Battle Ready

by Tom Clancy

  “Is it okay to go across?” the Capstone team asked.

  “I don’t know,” the lieutenant said, “but everything’s so confusing now that I doubt anyone will stop us. What’s to lose? Let’s give it a try.”

  Though most of the new one-stars were a little concerned about getting stopped or even detained by East German or Russian guards—and about getting chewed out for putting themselves at risk without a good reason—they were unable to resist such a dare from a hard-charging young officer. So they piled into a van and headed for Checkpoint Charlie, where, to their astonishment, they found no guards. It was like the ghost of an old Cold War movie set.

  On the other side, the main streets of East Berlin—Unter den Linden and Karl-Marx-Allee—offered a façade of modernity, an East German communist Potemkin village. But turning off the showplace avenues revealed the real differences between East and West—pockmarked walls still bearing bullet scars from the war—while more recent buildings were cheap and ugly Soviet-style cinder block and concrete, run-down and shabby. Instead of the new BMWs, Mercedes, and Audis of the West, they saw small cheap East German Traubis.

  The most striking aspect of East Berlin was its quiet. Few people were about; there was no vibrant, urban bustle, as in West Berlin. In fact, there was little evidence of commerce . . . or activity of any kind.

  East Berlin was a far cry from a great, modern world city like New York, London, or Paris . . . or its sister to the west. It was a poor, depressed, patched-together relic from the 1950s.

  As they were taking all this in, the lieutenant came up with another bright idea. “Let’s go find a Russian military compound,” he said.

  “Sure,” the one-stars agreed. “A terrific idea.” They were really game by then to push their luck. This was an opportunity they could have only dreamed about before this moment.

  They drove around until they found a Russian military facility (they never figured out its function); drove inside; and out of the van stepped a group of American flag officers in uniform, who must have had the same impact on the stunned Russian military personnel and their dependents as squid-people out of a starship. The Americans wandered around the compound for most of the afternoon. During that time, no one spoke to them; there were no greetings, no questions, no challenges, no ideas about what to do with the American “invaders”—shoot them, kiss them, or say hello. There was no decision; nothing was done. The Russians and their families went about their business; the wives pushed their baby carriages or dealt with their children; in the commissary, people pushed their grocery carts and grabbed cans and boxes off the shelves; and without a “by-your-leave,” the American officers checked out everything that caught their interest. The only response they got from anybody was a shocked, deer-in-the-headlights look. When the Americans left the compound, the shocked looks followed them out the gate.

  On the way back to Checkpoint Charlie, they stopped at a Soviet museum celebrating the fall of Berlin (the surrender had been signed in the building that housed it), and then at the Berlin Wall. “Do you want a piece?” the lieutenant asked, producing a small hammer. The others then chipped souvenir shards from the most powerful symbol of the Cold War.

  Zinni had never before felt so close to living history. “It’s over,” he said to himself, truly realizing it for the first time. “There is no more Soviet Union. It’s gone. There is no more Soviet enemy.”

  He wondered what new shape the world was taking.

  IN JUNE 1990, Zinni arrived at EUCOM headquarters, located in Stuttgart at a place called “Patch Barracks,” an old Second World War German Army casern taken over by U.S. forces at the end of the war. These had emerged from Hitler’s policies during the military buildup that preceded the war: Since he wanted both to hide the buildup and to connect the army closely to the people, he’d built small regimental caserns in towns all across Germany, rather than large, centralized military installations such as those in the U.S. Patch Barracks had originally housed the 7th Panzer Regiment, a moderately sized armored unit. When U.S. Forces took Stuttgart, the casern became known as Patch Barracks, after U.S. General Patch, the commander of the troops who liberated that part of Germany.

  It became EUCOM headquarters when the command was established. The original 1930s vintage stucco-clad barracks were turned into offices. In the ’50s and ’60s, apartment-type housing and a few individual houses were built on the post, but the majority of the people stationed there lived—as the military puts it—out on the economy (off the base).

  EUCOM is the U.S. Unified Command that runs military operations and relations in an area that includes Europe, most of Africa (CENTCOM had the rest), and part of the Middle East (Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel). During the Cold War, its primary focus was NATO support; and the CINC of EUCOM was also the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), the NATO military commander. Except for the occasional African or Middle Eastern crisis, planning and logistics support for the NATO commitment were the priority efforts.

  Traditionally, EUCOM has been an Army and Air Force-dominated theater of operations; and up until very recently, this dominance has been reflected in the service affiliation of the top officers.

  When Zinni first arrived there, it struck him as odd that the Operations Directorate (J-3) was so heavily dominated by Navy and Marine officers; but he soon realized why: The emphasis in this command had not been on operations (this is not the case in other unified commands, where operations normally are the center of the staff). The difference lay in EUCOM’s NATO mission. NATO went to war, and EUCOM was primarily the U.S. base providing NATO with the American wherewithal for that. In consequence, it was not operations but plans (J-5) and logistics (J-4) that were traditionally the key elements in EUCOM. This was reflected in their personnel—primarily Army and Air Force—while the Operations Directorate had come to be predominantly manned by the Navy and Marines.

  The operations shop mostly worked out on the edges—perhaps dealing with some minor crisis in Africa or the Mediterranean. It had the standing operating procedures for forming a Crisis Action Team (CAT) and could, in theory, gear up for a battle staff, but they’d never actually been called on for such a large-scale commitment; they’d never had to work twenty-four-hour operations over a long period of time. Suddenly, all that was changing. The NATO confrontation with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact was gone, and the plethora of crises emerging from that were changing both EUCOM and NATO priorities. The Operations Directorate was no longer a sleepy hollow. During Zinni’s tour, the J-3 shop was on twenty-four-hour operations virtually the whole time he was there. It became the EUCOM centerpiece.

  TONY ZINNI takes up the story:

  Since this was my first joint tour, getting used to serving in an environment and culture that wasn’t solely Marine Corps required adjustments; but I quickly found that the command was blessed with superb officers from all services. I could not have had better mentors—men who over the next two years entrusted me with the carrying out of several challenging and important missions.

  I was particularly impressed with our CINC, General Jack Galvin, USA—probably the finest soldier-statesman I’ve known . . . the best we’ve had since George Marshall. Though his talents and accomplishments never got the recognition they deserved (they were probably lost in the rush of events like the Gulf War), if those events had not turned out as they did, he would have had the kind of recognition and stature Marshall enjoys. His vision, his depth of strategic understanding, his insightfulness, his statesmanship, his military competence, and his exceptional intellect were unsurpassed among CINCs I’ve known. Just as with Marshall, when you were around him, you sensed you were in the presence of somebody who’s really great.

  Galvin was a soldier’s soldier, older than his peers. An enlisted medic in the Second World War, he had worked his way up through the ranks. When I got to Europe, he had been the CINCEUR for nine years, a long time.

  Our deputy CINC was General Jim McCarthy, USAF. McCarthy’
s a brilliant, high-energy guy, with exceptional organizational skills—qualities I’ve always admired. But I especially admired his openness . . . he was never set in his ways. He never met a new idea he didn’t like; they were all worth pursuing . . . even the wildest schemes would bring an open response: “Well, let’s think about that,” he’d say. “Let’s talk about it.”

  The other reason he impressed me: He was the first true joint officer I met. The DCINC is a full general, a four-star, the same rank as the CINC. Since CINCEUR is a full-time, all-consuming job, the DCINC runs EUCOM. This puts a lot of distance between him and a lowly Marine brigadier general. But Jim McCarthy never paid the slightest notice to that distance. He looked at you and not the uniform you wore or the badge of rank on your collar. Air Force officers can be parochial (so can Marines and officers of all the other services), or, worse, hung up on “Air Power Doctrine” (bombing is the war-winning strategy par excellence), but McCarthy was never caught up in that kind of stuff. He was always totally open to all the possibilities and capabilities all the services could contribute. He took what you had to offer, regardless of your service. I learned a lot about being a general officer from him.

  Our chief of staff was Lieutenant General Bob Chelberg, a very personable Army artillery officer, who, like McCarthy, had superior organizational skills.

  The EUCOM staff was overflowing with strong personalities. They were like bumper cars, slamming into each other . . . challenging each other. Chelberg kept all these big egos working smoothly; he held the staff together. He also had a gift for picking talent, and for encouraging everybody. He made you eager to work for him on his team; and he paid attention to morale, to the troops. He knew we were working long hours; he and McCarthy glued us together socially and created a strong sense of unit camaraderie that was remarkable in a joint environment.

  My immediate boss, the director of operations, was Rear Admiral Leighton Smith, USN—better known as “Snuffy.” Snuffy Smith was the embodiment of the positive spirit that kept us going. He brimmed over with energy and was intellectually brilliant, yet nobody was quicker to laugh; he kept us smiling with his humor and animation. At the same time, he demanded the highest degree of professionalism and commitment, and he set the example by demanding no less from himself. He would go on to earn four stars and become a CINC in NATO.

  These four officers provided me with an incredible learning experience.

  On the EUCOM staff, I was operating at a totally new level. I was no longer dealing with just Marine Corps operations. Almost from the moment I arrived, we were doing joint planning, executing joint missions, forming joint task forces; and we were kluging together Air Force, Navy, Army, Marine, and Special Operations units to do these missions.

  These were the consummate pros in these areas. They knew everything there was to know about them. . . . And in some cases we were plowing ground nobody had been into before.

  Just watching them operate, watching them explore options and poke into new and untried ways, watching them encourage and apply innovative thinking and refuse to get bound up by old paradigms . . . all of these things really left a deep mark in me.

  One example sticks hard in my memory: In the 1990-91 Gulf War, EUCOM was behind the opening of a second, air front, attacking Iraq out of Turkey. We would never have opened up that front if it hadn’t been for General McCarthy.

  Some young USAFE majors had come up with the idea and put together the basic work. But CENTCOM didn’t seem that interested in it. And I thought for sure it would be pooh-poohed away. But McCarthy said, “No, let’s pursue this. Let’s see what these guys can do.” And he kept pressing until Schwarzkopf came around. The second front made a difference.

  THE OPERATIONS shop is normally the part of a military staff that’s responsible for training, for exercises, for oversight on exercises, and for contingency planning. They also run the Op Center—the command center—and all its associated communications. We also had some unique duties. We ran the EUCOM flight detachment, for example—a few C-21 and C-12 VIP aircraft and helicopters.

  When I arrived, the J-3 command center had just been renovated. It was in a big room, with computers and data centers, screens for videoconferencing, CNN, and such, and spaces for charts and maps from the areas and regions where ops were taking place. There we’d get updates and briefs and would then process the information. It was an information center, intelligence center, and reaction center all in one. And this was where we would fuse all the information together and plan our response when a CAT was stood up in times of crises. (The function of a Crisis Action Team—CAT—was to handle a short-term event. You’d stand it up, deal with the event, and then it would go down.)

  In normal times, when not much was happening, we kept a simple watch in the command center, with a duty officer and a few people. But in time of crisis, when we stood up a CAT, the number could rise to ten or fifteen or more, and we’d man it full-time (in eight-hour watches) with people from different sections, like logistics, plans, and intelligence—keeping tabs, keeping things updated, communicating with the people operating in the field, processing information, developing briefs and options, issuing orders . . . all the things that planners and operators do. This put a great demand on the staff, as they had to do their regular jobs and man the CAT as well. The numbers also depended on the kind of team we needed for a particular mission. For example, some events—like humanitarian relief—required the participation of Civil Affairs elements.

  If the crisis grew big enough, or if we had multiple crises, the numbers would be higher still. And if the crisis got really serious—like the Gulf War—the CAT would transform into a Battle Staff, and we’d man it with as many as fifty or sixty people. Before 1990, the EUCOM J-3 shop had never done this; but 1990 brought a state of constant crisis, and we had to dust off and set up all these procedures. That responsibility fell on me. As deputy J-3, one of my jobs was to be the director of the Crisis Action Team and the Battle Staff. The CAT was in being for the entire two years of my tour of duty. (The more elaborately manned Battle Staff was up for a significant part of that time.)

  WHEN I checked in, the Operations Directorate was already bustling with activity. We had just started what is called a NEO (Non-combatant Evacuation Operation) of our embassy in Liberia—Operation Sharp Edge. Ships were off the coast, and a CAT had been formed. Meanwhile, the embassy had decided to call off the evacuation and hold out, so we now had to support and protect them in that mess.

  Liberia wasn’t an isolated case. All sorts of challenges were starting to show themselves on the other margins (meaning outside the NATO area).

  But the NATO area also brought its share of headaches: The end of the Cold War brought with it a “peace dividend” drawdown of forces—not an easy transition to plan and implement. Some Cold War armaments, like chemical munitions, were no longer needed. That meant moving them out of Europe on to destruction sites on Johnston Island in the Pacific—a dangerous and delicate operation (which was called “Operation Steel Box”). Arms reduction agreements with the former Soviet Union required inspections and verification of the destruction of weapons of mass destruction. We were involved. We were running the “Beirut Air Bridge” (security, supplies, and transport for our newly reestablished embassy in Lebanon had to be airlifted by Army helicopters from Cyprus). And General Galvin was beginning to push visionary ideas about starting military-to-military connections with the Russians and Eastern Europeans. The operations shop had a big part in managing all of these.

  Very soon after I came to EUCOM, listening to the daily intelligence briefings, I began to get the sense that all this wasn’t going to be an aberration but a sign of the way things were going to be happening for a while. For instance, some of the really sharp intelligence analysts had begun to suggest that the Balkans might start coming apart. Though this tragedy was still months away, we would have been stupid not to start thinking about the possible consequences. As this and other impending crises beg
an to show up on our radar screens, we came to realize that what we were getting into with, say, Operation Sharp Edge might not be all that unusual. The unusual might become the usual.

  All this manifested itself in increased day-to-day tasks. The Crisis Action Team that had been put together for Operation Sharp Edge was left in place to deal with all of these ongoing crises and operational missions.

  ONE OF my first orders from Snuffy Smith was to get out and visit our components—the four service and the special operations subordinate commands. “Spend most of your time with the Army, Air Force, and Special Operations people,” he said. “You already know the Navy and the Marine Corps.”

  I didn’t know it then, but Snuffy’s “get out and get acquainted” directive was the start of something, launching me on a series of trips that took me pretty regularly out of the nest: I spent most of my time at EUCOM away from our home base. It turned out that there was always some exercise, conference, or crisis area where they needed to send somebody on the staff, and only a general would do. I always volunteered for these. Since I always wanted to get the whole experience, I was willing to travel wherever I could get it; so I was constantly on the road. And I enjoyed the hell out of it. I just loved it.

  I used to kid my wife Debbie. “You’re a bachelorette,” I told her. She took it well, though. She’s a resourceful, independent woman.