Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

The next twelve hours brought an end to the war for VII Corps.

On into the night, we continued to fight a series of close battles. Following the decisions to adjust the 1st INF and 3rd AD axes of advance, I continued to focus on making adjustments in these fights in a way that would allow us to complete the double envelopment sometime the next day.

That evening, I got a quick update on the Iraqi units left in our sector and a look at our own situation. From the reports of the commanders I had visited earlier and from my own observations, it was clear to me that we had the Iraqis on the floor. A short briefing from Bill Eisel, G-2 at the TAC, confirmed it: The Iraqi intent was to continue to defend with what they had while attempting to withdraw their remaining units from the theater over pontoon bridges they were constructing over the Shatt al Arab[53] and the Euphrates. Since both these areas were outside VII Corps sector, and had been since late on 25 February, there was nothing we could do to stop the units leaving by that route. Meanwhile, the Iraqis we were facing no longer appeared capable of any kind of coordinated defense — battalion-sized actions, but not much more. We estimated that the Hammurabi Division and what was left of the Medina (by this time only a brigade) would defend around the Rumaila oil fields, or our Objective Raleigh (and about thirty kilometers from where the 1st CAV was now). It was still not clear to me how much of the Hammurabi was left in our sector, and whether they were joining the retreat, or were part of the defense. Other Iraqi military options in our sector were extremely limited at this point.

Our own situation was excellent. In the southern part of our sector, the British were racing toward Highway 8, with by now only scattered resistance, and the 1st INF was also in a pursuit, after having cracked through the Iraqi defense the night before and early that morning. Our biggest remaining future fights were going to be in the north, with what remained of the Hammurabi in Objective Raleigh. I figured that with the distance to Raleigh, that fight would take place late the next morning, 28 February, somewhere west of the Rumaila oil fields, and it would be over before the evening — very much like the Medina fight with 1st AD. Thus, I figured that by 1800 the next day, our double envelopment would be complete, and 1st CAV and the 1st INF would have accomplished their linkup somewhere north of Safwan on Highway 8, and we would have trapped the remainder of the Iraqi forces in our sector. By that time, we would have run out of both room to maneuver and Iraqi units to attack.

From there we could always continue north toward Basra, but that would take intervention and new orders from Third Army, and we had none. Nor did we have any new orders for finishing the current fight other than the ones we were trying to execute — i.e., our own double envelopment.

By then, I'd had VII Corps attacking for almost four days straight. Soon we would be at the limit of soldier and leader endurance. But we were not there yet.

I left the TAC and went outside to smoke a cigar.

When I returned at around 2130, Stan had been talking to John Landry at the main. There was talk of a cease-fire in the morning.

Total surprise. It was the second of the two great surprises of the war for me personally. The other was the order to attack early. Both were friendly actions. No warning order, no questions, no real evidence from the battlefield.

Cease-fire! "Who the hell's idea is that?" I wanted to know.

I called John Yeosock right away, and John confirmed the news. "There's talk about a possible 'cessation of offensive operations' effective tomorrow," he told me. "Nothing's definite yet," he added. "But in the light of that development, don't do operations that will unnecessarily cost any more casualties."

I repeated that our situation was a combination of pursuit and hasty attack. Another twenty-four hours or so would finish it. "Why now? Why not give us tomorrow? We have them where we want them. There is less and less organized resistance, but we are not done yet."

John agreed. "I already told the CINC we needed another day," he told me. "But I'll try to get all this clarified." Meanwhile, he directed us to put out a warning order for a possible cessation of offensive operations in the morning.

I was stunned.

But we put out the warning order. None of my commanders came back on the radio to protest stopping.

This was the third set of orders given to the corps that day. First had been the double envelopment. Second had been the adjustment based on Ron Griffith's radio call, our orders to keep 3rd AD and 1st INF from running into each other, and the postponement of the 1st CAV attack based on Ron Griffith's late call. Now this. We would issue two more orders before the cease-fire the next day. It was not the kind of battle rhythm pace I liked when issuing orders to an attacking corps of 146,000 soldiers and 50,000 vehicles — in fact, it was the kind of pace that I had been used to when I was a captain with 137 soldiers and fifty vehicles.

As I let it all sink in, many things went through my mind. My initial thoughts were ones of frustration: We had not yet finished the mission. We had the Iraqis on the floor. Let's finish it. Run right through the finish line at full speed.

Yet if someone knew something I did not, and if he thought we had reached our strategic goals, I was glad that our troops were done and there would be no more casualties. The corps was tired. In maybe another twenty-four hours, I would have had to start rotating units in and out to generate some fresh combat power.

I asked myself if I had been forceful enough in painting the local tactical picture to John Yeosock, and decided I had. We had been especially attentive to it since his earlier reports of the CINC's "concerns," and John got reports from not only me directly, but from Colonel Dick Rock and Colonel Carl Ernst, who had been at my 27 February morning planning session. Third Army had as precise a picture of our situation and the enemy's then as at any time in the war. As for CENTCOM, I had no idea what they knew, but I had to assume that it was whatever Third Army knew.

I did not bypass John Yeosock and call General Schwarzkopf directly to protest. I trusted Yeosock. He knew mounted operations and, even though he was in Riyadh, he had a great feel for what still needed to be done tactically in our sector of attack. I had made my case with him and that was it. At the same time, I trusted that the senior leadership knew what they were doing. We were not yet done tactically, but if there were other considerations that made a cease-fire a wise strategic choice, then OK, we would execute.

When I let the TAC know, their reaction was not unlike mine. First, they had questions: "Is this right?" Then, like me, they asked, "Why now?" Then, when the end appeared inevitable, there was a noticeable sign of physical letdown. With the adrenaline gone, the momentum and charged atmosphere of only a few moments earlier went away. I knew it would be like that all over the corps as the word got out.

It is here that human factors come into play in a large combat unit.

By 1800 that evening, I was using the combat power of the corps at full throttle, with maneuvers set in motion that would complete our mission in another twenty-four hours. We had four divisions committed, with a fresh division in the 1st CAV. The troops and commanders, while tired, were still capable of continuing the attacks at a peak level of intensity, stimulated both by the continuation of the attack and the prospects of victory. They were driving on. Yet if ever the momentum got interrupted, it would be hell getting it started again. It is a fact of soldier and unit behavior. When you're operating at close to endurance limits and pushing yourself and your soldiers to stay at that level, you must keep going. Any halt means a precipitous drop in energy level, because the stimulus is removed. Without that stimulus of movement and action, units fall idle very fast, like dropping off a cliff. After that, it is damn near impossible to rouse them to previous levels. I had seen it happen many times in training and in combat in Vietnam.

So when we confirmed the rumors of a cease-fire, the air went out of the balloon. When we put the order out just before midnight, we could just feel the corps attack momentum come to a halt.

VII CORPS ACTIONS

While all this was going on, actions in VII Corps continued.

First INF units had had almost four days of nonstop actions, accompanied by constant adjustment to retain unit integrity — to make sure the right units were in the right combination. These adjustments were especially frequent at night, when the units could easily become separated. One of those units was the 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor, an M1A1 tank battalion in the 2nd Armored Division Forward, which had been one of the two lead brigades in Tom Rhame's night attack toward Objective Norfolk on the previous night. By now they had attacked and moved all day and were approaching Highway 8.

On 27 February, according to an account by Captain Tim Ryan and Captain Bill Rabena, "the afternoon sun was setting as the brigade snaked its way down a valley leading from the Kuwaiti central plateau to the coastal plain [the troops would call it the "Valley of the Boogers," because of the severely broken terrain and the hidden Iraqis]. The dense black smoke from the burning oil wells twenty miles away made it seem several hours later. Captain Tim Ryan, the D Company, 3/66 Armor commander, had just finished issuing orders to his company for yet another brigade night attack when the change of mission from Lieutenant Colonel Jones came over the radio." Because Taylor Jones, the battalion commander, did not want to lose any howitzers to attacks by bypassed Iraqi units known to be still in the area, Jones ordered Ryan to go back to the rear and escort the howitzer batteries of 4/3 Field Artillery battalion forward so that they could safely get in better position to support the attack. Ryan decided to use only two tanks, his and that of Staff Sergeant Stringer, for the mission. "As Ryan and Stringer turned their tanks around for the return trip," after one successful escort, "Staff Sergeant Stringer identified and reported approximately ten dismounted Iraqi soldiers through the tank's thermal sights. The enemy squad was well armed, their light machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades clearly evident at that close range." Ryan wanted to let them surrender and fired warning shots over their heads. "As the tracers from the warning burst of machine-gun fire from Ryan's tank arched through the black sky twenty feet over the enemy's head, a hail of bullets from Stringer's tank slashed through the formation. Several enemy soldiers dropped in their tracks… Meanwhile, the remaining soldiers ran for cover behind a previously unnoticed Iraqi T-62 tank approximately 400 meters away from both Ryan and Stringer." Several minutes passed, as an Iraqi soldier made his way to Stringer's tank to ask for medical care for their wounded. Meanwhile, Ryan's tank loader, Pfc. Berthold, was keeping an eye on the remainder of the Iraqis and the T-62. When he noticed that some of the Iraqi infantry were mounting the tank and others were running away, he alerted his commander, and Ryan went into action. "Ryan immediately slewed his tank's turret back in the direction of the enemy tank, identified the fleeing enemy through his sights, and squeezed the trigger once again, sending machine-gun bullets through the dark. None of the enemy soldiers was moving when he traversed his turret back to the enemy tank… Before he had come to let the thought sink in, Sgt. Jones [his gunner] reported that the T-62's turret was traversing… Ryan ordered Jones to fire, and the resulting impact of the main gun round on the T-62's turret blew it completely off the hull." Ryan and Stringer would go on to destroy another tank and a BMP and capture an Iraqi infantry squad before they completed their artillery escort mission (at 0230, 28 February). At 0430, they got the mission to resume the attack at 0600 28 February.

First AD had continued their relentless attacks with three brigades abreast. Their combat damage to Iraqi units on into the darkness of 27 February was 186 enemy tanks, 127 personnel carriers of all types, 38 artillery pieces, 5 air defense systems, 118 trucks, and 839 EPWs. For the 1st AD, these attacks had been the heaviest fighting of the four days. One 1st AD soldier, from 4th Battalion, 66th Armor, was killed in action.

By about 2130, the 3rd AD had reached Phase Line Kiwi and had run out of room. If I continued them east, they would run into the 1st INF. (It was astride Highway 8 that I had redirected 1st INF farther east, so that 3rd AD could continue their attack to Objective Denver.)

Meanwhile, as their two brigades attacked on line toward Kiwi, they'd had continuous combat with Iraqi units. Their 1st Brigade had reported destroying 60 tanks, 13 artillery pieces, and 6 BRDMs (Soviet-built wheeled personnel carriers). At Kiwi, their 3rd Brigade (which had earlier passed through 2nd Brigade) had destroyed three T-72s, three BMPs, and captured over two hundred EPWs. One of the EPWs was an officer, who reported that there were many Iraqi tanks in front of the brigade beyond Kiwi. At a little past 2300, 3rd AD recorded that they had received our corps order to continue the attack to Denver across Highway 8 (made possible by the 1st INF adjustment east).

First CAV had moved east to a position just west of Phase Line Lime, ready to attack east to destroy the Hammurabi after 1st AD cleared a zone of attack. While moving up, their cavalry squadron had destroyed a BMP and a bypassed bunker complex from which Iraqis were firing on them. By 2100, they were set for their attack east. Their written order to attack east was published at 0220 on 28 February, although verbal orders had gone out many hours before.

ORDERS

At 2337, we got the official written order from Third Army that the cessation would take place the next day at 0500, and we put out our own order soon after that. Though we had less than six hours of darkness in which to execute, I was satisfied that there was enough time for the commanders to rein in their ground ops. Meanwhile, we would continue with Apaches forward until 0500, and I called off the operation of the 1st CAV.

I stuck around in the TAC for a little while longer, and when I was satisfied that all the units had received the 0500 cease-fire order, I decided to get some rest. My own adrenaline level had drained away. Gone was the intensity of the previous four days. Gone was the intensity of the previous night. I could feel myself relaxing. I tried to prevent it, but it was hopeless. "Do not let down," I kept saying to myself. I was not successful.

I left sometime at around 0100. While walking to the tent, I told Toby how proud I was of everybody in VII Corps… and how severely disappointed I was that I couldn't get the 1st CAV into the fight.

The problem was that, while it was over, I felt a nagging sense of in-completion. In every training exercise I'd ever had as a young officer, we had always tried to end with a successful attack that put us on our objective. Instead, we had ragged edges — and with our final objective clearly within reach.

First Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 1st CAV Division, was within sixty kilometers of Basra; 1st AD Apaches could see the Gulf; 3rd AD was within thirty kilometers of Highway 8 and our Objective Denver; 1st INF was less than twenty kilometers from Safwan. The British were across Highway 8, north of Kuwait City.

0300 28 FEBRUARY

"General Franks, we have new orders from Third Army." It was Toby, jolting me awake.

"What the hell is it now?" I snapped. Although I was waking up quickly, as soldiers learn to do, I was also "shooting the messenger."

As always, Toby was doing the right thing.

"Third Army has ordered a new time for the cessation," he said. "From 0500 to 0800. G-3 thinks you should come over to the TAC."

"OK, thanks, Toby. I'll be right there," I said, getting my head back in the war I'd thought was all but over. Toby left a cup of coffee. I got my leg on in the dark and walked into the bright lights of the TAC.

0315 VII CORPS TAC CP

I called John Yeosock to get clarification, and John confirmed the change. Not only did we have a change of cessation time from 0500 to 0800, he said, but we were to ensure "maximum destruction of enemy equipment." A written order would soon follow. When I reminded him that this was the third set of VII Corps orders that our units would have gotten within the past twelve hours, he told me he did not need any reminding about that. He was well aware that between him and a tank commander, orders had to pass through eight layers of command.

The next order for us was truly puzzling: it was very important for us to get to the crossroads at Safwan, John told me, to prevent any Iraqi units from escaping by that route. Why the Safwan crossroads had suddenly become a high priority escaped me. The 1st INF had already cut Highway 8 south of Safwan, the road leading into that intersection from the Gulf coast was not carrying any significant traffic, and in fact this order was the first time we had been given any geographic objective in the war (it had been a corps decision to seize al-Busayyah). But an order is an order. I said WILCO and called Stan over for a huddle. I had interpreted John's order as one to stop movement through the road junction. The tactics were up to me.

The first thing I wanted to do was make a quick call to the units to change the cease-fire time.

I assumed the time change had been the result of a simple error in converting Zulu time to local time, or a difference of three hours. The use of different times in a single time zone in an operational theater made absolutely no sense to me. I had outlawed the use of anything other than local time use in the corps. We were attacking in one time zone, and I did not want some tired, getting-shot-at soldier having to fool with changing times from Zulu to Charlie or whatever.

But we also had this crossroads business at Safwan to take care of.

Stan circled it on the map hanging in front of us. My first thought was to go after it with the 11th Aviation Brigade. Stan gave them a warning order. With Apaches to interdict traffic, that would get a presence there immediately, and ground troops would follow later. A second look at the map showed that such an attack by corps aviation risked getting in the way of the 1st INF. The Big Red One was not more than twenty to thirty kilometers away from Safwan, which would put the town in the normal deep area for division Apaches to attack. So I said no to the 11th Aviation Brigade option.

I recalled that 1st INF had been attacking on a generally northeast axis before I had ordered the division to go due east until they crossed Highway 8, then north. Now I figured that if they went back to their original attack direction, then they would get to the crossroads. To do that would also mean halting 3rd AD along Phase Line Kiwi, so that they would not now run into the 1st INF. That is what I decided to do.

Just as it was the third change of orders for the corps, it was also the third change of orders for the Big Red One… I could visualize Tom Rhame, forward in his tank, awakened with these orders and wondering if I had gone crazy.

I directed an order go out to all of VII Corps: They were to continue to attack in the same direction and with the same objectives we had been using prior to the early-evening adjustments, they were to continue the attack until 0800 (not 0500), and, until that time, they were to destroy maximum equipment. This order also put the 1st INF back on their earlier line of attack — that is, generally northeast. My assumption was that if our map posting was accurate — if they were indeed twenty to thirty kilometers from Safwan — then the 1st INF would easily get to those crossroads by 0800. I also figured their own Apaches would get there much sooner.

I should have known we would have confusion. Though we did our best to keep things simple, I probably should have realized that I was adding to the confusion simply by transmitting all of these orders. Time was running out.

With the initial cessation order at 2337, the coiled-spring effect had gone out of the corps — after all, soldiers are not machines to be switched on and off at random. Also, big units are harder to move than small units — especially when they have been attacking for the better part of four days. Clausewitz calls this phenomenon the disorganizing effects of victory. That night was the night of maximum friction, all brought on by fatigue, misunderstanding, and miscommunication — the "countless minor incidents," Clausewitz writes—"the kind you can never really foresee" that "combine to lower the level of performance."

Here is one example. We were attacking in one direction at 1800. Units were about to run into each other and were not oriented for the double envelopment. At 1900, an order went out to stop so that we could reorient the corps for the next day's final attack. However, even though orders to resume the attack were sent to all the other divisions, one was not put out to 1st INF — attention to it had gotten lost in all the cease-fire transmissions. Then, to add to the complexity, we got the cease-fire order and tried to go back to the directions that had been in effect before 1800.

At that point, since there was no time for written orders, all of these orders were going out in verbal radio transmissions over both our standard line-of-sight and our SATCOM radio nets. And finally, though the order announcing the 0800 cease-fire was received and acknowledged by each of the major units, I did not speak personally to any of the commanders at that time.

It was now about 0430. All of this activity had taken the better part of an hour. I looked around the TAC. We'd had three mission changes. Fatigue and frustration had overtaken us. What a hell of a way to end this war, I thought.

Sometime later we received the second written order from Third Army that night: an order to a five-division corps to extend by three hours an operation we had expected to end by now. It was totally unrealistic to believe that so large an organization could react that quickly — and in the middle of the night, after four days of battle. Even if everyone in the corps had been listening to the same radio, they would have had trouble executing on such short notice.

As far as I could see, there was nothing more I could do. I was tired, frustrated, and extremely disappointed that we had not been given the time to finish. I felt like the manager of a ball club that had won the World Series in five games, instead of four. We were proud as hell of what we had done, but I wanted that sweep.

Yet, for all that, I still determined that the frustrations would not cast a shadow over the heroic and skillful execution of VII Corps's soldiers and leaders, and for that reason, I said little more about the missed opportunity to bring our mission to its final conclusion. Nor should it cast a shadow today — six years after Desert Storm — over the strategic significance of the victory in the Gulf and the opportunities it has opened for greater peace in the region.

Nevertheless, from the perspective of strategic, operational, and tactical linkage, there are lessons to learn for the future. If students of military history and operations want to learn the major lesson the Gulf War teaches, they should look at the war's end state.

It was a significant challenge, no doubt about it, to orchestrate the end of a campaign of lightning swiftness that had been conducted by a thirty-five-nation coalition in a region of the world with many opportunities and pitfalls. Nonetheless, it seemed that we gave a lot more thought (at least in the theater) to how to get in and get started than how to conclude it. The intellectual focus seemed to be in inverse proportion. The closer we got to the end, the less we focused.

At the end of my briefing on 9 February, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney asked me, "How will it all end?" The perfect question at the right time — and a question every Secretary of Defense should ask anytime our military is about to be committed to battle. He should keep asking until it is over. Though I gave Secretary Cheney an answer that reflected my sense of how I expected it to end for VII Corps and Third Army, I'm not aware of anyone at any time giving him a picture of the expected end state for the entire theater.

Here, to the best of my knowledge, is the story of how the decision was made that brought us to the actual end state on the battlefield:

In the evening of 27 February, following General Schwarzkopf's "mother of all briefings," General Colin Powell called Schwarzkopf to tell him that the President was thinking of ending the war within a matter of hours, but would defer that decision to the theater commander. General Powell added that he shared the President's view. As far as he could personally tell, it was all over. Yet he too wanted to hear that confirmed by the theater commander.

General Schwarzkopf replied that he would poll his commanders before giving a final judgment.

That poll never got to the tactical battlefield.

In the call back to Powell, General Schwarzkopf confirmed that it was time to end the fighting. After that theater judgment, the Joint Chiefs agreed unanimously that the war had achieved its goals and should stop.

The order went to Third Army, and from Third Army to us.

Could we have gone on? Absolutely. Would that have made good tactical sense? From where I was standing, absolutely. Would another twelve hours have destroyed more of Saddam's army? Absolutely (though not much in our sector).

But wars are not fought to make tactical sense. They are fought to gain strategic objectives. When those who are looking at the entire strategic situation, both present and future, say we are at the end, then for the soldiers on the battlefield, that's the end. Sometimes strategic goals have immediate results, such as the liberation of Kuwait. Others take longer to manifest themselves, and are obtained by taking advantage of the new opportunities that arise from the way the tactical outcomes were gained. Now, six years after our victory in Desert Storm, those results are still being played out, and I believe they are mostly positive.

I was not thinking about any of that on the morning of 28 February. I simply trusted those who were making the strategic decisions. That was the difference between the end of this war and of the one in Vietnam. From President Bush to the soldiers in our tanks, it was a matter of trust reunited.

Our VII Corps tactical victories had not taken eighty-nine hours. They had taken almost twenty years.

0630

By now it was approaching daylight; reports of operations were coming in over the radio. These reports were somewhat spotty, however, because our tactical line-of-sight communications were not particularly good at this time. Since we were in their sector, we could talk direct with 3rd AD; we had good line-of-sight comms with 1st CAV; and since 2nd ACR were to our west, they were in direct comms. But because of the range between us and 1st AD, we had difficulty contacting them from time to time; other than SATCOM, we were out of radio contact with 1st INF (because SATCOM was on a different frequency than the other line-of-sight comms, transmissions on one could not be heard on the other).

As for VII Corps main CP, they were by now over 200 kilometers away (about an hour and a half's helo flight). For the past two days, they had been unable to hear tactical radio communications and were thus having difficulty keeping current on the rapidly changing local tactical situation.

Communication with Third Army was in better shape, since Colonel Dick Rock still had his long-haul phone comms directly back there. So I remained confident that John Yeosock's staff had a decent picture — at least of what we knew in the corps TAC.

Though I considered flying east to the 1st INF, I concluded that it would take up the whole time before the 0800 cease-fire, and I wanted to be the one to order it, so I determined to stay at the TAC. Because of the constantly changing orders from Riyadh and the possible mix-up in the corps, I wanted to be next to my most reliable comms during the hours before the cease-fire. After the previous night's rapid changes, I did not know what to expect this morning.

At 0700, John Tilelli called to tell me he was ready to attack if I wanted to exercise that option. It was one hour before the end, with still no room north of 1st AD and no time to get him room. It ripped me up inside. I could picture the 1st CAV, leaning forward in the saddle, as it were. They had deployed in October and had trained to a razor's edge; they had selflessly been the feint and demonstration force that had successfully deceived the Iraqis into believing we were coming up the Wadi al Batin; and finally, they had in a short time come all this way and gotten themselves in a position to attack. I did not want to be the commander to tell them now. It was painful; it's still painful today.

"No," I told John, "we are out of time."

He merely said, "Roger out."

At 0720 a frantic voice was heard over the corps line-of-sight FM radio net: "JAYHAWK, this is THRASHER BLUE 6" — a corps artillery unit, as it turned out—"we are taking incoming friendly fire."

The last thing I wanted was one or more of our soldiers killed or wounded by blue-on-blue this close to a cease-fire. Force protection was much more on my mind than destroying another ten or twenty Iraqi tanks. "Tell them cease fire," I said. The officer closest to the radio ordered, "JAYHAWK, JAYHAWK, this is JAYHAWK OSCAR, cease fire, I say again cease fire." As it turned out, some commanders took it to mean that we were issuing the actual cease-fire order when, in fact, it was only intended to stop the possible blue-on-blue. It was a confusing order, and I should not have let it go out.

The confusion did not end there. We got a reply from everyone, including the 1st INF, whom we had called on SATCOM. A moment later, it occurred to me that the blue-on-blue could not have involved them, since they were not in line-of-sight comms range. "Order the Big Red One to continue the attack," I ordered. The call went out immediately, but I later learned that not all their units got the second call.

Meanwhile, we got a call from 3rd AD explaining that THRASHER BLUE 6 was a corps unit on the other side of the enemy on their (3rd AD's) gun target line. When rounds missed and went over the Iraqis, they impacted in THRASHER BLUE 6's area. I told THRASHER to get the hell out of the way. They had already done that.

At 0740, the order went out to the other units to resume the attack.

Just before 0800, the 1st AD reported they had captured the HQ of the Medina Division. That was great news.

I glanced around the TAC. It was full of troops — those from the TAC and those who had come inside to witness the end. Everyone wanted to be in there when the order went out.

I looked at them, their tired faces, their by now grimy uniforms, and I was full of thanks for what they had done. I wished I could shake everyone's hand, give each of them a hug, and tell them all how proud I had been to serve in battle with them.

I watched the GPS Toby had brought into the TAC. It was our most accurate timepiece. At precisely 0800, I got on the radio and told units to cease fire.

First Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 1st CAV Division, was sixty kilometers from Basra (which, of course, was now in XVIII Corps sector) and about twenty kilometers from the Hammurabi. First INF was fifteen kilometers south of Safwan. First and 3rd ADs were twenty-five kilometers from Highway 8, and 1st AD Apaches could see the blue waters of the Gulf. The British were on Highway 8, north of Kuwait City.

It was over.

RESULTS

We had attacked close to 250 kilometers in eighty-nine hours with five divisions, day and night, in sandstorms and rain. It had been an incredible battlefield performance by the soldiers and leaders of VII Corps.

We had accomplished our mission to destroy the RGFC forces in our sector. The Tawalkana had ceased to exist as a division. The Medina was down to a few battalions, if that. At war's end, we could determine no other RGFC forces (with the possible exception of some scattered units of the Hammurabi) in our sector. Other Iraqi units were either destroyed or combat ineffective, and their equipment would be destroyed later. The better part of eleven Iraqi divisions lay in the wake of the VII Corps attack (including the two RGFC divisions). In those eighty-nine hours, corps units had destroyed 1,350 tanks, 1,224 personnel carriers of all types, 285 artillery pieces, 105 air defense pieces, and 1,229 trucks. And in our rolling attack we had bypassed an amount of equipment equal to that; after the cease-fire we went back and destroyed it. Though we had counted more than 22,000 Iraqi EPWs as captured, the true figure was probably as high as double that, since units lost count.

In the eighty-nine hours, we had fired a total of 55,000 artillery rounds and 10,500 MLRS rockets, and we had also fired twenty-five ATACMs in twenty-one missions. We'd used 348 close-support air strikes, mainly A-10s, and mainly in the daylight.

Kuwait was liberated. The Iraqi army had gone from fourth largest in the world to twenty-second in a little over a month. A coalition of thirty-five nations had quickly formed, had united its forces on the battlefield, and together had achieved impressive results in a short time. Was it perfect? No. But it was a hell of a lot closer to perfect than we had come in anyone's memory or experience. It was a victory of staggering battlefield dimensions.

But it had come at a price. At that point, I thought we had twenty-one soldiers KIA and ninety-seven wounded. That turned out to be grossly inaccurate. The final figure was 46 KIA and 196 U.S. wounded, and 16 British soldiers KIA and 61 wounded. I will never forget them for the rest of my life.

Eleven M1A1s were damaged, and four were destroyed; sixteen Bradleys damaged, and nine destroyed; one Apache damaged, and one destroyed.

I say again: It was fast but it was not easy.

Let no one equate swiftness with ease.

It was a total team effort, as we'd known it would be. I was humbled to have had the privilege to lead such a magnificent armored corps into battle. Their battlefield achievements had come about because of twenty years of rebuilding, and because of their courage and selfless sense of duty. That I had been permitted to return to battle with that Army after we had both been badly wounded was something more than I could ever have dreamed of.

LOGISTICS

The logistics dimension in such a short period of time had been staggering. Modern mounted warfare is fast and lethal, and consumes an enormous amount of supplies. Our logisticians kept the corps constantly sustained, and many entire armies cannot do that. They operate for a while, then pause for days, weeks, or even months, to allow their forces to resupply. That such was not the case with VII Corps was a testament to the skill and hard, brute force work done by VII Corps logisticians in all units.

Fuel and ammunition had been transported by corps soldiers mostly in truck convoys over the trackless desert. Led by junior officers and NCOs with few navigation devices and few radios, the convoys had rolled day and night. They had moved in rain and in driving sandstorms in which it was difficult to see the vehicle in front. They'd come upon bypassed Iraqi units and soldiers and captured them. They'd gone through minefields and our own unexploded munitions. At times, they'd gotten closer to the combat action with their fuel and ammo vehicles than normal practice would dictate.

Here is an account from the 125th Support Battalion, 1st Armored Division, from the day they almost ran out of fuel: "When the convoy [forty-two fuel trucks] arrived at the refuel site [Nelligen] they found that the other two brigades had taken everything and no allocation had been saved. Prior to first light [around 0400] on the twenty-seventh, enough fuel arrived for nineteen HEMMTS. Those fuelers left immediately for our location [about 100 kilometers away] under Major Dunn's control. He raced at speeds of over fifty mph across the desert to get us fuel. One tanker was lost, as it turned upside down when rolling over a ravine. No one was hurt, but we lost 2,500 gallons of fuel. The battalion commander… went back to meet them. SPC Spencer [the battalion commander's driver] later recounted topping sixty-five mph as his HMMWV left the ground when hitting even the smallest bump. [Sometime along the way] the second HEMMT convoy drove into a minefield. [One] vehicle ran over one of the mines, and it exploded," damaging the vehicle but not wounding anyone. Later that morning, the convoy reached the 1st Brigade and refueled them with enough to continue the attack on 27 February. "After distributing the newly arrived fuel to the combat battalions, we began movement through the log base [an Iraqi logistics base that the Medina had been defending and 1st AD had overrun]. Everywhere you looked there was total destruction. Ammo pits were burning and exploding, sending shrapnel flying through the air; trucks were overturned and ablaze; trailers full of supplies also were on fire. Moving the BSA through all of this in formation was nearly impossible." (The BSA — brigade support area — was where logistics units supporting 1st Brigade gathered and set up.) "Company-sized units broke into smaller columns and moved through. It took almost all day to re-form the BSA on the eastern side of the complex. As we moved through the area, the BSA captured some 146 EPWs. [And] there was a harrowing moment when one prisoner ran from the holding area to kiss the hand of the soldier who had just thrown him an MRE from his truck. There were no contemptuous victors, only compassionate soldiers."

The 2nd COSCOM work to supply the VII Corps before, during, and after the war had been an extraordinary achievement, one that has to rank in one of the all-time feats of logistics in the history of the U.S. Army. Expanding from a base of fewer than 8,000 soldiers in Germany, the COSCOM had grown before the start of the war to fifty battalion-sized units, in five brigade-sized organizations, with a total of over 26,000 soldiers (an armored division with attachments normally had less than forty battalion organizations). Their operations had begun on 8 November, the moment we were notified to deploy, and they had not stopped until we redeployed. They'd simultaneously deployed themselves, expanded by a factor of almost four, and built an infrastructure in the desert that had kept the corps supplied. It was austere, but it worked.

During the VII Corps eighty-nine-hour war, the COSCOM had moved 2.6 million meals, 6.2 million gallons of diesel fuel, 2.2 million gallons of aviation fuel, and 327 major assemblies, such as tank engines. Every day, they moved 4,900 tons of ammo. To do this, in addition to the transportation assets of each division, they used 1,385 tractor trucks, 608 fuel tankers, 1,604 trailers, and 377 five-ton trucks, organized in 11 petroleum companies, 13 medium truck companies, 8 HET companies, and 4 medium/light truck companies. These transportation assets had been augmented by the CH-47 helos of the 11th Aviation Brigade and by C-130 airlift drops by CENTAF.

Within the COSCOM was the 332nd Medical Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Mike Strong, a physician from the Reserve component. My VII Corps surgeon, Colonel Bob Griffin, served as Mike's chief of staff and organized the staff of the brigade. They had fifteen hospitals, which provided world-class medical care to our soldiers. They'd arranged the medical support in bands of increasing medical capability, depending on how close you were to the action. In the band closest to the action were the medical assets of the divisions, augmented by five MASHs (mobile army surgical hospitals) from the medical brigade. In the next band were five combat-support hospitals, which augmented the surgical capability of the more forward and mobile MASHs and provided more beds. Back in Saudi, along Tapline Road, were the five evacuation hospitals. Of all our medical facilities, these had the most complete surgical and nursing capabilities, and were used to stabilize patients before evacuation from theater, or to keep patients until they recovered and could return to duty. During the war, the brigade recorded 1,768 admissions and 960 air evacuations. The list of professional medical personnel either called to active duty or already on active duty could fill the pages of a medical Who's Who. One hospital commander was a sixty-seven-year-old, physically fit orthopedic surgeon who had begun his service in North Africa as an enlisted soldier with the British in World War II. He wanted to continue to serve, and that he did. Many of our medevac pilots were Vietnam veterans who had stayed in the Reserve component and were proud to answer the call again.

Brigadier General Bob McFarlin and all the logisticians of the 2nd COSCOM, the divisions, and separate corps units were heroes in my book. "Forget logistics and you lose," I have said on many occasions. I might add that one should not forget the logisticians, either. They were magnificent. Nothing got in their way.

OPERATING SYSTEMS

The Army uses the term battle operating systems to describe the seven parts of a tactical force that must work in harmony and in the right combination to ensure victory. These are maneuver, fires, logistics, command, mobility and countermobility, air defense, and intelligence.

In Desert Storm, all elements of the VII Corps made these work. Though I have put most of my focus on elements such as maneuver, fires, command, and intelligence, there were many others:

• The engineers of Colonel Sam Raines's 7th Engineer Brigade continually built and maintained thousands of kilometers of MSRs (main supply routes), opened and marked lanes through minefields, built several airfields, and destroyed Iraqi fortifications.

• Colonel Rich Pomager's 14th Military Police Brigade processed over 20,000 prisoners, operated the many EPW compounds, and provided route security on the thousands of kilometers of corps MSRs.

• The corps signal units of Colonel Rich Walsh's 93rd Signal Brigade ensured communications within the VII Corps, as well as with Riyadh and with units processing arriving soldiers and equipment through the ports and airfields. Signal soldiers and MPs operated in small units that often were isolated from their parent unit for extended periods. The successful completion of their mission was a tribute to their small-unit leadership.

• The 7th Personnel Group, commanded by Colonel Jo Rusin, linked our wartime replacement soldiers with equipment, or, where necessary, moved individual replacements forward to units where and when they were needed. She and her staff (together with corps AG Lieutenant Colonel Eugenia Thornton) were meticulous in maintaining accountability and the records of those VII Corps soldiers killed in action, who died as a result of disease and non-battle injury, were wounded in action, and injured as a result of non-battle causes. Later the 7th was timely and thorough in reporting to Third Army the circumstances of soldier deaths caused by fratricide.

• The 7th Finance Group, commanded by Colonel Russ Dowden, whose soldiers kept track of the myriad details of wartime finance so important to soldiers and families of VII Corps, many of whom had joined the Corps only recently. It was no small task and they did it superbly.

• Lieutenant Colonel Larry Dogden's Air Defense TF 8/43 moved with the VII Corps, providing an umbrella from Iraqi tactical missile attack or helicopter attack (CENTAF had earlier established air supremacy against Iraqi fixed-wing attack). At one point I told Larry that his air defense units moved with the same rapid agility as a cavalry unit, the highest compliment I could pay them.

0800–1000 VII CORPS TAC

We had some orders to get out.

First, I wanted the corps to understand the rules of engagement; in particular, I wanted them to know they had the right of self-defense. I imagined that many Iraqi units were out of communications and therefore did not know the war was over. Second, we had some minor repositioning to do in order to get into a better and more coherent posture, and some of the commanders might have figured that getting into a more coherent posture would violate the cease-fire. Third, I was concerned about force protection, especially unexploded munitions, which numbered in the tens of thousands all over the battlefield. We'd already had casualties and deaths from these — just getting out of your vehicle in the dark had become hazardous. Fourth, I wanted the corps to stop taking the PSG pills and to get out of the by-now-nasty chemical overgarments we had worn day and night since 24 February.

Fifth, I wanted to meet with the commanders at noon.

1000–1200 VISITS

After taking care of these orders, I wanted to get out and around the corps as soon as possible, and personally congratulate as many units and commanders as I could. I began in the north with the 1st AD, to congratulate them on capturing the Medina headquarters.

Ron Griffith had commanded the division with great skill and tenacity, and had been thorough in preparing his soldiers for war. His Old Ironsides team had reflected his thorough, savvy approach to war fighting. He'd drilled them hard. Their intelligence had always been current, and Ron had synchronized his ground maneuver, combat aviation, and artillery masterfully. I always knew that when Ron told me something, it was well considered, and he was what I called an "aware" commander; he always knew the score. I liked having Ron's savvy, street-smart commander wisdom on my team.

Ron went on to four-star rank, and is currently Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, the number-two-ranking general in the Department of the Army.

When Ron Griffith and I met that morning, I shook his hand and told him how proud I was of him and the soldiers and leaders of Old Ironsides.

Ron was elated at the performance of his division, and well he should have been. They had gone farther in their attack than any other of our units. During their attack, they had destroyed the better part of a brigade of the Tawalkana, a brigade of the Adnan, and two-thirds of the Medina, and captured the HQ of that division (by then vacant) and the HQ of the Iraqi VII Corps.

After I left Ron, we flew back toward the TAC. I noticed a tank unit on the ground and told Mark Greenwald to land so that I could talk to some of the soldiers. It was Company B, 1/8 Cavalry, a tank battalion in the 1st CAV. I walked up to a tank and talked to the crew. In a little while, some other soldiers gathered around, then identified themselves and their unit. When I asked what they had done, they told me they had moved all day and night to get there, but had never gotten into the fight. They were not happy about that.

After I explained that the cease-fire had kept them out of the fight, I congratulated them on their magnificent 250-kilometer move from the Ruqi Pocket to where we were now. Then in the sand I sketched out the basic VII Corps attack and the vital role their actions in the Ruqi Pocket had played. After thanking them again for what they had done to help gain the victory, I left to go back to the TAC.

1200 VII CORPS TAC CP

The moment I walked into the TAC, John Yeosock called. He wanted us to move corps units around to eliminate pockets of resistance behind us, within our lines, and to do it while staying within the cease-fire rules, which were not to fire unless fired upon or threatened. However, that didn't seem wise to me just then. Moving around put our troops at a disadvantage, I told him, and little was to be gained, since the Iraqis who had not yet heard about the cease-fire could shoot first. John said OK.

At 1220, I met with my five division commanders in the TAC and shook each one's hand. All of us were tired, but elated at our success. We also knew we still had work to do.

"I want to be the first of a long line of people to say well done," I told them. "No matter what is written, said, or shown about what happened out here, the courage of our soldiers in taking the fight to the enemy, day and night, in sandstorms and rain, will be forever stamped in the desert sands of Iraq and Kuwait. I'm not sure where this is going from here, but while it's fresh in our minds, I want to thank the soldiers for their superb performance."

Then I talked about:

• accountability — keeping track of where all our soldiers were, as well as of casualties, and of protection and proper identification of remains;

• safety — especially with unexploded munitions;

• record keeping — to capture what we had done, including battle vignettes and lessons learned for the future;

• awards policy — including awards for valor and guidance on war trophies and souvenirs;

• destruction of Iraqi equipment.

The meeting lasted about an hour, and then the commanders returned to their units.

Soon after that, the first of the media arrived, including a correspondent from AP and another from an Arab news agency. I went over with them what we had done to include what I called our "left hook," thus distinguishing it from what others have erroneously called a "Hail Mary" attack. In football, a Hail Mary play is a last-minute, go-for-broke attempt to score the winning touchdown by throwing a forward pass in the general direction of your opponent's end zone. The game is on the line, you're only a little behind, you have seconds left, so you throw… and hope. Our maneuver could not have been further from a Hail Mary. Later, in an interview with Rick Atkinson of the Washington Post, I used the terms "closed fist" and "left hook" for our envelopment maneuver. In his story, I noticed later, he used "left hook," and it stuck.

"Was this the best maneuver of your career?" they asked.

I used a remark I had once heard Willie Mays make, after his well-known catch of a long drive from Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series: "I just make the catches," he said. "I'll let you fellows describe them."

Meanwhile, a few of the staff from the main had come out, and I thanked them all for their work as a team, repeating in more detail what I had told my commanders earlier, then I spent the rest of the day at the TAC with them, going over what needed to be done. There was still an enormous amount to do. We could not let up now (and it was by then seductively easy to let up).

At this point, I thought our future mission was to defend northern Kuwait. I also thought that we might be ordered to leave some equipment at King Khalid Military City in a POMCUS storage configuration. Finally, there was the question of what would happen to VII Corps when we returned to Germany. I had no answer to that yet.