by Jim Proser
Myatt needs air cover to protect Ripper and Papa Bear as they work through the second belt, but the weather is not cooperating. Low, drizzling clouds obscure the battlefield. Every minute that ticks by gives Saddam time to move his forces to the now obvious point of attack. Every minute waiting ensures more casualties for the coalition. The distant thunder of B-52 bombardment reassures Myatt that at least some part of Saddam’s artillery is being destroyed.
Task Force Ripper, composed of Mattis’s 1/7 and Christopher Cortez’s 1/5, assuming they quickly breach the second belt, will be the main maneuver element inside Kuwait. The task force’s plan of maneuver will rely on the speed and mobility of the relatively new doctrine of maneuver warfare over massed firepower4. Mattis will be among the first field commanders to use it in desert combat with heavy armor. Although their maneuvers have been rehearsed on sand tables many times, they couldn’t know exactly what Saddam has hidden beyond the minefields. The only thing they know for certain is that the 1/7 and the 1/5 will meet the brunt of Saddam’s armor, so two companies of M60A1 tanks roll in front of them, forming the twin steel spearheads of their attack.
The Army, sweeping in a left hook through southern Iraq against Kuwait City, has the newest, most technologically advanced Abrams M1A1 tanks, which can shoot and hit any target within a mile while charging over rough terrain at up to forty miles per hour.5 The Marines’ M60A1s, which were developed during the Korean War and used extensively in Vietnam,6 are a much closer match to Saddam’s aging Russian T-55s and T-62s.
Myatt can’t wait any longer for the weather; he issues the command to assume attack positions. The net relays the code word “Coors” to all units.7 Radio silence ends with the sudden chatter of coordinates and sharp commands, a thousand diesel engines roar to life, and Task Force Ripper rolls over the line of departure several miles south of the Kuwait border toward its attack position inside Kuwait. Colonel Carlton Fulford orders Ripper’s two mechanized infantry battalions and tank battalion into a “tanks forward” wedge formation. AAVs with commanders and infantry troops fall in behind the iron phalanx of tanks as they move cautiously northeast across the desert, using night vision devices to navigate.
0410 Hours
Ripper crosses Phase Line Black at the Kuwaiti border and is soon within range of Saddam’s artillery. Scouts see no sign of the enemy until Fulford gets an aerial surveillance report of four tanks, six BMPs (Russian armored vehicles), and a suspected command post in front of the task force. As it continues to move forward, pre-positioned special teams—forward air controllers, artillery observers, naval gunfire teams, a surveillance and target acquisition platoon, and mine-clearing tanks—fall in behind Ripper’s steel wedges. Fulford deployed the teams the day before to check the route and secure their attack position.
A squad of A-6 Intruder jets strike the four Iraqi tanks and BMPs reported in Ripper’s sector. The tanks withdraw north, drawing the fire of Task Force Grizzly into Ripper’s sector. Ripper holds its fire and continues in wedge formation to Phase Line Saber, the edge of the second minefield. At 0500, Ripper is an hour ahead of schedule. Fulford orders a halt. The enemy has fled their sector. Engines idle in the dark while Fulford reports to Myatt that he is in position and has met no resistance. Engines shut down, and near silence descends as Task Force Ripper waits for the order to begin the attack. They send up a series of red star cluster flares, signaling that they have reached the second minefield.
Tanks equipped with mine plows come from behind the protection of the forward tanks and begin clearing lanes through the minefield. A light drizzle turns to rain, blinding the air cover and soaking the dismounted infantry of Grizzly and Taro protecting Ripper’s flanks as they march toward their forward blocking positions. The Marines are now partially blind to Saddam’s movements, but Saddam knows exactly where the Marines are and which way they are coming—the direct route northeast toward Kuwait City.
At dawn, Task Force Grizzly, preceding Ripper toward its blocking position, again fires on three T-72 tanks and three BMPs in Ripper’s sector. Ripper’s Third Battalion tankers, who have moved through the breached minefield, are unaware that Grizzly has been delayed in its advance and is still in Ripper’s sector. They think the distant, indistinct silhouettes are Iraqi. They open fire, and Grizzly begins taking casualties. Grizzly’s Colonel Fulks and Ripper’s Colonel Fulford quickly figure out that it is Ripper’s friendly fire hitting Grizzly. General Myatt jumps into the conversation and orders constant communication between task force commanders to avoid more friendly fire incidents.8
1030 Hours
A constant stream of Iraqi deserters begin to enter the lines.9 They wave white T-shirts of surrender and hold paper “Get Out of Iraq Free” flyers over their heads. The flyers are instructions in Arabic on how to surrender to the Marines, dropped the day before by B-52 bombers. Complicating matters for Mattis and the 1/7, while making its breach of the second obstacle belt, they run into their first significant firefight as scattered bunkers and armored squads open fire. At the same time, thousands of enemy soldiers are leaving their positions and approaching the Marines. Mattis’s first battle is a muddle of combat and humanitarian assistance. “At this time,” writes Gunnery Sergeant Paul S. Cochran, Third Tank Battalion, “POWs started appearing from everywhere. A total of approx 300 to 350 were credited to 2nd Plt [Platoon], because the[y] surrendered to our t[an]ks in our sector. POWs were blowing us kisses, waving American flags and ask[ing] for food and water.”10 Major Drew Bennett, 1/7 operations officer, reports “hundreds upon hundreds of Iraqis sporting white flags . . . converging on the breach sites, especially lane-3.”11
The 1/7 is still working its way through the second minefield, but the number of surrendering Iraqis threatens to slow the battalion’s advance. Mattis orders an infantry platoon to set up a prisoner holding area about three hundred yards south of the breach. At the same time he monitors the sporadic fighting to his front and orders artillery and air fire missions on enemy positions.
Within minutes the situation gets worse. The lanes get so congested that the attack completely stops—exactly as Myatt feared. Mattis immediately replaces his dismounted Marines guarding the enemy prisoners with Marines from the battalion supply trucks behind him. Then, judging the starving Iraqis to be no threat, he instructs the 1/7 not to stop for surrendering soldiers. Instead, the Iraqis are pointed toward the rear and waved on.
Mattis clears lane 3, then directs his Team Tank platoon through lane 4 to continue covering Task Force Ripper’s right flank. Team Tank and a combined anti-armor team, CAAT 2, immediately find and turn to attack two enemy tanks. They close with the enemy, exchanging heavy fire that kills both tanks but carries them dangerously into Task Force Papa Bear’s sector. Mattis orders Team Tank to correct course and return to formation, continuing the advance on the first day’s ultimate objective, the al-Jaber airfield.
Shifting his attack orientation from northeast to west, Mattis halts south of a tree-covered area with several buildings known as Emir’s Farm.12
1400 Hours
Mattis attacks Emir’s Farm. Dismounted infantry Company C and a mechanized infantry company he calls Team Mech envelop the position from west to east, while Team Tank covers their movement with fire. Hovering just above the trees, the Gunfighters squadron of Cobra helicopter gunships relay to Mattis which bunkers have enemy troops in them.
Team Mech moves in close, dismounts, and attacks the farm, supported by machine-gun fire from its AAVs and the Gunfighters above. The area was already swept by artillery fire during Ripper’s breach of the obstacle belts. The enemy force begins to disintegrate as Team Mech moves to within 1,800 yards, covered by a smoke barrage. Sweating profusely in their level 4 MOPP suits—full hood cover, rubber boots, and gas masks—they move slowly, too slowly for Mattis. He seems convinced that the defenders want to surrender. Frustrated with the pace of the attack, he assaults the farm from the opposite side with his own headquarters vehicles and directs the fi
nal envelopment from there.
Mattis guessed partly right. Headquarters and Team Mech companies capture two hundred prisoners. Mattis calls up the entire battalion to sweep the area, but soon realizes that the fight for Emir’s Farm is far from over. The Marines start engaging camouflaged Iraqi bunkers, tanks, rocket launchers, and armored personnel carriers. Mattis calls in the Gunfighters overhead against the Iraqi armor, with their Hellfire and TOW missiles. In the bunkers, Iraqi infantry are buried alive, literally plowed under by tanks rolling over them, fitted with mine plows that resemble fire-breathing, razor-toothed dinosaurs.
By 1530 the Iraqis are dead, fled, or begging to be fed. Now behind schedule for the main assault on al-Jaber, Mattis directs Team Tank to move ahead to their attack position northeast of the airfield. The rest of 1/7 will catch up.
1630 Hours
General Myatt forms up the spearhead of Task Force Ripper’s attack west of the airfield, with the Third Tank Battalion in the center, Mattis’s 1/7 on the right, and Cortez’s 1/5 on the left. Mattis and Cortez are also in wedge formation with their tank companies in the lead, mechanized companies on their left, and infantry companies on their right. Mattis and Cortez are in the center of their wedge in their armored vehicles behind the tanks. As they advance, artillery bombards the airfield. For the first time, the burning oil wells of the nearby al-Burqan oil field are a tactical problem.
Major Drew Bennett, operations officer of the 1/7, notes in his journal, “All hands were awestruck by the ominous pall of smoke emanating from over 50 wellhead fires in the Al Burqan oilfield. Commanders whose senses were sharply focused found that the rumbling from the burning [well heads] played tricks on their hearing, sounding almost like columns of armored vehicles approaching our right flank.”13
Task Force Ripper maneuvers north to envelop the airfield from the rear. At 1734, with visibility down to 300 yards, two T-62 tanks approach the right flank of the 1/7. The CAAT protecting the 1/7’s right flank spots the tanks and takes them out. In front of 1/7, Team Tank finds and destroys three more T-62s dug into revetments. As the 1/7 fights its way to the airfield perimeter, six more enemy tanks are taken on and destroyed.
1800 Hours
Task Force Ripper halts at the al-Jaber airfield perimeter, awaiting further orders. Under low clouds of rain and drizzle, wind blows thick plumes of toxic oil smoke over the men, who are still in their gas masks and full chemical protection suits. Iraqi resistance dwindles as dusk turns to night. Intelligence from newly captured Iraqis informs Myatt that the airfield is now abandoned. He issues Task Force Ripper new orders. Their objective is no longer the al-Jaber airfield. The task force turns from facing al-Jaber to facing northeast toward Objective C, Kuwait City. They form up into protective circle formations for the night and set the first watch. In the morning, they are to lead the fight across twenty-five miles of open desert through Saddam’s best Republican Guard divisions and kick in the front door of his most prized possession, Kuwait International Airport, unfortunately abbreviated as KIA, the military abbreviation for Killed in Action.
Lieutenant James D. Gonsalves, Company C, Third Tank Battalion, encounters an enemy tank soon after moving into position: “We had pulled up to our 2nd day’s objective and were awaiting further orders. The smoke clouds from the burning oil wells were closing in fast, reducing visibility to less than 1,500 meters. All of a sudden my loader, Lance Corporal Rodrigues, yelled: ‘We got a T-62 out there! Look! Gunner! SABOT! Tank! Range 1100 meters!’ The first explosion was small but then its ammo started cooking off. I counted 14 secondary explosions.”14
Reports of a full-scale enemy counterattack from battalions hiding inside the burning oil fields never materialize. Gunnery Sergeant Cochran would write about that first night inside Kuwait, “It turned to midnight, had to use night vision goggles to see. Did not work. By 6PM Iraq troops PCs [personnel carriers] and tks were reported 3 [kilometers] from us and moving closer. They finally stopped 2 short of our pos because of total blackout. I could not see the end of my 50 barrel 4 ft away.”15
Firefights including nearby cannon fire erupt throughout the night as Mattis and most of the exhausted 1/7 sleep through the lullaby of warfare. Some sleep sitting up in their vehicles; some lie on the ground underneath them or nearby, under a light drizzle of rain mixed with crude oil. They will not be there long enough to rest, just long enough to get covered with oil.
Myatt moves his command post forward through the second obstacle belt to be in position for directing the next day’s attack. Reports filter in that two enemy armored brigades are positioning to strike the division’s front and right flank. These reports corroborate each other, not like the scattered reports of roaming Iraqi units he has been receiving. He wakes up his commanders, and they position tanks and antitank teams to the front. Myatt’s analysis of the reports is correct.
0515 Hours—25 February 1991
The Iraqi counterattack begins from the west with a feint against Mattis and the 1/7 on the left flank of Task Force Ripper, followed by large-scale assaults against the right flank and center of both Task Forces Ripper and Shepherd. By 0620, Ripper’s Third Tank Battalion is in an intense firefight with twenty vehicles and an unknown number of infantry. The tanks knock down the first wave of the attack. Dense fog has rolled in with the drizzle and oil smoke, cutting visibility to less than three hundred feet.
Successive waves can’t coordinate their attacks in the low visibility, so instead of massing against a point of attack, they disperse across the front, some of them drifting into Task Force Papa Bear’s sector, which guards the right rear flank of the division. Some Iraqi units collide, while some slip through the lines, penetrating to the headquarters company at the center of Papa Bear. At that moment, Papa Bear is engaged in the largest tank battle in Marine Corps history, with a large armored force attacking from the west.
At 0800 Colonel Richard Hodory, commander of Papa Bear, and his staff are in their headquarters vehicles as an Iraqi T-55 tank and three armored personnel carriers emerge from the fog and halt about fifty yards away. The tank sits motionless, its gun sighted exactly on Hodory’s command vehicle. But instead of firing, the Iraqi commander gets out of his armored vehicle and surrenders.
The Iraqi commander says he is part of the brigade that attacked the right flank earlier. Within minutes, the rest of the commander’s force also finds Hodory but attacks the command post. Major John H. Turner reports, “We had main gun rounds, machine gun tracers and even 5.56-millimeter fire [from India Company 3/9, friendly fire] coming through the CP [command post]. I remember hitting the deck for the first time during the war and I saw tracers going through the CP from east to west at knee height.16
The headquarters company counters with grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, and antitank weapons. They kill one enemy tank and several armored personnel carriers. The remaining Iraqis retreat into the fog.
1100 Hours
The Iraqi counterattack is over, and the First Division again controls the battlefield. Remnants of the Iraqi force surrender or withdraw north and west into the smoke of the burning al-Burqan oil field. In a pitched battle lasting three hours, the enemy has lost seventy-five tanks and twenty-five armored personnel carriers and had three hundred prisoners taken. No Marines were killed or injured.
Mattis and the 1/7 are ordered to stay in position at al-Jaber while the rest of Task Force Ripper moves north. Task Force Grizzly is ordered to move up from its blocking position behind the second obstacle belt and relieve Mattis at the airfield. They are delayed by the traffic jam in the lanes and sporadic skirmishing with separated, lost Iraqi units along the way.
After about three hours of sleep and thirty hours of maneuvering, interrupted by four hours of intense firefights in heavy, unventilated MOPP suits, Mattis and his men are just at the leading edge of exhaustion. Mattis allows most of the men to rest as they wait and again sets the first watch. As the sun begins to warm them in their steel vehicles, the Marines on watc
h ward off sleep with instant coffee poured directly from the packet onto their tongues and whatever sugary treats they can find in their MREs. The morning wind has changed, lifting the fog and oil smoke around them, relieving some anxiety about being surprised by tanks rolling up on them.
Hours tick by, and still Grizzly is not in place to relieve them. Mattis is going to have to drive hard across probably mined and defended territory to catch up with the rest of Ripper after Grizzly does arrive. There is nothing to do but wait in the stifling vehicles until then. Many of the men and all of the vehicles are covered in a light film of crude oil encrusted with grit and sand. They have been sweating, swearing, and farting in their MOPP suits for over a day. They are beginning to stink horribly.
0230 Hours
Task Force Grizzly arrives at the al-Jaber airfield and relieves the 1/7. Mattis gives the command to move out, and the 1/7 advances double-time to the northeast to catch up with Task Force Ripper. The wind changes direction again, enveloping the battalion in a thick blanket of toxic oil smoke. By 1500 the sun has vanished into a darkness so black that even night-vision devices are useless.
Mattis positions CAAT 1 and CAAT 2 forward, protecting the battalion’s left and right fronts, as he keeps the companies into a tight wedge formation with Team Mech at the point, Company C on the left, and Team Tank on the right. Gunnery Sergeant Cochran will note that “It was like being in a black hole.”17
Driving blind to the possible threats around them and relying entirely on GPS, the 1/7 manages to find and rejoin Task Force Ripper. The task force is now ready to attack Kuwait International Airport.