Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

by Tom Clancy

  Throughout all this, I was both thinking and listening--redoing my mental map of enemy and friendly units based on the briefing, looking forward to key decisions I needed to make that day in order to set corps action in motion to accomplish objectives the next day. First, I did not want to give the Iraqis any more time to set a defense. Second, this was the day to commit to our attack formation. FRAGPLAN 728 still looked like the best choice, though questions remained about 1st CAV, which was still being held by General Schwarzkopf in CENTCOM reserve.

  I was also thinking of where I needed to go that morning to get information (or to confirm what I already had), to get a feel for the battles and their tempo, and reinforce what I wanted done face-to-face with the commanders.

  Right now, I was getting maybe 20 percent of my input from my staff at the CP; 40 to 50 percent from what I was seeing and hearing myself, and from my commanders as I met them; and the rest came from my own professional knowledge, training, education, and combat experience.

  As we saw in an earlier chapter (but it bears repeating now), most often you decide to decide. You ask yourself the question: Do I need to intervene and make an adjustment, or do I let the battle continue as it is? Most often a senior commander does not need to decide; he can leave things to subordinates rather than tinker at the margin. Senior tactical commanders really get to make only a few key decisions. It is better for them to focus their energies there, and trust their subordinates, who are in a better position to make their own decisions. Knowing the difference is the art of command. So is determining the tempo of the attack to keep your enemy off balance, and knowing when to be bold--when to take risks and gamble--and when not to.

  I would take all those elements into consideration that day as I selected the attack formation to destroy the RGFC. I would also have to find a third division for the attack . . . or else do without and use the 2nd ACR. Earlier, I had told Don Holder to be prepared to go all the way to Objective Denver if the opportunity presented itself. (Denver was on Highway 8, just south of the Iraq-Kuwait border.) By looking at our unit locations on the map and the enemy situation, and by doing some quick mental time/distance calculations, I could sense the time for that decision getting close.

  That meant I had to get on the move, and I needed to talk to my commanders face-to-face.

  But I was going nowhere right now. High winds and blowing sand, which reduced visibility to a few hundred meters, had grounded us. I was now a prisoner of the CP and tied to the comms.

  MEANWHILE, I got reports from our flanks.

  Word from our eastern flank was that the Egyptian attack was slow in getting under way. Earlier, that might have bothered me, but not now, because so far the Iraqis had been unable to react. More important, I would have the British out there shortly.

  That was important, because until the British could attack out of the breach to the east, Iraqi forces now opposite the Egyptians could be ordered to back out in order to thicken the RGFC defense, or even retreat across our sector along the blacktop road that ran roughly northwest on our Phase Line Smash to al-Busayyah. If they did either, they would threaten the steady stream of fuel tankers moving north from Nelligen to the 1st and 3rd ADs. If any of those Iraqi units--even by accident--ran into one of our convoys on the way to refuel the enveloping units, it would be a disaster from which we could not recover. Leaving logistics that vulnerable was a gamble I was not prepared to take.

  On our western flank, 1st AD 1/1 Cavalry was maintaining physical contact with XVIII Corps. Internal flank contacts were also good. In the desert, where there were no navigation features to act as guide points, we had to pay close attention to flank contacts. For navigation, units only had GPS, and at those times of the day when there were no satellites, most of them had to use old-fashioned dead reckoning. As a result, the risk of units running into, or else crossing in front of, one another was high throughout the war. When you have tank cannons that fire projectiles that are lethal past 3,000 meters at a mile a second, and when there are no natural terrain features to stop those projectiles, commanders at all levels pay close attention to flank contact.

  At that point, I used the delay to talk to John Yeosock. Because John's liaison in my TAC CP, Colonel Dick Rock, had been keeping Third Army well informed of our locations and actions, John had a pretty good picture of our situation (Dick Rock was excellent at giving this information as he knew it; his challenge was that he often was not completely up-to-date, either because the TAC was moving or because he was not with me and could not hear my discussions with commanders). I explained to John what I anticipated doing today, and he agreed with it.

  It was after that, though, that John dropped some surprising news on me: the CINC was concerned that we were not moving fast enough. For a moment, that hit me hard. It takes a lot of wind out of your sails when your theater commander seems disappointed in your progress. As a subordinate, you do not want to get on the bad side of your boss, so it was a blow when I learned that my boss's boss was not happy about our progress.

  My first thought was defensive: We had done well even to have gotten to where we were this morning, given the fifteen-hour advance start, I said to John; you know what we have been doing and why. And he agreed: he was pleased with our progress and convinced that, as the commander on the ground, I had the best feel of what to do. And, in fact, he gave me no new orders, nor was there any change of mission.

  When John told me that in fact he thought we were doing fine, I decided not to give the CINC's concerns much more thought (at the time). It looks like they don't have a good picture of the corps situation in Riyadh, I told myself, and when they do, this will blow over. It had just been a quick, passing comment. I chalked the whole thing up to the usual emotion of battle.

  Certainly, nothing John had told me led me to change my mind about what I needed to do, and in fact, in the press of commanding and maneuvering the corps, I soon forgot all about it (and the episode did not get noted in either my own journal or in Toby Martinez's log). Changes of orders I understood; I would have executed them. But concerns were not orders. There were concerns all over the place. If commanders want to do something about them, they give orders to their subordinates, but neither the CINC nor John Yeosock had told me to do anything different.

  After the war, I was to find out that John had been shielding me from an extraordinary emotional outburst from General Schwarzkopf during his morning update. He had--I have gathered from later reports--hit the ceiling. He had expected a VII Corps cavalry charge to the Republican Guards, and when he didn't get it, he blew up into one of his well-publicized rages. Since John Yeosock had much more experience with large armored maneuvers than Schwarzkopf, he knew that the CINC's expectations were illusory. And so he did what many commanders do--he absorbed the blow and shielded his subordinates. He toned down the CINC's blowup to "concerns" when we talked that morning. Yeosock did that a lot both before and during the war for both VII and XVIII Corps.

  It is also important to note that Third Army HQ in Riyadh was three miles away from the CINC's underground war room. Most communications between Yeosock and Schwarzkopf were by phone.

  Later commentators--including General Schwarzkopf--have claimed that from virtually the first moments of the G-Day attack, the U.S. Army should have been in "pursuit mode" rather than in what we call "movement to contact." More bluntly: they have accused VII Corps of failing to go into pursuit when we should have. However, you go into pursuit when your enemy is in retreat or fleeing. Though that's what Iraqi units elsewhere were doing, that was not the case with the RGFC. They were setting up a defense. Even if the CINC had told us to go into pursuit (which he did not do), it would have been a mistake. His concern should have been to isolate and cut off the RGFC, mostly by air, so that VII Corps and XVIII Corps could destroy them. Instead, he flew into a rage about how fast we were going, based on blue lines on a map in Riyadh that probably were not even accurately posted.

  0725 VII CORPS TAC CP

&
nbsp; Because we were co-located with 3rd AD (which was still corps reserve at that point), Butch Funk took the opportunity to come see me.

  At that time, Butch, real pro that he is, was doing what any good reserve commander would do. He was trying to anticipate the possible commitment of his unit so he could make plans--and maybe even rehearse them. When he came into the CP at 0725, I had two things on my mind: I wanted to keep him moving toward the RGFC, but I also wanted him to continue protecting our right flank from stray Iraqi units or vehicles until the British got out there in force. Butch "rogered" that, then gave me a quick update: he was maneuvering his division from a column of brigades to two brigades up and one back. I acknowledged it, and told him my intent was to position my TAC CP with, or close, to his own, in the center sector.

  It was a good, relaxed moment for both of us, and we were able to enjoy a paper cup of black coffee together from our coffeepot in the CP. The operation was going well. Because he and I saw eye to eye on the maneuver, we did not require a whole lot of communication. I was fortunate in all of my commanders--it worked that way with all of them.

  After my talk with Butch, I had a few minutes to myself (for the time being, the weather made it impossible to go anywhere). It was a welcome respite, and it gave me the opportunity to go over again what it is we were doing and why. Before I went out to visit commanders, I wanted to take a hard look at our primary mission and our tactics. I wanted to be as certain as I possibly could that what we were about to do would destroy the RGFC, and I wanted to review for myself that my intent and orders to the corps were still the right ones. These thoughts had been on my mind constantly, and they remained on my mind until the battles with the Iraqis ended. I looked at them from every possible angle, again and again:

  I had planned a rolling attack through Objective Collins into the flank and rear of the RGFC. We were not in pursuit of a retreating enemy, but preparing to attack a hastily defending enemy armored force.

  I had not considered any maneuver except to aim VII Corps directly at that force. That was our mission: to destroy the RGFC, not surround them. The only way to do that, in my judgment, was to hit them in such a way that they could not contend with us, and to keep hammering them until they quit or we had destroyed them. I remembered again what George Patton III had said in Vietnam, in the Blackhorse: "Find the bastards, then pile on." After we had found them and fixed them, I wanted to maneuver VII Corps into a position from which we could not only attack them, but pile on.

  In all of our briefings, it had been made clear that if the RGFC defended from where they were, the theater plan was for CENTAF--the Air Force--to isolate them. In Colin Powell's words, they were the ones who would "cut them off." We were the force that would "kill them."

  After I thought about the mission, I thought again about the time it would take. From the first, I had thought the campaign would last eight days: two days to get to the RGFC, four days to destroy them, and two days to consolidate what we had done. Those first two days were not only a function of the Iraqi army, but of time/distance, the coherence of our formations, and the freshness of our troops for the anticipated fight. From our line of departure to Collins, our way point just past Phase Line Smash, it was about 150 kilometers. If I decided on FRAGPLAN 7, I wanted a three-division moving fist of reasonably fresh troops at Collins, with enough fuel to sustain the attack until the RGFC was destroyed.

  Third Army had its own campaign timing figured out and it was well known to CENTCOM and to us. Third Army's planning had us taking seventy-four hours after H-Hour (i.e., BMNT on 24 February) to reach the RGFC. Our timing was in harmony with theirs.

  And then there was the issue of "operational pauses." I wanted to go over that again as well.

  As we saw earlier, my staff had estimated that if the corps moved continually to Objective Collins, we would need to make a preplanned halt so that our units could replenish themselves before they resumed the attack, and they were correct. The physical endurance limitations of soldiers and the need to fuel our vehicles meant that we could not move constantly for forty-eight hours, and then shift right into a major attack that might go on for up to four days.

  While Cal Waller was acting Third Army commander, I had briefed him in a four- to six-hour "rock drill" at the VII Corps CP. All my senior commanders had been present, and they had moved their own markers around on the flat 1:100 000 map board. During the drill, Waller had suggested needing a twenty-four-hour operational pause at Collins as we shifted from a north-south to an east-west attack. But I did not want to stop at Collins, directly in front of the RGFC--I wanted a rolling attack right into them: "no pauses." Therefore, I adjusted the tempo during the first two days to meet that goal.

  To get in the right attack formation without stopping meant a number of adjustments as we approached Smash. It also meant finding a third division for the fist. Today I would pick the third division or decide to use the 2nd ACR. As for the tempo adjustments, I had already begun making them the night before, and others would be made by my subordinate commanders as they maneuvered their units. For example, Don Holder was maneuvering the 2nd ACR at a tempo that would keep him about thirty minutes ahead of the divisions, and Butch Funk and Ron Griffith would do the same. Rupert Smith would move his division rapidly through the breach, then attack aggressively to the east. If I thought they needed to change their tempo to keep the corps physically balanced for our attack, I would tell them.

  When Butch left the TAC, the weather had cleared enough for me to fly forward. By now I was getting antsy about remaining too long at the CP. I hated to listen to the battle in the CP. I did not belong there. The inputs I needed to make decisions were not all there. They were forward.

  RENDEZVOUS WITH MAJOR GENERAL GRIFFITH SOMEWHERE IN IRAQ ABOUT 0830

  Though the wind had slowed down enough to fly, the sky was overcast and the temperature was fifty degrees.

  First, I went forward to meet Ron Griffith.

  I spent the twenty minutes of flight time staring at the map. It was coming together. The time and distance factors, as well as the position of VII Corps's units resulting from last night, gave me the mental picture I needed. If the RGFC stayed fixed, we were in an excellent position to turn ninety degrees east with our main attack--FRAGPLAN 7.

  With the intelligence indicating that the RGFC was staying in position--or perhaps beginning a movement that might denote an offensive maneuver--I felt it more important than ever for Ron to move 1st AD fast to Objective Purple, and achieve a positional advantage on the northwest flank of the RGFC in case they came toward us. With that done, I wanted him to be in the northern part of Objective Collins by midmorning the next day. By this time, I felt sure enough of the RGFC indicators that I could now give that order to Ron. Even though I could still maneuver 1st AD in a different direction if intelligence on the RGFC changed during the day, this order would essentially start us into the ninety-degree turn east. However, since the conditions for the FRAGPLAN 7 decision were still not completely certain, for the rest of the day I looked for information that either would confirm my hypothesis or cause me to decide to do something else.

  Either way, I knew I would make the go/no-go decision later in the day.

  Ron and I met somewhere in the east of his sector, about fifty kilometers into Iraq. It was flat, empty desert, with no vegetation. Some of his units were visible moving forward.

  Ron had landed his helo and was in radio contact with the division. His aviators had rigged up a portable generator so that they could set up quickly to power the radios. With him in his helo were his G-2, Lieutenant Colonel Keith Alexander; his G-3, Lieutenant Colonel Tommie Straus; and his aide. It was a good setup that allowed Ron both to move around the division and be present up front. While he was moving around, his ADC, Brigadier General Jay Hendrix, stayed on the ground at his TAC CP, while his chief of staff, Colonel Darryl Charlton, ran his main CP. Brigadier General Jarrett Robertson, ADC for support, moved around the division sector, ma
king sure he and the DISCOM29 commander, Colonel Verne Metzger, were on top of the division's considerable logistics challenges.

  I did not care how the commanders arranged things as long as they were personally up front and knew what was going on and I could find them. I always tried to go to them rather than have them come back to me.

  Ron was clearly on top of the situation and feeling good about his operation--I could see it on his face and hear it in his tone of voice. That was the way I liked to find my commanders, and it was also the way I felt about the entire corps just then. Up to now, they'd been facing parts of a brigade (and other units in the area, Ron estimated) of the Iraqi 26th Division in depth, but they'd had no problem defeating them (they had many prisoners).

  In fact, he reported, their main problem so far wasn't the Iraqi army, but the Iraqi terrain in the forward parts of their sector (that is, for the first fifty kilometers or so after their line of departure). They had encountered boulder fields, sabquas (soft sand), and blowing sand on the previous day, which had made it difficult to maintain unit integrity and had caused them to consume more fuel than they had anticipated. Fuel vehicles had gotten stuck in the sand, and some rocky terrain had proved more difficult to get through in coherent formations than we had thought. (My staff had predicted--quite accurately--that the going would be tough early on in 1st AD sector. I had largely ignored this estimate!) As it happened, CENTCOM/ARCENT had earlier read this terrain as impassable for armored formations. The Iraqis had read it the same way. Thus, not only did the Iraqis not occupy it, they thought it would help their defense refuse the left flank.