Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq sic-1 Read online

  He had gone all around the corps talking to commanders, looking soldiers in the eye, shaking their hands, banging them on the back, handing out VII Corps coins, saying a few words, such as "good to go," "good luck," "trust your leaders, we've got a great scheme of maneuver here," "the Iraqis will never know what hit them." And he had called out a "JAYHAWK" or two.

  He wanted to show confidence and to get a sense of the electricity going through the units. And he found to be true what he had reported to Secretary Cheney and General Powell on 9 February in the final briefing in Riyadh: "VII Corps is ready to fight." Soldiers were all pumped up. There was some of the usual "kick their ass" type of thing, "the Iraqis are messing with the wrong guys." Soldier-to-soldier chatter.

  For the most part, the troops and leaders were going about their work with an air of quiet professionalism. They were doing small things that count, such as cleaning weapons, checking fuel, checking oil in their vehicles, and doing a little maintenance on their vehicles.

  During his visits with commanders that day, Franks had talked about some of the pieces of the attack maneuver. Though by this time they had been over the basic maneuver many times, he wanted to review some of the details again. For example, he wanted to look over the coordination between the 1st Armored Division coming up on the left of the 2nd Cavalry. That is, he wanted to review how the 2nd Cavalry, which was initially covering — in front of — both the 1st AD and 3rd AD, would uncover the 1st AD — get out from in front of them — so that 1st AD could dash forward to al-Busayyah, which was their initial objective (called Objective Purple), about 140 kilometers from the attack start point.

  He had also talked to Major General Gene Daniel, his deputy, about the task force headquarters that Daniel would head up at the breach. Since the 1st Infantry Division, the British, the Corps logistics elements, two Corps artillery brigades, and perhaps the 1st Cavalry Division had to pass through the breach, he needed a commander there who could make sure that process went without letup, and who could make the necessary adjustments on the spot. (The 1st Cavalry Division was the theater reserve; it was expected — but not certain — that this division would be added to the VII Corps attack.)

  And he went to visit the 1st CAV again. His intention had been to attend the memorial service for two soldiers killed on 20 February during division actions in the Ruqi Pocket,[3] but because of GPS navigation problems (not that unusual in a helicopter), he hadn't arrived at the division until the service was over. However, he was still able to stay around and talk to the troops and commanders. It had been an emotional moment, visiting soldiers who had just lost friends in combat. He knew well that death in combat is sudden and usually unexpected, even though you know it will happen. And he was reminded again of the inner steel required of soldiers and leaders. Soldiers were speaking in soft tones about the action. While they were clearly touched by the loss of their buddies, they were not about to back off. They were ready to go again.

  He drew two lessons from the firsthand accounts he heard of the action that morning: First, the 1st CAV was able to strike back hard with a combinationof ground maneuver, artillery, and air and severely punish the Iraqis. Second, the Iraqis could deliver heavy and accurate fires if you happened to drive into their predetermined defensive area.

  At the 1st Infantry Division, he visited Colonel Bert Maggart's first brigade. Maggart, his commanders, and his brigade staff gave him a thorough briefing on their attack plans in their TAC command post (three M577s parked side by side with canvas extensions off the back to form a small twenty-five-by-thirty-foot work area). They needed no notes or references. They had been over it many times before. Their soldiers were keyed up, ready to go; plans for the attack were set and rehearsed; soldiers had confidence in their leaders and their ability to accomplish the mission. You could see it in their eyes. You could hear it in their voices. Because there had been lots of predictions about the timing of the attack, the troops were getting a little impatient with all the fits and starts. By now they wanted to get into it and finish it and go home.

  He found the same attitude in both the 3rd and the 1st Armored Divisions. "We're trained, we know what to do," troopers told him again and again. And he, too, was saying the same thing again and again: "We're ready, we're tough, we're trained. Just look out for each other, follow your leaders, and know what the hell you're doing." He got quick status reports from both division commanders.

  At the 1st Armored Division, the spirit of one unit especially touched him, and he spent the better part of an hour with them. They were a Bradley platoon, the 1st Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 7th Infantry, 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division. They called themselves "Raiders" and their motto was "Get some." The platoon leader was First Lieutenant Doug Morse, and the platoon sergeant was Staff Sergeant Jamie Narramore. They were ready and tough and not without a sense of humor. They had composed a song and sang it for him, a profane description of how tough they were and what they were about to do to the Iraqis. He wasn't sure how they had done it, but they had put every cussword he knew in there. "Thanks for not court-martialing us," Sergeant Narramore told him afterward. They had even gotten him to sign his name on a Bradley for good luck, and Franks and the twenty-eight platoon members had posed for a team picture. After the war, just before they got on the plane to go home, Franks and the Raiders had a mini-reunion; they told him some war stories. They had not had anyone wounded or killed in the action. He still has the Raiders picture on his wall at home.

  Some of the leaders were going through last-minute rock drills when he visited. In a "rock drill," leaders go out in the sand and mark out a piece of ground with white engineer tape to make a scaled replica of their actual anticipated battle area. Then, using rocks as unit icons, they move the rocks to show how they plan to move their units in relationship to one another, the terrain, and the enemy.

  Based on what he'd seen in Vietnam, the troops were in about the right frame of mind and keyed up properly. In Vietnam, another generation of American soldiers had gone across half the world to do what their country had asked; and tactically they'd done it as well as any other generation of American combat soldiers could. But this time it was going to end differently. They all would see to that.

  REFLECTIONS

  Franks was proud of his VII Corps team. After looking back over the day's visits, he thought again about trust — and made a quick inventory of what he needed to do to fulfill that trust.

  He had gone over his "commander's intent" with his commanders a number of times. This is the concise expression of how you visualize the operation, and it is always written by the commander personally. In the absence of specific orders, it could be used as operating guidelines. By now he thought it was clear and well understood. It read,

  I intend to conduct a swift series of attacks to destroy RGFC and minimize our own casualties. Speed, tempo, and a coordinated air/land campaign are key. I want Iraqi forces to move so that we can attack them throughout the depth of their formations by fire, maneuver, and air. The first phases of our operation will be deliberate and rehearsed, the latter will be more METT-T dependent. We will conduct a deliberate breach with precision and synchronization, resulting from precise targeting and continuous rehearsals. Once through the breach, I intend to defeat forces to the east rapidly, with one division as economy of force, and to pass three divisions and ACR as point of main effort to the west of that action, to destroy RGFC in a fast-moving battle with zones of action and agile forces attacking by fire, maneuver, and air. CSS must keep up, because I intend no pauses. We must strike hard and continually and finish rapidly.

  Franks then turned his attention to a specific skill: the ability to picture operations in his head, and to judge time/distance factors to get the right units in the right combination at the right place at the right time. Franks called this "orchestrating" the battle. How would we do? How would his commanders?

  The Army had given Franks lots of opportunities to practice and develop this
skill, from platoon leader to corps commander. That training and some excellent mentors had a lot to do with the honing of his ability, as had the crucible of Vietnam. But it was not only a matter of practice and experience; it also had to do with the way the brain worked — with imagination.

  All he knew was that somehow he could see a battle clearly in his head, relate the physical and soldier pieces together, and figure how long it would take a division, for example, to turn three brigades ninety degrees, or to mark twenty-four lanes of a minefield breach, or to close an artillery brigade on a moving division, or to close three divisions on a common objective.

  Some commanders were better than others at orchestrating a battle. For some it was a learned skill; for others it came more easily. For the conduct of battle they were about to wage, it was indispensable. But Franks felt all his commanders had it. He had had the opportunity to make his own judgments about all of them during their time together these past few months.

  At Third Army he trusted John Yeosock. Even though he had not commanded a corps, Yeosock understood all this, as did his G-3, Brigadier General Steve Arnold. Senior to them, Franks was not quite sure. He was never sure, especially at CENTCOM in the basement of the MOD building in Riyadh, how VII Corps maneuvers would be interpreted. As it happened, the perception there of what it would take to maneuver this large, multidivision, 146,000-soldier armored corps in a coordinated attack of over 200 kilometers was very different from how it was on the scene in Iraq and Kuwait. This difference in perception would lead to controversies later.

  Allied to this last issue was a communications matter that did not concern him then — CENTCOM HQ's picture of both the enemy and friendly situation. In light of later events, he realized it should have.

  Would their picture be the same as his own? Would his main command post (itself many kilometers from his location and the battle) be able to track the battle close enough to keep Third Army informed and to accurately write the required daily commander's situation reports? And then would this information get passed accurately to CENTCOM? Would J-3 (CENTCOM operations) even pay attention to what a single corps was doing? Or would that get rolled up in a big picture? Would CENTCOM be aware of the normal time-info lag of ground operations reports and situational displays? And then would they ask for an update before making decisions critical to ground ops? Where would Franks's higher commanders choose to locate themselves during the conduct of the ground war? Would they come forward into Iraq, where he would be in order to get a firsthand feel for the fight? And, finally, should he talk to Schwarzkopf during the war? Or should he communicate primarily with his immediate commander, John Yeosock?

  He was confident that his subordinates at VII Corps's main command post would get the communication job done. They were a smart, talented, skilled group. They would certainly report the correct picture of VII Corps's actions to Third Army.

  Possible use of chemical and biological weapons was a big concern, however. Had they gotten to all the Iraqi artillery capable of reaching the 1st Infantry Division in the breach or the follow-on units passing through the breach? They had no way of completely knowing. No other issue made Franks feel so much anger at the Iraqi leadership as their possible use of chemical or biological warfare.

  VII Corps was face-to-face with the possibility that the Iraqis would use one or both. They had them. They had used them on their own people and against Iran. There was nothing in their behavior or battle tendencies that indicated they would do anything different this time. Franks truly expected it.

  The VII Corps commanders and soldiers were not intimidated by any of this, however. For a long time, they had trained in chemical protective gear in NATO and U.S. training exercises, fully expecting the Warsaw Pact to use chemicals. It had all seemed so abstract then, though. They would endure these periods of time in masks and chemical suits, shouting in squeaky voices through their masks to be heard on the radio, sweating even in the winter inside the charcoal suits, fumbling as they tried to lace up the damned rubber booties someone had designed to go over their regular boots, wearing the monster rubber gloves, and laboring to look through gun sights with a protective mask on. They had made it work through disciplined training. They had done it so much it had become routine and a source of confidence, as long as they had the right gear. They had gotten that taken care of a few days before. They had protective measures. They also had antidotes. They were ready.

  Biological warfare was a different matter. Franks was not so sure about this. They had had very little training against biological agents in Germany and were mostly unfamiliar with the agents, even though some of them, such as anthrax, botulism, and salmonella, were commonly known sicknesses. The problem with biological warfare is that the biological agents have a delayed effect, which makes detection of the source difficult. It's hard to find evidence of who did it — and thus retaliation is difficult. They had all taken a crash course on Iraqi delivery means, though. The VII Corps NBC officer, Colonel Bob Thornton, and G-2 (Intelligence) Colonel John Davidson were helpful in getting whatever information was available. Franks wanted to stop a lot of rumors and bad information going around. He did not want the troops intimidated by Iraqi biological warfare capability. Of all the capabilities possessed by the Iraqis, it was the one that concerned him the most, right up to the end of the war.

  He also was aware of some other things that night — larger issues beyond the actual conduct of their mission.

  To Fred Franks, and to most of his soldiers and leaders, what they were about to do was their duty, pure and simple. They were professionals sent to skillfully use force as an instrument of their government (and of the UN), to compel a foreign belligerent to do what a UN resolution had ordered them to do. They knew how to do that. But this was not a jihad for them. This was neither total war, nor a war to save civilization, nor a war to stop madmen from trying to enslave the greater part of the world. The mission was clear: to liberate a nation and drive an invader out in an area of vital interests. It was use of force to gain specific strategic objectives at the least cost to their own side — then go home. This would affect Franks's selection of tactics; he thought it would be irresponsible of him and of VII Corps to pay an unlimited price in the lives of their soldiers for a limited objective. Vietnam had taught them all that.

  Perhaps SFC Ed Felder of Company D, 1st Battalion, 37th Armor, 1st Armored Division had said it best: "Nobody wants to go to war, but we train for it every day. That's what we get paid to do. We're professionals." And PFC Bruce Huggins, a tank mechanic of that battalion's headquarters company, said, "They asked for our help and we're going to give them that help and we'll free that country. We'll do our job, go home, and carry on with life."

  The end result was never in doubt. They would win. For him as a major commander it was a matter of selection of method and one that would come at least cost to soldiers for the mission assigned. There would be individual acts of heroism, as there always were. But for senior commanders, Franks saw nothing particularly heroic in what they were about to do. He had said right from the start, "We'll go do what we have to do and talk about it later." This was in the mode of Korea, Vietnam, and Panama. It was not a crusade.

  That distinction comes hard for Americans. In our own history, more often than not, we have fought "crusades" or used force for national survival: the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World Wars I and II. Not only do Americans have less experience with the other kind of war, but they tend as a matter of national character not to be warlike — even though America's sons and daughters make the best warriors when called upon.

  The other factor that stayed with Franks was Vietnam. In the hospital at Valley Forge, where he had had his leg amputated, he had made a pledge to his fellow amputees and to his fellow Vietnam veterans: "Never again." Never again would young men and women come away from a battlefield on which they were asked to risk their lives without gaining their objectives, without having those objectives thought to be wort
h the effort, without an agreement ahead of time that the tactical methods needed to achieve strategic objectives were acceptable for the military to use, and without a word of thanks to those who went when it was all over.

  Fred Franks was not in charge of all that; but he was in a position to satisfy himself as a commander that all these mistakes would not be repeated. That conviction burned hot in him, like a blue flame. Vietnam was never far from him throughout Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Now, that was a crusade, at least for Fred Franks.

  Another factor he got out of Vietnam was a respect for war and its costs, and for what it takes to win. When you're on the battlefield, you get into fights, either deliberately or in surprise meeting engagements with the enemy, and they got into a lot of those in Vietnam. Franks believed that you had to make it an unfair fight as rapidly as you could. You wanted to get all the advantages on your side, and to win the tactical engagement as rapidly as possible and at least cost to your soldiers. That meant a lot of firepower. It also usually meant moving into a positional advantage and bringing brutal amounts of fire to bear on the enemy, until they called it quits and ran away, or you destroyed their capability to continue, and controlled the area. And that was the end of it.

  In Vietnam, "If the enemy fired at us with a single AK-47 round, we pounded them with all we had. We put as much firepower back on them as we had, so much firepower that they wished they hadn't started something."

  That influenced his thoughts on Iraq. Different commanders might do things in different ways, but Franks's way was, "When we came into contact in the area of main attack, then it was going to be with a big fist. We were going to hammer the Iraqis relentlessly with that fist until we finished them. We were going to sustain the momentum of that attack until we were through with what we came there to do."