formations and our logistics, even though we had had to advance our attack by fifteen hours.
One last piece of maneuver remained. Did I order Tom Rhame to continue to attack to New Jersey? I got both Tom and Rupert Smith on the TACSAT radio from the TAC:
Enemy contact was light, Tom told me, and they had taken many prisoners. I asked him about continuing.
'I recommend we wait until daylight,' he answered, 'to avoid the night passage forward of 3rd Brigade, 2nd Armored Division.' Tom had gotten his 3rd Brigade from northern Germany in USAREUR. 'We can have New Jersey secured and be set to support a passage of the 1st (UK) AD by noon on the twenty-fifth.'
When I talked with Rupert Smith shortly afterward, he concurred. He could use more time — and daylight. All day he had been aggressively moving his division forward. Considering his unplanned early move forward with his almost 5,000 vehicles, he preferred a late-morning passage. When they had moved forward, they'd been arranged in column — i.e., they were pretty strung out. Then they'd had to regroup for the twenty-four-lane passage through the breach, and coordinate that passage, and then later they'd had to link up and get fires coordinated with the U.S. 142nd Artillery Brigade of about 600 vehicles from the Arkansas National Guard, with their two eight-inch battalions and an MLRS battalion. Following their participation in the breach prep fires, I had ordered the brigade to be in direct support of the British. It had turned out to be a great combat arrangement (even though it had sparked some laughs when the British troops and our troops from Arkansas and Oklahoma talked on the radio).
After I thought for a moment about what Rupert and Tom had told me, I ordered Tom to continue his attack at first light. He would then pass the British through at noon tomorrow.
I knew this was a gamble, but it was the best choice I had then, given the alternatives. Here is how I weighed them quickly in my head.
On the one hand, it was a gamble not to continue. If the Iraqis fired chemical or biological agents into the breach that night, then we would not be able to recover from it. In addition, if the Iraqis had already discovered the strength of the wide enveloping attack, it would give them twenty-four to thirty-six hours to set their defenses more skillfully, and to make our coming attacks more costly.
By continuing, we might keep them from firing those chemical or bio-logical weapons, and we would get to the RGFC twelve hours sooner. But continuing was also a gamble.
By continuing, we could get ourselves physically tangled up expanding the breach at night — by trying to fit a brigade in between two others while marking cleared lanes and moving the rest of the Big Red One forward. While we were untangling them, our enveloping force would be so far ahead, they would hit the RGFC while we were still getting the British through the breach. Even if the two armored divisions were successful in staying close behind the 2nd ACR, the rear of the enveloping forces would still be vulnerable to Iraqi attack from the east. In addition, the situation would prevent needed fuel from coming through the breach, and cause the enveloping attack to grind to a halt at the beginning of their RGFC attack. It also would deny our two armored divisions fire support from the two artillery brigades, which would be stuck behind the breach and thus be unable to join them for the RGFC attack.
It also was possible that the two divisions would
All in all, I thought the gamble was far greater if we continued that night than if we continued the next day. I would gamble that we had silenced all the Iraqi artillery and that, even if they noticed, the RGFC would probably underestimate the size of our force and that our three-division fist would overcome any time advantage on the RGFC side and smash them anyway. It was more important to preserve the three-division fist.
One other consideration operated as I made this decision. In the back of my mind, the idea was forming that if I did not get the 1st CAV in time, the third division of my three-division fist would be Rhame's Big Red One.
I recalled something Tom Rhame had said to me before the attack: 'Boss, don't leave us behind in the breach.' It was beginning to look as though Tom would get his wish.
Though the Big Red One had always seemed a possibility for that mission, I couldn't make that choice until I knew how much the breach mission had taken out of them. If they'd taken heavy casualties, for instance (some estimates had them losing up to a brigade total in the breach), it would have been impossible to use them for my third division.
As it happened, the 1st ID's casualties turned out to be unexpectedly low. Though I never expected casualties as high as some of the estimates, I still anticipated more than Tom actually reported — which was the best news I got all day. Now that it was clear that the division was in relatively good shape, I wanted to preserve them for use against the RGFC. Continuing that night might remove that option.
I consulted my commanders, but it was my decision alone. It was the right one.
At about 2000, the G-2 reported that all the Iraqi heavy units had remained in place. This included the three RGFC heavy divisions, the 12th AD, the 46th MECH (actually the 10th AD), the 52nd AD, and the 17th AD. There was, however, a report that a brigade of the Hammurabi was moving out for training. Based on tendencies we had studied from the Iran-Iraq War, such a move was usually a precursor to some offensive maneuver: they would set out from their locations, do some training — what we called rehearsals — and then attack. That got my attention.
Why? Because it was an indicator that the Iraqis might not be going to defend in place after all, but would try some kind of maneuver against us, a capability they still had. In that case, I would have chosen some other maneuver besides FRAGPLAN 7.
What did all this add up to? There was no indication at this point of an RGFC retreat. Of the three options we had originally given the RGFC, we were down to two. Every indication was that they were going to stay and fight from where they were or maneuver against us. It heightened my sense that I needed to keep the corps balanced to preserve my options for the attack tomorrow.
Shortly after the G-2 update, Stan reported that at this point our line of advance put the 2nd ACR on Phase Line Grape; both 1st AD and 3rd AD were on Melon; 1st INF was on Apple (their Colorado), with twenty-four lanes completed; and 1st CAV was conducting another feint into Iraq. Total prisoners reported were 1,000 in 1st INF, over 300 in 2nd ACR, over 100 in 3rd AD, and 50 in 1st CAV. (Throughout the course of the war, prisoner totals were very inaccurate. Rather than tie down combat formations to process prisoners, units would disarm the Iraqis, give them food and water, keep the officers, and point the rest south. Some estimates placed our prisoner totals at almost double the official figures.)
From the first moment of my involvement in Desert Shield, and all during Desert Storm, I had been in frequent communication with John Yeosock. John and I had agreed that I would call him as often as possible during the ground war to keep him informed. It was especially important for me to try to talk to him around 1800 so that he would have the latest when he went to General Schwarzkopf's regular 1900 evening briefings.
I called John Yeosock that evening to report what I was doing and why — a simple conversation between two cavalrymen who understood what it took to maneuver VII Corps. I told John that in my judgment the immediate situation and complexity of what we had to do at night was not worth the risk of continuing the attack. Just as he had done a few hours before, he told me he agreed with what I was doing and trusted my judgment.
We kept our higher headquarters informed in other ways, as well. As a matter of routine, and of Third Army rule, just as we had done throughout Desert Shield, at midnight, every twenty-four hours during the war my main CP sent a written 'Commander's SITREP (Combat)' to Third Army. It was the official report of what had gone on in VII Corps for the previous twenty-four hours and a forecast of what we would be doing for the next twenty-four. An info copy also went to CENTCOM. As it happened, this was not well timed, as the CINC got his daily briefing at 1900 and an update the first thing in the morning.
Before the attack, I had been in the habit of writing the commander's evaluation portion of the SITREP — or
