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.
