many forces out of the theater as possible. It was not yet clear to me whether they thought we were going for Basra and were trying to defend it (as they had done so strongly in the war with Iran), or whether they were now in full retreat.
Bob Schmitt confirmed that XVIII Corps was still to our west, had not yet turned east, and would not come on line with the corps today. This information intensified my own sense of urgency to complete the envelopment, as it now increasingly appeared that we were the only ones who could close the mission out.
Creighton Abrams continued to have a nose for the fight and the fire-support dimension of the planning that needed to go into it. As of now, he told me, he had no visibility on theater air. By now, the FSCL was being more tightly controlled by CENTCOM, and was out of our hands. Previously, after quick coordination with Third Army when all decision-makers had been available, we had been able to move it at our order; now CENTCOM said they would control it for the rest of the war. That was not welcome news, but a planning factor we had to deal with. I was still under the impression that theater air was attacking targets in front of Basra and sealing off the escape routes over the Euphrates in the XVIII Corps sector.[50]
Colonel Carl Ernst had been chief of the BCTP team when we had war-gamed early in January, and had stayed in theater at the direction of General Carl Vuono to assist John Yeosock's chief of staff, Brigadier General Bob Frix, who was running Lucky TAC for John at King Khalid Military City. After I showed Carl our past and planned maneuvers, he praised the corps for what we had done, and supported us for what we were about to do to close it. I was glad to hear that, since I figured he was keeping Third Army informed about what we were trying to do. Unfortunately, he had no decision authority to change boundaries, or he would have given us more maneuver room in XVIII Corps sector (who were not yet even anywhere near there).
Though it would probably have been useful to do so, I did not talk directly to Gary Luck at this point, as the comms were not great. A quick meeting might have been possible, but I did not even know where Gary was on the battlefield. If we had managed to link up our comms, we perhaps could have worked out the final maneuver together (absent CENTCOM and Third Army), but we were running out of time, and I really did not even consider calling Gary.
Additionally, our flank contact with XVIII Corps at this forward location was poor, and I did not know where the XVIII Corps liaison officer was or what he was doing. As a point of fact, even if communication with XVIII Corps had been better, in the time I figured we had to get this next battle under way, it would not have been possible to do both the XVIII Corps coordination and planning with Gary and the internal VII Corps work that needed to be done. So I stayed inside the VII Corps and figured we'd do what we could do ourselves. It was a conscious choice.
At about 1330, I left to go see John Tilelli, while Stan Cherrie left with the 1st INF planner to find the Big Red One. I wanted to see the results of John's quick planning, then go forward to 1st AD and personally nail down the final arrangements with them. Everything else was well under way, and all of it would happen. But the critical point was the northern sector of 1st AD. With everyone tired and with time now very compressed, I felt I needed to make that happen myself.
1300 1ST CAV TAC CP
We had about a ten-minute flight to the 1st CAV TAC CP, during which we bypassed many Iraqi troops and some units. On our flight, we were at an altitude of about 100 feet and moving fast, when out of the door at a range of maybe 500 meters we could see five Iraqi soldiers holding up their hands as if to surrender. My pilot, CWO Tom Lloyd, asked what he should do. We could not see if they were armed, so we slid the door of the Blackhawk open, circled back toward them to see their intentions, and did a 360-degree turn around them to check them out. They clearly wanted to surrender and probably thought we were an attack helo. Because we had to get to the 1st CAV, and in any case had no room for the five of them, I did not want to land, so when we spotted an artillery unit close by, we went over and told them to police up 'our prisoners,' and then flew on to the 1st CAV TAC.
As soon as we arrived, John Tilelli briefed me on the passage and attack maneuver he planned toward Objective Raleigh. He was going to lead with his cavalry squadron (1/7 CAV, 'Gary Owen'), then follow with one brigade behind the other until they were clear of the 1st AD, where they could then attack to Raleigh with two brigades abreast. His CAV squadron was already on the move. They could make it happen.
While I was at the TAC, I got a call from 1st AD: they were engaged with a brigade of the Medina Division in a large tank fight, and it was going well for the 1st AD. As it turned out, that call was about the Battle of Medina Ridge, our largest individual tank battle of the war.
This was both good news and not so good. The brigade in the fight was Ron's northern brigade, the 2nd, the same one that I had expected would give 1st CAV room to blitz forward. Now that they were in a big fight, I had some questions about how fast they could make room for 1st CAV, which meant that I wanted to go forward to nail this down. I would have liked John to come, too, but he needed to stay to begin moving his division forward, so I had him send his G-3, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Gunlicks, along in John's own UH-1 to meet me at the 1st AD TAC to finish the coordination.
I left to go find Ron.
1330–1400 FLIGHT TO 1ST AD
We headed east.
CWO Tom Lloyd was command pilot on the Blackhawk today. Tom had flown me when I was a division commander in the 1st AD, had gone to Blackhawk transition training, then moved to VII Corps. I trusted Tom just as I did Mark Greenwald. Ever since Vietnam, I had insisted that the pilots of my command aircraft be veteran aviators with both superior flying skills and the judgment to handle tough spots. The kind of flying we did put us in marginal situations from time to time, and I did not want rookies flying us.
Ron had meanwhile moved forward in his HMMWV to a position near the 2nd Brigade's battle with the Medina brigade. When we asked for location, they gave us a LORAN reading. That required Tom to translate in flight the LORAN to GPS. For a time, he and Toby were talking back and forth about it, and when I finally asked if they had the location, the answer was yes.
By then, I was not paying much attention to what was outside, as I was going over our maneuver on the map and thinking about everything else I needed to be doing right then.
A few minutes later, Tom said in a relatively calm voice, 'Sir, I think we are over the Iraqi positions. I can see tanks and Bradleys firing this way.'
'Well, turn around and let's go back,' I said, in about the same tone of voice. But all of a sudden my senses came to life in a hurry. Not much I could do, except hope the Iraqis were so occupied with 1st AD that they did not notice us. I was, however, more concerned about the reaction from our own troops. Up to this point, we had not seen any Iraqi helicopters, but we knew they still had HINDs and other Soviet-made helos in theater, and they still had the capability to use them if they wanted to risk it. We also knew that the best way to disseminate chemical or bio was by aerosol spray from helos, so our troops were on the lookout for HINDs and other Soviet-made helos.
It just so happened that on the pylons on each side of our Blackhawk, the crew had mounted 250-gallon wing tanks that increased our operating range (or time of flight available) for almost an hour. Unfortunately, with those external tanks, if we were flying straight at someone (the normal attack profile of a HIND), we looked almost like a HIND ourselves.
That the Bradleys didn't open up on us as we flew back was a stroke of good luck, more than likely caused by the discipline of the soldiers and the fact that this was day four, and by now our troops no longer looked up.
Ron's crew popped some smoke, and we set down about 200 meters from Ron's HMMWV. As I got out of the Blackhawk, I noticed our own artillery firing outgoing, but I also thought I heard the unmistakable, low-sounding
