Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

by Tom Clancy

  Moving into the future, as Professor Bob Quinn says in his book, Deep Change, is "building the bridge as you walk on it" (Quinn, Robert. Deep Change, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1996). The U.S. Army knows it can never predict the future with precision, yet it also knows it must continue to build that bridge even while walking on it because that is what our nation expects and needs. My mentor and former Army Chief of Staff General Carl Vuono (1987-1991) used to say the Army is constantly in "continuity and change." Indeed it is.

  What has happened represents an extension of the study in command and rebirth of the U.S. Army we told earlier. I want to draw attention to the inspiring performance of duty of soldiers and leaders in tough battlefield conditions. They have shown our enemies that America once more has both the will and the military capable of going anywhere to seek them out and capture, kill, or bring them to justice. It is also possible to reflect on the splendid efforts of our Army in Afghanistan and Iraq to show how the U.S. Army has evolved into the magnificent Army it is today over the years since the first publication of Into the Storm. It is relevant and ready to continue to meet national security challenges now and in the future. The U.S. Army, and indeed all the U.S. Armed Forces, succeeded in that most difficult of military tasks, dramatically downsizing in an environment where many believed history was over, balancing that task with frequent overseas employment and structural transformation with no attendant loss, indeed actual growth of capability, while overall personnel numbers went down. In spite of many disincentives, what happened was a transformation not unlike from the 1970s to the early 1990s to win these first battles in this new war.

  The U.S. Army has gone "into the storm" once more, or from Shakespeare's Henry V, "once more unto the breach." Recent and ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are the nation's military response so far to the ruthless attack on American citizens in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania in September 2001 and a coda to the war that is the subject of the original text. It is not my intent to provide a comprehensive account of these campaigns or to probe into lessons learned. What follows is a short summary of the successful campaigns in both Afghanistan and Iraq as results of the Army's and joint service's continuing transformation during this "interwar" period and some of my own reflections based on what I have seen in those intervening years.

  NO NOTICE START OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM

  On 7 October 2001, in response to orders from Commander-in-Chief President George W. Bush, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) launched a campaign in Afghanistan to destroy Taliban and Al Qaeda forces, to free that country, and to deny it to Al Qaeda as a training sanctuary. It was a campaign begun with no notice. It would be a campaign like no other in American military history, testament to the military's rapid transformation since 1991 and its ability to adapt rapidly and win.

  When the extremists' intentions became clear on 11 September, the U.S. military was ready and immediately went into action at home and overseas, opening a campaign in Afghanistan right into the heart of the enemy. President George W. Bush said on 7 October 2001, announcing that operation:

  "To all the men and women in our military, every sailor, every soldier, every airman, every Coast Guardsman, every Marine, I say this: Your mission is defined. The objectives are clear. Your goal is just. You have my full confidence, and you will have every tool you need to carry out your duty. . . ."

  Afghanistan is a land-locked country far from ports and the U.S.A., making it a difficult theater of operations for U.S. and allied forces to operate in. Almost immediately in opening this theater, U.S. and allied forces were able to use a staging base in Uzbekistan, the fruits of a mid-1990s initiative to develop new strategic relationships.

  Given a wide range of options made possible by the versatility of continually transforming U.S. military forces, CENTCOM was able to project power from the sea at great distances. They also used land-based air power at some distance from Afghanistan, operated long and sometimes fragile supply lines, and set up a rapid medical evacuation system that got wounded soldiers to treatment facilities more rapidly and in better condition than was done in any of our previous campaigns. All of that work was done by a U.S. military with a capability to adapt and to tailor a force rapidly to meet mission conditions.

  The campaign devised by CENTCOM commanded by General Tommy R. Franks fit the situation and enemy, and was as imaginative as it was effective in routing the Taliban and Al Qaeda, in denying Al Qaeda a sanctuary to train, and in setting the conditions for a new Afghanistan.

  SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES

  Special Operating Forces (SOF) teamed with Afghan Northern Alliance forces defeated the Taliban and drove them from power. They achieved their objectives because of their skill and courage and because they were networked with external support for intelligence, logistics, medical, and fire support, which included devastatingly effective precision munitions from the coalition air forces in a series of brilliantly executed operations. These operations effectively liberated six provinces of Afghanistan. They did all that in about a month, adapting to severe terrain and weather conditions, enemy actions, and using all modes of transportation including horseback riding. They completed the destruction of the Taliban and liberated Kabul (Stewart, Dr. Richard, "Army Center of Military History (CMH) initial summary of the Afghanistan War," final draft, 2003, Washington, D.C., pp 6-7, 15).

  EARLY RAID

  I had the opportunity to visit with Captain Shawn Daniel, Commander of Company C, 3d Battalion, 75th Rangers, who led his Ranger Company in an early airborne raid near Kandahar 19-20 October 2001. He told me of the extraordinary skill and courage of his Rangers during the night assault. Once on the ground he thought he had only a few injuries from the jump, only to learn after the operation that the injury rate was double what was reported because soldiers continued on their mission, sometimes with broken ankles. It was an early indicator to me that in this war, soldiers had a fierce commitment to the mission because this one was for us, for our freedoms, because the United States of America had been directly attacked. They felt it early in the war in 2001 and still feel it today.

  FIGHT OUTNUMBERED AND WIN

  Other battles demonstrated that U.S. and allied forces could, with imaginative combinations, fight outnumbered and win. In late November at the Quali Jangi fortress prison, small numbers of SOF along with soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division with automatic weapons, fought a set-piece five-day battle with courage, skill, and tenacity and defeated prisoners who had gained weapons and attacked their captors. In the end, 26 SOF and 10th Mountain soldiers killed or captured almost 600 of the enemy (Hagenbeck, Franklin, Lieutenant General, U.S. Army, interview, 31 December 2003).

  Such a feat was repeated in Iraq more than a year and a half later on 6 April 2003 when a small group of SOF, in a position they called "The Alamo," defeated an attacking Iraqi tank-led assault in broad daylight. They did so with some of their own weapons including the Javelin missile, one of the new equipment additions during the '90s, and their ability to call on Navy and Air Force fighter aircraft armed with precision munitions (On Point, final draft, The United States Army in Operations Iraqi Freedom, OIF Study Group, Fort. Leavenworth, Kansas, December 2003, pp. 308-309).

  CAPTURE OF KANDAHAR

  The battles to capture Kandahar in the south indicate the effective teamwork that developed between SOF and Northern Alliance forces. Two simultaneous ground operations were set in motion to capture the city. From the north, anti-Taliban forces under Hamid Karzai teamed with Captain Jason Amerine and his U.S. Special Operating Forces to advance on the city, fighting the biggest battle near Tarin Kowt, using precision munitions from allied aircraft, destroying more than thirty Taliban vehicles and killing about three hundred Taliban (Brown, Brigadier General John, American Military History, CMH, coordinating draft, 2003, Washington D.C., pp. 13-14).

  Karzai and his troops got the Taliban to surrender the city and leave, and were advancing on Kandahar from the north by 6
December (Stewart, CMH, p. 22). Meanwhile another force under Gul Sharzai, and again working with U.S. Special Forces, advanced on the city from the south. Karzai later appointed Sharzai to his former post as governor of the city (Stewart, CMH, p. 25).

  SPECIAL FORCES THOUGHTS

  From their operation in Afghanistan and also later in Iraq come some timeless truths:

  "Humans are more important than hardware . . . technology is not a panacea; combat-ready, adaptive and flexible, well-trained, physically and mentally tough soldiers, equals success . . . period." (U.S. Army Infantry Conference, "Lessons Learned," U.S. Army Infantry Center, Fort Benning, Georgia, 2003)

  From that bold beginning, U.S. and other nations' Special Operations Forces combined with Northern Alliance forces to defeat Taliban forces during the next several months until an interim government was established under Hamid Karzai in December. Those Special Operations Forces, plus conventional infantry from the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan and Afghan Northern Alliance Forces, won those first battles of this new war.

  OPERATION ANACONDA

  But there was one more first battle in Afghanistan. Colonel John Mulholland, Commander of Task Force Dagger, a joint special operations task force, recommended to General Franks that conventional U.S. forces undertake the planning for destruction of Al Qaeda that his forces had located, thus showing the level of teamwork in the U.S. military reached in the 1990s between Special Operating Forces and conventional forces.

  Franks turned to the overall combined land force commander, Lieutenant General (LTG) Paul T. Mikolashek, whose Combined Force Land Component Command (CFLCC) headquarters had been established in Kuwait in November 2001 (Stewart, CMH, p. 16). General Mikolashek verbally assigned the mission to the Afghanistan ground commander, Major General "Buster" Hagenbeck, Commanding General of 10th Mountain Division. Hagenbeck used his division headquarters to form Coalition Joint Task Force Mountain and named the operation Anaconda. Operation Anaconda showed just how far this interdependence of the Regional Combatant Commander, in this case General Tommy Franks, and the service department, in this case the Army, had come in the 1990s. Under Goldwater-Nichols, the Regional Combatant Commander commands assigned military forces directly under command of the Secretary of Defense and the President as Commander in Chief. Services provide forces to the Regional Commander. Service Chiefs are able to anticipate and make recommendations to regional commanders, the Secretary of Defense, and the President in their roles as members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All through the 1990s these relationships matured in actual operational practice. They work well for the nation.

  In this case Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki had been in discussions about providing a conventional force headquarters to the theater for follow up operations. Shinseki invited Major General Hagenbeck to accompany him on a Thanksgiving trip to the region to visit troops (Shinseki, Eric, General U.S. Army (ret.), notes, January 2004). Shinseki's forward thinking and service department, regional command teamwork provided Hagenbeck the opportunity to do a leader's reconnaissance, invaluable for a commander in visualizing an operation.

  In addition, Anaconda showed how far the U.S. Army and the Joint team had come in being able to combine units rapidly from different organizations into an effective fighting team, and how interdependent the services had become in conducting operations. It also demonstrates the wide versatility of U.S. division headquarters, capable of fighting division formations, and, as in this case, of providing battle command for a joint task force and of rapidly pulling various units together into a coherent combat team. It also showed how rapidly U.S. forces could project power at strategic distances--a capability repeated in Iraq a year later.

  Major General Hagenbeck's 10th Division headquarters assumed planning responsibility for the mission on 15 February 2002, and attacked on 2 March (Stewart, CMH, p. 33).

  Hagenbeck had more than 1,400 U.S. and allied troops from a number of different organizations in Operation Anaconda. His combat elements included 3d Brigade of two battalions from the 101st Airborne Division, one battalion and elements of another brigade from 10th Mountain Division, some elements of Mulholland's Task Force Dagger, and additional coalition and joint SOF units, along with various logistics units including medical units and support from air forces. The task force also had CH-47 helicopters and support of AH-64 attack helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division, the latter a result of weekend deployment of those aircraft from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to Afghanistan. Other air assets came from U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolts and U.S. Marine Cobra helicopters. Hagenbeck also had support of the U.S. Ambassador; his deputies Brigadier Generals Gary Harrell and Mike Jones, who coordinated a variety of special forces and other agencies in theater; and the CIA station chief (Gray, David, Colonel, U.S. Army, notes, 30 December 2003, and Hagenbeck, notes, 31 December 2003). Other forces available for Operation Anaconda included troops from Canada, SAS soldiers from Australia, and Afghan troops with Special Forces advisors.

  The area of operations featured rocky terrain varying from 8,000 feet to 11,000 feet in elevation with sharp narrow crevices, deep ravines, no vegetation, and weather that ranged from a windchill of -20 degrees F to 60 degrees F. Enemy forces in the objective area were among the best Al Qaeda had, veteran fighters who ran the terrorist training camps. They were armed with modern equipment including automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPGs), and mortars. Hagenbeck told me they even reinforced their positions with more fighters during the first three days of fighting (Hagenbeck interview, 31 December 2003). Destroying them would seriously hurt Al Qaeda.

  Colonel Frank Wiercinski, 3d brigade commander of the 101st Airborne, commanded U.S. conventional forces, called Task Force Rakassan. They were to be air assaulted into blocking positions on various hills and peaks in the mountainous terrain of the Shah-I-Kot Valley located about sixty miles south of Gardez (Armor Magazine, Captain Ryan Welch, "Operation Anaconda: The Battle for Shah-I-Kot Valley," November-December 2003, U.S. Army Armor Center, Fort Knox, Kentucky, p. 36). They would be the "anvil" force. Wiercinski told his troops they had two missions that night: to defeat the enemy, and to never leave a fallen soldier on the battlefield. He said they would be "good in combat . . . because of who you are," then spoke of the camaraderie of the soldiers, saying, "You will do it for each other." (Cooper, Richard T., "Fierce Fight in Afghan Valley Tests U.S. Soldiers and Strategy," Los Angeles Times, 24 March 2002, pp. 1-2).

  The "hammer" for this anvil, called Task Force Hammer, the main attack force, consisted of friendly Afghan troops and their Special Forces advisors. They would move from Gardez south to the objective area by truck and assault the valley towns held by Al Qaeda. As they cleared the villages, Al Qaeda would be forced back into the mountains, where they would run into the anvil of Task Force (TF) Rakassan. Another outer ring of blocking positions around the valley consisted of other special forces and Afghan troops tasked to prevent Al Qaeda from escaping (Welch, Armor Magazine, op cit, p. 38).

  On 2 March, TF Hammer began its move toward the objective area. After leaving the main roads they encountered difficulty on the muddy tracks with their loaded trucks. Then they came under heavy enemy fire and were also hit by mistake from circling AC-130 gunships. The combination of movement difficulty and enemy and accidental friendly fire proved deadly. According to one account, "TF Hammer received one additional CAS (close air support) mission and one Apache fire support mission throughout that long day . . ." (Stewart, CMH, p. 38). All of these factors caused the force to halt and withdraw by nightfall.

  Meanwhile, as the anvil in the plan, U.S. forces began their air assaults into blocking positions in the mountains. Almost immediately they came under heavy enemy fire. Every landing zone was "hot," meaning the enemy was firing on troops and helicopters. Nonetheless, by noon U.S. forces had occupied six of the seven assigned blocking positions (Stewart, CMH, p. 38). The second lift of troops could not get into place due to bad weather, leaving U
.S. units at half strength on these positions for most of the first day. Lieutenant Colonel Paul LaCamera's TF 1/8 7, the battalion from 10th Mountain Division, part of Wiercinski's TF Rakassan, came under heavy mortar, machine gun, RPG, and small arms fire as they tried to occupy their two blocking positions. Particularly hard hit was Company C commanded by Captain Nelson Kraft whose 1st Platoon had almost 50 percent casualties. Kraft consolidated his troops on one strongpoint and for 18 hours held off Al Qaeda attacks. Specialist Eddie Rivera, a medic in Company C, is credited with saving many lives of his fellow soldiers that day with his heroic actions (Sack, John, "War Stories, Anaconda," Esquire, August 2002, pp. 118-123). LaCamera set up his battalion command post with Company C and they too were hard hit. By the end of the day, 10th Mountain soldiers inflicted heavy casualties on Al Qaeda forces even as twenty-five U.S. soldiers were wounded. Fighting in close combat in Anaconda in tough mountainous terrain, American soldiers were able to fight and win right in the heart of the enemy. They did so again in close combat a year later in Iraq against Iraqi fedayeen in urban terrain.

  The following morning Hagenbeck adapted his plan to the situation. This is a key decision for any major unit commander--to fight the enemy and not your plan. You must adapt quickly. Knowing when to make that decision is the tough judgment major unit commanders make in a fight like this. You learn how to do that through years of tough battle-focused training and from experience gained from other operational missions. Hagenbeck did not hesitate. He designated U.S. forces as the main attack and reinforced them with Apaches, Marine Cobra attack helicopters, and close air support. Fierce close-range battles were fought over the next ten days as U.S. forces and additional Afghan reinforcements courageously battled Al Qaeda in caves and fortified positions. Captain Bob Mahowald, who was a lieutenant in the battles, wrote in a letter about small unit leadership, "I will always remember witnessing two nineteen-year-old specialists who, as M 240 machine gunners, poured fire into enemy positions to cover their platoon-mates' advance. Their responsibility was tremendous, and they performed flawlessly" (Mahowald, Robert, Captain, U.S. Army, letter, March 2003). It was a clear indication of the toughness of U.S. forces, and their willingness and tactical ability to take the fight to Al Qaeda wherever they were.