Small moments and not large occasions often wake us to the significance of enormous, earth-rattling changes. At nine A.M. that same morning a group of senior German military leaders and local civilian officials gathered with VII Corps leaders and families next to the VII Corps front gate there at Kelly Barracks. They were there to dedicate a memorial to the end of the Cold War. The twin highlights of the memorial were sections taken from the Berlin Wall and from the Iron Curtain. The piece from Berlin was donated to VII Corps by U.S. Berlin Command; the other piece was donated by the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. There was a small stone patio, a bench, and a brass plaque. It was a modest affair, yet a small but visible reminder of the sacrifice and dedication it took to win America's 'longest war.'
The German guests did not know that VII Corps had been ordered to Saudi Arabia. The American attendees, of course, had watched AFN the night before. There was an unusual tension. As Franks looked out at the gathering and began to speak, he was struck by how the monument behind him was a visible sign of one familiar world now gone, and that VII Corps was now a visible sign of a different world whose outlines were not to be so sharp and clear as the one coming to an end. It was the end of one war in one theater under one set of strategic conditions well known to all, and the beginning of a deployment to another theater in another coalition for perhaps another war in a set of strategic conditions just beginning to emerge. There were consequences no one could predict with any probability or certainty. All the signs and symbolism were there. That reflection took all of about ten seconds to flash through Franks's brain as he realized he was neither poet nor philosopher at that moment, but a corps commander who had work to do and not much time for reflection.
A little later, at the reception, Franks announced to his German friends that the corps was going to the Gulf. At the same time he asked them, as friends, for their help.
He got it… more help from them and from the rest of the German people than he dreamed possible. The warmth and generosity of the Germans, from government and military officials down to families caring for families, gave splendid evidence of the friendship that had grown out of the long residence of the American army in Germany. Just as important, the Germans knew what to do and they got things done, efficiently and without complaint. ('We understand better than most what it means to send troops away,' some of Franks's older German friends remarked.)
Later that morning, Franks assembled his new corps team in the command conference room, just upstairs from the secure conference room where they'd done most of their initial planning for the deployment: The 1st and 3rd Armored Division commanders, Ron Griffith and Butch Funk; the regimental commander of the 2nd ACR, Colonel Don Holder; the deputy corps commander, Gene Daniel; the chief of staff, John Landry; and the separate brigade commanders: the 14th MP commander, Rich Pomager; the 93rd Signal Brigade commander, Rich Walsh; the 207th MI Brigade commander, John Smith; the 11th Aviation Brigade commander, Johnnie Hitt; the 7th Engineer Brigade commander, Sam Raines; the 2nd COSCOM (Corps Support Command) commander, Bob McFarlin; the corps artillery commander, Creighton Abrams (son of the former Army Chief); the 7th Personnel Group commander, Jo Rusin; the 7th Finance Group commander, Russ Dowden; plus all of Fred Franks's staff, including the VII Corps base staff.
Fred Franks picks it up here:
There was electricity in the air. At the beginning of some meetings, you look around and can tell from body language and lack of energy in small talk that you need to do something dramatic to get everyone's attention. That was not the case today.
It was an impressive collection of talented and savvy commanders who were now ready to serve the same cause, only on a different continent against a different enemy. The only commander at that meeting from outside the regular corps lineup was Major General Butch Funk, CG 3rd Armored Division, normally assigned to V Corps. Following the two phone calls from Saudi, I had made myself some notes on three-by-five cards, as I did not want to leave anything out of this meeting. It was to be brief, but also important for all of us.
Attitude was important — mine and theirs. I needed to set the tone of command for this whole operation right from the start. I was pumped up. We had trained hard. We were confident. We were ready. I was sure of that. What I wanted was attention to thoughts we had previously adopted for VII Corps: focus on teamwork, discipline, agility, and skill in fundamentals. I wanted to reinforce the confidence, rapidly build this new team, set the attitude, and issue instructions for training priorities and rough order of deployment.
'Welcome. You all know where we're going unless you missed AFN last night. This will be a different kind of meeting than we originally had planned for this morning. Butch [MG Butch Funk], welcome to the VII Corps team. As I understand it, you will report here for operational matters, but stay plugged into V Corps for your deployment.
'I am proud that we are able to answer the call. Proud that the JAYHAWKS are going. I told the CINC [General Saint] two months ago that if they needed another corps in Saudi, we were ready. We finished our mission in Europe and, besides, we are halfway there. Getting there will be a tough challenge, especially from a standing cold start. We can do it and will. We need to do what we know how to do. I want teamwork, since we will have a new lineup. We need discipline and reliance on the chain of command, since there will be a lot to do at the same time. There will be adjustments necessary, to be sure. Stay loose. This deployment will not go with the precision of laser brain surgery. Don't get frustrated because there is not much you can do about it anyway. As deployment friction generates time, use that time for training, especially in fundamentals. Remember, skill in fundamentals wins in combat.
'In the absence of any mission orders, I want you to use your training time to concentrate on the following: chemical protection; weapons skills to be razor sharp, especially long-range gunnery; field craft, or living in the desert [later we would call it getting desert-smart and desert-tough]; and maneuver of large formations.
'One other thing. We will go do what we have to do and talk about it later. We are going to join our fellow soldiers who have been there now in a tough situation for three months. We are good, we know that. If we have to kick some ass, we know how to do that, too. But we do not need a lot of swagger bullshit about us coming into theater as saviors of the situation down there. Quiet professionalism is what I want. Inner toughness. My words to my cavalry friends fit here; that is, I want more gun smoke than horseshit.'
We agreed on that.
Next was to arrange for a leaders' recon on Sunday to Saudi Arabia and look at our new area of operations, to talk to our fellow soldiers and leaders to get some lessons learned, and get some mission guidance from the CINC. One other benefit would be to remove some of the unknowns and stop some rumors, plus help commanders decide how much of what to take (not tanks or other major unit items, but things such as spare parts, training materiel, cots, tents, athletic equipment for whatever spare time the troops would have, etc.).
We then went over other things: preparation for the overseas move (all the coordination necessary to get soldiers processed — shots, wills, family-support plans for those single parents and dual military, etc.); the importance of physical training; making a thorough people check so that we would know if we had any deployability problems; and finally the alignment of how we spent our training time to practice skills required for our mission, whenever we got it.
Family support was a big issue since we were already a forward-deployed force with family members, and we would now deploy again, this time without family members. Our Army had not done this on such a scale before, so we wanted to ensure we had well-thought-out military community family-support plans, that the Army would help our families take care of themselves. This was a particular point of pride with them, most of whom decided to stay at home in Germany rather than go back to the U.S.A.
Operations security was a question on everyone's mind. What could we say and what couldn't we? Good question. Our rule was we could talk about what President Bush, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and General Colin Powell had said on TV last night, but not much more. I did not want any mention of size of our units, or the sequence of our deployment (at this point that was also a mystery to my commanders, so no worry about that), or any speculation about what we would do when we got there.
Finally, I told the commanders that we would lead with the 2nd ACR, followed by our signal, logistics, and engineer units, then the rest of the combat units. Details would follow when I got the OK on deployment order from CENTCOM.
It was a short meeting. I wanted to get things in motion rapidly. The corps needed to explode into immediate action. It is what we would have done if the Soviets had launched a surprise attack. For us it was
