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

  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.

  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 line[34] 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 largest 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.