Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

VII CORPS TAC CP IRAQ

Activity level was high in the TAC. With enormous effort, they had traveled 150 kilometers to a position just west and north of the 2nd ACR's 73 Easting battle, set up the five M577s, and reestablished the communication channels. By now, the sandstorms, limited visibility, and rain of the late afternoon had passed us by, the wind was relatively calm, and temperatures were in the high forties. We had been in a fight with the RGFC since noon the day before.

I could see the troops were tired. Some were unshaven, and their chemical suits were soiled from three days of continuous wear. Yet everyone was working hard with focus and quiet professionalism. No one was hollering, and everyone had kept his sense of humor, although that was being seriously challenged.

Maps had been put up on the boards, situations quickly posted, field desks set up. Somebody somehow managed to make coffee — using paper towels for filters; real filters had run out long ago.

With the canvas extensions pulled out behind the backed-up M577s, our open work space (minus the vertical extension supports) was roughly twenty by thirty feet, all over uneven sand. The constant moving back and forth of the almost thirty people inside created a constant brown sandy haze under the artificial light.

A total of about 150 troops were at the TAC, and about fifty vehicles, counting our command group tanks and M113s. Located as we were in the middle of the 3rd AD sector, we could see the tracers from the rounds fired against the Iraqi defenses, and could hear the sounds of the battle, the low rumble of outgoing artillery, the boom of tank cannons, and the three-round thuds of 25-mm Bradley chain guns.

The radio crackled with continuous transmissions: "Enemy tanks at… Passage of lines beginning… T-72s at…" One after the other they came in… almost too fast to record manually. Each of the five M577s had two or more radios, so the noise was multiplied. Our battle staff NCOs were manning the radios and posting maps and staff officers were on the phone to VII Corps main CP — now more than 200 kilometers away — so that the main could keep its situation maps current for reports to Riyadh. Main also was giving us the latest intelligence from Third Army. I would want to hear that soon.

A few moments after I returned, I asked Stan to assemble the TAC crew so that I could brief them about what had gone on that day and outline what I had in mind for the next VII Corps maneuver.

"For the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours," I told them, "we are going to drive the corps hard, day and night, to overcome all resistance and to prevent the enemy from withdrawing. We will synchronize our fight, as we always have, but we will crank up the heat. The way home is through the RGFC."

I went on to thank them for their efforts so far, but, I added, we needed to run right through the finish line.

Since we were all getting tired — the TAC crew especially, after they'd moved all night and most of the day — I thought I needed to give us all some motivation, but I also wanted to outline some guidance for a plan of maneuver for the next day. I explained that we had the opportunity to engage in a double envelopment of the Iraqi forces to our front. We could close around them from the south and from the north, and trap the remaining Iraqi forces in our sector. From what we could see of the movement of XVIII Corps units, it did not appear that they would catch up to 1st AD for at least another twenty-four to forty-eight hours, as they had a long way to go after getting north to Highway 8 and then turning east. It was not an easy maneuver for them and one with significant logistics challenges, especially concerning fuel. So we'd better do what we could ourselves, in the time we had, to destroy the remaining Iraqi forces in our sector.

CONVERSATION WITH THE CINC

At around 1830, I called CENTCOM HQ and asked for General Schwarzkopf, but he was not in. They told me he would call back, and we finally connected sometime before 2000.

Since I have no exact notes on this call, I won't try to quote our exact words, but this was the gist:

I'd wondered if he would raise the issue of the speed of our advance, but he didn't, which pleased me. It seemed to indicate that the issue was closed. Otherwise my report was the same kind of SITREP that I normally gave to John Yeosock, though I hoped I could also communicate to him an awareness of the magnificent job our troops were doing under tough battlefield conditions. I just sensed he did not have an appreciation of all they were doing.

During our conversation, the TAC kept working hard. Radios continued to crackle, and people went about their business as I pressed the phone close to my ear so that I could hear. It was a straightforward, commander-to-commander discussion, and throughout he gave every indication that he understood what I was saying. I wanted to lay out what we were doing, and intended to do, and see if he had any further guidance for us, but I also wanted to let the CINC know that, in my judgment, the maneuver John Yeosock wanted to make with the British — to attack them south into the Wadi — was not a good idea. (I wanted General Schwarzkopf to be aware of this issue, because I wanted to use the British as the southern arm of the envelopment instead, and because we needed the CINC's help to get an Army boundary changed. Otherwise I would have simply argued the whole thing out with John Yeosock.)

I began by reporting that we had turned the corps ninety degrees east and were attacking the RGFC, that 1st INF would pass through 2nd ACR that night and form the three-division fist of the corps to destroy the RGFC, that I had Apaches going deep that night, and that we were pressing the fight hard. He seemed to take it all in.

Because I assumed he already had a good picture of our activities, I did not give him details of the fighting, or of the battle damage to the Iraqis. As I discovered after the war, though, his HQ was twelve to twenty-four hours behind in tracking the fight. If I had known that then, I would have filled him in more completely. As it turned out, what the CINC apparently thought we were doing and what we were actually doing were worlds apart.

After I had taken him through our basic situation, I told him about our orders from Third Army to attack south with the British, and told him that instead we should continue east and maybe north with the British, and he agreed. He thought going south was a bad idea as well.

Once again, I thought we understood each other. Again, I discovered after the war that I was wrong. In his autobiography, General Schwarzkopf reports that he heard me say that I was worried about some bypassed Iraqi units that might hit us in the flank and that, in his words, I "wanted them destroyed" before his forces turned to the Republican Guards, and therefore was about to order an attack toward the south.

" 'Fred,' I interrupted, 'for chrissakes, don't turn south! Turn east. Go after 'em!' "

A few lines later, he chalked it up to understandable pre-battle jitters but what he seemed to be saying was that I intended to have the whole corps attack south before I got around to hitting the Republican Guards. Such a thought couldn't have been further from my mind. I didn't even want to attack south with the British, much less the whole corps. How he got that impression is almost unimaginable to me. I was stunned. Here we were in a fist; we had been attacking relentlessly into the Tawalkana most of the day; we were also less than two hours from an Apache battalion attack about 100 kilometers east of those battles; and all of it heading due east! How could he think I was about to turn south? (That would have meant, for example, turning 1st AD and 3rd AD ninety degrees, which would have put them on the axis on which they had just attacked north for 150 kilometers! Plus, we were about to pass the 1st INF through the 2nd ACR at night!)

Lastly, I told him about our commitment of the 1st CAV in the north and our double-envelopment scheme of maneuver.

After he had listened to it all, he answered, "OK, Fred, good work, and keep it up," or words to that effect. He went on to add some compliments to the corps, yet he also left me with the clear intent that we should continue to press the attack hard… as we were in fact doing. Then he added some intelligence that was new to me: the Hammurabi Division were being loaded onto HETs and were trying to escape the theater. We had thought the Hammurabi would be defending in the vicinity of the Medina, or even up north in XVIII Corps sector. Now that they appeared to be trying to get out, my sense of urgency increased. However, since we were then close to 100 kilometers from the Hammurabi, they were split between us and XVIII Corps, and our troops were fully committed at this point, there wasn't much else we could do.

Finally, he thanked me for the update, added a "good luck," and that was it. I got no change in orders from General Schwarzkopf.

It was our only talk during those four days, and afterward, I could not help but conclude that he was satisfied with what we were doing. He also left me with the feeling that we had maybe another forty-eight hours to finish this war. It was nothing he said specifically, yet I put together the new intelligence about the Hammurabi with what we were doing to the Tawalkana, and that told me intuitively that time was running out. I still thought we had enough time to destroy the RGFC in our sector.

I felt I had had a clear meeting of minds with Schwarzkopf, and I chalked up the earlier reports of his displeasure to the usual ups and downs all commanders go through in a fight. We had maneuvered a large complex formation into a physical posture that in my judgment was perfect for the enemy and the mission. I had just finished pumping up the TAC and telling them we would drive this to completion. If ever I felt I had my unit in a position to have a decisive edge over an enemy, this was it.

I called John Yeosock to report the conversation, and my impressions, and also told him that I had raised the issue of the British attacking south, and that the CINC had agreed that it was not a good idea. John then released me from it (in all fairness to John, the mission south had not been a stupid or ill-considered idea: in addition to the possibility of getting the 1st CAV into the fight earlier, he had also been thinking that, by clearing the area, he could more quickly establish a log base in Kuwait that would give us a much faster turnaround time for fuel, in case we and XVIII Corps continued fighting in and around northern Kuwait and near Basra).

ENEMY FORCES

During the day, our main CP had been developing a clear picture of the Iraqis' activities, and after my phone calls, our G-2 folks gave Stan and me a quick intelligence update. This is what they reported at 2030:

"Tawalkana Mech Division and one brigade of the 52nd Armored Division will continue to defend along Phase Line Tangerine until approximately 26210 °C" — that is, at 2100 on 26 February ("C" stands for local time)—"at which time, Tawalkana Division has been ordered to withdraw to a subsequent defensive position. This subsequent defensive position will probably be reinforced by the remainder of the 52nd Armored Division and possibly the 17th AD. On 26 Feb, elements of the Medina Division moved out of revetments to orient forces to the SW. Similarly, up to 9 bns of the Hammurabi Division moved to the NE about 10–20 kilometers in positions to defend the Rumaila oil fields." The oil fields were about thirty kilometers west and southwest of Basra, running north to south about ten kilometers; they were about half in our sector and half in XVIII Corps's. We thought they might be impassable for heavy tracked vehicles (it turned out we were wrong). "Other Iraqi forces in Kuwait will continue to withdraw to the north toward the Iraqi border. The Iraqi goal will be to delay VII Corps and MARCENT[43] along successive defensive lines, while withdrawing the bulk of his armored and mechanized units into Iraq. Iraqi forces, particularly RGFC units, will remain capable of maintaining a defense in depth and conducting up to brigade-sized counterattacks. He will become increasingly vulnerable to Coalition air strikes as he withdraws from prepared defensive positions, as well as to rapid and coordinated fires and maneuvers."

This statement was later included in the report that went to Third Army from our VII Corps main CP. What it meant to me was that the Iraqi strategic reserves were attempting to form a series of defensive lines between us and Highway 8, so that they could continue to move their forces out of Kuwait, that the RGFC was the HQ directing this defense, and that the Tawalkana and Medina RGFC divisions were still immediately in front of VII Corps.

The Tawalkana had their three brigades on line from north to south approximately along the 70 north/south grid line. These three brigades were the 29th MECH, the 9th Armored, and the 18th MECH. South of the 18th MECH was the 37th Armored Brigade of the Iraqi 12th Armored Division. Earlier in the night of 24–25 February, the RGFC had deployed the 50th Armored Brigade, with close to ninety tanks, in a security zone in front of this defensive line. That force had been decisively defeated by the 2nd ACR the day before, 25 February. Behind the Tawalkana defense were brigades of both the 10th and 12th Iraqi Armored Divisions. The Medina, meanwhile, was moving two armored brigades west, the 14th and the 2nd, to defend a theater logistics site just to the east of the 70 north/south grid line. They were being joined by two unidentified armored brigades moving up from the south. At this time, the Iraqis still had the ability to reposition brigade-sized forces and were doing so. The Adnan Division also appeared to be sending a brigade south to help the Tawalkana and Medina Divisions defend.

For some time, it had not been clear to me either how much of the Hammurabi was in VII Corps's sector or how much they would become involved in this forming defense, and that was still the case. Our VII Corps estimate was that they were moving out of positions to defend the Rumaila oil fields and would move forward to defend if the Medina could not hold our attack. The 17th Armored also was part of the defense. (Earlier, in chapter 1, we mentioned that some Iraqi units had been wrongly identified. That was true in this area. Thus, the 52nd Division was actually the 12th Armored.)

Clearly the RGFC were attempting to defend, and were positioning forces to do so. Though I did not know their precise strength at this time, I believed it was closer to 75 percent than 50 percent. Not only were they repositioning units, they were also attempting fairly crafty defensive tactics, such as the reverse-slope defense mentioned earlier.

I put the intel update together with the information my commanders had given me during my battlefield visits earlier that day, and they matched. From there my commander's running estimate led me to these conclusions:

I knew we had the Iraqi forces fixed. We had also surprised them with the speed and direction of our attack, and they were now scrambling to reorient and to thicken the defense. I needed to continue to press the corps attack so that the Iraqis could not get any more set than they already were. We had opened up a window of vulnerability in the Iraqi defense, and we needed to complete our mission before that window closed.

As for us, it was clear to me again that we had the right forces in the right combination at the right place at the right time. The decision to mass into a three-division fist, the changes in tempo, the rolling attack — all were proving correct.

By turning east into the forming RGFC defense, we also had opened an attack lane to our north for XVIII Corps. We had not pinched them out and tried to do it all ourselves — their combat power would also be in the fight. It would make the complete destruction of the RGFC a Third Army, not just a VII Corps, fight, and it would also facilitate the ground/air coordination needed to finish it off, since both commands were in Riyadh. Because CENTCOM, Third Army, and CENTAF were co-located in Riyadh, all the command elements needed to isolate and destroy Iraqi forces in the Kuwaiti theater were in one place.

In the air, CENTAF had all the aircraft necessary to seal off the escape routes. On the ground, Gary Luck and I had the combat power to completely destroy all Iraqi forces in the Third Army zone. It was all coming together, just as we had discussed in our war games. Now we just had to complete the execution.

It would not be easy. For the soldiers and small-unit commanders conducting the attacks, it would turn out to be a night we would all remember.

PERSONNEL AND LOGISTICS

Once I had looked over the enemy and friendly situations, I asked for a quick report on our logistics status. Because I did not have a staff section to track logistics at the TAC CP, I was not current on our situation, and did not have a good feel for our fuel posture.

I did know I had a talented group of logisticians who could do the fuel arithmetic as well as I could. An M1A1 tank uses about fifty gallons an hour. You refuel about every eight hours or less, or at every opportunity. The tank's turbine engine burns as much idling as it does rolling at forty miles per hour. Divisions consume about 600,000 to 800,000 gallons of fuel a day. We were rapidly moving away from our supply points, so the turnaround time for returning trucks was stretching out to as long as twenty-four hours, or over 200 kilometers. But with Nelligen now established, I thought that we were still all right.

Though fuel availability in the battle area was becoming increasingly short, the percentage availability of our major combat systems was still in the high eighties to low nineties — even after the 150-kilometer move and some combat.

The equipment losses did not bother me — the soldier losses did. Our casualties for the first two days were fourteen KIA and forty-six WIA. That was not just a number to me. These were individual soldiers who had come here to do their duty. I did not agonize over these last reports, but I paused a minute and thought about those soldiers and what we needed to do over the next hours and days to continue to get our mission done at least cost. You feel it all, and then you decide and go on.

DOUBLE ENVELOPMENT

Earlier that afternoon, even while paying attention to the current battles, I had been intermittently thinking about the next move. How would we end it?

What I knew about the Iraqis that afternoon was this: The RGFC were defending and getting units into position in a hurry. We had clearly attacked into the Tawalkana in a defensive alignment from south to north. They had also attempted to put a security force of tanks and BMPs another ten to fifteen kilometers west of their main line of defense. Artillery was present, as well as mortars, but the Iraqis did not have time to coordinate their artillery fires very well with the defense, or to set any barriers in place, such as mines or antitank ditches. To the south of those three defending Tawalkana brigades was a brigade of the 12th Armored Division. The remainder of the 12th and the 10th Armored Divisions seemed to be in depth behind the Tawalkana. To the north of the Tawalkana and just slightly to the east, the Medina appeared to be relocating west from their earlier positions to tie in with the Tawalkana to their south. Augmenting the Medina defense was a brigade of the Adnan Division, which had come south to tie in with the northern brigade. Behind the Medina was the Hammurabi, whose intentions at that point I could only guess. They could stay and help the Tawalkana and Medina fight or leave. As far as I could determine, those were their only two options. I also did not know how much of the Hammurabi was still in the VII Corps sector.

Our own situation was clear to me. We would soon have three U.S. divisions on line attacking east. The 2nd ACR had found the southern seam between the RGFC and other units (it was between the southern brigade of the Tawalkana and the 37th Brigade of the 12th Armored Division). The XVIII Corps was about a day behind us now in the north after 1st AD had turned east. I figured we had two complete RGFC divisions in our sector (Tawalkana and Medina), one brigade of the Adnan, and probably one or two brigades of the Hammurabi, plus other divisions by now subordinated to the RGFC. Two complete RGFC infantry divisions were in the XVIII Corps sector now, as well as one or two brigades of the Hammurabi, plus an unknown amount of artillery.

The Iraqis had only two options: to fight us or attempt to escape. Our options were greater, but the two key factors were these: we had to choose how to cut off the RGFC in our sector, and we had to choose how to destroy them. Destroying them meant keeping up the relentless series of attacks, and I felt confident we had the combat power for that. Choosing how to cut them off was going to be tougher.

Our sector now ran due east toward the Kuwaiti border and extended to the Gulf. The northern line ran directly east to west, from al-Busayyah to the coast, passing just north of Safwan. It did not include Basra, or the crossings over the Euphrates north of the east-west portion of Highway 8. The southern line ran from the Kuwait/Iraq border to about fifteen kilometers north of Kuwait City across the north-south portion of Highway 8 and to the Gulf.

I considered the tactical means available. I did not think we could cut off the RGFC with attack helicopters alone, and my success in getting fixed-wing air to hit our targets deep had been poor. So I figured we'd have to use maneuver forces. How to do that? To the south of our sector, the British were rapidly closing on their Objective Waterloo. Once they reached that, they would run out of maneuver space east of the Wadi al Batin (since the area east of the Wadi was in the Egyptian sector). However, 1st CAV would be in area Lee behind the 1st INF attack by early the next morning.

That afternoon the answer jumped off the map. We had the maneuver forces for a double envelopment. This is a complex maneuver involving a direct attack at the enemy's strength, to keep the enemy fixed, while other forces go around as "enveloping arms" on each side and link up behind the enemy's main formation. The result is an entrapped enemy force. It is a rare maneuver, because conditions for its execution don't happen that often, but here it was clearly within our grasp. Trapping a significant part of RGFC forces in a vise would be a perfect way to end our mission.

This maneuver also dealt with questions that had occurred to me by then about whether XVIII Corps would have time to execute the Third Army-directed maneuver to attack to our north and pin the Iraqi forces against us. If XVIII Corps could attack across the north while we came up from the south and applied pressure in the center, that would be the best use of available Third Army forces — but if time ran out before XVIII Corps could attack into the RGFC, at least with the double envelopment we would have destroyed or captured all the Iraqi forces in our sector.

Because I had been more certain earlier that there would be a Third Army envelopment, using XVIII Corps as the northern arm of the enveloping force, my instinct then had been to send the 1st CAV around the south of the 1st INF, then north to Objective Denver, while continuing to send the British due east to interdict Highway 8, north of Kuwait City. (Also, since the British had been so successful that they had run out of maneuver space, I needed to get a boundary adjustment from Third Army to give them room.) Late in the morning, I called Third Army and hastily sketched that scheme to John Yeosock's XO, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Kendall, who passed it on to John.

In the early afternoon, when I talked to John Yeosock about my intention for 1st CAV, he told me he did not like the idea of sending them around 1st INF toward Denver, since, from what he could see, the bulk of the RGFC was farther north, and that was our objective. Since at that time I had figured XVIII Corps would be attacking in the north, I continued to argue for my own proposal. I figured that we had enough combat power up there and that I could get the 1st CAV around the south faster to close the door on the RGFC.

For a time, each of us argued the merits of each point of view in a good commander-to-commander discussion. Then, after we had both expressed our views, John still wanted me to weight the attack to the north, so I had said, "OK, I'll send them around the north of the 1st AD." John had a better picture of what XVIII Corps was doing and of whether they could close the gap in the north, and he probably had a better feel from the CINC about war termination, although at that time neither of us discussed it.

(What would John and I have decided if we had known on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth that it would end at 0800 on the twenty-eighth? Knowing now what I did not know then, I probably should have gone with my instincts and sent the 1st CAV attacking east from Lee, then north, early on the morning of the twenty-seventh, rather than sending them north, to the rear of 1st AD. However, since neither John nor I did know then, going north was then the right decision, especially in light of the growing gap between us and XVIII Corps.)

^{On 26 February, while current battles raged, General Franks was also thinking about how to shape the battles he wanted VII Corps to fight twenty-four to forty-eight hours in the future. With confirmed locations and intentions of RGFC units, he began shaping the plan for a double envelopment, initially intending to use the 1st (UK) Armor as the southern pincer and the recently released and on-the-move 1st CAV as the northern pincer.}

Once it was clear that 1st CAV would be the northern arm of our envelopment, I picked a new area for the 1st CAV north of Lee by about another eighty to one hundred kilometers, called it Horse, and ordered Tilelli to move his division there to be committed east and north of 1st AD. Though Horse was then occupied by 1st AD, we anticipated that by the time the 1st CAV got there, the 1st AD attack would have moved east and it would be vacant.

After I'd determined that move, my attention turned to the southern arm of the envelopment. My choice for that was the British, and later that day, before I talked with the CINC and Yeosock, I gave that planning contingency to Rupert Smith (at the same time, I told him he did not have to execute the mission south back down the Wadi). The series of planning contingencies we were giving the small British tactical staff severely strapped their capabilities — even as they were busy directing the battles toward Waterloo. In fact, I'm sure they thought their corps commander had them planning too much. And they were right; I did ask a lot of them.

So the double envelopment was going to be our next major maneuver. Most of the orders would be oral, and there would be some hastily drawn boundaries (the Germans call all of this auftragstaktik, or mission-type orders — that is, orders that veteran units can handle and that our doctrine tells us to use). These would be all we would need. By now we were a veteran corps.

PLANNING AND FIGHTING

I turned my attention back to fighting VII Corps and to the next day.

We had to do three things almost simultaneously at the TAC: to press the current developing attack; set the next move in motion; and keep Riyadh informed. After the short meeting with the TAC staff and my phone call with the CINC, I huddled with G-3 Stan Cherrie for further details.

At the 9 February briefing in Riyadh, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had asked, "How will it all end?" Now — at least in our sector of attack — I could see an emerging opportunity to answer the Secretary's question. We now had a final plan to close off the RGFC and destroy them.

Here is what we figured at that point: The 1st CAV, our northern envelopment arm, would attack east and just to the north of the 1st AD toward Objective Raleigh, which was where we thought the Hammurabi Division was located. The British, our southern envelopment arm, would attack northeast from their current location near their Objective Waterloo to Objective Denver. The two arms would link up behind the surrounded Iraqi forces near or just to the north of the town of Safwan, which was itself just north of the Iraq-Kuwait border on Highway 8. In between these two divisions would be the pressure force — the 1st AD, 3rd AD, and 1st INF. They would all attack due east toward Objective Denver. Finally, I would have the 2nd ACR in reserve, possibly to attack south of the 1st INF and toward Denver, inside the British. Though the concept seemed to make sense on the surface, I knew the real challenge would be getting the 1st CAV fitted in north of the 1st AD.

At around 2000, Stan Cherrie communicated our concept to the main CP for some further planning, while we set about to examine quickly its overall feasibility. Though Third Army was already well aware of what we had planned by that time, John Landry sent the double-envelopment scheme of maneuver to Third Army as part of the midnight VII Corps official situation report. Thus the CENTCOM staff had that report to include in General Schwarzkopf's 27 February morning update, but whether the update included mention of the double envelopment — or if in fact he ever learned of it — I do not know.

At a little past midnight, the Third Army liaison, Colonel Dick Rock, reported to Third Army that we were planning a double envelopment. And at his 0615 report on 27 February, he added details on the identification of units and location of objectives.

REPORTS

By 2100 the main attack was well under way.

When the 2nd ACR attacked through the RGFC security zone into a brigade of the Tawalkana, the orientation of the Iraqi units was either west toward us, or else south and southeast, as though they still expected the attack to come north up Wadi al Batin. North of the 2nd ACR, the 3rd AD had also begun to hit more and more Iraqi units, and by late afternoon had hit what appeared to be another brigade of the Tawalkana. To their north, lead elements of the 1st AD had also hit Iraqi armored and mechanized units. Although we were still getting prisoners, most Iraqi units were in defensive positions and fighting back. So far it appeared that both the direction and power of our attack had them surprised. We had the Tawalkana Division fixed, and possibly the Medina, as well as elements of other Iraqi divisions that had been incorporated into their building defense. I wanted to keep it that way by continuing the attack all night and all the next day… and for as long as necessary to accomplish our mission. And I wanted to press the attack both close and deep in order to keep the Iraqis from getting set, and permitting them to better coordinate their artillery fires or to emplace minefields.

While all this was happening, the British had been highly successful. While protecting our advancing corps right flank, they had defeated the 52nd Iraqi Division and overrun the HQ of most of the defending Iraqi frontline infantry divisions.

Thus, by late afternoon of 26 February, we had three divisions and a cavalry regiment in direct contact with the enemy. North to south: 1st AD, 3rd AD, 2nd ACR, and 1 UK. The 1st INF Division had been moving since 0430, and would pass forward through the 2nd ACR later that evening to give us four divisions on line in a night attack.

By this time, with so many units engaged in combat, there were more events to report in the battle than time to report them. The best we could do for our higher HQ was to summarize our plans and the enemy actions. It was just not possible to attempt the sort of specific detailed reporting of the battle at the corps level that one would normally get at a lower echelon, such as a battalion or a brigade.

The reporting did have to get done, though, and there we were, beset with problems, none of them having to do with talent or motivation.

The biggest problem, ironically, was our success on the battlefield. At every level, commanders and soldiers were more focused on fighting their units than on reporting, and so the latter suffered. That's normal in heavy fighting, of course — it was the same in Vietnam — and in fact, the heavier the fight and the faster the pace, the greater the lag time, but still it was a problem.

Another one was the constant movement of the command posts. Reports are assembled in the CPs and passed on, and maps kept current — yet everyone's command posts kept moving. They'd be set up for a short time, then they'd be gone again.

To control the 1st AD movement and early contacts, Ron Griffith had set up what was essentially a rolling TAC CP — a group of vehicles directly behind the attacking brigades, and which almost constantly moved along with them (and thus equipped only with line-of-sight communications). Butch Funk did the same thing. Both Griffith and Funk moved about the battlefield either in ground vehicles or helicopters. Beginning with the night attack on the twenty-sixth Tom Rhame commanded his division in a tank near the front. Don Holder also was up front with a small command group of vehicles as his 2nd ACR TAC and TOC moved during the day. Though the main CP of the Big Red One began moving north through the breach, the division not only ran away from them, the main never again set up and functioned through the rest of the war. Their reports went to their TAC CP, which had only line-of-sight comms. Meanwhile, most of my commanders directed the fight by radio when they could, but very often, because there was so much coordination involved, they were out of their CPs and up front, commander to commander.

In short, with all of this moving about, the staff officers and NCOs charged with writing things down and reporting to higher HQ could catch only bits and fragments… and then only when they themselves were not moving. When the CPs displaced, the staffs missed the part of the fight that went on while they were in transit. If the fight develops fast, the staffs can miss a lot in a short time.

Even today, battle logs are handwritten accounts of unit activities taken down from what the transcriber hears on the radio. These transcribers are normally accurate, but you can't report what you don't hear. In addition, if a radio operator uses a headset, then the transcriber cannot eavesdrop on what the operator's hearing, and so pick up potentially useful information. Finally, there are no electronic recording devices in CPs; and the review and supervision of the transcriber is sometimes haphazard. In other words, it is not a good system and we should get it fixed — but it was the one we were using in Desert Storm.

By the evening of 26 February, my VII Corps main CP in Saudi Arabia was both far out of line-of-sight FM radio range (and thus unable to hear the reports of the fight over the corps FM command net) and far from the sounds and sights we were seeing and hearing ourselves. It was not their fault. I told the CP to stay there, because it was our nerve center, and to break it down, move it more than 100 kilometers, and set it up again would have taken longer than the whole four days of the war.

However, their immobility, combined with our mobility, didn't help the accuracy or timeliness of their reports on the current friendly situation.

The VII Corps SITREP that went to Third Army as of midnight 26 February from my main CP illustrates it:

"2nd ACR attacked in zone to fix elements of the Tawalkana Division. Regiment attacked covering forces of an armored BDE and destroyed enemy T-72s and BMPs vicinity PT4797." Phase Line Smash: "One tank and nine MTLBs were destroyed; 1,300 EPWs were captured. During attacks on 26 Feb, 2nd ACR fought one brigade of the Tawalkana Division and elements of two bde's of the 12 AD, the 46th and 50th Bde's."

Now, considering the circumstances, that is not a bad report, but it is far from complete and scarcely conveys the intensity of the fighting by the 2nd ACR during the Battle of 73 Easting.

In the same SITREP, the 1st AD was reported to have attacked one battalion of the Tawalkana and destroyed more than 30 tanks and 10 to 15 other vehicles, while the 3rd AD was reported to have run into stiff resistance along the 71 north/south grid line, destroyed numerous armored vehicles with direct and indirect fires, and captured 130 EPWs.

In fact, that day the 1st AD destroyed 112 tanks, 82 APCs, 2 artillery pieces, 94 trucks, 2 ADA systems, and captured another 545 EPWs, while the 3rd AD "experienced its heaviest contact of the war and effectively fought both close and deep operations simultaneously. 1st and 2nd Bde engaged forces of the Tawalkana Division along the FLOT, while 2-227 the attack helicopter Bn (AH-64), and 2/6 Cavalry (AH-64), supported by Air Force stealth fighters (F-117A) and A-10s, engaged forces approximately 10–15 kilometers further east." Extracts of their battle logs (some of this was reconstructed at AARs from a number of unit battle logs) showed:

What these reports indicate is that 3rd AD battles were continuous all day both close and deep. By 2400 they had destroyed upwards of at least two battalions of Iraqi tanks (more than 100 tanks) and other vehicles, and in so doing had cracked the middle of the Tawalkana defense. Their combat was continuous throughout the twenty-sixth into the night and early-morning hours of the twenty-seventh. I knew most of this personally because I often visited with Butch Funk and saw it with my own eyes.

Yet little of the intensity of these and other battles was getting reported to Third Army or CENTCOM. For instance, as the above actions were happening, Colonel Kendall at Third Army reported (accurately reflecting what was known in Riyadh), "At the 1700 hours operational update [26 February], Yeosock announced that the mission was to gain and maintain contact with the RGFC and for the G-3 to ensure that the CENTCOM briefers stressed that ARCENT was still conducting a movement to contact… and preparing for a coordinated attack. Just before he departed for the CINC's 1900 hours update, Yeosock talked with General Franks for a situation update. Franks reported that the corps would be moving and fighting all night but that enemy units and logistics bases were being bypassed. He did not know if the 1st Cavalry Division would arrive in time for the battle." We definitely were not in a movement to contact at that time. We were in a series of continuous hasty attacks. From all I have read since the war, it seems that the impression in Riyadh was that the RGFC battle would really start on the twenty-seventh — but in fact we had been in the RGFC attack since noon on the twenty-fifth, and especially since about 0900 on the twenty-sixth, as 3rd AD and 1st AD came on line and I pushed 2nd ACR east.

I did make a short phone call to John Yeosock to give him an accurate description of our maneuvers and to inform him that we were in contact with the RGFC, but I did not go into details about the fighting or the enemy destroyed (I didn't know many of them myself at the time). For that reason, and because other reports were so incomplete at that time, neither CENTCOM nor the Third Army staffs who posted the maps and made up the 1900 briefing for General Schwarzkopf had any details of the 2nd ACR actions at 73 Easting, or of the 1st AD, the 3rd AD, and British actions. Since General Schwarzkopf never called me directly or came out to see for himself, he did not have a complete picture of the VII Corps situation.

I was not to find out how flawed that picture was until much later.

VII CORPS ATTACK

Once I had completed the forecasting and had put the next day's operation into motion, I turned my attention back to our current attack.

You always plan ahead to maintain tempo, but you also have to adjust your forecasted plan — depending on how your current operation works out — so that you can meld the two together and continue relatively smoothly. The two are never a perfect fit. This would be no exception.

Three things were on my mind about the current attack:

First, I wanted to maintain its momentum, yet I also wanted all my commanders to be aware of the rising risk of fratricide as we maneuvered three U.S. armored divisions abreast to conduct a night attack. I had seen and talked to all the commanders and was confident they would use whatever tactics they thought necessary in their sector. Ron Griffith chose to put all three brigades on line and simultaneously attack both close and deep. Butch Funk, while attacking close and deep at the same time, had two brigades forward and one back, then passed his third brigade forward through a leading brigade to sustain his momentum. Tom Rhame attacked through the 2nd ACR with two brigades forward and one back. Though we monitored the direction of attack of each of the units at the TAC, the units themselves had to make the flank coordination necessary to ensure that no unit strayed or fired across boundaries. It was an enormous task, and it was carried out with the greatest skill and discipline. Although all the commanders made adjustments on their own initiative to ensure that we avoided fratricide, they would not all be successful.

Second, I wanted to pass the 1st INF through the 2nd ACR. The 2nd ACR was skillful in these maneuvers and would take steps to ensure a clean handoff. Their coordination with the 1st INF, and the 1st INF's execution of the maneuver, would be flat well done and a tribute to them all. It was only later that I learned of the initiative at all levels in both units that had made it happen.

The third thing on my mind was our aviation deep attack. I thought there was a good chance we would need two that night. To give us time for them, the first was scheduled to go at 2100, which would make for some complications, since they would be flying out over the 2nd ACR and then returning over the 1st INF. To simplify, we could have waited until the passage of the two units was complete, but that would have eliminated the chance to attack again if it was necessary. It was a risk, but it was a risk worth taking.

The FSCL got in the way of our deep attack — it had been drawn just east of the aviation attack objective of Minden. My air coordination cell informed me F-111s would be attacking the escaping Iraqi forces to the east of the FSCL and along Highway 8. It would have resulted in more damage to Iraqi forces, and fewer Iraqi forces would ultimately have escaped, if we could have adjusted the FSCL, changed that air tasking to move the F-111s to another target, and attacked along Highway 8 with our own Apaches. But making those changes was not possible in the time we had.

By now VII Corps had been attacking for a little more than fifty hours without pause. We had gone about 150 kilometers and our attack was about twenty-four hours ahead of all the prewar projections of movement. Third Army's estimate had had us ready to attack the RGFC at H+74 hours. We were well ahead of that.

DEEP ATTACK

What every commander of an attacking corps tries to do is to fight both close and deep at the same time. The effect is to hit the enemy simultaneously throughout the depths of his formations. His deep forces do not have time to set up a coherent defense to await your fast-closing direct-fire tank and infantry forces. This destroys him physically. These attacks give him so many problems to deal with simultaneously that he cannot handle them. This destroys him mentally as well. The result of this dual breakdown is that his defense starts to lose coherence. Soon you have a disorganized enemy, fixed in position, fighting you in small units without any overall tied-together plan. We were beginning to achieve this effect on the Iraqis on the night of 26 February.

Because the 2nd ACR had found the southern flank of the Tawalkana's three-brigade defense, I thought that if we hit them close at Objective Norfolk and deep at Objective Minden, then we might crack their defense and also prevent more Iraqi troops from escaping from Kuwait.

We assigned the mission to the 11th Aviation Brigade, commanded by Colonel Johnnie Hitt. They had two Apache battalions, 2-229 and 2–6, as well as a lift company of UH-1s and a CH-47[44] company. Johnnie chose 2- 229, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Roger McCauley, for the mission.

They were to take off from their current location, which was about fifty kilometers behind where we were then fighting, fly over the 2nd ACR, then forward of the line of contact to Objective Minden. Minden was about eighty kilometers deep (or east) from Norfolk, and it was at Minden that we thought the Iraqis had their defense set in depth (Objective Minden was about twenty kilometers in diameter and only imprecisely drawn, based on our best estimate of where Iraqi forces were). Before the attack, McCauley and Lieutenant Colonel Terry Johnson, the 11th Brigade deputy commander, came forward to see me and coordinate personally. Because of the risks of blue on blue, and also because of the passage of 2nd ACR and 1st INF, over which they'd be flying, I told them both to be damn sure they had nailed down their coordination with both units. And stay west of the 20 north/south grid line, Stan Cherrie added. Since that was the current FSCL, east of it was under the control of CENTAF in Riyadh, and F-111s would be attacking targets there. Both of us wished them good luck.

They left at 2100, then had to divert around a tank battle in the vicinity of Objective Norfolk. They arrived in the target area with three companies of six Apaches each, and found some Iraqis attempting to set a defense, but other units generally moving south to north, apparently trying to escape. It was what they called a target-rich environment, and they hit it hard. They also got return fire from the Iraqis, mostly small arms. For the better part of an hour, they stayed in the target area with their three companies; the spacing of the Apaches varied, but they tried for about 150 meters. Each Apache carried eight Hellfire missiles, and each was constantly firing and destroying Iraqi tanks, infantry carriers, trucks, and air defense vehicles. They let go any Iraqis escaping on foot (after the war, they showed me the gun camera films).

When the attacking battalion returned at 2300, they brought news that caused me some concern. Though they reported that numerous vehicles were destroyed, they also noticed that, further east, Iraqi units continued to move north up Highway 8 from Kuwait City to Basra. They requested to attack at about midnight farther east beyond the FSCL.

That was a tough decision. I wanted to go east all the way to Highway 8. Our Apaches had much more staying power in an engagement area, especially at night, than the fixed-wing air, which would drop a single bomb per pass over the target and then have to leave the target area. My main CP had strongly recommended that we send the second strike east, but when I asked them to try to get it coordinated with Third Army and CENTAF by moving the FSCL east and letting us have Highway 8, the answer was that we couldn't get it done in time. Since none of the decision makers in Riyadh was available at that hour, to request it, and then get it approved and disseminated, would have taken all night and we'd be out of the night attack window.

I could have chosen to go anyway to ignore the boundary, go east, and take the risk that there would be no interference or fratricide from the F-111s attacking Highway 8, or hope that we could tie it together with them on the fly. However, to deliberately cross a boundary and get some of your troops killed by fratricide is a grievous breach of discipline, and in my judgment is cause for disciplinary action. In battle you just cannot have local commanders deciding when or when not to obey boundary restrictions. Another alternative was to try to reach the airborne command-and-control aircraft, and coordinate locally, but it was not clear to me there was one.

Complicating all this was the time and distance between the CPs. We were in the middle of the corps sector at the TAC CP. My deep-attacking planning cell was at the main CP, almost 200 kilometers away. The attack helicopter battalion was 100 kilometers from the main and a good 80 from us. Riyadh was a good 800 kilometers away, or farther than the distance from London to Paris. All of our discussion was over the phone, and it wasn't a conference line, on which everyone could be talking at once, and thus preclude misunderstanding. The people were tired — not the least the aviators. And this time, as they flew forward, they would be passing over the 1st INF Division, which meant that they'd have to coordinate with a different unit in the middle of the night. My gut told me to do it. My head said no. It was not a risk, it was a gamble. If it did not work out, and we had some serious fratricide, then we would never recover from it, and it would be a major distraction from our final attack against the RGFC for the rest of the night and all the next day and the next night.

Besides, if there were that many Iraqis on Highway 8, surely J-STARS or the F-111s also would notice it, and send out some fixed-wing air.

I ordered our Apaches to go back to Minden and as far east as they could, and at 0200 they went back with two companies, A and C, and destroyed more Iraqi vehicles.

Total BDA reported from both attacks was: 53 tanks, 19 APCs, 16 MTLBs, 1 ATC (air-traffic control) tower, 1 ammunition carrier, 1 bunker, and 40 enemy KIA. (I trusted their BDA, since they could see the Hellfires impacting on the vehicles. Once a Hellfire hit something, it was gone.) They had broken the back and the spirit of the Iraqi 10th Armored Division and prevented them from reinforcing the forming RGFC defense. Afterward, many of the 10th Armored abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot. We would destroy their equipment later.

It was an enormously powerful application of the battle-fighting doctrine we had written so long ago — and were now executing in war for the first time.

THE ZONE

At this point late at night, with the sounds of battle close by, my emotions were running high. I wanted to pour it on the Iraqis, just pound them in an unrelenting attack with everything we had. We had the fist where we wanted it and wanted to drive it home. Go for the knockout. Boom. In sports, they call it the killer instinct. I had been in these situations before in Vietnam, only with much smaller units and with much less combat power and fewer complex organizations to maneuver.

I was not alone in these feelings. You could sense the same thing all over the corps. I had already seen it in training, in chats and visits with the soldiers and leaders — seen it in their eyes. Now I was seeing it in combat. It was in the 2nd ACR at 73 Easting. It was in the Apaches' deep strike that night. It was in the Big Red One during their night attack through Objective Norfolk. Later, it was in 1st AD's battles at Medina Ridge and in 3rd AD's battles at Phase Line Bullet. It was in all the cavalry squadrons out front or on the flanks of their divisions. Get the job done. The Army calls it the "warrior spirit," but it is more than that. It's about being a warrior, yes, but also a soldier, which means the disciplined application of force, according to the laws of land warfare and our own values as a people. It goes beyond being a warrior.

And so, as warriors and soldiers, we all experienced this go-for-it-and-win feeling. It was nothing personal. But if they wanted a fight, they had come to the right place. There was no holding back.

These intense feelings heightened senses to a new level. They put you in a zone. I cannot explain it, but I have never been so aware of sights and sounds as I have been in combat. You can just sense things you could not before. Maybe it is a function of the physical danger to those for whom you are most responsible, like a parent in a crisis situation with his family. You just know and do things that seem right at the time. You reach into the depths of your memory and recall things from your training, education, study, and experience that were not available to you before. You make patterns out of scraps and pieces of information that you could not make before. Later, when people ask why you did do such-and-so, you answer, "It felt right at the time." There is an uncanny sharp intellectual focus that allows your brain to process information, accept some, reject some, form conclusions, decide, not decide, all in nanoseconds. Napoleon said it was the result of "meditation," of enormous and continuing concentration on an area, off it, then back to it — and then things just appear to you. A certain calmness comes as well, it is all suspended in front of you in your head, the knowledge of what to activate and what not to. You can see it all in your mind's eye. Things go into slow motion; moments seem to last longer than they actually do.

All of these experiences have happened to me in battle, and I have never been able to replicate them anywhere else. I especially felt them when I was out and around the soldiers, sensing their pride and pain. Even though I was not out there in the middle of it, I was close enough and I knew what the soldiers were feeling, because I had been there myself, had been shot at and hit and missed many times. I could feel it all — the emotions, the highs and lows of command and combat.

REFLECTIONS

That night was the most intense of the war, with the most concurrent activities… for me as the VII Corps commander… for the soldiers in the tanks and Bradleys… for the small-unit commanders trying to maintain order in their attack east in the dark… for my brigade and division commanders. The largest corps tank force in the history of the U.S. Army was on the attack. There was no time to stop or for summary briefings. I just listened and absorbed it all and used my imagination to picture the battle in my mind's eye.

We had the 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions side by side in contact with the Iraqis on about a seventy-kilometer front, with five brigades attacking, or about 500 tanks and 300 Bradleys. These were supported by twelve battalions of cannon and rocket artillery (close to 300 systems). Coming on line with them on about a thirty-kilometer front in the south was the 1st INF passing through the 2nd ACR. They would attack forward with two tank heavy brigades — or about 230 tanks and more than 100 Bradleys. To their south, the British were attacking with their two brigades, numbering almost 150 tanks and a similar number of Warriors. In all we had literally nine tank heavy brigades on line in a night attack against the Iraqis, plus the Apache attack deep into Minden.

At one point, the noise was so great I thought there was a thunderstorm, grew concerned about the Apaches, and stepped outside the TAC. It was no thunderstorm. It was a JAYHAWK storm of firepower crashing down on the Iraqis. The sky was lit up by tracers big and small, and by the sparkle effect given by the MLRS as they fired off on the ground onto Iraqi positions. The air was filled with the constant roar of exploding artillery and the thump of tank and Bradley cannons. The ground vibrated. It was awesome.

All the while, like all my commanders that night, I had to make quick decisions about this current battle even as I continued to think about the next day's fight. Should we pass the 1st INF at night? Yes. Should we conduct a deep attack with the Apaches? Yes. Should we do a second attack on Minden? Yes. Should we go beyond the FSCL in that second attack to Highway 8? No. There were reports of fire across boundaries and fratricide. Time to call 1st AD and 3rd AD commanders and order them to get their flank coordinated so that it would stop.

Then came the plans for the next battle. If I wanted to maintain the tempo of the attack, I had to issue orders soon, before the current fight was finished. So we drew up the double envelopment, our tentative maneuver scheme for the next day.

Time to give John Yeosock a word picture of what was going on, and to request more maneuver room for the British, and also in the north between us and XVIII Corps (Stan Cherrie had asked for another ten kilometers of space to the north of our sector to ease fitting the 1st CAV into our attack east; he was turned down). Watch the open flank of the 1st AD in the north. Track the progress of the 1st CAV to Lee, then tell them to go to Horse. Figure where to displace the TAC in the morning.

I was enormously proud of the soldiers and leaders in the small-unit actions all over the corps. I knew it was not easy. I had been in battle at night, but never like this, not on this scale, not with almost 1,000 tanks, not with nine brigades on line.

After the Big Red One had reported successful passage of lines through the 2nd ACR and the Apaches had returned safely, and after I decided on another attack on Minden, I decided to get some rest — something the soldiers in battle would not get that night.

It was difficult to leave the TAC. I knew we were in the largest corps night attack since World War II, and maybe ever. Before the night was finished, there would be acts of unbelievable heroism by VII Corps soldiers and moments of sheer terror, as units fought their way through Iraqi forces trying both to defend and to get out of the way. Commanders would be tense as they maneuvered their formations to keep them oriented on the enemy and to avoid blue-on-blue, and as they brought their awesome firepower against the Iraqis. Our attack helicopters would range deep, and that would require steady nerves and coordination. A-10s flying night CAS missions would do their best to help, even with their limited night-vision capability.

The Iraqis would try to cope. They'd crank their turrets by hand to keep the tanks cool and thus invisible to the M1A1 night sights. They'd allow attacking U.S. units to pass through, then fire on them from behind creating 360-degree fights, and trying to hit U.S. tanks in their rear grille doors. Some dismounted Iraqi infantry would even try to climb onto U.S. tanks.

Some of our soldiers would be wounded that night.

Some would not see another day.

I knew all that, and felt I should remain awake while it was going on, but the truth was that it was no longer in my hands. The orders had been given, and now it was up to the major unit commanders and their subordinate commanders and the soldiers to execute them. I had made the decision to commit them. All I could do at this point was trust in their leadership, courage, and skill. All were in abundance that night.

I was more convinced than ever that time was running out. At one point, I said to Toby: "I'll bet there will be a cease-fire soon." How soon, I did not know.

The length of a limited-objective conflict is influenced by a lot of factors, most of which I was not privy to as a corps commander. In all of the Arab-Israeli wars, for instance, last-minute tactical actions were undertaken in order to gain ground or positions that could be used to one side's advantage in talks after the war, and stalling allowed eleventh-hour maneuvers.

When the opening shots are fired, the hourglass is turned over. How fast the sand runs from top to bottom is influenced by many factors, and the two chief factors here, at least that I was aware of, were, on the one side, Iraqi resistance, and on the other, our own objectives. On the night of 26–27 February, the Iraqis were still fighting in some coherent defense, and they were capable of brigade and even division-sized actions. Yet I was also aware that their units were beginning to become intermingled, a sure sign that their cohesion was breaking down. We were taking prisoners, but they were not giving up without a fight, as some of their frontline units had done. Some equipment was later found abandoned, but that was because the Iraqis thought they were getting hit from the air (they could not see some of our tanks firing at extended ranges); when attacked from the air, their drill was to abandon their equipment and get in their bunkers.

How much longer would they be able to fight back? I thought another twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Meanwhile, we still had not come in ground contact with either the Medina or Hammurabi Divisions, which meant we definitely had some fighting left.

But the results would be similar. We clearly had the initiative and the firepower. The battles so far had been one-sided, and more one-sided battles would follow. So it was then a matter of how long and at what cost to our troops.

In prewar estimates, I had figured two days to get to the RGFC, four days to destroy them, and two days to consolidate. In fact, we had actually gotten to the RGFC security zone less than twenty-four hours after the launch of our attack — the 2nd ACR action at noon on the twenty-fifth against the 50th Brigade of the 12th Armored Division along Phase Line Smash. And less than twenty-four hours later, on the morning of the twenty-sixth, the 2nd ACR had hit the early defense lines of the Tawalkana. Then 73 Easting had come only a few hours after that, about 150 kilometers from where we had first attacked at 1500 on the twenty-fourth.

At midafternoon, the 3rd AD had begun a major attack against the 29th Brigade and elements of the 9th Brigade of the Tawalkana at what they would call the Battle of Phase Line Bullet (just east of Phase Line Smash).

After they overran the logistics site and HQ of the Iraqi VII Corps at al-Busayyah, the 1st AD turned east and began their attack on other elements of the northern brigade of the Tawalkana, the 29th, and the brigade of the Adnan Division sent south to assist the Tawalkana. The 1st AD also would send their Apaches deep three times to attack repositioning elements of the Medina Division.

Midnight was fifty-seven hours after we had begun at 1500 on the twenty-fourth.

I did not know we had only another thirty-two hours. Neither did anyone else at that point.

So while it was difficult to go rest while the soldiers were still fighting out there, I knew I had to. "Don't worry, General, we trust you." Well, had I fulfilled that trust? To that point I thought I had, but there was more to do. We had to bring this to an end. The troops did not need a tired, fuzzy-thinking corps commander the next day when we made our final move. Toby was right. The best thing I could do was get some rest.

I asked Stan to wake me if anything came up, and went to get a few hours' sleep. I think it was sometime past 0100, probably close to 0200. The TAC was still humming and radios were crackling with battle reports. Most of my TAC crew were still at it.

0400 VII CORPS TAC CP

It was still dark when I awoke, but by now the sounds of battle to the east had passed us by. Coffee was welcome. You learn to wake up fast in combat — your brain and senses turn up to maximum right away; maybe they never completely turn off.

Time to change stump socks: the last thing I needed was a blister on my stump. It had held up well, though. My enlisted aide, Sergeant First Class Lance Singson,[45] had gotten me spare cuff straps in case I needed them, and had brought a spare leg. I never used either, but I was glad to have them. As a student at the National War College, I had broken my leg while running on the streets of Fort McNair doing physical training, and done the same thing later as a member of the J-7 Joint Staff — both times landing as though I'd been cut down by a cornerback on a Saturday afternoon. So a spare leg was good to have. By this time the chemical suits were getting nasty. Though we had had no reports of chemical use by the Iraqis, and had not discovered any chemical munitions, we all had been wearing the suits and sleeping in them for almost three days. The charcoal was coming through and getting all over everything.

UPDATE: FRATRICIDE

On this night, we would have the greatest numbers of blue firing on blue.

It is a fact of war, present in every war we have fought. Who does not remember Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville in 1863? The Army chief of ground forces, General Leslie McNair, was killed by blue-on-blue in Normandy in 1944. We certainly had it in Vietnam. In our unit one day, an error with 81-mm mortars brought fire directly onto a unit that had requested fire on the enemy.

The fact of it, though, should not diminish our urgency to eliminate it in the future, however slim the chances. How do we do that? By training the troops, by giving them knowledge of the situations where the probabilities of fratricide are higher, and by simple increased awareness. At the same time, we must not so alarm our troops or leaders that they will become tentative in battle; that would make matters even worse.

In Desert Storm, we tried a few more specialized preventive measures. Some worked better than others. None was foolproof:

Our troops were well trained in identifying enemy equipment, but at ranges in excess of 2,000 meters on a night-vision sight, all you see is a hot spot about the size of one of the letters in this word.

To provide better identification for our vehicles, we tried uniform theater combat markings (which, unfortunately, could be seen only in daytime). And at the last minute, we also got so-called glint tape, which was supposed to be visible through night-vision devices. It did not work. For identification by our own air, we had standard air-ground issue marking panels, but these were not visible from 10,000 feet, where most of our fixed-wing air flew. We tried it by sending Apaches to 10,000 feet; even with optics that were better than the Air Force's, they could not tell friend from foe.

So we did what soldiers and leaders have always done. We relied on discipline, and looked at the risks to various types of tactics in various types of weather, and adjusted accordingly.

In the end, despite all the possibilities for blue-on-blue as the armored formations attacked in close proximity to one another, countless stories emerged about how combat discipline prevented it. Our soldiers and leaders were extraordinarily restrained, and in fact at times that led to severe command tensions in the heat of battle. On many occasions, our troops gave up their range advantage over the Iraqis and closed to ranges where it was possible to make positive ID, even though they were in greater danger from more accurate Iraqi fire. I have already mentioned cases in which units passed Iraqi units, which would then fire on them from behind. When our own units fired back, they occasionally caused inadvertent hits on our own vehicles behind the Iraqis. An enemy force between two friendly units posed similar problems: if one of the friendly units fired and missed, the shot could easily impact on the other friendly unit (that actually happened on the morning of 28 February). Similarly, on the flat desert, rounds traveling at close to a mile a second could easily cross unit boundaries. Finally, if you look through a so-called night sight, it is virtually impossible to tell whether you are seeing an enemy firing at you or a friendly vehicle being hit by enemy fire. We expected our gunners to make that life-or-death judgment in nanoseconds.

In VII Corps during Desert Storm, of the forty-six U.S. soldiers KIA, ten were classified as killed by our own fire. Of the sixteen British KIA, nine were blue-on-blue — the A-10 attack on the Warrior. Other deaths were listed as probable or possible, as they occurred during simultaneous friendly fire and enemy fire, where it was not possible to determine the cause of death. Still, we did our best to find out. A team from AMC (Army Material Command) checked our hit vehicles for uranium residue — a telltale sign that it was from our fire, since the Iraqis did not have that type of ammunition. That team personally briefed me and our commanders.

In every case where there was suspected blue-on-blue in VII Corps, I ordered an investigation. I wanted it done for three reasons: so that commanders could make the proper classification of combat death; so that family members would know what had happened; and finally, so that commanders could make a judgment about how it had happened and whether there was justification for punitive action. We were not directed to do this by higher HQ. I just thought it was the right thing to do.

The results of these investigations were all reviewed personally by major unit commanders, by me personally, and by Colonel Walt Huffman, my staff judge advocate, for legal correctness, then they were forwarded to Third Army. It was not until April 1991 (before we left Iraq) that we finished these reviews and forwarded the results. It should not have taken so long to release the information and to tell the next of kin.

None of these thoughts is offered as an excuse, nor are they probably of much comfort to the next of kin. These soldiers died doing what they were ordered to do against an enemy on a battlefield. It does not diminish their status as heroes and soldiers that they died from our own fire or our own munitions. I regret every one of these deaths, just as I regret all the deaths in the corps from every cause.

ACTIONS

During the night of 26–27 February, our attack had gone about forty to sixty kilometers into the Iraqi defense.

BRITISH. The 1st UK had secured Objective Waterloo, and as I had ordered, they were prepared to attack to the northeast behind the Iraqis in front of 1st INF to Objective Denver. They had been impressive in their relentless day-and-night attacks. Since 1200 on 25 February, when they attacked east out of the breach, they had broken the back of Iraqi frontline divisions, primarily by cutting off their heads in the rear; that is, by capturing generals and other senior officers of the Iraqi division leadership who had stayed to fight with their troops. They also had defeated the tactical reserve and prevented Iraqi forces from joining the defense farther north or from interfering with our constant stream of fuel trucks making their way north. I knew I had a decision with the British early that morning. Should I order them north or not? Before I made that decision, I wanted to check the progress of the 1st INF.

1ST INF. The Big Red One had begun passage of lines through the 2nd ACR at about 2200 and finished at 0200. Tom Rhame, Don Holder, and their leaders had done a magnificent job in pulling this off. Eight thousand vehicles of the 1st INF had had to pass through the two thousand of the CAV, and then into battle a few kilometers farther on. The 2nd ACR had established a battle hand-over line and a series of passage points that would let the 1st INF pass through, then give them at least two kilometers before contact with the Iraqis. Lieutenant Colonel Steve Robinette, with Don Holder's approval, had ordered the regiment back that distance earlier in the evening in order to give them that space.

As for the 1st INF: At first Tom Rhame had wanted to pass his first brigade through Don's northern squadron (2nd) and his third brigade through the regiment's southern squadron (1st). This would have allowed Rhame to conduct an envelopment move, with those two brigades attacking the Iraqi defense from the south and north, while leaving the 2nd ACR to keep pressure on the middle. But Don did not like that, as it would leave his middle squadron (3rd) to support by fire, and would thus put that squadron in a possible blue-on-blue situation, where it would be firing into Rhame's two brigades. With so little time to plan, Tom decided that the maneuver was not worth the risk, and he changed to a straight forward passage through all three squadrons on a thirty-kilometer front.

In the north, 1st INF had its 1st Brigade, commanded by Colonel Lon "Bert" Maggart; and in the south, they had the 3rd Brigade, commanded by Colonel Dave Weisman; while the 2nd Brigade, commanded by Colonel Tony Moreno, was then in reserve. Because both 1st and 3rd Brigades had two tank battalions each, plus a Bradley battalion, Tom wanted his tank heavy forces forward. This would put the 1st INF into the fight with 232 tanks in the same thirty-kilometer-wide sector where the 2nd ACR had 123.

Although elements would continue to pass through all night, the passage was almost complete by midnight, and the 1st INF reported it was all clear of the 2nd ACR at 0200. Meanwhile, I had removed the 210th Artillery Brigade (two battalions of 155-mm howitzers and one MLRS battalion) from the 2nd ACR, and used them to reinforce the 1st INF as they passed through (and thereafter until the cease-fire). I also had ordered the 2/1 AH- 64 battalion back to their parent 1st AD early on the morning of the twenty-seventh to rejoin them for their main attack in the north.

Let me offer an aside here: One of the ways you influence the outcome of battles and engagements is by weighting the main effort. For a corps commander, the most reusable combat assets are aviation and artillery. Less reusable are ground-maneuver units. These take longer to get from one place to another, and once the battle is joined, they tend to get engaged in actions from which they can't easily be extricated. That's not so with aviation and artillery. So for 2nd ACR's covering force, I had placed an AH-64 battalion with eighteen Apaches from 1st AD, and from corps artillery, a field artillery brigade with two cannon battalions of twenty-four guns each and an MLRS battalion of eighteen launchers. When that 2nd ACR mission was complete, I removed these units from the regiment and put them in the main attack. Likewise, because I thought that Butch needed the combat power in his main attack in the center, I had directed that a battalion of the corps 11th Aviation Brigade, 2/6 CAV, go early on the morning of the twenty-seventh to the 3rd AD. Butch's second attack battalion had been removed in August 1990, when U.S. Army Europe had sent an aviation brigade to support XVIII Corps early on in Desert Shield, and they had never been returned. Likewise, after the breach mission and the shifting of the corps main effort to the enveloping force, I had cut the 42nd and 75th Artillery Brigades from the 1st INF to the 3rd AD and 1st AD respectively. These changes required physical moves and coordination in order to get the radio frequencies set, the maps posted with current situations, the mission orders done, and logistics support arranged. It all took time — but it took less time with aviation and artillery units.

By BMNT, the Big Red One had seized Norfolk (an objective we had placed about thirty kilometers east of Phase Line Smash; we'd anticipated Iraqi second-echelon forces to be located there) and were pressing toward Highway 8, some eighty kilometers east of where they had begun their attack just before midnight.

By now, we had approximate numbers of enemy losses and of our own soldiers killed and wounded. From this, I knew it must have been a hell of a fight, and so was determined to go visit the division right away that morning. Later, I talked to soldiers and commanders of the Division's 1st and 3rd Brigades, and attended a memorial service for the four soldiers killed in action in 1/41 Infantry in 3rd Brigade and heard the details.

Here are some of the specifics of that series of night battles of the 1st INF toward Norfolk:

Colonel Bert Maggart[46] describes the early scenes this way: "The passage into enemy-held territory was an eerie, almost surreal experience. The night sky was filled with catastrophic explosions, the likes of which I had never seen before. Even the destruction of four T-55 tanks during the breach [on 24–25 February] was nothing compared to the sight that joined our eyes during the transition from friendly to enemy ground. Horrible fires roared from the turrets of Iraqi tanks, with flames shooting high into the night air. At the exact point of passage through the 2nd ACR in the TF 2/3 4 zone, a T-72 tank that the regiment had destroyed earlier that evening still burned brightly, filling the air with the pungent smell of burning oil, rubber, and flesh."

On 1 March 1991, in a personal talk with Lieutenant Colonel Pat Ritter, commander of TF 1/3 4 Armor, Pat told me of a close-in action in which Iraqi infantry had climbed onto his tank, only to be shot off by one of his company commanders' tanks.

Soldiers in 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Greg Fontenot,[47] referred to the night attack as "Fright Night." If that's what they called it, I can't imagine what the Iraqis called it. Greg Fontenot later wrote of his battalion's experience that night: "As Charlie" — Team C—"and Delta passed the command group closing on Bravo's left rear, they encountered infantrymen in spider holes who wanted to fight… At one point, Burns crawled all over his infantry platoon leader for firing on C-66 [Burns's tank] with a Bushmaster [the 25-mm cannon on Bradleys]. The platoon leader calmly replied that he was killing enemy infantry, a fact to which I can attest… In the first hour [about 0130 to 0230], the task force destroyed thirty-five armored vehicles, ten trucks, an unknown number of dismounted infantrymen, and captured nearly one hundred Iraqi troops." The Iraqis did fight back, and Fontenot went on to describe the effect of Iraqi artillery and direct-fire rounds.

Newly commissioned in 1990 out of Southern University, Second Lieutenant Chuck Parker was a tank platoon leader in Company B, 2/3 4 Armor. He remembers his main task that night as keeping his platoon fixed on the enemy and avoiding blue-on-blue fires. In order to keep his platoon aligned and hammering away at enemy targets, he kept his head out of the turret and used handheld night-vision goggles (NVGs). Without his NVGs, he could not see beyond his tank. Tracers from firing were visible, however, causing alternately bright flashes and darkness, and occasionally washing out his NVGs. The sounds of tank cannon and artillery fire were almost constant. For Lieutenant Parker, the time he and his unit had spent meeting the tough crew and platoon tank-gunnery standards at Fort Riley was well spent. That night they destroyed many Iraqi tanks and other combat vehicles on their way to Norfolk, while in the entire eighty-nine hours of the attack, his platoon did not have a soldier killed or wounded. As part of Company B, they had led the breach force on 24 February with mine-clearing blades on the front of their M1A1s. (The soldiers of Parker's platoon remain close and stay in touch with one another.)

Over on the right in 3rd Brigade (actually 2nd Armored Division Forward, out of Garlstedt in north Germany, sent as the third brigade of the 1st INF), commanded by Colonel Dave Weisman, the engagements and actions were similar.

"The biggest problem was keeping battalions in line, making sure we didn't shoot each other," says Weisman, who was in an M113 behind 2/66 Armor.[48] And Lieutenant Colonel Jim Hillman, commander of TF 1/41 Infantry, said, "… we found ourselves in a 360-degree fight, and that was the hardest part of this whole thing… We were in amongst them [and] spent the rest of the night clearing them, either capturing or killing soldiers in those bunkers."

"We had thermal sights, but unheated targets," said Lieutenant Colonel John Brown, who commanded 2nd Battalion, 66th Armor, that night, referring to the Iraqi practice of leaving tank engines turned off to make them invisible to our NVGs, while "the Iraqis had daylight sights, but unilluminated targets. Neither of us could particularly see each other." He continued, "We were 'coaxing' [shooting with the M1A1's machine gun] guys running between tanks, running between our tanks and bunkers, as we were moving through. It was really hairy. There were rounds flying all over the place."

Hillman added, "There were burning hulks going up like flares, infantry trying to surrender, infantry trying to hide, infantry trying to fight, infantry getting up on tracked vehicles, either to attack or try to surrender."

Lieutenant Colonel Taylor Jones's 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor, attacked through three Iraqi tank companies, about a battalion in strength. "It just seemed like there was target after target after target," said Captain Tim Ryan, who commanded Company D.

There were casualties and there were heroes and extraordinary courage under fire.

On this night, Command Sergeant Major Conway of 2/66 Armor would crawl up on an Iraqi T-55 tank and drop a grenade in the turret. He was blown off the tank as the tank exploded (he survived). He also led a four-man team to go after an Iraqi RPG team that was threatening the fuel trucks following the attack. Later, Brown's gunner, Staff Sergeant Matthew Sheets, spotted Iraqi RPG teams getting in position to shoot into the rear of advancing 2/66 tanks. "I'm convinced that Sheets saved six tanks," Brown says, "since he killed six Iraqi RPG teams."

In another part of the battle, Captain Lee Wilson was commanding Company B, 1/41 Infantry. While his company was moving to link up with a forward unit, the company, and Wilson's own Bradley, came under intense Iraqi RPG and machine-gun fire. U.S. tanks, seeing the battle behind them, fired into the formation. (Through a night sight, remember, RPGs hitting a friendly vehicle look almost like an enemy vehicle firing at you.) Wilson's Bradley was hit, and he was thrown from the Bradley (he survived). Sergeant Joe Dienstag, the Bradley gunner, who was seated next to Wilson in the turret, was untouched. Private First Class Dennis Skaggs, the driver, whose hands were too numb from the blast to operate the controls that let the ramp down in the back so that the troops could get out, grabbed a sledgehammer and got the ramp open. The troops poured out as the back of the Bradley filled with smoke. Skaggs, a combat lifesaver,[49] and Dienstag pulled out wounded soldiers, and Skaggs immediately began intravenous fluids and pressure bandages. ("This kid was phenomenal," Wilson later said of Skaggs.) The battle continued, with Iraqi small-arms fire all around. Burning vehicles were visible, and you could hear tank and Bradley cannon fire.

For the 3rd Brigade, it was a swirling fight with Iraqi tank and infantry forces that night.

One U.S. Bradley platoon had four soldiers KIA and eighteen wounded. For the entire division, there were six U.S. soldiers KIA that night, and thirty wounded, for VII Corps the largest concentration of casualties in the shortest time in the war.

I constantly bristle at misrepresentations that all the fighting was done at 2,500 meters, or that it looked like the pictures on TV of laser-guided bombs hitting targets from the air. The ground combat was physically tough, often at night or in weather affecting visibility, and at distances measured in a few meters rather than kilometers.

Perhaps, Sfc Jim Sedgwick, a platoon sergeant in 1/41 Infantry, said it best: "We almost lost a platoon, and out of a company element, that's an awful lot of people… Friendly fire, unfriendly, that's not the point. What they did that night was, they took care of their people. They did the best they could in an extraordinary situation. They had a lot of genuine heroes that night. A lot of them."

Sedgwick was a Vietnam veteran.

The attack to seize Objective Norfolk broke the back of the Iraqi defense. More than 300 Iraqi vehicles were destroyed. But it came at a price in dead and wounded. It was a risk. You ask a lot of your soldiers and leaders.

Lieutenant Colonel Jim Hillman said it right: "There was a composure and discipline that reflect a quality of soldier… far more than we had a right to expect."

That night is why I always tell people, "It was fast, but it was not easy. Do not equate swiftness with ease." That night, those soldiers wrote new pages in the history of night mounted combat.

3RD AD. By this time, the division had come on line abreast with, first, the 2nd ACR, and then the 1st INF to their south and the 1st AD to their north. I was glad to have the disciplined, well-drilled, and relentless armored force that was the 3rd AD in the middle of the VII Corps attack. You want a steady outfit in the middle. They would keep the flank contact left and right with 1st AD and 1st INF (to keep the corps attack relatively aligned and to prevent shooting across flanks), and they would cut a swath of destruction through the Iraqi RGFC middle.

Since the sector I had given Butch Funk was too narrow to put three brigades on line, Butch had been using two brigades forward (his 1st and 2nd) and one back. By now he had decided to pass his third brigade through his second and leave his first brigade in the south, next to the 1st INF.

Third AD's battle log was full of reports of actions across their front, highlighted late the afternoon before, around 1600, with what they would call the Battle of Phase Line Bullet.

They had been on the move since early the morning before, 26 February, and had been in enemy contact for about twelve straight hours. That morning, they had been my freshest division, but no more. I needed them to sustain the center of our attack east toward Highway 8. The more success they had, the more the Iraqis on either flank would feel threatened.

Late the day before, Funk's two brigades on line were attacking into the center of the Tawalkana's forming defenses. His second brigade, commanded by Colonel Bob Higgins, was in the north, and his first brigade, commanded by Colonel Bill Nash, was in the south, linked with the advancing 2nd ACR.

Nash's three battalions on line had hit the Iraqi security zone at 1630 that afternoon — a twelve-kilometer advancing line of steel. There were many targets, some close, some distant.

First Lieutenant Marty Leners, 1st Platoon leader, Company C, 3/5 Cavalry was the first tank in the 3rd AD to kill a T-72. But for Leners and his gunner, Sergeant Glenn Wilson, it was a tense engagement. Rain and blowing sand made it difficult to use the laser range finder on their M1A1. That meant they had to use battle-sight range (an automatic setting using average expected range) or estimate the range and manually input it into the tank computer. That all takes time. Their problem was that the T-72 saw them and was traversing its turret in their direction, ready to fire. Wilson got a round off, using battle-sight range. It fell short of the T-72. Leners quickly input additional range and Wilson fired a second round, beating the Iraqi tank to the draw and killing it.

Over in Lieutenant Colonel John Kalb's 4/32 Armor, the fighting was at closer quarters. T-72s were closer than 1,000 meters, with Iraqi infantry on board and in bunkers. In a running fight with a T-72 and Iraqi infantry after darkness on 26 February, Kalb's scouts in Bradleys had destroyed the tank and Iraqi infantry, but had lost two soldiers KIA and a Bradley to a fratricide. Early on the morning of the twenty-seventh, Kalb's tank task force had intercepted an Iraqi unit attempting a counterattack, and in less than a minute had destroyed 15 T-72s and 25 other armored vehicles with the massed tank fires of his 43 M1A1s.

To their north, the 2nd Brigade's fights went on all night. Lieutenant Colonel Beaufort "Chuck" Hallman's 4/8 Cavalry, an M1A1 task force, attacked into the heart of the Iraqi defense, which now appeared to be in some depth; and received return fire from the Iraqis' small arms, RPGs, and artillery, in addition to tank and BMP 73-mm fire. Their attack went on for the better part of four hours against a dug-in Iraqi tank/infantry position supported by artillery. Iraqi infantry were in bunkers, and Iraqi tanks and BMPs attempted to use destroyed vehicles as shields. Hallman's tankers relentlessly pressed the attack. By about 0400, the brigade, together with TF 4/18 Infantry, had broken the back of the Iraqi defense, and Funk was preparing to pass Colonel Rob Goff's 3rd Brigade through them to continue the attack.

Artillery supported them all the way. In his notes, Colonel Morrie Boyd of the 42nd Artillery Brigade, supporting Colonel John Michitsch's 3rd AD artillery, writes that the forty-eight 155-mm howitzers of the 3/20 and 2/29 Field Artillery Battalions fired continuously throughout the night, while the eighteen MLRS launchers of 1/27 provided rocket fires against the Iraqi formations. The Iraqis came to refer to these devastating barrages as "iron rain." During the eighty-nine hours of the war, the 42nd Brigade would fire 2,854 155-mm rounds and 555 MLRS rockets in 121 different missions.

By now, Butch Funk was employing his aviation and MLRS deep. With M1A1 tank and Bradley battalions close in, these together made about a twenty- to thirty-kilometer death zone moving east in front of the division. His aviation brigade, commanded by Colonel Mike Burke, had the night before (about 2300) defeated an attempted Iraqi move to get a battalion in between 3rd AD and 1st AD to the north. From five kilometers away, Funk was able to see his Apache battalion engage the Iraqi unit, and in the space of three minutes destroy eight T-72s and nineteen BMPs.

I was glad to hear he had put in a fresh brigade, as that would help sustain the momentum, and I had no other forces to give him except aviation.

Since Butch had used his sole Apache battalion that night and it would be unavailable for part of today, I ordered that 2/6 (commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Terry Branham, an AH-64 battalion from 11th Aviation Brigade) go today to reinforce the 3rd AD (this was non-doctrinal: corps Apaches normally worked deep in the corps sector at night, while division Apaches worked the closer-in fight). I figured Butch needed the combat power to speed his attack east at a high tempo more than I would need it that night in a corps deep attack.

I did not believe the Iraqis expected three armored divisions to hit them at night on line. I wanted to pour it on with everything we had. Time was not only running out in the war, it was running out for some of our units who had had little rest the last few days. I figured we could sustain the current attack tempo for another twenty-four to forty-eight hours, then we would have reached the end of endurance and I would have to begin rotating major units in and out.

Third AD had destroyed hundreds of enemy vehicles and captured many prisoners. Their attack tempo was swift and steady. During their attack, they found the same kinds of prepared positions (including reverse-slope defenses) and positions in depth that the 1st INF and 2nd ACR had found. The Iraqis fought back, and the fights were sharp and brutally lethal. There was depth to the Iraqi defense, either by design or because units were attempting to escape, but the Iraqis were no match for them.

1ST AD. First AD had likewise been attacking all night and were still at it. By now, Ron Griffith had brought his three maneuver brigades up on line and seemed tied in well with 3rd AD to his south. At this point, the division had almost 9,200 vehicles, and almost 2,000 of these were tracked. As they turned east, they soon came into contact with the northern brigade of the Tawalkana defense, which was located about fifty kilometers from where they had made their right turn. Continuing east all night, the division had destroyed the northern brigade of the Tawalkana and the brigade of the Adnan that had moved south into the 1st AD sector from the XVIII Corps sector. Colonel Dan Petrosky's Apaches of the 1st AD aviation brigade and CAS had hit the Iraqis deep in the sector, and they had located a sizable logistics base in the vicinity of their Objective Bonn. They had also discovered the Medina Division moving to protect that base. It was clear that this day the 1st AD would hit the Medina.

They still had an open flank to their north, for the 3rd ACR and 24th Division were about sixty kilometers to their rear, or west, after their ninety-degree turn. The Iraqis had already tried to take advantage of that gap by moving the Adnan brigade south. After meeting the combined artillery and air fires of 1st AD, the RGFC did not try anything like that again. That was the last troop movement south from the northern RGFC infantry divisions.

THOUGHTS

That gap continued to concern me, however, for two reasons. The first had to do with the security of the 1st AD and its vulnerability to attacks from the north, either by ground forces or artillery. The second was that if the Third Army was looking at a coordinated VII Corps/XVIII Corps attack against the RGFC, things would have to happen fast. However, I was not sure the Army maneuver was possible anymore, which meant that we might have to do what we could ourselves in our sector. The time lines we had discussed before the war indicated that Third Army would issue the order for the coordinated attack forty-eight hours prior to execution.

I reviewed our combat-power adjustments I had ordered for the final fights to the Gulf and the destruction of the RFGC:

The 2/1 AH-64 battalion (eighteen Apaches) had gone back to the 1st AD from 2nd ACR, so Ron's ability to attack in depth with Apaches would double. In addition, the 75th Artillery Brigade (24 155-mm howitzers, 12 8-inch howitzers, 9 MLRS, and 9 ATACMS-capable MLRS) also had joined the 1st AD late the day before, and now were firing in support of the division.

A corps AH-64 battalion, 2/6 Cavalry, had joined 3rd AD (also doubling their Apache strength to 36), plus the 42nd Artillery Brigade (48 155-mm howitzers, and 18 MLRS launchers) had rejoined the division and was already supporting their attacks.

The 210th Artillery Brigade (48 155-mm howitzers and 18 MLRS) was now with the 1st INF to add to the fires of its own division artillery.

I made no change with the British.

The 2nd ACR was in Corps reserve, with only its assigned units now, giving it less combat power.

I also had considered the option of a corps deep strike that night with Apaches into Objective Denver, yet at the rate at which the 1st INF was attacking, they might already be there by then. That conclusion led me to retain only one corps attack battalion and to commit the other to that day's fight with 3rd AD.

There were two decisions to be made that day: How to fit the 1st CAV into the fight to destroy the Hammurabi in the north? And what force to commit as the southern arm of our envelopment in the south, the 1st INF or the British? On the one hand, the British were available (they'd finished with the tactical reserve). I figured the Big Red One would still be in the middle of a fight they had begun the night before. If the 1st INF was still slugging their way through Norfolk, the British could get there faster. On the other hand, if the 1st INF had broken through, it meant they were closer, and I would use them. That is what I had to find out.

The main forces of the RGFC, of course, remained up north. From the early reports of the previous night's 1st INF attacks, and after looking at their position on the map, it looked to me as though I could use the Big Red One in the south and keep the British attacking directly east to Highway 8. That would shorten the southern arm by a good eighty to one hundred kilometers.

After an intelligence brief, I determined that I would make those two decisions after seeing for myself, and by visiting both commanders and getting their judgments on the immediate situation in their sectors. I also wanted to get away from the TAC, as they were again going to displace forward to keep up with the fight, which during the night had passed us by. As night turned to day, the sounds of battle had become more distant.

FLANKS. At this point, we had a poor picture of the situation on both of our flanks — XVIII Corps now to our north and west and the Egyptian Corps to our east. We had a better picture of XVIII Corps. We did know that the 3rd CAV was some distance behind the 1st AD, and would likely not close that gap today. Though our liaison with XVIII Corps had been keeping our main CP advised of other actions of XVIII Corps units, I was focused mainly on what the 24th MECH and 3rd ACR were doing, and whether they also would turn east to attack toward Basra, on our north. We also knew generally from the British that their southern flank was open, as the Egyptians were not yet ready to turn east toward Kuwait City. That did not bother me at all.

We also had a poor picture of what theater air was doing deep to interdict or otherwise isolate the RGFC in the Kuwaiti theater of operations. I had to assume they were interdicting Iraqi forces that were attempting to escape, and isolating the remaining forces in the KTO so that we could close in for the kill. With 1,500-plus sorties a day, I figured they were still very much in the fight. All the RGFC still appeared to be in the KTO that morning.

The previous day and night had been the biggest day of the war for CAS in support of VII Corps. We had used a total of 128 close-air-support strikes. And while we had gotten all that we asked for, that still represented only less than 10 percent of the daily air sorties flown, and we were the main attack.

ENEMY SITUATION. The picture of the Iraqi intent was clear that morning. They continued to use their theater reserve, the RGFC, to form successive lines of defense against our attack. These began with the Tawalkana, then shifted to the Medina, then the Hammurabi. Since some units remained in positions oriented south or southeast, as though we would still attack up the Wadi al Batin, the orientations were somewhat confused. Other units — especially RGFC units — were attempting to orient to the west, now that they had figured out that we were coming from that direction. The Tawalkana continued to set the initial line of defense with whatever forces became available, and because we knew they tended to shift brigades around from one major unit to another without too much difficulty, that doubtless accounted for the reports of unfamiliar units we were getting. Finally, the southern flank of the Tawalkana clearly turned out to be right where the 2nd ACR had said it was, and where the 3rd Brigade of the 1st INF was attacking. It might have accounted for the different type of defense encountered by Dave Weisman's brigade. Their night attack broke the back of that southern brigade (the 37th MECH) and exposed a flank.

At this point early in the morning of 27 February, I still had the corps in a series of hasty attacks, and the enemy still seemed to be capable of brigade-sized defensive sets and local counterattacks. We saw very little evidence that these forces were running away. In my judgment, we were not in any pursuit operation — not yet.

After the war, I directed my G-2, Colonel John Davidson, to attempt to reconstruct the Iraqi plan in our sector from all sources, including captured materiel and prisoners. Although it was done quickly, the report gives a much different picture of Iraqi forces than the one we got from their frontline infantry or from those facing MARCENT near Kuwait City. The document is entitled "The 100-Hour Ground War: How the Iraqi Plan Failed."

Extracts show:

• That the Tawalkana did indeed defend generally along the 65 north & south gridline, with the 12th AD, 37th Brigade in the south. North of that brigade, the 9th, 18th, and 29th Brigades were on line south to north. It was the 9th Brigade and parts of the 18th that the 2nd ACR hit at 73 Easting. "The 9th Armd Bde," the report states, "is amazed that it would be attacked during a rainstorm with blowing sand."

• That the Medina was moving west to establish defensive positions: "Four battalions of the 14th Mech Bde, Medina Division, move in a southwesterly direction to set up a hasty defense in the midst of the theater logistics site. Concurrently, 2nd Armd Bde moves approximately seven kilometers to the northwest to form a defensive line from QU0939 to QU0946. Two unidentified armored brigades depart the south to establish contact between the 14th Mech Bde and 2nd Armd Bde, and provide a coherent defense of the LOCs. These LOCs allow the escape of units from the south to Basra."

• That the Hammurabi Division was assessed to be moving with its nine battalions to defend the Rumaila oil fields, or to take up the defense if the Tawalkana became combat-ineffective.

• That the "mission of Iraqi ground forces," on 27 February, "continues to be a hasty defense in depth to delay the advance of Coalition forces until all forces withdraw from Kuwait, and successfully cross the Euphrates River. The remainder of the Tawalkana MECH Div and the repositioned Medina Armd Div of the RGFC are to block any further penetration of VII Corps forces coming from the west."

Though I did not know all this on the morning of 27 February, I knew enough to determine that we were into a successive series of hastily defended positions, and that the troops we were facing were attempting to fight us, even though up to now the skill level and combat power had been a mismatch.

As soon as it began to get light, we flew the twenty minutes it took to find 1st INF. I wanted to get their assessment and decide early about the attack north.

Either 1st INF or 1 UK.