[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
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
