into the Storm (1997)

by Tom - Nf - Commanders Clancy

  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 respected 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.

  Though Agent Orange had been heavily used in War Zone C, the effects were intermittent. There were bare patches that left the jungle looking as if it had been hit by winter, and there were large areas of dense rain forest. But on the whole, despite the defoliants, the forests of War Zone C were higher and denser than what the squadron had experienced up to then--triple canopy rather than single canopy. The NVA were transporting their people and supplies through this labyrinth on bicycles along a network of jungle trails and often using flashlights to do it at night.

  Time and again after fights and B-52 strikes, American soldiers discovered flashlights on dead and captured NVA. Nobody made very much of this until, all of a sudden, it hit someone that they carried flashlights because they couldn't see at night, not nearly as well as Americans. Because of their diet--fish and rice, few fresh vegetables--they were practically blind in the dark. At night in thick jungle, they could hardly see the trails with their flashlights, much less navigate. The only reason they operated at night was that operating during the day was even more dangerous. In other words, the NVA didn't own the night. They were vulnerable.

  When that point grew clear, one of the officers had an inspiration. His name was Captain Sewall Menzel, and he came up with a way to lay an ambush for the NVA without exposing American troops. When the North Vietnamese came down a trail, one of them would hit a trip wire; behind him, preset claymore mines and other weapons would go off, killing nearly everyone on the trail. They had tried it earlier with some success. It would work much better in War Zone C.

  Soon, 2nd Squadron troops were setting "trap lines," as they called them, along assigned trails. Each of the cavalry troops had an assigned area and their "trap lines" to set and check daily. Before long, these automatic ambushes had succeeded in cutting way back on the amount of men and supplies coming through.

  When you really know the enemy, you can see his weaknesses and hit him hard.

  Prepare Soldiers to Fight

  Doing this has both immediate and long-term aspects.

  Long-term preparation for combat is absolutely the most crucial component of keeping soldiers at a combat edge. The word for long-term preparation is training. Franks later liked to quote Rommel, who said, "The best form of welfare for the troops is first-class training."

  If you don't have much experience with today's Army, there's a good chance you have misconceptions about how soldiers spend their working life. The tendency is to think of Army life as dull but predictable: you have to work your way, as best you can, around a large, unresponsive bureaucracy. In truth, there's more than a little bit of all that, but none of this is the true Army.

  Soldiers and leaders in the U.S. Army spend the better part of their lives training for war, and training hard. American soldiers train like Olympic athletes--but with this difference: they train their bodies to perform at the highest pitch, but they also train their minds to work at the same high pitch. In combat, the mental edge is as important as the physical. You also have to know how to handle your weapons. You have to know how to run and maintain your vehicles. And you have to know how to do all that in consort with other vehicles . . . in a team, with other teams. And that means you have to think, not only about what's going on now, in your own immediate situation, but also in relation to several other situations that depend on you. And at the same time, you have to think about how each of these situations is changing, and likely to change, over the course of the next few minutes, or hours . . . or for longer periods for higher commanders. Finally, you have to be able to predict or judge or intuit or guess how your enemy is going to be acting and reacting to all these situations, then decide on a course of action that gives your units the edge they need.

  This kind of thinking is thinking at a very high level.

  Fred Franks has always had a passion for units skilled in combat fundamentals, a carryover from playing lots of sports. He particularly valued accurate firepower, for being able to hit what you aim at. It is his conviction that most battles and engagements are won by units with weapons skills. Maneuver is important, as is knowing how to maneuver, but in the final crunch, it's the unit's fighting capability in terms of toughness and their weapons skills that wins in a fight.

  How do you train for toughness and weapons skills? By drills and exercises. By setting up a qualification course for vehicles such as tanks. And then by practice and more practice to reach combat standards. You push your unit's edge as far as you can. Then you push it farther than that.

  Units need intensive training--if they can get it--even in combat zones.

  After Grail Brookshire took command as 2nd Squadron commander from Jim Aarstaat early in September, the squadron completed its move to Di An. There they were to exchange most of their M113s for newer Sheridan light tanks. And there they also drew 81-mm mortars in exchange for their 4.2-in weapons (the 81-mm mortar could shoot closer in to its own position, a capability Brookshire wanted).

  At Di An, in addition to receiving new weapons, the squadron would undergo a CMMI (Command Maintenance Management Inspection), an administrative procedure that looked into how the squadron's maintenance program was going. The new weapons were an important addition to the squadron. The CMMI was a bureaucratic joke.

  "For Christ's sake," Franks said to himself when the inspectors made their appearance in their crisp, spiffy rear area uniforms, "the squadron's in the middle of a combat theater, and here come these rear area guys with clipboards checking us out like we're at Fort Knox with nothing better to do."

  There were too many scenes like this:

  "Hey, look here," a CMMI officer laments, adding up check marks on his clipboard. "These vehicles have holes in them."

  "Shit, sir, they got hit by RPGs," a soldier answers, with barely concealed disgust. "That happens when you fight."

  Franks knew the CMMI threatened to take the squadron's focus off needed combat training. They did not let it happen. They kept their eye on the ball. It was a great lesson. Franks would later remember this as he kept focused on the training and preparation for war amid all the distractions of VII Corps's deployment to Saudi Arabia.

  Despite the CMMI, the standdown for maintenance came at a good time for the unit. Most vehicles the squadron was keeping needed to be fitted out with new tracks or otherwise repaired and brought up to speed. This time also gave Brookshire a chance to get to know the squadron and for them to get to know him. More important, they needed a rest. They had been on line in operations for more than six months without a break.

  It wasn't a holiday. Brookshire wanted discipline, combat discipline. He wanted a training program, to institute maintenance procedures that would work in combat, and to stress teamwork. He also wanted to get the squadron provisioned with all the right equipment, and to replace what was lost to combat actions. Weapons needed to be fixed or replaced, and fire control on tracked vehicles corrected. They needed spare parts, and they needed to load up on ammunition. While all this was going on, Brookshire was everywhere looking into everything, and he expected Franks as the S-3 and Gilbreath as the executive officer to be doing the same thing. It was a break from combat, but a busy time for the squadron.

  Meanwhile, they took in the new Sheridans, and on the whole, they were glad to have them.

  The Sheridan light tank was an innovative, and in many ways a flawed, machine (its official title was Armored Airborne R
econnaissance Assault Vehicle, or AARAV). Originally designed to be dropped by parachute, for use by airborne units (the 82nd Airborne is phasing out Sheridans, but used them effectively in Panama in 1989), the Sheridan was fitted with aluminum armor and an aluminum frame. It had a decent powerplant, which made it quick and agile (much better than the M113 in that regard); and because it was light, it didn't normally bog down in the often soft terrain of Vietnam. Soldiers also welcomed the big weapon it carried, a 152-mm cannon (the tank commander had, additionally, a .50-caliber machine gun). From this you could fire either an antipersonnel flechette round, a HEAT round, or even a Shillelagh antitank missile. The flechette round is packed like a shotgun shell with three-inch-long darts that are propelled to a velocity comparable to the muzzle velocity of a bullet. HEAT rounds (High Explosive Anti-Tank) were used for bunker busting. They were not actually used against tanks, since in those days the U.S. Army did not see NVA tanks. Shillelaghs were not used in Vietnam.