That was it. The evidence of my senses had been confirmed by Bill Carter's quick summary and now by the judgment of the division commander forward. It was then that I decided (though I was already leaning that way — especially after seeing the destruction on the way out here) to use the 1st INF as our southern envelopment arm, and not the British. Using them would get our southern division where I wanted them more directly and faster, and I would also exploit the success of the Big Red One. The 1st INF was now, technically, in an exploitation-and- pursuit. It had been a long time since a U.S. Army unit had been in that tactical situation. We surely had not practiced that situation in the Cold War, and not much in our training… Well, you must always be prepared for success on the battlefield, and to seize the opportunities opened by an action of one of your subordinate units. I had expected to be in this situation, and now we were ready to exploit it.
Bill Carter had overheard my conversation with Tom, and moments later, he and I and his planners were clustered beside a flat 1:100 000 map off the end of the M577 ramp.
The troops around me looked tired. They had been attacking now since 1500 on the twenty-fourth. They'd had some rest, but not much. The movement forward after the breach had begun at around 0430 on 26 February, and had gone on in blinding sandstorms. They had coordinated, then executed the complex night passage of lines, then fought their way through two Iraqi brigades past Norfolk, and were now heading east. A hell of a series of tactical moves and fights. I was never more proud of any unit than I was of the Big Red One that morning.
But I've been around tired troops, and these troops were tired… though clearly not down. They were running on fumes now, but they wanted to finish it. I could imagine what the troops who had fought all night felt like.
As I looked at the map, a piece of blue representing the Persian Gulf was just visible at the far eastern corner of the eastern map sheet. It caught my attention.
'Attack east,' I told them. 'Go for the blue on the map. That is what is bringing the ships to take us home when this is over. Go for that. Here!' I said, banging on the map. Not too military, but I wanted them — as clearly tired as they were — to have something to seize on to propel them forward another twenty-four hours. As Greg Fontenot was to tell me later, my remark 'Go for the blue on the map' got all the way to the battalion commanders, and maybe further.
'Bill,' I went on, 'now, here is what I am planning for the corps to do.' Then I quickly sketched out how the 1st CAV would attack around the 1st AD in the north later that day, while the 1st and 3rd ADs would be the pressure forces continuing to attack due east, and the 1st INF would attack east through Denver across Highway 8 toward the Gulf. At that time, I also planned to bring the 2nd ACR up to the inside of the 1st INF to an Objective Hawk (after the corps's JAYHAWK nickname) that I drew just west of Denver, in order to keep the 3rd AD and 1st INF from running into each other. The British would meanwhile continue due east to Highway 8, just north of Kuwait City.
As soon as I finished my sketch, Bill told me that he had it and they would execute. I then asked him to send a planner along with me back to the corps TAC, where we would quickly finish the graphic control measures.
Before I left the area, I walked over to talk to some of the aviators — scout and attack helo pilots — about what they had seen and done over the last hours. The aviation brigade was commanded by Colonel Jim Mowrey, a smart, aggressive aviator whom I had gotten to know as a war college student at Fort Leavenworth during 1986 and 1987. Jim was not there at the time.
The aviators were clearly tired from flying all night. Again, you could see it in their eyes. They described for me their attack in front of the close fight, during which they had surprised Iraqi units and destroyed numbers of vehicles. The scene they described fit my own visualization. Many Iraqi soldiers, they continued, had soon been running about trying to escape (they had been easily seen on night vision as white or black figures, depending on the mode of the sight). They had chosen not to fire on them, but instead focused their cannon fire on the equipment. I was proud of them. They had never forgotten who they were and what they stood for. I shook their hands, told them well done, and gave them VII Corps coins. Their accounts were more confirmation of a breakthrough.
From what I had seen and heard, combined with earlier intelligence reports, I knew that whatever RGFC remained in our sector were now in a small area north of 1st INF's attack axis and east of 3rd AD and 1st AD. How many, I was not sure.
We now had work to do to get the order out and executed that I had just sketched. The normal time for a complete new corps order is seventy-two hours. Even a change to a basic order (called a FRAGO — short for fragment of an order) usually takes twenty-four hours, as our FRAGPLAN 7 had done. I had given a warning order for this double envelopment the day before. Now I ordered it to be executed later that day and the next.
0715 VII CORPS TAC FWD
We flew to our TAC FWD, close to the 3rd AD TAC, about a twenty-minute flight back over the smoking ruins of the better part of two Iraqi brigades. There I linked up with Lieutenant Colonel Dave McKiernan and his crew. They were beat. They had been up most of the night working, moving, keeping up with the battles in the 1st AD and 3rd AD, and keeping us at the TAC informed. By now the main TAC with Stan was displacing forward to this location, or close to it. I was reminded of the reasons why fitness is part of a professional soldier's creed. You have to have something in reserve in times like this.
I needed Dave to understand what I wanted done and to begin making the orders overlays, while I went to lay out my intent face-to-face with the commanders. I sketched out the maneuver for him in the sand and on the map and told him to get to work on it while I went to see Griffith and Funk. I would return at around 1030, I told him, and I wanted an orders group meeting of Tilelli, Holder, and Creighton Abrams at the TAC. If they could get our planners forward from the main CP to help, that would be a bonus. Then I left to go see Butch Funk.
I figured they would have the graphics posted on overlays of acetate ready to pass out by the time I got done with the face-to-face meetings. It would not be easy.
While I was at the TAC, I talked to John Yeosock twice to describe our progress and what I had seen, to go over our double-envelopment scheme of maneuver, and to discuss more maneuver room up north, in order to fit the 1st CAV in without some complex maneuver with the 1st AD. 'I'm proud of what the corps is doing,' he told me, 'and I'll see what I can do to help you.'
I have later learned that the day before (26 February), the Third Army G-2, John Stewart, and the G-3, Steve Arnold, had been on their way forward to link up with me to go over final plans for the RGFC destruction. They had gotten as far as King Khalid Military City, then John Yeosock had had to recall them to help him with a crisis with the CINC in Riyadh over our movement rate.
I cannot help but think that the end of the war might have turned out differently if they had been able to continue forward and we could have finalized the VII Corps-XVIII Corps coordinated final attack. As a minimum, I'll bet Steve Arnold would have been able to get our northern boundary changed and notify XVIII Corps about it. That would have allowed us to blitz the 1st CAV forward at about 1100 on the twenty-seventh, when they closed into Horse behind the 1st AD, and to slam into the Hammurabi Division (which was by then retreating). That would have completed the three-for-three heavy division RGFC destruction. It never happened.
0745 3RD AD TAC CP
I linked up with Butch Funk well forward in the 3rd AD's attack zone. With Butch was his aide, plus Brigadier General Gene Blackwell, and his command sergeant major, Joe T. Hill. Blackwell was a long-legged, six-foot-four Clemson graduate from South Carolina, all soldier — a warrior with fighter instincts, who went for the kill. As warriors and soldiers, he and Butch were much alike, but their personalities were very different. Gene was quieter than Butch, and you needed to draw him out. Butch was always explaining and teaching what he wanted done. But they were both very direct when they wanted orders carried out. They were a good team.
Joe T. Hill was a Georgian (with a clipped Georgia accent), a veteran tanker, and a Vietnam vet, who had commanded an M1A1 the four days of the ground war. If you ordered an archetypal CSM out of central casting — a combat-savvy, streetwise, troop-focused veteran tanker — you'd get Joe T. Hill. I had interviewed 'Joe T' for the VII
