by Tom Clancy
He added that reports of progress outside the corps early in the morning of 24 February were sketchy at best. As 2nd ACR had moved forward, they had maintained contact with 3rd ACR on our VII Corps western boundary (they were XVIII Corps's easternmost unit). And since we had a liaison officer directly linked to XVIII Corps in our main CP, we had reports of early success by the 82nd, 101st, and French 6th Division operation in the west of XVIII Corps.
Meanwhile, effective midnight, 1st CAV had been placed back under control of CENTCOM as theater reserve. We continued to stay in communication with them, however, as I anticipated their coming back to us at some point. They were also still operating in our sector, and we were providing their logistics support.
As for Marine actions or the Arab forces (JFC-E) on the east coast, we had no reports.
Fire support came next: Colonel Ray Smith21 reported that we would get a total of 350 sorties of air that day, 100 of them close air support.
"What about targets beyond the FSCL?" I asked. The FSCL was a line usually drawn about thirty to forty kilometers forward of the line of enemy contact; beyond it, the air could attack targets of their choosing.
"Sir, the correlation between what we asked to get hit and what got hit is still poor, less than 50 percent."
The FSCL issue continued to be a point of great disagreement between me and CENTAF and had plagued our operations from the start (Gary Luck and Third Army were having the same problems). My ability to influence air interdiction attacks against ground targets beyond the FSCL was poor. CENTAF kept rejecting our targets and hitting their own. Though I had made my feelings on this well known to both Yeosock and Waller, I was not confident the situation with air would change. It did not.
By now, the staff knew all this was a raw issue with me. I had no arguments with how many air sorties CENTAF flew in and beyond our sector. That was the CINC's decision. But I wanted to synchronize the sorties in our sector with my own assets in a well-orchestrated scheme of attack. I had the mission here, not the Air Force! So when the subject of targets beyond the FSCL came up, my reaction was likely to be heated and sharp. I thought I knew a hell of a lot better what targets should get hit in our sector than CENTAF in Riyadh, especially after the attack began and the situation started to change rapidly.
In his brief, our chemical officer, Colonel Bob Thornton, reported that the orders were understood in the corps that forward of the line of departure (the Iraq-Saudi border), troops would be in MOPP 1 and would take the nerve gas (PB) pills. He continued to maintain that the Iraqis had the capability to use chemical and bio against us, and I believed him. I expected the Iraqis to use chemical weapons, and I never rested easy about it.
G-4, Colonel Bill Rutherford, reviewed the status of major pieces of equipment. Availability was in the high 90 percentile, better than we'd ever had in Germany, and a testament to the hard work put in by soldiers and sergeants. It also showed pride: no one wanted to be left behind with a broken vehicle. Our biggest challenge, we all knew, would be fuel. Though consumption would be enormous--the divisions would burn up to 800,000 gallons a day--the problem would be distribution, not supply. I did not want to be the armored commander who ran out of fuel on top of the world's greatest supply of oil. Logisticians can work only so much magic, however, and I was very aware that my tactical decisions would be influenced by logistics.
Over the past few days, I had ordered a number of operations to prepare for our attack on G+1, but because of the diplomatic maneuvering and the constant possibility of last-minute changes, I had been in the habit of confirming those orders each day. That day, I knew I needed to confirm that: 2nd ACR was to continue to execute a movement to contact twenty kilometers to Phase Line Grape (their Busch), 3rd AD was to conduct a planned deep attack that night against artillery in range of the breach with their Apaches, and 11th AVN BDE was to execute CONPLAN Boot, an attack the following night against Iraqi VII Corps tactical reserves, their 52nd Armored Division (this would complement both the 1st INF breach on G+1 and the subsequent attack east by the British).
It was a quick staff update, perhaps twenty minutes in all, and when it was over, I made a brief recap. This was an important day, I said, the last day for us to get ready for our attack. The diplomatic maneuvering was over, I told them. Now it was up to us. I thanked them for all their hard work, and said, "JAYHAWK."
It was a great team. As I had said many times, I was confident we would do what we had to do, and save the talk for later. I was proud to be with them, as well as with the larger team, the 146,000 (counting 1st CAV) American and British soldiers who were the JAYHAWK VII Corps.
After a brief huddle with John Landry and Gene Daniel to go over that day's key operations and review my expectations of the next two days, I departed for the twenty-minute Blackhawk trip to our TAC CP.
VII CORPS COMMAND POSTS
Though we had spent considerable effort to think our way through command post arrangements and to keep each other informed during the anticipated fast-moving operation, these arrangements, we knew, were fragile. Even so, I was confident they would work. While there was still time, though, I took one final look at them:
Of our three command posts, the rear CP would stay at Al Qaysumah, a town with an airfield about thirty kilometers east of Hafar al Batin on the Tapline Road; the main would stay right where they were, about forty kilometers south of the border; and the TAC CP and the two "jump TAC" CPS would move and stay physically close to the battle.
The TAC CP would initially remain close to the middle of the 3rd Armored formation. It would move late on G+1, after the success of the breach was assured and I shifted the main effort of the corps to the enveloping force.
One "jump TAC" would stay well ahead with the 3rd Armored, so they could communicate with 2nd ACR, 1st AD, and 3rd AD. The other "jump TAC" would be at the breach site, where Brigadier General Gene Daniel was to command passage through the breach of the appropriate corps units--the British, our two artillery brigades moving to join their divisions, the 400-plus vehicles that would make up Log Base Nelligen, the 1st CAV (as I hoped), as well as other corps units needed north in the attack. We also needed two-way traffic in the breach to evacuate prisoners and for resupply.
My personal plan was to stay closest to the corps main effort. That meant I would spend that night at the main CP (its location was closer to the breach than the TAC's), then shift to the TAC on G+1. I planned to use the main TAC and the two smaller jump TACs as my operating bases and command the corps from the front. To ensure a positive link to my nerve center at the main CP, we had arranged for my executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Russ Mulholland, to make two courier runs to the main TAC daily, at 0900 and at 1700 (John Landry had directed the staff to have information current as of 0830 and 1630). In this way, I could be forward to command face-to-face, get my "fingerspitzengefuhl" of the battles, and obtain the latest information from the corps main, which had much better long-haul comms.
We also planned to use aerial retrans capability--a helicopter relay of line-of-sight comms, like a manned low-orbiting satellite, to essentially double our comm range. This worked reasonably well, except when weather kept the helos on the ground (quite often, it turned out).22
STRATEGIC CONTEXT AND TACTICAL COMMANDER
During the flight to the TAC CP, I shifted my thoughts to our part in a larger theater campaign plan. We were not operating alone, and I could never let myself lose sight of that.
Nobody in an operation this vast and important was a free agent. We all operated within the context of a mission and objectives, and the discipline to stay within those. That applied to me as well as to Generals John Yeosock, Norman Schwarzkopf, and Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Cheney, and even to President Bush. I always had the opinion to go to my commander and try to get something changed if I thought it was getting in the way, but in reality, as a senior commander, you have to pick your spots, and you don't do it often. Otherwise, you're either a whiner or a disruption to the operatio
n. So, as in any operation, there were some constraints (must-dos) and restraints (do-nots).
They were not unreasonable, and I agreed with them.
The major constraint on us was to reinforce the theater deception scheme. That meant we had to stay hidden from the Iraqis out west until we attacked and reinforce the 1st CAV deception.
As for our major restraint, this had been set out to us in an order that my chief of staff, John Landry, had gotten from Third Army on 22 February. We were directed not to conduct any "irreversible" actions--that is, actions that would throw off the theater attack timetable. During a call to Cal Waller (when he was Third Army commander in Yeosock's absence), I told him I assumed that meant we were not to conduct any operations that might affect the diplomatic maneuvering then going on. Cal agreed but left further interpretation up to me. My choice then was to interpret the restraints as very tight. This was my interpretation and no one else's.23
This order had been a formal follow-through on Cal Waller's informal instructions during his 20 February visit that we should not conduct any battles that could provoke a strategic decision (that would get ground forces so involved it would set off a clamor for the beginning of the entire ground war in the United States). At that point, a couple of days before the attack, there was still a possibility that the ground war would be called off.
Why is all that important? Because this restraint and my own interpretation tied our hands for cross-border operations with Apaches (although we had in fact conducted one with our 11th Aviation Brigade earlier in February). Both the 1st Armored and the 3rd Armored Divisions, for example, had well-thought-out plans to send their Apaches into Iraq. Though I had gotten excellent briefings from both division commanders on both operations and had no hesitation about executing the plans, the restraint put any such plans on hold.
The 3rd AD wanted to go after artillery that was about fifty kilometers from the border in their assigned zone. Because this artillery was also in range of the 1st INF breach, the attack would help out the Big Red One as well. We were having difficulty getting TAC air to go after the artillery, and we couldn't reach it with our own artillery, so I had talked to Butch Funk about using our Apaches. Soon after that, Colonel Mike Burke, the aviation brigade commander, put together a plan to go after the artillery, and I told Butch to execute. But then I got the instructions from Third Army to restrain, and the attack had to be put off. (On G-Day, I authorized Butch to conduct the attack that night.)
Meanwhile, Ron Griffith wanted to conduct an armed reconnaissance with Apaches in front of the 1st Armored Division out to a depth of some sixty or seventy kilometers to confirm, as we thought, that parts of a brigade of the 26th Division were out there trying to refuse the Iraqi west flank. He also wanted a better assessment of the difficult terrain through which the division would have to travel for fifty kilometers just north of the border. The confirmation of that intelligence on the enemy and terrain would allow Griffith to fix and bypass the Iraqi force (and the Apaches could take out some Iraqis on their own as well), and also speed Ron's advance toward al-Busayyah. I had to disapprove Ron's plan for the same reason. (As with Butch, I gave the OK to Ron to execute on G-Day after the restraints came off.)
Though the reasoning behind this Third Army restraint made complete sense to me, it is still an illustration of the fits and starts that last-minute diplomatic maneuvering cause in military operations. As uncomfortable as this may be for commanders, we all better get used to it. More recent diplomatic maneuvering at the last minute forestalled our airborne assault in Haiti.
If I had known that our attack was going to be moved up from G+1 to G-Day, my decisions on the twenty-third would have been much different, and I would have put the corps into a much more aggressive posture on the twenty-fourth. In particular, I would have hit the Iraqis hard with our own aviation for a few days before our ground units attacked. You can turn some operations off and on in a short period of time; but not most of them.
0830 VII CORPS TAC CP
After we landed at the TAC CP, I went immediately inside the tent extensions behind the M577s. The weather was still good for flying, but the wind was picking up. The temperature was in the low forties.
Inside the TAC there was a roughly twenty-by-fifteen-foot "floor" of sand with three M577s on one end and two on the other. Four vertical poles and long horizontal tube steel poles held the canvas up to a height of about seven feet. Behind each M577 was a small work area for that section, usually consisting of a green, wooden two-by-three-foot collapsible field desk with field telephones. There was the ever-present, never-shut-down coffeepot working away nearby as well as the steady hum of the generators. At the rear of the G-3 M577 were two desks, one for me with my own phones and one for the G-3. In front of those desks was a situation map, 1:250 000 scale, over which you could put separate sheets of heavy acetate, each annotated with information, such as enemy, engineers, fire support, air defense, etc. Enemy and friendly locations were posted using one-by-two-inch pieces of acetate with adhesive on the back (cut out and posted by hand). Since they were not to scale, you had to interpolate. An enemy brigade unit sticker might cover twice the area they actually occupied on the ground. Same for our own units. Worse, the glue tended to dry out, so on occasion the stickers fell from the map. When you picked them up, you hoped you put them back where they belonged. Reports came in via radio, fax, telephone, or teletype, then the info got posted on the maps by our NCOs. It was far from high-tech, and a reminder that even today, war on the ground and at the front was done by hand.
The team in there was hard at work. We had been at it for two months, and were a smooth-running operation. I was pleased with what we had done and confident we were up to the task of commanding what was potentially a five-division multi-national corps of 1,584 tanks and a total of close to 50,000 vehicles on the move.
After I walked in and said good morning to the troops, I sat down on the gray metal folding chair behind my field desk and turned my attention to Stan Cherrie's update. Though I had already gotten most of what I needed at the main CP, information on our own units' operations was usually more current at the TAC--they were closer to the units than the main CP and had direct line-of-sight communications--so that is what I focused on. I paid attention to our own early movements, because I wanted them to go right and to build an early momentum of success. I did not anticipate any problems, but you can never discount chance. In other words, though I was still confident, I was also still wary.
1ST INF DIVISION. In order to make room for our artillery far enough forward to range the Iraqi artillery, at 0538, the division attacked into the Iraqi 26th Division security zone, with 1st and 2nd Brigades on line, and one in reserve. By 0930, they had reached Phase Line Kansas without enemy contact, and were set to begin the breach the next day.
2ND ACR. The regiment had moved out toward Busch at 0630, with 4th Squadron (Aviation) in front and the 2nd and 3rd Squadrons following side by side on the ground. At this point, Don Holder had three squadrons forward (one air and two ground) and one (the 1st) back (on the ground). By 0708, the 4th Squadron had engaged six unidentified enemy vehicles with MLRS, and was reporting empty fighting positions. At 0812, P Troop (Aviation) had engaged six enemy infantry about twenty kilometers into Iraq. At 0910, the regiment received enemy artillery fire and quickly silenced it with counter-battery fire. By 1117, the entire regiment was across the border berm, clearing the way for follow-on divisions.
1ST AD AND 3RD AD. Both divisions had been moving forward into the area now vacated by the 2nd ACR and were preparing for the next day's attack by cutting additional holes in the double ten- or twelve-foot-high hard sand border berm. First AD had two brigades forward and one back, and their roughly 8,000 vehicles stretched about eighty kilometers to the rear. Third AD was in a column of brigades, and their own 8,000 vehicles stretched over 100 kilometers to the rear.
BRITISH. The British were beginning to load their heavy armored vehicles on Heavy Equ
ipment Transporters. Today they would move those HETS the seventy or eighty kilometers from their position, called "Ray,"24 forward to a location just behind the border. From here they would be ready to move through the cleared breach just after dark on G+1. Rupert Smith wanted to do this in order to conserve wear and tear on his vehicles and to save them for the fight. (The British were genuinely concerned about breakdowns of the Challenger tank. As it turned out, Challenger performed much better than expected.)
LOGISTICS. Our logisticians were assembling the over 400 fuel vehicles and other support required to establish the corps's Log Base Nelligen. Those vehicles and soldiers were to go from Log Base Echo 100 kilometers forward through the 1st INF Division breach and into the open desert just to its north to set up a 1.2 million-gallon fuel-storage capability on the ground. There they would refuel the attacking enveloping force after that force had used the fuel in their own vehicles and the reserves carried on their own assigned trucks. South of the breach would be another fuel site (called Buckeye) with a similar capacity, also requiring 400-plus fuel vehicles, which would fuel the breach operation and be available for the British should they need it.