declared, “is to preserve an accurate record for improvements in tactics and equipment to future generations of Marines.”

Quilter said that documents he has reviewed thus far reveal that there were considerable communications glitches during the war, essentially because much of the equipment was more than 20 years old. At one point, Quilter said, Boomer grew so frustrated at not being able to reach one unit that he nearly hurled a malfunctioning radio through his tent’s door.

“I think he would have traded a Jeep for a decent cellular phone,” Quilter said.

“Situational awareness”--knowing where one is on the battlefield--was also a problem for some units, as was the process of obtaining aerial photographs of the battlefield. Ironically, Quilter said, the Marines had deactivated their only photo reconnaissance squadron weeks before the war began. Trying to obtain surveillance photos shot by orbiting satellites often took so long that, by the time they arrived, they were worthless, he said.

Another problem, far less technical, dealt with the number of items typically carried into battle by Marines. Although most of their time in action was spent riding in armored vehicles, many quickly found themselves exhausted after dismounting because of the 60 to 70 pounds of equipment strapped to their backs.

“The lesson there,” Quilter said, “is don’t take what you don’t need.” Instances in which U.S. Air Force jets fired accidentally on Marine positions with fatal results demonstrated the need to mark targets, if possible, with smoke, before directing aircraft to attack, Quilter said.

“We did that in Vietnam,” he said, “but we didn’t do it here in some instances. A guy flying at 9,000 feet at night needs something to show him what he’s supposed to hit.”

Quilter and his detachment plan to review after-action reports from all Marine units that fought, along with intelligence reports, pilot debriefings, dozens of other types of documents and personal writings that Marines care to submit.

He already has so many files that he has resorted to storing many of the papers in two Soviet ammunition crates that he picked up at a liberated Kuwaiti airfield.

He insisted that he remains undaunted by his task, adding that he probably will incorporate his own, 170-page war diary when preparing the final narrative history.

The final product may involve several volumes and at least as many months to complete. The work will be finished once Quilter and his detachment, two of whom hold doctorate degrees in history, return to the United States. They are expected to depart Saudi Arabia next month.