Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

I left Don and the advancing 2nd ACR and flew about forty kilometers to the southwest to a spot in the desert where my jump TAC was co-located with the 3rd AD TAC CP. The sky was dark and the wind was picking up; it looked like rain.

Earlier, I had asked my chief, John Landry, to bring a small staff group forward so I could review the situation, compare what they had with what I had seen and gotten from the commanders, and confirm the deep attack by our 11th Aviation Brigade that night.

1630 SOMEWHERE IN IRAQ

After a few radio calls back and forth, and some flying that was in less than a straight line, we found the jump TAC, JAYHAWK Forward, located with the 3rd AD TAC CP. Waiting for me were John Landry, John Davidson (G-2), Colonel Johnnie Hitt (11th Aviation Brigade commander), Colonel Ray Smith (corps deputy fire-support coordinator), Colonel Bill Rutherford (G-4), and Stan Cherrie. Much to my disappointment, the TAC CP were stuck somewhere in the sea of vehicles behind us that stretched all the way back to the Saudi border. Considering the 8,000 vehicles of the 3rd AD, plus those of the 42nd Artillery Brigade that had linked up with them, plus the corps support groups that were moving supplies behind the 3rd AD, it should not have surprised me. But it put me in a slow burn that I had only two M577s and one PCM line[34] with which to command an entire attacking armored corps.

In the fast-fading daylight, we huddled around a HMMWV hood, with a map spread over the top. The jump TAC was still setting up.

'The RGFC situation is about what we reported to you this morning,' John Davidson began. 'It looks as though they are forming a defense along here.' He pointed to a location that was close to an estimate that the 2nd ACR S-2, Major Dan Cambell, had given to me earlier. 'We talked to Third Army. Brigadier General Stewart knew you wanted to make a decision about now and that you needed his best estimate on the RGFC. The way it looks, he told me, the RGFC will defend from where they are now.'

That was the final intelligence piece I needed, which confirmed everything I'd learned at the 2nd ACR.

Bill Rutherford, G-4, reported that our logistics situation was green for now, but that fuel would continue to be a close call. Log Base Nelligen, north at the breach, would be operational by sometime tomorrow and available to provide fuel to trucks returning empty from the divisions. He also reported an emergency resupply of ammo to 2nd ACR by CH-47,[35] because some of the CAV ammo vehicles had gotten stuck in soft sand. In major end items, that is, major pieces of equipment such as tanks, Bradleys, and the like, we were in excellent shape. Over 90 percent of them were available, as combat and maintenance losses had been few.

'That does it,' I said, voicing the decision I had already made. 'We execute FRAGPLAN 7. Get the orders out. I want 1st INF to pass through the 2nd ACR and continue the attack tomorrow afternoon. I want 3rd AD to pass through and around to the north of the 2nd ACR and attack east. I already told Ron Griffith I want him in the northern part of Collins by midmorning tomorrow to attack east from there.'

VII Corps would now turn ninety degrees east and activate the new Third Army northern boundary between us and XVIII Corps, which would open an attack lane for them and make possible the mutually supporting corps attacks I thought we needed. It also meant that the RGFC was now in two sectors, ours and XVIII Corps's — or rather, in a Third Army sector, as drawn in the contingency plan of 18 February and amended just the day before, on the twenty-fourth.

I knew I needed to call John Yeosock right away to tell him what we were doing. It would confirm what I had told him that morning.

Earlier, there had been some differences over how and when to commit to this Third Army contingency plan. As we have already seen, while Cal Waller was Third Army commander, he had committed to it ahead of time — in fact, he had thought we might even have to pause to make sure we had a coordinated VII and XVIII Corps attack against the RGFC. When John Yeosock had returned, however, he was not ready to commit. Instead, he had published the plan, to be executed 'on order.' I knew, however, that it was his intent to order its execution if the RGFC stayed fixed, and so when I became convinced that the RGFC was indeed fixed, I thought I had the green light from Third Army to make this decision. And I did it.

Getting hold of him did not prove to be easy.

G+1… THE REST OF THE THEATER

Meanwhile, many other things were going on in the theater of operations. On Monday morning, 25 February, this was the state of affairs in the Iraqi-occupied emirate that the Iraqis called Al Burqan Province and everyone else called Kuwait.

The Marines were in possession of the better part of the Kuwaiti bootheel, twenty to forty kilometers into the Iraqi defense. In the process of taking it, they had mauled three Iraqi divisions and captured 8,000 Iraqi prisoners. JFC-North, to their west, with only enough breaching equipment to open eleven lanes, had not by then made much of a dent in Iraqi lines. Even so, though they were deliberate, the Egyptians were getting the job done. And on the coast, the forces of JFC-East had advanced steadily, though not especially speedily, toward Kuwait City.

The Iraqis in Kuwait were in a wretched condition, and that was just fine, as far as the Marines and the Arabs fighting them were concerned. At least five frontline Iraqi divisions were, for all practical purposes, no longer in existence, and several other divisions, including some heavies, were so severely battered they were close to ineffective. A number of other divisions and special forces brigades remained facing the coast, still waiting for the Marine amphibious assault that was never to come. These units were effectively tricked out of the war. In the end, the Iraqis in Kuwait proved more efficient at destruction and looting than at organizing a defense and fighting a determined, well-trained foe. Most notably, the Iraqis had sabotaged refineries and more than 150 oil wells. Black, greasy plumes of smoke darkened the skies over Kuwait.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, several hundred kilometers to the west, the 101st Airborne was preparing to be airlifted out to Highway 8 and the Euphrates valley, while the 3rd ACR and the 24th MECH were moving north, without opposition, on VII Corps's western flank.

The rest of G+1 was not to go so smoothly.

Early that morning, in Kuwait, T-55s from the 3rd and 8th Armored Brigades of Iraqi Lieutenant General Salah Abdoul Mahmoud's Iraqi III Corps (Mahmoud had been the Iraqi commander at the Battle of Khafji) attacked the eastern flank of the 1st Marine Division out of the oil smoke-grimed fog covering the Burqan oil field. The Iraqi counterattack that everyone had expected had finally come, and from an unexpected direction. Iraqis traditionally took attacks head-on. This time they tried a surprise out of the oil field on the Marines' flank. It was a sharp battle — perhaps the largest tank engagement in Marine history. It was also, for all practical purposes, a rout. The poorly trained Iraqis were no match for the Marines, with their M-60 tanks, their LAVs (APCs), their Cobra attack helicopters, and their Harrier fighter-bombers — not to mention TOWs and other missiles. The Iraqis did not have effective artillery, their tankers couldn't shoot straight, and their attack was piecemeal and uncoordinated. If they had hit the Marines in a coordinated fist (the kind of fist Fred Franks was aiming at their Republican Guards), it could have been a very nasty morning for the Marines.

As it happened, the Iraqi defeat was not a total loss for them. It bought time. The battle put an end to the Marine advance for the rest of the day, and this gave major elements of the Iraqi army time to pull out of Kuwait City.

To the west, the French 6th Light Division and the 82nd Airborne were advancing to as-Salman to secure the Coalition's left flank. Meanwhile, that afternoon, a thousand paratroopers from the 101st Airborne's 3rd Brigade were lifted by Blackhawks north to a spot in the Euphrates valley near the town of Al Khidr, between the larger towns of as-Samawah and an-Nasiriyah. They carried with them their M-16s, their machine guns, a few