yourself the question: Do I need to intervene and make an adjustment, or do I let the battle continue as it is? Most often a senior commander does not need to decide; he can leave things to subordinates rather than tinker at the margin. Senior tactical commanders really get to make only a few key decisions. It is better for them to focus their energies there, and trust their subordinates, who are in a better position to make their own decisions. Knowing the difference is the art of command. So is determining the tempo of the attack to keep your enemy off balance, and knowing when to be bold — when to take risks and gamble — and when not to.
I would take all those elements into consideration that day as I selected the attack formation to destroy the RGFC. I would also have to find a third division for the attack… or else do without and use the 2nd ACR. Earlier, I had told Don Holder to be prepared to go all the way to Objective Denver if the opportunity presented itself. (Denver was on Highway 8, just south of the Iraq-Kuwait border.) By looking at our unit locations on the map and the enemy situation, and by doing some quick mental time/distance calculations, I could sense the time for that decision getting close.
That meant I had to get on the move, and I needed to talk to my commanders face-to-face.
But I was going nowhere right now. High winds and blowing sand, which reduced visibility to a few hundred meters, had grounded us. I was now a prisoner of the CP and tied to the comms.
Meanwhile, I got reports from our flanks.
Word from our eastern flank was that the Egyptian attack was slow in getting under way. Earlier, that might have bothered me, but not now, because so far the Iraqis had been unable to react. More important, I would have the British out there shortly.
That was important, because until the British could attack out of the breach to the east, Iraqi forces now opposite the Egyptians could be ordered to back out in order to thicken the RGFC defense, or even retreat across our sector along the blacktop road that ran roughly northwest on our Phase Line Smash to al-Busayyah. If they did either, they would threaten the steady stream of fuel tankers moving north from Nelligen to the 1st and 3rd ADs. If any of those Iraqi units — even by accident — ran into one of our convoys on the way to refuel the enveloping units, it would be a disaster from which we could not recover. Leaving logistics that vulnerable was a gamble I was not prepared to take.
On our western flank, 1st AD 1/1 Cavalry was maintaining physical contact with XVIII Corps. Internal flank contacts were also good. In the desert, where there were no navigation features to act as guide points, we had to pay close attention to flank contacts. For navigation, units only had GPS, and at those times of the day when there were no satellites, most of them had to use old-fashioned dead reckoning. As a result, the risk of units running into, or else crossing in front of, one another was high throughout the war. When you have tank cannons that fire projectiles that are lethal past 3,000 meters at a mile a second, and when there are no natural terrain features to stop those projectiles, commanders at all levels pay close attention to flank contact.
At that point, I used the delay to talk to John Yeosock. Because John's liaison in my TAC CP, Colonel Dick Rock, had been keeping Third Army well informed of our locations and actions, John had a pretty good picture of our situation (Dick Rock was excellent at giving this information as he knew it; his challenge was that he often was not completely up-to-date, either because the TAC was moving or because he was not with me and could not hear my discussions with commanders). I explained to John what I anticipated doing today, and he agreed with it.
It was after that, though, that John dropped some surprising news on me: the CINC was concerned that we were not moving fast enough. For a moment, that hit me hard. It takes a lot of wind out of your sails when your theater commander seems disappointed in your progress. As a subordinate, you do not want to get on the bad side of your boss, so it was a blow when I learned that my boss's boss was not happy about our progress.
My first thought was defensive: We had done well even to have gotten to where we were this morning, given the fifteen-hour advance start, I said to John; you know what we have been doing and why. And he agreed: he was pleased with our progress and convinced that, as the commander on the ground, I had the best feel of what to do. And, in fact, he gave me no new orders, nor was there any change of mission.
When John told me that in fact he thought we were doing fine, I decided not to give the CINC's concerns much more thought (at the time). It looks like they don't have a good picture of the corps situation in Riyadh, I told myself, and when they do, this will blow over. It had just been a quick, passing comment. I chalked the whole thing up to the usual emotion of battle.
Certainly, nothing John had told me led me to change my mind about what I needed to do, and in fact, in the press of commanding and maneuvering the corps, I soon forgot all about it (and the episode did not get noted in either my own journal or in Toby Martinez's log). Changes of orders I understood; I would have executed them. But concerns were not orders. There were concerns all over the place. If commanders want to do something about them, they give orders to their subordinates, but neither the CINC nor John Yeosock had told me to do anything different.
After the war, I was to find out that John had been shielding me from an extraordinary emotional outburst from General Schwarzkopf during his morning update. He had — I have gathered from later reports — hit the ceiling. He had expected a VII Corps cavalry charge to the Republican Guards, and when he didn't get it, he blew up into one of his well-publicized rages. Since John Yeosock had much more experience with large armored maneuvers than Schwarzkopf, he knew that the CINC's expectations were illusory. And so he did what many commanders do — he absorbed the blow and shielded his subordinates. He toned down the CINC's blowup to 'concerns' when we talked that morning. Yeosock did that a lot both before and during the war for both VII and XVIII Corps.
It is also important to note that Third Army HQ in Riyadh was three miles away from the CINC's underground war room. Most communications between Yeosock and Schwarzkopf were by phone.
Later commentators — including General Schwarzkopf — have claimed that from virtually the first moments of the G-Day attack, the U.S. Army should have been in 'pursuit mode' rather than in what we call 'movement to contact.' More bluntly: they have accused VII Corps of failing to go into pursuit when we should have. However, you go into pursuit when your enemy is in retreat or fleeing. Though that's what Iraqi units elsewhere were doing, that was not the case with the RGFC. They were setting up a defense. Even if the CINC had told us to go into pursuit (which he did not do), it would have been a mistake. His concern should have been to isolate and cut off the RGFC, mostly by air, so that VII Corps and XVIII Corps could destroy them. Instead, he flew into a rage about how fast we were going, based on blue lines on a map in Riyadh that probably were not even accurately posted.
0725 VII CORPS TAC CP
Because we were co-located with 3rd AD (which was still corps reserve at that point), Butch Funk took the opportunity to come see me.
At that time, Butch, real pro that he is, was doing what any good reserve commander would do. He was trying to anticipate the possible commitment of his unit so he could make plans — and maybe even rehearse them. When he came into the CP at 0725, I had two things on my mind: I wanted to keep him moving toward the RGFC, but I also wanted him to continue protecting our right flank from stray Iraqi units or vehicles until the British got out there in force. Butch 'rogered' that, then gave me a quick update: he was maneuvering his division from a column of brigades to two brigades up and one back. I acknowledged it, and told him my intent was to position my TAC CP with, or close, to his own, in the center sector.
It was a good, relaxed moment for both of us, and we were able to enjoy a paper cup of black coffee together from our coffeepot in the CP. The operation was going well. Because he and I saw eye to eye on the maneuver, we did not require a whole lot of communication. I was fortunate in all of my commanders — it worked that way with all of them.
After my talk with Butch, I had a few minutes to myself (for the time being, the weather made it impossible to go anywhere). It was a welcome respite, and it gave me the opportunity to go over again what it is we were doing and why. Before I went out to visit commanders, I wanted to take a hard look at our primary mission and our tactics. I wanted to be as certain as I possibly could that what we were about to do would destroy the RGFC, and I wanted to review for myself that my intent and orders to the corps were still the right ones. These thoughts had been on my mind constantly, and they remained on my mind until the battles with the Iraqis ended. I looked at them from every possible angle, again and again:
