into the Storm (1997)

by Tom - Nf - Commanders Clancy

  Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Gary Luck had been briefed on CONPLAN Ridgeway (Contingency Plan Ridgeway), XVIII Corps's accommodation to the developments to the east. He ordered XVIII Corps to attack east into the Republican Guards. The 24th MECH and the 3rd ACR (under the 24th's operational control) would be the main effort, attacking east along Highway 8 late on the twenty-seventh, while the 101st Airborne would attack into an objective (Thomas) ten kilometers north of Basra with Apache and Cobra helicopters.

  XVIII Corps was now prepared to synchronize its operations with VII Corps. But they had to hurry. By late on the twenty-sixth, while XVIII Corps was completing its airfield attacks and mission to interdict Highway 8, VII Corps was at least fifty kilometers farther east than Gary Luck's easternmost unit, and the gap between the two corps was growing.

  Over in Kuwait, on the night of 25-26 February, there began an episode that would later turn out to be a major reason why the war ended early.

  Late on the evening of the twenty-fifth, the Kuwaiti resistance let the Saudis know that the Iraqi army in Kuwait City appeared to be forming convoys out of military and civilian vehicles. It looked, in other words, as though the Iraqis might be starting to move out. The Saudis communicated this news to CENTCOM, and it was confirmed by a J-STARS aircraft tracking ground movements out of Kuwait City. Something approaching 200 vehicles was tracked moving on the freeway connecting Kuwait City and Basra near the town of Al Jahrah, at the western end of the Bay of Kuwait.

  Soon CENTAF had Navy and USAF F-15s attacking these vehicles (only a very few of which were tanks or BMPs) along the highway, on what is known as the Mutlah Ridge. And during the early-morning hours of 26 February, Air Force and Navy aircraft flew hundreds of sorties against what indeed proved to be the fleeing Iraqi army. The attacks were so successful, the Western media dubbed the highway near Al Jahrah "the Highway of Death." Close to 1,500 smashed and burned-out hulks clogged the road to Basra (though loss of life, it became apparent later, was not nearly so great as the press at first reported).

  An article appeared in the 26 February Washington Post, entitled " 'Like Fish in a Barrel,' U.S. Pilots Say." Another appeared the same day, describing Coalition air attacks as "a combat frenzy." Such views half a world from the action were about to set in motion decisions that would determine whether or not Norman Schwarzkopf's imperative--"Destroy the Republican Guards!"--would in fact be achieved.

  By the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, the 2nd Marine Division, spearheaded by the Army's Tiger Brigade, had captured Mutlaa Ridge and cut off the highway to Basra, while the 1st Marine Division had sealed off the Kuwait International Airport. JFC-E continued north along the coastal highway. Kuwait City was now encircled.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Night Combat

  VII CORPS TAC CP IRAQ

  ACTIVITY level was high in the TAC. With enormous effort, they had traveled 150 kilometers to a position just west and north of the 2nd ACR's 73 Easting battle, set up the five M577s, and reestablished the communication channels. By now, the sandstorms, limited visibility, and rain of the late afternoon had passed us by, the wind was relatively calm, and temperatures were in the high forties. We had been in a fight with the RGFC since noon the day before.

  I could see the troops were tired. Some were unshaven, and their chemical suits were soiled from three days of continuous wear. Yet everyone was working hard with focus and quiet professionalism. No one was hollering, and everyone had kept his sense of humor, although that was being seriously challenged.

  Maps had been put up on the boards, situations quickly posted, field desks set up. Somebody somehow managed to make coffee--using paper towels for filters; real filters had run out long ago.

  With the canvas extensions pulled out behind the backed-up M577s, our open work space (minus the vertical extension supports) was roughly twenty by thirty feet, all over uneven sand. The constant moving back and forth of the almost thirty people inside created a constant brown sandy haze under the artificial light.

  A total of about 150 troops were at the TAC, and about fifty vehicles, counting our command group tanks and M113s. Located as we were in the middle of the 3rd AD sector, we could see the tracers from the rounds fired against the Iraqi defenses, and could hear the sounds of the battle, the low rumble of outgoing artillery, the boom of tank cannons, and the three-round thuds of 25-mm Bradley chain guns.

  The radio crackled with continuous transmissions: "Enemy tanks at . . . Passage of lines beginning . . . T-72s at . . ." One after the other they came in . . . almost too fast to record manually. Each of the five M577s had two or more radios, so the noise was multiplied. Our battle staff NCOs were manning the radios and posting maps and staff officers were on the phone to VII Corps main CP--now more than 200 kilometers away--so that the main could keep its situation maps current for reports to Riyadh. Main also was giving us the latest intelligence from Third Army. I would want to hear that soon.

  A few moments after I returned, I asked Stan to assemble the TAC crew so that I could brief them about what had gone on that day and outline what I had in mind for the next VII Corps maneuver.

  "For the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours," I told them, "we are going to drive the corps hard, day and night, to overcome all resistance and to prevent the enemy from withdrawing. We will synchronize our fight, as we always have, but we will crank up the heat. The way home is through the RGFC."

  I went on to thank them for their efforts so far, but, I added, we needed to run right through the finish line.

  Since we were all getting tired--the TAC crew especially, after they'd moved all night and most of the day--I thought I needed to give us all some motivation, but I also wanted to outline some guidance for a plan of maneuver for the next day. I explained that we had the opportunity to engage in a double envelopment of the Iraqi forces to our front. We could close around them from the south and from the north, and trap the remaining Iraqi forces in our sector. From what we could see of the movement of XVIII Corps units, it did not appear that they would catch up to 1st AD for at least another twenty-four to forty-eight hours, as they had a long way to go after getting north to Highway 8 and then turning east. It was not an easy maneuver for them and one with significant logistics challenges, especially concerning fuel. So we'd better do what we could ourselves, in the time we had, to destroy the remaining Iraqi forces in our sector.

  CONVERSATION WITH THE CINC

  At around 1830, I called CENTCOM HQ and asked for General Schwarzkopf, but he was not in. They told me he would call back, and we finally connected sometime before 2000.

  Since I have no exact notes on this call, I won't try to quote our exact words, but this was the gist:

  I'd wondered if he would raise the issue of the speed of our advance, but he didn't, which pleased me. It seemed to indicate that the issue was closed. Otherwise my report was the same kind of SITREP that I normally gave to John Yeosock, though I hoped I could also communicate to him an awareness of the magnificent job our troops were doing under tough battlefield conditions. I just sensed he did not have an appreciation of all they were doing.

  During our conversation, the TAC kept working hard. Radios continued to crackle, and people went about their business as I pressed the phone close to my ear so that I could hear. It was a straightforward, commander-to-commander discussion, and throughout he gave every indication that he understood what I was saying. I wanted to lay out what we were doing, and intended to do, and see if he had any further guidance for us, but I also wanted to let the CINC know that, in my judgment, the maneuver John Yeosock wanted to make with the British--to attack them south into the Wadi--was not a good idea. (I wanted General Schwarzkopf to be aware of this issue, because I wanted to use the British as the southern arm of the envelopment instead, and because we needed the CINC's help to get an Army boundary changed. Otherwise I would have simply argued the whole thing out with John Yeosock.)

  I began by reporting that we had turned the corps ninety de
grees east and were attacking the RGFC, that 1st INF would pass through 2nd ACR that night and form the three-division fist of the corps to destroy the RGFC, that I had Apaches going deep that night, and that we were pressing the fight hard. He seemed to take it all in.

  Because I assumed he already had a good picture of our activities, I did not give him details of the fighting, or of the battle damage to the Iraqis. As I discovered after the war, though, his HQ was twelve to twenty-four hours behind in tracking the fight. If I had known that then, I would have filled him in more completely. As it turned out, what the CINC apparently thought we were doing and what we were actually doing were worlds apart.

  After I had taken him through our basic situation, I told him about our orders from Third Army to attack south with the British, and told him that instead we should continue east and maybe north with the British, and he agreed. He thought going south was a bad idea as well.

  Once again, I thought we understood each other. Again, I discovered after the war that I was wrong. In his autobiography, General Schwarzkopf reports that he heard me say that I was worried about some bypassed Iraqi units that might hit us in the flank and that, in his words, I "wanted them destroyed" before his forces turned to the Republican Guards, and therefore was about to order an attack toward the south.

  " 'Fred,' I interrupted, 'for chrissakes, don't turn south! Turn east. Go after 'em!' "

  A few lines later, he chalked it up to understandable pre-battle jitters but what he seemed to be saying was that I intended to have the whole corps attack south before I got around to hitting the Republican Guards. Such a thought couldn't have been further from my mind. I didn't even want to attack south with the British, much less the whole corps. How he got that impression is almost unimaginable to me. I was stunned. Here we were in a fist; we had been attacking relentlessly into the Tawalkana most of the day; we were also less than two hours from an Apache battalion attack about 100 kilometers east of those battles; and all of it heading due east! How could he think I was about to turn south? (That would have meant, for example, turning 1st AD and 3rd AD ninety degrees, which would have put them on the axis on which they had just attacked north for 150 kilometers! Plus, we were about to pass the 1st INF through the 2nd ACR at night!)

  Lastly, I told him about our commitment of the 1st CAV in the north and our double-envelopment scheme of maneuver.

  After he had listened to it all, he answered, "OK, Fred, good work, and keep it up," or words to that effect. He went on to add some compliments to the corps, yet he also left me with the clear intent that we should continue to press the attack hard . . . as we were in fact doing. Then he added some intelligence that was new to me: the Hammurabi Division were being loaded onto HETs and were trying to escape the theater. We had thought the Hammurabi would be defending in the vicinity of the Medina, or even up north in XVIII Corps sector. Now that they appeared to be trying to get out, my sense of urgency increased. However, since we were then close to 100 kilometers from the Hammurabi, they were split between us and XVIII Corps, and our troops were fully committed at this point, there wasn't much else we could do.

  Finally, he thanked me for the update, added a "good luck," and that was it. I got no change in orders from General Schwarzkopf.

  It was our only talk during those four days, and afterward, I could not help but conclude that he was satisfied with what we were doing. He also left me with the feeling that we had maybe another forty-eight hours to finish this war. It was nothing he said specifically, yet I put together the new intelligence about the Hammurabi with what we were doing to the Tawalkana, and that told me intuitively that time was running out. I still thought we had enough time to destroy the RGFC in our sector.

  I felt I had had a clear meeting of minds with Schwarzkopf, and I chalked up the earlier reports of his displeasure to the usual ups and downs all commanders go through in a fight. We had maneuvered a large complex formation into a physical posture that in my judgment was perfect for the enemy and the mission. I had just finished pumping up the TAC and telling them we would drive this to completion. If ever I felt I had my unit in a position to have a decisive edge over an enemy, this was it.

  I called John Yeosock to report the conversation, and my impressions, and also told him that I had raised the issue of the British attacking south, and that the CINC had agreed that it was not a good idea. John then released me from it (in all fairness to John, the mission south had not been a stupid or ill-considered idea: in addition to the possibility of getting the 1st CAV into the fight earlier, he had also been thinking that, by clearing the area, he could more quickly establish a log base in Kuwait that would give us a much faster turnaround time for fuel, in case we and XVIII Corps continued fighting in and around northern Kuwait and near Basra).

  ENEMY FORCES

  During the day, our main CP had been developing a clear picture of the Iraqis' activities, and after my phone calls, our G-2 folks gave Stan and me a quick intelligence update. This is what they reported at 2030:

  "Tawalkana Mech Division and one brigade of the 52nd Armored Division will continue to defend along Phase Line Tangerine until approximately 262100C"--that is, at 2100 on 26 February ("C" stands for local time)--"at which time, Tawalkana Division has been ordered to withdraw to a subsequent defensive position. This subsequent defensive position will probably be reinforced by the remainder of the 52nd Armored Division and possibly the 17th AD. On 26 Feb, elements of the Medina Division moved out of revetments to orient forces to the SW. Similarly, up to 9 bns of the Hammurabi Division moved to the NE about 10-20 kilometers in positions to defend the Rumaila oil fields." The oil fields were about thirty kilometers west and southwest of Basra, running north to south about ten kilometers; they were about half in our sector and half in XVIII Corps's. We thought they might be impassable for heavy tracked vehicles (it turned out we were wrong). "Other Iraqi forces in Kuwait will continue to withdraw to the north toward the Iraqi border. The Iraqi goal will be to delay VII Corps and MARCENT43 along successive defensive lines, while withdrawing the bulk of his armored and mechanized units into Iraq. Iraqi forces, particularly RGFC units, will remain capable of maintaining a defense in depth and conducting up to brigade-sized counterattacks. He will become increasingly vulnerable to Coalition air strikes as he withdraws from prepared defensive positions, as well as to rapid and coordinated fires and maneuvers."

  This statement was later included in the report that went to Third Army from our VII Corps main CP. What it meant to me was that the Iraqi strategic reserves were attempting to form a series of defensive lines between us and Highway 8, so that they could continue to move their forces out of Kuwait, that the RGFC was the HQ directing this defense, and that the Tawalkana and Medina RGFC divisions were still immediately in front of VII Corps.

  The Tawalkana had their three brigades on line from north to south approximately along the 70 north/south grid line. These three brigades were the 29th MECH, the 9th Armored, and the 18th MECH. South of the 18th MECH was the 37th Armored Brigade of the Iraqi 12th Armored Division. Earlier in the night of 24-25 February, the RGFC had deployed the 50th Armored Brigade, with close to ninety tanks, in a security zone in front of this defensive line. That force had been decisively defeated by the 2nd ACR the day before, 25 February. Behind the Tawalkana defense were brigades of both the 10th and 12th Iraqi Armored Divisions. The Medina, meanwhile, was moving two armored brigades west, the 14th and the 2nd, to defend a theater logistics site just to the east of the 70 north/south grid line. They were being joined by two unidentified armored brigades moving up from the south. At this time, the Iraqis still had the ability to reposition brigade-sized forces and were doing so. The Adnan Division also appeared to be sending a brigade south to help the Tawalkana and Medina Divisions defend.

  For some time, it had not been clear to me either how much of the Hammurabi was in VII Corps's sector or how much they would become involved in this forming defense, and that was still the case. Our VII Corps
estimate was that they were moving out of positions to defend the Rumaila oil fields and would move forward to defend if the Medina could not hold our attack. The 17th Armored also was part of the defense. (Earlier, in chapter 1, we mentioned that some Iraqi units had been wrongly identified. That was true in this area. Thus, the 52nd Division was actually the 12th Armored.)

  Clearly the RGFC were attempting to defend, and were positioning forces to do so. Though I did not know their precise strength at this time, I believed it was closer to 75 percent than 50 percent. Not only were they repositioning units, they were also attempting fairly crafty defensive tactics, such as the reverse-slope defense mentioned earlier.

  I put the intel update together with the information my commanders had given me during my battlefield visits earlier that day, and they matched. From there my commander's running estimate led me to these conclusions:

  I knew we had the Iraqi forces fixed. We had also surprised them with the speed and direction of our attack, and they were now scrambling to reorient and to thicken the defense. I needed to continue to press the corps attack so that the Iraqis could not get any more set than they already were. We had opened up a window of vulnerability in the Iraqi defense, and we needed to complete our mission before that window closed.