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

by Tom Clancy

  "Yes, we can do it," I told John, after a pause of no more than a second or two. "Tell the CINC yes, but I still want to talk to my commanders."

  "XVIII Corps said they could go on two hours' notice," Yeosock answered. "How does that sound to you? Based on how soon the Egyptians can get ready, it looks like 1500 at the earliest. Take that as a warning order, with a confirmation at 1300, for a 1500 attack."

  "Sounds OK to me, but I still want to talk to my commanders."

  That call, and the cease-fire decision four days later, turned out to be the biggest surprises of the war for VII Corps. We had been over the plan with Third Army and with CENTCOM so many times that I thought we had considered every possibility. And now came one that we had never considered; it was that unexpected.

  Why did the CINC want us to go early? What had brought on this very large, very sudden change? Except for John's remark that the Marines were doing well in the east, I was without a clue. The best understanding I could come to in the first moments after John's call was this: Since the Marines were going faster than expected, the fixing operation to our east was now going to take much less than a full day; this would allow us to attack today instead of tomorrow. Thus, as I understood it, the call from John Yeosock was primarily a matter of moving up the attack timetable fifteen hours.[26]

  If that was the case (and I had no indication from John of anything else; he hadn't mentioned any change of missions or different methods of attack), I figured that the CINC was making no other changes in the plan. Nothing in my own intelligence indicated that the Iraqis in our sector were doing anything different from what we expected. There was no release of the 1st CAV Division from theater reserve, which would have signaled that all was well in the east, and that the Iraqi situation was so well known that early commitment of the reserve was a good choice. There was no "go as soon as you are ready." There was only "go early," but in coordination with XVIII Corps and the Egyptian Corps, just as the original plan said.

  On the other hand, if the Iraqis were totally crumbling and we were now involved in a rout of the Iraqis and were in (technically) a pursuit, then there would be no need for flank protection or any coordinated attack. We could all go as soon as ready and get immediately in pursuit of a broken enemy.

  If the enemy situation is completely known, then you have no reason to keep a reserve for contingencies. In other words, reserves are insurance policies against unexpected enemy actions or to exploit enemy vulnerabilities by piling on at a decisive location. Thus keeping a reserve signaled — at least to me — that the CINC still needed an insurance policy.

  Turning my attention back to immediate practical matters, I knew we would have to make adjustments. According to the old saying, when you meet the enemy, the first casualty is your plan. Well, we went that one better. We had not yet met the enemy, and the plan was already a casualty.

  As my first order of business, I wanted to do three things: to talk to my commanders to get their assessments, to determine what adjustments needed to be made to move our attack up by fifteen hours, and to determine if we needed to make any tactical adjustments from our planned maneuvers following this early attack. We were going to do it. That wasn't an issue. It was a matter of when and how.

  The major factor for me was that each piece of the corps had to fit together to make a coherent whole. Coherence was necessary because of the confined space in which we were working and because we had a single corps objective: to destroy the RGFC in our sector. That meant coordinating the movement and positioning of all corps units toward that single, common objective, and staying balanced, so that several options were available when we attacked the RGFC. I wanted to go early in a way that preserved that balance. That was the key challenge on which I focused.

  It would have been different if each of the VII Corps units had had its own individual objectives. If I could have lined up my units along the border, given them a zone or lane in which to operate, and then turned them loose to head north in their own lanes to their own individual objectives at their own speed, it would have been much easier. We were not in that situation.

  Meanwhile, a question kept flashing in the back of my mind: What do we do in daylight and what in darkness? I knew that I'd have to adjust the day-night scheme we had worked out and rehearsed in training, but now that we were going early, would I be calling on units to perform operations at night that would get us either bogged down or else so tangled up that the RGFC focus could be jeopardized?

  I had wanted the breach done, minefields cleared, and passage lanes marked in daylight. Then I wanted to pass through the follow-on forces under cover of darkness and move the enveloping force close to the RGFC at night. That way, I had reasoned, they wouldn't know what was coming at them either from the breach or from the envelopment, and the RGFC would have only the minimum time to react to our attack. Such a sequence also would make it more difficult for the Iraqis to target us and to employ chemical weapons, even if they were able to move artillery to replace what our two-hour prep had taken out.

  Breaching a complex obstacle covered by enemy fire is the toughest attack mission a unit can get. By doing it in daylight, there would be much greater exposure to Iraqi direct-fire weapons than at night, but we would more than make up for it by greater speed, greater avoidance of blue-on-blue, and our greater ability to mark lanes for follow-on units to pass through. We also would have a better setup for the RGFC attack. I had discussed all this with Tom Rhame and his commanders over and over again, and they all had agreed. Daylight it would be. That meant a start at BMNT tomorrow.

  Now that timing was out the window.

  At that point, I intuitively felt that we were going to run out of daylight for our breach attack, even given our early success in moving through the Iraqi security zone. And I sensed that time was suddenly slipping through our fingers. We needed as much daylight as we could get.

  If we could handle the early attack simply by moving up our attack time — and keeping all the other pieces of the operation about the same — then the sooner we attacked, the better. If we could move it up fifteen hours, we could move it up more. We were losing valuable time. You just sensed that.

  Since I was coming to the conclusion that earlier was better, and that going earlier might even reduce some of the tactical risks, I knew I needed to talk to Tom Rhame and confirm it with him. As for my enveloping force, they could continue doing what they had already begun.

  Stan Cherrie had heard my end of the conversation. So had Creighton Abrams.

  "Stan," I said, "get a warning order out that we are going to attack early. Talk to the commanders and get their input. Get Butch Funk and Don Holder in here." Since the 2nd ACR would be pacing the corps advance, I wanted to talk to my covering force commander. Meanwhile, I'd had some ideas about a possible contingency operation on the east flank, so I wanted to talk to my reserve division commander about that. This contingency operation carried some risks with it. The issue, as I saw it, was that by going early, the enveloping force would be way out ahead toward the RGFC by the time the 1st INF could complete the breach and the British could pass through and move on to defeat the Iraqi tactical reserves to the east. That meant that my east flank would be exposed during that gap. What I was thinking of doing was committing Butch Funk in a shallower attack to the east than we had originally planned. If I did that, and used the 2nd ACR in between the two armored divisions, we could possibly protect our east flank and get to the RGFC faster, though at the cost of reducing our combat power. With that in mind, I wanted to brainstorm a quick maneuver adjustment with Butch and Don.

  I then called Tom Rhame. No problem, he told me. They could go early around noon. Ron Griffith told me the same.

  As I made these calls, Creighton Abrams was working on the adjustments he would have to make to the two-hour artillery prep fires planned before the breach. Two hours was impossible now; we could not get all the ammo into position in time. How much prep was enough? How much would kill th
e Iraqi artillery in range of the breach and their chemical delivery means? If two hours was the minimum necessary, and we did less today, were we risking chemical strikes?

  Meanwhile, I needed someone to call the British. Since they had a liaison element with us at the TAC CP, they knew what I knew at that point. But I needed to find out if Rupert Smith could adjust his movement from Area Ray forward fast enough to be ready to pass through the breach once the 1st INF opened it up and cleared out of the way.

  I also needed a quick logistics estimate. Would log elements (more than 400 vehicles) be ready to go forward to establish Buckeye (then about 400 more vehicles), then through the breach and establish Nelligen to provide fuel for the enveloping units?

  And finally, I needed to make an adjustment to CONPLAN Boot — the 11th Aviation Brigade attack planned for tomorrow night on the eastern flank. I wanted them to hit the Iraqi reserves there and speed the British exit from the breach. Could they go tonight?

  Don Holder and Butch Funk arrived at about 1015. We huddled outside the TAC enclosure because Stan and the troops in there were burning up the comms lines getting all the orders out and getting input on what I had asked for.

  I used butcher paper to sketch out my ideas for Butch and Don.

  What I had in mind was to commit to FRAGPLAN 7 right away. Third AD would initially make a shallower attack that would drive almost directly east while keeping clear of the northern forward limits of the breach. This maneuver would very quickly place a major force just east and north of the planned British attack. Meanwhile, the 2nd ACR would attack in the center between the two armored divisions. They would then give up their cover mission and become an attacking force — actually, part of a smaller fist. If I could not come up with the third division for my fist, then they would continue the attack in the center — a risk. If I did find another division, I would eventually relieve them, and the added division would pass through them. And in fact, in the back of my mind, was the growing likelihood that the 1st INF would come out of the breach in a posture that would allow me to use them again against the RGFC.

  There were other risks. The plan would require rapid adjustment by two major maneuver units, 3rd AD and 2nd ACR, which would take time to disseminate. It would also commit us early to FRAGPLAN 7. If two days from now the RGFC did something different from what we expected, we were out of options.

  Still, I wanted to explore maneuvers quickly that could adjust our attack for the better without totally unraveling the corps. Such adjustments open new risks, and I was aware of that, but I also was aware that such risks were not so unusual. When you change your attack scheme, you have to look for possible adjustments. That's the nature of tactics.

  After I finished laying out my concept, Don told me he could do it — but he didn't think it was a good idea. His operation was going well, he was building a successful momentum that he did not want to interrupt, and he thought our original maneuver gave us more combat power against the RGFC to accomplish our mission.

  Butch also told me he could do it. It was a matter of adjusting his graphical control measures (drawing new lines, or boundaries, for the units) and of attacking shallower but he, too, was concerned about our combat power against the RGFC.

  I listened to them, and I remembered my focus: Keep it simple. Don and Butch verified what I already knew: I could be introducing additional friction if I went forward with my change. I decided to stick with the plan we had made, after all, and to make only the adjustments, such as artillery preparation, movement of the British forward, and positioning of logistics, necessary to compress the time by fifteen hours. All these would introduce friction of their own. I did not need to add to it unless the tactical advantages far outweighed that disadvantage, and they didn't.

  So I told both commanders to continue as planned, with one adjustment: I ordered Butch Funk to cover that eastern flank until the British got out there. That way I had the flank secured and could still remain focused on our objective: the destruction of the RGFC, in our sector.

  The meeting lasted twenty minutes.

  I went back inside to talk briefly to Stan and to tell him of my decision. It was my final decision that day concerning the scheme of maneuver. I'd figured I had a small window in which to adjust tactics, and had now used that window to consider the adjustment I had just rejected. Window closed. Decision made. I call this moment, and moments like it, the "good-idea cutoff time" — the point at which a large organization just cannot make any further major changes. One element in the art of command is to know when you've reached that point. I knew we had just passed it.

  When I walked up to him, Stan was busy with all the tasks that needed to be done and coordinating it all with John Landry at the main CP. In fact, things were breaking so fast that I had not told Stan that I was even thinking of making the adjustments I had discussed with Butch and Don, so it was important to tell him that I had decided to stick with what we had planned to do tomorrow, but that the time schedule had to be compressed so we could do it all today.

  Before I left, Stan further heightened my concern that time was escaping us. "You know, boss," he remarked, "we might run out of daylight."

  Night operations, even with night-vision equipment, are not the same as those during the day. They are more difficult. They take more time. There is more friction. You try to keep the tactics simple. You try to give troops time to plan and rehearse what they will be doing at night. I sensed all that — and kept on moving.

  1ST INFANTRY DIVISION

  At 1115, I flew twenty minutes out to the 1st INF Division. The weather was still good, although by now clouds covered the sky and the wind was picking up. Beneath us was vehicle movement as far as the eye could see. Although the units did not yet know that they would be attacking early, they were repositioning for the attack that they thought would be under way tomorrow.

  When I arrived at the 1st INF TAC CP, I was met by Brigadier General Bill Carter, the assistant division commander. Tom Rhame was supposed to be there, too, but he was at the 1st INF main CP — a screwup of comms already. No matter. Bill could answer my questions about an early attack into the breach at 1500.

  He outlined the status of the artillery positioning (at this point still aligned for the prep to fire the next day), the ammunition for the prep, the possibility of seizing Phase Line Colorado (the line where they would complete the breach) by nightfall if the division attacked at 1500, enemy activity and disposition, and the status of the lanes opened for the passage of the British (they had already begun marking these). The bottom line, Carter said, was that Tom Rhame felt they could go at 1500 with no problem or undue risk, but unless they went earlier than 1500, they would probably not finish by dark. They could go earlier if ordered. In fact, Rhame preferred that.

  At the 1st INF TAC, I again ran into Brigadier General Creighton Abrams. (Creighton had a great knack for showing up at precisely the right time. Uncanny the way some people can do that.) Creighton told me there'd be no problem shooting the prep, but we'd have ammo available for only a thirty-minute attack.

  I said, "OK, thirty minutes it is."

  I knew the risk. Certainly, the Iraqi artillery in range of the breach, and able to fire chemical munitions, might not be silenced by a shorter thirty-minute prep — if we had thought two hours necessary before, then why was something less all right now? I also remembered the Iraqi artillery fire against the 1st CAV Division on 20 February in the action that had resulted in three soldiers KIA and six wounded. However, a few things had changed. What I'd seen so far today was how ineffective Iraqi artillery fire had been at the 1st INF in its move forward into the Iraqi security zone and at the 2nd ACR movement forward. I'd also seen our own artillery and witnessed its counterfire capability to rapidly silence Iraqi mortar and artillery fire. In addition, our attacks the past week had caused Iraqi artillery to take a severe beating. It was a risk — but it was acceptable.

  That settled it. We could do it. We could go early. Though the
re were tactical risks, they were acceptable. In fact, the bigger risk now was in waiting. If we could go at 1500, we could go now. Since John Yeosock's call, I'd been feeling we were wasting daylight. If we went right away, it would be no more risky than later — it might even be less so. Maybe we would complete the breach that day and pass the British the same night instead of the following night. That way we could save a whole day. I could see no advantage to VII Corps in waiting. I was seized with the urgency to get this thing going now!

  "The wasted minute," Napoleon called it. In battle you cannot get it back. There are times when you just feel that time is getting away from you or that you are wasting time that would be a combat asset if you had it. This was one of those times, and so I was getting impatient.

  Tom Rhame was feeling a similar impatience, I think. When I talked to Tom on the radio and ordered him to attack at 1500, he made it clear what Bill had already told me, that he wanted to go earlier, if he could.

  "I'll see about that," I told him, "but for now plan on 1500."

  If I wanted to go early, the first thing I had to do was put in a call to John Yeosock to get his permission. But when I walked over to my jump TAC nearby, the comms weren't working! I could not get through.

  "Damn! Just when I need them, the comms are not there."

  I was frustrated, but there wasn't much I could do except get in the helo and go back to the TAC and the comms there.

  ATTACK VII CORPS TAC CP

  I got back to the TAC at about 1250.

  Stan told me 3rd AD had said they were ready to attack right away — they were already moving. That was good. That gave me more proof that we might as well just keep this thing rolling.

  I immediately called John Yeosock. I told him we were ready to attack by 1500, but we were also ready to attack now. It would be just as easy to go now. If there was urgency in Riyadh for us to attack early, I reasoned, then keeping tight coordination between the attacking corps was no longer necessary. We were ready now. We had five hours of daylight left. Based on what I'd seen myself and on what had already been reported by 2nd ACR, I thought we might get through the breach today if we got started now. And if we did that, we could put ourselves back to our original day-night scheme, only twenty-four hours earlier. We did not have a long discussion, but I was clear that we could go immediately if required.