tough and highly risky operation. Though we had trained some forward passage in simulations during our BCTP scenarios with the 1st INF in March 1990, I knew that wasn't going to help us a great deal. I also had a certain amount of experience with passages of lines and reliefs in place as a squadron commander in the 3rd ACR, then as commander of the 11th ACR and of the 1st AD. Yet all that had been a rearward passage in the defense.
I weighed the pluses and minuses once again. The risk to our troops was that units could get misoriented in the dark and there could be fratricide. But waiting until morning also was a risk. The RGFC was right in front of us, and it was moving units into the defense. At the same time, continuing the attack with the 2nd ACR posed no less a fratricide risk as making the passage at night — and they had only one-third the combat power of the Big Red One. That meant that the 2nd ACR might run out of combat power in the middle of the RGFC defense. Worse, the Iraqis might be able to set a stronger defense with mines and better-coordinated artillery fires.
I weighed these considerations quickly, then made my decision. I needed the 1st INF combat power attacking the now-stunned defense before they could recover. The Big Red One had the combat power I needed to keep attacking and maybe break through to Highway 8. It was a risk, not a gamble. But it was a risk.
At 1700 hours, I called Tom Rhame and ordered him to pass through the 2nd ACR and attack to seize Norfolk. It was a heavy decision for me: I knew what I was asking the soldiers and leaders to do. Though I did not second-guess myself, I thought about it all night long as I listened to reports of our battles on the radio in the TAC close by.
G + 2… THE REST OF THE THEATER
For the first twenty-four hours after their launch on G-Day, XVIII Corps's powerful 24th MECH had relatively easy going, with virtually no enemy opposition, over hard desert highlands as they thrust north toward Highway 8 and the Euphrates. They had a very long way to go, however. It was roughly 300 kilometers from their line of departure to Highway 8. But then, about sixty kilometers south of the highway, as the terrain sloped down toward the river, the going got considerably rougher. After rains, much of the area turns into nearly impenetrable quagmires. There were rains aplenty.
And so it took the division the better part of the night of 25 February until midday of the twenty-sixth to negotiate 'the great dismal bog,' as they called it, and begin the final attacks to put an armored cork on the Euphrates River valley.
The division had a number of objectives on or near Highway 8. South and east of the town of an-Nasiriyah were two airfields: Tallil, near the town, and Jalibah, not quite halfway (about seventy-five kilometers) between an-Nasiriyah and Basra. After they got through the bog, the 24th MECH took aim at the two airfields and at the highway itself. Soon the Iraqis were checked and the highway was secure. (Iraqi command to the east seemed unaware of this fact, for later that evening, a convoy of several dozen trucks and tanks on HETs were motoring up the highway — a brigade of the Hammurabi Division, it later turned out, trying to escape to Baghdad. First Brigade soon let the convoy know that the XVIII Corps had slammed the most direct route from Basra to Baghdad in their face.)
By early evening of the twenty-sixth, 2nd Brigade was in position to attack Jalibah, and by early morning of the following day, 197th Brigade had fought another 300 Republican Guard commandos in the vicinity of Tallil Airfield and secured a position southeast of the field. The 24th Division spent the morning of the twenty- seventh attacking the airfield.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Gary Luck had been briefed on CONPLAN Ridgeway (Contingency Plan Ridgeway), XVIII Corps's accommodation to the developments to the east. He ordered XVIII Corps to attack east into the Republican Guards. The 24th MECH and the 3rd ACR (under the 24th's operational control) would be the main effort, attacking east along Highway 8 late on the twenty-seventh, while the 101st Airborne would attack into an objective (Thomas) ten kilometers north of Basra with Apache and Cobra helicopters.
XVIII Corps was now prepared to synchronize its operations with VII Corps. But they had to hurry. By late on the twenty-sixth, while XVIII Corps was completing its airfield attacks and mission to interdict Highway 8, VII Corps was at least fifty kilometers farther east than Gary Luck's easternmost unit, and the gap between the two corps was growing.
Over in Kuwait, on the night of 25–26 February, there began an episode that would later turn out to be a major reason why the war ended early.
Late on the evening of the twenty-fifth, the Kuwaiti resistance let the Saudis know that the Iraqi army in Kuwait City appeared to be forming convoys out of military and civilian vehicles. It looked, in other words, as though the Iraqis might be starting to move out. The Saudis communicated this news to CENTCOM, and it was confirmed by a J-STARS aircraft tracking ground movements out of Kuwait City. Something approaching 200 vehicles was tracked moving on the freeway connecting Kuwait City and Basra near the town of Al Jahrah, at the western end of the Bay of Kuwait.
Soon CENTAF had Navy and USAF F-15s attacking these vehicles (only a very few of which were tanks or BMPs) along the highway, on what is known as the Mutlah Ridge. And during the early-morning hours of 26 February, Air Force and Navy aircraft flew hundreds of sorties against what indeed proved to be the fleeing Iraqi army. The attacks were so successful, the Western media dubbed the highway near Al Jahrah 'the Highway of Death.' Close to 1,500 smashed and burned-out hulks clogged the road to Basra (though loss of life, it became apparent later, was not nearly so great as the press at first reported).
An article appeared in the 26 February Washington Post, entitled ' 'Like Fish in a Barrel,' U.S. Pilots Say.' Another appeared the same day, describing Coalition air attacks as 'a combat frenzy.' Such views half a world from the action were about to set in motion decisions that would determine whether or not Norman Schwarzkopf's imperative—'Destroy the Republican Guards!' — would in fact be achieved.
By the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, the 2nd Marine Division, spearheaded by the Army's Tiger Brigade, had captured Mutlaa Ridge and cut off the highway to Basra, while the 1st Marine Division had sealed off the Kuwait International Airport. JFC-E continued north along the coastal highway. Kuwait City was now encircled.
