Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

I had planned a rolling attack through Objective Collins into the flank and rear of the RGFC. We were not in pursuit of a retreating enemy, but preparing to attack a hastily defending enemy armored force.

I had not considered any maneuver except to aim VII Corps directly at that force. That was our mission: to destroy the RGFC, not surround them. The only way to do that, in my judgment, was to hit them in such a way that they could not contend with us, and to keep hammering them until they quit or we had destroyed them. I remembered again what George Patton III had said in Vietnam, in the Blackhorse: 'Find the bastards, then pile on.' After we had found them and fixed them, I wanted to maneuver VII Corps into a position from which we could not only attack them, but pile on.

In all of our briefings, it had been made clear that if the RGFC defended from where they were, the theater plan was for CENTAF — the Air Force — to isolate them. In Colin Powell's words, they were the ones who would 'cut them off.' We were the force that would 'kill them.'

After I thought about the mission, I thought again about the time it would take. From the first, I had thought the campaign would last eight days: two days to get to the RGFC, four days to destroy them, and two days to consolidate what we had done. Those first two days were not only a function of the Iraqi army, but of time/distance, the coherence of our formations, and the freshness of our troops for the anticipated fight. From our line of departure to Collins, our way point just past Phase Line Smash, it was about 150 kilometers. If I decided on FRAGPLAN 7, I wanted a three-division moving fist of reasonably fresh troops at Collins, with enough fuel to sustain the attack until the RGFC was destroyed.

Third Army had its own campaign timing figured out and it was well known to CENTCOM and to us. Third Army's planning had us taking seventy-four hours after H-Hour (i.e., BMNT on 24 February) to reach the RGFC. Our timing was in harmony with theirs.

And then there was the issue of 'operational pauses.' I wanted to go over that again as well.

As we saw earlier, my staff had estimated that if the corps moved continually to Objective Collins, we would need to make a preplanned halt so that our units could replenish themselves before they resumed the attack, and they were correct. The physical endurance limitations of soldiers and the need to fuel our vehicles meant that we could not move constantly for forty-eight hours, and then shift right into a major attack that might go on for up to four days.

While Cal Waller was acting Third Army commander, I had briefed him in a four- to six-hour 'rock drill' at the VII Corps CP. All my senior commanders had been present, and they had moved their own markers around on the flat 1:100 000 map board. During the drill, Waller had suggested needing a twenty-four-hour operational pause at Collins as we shifted from a north-south to an east-west attack. But I did not want to stop at Collins, directly in front of the RGFC–I wanted a rolling attack right into them: 'no pauses.' Therefore, I adjusted the tempo during the first two days to meet that goal.

To get in the right attack formation without stopping meant a number of adjustments as we approached Smash. It also meant finding a third division for the fist. Today I would pick the third division or decide to use the 2nd ACR. As for the tempo adjustments, I had already begun making them the night before, and others would be made by my subordinate commanders as they maneuvered their units. For example, Don Holder was maneuvering the 2nd ACR at a tempo that would keep him about thirty minutes ahead of the divisions, and Butch Funk and Ron Griffith would do the same. Rupert Smith would move his division rapidly through the breach, then attack aggressively to the east. If I thought they needed to change their tempo to keep the corps physically balanced for our attack, I would tell them.

When Butch left the TAC, the weather had cleared enough for me to fly forward. By now I was getting antsy about remaining too long at the CP. I hated to listen to the battle in the CP. I did not belong there. The inputs I needed to make decisions were not all there. They were forward.

RENDEZVOUS WITH MAJOR GENERAL GRIFFITH SOMEWHERE IN IRAQ ABOUT 0830

Though the wind had slowed down enough to fly, the sky was overcast and the temperature was fifty degrees.

First, I went forward to meet Ron Griffith.

I spent the twenty minutes of flight time staring at the map. It was coming together. The time and distance factors, as well as the position of VII Corps's units resulting from last night, gave me the mental picture I needed. If the RGFC stayed fixed, we were in an excellent position to turn ninety degrees east with our main attack — FRAGPLAN 7.

With the intelligence indicating that the RGFC was staying in position — or perhaps beginning a movement that might denote an offensive maneuver — I felt it more important than ever for Ron to move 1st AD fast to Objective Purple, and achieve a positional advantage on the northwest flank of the RGFC in case they came toward us. With that done, I wanted him to be in the northern part of Objective Collins by midmorning the next day. By this time, I felt sure enough of the RGFC indicators that I could now give that order to Ron. Even though I could still maneuver 1st AD in a different direction if intelligence on the RGFC changed during the day, this order would essentially start us into the ninety-degree turn east. However, since the conditions for the FRAGPLAN 7 decision were still not completely certain, for the rest of the day I looked for information that either would confirm my hypothesis or cause me to decide to do something else.

Either way, I knew I would make the go/no-go decision later in the day.

Ron and I met somewhere in the east of his sector, about fifty kilometers into Iraq. It was flat, empty desert, with no vegetation. Some of his units were visible moving forward.

Ron had landed his helo and was in radio contact with the division. His aviators had rigged up a portable generator so that they could set up quickly to power the radios. With him in his helo were his G-2, Lieutenant Colonel Keith Alexander; his G-3, Lieutenant Colonel Tommie Straus; and his aide. It was a good setup that allowed Ron both to move around the division and be present up front. While he was moving around, his ADC, Brigadier General Jay Hendrix, stayed on the ground at his TAC CP, while his chief of staff, Colonel Darryl Charlton, ran his main CP. Brigadier General Jarrett Robertson, ADC for support, moved around the division sector, making sure he and the DISCOM[29] commander, Colonel Verne Metzger, were on top of the division's considerable logistics challenges.

I did not care how the commanders arranged things as long as they were personally up front and knew what was going on and I could find them. I always tried to go to them rather than have them come back to me.

Ron was clearly on top of the situation and feeling good about his operation — I could see it on his face and hear it in his tone of voice. That was the way I liked to find my commanders, and it was also the way I felt about the entire corps just then. Up to now, they'd been facing parts of a brigade (and other units in the area, Ron estimated) of the Iraqi 26th Division in depth, but they'd had no problem defeating them (they had many prisoners).

In fact, he reported, their main problem so far wasn't the Iraqi army, but the Iraqi terrain in the forward parts of their sector (that is, for the first fifty kilometers or so after their line of departure). They had encountered boulder fields, sabquas (soft sand), and blowing sand on the previous day, which had made it difficult to maintain unit integrity and had caused them to consume more fuel than they had anticipated. Fuel vehicles had gotten stuck in the sand, and some rocky terrain had proved more difficult to get through in coherent formations than we had thought. (My staff had predicted — quite accurately — that the going would be tough early on in 1st AD sector. I had largely ignored this estimate!) As it happened, CENTCOM/ARCENT had earlier read this terrain as impassable for armored formations. The Iraqis had read it the same way. Thus, not only did the Iraqis not occupy it, they thought it would help their defense refuse the left flank.

Once through this area, the 1st AD tempo picked up dramatically. Its navigation challenges were exacerbated by the lack of GPS — the division mainly had LORAN[30] navigation devices. It sometimes took as long as two or three minutes to get accurate readings from LORAN towers (the Iraqis left these towers standing the whole war!). Because of the two- or three-minute lag time of readings, units wandered around some, and made some 'S' maneuvers through the already difficult terrain. It was even more difficult for logistics to keep up. In other words, up to now, navigation, refueling needs, and changing division formations had regulated the 1st AD's tempo more than any Iraqi action.