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

by Tom Clancy

  Except for continuing problems with unexploded munitions, our own situation was good. In the past twenty-four hours, we had suffered our second soldier death due to our own unexploded munitions, and I therefore put out a message to the commanders to reinforce troop protection. Later, throughout all Third Army, we would adopt the saying "Not one more life."

  After the briefing, I gave Stan guidance on our occupation duties, and told him to have some alternatives worked out for me when I got back that night.

  Next I ordered the formation of a Task Force Demo (a demolition task force) to destroy abandoned and captured Iraqi equipment more rapidly than we'd been able to do up to that time. I also wanted to be briefed on their actions each day hereafter until we left Iraq.

  1st INF

  That day at 1200 was to be the cease-fire meeting at Safwan. We'd had our people there since late the afternoon before to set up the site. All the equipment had been coming in trucks from King Khalid Military City and theater stocks, but they'd gotten jammed up in the traffic mess created by the destruction just north of Kuwait City. The trucks could not get through. That meant they had to transfer equipment to CH-47 helos and fly it in. The site would be ready at noon, but it would be a primitive setup.

  At about 0830, I flew into Safwan and talked to Brigadier General Bill Carter, the senior officer there, and grilled him on all the details of the setup. Tom Rhame joined us as we talked. In the Army, when a commander essentially flyspecks every detail, they call it "getting into the weeds." That was what I was doing… and it was different from my usual practice. I usually probe around to determine if an operation has its act together. Once I'm satisfied, I leave the details to the unit that is doing it. On this one, I wanted to go over it all and see how I could help.

  As always, things were well organized. At the same time, they let me know there were too many bosses running around giving instructions. I could see that for myself. There were troops from 22nd SUPCOM (Lieutenant General Gus Pagonis's unit), VII Corps HQ, 1st INF, and probably Third Army. Since VII Corps had the mission, I knew I could fix the situation in a heartbeat, and told Carter he was in charge of getting the site ready; he was to take charge and make it happen. It didn't matter what other units were there — as far as I was concerned, they were all in VII Corps territory, and they now belonged to 1st INF, Tom Rhame, and Bill Carter.

  After we got the who's-in-charge-here issue straightened out, Bill Carter and the Big Red One took over, and without them — from Moreno taking the site in the first place to Bill organizing it — it would not have happened. But they didn't do it alone. They had a lot of help from Major Dan Nolan, the VII Corps SGS (the secretary of the general staff, the group that works for the corps chief, and that handles all correspondence, information distribution, and protocol), and his crew, plus the troops and equipment from Third Army and 22nd SUPCOM.

  They put up a sign that was visible to all those who entered the site: WELCOME TO IRAQ, COURTESY OF THE BIG RED ONE. That was unit pride working… yet it was also a historical fact. I liked that.

  While I was there, we got the word that the Iraqis couldn't make it to that day's meeting, so the meeting had been postponed until the next day. We were glad to get twenty-four more hours. The extra time gave the 1st INF more time to prepare the site, and it gave me a chance to continue to visit units.

  My first stop was Troop G in 2nd Squadron, 2d ACR, one of the three cavalry troops to make the Battle of 73 Easting so successful. Captain Joe Sartiano gathered the troopers around a tank, and they spoke in whispered tones about what they had done. It is not unusual for those who have seen real combat to talk little about it and almost never in loud locker-room voices or language. This is especially true for those units that have had members wounded or killed in action, as was the case with Troop G.

  I almost had to pry stories out of them. They told me about Sergeant Nels Moller, who had been killed in action, and about the heroism of Second Lieutenant Gary Franks and Staff Sergeant Larry Foltz, who when their own vehicle had become inoperative from enemy fire, had crawled through that fire to another vehicle so that they could continue to call artillery on the Iraqis in 73 Easting.

  I ended the session by telling them that their actions had found and fixed the RGFC for VII Corps, just as cavalry is supposed to do. Then we had finished the fight they had started with the units that had passed through them. They were now combat veterans and had earned the proud right to wear the 2nd ACR patch on their right shoulder, signifying combat service.

  It was when I was about to leave that Staff Sergeant Waylan Lundquist, platoon sergeant of the second (tank) platoon, said that line that I've never forgotten: "Hey, sir, you generals didn't do too bad this time, either."

  It was the best compliment a commander could hear. But I also noticed he said "this time"!

  My next stop was about thirty minutes south. With Major General Rupert Smith and the British, I found the same attitude as with the U.S. troops: quiet, but pleased and proud with what they had done. Rupert and I compared notes and he confirmed he had been a bit weary of mission changes when, on the twenty-sixth, he did not know if he was to go north to attack in front of the 1st INF, south to clear the zone to the 1st CAV, or due east to Highway 8. Rupert and I laughed about it, but it had not been all that funny then. We also shared a laugh about something else. As radio call signs, we Americans tended to use our unit nicknames to identify ourselves. I called myself JAYHAWK, Tom Rhame used DANGER, Butch Funk SPEARHEAD, and Ron Griffith IRON. That was strange to the British, and so Rupert had selected SUN RAY as his call sign.

  At each visit to the 1st (UK), they assembled a battalion and I was able to tell them thanks from their Yank commander for what they had done and explain how their actions had contributed to our overall success. Working with the British had been a highly successful combined operation: American and British troops together again in the desert, just as in World War II. I would forever see and know the UK differently since I had been privileged to command their soldiers in battle. I hoped the people in the UK would feel the same intense pride in their soldiers and what they had accomplished that we did.

  From the 1st (UK), I flew back into Saudi Arabia to visit the soldiers in one of our evacuation hospitals. Fifteen minutes south of the border, we arrived at the 312th Evacuation Hospital and landed on their medevac pad, waving off the medics who rushed out thinking we were bringing in casualties.

  We had five such hospitals in VII Corps, in addition to the five MASH and five combat-support hospitals. Each had different capabilities for surgical treatment, trauma, and bed space. Normally, you echelon the MASH forward with divisions, place the CSHs farther back, and keep the larger evac hospitals well in the rear. I wanted to visit our wounded and especially to talk to the amputees.

  I was angry to learn that they had no Purple Hearts to award at the hospital. Normally, Purple Hearts are awarded in the hospital, as soldiers are too quickly evacuated from their parent unit to receive them there. A Purple Heart for wounds in combat is a badge of honor for risking your life for your country. I wanted them awarded, and I wanted them now. We got that squared away with a few calls to the right people.

  Our wounded soldiers were getting world-class medical care. The staff of our hospitals there would have made any hospital in the U.S.A. proud. Many of the doctors were Vietnam veterans. Our oldest hospital commander had first served as a private soldier in the North Africa campaigns and then, after he had become a doctor, as a surgeon in Korea, Vietnam, and now here.

  The troops were hurting from their wounds and full of questions about their fellow soldiers and their unit. I talked to all the amputees in that hospital and tried to share my own experiences with them. I was immensely proud of these young soldiers and those I had visited earlier. They were not from another planet. They were American soldiers who had given it the best they had. All I wanted to do was say thanks, as I remembered my fellow amputees in the ward in Valley Forge so long ago.


  I flew in silence most of the hour and fifteen minutes back to the corps TAC 200 kilometers into Iraq.

  VII Corps TAC CP Iraq

  At about 1830, soon after I got back to the TAC, I got a call from John Yeosock.

  "Fred, the CINC wants you to escort him to the talks at Safwan tomorrow," he said.

  "Me? You sure about that?" That was a real shocker. The CINC wants me to escort him? I had to get this one straight.

  "I'm sure."

  "WILCO." I'd be there.

  3 MARCH 1991

  I was up before first light.

  This would be a big day.

  Our troops had reported they would be ready when General Schwarzkopf arrived, and I depended on that. After a quick update that told me the situation was otherwise quiet in our part of occupied Iraq, we left at 0715 for Kuwait City and the airport, which by now was back in limited use. The CINC would not arrive before 0930, and it was only a forty-five-minute ride, but I wanted to look around some and to give ourselves plenty of time. Since this was the CINC's first visit north of the Saudi border and to the battlefield, I also wanted to preview what I might show him on our thirty-minute flight from Kuwait City airport to Safwan.

  On the way to the airfield, we flew over the so-called Highway of Death, just north of Kuwait City. There was a lot of wreckage there, to be sure, but what impressed me first was not so much the volume of destruction as the great numbers of civilian vehicles in and around the military trucks — the Iraqis had been using them as transportation to haul out their aggressor's loot. I spotted very few combat vehicles. The next thing that struck me was the sheer visual impact of it all. If a target analyst had examined this scene, he would have seen it the way we just had, but if you read about it in a newspaper, you'd likely come to the conclusion that it had been like shooting fish in a barrel — an un-American way to fight a war; and so the sooner ended, the better. If I had known that this was the impression people were getting in Washington, I would have realized at the time that the war would not go on much longer. The impact was too powerful.

  I wanted the CINC to get a good look at all of this, and especially at what VII Corps units had done.

  Farther north, where the British and 1st INF were across the highway, we had seen combat vehicles, tanks, and BMPs, damaged, abandoned, or destroyed. When we cleared the road later, we had to use both the 1st and 9th Engineer Battalions. Following that cleanup, until the mess on the roads around Kuwait City got cleaned up, we used half the four-lane divided highway for about two weeks as a C-130 strip for resupply. Otherwise, in order to reach the 1st INF, they drove all the way through the desert.

  As we made our way toward Kuwait City that morning, we flew by other burning oil wells. Hundreds were visible. It was fortunate for us that we were west of the oil fields, since the wind generally blew from west to east, and the smoke stayed out over the Gulf (years later on a trip to India, I learned that they had gotten some of the smoke even that far away). On some days, the wind did blow the other way, and it was like night where we were.

  (I even asked our doctors about it, but they predicted that the greasy air would not cause any long-term effects for our troops. Breathing the stuff was about the same as breathing big-city smog, they told me.)

  We also flew over the destruction in the desert that had been delivered by the 1st INF as they cut a swath through the Iraqis to Highway 8.

  Finally, we came to the coast and passed over the elaborate defenses the Iraqis had built to stop the amphibious landing that never came. On the beaches they had laid out complex obstacles: wire entanglements, concrete tetrahedron blocks, steel tangles, and probably mines (although I could not tell that from the air). To prevent helos from landing, they had erected thousands of telephone poles.

  On a later visit to Kuwait City, we visited the abandoned Iraqi III Corps HQ (it was this corps that had been meant to defend against the Marine landing). I saw an elaborate twenty-by-thirty-foot terrain board set up, in color, with terrain relief, and a scaled replica of the beach area, complete with overlaid military grid. I could just picture the commander and all his subordinate commanders and staff going over their defense in precise detail. That deception by our Marine and Navy forces afloat essentially tied down a whole Iraqi corps. It was masterful.

  Since all of this was on the eastern part of the city, we would not fly over it with the CINC on the way to Safwan.

  We landed at Kuwait City International Airport. As you might expect, it looked as if it had been in a war. Hangars were wrecked, their roofs caved in; there were holes in the walls of other buildings; and wrecked Iraqi vehicles. Except for pitted marks here and there, apparently from cluster bomb munitions, the runway itself was not damaged. But we were careful to stay on the runways or taxi aprons and off the grassy areas in between, because there still might be unexploded ordnance in there.

  At 0930, General Schwarzkopf arrived in a modern civilian Gulfstream jet. It taxied over to our command Blackhawk and stopped, then the CINC came out and down the stairs, and I saluted.

  I was a bit uneasy; not only was this a big day, but just the day before he had accused me of disobeying an order; and he had expressed displeasure to John Yeosock at our VII Corps attack tempo early in the war. Despite all that, I was determined to leave the personal stuff out of it and to focus on the day's mission and show him as much as I could of what we had done out here. I figured the last thing we both needed was for me to be taking up time with personal business between the two of us… though if he wanted to talk about it, I was ready and more than willing.

  Neither issue came up, not then, not ever, in any of our meetings or correspondence.[54]

  FOR the flight up to Safwan, we had arranged a visible show of force. I had a company of Apaches (from our 2/6 CAV 11th Aviation Brigade) to escort us, three on each side of our Blackhawk. We also had ordered Tom Rhame to do the same at Safwan. We wanted to demonstrate to the Iraqis that we had plenty of combat power left if they had a mind to restart anything. From what I had seen of "Moreno" tactics, the Iraqis respected a credible show of force.

  As we took off, I let the CINC know I wouldn't bother him with a lot of chatter, since I knew he had a lot on his mind, and that we would fly lower and slower than usual, so that he would have a chance to look around. The conference site was ready, I added, and described the general setup.

  "The Iraqis better not ask for much today," he said, "because I'm not in a charitable mood. I'm not in a position to give them much, and they're not in a position to demand much." From that I concluded that he and Washington had the day's events pretty well figured out. I made no attempt to question him on any of it, since it was none of my business unless the CINC chose to discuss it. He did not.

  As we flew over the burning oil wells, he was as shocked as the rest of us by that tragedy. "What would possess a people to do something like that?" he wondered aloud.

  Shortly after that, we circled to get a closer look at the "Highway of Death." He had nothing to say. Then we went a little west of Highway 8, so that I could point out the destroyed Iraqi equipment. It stretched as far as we could see, and it impressed him. When we reached it, I pointed out the area of the 1st INF division attack, and explained how they had come out of the west after their night attack and laid waste to the Iraqi army all the way to Highway 8. The scene was the same behind the British and the 1st and 3rd ADs, I added.

  He was clearly pleased. "Just like we planned it, Fred," he said.

  After the CINC said that, I figured that all the problems and confusions of the previous four days had gone away; and I never expected to hear of them again.

  SAFWAN 3 MARCH 1991

  We landed on the airstrip about 500 feet down from the tents where the meeting would be held, so that we would not blow them away. General Schwarzkopf quickly got off the helicopter. We drew a crowd of maybe a hundred media people, with cameras and microphones at the ready.

  The 1st Infantry Division captured, then arranged the neg
otiation site at Safwan. When the Iraqi generals rode in U.S. HMMWVs through the cordon of American combat equipment, they saw the might that many of their soldiers had faced in the previous eighty-nine hours.

  To my surprise, there was Gus Pagonis, in complete combat uniform, to greet the CINC. Not Tom Rhame, not Bill Carter, not Tony Moreno. Then, as the cameras rolled, Gus and General Schwarzkopf strolled to the tent area, with Gus carefully explaining the largely VII Corps, mostly 1st INF, setup. I quickly fell in on Gus's left.

  I was shocked to see Gus grab the CINC and squire him away. Though 22 SUPCOM had certainly supplied some equipment, this was not a 22 SUPCOM (that is to say, a Gus Pagonis) mission. The Big Red One and VII Corps had taken the site from the Iraqis; they'd organized it and set it up; they'd done the work. VII Corps had fought through the RGFC to get here. First INF had fought all night through Norfolk, and had captured Safwan just the day before. It did not seem right to me. I wanted the spotlight to shine that day on our troops who had fought through more than 250 kilometers of desert and destroyed the better part of eleven divisions to get to this site. I flat missed that one.

  Under Tom Rhame's orders, Bill Carter and the troops had done a magnificent job. We had our show of force. Meanwhile, the 1st INF had arranged to meet the Iraqi delegation at a designated pickup point. They then put them in our HMMWVs, and drove them on a route that took them through a canyon of M1A1 tanks and Bradleys, spaced about twenty meters apart, with soldiers at their crew positions in full battle dress. The airfield was ringed with tanks and Bradleys, also with soldiers at crew stations (two battalions and the cavalry squadron were there). Apaches and CENTAF A-10s were flying overhead, and an additional Apache company was parked on the airstrip. We wanted to be sure that the Iraqi delegation and any other Iraqi units watching got a firsthand look at our combat power.