Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

VII CORPS MAIN COMMAND POST G-DAY 24 FEBRUARY 1991

I was up at 0400 after a good night's sleep, hoping my leaders and troops were as well rested. We would need our energy.

In a way, I was relaxed that morning — or at least relaxed in the sense that I knew we were ready and that we had the initiative. I did not think I would make any major decisions that day, one of those rare days in the last hundred when that was the case. Most of what we had spent those hundred or so days preparing was now ready to go. The main thing was we knew when we were going to attack: tomorrow, at about 0530, or BMNT. That seemed a sure thing.

This knowledge is a definite advantage for the attacker, one not available for the defense. You can get your unit both physically arranged and mentally ready. The defenders can only wait and wonder. After all those years conceding the initiative to the Warsaw Pact in our NATO mission, I liked this much better.

But truly relaxed? No.

I felt the stress — we all did, soldiers and leaders alike. All over the command, the pressure was constant. Some of it was physical, due to the extended austere living conditions, especially for the soldiers, and some was mental, because we were going to war and there were a lot of big unknowns. Those who had not been in combat probably wondered how they would handle it. Those who knew combat wondered what this war would bring. There was also a sense of isolation there in the desert. As a commander, you do your best to relieve some of the stress by the command climate you set, the way you treat people, the decisions you make, and the way you make them. But getting soldiers and units ready for war also means tough decisions, hard work, and being unyielding on the need to meet rigorous battlefield standards. As for myself, my own way of relieving stress wasn't to take days off, but to visit fellow leaders and soldiers, to try to do things for them: "To lead is also to serve." They always did more for me than I did for them. They never failed to inspire me with their hard work, selfless attitude, sense of humor, and flat-out competence.

Like most mornings over the past hundred days, the transition from sleep to waking was not gradual. As soon as I woke up, my brain switched on full throttle. From the time we had gotten the mission, I had never stopped concentrating on the myriad issues confronting us, as well as on all the details that had to be dealt with in order to get ready for and execute combat operations. That focus consumed me that day and every day as we prepared for battle. I never concentrated as hard on anything in my life. It was seven days a week, every waking second; and it probably continued in my subconscious somehow when I slept. There were no days off; I just couldn't do that. General Hancock said it right at Gettysburg: "Today, a corps commander's life is not important." I felt it was my duty to spend myself to the max for this mission and the troops for whom I was responsible. I lived it. I internalized the various parts of the corps so that I would know its behavior like my own. It was like a living part of me. We almost became as one. I was not alone in this. I had seen all my leaders and commanders do the same in their organizations.

So I was focused and intent on what we were about to do that morning, and especially on what we needed to do that day — to the point that I didn't notice much that was around me — yet I was also about as relaxed as a commander could be this close to a major attack. I was confident, but I knew that things rarely went exactly as planned, and I was acutely aware of my responsibilities.

My first focus that morning was on what we call a commander's running estimate — the continuing assessment in my own head of what was going on in the corps and of possible enemy actions. A commander does this constantly, looking at the situation and war-gaming possibilities, and his staff does the same, often separated in time and distance.

Here is how the corps looked to me that morning as I renewed our activities over the past few days.

The main issue for us that day was to move our enveloping force (2nd ACR, 1st AD, and 3rd AD) and our breach force (1st INF) far enough forward to make the start of our attack tomorrow release like a coiled spring. This would jump-start a momentum that would not let up until we destroyed the Republican Guards, in the sector Third Army had assigned us.

1ST INF DIVISION. Prior to this morning, elements of the 1st INF had moved forward once before. On 16 February, in order to get artillery close enough to reach Iraqi artillery in range of the breach, Tom Rhame had pushed his 1st INF, 3rd Brigade, commanded by Colonel Dave Weisman, forward to occupy the Iraqi security zone (an area in front of the Iraqi main defense that extended from the border about fifteen kilometers into Iraq). During this operation, the brigade had been in several sharp fights with Iraqi recon units and done well in their first combat. On the night of 17 February, we had had the first blue-on-blue (what some call fratricide, or so-called friendly fire) in the 1st Infantry Division, when a division Apache had fired on a 3rd Brigade Bradley and an M113, killing two of our soldiers and wounding six others. As a result, Tom Rhame, with my concurrence, had relieved the aviation battalion commander who had personally fired the fatal missile. The same day, an MLRS in the division artillery south of the border had fired by mistake into our attack positions. Though, as luck would have it, the rockets had fallen harmlessly into the sand, I was still concerned, because I wanted to build on early success. I had ordered Tom to pull the whole brigade back out of the Iraqi security zone that afternoon. That way, we reinforced our deception by signaling to the Iraqis that we were not coming at them from that direction.

CORPS ARTILLERY. During the period just before G-Day, Iraqi artillery was our main focus, especially those capable of firing chemical munitions. Because we didn't want to give away the location of our attack, we waited until about a week before the actual assault in which our artillery, attack helicopters, and close air support would hit the Iraqi artillery that was within range of the breach. We knew the Iraqis paid a lot of attention to artillery preparations, so if we'd been pounding the area out in front of the 1st Infantry Division for a couple of weeks, they probably would have reported to the RGFC: "Hey, they've got some sizable forces out here. Looks like they're coming farther west of the Wadi."

Later on G-Day, artillery would move into position before the 1st INF attack for two hours of preparatory fires into the breach area, in order to destroy the Iraqi artillery in range of the breach site. This prep fire had been planned by Brigadier General Creighton Abrams and Colonel Mike Dotson, the Big Red One Division artillery commander, and it would be shot by the 1st INF Division artillery, reinforced by three VII Corps artillery brigades, the 42nd, 75th, and 142nd, and the artillery of the 1st UK Division. After their firing mission, the 42nd and 75th Artillery Brigades would move through the newly opened breach and join the enveloping 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions, respectively, to reinforce the fires of their division artillery units in time for those division attacks on the RGFC.

ENVELOPING FORCE. Here our challenge was to find sufficient room to maneuver—1st AD, with their twenty-five kilometers of front on the Iraqi border, and 3rd AD, with their fifteen kilometers next to them.

I had given 1st Armored the extra room so that Ron Griffith could put two of his three ground-maneuver brigades side by side in a desert wedge (one brigade leading, followed by two brigades abreast). That way, he wouldn't be held up by time-consuming repositioning when we released the coiled spring. I wanted 1st Armored really fast off the mark — as though shot from a cannon toward Objective Purple, the Iraqi VII Corps logistics site at the Iraqi village of al-Busayyah, some 120 kilometers north of the border.

Given the enemy forces and the terrain he had to get through, I had estimated Ron would reach Purple about eight hours after H-Hour. Once he had seized that objective, we would have a major maneuver force north and west of the RGFC, one that was positioned to outflank any RGFC attack that might come west or southwest of their present locations to meet our enveloping force. (Iraqi forces habitually met a penetration attack head-on, and not from the flanks, as our doctrine advises.)

Because 1st AD had to be launched quickly, Butch Funk and his 3rd Armored Division had to start in a column of brigades that would initially extend almost 120 kilometers to the rear. Though 3rd AD was our corps reserve, they were not stationary. I wanted them moved forward across the border today, and I wanted them to get into a better offensive formation before they attacked tomorrow. Once he crossed the border and we got him more room, he could shift to whatever attack formation he thought necessary for the missions I had assigned him. It would take time, but I thought they would have time on G-Day and G+1 to get into another tactical formation before I committed them to any of the contingencies we had war-gamed.

While preparing for this maneuver, Butch also had to contend with another contingency, one that he handled with the kind of ease I'd come to expect from him: If CENTCOM committed the 1st Cavalry Division to JFC-North, then VII Corps was responsible for providing 1st CAV with a third maneuver brigade to replace the one 1st CAV had given earlier to the U.S. Marines. If that happened, I planned to order Butch to send one of his brigades to 1st CAV. Cal Waller had gotten my recommendation on this approved by Schwarzkopf, instead of CENTCOM's first choice, which had been 2nd AD (Forward) out of 1st INF.

The mission of our other enveloping force, the 2nd ACR, was to be out front and to provide offensive cover to cover the movement of the two armored divisions as they attacked toward Objective Collins about 150 kilometers from their line of departure. In order to get a better start on it, Don Holder had requested that his 2nd Cavalry Regiment move forty kilometers forward into Iraq to their Phase Line Busch[18] (2nd ACR had named all their phase lines after beers). This would not only put him about thirty minutes ahead of the two divisions, it would clear the area and allow the divisions to move up across the Iraqi border. (We wanted to lean as far forward as possible without tipping our hand.)

Yesterday, the regiment had moved forward about twenty kilometers beyond the border to their Phase Line Bud to clear the area south of the berm for the two follow-on divisions and to prepare for their move to Busch (they'd push their aviation forward of that). Though I had approved Don Holder's request for these moves, I had ordered him to show only aviation and artillery to any Iraqis out there, in order not to tip our hand early. The regiment had fired their first round in combat at 1330 the day before in a ten-minute artillery preparation fire. By 1400, 2nd Squadron, preceded by the 4th, or Aviation, Squadron (nicknamed "Redcatcher" after our Cold War days), had all pushed across the border without incident. At 1628, however, two soldiers had been wounded when their vehicle had run over one of our own DPICM[19] munitions. The men were medevaced. At 1900, 3rd Squadron reported enemy dismounted infantry in their area, and the troops were assessed to be from the Iraqi 26th Division (thus confirming our intelligence that the 26th had a brigade in depth to refuse the west flank of the Iraqi VII Corps). Meanwhile, 4th Squadron reported that the twenty kilometers forward to Phase Line Busch were clear of enemy. By 2100, the regiment had reached Bud and had cut forty-three lanes in the double-border berm, both for their own passage and for assisting the two follow-on divisions, which would need to cut more.

The coiling of our coiled spring was to be on the Iraqi side of the border — just cleared out by the 2nd ACR. Both 1st AD and 3rd AD would have more room on the other side of the border, and they would also have gotten through all of the friction of passing through the lanes in the berm and reassembling.

Making it through the border berms turned out to be slow going for some of our units. The holes we had cut in the berms acted like "filters," and it took time to go through one by one, and then to get into some sort of tactical grouping. In one battalion, units got so disoriented in the dark and mixed with vehicles from other units that the commander pulled them south of the berm to reenter Iraq the next day.

207TH MI BRIGADE. Our newly acquired Pioneer UAVs (the first UAVs used in combat by the U.S. Army) were an immediate help in targeting Iraqi artillery. By G-Day, through bomb damage assessment provided by Pioneer flights, we had detected the destruction of sixty-five Iraqi artillery pieces and FROG (Free Rockets Over Ground). The Pioneers had also flown a mission in support of General Saleh Halaby's Egyptian Corps on our east flank.

I had previously cleared all of our forward movements across the Iraqi border with John Yeosock. The main attack on G-Day was in the east — the Marines and the Arab forces of JFC-East, together with a very well planned and, as it turned out, well-executed Navy and Marine amphibious deception maneuver toward the Kuwaiti coast. Since the aim of that attack was to freeze the RGFC in place and to draw their attention to Kuwait, and since General Schwarzkopf rightfully wanted a synchronized first- and second-day ground attack scheme, John had directed both us and XVIII Corps to clear any such forward movement with him. If the eastern attack was successful in its aim, the Third Army heavy forces attack on the second day could better achieve positional advantage to destroy the RGFC.

That was my running estimate that morning of G-Day, and everything looked in place. After a paper cup of coffee brought over by Staff Sergeant Dave St. Pierre, my driver, I strapped on my leg, pulled the leg of my tanker's Nomex suit over it, strapped on my shoulder holster containing my 9-mm Beretta, and put on my Kevlar helmet. Today we'd get into our coiled spring. Tomorrow we'd attack.

I walked the thirty feet through the sand in the early-morning cold and quiet darkness to get a quick breakfast before the morning update. John Landry and a few other members of the corps staff were in the small van where we took meals and sometimes had short meetings. As we ate a hot breakfast of B rations and coffee, we talked informally. At this point, most of the corps were eating two hot meals a day, breakfast and supper, with Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) during the day. That was about to change. Until the war was over, we all ate a steady diet of MREs.

We talked about our activities for the day. Nothing unexpected had happened during the night. I would get a complete staff update shortly.

0600 VII CORPS MAIN COMMAND POST

After breakfast, I walked the short distance to our newly arranged CP, two Army general-purpose tents hooked together and pitched over sand, where I would get a quick morning update before moving on to the TAC CP.

I took a fast look around. The CP was a working area, and work continued even as we had our meeting. The atmosphere was informal. We had been at this for three months now, and during that time I'd lived there, often just wandering around and chatting with people, so by this morning, I knew nearly all personnel by their first names, and the feeling was relaxed. We were like a family in many ways, and the meeting was much more like a family gathering than the stereotypical image of some Prussian war council — the supreme field marshal marching in and arranging himself grandly in the highest-backed of a line of high-back chairs. Our chairs, in fact, were mainly gray metal fold-up things, with a lot of dents and chipped paint from constant use. Since there weren't many of them, people dragged up their own or stood.

The various corps staff seated themselves. Standing behind them were most of the rest of the tent's staff, who'd left their stations so that they could be present for the update on this first day. Also standing were the liaison officers from the various corps units, there to report any orders back to their commanders. By this time, everyone knew what to expect when I had a briefing. On this day, as usual, I was serious, but I also wanted to project the confidence I genuinely felt… and wanted everyone there to feel. I looked at the faces around me. What a talented team, I thought, their skills developed through years of schools and training exercises. It had taken our Army almost twenty years to get here.

I sat in the middle chair, about ten feet in front of a 1:250 000-scale situation map with the latest enemy and friendly situation posted. To my right was my deputy, Brigadier General Gene Daniel, and to my left was Brigadier General John Landry, chief of staff. The tent was quiet in anticipation, except for the occasional radio and phone calls coming in on this first day.

Normally, I liked to start with the G-2 for a picture of the enemy.

So far, based on what I'd seen, we had the Iraqis where we wanted them, and we had the right moves for that day and the next. But I was searching now for any indicators that would cause me to make last-minute adjustments, as I looked ahead to the next day and the day after that. Tactics is always a series of adjustments, as you attempt to get an edge on the enemy and keep that edge.

I still anticipated that my next big decision would come in about twenty-four hours, when I ordered the corps into a maneuver to attack and destroy the RGFC. I anticipated selecting one of the seven FRAGPLANs we had proposed — I still preferred FRAGPLAN 7, which turned VII Corps ninety degrees east, formed a three-division armored fist, then attacked into the flank and rear of the RGFC if they remained fixed or defended where they were. Over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, I needed to maneuver the corps so that when we executed that FRAGPLAN, we would be in a continuous rolling attack and wouldn't have to stop and form the fist. The only two missing pieces from FRAGPLAN 7 were the Iraqi RGFC dispositions and the third division for my fist. If CENTCOM didn't release the 1st CAV — or if they didn't do it in time — I'd have to come up with another division from somewhere.

Why three divisions? For two reasons: First, if the RGFC and the 10th and 12th Iraqi Armored Divisions stayed fixed, we would be attacking into five heavy divisions (with our three), with XVIII Corps to our north attacking three RGFC infantry divisions. Even if CENTAF had succeeded in reducing the Iraqi divisions by 50 percent, that would still leave a 1:1 fight (again with our three). We could defeat the Iraqis with two divisions instead of three, but at a risk of sustaining many more casualties. The second reason I wanted the three divisions was so that we could sustain our combat power for at least two or more days. I did not want our attack to run out of combat power after twenty-four hours. Our mission was to destroy the RGFC in our sector, not just defeat them.

As for the question of which would be the third division, I had always kept open the possibility of using the 1st INF somehow in the RGFC attack after they completed the opening-up of the breach. The issue there had to be how well they came through their breach attack. If they got hurt badly in the breach, then I would leave them there. If, on the other hand, they came through all right, then I wanted to use them. In fact, I hoped to use them — possibly as reserve — even if the 1st CAV had been committed to us earlier than they in fact were.

"OK, John, what have you got?" I asked Colonel John Davidson, the G-2.

After John gave us a complete enemy lay-down, he concluded, "Sir, the Iraqis have not moved and show no reaction in our sector so far to Coalition attacks or to our early movements. Iraqi VII Corps remains fixed in front of us. RGFC still has capability to relocate. Looks as though they are remaining in place and will stay that way. Estimate main force Iraqi units at between 50 and 75 percent strength. Morale continues to be low in Iraqi VII Corps. RGFC will fight."

Let me expand on this a little: First, it looked as though our 1st CAV deception into the Ruqi Pocket was working. The Iraqis weren't aware that the main attack would come from west of there. Good. Next, we had predicted that a brigade of the armored division in reserve (the 52nd) could reinforce Iraqi units defending against our breach, and that prediction still held. I had instructed fire support and G-2 to hammer it relentlessly. The Iraqis had five frontline infantry divisions in our sector. Their tactical reserve was the 52nd, positioned in the Wadi al Batin and stretching westward behind the frontline divisions. One brigade of the 52nd was positioned close to the place where the British would turn east as they left the breach. If that brigade was left alone, they could hold up the British and clog the whole breach. That is why I had ordered our fire support people to make it "go away."

We also estimated that deeper in their strategic theater forces, the Tawalkana, Medina, and 17th Armored Divisions could reposition west to the vicinity of our Objective Collins. Collins was a corps "way point" — or the place where I had estimated I would commit the corps to one of the FRAGPLANS. It was a large circle on the map to indicate a corps concentration point, about 150 kilometers from the line of departure, and it had significance only as a point of orientation. There was no attack to "seize" Collins, for example. Rather, in the absence of towns or crossroads or some other orienting feature, we had to create "features" of our own. Collins was one of these.

And lastly, we continued to think that they would attempt to defend in depth in successive positions from the border over to Basra and use chemical weapons against us, either at the border or as we attacked the RGFC.

John was followed by the staff weather officer, Air Force Major Jerry Thornberg, who gave a not-too-encouraging picture of the February desert weather: High winds would develop later, with blowing sands limiting visibility, plus low clouds and chance of rain. Temperatures were to climb into the low fifties during the day and go down to close to freezing that night. He predicted more of the same all week.[20] I knew that would probably complicate movement and resupply, and might interfere with aviation. But I also knew there wasn't much you could do about the weather except work around or through it.

Since my G-3, Colonel Stan Cherrie, was at this point already about fifty kilometers northwest at the TAC CP, Colonel Mike Hawk gave the G-3 portionof the briefing. I would join Stan shortly and get from him a complete report on what the friendly units were doing. Mike reported that to this point the movements of our forces were proceeding without enemy contact and without problems.

He added that reports of progress outside the corps early in the morning of 24 February were sketchy at best. As 2nd ACR had moved forward, they had maintained contact with 3rd ACR on our VII Corps western boundary (they were XVIII Corps's easternmost unit). And since we had a liaison officer directly linked to XVIII Corps in our main CP, we had reports of early success by the 82nd, 101st, and French 6th Division operation in the west of XVIII Corps.

Meanwhile, effective midnight, 1st CAV had been placed back under control of CENTCOM as theater reserve. We continued to stay in communication with them, however, as I anticipated their coming back to us at some point. They were also still operating in our sector, and we were providing their logistics support.

As for Marine actions or the Arab forces (JFC-E) on the east coast, we had no reports.

Fire support came next: Colonel Ray Smith[21] reported that we would get a total of 350 sorties of air that day, 100 of them close air support.

"What about targets beyond the FSCL?" I asked. The FSCL was a line usually drawn about thirty to forty kilometers forward of the line of enemy contact; beyond it, the air could attack targets of their choosing.

"Sir, the correlation between what we asked to get hit and what got hit is still poor, less than 50 percent."

The FSCL issue continued to be a point of great disagreement between me and CENTAF and had plagued our operations from the start (Gary Luck and Third Army were having the same problems). My ability to influence air interdiction attacks against ground targets beyond the FSCL was poor. CENTAF kept rejecting our targets and hitting their own. Though I had made my feelings on this well known to both Yeosock and Waller, I was not confident the situation with air would change. It did not.

By now, the staff knew all this was a raw issue with me. I had no arguments with how many air sorties CENTAF flew in and beyond our sector. That was the CINC's decision. But I wanted to synchronize the sorties in our sector with my own assets in a well-orchestrated scheme of attack. I had the mission here, not the Air Force! So when the subject of targets beyond the FSCL came up, my reaction was likely to be heated and sharp. I thought I knew a hell of a lot better what targets should get hit in our sector than CENTAF in Riyadh, especially after the attack began and the situation started to change rapidly.

In his brief, our chemical officer, Colonel Bob Thornton, reported that the orders were understood in the corps that forward of the line of departure (the Iraq-Saudi border), troops would be in MOPP 1 and would take the nerve gas (PB) pills. He continued to maintain that the Iraqis had the capability to use chemical and bio against us, and I believed him. I expected the Iraqis to use chemical weapons, and I never rested easy about it.

G-4, Colonel Bill Rutherford, reviewed the status of major pieces of equipment. Availability was in the high 90 percentile, better than we'd ever had in Germany, and a testament to the hard work put in by soldiers and sergeants. It also showed pride: no one wanted to be left behind with a broken vehicle. Our biggest challenge, we all knew, would be fuel. Though consumption would be enormous — the divisions would burn up to 800,000 gallons a day — the problem would be distribution, not supply. I did not want to be the armored commander who ran out of fuel on top of the world's greatest supply of oil. Logisticians can work only so much magic, however, and I was very aware that my tactical decisions would be influenced by logistics.

Over the past few days, I had ordered a number of operations to prepare for our attack on G+1, but because of the diplomatic maneuvering and the constant possibility of last-minute changes, I had been in the habit of confirming those orders each day. That day, I knew I needed to confirm that: 2nd ACR was to continue to execute a movement to contact twenty kilometers to Phase Line Grape (their Busch), 3rd AD was to conduct a planned deep attack that night against artillery in range of the breach with their Apaches, and 11th AVN BDE was to execute CONPLAN Boot, an attack the following night against Iraqi VII Corps tactical reserves, their 52nd Armored Division (this would complement both the 1st INF breach on G+1 and the subsequent attack east by the British).

It was a quick staff update, perhaps twenty minutes in all, and when it was over, I made a brief recap. This was an important day, I said, the last day for us to get ready for our attack. The diplomatic maneuvering was over, I told them. Now it was up to us. I thanked them for all their hard work, and said, "JAYHAWK."

It was a great team. As I had said many times, I was confident we would do what we had to do, and save the talk for later. I was proud to be with them, as well as with the larger team, the 146,000 (counting 1st CAV) American and British soldiers who were the JAYHAWK VII Corps.

After a brief huddle with John Landry and Gene Daniel to go over that day's key operations and review my expectations of the next two days, I departed for the twenty-minute Blackhawk trip to our TAC CP.

VII CORPS COMMAND POSTS

Though we had spent considerable effort to think our way through command post arrangements and to keep each other informed during the anticipated fast-moving operation, these arrangements, we knew, were fragile. Even so, I was confident they would work. While there was still time, though, I took one final look at them:

Of our three command posts, the rear CP would stay at Al Qaysumah, a town with an airfield about thirty kilometers east of Hafar al Batin on the Tapline Road; the main would stay right where they were, about forty kilometers south of the border; and the TAC CP and the two "jump TAC" CPS would move and stay physically close to the battle.

The TAC CP would initially remain close to the middle of the 3rd Armored formation. It would move late on G+1, after the success of the breach was assured and I shifted the main effort of the corps to the enveloping force.

One "jump TAC" would stay well ahead with the 3rd Armored, so they could communicate with 2nd ACR, 1st AD, and 3rd AD. The other "jump TAC" would be at the breach site, where Brigadier General Gene Daniel was to command passage through the breach of the appropriate corps units — the British, our two artillery brigades moving to join their divisions, the 400-plus vehicles that would make up Log Base Nelligen, the 1st CAV (as I hoped), as well as other corps units needed north in the attack. We also needed two-way traffic in the breach to evacuate prisoners and for resupply.

My personal plan was to stay closest to the corps main effort. That meant I would spend that night at the main CP (its location was closer to the breach than the TAC's), then shift to the TAC on G+1. I planned to use the main TAC and the two smaller jump TACs as my operating bases and command the corps from the front. To ensure a positive link to my nerve center at the main CP, we had arranged for my executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Russ Mulholland, to make two courier runs to the main TAC daily, at 0900 and at 1700 (John Landry had directed the staff to have information current as of 0830 and 1630). In this way, I could be forward to command face-to-face, get my "fingerspitzengefuhl" of the battles, and obtain the latest information from the corps main, which had much better long-haul comms.

We also planned to use aerial retrans capability — a helicopter relay of line-of-sight comms, like a manned low-orbiting satellite, to essentially double our comm range. This worked reasonably well, except when weather kept the helos on the ground (quite often, it turned out).[22]

STRATEGIC CONTEXT AND TACTICAL COMMANDER

During the flight to the TAC CP, I shifted my thoughts to our part in a larger theater campaign plan. We were not operating alone, and I could never let myself lose sight of that.

Nobody in an operation this vast and important was a free agent. We all operated within the context of a mission and objectives, and the discipline to stay within those. That applied to me as well as to Generals John Yeosock, Norman Schwarzkopf, and Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Cheney, and even to President Bush. I always had the opinion to go to my commander and try to get something changed if I thought it was getting in the way, but in reality, as a senior commander, you have to pick your spots, and you don't do it often. Otherwise, you're either a whiner or a disruption to the operation. So, as in any operation, there were some constraints (must-dos) and restraints (do-nots).

They were not unreasonable, and I agreed with them.

The major constraint on us was to reinforce the theater deception scheme. That meant we had to stay hidden from the Iraqis out west until we attacked and reinforce the 1st CAV deception.

As for our major restraint, this had been set out to us in an order that my chief of staff, John Landry, had gotten from Third Army on 22 February. We were directed not to conduct any "irreversible" actions — that is, actions that would throw off the theater attack timetable. During a call to Cal Waller (when he was Third Army commander in Yeosock's absence), I told him I assumed that meant we were not to conduct any operations that might affect the diplomatic maneuvering then going on. Cal agreed but left further interpretation up to me. My choice then was to interpret the restraints as very tight. This was my interpretation and no one else's.[23]

This order had been a formal follow-through on Cal Waller's informal instructions during his 20 February visit that we should not conduct any battles that could provoke a strategic decision (that would get ground forces so involved it would set off a clamor for the beginning of the entire ground war in the United States). At that point, a couple of days before the attack, there was still a possibility that the ground war would be called off.

Why is all that important? Because this restraint and my own interpretation tied our hands for cross-border operations with Apaches (although we had in fact conducted one with our 11th Aviation Brigade earlier in February). Both the 1st Armored and the 3rd Armored Divisions, for example, had well-thought-out plans to send their Apaches into Iraq. Though I had gotten excellent briefings from both division commanders on both operations and had no hesitation about executing the plans, the restraint put any such plans on hold.

The 3rd AD wanted to go after artillery that was about fifty kilometers from the border in their assigned zone. Because this artillery was also in range of the 1st INF breach, the attack would help out the Big Red One as well. We were having difficulty getting TAC air to go after the artillery, and we couldn't reach it with our own artillery, so I had talked to Butch Funk about using our Apaches. Soon after that, Colonel Mike Burke, the aviation brigade commander, put together a plan to go after the artillery, and I told Butch to execute. But then I got the instructions from Third Army to restrain, and the attack had to be put off. (On G-Day, I authorized Butch to conduct the attack that night.)

Meanwhile, Ron Griffith wanted to conduct an armed reconnaissance with Apaches in front of the 1st Armored Division out to a depth of some sixty or seventy kilometers to confirm, as we thought, that parts of a brigade of the 26th Division were out there trying to refuse the Iraqi west flank. He also wanted a better assessment of the difficult terrain through which the division would have to travel for fifty kilometers just north of the border. The confirmation of that intelligence on the enemy and terrain would allow Griffith to fix and bypass the Iraqi force (and the Apaches could take out some Iraqis on their own as well), and also speed Ron's advance toward al-Busayyah. I had to disapprove Ron's plan for the same reason. (As with Butch, I gave the OK to Ron to execute on G-Day after the restraints came off.)

Though the reasoning behind this Third Army restraint made complete sense to me, it is still an illustration of the fits and starts that last-minute diplomatic maneuvering cause in military operations. As uncomfortable as this may be for commanders, we all better get used to it. More recent diplomatic maneuvering at the last minute forestalled our airborne assault in Haiti.

If I had known that our attack was going to be moved up from G+1 to G-Day, my decisions on the twenty-third would have been much different, and I would have put the corps into a much more aggressive posture on the twenty-fourth. In particular, I would have hit the Iraqis hard with our own aviation for a few days before our ground units attacked. You can turn some operations off and on in a short period of time; but not most of them.

0830 VII CORPS TAC CP

After we landed at the TAC CP, I went immediately inside the tent extensions behind the M577s. The weather was still good for flying, but the wind was picking up. The temperature was in the low forties.

Inside the TAC there was a roughly twenty-by-fifteen-foot "floor" of sand with three M577s on one end and two on the other. Four vertical poles and long horizontal tube steel poles held the canvas up to a height of about seven feet. Behind each M577 was a small work area for that section, usually consisting of a green, wooden two-by-three-foot collapsible field desk with field telephones. There was the ever-present, never-shut-down coffeepot working away nearby as well as the steady hum of the generators. At the rear of the G-3 M577 were two desks, one for me with my own phones and one for the G-3. In front of those desks was a situation map, 1:250 000 scale, over which you could put separate sheets of heavy acetate, each annotated with information, such as enemy, engineers, fire support, air defense, etc. Enemy and friendly locations were posted using one-by-two-inch pieces of acetate with adhesive on the back (cut out and posted by hand). Since they were not to scale, you had to interpolate. An enemy brigade unit sticker might cover twice the area they actually occupied on the ground. Same for our own units. Worse, the glue tended to dry out, so on occasion the stickers fell from the map. When you picked them up, you hoped you put them back where they belonged. Reports came in via radio, fax, telephone, or teletype, then the info got posted on the maps by our NCOs. It was far from high-tech, and a reminder that even today, war on the ground and at the front was done by hand.

The team in there was hard at work. We had been at it for two months, and were a smooth-running operation. I was pleased with what we had done and confident we were up to the task of commanding what was potentially a five-division multi-national corps of 1,584 tanks and a total of close to 50,000 vehicles on the move.

After I walked in and said good morning to the troops, I sat down on the gray metal folding chair behind my field desk and turned my attention to Stan Cherrie's update. Though I had already gotten most of what I needed at the main CP, information on our own units' operations was usually more current at the TAC — they were closer to the units than the main CP and had direct line-of-sight communications — so that is what I focused on. I paid attention to our own early movements, because I wanted them to go right and to build an early momentum of success. I did not anticipate any problems, but you can never discount chance. In other words, though I was still confident, I was also still wary.

1ST INF DIVISION. In order to make room for our artillery far enough forward to range the Iraqi artillery, at 0538, the division attacked into the Iraqi 26th Division security zone, with 1st and 2nd Brigades on line, and one in reserve. By 0930, they had reached Phase Line Kansas without enemy contact, and were set to begin the breach the next day.

2ND ACR. The regiment had moved out toward Busch at 0630, with 4th Squadron (Aviation) in front and the 2nd and 3rd Squadrons following side by side on the ground. At this point, Don Holder had three squadrons forward (one air and two ground) and one (the 1st) back (on the ground). By 0708, the 4th Squadron had engaged six unidentified enemy vehicles with MLRS, and was reporting empty fighting positions. At 0812, P Troop (Aviation) had engaged six enemy infantry about twenty kilometers into Iraq. At 0910, the regiment received enemy artillery fire and quickly silenced it with counter-battery fire. By 1117, the entire regiment was across the border berm, clearing the way for follow-on divisions.

1ST AD AND 3RD AD. Both divisions had been moving forward into the area now vacated by the 2nd ACR and were preparing for the next day's attack by cutting additional holes in the double ten- or twelve-foot-high hard sand border berm. First AD had two brigades forward and one back, and their roughly 8,000 vehicles stretched about eighty kilometers to the rear. Third AD was in a column of brigades, and their own 8,000 vehicles stretched over 100 kilometers to the rear.

BRITISH. The British were beginning to load their heavy armored vehicles on Heavy Equipment Transporters. Today they would move those HETS the seventy or eighty kilometers from their position, called "Ray,"[24] forward to a location just behind the border. From here they would be ready to move through the cleared breach just after dark on G+1. Rupert Smith wanted to do this in order to conserve wear and tear on his vehicles and to save them for the fight. (The British were genuinely concerned about breakdowns of the Challenger tank. As it turned out, Challenger performed much better than expected.)

LOGISTICS. Our logisticians were assembling the over 400 fuel vehicles and other support required to establish the corps's Log Base Nelligen. Those vehicles and soldiers were to go from Log Base Echo 100 kilometers forward through the 1st INF Division breach and into the open desert just to its north to set up a 1.2 million-gallon fuel-storage capability on the ground. There they would refuel the attacking enveloping force after that force had used the fuel in their own vehicles and the reserves carried on their own assigned trucks. South of the breach would be another fuel site (called Buckeye) with a similar capacity, also requiring 400-plus fuel vehicles, which would fuel the breach operation and be available for the British should they need it.

ENGINEERS. Our engineers were up front with each of the attacking units where they would break holes in the border berm with bulldozers or Armored Combat Engineer (ACE) vehicles. They also would fire mine-clearing line charges (MICLIC) into the Iraqi minefields to clear lanes for follow-on tanks equipped with mine plows and rollers.

Colonel Sam Raines, CO of the 7th Engineer Brigade, captured in his journal a lot of what we were all thinking: "Looking in the faces of my soldiers, I see some fear; but overwhelmingly I see determination and seriousness. These are the same faces that were in landing craft off Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944, on Iwo Jima, at Pork Chop Hill, the base of Hamburger Hill, or in a C-141 aircraft just prior to the airborne drop on Grenada. It is a serious, anxious look, no horse-play, just pure professional dedication to the task at hand. In every heart there are prayers… All of us are now wearing cumbersome chemical protection suits and rubber boots over our regular uniforms. They are uncomfortable, very hot; and the charcoal filter lining turns hands, face, and neck sooty black… We live in the miserable chemical suits for several days."

207TH MI BRIGADE. To ensure we had continuous coverage as we attacked north, then east, Colonel John Smith, CO 207th, had formed Task Force Sand Hawk to move his UAV platoon closer to the Iraqi border. The next day they displaced forward into the 1st CAV sector to operate off a 188-by-60-foot aluminum runway built by the 527th Engineer battalion. There they flew a total of fifteen missions, totaling just under sixty-one hours (ten further missions were canceled because of bad weather, and one aircraft crashed and was destroyed). Their contribution was important, for they located for attack Iraqi artillery battalions, FROG batteries, infantry trench lines, and other targets. And the UAV platoon also would capture 303 prisoners. Because I had concerns that the platoon needed some firepower (there was nothing between them and the Iraqis), I had ordered them to be provided with a platoon of tanks (3rd Platoon, Company B, 3rd Battalion, 77th Armor, from the 8th Infantry Division).[25] Our soldiers and leaders did all this after getting them in theater just three weeks earlier, with no prior experience with UAVs. It was remarkable, and a great tribute to our soldiers and leaders.

After Stan's update, I was satisfied that we were doing what we had planned and that, as I read the Iraqis, no adjustments were necessary so far. I planned to stay at the TAC a little while longer, then go visit commanders, starting with Don Holder in Iraq and working my way around. I wanted to confirm what I had just heard, see it with my own eyes, and get the face-to-face judgments of my commanders.

Meanwhile a lot was going on in the theater outside of VII Corps, but I knew very little about it at the time. Tom Clancy now brings us up to date on some of these events.

ATTACK

On G-Day, at 0400, on a front running from the Gulf to about 400 kilometers deep into the desert, a force of 620,000 soldiers, Marines, and airmen from close to forty different nations took part in launching the most massive attack since World War II against an Iraqi force of approximately 540,000 men.

• In the Gulf near Kuwait, a Marine amphibious group thrust toward the coast, threatening the seaborne invasion for which the Iraqis had prepared mightily… and that never came.

• The Saudi-led Arab JFC-East force attacked up the coastal highway toward Kuwait City.

• Just to their west, in the Kuwaiti boot heel, Lieutenant General Walt Boomer's two divisions, the 1st and 2nd Marines, started their breaching operations into the Iraqi minefields and other static defenses a few kilometers inside Kuwait. The 1st CAV's "Tiger" Brigade (as part of the 2nd Marine Division, on the west flank of the Marine attack) followed close behind, to give the Marines additional heavy M1A1 punch. (The Marines also had a battalion of M1A1s.)

• To their west, the Egyptian-led JFC-North continued to prepare to launch their 25 February attack into the Iraqi security zone.

• To their west, in VII Corps, the 1st CAV, now under CENTCOM command, continued their deception into the Ruqi Pocket.

• To their west, 1st INF attacked into the Iraqi security zone, to take out reconnaissance and observation posts, and the 2nd ACR moved twenty kilometers into Iraq to their west.

• And, finally, to their west, XVIII Corps launched their attack toward the Euphrates with their light infantry and air assault elements.

There were three initial phases to Gary Luck's attack plan to cut off the RGFC escape routes and supply corridors along Highway 8:

First, elements of Major General Peay's 101st Airborne Division were to airlift to an objective about 150 kilometers from their launch point and set up there what was known as FOB (Forward Operating Base) Cobra, which would be their logistics and operational anchor for their second phase.

Second, the next day, another helicopter assault by the 101st would establish an airhead near the Euphrates.

Third, Major General Barry McCaffrey's 24th MECH and 3rd ACR would drive east of the 101st, toward Highway 8.

Meanwhile, on the western flank of XVIII Corps, the French division, beefed up by the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne and the American 18th Field Artillery Brigade, attacked toward Objective Rochambeau, fifty kilometers into Iraq. When that was taken, they were to move on toward Objective White, the town of as-Salman, and the airfield north of town.

To say that all of these attacks went well is an understatement. The Iraqi frontline defenses crumbled. The fearsome Iraqi defensive barriers proved to be far less fearsome than everyone believed, or dared to hope for (though they still weren't easy, and there were casualties and deaths). Some Iraqi troops and entire Iraqi units surrendered without a fight, while others fought back. Predictions of U.S. casualties into the tens of thousands never happened. No chemical or biological attacks were detected. Such a result had been far from a sure thing only hours before.

By 1800 on the twenty-fourth, the two Marine divisions had advanced through the two Iraqi defensive belts. The 1st Marine Division had gone about forty kilometers, and the 2nd, on the west, had gone twenty kilometers. As the official Marine Corps history states: "During the night of 24–25 February, both divisions assumed defensive postures…

"In the early afternoon, Lieutenant General Walter Boomer received a call from General Schwarzkopf concerning the allied main attack with VII Corps and the Joint Forces Command-North immediately to MARCENT's left" — i.e., to the left of the Marine divisions. "The Marines' speedy progress caused Schwarzkopf to worry aloud about possible exposure of I MEF's left flank once they became abreast of Manaquish, where the border turned due west… General Boomer recommended that the main attack begin as soon as possible. Shortly after this conversation, General Schwarzkopf ordered the main attack to commence. Although ARCENT's VII Corps crossed its line of departure at 1500, the Joint Forces Command-North attack on MARCENT'S left was delayed until after 1800. It stopped just inside their breach for the night."

Thus, the wheels were set in motion for an early attack by VII Corps — much, as it turned out, to Fred Franks's surprise.

EARLY ATTACK SUNDAY 24 FEBRUARY VII CORPS TAC CP

At 0930, John Yeosock called.

"Fred, John, CINC wants to know if you can attack early."

"Say again." I was not sure I heard this right.

"The Marines have been having success, and the CINC does not want to wait until tomorrow to attack. He wants to know if we can go early, today."

I was genuinely surprised — shocked maybe was more accurate. We had considered every other possibility except this. In a flash, my brain went from the reflective, intensely focused, get-ready pace of a moment before to "warp-speed" active. Before I replied to John, dozens of thoughts flashed through my head, along with dozens more about what I would have to do to make it all happen.

What is the CINC really asking? was the first mental question. I quickly concluded that it wasn't actually "Can you attack early?" but "How soon can you attack?" I quickly ruled out telling John we could not do it, because I had no doubt that we could.

Other questions shot through my head.

What about unit positions in relation to one another? Would they have to move? What about artillery preparations, logistics (especially fuel), the British move forward, and the orders already disseminated and rehearsed? And how would an early attack affect day and night operations, and operations forty-eight hours from now?

I told myself, Whatever you do, keep it simple. I knew that success early on in an attack builds its own momentum. I had seen that many times before. So, given this go-early situation, I did not need to put additional barriers in front of the corps by making some sudden change of plan. If we could simply back everything up to today that we had planned to do tomorrow at BMNT, then that would be the best way to do it.

All this raced through my brain in nanoseconds. OK, I decided, keep it simple and continue with what we've already set in motion, but with some major time and tactical adjustments. Now I had to see whether that was possible.

"Yes, we can do it," I told John, after a pause of no more than a second or two. "Tell the CINC yes, but I still want to talk to my commanders."

"XVIII Corps said they could go on two hours' notice," Yeosock answered. "How does that sound to you? Based on how soon the Egyptians can get ready, it looks like 1500 at the earliest. Take that as a warning order, with a confirmation at 1300, for a 1500 attack."

"Sounds OK to me, but I still want to talk to my commanders."

That call, and the cease-fire decision four days later, turned out to be the biggest surprises of the war for VII Corps. We had been over the plan with Third Army and with CENTCOM so many times that I thought we had considered every possibility. And now came one that we had never considered; it was that unexpected.

Why did the CINC want us to go early? What had brought on this very large, very sudden change? Except for John's remark that the Marines were doing well in the east, I was without a clue. The best understanding I could come to in the first moments after John's call was this: Since the Marines were going faster than expected, the fixing operation to our east was now going to take much less than a full day; this would allow us to attack today instead of tomorrow. Thus, as I understood it, the call from John Yeosock was primarily a matter of moving up the attack timetable fifteen hours.[26]

If that was the case (and I had no indication from John of anything else; he hadn't mentioned any change of missions or different methods of attack), I figured that the CINC was making no other changes in the plan. Nothing in my own intelligence indicated that the Iraqis in our sector were doing anything different from what we expected. There was no release of the 1st CAV Division from theater reserve, which would have signaled that all was well in the east, and that the Iraqi situation was so well known that early commitment of the reserve was a good choice. There was no "go as soon as you are ready." There was only "go early," but in coordination with XVIII Corps and the Egyptian Corps, just as the original plan said.

On the other hand, if the Iraqis were totally crumbling and we were now involved in a rout of the Iraqis and were in (technically) a pursuit, then there would be no need for flank protection or any coordinated attack. We could all go as soon as ready and get immediately in pursuit of a broken enemy.

If the enemy situation is completely known, then you have no reason to keep a reserve for contingencies. In other words, reserves are insurance policies against unexpected enemy actions or to exploit enemy vulnerabilities by piling on at a decisive location. Thus keeping a reserve signaled — at least to me — that the CINC still needed an insurance policy.

Turning my attention back to immediate practical matters, I knew we would have to make adjustments. According to the old saying, when you meet the enemy, the first casualty is your plan. Well, we went that one better. We had not yet met the enemy, and the plan was already a casualty.

As my first order of business, I wanted to do three things: to talk to my commanders to get their assessments, to determine what adjustments needed to be made to move our attack up by fifteen hours, and to determine if we needed to make any tactical adjustments from our planned maneuvers following this early attack. We were going to do it. That wasn't an issue. It was a matter of when and how.

The major factor for me was that each piece of the corps had to fit together to make a coherent whole. Coherence was necessary because of the confined space in which we were working and because we had a single corps objective: to destroy the RGFC in our sector. That meant coordinating the movement and positioning of all corps units toward that single, common objective, and staying balanced, so that several options were available when we attacked the RGFC. I wanted to go early in a way that preserved that balance. That was the key challenge on which I focused.

It would have been different if each of the VII Corps units had had its own individual objectives. If I could have lined up my units along the border, given them a zone or lane in which to operate, and then turned them loose to head north in their own lanes to their own individual objectives at their own speed, it would have been much easier. We were not in that situation.

Meanwhile, a question kept flashing in the back of my mind: What do we do in daylight and what in darkness? I knew that I'd have to adjust the day-night scheme we had worked out and rehearsed in training, but now that we were going early, would I be calling on units to perform operations at night that would get us either bogged down or else so tangled up that the RGFC focus could be jeopardized?

I had wanted the breach done, minefields cleared, and passage lanes marked in daylight. Then I wanted to pass through the follow-on forces under cover of darkness and move the enveloping force close to the RGFC at night. That way, I had reasoned, they wouldn't know what was coming at them either from the breach or from the envelopment, and the RGFC would have only the minimum time to react to our attack. Such a sequence also would make it more difficult for the Iraqis to target us and to employ chemical weapons, even if they were able to move artillery to replace what our two-hour prep had taken out.

Breaching a complex obstacle covered by enemy fire is the toughest attack mission a unit can get. By doing it in daylight, there would be much greater exposure to Iraqi direct-fire weapons than at night, but we would more than make up for it by greater speed, greater avoidance of blue-on-blue, and our greater ability to mark lanes for follow-on units to pass through. We also would have a better setup for the RGFC attack. I had discussed all this with Tom Rhame and his commanders over and over again, and they all had agreed. Daylight it would be. That meant a start at BMNT tomorrow.

Now that timing was out the window.

At that point, I intuitively felt that we were going to run out of daylight for our breach attack, even given our early success in moving through the Iraqi security zone. And I sensed that time was suddenly slipping through our fingers. We needed as much daylight as we could get.

If we could handle the early attack simply by moving up our attack time — and keeping all the other pieces of the operation about the same — then the sooner we attacked, the better. If we could move it up fifteen hours, we could move it up more. We were losing valuable time. You just sensed that.

Since I was coming to the conclusion that earlier was better, and that going earlier might even reduce some of the tactical risks, I knew I needed to talk to Tom Rhame and confirm it with him. As for my enveloping force, they could continue doing what they had already begun.

Stan Cherrie had heard my end of the conversation. So had Creighton Abrams.

"Stan," I said, "get a warning order out that we are going to attack early. Talk to the commanders and get their input. Get Butch Funk and Don Holder in here." Since the 2nd ACR would be pacing the corps advance, I wanted to talk to my covering force commander. Meanwhile, I'd had some ideas about a possible contingency operation on the east flank, so I wanted to talk to my reserve division commander about that. This contingency operation carried some risks with it. The issue, as I saw it, was that by going early, the enveloping force would be way out ahead toward the RGFC by the time the 1st INF could complete the breach and the British could pass through and move on to defeat the Iraqi tactical reserves to the east. That meant that my east flank would be exposed during that gap. What I was thinking of doing was committing Butch Funk in a shallower attack to the east than we had originally planned. If I did that, and used the 2nd ACR in between the two armored divisions, we could possibly protect our east flank and get to the RGFC faster, though at the cost of reducing our combat power. With that in mind, I wanted to brainstorm a quick maneuver adjustment with Butch and Don.

I then called Tom Rhame. No problem, he told me. They could go early around noon. Ron Griffith told me the same.

As I made these calls, Creighton Abrams was working on the adjustments he would have to make to the two-hour artillery prep fires planned before the breach. Two hours was impossible now; we could not get all the ammo into position in time. How much prep was enough? How much would kill the Iraqi artillery in range of the breach and their chemical delivery means? If two hours was the minimum necessary, and we did less today, were we risking chemical strikes?

Meanwhile, I needed someone to call the British. Since they had a liaison element with us at the TAC CP, they knew what I knew at that point. But I needed to find out if Rupert Smith could adjust his movement from Area Ray forward fast enough to be ready to pass through the breach once the 1st INF opened it up and cleared out of the way.

I also needed a quick logistics estimate. Would log elements (more than 400 vehicles) be ready to go forward to establish Buckeye (then about 400 more vehicles), then through the breach and establish Nelligen to provide fuel for the enveloping units?

And finally, I needed to make an adjustment to CONPLAN Boot — the 11th Aviation Brigade attack planned for tomorrow night on the eastern flank. I wanted them to hit the Iraqi reserves there and speed the British exit from the breach. Could they go tonight?

Don Holder and Butch Funk arrived at about 1015. We huddled outside the TAC enclosure because Stan and the troops in there were burning up the comms lines getting all the orders out and getting input on what I had asked for.

I used butcher paper to sketch out my ideas for Butch and Don.

What I had in mind was to commit to FRAGPLAN 7 right away. Third AD would initially make a shallower attack that would drive almost directly east while keeping clear of the northern forward limits of the breach. This maneuver would very quickly place a major force just east and north of the planned British attack. Meanwhile, the 2nd ACR would attack in the center between the two armored divisions. They would then give up their cover mission and become an attacking force — actually, part of a smaller fist. If I could not come up with the third division for my fist, then they would continue the attack in the center — a risk. If I did find another division, I would eventually relieve them, and the added division would pass through them. And in fact, in the back of my mind, was the growing likelihood that the 1st INF would come out of the breach in a posture that would allow me to use them again against the RGFC.

There were other risks. The plan would require rapid adjustment by two major maneuver units, 3rd AD and 2nd ACR, which would take time to disseminate. It would also commit us early to FRAGPLAN 7. If two days from now the RGFC did something different from what we expected, we were out of options.

Still, I wanted to explore maneuvers quickly that could adjust our attack for the better without totally unraveling the corps. Such adjustments open new risks, and I was aware of that, but I also was aware that such risks were not so unusual. When you change your attack scheme, you have to look for possible adjustments. That's the nature of tactics.

After I finished laying out my concept, Don told me he could do it — but he didn't think it was a good idea. His operation was going well, he was building a successful momentum that he did not want to interrupt, and he thought our original maneuver gave us more combat power against the RGFC to accomplish our mission.

Butch also told me he could do it. It was a matter of adjusting his graphical control measures (drawing new lines, or boundaries, for the units) and of attacking shallower but he, too, was concerned about our combat power against the RGFC.

I listened to them, and I remembered my focus: Keep it simple. Don and Butch verified what I already knew: I could be introducing additional friction if I went forward with my change. I decided to stick with the plan we had made, after all, and to make only the adjustments, such as artillery preparation, movement of the British forward, and positioning of logistics, necessary to compress the time by fifteen hours. All these would introduce friction of their own. I did not need to add to it unless the tactical advantages far outweighed that disadvantage, and they didn't.

So I told both commanders to continue as planned, with one adjustment: I ordered Butch Funk to cover that eastern flank until the British got out there. That way I had the flank secured and could still remain focused on our objective: the destruction of the RGFC, in our sector.

The meeting lasted twenty minutes.

I went back inside to talk briefly to Stan and to tell him of my decision. It was my final decision that day concerning the scheme of maneuver. I'd figured I had a small window in which to adjust tactics, and had now used that window to consider the adjustment I had just rejected. Window closed. Decision made. I call this moment, and moments like it, the "good-idea cutoff time" — the point at which a large organization just cannot make any further major changes. One element in the art of command is to know when you've reached that point. I knew we had just passed it.

When I walked up to him, Stan was busy with all the tasks that needed to be done and coordinating it all with John Landry at the main CP. In fact, things were breaking so fast that I had not told Stan that I was even thinking of making the adjustments I had discussed with Butch and Don, so it was important to tell him that I had decided to stick with what we had planned to do tomorrow, but that the time schedule had to be compressed so we could do it all today.

Before I left, Stan further heightened my concern that time was escaping us. "You know, boss," he remarked, "we might run out of daylight."

Night operations, even with night-vision equipment, are not the same as those during the day. They are more difficult. They take more time. There is more friction. You try to keep the tactics simple. You try to give troops time to plan and rehearse what they will be doing at night. I sensed all that — and kept on moving.

1ST INFANTRY DIVISION

At 1115, I flew twenty minutes out to the 1st INF Division. The weather was still good, although by now clouds covered the sky and the wind was picking up. Beneath us was vehicle movement as far as the eye could see. Although the units did not yet know that they would be attacking early, they were repositioning for the attack that they thought would be under way tomorrow.

When I arrived at the 1st INF TAC CP, I was met by Brigadier General Bill Carter, the assistant division commander. Tom Rhame was supposed to be there, too, but he was at the 1st INF main CP — a screwup of comms already. No matter. Bill could answer my questions about an early attack into the breach at 1500.

He outlined the status of the artillery positioning (at this point still aligned for the prep to fire the next day), the ammunition for the prep, the possibility of seizing Phase Line Colorado (the line where they would complete the breach) by nightfall if the division attacked at 1500, enemy activity and disposition, and the status of the lanes opened for the passage of the British (they had already begun marking these). The bottom line, Carter said, was that Tom Rhame felt they could go at 1500 with no problem or undue risk, but unless they went earlier than 1500, they would probably not finish by dark. They could go earlier if ordered. In fact, Rhame preferred that.

At the 1st INF TAC, I again ran into Brigadier General Creighton Abrams. (Creighton had a great knack for showing up at precisely the right time. Uncanny the way some people can do that.) Creighton told me there'd be no problem shooting the prep, but we'd have ammo available for only a thirty-minute attack.

I said, "OK, thirty minutes it is."

I knew the risk. Certainly, the Iraqi artillery in range of the breach, and able to fire chemical munitions, might not be silenced by a shorter thirty-minute prep — if we had thought two hours necessary before, then why was something less all right now? I also remembered the Iraqi artillery fire against the 1st CAV Division on 20 February in the action that had resulted in three soldiers KIA and six wounded. However, a few things had changed. What I'd seen so far today was how ineffective Iraqi artillery fire had been at the 1st INF in its move forward into the Iraqi security zone and at the 2nd ACR movement forward. I'd also seen our own artillery and witnessed its counterfire capability to rapidly silence Iraqi mortar and artillery fire. In addition, our attacks the past week had caused Iraqi artillery to take a severe beating. It was a risk — but it was acceptable.

That settled it. We could do it. We could go early. Though there were tactical risks, they were acceptable. In fact, the bigger risk now was in waiting. If we could go at 1500, we could go now. Since John Yeosock's call, I'd been feeling we were wasting daylight. If we went right away, it would be no more risky than later — it might even be less so. Maybe we would complete the breach that day and pass the British the same night instead of the following night. That way we could save a whole day. I could see no advantage to VII Corps in waiting. I was seized with the urgency to get this thing going now!

"The wasted minute," Napoleon called it. In battle you cannot get it back. There are times when you just feel that time is getting away from you or that you are wasting time that would be a combat asset if you had it. This was one of those times, and so I was getting impatient.

Tom Rhame was feeling a similar impatience, I think. When I talked to Tom on the radio and ordered him to attack at 1500, he made it clear what Bill had already told me, that he wanted to go earlier, if he could.

"I'll see about that," I told him, "but for now plan on 1500."

If I wanted to go early, the first thing I had to do was put in a call to John Yeosock to get his permission. But when I walked over to my jump TAC nearby, the comms weren't working! I could not get through.

"Damn! Just when I need them, the comms are not there."

I was frustrated, but there wasn't much I could do except get in the helo and go back to the TAC and the comms there.

ATTACK VII CORPS TAC CP

I got back to the TAC at about 1250.

Stan told me 3rd AD had said they were ready to attack right away — they were already moving. That was good. That gave me more proof that we might as well just keep this thing rolling.

I immediately called John Yeosock. I told him we were ready to attack by 1500, but we were also ready to attack now. It would be just as easy to go now. If there was urgency in Riyadh for us to attack early, I reasoned, then keeping tight coordination between the attacking corps was no longer necessary. We were ready now. We had five hours of daylight left. Based on what I'd seen myself and on what had already been reported by 2nd ACR, I thought we might get through the breach today if we got started now. And if we did that, we could put ourselves back to our original day-night scheme, only twenty-four hours earlier. We did not have a long discussion, but I was clear that we could go immediately if required.

But John said no. The CINC wanted to keep our attack coordinated with the Egyptians on our east, and they could not be ready before 1500. When I protested again that we were losing valuable daylight, no was still the answer.

At this point I was getting mixed signals. Go early, but not too early. Go early, but the coordinated attack — XVIII Corps, VII Corps, Egyptian Corps — still ruled. From all I gathered from the call to John, there was no unusual sense of urgency other than that, for some reason or other, the CINC wanted us to go a bit early. He still wanted us in a coordinated deliberate attack, and all the other pieces of the mission remained unchanged.

I turned to Stan. "Get the order out," I told him. "We attack according to the same plan, but at 1500 today. Artillery prep starts at 1430 for thirty minutes. I want to cheat with the 2nd ACR and start them at 1430."

"WILCO."

The order went out.

ACTIONS

Then the weather turned bad. While VII Corps units attacked, there were high winds and rain, which severely reduced visibility in some places to less than 100 meters. Though all this probably helped conceal our attack, and so worked to our benefit, the effect for me personally was to trap me for most of the afternoon at the TAC, where I listened to the radio transmissions of the battle reports. Here is what was happening.

At 1430, an almost 6,000-round prep was fired for thirty minutes. This was fired by the division artillery of the 1st INF, the 42nd Artillery Brigade, 75th Artillery Brigade, 142nd Artillery Brigade, and the Regimental Artillery of the British: a total of over 260 cannons and 60 MLRS; 414 MLRS rockets were fired, and cannon accounted for the rest. It was an awesome display of firepower, and of coordination and soldier-NCO skill in getting it together in such compressed time. From a standing no-notice start at 0930, they had put it all together in five hours. Creighton Abrams, Colonels Mike Dotson, Morrie Boyd, Gunner Laws, 142nd commander Colonel Charles Linch, and Brigadier (UK) Ian Drurie were masterful in their teamwork and leadership.

Following the prep fires, the 1st INF attacked, with Colonel Bert Maggart's 1st Brigade on the left and Colonel Tony Moreno's 2nd Brigade on the right. Colonel Dave Weisman's 3rd Brigade was in reserve, to be committed when the division expanded the breach head to three-brigade width beyond Phase Line Colorado to New Jersey, at a distance of about forty kilometers.

The Iraqi defense was laid out like this: First there were wire obstacles, then mines (the wires and mines extended back about five or ten kilometers). Then came bunkers and trenches, extending another ten kilometers. This far west, there were no fire trenches, though they did have them in front of the 1st CAV and perhaps thirty kilometers west of the Wadi al Batin.

Tension was high as the two brigades attacked. Their mission was to clear the breach zone of not only direct fire that could be placed on the units following them, but also of Iraqi artillery observers who could send indirect fire from Iraqi artillery units. (I didn't want anything left — not artillery, not forward observers, not tanks, not RPGs, not even rifles or machine guns that could cause problems to, say, our 5,000-gallon fuel trucks.) They were also to clear and mark twenty-four lanes through the obstacle system, each wide enough — about four meters — for a tracked vehicle. The Iraqis were in bunkers and trenches behind the minefields and barbed-wire obstacle system. Some of their artillery was still operable, plus heavier weapons such as tanks thickened their defense.

The breach was to be made slowly, steadily, and deliberately. The 1st INF lead tanks were equipped with mine plows that had been fitted in front of each track to plow up mines and push them to the side. Behind the plows came tanks equipped with heavy rollers in front of each track to set off any mines missed by the plows. To be sure lanes were cleared, a tank with a full track-width blade followed the rollers to scrape the entire width of the lane. This ensured positive clearance for the many fuel trucks that would soon use the lanes.

Crews in the lead mine-plow tanks were the tip of the attacking VII Corps spear. In those vehicles tensions were way up. They were out front and ready.

While mine-clearing tanks did their work, the rest of 1st Brigade and 2nd Brigade kept up relentless suppressive fires on Iraqi positions, forcing the defending Iraqis either to die in their bunkers or to surrender. And 1st INF artillery continued to fire on Iraqi positions just in front of advancing tanks and Bradleys, as well as deeper, to silence the remaining Iraqi artillery. Apache helicopters joined the fight by firing deep over the top of the attacking brigades to destroy Iraqi tanks. It was a masterful coordinated combined-arms fight by those lead brigades and the division to get all the combat power of the division into operation.

The Iraqis never had a chance. The Iraqi 26th Division had been defending with two brigades forward, the 110th and 434th, each on a fifteen-kilometer front. They were surprised and stunned by the speed and violence of the 1st INF attack, and rapidly cracked. Though there was return fire, mostly small arms and some heavier weapons that were quickly silenced, the Iraqis could not effectively coordinate their defense; pre G-Day artillery raids had knocked out much of their telephone wire and they feared getting on radios, in the belief that U.S. forces would use the transmissions as a source to target. Their third brigade was to the north, refusing the western flank, and could not assist.

The Iraqi trenches were anywhere from two to six feet deep, and the bunkers had two feet or more of sandbag cover overhead. The Iraqis would come out of the deeper bunkers to man the trenches, and interspersed among their positions were heavier vehicles such as tanks and BMPs. Mortars and artillery fired sporadically. One of the units to receive mortar fire was Company C, 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor, and it quickly became involved in a typical situation. U.S. engineers and mortars fired smoke in an attempt to blind the Iraqi defense, and some of the smoke blew back on the attacking units, making progress difficult, although more of the smoke fell in front of the Iraqis and was helpful. Meanwhile, the mine plows tried to keep at a speed of five mph or less, and on line to clear the mines evenly in the twenty-four lanes, while other units fired over them to suppress Iraqi defenders.

Rather than send our own troops into the bunker systems when we got there, we had decided to put tanks with bulldozer blades on each side of the fortifications and run them alongside the trenches, burying whatever was in there under a wall of sand. The Iraqis were given the opportunity to surrender, and some of them did; others were buried. It was their choice. It made no sense for our troops to get tangled in the Iraqi trenches and bunkers.

The battle was sharp and violent, with a high sustained tempo of fire and movement from our side. This was just as Tom Rhame and the Big Red One wanted it to be.

Once on the Iraqi side, the fighting was sporadic. Faced with this overwhelming force, many Iraqis surrendered, yet some fought back the best they could. They returned fire. Some of them died in their bunkers. But it was no use.

At about 1630, the weather cleared enough to permit flight, and I went forward to see Tom Rhame at his TAC CP, which was still in Saudi Arabia at that point. When I met him, Tom was ecstatic over the success of his division and the courage of his troops. I told Tom I was proud of them and what they had done so far. I was also relieved that we had seen no chemical attacks. We were all so highly sensitized to the possibility that I listened for any indications, and I almost could not believe that the Iraqis had not used them yet.

After I left Tom, I flew into Iraq to link up with Colonel Don Holder and the 2nd ACR Command Group. By now it was about 1715. We flew over attacking 1st INF units, stretching back as far as I could see. Some were moving forward through newly cleared lanes; others were waiting to pass through. When we reached the border, we headed northwest over the 3rd AD, which was now crossing the border and making its way through the berm (we could also see part of the 1st AD). The vehicle movement visible to me was slow, and many vehicles were stopped — but that was not that unusual in a large unit movement and attack. After we passed over the 3rd AD, we flew over nothing but empty desert until we reached the 2nd ACR.

From 1015, when I'd last talked to Don, the regiment had seen some action against the deep brigade of the Iraqi 26th Division, about twenty kilometers from the line of departure. The Iraqi division commander had had to fight the Big Red One and the 2nd ACR simultaneously from two directions, with few workable communications. The 2nd ACR was continuing to attack while I visited with Don.

The 2nd ACR had captured some officers, he reported, engaged enemy armored vehicles with their aviation and close air support, and their helos had taken some fire. From 1430 until later that evening (a report I got after returning to the TAC), Troop L on the regiment's eastern flank had fought nine engagements over a space of twenty kilometers against T-55s, BMPs, infantry, and bunkers. They had destroyed one T-55, a BMP, and a PT 76 (a Soviet-built light amphibious tank), and taken approximately 300 prisoners. They had also refueled twice and gotten some fifteen ammo tractors stuck in the soft sand.

I gave Don the status of the 1st AD and 3rd AD behind him since I had just flown over them. I figured it would take them most of the night to close in behind the regiment, even unopposed. Don and I talked about the wisdom of his continuing the attack that night. Though I wanted to continue, I was aware of the growing gap between the now-fast-advancing regiment and the rest of the divisions. It was now at least twenty kilometers, and the gap was about to grow, since the regiment was now in full deployment and moving, while the divisions were in the process of squeezing themselves through the berm and getting into their formations.

Based on the rapid movement of the regiment, and their success this day, Don's recommendation was to continue aviation and artillery throughout the night but to stop forward ground movement. In that way, the divisions could close up behind the regiment and remain concentrated for our closure on Phase Line Smash, another fifty to seventy-five kilometers ahead, the next day.

Phase Line Smash, about 150 kilometers from our starting point on the Saudi-Iraqi border, was the last reference line we had drawn before we anticipated significant combat with the RGFC. It was a control measure for me to get the corps into whatever attack configuration I decided on to attack the Guards. Smash was named deliberately, because that is where we anticipated "smashing" into the RGFC. It was like a line of departure for our attack, and by the time we reached it, I wanted us to be rolling through it without stopping. Because I had Smash there, I was able to meter the movement of units so that they would reach Smash at about the same time for a concentrated attack.

What Don said made sense, and I told him I'd let him know later, but for now I wanted him to slow his rate and continue aviation and artillery attacks well forward to keep the Iraqis off balance. What I wanted to do in the meantime was check the progress of the 1st INF to see if they were getting any artillery fire from the Iraqis and if they might be vulnerable by not continuing to move.

Meanwhile, all the Iraqis had seen so far was a cavalry regiment and two brigades of the 1st INF. That meant that the RGFC still did not know what was bearing down on them. The less the Iraqis knew about the size of the force descending on them, the less would be their sense of urgency to organize a fortified defensive line. I wanted to stay hidden from them for as long as possible. If I continued moving the 2nd ACR forward, and in so doing tipped off a larger force to their presence, and if I could not then bring my own larger force into a coordinated attack before the Iraqis got big units in the way, it would make for some tougher going.

In addition, on 19 February, I had told Don Holder that if he was successful on Smash and found a soft spot in the Iraqi defenses, he should not be surprised if I blitzed him directly to Objective Denver on Highway 8. In my mind that possibility still remained for the following day. I wanted the regiment fresh for it.

I left and was back at the TAC just at dark.

When I got there, I got a quick, informal update of our situation:

The 1st INF Division had reached Phase Line Colorado, which meant they were halfway through the breach mission, or about twenty kilometers deep. At this point, Tom had two brigades abreast, with the rest of the division strung behind, all the way back into Saudi. To make room for the British, we had planned to expand the breach head another twenty kilometers north, to Phase Line New Jersey, and also expand it west and east. That would allow the 1st INF to move all its vehicles through the lanes and into this expanded area. To get that much area required three brigades on line, which meant Tom had to bring the 3rd Brigade through the cleared but not yet marked lanes, then attack forward with the two lead brigades northeast and northwest so that they could open up the middle for the 3rd Brigade. That was no easy maneuver, especially in contact with the enemy, and especially at night, but it was necessary, both to ensure that the area was totally secured and free of any artillery in range of the breach, and to finish passing the Big Red One through the breach and make room for the 1st UK.

I was pleased with the operation so far. But I also knew the risk of moving a brigade in between two others and attacking forward twenty kilometers at night from Colorado to New Jersey without any preparation or warning. And so I was beginning to question the wisdom of continuing the attack at night… Once again, the wasted minute. We could have gone earlier than 1500. I would not have been in this situation if we had. But that was past. I had to deal with now.

Meanwhile, 1st INF aviation ranged far beyond Colorado into Iraqi depths, and 1st INF artillery fires also were striking deep. By 1800, the 1st INF had reported more than 1,000 prisoners, a rough count, as no one was particularly worried about statistics at this point. The division so far reported no losses of its own.

Things had gone far better than we had expected. Better still, the Iraqis had still not used chemical or bio.

I got an equally encouraging report from 1st AD. Ron Griffith reported that their cavalry squadron had crossed the Iraqi border at 1434, following the 2nd ACR. By 1500, sixteen D-7 combat engineer bulldozers had cut 250 eight-meter-wide lanes through the border berm (they had been working for ten hours). The division was passing through. At this point, Ron had the division in a wedge formation, with one brigade at the tip and two following on each side. By 1800, the lead elements of their brigades had moved about fifteen kilometers into Iraq, and they were continuing to move. Their cavalry squadron had actually moved sixty kilometers into Iraq that day.

Third AD movements also were continuing. Butch Funk (still corps reserve at this point) moved his column of brigades behind 2nd ACR. As his elements streamed north into Iraq, Butch had his division band at the border berm playing cavalry music. So far, the division had reported some minor enemy contact and had taken some prisoners bypassed by 2nd ACR.

When I called John Yeosock at 1810, I reported all this, and I also advised him we would more than likely suspend offensive operations for the night, but would continue other combat operations, such as aviation and artillery, as well as finish the passage of the remainder of the two armored divisions across the berm and into Iraq. We would then resume offensive operations at first light. He concurred without discussion. John usually said that tactical decisions were up to me, since I was closer to the action, and then he supported them. My report was quick, with little deliberation: a routine affair, and then I went on to other duties.

I called Don Holder and confirmed that I wanted him to cease offensive movement, but to continue artillery fires and aviation attacks forward.

A few minutes later, Ron Griffith, who had monitored the order to the 2nd ACR to cease forward movement, called me at the TAC to ask if the order also applied to him. I told him yes.

I did not actually think that decision through as well as I had Don's. As it happened, I could just as easily have ordered Ron to continue… even though elements of 2nd ACR were in front of him, and he could not have gone far. To allow 1st AD to continue to move toward al-Busayyah and Objective Purple, I would have had to order Don Holder to uncover in front of 1st AD tonight (since 2nd ACR had moved their elements forward all that day, by about 2000 many of their ground elements were actually out from in front of 1st AD; 2nd ACR aviation, however, was still operating there). Yet since I figured it would take most of the night to get all that done and would possibly cause some fratricide, I told Ron to stop. I really did not think we would net any advance time by uncovering and advancing that night, and I also knew that Ron would continue to move his division forward through the border berm well into the night, refuel, get orders out, and continue the attack at first light. Besides, our intelligence indicated little reaction from the RGFC.

We had one disappointment that day. The 11th Aviation Brigade reported that they could not execute CONPLAN Boot that night. When we had gotten the word to go early, we had caught them moving both FAARPs (Forward Arm And Refuel Points, temporary fuel and ammo sites meant to be set up and broken down quickly) and aircraft forward, in anticipation of attacking the following night. There was no way they could go tonight. Too bad. The weather was still good, and that attack really would have helped on the east.

Our casualties so far were one soldier KIA and one WIA in the 1st INF, three soldiers WIA in 1st AD, and two soldiers WIA in the 2nd ACR from the DPICM incident earlier, when they had run over our own munitions. These were our first, but regretfully not the last, casualties from our own unexploded ammunition on the battlefield as we advanced.

Meanwhile, I had forecast we would be at Phase Line Smash the next day. At that point we would know whether we had been successful in surprising and fixing the Republican Guards. Late in the day, I would make the decision about which FRAGPLAN to use to destroy the RGFC. As for now, I was continuing to maneuver the corps to keep all my options available until the following afternoon. All of this was clear to my commanders. It also was in the heads of my two key maneuver operators at my command nodes, Stan Cherrie at the TAC and John Landry at the main CP. In short, I was pleased at our progress to this point and felt good about the coherence of our formations and our logistics, even though we had had to advance our attack by fifteen hours.

One last piece of maneuver remained. Did I order Tom Rhame to continue to attack to New Jersey? I got both Tom and Rupert Smith on the TACSAT radio from the TAC:

Enemy contact was light, Tom told me, and they had taken many prisoners. I asked him about continuing.

"I recommend we wait until daylight," he answered, "to avoid the night passage forward of 3rd Brigade, 2nd Armored Division." Tom had gotten his 3rd Brigade from northern Germany in USAREUR. "We can have New Jersey secured and be set to support a passage of the 1st (UK) AD by noon on the twenty-fifth."

When I talked with Rupert Smith shortly afterward, he concurred. He could use more time — and daylight. All day he had been aggressively moving his division forward. Considering his unplanned early move forward with his almost 5,000 vehicles, he preferred a late-morning passage. When they had moved forward, they'd been arranged in column — i.e., they were pretty strung out. Then they'd had to regroup for the twenty-four-lane passage through the breach, and coordinate that passage, and then later they'd had to link up and get fires coordinated with the U.S. 142nd Artillery Brigade of about 600 vehicles from the Arkansas National Guard, with their two eight-inch battalions and an MLRS battalion. Following their participation in the breach prep fires, I had ordered the brigade to be in direct support of the British. It had turned out to be a great combat arrangement (even though it had sparked some laughs when the British troops and our troops from Arkansas and Oklahoma talked on the radio).

After I thought for a moment about what Rupert and Tom had told me, I ordered Tom to continue his attack at first light. He would then pass the British through at noon tomorrow.

I knew this was a gamble, but it was the best choice I had then, given the alternatives. Here is how I weighed them quickly in my head.

On the one hand, it was a gamble not to continue. If the Iraqis fired chemical or biological agents into the breach that night, then we would not be able to recover from it. In addition, if the Iraqis had already discovered the strength of the wide enveloping attack, it would give them twenty-four to thirty-six hours to set their defenses more skillfully, and to make our coming attacks more costly.

By continuing, we might keep them from firing those chemical or bio-logical weapons, and we would get to the RGFC twelve hours sooner. But continuing was also a gamble.

By continuing, we could get ourselves physically tangled up expanding the breach at night — by trying to fit a brigade in between two others while marking cleared lanes and moving the rest of the Big Red One forward. While we were untangling them, our enveloping force would be so far ahead, they would hit the RGFC while we were still getting the British through the breach. Even if the two armored divisions were successful in staying close behind the 2nd ACR, the rear of the enveloping forces would still be vulnerable to Iraqi attack from the east. In addition, the situation would prevent needed fuel from coming through the breach, and cause the enveloping attack to grind to a halt at the beginning of their RGFC attack. It also would deny our two armored divisions fire support from the two artillery brigades, which would be stuck behind the breach and thus be unable to join them for the RGFC attack.

It also was possible that the two divisions would not be able to close quickly behind the rapidly advancing 2nd ACR. In that case, the regiment would likely find itself way out ahead of those two follow-on divisions, and it would hit the RGFC, alert them, and give them time to react before I could mass the corps.

All in all, I thought the gamble was far greater if we continued that night than if we continued the next day. I would gamble that we had silenced all the Iraqi artillery and that, even if they noticed, the RGFC would probably underestimate the size of our force and that our three-division fist would overcome any time advantage on the RGFC side and smash them anyway. It was more important to preserve the three-division fist.

One other consideration operated as I made this decision. In the back of my mind, the idea was forming that if I did not get the 1st CAV in time, the third division of my three-division fist would be Rhame's Big Red One.

I recalled something Tom Rhame had said to me before the attack: "Boss, don't leave us behind in the breach." It was beginning to look as though Tom would get his wish.

Though the Big Red One had always seemed a possibility for that mission, I couldn't make that choice until I knew how much the breach mission had taken out of them. If they'd taken heavy casualties, for instance (some estimates had them losing up to a brigade total in the breach), it would have been impossible to use them for my third division.

As it happened, the 1st ID's casualties turned out to be unexpectedly low. Though I never expected casualties as high as some of the estimates, I still anticipated more than Tom actually reported — which was the best news I got all day. Now that it was clear that the division was in relatively good shape, I wanted to preserve them for use against the RGFC. Continuing that night might remove that option.

I consulted my commanders, but it was my decision alone. It was the right one.

At about 2000, the G-2 reported that all the Iraqi heavy units had remained in place. This included the three RGFC heavy divisions, the 12th AD, the 46th MECH (actually the 10th AD), the 52nd AD, and the 17th AD. There was, however, a report that a brigade of the Hammurabi was moving out for training. Based on tendencies we had studied from the Iran-Iraq War, such a move was usually a precursor to some offensive maneuver: they would set out from their locations, do some training — what we called rehearsals — and then attack. That got my attention.

Why? Because it was an indicator that the Iraqis might not be going to defend in place after all, but would try some kind of maneuver against us, a capability they still had. In that case, I would have chosen some other maneuver besides FRAGPLAN 7.

What did all this add up to? There was no indication at this point of an RGFC retreat. Of the three options we had originally given the RGFC, we were down to two. Every indication was that they were going to stay and fight from where they were or maneuver against us. It heightened my sense that I needed to keep the corps balanced to preserve my options for the attack tomorrow.

Shortly after the G-2 update, Stan reported that at this point our line of advance put the 2nd ACR on Phase Line Grape; both 1st AD and 3rd AD were on Melon; 1st INF was on Apple (their Colorado), with twenty-four lanes completed; and 1st CAV was conducting another feint into Iraq. Total prisoners reported were 1,000 in 1st INF, over 300 in 2nd ACR, over 100 in 3rd AD, and 50 in 1st CAV. (Throughout the course of the war, prisoner totals were very inaccurate. Rather than tie down combat formations to process prisoners, units would disarm the Iraqis, give them food and water, keep the officers, and point the rest south. Some estimates placed our prisoner totals at almost double the official figures.)

From the first moment of my involvement in Desert Shield, and all during Desert Storm, I had been in frequent communication with John Yeosock. John and I had agreed that I would call him as often as possible during the ground war to keep him informed. It was especially important for me to try to talk to him around 1800 so that he would have the latest when he went to General Schwarzkopf's regular 1900 evening briefings.

I called John Yeosock that evening to report what I was doing and why — a simple conversation between two cavalrymen who understood what it took to maneuver VII Corps. I told John that in my judgment the immediate situation and complexity of what we had to do at night was not worth the risk of continuing the attack. Just as he had done a few hours before, he told me he agreed with what I was doing and trusted my judgment.

We kept our higher headquarters informed in other ways, as well. As a matter of routine, and of Third Army rule, just as we had done throughout Desert Shield, at midnight, every twenty-four hours during the war my main CP sent a written "Commander's SITREP (Combat)" to Third Army. It was the official report of what had gone on in VII Corps for the previous twenty-four hours and a forecast of what we would be doing for the next twenty-four. An info copy also went to CENTCOM. As it happened, this was not well timed, as the CINC got his daily briefing at 1900 and an update the first thing in the morning.

Before the attack, I had been in the habit of writing the commander's evaluation portion of the SITREP — or at least going over it. (These were often brutally candid: I complained about poor intel and about logistics shortages — lack of spare parts, medical supplies, and transportation. This at times got the CENTCOM staff in hot water, thus not making me a popular guy with some of them.) But during the war I stopped this practice, relying on John Landry and Stan to listen to me and to capture the essence of what was going on in the corps. Besides, I was talking directly to John Yeosock so much that he was getting commander's evaluations directly from me. Though I wasn't aware of this at the time, after the war I found out that John Yeosock had had his staff pay close attention to these reports, and had often had them follow up on the key items that he would need for the CINC's regular 1900 briefings. But I have no idea of the effect of all this at CENTCOM.

All commanders make a choice about what to pay attention to and what to ignore. There was no lack of information at Third Army about what was happening in VII Corps. They got it by way of direct calls from me to Yeosock; direct calls from the Third Army liaison, Colonel Dick Rock, to Third Army HQ; direct calls from Stan Cherrie, John Landry, Colonel Mike Hawk, and others to Brigadier General Steve Arnold and others in Riyadh and Third Army TAC CP in King Khalid Military City; periodic situation reports from staff officers to Third Army; and finally, from the written summary submitted as of midnight each day. (As a practical matter, this report was prepared much earlier than that, so by the time it went in, much of the friendly information was less than current, especially as the action picked up tempo. That meant that the information reported at the CINC's morning briefing could be as much as twelve hours old if the CENTCOM staff did not update their reports.)

2300 VII CORPS TAC CP SAUDI ARABIA

That evening, I continued to monitor reports of corps activity coming into the CP over the radio. Per my orders to Don and his assessment of his situation, 2nd ACR kept up attacks and combat activities all night. In other words, they did not stop at sundown, get out their sleeping bags, and get eight or ten hours of sleep. They continued movement to adjust unit formations, get better force protection, and also put out reconnaissance. They also fired artillery and pushed aviation forward, and some units even advanced forward if the local commander thought it would improve his posture for his operations the next day. Many of the leaders and the troops were up all night. Few would get more than three or four hours of sleep… and that was "combat" sleep, without tents or cots.

They also had some combat actions. Later that night, at 0200, in order to keep the Iraqis off balance, and to keep them from being set when the regiment attacked at first light, they were planning to attack the eastern half of their Objective Merrill, about sixty kilometers into Iraq, with the AH-64 battalion from 1st AD that I had placed under Don's operational control.

Meanwhile, they reported their lead aircraft scouts were at Phase Line Smash — or at the 78 Easting[27] longitude line — where it was vital to me to have immediate intelligence because of the proximity of the RGFC. At 2200, they reported their 2nd Squadron had taken 385 prisoners. At 2359, an Iraqi infantry battalion surrendered to their 2nd Squadron in Objective Merrill, and soon after that, they reported that they were inundated with prisoners all across their area. Later, after I went to get some rest at 0324, the aviation battalion reported destroying a building with antennas, numerous bunkers, a BMP, and six trucks; one AH-64 was hit by ground fire.

The rest of the corps was not idle that night. Other combat activities were going on:

• In 1st AD, the lead unit, 1–1 Cavalry, had pushed sixty kilometers into Iraq, well forward of the rest of the division. Elsewhere in the division, three soldiers were wounded when a vehicle struck a mine just over the border. Meanwhile, refueling operations and movement forward of the division into their division wedge would continue until after 0200 on the twenty-fifth. The division had taken prisoners, but by now the count was not accurate.

• Third AD also continued moving units forward over the border and refueling operations well into the night. Their lead unit, 4–7 Cavalry, had reported engaging twenty-nine tanks with close air support and later capturing more prisoners. Other prisoners, bypassed by 2nd ACR, also were captured by division units.

• As 1st INF continued to mark lanes, their aviation forward also conducted a screen of their ground elements so as to preempt any Iraqi artillery from firing on forces refueling for tomorrow's operation.

• The British reported closing into an area just south of the breach ready to begin passage of lines.

• Finally, I learned we had used forty-four close-air-support strikes today.

At midnight the commander's SITREP went in from our main CP. In it no casualties were reported (in fact, we had seven — two in 2nd ACR, two in 1st INF, and three in 1st AD). The report described major units of the corps as involved in security and reconnaissance operations that night and positioned to continue the attack on 25 February.

As for the Iraqis, we assessed that in their VII Corps there was little chemical capability. They could continue local counterattacks, but use of mobile reserves was limited to local repositioning. The report went on to say: "Indications of minefields and defensive positions in Tawalkana Division sector indicate intent to defend in place. Alpha Brigade, Hammurabi Division, has moved out of revetments and appears to be conducting local maneuver training… "

This report — like most of those from our main CP throughout the war — was right on the mark with respect to possible enemy courses of action and our own future plans. Although they were mostly out of direct radio contact, the troops there tracked the battle as well as they could. Because they were out of direct radio contact, there were some exceptions to the overall accuracy of these reports: Normally, reports of our own actions tended to understate what was going on — as, for instance, the destruction of Iraqi units and the numbers of Iraqi prisoners and KIA. Reports of our own casualties also lagged considerably.

In sum, I was pleased with the corps that day. Our agility in adjusting to the fifteen-hour advance in attack had been superb. Second ACR and lead elements of 1st AD were now sixty kilometers deep into Iraq and continuing actions. First INF had completed twenty-four lanes. Through these the 2,500 tracked vehicles and 5,000 wheeled vehicles of the British would move, followed by the 400 logistics vehicles (and the fuel that would allow the enveloping divisions to attack the RGFC without stopping) and the over 1,000 vehicles of the two-corps artillery brigades that would join the enveloping divisions. We were in the posture I wanted.

Later that night, I learned from Major Bernie Dunn, our Arabic-speaking liaison officer with the Egyptians, that the JFC-N attack on our east had not yet gone forward of the border. This information further reinforced my urgency to get the British out to the east before I got my enveloping forces logistics elements too far forward and vulnerable to an Iraqi move from that direction.

My decision not to continue with most of our offensive operations that night was a gamble. I knew that, yet I was convinced the risk was worth taking. To gain a massed three-division fist against the RGFC more than offset any advantage they might gain from a warning of our attack that gave them time to prepare. Meanwhile, they showed few signs of reacting, and Iraqi artillery fire was by now almost nonexistent — or quickly silenced by counterfire.

STILL later that night, I gave some more thought to the go-early order and to whether, because of that, the intent of my higher HQ had changed.

My conclusion: Everything I'd learned today from higher headquarters told me we were operating only with the intent of moving the attack up fifteen hours, nothing more.

John Landry was to tell me the next day that he was surprised by my decision because I had been so adamant about "no pauses" and would not even let the word be used.

He was right, I didn't want pauses. What I meant was I didn't want them in front of our main objective, the RGFC (as Burnside had paused before Fredericksburg in December 1862, during the Civil War, when he'd waited for bridging for two weeks while Lee built his defenses). I would not permit planned pauses because they might not be needed and would break the natural momentum of an attack once it got rolling. On the other hand, I was prepared to accept battle-event-caused pauses in order to keep the corps balanced and thus use them to adjust tempo to gain mass and continued momentum with our troops reasonably fresh and the corps supplied when we hit the RGFC.

I did not agonize that night over my decision not to continue, much less second-guess myself. I was looking ahead to our objective. As we approached the RGFC, I thought about the moves and countermoves available to us and to them. I wanted them fixed and out of options while we still had some left. As I had been doing all along whenever I could, I stared at the map, making it come alive in my head. We are here, they are there. What do I want it to look like when we are successful? How do I get us from this state to that state at least cost?

I war-gamed in my head, involved some others, thought out loud with Stan. That not only helped me think my way through the next few days, it also got Stan inside my head, where he needed to be.

The bottom line that night was that I thought the RGFC would stay in a posture that would make FRAGPLAN 7 the best scheme of attack. I needed one more look to confirm it the next day. The timing depended on our being able to go from our current formation alignment to our attack alignment in less time than the Iraqis could react. I also could not wait too long or the corps would not be able to execute. My key "reads" the next day would be our posture and the Iraqis'. Then I would decide.

Commanders of large campaigns and of large land forces don't think in chronological terms. They think in terms of the mission against a particular enemy, the organization of their forces on the ground, the time it takes to get their forces in a posture to accomplish their mission on that terrain and at the least cost to their own side. Sometimes they will think in terms of hours to accomplish all this, sometimes in terms of days. Sometimes the mission will take hours, sometimes it will take days.

Thus, when we examine what happened in a campaign such as Desert Storm on Day 1 (24 February), on Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4, rather than at the actual phases of the battle as they developed (and which didn't follow the rhythms of day and night), we miss the context within which a senior tactical commander views the battle and uses time.

In other words, during Desert Storm, I did not think in terms of discrete days. On the first day, on the twenty-fourth, when we were ordered to attack early, I was thinking in the present: we had lots to do to pull that off. But I also was thinking two days in advance. I knew that decisions I would make that first day would influence the posture the corps could get into on the third day, the twenty-sixth.

The third day was the key day, for in my judgment, that was when we would attack the Republican Guards. I would make the decision about how to attack them on the second day, and the first day's decisions would determine the range of alternatives available to me then. So in Desert Storm (other situations would have required different kinds of thinking), I thought in continuous periods of 12, 24, 48, and 72 hours, regardless of days. I also was aware that in large tactical organizations in large land battles, you cannot make many decisions over short time spans that cause major maneuvers. That is why you forecast key decision points and make decisions that stick. For that reason, my intent was to issue orders to my subordinate commanders that would last at least twelve hours before I had to change those instructions. In the event that I had to issue instructions that would cause a major rearrangement of the corps within our overall basic plan, I needed to give them as much as twenty-four hours. A total plans change, done from a cold start without warning — such as, for instance, an attack to Baghdad — might have taken as much as seventy-two hours from receipt to execution.

About midnight, I told Toby to wake me for anything significant, then left the enclosed area and went to get some rest. Stan and most of the TAC team were still at it when I left.

At 0500 on the twenty-fifth, I was awake and back at it. A quick paper cup of coffee, a few moments to strap on my leg and the other boot, shoulder holster, and Kevlar, then a short walk over to the TAC CP. The charcoal-lined chemical protective overgarment we all wore felt good in the early-morning cold. Stan Cherrie and the TAC team were already in there, and radios were already alive with reports.