It began with an F-117 stealth fighter flying by as thousands of U.S. troops began a 3.5-mile march from Capitol Hill.
The last major military parade in the nation’s capital was on June 8, 1991, just months after the end of Operation Desert Storm. It was called the National Victory Celebration, and its festivities were a celebration of American military might and technological prowess after U.S. and coalition forces had expelled the Iraqi army from Kuwait following roughly a month of airstrikes and a 100-hour ground war.
Once the wedge-shaped black jet flew down the National Mall, more than a dozen Army and Navy helicopters followed, as did an OV-10 Bronco observation plane from the Marines.
Hundreds of thousands of people cheered as more than 8,000 active-duty and reserve service members from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard along with a civilian contingent from the Merchant Marine made their way along the route from Capitol Hill down Constitution Avenue, over the Memorial Bridge across the Potomac River to the Pentagon.
Early in the route, they marched under a huge yellow ribbon suspended over the road by cranes.
On Saturday, troops and military equipment were set to again roll down the streets of Washington, this time for the Army’s 250th birthday celebration. President Trump has boasted about plans for the “amazing day,” which is also his 79th birthday.
But the 1991 parade was different.
It came just months after a lopsided victory against an enemy army in the largest U.S. military operation since Vietnam.
For some politicians still feeling the aftershocks of that war in Southeast Asia, the battle in the Iraqi desert felt like vindication.
“By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all,” President George H.W. Bush said proudly at the end of a speech to state legislators at the White House in March, shortly after the cease-fire was signed.
Leading the parade was an officer whose approach to war was shaped by combat in Vietnam, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who had overseen the Gulf War from a base in Saudi Arabia, with his staff from U.S. Central Command in formation behind him.
Once the general reached Mr. Bush’s reviewing stand in front of the Ellipse near the White House, he split off to salute the president, who left the stand’s protective bubble of ballistic glass to greet him.
General Schwarzkopf then stepped into the president’s stand and sat beside his boss, Gen. Colin L. Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Together, the two generals received and returned salutes from the marchers alongside their commander in chief.
The parade was heavy on people and marching bands, and relatively light on hulking vehicles.
Just three M1 Abrams tanks, two M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, two M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System vehicles, two Light Attack Vehicles, an Amphibious Assault Vehicle and four M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzers accompanied them.
On Saturday, however, there were plans for 28 tanks, 28 Bradleys, 28 Stryker fighting vehicles and five Paladins. Crowds were expected to be much smaller than in 1991, as the Secret Service had fenced off the parade route to all but those who consent to a security screening. The thunderstorms and rain showers predicted for late afternoon and early evening may thin the crowd even more.
More than 60 warplanes flew down the Mall at various points in 1991, but just a handful of World War II-vintage planes of the former Army Air Forces will fly on Saturday.
For the Desert Storm celebration, the Navy flew a dozen warplanes in three diamond formations. The Air Force flew at least one of every kind of plane that it had used over Iraq, from a B-52 bomber to cargo planes and refuelers to F-15s and A-10 attack jets.
Cheers went up for the military hardware rolling or flying down the Mall, just as for the marchers.
The crowd clapped and shouted at the sight of a Patriot air-defense missile launcher and mock-ups of two Tomahawk cruise missiles, which the parade’s announcer called “a technical hero” of the war.
Willard Scott, then a mainstay of morning television on the “Today” show, told the crowd — many of whom were waving small flags — how many Tomahawks the Navy had fired during the war.
There were no tall security barriers keeping the revelers locked in place, and after about an hour and 45 minutes, they began leaving as marchers carrying the flags of all U.S. states and territories came by, followed by a U.S.O. float bearing a large sign saying, “Thank you America.”
The president stayed to sing “God Bless America” and soon made his way to the White House’s South Lawn, where a Marine helicopter landed to fly him to Camp David.
After some pops and puffs of smoke from a brief daylight fireworks show, one last Army band played “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
“Goooooood morning, Americans!” Adrian Cronauer, a former Air Force radio D.J., belted into a microphone — a play on a line made famous by Robin Williams in a 1987 movie about Mr. Cronauer’s tour in Vietnam.
One final flyby, and it was over.
For the men and women marching to the Pentagon, they were home. But tens of thousands of troops were still in the desert, minding Iraqi prisoners of war, dodging unexploded American munitions littering the sand, and giving humanitarian aid. Around 200 U.S. service members died in the war, and tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed.
For all of the celebration of the Gulf War’s accomplishments, and the idea that limited war could provide lasting results, the syndrome that Mr. Bush thought he had kicked was merely in remission.
His son, George W. Bush, ordered U.S. forces to war in Iraq again as president just 12 years later.
That war led to a longer conflict than U.S. troops faced in Vietnam.
Although America’s combat mission in the country largely ended for a second time in 2011, then transitioned into a battle against the Islamic State until 2021, U.S. forces remain in the country to support Iraq forces attacking pockets of Islamic State fighters.
There is no military victory to celebrate this time, only a 250-year milestone for the Army and a president threatening that protesters who assembled during the event would be met with “very big force” on his birthday.
John Ismay is a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy.
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