Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

by Tom Clancy

  Meanwhile, they had to deal with practical issues:

  Troops had to get ammunition uploaded into vehicles and leaders had to make sure they had top-of-the-line wartime ammo. That meant distribution and uploading turrets and ammo trucks. Transportation was in short supply. The 1st INF had only forty-nine fuel trucks when they deployed from Fort Riley. At the end of the war, they had 114. It was an immense challenge for Gus Pagonis and the theater to find trucks to transport heavy tracked vehicles such as tanks and Bradleys from the ports to the desert. To augment the U.S. Army heavy equipment transporter trucks, he hired indigenouslabor from Pakistan and other nations, with trucks, for the 800-plus-kilometer round trip to the desert. Compounding his challenge was the transportation required to haul new M1A1 tanks and Bradleys to the 1st CAV and 24th Division in order to swap for their old ones. And the limited truck supply had to haul U.S.A.F. ammo at the same time it was to haul the corps's late-arriving heavy tracked vehicles to the desert. When XVIII Corps began their truck move west after the start of the air campaign, the competition for truck assets intensified, causing a frustrated Ron Griffith at one point to order two Bradley battalions not to wait, but simply to drive the more-than-400-kilometer distance to their TAA on their own tracks.

  Since the corps initially had no maps of the area, these had to be obtained and distributed by the tens of thousands, and in sets. (Military maps come in separate three-foot square sheets; for the VII Corps area, leaders needed about thirty separate sheets, which then had to be taped together to make one map.) It's a standing joke in the Army that you always go fight someplace where you can't pronounce the names of the towns and where you have no maps. For VII Corps, the joke wasn't all that funny.

  Sanitation and waste disposal were also a serious issue--not only normal trash and garbage, but human waste. They burned it or buried it in deep pits. "Here's the most modern force our Army has ever fielded," Franks said at one point to Cal Waller, "using diesel to burn shit in fifty-five-gallon cut-off drums. It's no different from Vietnam." Black smoke plumes were everywhere.

  Because they had very few cots, too many soldiers had to sleep on the sand. They worked at getting cots from every conceivable source in Europe and the United States.

  Despite the efforts of everyone concerned, mail delivery was simply awful. Mail to and from Germany took up to a month. There was just too much volume for the system to handle, and of course transportation had higher priorities. Only after Franks ordered the formation of an ad hoc postal battalion, with a lieutenant colonel in charge, and gave them dedicated transportation, did the problem begin to get fixed. Of the spreading oil slick in the Persian Gulf, one frustrated soldier said, "Put a stamp on it and that way it will never get to Saudi Arabia."

  On the positive side, water distribution worked well, which was aided considerably by the availability of cases of water in plastic liter bottles from the Saudi desalinization plant on the coast.

  Meanwhile, the troops prepared for desert warfare:

  They placed tape on the leading edges of the blades of almost 800 helicopters to save blade wear from the corrosive effects of sand. They installed particle separators on aircraft to prevent sand ingestion in turbine engines. To deal with the same problem in tank turbine engines, tankers got a fresh supply of "V" packs and spares to place in air-cleaning systems, and cleaned them at every opportunity. As a result, tanks ran at an availability rate of over 90 percent. They painted all of their almost 40,000 green Europe-based vehicles with desert tan chemical-resistant paint, one by one, taking precautions against the toxic paint spray by using tent enclosures and masks. Since the spare parts system could not be adapted fast enough, an ad hoc system sprang up, and vehicles got the spare parts they needed.

  And finally, soldiers fitted chemical protective masks, using the tried and true method: You place banana oil around the mask before you put it on. If you smell the oil after it's on, you know you have a bad fit.

  Soldiers made do with what they had. From the time they deployed from port to the desert until they redeployed in April and May of 1991, the troops lived in the desert with what they'd brought in. It was a help-yourself theater. The desert was hostile. Weather turned cold at night and it rained a lot. Fierce sandstorms blew up, reducing visibility to meters and getting sand into everything. Flies were everywhere. It was a hell of an adjustment for the troops, hardened as they were to living in the field in Europe.

  Despite everyone's best efforts, nothing escaped "friction." It was everywhere.

  Early on, Franks directed commanders to raise their tolerance for imperfection, to work on those things they could do something about, and when time was created by transportation delays, to use it for training. He did not want the command frustrated over things over which they had little control: "Keep your heads on the war fighting and preparing for war," he emphasized again and again. "Keep focused on the objective and do not take your eye off the ball." It wasn't easy, but the commanders and troops did it.

  The whole Department of the Army operation in Washington was a masterpiece of organization by Army Chief General Carl Vuono, who held daily meetings to anticipate requirements. His vice chief, General Gordon Sullivan, quarterbacked the effort, and was constantly on the phone to Franks, Luck, Yeosock, and Pagonis, seeking ways to help. FORSCOM commander, General Ed Burba, not only deployed active component units, but put together combinations of active and Reserve component units to fit theater needs. It was exactly the kind of situation--the provisioning of a warfighting theater--that the Goldwater-Nichols National Security Act of 1986 had anticipated. Franks and VII Corps became provisioned as a contingency corps almost overnight.

  Not everything arrived on time. One minor frustration for both Sullivan and Franks, and a potential issue with the troops, was the fact that no one in the corps had yet received the desert battle dress uniforms, the sand-colored BDUs (called DCUs). XVIII Corps had them, as did the support troops in the port area, and troops in Riyadh. But not VII Corps. Rumors flew about the elusive uniforms: "They're at the port." "They're shipped." "One pallet arrived by air from Dover in Frankfurt. Meet the plane in Dammam." No DCUs. First it was frustrating. Then it was a joke. "To hell with the desert uniforms," one of the soldiers in 3rd Armored Division said finally. "Tell them we don't want them. We're the troops from Germany. We were trained to beat the best the Russians had. When the Iraqis see us, they'll know that and it will scare the crap out of them." Everyone in VII Corps felt the same way. They didn't get the sand-colored DCUs until almost April; and some of the troops only got issued a set on their way home after the war. Chemical overgarment protective suits covered them up anyway.

  TRAINING

  Everything in Saudi Arabia had to be started from nothing. That included training. There were no training facilities for VII Corps to use, and they had to train. Though the experience of XVIII Corps provided valuable lessons, they still had three months' lead. The enemy, as always, was time and the myriad concurrent activities that distracted commanders and soldiers from preparing for war. Nonetheless, leaders dived into training as an immediate priority.

  Fred Franks had started out with a four-week plan for his units before he sent them into the attack: They would have a week to get individual units assembled, to find everything, and to get to Tactical Assembly Areas, and three weeks for training. He wanted a full three weeks of training in order to adapt European skills to the desert, and to get desert-smart and desert-tough. He also wanted time for mission rehearsals. This plan was not based on any scientific analysis, but on his best professional experience and judgment.

  Though he did not think these plans were unrealistic, he realized he was not a free agent and might have to make some adjustments. Adjustments were OK, but not compromises that would cause his troops to be unprepared.

  In the event, his three-week training goal proved hard to meet--he had to reduce the three weeks to two--and time kept pressing him harder and harder.

  On 23 December, ten da
ys after he arrived in-country, he made this comment in his journal: "How can we get ahead of time? Friction to overcome is enormous. . . . Maybe I need to change my style. Help yourself and do not worry. . . . Need some major muscle movement to make things happen. Not sure at this point we can make it and have three weeks' training. Settling in taking longer than I'd like. Thought seven days was OK, then three weeks to train. Unit integrity not good. Must get that fixed. We'll make another assessment end of this week."

  During a meeting in Riyadh on 27 December, called by General Schwarzkopf and attended by Franks, Gus Pagonis, Gary Luck, and John Yeosock, the CINC announced that he thought they'd be at war in three weeks. After the meeting, Franks wrote in his journal, "What I must do is drive this corps to a new level of effort to get ready to go to war. We are not moving fast enough."

  And on 2 January 1991, he wrote, "Time getting short. How to best prepare the corps. . . . Think we'll be OK if only I can give the troops two weeks." He'd had to adjust his earlier plan by then. "Must shoot. Must get some batting practice. Night moves. CSS on the move"--combat service support, or logistics--"Meet, plan, visit, assess, and make adjustments. Also have to get troops work at night."

  THE 1st Infantry Division Forward command team's running the growing port operations made a major contribution to the training effort. Since many soldiers were forced to remain in port for two to three weeks without their equipment, Franks asked Brigadier General Mullen to establish a training service for commanders and units in port. Mullen set up facilities where unit commanders could do individual preparation. Though these facilities were elementary, leaders immediately began exercises in firing individual weapons, chemical protection, driving in Saudi Arabia, and desert navigation.

  Meanwhile, corps units needed gunnery ranges in the desert where they could refine weapons skills without endangering other units and whatever local populace might be in the area or passing through. An element in VII Corps headquarters was formed to assist unit commanders in acquiring the real estate, and unit commanders took it from there, building stationary targets from scrap lumber or whatever else they could get their hands on.

  Franks gave directions to allow soldiers to fire service ammunition (actual wartime ammunition, something they had never done in Germany). He wanted soldiers--ground and air--to see the full capability of this ammunition, so that they would be familiar with it when the war started. This was both a risk and a trade-off, for wartime ammunition (especially Hellfire missiles) was in short supply. He took the risk.

  In order to practice for the breaching operation, corps engineers (the 588th ENG Battalion from Fort Polk, Louisiana) built an exact replica of the Iraqi defensive system, complete with berms and antitank ditches. It was five kilometers long and even faced the same direction as the actual Iraqi system so as to replicate actual light data. It took two weeks to build at the rate of twenty-five meters an hour. Afterward, the 1st Infantry Division conducted full-up training rehearsals on this system, and the combat elements of the 1st UK Armored Division, with all of their nearly 4,500 vehicles, twice practiced their planned night passage of lines through the Big Red One.

  The 1st UK was placed under tactical control of VII Corps in mid-December. The day before Christmas, Lieutenant General Sir Peter de Billiere came to see Franks at his trailer HQ in a parking lot in the port of Dammam. De Billiere was the senior British military officer in-country, and they had never met before, and it was crucial to talk about the conditions of employment of the British forces.

  It was not the first time Franks would have foreign troops under his command. In Germany in NATO, he had commanded both Canadian and German forces, and he had also played in an exercise under the tactical control of the German II Corps, so he knew what it looked like from the other direction. Franks knew that building mutual trust was vital, and also that the mission assignment needed to be within that unit's capabilities and that he needed to be sensitive to different doctrinal processes for planning and for communicating orders. Logistics is always a challenge, because the official policy is that logistics is a national responsibility, meaning that every country is responsible for supplying its own troops--a totally unworkable policy from a tactical standpoint and one that needs changing. Finally, he was never satisfied that the staffs could work closely enough unless they were totally integrated. Armed with all those thoughts, he met de Billiere.

  From his point of view, they hit it off right from the start. De Billiere was a no-nonsense soldier ungiven to posturing or reminders of the importance of his position. He wanted the best for his British troops and he wanted them to make a meaningful contribution to the success of the mission. It was purely a commander-to-commander meeting, also attended by Major General Rupert Smith, newly appointed to command the British division: just the three of them.

  Their most important conclusions:

  * The British would be employed as a division (in other words, Franks would not break up the division and place the parts under other American control);

  * future U.S.-UK relationships depended on the success of their venture together;

  * de Billiere agreed to make the switch as soon as Franks wanted (Franks said right away, because he wanted them to move out on planning);

  * de Billiere was concerned about the impracticality of the policy that "logistics is a national responsibility"; Franks told him not to worry because it was his intent not to let that get in the way, including in the treatment of each other's casualties;

  * de Billiere did not want to unplug from their national intel too soon, to which Franks was quick to agree, since he thought their products had to be better than what he was getting from his own national system (as it turned out, it was a valuable connection, even though U.S. intel got much better toward mid-January);

  * they agreed to integrate their staffs rather than following the usual liaison cell practice (a new step at the tactical level, even though it was routinely done at strategic levels of command);

  * Franks agreed to be sensitive to the British need for training and for forming the division, since it was happening on the fly, just as with VII Corps;

  * they agreed on tight OPSEC, since they did not want anyone to know that the British were moving from the coast inland and joining VII Corps (to this day there are few official pictures or films of the U.S. VII Corps and the UK training and fighting together, due to rigid OPSEC discipline).

  Their meeting lasted about forty-five minutes to an hour. They shook hands as soldier to soldier, in a mutual understanding that what they had agreed to verbally was the way it would be. No contracts, no treaties, no paper exchanged, just two soldiers trusting each other. Franks was proud of the corps's service with the British and of their mutual respect and trust. It all started that day.

  After de Billiere left, Franks had a session with Rupert Smith and selected members of his staff, in order to get to know their capabilities and to give Smith some initial planning guidance.

  Rupert Smith was bright, intense, focused, and very much at ease with himself, and Franks could see they would get along well. Although he had come from a Special Forces, light-infantry background, he was not intimidated in the least with commanding an armored division, and was also quite willing to listen and to give his subordinate commanders wide latitude in their methods for mission accomplishment. He wanted to get to work immediately. He took notes, asked questions, clarified guidance when Franks was not clear, and was candid in expressing his views but seemed quite willing and comfortable to take orders from an American. Franks was glad to have them on the team.

  On 19 January, Franks visited them. At their assembly area along the east coast, the British had staked out a live-fire maneuver area where the downrange impact area for direct-fire systems was out over the water. There they could maneuver a brigade and conduct live fire with their tanks, artillery, aviation, as well as practice minefield clearing and berm breaching. During his visit, in the course of an attack exercise by 7 Brigade, commande
d by then-Brigadier Patrick Cordingly, Franks rode a Challenger tank and fired a few rounds. They were training hard and aggressively. Franks liked what he saw and told Major General Rupert Smith so.

  Smith had his hands full. The British were forming a division by assembling the most modern forces from all over their army. Only their 7 Brigade was a set unit. Smith was putting the others together as they flowed into theater. He had the same team-building and training challenge as Franks himself, and Franks understood. With that in mind, he determined to leave Smith and his division at this training area and close to their logistics base as long as possible. They could accomplish twice as much in the same period of time as they could when they picked up and moved to the west to join VII Corps's Tactical Assembly Area.

  MEANWHILE, units were crafting a variety of innovative training techniques. For example, they constantly practiced refuel on the move. They set up fuel trucks and long hoses, quick-disconnect nozzles, and the fastest pumps they could get and made an arrangement something quite like a service station crossed with an auto-racing pit stop. The tanks and other vehicles drove to the hose ends laid out on the desert floor at a spacing that could accommodate whatever size unit they wanted to refuel (within reason--usually determined by the terrain and the availability of refueling material). The drill was to anticipate when they needed fuel, preposition the fuel trucks at a spot, direct the tankers to it, get them there and through it as fast as possible, then get the unit back into its tactical organization . . . all the while maintaining some semblance of organizational integrity. It took lots of practice to get it right.