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VII Corps assembly area in Saudi ArabiaThe 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment deployed to Southwest Asia first.Within days of President Bush’s 8 November announcement, the regiment,which had patrolled West Germany’s border with the East for more thanforty-five years, had its equipment loaded and was under way. After reachingSaudi Arabia in early December, it began preparations for the arrivalof the remaining VII Corps units at the designated tactical assembly areas.The deployments from Germany demonstrated that rapidly dispatchingforward-deployed units into another theater as a contingencyforce was a major challenge. With no formal doctrine for such massiveintertheater movements and hampered by bad weather, dock strikes,and the problems inherent with loading hundreds of tanks and wheeledvehicles onto railcars and ships, the remaining VII Corps units movedless quickly than the 2d ACR. Although all corps equipment reachedthe European ports of debarkation on time for transshipment, ships didnot put all of the VII Corps in Southwest Asia by the target date of 15January. By that time, 91 percent of the corps’ soldiers, with 67 percent ofthe tracked vehicles and 66 percent of the wheeled vehicles, had arrivedin the theater of operations.Once in the theater of operations, the distribution of unit equipmentdelayed movement to the tactical assembly areas in the desert.22