Honoring Our Veterans: Mark Boaz (Part 1)
 | Author:
Matt Nelson
MT43 News Correspondent |
Honoring Our Veterans: Mark Boaz (Part 1) Matt Nelson This is Part 1 of a 2 part article honoring Mark Boaz.
“I was born & raised in Southern California and at age 15, moved to San Luis Obispo in 1973. In high school, I played water polo and swam and later, surfed all over the central coast. After high school, I went to community college, mostly to play water polo. My surfing buddy had been in the Army and his stories got me interested in joining. A local MP National Guard unit was offering a small bonus and that's all it took.
I went to basic training and MP school at Ft. McClellan, AL., and soon returned to college to go into the 2 year ROTC program at Cal Polytechnic State University, where I graduated in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in history, and obtained my Regular Army commission as a 2nd Lieutenant.
I was placed in the Armor branch and shipped off to Ft. Knox for Officer Basic Course. My first assignment was to West Germany and the Cold War was at its peak. They still had the wall in Berlin, and still had separation of the Soviet Block in East Germany. I was a tank platoon leader, scout platoon leader and a company executive officer there, in the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Armor Division in Gelnhausen, Germany. It’s a beautiful medieval city.
I was in Germany from 1986 to 1989. I came out of Germany and went to Officer Advance Course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in the Field Artillery School and then went to Fort Riley, Kansas assigned to the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division commonly called the Big Red One. I became a personnel staff officer – we call them S1s; S2 is Intelligence, S3 is Tactics, and S4 is Logistics. I became an Armor battalion S1 and later an assistant S1 at the brigade level. As a new Captain, typically you go to your unit and you do a staff job until your chance comes up to go into a company command position.
In the interim, we had a small war. This was a result of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait in 1990, initially called Desert Shield, followed by Desert Storm. Operation Desert Shield was from August 2, 1990, to January 17, 1991, and Operation Desert Storm was from January 17, 1991, to February 28, 1991. I was a wartime battalion S1 and that was quite an experience. The Big Red One went through the desert in a flanking maneuver, across the Highway of Death in Kuwait, and cut off all the retreating forces.
A M577 is a personnel carrier with a high back, and they have lots of radios and antennas. They are a command and control vehicle. I was up in the top hatch and we basically followed behind the leading command vehicles. We were not shooting at anything because we were kind of in the formation; we had tanks all around us. We got into a couple of scraps I guess. Most of the tanks that we shot up were probably abandoned.
We saw a lot of enemy soldiers who were just walking through the desert with white flags. They had decided not to fight at that point. We crossed the "Highway of Death" and we set up our defensive perimeter at the end of three days of driving, and that is where we stayed for the next few days. The cease-fire had been given. There were very few casualties on our side. Most of the fighting was done in that war with the front line scouting units of the division, moving to contact.
As the S1, one of my primary jobs in wartime was handling Prisoners of War (POWs). We had lots of those, probably about 1000. These guys just started coming out of the woodwork, out of the holes and trenches. They showed up on our doorstep wanting to be fed and taken care of. They just wanted to survive. The mortar platoon was my security force. We fed the prisoners with Meals Ready To Eat (MREs), but we had so many POWs that we couldn’t feed them all. We had to break down the MREs and split up what we had as fairly as possible so everybody got something. That was just day one. Soon we were resupplied and we were able to move them to an empty warehouse nearby.
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PhotoCredit: Matt Nelson
Image 1 Caption: Retired U.S. Army Major Mark Boaz
Image 2 Caption: Mark Boaz medals - Photo Credit to Mark Boaz
