Operation Urgent Fury Research Articles

Diaspora Revisited: Toward a Transnational Feminist Critique

This essay explores how Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada in 1983, shapes diasporic subjectivity. Examining Audre Lorde's "Grenada Revisited" (1984) and Monica Sok's "Yearning" (2016), the author argues that these two texts dialogically form a diasporic feminist synthesis that refuses—in the face of overpowering American military might, bellicose melancholy, diasporic loss, and pervasive indifference—to disremember. Ultimately, it is through this subtle manipulation of interpretive poetics, memory work, and recollective labor that Sok and Lorde engender a new way of seeing the legacies of war and the ongoingness of conflict.

A Connection Between Veterans and Physicians: Operation Urgent Fury

A Connection Between Veterans and Physicians: Operation Urgent Fury

Operation Urgent Fury: The Role of American Diplomacy in the U.S. Invasion of Grenada

This article explores the role of American diplomacy during the Grenada crisis in October1983. Although the invasion is usually viewed as a military operation, American diplomatsspearheaded the decision. George Shultz, Secretary of State at the time, argued in his memoirthat the entire Grenada operation was driven by the State Department. Following a coupon the island staged by an extreme Marxist group and subsequent murder of Prime MinsterBishop and some of his government members, a shoot-on-site curfew was declared and thesituation was becoming chaotic; endangering hundreds of American medical students in Grenada.The U.S. request to facilitate the students’ evacuation was not met by the Grenadianauthorities. The Organization of East Caribbean States members, fearing that the Grenadianscenario could affect their countries, formally requested the United States to intervene militarily.In response, President Reagan authorized military intervention. The American diplomatswere assigned a role of civilian control on the island during and after the invasion and facilitatedthe peaceful evacuation of the American students. The U.S. military left the island shortlythereafter, and the Governor General appointed the Provisional Government. In one year theGrenadians held the Parliamentary elections and elected a new government

‘Shrouded in Some Mystery’: The Governor General's Invitation and the 1983 Grenada Intervention

ABSTRACTOn 25 October 1983 the United States, supported by several Caribbean states, intervened militarily in the commonwealth Caribbean island of Grenada. Operation Urgent Fury followed the implosion of the Marxist-Leninist People's Revolutionary Government and execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several colleagues. This article examines the alleged request for external assistance made by the Grenadian governor general, Sir Paul Scoon. It will examine the discrepancies between Scoon's memoir account of the episode and the official record to reveal that Scoon made no such request. The origins of the request emerged from discussions between Caribbean and US officials and it was brought to fruition by the Barbadian prime minister, Tom Adams.

The Grenada Invasion, International Law and the Scoon Invitation: A 30-year Retrospective

All the international legal rationales for the US-OECS (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States) invasion of Grenada in October 1983 arguably depend, at least in part, on the nature, substance and circumstances of the request for external assistance that was made by Grenadian Governor-General Sir Paul Scoon. Of all the factual circumstances surrounding the Grenada episode, perhaps the least well known in the 1980s were those related to the so-called ‘Scoon invitation’. Thirty years later, this article identifies the politically and legally consequential details of the Scoon invitation to which we are now privy, drawing upon the memoir accounts of key participants, scholarly interviews with key Grenada decision-makers, and declassified US government documents. Situating the Grenada case within post-1983 state practice on ‘interventions by invitation’, it concludes that Sir Paul did not initiate his informal, oral invitation or author his formal, written one, and that even though he genuinely supported ‘Operation Urgent Fury’, the Governor-General’s invitation did not legally justify the operation.

Army Medical Department Lessons Learned Program Marks 25th Anniversary

The year 2010 marked the 25th anniversary of the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) as well as the Army Medical Department (AMEDD) Center and School's Lessons Learned Division. In the aftermath of Operation Urgent Fury in 1983, the Army recognized the need to create an organization whose sole purpose was to collect, review, and analyze lessons learned and created the CALL in 1985 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The AMEDD followed suit and established the Medical Information System/AMEDD Lessons Learned office under the Directorate of Evaluation and Standardization to research and compile lessons learned as the AMEDD's point of contact for the CALL program. Over these past 25 years the AMEDD Center and School Lessons Learned program evolved and underwent organizational realignments, but the overall mission continues to promote changes either directly or indirectly in the AMEDD's Doctrine, Organizations, Training, Leader Development, Materiel, Personnel and Facilities domains and capabilities to provide combat health service support on the battlefield.

A British anti-imperialist lion in the Grenada revolution

In 1979, the New Jewel Movement (NJM), under the leadership of Maurice Bishop, took power in Grenada in a bloodless coup. With a political vision conjoining socialism and black power, the revolution in Grenada immediately drew the hostility of the US government, which began a programme of destabilisation. The leadership of the revolution sought to develop a highly participatory approach to political and economic decision-making that would enable the country’s workers and peasants to actively shape Grenada’s development. With popular education a priority, Chris Searle came to Grenada to teach. But he soon was invited to contribute to ministerial discussions, devising national education policy and creating a publishing house. He also helped to write Maurice Bishop’s speeches. In 1983, the US government took advantage of division and conflict in the leadership of the NJM to mount an invasion, ‘Operation Urgent Fury’, which restored to Grenada a regime more favourable to US interests.

A Review of Orthopedic Injuries in Three Recent U.S. Military Conflicts

We conducted a retrospective review of all patients with orthopedic injuries evacuated to a single medical center to evaluate the treatment and outcome of these injuries in three recent U.S. military conflicts: Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada), Operation Desert Shield/Storm (southwest Asia), and Operation Restore Hope (Somalia). Sixteen orthopedic casualties were originally treated at the medical detachment in Grenada before evacuation to the medical center. Most of these injuries were gunshot wounds to the extremities (11), with three known open fractures. Two patients (three extremities) sustained traumatic amputation (19% amputation rate). One hundred eighty-one patients with orthopedic injuries were medically evacuated from southeast Asia to the medical center for definitive treatment. Of these injuries, there were 143 fractures in 69 patients. One hundred of these fractures were open fractures, and 60% of these injuries were blast injuries. Furthermore, there were 26 amputations (14%). Twenty-two patients with orthopedic injuries were treated in Somalia and evacuated to the medical center. Thirteen of the 22 patients (59%) sustained gunshot wounds, and 2 (9%) sustained blast injuries. There were eight open fractures (36%) and three amputations in two patients (14%). Three of the 22 patients underwent successful limb salvage when ablation was the only other surgical alternative. It appears that a large percentage of medical center evacuations from military conflicts are for orthopedic injuries. Many of these injuries are the result of high-velocity weapons or blast injuries. Regardless of the size and/or purpose of the intervention, similar injury patterns and severity can be expected, because 51% of orthopedic patients had open fractures. Similarly, the rate of amputation associated with extremity trauma has not varied significantly since the Vietnam War.

LOGISTICS IN GRENADA: SUPPORTING NO-PLAN WARS

Abstract : This article analyzes the logistics of Operation Urgent Fury, the 1983 American-led military intervention in Grenada. The article is not written for logisticians but for senior national security leaders such as the warfighting commanders-in-chief. These are the personnel who will make the essential multidimensional logistic decisions, either by design or omission. Logistics is as essential to the successful accomplishment of no-plan low-intensity conflicts as it is to any other military operation. No-plan operations are those in which a contingency plan may not exist or where the exigency of the situation, coupled with a requirement for stringent operational security and a prompt response, precludes actions to refine general war plans into detailed operations orders. The quick response may be necessary to meet operational needs as well as to appease domestic political pressures. In Operation Urgent Fury, U.S. forces successfully overcame tremendous operational and logistic challenges. Urgent Fury, however, illustrates a best-case rather than a worst-case example. Grenada is relatively close to the United States. There were no significant enemy air or sea forces, and enemy ground forces were not well-trained regulars. The population was friendly and the environment forgiving. Even so, U.S. forces struggled to provide adequate logistic support, and in many instances inadequate logistic preparation was overcome only by extraordinary efforts of American soldiers. Our armed forces demonstrated the capability of deploying, fighting, and winning on short notice, but whether we are capable of repeating this success in a future no-plan operation under less favorable conditions is dubious. The lessons of Grenada suggest we are not thus capable, and that our warfighting commanders underestimated the critical importance of logistics in planning and conducting the operation.

Airborne Tactical Medical Support in Grenada

On October 24, 1983, clinical fillers rapidly integrated into the 82d Airborne Division, deployed to the Island of Grenada, and significantly contributed to the tactical medical support mission during Operation Urgent Fury. However, the medical community's unfamiliarity with the airborne division's operational requirements and the 307th Medical Battalion's capabilities have created questions which must be addressed to provide a clearer understanding of what occurred at the division level of medical support (DLMS) during the initial 4 days of the operation. This article outlines key aspects for DLMS to the U.S. Army airborne division and briefly reviews DLMS during Operation Urgent Fury.