On the other hand, if the Iraqis were totally crumbling and we were now involved in a rout of the Iraqis and were in (technically) a pursuit, then there would be no need for flank protection or any coordinated attack. We could all go as soon as ready and get immediately in pursuit of a broken enemy.
If the enemy situation is completely known, then you have no reason to keep a reserve for contingencies. In other words, reserves are insurance policies against unexpected enemy actions or to exploit enemy vulnerabilities by piling on at a decisive location. Thus keeping a reserve signaled — at least to me — that the CINC still needed an insurance policy.
Turning my attention back to immediate practical matters, I knew we would have to make adjustments. According to the old saying, when you meet the enemy, the first casualty is your plan. Well, we went that one better. We had not yet met the enemy, and the plan was already a casualty.
As my first order of business, I wanted to do three things: to talk to my commanders to get their assessments, to determine what adjustments needed to be made to move our attack up by fifteen hours, and to determine if we needed to make any tactical adjustments from our planned maneuvers following this early attack. We were going to do it. That wasn't an issue. It was a matter of when and how.
The major factor for me was that each piece of the corps had to fit together to make a coherent whole. Coherence was necessary because of the confined space in which we were working and because we had a single corps objective: to destroy the RGFC in our sector. That meant coordinating the movement and positioning of
It would have been different if each of the VII Corps units had had its own individual objectives. If I could have lined up my units along the border, given them a zone or lane in which to operate, and then turned them loose to head north in their own lanes to their own individual objectives at their own speed, it would have been much easier. We were not in that situation.
Meanwhile, a question kept flashing in the back of my mind: What do we do in daylight and what in darkness? I knew that I'd have to adjust the day-night scheme we had worked out and rehearsed in training, but now that we were going early, would I be calling on units to perform operations at night that would get us either bogged down or else so tangled up that the RGFC focus could be jeopardized?
I had wanted the breach done, minefields cleared, and passage lanes marked in daylight. Then I wanted to pass through the follow-on forces under cover of darkness and move the enveloping force close to the RGFC at night. That way, I had reasoned, they wouldn't know what was coming at them either from the breach or from the envelopment, and the RGFC would have only the minimum time to react to our attack. Such a sequence also would make it more difficult for the Iraqis to target us and to employ chemical weapons, even if they were able to move artillery to replace what our two-hour prep had taken out.
Breaching a complex obstacle covered by enemy fire is the toughest attack mission a unit can get. By doing it in daylight, there would be much greater exposure to Iraqi direct-fire weapons than at night, but we would more than make up for it by greater speed, greater avoidance of blue-on-blue, and our greater ability to mark lanes for follow-on units to pass through. We also would have a better setup for the RGFC attack. I had discussed all this with Tom Rhame and his commanders over and over again, and they all had agreed. Daylight it would be. That meant a start at BMNT tomorrow.
Now that timing was out the window.
At that point, I intuitively felt that we were going to run out of daylight for our breach attack, even given our early success in moving through the Iraqi security zone. And I sensed that time was suddenly slipping through our fingers. We needed as much daylight as we could get.
If we could handle the early attack simply by moving up our attack time — and keeping all the other pieces of the operation about the same — then the sooner we attacked, the better. If we could move it up fifteen hours, we could move it up more. We were losing valuable time. You just sensed that.
Since I was coming to the conclusion that earlier was better, and that going earlier might even reduce some of the tactical risks, I knew I needed to talk to Tom Rhame and confirm it with him. As for my enveloping force, they could continue doing what they had already begun.
Stan Cherrie had heard my end of the conversation. So had Creighton Abrams.
'Stan,' I said, 'get a warning order out that we are going to attack early. Talk to the commanders and get their input. Get Butch Funk and Don Holder in here.' Since the 2nd ACR would be pacing the corps advance, I wanted to talk to my covering force commander. Meanwhile, I'd had some ideas about a possible contingency operation on the east flank, so I wanted to talk to my reserve division commander about that. This contingency operation carried some risks with it. The issue, as I saw it, was that by going early, the enveloping force would be way out ahead toward the RGFC by the time the 1st INF could complete the breach and the British could pass through and move on to defeat the Iraqi tactical reserves to the east. That meant that my east flank would be exposed during that gap. What I was thinking of doing was committing Butch Funk in a shallower attack to the east than we had originally planned. If I did that, and used the 2nd ACR in between the two armored divisions, we could possibly protect our east flank and get to the RGFC faster, though at the cost of reducing our combat power. With that in mind, I wanted to brainstorm a quick maneuver adjustment with Butch and Don.
I then called Tom Rhame. No problem, he told me. They could go early around noon. Ron Griffith told me the same.
As I made these calls, Creighton Abrams was working on the adjustments he would have to make to the two-hour artillery prep fires planned before the breach. Two hours was impossible now; we could not get all the ammo into position in time. How much prep was enough? How much would kill the Iraqi artillery in range of the breach and their chemical delivery means? If two hours was the minimum necessary, and we did less today, were we risking chemical strikes?
Meanwhile, I needed someone to call the British. Since they had a liaison element with us at the TAC CP, they knew what I knew at that point. But I needed to find out if Rupert Smith could adjust his movement from Area Ray forward fast enough to be ready to pass through the breach once the 1st INF opened it up and cleared out of the way.
I also needed a quick logistics estimate. Would log elements (more than 400 vehicles) be ready to go forward to establish Buckeye (then about 400 more vehicles), then through the breach and establish Nelligen to provide fuel for the enveloping units?
And finally, I needed to make an adjustment to CONPLAN Boot — the 11th Aviation Brigade attack planned for tomorrow night on the eastern flank. I wanted them to hit the Iraqi reserves there and speed the British exit from the breach. Could they go tonight?
Don Holder and Butch Funk arrived at about 1015. We huddled outside the TAC enclosure because Stan and the troops in there were burning up the comms lines getting all the orders out and getting input on what I had asked for.
I used butcher paper to sketch out my ideas for Butch and Don.
What I had in mind was to commit to FRAGPLAN 7 right away. Third AD would initially make a shallower attack that would drive almost directly east while keeping clear of the northern forward limits of the breach. This maneuver would very quickly place a major force just east and north of the planned British attack. Meanwhile, the 2nd ACR would attack in the center between the two armored divisions. They would then give up their cover mission and become an attacking force — actually, part of a smaller fist. If I could not come up with the third division for my fist, then they would continue the attack in the center — a risk. If I did find another division, I would eventually relieve them, and the added division would pass through them. And in fact, in the back of my mind, was the growing likelihood that the 1st INF would come out of the breach in a posture that would allow me to use them again against the RGFC.
There were other risks. The plan would require rapid adjustment by two major maneuver units, 3rd AD and 2nd ACR, which would take time to disseminate. It would also commit us early to FRAGPLAN 7. If two days from now the RGFC did something different from what we expected, we were out of options.
Still, I wanted to explore maneuvers quickly that could adjust our attack for the better without totally unraveling the corps. Such adjustments open new risks, and I was aware of that, but I also was aware that such risks were not so unusual. When you change your attack scheme, you have to look for possible adjustments. That's
