Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

by Tom Clancy

  It was all coming together. I knew what I wanted to do. I would use FRAGPLAN 7--but with the 1st INF in place of the 1st CAV, who were still held in CENTCOM reserve. This would cause major adjustments to be made in the 1st INF and adjustments in graphics overlay at corps. To do both on the move would require many orders to be oral rather than written, and maps would have to be hastily marked. But it all could be done.

  With the decision came an assumption: Since the Tawalkana was fixed, the other two RGFC heavy divisions would also doubtless fight in that defense. So far, I had the Tawalkana intelligence I needed from the 2nd ACR. I would soon confirm my assumption about the other two RGFC heavy divisions from the intelligence update from my G-2, and from Third Army. Earlier, I had figured with the Third Army G-2, Brigadier General John Stewart, that this was about the point in the fight when we would have to make a prediction about the disposition of the RGFC. I was confident they would have that intelligence for me when I rendezvoused a little later at the TAC with John Davidson, VII Corps G-2.

  Meanwhile, the orders that set the plan in motion were clear. I had ordered Tom to move forward. I had ordered Don to continue to attack. I had ordered Ron Griffith to be in the northern area of Collins by midmorning the next day. Now it was time to get an update from my staff and see if Third Army had any orders for us before I gave FRAGPLAN 7 orders to the corps.

  I left Don and the advancing 2nd ACR and flew about forty kilometers to the southwest to a spot in the desert where my jump TAC was co-located with the 3rd AD TAC CP. The sky was dark and the wind was picking up; it looked like rain.

  Earlier, I had asked my chief, John Landry, to bring a small staff group forward so I could review the situation, compare what they had with what I had seen and gotten from the commanders, and confirm the deep attack by our 11th Aviation Brigade that night.

  1630 SOMEWHERE IN IRAQ

  After a few radio calls back and forth, and some flying that was in less than a straight line, we found the jump TAC, JAYHAWK Forward, located with the 3rd AD TAC CP. Waiting for me were John Landry, John Davidson (G-2), Colonel Johnnie Hitt (11th Aviation Brigade commander), Colonel Ray Smith (corps deputy fire-support coordinator), Colonel Bill Rutherford (G-4), and Stan Cherrie. Much to my disappointment, the TAC CP were stuck somewhere in the sea of vehicles behind us that stretched all the way back to the Saudi border. Considering the 8,000 vehicles of the 3rd AD, plus those of the 42nd Artillery Brigade that had linked up with them, plus the corps support groups that were moving supplies behind the 3rd AD, it should not have surprised me. But it put me in a slow burn that I had only two M577s and one PCM line34 with which to command an entire attacking armored corps.

  In the fast-fading daylight, we huddled around a HMMWV hood, with a map spread over the top. The jump TAC was still setting up.

  "The RGFC situation is about what we reported to you this morning," John Davidson began. "It looks as though they are forming a defense along here." He pointed to a location that was close to an estimate that the 2nd ACR S-2, Major Dan Cambell, had given to me earlier. "We talked to Third Army. Brigadier General Stewart knew you wanted to make a decision about now and that you needed his best estimate on the RGFC. The way it looks, he told me, the RGFC will defend from where they are now."

  That was the final intelligence piece I needed, which confirmed everything I'd learned at the 2nd ACR.

  Bill Rutherford, G-4, reported that our logistics situation was green for now, but that fuel would continue to be a close call. Log Base Nelligen, north at the breach, would be operational by sometime tomorrow and available to provide fuel to trucks returning empty from the divisions. He also reported an emergency resupply of ammo to 2nd ACR by CH-47,35 because some of the CAV ammo vehicles had gotten stuck in soft sand. In major end items, that is, major pieces of equipment such as tanks, Bradleys, and the like, we were in excellent shape. Over 90 percent of them were available, as combat and maintenance losses had been few.

  "That does it," I said, voicing the decision I had already made. "We execute FRAGPLAN 7. Get the orders out. I want 1st INF to pass through the 2nd ACR and continue the attack tomorrow afternoon. I want 3rd AD to pass through and around to the north of the 2nd ACR and attack east. I already told Ron Griffith I want him in the northern part of Collins by midmorning tomorrow to attack east from there."

  VII Corps would now turn ninety degrees east and activate the new Third Army northern boundary between us and XVIII Corps, which would open an attack lane for them and make possible the mutually supporting corps attacks I thought we needed. It also meant that the RGFC was now in two sectors, ours and XVIII Corps's--or rather, in a Third Army sector, as drawn in the contingency plan of 18 February and amended just the day before, on the twenty-fourth.

  I knew I needed to call John Yeosock right away to tell him what we were doing. It would confirm what I had told him that morning.

  Earlier, there had been some differences over how and when to commit to this Third Army contingency plan. As we have already seen, while Cal Waller was Third Army commander, he had committed to it ahead of time--in fact, he had thought we might even have to pause to make sure we had a coordinated VII and XVIII Corps attack against the RGFC. When John Yeosock had returned, however, he was not ready to commit. Instead, he had published the plan, to be executed "on order." I knew, however, that it was his intent to order its execution if the RGFC stayed fixed, and so when I became convinced that the RGFC was indeed fixed, I thought I had the green light from Third Army to make this decision. And I did it.

  Getting hold of him did not prove to be easy.

  G+1 . . . THE REST OF THE THEATER

  Meanwhile, many other things were going on in the theater of operations. On Monday morning, 25 February, this was the state of affairs in the Iraqi-occupied emirate that the Iraqis called Al Burqan Province and everyone else called Kuwait.

  The Marines were in possession of the better part of the Kuwaiti bootheel, twenty to forty kilometers into the Iraqi defense. In the process of taking it, they had mauled three Iraqi divisions and captured 8,000 Iraqi prisoners. JFC-North, to their west, with only enough breaching equipment to open eleven lanes, had not by then made much of a dent in Iraqi lines. Even so, though they were deliberate, the Egyptians were getting the job done. And on the coast, the forces of JFC-East had advanced steadily, though not especially speedily, toward Kuwait City.

  The Iraqis in Kuwait were in a wretched condition, and that was just fine, as far as the Marines and the Arabs fighting them were concerned. At least five frontline Iraqi divisions were, for all practical purposes, no longer in existence, and several other divisions, including some heavies, were so severely battered they were close to ineffective. A number of other divisions and special forces brigades remained facing the coast, still waiting for the Marine amphibious assault that was never to come. These units were effectively tricked out of the war. In the end, the Iraqis in Kuwait proved more efficient at destruction and looting than at organizing a defense and fighting a determined, well-trained foe. Most notably, the Iraqis had sabotaged refineries and more than 150 oil wells. Black, greasy plumes of smoke darkened the skies over Kuwait.

  Meanwhile, in Iraq, several hundred kilometers to the west, the 101st Airborne was preparing to be airlifted out to Highway 8 and the Euphrates valley, while the 3rd ACR and the 24th MECH were moving north, without opposition, on VII Corps's western flank.

  The rest of G+1 was not to go so smoothly.

  Early that morning, in Kuwait, T-55s from the 3rd and 8th Armored Brigades of Iraqi Lieutenant General Salah Abdoul Mahmoud's Iraqi III Corps (Mahmoud had been the Iraqi commander at the Battle of Khafji) attacked the eastern flank of the 1st Marine Division out of the oil smoke-grimed fog covering the Burqan oil field. The Iraqi counterattack that everyone had expected had finally come, and from an unexpected direction. Iraqis traditionally took attacks head-on. This time they tried a surprise out of the oil field on the Marines' flank. It was a sharp battle--perhaps the lar
gest tank engagement in Marine history. It was also, for all practical purposes, a rout. The poorly trained Iraqis were no match for the Marines, with their M-60 tanks, their LAVs (APCs), their Cobra attack helicopters, and their Harrier fighter-bombers--not to mention TOWs and other missiles. The Iraqis did not have effective artillery, their tankers couldn't shoot straight, and their attack was piecemeal and uncoordinated. If they had hit the Marines in a coordinated fist (the kind of fist Fred Franks was aiming at their Republican Guards), it could have been a very nasty morning for the Marines.

  As it happened, the Iraqi defeat was not a total loss for them. It bought time. The battle put an end to the Marine advance for the rest of the day, and this gave major elements of the Iraqi army time to pull out of Kuwait City.

  To the west, the French 6th Light Division and the 82nd Airborne were advancing to as-Salman to secure the Coalition's left flank. Meanwhile, that afternoon, a thousand paratroopers from the 101st Airborne's 3rd Brigade were lifted by Blackhawks north to a spot in the Euphrates valley near the town of Al Khidr, between the larger towns of as-Samawah and an-Nasiriyah. They carried with them their M-16s, their machine guns, a few TOW missiles, and their mortars. Their artillery and most of their TOWs, with most of their launchers mounted on Humvees, came in nearby on big Chinook helicopters. Because the Chinooks didn't have range enough to reach the 3rd Brigade landing zone, they landed about forty kilometers south of Highway 8. From there the Humvees and cannon would travel overland to rendezvous with the paratroopers.

  Both landing zones, it turned out, were a sea of mud, which made it hard--and miserable--for everybody, but especially for the artillery. It took the entire night and most of the next morning to plow through the axle-deep slop and reach the other men.

  Meanwhile, because the weather was so grim, Colonel Robert Clark, the brigade commander, decided to hold off on reinforcing the 1,000 who had already landed. That left a lightly armed force of paratroopers to spend the very cold, wet night between G+1 and G+2 setting up ambush positions to close off Highway 8, and waiting nervously for Iraqi armor to counterattack. The Iraqi armor, blessedly, never showed up. The worst the Americans had to face, as it happened, were fifteen Iraqi infantrymen, whom they drove off with mortars. Later they stopped a convoy, whose trucks turned out to be carrying onions (which they gave to hungry local villagers the next day).

  Though the 101st's hold on Highway 8 was just then tenuous (they were soon reinforced), it proved real, lasting, and effective. For the rest of the war, if the Iraqis wanted to drive from Basra to Baghdad, they didn't do it on Highway 8.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Attack East

  VII CORPS JUMP TAC IRAQ

  AT 1800 I got a call from Ron Griffith. He was in a situation that would delay his attack into al-Busayyah.

  First AD was just outside Purple, he told me, and his G-2 had estimated that an Iraqi commando battalion, tank company, and some other infantry were in al-Busayyah, all positioned to protect the VII Iraqi Corps logistics base. The area around al-Busayyah was laced with four- to six-foot-deep wadis, and the Iraqi tanks were dispersed and dug into the terrain, as was the infantry. The commando battalion was in the town itself, thirty to thirty-five buildings of stone and thick adobe. Because he preferred not to get into a night fight that would set his mounted units against dismounted enemy troops, he wanted to request my OK to hold his mounted ground attack until first light the next day (though he would continue to attack by artillery and Apaches all night).

  I figured the tactics were up to Ron, but the corps tempo was my business. My main corps focus for Ron was that he have 1st AD in Collins the next morning at 0900. On the other hand, since the RGFC and associated units were moving into a defensive set and were not a threat to maneuver against us, the sense of urgency to hit Purple by the end of the day and to position 1st AD on the northwest flank of the RGFC was no longer that great.

  So Ron had it right. It made no sense to risk the casualties and possible fratricide that could result from a mounted attack at night into a dismounted defense in a village. (To do a night attack correctly, he would have had to go very slowly and deliberately, which would have ended up compromising our much greater firepower. If he had tried to go faster, he would have risked bypassing Iraqi infantry and getting involved in a 360-degree fight in a village.) It was better to secure the town in the morning, in daylight, when all the advantages would be with his troops. That should still give him plenty of time to turn ninety degrees right and be where I wanted him by 0900.

  "Permission granted," I said, "as long as you are in the northern part of Collins by 0900, attacking east beside 3rd AD."

  "Roger. We can do both."

  Meanwhile, we were getting reports that the British had had enemy contact right after noon, soon after their lead units had exited the breach-head line attacking east. Between then and now, they had been overrunning HQs and capturing prisoners, and they were continuing to fight on into darkness (it got totally dark at about 1845 each day, which was around fifty minutes after sunset). The entire division was still not clear of the breach.

  This was not good news, as it would delay the 1st INF move north to pass through the 2nd ACR.

  Meanwhile, I heard from John Landry that we had no additional orders from Third Army, but he had learned from Steve Arnold that there was still concern about the VII Corps pace of attack. That really got my attention. I blew up over the phone to John.

  "What the hell is wrong with them in Riyadh? Do they know what the hell is going on out here? I've talked to John Yeosock constantly to let him know what's happening. Here we are maneuvering the corps to get in position for the knockout of the RGFC, and they are concerned about progress? God damn it."

  I had a lot on my mind from a long day of complex maneuvering and advance planning, and now this. No new orders. Only "concerns." Give me a break. If you want me to do something different, just tell me. I'm a soldier; I will execute. But "concerns"? Thoughts from J. F. C. Fuller's book Generalship: Its Disease and Cures and images of "chateau generals" during World War I danced in my head, but I said nothing of that. It was just normal commander frustration with higher HQ, I told myself. I let the moment pass. I thought the "concerns" in Riyadh also would pass when they had a clearer picture. But I also thought that I had better find out what the problem was.

  As a commander, I was not prone to wide mood swings or loud outbursts. Some are, and use it as an effective command style. Not me. Competitive, yes. Hate to lose, yes. Iron will and fierce determination. Yes. But not a screamer. You work hard at keeping a cool head and maintaining the right balance of patience and impatience, at staying under control, able to think clearly when chaos threatens. If you constantly blow up at the least setbacks, your subordinates have a hard time understanding you, and soon get numb to the emotional outbursts, plus it clouds your thinking.

  I also felt intense loyalty to my unit, like you do in a tight family. When something threatened my family--as these Riyadh "concerns" did--I got very combative. My first reaction was anger, but then I quickly cooled down and blamed it all on misunderstandings. I figured an explanation would clear it up. If that did not do it, then I would get some new orders to replace my current orders and intent from Third Army and CENTCOM.

  "I'll call John Yeosock later and talk to him about it. Let's get the rest of this done," I said.

  The other issue was our deep attack. I had wanted to attack deep with the 11th Aviation Brigade the previous night, but because of the time change of the corps attack, we hadn't been able to execute. Tonight I wanted them to go deep in front of 2nd ACR to help isolate the Iraqis in the battle space--to keep the units in the rear from reinforcing the units forward--and to destroy Iraqi units that were deep while 2nd ACR was doing the same thing close. That way, 2nd ACR would be better able to continue its advance until I got the 1st INF forward to take up the fight. The 11th Brigade was ready, and I had already ordered them to execute.

  Then, at around 1800,
the weather turned bad. Of all the four days of our battle, this night brought the most violent rainstorms: thunder, lightning, torrential rain, fast-forming ponds, and running water. Because of the bad weather, John Landry and John Davidson were unable to fly back to the main CP, so they spent the night at the jump TAC.

  For most of the evening, we kept current inside the two M577 extensions behind the tracks. The maps were up, showing friendly and enemy situations. We were located with 3rd AD, of course, and had radio contact with 1st AD and 2nd ACR, but not with 1st INF or the British. Our communications were terrible. At that point, I did not have a single dependable long-haul comm line with which to talk to Third Army or my main CP.

  The weather and comm situation, on top of the "concerns" from Riyadh, had me totally pissed off. To complicate matters, the main TAC was moving to catch up, but by now there was no hope that they would make it to our location before morning. So that night I was as frustrated as I had ever been as a commander. Worse, I could not do much about it.