Brigadier General Bob McFarlin and all the logisticians of the 2nd COSCOM, the divisions, and separate corps units were heroes in my book. "Forget logistics and you lose," I have said on many occasions. I might add that one should not forget the logisticians, either. They were magnificent. Nothing got in their way.
OPERATING SYSTEMS
The Army uses the term battle operating systems to describe the seven parts of a tactical force that must work in harmony and in the right combination to ensure victory. These are maneuver, fires, logistics, command, mobility and countermobility, air defense, and intelligence.
In Desert Storm, all elements of the VII Corps made these work. Though I have put most of my focus on elements such as maneuver, fires, command, and intelligence, there were many others:
* The engineers of Colonel Sam Raines's 7th Engineer Brigade continually built and maintained thousands of kilometers of MSRs (main supply routes), opened and marked lanes through minefields, built several airfields, and destroyed Iraqi fortifications.
* Colonel Rich Pomager's 14th Military Police Brigade processed over 20,000 prisoners, operated the many EPW compounds, and provided route security on the thousands of kilometers of corps MSRs.
* The corps signal units of Colonel Rich Walsh's 93rd Signal Brigade ensured communications within the VII Corps, as well as with Riyadh and with units processing arriving soldiers and equipment through the ports and airfields. Signal soldiers and MPs operated in small units that often were isolated from their parent unit for extended periods. The successful completion of their mission was a tribute to their small-unit leadership.
* The 7th Personnel Group, commanded by Colonel Jo Rusin, linked our wartime replacement soldiers with equipment, or, where necessary, moved individual replacements forward to units where and when they were needed. She and her staff (together with corps AG Lieutenant Colonel Eugenia Thornton) were meticulous in maintaining accountability and the records of those VII Corps soldiers killed in action, who died as a result of disease and non-battle injury, were wounded in action, and injured as a result of non-battle causes. Later the 7th was timely and thorough in reporting to Third Army the circumstances of soldier deaths caused by fratricide.
* The 7th Finance Group, commanded by Colonel Russ Dowden, whose soldiers kept track of the myriad details of wartime finance so important to soldiers and families of VII Corps, many of whom had joined the Corps only recently. It was no small task and they did it superbly.
* Lieutenant Colonel Larry Dogden's Air Defense TF 8/43 moved with the VII Corps, providing an umbrella from Iraqi tactical missile attack or helicopter attack (CENTAF had earlier established air supremacy against Iraqi fixed-wing attack). At one point I told Larry that his air defense units moved with the same rapid agility as a cavalry unit, the highest compliment I could pay them.
0800-1000 VII CORPS TAC
We had some orders to get out.
First, I wanted the corps to understand the rules of engagement; in particular, I wanted them to know they had the right of self-defense. I imagined that many Iraqi units were out of communications and therefore did not know the war was over. Second, we had some minor repositioning to do in order to get into a better and more coherent posture, and some of the commanders might have figured that getting into a more coherent posture would violate the cease-fire. Third, I was concerned about force protection, especially unexploded munitions, which numbered in the tens of thousands all over the battlefield. We'd already had casualties and deaths from these--just getting out of your vehicle in the dark had become hazardous. Fourth, I wanted the corps to stop taking the PSG pills and to get out of the by-now-nasty chemical overgarments we had worn day and night since 24 February.
Fifth, I wanted to meet with the commanders at noon.
1000-1200 VISITS
After taking care of these orders, I wanted to get out and around the corps as soon as possible, and personally congratulate as many units and commanders as I could. I began in the north with the 1st AD, to congratulate them on capturing the Medina headquarters.
Ron Griffith had commanded the division with great skill and tenacity, and had been thorough in preparing his soldiers for war. His Old Ironsides team had reflected his thorough, savvy approach to war fighting. He'd drilled them hard. Their intelligence had always been current, and Ron had synchronized his ground maneuver, combat aviation, and artillery masterfully. I always knew that when Ron told me something, it was well considered, and he was what I called an "aware" commander; he always knew the score. I liked having Ron's savvy, street-smart commander wisdom on my team.
Ron went on to four-star rank, and is currently Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, the number-two-ranking general in the Department of the Army.
When Ron Griffith and I met that morning, I shook his hand and told him how proud I was of him and the soldiers and leaders of Old Ironsides.
Ron was elated at the performance of his division, and well he should have been. They had gone farther in their attack than any other of our units. During their attack, they had destroyed the better part of a brigade of the Tawalkana, a brigade of the Adnan, and two-thirds of the Medina, and captured the HQ of that division (by then vacant) and the HQ of the Iraqi VII Corps.
After I left Ron, we flew back toward the TAC. I noticed a tank unit on the ground and told Mark Greenwald to land so that I could talk to some of the soldiers. It was Company B, 1/8 Cavalry, a tank battalion in the 1st CAV. I walked up to a tank and talked to the crew. In a little while, some other soldiers gathered around, then identified themselves and their unit. When I asked what they had done, they told me they had moved all day and night to get there, but had never gotten into the fight. They were not happy about that.
After I explained that the cease-fire had kept them out of the fight, I congratulated them on their magnificent 250-kilometer move from the Ruqi Pocket to where we were now. Then in the sand I sketched out the basic VII Corps attack and the vital role their actions in the Ruqi Pocket had played. After thanking them again for what they had done to help gain the victory, I left to go back to the TAC.
1200 VII CORPS TAC CP
The moment I walked into the TAC, John Yeosock called. He wanted us to move corps units around to eliminate pockets of resistance behind us, within our lines, and to do it while staying within the cease-fire rules, which were not to fire unless fired upon or threatened. However, that didn't seem wise to me just then. Moving around put our troops at a disadvantage, I told him, and little was to be gained, since the Iraqis who had not yet heard about the cease-fire could shoot first. John said OK.
At 1220, I met with my five division commanders in the TAC and shook each one's hand. All of us were tired, but elated at our success. We also knew we still had work to do.
"I want to be the first of a long line of people to say well done," I told them. "No matter what is written, said, or shown about what happened out here, the courage of our soldiers in taking the fight to the enemy, day and night, in sandstorms and rain, will be forever stamped in the desert sands of Iraq and Kuwait. I'm not sure where this is going from here, but while it's fresh in our minds, I want to thank the soldiers for their superb performance."
Then I talked about:
* accountability--keeping track of where all our soldiers were, as well as of casualties, and of protection and proper identification of remains;
* safety--especially with unexploded munitions;
* record keeping--to capture what we had done, including battle vignettes and lessons learned for the future;
* awards policy--including awards for valor and guidance on war trophies and souvenirs;
* destruction of Iraqi equipment.
The meeting lasted about an hour, and then the commanders returned to their units.
Soon after that, the first of the media arrived, including a correspondent from AP and another from an Arab news agency. I went over with them what we had done to include what I called our "left hook," thus distinguishing
it from what others have erroneously called a "Hail Mary" attack. In football, a Hail Mary play is a last-minute, go-for-broke attempt to score the winning touchdown by throwing a forward pass in the general direction of your opponent's end zone. The game is on the line, you're only a little behind, you have seconds left, so you throw . . . and hope. Our maneuver could not have been further from a Hail Mary. Later, in an interview with Rick Atkinson of the Washington Post, I used the terms "closed fist" and "left hook" for our envelopment maneuver. In his story, I noticed later, he used "left hook," and it stuck.
"Was this the best maneuver of your career?" they asked.
I used a remark I had once heard Willie Mays make, after his well-known catch of a long drive from Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series: "I just make the catches," he said. "I'll let you fellows describe them."
Meanwhile, a few of the staff from the main had come out, and I thanked them all for their work as a team, repeating in more detail what I had told my commanders earlier, then I spent the rest of the day at the TAC with them, going over what needed to be done. There was still an enormous amount to do. We could not let up now (and it was by then seductively easy to let up).
At this point, I thought our future mission was to defend northern Kuwait. I also thought that we might be ordered to leave some equipment at King Khalid Military City in a POMCUS storage configuration. Finally, there was the question of what would happen to VII Corps when we returned to Germany. I had no answer to that yet.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Duty in Iraq
0300 1 MARCH 1991
ANOTHER early-morning phone call from Riyadh. I was asleep in my small tent at the TAC.
It was John Yeosock. "There will be cease-fire talks tomorrow," he told me when I got to the phone, "and VII Corps will be responsible to set up the site. The CINC," he added, "also wants recommendations about the best place to hold the talks."
"Let me ask around, and I'll get back to you," I answered. My immediate first thought was that the best place would be somewhere out on the battlefield, where the press and the Iraqi brass could see the extent of the damage to the Iraqi army.
I had a quick huddle with the staff at the TAC to get them into it; and I soon had the corps staff at the main CP in on it as well. It would be a huge task to set up in such a short time, and we obviously wanted to do it right.
Though we didn't have a lot of time, we made calls to the units in the corps to find out their views about sites; and the one that I liked best was the Medina Division HQ that 1st AD had captured on the last day of the war. It would provide a great backdrop, since it would show the abandoned HQ of one of their no-longer "elite" divisions (we figured that by now we had stripped them of any right to call themselves elite); it was reasonably accessible to the media (I figured we would fly them into the final site); and all around it was destroyed Iraqi army equipment. It would perfectly communicate the magnitude of the defeat of Saddam's army to the world.
AT about 0400, John called back to ask for our recommendation, and I told him about the Medina Division HQ. John seemed to like that and said he would pass my recommendation to CENTCOM--but he also asked if we had taken the crossroads in Safwan, as specified in the written order we had gotten the morning of 28 February. I was surprised by the question. I still wondered why anyone placed any significance on that crossroads, since the remaining RGFC in our sector were in front of 1st and 3rd ADs. But an order is an order, and I believed we had done what we had been supposed to do. I told him we did not have troops there physically, but that we had gotten air there to interdict movement, as I had understood the intent.
He told me that would be a problem. Our written orders had been to seize it, and the CINC thought we had it. Safwan was the site the CINC favored for the talks and he had already tentatively told Washington. I repeated that we did not have it.
John told me the CINC wanted to know why his orders had been disobeyed regarding that crossroads.
I was absolutely stunned.
My first reaction was real anger. I thought about the other war that had ended with my lower leg amputated. Now here in this war I was to have my professional character amputated. I was really disappointed with the CINC. To be accused of disobeying an order is to be accused of a serious breach of discipline, especially in wartime. More than the personal injury, though, was the sudden realization that this had been the first communication from the theater commander to VII Corps after the war. No calls of thanks to the troops. No discussion of casualties. No calls to the locker room, as it were, for the men and women who had made this all possible. That anger burned hot for some time.
I have questioned orders, especially ones I considered stupid, or those to which there might be legal or moral objections. I have argued the wisdom of others and suggested alternatives. I have executed orders I did not like, and for commanders I did not like. But once discussions ended and my commander said, "Here is what I want you to do," never had I willingly or knowingly disobeyed a legal order.
Yet I was also a corps commander of 146,000 U.S. and British troops who had just finished a magnificent operation. I could not let the incident overshadow the great achievements of the troops and my responsibility to them. I also was a subordinate, and my superior officer had requested an explanation. I would do as he requested. Then I would let it pass and get on with the mission. We still had lots to do.
We had interdicted the road junction but not seized it. We had done so with attack helicopters of the 1st INF (they had been there for a number of hours, and I later learned they had observed six vehicles pass through but had not fired because they had gotten the panic cease-fire call at about 0720 on 28 February and had never gotten the order to resume the attack). There had been no intent to disobey orders. I had selected tactics to accomplish what I had interpreted to be the intent of the order.
I had gotten those verbal orders from John at about 0330 on 28 February. The written order came later that morning. My interpretation of John's verbal orders to me was for us to stop Iraqi movement through that road junction. My selection of tactics was interdiction with air, and the assumption that the 1st INF attack would probably get there by 0800 if they continued on their attack axis. Stan gave the 1st INF the mission to interdict the road junction, which they did. I and everyone else missed the "seize" in the written order. That was my fault.
Any failure of the corps to seize the road junction was my responsibility, but it was not failure based on disobeying an order.
I never heard any more about it, not then and not since. I never mentioned it to any of the other commanders or soldiers, other than in the 1st INF, since they were involved.
I could never understand why the CINC's first reaction would be to accuse John Yeosock and me of disobeying an order.
1 MARCH 1991
Right after first light, I went to visit the 1st INF, who were across Highway 8, just south of the Kuwait-Iraq border. I wanted to tell Tom Rhame what had to be done to get Safwan and to explain that it was now the site of the talks.
On the way, we saw the wreckage of the Iraqi army that had tried to stop them. We had flown over some of the wreckage the morning of the twenty-seventh. Now it went on much farther. Burning equipment, tanks, BMPs, trucks, air defense tracked vehicles, artillery--it was all there. Some isolated pieces of equipment looked brand new and undamaged. Bunkers, trenches, and vehicle revetments were everywhere.
As we crossed over into Kuwait, we saw the oil well fires. They resembled gigantic torches, with bright orange flames reaching from the ground to a height above our flight path. The flames were topped by thick black plumes of smoke, which spread and merged to form a black gray haze over the entire landscape. Close to them, you could hear the loud, roaring sounds of burning gas and oil. It grew visibly darker the farther we flew into Kuwait. It was Dante's Inferno, Armageddon, hell on earth, you pick it. I had never seen anything on this scale before. We quickly counted twenty-seven wells on fire, and there were many times tha
t many. It was an awesome sight . . . and an unconscionable act of material brutality against the assets of another nation. I'm sure the Iraqis thought that if they could not have the oil, then no one else would, either.
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