At this point, I thought our future mission was to defend northern Kuwait. I also thought that we might be ordered to leave some equipment at King Khalid Military City in a POMCUS storage configuration. Finally, there was the question of what would happen to VII Corps when we returned to Germany. I had no answer to that yet.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Duty in Iraq
0300 1 MARCH 1991
Another early-morning phone call from Riyadh. I was asleep in my small tent at the TAC.
It was John Yeosock. 'There will be cease-fire talks tomorrow,' he told me when I got to the phone, 'and VII Corps will be responsible to set up the site. The CINC,' he added, 'also wants recommendations about the best place to hold the talks.'
'Let me ask around, and I'll get back to you,' I answered. My immediate first thought was that the best place would be somewhere out on the battlefield, where the press and the Iraqi brass could see the extent of the damage to the Iraqi army.
I had a quick huddle with the staff at the TAC to get them into it; and I soon had the corps staff at the main CP in on it as well. It would be a huge task to set up in such a short time, and we obviously wanted to do it right.
Though we didn't have a lot of time, we made calls to the units in the corps to find out their views about sites; and the one that I liked best was the Medina Division HQ that 1st AD had captured on the last day of the war. It would provide a great backdrop, since it would show the abandoned HQ of one of their no-longer 'elite' divisions (we figured that by now we had stripped them of any right to call themselves elite); it was reasonably accessible to the media (I figured we would fly them into the final site); and all around it was destroyed Iraqi army equipment. It would perfectly communicate the magnitude of the defeat of Saddam's army to the world.
AT about 0400, John called back to ask for our recommendation, and I told him about the Medina Division HQ. John seemed to like that and said he would pass my recommendation to CENTCOM — but he also asked if we had taken the crossroads in Safwan, as specified in the written order we had gotten the morning of 28 February. I was surprised by the question. I still wondered why anyone placed any significance on that crossroads, since the remaining RGFC in our sector were in front of 1st and 3rd ADs. But an order is an order, and I believed we had done what we had been supposed to do. I told him we did not have troops there physically, but that we had gotten air there to interdict movement, as I had understood the intent.
He told me that would be a problem. Our written orders had been to seize it, and the CINC thought we had it. Safwan was the site the CINC favored for the talks and he had already tentatively told Washington. I repeated that we did not have it.
John told me the CINC wanted to know why his orders had been disobeyed regarding that crossroads.
I was absolutely stunned.
My first reaction was real anger. I thought about the other war that had ended with my lower leg amputated. Now here in this war I was to have my professional character amputated. I was really disappointed with the CINC. To be accused of disobeying an order is to be accused of a serious breach of discipline, especially in wartime. More than the personal injury, though, was the sudden realization that this had been the first communication from the theater commander to VII Corps after the war. No calls of thanks to the troops. No discussion of casualties. No calls to the locker room, as it were, for the men and women who had made this all possible. That anger burned hot for some time.
I have questioned orders, especially ones I considered stupid, or those to which there might be legal or moral objections. I have argued the wisdom of others and suggested alternatives. I have executed orders I did not like, and for commanders I did not like. But once discussions ended and my commander said, 'Here is what I want you to do,' never had I willingly or knowingly disobeyed a legal order.
Yet I was also a corps commander of 146,000 U.S. and British troops who had just finished a magnificent operation. I could not let the incident overshadow the great achievements of the troops and my responsibility to them. I also was a subordinate, and my superior officer had requested an explanation. I would do as he requested. Then I would let it pass and get on with the mission. We still had lots to do.
We had interdicted the road junction but not seized it. We had done so with attack helicopters of the 1st INF (they had been there for a number of hours, and I later learned they had observed six vehicles pass through but had not fired because they had gotten the panic cease-fire call at about 0720 on 28 February and had never gotten the order to resume the attack). There had been no intent to disobey orders. I had selected tactics to accomplish what I had interpreted to be the intent of the order.
I had gotten those verbal orders from John at about 0330 on 28 February. The written order came later that morning. My interpretation of John's verbal orders to me was for us to stop Iraqi movement through that road junction. My selection of tactics was interdiction with air, and the assumption that the 1st INF attack would probably get there by 0800 if they continued on their attack axis. Stan gave the 1st INF the mission to interdict the road junction, which they did. I and everyone else missed the 'seize' in the written order. That was my fault.
Any failure of the corps to seize the road junction was my responsibility, but it was not failure based on disobeying an order.
I never heard any more about it, not then and not since. I never mentioned it to any of the other commanders or soldiers, other than in the 1st INF, since they were involved.
I could never understand why the CINC's first reaction would be to accuse John Yeosock and me of disobeying an order.
1 MARCH 1991
Right after first light, I went to visit the 1st INF, who were across Highway 8, just south of the Kuwait-Iraq border. I wanted to tell Tom Rhame what had to be done to get Safwan and to explain that it was now the site of the talks.
On the way, we saw the wreckage of the Iraqi army that had tried to stop them. We had flown over some of the wreckage the morning of the twenty-seventh. Now it went on much farther. Burning equipment, tanks, BMPs, trucks, air defense tracked vehicles, artillery — it was all there. Some isolated pieces of equipment looked brand new and undamaged. Bunkers, trenches, and vehicle revetments were everywhere.
As we crossed over into Kuwait, we saw the oil well fires. They resembled gigantic torches, with bright orange flames reaching from the ground to a height above our flight path. The flames were topped by thick black plumes of smoke, which spread and merged to form a black gray haze over the entire landscape. Close to them, you could hear the loud, roaring sounds of burning gas and oil. It grew visibly darker the farther we flew into Kuwait. It was Dante's Inferno, Armageddon, hell on earth, you pick it. I had never seen anything on this scale before. We quickly counted twenty-seven wells on fire, and there were many times that many. It was an awesome sight… and an unconscionable act of material brutality against the assets of another nation. I'm sure the Iraqis thought that if they could not have the oil, then no one else would, either.
Though I wanted to talk to Tom Rhame about Safwan, I first thanked him and his troops for their superb efforts during the war. I had given Tom the most varied combat missions and, in the night passage and attack, the toughest, and they had done what I'd asked with skill and courage. They felt good about it. I could see it in the faces, hear it in the voices of the officers, NCOs, and soldiers I saw and with whom I talked. It was a different unit from the one I had visited on the eve of battle. They were now victorious veterans of mobile armored desert warfare. They would never be the same, and they knew it.
