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

  • FIREPOWER: Using everything available to you at the right place and time.

  • PROTECTION: Preserving your force for use at the right time.

  • COMMAND AND LEADERSHIP: The battlefield is a chaotic place. If your side is less mired in chaos than your enemy's, if your force is more agile and can respond more quickly to changing events, you have a big edge. You do that through vision and sensing. If you can see your own units and the enemy better than your enemy can see you, then he is, relatively speaking, more entangled in confusion and chaos. You also have to see in your mind's eye what you cannot see physically. You have to know where and how to get the right information to form that vision.

  • MANEUVER: If you can move around the battlefield faster than your enemy in the right combination of units, you effectively increase your own numbers and increase the number of directions from which you can hit the enemy. This is how you gain and maintain the initiative and win.

  Combat Discipline

  Combat discipline is not the same as parade-ground discipline. The latter has its uses — though these don't figure high in the greater scheme of things. On the other hand, without combat discipline, you lose. Combat discipline means maintaining weapons and maintaining vehicles. It means doing what is right even when no one is watching. It means following orders. It means staying put and fighting if that is the mission, even though the odds may not look good. It means applying lots of violence with focused firepower on the enemy, but when the engagement is over, being able to shut it off. And it means staying alert and on edge, and looking out for one another.

  Noncommissioned officers and leaders and commanders need to know how to keep the edge that comes from combat discipline, especially during lulls between combat actions. If units don't engage in a combat action at least once every three or four days, their effectiveness falls off very rapidly. Units and leaders cannot get complacent. Complacency is a fatal disease. With that in mind, Brookshire and Franks would spend much of their time going out and around, visiting units, listening to the troops, talking to the troop commanders (and the troop commanders and noncommissioned officers would, of course, be doing the same thing), making sure the troops were using battle lulls to clean their weapons, keep their ammo clean, maintain their vehicles, and attend to some personal hygiene (not easy, living out of a combat vehicle).

  Focus

  Focus is equal parts concentration and awareness. Ground combat is relentless, both physically and mentally. You live and fight from your vehicles, no letup, no rear areas, nothing but day after day of looking for the enemy. If you give in to exhaustion, you grow careless or overconfident, and then you become a hazard not only to yourself but, if you are a leader, even more so to your soldiers.

  Before a planned battle, you get focused, no matter how tired you are. It requires every ounce of energy you can generate but you have no choice, and you must stay that way the entire action. In combat, time passes differently. Sometimes it seems like slow motion — actual combat time always seems longer than it really is — but you can't let up, ever.

  When that planned battle begins, however, you sense the newness of it all, because each battle is different, and that is a help. It adds to the normal alertness, no matter how tired you are. During the battle, your senses come alive. They are supercharged. You see more, hear more, sense more. You fight to keep them under control. Your intuition lights up. Combat veterans call it a "sixth sense." Once, after midnight in War Zone C, the squadron firebase came under intense rocket and direct fire attack. Franks was asleep on a cot when it started. Rather than stand up, he rolled off his cot and crawled out. When he looked the next day at the sides of the shelter, they were riddled with shrapnel and bullet holes. Standing up would have been sure death. He could not explain why he had not stood up.

  In battle, thought processes that might usually take longer take place in your head in nanoseconds. Your senses and brain are working overtime, stimulated by the action and your own sense of responsibility to the mission and your troops. But if you are tired going in, once that battle stimulus is removed, leaders and units crash. Breaking the momentum of an attack and then starting tired units back again is almost impossible.

  If you are a senior commander, you are intensely focused on the present — on the immediate fight in front of you. But at the same time you try to remain detached enough that you can forecast and anticipate the next fight, and the one after that. The more senior you are, the more future you have to create.

  If you constantly stay focused, you usually can outthink the enemy. You can run him out of options as you simultaneously outfight him. That's how you win.

  Loyalty to Friends

  Our friend W. E. B. Griffin has called this attitude, correctly, the Brotherhood of War. Yes, soldiers fight for their country. Yes, love of country is right in there among their own deepest-held beliefs — along with love of family and love of God. But when it comes down to it, soldiers in combat actually fight for their friends who are side by side with them in the fight… for the other members of their tank crew, for the rest of their squad. In a good unit, each soldier feels a boundless, unquestioned loyalty to the others. He does his best not to bring bad things to the others. He feels enormous peer pressure to pull his own weight in a fight. And he will sometimes reach impossible heights of bravery looking out for the others. In January 1970, near Bu Dop, for example, Captain Carl Marshall landed his Cobra amid enemy fire one morning at the beginning of a huge battle in order to rescue a fellow pilot who had been shot down in his scout Loach and was about to be captured by the NVA. Franks was in his own Loach adjusting artillery fire into the trees to keep the NVA away while beginning to maneuver ground troops, and he saw it all. He saw Marshall land, open the canopy of his Cobra, and with his cannon firing into the trees lift off and rescue his fellow aviator.

  The commander's goal, not always achieved, is to create the conditions that will endow the whole unit with that feeling, and the behavior that follows from it. If the brotherhood feeling is working at a high level — in, say, a regiment — then you really have the power that can give you the decisive edge over your enemy.

  Loyalty to troops — the Brotherhood of Warriors — has always been a powerful force in Fred Franks's own life and in his deepest convictions as a commander. He has always identified more directly with the soldiers than with the institutional hierarchy.

  "To lead is to serve," he likes to say. "The spotlight should be on the led and not the leader.

  "In battle, character counts in leaders and soldiers as much as brains. Stuff like courage, mental and physical toughness, and integrity really count. Yet competence is also important for leaders, because I believe soldiers have every right to expect their leaders to know what they are doing. Leaders must also share the danger, the pain, and also the pride that the troops feel. Leaders need to be up front in combat. They need to be where the soldiers are."

  To Franks there is always unimaginable nobility about young Americans who are willing to risk it all for the sake of accomplishing what their country has asked them to do. That implies an almost blind trust on their part that their leaders have the stomach to see it through and will do that at the least cost to those inside the actual flames of combat. It implies that before the commitment to battle is made, the leaders have reached the reasonable conclusion that the objectives are worth the cost. It also implies that the tactical methods to be used will accomplish the strategic objectives. And it implies, finally, that after the battle is over, no matter what the outcome, they will acknowledge and recognize the sacrifice of those who carry in their bodies and their souls the living record of battle, a record that lasts far longer than the individual lives of soldiers or leaders. If leaders trust that soldiers are willing to give up their lives, or parts of their bodies, in order to accomplish their aims, then soldiers have a right to expect that their sacrifice will be worth it and remembered.

  When, not long before the attack into Iraq, that sold
ier came up to General Franks and said, "Don't worry, General, we trust you," that remark touched deep within Fred Franks's inner core; it captured exactly what he had hoped the soldiers felt, and exactly what he had hoped that he himself was providing for them. And the highest praise that came to him after the victory was from a sergeant in the 2nd ACR. "You generals didn't do too bad this time," he said.

  The question of loyalty affected Franks in another way.

  Many of his professional generation were affected personally by Vietnam but kept it to themselves, and it perhaps did not affect their performance of duties later. Some might even say after Desert Storm and Provide Comfort that Vietnam had not affected them in the Gulf. That was not to be so for Franks. There was not a single day during Desert Shield and Desert Storm that he did not remember Vietnam and the fellow soldiers of his generation. Vietnam and the broken trust. Vietnam and the courage of the soldiers taking fire both on the battlefield and at home in America. It was a national tragedy of the 1970s. Being in the hospital with those soldiers hurt badly by war and seeing the pain caused them by those who linked them to the cause of the war left Franks identifying more with these young soldiers than perhaps with some of his own generation of professionals who were untouched by that personal experience. It was to make a difference the rest of his life.

  Building a Team

  Combat units are teams. They are in fact teams of teams: squads, platoons, troops, squadrons, and on up to higher teams such as divisions and corps.

  To build his team, the commander watches over three elements: He makes sure that the team members share — and work toward — common goals (in particular, the commander's intent). He listens (to know what is actually going on). And he makes himself aware of the chemistry both within the team and between it and other teams. He allows differences unless they fracture teamwork.

  Squadron commanders normally changed their troop commanders every six months. Fox Troop was due for a change in March. In due course, Brookshire pulled Captain Max Bailey out of Troop F and put in a captain who had been the squadron S-4 (logistics). Immediately, Brookshire and Franks sensed a change in the personality of the unit. That was to be expected. But this was not a welcome change. They were now a little less aggressive in the fight, less coordinated when an action started. They weren't as quick and crisp as before. The teamwork among the troops, and between Troop F and the artillery battery, was breaking down. It wasn't that the new captain was incompetent, but the chemistry was wrong — and something had to be done to make it right.

  Though Brookshire had probably already made up his mind, he asked Franks for his thoughts.

  "I don't think you have a choice," he said. "Soldiers deserve the best leadership we can provide. The guy in Troop F is a good guy, and he knows the job. It just isn't working. You can stay with him for another couple of months, but I don't think it's going to work, and we're going to end up with somebody getting hurt and maybe killed in the process. So my recommendation is for you to pull him out without prejudice, send him to another unit, and put Bailey back in command of the troop."

  That is what Brookshire did. The chemistry of the unit demanded it. The captain was sent to command a mechanized infantry company in another division, where he had a fine combat record, and Troop F's teamwork was once again crisp.

  The Human Dimension

  The commander has to know how his soldiers are fighting in combat. He has to be aware of the momentum of his units, and of their reactions to success or failure. He has to know how much they have left in them, and how much peak effort they can still put out — during all the stress, intensity, and exhaustion of combat.

  In November, the squadron was given the mission of opening the road between the towns of Loc Ninh and Bu Dop, about thirty kilometers away. It was a slow job: the road had been closed for some time and was full of mines, and the jungle had grown over it. By December, they were halfway there. Meanwhile, part of the mission involved flying in a task force to secure Bu Dop. This task force was commanded by Major Jim Bradin, and its mounted element was Max Bailey's Fox Troop, plus Troop B from 1st Squadron.

  Though Franks's duty was on the road, and not in Bu Dop, he kept an eye and an ear aimed in their direction — just as he kept an eye and ear aimed at all the units of 2nd Squadron. He wanted to make sure they were OK; if trouble broke out, he could offer help fast.

  One day, Franks was in his helicopter listening in: Fox Troop was in a fight. They'd run into an ambush in a rubber plantation. In early August, Echo Troop had fallen into a situation very like this one — NVA regulars dug in, in bunkers — and had come out of that fight with over half the troop as casualties. The action had left deep scars. And now Fox Troop was in a similar stiff fight against a major force in an area the NVA had owned for years. The stakes were high. Things could go very badly, the way they had with Echo Troop. Or they could badly hurt the enemy, and even break the back of NVA forces around Bu Dop. As it happened, Max Bailey was away on R and R, so the executive officer, Lieutenant John Barbeau, was commanding the troop.

  Franks called Bradin. "Can I help?"

  "Hell, yes, you can help. I can't get a helicopter to get up in the air to go over there to run the fight. Can you come over and do that?"

  This was unusual: taking charge of a fight for someone else in his area of operations. But Franks called Brookshire, and he OK'd it. It was an unselfish thing for Bradin to do. He was thinking only of what was best for the mission and the soldiers.

  It took five minutes at top speed to reach Fox Troop. Then he flew over the area, watching the firing back and forth at close quarters (no more than fifty to one hundred meters), getting a sense of the engagement. The NVA were firing at his Loach, too, but he accepted that. It wasn't the first time. Meanwhile, he did what he needed to do to help: he brought in artillery and attack helicopters to seal off the area, while the troop continued the fight on the ground. He switched to the troop radio frequency and immediately heard the sharp exchanges so characteristic of commanders in a stiff fight. Meanwhile, Bradin had sent another cavalry unit, Troop B, to join the fight.

  Things were going well until a call came from Barbeau saying that they had some casualties.

  "OK," Franks told him, "evacuate your wounded, establish an LZ, and finish the fight. I'll call a medevac in." In other words, his intent was for a security element to go out with the wounded, nothing more than that.

  But the troop had had more casualties and wounded than Franks knew — four soldiers KIA and twenty wounded, almost 50 percent of what they had gone in with — and instead Barbeau pulled the whole troop out of the engagement area. That made sense, but…

  That lets Troop B in there and the fight not finished, Franks thought. They had the NVA trapped, right where they wanted them, had paid a big price, and now needed to finish them. Plus, Franks wanted Troop F to own the area for which they had fought so well, and not to be out of there as though the NVA had run them out.

  So Franks landed his Loach and said to the commander, "You, me, and this cavalry troop, we're going back in there. Leave some security here to evacuate the wounded, then mount up and let's go." And then he got into the commander's track with Barbeau and they moved back up and secured the area with Troop B and made sure the NVA weren't capable of attacking again.

  He was taking a chance on Troop F at that moment, but he knew them as a unit and how tough they were. Barbeau and Troop F were all heroes that day. Hurt as they were, they went back in and finished the battle. The NVA never again threatened Bu Dop until after the Blackhorse left.

  Know the Enemy

  This is not just knowledge learned from reports and briefings. This is knowledge gained from action, from contact with the enemy. It's fingertips-to-gut knowledge. Once you have this kind of knowledge, you begin to see vulnerabilities in the enemy, and then you can take the fight to the enemy and hit him hard.

  Brookshire, Franks, and 2nd Squadron came to know the NVA well, in day-in, day-out actions. They resp
ected them, and so did everyone else in the Blackhorse.

  The NVA were tough, well-drilled, well-armed light infantry. That is to say, their usual armament was individual weapons — AK-47s, machine guns, RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades, something like World War II bazookas), and small mortars. On occasion they used heavier 107-mm and 122-mm rockets, but usually only when staging an attack on a fixed site, such as a firebase. They were tightly disciplined in their individual actions, movements, and use of fire, and they were highly motivated, rarely surrendering or leaving dead or wounded. When you captured them, NVA prisoners would talk, but they knew only what they themselves were supposed to do, and not much more. Nevertheless, interrogation of prisoners often obtained vital information, especially if it could be done right now, as soon as they were taken. Because NVA communications were poor, when they left a base camp to move out on an operation, they had a hard time making adjustments. They did what they'd been ordered to do, come hell or high water. Though short-term adjustments came hard, over the longer term they adapted both their strategies and their tactics to suit changing situations. They were smart and they adapted. So did 2nd Squadron.

  The NVA were elusive infantry who had a remarkable ability to move around without being detected. Over time the squadron credited them with the capability, perhaps too much, to operate at night.

  This was not true, as they discovered in War Zone C.

  After 2nd Squadron completed the job of opening the road to Bu Dop in early February, they were moved to War Zone C on an interdiction mission. War Zone C, 100 kilometers to the north and west of Saigon and south of an area of Cambodia called the Fishhook, was essentially uninhabited — no commerce, no civilians, only the NVA and the Blackhorse. There, the mission was not to keep roads open but to keep NVA regulars and supplies away from the air base at Bien Hoa, Loc Ninh, and the populated area around Saigon. The squadron had that mission until the invasion of Cambodia in May 1970.