roll-on roll-off ships; 74 World War II-type break bulk ships; and 4 lighter aboardship. Total ships: 152. The flow was not steady. In one week, 7 to 14 January, forty ships arrived.
Over Fred Franks's strong objections, ships were loaded for maximizing space and not for unit integrity. Analysis by the PSA indicated that equipment arrived on seven different ships over twenty-six days for nineteen different battalions. In some units, soldiers staged in one port while their equipment arrived in the other, over 100 kilometers away. One tank battalion in 3rd AD arrived on eight different ships over a twenty-three-day period. A corps signal battalion arrived on eleven different ships over sixteen days. A military intelligence battalion arrived on twelve different ships over thirty-five days.
Protecting the soldiers while in port from Scud attacks or terrorist action, ensuring good health in crowded conditions, and performing individual skill-training while waiting required both strong small-unit leader discipline and extraordinary overall leadership from Bill Mullen and his PSA. They not only got it done, they gave Franks and his commanders time to focus on training, planning, and eventually on conducting combat operations.
Meanwhile, to ensure the troops had the latest equipment, the Army decided to conduct a modernization program concurrent with the deployment. VII Corps would get the best tanks available. That meant swapping out some of the ones they'd brought for heavier-armor tanks, or bolting on heavier armor to ones they already had in the port (this was done by a group of civilians from Anniston Army depot in the U.S.A.). The 1st INF exchanged two tank battalions of 105-mm M1 tanks for 120-mm M1A1 tanks. In the 2nd ACR and in some 1st INF Division units, all the Bradleys were swapped for better-protected models. These were all command decisions linked to the battle being planned by the corps.
Additionally, VII Corps received a whole suite of mine-clearing equipment — plows, rollers, and a full vehicle-width rake. Hundreds of HMMWVs were added to replace older vehicles. Also new were the TACMS (ground-to-ground missiles) for their MLRS launchers and software to engage Scuds for their Patriots. Though corps units initially had no GPS receivers, they eventually received more than three thousand. Because there weren't enough GPS receivers to go around, some units had to use LORAN devices, or a combination of the two. LORAN and GPS are not compatible systems, which made for interesting navigation problems. The troops coped, but not without incident. There were two different tactical communications capabilities, the old and the new MSE (Mobile Subscriber Equipment — the Army's new tactical communication system that, among other things, establishes area communications just as a mobile phone does). They had to cobble these together to make both compatible. There were strategic comms, including a very few TACSAT[13] radios (essential, because of the great distances and the absence of reliable civilian comms). They also received the new reverse- osmosis water-purification equipment that allowed them to make their own water. And later they got the Pioneer UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) from the Navy, and employed it almost immediately.
Meanwhile, they had to deal with practical issues:
Troops had to get ammunition uploaded into vehicles and leaders had to make sure they had top-of-the-line wartime ammo. That meant distribution and uploading turrets and ammo trucks. Transportation was in short supply. The 1st INF had only forty-nine fuel trucks when they deployed from Fort Riley. At the end of the war, they had 114. It was an immense challenge for Gus Pagonis and the theater to find trucks to transport heavy tracked vehicles such as tanks and Bradleys from the ports to the desert. To augment the U.S. Army heavy equipment transporter trucks, he hired indigenouslabor from Pakistan and other nations, with trucks, for the 800-plus-kilometer round trip to the desert. Compounding his challenge was the transportation required to haul new M1A1 tanks and Bradleys to the 1st CAV and 24th Division in order to swap for their old ones. And the limited truck supply had to haul U.S.A.F. ammo at the same time it was to haul the corps's late-arriving heavy tracked vehicles to the desert. When XVIII Corps began their truck move west after the start of the air campaign, the competition for truck assets intensified, causing a frustrated Ron Griffith at one point to order two Bradley battalions not to wait, but simply to drive the more-than-400-kilometer distance to their TAA on their own tracks.
Since the corps initially had no maps of the area, these had to be obtained and distributed by the tens of thousands, and in sets. (Military maps come in separate three-foot square sheets; for the VII Corps area, leaders needed about thirty separate sheets, which then had to be taped together to make one map.) It's a standing joke in the Army that you always go fight someplace where you can't pronounce the names of the towns and where you have no maps. For VII Corps, the joke wasn't all that funny.
Sanitation and waste disposal were also a serious issue — not only normal trash and garbage, but human waste. They burned it or buried it in deep pits. 'Here's the most modern force our Army has ever fielded,' Franks said at one point to Cal Waller, 'using diesel to burn shit in fifty-five-gallon cut-off drums. It's no different from Vietnam.' Black smoke plumes were everywhere.
Because they had very few cots, too many soldiers had to sleep on the sand. They worked at getting cots from every conceivable source in Europe and the United States.
Despite the efforts of everyone concerned, mail delivery was simply awful. Mail to and from Germany took up to a month. There was just too much volume for the system to handle, and of course transportation had higher priorities. Only after Franks ordered the formation of an ad hoc postal battalion, with a lieutenant colonel in charge, and gave them dedicated transportation, did the problem begin to get fixed. Of the spreading oil slick in the Persian Gulf, one frustrated soldier said, 'Put a stamp on it and that way it will never get to Saudi Arabia.'
On the positive side, water distribution worked well, which was aided considerably by the availability of cases of water in plastic liter bottles from the Saudi desalinization plant on the coast.
Meanwhile, the troops prepared for desert warfare:
They placed tape on the leading edges of the blades of almost 800 helicopters to save blade wear from the corrosive effects of sand. They installed particle separators on aircraft to prevent sand ingestion in turbine engines. To deal with the same problem in tank turbine engines, tankers got a fresh supply of 'V' packs and spares to place in air-cleaning systems, and cleaned them at every opportunity. As a result, tanks ran at an availability rate of over 90 percent. They painted all of their almost 40,000 green Europe-based vehicles with desert tan chemical-resistant paint, one by one, taking precautions against the toxic paint spray by using tent enclosures and masks. Since the spare parts system could not be adapted fast enough, an ad hoc system sprang up, and vehicles got the spare parts they needed.
And finally, soldiers fitted chemical protective masks, using the tried and true method: You place banana oil around the mask before you put it on. If you smell the oil after it's on, you know you have a bad fit.
Soldiers made do with what they had. From the time they deployed from port to the desert until they redeployed in April and May of 1991, the troops lived in the desert with what they'd brought in. It was a help- yourself theater. The desert was hostile. Weather turned cold at night and it rained a lot. Fierce sandstorms blew up, reducing visibility to meters and getting sand into everything. Flies were everywhere. It was a hell of an adjustment for the troops, hardened as they were to living in the field in Europe.
Despite everyone's best efforts, nothing escaped 'friction.' It was everywhere.
Early on, Franks directed commanders to raise their tolerance for imperfection, to work on those things they could do something about, and when time was created by transportation delays, to use it for training. He did not want the command frustrated over things over which they had little control: 'Keep your heads on the war fighting and preparing for war,' he emphasized again and again. 'Keep focused on the objective and do not take your eye off the ball.' It wasn't easy, but the commanders and troops did it.
The whole Department of the Army operation in Washington was a masterpiece of organization by Army Chief General Carl Vuono, who held daily meetings to anticipate requirements. His vice chief, General Gordon Sullivan, quarterbacked the effort, and was constantly on the phone to Franks, Luck, Yeosock, and Pagonis, seeking ways to help. FORSCOM commander, General Ed Burba, not only deployed active component units, but put together combinations of active and Reserve component units to fit theater needs. It was exactly the kind of situation — the provisioning of a warfighting theater — that the Goldwater-Nichols National Security Act of 1986 had anticipated. Franks and VII Corps became provisioned as a contingency corps almost overnight.
Not everything arrived on time. One minor frustration for both Sullivan and Franks, and a potential issue with the troops, was the fact that no one in the corps had yet received the desert battle dress uniforms, the sand- colored BDUs (called DCUs). XVIII Corps had them, as did the support troops in the port area, and troops in Riyadh. But not VII Corps. Rumors flew about the elusive uniforms: 'They're at the port.' 'They're shipped.' 'One pallet arrived by air from Dover in Frankfurt. Meet the plane in Dammam.' No DCUs. First it was frustrating. Then it was a joke. 'To hell with the desert uniforms,' one of the soldiers in 3rd Armored Division said finally. 'Tell them we don't
