Thirty-five years after the U.S.-led military coalition wrested Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, a memorial to honor the service members who served and the 383 who died in operations has found its home on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
“Desert Shield and Desert Storm, to a certain degree, has been a victim of its own success,” Scott Stump, President and CEO of the National Desert Storm War Memorial Association and Marine Corps Reserve veteran, told reporters last Thursday.
Stump, a veteran of the campaign, began what he dubbed “his life’s work” back in 2010, during the 20th anniversary of the successful military campaign.
“I decided that something needed to be done,” Stump said. “That this was too important. I had been to a number of veteran events put on by veteran service organizations that would remember past events and recognize past veterans and those who have fallen. They would skip right over this like it never happened, and I felt like that wasn’t right. I put myself in the shoes of those Gold Star family members. How would I feel if my loved one’s service was just basically overlooked? I felt like that was wrong, and that something had to be done.”
Now, the culmination of his 16-year battle with contracts, commissions, review agencies and countless authorization hurdles is finally coming to fruition.
With the Lincoln Memorial looming off in the distance and an expansive greenspace in the foreground, both Stump and Skip Graffam, lead design partner and lead landscape architect, emphasized the prime location of the Desert Shield and Desert Storm Memorial — 23rd and Constitution Avenue — during a recent hard hat tour with Military Times and other members of the press.
“During a commission meeting, I stated we want something that is visible, but also ‘visit-able,’ and that’s what we’ve achieved here because the National Park Service has estimated that we conservatively are going to be receiving anywhere in the neighborhood of five to 6 million annual visitors. We didn’t want to have something that people drove by and glanced at. We wanted people to come in and experience this memorial, and I believe we have hit the mark on that.”
“The parade route for the victory parade of Desert Storm was down Constitution Avenue,” Graffam added, “which was the last parade since World War II took place right there. So again, that’s why the site was so critical to the veterans.”
Noting that memorials along Constitution Avenue form a “kind of charm bracelet,” Graffam told reporters that he hopes the memorial “is going to further encourage that kind of connection” with the National Mall.
The memorial itself, while still under construction, is slated to be open to the public on Oct. 24, 2026.
Noting that veterans from the association went over “every inch of belt buckle, machine gun sight and chin strap” for accuracy, the design itself conjures up the impression of a sandstorm and mirrors the famous “Left Hook” maneuver where Lt. Gen. John Yeosock sent the XVIII Airborne Corps deep inside Iraq to block the Iraqi forces’ northern escape. The spiral pattern, Graffam notes, is meant to portray the “kinetic movement” of the campaign.
The memorial’s stone — mined in Brazil — gives off the appearance of barchan dunes found specifically in the Kuwaiti desert.
“It’s kind of flat light here, but you would see it sparkle when it rains,” Graffam told Military Times. “It’ll actually get really kind of a dark tan, and then it dries out. In the afternoon, one of the reasons why we oriented the description wall there, [is that] you get the afternoon sunlight and [it] turns it gold. It’s really cool. …It’s really interesting to see it react to life. I threw a bucket of water on it, you’d be like, ‘wait, that’s not the same thing.’”
Replete with a dune-scape “oasis” and carved, built-in stone seats, both Graffam and Stump urge visitors to take in the memorial at all times of day — but especially at night when the memorial’s stone is lit up.
At the center of the memorial, a large, burnished “unity” shield replete with the Al-Arfaj, Kuwait’s national flower, commemorates the shared effort of the coalition, with the names of the 36 other nations who were involved in the fight. Water will flow over the shield and down into waterways to further add to the experience.
“We hope it’s a memorial that’s designed for not only the veterans, but also something that, you know, 50 to 100 years in the future, [is] for people [who] may not know much about it, are interested in learning more and feel that this is a place that was important enough to remember,” Graffam concluded.
Claire Barrett is an editor and military history correspondent for Military Times. She is also a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
