Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq
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1 Third Army was Franks's next higher command, while CENTCOM (Central Command) was the overall U.S. Joint Command (Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines) in the Gulf. CENTCOM was commanded by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf.
2 A meeting engagement is a tactical action in which a force that is usually moving "meets" or otherwise runs into an enemy force that is also usually moving, but which could also be stationary. Normally, this is a surprise encounter, even though you know the enemy is out there somewhere. The faster-reacting force usually wins. It takes a lot of practice for units to absorb the initial surprise and continue to act faster than the enemy and in a way that brings combat power
to bear. It is a tough tactical maneuver, and indeed a commander obviously would prefer to know in advance where the enemy is so he can think ahead about his mode of attack.
3 In order to lure the Iraqis into believing that the main American attack was coming due north up the Wadi al Batin axis rather than further west, Franks and his planners had devised a deception scheme that had the division operating in the Ruqi Pocket of the Wadi al Batin. (The Ruqi Pocket was at the tricorner area where the borders of Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi joined. This area lay at the eastern edge of the VII Corps zone of operations.) Here the 1st CAV had conducted a skillful series of feints and demonstrations against Iraqi forces. During their operation they had captured 1,800 Iraqi prisoners.
4 The following ideas--as well as most of the other more "conceptual" or "philosophical" portions of this chapter--do not actually represent Fred Franks's understanding of his experiences while he was in Vietnam. Rather, and more accurately, they represent the distillation of a lifetime of experiences. In Vietnam, this understanding was in seed and green shoot form. But it was there.
5 After Vietnam, Leach became armor branch chief at the Army's Personnel Command in charge of assignments of all armor officers. While there, he saw to it that battle-wounded soldiers who wanted to remain in the Army were given the opportunity to do so. More than anyone else, Jimmie Leach helped Franks stay on active duty. Franks would never forget this. It was the cavalry family looking after its own.
6 The following dialogue was reported by James P. Sterba in "Scraps of Paper from Vietnam," The New York Times Magazine, 18 October 1970.
7 Dialogue again as reported by James P. Sterba.
8 For a more complete description of all these systems, see my Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment.
9 Divisions normally differ only in the number of tank and Bradley battalions; an armored division might have six tank and four Bradley battalions, while a mechanized division will normally have five battalions of each.
10 Large metal shipping containers.
11 Third Infantry also ran the convoy operations over German highways to ports in northern Germany and Holland and provided the cadre to load the ships at the port.
12 Combat loading places a unit's weapons, equipment, ammo, and vehicles on board a ship in such a way that when these are unloaded at their destination, they'll be "ready to go." You can, for example, theoretically drive a combat-loaded unit off the ship and go fight it.
13 Tactical Satellite Radio. When VII Corps deployed, they had none of these. They eventually got thirty-three for the whole corps. They could have used more.
14 Franks and the commander of Egyptian forces in the coalition, Major General Saleh Halaby, exchanged visits several times during the course of the preparations for war. They talked about command arrangements and exchanged plans. In fact, as it turned out, the Egyptian army knew the Iraqis very well, for they had seen them during the Iran-Iraq War. And during one of their visits Franks got from Haleby his appraisal of Iraqi forces. It turned out to be the most accurate assessment Franks would get of the Iraqis: He was right on target.
15 They thought the RGFC would attempt either to escape from the theater via Highway 8, to counterattack against attacking Third Army corps, or to defend the approaches to Basra. It was believed that the last was their most likely choice.
16 The UN gave the Iraqis a 15 January deadline to get out of Kuwait, after which point the Coalition considered itself officially at war with Iraq. The deadline passed, and the air war began on 17 January.
17 In July 1994, Franks directed that a building at TRADOC headquarters at Fort Monroe, Virginia, be dedicated in his memory. Present at the dedication were his family and his whole chain of command, from platoon leader to corps commander (by now John Tilelli was also a four-star general and Vice Chief of Staff of the Army.) It is the first building at that national historic landmark to be dedicated to an enlisted soldier. Ardon was a hero.
18 Phase lines are used to keep units abreast of one another when that is necessary, or to otherwise control a unit. It is easier to maneuver units if they have common reference points on which to orient--especially in the desert, where there are no landmarks.
19 Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions--small hand grenade-sized bomblets packed into an artillery shell and dispensed when the shell bursts in the air; about 5 percent were duds.
20 As it turned out, this period set a ten-year record for rainfall.
21 Ray died of a heart attack in 1993; he was a superb officer who knew more about corps deep operations than anyone I knew. He was also a meticulous planner and relentless in seeing orders executed to completion.
22 Such is the nature of investment decisions for strategic and tactical communications. Strategic comms work well and get big dollars for development, while the closer you get to where rounds impact, the less money and the more primitive the comms. So you improvise and do other things. Except for 3rd AD, we had tactical line-of-sight communications that dated back to the early 1960s and had been used in Vietnam.
23 Cal Waller died of a heart attack in 1995. He was an invaluable line of communication with General Schwarzkopf, and in January had the courage to say that we weren't then ready to attack (even though several people wished that was somehow so); he was for a time Third Army commander, a job he handled with professionalism and skill; and he was a friend.
24 Lieutenant Colonel Tom Goedkoop and my corps planners had on their own initiative named all the assembly areas and attack positions of the VII Corps after World War II Medal of Honor winners: Garcia, Butts, Henry, Thompson, Roosevelt, Keyes, and Ray.
25 On a visit to Fort Huachuca on 19 December 1991, I was surprised to receive a UAV propeller blade from one of the task force members with the inscription "Thanks for the TANKS, Sir."
26 After the war, I learned from the USMC history that a decision to go early really did not happen until early afternoon--despite the flurry of phone calls in the morning. The 0930 phone call from John Yeosock was therefore a "what if " . . . a trial balloon. In other words, contrary to some postwar analyses and commentaries, the decision to attack early was not predicated on some kind of perception of a rout of the Iraqis or that the Iraqis were getting away. The motive for the early attack was protection of the Marines' left flank. That makes sense.
27 Easting lines--north/south grid lines--were another means of orientation. As you moved from west to east, the numbers grew higher. Thus 60 Easting was farther west than 70 Easting.
28 FRAGPLAN 7 had originally been the proposal of my chief of plans, Lieutenant Colonel Bob Schmitt, and British staff planner Major Nick Seymour, a fact that accounted for some British names for objectives, such as Norfolk and Minden.