Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

by Tom Clancy

  Shortly after the G-2 update, Stan reported that at this point our line of advance put the 2nd ACR on Phase Line Grape; both 1st AD and 3rd AD were on Melon; 1st INF was on Apple (their Colorado), with twenty-four lanes completed; and 1st CAV was conducting another feint into Iraq. Total prisoners reported were 1,000 in 1st INF, over 300 in 2nd ACR, over 100 in 3rd AD, and 50 in 1st CAV. (Throughout the course of the war, prisoner totals were very inaccurate. Rather than tie down combat formations to process prisoners, units would disarm the Iraqis, give them food and water, keep the officers, and point the rest south. Some estimates placed our prisoner totals at almost double the official figures.)

  FROM the first moment of my involvement in Desert Shield, and all during Desert Storm, I had been in frequent communication with John Yeosock. John and I had agreed that I would call him as often as possible during the ground war to keep him informed. It was especially important for me to try to talk to him around 1800 so that he would have the latest when he went to General Schwarzkopf's regular 1900 evening briefings.

  I called John Yeosock that evening to report what I was doing and why--a simple conversation between two cavalrymen who understood what it took to maneuver VII Corps. I told John that in my judgment the immediate situation and complexity of what we had to do at night was not worth the risk of continuing the attack. Just as he had done a few hours before, he told me he agreed with what I was doing and trusted my judgment.

  We kept our higher headquarters informed in other ways, as well. As a matter of routine, and of Third Army rule, just as we had done throughout Desert Shield, at midnight, every twenty-four hours during the war my main CP sent a written "Commander's SITREP (Combat)" to Third Army. It was the official report of what had gone on in VII Corps for the previous twenty-four hours and a forecast of what we would be doing for the next twenty-four. An info copy also went to CENTCOM. As it happened, this was not well timed, as the CINC got his daily briefing at 1900 and an update the first thing in the morning.

  Before the attack, I had been in the habit of writing the commander's evaluation portion of the SITREP--or at least going over it. (These were often brutally candid: I complained about poor intel and about logistics shortages--lack of spare parts, medical supplies, and transportation. This at times got the CENTCOM staff in hot water, thus not making me a popular guy with some of them.) But during the war I stopped this practice, relying on John Landry and Stan to listen to me and to capture the essence of what was going on in the corps. Besides, I was talking directly to John Yeosock so much that he was getting commander's evaluations directly from me. Though I wasn't aware of this at the time, after the war I found out that John Yeosock had had his staff pay close attention to these reports, and had often had them follow up on the key items that he would need for the CINC's regular 1900 briefings. But I have no idea of the effect of all this at CENTCOM.

  All commanders make a choice about what to pay attention to and what to ignore. There was no lack of information at Third Army about what was happening in VII Corps. They got it by way of direct calls from me to Yeosock; direct calls from the Third Army liaison, Colonel Dick Rock, to Third Army HQ; direct calls from Stan Cherrie, John Landry, Colonel Mike Hawk, and others to Brigadier General Steve Arnold and others in Riyadh and Third Army TAC CP in King Khalid Military City; periodic situation reports from staff officers to Third Army; and finally, from the written summary submitted as of midnight each day. (As a practical matter, this report was prepared much earlier than that, so by the time it went in, much of the friendly information was less than current, especially as the action picked up tempo. That meant that the information reported at the CINC's morning briefing could be as much as twelve hours old if the CENTCOM staff did not update their reports.)

  2300 VII CORPS TAC CP SAUDI ARABIA

  That evening, I continued to monitor reports of corps activity coming into the CP over the radio. Per my orders to Don and his assessment of his situation, 2nd ACR kept up attacks and combat activities all night. In other words, they did not stop at sundown, get out their sleeping bags, and get eight or ten hours of sleep. They continued movement to adjust unit formations, get better force protection, and also put out reconnaissance. They also fired artillery and pushed aviation forward, and some units even advanced forward if the local commander thought it would improve his posture for his operations the next day. Many of the leaders and the troops were up all night. Few would get more than three or four hours of sleep . . . and that was "combat" sleep, without tents or cots.

  By the close of the first day, the 1st Infantry Division breach was completed to twenty kilometers, and the 1st (UK) Armored was flowing toward the passage points to continue to push the attack. The 2nd ACR had advanced well forward toward Phase Line Smash, and the 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions were continuing to maneuver into attack formation and getting their vehicles through the berm choke points. First AD had combat actions on the west of the corps sector.

  They also had some combat actions. Later that night, at 0200, in order to keep the Iraqis off balance, and to keep them from being set when the regiment attacked at first light, they were planning to attack the eastern half of their Objective Merrill, about sixty kilometers into Iraq, with the AH-64 battalion from 1st AD that I had placed under Don's operational control.

  Meanwhile, they reported their lead aircraft scouts were at Phase Line Smash--or at the 78 Easting27 longitude line--where it was vital to me to have immediate intelligence because of the proximity of the RGFC. At 2200, they reported their 2nd Squadron had taken 385 prisoners. At 2359, an Iraqi infantry battalion surrendered to their 2nd Squadron in Objective Merrill, and soon after that, they reported that they were inundated with prisoners all across their area. Later, after I went to get some rest at 0324, the aviation battalion reported destroying a building with antennas, numerous bunkers, a BMP, and six trucks; one AH-64 was hit by ground fire.

  The rest of the corps was not idle that night. Other combat activities were going on:

  * In 1st AD, the lead unit, 1-1 Cavalry, had pushed sixty kilometers into Iraq, well forward of the rest of the division. Elsewhere in the division, three soldiers were wounded when a vehicle struck a mine just over the border. Meanwhile, refueling operations and movement forward of the division into their division wedge would continue until after 0200 on the twenty-fifth. The division had taken prisoners, but by now the count was not accurate.

  * Third AD also continued moving units forward over the border and refueling operations well into the night. Their lead unit, 4-7 Cavalry, had reported engaging twenty-nine tanks with close air support and later capturing more prisoners. Other prisoners, bypassed by 2nd ACR, also were captured by division units.

  * As 1st INF continued to mark lanes, their aviation forward also conducted a screen of their ground elements so as to preempt any Iraqi artillery from firing on forces refueling for tomorrow's operation.

  * The British reported closing into an area just south of the breach ready to begin passage of lines.

  * Finally, I learned we had used forty-four close-air-support strikes today.

  At midnight the commander's SITREP went in from our main CP. In it no casualties were reported (in fact, we had seven--two in 2nd ACR, two in 1st INF, and three in 1st AD). The report described major units of the corps as involved in security and reconnaissance operations that night and positioned to continue the attack on 25 February.

  As for the Iraqis, we assessed that in their VII Corps there was little chemical capability. They could continue local counterattacks, but use of mobile reserves was limited to local repositioning. The report went on to say: "Indications of minefields and defensive positions in Tawalkana Division sector indicate intent to defend in place. Alpha Brigade, Hammurabi Division, has moved out of revetments and appears to be conducting local maneuver training. . . ."

  This report--like most of those from our main CP throughout the war--was right on the mark with respect to possible enemy courses of action and our ow
n future plans. Although they were mostly out of direct radio contact, the troops there tracked the battle as well as they could. Because they were out of direct radio contact, there were some exceptions to the overall accuracy of these reports: Normally, reports of our own actions tended to understate what was going on--as, for instance, the destruction of Iraqi units and the numbers of Iraqi prisoners and KIA. Reports of our own casualties also lagged considerably.

  In sum, I was pleased with the corps that day. Our agility in adjusting to the fifteen-hour advance in attack had been superb. Second ACR and lead elements of 1st AD were now sixty kilometers deep into Iraq and continuing actions. First INF had completed twenty-four lanes. Through these the 2,500 tracked vehicles and 5,000 wheeled vehicles of the British would move, followed by the 400 logistics vehicles (and the fuel that would allow the enveloping divisions to attack the RGFC without stopping) and the over 1,000 vehicles of the two-corps artillery brigades that would join the enveloping divisions. We were in the posture I wanted.

  LATER that night, I learned from Major Bernie Dunn, our Arabic-speaking liaison officer with the Egyptians, that the JFC-N attack on our east had not yet gone forward of the border. This information further reinforced my urgency to get the British out to the east before I got my enveloping forces logistics elements too far forward and vulnerable to an Iraqi move from that direction.

  My decision not to continue with most of our offensive operations that night was a gamble. I knew that, yet I was convinced the risk was worth taking. To gain a massed three-division fist against the RGFC more than offset any advantage they might gain from a warning of our attack that gave them time to prepare. Meanwhile, they showed few signs of reacting, and Iraqi artillery fire was by now almost nonexistent--or quickly silenced by counterfire.

  STILL later that night, I gave some more thought to the go-early order and to whether, because of that, the intent of my higher HQ had changed.

  My conclusion: Everything I'd learned today from higher headquarters told me we were operating only with the intent of moving the attack up fifteen hours, nothing more.

  John Landry was to tell me the next day that he was surprised by my decision because I had been so adamant about "no pauses" and would not even let the word be used.

  He was right, I didn't want pauses. What I meant was I didn't want them in front of our main objective, the RGFC (as Burnside had paused before Fredericksburg in December 1862, during the Civil War, when he'd waited for bridging for two weeks while Lee built his defenses). I would not permit planned pauses because they might not be needed and would break the natural momentum of an attack once it got rolling. On the other hand, I was prepared to accept battle-event-caused pauses in order to keep the corps balanced and thus use them to adjust tempo to gain mass and continued momentum with our troops reasonably fresh and the corps supplied when we hit the RGFC.

  I did not agonize that night over my decision not to continue, much less second-guess myself. I was looking ahead to our objective. As we approached the RGFC, I thought about the moves and countermoves available to us and to them. I wanted them fixed and out of options while we still had some left. As I had been doing all along whenever I could, I stared at the map, making it come alive in my head. We are here, they are there. What do I want it to look like when we are successful? How do I get us from this state to that state at least cost?

  I war-gamed in my head, involved some others, thought out loud with Stan. That not only helped me think my way through the next few days, it also got Stan inside my head, where he needed to be.

  The bottom line that night was that I thought the RGFC would stay in a posture that would make FRAGPLAN 7 the best scheme of attack. I needed one more look to confirm it the next day. The timing depended on our being able to go from our current formation alignment to our attack alignment in less time than the Iraqis could react. I also could not wait too long or the corps would not be able to execute. My key "reads" the next day would be our posture and the Iraqis'. Then I would decide.

  COMMANDERS of large campaigns and of large land forces don't think in chronological terms. They think in terms of the mission against a particular enemy, the organization of their forces on the ground, the time it takes to get their forces in a posture to accomplish their mission on that terrain and at the least cost to their own side. Sometimes they will think in terms of hours to accomplish all this, sometimes in terms of days. Sometimes the mission will take hours, sometimes it will take days.

  Thus, when we examine what happened in a campaign such as Desert Storm on Day 1 (24 February), on Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4, rather than at the actual phases of the battle as they developed (and which didn't follow the rhythms of day and night), we miss the context within which a senior tactical commander views the battle and uses time.

  In other words, during Desert Storm, I did not think in terms of discrete days. On the first day, on the twenty-fourth, when we were ordered to attack early, I was thinking in the present: we had lots to do to pull that off. But I also was thinking two days in advance. I knew that decisions I would make that first day would influence the posture the corps could get into on the third day, the twenty-sixth.

  The third day was the key day, for in my judgment, that was when we would attack the Republican Guards. I would make the decision about how to attack them on the second day, and the first day's decisions would determine the range of alternatives available to me then. So in Desert Storm (other situations would have required different kinds of thinking), I thought in continuous periods of 12, 24, 48, and 72 hours, regardless of days. I also was aware that in large tactical organizations in large land battles, you cannot make many decisions over short time spans that cause major maneuvers. That is why you forecast key decision points and make decisions that stick. For that reason, my intent was to issue orders to my subordinate commanders that would last at least twelve hours before I had to change those instructions. In the event that I had to issue instructions that would cause a major rearrangement of the corps within our overall basic plan, I needed to give them as much as twenty-four hours. A total plans change, done from a cold start without warning--such as, for instance, an attack to Baghdad--might have taken as much as seventy-two hours from receipt to execution.

  ABOUT midnight, I told Toby to wake me for anything significant, then left the enclosed area and went to get some rest. Stan and most of the TAC team were still at it when I left.

  At 0500 on the twenty-fifth, I was awake and back at it. A quick paper cup of coffee, a few moments to strap on my leg and the other boot, shoulder holster, and Kevlar, then a short walk over to the TAC CP. The charcoal-lined chemical protective overgarment we all wore felt good in the early-morning cold. Stan Cherrie and the TAC team were already in there, and radios were already alive with reports.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Turn East

  0600 VII CORPS TAC CP SAUDI ARABIA 25 FEBRUARY 1991

  DURING the very brief--less than twenty-minute--morning update, I was interested in answers to the following questions: What was our situation? The enemy's situation? Where were we vulnerable? Where was the enemy vulnerable? What was happening on the flanks? Had higher HQ issued any changes? Did we need to make any adjustments to exploit an enemy vulnerability or to protect one of our own? Did anyone have any recommendations? Wherever I went, I looked for answers, for these formed the basis of my continuing running estimate.

  I hadn't been away from the map long; things hadn't changed a lot.

  G-2 went quickly over the enemy situation, then Stan reviewed the battle activities since midnight. Our units reported more prisoners. There were reports from 2nd ACR, as it approached Phase Line Smash, of battalion-sized units and heavy Iraqi equipment, such as tanks, which were early indicators that we could expect increased enemy actions the closer we got to the RGFC. As for the actual RGFC divisions, they did not appear to be going anywhere. They were still in position, attempting to set a defense. The earlier report that a brigade of the Hammurabi was
moving out indicated that they might even be trying some kind of maneuver or repositioning north or west. As we had expected, they were not retreating. At this point, I did not know how much they knew about us. By now they were probably aware of a force out to the west, but I did not think they realized our size and capabilities. The early indicators showed some attempt at reorientation, but at this point it seemed to me they still believed the main attack was coming north up the Wadi.

  I had no information otherwise from my own VII Corps sources or from Third Army. Because the Iraqi defense was hasty and not well coordinated, they were vulnerable to a massed fist attack. Good.

  We had not gotten any change in orders from Third Army.

  While I received this short briefing, the radios in the TAC continued to come alive with short-burst transmissions, as corps units reported moves, locations, and enemy contacts, and gave situation reports. Each staff section was busy on the phone getting longer messages or reports, and our NCOs were back and forth in both G-2 and G-3, posting the latest friendly and enemy situations on the map. Troops were already beginning to break the TAC down, getting ready to move as soon as I left. The breakdown of the TAC normally took less than an hour if you had had a lot of practice, and by now these soldiers had had a lot of practice.