Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

something that we had lived with in Central Europe for forty years. For all those years, we had had unannounced readiness alerts every month, in which we would have to clear our barracks and motor pools, including ammo upload with all our vehicles, in less than two hours. We could handle this cold start. I was sure of it.

The other reason I was sure was that I was talking to winners. Leaders who had stayed the course, who had been part of a twenty-year rebuilding of the U.S. Army, who had just helped win the Cold War without a shot fired. I recognized this kind of an outfit.

I had been through this before. It would be the same in a lot of ways, but one thing was certain — this time the results would be different! I personally owed that to my fellow amputees from Valley Forge and to the soldiers now entrusted to my command.

TEAM BUILDING

Since the VII Corps that had been stationed in Germany was only a portion of the VII Corps that went to Saudi Arabia, special efforts had to be put into creating the new VII Corps team.

For the commander, team building is not simply a matter of bringing the new units on board, showing them they are welcome, and incorporating their work styles into your own; team building is a matter first of assessing the following skills and then of acting on your assessment. You have to know (1) how well the new leaders communicate with you and with one another; and (2) how well they execute whatever it is they are supposed to be doing. You want the new people to fit in, yes, but fitting in is not the first goal. You want them to fit in in such a way that you can use them to achieve the goals you set for them within the mission.

Communication involves, first of all, knowing who you're dealing with. You find this out partly during the regular meetings with your subordinates and partly by visiting them on their own turf. The normal give-and-take of meetings will give you a sense of what's important to the various subordinates, how each looks at situations under discussion, and so on. In an organization as large as an Army corps, there will of course be particular practices and policies that have to be insisted upon. These have to be done in a certain way and no other, and that's the way it must be. They are not negotiable. Franks calls such items FARs—'flat-ass rules.' Other policies and practices are up for discussion; there are several possible ways to accomplish them. From observing how subordinates deal with these and how they interact with one another and with you during meetings, you get a sense of who you're dealing with. You also watch to see how quickly the others understand what you have to tell them. Some people understand you almost immediately. Others need detailed explanations. Others are full of questions. Some need very precise language in order to understand you. Others 'get it' on the fly. None of these communication styles is necessarily wrong, or bad, though quickness and precision in communication is obviously desirable in the Army.

In combat, you're rarely in the same room with your most important subordinates, and when you see them, you don't usually spend two hours with them. You're with them for maybe fifteen minutes to half an hour at a time, or perhaps forty-five minutes at the maximum; then you're off to somewhere else. In those fifteen or so minutes, the communication has to be exceptionally quick, accurate, and disciplined. With some subordinates, you can always get your business done fast, often in less than ten minutes. Others might take an hour to cover the same business. If a commander is not able to see all of his subordinates during a given swing around his command, he might choose to see face-to-face only those subordinates who are not as quick, precise, and disciplined as the others. The quick ones can perhaps be handled over the phone.

You have to know how subordinates communicate, and then you have to know how well they execute in leadership situations. You find that out by visiting their positions and talking to the troops and the small-unit leaders. In time you begin to get an idea of what your leaders are made of, how they issue orders, how they react in leadership situations; and you can determine from that what types of missions you're comfortable giving them in future combat situations. What you're looking for is a commander, and his subordinates, who can do whatever you ask them to do; who can execute it very thoroughly and quickly, and up to a standard of perfection that they themselves will be proud of; who are capable of handling two or three significant operations simultaneously; and who are very resilient in their ability to handle mission planning.

When you are building teams, and teams of teams, that's what you are trying to build. And to the credit of Fred Franks and his colleagues, that was the kind of team he took to Saudi Arabia.

LEADERS' RECON SAUDI ARABIA 11 NOVEMBER TO 15 NOVEMBER 1990

On Sunday, 11 November, Franks flew to Riyadh in an Air Force C-21—the Air Force version of the Learjet. With him on the six-seater was the core group he wanted instantly up to speed in the new theater. The rest of his leaders were to arrive in Dammam two days later, on the thirteenth. On the Learjet with Franks were Brigadier General Bob McFarlin, the commander of the 7th Support Command (in charge of VII Corps logistics); Colonel Stan Cherrie, the G-3; Colonel Ed Simpson, the deputy chief of staff, whom Franks had appointed to be commander of the VII Corps port arrival unit; Colonel Rich Walsh, commander of the 93rd Signal Brigade (communications in the austere desert environment was going to be a big challenge for the corps signal brigade, so Franks wanted Rich Walsh to come down early to look around); and Major Toby Martinez, Franks's aide. The journey took a full day, including a fuel stop in Cairo. They arrived in Riyadh after dark, and they were met there by John Yeosock (to welcome Franks, Yeosock gave him his sand-colored baseball cap to replace Franks's floppy issue hat). After a working meal with Yeosock, the briefings started. The next four days were packed with meetings, briefings, and field trips to check out ports and the Tactical Assembly Areas, and to visit units and commanders already deployed in the desert.

For Franks and his leaders and staff, it was to be their first opportunity to get a personal sense of this very strange, unfamiliar, and harsh place where they were about to set up operations, of the people who lived there, and of the many challenges he and VII Corps were about to face. They had a lot to do in a short time; Franks's mind was working at top speed, taking in impressions from all of his senses, concentrating on details of briefings, taking notes, asking questions, doing whatever he could to get a feel for the operational situation, the training situation, the living situation for his troops. He was also aware that they were making a first impression on the others in the theater. Many of the units already there had been in theater for months, deterring further Iraqi aggression into Saudi Arabia. These soldiers had worked hard under exceedingly uneasy conditions (if the Republican Guards had continued to the south in August or September, Coalition airpower just may have stopped them, but the Coalition forces then on the ground would have had a very hard time keeping the Iraqis out of the Saudi oil fields). And they were understandably proud of their success. Franks wanted to make sure that his own people portrayed a professional force that was simply coming to do its part in a team that was already established. He didn't want any swagger or chest thumping.

And so Franks and the others went around — covering hundreds of kilometers. They saw the terrain, the ports, and the desert. They talked candidly to their fellow commanders and soldiers, and learned from them. And finally, General Schwarzkopf gave a mission briefing for all of his commanders, division and above. It was Schwarzkopf 's most important briefing of the war, the first and only mission briefing they were to get from him.

It was held on Wednesday morning, 14 November, in Dammam, in a building the U.S. military leased from the Saudis for use as a dining facility. The security at the door that morning was unusually tight.

All the U.S. commanders from all the services were there, through the chain of command to division commander. From VII Corps were Franks, Funk, Griffith, and Rhame. XVIII Corps included Luck, Peay, Tilelli, McCaffrey, and Johnson. Third Army had Yeosock and BG Steve Arnold, Yeosock's G-3. The Army attendees were a group of combat-seasoned veterans, all of whom had been through Vietnam and the long climb back.

General Norman Schwarzkopf, a large, imposing man, with a lot of flair and spark, was a splendid public speaker — forceful, articulate, inspiring — and this was to be one of his more spectacular performances. It was a fire-breathing talk, and he expected everyone in the room to breathe fire after they'd heard it. He wanted them to