Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

by Tom Clancy

  As far as I could see, there was nothing more I could do. I was tired, frustrated, and extremely disappointed that we had not been given the time to finish. I felt like the manager of a ball club that had won the World Series in five games, instead of four. We were proud as hell of what we had done, but I wanted that sweep.

  Yet, for all that, I still determined that the frustrations would not cast a shadow over the heroic and skillful execution of VII Corps's soldiers and leaders, and for that reason, I said little more about the missed opportunity to bring our mission to its final conclusion. Nor should it cast a shadow today--six years after Desert Storm--over the strategic significance of the victory in the Gulf and the opportunities it has opened for greater peace in the region.

  Nevertheless, from the perspective of strategic, operational, and tactical linkage, there are lessons to learn for the future. If students of military history and operations want to learn the major lesson the Gulf War teaches, they should look at the war's end state.

  It was a significant challenge, no doubt about it, to orchestrate the end of a campaign of lightning swiftness that had been conducted by a thirty-five-nation coalition in a region of the world with many opportunities and pitfalls. Nonetheless, it seemed that we gave a lot more thought (at least in the theater) to how to get in and get started than how to conclude it. The intellectual focus seemed to be in inverse proportion. The closer we got to the end, the less we focused.

  At the end of my briefing on 9 February, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney asked me, "How will it all end?" The perfect question at the right time--and a question every Secretary of Defense should ask anytime our military is about to be committed to battle. He should keep asking until it is over. Though I gave Secretary Cheney an answer that reflected my sense of how I expected it to end for VII Corps and Third Army, I'm not aware of anyone at any time giving him a picture of the expected end state for the entire theater.

  Here, to the best of my knowledge, is the story of how the decision was made that brought us to the actual end state on the battlefield:

  In the evening of 27 February, following General Schwarzkopf's "mother of all briefings," General Colin Powell called Schwarzkopf to tell him that the President was thinking of ending the war within a matter of hours, but would defer that decision to the theater commander. General Powell added that he shared the President's view. As far as he could personally tell, it was all over. Yet he too wanted to hear that confirmed by the theater commander.

  General Schwarzkopf replied that he would poll his commanders before giving a final judgment.

  That poll never got to the tactical battlefield.

  In the call back to Powell, General Schwarzkopf confirmed that it was time to end the fighting. After that theater judgment, the Joint Chiefs agreed unanimously that the war had achieved its goals and should stop.

  The order went to Third Army, and from Third Army to us.

  COULD we have gone on? Absolutely. Would that have made good tactical sense? From where I was standing, absolutely. Would another twelve hours have destroyed more of Saddam's army? Absolutely (though not much in our sector).

  But wars are not fought to make tactical sense. They are fought to gain strategic objectives. When those who are looking at the entire strategic situation, both present and future, say we are at the end, then for the soldiers on the battlefield, that's the end. Sometimes strategic goals have immediate results, such as the liberation of Kuwait. Others take longer to manifest themselves, and are obtained by taking advantage of the new opportunities that arise from the way the tactical outcomes were gained. Now, six years after our victory in Desert Storm, those results are still being played out, and I believe they are mostly positive.

  I was not thinking about any of that on the morning of 28 February. I simply trusted those who were making the strategic decisions. That was the difference between the end of this war and of the one in Vietnam. From President Bush to the soldiers in our tanks, it was a matter of trust reunited.

  Our VII Corps tactical victories had not taken eighty-nine hours. They had taken almost twenty years.

  0630

  By now it was approaching daylight; reports of operations were coming in over the radio. These reports were somewhat spotty, however, because our tactical line-of-sight communications were not particularly good at this time. Since we were in their sector, we could talk direct with 3rd AD; we had good line-of-sight comms with 1st CAV; and since 2nd ACR were to our west, they were in direct comms. But because of the range between us and 1st AD, we had difficulty contacting them from time to time; other than SATCOM, we were out of radio contact with 1st INF (because SATCOM was on a different frequency than the other line-of-sight comms, transmissions on one could not be heard on the other).

  As for VII Corps main CP, they were by now over 200 kilometers away (about an hour and a half's helo flight). For the past two days, they had been unable to hear tactical radio communications and were thus having difficulty keeping current on the rapidly changing local tactical situation.

  Communication with Third Army was in better shape, since Colonel Dick Rock still had his long-haul phone comms directly back there. So I remained confident that John Yeosock's staff had a decent picture--at least of what we knew in the corps TAC.

  Though I considered flying east to the 1st INF, I concluded that it would take up the whole time before the 0800 cease-fire, and I wanted to be the one to order it, so I determined to stay at the TAC. Because of the constantly changing orders from Riyadh and the possible mix-up in the corps, I wanted to be next to my most reliable comms during the hours before the cease-fire. After the previous night's rapid changes, I did not know what to expect this morning.

  At 0700, John Tilelli called to tell me he was ready to attack if I wanted to exercise that option. It was one hour before the end, with still no room north of 1st AD and no time to get him room. It ripped me up inside. I could picture the 1st CAV, leaning forward in the saddle, as it were. They had deployed in October and had trained to a razor's edge; they had selflessly been the feint and demonstration force that had successfully deceived the Iraqis into believing we were coming up the Wadi al Batin; and finally, they had in a short time come all this way and gotten themselves in a position to attack. I did not want to be the commander to tell them now. It was painful; it's still painful today.

  "No," I told John, "we are out of time."

  He merely said, "Roger out."

  At 0720 a frantic voice was heard over the corps line-of-sight FM radio net: "JAYHAWK, this is THRASHER BLUE 6"--a corps artillery unit, as it turned out--"we are taking incoming friendly fire."

  The last thing I wanted was one or more of our soldiers killed or wounded by blue-on-blue this close to a cease-fire. Force protection was much more on my mind than destroying another ten or twenty Iraqi tanks. "Tell them cease fire," I said. The officer closest to the radio ordered, "JAYHAWK, JAYHAWK, this is JAYHAWK OSCAR, cease fire, I say again cease fire." As it turned out, some commanders took it to mean that we were issuing the actual cease-fire order when, in fact, it was only intended to stop the possible blue-on-blue. It was a confusing order, and I should not have let it go out.

  The confusion did not end there. We got a reply from everyone, including the 1st INF, whom we had called on SATCOM. A moment later, it occurred to me that the blue-on-blue could not have involved them, since they were not in line-of-sight comms range. "Order the Big Red One to continue the attack," I ordered. The call went out immediately, but I later learned that not all their units got the second call.

  Meanwhile, we got a call from 3rd AD explaining that THRASHER BLUE 6 was a corps unit on the other side of the enemy on their (3rd AD's) gun target line. When rounds missed and went over the Iraqis, they impacted in THRASHER BLUE 6's area. I told THRASHER to get the hell out of the way. They had already done that.

  At 0740, the order went out to the other units to resume the attack.

  JUST before 0800, the 1st AD reported they h
ad captured the HQ of the Medina Division. That was great news.

  I glanced around the TAC. It was full of troops--those from the TAC and those who had come inside to witness the end. Everyone wanted to be in there when the order went out.

  I looked at them, their tired faces, their by now grimy uniforms, and I was full of thanks for what they had done. I wished I could shake everyone's hand, give each of them a hug, and tell them all how proud I had been to serve in battle with them.

  I watched the GPS Toby had brought into the TAC. It was our most accurate timepiece. At precisely 0800, I got on the radio and told units to cease fire.

  First Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 1st CAV Division, was sixty kilometers from Basra (which, of course, was now in XVIII Corps sector) and about twenty kilometers from the Hammurabi. First INF was fifteen kilometers south of Safwan. First and 3rd ADs were twenty-five kilometers from Highway 8, and 1st AD Apaches could see the blue waters of the Gulf. The British were on Highway 8, north of Kuwait City.

  It was over.

  RESULTS

  We had attacked close to 250 kilometers in eighty-nine hours with five divisions, day and night, in sandstorms and rain. It had been an incredible battlefield performance by the soldiers and leaders of VII Corps.

  We had accomplished our mission to destroy the RGFC forces in our sector. The Tawalkana had ceased to exist as a division. The Medina was down to a few battalions, if that. At war's end, we could determine no other RGFC forces (with the possible exception of some scattered units of the Hammurabi) in our sector. Other Iraqi units were either destroyed or combat ineffective, and their equipment would be destroyed later. The better part of eleven Iraqi divisions lay in the wake of the VII Corps attack (including the two RGFC divisions). In those eighty-nine hours, corps units had destroyed 1,350 tanks, 1,224 personnel carriers of all types, 285 artillery pieces, 105 air defense pieces, and 1,229 trucks. And in our rolling attack we had bypassed an amount of equipment equal to that; after the cease-fire we went back and destroyed it. Though we had counted more than 22,000 Iraqi EPWs as captured, the true figure was probably as high as double that, since units lost count.

  In the eighty-nine hours, we had fired a total of 55,000 artillery rounds and 10,500 MLRS rockets, and we had also fired twenty-five ATACMs in twenty-one missions. We'd used 348 close-support air strikes, mainly A-10s, and mainly in the daylight.

  As the time of the cessation of hostilities arrived, most lead combat elements were in Kuwait, with smaller combat units from the 1st Infantry Division and the 1st (UK) Armored reaching across Highway 8. The VII Corps double envelopment did not occur.

  Kuwait was liberated. The Iraqi army had gone from fourth largest in the world to twenty-second in a little over a month. A coalition of thirty-five nations had quickly formed, had united its forces on the battlefield, and together had achieved impressive results in a short time. Was it perfect? No. But it was a hell of a lot closer to perfect than we had come in anyone's memory or experience. It was a victory of staggering battlefield dimensions.

  But it had come at a price. At that point, I thought we had twenty-one soldiers KIA and ninety-seven wounded. That turned out to be grossly inaccurate. The final figure was 46 KIA and 196 U.S. wounded, and 16 British soldiers KIA and 61 wounded. I will never forget them for the rest of my life.

  Eleven M1A1s were damaged, and four were destroyed; sixteen Bradleys damaged, and nine destroyed; one Apache damaged, and one destroyed.

  I say again: It was fast but it was not easy.

  Let no one equate swiftness with ease.

  It was a total team effort, as we'd known it would be. I was humbled to have had the privilege to lead such a magnificent armored corps into battle. Their battlefield achievements had come about because of twenty years of rebuilding, and because of their courage and selfless sense of duty. That I had been permitted to return to battle with that Army after we had both been badly wounded was something more than I could ever have dreamed of.

  LOGISTICS

  The logistics dimension in such a short period of time had been staggering. Modern mounted warfare is fast and lethal, and consumes an enormous amount of supplies. Our logisticians kept the corps constantly sustained, and many entire armies cannot do that. They operate for a while, then pause for days, weeks, or even months, to allow their forces to resupply. That such was not the case with VII Corps was a testament to the skill and hard, brute force work done by VII Corps logisticians in all units.

  Fuel and ammunition had been transported by corps soldiers mostly in truck convoys over the trackless desert. Led by junior officers and NCOs with few navigation devices and few radios, the convoys had rolled day and night. They had moved in rain and in driving sandstorms in which it was difficult to see the vehicle in front. They'd come upon bypassed Iraqi units and soldiers and captured them. They'd gone through minefields and our own unexploded munitions. At times, they'd gotten closer to the combat action with their fuel and ammo vehicles than normal practice would dictate.

  Here is an account from the 125th Support Battalion, 1st Armored Division, from the day they almost ran out of fuel: "When the convoy [forty-two fuel trucks] arrived at the refuel site [Nelligen] they found that the other two brigades had taken everything and no allocation had been saved. Prior to first light [around 0400] on the twenty-seventh, enough fuel arrived for nineteen HEMMTS. Those fuelers left immediately for our location [about 100 kilometers away] under Major Dunn's control. He raced at speeds of over fifty mph across the desert to get us fuel. One tanker was lost, as it turned upside down when rolling over a ravine. No one was hurt, but we lost 2,500 gallons of fuel. The battalion commander . . . went back to meet them. SPC Spencer [the battalion commander's driver] later recounted topping sixty-five mph as his HMMWV left the ground when hitting even the smallest bump. [Sometime along the way] the second HEMMT convoy drove into a minefield. [One] vehicle ran over one of the mines, and it exploded," damaging the vehicle but not wounding anyone. Later that morning, the convoy reached the 1st Brigade and refueled them with enough to continue the attack on 27 February. "After distributing the newly arrived fuel to the combat battalions, we began movement through the log base [an Iraqi logistics base that the Medina had been defending and 1st AD had overrun]. Everywhere you looked there was total destruction. Ammo pits were burning and exploding, sending shrapnel flying through the air; trucks were overturned and ablaze; trailers full of supplies also were on fire. Moving the BSA through all of this in formation was nearly impossible." (The BSA--brigade support area--was where logistics units supporting 1st Brigade gathered and set up.) "Company-sized units broke into smaller columns and moved through. It took almost all day to re-form the BSA on the eastern side of the complex. As we moved through the area, the BSA captured some 146 EPWs. [And] there was a harrowing moment when one prisoner ran from the holding area to kiss the hand of the soldier who had just thrown him an MRE from his truck. There were no contemptuous victors, only compassionate soldiers."

  The 2nd COSCOM work to supply the VII Corps before, during, and after the war had been an extraordinary achievement, one that has to rank in one of the all-time feats of logistics in the history of the U.S. Army. Expanding from a base of fewer than 8,000 soldiers in Germany, the COSCOM had grown before the start of the war to fifty battalion-sized units, in five brigade-sized organizations, with a total of over 26,000 soldiers (an armored division with attachments normally had less than forty battalion organizations). Their operations had begun on 8 November, the moment we were notified to deploy, and they had not stopped until we redeployed. They'd simultaneously deployed themselves, expanded by a factor of almost four, and built an infrastructure in the desert that had kept the corps supplied. It was austere, but it worked.

  During the VII Corps eighty-nine-hour war, the COSCOM had moved 2.6 million meals, 6.2 million gallons of diesel fuel, 2.2 million gallons of aviation fuel, and 327 major assemblies, such as tank engines. Every day, they moved 4,900 tons of ammo. To do this, in additio
n to the transportation assets of each division, they used 1,385 tractor trucks, 608 fuel tankers, 1,604 trailers, and 377 five-ton trucks, organized in 11 petroleum companies, 13 medium truck companies, 8 HET companies, and 4 medium/light truck companies. These transportation assets had been augmented by the CH-47 helos of the 11th Aviation Brigade and by C-130 airlift drops by CENTAF.

  Within the COSCOM was the 332nd Medical Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Mike Strong, a physician from the Reserve component. My VII Corps surgeon, Colonel Bob Griffin, served as Mike's chief of staff and organized the staff of the brigade. They had fifteen hospitals, which provided world-class medical care to our soldiers. They'd arranged the medical support in bands of increasing medical capability, depending on how close you were to the action. In the band closest to the action were the medical assets of the divisions, augmented by five MASHs (mobile army surgical hospitals) from the medical brigade. In the next band were five combat-support hospitals, which augmented the surgical capability of the more forward and mobile MASHs and provided more beds. Back in Saudi, along Tapline Road, were the five evacuation hospitals. Of all our medical facilities, these had the most complete surgical and nursing capabilities, and were used to stabilize patients before evacuation from theater, or to keep patients until they recovered and could return to duty. During the war, the brigade recorded 1,768 admissions and 960 air evacuations. The list of professional medical personnel either called to active duty or already on active duty could fill the pages of a medical Who's Who. One hospital commander was a sixty-seven-year-old, physically fit orthopedic surgeon who had begun his service in North Africa as an enlisted soldier with the British in World War II. He wanted to continue to serve, and that he did. Many of our medevac pilots were Vietnam veterans who had stayed in the Reserve component and were proud to answer the call again.