Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

did this at the by-now well-known road junction north of Safwan). General Schwarzkopf emphasized that all forces were to have the right of self-defense. He told me nothing of POW exchanges but I knew that one of his highest priorities was to ensure the safe return of our POWs.

The orders to implement the agreement were now clear to me. General Schwarzkopf had gotten approval from Washington, and Gary and I had what we needed to implement the cease-fire and to remain in Iraq. We would not give an inch until the Iraqis agreed to a permanent cease-fire and to whatever the UN wanted them to do. The CINC was clearly pleased with the way things were going.

(It occurs to me now that it would have been simple on the afternoon of 26 or 27 February for the three of us, plus John Yeosock and Chuck Horner, to have had a similar quick orders group meeting about the end of the war. That way, the CINC could have issued orders about it, and we all would have been clear about their execution.)

I left the tent and waited for the CINC to get ready to leave.

Various members of the media were still talking to soldiers. When my public affairs officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Gleisberg, noticed Tom Brokaw of NBC among the correspondents, he asked him if he wanted to talk to the commander of the main attack. He did, so we chatted a short while, and I outlined what VII Corps had done. Since they already had their story for the day, however, it didn't end up in his report.

After we finished, NBC gave the troops a wonderful gift. Because they had not used all their rented satellite time, Brokaw made available what they had left to soldiers so they could call home. The troops quickly lined up. Because of that generosity, I still watch Tom Brokaw's evening news.

RETURN FLIGHT

At about 1430, we got back in the Blackhawk and flew to Kuwait City with the same escort. Once again, it seemed to me that General Schwarzkopf felt good about the day's events. He had apparently gotten all he wanted from the Iraqis, and had his forces positioned in Iraq for any future operations if they were required. If not, we were positioned to leave as soon as a permanent cease-fire had been obtained.

Once more, we looked over destroyed Iraqi equipment. We had bypassed a large quantity of equipment and ammunition during our attack, I told him, and had started to destroy it, but because of the enormous quantities, and because of our lack of EOD personnel,[55] I was not sure we would get it all done.

'I don't want any Iraqi equipment left in working condition,' he told me. 'Let me know if you need any more help.'

There was not much more talk.

I saluted the CINC as he boarded his C-20 to head back to Riyadh.

It had been a good day. We flew back to the VII Corps TAC CP in Iraq to begin our occupation phase.

OCCUPATION

Later that day, I briefed all the commanders except Tom Rhame, whom I had briefed at Safwan. I used the notes from my session with General Schwarzkopf.

I did not foresee it then, but we were about to enter a seventy-day occupation period. In this time, we captured and processed more prisoners than we had in the eighty-nine-hour war, and our soldiers and units conducted massive humanitarian work for the indigenous population as well as for refugees and displaced persons. This period ended for VII Corps on 9 May 1991.

In its intensity of concurrent activities, it was not unlike the period before the war. We had to make more command judgments without precedent or guidance than in any period I had ever experienced. It was also a time for emotional reflection, as my commanders and I made it our focus to visit hospitals and memorial services, and to listen to soldiers describe their combat actions, or the selfless actions of their fellow soldiers. It was a time of lessons learned, for the next time. Finally, it was a time of redeployment, and for ceremonies to say thanks and to remember.

IMMEDIATE MISSIONS

There are many things to do after the shooting stops. Despite the urgency everyone feels, you do not just declare a halt, cease firing, and then turn around and go home. The speed with which units can switch from all- ahead full-speed combat to post-combat operations is a matter of both command will and the discipline of soldiers. Our soldiers again proved to be superb.

Meanwhile, as I later learned, our national security team at home was more focused on getting the UN resolutions approved than on the meeting at Safwan. They considered it to be a matter of cease-fire arrangements between combatants, nothing more, nothing less, and to be left to the theater commander.

As a result, some senior civilian policy officials in DOD were not even aware that the talks would happen until the last minute, and when they found out, they tried to offer some alternatives to the structure of the talks. But by then General Schwarzkopf had sent the terms he and his HQ had drawn up to the Joint Chiefs, who had approved them, and the meeting was about to be held.

According to an account in Secretary of State James Baker's book, The Politics of Diplomacy, on a subsequent visit to Saudi, Baker and Schwarzkopf discussed amending the terms of the talks in light of developments in Iraq. The option was to have a permanent demilitarized zone in Iraq to be monitored by the UN, one perhaps as large as the existing ground under the current no-fly zone. We were already there on the ground and would only have to turn it over to the UN. It was late, however, and a great deal of momentum had been generated by the idea of getting the troops out and getting them home, and so nothing was changed.

The same attitude toward a quick withdrawal pervaded the theater at CENTCOM HQ, except that the CINC had made it perfectly clear that we were not to give up 'one square inch of Iraqi territory' until our POWs were returned and the Coalition had what it wanted from a defeated Iraq. Here, at least, we were using the battlefield victory to gain the strategic objectives we wanted.

Meanwhile, Third Army had its hands full. Even before the cease-fire had gone into effect, they had formed a task force (named Task Force Freedom) to rebuild Kuwait, appointed a commander, Major General Bob Frix, and gotten special funds from the Department of the Army (the U.S. Army was appointed executive agent for the job). After the Coalition had kicked out the Iraqis, they rolled into Kuwait City and went to work.

In occupied Iraq, it was a different story.

The demilitarized line and force separation were meant to be short temporary measures, and as a result, there was absolutely no intention in CENTCOM to order us to do anything that would indicate or otherwise cause us to establish what might look like a permanent presence in Iraq. I welcomed that. Along with the rest of my commanders, I was anxious to get our troops out of Iraq and back into Saudi, then home. But things did not work out that way.

This was a strange period for us. We had no formal occupation mission. In fact, since I had initially figured, along with John Yeosock, that the permanent cease-fire would happen about two weeks after the Safwan talks, and then we would leave, we concentrated at first on lessons learned, on the safety and security of our troops, on enforcing the DML (demilitarized line) provisions the CINC had set out, and on destroying Iraqi equipment and ammo as fast as we could. Simple. Mission accomplished.

Then predictions changed. Two weeks became extended to 18–22 March. Then longer. Then I stopped asking. Meanwhile, XVIII Corps was pulling out in accordance with the 'first-in, first-out' policy (units were