Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

The first unit from the 2nd ACR began loading trains for German ports on 19 November 1990. The first troops from the 2nd Squadron, 2nd ACR, and support elements arrived in the Gulf on 5 and 6 December. This was a small wave foretelling the vast flood that was soon to follow.

Over the next two and a half months, VII Corps would be stretched and pulled in a hundred different directions. A commander's job is to focus his energies on the main objective while making sure that all the myriad activities that contribute to that objective's success are not ignored. For VII Corps, the main objective was to go to Saudi Arabia and, if needed, to attack and destroy the Republican Guards, and in order to achieve that objective, Franks fixed responsibility for the corps into four separate, but linked, areas. They would have to (1) deploy the corps while caring for families at home, (2) assemble the corps in Tactical Assembly Areas, (3) prepare for war, and (4) conduct combat operations.

Franks knew that he could not afford to take his eyes off any one of these activities, but his greatest focus had to be on the actual combat operations. In the other areas, he could accept some imperfection, and he trusted the commanders and noncommissioned officers to get the job done, but in preparing and conducting combat operations, the tolerance for failure to meet expectations had to be extremely low. Here was where he had to place his main personal effort, intervening in the other areas only when they needed him or when, in his own judgment, he needed to step in to break a logjam.

He threw himself into a series of meetings, war games, visits, and constant chattering over phones and tactical radios to get the job done on the combat side. In the meantime, to ensure family support, he established VII Corps Base in Germany. To handle the continued deployment of the corps after the corps headquarters had moved to Saudi Arabia, he left his deputy commander, Brigadier General Gene Daniel, and a headquarters element in Stuttgart to work with USAREUR and EUCOM. And to get the 152 ships and 927 aircraft of VII Corps debarked and then moved the 500 kilometers to the Tactical Assembly Areas in Saudi Arabia, he formed a special command called the Port Support Authority, or PSA, and to command it, picked his friend and 1959 West Point classmate, Brigadier General Bill Mullen, and his commanders and leaders from the 1st Infantry Division Forward.

It was time to begin.

GETTING MOVING

As a matter of priority in VII Corps, Franks had always stressed attention to fundamentals, agility, teamwork, and discipline. Though he would take those same priorities to the desert, there was now a new lineup of units and a new mission in a new set of conditions. The priorities would have to be adapted to these new conditions.

In mid-November, this is what he found when he looked at training specifics:

Third Armored Division had just completed their extensive semi-annual gunnery and maneuver training at Grafenwohr and Hohenfels, and they were currently engaged in a BCTP seminar, so the deployment order had come at a training peak for them. Good news. This was not the case with the 2nd ACR and the 1st Armored Division, however. They had not fired their major direct-fire tank and Bradley weapons systems in some time, and after they began deployment — which was very soon — their equipment would not even be available for training. Franks quickly reached out to the 3rd Infantry Division, which was already at Grafenwohr, but would not be deploying to the desert. In an act of great teamwork that proved to be of enormous training benefit to the corps, the soldiers and leaders of the 3rd Infantry Division formed a cadre and provided their own equipment so that 2nd ACR and 1st Armored Division soldiers could go through an intense period of training. Franks visited the 3rd ID often and never heard a grumble.

Initially, then, things seemed to be in good shape.

Yet after his return from the leaders' recon to Saudi Arabia, Franks began to notice that leaders at all levels were increasingly distracted by the myriad details of deployment. This was completely understandable, he felt, since deployment from a no-notice cold start was certainly not going to go with much precision. There was a lot of "friction." Some things just did not get done unless the commander got personally involved.

But some imperfection could be absorbed, because deployment was not the main effort. Training was. So in order to "get our heads out of CONEX[10] containers," as he put it, and into war-fighting thinking and training, he decided to convene a war council. They met at Schweinfurt, on 29 November, with 3rd Infantry Division[11] the host, and all the commanders present.

Franks did not want too many commanders' meetings, but it was useful to get them together from time to time, especially since some of them were new. His two consistent objectives at all of these meetings were to focus the commanders on what was important — for now, training, and later, operations — and to establish teamwork. He had a different group now and it was his job to unite them as one team. In a setting such as this, they could talk training and war fighting with one another, see how the rest thought, and Franks could both size them up and further encourage camaraderie.

The agenda that day was simple: the G-2 briefed them on the Iraqi order of battle and the latest from southwest Asia, then 1st Armored Division talked the commanders through a minefield-breaching operation; next everyone discussed how to assemble the corps — to deploy to Saudi Arabia and get everyone back together again in units — and the meeting closed with more "flat-ass rules" and training.

Some of the FARs were as follows: Because the corps must always fight in depth, they would discuss deep operations at every meeting. (As battle progressed, the tendency was to put one's attention on the battle in close contact and forget about depth — a situation Franks intended to avoid.) Next: though Franks would issue mission orders to encourage and indeed demand initiative, no one was a free agent. He stressed again the role of agility in the corps and the importance of commanders' intent. The intent must be understood two echelons in either direction, he told them. In other words, a battalion commander must know what the division commander intends and a brigade commander must know what a corps commander intends. He stressed that massed artillery fire was at least two or more battalions on the same target (reinforcing Franks's own belief in gaining a decisive edge over the enemy). And finally: "Get desert-smart and desert-tough," he said, "but don't overextend people and machines."

That meeting would set the command focus for VII Corps's training for their combat mission two and a half months later.

FROM A DISTANCE

There is an old saying that the toughest job in the military is to be a military spouse. VII Corps was about to prove that in spades.

Military families are accustomed to separations, but usually for predictable lengths of time, and there was nothing predictable about what was about to happen. Nor could they use Vietnam as a guideline. With Vietnam, soldiers had gone off to war for a certain amount of time, with certain hardships and casualties, but for the most part, after early unit deployments they had gone off individually, not as a unit, and here it was all different.

Now whole units were going, and family members knew one another, and knew other service members. They were a unit family, and so the impact of the departure — of friends and neighbors gone, of bustling kasernes suddenly emptied of soldiers — was profound and shocking.

Over the long years of the Cold War, military communities had sprung up in Germany, groupings of units and family members essentially into U.S. "towns," normally centered on garrison locations called kasernes, after the German word for barracks. In fact, they were mostly old German army locations, built prior to World War II, some dating as far back as World War I. Within these troop locations, which also included barracks for unmarried soldiers and motor parks for equipment, the U.S. Army had built family quarters (three-story, three-stairwell apartments and some individual dwellings), schools, shopping areas for PXs and commissaries, health clinics, athletic facilities, and other normal community facilities. In VII Corps alone, there were thirteen of these towns, which housed close to 100,000 U.S. VII Corps and other USAREUR soldiers and close to 200,000 family members altogether.

Meanwhile, over the years, more and more Army service members had become married—60 to 75 percent by 1990—and because it had not been feasible for the Army to build more housing for them, many of them — up to half the families in some locations — lived in local German communities in housing leased from the Germans, some individually, others as blocks of units by the U.S. Army. Needless to say, such arrangements complicated living for those families, and at times, transportation, schools, medical care, and normal socialization with other American families proved difficult.

Such was the general situation when the announcement on 8 November hit VII Corps families with a thunderclap. The good news was that the announcement had named specific units and had gone out over the Armed Forces Network television station, so all the people connected with those units knew immediately. But not all the units had been named, so it was not until twenty-four to forty-eight hours later that everyone knew. And then the question was, what would the families do while the soldiers were off at war?

Family support during periods of separations, and even during normal garrison operations, was not new to the Army. There had been support groups throughout the Army's history to assist families with the many challenges of living in faraway places — in the West after the Civil War, for instance. Such groups normally centered around units, and involved an informal grouping of spouses and a link to the unit's official chain of command. In the early 1980s, the Army even began a program called "command team seminars" to assist spouses, centering on a weeklong class at Fort Leavenworth while the military command spouse went to his or her pre-command course.

VII Corps deployment to Saudi Arabia built on the already existing informal, yet highly effective, family-support networks. And as for the families themselves, there was no complaining. The attitude was "We are part of the mission. Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work."

There also was official help. In General Butch Saint, for instance, they were fortunate to have a USAREUR commander who was both savvy in the ways of mobile armored warfare and acutely sensitive to family issues. He not only was intimately involved with units deploying throughout the command, but he realigned the military communities to see to it that VII Corps communities came under the direct support structure of his HQ, and he formed a family-support task force in the headquarters itself. He also set in motion plans to ensure the security of our families — understandably, there was a lot of anxiety about possible terrorist attacks — and he pledged the total support of the Army's assets for assistance. Wherever medical personnel and military police deployed with VII Corps units, he called in Reserve component units and individuals to come to Germany to replace them.

Meanwhile, on 6 December 1990, Franks published the detailed order to establish VII Corps Base, which would command those parts of the corps that would remain in Europe, an order that went into effect a week later, the day Franks deployed VII Corps HQ to Saudi Arabia. Though it was meant to accomplish a number of things simultaneously, it was aimed first and foremost at helping VII Corps families cope with the deployment and the war (if indeed there was to be a war, which was not yet certain).

To run the base, Franks and General Saint appointed Major General Roger Bean, current commander of the Pershing Brigade in Germany and an old friend of Franks, and as chief of staff Colonel Jerry Sinn, superb officer and the head of resource management. As an enlisted man in Vietnam, Sinn had been a tunnel rat, one of the soldiers who volunteered to go down into Viet Cong tunnels and look for the enemy, armed with only a pistol and flashlight.

As part of the order, Franks directed formation of a family-support directorate, whose sole responsibility was to help families in the corps. It was headed by Colonel Bob Julian, who had been running the corps's communications modernization program, now on hold because of Desert Shield.

Within each military community were formed what were called Family Assistance Centers — FACs — where the highest priority was to get information back and forth between families and forward-deployed spouses. Using faxes of newsletters, videotapes, phone calls, and messages, the FACs became nerve centers of information and comfort. At corps HQ at Kelly Barracks in Stuttgart, by converting an unused area with fresh paint and other internal construction, the spouses built a center where they could hold regular meetings and where teenagers of older military families could assume responsibilities and lend their considerable energies and talents. An e-mail system connected them to units in the Gulf. AT&T established a one-page "Desert Fax" program. Newsletters began all over VII Corps. Denise Franks started one of these, Sandpaper-a-Desert Link, which was published and distributed monthly. "This is a difficult time for all of us," she wrote in January 1991. "But I am inspired by all I see happening around me… We all need help at one time or another. We aren't always able to repay the friends who helped us… but it is repayment in kind for us to offer help to someone else."

For all these efforts, the Army allowed use of transportation, copying machines, office space, and phones. For instance, Roger Bean let Denise use Fred's old commander's office for her own family-support work. She held her first of what turned out to be weekly meetings with a special task force on 13 November 1990, and also formed an informal advisory board with other senior commanders' spouses. Throughout the VII Corps area, similar arrangements sprang up, with Ron Griffith's wife, Hurdis; Butch Funk's wife, Danny; and others.

In an unprecedented act of friendship, the Germans poured out their support. Relations between the Americans and Germans had been genuinely warm and long-lasting, and now German army units provided security and transportation, and private German citizens contributed thousands of Deutschmarks for families, and sponsored Christmas functions.

Meanwhile, U.S. Army families in Germany began a yellow-ribbon campaign. The ribbons appeared everywhere to symbolize support for the deployed soldiers, and they stayed up until the soldiers came home. If there was a shortage of yellow ribbon, more was sent from the United States. Bolts arrived in Stuttgart. Every tree seemed to have one tied around it. Homes and office buildings and barracks became festooned with bright yellow ribbons.

Deployment reached and touched everyone. Some older families had more than one member deployed. In a spouse's absence, families bonded together to remember special occasions, such as anniversaries, births, graduations, and school events, and even to care for families where both spouses were deployed. The unofficial theme song in VII Corps Base was "From a Distance."

Security was tightened considerably, as threats from terrorism were real. Military police and local German police bonded together to provide a visible presence both on and off military kasernes. The presence of armed military police, complete with flak vests and Kevlar helmets, became a daily part of the military community landscape in Germany.

Schools also pitched in. Before Franks deployed, the head of the DODDS (Department of Defense Dependent School System) came to him and asked how the teachers could help. VII Corps immediately included DODDS in the information channels so that the teachers could explain what was going on to the students in school. The teachers also saw the children of the soldiers who were forward-deployed and at war every day, and were sensitive to their individual needs. They were quick to spot a student whose behavior might have changed, and to alert parents and offer counseling.

All of this activity was based on the simple yet profound idea that the Army takes care of its own. Following Desert Storm, the Army set about to capture valuable lessons learned, and published a TRADOC pamphlet in 1994 that would prove useful to future generations of families in similar circumstances, and would begin a formal program called Army Family Team Building. Many of the lessons were applied when U.S. Army forces deployed from Germany to Bosnia in 1995.

TIME IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD

The crush and variety of daily activities getting ready for war was almost mind-boggling. No one was exempt, from Franks commanding the corps to the Bradley or tank driver. It never let up. From the notification on 8 November to the week before the attack, when the last units from the 3rd AD arrived, it was the most intensive fourteen-week period of concurrent activities Fred Franks experienced in all his time in the Army. His REFORGER experiences were mild compared to this. His enemies quickly became accidents, troop sickness — and time: time to train, time to physically protect his troops.

The first thing he and his commanders noticed was the bare-bones nature of the theater. Everything became a struggle. Basic survival had to be created in the desert: shelters, sanitation, water, and food. Communications had to be set up, mail delivered, training ranges built, training started. And that was when they managed to get into the desert. It was hard enough just getting through the ports.

The VII Corps planners wanted to use the Saudi Arabian ports of Dammam and Jubayl. Because Jubayl was over 100 kilometers closer to their Tactical Assembly Areas, they wanted to bring the heavy forces through there, link up soldiers and equipment after two or three days, and move them quickly to the desert TAAs to begin training. They also had planned to combat-load[12] the ships, so that equipment could be speedily married up with units, and again moved to the desert.

None of these plans proved feasible. The airflow was smooth and uneventful, in fact, almost too efficient, because troops arrived on time, but ships did not. Some delays were caused by weather, some by ship breakdown. One crew jumped ship because they objected to arriving in a war zone.

In a perfect operation, the planners had estimated they would have a steady state of 8,000 to 10,000 troops in port at any one time, with a stay for each soldier of no longer than two or three days. They ended up with triple those numbers. Some troops waited in port for as long as three weeks for their equipment, which compounded the problems caused by the temporary living conditions in the port, fractured unit integrity, and seriously delayed plans for training in the desert. Though the command coped with these problems, they still had to face hundreds of unwanted daily issues. Stress on soldiers was high.

All of these problems continually proved the wisdom of placing Brigadier General Bill Mullen in command of corps Port Support Authority just after Christmas in 1990. The corps could not have gotten so ready to fight in such a short period of time with so many challenges to overcome if it had not been for the work of Mullen and his 1st ID Forward leaders and soldiers.

Their accomplishments were staggering. Between 5 December and 18 February, 50,500 vehicles were off-loaded and staged (checked and readied for heavy equipment transporter movement), 107,000 troops were billeted, supported, and secured, as well as thousands of other soldiers from other units. There were 900 convoys (the numbers of trucks in the convoys varied from twenty to fifty). More than 6,000 armored vehicles and other pieces of equipment were moved the 550 kilometers to desert assembly areas. Thirty-five hundred containers with spare parts and other critical items were sent forward. Eighty-six hundred vehicles were painted sand color. The maximum number of soldiers in port waiting for their equipment peaked at 35,981 on 9 January 1991 (many more than the eight to ten thousand soldiers they had planned for!). Maximum ship arrivals were eight in one day. On 12 January, nineteen ships were waiting to off-load. The last tanks and Bradleys arrived from Germany from the 3rd Brigade, 3rd AD, on 6 February 1991. The last of VII Corps's units to arrive was the 142nd Artillery Brigade from the Arkansas National Guard on 17 February 1991. The types of ships varied: 11 U.S. Navy fast sea lift; 63 so-called roll-on roll-off ships; 74 World War II-type break bulk ships; and 4 lighter aboardship. Total ships: 152. The flow was not steady. In one week, 7 to 14 January, forty ships arrived.

Over Fred Franks's strong objections, ships were loaded for maximizing space and not for unit integrity. Analysis by the PSA indicated that equipment arrived on seven different ships over twenty-six days for nineteen different battalions. In some units, soldiers staged in one port while their equipment arrived in the other, over 100 kilometers away. One tank battalion in 3rd AD arrived on eight different ships over a twenty-three-day period. A corps signal battalion arrived on eleven different ships over sixteen days. A military intelligence battalion arrived on twelve different ships over thirty-five days.

Protecting the soldiers while in port from Scud attacks or terrorist action, ensuring good health in crowded conditions, and performing individual skill-training while waiting required both strong small-unit leader discipline and extraordinary overall leadership from Bill Mullen and his PSA. They not only got it done, they gave Franks and his commanders time to focus on training, planning, and eventually on conducting combat operations.

Meanwhile, to ensure the troops had the latest equipment, the Army decided to conduct a modernization program concurrent with the deployment. VII Corps would get the best tanks available. That meant swapping out some of the ones they'd brought for heavier-armor tanks, or bolting on heavier armor to ones they already had in the port (this was done by a group of civilians from Anniston Army depot in the U.S.A.). The 1st INF exchanged two tank battalions of 105-mm M1 tanks for 120-mm M1A1 tanks. In the 2nd ACR and in some 1st INF Division units, all the Bradleys were swapped for better-protected models. These were all command decisions linked to the battle being planned by the corps.

Additionally, VII Corps received a whole suite of mine-clearing equipment — plows, rollers, and a full vehicle-width rake. Hundreds of HMMWVs were added to replace older vehicles. Also new were the TACMS (ground-to-ground missiles) for their MLRS launchers and software to engage Scuds for their Patriots. Though corps units initially had no GPS receivers, they eventually received more than three thousand. Because there weren't enough GPS receivers to go around, some units had to use LORAN devices, or a combination of the two. LORAN and GPS are not compatible systems, which made for interesting navigation problems. The troops coped, but not without incident. There were two different tactical communications capabilities, the old and the new MSE (Mobile Subscriber Equipment — the Army's new tactical communication system that, among other things, establishes area communications just as a mobile phone does). They had to cobble these together to make both compatible. There were strategic comms, including a very few TACSAT[13] radios (essential, because of the great distances and the absence of reliable civilian comms). They also received the new reverse-osmosis water-purification equipment that allowed them to make their own water. And later they got the Pioneer UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) from the Navy, and employed it almost immediately.

Meanwhile, they had to deal with practical issues:

Troops had to get ammunition uploaded into vehicles and leaders had to make sure they had top-of-the-line wartime ammo. That meant distribution and uploading turrets and ammo trucks. Transportation was in short supply. The 1st INF had only forty-nine fuel trucks when they deployed from Fort Riley. At the end of the war, they had 114. It was an immense challenge for Gus Pagonis and the theater to find trucks to transport heavy tracked vehicles such as tanks and Bradleys from the ports to the desert. To augment the U.S. Army heavy equipment transporter trucks, he hired indigenouslabor from Pakistan and other nations, with trucks, for the 800-plus-kilometer round trip to the desert. Compounding his challenge was the transportation required to haul new M1A1 tanks and Bradleys to the 1st CAV and 24th Division in order to swap for their old ones. And the limited truck supply had to haul U.S.A.F. ammo at the same time it was to haul the corps's late-arriving heavy tracked vehicles to the desert. When XVIII Corps began their truck move west after the start of the air campaign, the competition for truck assets intensified, causing a frustrated Ron Griffith at one point to order two Bradley battalions not to wait, but simply to drive the more-than-400-kilometer distance to their TAA on their own tracks.

Since the corps initially had no maps of the area, these had to be obtained and distributed by the tens of thousands, and in sets. (Military maps come in separate three-foot square sheets; for the VII Corps area, leaders needed about thirty separate sheets, which then had to be taped together to make one map.) It's a standing joke in the Army that you always go fight someplace where you can't pronounce the names of the towns and where you have no maps. For VII Corps, the joke wasn't all that funny.

Sanitation and waste disposal were also a serious issue — not only normal trash and garbage, but human waste. They burned it or buried it in deep pits. "Here's the most modern force our Army has ever fielded," Franks said at one point to Cal Waller, "using diesel to burn shit in fifty-five-gallon cut-off drums. It's no different from Vietnam." Black smoke plumes were everywhere.

Because they had very few cots, too many soldiers had to sleep on the sand. They worked at getting cots from every conceivable source in Europe and the United States.

Despite the efforts of everyone concerned, mail delivery was simply awful. Mail to and from Germany took up to a month. There was just too much volume for the system to handle, and of course transportation had higher priorities. Only after Franks ordered the formation of an ad hoc postal battalion, with a lieutenant colonel in charge, and gave them dedicated transportation, did the problem begin to get fixed. Of the spreading oil slick in the Persian Gulf, one frustrated soldier said, "Put a stamp on it and that way it will never get to Saudi Arabia."

On the positive side, water distribution worked well, which was aided considerably by the availability of cases of water in plastic liter bottles from the Saudi desalinization plant on the coast.

Meanwhile, the troops prepared for desert warfare:

They placed tape on the leading edges of the blades of almost 800 helicopters to save blade wear from the corrosive effects of sand. They installed particle separators on aircraft to prevent sand ingestion in turbine engines. To deal with the same problem in tank turbine engines, tankers got a fresh supply of "V" packs and spares to place in air-cleaning systems, and cleaned them at every opportunity. As a result, tanks ran at an availability rate of over 90 percent. They painted all of their almost 40,000 green Europe-based vehicles with desert tan chemical-resistant paint, one by one, taking precautions against the toxic paint spray by using tent enclosures and masks. Since the spare parts system could not be adapted fast enough, an ad hoc system sprang up, and vehicles got the spare parts they needed.

And finally, soldiers fitted chemical protective masks, using the tried and true method: You place banana oil around the mask before you put it on. If you smell the oil after it's on, you know you have a bad fit.

Soldiers made do with what they had. From the time they deployed from port to the desert until they redeployed in April and May of 1991, the troops lived in the desert with what they'd brought in. It was a help-yourself theater. The desert was hostile. Weather turned cold at night and it rained a lot. Fierce sandstorms blew up, reducing visibility to meters and getting sand into everything. Flies were everywhere. It was a hell of an adjustment for the troops, hardened as they were to living in the field in Europe.

Despite everyone's best efforts, nothing escaped "friction." It was everywhere.

Early on, Franks directed commanders to raise their tolerance for imperfection, to work on those things they could do something about, and when time was created by transportation delays, to use it for training. He did not want the command frustrated over things over which they had little control: "Keep your heads on the war fighting and preparing for war," he emphasized again and again. "Keep focused on the objective and do not take your eye off the ball." It wasn't easy, but the commanders and troops did it.

The whole Department of the Army operation in Washington was a masterpiece of organization by Army Chief General Carl Vuono, who held daily meetings to anticipate requirements. His vice chief, General Gordon Sullivan, quarterbacked the effort, and was constantly on the phone to Franks, Luck, Yeosock, and Pagonis, seeking ways to help. FORSCOM commander, General Ed Burba, not only deployed active component units, but put together combinations of active and Reserve component units to fit theater needs. It was exactly the kind of situation — the provisioning of a warfighting theater — that the Goldwater-Nichols National Security Act of 1986 had anticipated. Franks and VII Corps became provisioned as a contingency corps almost overnight.

Not everything arrived on time. One minor frustration for both Sullivan and Franks, and a potential issue with the troops, was the fact that no one in the corps had yet received the desert battle dress uniforms, the sand-colored BDUs (called DCUs). XVIII Corps had them, as did the support troops in the port area, and troops in Riyadh. But not VII Corps. Rumors flew about the elusive uniforms: "They're at the port." "They're shipped." "One pallet arrived by air from Dover in Frankfurt. Meet the plane in Dammam." No DCUs. First it was frustrating. Then it was a joke. "To hell with the desert uniforms," one of the soldiers in 3rd Armored Division said finally. "Tell them we don't want them. We're the troops from Germany. We were trained to beat the best the Russians had. When the Iraqis see us, they'll know that and it will scare the crap out of them." Everyone in VII Corps felt the same way. They didn't get the sand-colored DCUs until almost April; and some of the troops only got issued a set on their way home after the war. Chemical overgarment protective suits covered them up anyway.

TRAINING

Everything in Saudi Arabia had to be started from nothing. That included training. There were no training facilities for VII Corps to use, and they had to train. Though the experience of XVIII Corps provided valuable lessons, they still had three months' lead. The enemy, as always, was time and the myriad concurrent activities that distracted commanders and soldiers from preparing for war. Nonetheless, leaders dived into training as an immediate priority.

Fred Franks had started out with a four-week plan for his units before he sent them into the attack: They would have a week to get individual units assembled, to find everything, and to get to Tactical Assembly Areas, and three weeks for training. He wanted a full three weeks of training in order to adapt European skills to the desert, and to get desert-smart and desert-tough. He also wanted time for mission rehearsals. This plan was not based on any scientific analysis, but on his best professional experience and judgment.

Though he did not think these plans were unrealistic, he realized he was not a free agent and might have to make some adjustments. Adjustments were OK, but not compromises that would cause his troops to be unprepared.

In the event, his three-week training goal proved hard to meet — he had to reduce the three weeks to two — and time kept pressing him harder and harder.

On 23 December, ten days after he arrived in-country, he made this comment in his journal: "How can we get ahead of time? Friction to overcome is enormous… Maybe I need to change my style. Help yourself and do not worry… Need some major muscle movement to make things happen. Not sure at this point we can make it and have three weeks' training. Settling in taking longer than I'd like. Thought seven days was OK, then three weeks to train. Unit integrity not good. Must get that fixed. We'll make another assessment end of this week."

During a meeting in Riyadh on 27 December, called by General Schwarzkopf and attended by Franks, Gus Pagonis, Gary Luck, and John Yeosock, the CINC announced that he thought they'd be at war in three weeks. After the meeting, Franks wrote in his journal, "What I must do is drive this corps to a new level of effort to get ready to go to war. We are not moving fast enough."

And on 2 January 1991, he wrote, "Time getting short. How to best prepare the corps… Think we'll be OK if only I can give the troops two weeks." He'd had to adjust his earlier plan by then. "Must shoot. Must get some batting practice. Night moves. CSS on the move" — combat service support, or logistics—"Meet, plan, visit, assess, and make adjustments. Also have to get troops work at night."

The 1st Infantry Division Forward command team's running the growing port operations made a major contribution to the training effort. Since many soldiers were forced to remain in port for two to three weeks without their equipment, Franks asked Brigadier General Mullen to establish a training service for commanders and units in port. Mullen set up facilities where unit commanders could do individual preparation. Though these facilities were elementary, leaders immediately began exercises in firing individual weapons, chemical protection, driving in Saudi Arabia, and desert navigation.

Meanwhile, corps units needed gunnery ranges in the desert where they could refine weapons skills without endangering other units and whatever local populace might be in the area or passing through. An element in VII Corps headquarters was formed to assist unit commanders in acquiring the real estate, and unit commanders took it from there, building stationary targets from scrap lumber or whatever else they could get their hands on.

Franks gave directions to allow soldiers to fire service ammunition (actual wartime ammunition, something they had never done in Germany). He wanted soldiers — ground and air — to see the full capability of this ammunition, so that they would be familiar with it when the war started. This was both a risk and a trade-off, for wartime ammunition (especially Hellfire missiles) was in short supply. He took the risk.

In order to practice for the breaching operation, corps engineers (the 588th ENG Battalion from Fort Polk, Louisiana) built an exact replica of the Iraqi defensive system, complete with berms and antitank ditches. It was five kilometers long and even faced the same direction as the actual Iraqi system so as to replicate actual light data. It took two weeks to build at the rate of twenty-five meters an hour. Afterward, the 1st Infantry Division conducted full-up training rehearsals on this system, and the combat elements of the 1st UK Armored Division, with all of their nearly 4,500 vehicles, twice practiced their planned night passage of lines through the Big Red One.

The 1st UK was placed under tactical control of VII Corps in mid-December. The day before Christmas, Lieutenant General Sir Peter de Billiere came to see Franks at his trailer HQ in a parking lot in the port of Dammam. De Billiere was the senior British military officer in-country, and they had never met before, and it was crucial to talk about the conditions of employment of the British forces.

It was not the first time Franks would have foreign troops under his command. In Germany in NATO, he had commanded both Canadian and German forces, and he had also played in an exercise under the tactical control of the German II Corps, so he knew what it looked like from the other direction. Franks knew that building mutual trust was vital, and also that the mission assignment needed to be within that unit's capabilities and that he needed to be sensitive to different doctrinal processes for planning and for communicating orders. Logistics is always a challenge, because the official policy is that logistics is a national responsibility, meaning that every country is responsible for supplying its own troops — a totally unworkable policy from a tactical standpoint and one that needs changing. Finally, he was never satisfied that the staffs could work closely enough unless they were totally integrated. Armed with all those thoughts, he met de Billiere.

From his point of view, they hit it off right from the start. De Billiere was a no-nonsense soldier ungiven to posturing or reminders of the importance of his position. He wanted the best for his British troops and he wanted them to make a meaningful contribution to the success of the mission. It was purely a commander-to-commander meeting, also attended by Major General Rupert Smith, newly appointed to command the British division: just the three of them.

Their most important conclusions:

• The British would be employed as a division (in other words, Franks would not break up the division and place the parts under other American control);

• future U.S.-UK relationships depended on the success of their venture together;

• de Billiere agreed to make the switch as soon as Franks wanted (Franks said right away, because he wanted them to move out on planning);

• de Billiere was concerned about the impracticality of the policy that "logistics is a national responsibility"; Franks told him not to worry because it was his intent not to let that get in the way, including in the treatment of each other's casualties;

• de Billiere did not want to unplug from their national intel too soon, to which Franks was quick to agree, since he thought their products had to be better than what he was getting from his own national system (as it turned out, it was a valuable connection, even though U.S. intel got much better toward mid-January);

• they agreed to integrate their staffs rather than following the usual liaison cell practice (a new step at the tactical level, even though it was routinely done at strategic levels of command);

• Franks agreed to be sensitive to the British need for training and for forming the division, since it was happening on the fly, just as with VII Corps;

• they agreed on tight OPSEC, since they did not want anyone to know that the British were moving from the coast inland and joining VII Corps (to this day there are few official pictures or films of the U.S. VII Corps and the UK training and fighting together, due to rigid OPSEC discipline).

Their meeting lasted about forty-five minutes to an hour. They shook hands as soldier to soldier, in a mutual understanding that what they had agreed to verbally was the way it would be. No contracts, no treaties, no paper exchanged, just two soldiers trusting each other. Franks was proud of the corps's service with the British and of their mutual respect and trust. It all started that day.

After de Billiere left, Franks had a session with Rupert Smith and selected members of his staff, in order to get to know their capabilities and to give Smith some initial planning guidance.

Rupert Smith was bright, intense, focused, and very much at ease with himself, and Franks could see they would get along well. Although he had come from a Special Forces, light-infantry background, he was not intimidated in the least with commanding an armored division, and was also quite willing to listen and to give his subordinate commanders wide latitude in their methods for mission accomplishment. He wanted to get to work immediately. He took notes, asked questions, clarified guidance when Franks was not clear, and was candid in expressing his views but seemed quite willing and comfortable to take orders from an American. Franks was glad to have them on the team.

On 19 January, Franks visited them. At their assembly area along the east coast, the British had staked out a live-fire maneuver area where the downrange impact area for direct-fire systems was out over the water. There they could maneuver a brigade and conduct live fire with their tanks, artillery, aviation, as well as practice minefield clearing and berm breaching. During his visit, in the course of an attack exercise by 7 Brigade, commanded by then-Brigadier Patrick Cordingly, Franks rode a Challenger tank and fired a few rounds. They were training hard and aggressively. Franks liked what he saw and told Major General Rupert Smith so.

Smith had his hands full. The British were forming a division by assembling the most modern forces from all over their army. Only their 7 Brigade was a set unit. Smith was putting the others together as they flowed into theater. He had the same team-building and training challenge as Franks himself, and Franks understood. With that in mind, he determined to leave Smith and his division at this training area and close to their logistics base as long as possible. They could accomplish twice as much in the same period of time as they could when they picked up and moved to the west to join VII Corps's Tactical Assembly Area.

Meanwhile, units were crafting a variety of innovative training techniques. For example, they constantly practiced refuel on the move. They set up fuel trucks and long hoses, quick-disconnect nozzles, and the fastest pumps they could get and made an arrangement something quite like a service station crossed with an auto-racing pit stop. The tanks and other vehicles drove to the hose ends laid out on the desert floor at a spacing that could accommodate whatever size unit they wanted to refuel (within reason — usually determined by the terrain and the availability of refueling material). The drill was to anticipate when they needed fuel, preposition the fuel trucks at a spot, direct the tankers to it, get them there and through it as fast as possible, then get the unit back into its tactical organization… all the while maintaining some semblance of organizational integrity. It took lots of practice to get it right.

Units performed a lot of live fire, including what the Army calls calibrating, boresighting, and zeroing their major direct-fire weapons systems to make sure rounds hit where they aimed them — different procedures for each type of weapons system.

Major General Butch Funk at the 3rd AD had a particularly challenging training situation. Since his division equipment was the last to be shipped from Germany and it had been loaded in such a way that the tactical integrity of his units was lost, the assembling of his division was a major challenge. Yet in some ways he knew that 3rd AD was ahead of the game, since they had just completed their semi-annual gunnery and maneuver training in Germany. What they needed to do, he realized, was work on major unit moves and formation changes in the desert, maneuvers not possible to train in Germany, and so he turned the assembly of the division over to his junior officers and his noncommissioned officers, led by division command's Sergeant Major Joe T. Hill, took his commanders out into the desert to his Tactical Assembly Area, and used HMMWVs to move and navigate in the desert, spaced like the whole division. It was a masterful use of the entire chain of command to handle a variety of simultaneous activities.

Major General Ron Griffith had a different challenge. Though he, too, had to assemble his division amid fractured unit integrity, his division had had the bad luck of arriving when competition was highest for trucks to transport them the 400 kilometers to their desert assembly areas. On top of all that, Franks gave Griffith responsibility to be VII Corps reserve for an ARCENT mission to protect the ARCENT lines of communication (the road networks designated for unit and supply movements, in this case, the Tapline Road) from a preemptive Iraqi attack while XVIII Corps moved west. This was a real mission, requiring staff planning and orders — no small amount of work for a division-sized organization. Thus he had a real mission, plus he had to assemble and train the division all at the same time.

Griffith drilled his division hard and conducted as much live-fire training as he could fit in. He also worked his artillery, including MLRS, into his maneuver training. For their live firing, the 1st Armored used what was called Jayhawk range, a ten-by-fifty-kilometer piece of uninhabited desert the corps had arranged with the Saudis. A daily major exercise for all the units using this range was to make sure that no unsuspecting Bedouin and his herd wandered into the impact area — not to mention U.S. military vehicles or aircraft. There were no fences, no roads, no terrain features, and no electronic or phone communications with the Bedouins who shared the desert with VII Corps.

IN the period before the battle, Fred Franks simultaneously devoted his most concentrated efforts — with the help of a great many smart, skilled people — to working out the corps's plan of attack. Before we get to that, though, we need to spend some time placing the story in its context. We need to look at the nature of military plans and maps, and then at the planning processes in the headquarters above his, in CENTCOM and Third Army, to show how his plans were formed out of those and how he helped influence them.

PLANS

Plans and orders are not the same. Plans are options. Orders make things happen. Units make many plans, but some never get executed.

The job of a unit's staff is to manufacture feasible options — and to continue manufacturing them. The commander needs as many options as possible. You try to be like the pool player, Franks likes to say, making a shot but also lining up the cue ball for the next shot.

Normally with plans, there are such words as "effective for planning on receipt, execution on order." This allows subordinate units to do their own planning and work out all the details. If events turn out anywhere close to the assumptions in your plan, then it is a matter of telling the organization to execute a specific OPLAN. That rarely happens without adjustment.

Sometimes you update the plan: when your mission or troops available to you have been modified, when your senior HQ modifies their own plan, when the enemy does something different or unexpected, when you get a better idea, or when you spot an enemy vulnerability to exploit. U.S. units make lots of plans, which on occasion causes concern with our allies. Their much smaller staffs are not capable of producing the prodigious numbers of contingency plans that Americans can generate.

Nonetheless, the more options, the better. Thinking through a situation and developing a wide range of options, then keeping your force in a physical posture where those options remain available to you, lets you outthink an enemy and then outfight him. It is a process that continues during a battle.

MAPS

Land forces use terrain. They fight on the ground. How they dispose their forces on that ground relative to the enemy and with what weapons are crucial to the successful outcome of a battle or a series of battles.

The U.S. Army still uses paper maps to picture that ground. As with service station maps, they have lines and use colors to represent various features, but they also include an overprinted grid system that allows soldiers and leaders to describe their locations from coordinates. They also include terrain contours that allow them to determine hills, valleys, etc. Newer technology will soon allow soldiers to see the terrain in three-dimensional virtual reality, and indeed fly over it, drive around on it, or walk through it. This technology will allow commanders to better apply their combat power on the ground relative to the enemy.

But for Desert Storm they had flat, one-dimensional paper maps.

Maps come in different scales to represent certain sizes of ground. In Desert Storm, VII Corps used three scales—1:250 000, 1:100 000, and 1:50 000. The smaller the scale, the more detail. In the desert, where the ground is relatively flat, scale does not really matter much—except that on large-scale maps it is much harder to indicate both enemy and friendly units and the speed of unit movements. That is to say, if you indicate an enemy brigade with a small map sticker (say an inch-by-half-inch rectangle) that sticker might cover an area on the map occupied by two brigades on the ground. It's not hard to imagine misperceptions and confusion resulting from that. Meanwhile, if you move an inch on a 1:250 000 map, you have in fact moved about ten miles on the ground. If you are attacking a determined enemy on tough ground, ten miles is a long way. But if you are looking at that map at a higher headquarters, or a larger-scale map, that inch might appear to you as no movement at all.

U.S. Army maps in a command post are normally mounted vertically on a piece of plywood and covered with acetate. The acetate allows you to mark up the map and change the markings. This procedure was begun in World War I and continues to this day. When the first U.S. tank crossed the Sava River into Bosnia in December 1995, the tank commander was standing in his hatch in the tank turret, looking at a map, and relating it to what he was seeing in front of him.

Skill in relating the map to the ground and in moving units in relation to one another to get the maximum combat power on the enemy (while the enemy is doing the same thing) is the art of war at the tactical level. When you are a small-unit commander, you can normally see all the ground your unit will operate on physically. The more senior you get, the more this skill becomes a function of your imagination, as you figure what combination should go where over terrain you cannot see and against an enemy with a mind of his own.

FRED Franks spent a lot of time before the attack looking at maps, meditating on them, playing all the combinations over and over again in his mind, and then actually moving around on the ground. He wanted to inform his senses about what was possible on the ground, about how forces and various combinations of forces would fit, how much room they took, and how long it took them to move from one place to the other. He also did it with the Iraqis. Then he wanted to relate all that to a paper map. In that way he could begin to imagine the battle and the various combinations of possibilities.

He was helped in this by his experience in the deserts of Fort Bliss, Texas, with the 3rd Cavalry. Others in the corps had had similar experiences at Fort Bliss or at Fort Irwin. The desert was no stranger to them.

In early February, Franks asked his G-2, John Davidson, to put together a 1:100 000 map (the kind used most frequently in Germany at corps level) and put it flat on a table so as to better visualize the battle. It took an eight-by-ten-foot board to get the whole area on it. That flat map board became their primary planning and briefing tool in the last stages of attack preparation in the two weeks before the attack. It was around that map that Franks asked his commanders if they had enough room to carry out the missions he had given them. They all answered it would be tight, but they could do it.

By the time VII Corps attacked, that map, VII Corps forces, and the Iraqi forces were burned into Franks's mind. He had seen the fight ahead of time and could see the ground and his own forces on it. During the attack, his task was to relate what was actually happening on the field to the picture in his mind, and make adjustments. His big challenge was to keep his own forces continually arrayed in the desert in time, space, and distance in relation to one another for the first two days, so he could have all seven of his FRAGPLAN options available to choose from when he saw the final RGFC disposition. That was why he spent so much time looking at the map. He was playing all the combinations over and over again in his mind. His subordinate commanders were doing the same in their sectors.

The end goal of all this thinking and meditation was to inform Franks's intuition. Commanders decide things because, they often say, "it feels right." What they mean is that all their years of training and education, that focused concentration, that intense desire to win at least cost to their troops, and their own intellectual capacity for synthesis tell them intuitively that their orders are the right thing to do in that given circumstance. Sometimes you cannot explain it.

THE CENTCOM PLAN

The VII Corps plan of attack was not an isolated grand concept entire of itself. Rather, in order to ensure harmony in the overall campaign, it was nested within the larger scope plans of Third Army, CENTCOM, and Coalition strategic objectives. CENTCOM planned the entire theater campaign — including the Coalition allies, land, sea, air, and Special Forces — to accomplish both national and Coalition objectives. Third Army planned the ground operation of VII and XVIII Corps in a way consistent with the overall CENTCOM plan. VII Corps planned its piece of the Third Army plan.

The concept that General Schwarzkopf briefed to Franks and the other commanders on 14 November grew out of another plan that had its origins in early October. At that time General Powell had instructed Schwarzkopf to devise an offensive option and then to send a team to Washington to brief it to the Joint Chiefs. The briefing was held on 13 October.

According to this plan, the heavy elements of XVIII Corps — the 24th MECH, the 1st CAV, and the 3rd ACR — and the Marines would attack just east of the Wadi al Batin in the general direction of Kuwait City. (Schwarzkopf and his planners had rejected a possible flanking move to the west of the Wadi, because logistics would be too difficult, and because the attack would be vulnerable to counterattack on its own flank by Iraqi armored divisions.) Schwarzkopf was not at all happy with this plan: he was by no means certain that it would get the mission accomplished, and there was a possibility of seriously unacceptable casualties (computer projections estimated 10,000, with perhaps 1,000 killed). Still, it was, in his view, the best course he had with the forces available.

In fact, the argument that Schwarzkopf made through his planners (he himself wasn't present at the briefing) was that the original plan's very inadequacies argued for more forces if there was to be a real offensive option. He had protested to General Powell about even sending a briefing to Washington because of his concerns. The problem at the time was that Schwarzkopf did not seem to know what to do with those forces if he got them.

The plan briefed on 13 October — even with Schwarzkopf's caveats — was not well received in Washington by the Joint Staff and the Secretary of Defense. It was less well received in the White House. Schwarzkopf's nervousness about the plan, his request for more forces, and the overall perception that he wasn't aggressive enough did not sit well there.

The briefing did not make Schwarzkopf look good, and that was a major sore point with the CINC. His sensitivity on that score continued even after the two-corps plan was developed.

Following the failed briefing, General Schwarzkopf directed General Yeosock to become involved in ground planning, and Yeosock turned to Brigadier General Steve Arnold, who had come from Korea just after Labor Day to become Third Army G-3. Arnold was called on to direct both Third Army planning and CENTCOM land operations planning, and he held these two responsibilities until final approval of the plan in early January. During that period, Arnold led the so-called Jedi Knights, the graduates of the U.S. Army's School for Advanced Military Studies, who were doing the planning work at CENTCOM and Third Army. (As it turned out, the planners of both VII and XVIII Corps also were SAMS graduates, which was a good thing for both communications and the overall planning effort.)

Meanwhile, General Powell had decided to go to Saudi Arabia to hear further plans discussions and, if necessary, to get personally involved in moving the planning forward. On 22 October, he attended a briefing on a two-corps option, but still was not satisfied. That evening in the guest quarters in Saudi Arabia, he sketched out for General Schwarzkopf on some hotel stationery a scheme of maneuver that would place the two U.S. corps west of the main Iraqi defenses in an enveloping maneuver.

Schwarzkopf agreed with this concept, which then became the basis for new guidance to Steve Arnold. Following Powell's return to Washington, Arnold and the planners sent copies of their early work on this new concept to the Joint Staff to demonstrate its feasibility. Once he himself was assured it would work, General Powell briefed the concept personally to the President on 30 October and secured approval (he already had Cheney's) for the introduction of VII Corps and an additional 250,000 troops into the theater.

The formal announcement was made on 8 November, the Friday after the fall elections.

The main question then at CENTCOM revolved around how far west the flanking maneuver should be. This had to be decided before Third Army could begin to do any definitive planning of its own. Likewise, the two corps would also have to wait for final decision from Third Army before taking their own plans very far. This was especially the case for VII Corps, the main effort, with their force-oriented mission.

Because he himself was under pressure from Washington to look at extremely wide flanking movements, General Schwarzkopf initially gave Steve Arnold guidance to look at sending some forces 500 miles to the west near the Jordanian border (where they could presumably attack Scud capabilities and perhaps cause the Iraqis other discomforts, such as threatening Baghdad); even after this option was discarded (it would have been a logistics nightmare), Schwarzkopf continued to press Arnold and the planners to consider options that placed forces far to the west of where they eventually ended up. This may have been craftiness on Schwarzkopf's part. Showing how insupportable they were may have been his way of getting "Washington ideas" off his back. Yet by the time of the 14 November briefing, XVIII Corps was still attacking far to the west of VII Corps.

Meanwhile, Arnold was convinced that an XVIII Corps attack to the west was not just logistically insupportable, from an operational sense it did not focus on the principal objective of liberating Kuwait and destroying the RGFC, and he continued to try to convince the CINC to agree with him on that. A number of options were considered, all focused on the question of how far west to put XVIII Corps.

As soon as Franks saw the plan on 14 November, he got involved with the planners and with John Yeosock in pressing for a two-corps mutually supporting attack against the RGFC. The concept of a wide attack by XVIII Corps was raised again at the briefing to Cheney and Powell on 20 December. Though Arnold's recommendation then was to drop it, there was no discussion either way about the option. In the end, it was logistics support that drove General Schwarzkopf finally to decide, on 8 January 1991, on a two-corps, side-by-side attack.

This decision freed Third Army to finalize its plans. From there the key decisions were about final force allocation to the two corps and about their mission assignments for the final attack on the RGFC.

Arnold and the planners, thinking conservatively, were convinced that in order to destroy the RGFC, Third Army needed more combat power than it then had. By mid-December they had succeeded in getting VII Corps an additional division, the 1st (UK) AD. (Since the British division was originally slated to join in the Marines' attack to the east of VII Corps, that ended up costing an armored brigade to replace them, which Franks persuaded Waller to ask Schwarzkopf to take from the 1st Cavalry Division rather than the 1st INF.) But in the view of Arnold and his planners, the 1st UK was still not going to be enough. In order to destroy all three heavy RGFC divisions, as well as their three infantry divisions and artillery, the planners thought the theater reserve division, the 1st CAV, should be released early to VII Corps — that is, to the main attack. The CINC, on the other hand, because he felt he might have to send it to help the Egyptians if their attack stalled, wanted to keep this division in theater reserve under his control, with no promises of release. Repeated discussions by planners with General Schwarzkopf on this issue made him very sensitive on that point. The release of the 1st CAV would consequently dog operational planning right up to and including the actual operation. And they were not in fact released from CENTCOM control until 0930 the morning of 26 February, or more than two days after the beginning of the ground war.

Picking the 1st CAV as theater ground reserve was a point for some discussion among planners. Normally, you choose as your reserve a unit that can influence the battle throughout the theater. In the choice of units for that role, the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) might have been a logical choice. With four AH-64 helicopter battalions, their long and lethal reach could influence the theater outcome. On the other hand, the 1st CAV was chosen because CENTCOM wanted an armored unit available to reinforce the Egyptian attack if that became bogged down. Franks had spent time with the Egyptians and seen their plan. As far as he was concerned, they had what it took to accomplish their mission on the VII Corps flank.[14] If the theater had been willing to take a small risk on them, they could have given 1st CAV to VII Corps from the start, kept the 101st as theater or Third Army reserve, and effectively employed the 101st on the last two days to isolate the Kuwaiti theater of operations. Those are choices that are made early and are easy to second-guess later.

Meanwhile, planning efforts continued, and each corps worked on its own plans and kept both Third Army and CENTCOM aware of its work. There was no mystery to what each major HQ was doing. Commanders above the corps level also were well aware of planning work, and had the opportunity on several occasions to intervene if they did not like what they heard. Thus there should have been no surprise later on about the speed and tempo of the VII Corps attack. On 14 December, in preparation for a briefing of Secretary Cheney and General Powell, Franks and the other corps commanders briefed General Schwarzkopf on their plans so far. The CINC approved what he heard. In fact, it was now, in his words, "my plan." He had taken ownership of it.

On 20 December, during the briefing to Secretary Cheney and General Powell, Cheney made a somewhat mysterious comment to Franks, just after he had gone over his concept of attack. "Thanks," Cheney said, "I feel better now."

Franks didn't know then that Cheney was referring to the more than two months of discussions and planning in which he had participated. He had seen the early — and unsatisfactory — one-corps plan, the early two-corps planning, and had listened to General Powell sketch out a bolder two-corps plan to the President. Now he was seeing how the two-corps offensive concept would actually be put into action in the theater. And so for the first time, for him, all the pieces were really falling in place.

From 27 to 30 December in Riyadh, Lieutenant General Yeosock convened a MAPEX, which both Franks and Luck attended on the first day and the last. Yeosock had originally intended to use this as a war game of final Third Army plans, but couldn't, since the CENTCOM plan was not yet final. Instead, the session became a discussion of resource allocation between VII and XVIII Corps, and of air support to the ground phase of the operation. Franks continued his discussions with John Yeosock over the necessity for a coordinated two-corps attack. Yeosock was sympathetic and, with Steve Arnold, went back to Schwarzkopf beginning on 4 January with a series of options.

On 8 January General Schwarzkopf made his final decision on Third Army positions for the attack. Instead of a wide west maneuver north by XVIII Corps, with a gap between corps, the two corps would attack abreast. It then became a matter of Third Army determining how to destroy the RGFC.

THE THIRD ARMY PLAN

Third Army planning intensified starting in mid-January.

The CINC directed Lieutenant General Yeosock to plan for offensive actions beginning anytime after the start of the air campaign on 17 January. Brigadier General Arnold and his planners, with the assistance of both corps, followed up on this. Taking into consideration the status of the two corps, the combat power available, and assumptions about possible RGFC choices,[15] they developed five different options for an attack.

Though timelines for the various attack options and forces available were developed, most of the planning energy was devoted to the one that assumed Third Army would attack only after all forces were ready and that the RGFC would defend in place. This timeline had both XVIII Corps and VII Corps in place by H+74 for a coordinated two-corps attack against the RGFC (H-hour — the start of the attack on G-Day). In actuality, since the heavy forces of both corps would not begin their attack until H+26, this meant these forces would hit the RGFC forty-eight hours from that point.

On 1 February 1991, a meeting to discuss final plans was held at King Khalid Military City, hosted by Lieutenant General Yeosock and attended by Franks and Luck and key members of their staffs.

Since, at that late date, a coherent Third Army two-corps order had not been published, Franks continued his strong argument to Yeosock at the end of the meeting (after General Luck had had to leave) for a two-corps coordinated attack against the RGFC if they stayed in place. He proposed that VII Corps would turn ninety degrees east and XVIII Corps would attack to their north. Both Yeosock and Arnold liked the concept. After that meeting, Third Army developed its plan for the Army to attack the RGFC and published the order on 18 February, during the time that Lieutenant General Cal Waller was temporarily in command.

The order's maneuver portion read, "ARCENT continues the attack with two corps attacking abreast to encircle enemy first-echelon forces in the JFNC zone and destroy the RGFC. On order, VII Corps conducts the Army main attack in the south to destroy the Tawalkana Mech and the Medina Armor; fixes then defeats the 17 AD and the 52 AD. On order, the XVIII Airborne Corps conducts the Army supporting attack in the north to penetrate and defeat the Nebuchadnezzar and the Al Faw Infantry Divisions and destroy the Hammurabi Armor Division."

XVIII Corps was not pleased with this order. In a message to the ARCENT commander, they listed three objections to it. First, they did not like being assigned the mission of attacking the RGFC infantry divisions, since that could cause unacceptable casualties. Second, they needed more maneuver room. Third, they did not feel they had the combat power to attack through the RGFC infantry and to destroy the Hammurabi.

At 2200 on 24 February — after the attack had begun — Third Army published a change to that order that allowed for the possibility that as the Third Army attack progressed, the Hammurabi Armored Division might either end up in the VII Corps zone of attack or in XVIII Corps's. It was not clear, in other words, whether the Hammurabi would stand and defend or move. If they stayed in one place, VII Corps was to be prepared to attack and destroy them, after destroying the Tawalkana and the Medina. Meanwhile, XVIII Corps would take on the RGFC light divisions and RGFC artillery, which were in their zone, and they also would take on the Hammurabi if that division moved into their zone. Third Army believed the RGFC had artillery positioned in XVIII Corps's sector that would fire south into VII Corps when VII Corps attacked the Medina. The order was for XVIII Corps to destroy that artillery.

These discussions and subsequent planning became the basis for the Third Army's two-corps plan. This was executed following the evening of 25 February, when Franks ordered VII Corps to execute FRAGPLAN 7 and when XVIII Corps subsequently redirected their attack toward Basra.

Even though Third Army had developed a coordinated two-corps attack, there was still no agreement on those concerns that had bothered Franks as far back as the 14 November briefing. No plans existed that laid out how the forces would be disposed (now probably in front of Basra) at the end of the war. Likewise, there was nothing like a CENTCOM airground plan to isolate and then finish the RGFC units in the Kuwait theater.

It was not that Yeosock and Third Army planners did not try to get this done. Rather, they intended to adapt to circumstances and put out a new "frag" order every twenty-four hours (which they did anyway) in order to adjust the two-corps attack. What caught them short was the timing of the end of the war.

Specifically, Lieutenant General Yeosock's intention was first to determine if the RGFC were staying in place. If so, then the two-corps attack plan would be executed. Then, based on the situation at that point, he planned to issue further orders to both corps for the final attack to complete the RGFC destruction in a coordinated air-ground action.

There had very definitely been thought within the Third Army about the war's end state, but the cease-fire preempted that final order.

THE VII CORPS PLAN

A military plan comes out of many minds working on a common problem, yet it is not a committee solution. The commander decides. How commanders decide, along with what they decide, largely determines the excellence of the final product and the confidence with which subordinates execute the plan.

The VII Corps plan had to be just that — the corps plan. Fred Franks knew from the start what he wanted to do and how he wanted to develop that plan: he had to come up with a simple scheme of maneuver that would accomplish his mission at least cost, and the way he did that had to reinforce the teamwork he was building in VII Corps. In other words, he not only had to come up with a workable scheme of maneuver, he also had to teach it, and do that in such a way that all of his leaders had internalized it, were of one mind with him, and were playing on the same team.

Someone asked Franks how much time in VII Corps he spent teaching. About 50 percent, he told them.

One might argue that in a military organization, where everyone follows orders, all you have to do is make a decision and then tell your subordinates "This is it, go do it." That is certainly true, and Franks did that a lot. But at the same time, a commander has the benefit of a great deal of experience in his subordinates and they also have large and complex organizations of their own, which they have to direct and move. For both reasons, they will have judgments worth listening to.

In other words, when you make military plans, you have to be aware of the human dimension. When things get tough, when opportunities and enemy actions require adjustments to the plan, and when you expect and indeed demand initiative from your subordinates, you want them to be on your wavelength and to really believe in what they are doing. Results are always better when your subordinates have been part of the plan. You form a team that way.

One of the ways Franks built his VII Corps team was to evolve the plan in such a way that all of his leaders took part in the plan building. From the start he had a good idea about what he wanted to do, but the process by which he arrived at it was a matter both of bringing the team along and convincing them that it was also their idea, and of consulting with his commanders, all savvy mounted warriors who provided valuable input. He also knew he was going to focus all VII Corps units' attack on a common corps objective, rather than assign individual objectives to individual units.

But in the end it had to be Fred Franks's plan. It had to come out of the will and mind of the commander, and not out of a patchwork of inputs from subordinates as an accommodation to all views.

In encouraging input from subordinates, he was not unlike many earlier commanders that he admired: Robert E. Lee, George S. Patton, Field Marshal Slim (the British victor over the Japanese in Burma in World War II). He did not consider it weakness or indecision. It was smart command style.

Though teaching the plan and listening to input are indispensable to the process, planning and decision making are primarily intellectual acts. They are problem solving, pure and simple — with the added dimension that the problem is two sided, and this is the tough, uncompromising arena of land war, in which the outcome is deadly and forever. In simple terms, the enemy shoots back and behaves in ways you sometimes do not want and haven't anticipated, while using the same time and the same terrain.

At the same time, the commander operates in a military and national hierarchy of ideas and policies. No military commander is a free agent — he can't do as he wants. He operates within a framework of orders and directives in a chain of command. In the United States, that means civilian control and orders issued either by the President as commander in chief or the Secretary of Defense. Those orders are translated into action at each subordinate headquarters. In Desert Storm, the orders came from President Bush and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney via the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, to General Schwarzkopf, the U.S. Unified Command commander for the region and the commander of Coalition forces in Saudi Arabia. That meant that General Schwarzkopf had to answer both to his chain of command and to the Coalition when he was putting together his strategic objectives and the military plans to achieve those objectives. It was not simply a matter of the United States devising a plan and then executing it. Though the United States by far had the preponderance of forces, it still had to involve the Coalition nations in the decision-making process. The United States needed their forces to accomplish the mission, wanted their ideas about the best way to do that, and wanted to conduct a campaign that would accomplish the mission in such a way that it would lay the groundwork for future cooperation in this very volatile region.

When the CINC finished his briefing on 14 November 1990, Franks was crystal clear about four things: He knew VII Corps was the main attack. He knew that if, through his fault, any details of this plan got into the media, he was history. He was convinced that XVIII Corps was way too far to the west for a mutually supporting two-corps attack. And he had heard nothing mentioned about how it would all end from a theater perspective.

Following the CINC's briefing, he did not give any guidance to his own planners for the better part of two weeks. There were two reasons for this: First, before he could do any detailed work, he needed from Third Army a basic mission statement and the units to be assigned to VII Corps. At that point, it was not at all clear what additional troops would come from outside the corps. As far as he knew, he would be attacking with three divisions (1st AD, 1st ID, and 3rd AD, three corps artillery brigades, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, and the 11th Aviation Brigade). Second, because of operations security, he simply did not want to get involved in detailed planning while they were still in Germany. With all the media outlets and the intense speculation about what they were about to do, he felt it was best to wait until they were close to going before they did any detailed work. He issued his first guidance to his planners on 27 November.

His planners, meanwhile, had not been sitting on their hands. They had been busy in Riyadh. Heading his planning work was Lieutenant Colonel Tom Goedkoop. Goedkoop had been assigned to VII Corps after graduating from SAMS in the summer of 1989, and had arrived in VII Corps shortly before Franks. Goedkoop, a tanker, bright, focused, positive, and a hard-working officer, made several trips to Riyadh during November to better understand the planning climate there and to do what he could to help Third Army finish enough of its plan so that VII Corps could begin work.

Franks also had dispatched John Landry, VII Corps chief of staff, to Saudi with part of the staff for coordination meetings and, more specifically, to ask CENTCOM if VII Corps could move their Tactical Assembly Areas farther west (Yeosock had told him it would have to be cleared by the CINC). After a helicopter flight on 14 November over the area where the corps was supposed to locate, Franks was convinced they were too far east. To transfer from the planned TAA to the corps's attack positions would mean an extremely long desert move. The distance from the proposed TAA to King Khalid Military City was approximately 200 kilometers, and from there to the attack position — another 160 kilometers. Doing that would cost too much time, as well as too much wear and tear on the vehicles. Franks knew initial disposition of forces on the ground was vital, remembering Molke's dictum that "an error in initial disposition might not be corrected for an entire campaign."

Landry got permission from Cal Waller to locate west toward King Khalid Military City.

After Third Army came up on 24 November with a revised plan and mission statement, Franks met with his planners on 27 November and gave them guidance. He focused on three battles: the initial breach of the Iraqi defense, the defeat of the Iraqi tactical reserves, and mass to destroy the RGFC. He also wanted to find a way to keep the Iraqis from knowing where the VII Corps would hit.

At this point, intelligence indicated that the Iraqis had the capability to develop a complex obstacle system of mines, trenches, so-called fire trenches (trenches filled with oil they could ignite in the event of attack), and wire entanglements all across the corps's front. The big question, early on, was how far west the Iraqi barrier system would go.

Franks and his planners knew from the beginning that they did not want to get the corps tangled up in that system. He wanted a flank or to be able to create one. If there was a way in their sector to send heavy forces (at that point 1st AD, 3rd AD, and 2nd ACR) around it, and if the terrain would support heavy forces, and if they could logistically support heavy forces, then they would send as much of the enveloping attack out there as they could. (There were always reasons for making the breach — even if a way west opened up: to keep logistical lines short, for example, and to rapidly defeat the Iraqi tactical reserves.)

When they first looked at their sector, it appeared that the Iraqis would continue to build their barrier system all the way across it. If that happened, VII Corps would have to breach that line in order to achieve a penetration for the heavy forces to move toward the RGFC. After passing through the breach, the heavy forces would move north to a concentration area, and then they would attack to destroy the RGFC.

All of this was slow and deliberate, and Franks did not like it. During this analysis, he started asking about a flank. In fact, since at that time CENTCOM plans for XVIII Corps placed them far to the west of their eventual attack corridor, VII Corps could have gone even farther west than they eventually went, but their terrain analysis showed that traffic ability out there was not good for a large formation. Either it could not move rapidly north or the formation would have to spread out too much and be too far away to concentrate against the RGFC. Thus they assumed they had to punch a breach through the barrier and assemble the attack at a concentration point on the way to the RGFC. (As it happened, when the 3rd ACR traveled that terrain during the war they had a hard time getting through it, and had to move a lot slower than the 1st Armored to their east.)

VII Corps planners analyzed the breach in great detail. They figured its width and its depth, then how many vehicles could pass at what speed, then worked out specific time lines for each type unit in the corps.

Franks still didn't like it. None of his planners did. Not only would it take too much time to bring his forces through the breach, but once they were through, they would be strung out north to south when he wanted them aligned east to west and coiled to strike from south to north.

He again told his planners that he preferred to flank the Iraqi barrier so that he could achieve a more rapid concentration of forces for the attack on the RGFC. After some thought and examination of that option, he seized on the idea of an "audible." What he wanted to do was look over the Iraqi line of scrimmage, as it were, to determine how far west their defense was set. If they were in a defense for the play VII Corps had called — i.e., if the barrier extended across VII Corps's sector — then they would run the breach play. If, on the other hand, the Iraqis left an opening to the west, they would change their plan that put units in that opening and let them race to the RGFC and mass against them much faster.

They did this initial planning with only a few planners, all approved by Franks in their secure room in the basement of VII Corps HQ at Kelly Barracks in Stuttgart. His chief of staff and G-3 also were present.

In early December, he picked the Big Red One to make the breach. They'd had recent NTC experience in breaching, they were an infantry division, and Tom Rhame volunteered to do it.

On 6 December, Franks made a three-day return trip to Saudi Arabia with Corps staff Don Holder and 3rd AD chief Jerry Smith to personally greet the first arriving units from the 2nd ACR. He made this entry in his journal: "Saw 2/2 ACR. Troops look great. Spirited, cleaning weapons. Chain of command present. Landed in A.M. and right on their vehicles w/o sleep. Inspiring. Gave coins to soldiers cleaning weapons to remind them to continue." He discussed the plan with John Yeosock, as well as a myriad of other details of deployment, and briefed the breach option, stressing that he thought the VII Corps and XVIII Corps attacks should be mutually supporting. He discussed the need for deception and questioned how CENTCOM would conduct operations deep with air. Franks also met with Cal Waller, vital in any communication with General Schwarzkopf, but not with Schwarzkopf himself.

Franks made his final move to Saudi Arabia on 13 December.

In preparation for the briefing on 20 December for Secretary Cheney and General Powell, Franks briefed General Schwarzkopf on 14 December on his attack plan. His instructions from Schwarzkopf then were to brief the plan in sufficient detail (especially the breach) that when Secretary Cheney and General Powell left they would be convinced the plan was viable, and that it was set in concrete and difficult to change. Schwarzkopf wanted approval of what he was doing, and no more suggestions from Washington. Armed with that guidance, Franks and his planners prepared that type of briefing. The plan had six phases and the audible.

On 20 December, Franks principally briefed the breach-only plan, but explained that there was an audible plan available if the Iraqis gave him an opening farther west. As a point of interest, in the light of General Schwarzkopf's later dissatisfaction with the speed of the VII Corps attack, no one in Franks's superior chain of command commented about the laborious task of passing a three-division corps through a relatively narrow opening, assembling the corps, and then moving toward the enemy 150 kilometers away. Franks had misgivings about the plan, as indicated in his journal, even though he did not yet have an alternative.

"Believe operationally we might be violating principle of mass (if we send all our units thru breach one behind the other in column). In our scheme the principal worry is tight movement thru breach. Do not want a bridge too far (thinking of the WW II operation and piecemeal one-unit-at-a-time commitment on a narrow front)."

He is still pleased that he did not have to execute it.

In answer to a question from Dick Cheney about the mission Franks had for the British 1st AD, he replied that he anticipated giving them the mission to defeat the Iraqi VII Corps tactical reserve so that his heavy forces could move to destroy the RGFC without worrying about their rear, flank, and fuel.

A thornier issue had to do with the 1st CAV, the theater reserve (on which subject the CINC continued to be especially sensitive). As he went through his presentation, Franks explained that even though the 1st CAV was theater ground reserve, since it was a Third Army assumption and logical for the theater reserve to be assigned to the main attack (if it was not needed elsewhere), he was including plans for their use by VII Corps.

This assumption did not go down well with Schwarzkopf. Later, in fact, in his autobiography, he charged that Franks was not prepared to attack unless he had the 1st CAV.

The charge — with all its implications — is not true. In providing a place for the 1st CAV in his scheme of maneuver, Franks was doing what any commander would do and what Third Army had instructed him to do.

The last week in December was an intense period for Franks and his planners. There were many reasons for it: Franks wanted to settle on his intent, to nail down the plan, go over it with his commanders in a session (with a BCTP exercise) at King Khalid Military City in early January, and then lock it down and train and rehearse with specific tasks in mind. At the same time, he suspected that the air war was going to start soon. When it did, the Iraqis would be frozen in place. His suspicion was correct; the air war did start soon (on 17 January), and that did freeze the Iraqis in place — with the result that their picture of the Iraqis in mid-January turned out to be essentially the one they would have when they attacked.

Meanwhile, there were long sessions with Creighton Abrams, John Landry, Stan Cherrie, John Davidson, and the planners. There were still many questions about the breach and the audible, questions about logistics support (mainly fuel trucks), questions about when to move the British west to the corps TAA, questions about construction of an exact breach replica so that the 1st INF and the Brits could rehearse (this was done), questions about the feints and deceptions up into the Ruqi Pocket (so that the Iraqis would be deceived into believing the main attack would go up the Wadi al Batin), questions about air-ground rules in the theater that were totally different from NATO's, and questions about growing frustrations with lack of intelligence, especially imagery of Iraqi defensive positions. (At one point, Franks told Yeosock that tourists had better pictures of Iraq than he did. He'd be better off, he told him, sending his own C-12 to fly along the border with the door open and use a personal camera to get pictures… He was exaggerating, but frustration was high.)

One serious disagreement between Franks and his planners was over whether or not there should be a pause by the corps before they hit the RGFC. Regardless of the final choice about the audible, they calculated that continuous movement and enemy action over the distances the corps would have to travel (over 150 kilometers) would require what doctrine calls an operational pause to refuel and rearm in an area they had called Objective Collins (after Lightning Joe Collins, the VII Corps commander in World War II).

Franks vetoed that suggestion. "No pauses," he ordered. He did not disagree with their calculations (friction was inevitable), with their recommendation for an area of concentration, or even with the possible need for adjustments to the rate of movement, in order to better focus the impact of the heavy forces, but he did not want to build a deliberate pause into the plan, especially one right in front of the main enemy location. A pause was bad motivationally: once you are two or three days into an attack and really rolling, it is better to keep rolling than to stop and then try to get tired troops moving again; and tactically: he did not want to give the Iraqis a chance to adjust their defense (it was Franks's belief that giving them time to set up a position defense was playing to their strength).

The planners then began to work out some other way.

As it turned out, Franks decided to adjust the corps's rate of advance during the first day and a half. Those adjustments allowed the corps to roll hard into the RGFC with the greatest possible momentum, with concentrated combat power, with fresh troops, and with a sustainable logistics posture. For these adjustments, Franks has since been sharply criticized by many analysts and chroniclers of the war in the Gulf, and most notably by General Schwarzkopf, their assumption being that several thousand M1A1s, Bradleys, and other heavy armored vehicles should have been able to charge across 150 kilometers or so of desert the same way horse cavalry in a John Ford movie charge down a valley. The issue goes back to knowing about what cavalry people call the "tempo of a mounted attack": You want not only to hit your enemy hard and fast with your heavy stuff, and hit them from an unexpected direction, but you want to hit them with a coherent formation so that your combat power is focused and can hit hard and keep hitting until the enemy quits. That meant that for Fred Franks the question was whether to stop in front of the main enemy objective or to "go slow now and go fast later," as the old German saying goes. He chose to do the latter.

On 28 December, Franks moved the VII Corps Main CP out of the port area of Dammam to the desert at a point about seventy-five kilometers east of King Khalid Military City.

On 2 January, he visited the soldiers who were by then erecting the exact replica of the Iraqi obstacle system. During the visit he determined that his people were building at the rate of twenty-five meters per hour.

That made for some interesting further thinking: Could the Iraqis, he asked himself, extend their defensive barrier west as fast as our engineers? And even if they could, how far west could they go at that rate?

The answer, it seemed to Franks, was that his soldiers were more skilled than the Iraqis. Based on his troops' timelines, he determined that in the time they had, the Iraqis wouldn't be able to extend their barrier system all the way across the VII Corps sector, especially if the air attacks began soon.

He called the "audible" during a plans and issues session in King Khalid Military City, 6 to 8 January, attended by all the major subordinate commanders of the corps plus their planners.

At that time, the two forces he had available for the enveloping maneuver were the 2nd ACR and the 1st AD. Third AD was then the VII Corps reserve; as such it was to be the force Franks wanted to put in the Ruqi Pocket to carry out the deception mission. According to the current configuration of the plan, 3rd AD would be feinting in the Ruqi Pocket before VII Corps attacked. When the real attack started, 3rd AD would back out of there and then either pass through the breach or follow 1st AD north through the gap in the west.

Franks was not pleased with this arrangement of units, because it probably meant that 3rd AD would take too long to disengage from Ruqi and catch up with 1st AD for the RGFC attack, and this would cause a piecemeal attack into the RGFC.

Even though he was to be CENTCOM reserve, John Tilelli attended the briefings. "Don't forget about us," he told Franks.

Franks didn't forget him.

During this meeting, Franks also talked to the new Third Army G-2, Brigadier General John Stewart. Stewart's area was intelligence, and in order to decide what formation to order VII Corps into for the attack on the RGFC, Franks had to know the RGFC's final disposition. He needed to make the decision about twenty-four hours before execution, Franks figured, and since it would take about forty-eight hours to get to the RGFC, he told Stewart he needed the final intelligence twenty-four hours after VII Corps attacked — no later. Stewart would deliver the information he needed on the afternoon of 25 February, right on time.

In the days following the meeting at King Khalid Military City, there were a number of what turned out to be false alerts that Iraqi forces were coming across the border.

On 11 January, there was a report that four Iraqi aircraft had penetrated Saudi airspace and had been driven back by F-16s. On 17 January, just after the air attack began, there was a report that fifty-five Iraqi tanks were engaging the Egyptians. At that time, VII Corps's 11th Aviation Brigade alerted their two Apache battalions, and the 2nd ACR sent a squadron out to intercept the force. When he got this intelligence, Franks was visiting Tom Rhame on a rifle-firing range. He dropped everything, immediately flew forward to 2nd ACR, and soon learned that no Iraqi tanks had crossed the border.

While none of these reports turned out to be accurate, they did serve to exercise the corps's rapid-response capability and communications. Franks was pleased with the ability of subordinate commanders to react quickly, to listen to the radio, to anticipate actions, and on their own initiative make things happen.

On 8 January, the 1st CAV and the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, were attached to VII Corps for a mission to protect Tapline Road from a possible Iraqi preemptive attack south down the Wadi al Batin (Franks was also ordered to tie in with French forces west of King Khalid Military City in order to protect the western flank). The 2nd Brigade flew into position on 12 January. And on 13 January, because of reports of a probable Iraqi attack, Franks ordered the 1st CAV forward to a position just south of the road. It then occurred to him that now that he had the 1st CAV for this mission, it would be logical to move them forward to defensive positions just south of the Iraqi border and adjacent to the Egyptians east of VII Corps. Not long after that, he ordered John Tilelli north to this location… which was, as it happened, the Ruqi Pocket.

So why not use 1st CAV, Franks asked himself, instead of 3rd AD to conduct the feints and demonstrations up the pocket to deceive the Iraqis? If he could free the 3rd AD from that mission, he could move them out west to join the 1st AD and the 2nd ACR. It was a stroke of luck. Franks took advantage of it.

Once that was solved, he had another question: Was there enough room on the ground to place both armored divisions side by side? Or would he have to put them one behind the other? He had forty kilometers to work with in that sector, and uncertain terrain. Franks wanted the divisions side by side. He asked for analysis. The result: several opinions. Franks's staff favored putting the two divisions in column; they didn't think the terrain forward of the border would support two divisions side by side. He told his two commanders to take a look at the terrain. Butch Funk and Ron Griffith both favored two divisions abreast. It would be tight, they said, but they could do it.

To settle this question, Franks sent a ground reconnaissance party out to the area to look around, and on 24 January, he and Stan Cherrie went out to look at it from his Blackhawk. That same day, after his own look and when the recon report came back positive, Franks decided to put the two divisions side by side. Because 1st AD had farther to go, and more to do initially (they had to seize the Iraqi town of al-Busayyah early in their attack), Franks put 1st AD on a twenty-five-kilometer, two-brigade front, and 3rd AD on a fifteen-kilometer, one-brigade front. This would mean that 3rd AD would stretch to the rear over 100 kilometers, and that it would take time and considerable coordination for them to get in a combat posture of two brigades forward. But that was better than putting them behind the 1st AD.

Now Franks had the geometry of his forces that he wanted. He had an enveloping force to the west—2nd ACR, 1st AD, and 3rd AD. He had the 1st INF doing the breach, with the 1st UK following quickly through the breach to defeat the tactical reserves to the east. Logistics, particularly fuel, could also now be easily transported through the breach to the north, where it would be available to the enveloping force. Supporting artillery brigades could be initially passed through to join the enveloping armored divisions before their RGFC attack.

On 26 January, Franks made this note in his journal: "Planning session A.M. Trying to 'what-if' mobile Iraq forces. Think he will fight attrition battle from successive positions. Must shape battle with air, not extend myself logistically, and beat him to positions. East flank vulnerable. If Egyptian attack stalls, then flank thru UK is vulnerable. Must attrit 12th (Iraqi) Div (the one in reserve just behind the frontline Iraqi divisions) so UK can push east and hold while I go north with 1st AD to threaten his flank. Keep 3rd AD in reserve in center able to go east to assist UK or commit north. Should not commit 3rd AD until sure I'll get 1st CAV."

That day Franks also finalized VII Corps's plans for artillery raids across the border and for feints. The purpose of these was to destroy Iraqi combat capability, especially artillery in range of the breach, and to deceive the Iraqis through the artillery fire and ground maneuver feints by the 1st CAV in the Ruqi Pocket that VII Corps's attack was going north up the Wadi al Batin.

On 26 January, Franks also sent Tom Goedkoop, his planner, to assume command of 4/66 Armor, an M1A1 tank battalion in the 1st AD, to replace the unit's commander, who had been injured. Goedkoop went on to command the battalion with distinction in combat. To replace him, Franks selected Lieutenant Colonel Bob Schmitt, another SAMS graduate, who had been working at Third Army on their planning. Schmitt proved to be an excellent choice — well read in the situation, bright, motivated, and savvy.

On 13 January, the VII Corps attack order had been published to include Franks's intent. That basic order remained unchanged in its essentials from that point until the actual attack on 24 February — though modifications in it continued to be made as air attacks caused Iraqi dispositions to change and as they received better-focused intelligence.

Yet Franks knew there was a limit to how long such adjustments could be made. That limit, in his judgment, was to be about two weeks before the ground attack. "Now is not the time to tinker with the plan," he told Toby Martinez on 13 February, a few days before the attack. "The more senior you get, the less you must meddle — do not try and make 100 percent. We have a good plan, just let the people execute." He wanted subordinate commanders to have time to do their planning, to brief and discuss their options with their soldiers, and to be able to conduct rehearsals. That all takes time. If he continued to change the plan, they would never be able to do that. A good plan that is thoroughly understood will be better executed than a perfect plan that nobody has internalized and rehearsed.

To better see how all of this affected individual units, let's take a quick look at how the 2nd ACR saw their own plan, which was published on 20 January. Their mission, it read, was to "attack through the western flank of enemy defenses and conduct offensive cover operations to develop the situation for VII Corps." In their concept of operations, it went on to say, the "regiment's task is to set the terms for action for the corps's main body and to serve as a base of fire and observation for the corps commander's maneuver… If the enemy is moving, regiment meets and destroys advance guard battalions and develops the situation for the corps commander. If he is defending, regiment fixes the enemy from standoff range, finds his flanks, and assists in getting the divisions into the fight." Don Holder, the regiment's commander, and Franks discussed the regiment's maneuver many times both before and after their order was published. Since the regiment would be the key to finding and fixing the RGFC, Franks wanted Holder to be on the same mental wavelength with regard to possibilities for the coming battles. He was.

On 5 February, for instance, Franks visited a training exercise of the 3rd AD. Butch Funk had his commanders and key staff out in the desert in HMMWVs moving cross-country as though he had the whole division out there. At a break in their movement, he huddled all the commanders for a short AAR, and Franks spoke to them about the VII Corps plan and what he expected the Iraqis would do. The more the commanders knew, the better they'd be able to execute when the time came.

Late in January, Franks's planners began to develop the FRAGPLANs that would give the corps options off their basic maneuver and put them in the right attack formation to destroy the RGFC.

On 8 February, Franks flew to Riyadh for the final briefing with Cheney and Powell. The briefing was held the next day.

Franks had printed his most important conclusions on the bottom of his concluding briefing chart. These were:

During the briefing, Franks went through the final iteration of the plan in detail, including a summary of combat actions up to that point, the RGFC's likely options, and a review of training time for each major unit.

Some questions came up, and then Cheney asked the biggest question of the war: "How will it all end?" It was a great question. Franks hesitated a moment, thinking Cheney should really hear the answer from General Schwarzkopf, from a theater perspective, instead of the perspective of one of five attacking corps commanders. But there was only silence. So Franks said, "Mr. Secretary, I cannot answer for anyone else, but I can give you my opinion from a VII Corps perspective. I believe the Iraqis will defend from positions about where they are now. We will get to a position about here" — he pointed to objective area Collins—"and then turn right ninety degrees, slamming into the RGFC with a three-division fist. We will continue to attack and finish around the area of the Kuwait-Iraq border here" where it intersects Highway 8. "XVIII Corps will attack to our north. We will be the anvil along the border area and they will be the hammer coming in from the north."

There was no discussion.

After the briefing, the CINC asked everyone to stay for a few minutes, and General Powell spoke in an informal setting. He told everyone thanks and related how Whitney Houston had sparked an emotional outburst of patriotism when she'd sung an inspired rendition of the national anthem at the recent Super Bowl. He said it was an indication of the lift the country had gotten from the operation so far, and said everybody should be proud of it. This operation was proof that the United States could do things well. He asked all the commanders to pass on to the soldiers how much they were supported at home. It really pumped Franks up. He was glad to hear it and pass it along.

General Schwarzkopf also spoke to the assembled commanders. He said he was "very well pleased" with what he had heard. "You should start on your countdown. February 21 to 24 is the window for attack."

Franks himself was really pleased with the outcome. He thought they were all of one mind on the attack, and on what the corps and Third Army would do if the RGFC stayed where they were. He also thought the ground and the air component saw eye to eye on what needed to be done, and that if the RGFC stayed where they were, the air would isolate them in the theater.

His only regret lay in one piece of coordination that didn't happen. While in Riyadh, Franks went to visit the Air Force to try to get better help in destroying artillery in range of the breach. He proposed to Major General John Corder, the deputy for Lieutenant General Chuck Horner, that the Air Force put up aircraft at the same time the corps flew their Pioneer UAV. When the UAV spotted an artillery target, Franks proposed, the corps could relay it to the circling aircraft, and the aircraft could roll in and take it out. Corder agreed to do it, but on 10 February Franks was informed that his decision had been disapproved and they would not do it after all. He never knew why.

Other than that, though, he was enthusiastic. The last time Franks had briefed them in December he had the 2nd ACR, two battalions of the 210th Artillery Brigade, and one AH-64 battalion in Saudi ready for war. Now he had a four-division corps ready to fight. It was a hell of an achievement by the commanders and soldiers of the VII Corps, with help from many outside the corps. Franks was proud of the VII Corps and proud to report to General Powell and Secretary Cheney that if called on, they were ready to fight.

During the period before the war, Franks never really stopped thinking about the upcoming battles — mentally preparing himself for what the corps was about to face. He was motivated to win at least cost, and he never concentrated so hard on anything in his life. It never left his conscious or subconscious thoughts. Total focus like that was a method of problem solving that had never failed him. An aspect of these meditations (as Napoleon called them) was to continue to sit in front of a map and concentrate on it — looking from that angle at the corps plan, at possible combinations, then thinking about something else, and then looking back again.

The corps was scheduled to move from its TAAs to its final attack positions starting on 16 February. During one of his map sessions before that move, Franks's concentration on unit dispositions paid off: he noticed that the corps units were now arrayed south to north in the same physical configuration as they would later — in the tactical maneuver toward the RGFC — attack south to north. That configuration meant that it would be possible to conduct a corps rehearsal of this difficult and complex maneuver as the corps traveled the 160 to 180 kilometers to its attack positions, an invaluable training opportunity. It was the only chance the corps had for such a rehearsal. Franks gave the order.

From 16 to 18 February, the rehearsal took place, and it was awesome, that massed wave of iron, itself over 100 kilometers wide, hurtling across the desert. Typically, they did an AAR after the move.

At the end of the move, on 18 February, Cal Waller became ARCENT and Third Army commander, as John Yeosock had been evacuated to Germany for emergency gallbladder surgery.

On 20 February, during a visit, Waller made it clear that from G-minus three to G-Day itself, it was imperative that the corps avoid getting into any fights that might force a strategic decision to go to war (this was during a time of intense, last-minute diplomatic maneuvering between the United States, the Soviets, and the Iraqis). At the same meeting, he also confirmed that there would be a coordinated attack by XVIII and VII Corps to the final objective, adding that VII Corps should not get in a hurry attacking the RGFC; he expected both corps might need the operational pause near Objective Collins. And he confirmed further that it would be twenty-four to thirty-six hours after the attack before there was a decision from CENTCOM on release of the 1st CAV Division.

Franks, of course, welcomed the decision on the mutually supporting attack, but he still did not want to pause in front of the RGFC.

At 2200 on 21 February, Waller called Franks to tell him G-Day would be 24 February. They would go on the twenty-fifth.

On 22 February, Franks had his final commanders' meeting. He told them to "fight tough and smart, close and deep, use arty and air, and cover each other," and gave a short pep talk about the importance of the mission and how well prepared the corps now was for combat.

Later that day, Franks visited a hospital and the 1st CAV soldiers wounded on 20 February. He told them thanks, and asked about their fellow soldiers and how soon they could go back to the division. Most of their wounds were from fragmentation or burns.

COMMAND OF GROUND FORCES

Meanwhile, an issue was still floating out there that needed to be resolved — the issue of overall command of ground forces. The designation of a land force commander, with a separate staff competent to direct land force operations in a joint theater environment, has been an issue in many U.S. joint operations back to World War II.

Normally in a theater of operations, there is a joint force commander, a CINC, who directs operations through what are called service component commanders of land, sea, and air. In the Gulf theater, there was no problem with sea and air component commanders. The Joint Forces air component commander was Lieutenant General Chuck Horner, and all air forces in the theater reported to him, including Navy air not needed for ship protection and Marine air not needed for close air support of marines. Likewise, all naval forces reported to Vice Admiral Stan Arthur.

On the ground, however, things were more complicated. On the ground were essentially five corps: two Arab corps and three U.S. corps. A lot of combat power. Yet initially no overall land forces commander had been designated.

Thus, for example, when Chuck Horner needed to coordinate airground actions, he had no land force counterpart with whom to coordinate, but went directly to the CINC.

In the end, General Schwarzkopf felt he had to assume the role of de facto land forces commander. This would still have been a viable choice if Schwarzkopf's staff had been able to direct land forces operations and be the theater staff. They were not. They had never practiced it, and were inclined not to get involved.

This is how the ground forces broke down: the USMC had a two-division corps-sized force, under Lieutenant General Boomer, reporting directly to the CINC; the two U.S. Army corps, with a total of nine divisions, reported to Lieutenant General Yeosock, who then reported to the CINC; and the Saudi composite — essentially two division corps — the Egyptian two-division corps, and the Syrian division each reported to the Royal Saudi Land Force's designated commander, Lieutenant General Khalid. In Riyadh, a staff coordination cell for all non-U.S. Coalition forces was created. It was called C3I (Coalition Communication Coordination Integration Center), and it was headed by U.S. Army Major General Paul Schwartz.

Thus, three land commanders reported directly to the CINC. But the CINC had no staff to direct land forces operations. During planning, this vacuum didn't have much consequence, but during operations, because there was no overall direction of land forces operations, it would matter a great deal. This continues to an be area of much discussion today.

OPERATIONS BEFORE G-DAY

Unlike forces in England preparing to attack German defenses on D-Day, who had no operational mission until they sailed to conduct their assault, VII Corps was an operational unit, part of CENTCOM's land forces, and had an operational mission, even as it deployed and planned the attack.

This meant that as soon as units were in-theater, they were assigned operational missions, which had to be planned for and trained for. They were not simply placed in some administrative area for sixty days to get themselves assembled and combat ready, at which point they could signal that they were ready to play. While they were assembling, training, planning, and dealing with the myriad other details of preparing for battle, VII Corps units had a number of tough things to do.

The 2nd ACR, the first unit in-theater, became operational on 21 December. At that time, the VII Corps mission was to provide a security force in the then-150-kilometer gap between XVIII Corps's western boundary (at this time XVIII Corps had a defensive mission from the coast to about 100 kilometers west) and the eastern boundary of the Joint Forces Command North (that is, the two Egyptian divisions and the Syrian division). The 2nd ACR had that job.

From that point on, VII Corps was directed to be prepared to fight with the forces they had in-theater. This directive required continuing adjustments in estimates, planning, training, modernization, debarkation and movement to TAAs, and in command, even as the corps planned for its attack toward the RGFC (if that proved necessary).

On 26 December, after a heads-up that Third Army might be called on to attack soon after the UN deadline passed on 15 January,[16] John Yeosock informed Franks that he wanted VII Corps's combat power (i.e., the forces they had then) available as of 15 January, 1 February, and 15 February. From that moment on, the corps planners had to be simultaneously available for war with what they had, while planning for war with the entire fully deployed corps.

On 27 December, at an informal meeting in his office in Riyadh, General Schwarzkopf informed Franks, Pagonis, Luck, and Yeosock that the President had called on Christmas Eve to tell him that they might be at war in three weeks. The CINC then instructed his commanders that he would try to hold off the ground attack until somewhere between 10 and 20 February, but that they should be ready to go earlier with what they had.

On 27 December, VII Corps was far from ready to go. They would be only slightly more ready to go in three weeks. Franks, in short, was not at all pleased to hear that they might be expected to attack then. All the same, he determined to drive the corps even faster to get ready.

He speculated in his journal on possible reasons behind the CINC's announcement: "[I] believe," he wrote, "some promises were made at the highest levels… that if we committed forces by early November they would be ready by 15 January. Then our gov't took that date and got the UN resolution passed. I'd like to meet the staff who came up with that projection. Here we are with 2nd ACR, one AH-64 battalion, and two artillery battalions. Have next to no CL IX" — spare parts. "Have no maps. Have no nav aids" — 137 total. "Have lousy comms."

But an order is an order. So he kicked the corps into higher gear and planned accordingly. It was at this point that he adjusted his pre-combat training time from three weeks to two.

Meanwhile, other missions came to them:

On 7 January, John Yeosock gave Franks the order to defend the Tapline Road against a possible Iraqi attack down the Wadi al Batin. To cut that would cut the major northern Saudi east-west supply corridor, as well as the avenue XVIII Corps would soon be using for their move west to their attack positions. For this mission, Franks planned to use the 1st CAV and the 2/101st to defend, while the aviation elements of the 1st AD would be his reserve. Air and the reinforced 1st CAV would be enough combat power to stop an Iraqi attack, he reasoned, and by using no more than those forces, he would be able to preserve his ground troops so as to protect their training and to allow them the time they needed to get out of the port area.

On 9 January, General Schwarzkopf met all of his commanders in Dammam. The air campaign would begin shortly, he told them, but — good news for Fred Franks — there was no longer pressure to start the ground campaign before 15 February. They were therefore to be ready to attack then. Meanwhile, the Iraqis were moving armor and artillery forward; it was likely that if they thought we were going to attack, they would conduct a preemptive attack. Thus, the CINC concluded, all should be in a heightened state of alert and prepared to defend themselves.

That same day, intelligence reported that the Iraqis were moving three divisions to the Wadi, either to attack or to blunt the U.S. attack.

The next day, Franks met with the French and tied their operations to his. He wanted them to defend the western approaches to Tapline Road and King Khalid Military City in case the Iraqis came wide through the opening in the west of their defensive line.

On 13 January, Franks and Martinez rode in their HMMWV with driver Staff Sergeant Dave St. Pierre cross-country in a driving rain to visit the 2/101st, now deployed into defensive positions west of Al Qaysumah. Once he personally saw their position, and met with Colonel Ted Purdom, the brigade commander, and after considering the recent intel about possible Iraqi preemptive strikes, he ordered John Tilelli to move the 1st CAV forward, and ordered reinforcement of the 2/101st with engineer support and artillery from corps. The 1st CAV moved within thirty minutes of the order, at about 1530, and closed just south of Tapline Road that evening. Later, on 23 January, Franks started the 1st CAV north of the Tapline Road. He wanted 1st CAV forward to the border to be in a better defensive position to protect the lines of communication and to begin artillery raids and feints for the deception plan.

On 17 January, the air war started.

The air campaign against Iraq, created and waged by the USAF, with no small tactical help from the U.S. Navy, the RAF, and elements of the French air force, was on many levels a brilliantly devised and magnificently executed operation. It brought the war devastatingly to the enemy's "head" — his centers of leadership, control centers, telecommunications centers, transportation centers, and centers of production for war and for weapons of mass destruction. Never before had these centers of gravity been so effectively and precisely neutralized.

Yes, the USAF claimed at the time more precision and more devastation than was actually achieved, but that does not diminish their actual achievement. Within hours of the start of the attack, one of the most sophisticated air defense systems in the world was rendered virtually harmless (above roughly 10,000 feet; below that, Iraqi SAMs and antiaircraft guns could hurt you). Within days, the Iraqi air force, armed with top-of-the-line Soviet and French aircraft, was chased out of the skies. These successes not only rendered the entire country naked to air attacks, they left the Iraqi army without any deep support or capability to maneuver, and allowed the U.S. Army to make its vast move to the west for the great "left hook" undetected. By 24 February, the air campaign had wrought considerable damage on the Iraqi army — not the 50 percent of Iraqi armor and artillery that the U.S.A.F. had set out to kill, but a lot. By G-Day, the Iraqi leadership's command-and-control capability over their army was seriously diminished, and the will to fight of Iraqi frontline troops, mostly in Kuwait, had been pounded and blasted into the sand.

The RGFC was another thing. At best, 25 percent of their armor and artillery had been knocked out of action. And their will to fight…? When the battle came, they fought, and fought hard. To the benefit and credit of the U.S. Army, they were outclassed.

Back to VII Corps, when the air war started, it had been forty-one days since 6 December, when the first VII Corps troops had arrived, and twenty-six days since the 2nd ACR had become operational. More than half of VII Corps was still deploying, and there was not a combat-ready division available in VII Corps.

On 11 January, Franks had ordered the corps to begin conducting "stand to" at 0500 daily. He wanted to increase their combat-ready mentality and to get daily status reports.

On 19 January, in the first VII Corps combat action since World War II, a battery of the 75th Artillery Brigade, under the command of Captain Jeff Lieb, fired a TACMS missile in support of the USAF and destroyed an Iraqi SA-2 air defense site. Franks talked to the crew later that day. They called the TACMS "AT&T," or "reach out and touch someone."

The next day, another TACMS was sent against an Iraqi logistics site that supported their armored units just behind their frontline defending division. Franks reasoned that they would go nowhere without logistics and wanted the site destroyed to prevent a preemptive attack.

Intelligence reports intensified. There were reports on 21 January of terrorist infiltrators targeting command posts. VII Corps began tracking all civilian movement in their TAAs.

On 29 January, the Iraqis did attempt a preemptive strike in the east toward the Saudi town of Khafji. They were beaten back with high losses by a combination of air and U.S. Marine and Saudi land forces. Franks and his planners and commanders took lessons from the Marine report on that operation and applied them to their upcoming attack.

That same day, a Pioneer UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) platoon was attached to the corps's 207th MI Brigade. It began flying intelligence and target-acquisition missions two days later.

On 1 February, the 1st CAV began to assume operations up to the border, and from that day until VII Corps attacked on 24 February, the division fought what has become known as the battle of the Ruqi Pocket. Their mission was to conduct artillery raids and feints against Iraqi positions along the Wadi, to destroy Iraqi units and artillery in range of the breach, and to deceive the Iraqis that the Coalition main attack was coming north up the Wadi. As G-Day approached, the 1st CAV operation, by design, picked up intensity. Brigadier General Tilelli and his division kept constant pressure on the Iraqis by a combination of artillery raids, ground attacks up to brigade strength, and aviation attacks fifty to eighty kilometers deep.

Here are some of the notable events:

27 January—the 1st CAV captured five Iraqi deserters, the first of almost 1,800 captured during the next three weeks.

2 February—friendly fire. A U.S. HARM missile hit a 1st CAV radar site and wounded two soldiers.

5 February—the 1st CAV had its first exchange of fire across the border. Two days later, it destroyed an Iraqi border observation tower.

13 February—thirty-five EPWs (enemy prisoners of war, the new name for POWs) were collected. Later that day, sixty MLRS rockets were fired in two different strikes at targets determined by the 1st Brigade. The next day, the 1st Brigade began breaking holes in the twelve-foot-high border berm, and later that day 108 MLRS rockets were fired by the 42nd Artillery brigade under 1st CAV control. The following day, combat engineer vehicles used a variety of fire (165-mm demolition cannon, Copperhead laser-guided artillery, and TOWs fired by Bradleys) to destroy three Iraqi border observation towers.

15 February—in an operation named Redstorm/Bugle, the 1st CAV fired MLRS and cannon artillery, while the VII Corps 2/6 Apache battalion of eighteen AH-64s attacked approximately seventy-five kilometers deep into Iraqi positions.

17 February—using all of VII Corps's daily CAS (combat air support) allocations, the 1st CAV successfully destroyed numerous Iraqi artillery pieces, an MLR battery, a command post, and tanks in front of the division's sector. The following day, 1/7 CAV and 2/8 CAV, both battalion task forces of tanks and Bradleys, conducted a mounted reconnaissance forward, capturing enemy ammunition and killing defending Iraqi infantry. As they withdrew, they came under Iraqi artillery fire, which was quickly silenced by twenty-four MLRS rockets and close air support.

19 February—the 1st UK MLRS unit, under 1st CAV control, fired 192 rockets against nineteen targets. That night, 2/8 CAV ambushed an Iraqi MTLB and destroyed it with a TOW missile. It also took out a pair of enemy infantry squads with artillery fire.

20 February—Operation Knight Strike was launched by Colonel Randy House's 2nd Brigade, in the largest tactical fight of the war so far for VII Corps. In a running battle with Iraqi dug-in units, 1/5 CAV, a Bradley battalion, came under heavy fire, and both a Bradley and a Vulcan air defense track took direct hits from five Iraqi tanks in revetments, followed by mortar and artillery fire. The CAV struck back with artillery and close air support, destroying the Iraqi tanks and twenty artillery pieces. During the fight, a second Bradley was hit, an M1A1 tank hit a mine, and three 1st CAV soldiers were killed (nine were wounded). One of those killed in action was PFC Ardon Cooper, who threw himself over his wounded buddies to protect them from incoming Iraqi artillery fire. For this, Cooper was awarded a posthumous Silver Star.[17]

Even though Operation Knight Strike was successful, it showed that the Iraqis were capable of heavy concentration of fire if an attacking unit got into their prearranged fire area. But it showed as well that Iraqi fire could be quickly silenced and that they had limited ability to shift their fires from their prearranged defensive positions. The lesson was to keep them from getting set in a defensive position. You had to hit them without pause with massed combat power from an unexpected direction.

21 February—703 MLRS rockets were fired by an MLRS unit of the 1st AD under 1st CAV control at known and suspected Iraqi targets as part of the plan for all units of the corps to get into combat operations.

Meanwhile, 1st CAV armor and infantry units kept up almost continual direct-fire attacks against Iraqi units in the Ruqi Pocket area; they continued to break holes in the twelve-foot-high border berm, and they continued their relentless raids against Iraqi defending units. First UK artillery joined this fight on 22 February, and along with 1st CAV artillery, they conducted a massive artillery raid. Later reports indicated that this raid deceived the Iraqis into believing the ground offensive had started in this area.

The actions by the 1st CAV Division in the Ruqi Pocket were hugely successful. They deterred any attack south by Iraqi units, destroyed significant numbers of Iraqi units and artillery (some in range of the 1st INF breach), captured prisoners, who were a valuable source of intelligence, deceived the Iraqi command about the size and direction of the VII Corps attack, provided valuable lessons about how the Iraqis could and could not fight, lessons other units in the corps would use, and allowed the aviation and artillery units of VII Corps to be skillfully employed in the artillery raids (code-named Red-storm). These raids inflicted damage on the Iraqis and gave the rest of the corps needed combat experience. It was a masterful and selfless performance by the 1st CAV that contributed in a major way to VII Corps's battle success.

Earlier, during the first week in February, the corps began to position their logistics west to form Log Base Echo, which was to be the provisions center for the attack. To provide security for Echo, Franks moved an element of the 1st INF on the border in front of them, just west of the 1st CAV. Their orders from Franks were to show only reconnaissance units and aviation (he didn't want the Iraqis to know a force was west of the 1st CAV) so the 1st INF immediately began actions to guard the logistics site and cover the rest of the division move. VII Corps now had forces west from the Wadi approximately eighty kilometers.

On 14 February, a Scud missile hit Hafar al Batin, narrowly missing a 1st CAV shower point. That day Franks was twenty kilometers to the east at a COSCOM briefing and could hear the impact. There were no casualties.

More attacks were launched in front of the 1st INF on 16 February. Franks wanted to start to hit Iraqi artillery in range of the breach and to conduct some aggressive reconnaissance. He reasoned that by then the Iraqis would not be able to react very much anyway. And, besides, with the increased activity of the 1st CAV, they would not notice. But he kept the 2nd ACR and the two armored divisions hidden in the west until 23 February.

The next day was G-Day. Fred Franks continues from here.