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

by Tom Clancy

  VII Corps deployment to Saudi Arabia built on the already existing informal, yet highly effective, family-support networks. And as for the families themselves, there was no complaining. The attitude was "We are part of the mission. Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work."

  There also was official help. In General Butch Saint, for instance, they were fortunate to have a USAREUR commander who was both savvy in the ways of mobile armored warfare and acutely sensitive to family issues. He not only was intimately involved with units deploying throughout the command, but he realigned the military communities to see to it that VII Corps communities came under the direct support structure of his HQ, and he formed a family-support task force in the headquarters itself. He also set in motion plans to ensure the security of our families — understandably, there was a lot of anxiety about possible terrorist attacks — and he pledged the total support of the Army's assets for assistance. Wherever medical personnel and military police deployed with VII Corps units, he called in Reserve component units and individuals to come to Germany to replace them.

  Meanwhile, on 6 December 1990, Franks published the detailed order to establish VII Corps Base, which would command those parts of the corps that would remain in Europe, an order that went into effect a week later, the day Franks deployed VII Corps HQ to Saudi Arabia. Though it was meant to accomplish a number of things simultaneously, it was aimed first and foremost at helping VII Corps families cope with the deployment and the war (if indeed there was to be a war, which was not yet certain).

  To run the base, Franks and General Saint appointed Major General Roger Bean, current commander of the Pershing Brigade in Germany and an old friend of Franks, and as chief of staff Colonel Jerry Sinn, superb officer and the head of resource management. As an enlisted man in Vietnam, Sinn had been a tunnel rat, one of the soldiers who volunteered to go down into Viet Cong tunnels and look for the enemy, armed with only a pistol and flashlight.

  As part of the order, Franks directed formation of a family-support directorate, whose sole responsibility was to help families in the corps. It was headed by Colonel Bob Julian, who had been running the corps's communications modernization program, now on hold because of Desert Shield.

  Within each military community were formed what were called Family Assistance Centers — FACs — where the highest priority was to get information back and forth between families and forward-deployed spouses. Using faxes of newsletters, videotapes, phone calls, and messages, the FACs became nerve centers of information and comfort. At corps HQ at Kelly Barracks in Stuttgart, by converting an unused area with fresh paint and other internal construction, the spouses built a center where they could hold regular meetings and where teenagers of older military families could assume responsibilities and lend their considerable energies and talents. An e-mail system connected them to units in the Gulf. AT&T established a one-page "Desert Fax" program. Newsletters began all over VII Corps. Denise Franks started one of these, Sandpaper-a-Desert Link, which was published and distributed monthly. "This is a difficult time for all of us," she wrote in January 1991. "But I am inspired by all I see happening around me… We all need help at one time or another. We aren't always able to repay the friends who helped us… but it is repayment in kind for us to offer help to someone else."

  For all these efforts, the Army allowed use of transportation, copying machines, office space, and phones. For instance, Roger Bean let Denise use Fred's old commander's office for her own family-support work. She held her first of what turned out to be weekly meetings with a special task force on 13 November 1990, and also formed an informal advisory board with other senior commanders' spouses. Throughout the VII Corps area, similar arrangements sprang up, with Ron Griffith's wife, Hurdis; Butch Funk's wife, Danny; and others.

  In an unprecedented act of friendship, the Germans poured out their support. Relations between the Americans and Germans had been genuinely warm and long-lasting, and now German army units provided security and transportation, and private German citizens contributed thousands of Deutschmarks for families, and sponsored Christmas functions.

  Meanwhile, U.S. Army families in Germany began a yellow-ribbon campaign. The ribbons appeared everywhere to symbolize support for the deployed soldiers, and they stayed up until the soldiers came home. If there was a shortage of yellow ribbon, more was sent from the United States. Bolts arrived in Stuttgart. Every tree seemed to have one tied around it. Homes and office buildings and barracks became festooned with bright yellow ribbons.

  Deployment reached and touched everyone. Some older families had more than one member deployed. In a spouse's absence, families bonded together to remember special occasions, such as anniversaries, births, graduations, and school events, and even to care for families where both spouses were deployed. The unofficial theme song in VII Corps Base was "From a Distance."

  Security was tightened considerably, as threats from terrorism were real. Military police and local German police bonded together to provide a visible presence both on and off military kasernes. The presence of armed military police, complete with flak vests and Kevlar helmets, became a daily part of the military community landscape in Germany.

  Schools also pitched in. Before Franks deployed, the head of the DODDS (Department of Defense Dependent School System) came to him and asked how the teachers could help. VII Corps immediately included DODDS in the information channels so that the teachers could explain what was going on to the students in school. The teachers also saw the children of the soldiers who were forward-deployed and at war every day, and were sensitive to their individual needs. They were quick to spot a student whose behavior might have changed, and to alert parents and offer counseling.

  All of this activity was based on the simple yet profound idea that the Army takes care of its own. Following Desert Storm, the Army set about to capture valuable lessons learned, and published a TRADOC pamphlet in 1994 that would prove useful to future generations of families in similar circumstances, and would begin a formal program called Army Family Team Building. Many of the lessons were applied when U.S. Army forces deployed from Germany to Bosnia in 1995.

  TIME IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD

  The crush and variety of daily activities getting ready for war was almost mind-boggling. No one was exempt, from Franks commanding the corps to the Bradley or tank driver. It never let up. From the notification on 8 November to the week before the attack, when the last units from the 3rd AD arrived, it was the most intensive fourteen-week period of concurrent activities Fred Franks experienced in all his time in the Army. His REFORGER experiences were mild compared to this. His enemies quickly became accidents, troop sickness — and time: time to train, time to physically protect his troops.

  The first thing he and his commanders noticed was the bare-bones nature of the theater. Everything became a struggle. Basic survival had to be created in the desert: shelters, sanitation, water, and food. Communications had to be set up, mail delivered, training ranges built, training started. And that was when they managed to get into the desert. It was hard enough just getting through the ports.

  The VII Corps planners wanted to use the Saudi Arabian ports of Dammam and Jubayl. Because Jubayl was over 100 kilometers closer to their Tactical Assembly Areas, they wanted to bring the heavy forces through there, link up soldiers and equipment after two or three days, and move them quickly to the desert TAAs to begin training. They also had planned to combat-load[12] the ships, so that equipment could be speedily married up with units, and again moved to the desert.

  None of these plans proved feasible. The airflow was smooth and uneventful, in fact, almost too efficient, because troops arrived on time, but ships did not. Some delays were caused by weather, some by ship breakdown. One crew jumped ship because they objected to arriving in a war zone.

  In a perfect operation, the planners had estimated they would have a steady state of 8,000 to 10,000 troops in port at any one time, with a stay for each soldier of no longer than two or
three days. They ended up with triple those numbers. Some troops waited in port for as long as three weeks for their equipment, which compounded the problems caused by the temporary living conditions in the port, fractured unit integrity, and seriously delayed plans for training in the desert. Though the command coped with these problems, they still had to face hundreds of unwanted daily issues. Stress on soldiers was high.

  All of these problems continually proved the wisdom of placing Brigadier General Bill Mullen in command of corps Port Support Authority just after Christmas in 1990. The corps could not have gotten so ready to fight in such a short period of time with so many challenges to overcome if it had not been for the work of Mullen and his 1st ID Forward leaders and soldiers.

  Their accomplishments were staggering. Between 5 December and 18 February, 50,500 vehicles were off-loaded and staged (checked and readied for heavy equipment transporter movement), 107,000 troops were billeted, supported, and secured, as well as thousands of other soldiers from other units. There were 900 convoys (the numbers of trucks in the convoys varied from twenty to fifty). More than 6,000 armored vehicles and other pieces of equipment were moved the 550 kilometers to desert assembly areas. Thirty-five hundred containers with spare parts and other critical items were sent forward. Eighty-six hundred vehicles were painted sand color. The maximum number of soldiers in port waiting for their equipment peaked at 35,981 on 9 January 1991 (many more than the eight to ten thousand soldiers they had planned for!). Maximum ship arrivals were eight in one day. On 12 January, nineteen ships were waiting to off-load. The last tanks and Bradleys arrived from Germany from the 3rd Brigade, 3rd AD, on 6 February 1991. The last of VII Corps's units to arrive was the 142nd Artillery Brigade from the Arkansas National Guard on 17 February 1991. The types of ships varied: 11 U.S. Navy fast sea lift; 63 so-called roll-on roll-off ships; 74 World War II-type break bulk ships; and 4 lighter aboardship. Total ships: 152. The flow was not steady. In one week, 7 to 14 January, forty ships arrived.

  Over Fred Franks's strong objections, ships were loaded for maximizing space and not for unit integrity. Analysis by the PSA indicated that equipment arrived on seven different ships over twenty-six days for nineteen different battalions. In some units, soldiers staged in one port while their equipment arrived in the other, over 100 kilometers away. One tank battalion in 3rd AD arrived on eight different ships over a twenty-three-day period. A corps signal battalion arrived on eleven different ships over sixteen days. A military intelligence battalion arrived on twelve different ships over thirty-five days.

  Protecting the soldiers while in port from Scud attacks or terrorist action, ensuring good health in crowded conditions, and performing individual skill-training while waiting required both strong small-unit leader discipline and extraordinary overall leadership from Bill Mullen and his PSA. They not only got it done, they gave Franks and his commanders time to focus on training, planning, and eventually on conducting combat operations.

  Meanwhile, to ensure the troops had the latest equipment, the Army decided to conduct a modernization program concurrent with the deployment. VII Corps would get the best tanks available. That meant swapping out some of the ones they'd brought for heavier-armor tanks, or bolting on heavier armor to ones they already had in the port (this was done by a group of civilians from Anniston Army depot in the U.S.A.). The 1st INF exchanged two tank battalions of 105-mm M1 tanks for 120-mm M1A1 tanks. In the 2nd ACR and in some 1st INF Division units, all the Bradleys were swapped for better-protected models. These were all command decisions linked to the battle being planned by the corps.

  Additionally, VII Corps received a whole suite of mine-clearing equipment — plows, rollers, and a full vehicle-width rake. Hundreds of HMMWVs were added to replace older vehicles. Also new were the TACMS (ground-to-ground missiles) for their MLRS launchers and software to engage Scuds for their Patriots. Though corps units initially had no GPS receivers, they eventually received more than three thousand. Because there weren't enough GPS receivers to go around, some units had to use LORAN devices, or a combination of the two. LORAN and GPS are not compatible systems, which made for interesting navigation problems. The troops coped, but not without incident. There were two different tactical communications capabilities, the old and the new MSE (Mobile Subscriber Equipment — the Army's new tactical communication system that, among other things, establishes area communications just as a mobile phone does). They had to cobble these together to make both compatible. There were strategic comms, including a very few TACSAT[13] radios (essential, because of the great distances and the absence of reliable civilian comms). They also received the new reverse-osmosis water-purification equipment that allowed them to make their own water. And later they got the Pioneer UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) from the Navy, and employed it almost immediately.

  Meanwhile, they had to deal with practical issues:

  Troops had to get ammunition uploaded into vehicles and leaders had to make sure they had top-of-the-line wartime ammo. That meant distribution and uploading turrets and ammo trucks. Transportation was in short supply. The 1st INF had only forty-nine fuel trucks when they deployed from Fort Riley. At the end of the war, they had 114. It was an immense challenge for Gus Pagonis and the theater to find trucks to transport heavy tracked vehicles such as tanks and Bradleys from the ports to the desert. To augment the U.S. Army heavy equipment transporter trucks, he hired indigenouslabor from Pakistan and other nations, with trucks, for the 800-plus-kilometer round trip to the desert. Compounding his challenge was the transportation required to haul new M1A1 tanks and Bradleys to the 1st CAV and 24th Division in order to swap for their old ones. And the limited truck supply had to haul U.S.A.F. ammo at the same time it was to haul the corps's late-arriving heavy tracked vehicles to the desert. When XVIII Corps began their truck move west after the start of the air campaign, the competition for truck assets intensified, causing a frustrated Ron Griffith at one point to order two Bradley battalions not to wait, but simply to drive the more-than-400-kilometer distance to their TAA on their own tracks.

  Since the corps initially had no maps of the area, these had to be obtained and distributed by the tens of thousands, and in sets. (Military maps come in separate three-foot square sheets; for the VII Corps area, leaders needed about thirty separate sheets, which then had to be taped together to make one map.) It's a standing joke in the Army that you always go fight someplace where you can't pronounce the names of the towns and where you have no maps. For VII Corps, the joke wasn't all that funny.

  Sanitation and waste disposal were also a serious issue — not only normal trash and garbage, but human waste. They burned it or buried it in deep pits. "Here's the most modern force our Army has ever fielded," Franks said at one point to Cal Waller, "using diesel to burn shit in fifty-five-gallon cut-off drums. It's no different from Vietnam." Black smoke plumes were everywhere.

  Because they had very few cots, too many soldiers had to sleep on the sand. They worked at getting cots from every conceivable source in Europe and the United States.

  Despite the efforts of everyone concerned, mail delivery was simply awful. Mail to and from Germany took up to a month. There was just too much volume for the system to handle, and of course transportation had higher priorities. Only after Franks ordered the formation of an ad hoc postal battalion, with a lieutenant colonel in charge, and gave them dedicated transportation, did the problem begin to get fixed. Of the spreading oil slick in the Persian Gulf, one frustrated soldier said, "Put a stamp on it and that way it will never get to Saudi Arabia."

  On the positive side, water distribution worked well, which was aided considerably by the availability of cases of water in plastic liter bottles from the Saudi desalinization plant on the coast.

  Meanwhile, the troops prepared for desert warfare:

  They placed tape on the leading edges of the blades of almost 800 helicopters to save blade wear from the corrosive effects of sand. They installed particle separators on aircraft to
prevent sand ingestion in turbine engines. To deal with the same problem in tank turbine engines, tankers got a fresh supply of "V" packs and spares to place in air-cleaning systems, and cleaned them at every opportunity. As a result, tanks ran at an availability rate of over 90 percent. They painted all of their almost 40,000 green Europe-based vehicles with desert tan chemical-resistant paint, one by one, taking precautions against the toxic paint spray by using tent enclosures and masks. Since the spare parts system could not be adapted fast enough, an ad hoc system sprang up, and vehicles got the spare parts they needed.

  And finally, soldiers fitted chemical protective masks, using the tried and true method: You place banana oil around the mask before you put it on. If you smell the oil after it's on, you know you have a bad fit.

  Soldiers made do with what they had. From the time they deployed from port to the desert until they redeployed in April and May of 1991, the troops lived in the desert with what they'd brought in. It was a help-yourself theater. The desert was hostile. Weather turned cold at night and it rained a lot. Fierce sandstorms blew up, reducing visibility to meters and getting sand into everything. Flies were everywhere. It was a hell of an adjustment for the troops, hardened as they were to living in the field in Europe.

  Despite everyone's best efforts, nothing escaped "friction." It was everywhere.