into the Storm (1997)

by Tom - Nf - Commanders Clancy

  I left the tent and waited for the CINC to get ready to leave.

  Various members of the media were still talking to soldiers. When my public affairs officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Gleisberg, noticed Tom Brokaw of NBC among the correspondents, he asked him if he wanted to talk to the commander of the main attack. He did, so we chatted a short while, and I outlined what VII Corps had done. Since they already had their story for the day, however, it didn't end up in his report.

  After we finished, NBC gave the troops a wonderful gift. Because they had not used all their rented satellite time, Brokaw made available what they had left to soldiers so they could call home. The troops quickly lined up. Because of that generosity, I still watch Tom Brokaw's evening news.

  RETURN FLIGHT

  At about 1430, we got back in the Blackhawk and flew to Kuwait City with the same escort. Once again, it seemed to me that General Schwarzkopf felt good about the day's events. He had apparently gotten all he wanted from the Iraqis, and had his forces positioned in Iraq for any future operations if they were required. If not, we were positioned to leave as soon as a permanent cease-fire had been obtained.

  Once more, we looked over destroyed Iraqi equipment. We had bypassed a large quantity of equipment and ammunition during our attack, I told him, and had started to destroy it, but because of the enormous quantities, and because of our lack of EOD personnel,55 I was not sure we would get it all done.

  "I don't want any Iraqi equipment left in working condition," he told me. "Let me know if you need any more help."

  There was not much more talk.

  I saluted the CINC as he boarded his C-20 to head back to Riyadh.

  It had been a good day. We flew back to the VII Corps TAC CP in Iraq to begin our occupation phase.

  OCCUPATION

  Later that day, I briefed all the commanders except Tom Rhame, whom I had briefed at Safwan. I used the notes from my session with General Schwarzkopf.

  I did not foresee it then, but we were about to enter a seventy-day occupation period. In this time, we captured and processed more prisoners than we had in the eighty-nine-hour war, and our soldiers and units conducted massive humanitarian work for the indigenous population as well as for refugees and displaced persons. This period ended for VII Corps on 9 May 1991.

  In its intensity of concurrent activities, it was not unlike the period before the war. We had to make more command judgments without precedent or guidance than in any period I had ever experienced. It was also a time for emotional reflection, as my commanders and I made it our focus to visit hospitals and memorial services, and to listen to soldiers describe their combat actions, or the selfless actions of their fellow soldiers. It was a time of lessons learned, for the next time. Finally, it was a time of redeployment, and for ceremonies to say thanks and to remember.

  IMMEDIATE MISSIONS

  There are many things to do after the shooting stops. Despite the urgency everyone feels, you do not just declare a halt, cease firing, and then turn around and go home. The speed with which units can switch from all-ahead full-speed combat to post-combat operations is a matter of both command will and the discipline of soldiers. Our soldiers again proved to be superb.

  MEANWHILE, as I later learned, our national security team at home was more focused on getting the UN resolutions approved than on the meeting at Safwan. They considered it to be a matter of cease-fire arrangements between combatants, nothing more, nothing less, and to be left to the theater commander.

  As a result, some senior civilian policy officials in DOD were not even aware that the talks would happen until the last minute, and when they found out, they tried to offer some alternatives to the structure of the talks. But by then General Schwarzkopf had sent the terms he and his HQ had drawn up to the Joint Chiefs, who had approved them, and the meeting was about to be held.

  According to an account in Secretary of State James Baker's book, The Politics of Diplomacy, on a subsequent visit to Saudi, Baker and Schwarzkopf discussed amending the terms of the talks in light of developments in Iraq. The option was to have a permanent demilitarized zone in Iraq to be monitored by the UN, one perhaps as large as the existing ground under the current no-fly zone. We were already there on the ground and would only have to turn it over to the UN. It was late, however, and a great deal of momentum had been generated by the idea of getting the troops out and getting them home, and so nothing was changed.

  The same attitude toward a quick withdrawal pervaded the theater at CENTCOM HQ, except that the CINC had made it perfectly clear that we were not to give up "one square inch of Iraqi territory" until our POWs were returned and the Coalition had what it wanted from a defeated Iraq. Here, at least, we were using the battlefield victory to gain the strategic objectives we wanted.

  Meanwhile, Third Army had its hands full. Even before the cease-fire had gone into effect, they had formed a task force (named Task Force Freedom) to rebuild Kuwait, appointed a commander, Major General Bob Frix, and gotten special funds from the Department of the Army (the U.S. Army was appointed executive agent for the job). After the Coalition had kicked out the Iraqis, they rolled into Kuwait City and went to work.

  In occupied Iraq, it was a different story.

  The demilitarized line and force separation were meant to be short temporary measures, and as a result, there was absolutely no intention in CENTCOM to order us to do anything that would indicate or otherwise cause us to establish what might look like a permanent presence in Iraq. I welcomed that. Along with the rest of my commanders, I was anxious to get our troops out of Iraq and back into Saudi, then home. But things did not work out that way.

  This was a strange period for us. We had no formal occupation mission. In fact, since I had initially figured, along with John Yeosock, that the permanent cease-fire would happen about two weeks after the Safwan talks, and then we would leave, we concentrated at first on lessons learned, on the safety and security of our troops, on enforcing the DML (demilitarized line) provisions the CINC had set out, and on destroying Iraqi equipment and ammo as fast as we could. Simple. Mission accomplished.

  Then predictions changed. Two weeks became extended to 18-22 March. Then longer. Then I stopped asking. Meanwhile, XVIII Corps was pulling out in accordance with the "first-in, first-out" policy (units were supposed to go home in accordance with their arrival times; we enforced this policy hard in VII Corps). Their withdrawal was completed on 22 March. That meant that we took over the zone previously occupied by both corps, an area about the size of Kentucky. After the XVIII Corps departure, the troops of VII Corps were the only ones left in Iraq.

  During this time, we had no orders from Third Army or CENTCOM, other than rules of engagement to enforce the DML. The in-theater intent remained that we should not do anything to suggest permanency. But things in Iraq could not remain the same while everyone waited for the cease-fire. Permanent residents of towns and villages began to appear, as did refugees. Food and water were in short supply. Except for what we could provide, there was no law and order. Likewise, without us, there were no medical facilities. That made for some difficult choices for us in VII Corps. We could not stand idly by.

  Meanwhile, I stayed at our TAC CP in Iraq. I was not leaving as long as we had VII Corps in Iraq.

  During those weeks, we spent considerable time going over the battles we had just fought to get it all accurate and to learn for the next time. You must also learn from success.

  I directed each unit to conduct an AAR of its unit actions while it was all fresh in everyone's mind and we were still there on the battlefield, which everyone did within two weeks after the end of the war. On 11 March, we did a complete VII Corps AAR at the TAC CP, with all senior commanders in attendance. For that, my TAC crew built a terrain-scaled replica of our attack zone, which included phase lines and markers in the sand for positions of major unit movement. I did eighteen hours of interviews with the VII Corps historian, Major Pete Kindsvatter. My major unit commanders and I atte
nded a Third Army AAR at King Khalid Military City on 12 March, notable for the time differences on unit locations, which further confirmed my suspicions that the map-posting accuracy in Riyadh had been short of the mark and might have accounted for some of the situational misunderstanding. Some CENTCOM times had been as much as twenty-four hours off on the Third Army battle reconstruction. I even found out later that CENTCOM had been in the habit of posting unit locations on the map by the locations of unit command posts, an error of fifty kilometers or more in some cases, since the CPs would sometimes be that far behind.

  Both 1st AD and 3rd AD went back over their battle areas to look at what had been destroyed by air and what their units had destroyed. As best as both units could determine, about 15 to 20 percent of the damage had been done by CENTAF; the rest had come from direct-fire systems, artillery, or aviation. Third AD meticulously counted every destroyed tank in its sector and came up with 603. Of that number, fewer than 100 had been by air. In his AAR, Butch Funk confirmed the 9th and 29th Brigades of the Tawalkana in his sector, as well as the 10th and 12th Iraqi Armored Divisions. In some cases the Iraqis had abandoned perfectly functioning pieces of equipment, which we either took back to Germany as display monuments or blew up. First AD methodically reconstructed the Battle of Medina Ridge, locating each Iraqi vehicle by GPS, and recording its orientation vis-a-vis the attacking 1st AD, and what had killed the vehicle. Their statistics of that fight are accurate beyond doubt. I personally spent the better part of an afternoon with Joe Sartiano, H. R. McMaster, and Lieutenant Colonel Mike Kobbe going around the 73 Easting battle step by step.

  The previously mentioned booklet, "The 100-Hour War: How the Iraqi Plan Failed," assembled by a team headed by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Kirk from VII Corps G-2 in a little more than thirty days, and from a variety of sources, remains the most definitive account of what the Iraqis were trying to do in our sector. One Iraqi infantry unit commander said, "You attacked us with the same NATO force that was designed to attack the entire Warsaw Pact, and the entire earth shook." He got all that right, except the part about attacking the Warsaw Pact. An Iraqi brigade commander said, "I stood and looked to the west, and all I could see for as far as one could see were tanks and more tanks; tanks everywhere." One Iraqi general said, after he was captured, "I will never forget the way we were treated. Your soldiers are heroes."

  One area where we failed was in capturing the combat in video and still pictures. Since many of our battles were in bad weather, rain, blowing sand, and at night, they would have been difficult to capture on film in any event, but we could have done better. I regret that the video legacy of Desert Storm gives a poor to erroneous impression of the war that the soldiers and Marines fought on land.

  We recorded all our lessons learned, as well as made notes for what needed to be improved for the future. We learned that our soldiers, training, organizations, doctrine, and equipment were as able as we had thought they were. It was also a vindication of the Total Army concept that included the Reserve component.

  There were also some things we needed to look at for the future of land warfare. I thought Desert Storm represented a transition war (in fact, all wars are transition wars). A lot of the old methods bear repeating in the future, but also some of the new ones. I also thought our possible enemies of the future were watching this war and taking notes. If they ever confronted the United States on a battlefield, they would attempt to stay away from some of our strengths--and take note of our weaknesses. All that meant to me was that we could not stand still and rest on our laurels. We would have to continue to maintain the edge. I filed it all away in my own notes to look at after we had some more time and perspective.

  In some of the other actions we started during those days:

  * I wanted to get the story told of what the corps soldiers had done in our eighty-nine-hour war, and so made sure there were many interviews with soldiers in the media and in unit publications.

  * I had training resume. Not that I had to remind anyone; after the war, commanders instinctively turned to training. We had lots of ammo, plenty of targets still to shoot at, and plenty of real estate. Each unit set up its own target area and began training again. You have to keep your edge. If Saddam had decided to start something again, or if the rules changed, we were ready.

  * We continued to destroy the Iraqi equipment we had bypassed in our attack.

  We had one ally in all this. When XVIII Corps left, the French left a company-sized aviation unit with us, under my tactical control, and it was of great assistance to us in the western part of our sector. At one point, I asked the French commander when he was going home. "When you do," he answered. "We will stay as long as you need us." That they did. Like the British, they were terrific allies.

  DESTRUCTION OF ENEMY EQUIPMENT

  This task was vast, and went on from the beginning of the war on 24 February until we left Iraq for good on 9 May. Each unit was given the task of destroying the enemy ammunition and equipment in the area it had been assigned for occupation duties.

  Because I was aware that it would require a total corps effort, I directed Task Force Demo to be formed on 2 March, and gave the mission to Colonel Sam Raines's 7th Engineer Brigade. Sam formed a special composite unit, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Mark E. Vincent from an M577 in the VII Corps TAC CP in Iraq.

  At 1500 on 2 March, they briefed me at the TAC on their concept of the operation, and I approved it on the spot. For the next seven weeks, this task force went about destroying Iraqi equipment and munitions and supervising the work done by our divisions, the 2nd ACR, and even the 11th Aviation Brigade in their sectors. It was an enormous effort.

  Each day, I got a report on the previous day's destruction. Extensive records were kept of what was destroyed and its GPS location; specific areas were designated, and each day's mission ordered within those areas. Thus, all units knew who was working where, and safety was maintained. In the entire operation, not one U.S. soldier was injured.

  In seven weeks, the task force supervised the destruction of equipment equivalent to that of two Iraqi MECH/armor divisions. EOD personnel cleared thousands of unexploded or unexpended munitions, and--in a humanitarian effort--fenced off hazardous areas around populated sites. A total of 6,622 targets were destroyed, worth, we estimated, about $1.2 billion.

  The task force did not examine each of the munitions before exploding it, but we were sensitive to the possibility of unexploded Iraqi chemical munitions, and to my knowledge, no one ever detected any release of Iraqi chemical agents. If such agents had in fact been released, the chemical alarms in use with the troops would have detected them. During the time of the mission, no mission-caused illnesses were reported, except for one soldier who got a mustard gas blister on his arm.

  We even destroyed an Iraqi gunboat. One day, Tom Rhame called and said, "Boss, we've got an Iraqi gunboat just off the coast by Umm Qasr. We'd like to destroy it."

  "Is it occupied?" I asked.

  "No."

  "Go ahead."

  A few 120-mm tank rounds later, the gunboat went to the bottom of the Gulf.

  Near Umm Qasr on 10 March, the 1st INF uncovered a huge cache of cruise missiles, Exocets and Silkworms. The unit not only destroyed the concrete facility that housed them, but set off the missiles in a spectacular explosion near the coast (they used remote fusing from five kilometers away).

  HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS

  It was in the area of humanitarian operations that we were least prepared, and experienced the most frustrations--and, in the end, the greatest satisfaction--of anything we did in the postwar period.

  We were genuinely surprised by the magnitude of this mission.

  Immediately after Desert Storm, there were few civilians in the VII Corps sector. The largest towns were Safwan and al-Busayyah. When Moreno and the Big Red One had taken it, Safwan had been largely deserted, while al-Busayyah was now mostly rubble, and completely abandoned. Shortly after the beginning of the XVIII Corp
s withdrawal on 9 March, and while the talks continued at the UN, a civil war broke out in the south of Iraq, when the Shi'ite Muslims in the region rebelled against the Baghdad regime.

  As a direct result of that civil war, and the Iraqi government's indiscriminate and deliberate acts of violence against the civilian population along the Euphrates, a large number of refugees began arriving in the VII Corps sector, starting on about 15 March. Many of these refugees were drawn to Safwan, the only significantly built-up area in U.S.-occupied Iraq, and refugees thought that from there they would have quick access to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (Safwan was only a few kilometers north of the Kuwaiti border). Soon after the war, however, both of those countries closed their borders to these refugees, and VII Corps faced a growing refugee population.