Tom had commanded the Big Red One with skill and courage. Like the rest of us, he was a combat veteran of Vietnam, a veteran of the Cold War, and had had extensive command and staff service in mounted units. I enjoyed being around Tom. He was quick off the mark, never backed away from a challenge, and was always upbeat. He and his division were tough mounted warriors. I had always known it, and now the Iraqis knew it as well.
Tom and I huddled so that he could reconstruct for me the last twelve hours of his war. It was then that I learned that he had not received a specific order to seize Safwan. Then we discussed what we had to do now.
'We have to go get the town and the airfield without getting into a fight,' I told him. 'Try to seize them without firing a shot, but your troops and commanders always have the right of self-defense.'
'WILCO, boss,' he answered.
That was not the only guidance Tom got about Safwan that day. He received a lot more — from me, all the way to Riyadh. The anxiety level was up in Riyadh. I guess nobody wanted to tell President Bush that our site for the talks was still in enemy hands. At the same time, I also guess no one wanted to conduct a full assault into Safwan, since that might cause casualties, would attract a lot of attention, and violate our 'cessation of offensive operations.' So the guidance I gave Tom was to secure the town without a fight. Bluff, threaten, do whatever he had to, but get it. I left the details to him.
Later that day, Tom sent his second brigade, commanded by Colonel Tony Moreno, and the 1/4 Cavalry to get Safwan.
In a superbly skilled use of persuasion supported by force, Tony Moreno quite simply told the Iraqi commander to get the hell out of the way or suffer the results. That threat was credible to the Iraqis. They had already seen what U.S. forces had done to their friends, and Tony had the tanks visible to show he meant business. By late afternoon, they were in Safwan and had the airfield… but not before the 1/4 Cav had had to convince an Iraqi RGFC colonel to get out of there, using the same 'Moreno' tactics. Moreno's approach had essentially been the same one that President Bush had used to deal with Saddam Hussein in the first place. 'Get out of Kuwait, or we are coming in there to throw you out.' Saddam had not been convinced, so the Coalition had liberated Kuwait by force. When Tony Moreno used the same threat at Safwan, the Iraqis did not need more convincing. By 1600, they had Safwan, the airfield, and the road junction.
Meanwhile, though the mission had to come first, I still had a driving urgency (fueled by the aftermath of Vietnam) to visit the troops and leaders to thank them for all they had done to win this victory. I also wanted to visit the hospitals and especially to talk to as many amputees as I could. I started the process that day… as did all my commanders. There would be many visits and many ceremonies, which together would put some kind of closure on all that had happened.
Here is one small example: On the way back to the TAC, we visited with Lieutenant Colonel Pat Ritter and his tankers of the 1/3 4 Armor and learned from them about the intensity of the 1st INF's fight to take Objective Norfolk on the night of 26 and 27 February.
Pat told me of the tough night passage, the difficulty they had had just navigating, and the enormous discipline shown by the soldiers and leaders to clear fires so that they would not shoot each other. He and his company commanders and NCOs talked about close-in fighting and about the Iraqi infantry with RPGs. He related stories about short-range tank shots of less than 500 meters and about the enemy firing from the rear. He also told of one of his company commanders who had used the machine guns of his tank to kill Iraqi infantry trying to climb on Ritter's tank. As the troops told me about their battles, I felt the emotion and excitement in their voices. When they talked about what they themselves had done, it was in whispered tones, but when they talked about what others had done, their voices grew louder. It had been a tough night for those tankers. Before I left, I told Pat and his troops how proud I was of them.
SINCE I had not yet had a chance to visit 3rd AD, that night I called Butch Funk. He was feeling good about the performance of Spearhead — as well he should have. They had been relentless and had left in their wake the better part of four divisions, including the Tawalkana. Butch had scheduled an AAR with his commanders on top of the captured underground HQ of the 10th Iraqi Armored Division, and I wanted to attend some of that. There was also to be a memorial service in his CAV squadron, and he asked if I would later award his CAV squadron commander the Silver Star. I told him I would be proud to do it.
I also called Cal Waller to get a reading of the CINC on the Safwan issue and the flap over our pace of attack. Cal was always helpful with reading Schwarzkopf, and he was also candid and did not hold anything back.
When I asked him about the uproar and accusations over the Safwan road intersection, Cal explained, as I had guessed, that the problem was that the CINC was embarrassed: Based on what he had been briefed, he had told the President we had the place for the talks. Then he was told we did not have it.
When I asked Cal about the pace-of-attack problem, he told me that the CINC had been upset over that a couple of days before, but now he was pleased about the whole operation.
All right, I thought to myself afterward, they both make sense now, then chalked both of them off to the spur-of-the-moment pressure of command. It even occurred to me that now maybe the CINC regretted he'd raised the Safwan incident at all.
2400 1 MARCH 1991
As of midnight, our VII Corps SITREP to Third Army said this about Iraqi units:
North of us, out of our sector, approximately five battalions remained in the Basra pocket, conducting screening and hasty defensive operations on the southern bank of the Euphrates River. These units were hastily formed battle groups composed of the Medina, Hammurabi, and Adnan Divisions. We also knew that approximately eighteen battalions of five different divisions had successfully withdrawn to the north bank of the Euphrates River and were probably attempting to consolidate before returning to the Baghdad area. We thought the threat to VII Corps in our sector consisted of scattered forces of no larger than company-sized elements who had either been trapped or bypassed, and who might not have gotten the cease-fire word.
2 MARCH 1991
That morning, I got a quick staff update on the enemy and on our own situation.
Though the Iraqis were in disarray, they were rapidly moving units and equipment out of the theater. They were clearly a beaten army and fleeing as fast as they could. Our SITREP the previous night had gotten that accurately.
Except for continuing problems with unexploded munitions, our own situation was good. In the past twenty- four hours, we had suffered our second soldier death due to our own unexploded munitions, and I therefore put out a message to the commanders to reinforce troop protection. Later, throughout all Third Army, we would adopt the saying 'Not one more life.'
After the briefing, I gave Stan guidance on our occupation duties, and told him to have some alternatives worked out for me when I got back that night.
Next I ordered the formation of a Task Force Demo (a demolition task force) to destroy abandoned and captured Iraqi equipment more rapidly than we'd been able to do up to that time. I also wanted to be briefed on their actions each day hereafter until we left Iraq.
That day at 1200 was to be the cease-fire meeting at Safwan. We'd had our people there since late the afternoon before to set up the site. All the equipment had been coming in trucks from King Khalid Military City and theater stocks, but they'd gotten jammed up in the traffic mess created by the destruction just north of Kuwait City. The trucks could not get through. That meant they had to transfer equipment to CH-47 helos and fly it in. The site would be ready at noon, but it would be a primitive setup.
