We slam on, sweeping, reading, deciphering landscape all around. The lieutenant is up and down in the TC’s hatch, reporting visible terrain, driving rain, thickening skies. He keeps conveying info to other tanks in 2nd Platoon, calling (with little success) to other TCs riding in hatches and giving hand signals. “We can’t see the enemy, but he sure as hell can’t see us, not at our speed,” he calls to the crew of The Claw. “Need to press like a sonofabitch now if we’re going to beat him at his own game.”
“Would main units leave their engines off out here?” Noordwink wants to know as he drives, accelerates, slams on.
“They can do anything…what would you do to avoid our power?” the lieutenant replies. Then: “Murphy, keep your eyes on your screen. We may need to respond in an instant.”
I’m doing nothing but keeping my eyes on my screen as The Claw tracks on, slamming/squeaking/treading over rough terrain at thirty, thirty-five, up to thirty-eight. My screen reveals ridges, inclines, waves, and outgrowths of brush and half-buried boulders, a barren moonscape of rises and depressions, highlights and shadows, and, now and then, spaces blocked from thermal reception by hills, by rain and fog flowing in and out of the range finder’s depth perception. Scouts in Bradleys are fanned out before our monsters, looking to report any enemy presence, history, residue. Armor, as we know, has to be deeply concealed to avoid thermal detection. Concealed, cooled down, calm.
The captain comes on with word that we’re presently crossing Phase Line 66 and will advance to 70 Easting (no further, on orders from Corps), where we’ll stop to refuel and rearm, perform vehicle maintenance, get some air, use the facilities.
“Tomorrow will be the day,” he adds. “No doubt about it. RG have to be here looking for a fight…unless they heard about our gunners and hightailed it to the Euphrates last night!”
Only later will we learn that at distances of four, five, six kilometers, concealed in sand and as yet undetected by thermal-imaging in our three hundred and more armored vehicles, there lay in wait the thousand-plus armored vehicles and eighteen thousand soldiers of the Tawakalna Elite Republican Guard Division. As aware as they have to be of our presence, the RG division, blinded by sand and clouds, would seem to be under the impression that they can take us on and play at our level of speed and firepower.
They must also be aware that the main coalition attack is underway in the east…1st and 3rd Marines, 24th Mech and Saudi forces remodeling the shore in an overwhelming-force push into Kuwait City. Bottom line: Neither 2nd Cav or the Elite Tawakalda RG can be aware, given the foul weather and the grounding of air support, that it is but minutes removed from a head-on collision in a barren desert.
Five camels provide an early clue, while their significance requires a moment to reveal itself. After the camels are read as evidence that Iraqi forces are nearby, word follows that Iron Troop recon scouts, encountering the camels and the five Bedouins riding them, noticed at the last second that the tribesmen were wearing army boots under their robes and a thin radio antenna was sticking up from an animal’s saddlebags, that a rifle sheathed downward was too high-tech to be the property of a Bedouin riding a camel. Attacking at once with M-16s (one camel and rider escape) the recon scouts verify the riders to have been Iraqi commandoes carrying anti-tank grenade launchers hidden in their saddlebags. “We don’t know if they got off a radio report before they were cut down or not,” the captain says. “Have to assume they did.”
An alert follows that will have us postponing a planned pit stop. Geo’s 3rd Platoon, probing left front at 67 Easting, comes under fire from a concentration of cinder block buildings and has been forced to take cover. The report includes the grid location of the buildings, allowing us to see (with our firepower) that the Iraqi guards have made a miscalculation they’ll soon regret. “Twin 23 millimeter artillery fire. Machine gun fire. Anti-tank missiles. Six, seven cinder block buildings. Looks like a company-sized detachment that didn’t know the size of the bear they decided to poke,” the captain confides over the net.
He also conveys grid coordinates as he orders the troop’s M1A1s and Bradleys to reply. I notice that it is straight-up 1600 hours. As my screen finds the cinderblock complex within rain and low-lying clouds, I confirm grid numbers and add, “Ten forty-four meters.” The order to fire comes at once (tanks can never afford to pause) and volleys of HEAT rounds and TOW missiles obliterate the outpost within seconds of the assault beginning.
“One last HEAT round!” the lieutenant calls.
“Up!” Sherman calls.
Remaining on my crosshairs like a demon, as The Claw squeaks on hard at thirty, I call, “On the way!” and pull the trigger, and there comes yet another fire-belching of the 120 millimeter cannon and another high-explosive anti-tank shell traveling one mile per second on its way to what remains of a cinderblock section.
“Direct hit,” the lieutenant notes.
“Cease fire” comes from the captain forty seconds after the first round was fired. The Iraqi defense post, hit from several angles, has been reduced to flaming rubble, most of it having been ignited by a single volley.
Captain Kinder orders Geo to return to the lead, which means, one, dismount scouts from Bradleys will be moving out to process the destroyed complex and, two, should hostile fire come from another direction or roving force it will have to face M1A1s moving four abreast, cannons ready to belch lethal fire.
“Proceeding to 70 Easting, where we’ll hold as ordered,” the captain explains. “Be vigilant. No telling what messages may have been transmitted from that outpost or what forces might be hiding nearby.”
We move then at under twenty. Hardly four minutes have passed (my clock shows 16:06) while, as before, I enter more than my eyes alone into the screen before me. I read-read-read, looking for any telltale sign of life.
“Passing 68 Easting,” the lieutenant calls over the intercom as we roll over another imaginary line. “Visibility two-sixty meters,” he adds. “Rough terrain ahead.”
It’s then that my eyes return for the fifth or sixth time to a barely distinct blur within the landscape mid-left on my screen. Boulders, I think again as I did in the first place. A long ridge. An extended outcropping. My adrenaline has barely receded from the firing of HEAT rounds as I find myself wanting to be extra alert…though not foolishly so. Crying wolf on reading a thermal screen is no less a shortcoming than failing to read any sign at all. I return again (seconds later) to the outcropping. The long ridge at 900 meters. I try to decipher any shape, line, bits of evidence within the sand and gravel. Tanks out of formation? Tanks in formation? There is no movement nor any sign, nothing but the long barren ridge. My mind weighs desert scorpions, their presence visible only when they move. An imperfection in the moonscape? Ancient ruins covered by windblown sands of time?
We roll on. I look left to right, right to left. Repeat the scan. Look as deeply as I possibly can.
As I keep surveying, my eyes return to the long ridge that refuses to stop speaking to me. Moving within seven-ten meters, I say, “Sir… something weird at GH one-nine-eight, eight two-six. One twenty meters to 69 Easting. Could be a ridge. Could also be a shit load of T-72s covered with sand.”
The lieutenant, ever my champion, passes on my suspicion to Platoon and Troop as The Claw squeaks on. I keep trying to read my screen while returning over and over to the blurred ridge, seeking to clarify, define, understand the curious presence. “That long shadow, sir. All I know is it looks different. More the shadow than the ridge. It’s cold. But there hasn’t been anything else like it.”
“I’m certain the area’s been scouted; still, there’s no need to take anything for granted,” the lieutenant returns, letting us know he has the suspicious ridge in focus at roughly seven hundred meters.
I ride an inch above my seat, eyes deeper than ever into my screen, returning over and over to the ridge, reading left and up, right and down. Part of something is darker than other parts and I wonder: If a row of T-72s is lying
in ambush, did one crew go lazy and add six inches of sand when orders called for ten? At six fifty meters, I say, “Six fifty to ridge, sir. Looks suspicious to me.”
Did I see movement? A cup of sand sliding from a darkly shaded outcropping? Could a line of tanks be visible from the other side of the ridge? My eyes resweep overall, and return to the unusual configuration where sand seemed to slide downhill. I try to read turret, gun barrel, tube, rifle barrel like shapes in a puzzle. “Looks weird, sir, is all I can say. Left front, four-seven-two meters. Shadows defining a depression. Could be an old burial ground. Still, it’s too neat. Looks weird.”
The lieutenant lowers into the hatch to his override screen, and I say, “Left front, sir. Four-seventy. Did you see that? Just then?”
Thinking I saw movement to the left, I try all the harder to see more of the same. “Wasn’t much. Six eight meters from the left. I think I saw something move! Sand! A rifle barrel?”
“Didn’t see it,” the lieutenant says.
“I saw something.”
“Could be an ambush…it’s a good spot for it. Could be camels lying in one of the elements.”
“I could fire a spurt, sir. See if it hits metal.”
“Could be Bedouins dug in against the wind. Sure you saw movement? Could be an ammo depot, for that matter. You’d blow everything to hell and back if you set it off.”
“They’re animals, sir, there’d be heat,” I say as we close to four hundred meters.
Taking to the net, the lieutenant signals an alert. The Claw, like other M1A1s in the formation, reduces speed on approaching a rise that may or may not provide a better view of the curious ridge. “Silver bullet, just in case,” the lieutenant calls. “Murphy, devour that screen. I’m going up for a better look.”
We squeak on, churning up a rise at minimal speed, under ten. “Super say-bo up!” Sherman calls out as the breech slams, whereupon, of an instant, the lieutenant shouts, “CONTACT! ENEMY TANKS LEFT-FRONT! FIRE! IT IS AN AMBUSH! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!”
Crosshairs targeted on one end of the ridge, I shout, “ON THE WAY!” and squeeze off a round.
“AMBUSH–ALL UNITS FIRE,” the lieutenant keeps shouting as Sherman calls “UP!” yet again.
Moving two-fisted at the shadow, I add, “ON THE WAY!” and fire again.
Riding the recoil, I move the crosshairs to the next blur and fire again.
“You just blew away a turret!” the lieutenant screams.
Riding the recoil, tracing the ridge, I call “On the way!” and fire again.
“DIRECT HIT! DIRECT HIT!” comes from the lieutenant together with “UP!” from Sherman.
“BLEW THAT TURRET EIGHTY FEET IN THE AIR!” follows from the lieutenant and, overlapping from me, “On the way!” as I ride the crosshairs and fire yet again, seeing another tank explode as I scan at once for added targets, as Sherman calls, “UP!” to indicate another round being slammed into place.
“DIRECT HIT, GOOD LORD!” the lieutenant is shouting, whereupon the captain’s voice comes calling over the net, “Cease fire! That’s it! Cease fire! Was an ambush! Ten T-72s lying in wait, covered in sand! All destroyed! Good work, Geo! Excellent response! Excellent! Congrats to all!”
“Murphy, great shooting!” the lieutenant is adding. “You took out three T-72s in under ten seconds! You know that? That’s what you did! Great teamwork, all of you! Long live The Claw! Long live this amazing crew! Incredible!”
As the captain is reminding us to remain alert, warning that there could be more, that we may have been baited, I strive to settle my breath and re-comprehend my screen as The Claw churns forward in its infinite tracking. Yes, a time to catch us off guard, I think. Using T-72s as bait to lure our squadron’s hundred creepy crawlers into a trap! Pulling us into a depression in the moonscape where we might be blasted like fish in a barrel.
All the while, as my mind and heart keep racing/soaring/thrilling with the taste of battle, of doing what I just did as gunner, the lieutenant is calling (no matter his admonition to crew and platoon to remain alert) “It was an ambush! Murphy, what a display! Great job! Three T-72s in under ten goddamn seconds! Reading those shadows! Who’d they think they were messing with, the boy scouts?”
“Great eye, Murphy,” comes from Sergeant Noordwink, in an even voice I’ve never heard him use before.
When Captain Kinder comes on to offer measured congratulations, the lieutenant replies for all to hear, “Corporal Murphy, Green One, sir, took out three T-72s in under ten seconds! Most incredible display of shooting I’ve ever seen, at Hohenfels, Graf, anywhere!”
“Congrats to Corporal Murphy…but remain alert,” the Captain says. “We may have simply scratched the ass of an RG armored division.”
Bypassing smoldering half-buried tanks, leaving the processing of dead and wounded to trailing MP units, the lieutenant, but faintly corrected by the captain, returns all attention to directing our four-tank platoon as part of our greater wedge. Mere minutes have passed since we took out the cinder block outpost, while 70 Easting, where we have been instructed to halt, remains 1,800-plus meters away. That is to say: We’re ahead of schedule. Our response was decisive (as we were taught time and again that responses had to be in any clash of armor) which encounter went down so suddenly, concluded so quickly, it’s hard to believe we’ve been tested in battle and have come off as responsive, capable, lethal.
So this is warfare? is the odd question once more crossing my mind. The training, practicing, mastering of equipment. The teamwork. An immediate reply when called for. How lucky we are that every element fell into place and we pulled it off. How easy it would have been for things to go some other way. If we had hesitated, been other than vigilant, been off by two or three seconds.
Tested in battle. I don’t feel tested at all…though down deep maybe I do. I prepared. Paid attention. Practiced. Produced when called on to do so. If only we might take a break and sit around a campfire drinking beer, catching our breath, and coming back to earth.
The cold rain continues spattering as we grind on toward 70 Easting. It’s a moment later that surprise contact shocks us yet again. M1A1s from Geo have returned to the lead, Bradley scouts to the flanks, mortar sections to the rear (Apache warships remaining grounded) and even with our thermal sights the reading of the world before us is under 400 meters.
2nd Cav’s penetration like a bayonet into Iraq’s underbelly proceeds. As lead vehicles approach another cloudy, barely perceptible rise, all at once, coming at us on the attack at 2,000 meters, is the enemy force we’ve been deeply and darkly hoping and fearing to engage! The Elite Republican Guard! We’re being attacked! A full armada of tanks and fighting vehicles is coming hard, clearly intending to obliterate all that we are.
“Holy shit!” the lieutenant utters as there appear through rain clouds and over the desert plain, a thousand ships of war, the Tawakalna Republican Guard on a collision course with a regiment one-third or one-fourth its size, if one expressly in gear, warmed up, primed to fight, rolling hard. My heart leaps in alarm, fear, determination, a call to fight.
Captain Kinder’s command will remain unforgettable, as calm as it is: “All units. All units. The enemy is upon us. Commence firing as you will. It is time to execute.”
Immediately, as in exercises at Hohenfels, there erupts a cacophony of cannon fire interspersed with an oddly calm calling of orders, spot reports, six-digit grids…a rolling-forward, repeated firing by 2nd Cav tanks, Howitzers, mortars…a systematic working over and, as rehearsed a hundred times, the picking off of the scrambling T-72s, APCs, and BDRMs, well before they can return fire and effect any pickings of their own. They may have been in attack formation, but they seem to have been running checklists or tying shoes or sipping tea, as our instantaneous counter-attack sends them scrambling pell-mell to evade and retreat…knocked into a panic of confusion by the on-charging many-pronged beast with lethal tongues of fire that we are, belching systematic eruptions and exploding their armor wit
h shattering accuracy and relentless speed and efficiency.
The larger Iraqi force was in battle formation but for some reason was not ready to engage or defend. Later analysis would show that the Elite RG division had assumed itself ready, needing but one minute to load, aim, fire…in which single minute 2nd Armored Cav struck with hundreds of targeted sabot, HEAT, TOW, Howitzer rounds, blasting their armor so quickly and so hard it was blown apart and/or sent (in the precious few instances where it was able) running for its life. Goat farmers had decided to face professionals. The latter had annihilated the goat farmers before they had had a chance to fart or think straight. Tank warfare in the desert.
A captured Iraqi battalion commander who spoke English and had trained at Fort Bragg wanted to know (on being debriefed) if our M1A1s had a new secret weapon? Of 39 tanks in his unit, he said, he lost but one to six full weeks of air attacks; in twelve minutes of battle with 2nd Cav’s M1A1s, he was left with zero!
“Teamwork,” he was told, as we heard from Captain Kinder. The interrogating officer did not know how else to explain the discrepancy. Teamwork and training. Dedicated soldiers. Preparation. Speed of response.
Less than an hour has gone to a pivotal engagement in the Gulf War. The best had met the best. Each side had come to fight. “Fox, Geo, Eagle, Iron could not have been more ready to deliver,” the colonel remarks over the net in the aftermath. “Our cannons belched fire as we advanced. Iraqi return fire fell short and hit wide. Machine gun fire pinged from our armor.” Within minutes we were rolling past smoldering hulks that had been obliterated at 280, 210, 160 meters. “A lone Geo casualty is under report,” the colonel adds. “A dismount scout who exited a Bradley right into an ammo explosion from a fighting vehicle that was taking a hit. God bless his generous soul.”
Carrying Page 28
