At about 0830, I flew into Safwan and talked to Brigadier General Bill Carter, the senior officer there, and grilled him on all the details of the setup. Tom Rhame joined us as we talked. In the Army, when a commander essentially flyspecks every detail, they call it 'getting into the weeds.' That was what I was doing… and it was different from my usual practice. I usually probe around to determine if an operation has its act together. Once I'm satisfied, I leave the details to the unit that is doing it. On this one, I wanted to go over it all and see how I could help.
As always, things were well organized. At the same time, they let me know there were too many bosses running around giving instructions. I could see that for myself. There were troops from 22nd SUPCOM (Lieutenant General Gus Pagonis's unit), VII Corps HQ, 1st INF, and probably Third Army. Since VII Corps had the mission, I knew I could fix the situation in a heartbeat, and told Carter he was in charge of getting the site ready; he was to take charge and make it happen. It didn't matter what other units were there — as far as I was concerned, they were all in VII Corps territory, and they now belonged to 1st INF, Tom Rhame, and Bill Carter.
After we got the who's-in-charge-here issue straightened out, Bill Carter and the Big Red One took over, and without them — from Moreno taking the site in the first place to Bill organizing it — it would not have happened. But they didn't do it alone. They had a lot of help from Major Dan Nolan, the VII Corps SGS (the secretary of the general staff, the group that works for the corps chief, and that handles all correspondence, information distribution, and protocol), and his crew, plus the troops and equipment from Third Army and 22nd SUPCOM.
They put up a sign that was visible to all those who entered the site: WELCOME TO IRAQ, COURTESY OF THE BIG RED ONE. That was unit pride working… yet it was also a historical fact. I liked that.
While I was there, we got the word that the Iraqis couldn't make it to that day's meeting, so the meeting had been postponed until the next day. We were glad to get twenty-four more hours. The extra time gave the 1st INF more time to prepare the site, and it gave me a chance to continue to visit units.
My first stop was Troop G in 2nd Squadron, 2d ACR, one of the three cavalry troops to make the Battle of 73 Easting so successful. Captain Joe Sartiano gathered the troopers around a tank, and they spoke in whispered tones about what they had done. It is not unusual for those who have seen real combat to talk little about it and almost never in loud locker-room voices or language. This is especially true for those units that have had members wounded or killed in action, as was the case with Troop G.
I almost had to pry stories out of them. They told me about Sergeant Nels Moller, who had been killed in action, and about the heroism of Second Lieutenant Gary Franks and Staff Sergeant Larry Foltz, who when their own vehicle had become inoperative from enemy fire, had crawled through that fire to another vehicle so that they could continue to call artillery on the Iraqis in 73 Easting.
I ended the session by telling them that their actions had found and fixed the RGFC for VII Corps, just as cavalry is supposed to do. Then we had finished the fight they had started with the units that had passed through them. They were now combat veterans and had earned the proud right to wear the 2nd ACR patch on their right shoulder, signifying combat service.
It was when I was about to leave that Staff Sergeant Waylan Lundquist, platoon sergeant of the second (tank) platoon, said that line that I've never forgotten: 'Hey, sir, you generals didn't do too bad this time, either.'
It was the best compliment a commander could hear. But I also noticed he said 'this time'!
My next stop was about thirty minutes south. With Major General Rupert Smith and the British, I found the same attitude as with the U.S. troops: quiet, but pleased and proud with what they had done. Rupert and I compared notes and he confirmed he had been a bit weary of mission changes when, on the twenty-sixth, he did not know if he was to go north to attack in front of the 1st INF, south to clear the zone to the 1st CAV, or due east to Highway 8. Rupert and I laughed about it, but it had not been all that funny then. We also shared a laugh about something else. As radio call signs, we Americans tended to use our unit nicknames to identify ourselves. I called myself JAYHAWK, Tom Rhame used DANGER, Butch Funk SPEARHEAD, and Ron Griffith IRON. That was strange to the British, and so Rupert had selected SUN RAY as his call sign.
At each visit to the 1st (UK), they assembled a battalion and I was able to tell them thanks from their Yank commander for what they had done and explain how their actions had contributed to our overall success. Working with the British had been a highly successful combined operation: American and British troops together again in the desert, just as in World War II. I would forever see and know the UK differently since I had been privileged to command their soldiers in battle. I hoped the people in the UK would feel the same intense pride in their soldiers and what they had accomplished that we did.
From the 1st (UK), I flew back into Saudi Arabia to visit the soldiers in one of our evacuation hospitals. Fifteen minutes south of the border, we arrived at the 312th Evacuation Hospital and landed on their medevac pad, waving off the medics who rushed out thinking we were bringing in casualties.
We had five such hospitals in VII Corps, in addition to the five MASH and five combat-support hospitals. Each had different capabilities for surgical treatment, trauma, and bed space. Normally, you echelon the MASH forward with divisions, place the CSHs farther back, and keep the larger evac hospitals well in the rear. I wanted to visit our wounded and especially to talk to the amputees.
I was angry to learn that they had no Purple Hearts to award at the hospital. Normally, Purple Hearts are awarded in the hospital, as soldiers are too quickly evacuated from their parent unit to receive them there. A Purple Heart for wounds in combat is a badge of honor for risking your life for your country. I wanted them awarded, and I wanted them now. We got that squared away with a few calls to the right people.
Our wounded soldiers were getting world-class medical care. The staff of our hospitals there would have made any hospital in the U.S.A. proud. Many of the doctors were Vietnam veterans. Our oldest hospital commander had first served as a private soldier in the North Africa campaigns and then, after he had become a doctor, as a surgeon in Korea, Vietnam, and now here.
The troops were hurting from their wounds and full of questions about their fellow soldiers and their unit. I talked to all the amputees in that hospital and tried to share my own experiences with them. I was immensely proud of these young soldiers and those I had visited earlier. They were not from another planet. They were American soldiers who had given it the best they had. All I wanted to do was say thanks, as I remembered my fellow amputees in the ward in Valley Forge so long ago.
I flew in silence most of the hour and fifteen minutes back to the corps TAC 200 kilometers into Iraq.
At about 1830, soon after I got back to the TAC, I got a call from John Yeosock.
'Fred, the CINC wants you to escort him to the talks at Safwan tomorrow,' he said.
'Me? You sure about that?' That was a real shocker. The CINC wants me to escort him? I had to get this one straight.
'I'm sure.'
'WILCO.' I'd be there.
3 MARCH 1991
I was up before first light.
This would be a big day.
Our troops had reported they would be ready when General Schwarzkopf arrived, and I depended on that. After a quick update that told me the situation was otherwise quiet in our part of occupied Iraq, we left at 0715 for Kuwait City and the airport, which by now was back in limited use. The CINC would not arrive before 0930, and it was only a forty-five-minute ride, but I wanted to look around some and to give ourselves plenty of time. Since this was the CINC's first visit north of the Saudi border and to the battlefield, I also wanted to preview what I might show him on our thirty-minute flight from Kuwait City airport to Safwan.
On the way to the airfield, we flew over the so-called Highway of Death, just north of Kuwait City. There was a lot of wreckage there, to be sure, but what impressed me first was not so much the volume of destruction as the great numbers of civilian vehicles in and around the military trucks — the Iraqis had been using them as transportation to haul out their aggressor's loot. I spotted very few combat vehicles. The next thing that struck me was the sheer visual impact of it all. If a target analyst had examined this scene, he would have seen it the way we
