Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

by Tom Clancy

  While I was there, I got a flash report from the 2nd ACR: at 1240, they reported that they'd found the security area of the Tawalkana Division, and identified the unit as the 50th Brigade of the 12th AD.

  The security area is a zone of about fifteen to twenty kilometers (sometimes less) in front of a main defense, and is intended to deceive the attacker as to the location of the main defense and to break up the momentum of the attacking force by causing them to fight, deploy, and thus expose their intentions early.

  Finding the RGFC security area was a big deal for me, for it indicated that our main attack was beginning. Once that zone had been found, I wanted the CAV to attack through it and into the main defense, while I simultaneously maneuvered the corps into a fist and kept them concealed from the RGFC as long as we could.

  Other reports from the 2nd ACR indicated that their Troop I had destroyed twelve Iraqi personnel carriers, and soon after, 2nd ACR reported another contact and combat with an Iraqi mechanized battalion reinforced by tanks. All this was happening around our Phase Line Smash.

  My orders to 2nd ACR were to press on to develop the situation, but not to become decisively engaged. I wanted the regiment to collapse that security zone and find where the main defense was. I did not want them stuck in a situation they could not handle while I was maneuvering the heavy fist of the corps against the Iraqis' main defense area.

  But as of now, the timing seemed about right to me. The 2nd ACR had the combat power to continue east through the Iraqi security zone, while I turned the rest of the corps ninety degrees to take up the fight they were now beginning to develop for us.

  By now it was getting close to 1400, time to go forward and get a firsthand, face-to-face assessment from Don Holder.

  We lifted off from near the 1st INF CP and flew the seventy or eighty kilometers forward to link up with Don Holder. This flight gave me a chance to look over the 1st INF's accomplishments, then to fly over the 3rd AD and the empty stretch between the 3rd AD and the 2nd ACR.

  What I saw were signs of Iraqi defenses, now destroyed. Some destroyed Iraqi equipment was also visible. Bunkers and trenches were everywhere, either abandoned or destroyed by 1st INF vehicles running over them. Though I had seen no prisoners while I was on the ground, Tom had told me there were so many they had almost overwhelmed their capacity to move them to the rear. (This information gave me some concern, for the breach lanes needed to be running south to north. We didn't need EPWs moving south and clogging lanes.)

  Moving south to north, meanwhile, was a steady stream of equipment: the British. The whole scene was just as Tom and Rupert had described it.

  We doubled back and flew over the incredibly massive 3rd AD formation that was moving forward--vehicles as far as I could see, about 10,000 of them, counting corps support units. And this was only one of the four divisions! By this time, they were stretched from south of the border forward by sixty to eighty kilometers. Though I wasn't aware of it at the time, the 3rd AD was having some combat actions of its own as we passed over, and taking prisoners. The area they covered was simply too big for me to see everything they were doing in a quick overflight.

  After we passed their lead units, flying very low and fast, there was nothing but sand until we reached the 2nd ACR. It was a strange feeling, flying over this now mostly empty "no-man's-land" through which the 2nd ACR had attacked earlier. Though there were bypassed Iraqi units in this area, plus who knew what else, I was too focused on the 2nd ACR to pay too much attention to what lay beneath us.

  1530 2ND ACR MAIN CP

  Right now I needed to look at the current situation in front of the 2nd ACR before confirming the attack formation for the corps. I also needed to decide whether to push the 2nd ACR straight to Objective Denver or to pass the 1st INF through and put 2nd ACR in corps reserve. We landed at the regimental TAC CP, where there were three M577s and a scattering of other vehicles under some canvas extensions. Inside the CP, I immediately sensed that the regiment was engaged with the Iraqis. Radios were alive with almost constant battle reports. Maps were being posted and adjusted with new information. Small huddles were taking place as officers exchanged battle information.

  I could tell from Don Holder's voice and his eyes that he was in a fight. I also sensed he had it firmly under control and needed no additional help from corps assets at this point. He quickly confirmed the earlier report that the regiment had found the RGFC security zone. His third squadron, he added, had been engaging tanks, APCs, and MTLBs around the regiment's Objective May, close to Phase Line Smash.

  Here is the essence of the rest of Don's update:

  At 1245, Troop P (aviation) reported numerous enemy contacts just west of Phase Line Smash, and aviation was continuing to push east across Smash. Troops I and K (of 3rd Squadron, on the south of the regiment's northeast advance) engaged an Iraqi mechanized infantry battalion reinforced with tanks about five kilometers west of that sighting and destroyed thirteen BTR60s (wheeled infantry carriers), four T-55s, one BMP, and captured a lieutenant colonel.

  At about 1321, Troop L (of 3rd Squadron) crossed Phase Line Smash.

  At 1343, 4/2 (aviation squadron) reported Iraqi armor almost twenty kilometers east of Phase Line Smash but out of 4/2's range. At 1400, Troop G (of 2nd Squadron, on the north of the regiment's advance) reported that they had attacked and destroyed an Iraqi infantry company of MTLBs. This meant that Don had not only both his leading squadrons engaged with Iraqi defending units, but reports that his aviation, out front by twenty kilometers, had spotted additional Iraqi tanks. When close air support was available, the regiment was employing it. That day it would use twenty-four close-air-support strikes against the targets being located by the ground and aviation units. Don also had the 210th Artillery Brigade from VII Corps artillery, and a battalion of Apaches out of 1st AD that I had put under his operational control. He was using them all now, except for the Apaches. Those he was saving for that night, because their night-fighting capabilities were much better than those of the Cobras in his aviation squadron. These he used during the day.

  At this point, we were at the 29 grid line (29 Easting) and these fights were going on at the 41 grid line (41 Easting), twelve kilometers away.

  The desert was featureless, just as it had been at the spots where I had met Tom Rhame and Ron Griffith. There were small twenty- to fifty-foot rises and drops to which the small-unit commanders had to pay attention, but almost no vegetation. Despite the intermittent rain, where armored vehicles passed, sandy dust still got churned up quickly. Though the weather now was mostly calm, the cloud cover indicated that the weather would soon turn bad.

  Don's conclusion was exactly the same as mine: he had found the RGFC--the Tawalkana--defending and moving units into position, with a hastily formed security force of other units to its west. From all these battle events, the regiment's intelligence assessment and Don's judgment was that the Tawalkana Division was along the 65 Easting (about twenty kilometers east of our Phase Line Smash), covering the Iraqi army's withdrawal from Kuwait, and with a security zone that extended eight kilometers west.

  That got my attention . . . though I was far more fixed on the location of the Tawalkana and the rest of the RGFC than I was on the possibility of the Iraqis leaving Kuwait. True or not (it turned out to be correct), I had no way to confirm Don's judgment at that point. Instead, I focused on our mission. If the Tawalkana was along the 65 Easting, then that was where we would fight them. It also meant they were fixed or had fixed themselves--either way was fine with me--and that the Medina and Hammurabi Divisions, as well as other armored units, also would be in the vicinity and part of this forming defense.

  That battlefield report and Don's judgment confirmed the conditions for FRAGPLAN 7.

  Here is how I was thinking: We had the Tawalkana fixed. Other armored and mechanized units in the same vicinity would probably join the defense, as would the two other RGFC heavy divisions. At this point I did not know how much they knew about our env
eloping attack. When the regiment hit them, however, they had to realize that they were now facing some forces west of the Wadi. If they were expecting us up the Wadi, they now had to adjust rapidly. They were not good at that (though they could rapidly reposition). After their adjustments, their defenses would not be well coordinated, their obstacles and artillery would not be tied in . . . unless we gave them time to get set. I was not going to give them that time. The regiment had done what I asked. The Iraqis were fixed. It was time to swing into our attack formation.

  ONE other question remained: If I passed the 1st INF through the 2nd ACR, then where and when should I do it?

  In Don's judgment, the regiment did not have the combat power to attack through the Tawalkana and other forming Iraqi units to Objective Denver, and I agreed. That settled the if. As to the rest, it was a matter of a quick time/distance mental calculation. There was no time for detailed staff work. This was an in-your-head commander-to-commander mounted maneuver (and again, the reason why a mounted commander must be up front in the attack with his finger on the pulse). The 1st INF was in the breach securing it, while the British passed through them and attacked to the east. Rupert and Tom had estimated it would take the British twelve hours. If they were correct, the 1st INF could begin moving forward sometime after midnight on the night of the twenty-fifth to the twenty-sixth. Given the almost 100 kilometers separating the 2nd ACR and the 1st INF, and given my imperative that the 2nd ACR keep the pressure on the Tawalkana (so that they would not have time to set their defense), I had much to consider. My first thinking was for the passage to happen late the next afternoon, but that was beginning to look doubtful. If they could not make it by then, I had another decision: should I continue to push the 2nd ACR and pass the 1st INF early in the morning of the twenty-seventh, or pass them forward tomorrow night? That decision was coming, but I didn't have to make it now.

  I had a quick huddle with Don and his executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Robinette. Don was a superb commander, with a great feel for covering force operations and the tempo of the covering force in relation to the main body. A year before, during REFORGER 90, when he had been in a covering force mission in front of VII Corps, he had developed a situation that exposed an enemy vulnerability (an opening for a preemptive attack), but the main body (or follow-on force) had been too far behind them to exploit the vulnerability. Neither of us wanted that to happen again. I had known Steve Robinette in the Center for Army Tactics at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, and I had seen him in action at Hohenfels and in REFORGER in Germany. He was a superb tactician, who could picture the tactical situation in his head and accurately assess friendly abilities as well as any officer I knew. I trusted both their judgments completely. Tactically, we were in one another's heads.

  What Don had in mind just then--based on my mission to him not to get decisively engaged, and on the expectation that the 1st INF was closer than they actually were--was that the regiment should go over to the defense very soon and let the 1st INF pass through the next day. (More accurately, he wanted to get into a stationary position that would allow the follow-on division to pass through the regiment with the fewest potential complications.) He was unaware that the British were just now only partway through their passage, or that the time/distance to get the 1st INF forward was greater than he thought.

  After I clarified the actual time/distance for 1st INF, I pointed out that I was not yet ready for him to go on the defense. "What I want you to do," I said, "is continue to maintain contact with the enemy. Keep pressure on the Tawalkana. Fix the RGFC. Locate flanks. And then be prepared to pass 1st INF to the east."

  Don understood.

  It was not an easy mission. He'd have to revise his formation alignment, then go into the teeth of the stiffening Iraqi defense in order to both fix and find the flanks of more than a division, and figure out the tempo to do all of that. And he'd have to do it all without getting so tangled up that I'd have to rescue him by committing combat units at a time and place dictated by the enemy and not by our own initiative . . . with the end result that I wouldn't be able to pass the 1st INF through. I trusted Don and the 2nd ACR to get the job done. And I knew I'd go back to see how they were doing it.

  What I had just done with 2nd ACR was to reinforce the offensive cover mission. So far, 2nd ACR's mission had been to protect the movement of the main body from enemy action, and Don and the regiment had been adjusting their tempo to stay about thirty minutes in front of the main body. Now that was about to change.

  I had now ordered Don on a reconnaissance mission--part of an offensive cover--which meant that he now had to orient himself more directly on the enemy in front of him than on the corps behind him. It also meant that the movement tempo could change, that is, he was no longer restricted to keeping about thirty minutes ahead of the lead elements of the rest of the corps. Don and the 2nd ACR were now focused on the enemy, while at the same time estimating a place where they could pass the 1st INF through. I would rely on Don's tactical judgment to decide the tactics and to adjust the tempo for this mission.

  Estimating where to make the forward passage of two moving units is more art than science. You could attempt a passage of one unit through another while both are moving in the same direction, like a relay team in track, but in my experience that does not work. You must designate some battle handover point, a clear separation of the responsibilities for where the passing unit is to take up the fight.

  In our NATO missions, all our passages of lines had been in the defense, called a rearward passage of lines, where a defending unit on the move backward had passed the fight to a stationary unit in a defensive position. We had done it many times when I had commanded the Blackhorse in the Fulda Gap from 1982 to 1984.

  Those were easy compared to the maneuver facing us soon. For one thing, we were attacking. In the attack, I wanted the maximum out of the 2nd ACR, that is, I wanted them to find, fix, and locate the enemy flanks, and also to push as far east as they could go before passing the 1st INF. Sooner or later, however, the 1st INF would be ready to pass, and the 2nd ACR must stop, either of their own accord or because of enemy actions. As they tried to fix that point (judging both enemy resistance and the availability of the 1st INF to pass), the 2nd ACR would almost surely have to go through some fits and starts, and there would also almost surely be some frustrations among junior leaders in the regiment who wanted to press east. I liked that aggressive attitude, but it was better for the larger 1st INF to keep moving steadily while the 2nd ACR did the fits and starts; a cavalry regiment is much more agile and able to handle the interruptions than an 8,000-vehicle, three-maneuver-brigade division.

  All this was in my mind as Don, Steve, and I worked things out.

  Based on his estimate that the Tawalkana security zone started at 65 Easting and extended about eight kilometers west, Don figured that from where they were, the 2nd ACR should attack to about 60 Easting in order to collapse the security zone. By that time, the 1st INF would be ready to pass through. However, if the RGFC turned out to be farther east than that, or if the 1st INF turned out to be farther behind than we expected, or if the 2nd ACR was able to go farther east than the 60 grid line, then they would continue to attack east.

  I thought about that for a second--and about a larger issue that I had to keep forcing into my thinking. Just then I was intensely focused on the present. As tempting as that might be, I knew I had larger responsibilities. I could concentrate on the present only to the extent that its outcome affected future operations. It was not easy--I had commanded a cavalry regiment and there I was in the middle of combat with one--but I had to let that pass and force myself to look to the future--and especially at the decision on FRAGPLAN 7. It was up to Don to fight the regiment in the present.

  After a quick look at FRAGPLAN 7 on the map, I looked ahead at both 3rd AD and 1st INF in relation to the 2nd ACR. We needed to pass both divisions through the 2nd ACR to take up the fight against
the Tawalkana and the developing RGFC defense, but the two divisions were in different circumstances.

  The 3rd AD was immediately available to execute, and was to the west-southwest of the 2nd ACR by about thirty minutes to an hour--just about right. It'd been a hell of a feat for them to get there only twenty-four hours after we had launched--they'd had to start fifteen hours early, and in a column of brigades; they'd had few cuts in the border berm to use, and so the tactical integrity of their formations had been fractured, forcing the units to go through single file, and then reassemble on the far side into two brigades forward and one back. The 3rd AD had taken hundreds of prisoners, some bypassed by the 2nd ACR, and they'd had some combat: Iraqis retreating away from the 1st INF attack had run into the 3rd AD's eastern flank. Because we were concerned about fratricide on that flank, I had placed a five-kilometer buffer zone in between the two divisions. Some Iraqi units in that zone had been attacked by both divisions. In other words, it had not been an idle or combat-free twenty-four hours for the 3rd AD.

  On the other hand, the 1st INF was in the breach about sixty to eighty kilometers away from the 2nd ACR, and fixed in place until the British could pass through. By the time the British finished passage, the 1st INF would be a good eight or ten hours behind the 2nd ACR. The next day I would need to make the tactical judgment about how to keep the 2nd ACR attacking east while moving the whole 1st INF forward to catch them, pass through, and take up the attack.