madmen from trying to enslave the greater part of the world. The mission was clear: to liberate a nation and drive an invader out in an area of vital interests. It was use of force to gain specific strategic objectives at the least cost to their own side — then go home. This would affect Franks's selection of tactics; he thought it would be irresponsible of him and of VII Corps to pay an unlimited price in the lives of their soldiers for a limited objective. Vietnam had taught them all that.
Perhaps SFC Ed Felder of Company D, 1st Battalion, 37th Armor, 1st Armored Division had said it best: 'Nobody wants to go to war, but we train for it every day. That's what we get paid to do. We're professionals.' And PFC Bruce Huggins, a tank mechanic of that battalion's headquarters company, said, 'They asked for our help and we're going to give them that help and we'll free that country. We'll do our job, go home, and carry on with life.'
The end result was never in doubt. They would win. For him as a major commander it was a matter of selection of method and one that would come at least cost to soldiers for the mission assigned. There would be individual acts of heroism, as there always were. But for senior commanders, Franks saw nothing particularly heroic in what they were about to do. He had said right from the start, 'We'll go do what we have to do and talk about it later.' This was in the mode of Korea, Vietnam, and Panama. It was not a crusade.
That distinction comes hard for Americans. In our own history, more often than not, we have fought 'crusades' or used force for national survival: the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World Wars I and II. Not only do Americans have less experience with the other kind of war, but they tend as a matter of national character not to be warlike — even though America's sons and daughters make the best warriors when called upon.
The other factor that stayed with Franks was Vietnam. In the hospital at Valley Forge, where he had had his leg amputated, he had made a pledge to his fellow amputees and to his fellow Vietnam veterans: 'Never again.' Never again would young men and women come away from a battlefield on which they were asked to risk their lives without gaining their objectives, without having those objectives thought to be worth the effort, without an agreement ahead of time that the tactical methods needed to achieve strategic objectives were acceptable for the military to use, and without a word of thanks to those who went when it was all over.
Fred Franks was not in charge of all that; but he was in a position to satisfy himself as a commander that all these mistakes would not be repeated. That conviction burned hot in him, like a blue flame. Vietnam was never far from him throughout Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Now, that was a crusade, at least for Fred Franks.
Another factor he got out of Vietnam was a respect for war and its costs, and for what it takes to win. When you're on the battlefield, you get into fights, either deliberately or in surprise meeting engagements with the enemy, and they got into a lot of those in Vietnam. Franks believed that you had to make it an unfair fight as rapidly as you could. You wanted to get all the advantages on your side, and to win the tactical engagement as rapidly as possible and at least cost to your soldiers. That meant a lot of firepower. It also usually meant moving into a positional advantage and bringing brutal amounts of fire to bear on the enemy, until they called it quits and ran away, or you destroyed their capability to continue, and controlled the area. And that was the end of it.
In Vietnam, 'If the enemy fired at us with a single AK-47 round, we pounded them with all we had. We put as much firepower back on them as we had, so much firepower that they wished they hadn't started something.'
That influenced his thoughts on Iraq. Different commanders might do things in different ways, but Franks's way was, 'When we came into contact in the area of main attack, then it was going to be with a big fist. We were going to hammer the Iraqis relentlessly with that fist until we finished them. We were going to sustain the momentum of that attack until we were through with what we came there to do.'
So the idea of 'fair fight' had no meaning for Franks in this context. It seemed totally insane to give the enemy some sporting chance to win.
'If you have to fight,' Franks liked to say, 'then 100 to nothing is about the right score for the battlefield. Twenty-four to twenty-one may be okay in the NFL on Sunday afternoon, but not on the battlefield.
'My inclination in tactics is to maneuver our force to bring so much combat power to bear on the other force that we will get them backpedaling. I want to get them on the ropes and keep them there. Then, when we've got them down, we'll finish them. We're going to finish them.
'If we have to fight, then we were going to go for the jugular, not the capillaries.
'But once we are winning our battles, we've got to link those successful battles in some pattern or direction, so they add up to mean something bigger. They have to end up accomplishing your strategic aims. That is why you are fighting those battles. And that is why the troops who are risking it all to win those battles trust that the generals and Secretaries of Defense and Presidents know what they are doing, and will make all that sweat and blood count for something.'
From what Franks and his commanders had seen so far, the command climate was far different from the one in Vietnam. They could feel the steel in the will, from the President and the Secretary of Defense through General Powell, to the theater. It was solid.
Finally he was at peace with himself, as much as any commander could be on the eve of battle. His troops and leaders were ready. They had worked like hell to get to where they were, and most units had had the minimum two weeks' training he thought necessary. Soldiers were confident in themselves, their equipment, one another, and their leaders. Franks had known that would come because of the training in Saudi Arabia and the team-building they had worked on since the start of the mission to deploy on 8 November. They had become the VII Corps team so necessary for success in combat.
On 21 February, Sam Donaldson of ABC News came to visit VII Corps. Franks escorted him to the 2nd ACR and 1st AD. While at 1st AD, Donaldson talked to members of an M1A1 tank company commanded by Captain Dana Pittard. Franks was never more proud of his soldiers than he was when he heard them talk of the mission and of one another. Specialist Shawn Freeney, a mechanic in Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 37th Armor, said, 'It lets you know that, when it comes down to it, you're around family. All of us here are family — right here is my family.'
They had prepared the way you would for a big game. They had emphasized skills in fundamentals and teamwork. They had gone through situation drills against possible game situations. They had gotten their 'batting practice' under close-to-game conditions and they had had some scrimmages.
But where Franks knew the sports analogy stopped was game time. War is different. Ground combat is physically tough, uncompromising, and final. The enemy can be as close as a few meters or thousands of meters. There you deal in the ultimate reality — life and death. There is no home-and-home scheduling. There is no next year. When it's over, it's over; the memories and results are frozen in time for a lifetime. For some soldiers, there would be no more lifetime after this. Fred Franks knew that, and so did they.
Franks thought again of his soldiers and leaders. 'Have I prepared them well enough for this mission? I think so. Did we have a workable plan? Yes. Have we thought of everything? Probably not. Have we ignored anything major? I don't think so. Are the troops ready? Yes. They know what to do, they're motivated by the right things, and they want to get this going and get it finished so they can go home. Not a complicated set of emotions. Soldiers and units go at two speeds, all-ahead full or stop. There can be no half-stepping, especially for a mounted attack. We're ready.'
He recalled then something Captain Dana Pittard had said to Sam Donaldson: 'My biggest fear, of course, is making sure I don't do something wrong that would cost somebody's life or something else. There's no fear on the personal side.' He also recalled the old saying that generals can lose battles and campaigns, but only the soldiers can win. He believed that. He also believed that if he got them and their commanders to the right place at the right time in the right combination, in battle after battle, they would take it from there and win.
His thoughts turned to Denise, his wife of thirty-one years, and to their daughter, Margie, and her family. They were all a close family; they'd been through a lot together. Denise was now busy at home in Germany with family support work. For the first time in the history of the U.S. Army, they had taken units already deployed in one theater (with families), deployed to another, and left their families overseas.
Someone had asked Denise if she was 'going home' — that is, leaving Stuttgart and returning to the United States. 'I am home,' she replied. Though they could have returned to the States, most families stayed right there. In doing that, they were breaking new ground, adapting to new realities. And Denise was providing leadership and
