Veterans of the U.S. Army VII Corps who fought in the 1991 Persian Gulf War came to Arlington National Cemetery on Feb. 14, 2025, to honor their fallen.
On Aug. 2, 1990, Iraqi forces under President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In response, President George H.W. Bush sent two U.S. Army corps to Saudia Arabia: the XVIII Airborne Corps, based in the United States, and the VII Corps, based in Germany. The two corps joined other coalition countries’ forces there. The plan to liberate Kuwait was named Operation Desert Storm.
The VII Corps, under the command of Lt. Gen. Frederick Franks, consisted of the 1st Infantry Division, the 2nd and 3rd Armored divisions, the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment and other support units. On Feb. 24, 1991, Franks’ VII Corps encircled and destroyed Iraqi forces in and around Kuwait. Within 100 hours, the ground war had ended.
After the war, Franks and other veterans founded the VII Corps Desert Storm Association to remember the soldiers killed during the operation, according to retired Army Col. Mark Rado, the Association’s president. During the ceremony, Rado spoke about the massive effort to move an entire corps—about 147,000 soldiers—from Western Europe to a combat theater in the Middle East.
Rado and three other VII Corps veterans laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Other veterans, some wearing Operation Desert Storm baseball caps, watched and saluted as an Army bugler sounded Taps.
Brig. Gen. Robert McFarlin, who commanded the Corps Support Command during the war, spoke about what the wreath-laying meant to him. “You think of how many people have given their lives and done their duty for their country,” he said. “Every time I come through these gates, it’s that way.”
In remembering the war, McFarlin also explained what it was like to get supplies to the frontline soldiers. “It was brute force,” he said. “We went by the idea of ‘don’t let anybody ever run out of anything.’” As for the American soldiers’ esprit de corps, McFarlin thought back to a conversation he once had with a soldier in his container yard. “He told me,” McFarlin said, “‘We’re here for whatever it takes.’”