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Introduction:
THE QUIET LION
HEROES RARELY LOOK THE PART. THE FIRST HOLDER OF THE MEDAL OF Honor I met looked more like a retired accountant than John Wayne, and when I introduced General Fred Franks to a physician friend, the latter remarked that he was a dead ringer for the professor of pediatrics at Cornell University Medical School. And that's really the basis on which we first met. In 1991,I knew a young lad named Kyle who was afflicted with a rare and deadly form of cancer. A friend of mine, Major General Bill Stofft, was heading over to the Persian Gulf after the conclusion of hostilities. There was a senior officer over there, I'd heard, who'd lost a leg in Vietnam. My little buddy had just endured the surgical removal of his leg, and I asked Bill if he might approach this officer and ask him to write a brief letter of encouragement to Kyle, then at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The officer, I learned from General Stofft, was Fred Franks, then a lieutenant general, and commander of Vll Corps. Bill delivered the request, and Lieutenant General Franks responded at once, calling it a privilege. He wrote a warm letter to my friend, and copied it to me with a cover note thanking me for making him aware of my friend and his affliction. That, really, is the bond between us.
Soon thereafter, Fred received another star and a new post as commanding general of the U. S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) at Fortress Monroe in the Virginia Tidewater, a plum job whose mission it is to look into the future and prepare for it, and it was there that we met for the first time. The first order of business was to thank him for his gracious solicitude to my little friend. He waved it off, thanking me again for the opportunity to look after a child, and really that's most of what I needed to learn about this gentleman.
Fred is a man of modest size and words --- on the rare occasions when he swears, even that is quiet. There's an engaging shyness to this general officer. Don't be fooled. He's one of the undramatic people who gets the job done and moves on without fanfare to the next mission, leaving accomplishment in his wake.
Soldiers are not what we most often see portrayed on the screen. The best of them, the ones who ascend to generals' stars, are thoughtful students of their profession, scholarly commentators on history, and gifted observers of human psychology. The profession of arms is every bit as broad and deep as medicine or law. Like physicians, officers must know their subject in every detail, for they deal in the currency of life and death, and some mistakes can never be corrected. Like attorneys, they must plan everything in exquisite detail, because in some arenas you have but one chance to get it right.
The sheer intellectual complexity of command is something few have discussed with anything approaching accuracy. In preparing to move his VII Corps across the desert, Fred first of all had to consider the major pieces: U.S. 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions, the renowned 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized), the 1st Cavalry Division, U.K. 1st Armored Division, U.S. 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and three separate artillery brigades. Those units alone account for nearly 100,000 soldiers, each of whom was assigned to a vehicle. Toss in the "loggies," the logistical troops whose unsung but vital job was to keep the "shooters" equipped with everything from diesel fuel to computer chips.
Okay, now imagine that you have to plan the rush hour for a city of, oh, say, 1 million, deciding how each worker gets home; that you have to account for every single one of them, from point of origin to destination, and that everyone has to arrive home at exactly the right time.
Oh, that's not all: Fred had to plan seven different options for his move. So you also must allow for seven different combinations of closed streets, road work, and broken bridges, while still allowing every commuter to make it home at the proper time.
By the way, if you mess this little job up, human lives will be lost.
Sounds easy? We haven't even gotten to the really hard part yet. People will be trying to kill the commuters --- organized, trained people, with weapons --- and you also must minimize that little hazard.
And yet, in a way, this was the easy part. Just to get to that point Fred Franks and his colleagues --- men like Creighton Abrams, Ed Burba, Bill DePuy, Colin Powell, Butch Saint, Norm Schwarzkopf, Pete Taylor, Carl Vuono, and so many others --- had to fix an Army that in their younger days as lieutenants and captains had been broken by poor political leadership and public antipathy. Fred lost part of a leg in Vietnam. His colleagues were all hurt in one way or another, and the Army nearly lost its soul, while America lost her confidence as a nation. As a major with 1.5 legs, Iying in a bed in Valley Forge, he had to conquer pain and heartache, to wonder if he had a career before him at all, and wonder also if his country gave a damn about him and his fellow amputees.
Remember just how dark those days were? The Army was on its back, its NCO corps bled nearly to death in Vietnam, drugs rampant throughout the institution, and morale so low that on more than one post, officers entered barracks only with an armed escort.
Fred was one of the men who had to make good all that others had conspired to destroy. Like the Army of the 1970s, he had to learn to walk all over again. As he had to repair the wounds in his heart, so the Army had to restore its confidence. All these things did happen, however, because Fred and men like him never lost faith in their country or their own ideals.
How great was their task? Looking back from today's perspective, it is more frightening, perhaps, than it was at the time, but the magnitude of the accomplishment can be measured simply: America won the Cold War because she and her allies were too strong to lose. That happened only because Fred Franks and his wounded but proud band of brothers made her so, and that only after healing themselves. I started meeting these men in 1988, and that's when the idea for this book really began. The public image of the Army is most often that of the cinema, and that is generally an infantry squad, because a movie can show only so much. By the same token, the heaviest firepower the Army has --- tanks and artillery, which do most of the killing on the modern battlefield --- has been largely ignored. And so the image we have of the military is not so much false as limited. That's a lesson I learned at Fort Irwin, California, on a cold January morning. Having had the taste, I had to learn more, and I was fortunate in finding a superb collection of teachers.
Any army is a vast community of people more than a collection of their awesome tools. It may seem grotesque to call war-fighting an art, but war fighting is more than anything else the leadership of people, and handling people is the most demanding of human arts, all the more so when the currency is life and death. More than that, in a nation's military, you find the nation itself, all of its qualities, whether good or bad, distilled to an odd sort of purity. Our Army has traveled in a single lifetime down a strange and crooked road, from the triumph of World War II through the embarrassment of Korea, through peacekeeping and holding the line in Europe, through tragedy and waste in Vietnam, through near total collapse thereafter, through a long and wrenching process of reconstitution, then again to dominance on the sands of Iraq and Kuwait.
It's a story I could hardly tell by myself, and it's a story for more than one book. From Fred Franks I learned the story of the United States Army, so grievously wounded in Vietnam. Though the viewpoints and perspectives are mine, much of the story is his, and in certain chapters I have felt it only fitting that he tell it in his own words. Other aspects of America's recovery and dominance will come from others in future books, and I hope the reader will come to grasp just how much was done, and how much is owed. There were plenty of infantry squads, and tank crews, and cannoneers, and loggies, all wearing their nation's colors. All of them were trained, supported, and led by the professionals who kept the faith.
And so the man and the army that advanced across sand and rock were ready for their task, their memories of Vietnam never far from their minds, and the lessons of that experience in their hands. The army America deployed to the Persian Gulf might well have been the finest in all of history, equipped with the best weapons, trained in the most realistic fashion, and led by men who'd learned the hard way why you have to get it done right the first time. We all saw the results on TV
It's been my honor to get to know this man. A man of iron and letters --- he's taught poetry at the university level --- Fred Franks symbolizes our army as well as any man could.
THE DAY BEFORE
23 FEBRUARY 1991 2100
VII CORPS MAIN COMMAND POST
After the evening briefing and a brief talk to his staff and the liaison officers from subordinate units, Fred Franks went back to his sleeping shelter.
In his talk, Franks was emotional about the soldiers and hard-nosed about the task ahead. The staff was quiet and serious. Most listened quietly, and there was a lot of eye contact. When he finished, they all hollered a big "JAYHAWK" --- Vll Corps's nickname --- and that was it. He left the tent.
Then he was alone with his thoughts. Before he got some rest he wanted to go over some things about the operation ahead and reflect on the events of this day.
There was one thought that would not leave him. "Don't worry, General, we trust you." A soldier in 3rd Armored Division had said that to him on 15 February during one of his many visits to Vll Corps units. Now, how am I going to fulfill that trust? he asked himself. It was what the soldiers were thinking --- he knew that --- and he wanted to be worthy.
During Vietnam, that bond between the soldiers and the country's leaders in Washington had been shattered. It was an open wound. Fred Franks wanted to be one of the commanders who could heal that wound, who could rebuild that trust. It was a powerful, consuming thought on this eve of battle, one that never left him, ever.
The next day was G-Day, the beginning of the ground attack to liberate Kuwait of Iraqi forces. The Coalition plan was for the U.S. Marines and the Saudis to attack at 0400, 200 kilometers to the east of Vll Corps, while the light forces of U.S. XVIII Corps --- the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division --- and the French would attack 100 kilometers to the west. And then the heavy forces --- Vll Corps, the armored units of XVIII Corps, and the JFCN (the Arab Joint Forces Command North, an Egyptian Corps and a Syrian division) --- would attack on G+ 1, the day after the next, at BMNT (the beginning of morning nautical twilight, or first light), or 0538 GPS local time (they used global positioning systems to give exact time).
What Franks didn't know then was that this night was going to turn out to be the eve of his own Vll Corps attack. When he learned of this change of plans the next day, it was to be for him one of the two greatest surprises of the war.
As far as he knew, the plan and the attack times were set, and he was considering nothing different. Nobody had mentioned the possibility of going early, not Third Army, CENTCOM, John Yeosock (the Third Army commander, and Franks's immediate superior), or Norm Schwarzkopf. They had hashed out the timing time and again. As far as he knew, they had settled it. The Marines and the Saudis would go into Kuwait and fix Iraqi forces there, and then the heavy forces would go after the RGFC --- the Republican Guards Forces Command. Vll Corps, the Egyptian Corps, and the heavy part of XVIII Corps were scheduled to attack on G+1 at BMNT.
As he sat there in the silence of his sleeping shelter --- an expando van on the back of a five-ton truck --- he checked his cigar supply. It was still holding up. Then he lit one as he began to go over in his mind the posture for the attack the day after tomorrow. He had no map, but by now they had been over the plan so many times he had it almost committed to memory. As was his practice, he used the Army's basic problem-solving method and one he himself had taught many times, which went by the acronym METT-T (Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops available to you, and Time).
DUTY CALLS: The Career of Fred Franks.
MAJOR FRED FRANKS FOUGHT IN VIETNAM WITH THE 11TH ARMORED Cavalry Regiment, the "Blackhorse," from August 1969, when he arrived, to May 1970, when he was severely wounded during the Cambodian invasion. He had previously served with the Blackhorse in Gemmany for almost three and a half years, from March 1960 to July 1963, and he was glad to be back in his old outfit. He was a cavalry officer; he knew cavalry; cavalry was his home. And the Blackhorse was his regiment.
Like so many Americans before him, Franks got off the plane with his fellow soldiers at Long Binh, Vietnam, ready to do his duty. He had flown over in a stretch DC-8 out of Travis Air Force Base, just north of San Francisco. Just the day before, he had said good-bye to Denise and Margie at the Philadelphia International Airport and flown to San Francisco. His kid brother, Farrell, had driven them to the airport, and his mother and dad met them there to say good-bye. It was a quick forty-eight-hour transition from what soldiers called "the world" to a combat zone.
The first thing that hit him getting off the plane was the unmistakable smell. It was a combination of the heat, the smoke in the air from buming wood, and who knew what else. But he would never forget it.
Fighter aircraft were parked close by. He heard sounds of jet fighters taking off and flying overhead, as well as the unmistakable Vietnam sound of UH-1 "Huey" helicopter rotor blades slapping in the air. He was intent on taking in as much as he could, right away, as he thought back on how he'd gotten there.
After graduating from West Point in 1959, Franks had asked for and was commissioned into armor. He was a "tanker," and yet he saw himself as more than that. Though tanks are the centerpiece of cavalry --- they give it its punch --- cavalry goes beyond tanks. Armored cavalry is the first team; it has a command freedom, an esprit, an ethos. In the cavalry, small units operate a combination of potent weapons systems (in the Army, this is called "combined arms") that give them the capability to move fast and hit hard. On the battlefield, these units operate under decentralized leadership in missions that are out in front of everyone else.
First, though, Franks had to go through some fundamentals: a basic armor course at Fort Knox, then Ranger and airborne schools at Fort Benning. Chest deep on patrol in the dark waters of the Florida swamps and then in the numbing cold of the Dahlonega, in the Georgia hills, Franks learned a lot about himself and combat. It was the best individual peacetime training he ever got in the Army.
Franks did his apprentice work in armored cavalry along the Iron Curtain between Czechoslovakia and West Germany during a time that included the 1961 Berlin crisis and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. In the crucible of daily life as a young troop leader in the Blackhorse, he learned from the officers and noncommissioned officers the tough, hard skills of small-unit tactical leadership. Combat veterans of World War 11 and Korea drilled them on combat cavalry fundamentals and taught them tribal wisdom through war stories during the long nights at the border camps along the Czech border. Like so many others, he developed his tactical skills by doing his job day to day in the field, by listening, working hard, and by making damn-fool mistakes, and being allowed to get back up and learn from them.
For his first fifteen months in the Blackhorse, Franks was a lieutenant leader of the smallest combined-arms unit in the U.S. Army, an armored cavalry platoon of scouts, tanks, mechanized infantry, and a self-propelled mortar. From there he was the squadron's support platoon leader, responsible for leading truck resupply of the squadron. For the next eight months, he was executive officer (second in command) of a cavalry troop. Then he commanded Troop I.
When he headed to Vietnam, it was the Blackhorse he intended to belong to --- but he almost didn't make it. By the time Franks got to Vietnam, the beginnings of the U.S. drawdown had screwed up the individual replacement system so badly that all orders were canceled, and new replacements were sequestered upon arrival to await new orders. He was instructed not to call anyone. No way, Franks thought, I've got to get to a phone. He got through to a sergeant at the Blackhorse unit at Long Binh. "Wait right there, don't go anywhere else, we'll be over to get you. We knew you were coming."
The next morning, true to the sergeant's word, the Blackhorse sent a vehicle over and picked him up. "Major Franks? Come with me, sir. Your orders are all cut and we're ready to go." When Franks saw that rearing black horse patch on the soldier's shoulder, he felt as though he had seen a family member. Actually, he had.
In 1969, the Blackhorse was one of four cavalry regiments on active duty in the Army. The others, 2nd, 3rd, and 14th, were in Germany. The Blackhorse had been withdrawn from Germany in the summer of 1964 and stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland. When the big U.S. buildup in Vietnam began in 1965, it soon became apparent that an armored cavalry regiment would be a valuable asset in the war, and the 11th ACR was deployed to Vietnam, arriving in 1966. It immediately established itself as a tough combat regiment, successfully completing a wide variety of missions on many different terrains. Soon it had inflicted heavy punishment on the Viet Cong and the NVA, the North Vietnamese Army.
The Army is a competitive organization, but Franks was a competitive man. When he joined the 11th ACR in Vietnam, he had not yet met a wall that could stop him. If there was a hurdle to leap --- physical, psychological, or intellectual --- he leapt it. If he failed the first time, he worked and trained until he made it over. He was an athlete; he was used to intense training and to hard drills. And he was used to the payoff that hard training gave him. Though at five-eight, he couldn't be called physically impressive, he was a talented baseball player who'd reached a career batting average of better than .300 on the West Point baseball team, and been team captain. There's a good chance he would have succeeded as a professional ballplayer. He was tempted. In 1961, the choice confronted him: to be a soldier or a baseball player. Franks chose soldier.
There was also in him a finely tuned, well-developed mind, and in 1964, the Army sent him to Columbia University to study for an M.A. in English. Afterward, he was scheduled to teach at West Point. It was a two-year course at a high-ranking school, but characteristically, he pushed it. He finished the degree in a year, in the belief that he would be sent to Vietnam for the second year, and then to West Point following that. Somehow a bureaucratic foulup put a stop to that: "If we've set you up for two years of study," he was told, "you have to put yourself through two years of study." And it turned out he couldn't go to Vietnam in 1965 after all. Daunted, yet still pushing hard, he continued at Columbia and completed most of the course work for a Ph.D. Then he went on, as planned, to West Point, where, on a teacher's schedule, he had the opportunity to finish up his days at a reasonable hour and perhaps spend real time with Denise and Margie (like most young Army officers, he'd been away more often than he was home).
Don't count on it. He did get to spend more time with them, but he also hit the books and completed his Ph.D. orals, while carrying a full teaching load and taking on the job of assistant varsity baseball coach for the fall and spring. On top of that, he took a correspondence course from Fort Sill to keep his nuclear weapons proficiency current, a necessary skill for officers in the 1960s.
IRAQ: THE PLAN
The area of the maneuver was vast --- larger than the state of Virginia. Part of the box's sides were natural, and part were, or would be, created by coalition fighting forces. Looking at Kuwait: to the east was the natural barrier of the Gulf; to the north was the Euphrates, a potential barrier once air cut the bridges over it; to the south was Saudi Arabia, now closed to the Iraqis because of Desert Shield forces; and to the west was the desert vastness, the main corridor of attack. Schwarzkopf discussed the trafficability of the desert and directed the commanders to pay attention to that.
After noting that detailed intelligence of the Iraqi barrier system would be available by D-15, he emphasized, "Logistics is the long pole in the tent" --- commanders must be prepared with logistics to support their operations --- and directed them all to begin offensive training immediately. He added that he would reposition forces when the Iraqi recon capability was gone, and directed the Arab forces to liberate Kuwait City. And finally, he said, his worst-case scenario was that the attacking Coalition forces would be hung up in the Iraqi obstacle system and get hit by chemical attack. (Franks was to hear Schwarzkopf constantly stress the need to reduce casualties, a drive he shared with the CINC.)
He concluded, passionately, "Let me leave you with one thought, guys. In order for this to succeed --- because the enemy is still going to outnumber us" --- and because they had built what appeared to be a tough, extensive, potentially deadly barrier system along the border --- "it is going to take . . . killer instinct on the part of all of our leaders out there.... We need commanders in the lead who absolutely, clearly understand that they will get through " the barrier system. "And that once they are through, will move. We will attack, attack. I will look for commanders who can attack. We cannot afford failure. We will not fail."
And that was it. It was a masterful presentation in content, in format, and in motivational language. No one there could possibly have a question about what he was supposed to do.
Many outside the Army erroneously imagine that when a commander like Fred Franks receives a plan --- such as the one General Schwarzkopf outlined --- all he has to do, more or less, is follow the numbers. People tend to think the whole thing is completely worked out, like a recipe in a cookbook, and all that's left for the subordinate commander is to say, "Yes, sir," and go execute it.
Not true.
General Schwarzkopf's campaign outline was indeed an excellent operations concept, but it did not provide --- nor did it ever intend to provide --- Fred Franks or Gary Luck or any of the other commanders more than a very general design for what they were supposed to do. The tactical details had to be worked out later. The outline defined the missions of each corps and its general scheme of maneuver; it gave each corps the sector it was to operate in (the corridors that Schwarzkopf talked about); and it laid out the phases of the campaign. But it was not at all specific in terms of the tactical operation.
So, in effect, the CINC was saying, "OK, Vll Corps, your mission is to destroy the Republican Guards. And, XVIII Corps, your mission is to go up and interdict Highway 8. But how you do that, that's up to you." He even made a point of that during the briefing.
Consequently, as Franks was internalizing and processing the plan that morning, a host of questions was racing through his head: How extensive is the Iraqi barrier system in my sector? Will it go all the way across it? Will I have to breach the barrier before I can get my forces through? Or can I go around it, farther to the west? And how is the terrain out there? Can my heavy stuff pass over it? What options are available to the RGFC? What are my schemes of maneuver? How do I mass my corps for the RGFC destruction? How do I structure and orchestrate my corps for that attack? What are the battles and engagements I need to fight, sequentially and simultaneously, to get to and destroy the RGFC?
The CINC had nothing to say about that. That was Fred Franks's responsibility.
Some of them gave the obligatory expression of confidence and enthusiasm for the plan, but it was still little more than a concept or a notion. Fred Franks was already working the idea and analyzing the mission --- keeping his own counsel until he had processed the task before him intellectually.
When the briefing was over, the CINC doubtless expected an outpouring of enthusiasm from his commanders, and he got it from some of them. But not from Fred Franks, which, for Franks, was certainly a mistake. For General Schwarzkopf, Franks's absence of outward display was interpreted as a lukewamm attitude toward the plan.
In fact, Franks was profoundly enthusiastic about the ClNC's concept, and he was absolutely certain that when it came to a fight, his troops would win. Unfortunately, an excited outburst was the farthest thing from his mind just then. Instead, he was rapidly forming maneuver schemes in his head (hoping to give his commanders an early headsup); he was thinking about Iraqi forces in front of the corps and about what the Republican Guards might do (since the VII Corps mission was force oriented), and he was thinking about force placement on the ground.
After General Schwarzkopf finished speaking, he invited the others up front to look more closely at the maps and the intelligence photos of the minefields and barrier systems, and the like. While Franks was up there, examining them, the CINC approached him and asked, "Hey, Fred, what do you think?"
And Franks answered, in a calm, confident, forceful, but professional voice, "We can do this. We'll make it happen."
For the CINC, that wasn't enough. It turned out to be a burr beneath Schwarzkopf's skin.
Later, in General Schwarzkopf's autobiography, It Doesn't Take a Hero, the general states that Franks was the one leader at the briefing who was not happy with the plan. In his words: "The only dissonant note was from Freddie Franks: 'The plan looks good, but I don't have enough force to accomplish my mission.' He argued that I should give him the 1st Cavalry Division, which I was holding in reserve. I said I would consider it when the time came."
This conversation did not take place on 14 November --- though later, in a December briefing, Franks stated that as a planning assumption he presumed that the 1st CAV would be released to VII Corps, if they weren't required to save some situation elsewhere (also a Third Army assumption and a normal planning assumption, since VII Corps was the main attack).
The dissonance between Generals Schwarzkopf and Franks was to grow, with consequences that were unfortunate.
PART TWO
On 8 February, Franks flew to Riyadh for the final briefing with Cheney and Powell. The briefing was held the next day.
Franks had printed his most important conclusions on the bottom of his concluding briefing chart. These were:
Vll Corps is ready to fight
Soldier will and attitude unbeatable
Support of body politic and public has been vital to date
Spare parts a big unresolved problem
Use of massed air with intelligence and ground maneuver is key to success
During the briefing, Franks went through the final iteration of the plan in detail, including a summary of combat actions up to that point, the RGFC's likely options, and a review of training time for each major unit.
Some questions came up, and then Cheney asked the biggest question of the war: "How will it all end?" It was a great question. Franks hesitated a moment, thinking Cheney should really hear the answer from General Schwarzkopf, from a theater perspective, instead of the perspective of one of five attacking corps commanders. But there was only silence. So Franks said "Mr. Secretary, I cannot answer for anyone else, but I can give you my opinion from a VII Corps perspective. I believe the Iraqis will defend from portions about where they are now. We will get to a position about here" --- he pointed to objective area Collins --- "and then turn right ninety degrees, slamming into the RGFC with a three-division fist. We will continue to attack and finish around the area of the Kuwait-lraq border here" where it intersects Highway 8. "XVIII Corps will attack to our north. We will be the anvil along the border area and they will be the hammer coming in from the north."
There was no discussion.
After the briefing, the CINC asked everyone to stay for a few minutes, and General Powell spoke in an informal setting. He told everyone thanks and related how Whitney Houston had sparked an emotional outburst of patriotism when she'd sung an inspired rendition of the national anthem at the recent Super Bowl. He said it was an indication of the lift the country had gotten from the operation so far, and said everybody should be proud of it. This operation was proof that the United States could do things well. He asked all the commanders to pass on to the soldiers how much they were supported at home. It really pumped Franks up. He was glad to hear it and pass it along.
General Schwarzkopf also spoke to the assembled commanders. He said he was "very well pleased" with what he had heard. "You should start on your countdown. February 21 to 24 is the window for attack."
Franks himself was really pleased with the outcome. He thought they were all of one mind on the attack, and on what the corps and Third Army would do if the RGFC stayed where they were. He also thought the ground and the air component saw eye to eye on what needed to be done, and that if the RGFC stayed where they were, the air would isolate them in the theater.
His only regret lay in one piece of coordination that didn't happen. While in Riyadh Franks went to visit the Air Force to try to get better help in destroying artillery in range of the breach. He proposed to Major General John Corder, the deputy for Lieutenant General Chuck Homer, that the Air Force put up aircraft at the same time the corps flew their Pioneer UAV. When the UAV spotted an artillery target, Franks proposed, the corps could relay it to the circling aircraft, and the aircraft could roll in and take it out. Corder agreed to do it, but on 10 February Franks was informed that his decision had been disapproved and they would not do it after all. He never knew why.
Other than that, though, he was enthusiastic. The last time Franks had briefed them in December he had the 2nd ACR, two battalions of the 210th Artillery Brigade, and one AH-64 battalion in Saudi ready for war. Now he had a four-division corps ready to fight. It was a hell of an achievement by the commanders and soldiers of the VII Corps, with help from many outside the corps. Franks was proud of the VII Corps and proud to report to General Powell and Secretary Cheney that if called on, they were ready to fight.
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EARLY ATTACK
SUNDAY 24 FEBRUARY
VII CORPS TAC CP
At 0930, John Yeosock called.
"Fred, John, CINC wants to know if you can attack early."
"Say again." I was not sure I heard this right.
"The Marines have been having success, and the CINC does not want to wait until tomorrow to attack. He wants to know if we can go early, today."
I was genuinely surprised --- shocked maybe was more accurate. We had considered every other possibility except this. In a flash, my brain went from the reflective, intensely focused, get-ready pace of a moment before to "warpspeed" active. Before I replied to John, dozens of thoughts flashed through my head, along with dozens more about what I would have to do to make it all happen.
What is the CINC really asking? was the first mental question. I quickly concluded that is wasn't actually "Can you attack early?" but "How soon can you attack?" l quickly ruled out telling John we could not do it, because I had no doubt that we could.
Other questions shot through my head.
What about unit positions in relation to one another? Would they have to move? What about artillery preparations, logistics (especially fuel), the British move forward and the orders already disseminated and rehearsed? And how would an early attack affect day and night operations, and operations forty-eight hours from now?
I told myself, Whatever you do, keep it simple. I knew that success early on in an attack builds its own momentum. I had seen that many times before. So, given this go-early situation, I did not need to put additional barriers in front of the corps by making some sudden change of plan. If we could simply back everything up to today that we had planned to do tomorrow at BMNT, then that would be the best way to do it.
All this raced through my brain in nanoseconds. OK, I decided, keep it simple and continue with what we've already set in motion, but with some major time and tactical adjustments. Now I had to see whether that was possible.
"Yes, we can do it," I told John, after a pause of no more than a second or two. "Tell the CINC yes, but I still want to talk to my commanders."
"XVIII Corps said they could go on two hours' notice," Yeosock answered. "How does that sound to you? Based on how soon the Egyptians can get ready, it looks like 1500 at the earliest. Take that as a warning order, with a confirmation at 1300, for a 1500 attack."
"Sounds OK to me, but I still want to talk to my commanders."
That call, and the cease-fire decision four days later, turned out to be the biggest surprises of the war for VII Corps. We had been over the plan with Third Army and with CENTCOM so many times that I thought we had considered every possibility. And now came one that we had never considered; it was that unexpected.
Why did the CINC want us to go early? What had brought on this very large, very sudden change? Except for John's remark that the Marines were doing well in the east, I was without a clue. The best understanding I could come to in the first moments after John's call was this: Since the Marines were going faster than expected, the fixing operation to our east was now going to take much less than a full day; this would allow us to attack today instead of tomorrow. Thus, as I understood it, the call from John Yeosock was primarily a matter of moving up the attack timetable fifteen hours. *
If that was the case (and I had no indication from John of anything else; he hadn't mentioned any change of missions or different methods of attack), I figured that the CINC was making no other changes in the plan. Nothing in my own intelligence indicated that the Iraqis in our sector were doing anything different from what we expected. There was no release of the Ist CAV Division from theater reserve, which would have signaled that all was well in the east, and that the Iraqi situation was so well known that early commitment of the reserve was a good choice. There was no "go as soon as you are ready." There was only "go early," but in coordination with XVIII Corps and the Egyptian Corps, just as the original plan said.
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.
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TALK OF CEASE FIRE
By then, I'd had VII Corps attacking for almost four days straight. Soon we would be at the limit of soldier and leader endurance. But we were not there yet.
I left the TAC and went outside to smoke a cigar.
When I returned at around 2130, Stan had been talking to John Landry at the main. There was talk of a cease-fire in the morning.
Total surprise. It was the second of the two great surprises of the war for me personally. The other was the order to attack early. Both were friendly actions. No warning order, no questions, no real evidence from the battlefield.
Cease-fire! "Who the hell's idea is that?" l wanted to know.
I called John Yeosock right away, and John confirmed the news. "There's talk about a possible 'cessation of offensive operations' effective tomorrow," he told me. "Nothing's definite yet," he added. "But in the light of that development, don't do operations that will unnecessarily cost any more casualties."
I repeated that our situation was a combination of pursuit and hasty attack. Another twenty-four hours or so would finish it. "Why now? Why not give us tomorrow? We have them where we want them. There is less and less organized resistance, but we are not done yet."
John agreed. "I already told the CINC we needed another day," he told me. "But I'll try to get all this clarified." Meanwhile, he directed us to put out a warning order for a possible cessation of offensive operations in the morning.
I was stunned.
But we put out the warning order. None of my commanders came back on the radio to protest stopping.
This was the the third set of orders given to the corps that day. First had been the double envelopment. Second had been the adjustment based on Ron Griffith's radio call, our orders to keep 3rd AD and 1st INF from running into each other, and the postponement of the 1st CAV attack based on Ron Griffith's late call. Now this. We would issue two more orders before the cease-fire the next day. It was not the kind of battle rhythm pace I liked when issuing orders to an attacking corps of 146,000 soldiers and 50,000 vehicles --- in fact, it was the kind of pace that I had been used to when I was a captain with 137 soldiers and fifty vehicles.
As I let it all sink in, many things went through my mind. My initial thoughts were ones of frustration: We had not yet finished the mission. We had the Iraqis on the floor. Let's finish it. Run right through the finish line at full speed.
Yet if someone knew something I did not, and if he thought we had reached our strategic goals, I was glad that our troops were done and there would be no more casualties. The corps was tired. In maybe another twenty-four hours, I would have had to start rotating units in and out to generate some fresh combat power.
I asked myself if I had been forceful enough in painting the local tactical picture to John Yeosock, and decided I had. We had been especially attentive to it since his earlier reports of the ClNC's "concerns," and John got reports from not only me directly, but from Colonel Dick Rock and Colonel Carl Ernest, who had been at my 27 February morning planning session. Third Army had as precise a picture of our situation and the enemy's then as at any time in the war. As for CENTCOM, I had no idea what they knew, but I had to assume that it was whatever Third Army knew.
I did not bypass John Yeosock and call General Schwarzkopf directly to protest. I trusted Yeosock. He knew mounted operations and, even though he was in Riyadh he had a great feel for what still needed to be done tactically in our sector of attack. I had made my case with him and that was it. At the same time, I trusted that the senior leadership knew what they were doing. We were not yet done tactically, but if there were other considerations that made a cease-fire a wise strategic choice, then OK, we would execute.
When I let the TAC know, their reaction was not unlike mine. First, they had questions: "Is this right?" Then, like me, they asked, "Why now?" Then, when the end appeared inevitable, there was a noticeable sign of physical letdown. With the adrenaline gone, the momentum and charged atmosphere of only a few moments earlier went away. I knew it would be like that all over the corps as the word got out.
It is here that human factors come into play in a large combat unit.
By 1800 that evening, I was using the combat power of the corps at full throttle, with maneuvers set in motion that would complete our mission in another twenty-four hours. We had four divisions committed, with a fresh division in the 1st CAV. The troops and commanders, while tired, were still capable of continuing the attacks at a peak level of intensity, stimulated both by the continuation of the attack and the prospects of victory. They were driving on. Yet if ever the momentum got interrupted, it would be hell getting it started again. It is a fact of soldier and unit behavior. When you're operating at close to endurance limits and pushing yourself and your soldiers to stay at that level, you must keep going. Any halt means a precipitous drop in energy level, because the stimulus is removed. Without that stimulus of movement and action, units fall idle very fast, like dropping off a cliff. After that, it is damn near impossible to rouse them to previous levels. I had seen it happen many times in training and in combat in Vietnam.
So when we confirmed the rumors of a cease-fire, the air went out of the balloon. When we put the order out just before midnight, we could just feel the corps attack momentum come to a halt.
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WAR RESTARTS, THEN ENDS
Sometime later we received the second written order from Third Army that night: an order to a five-division corps to extend by three hours an operation we had expected to end by now. It was totally unrealistic to believe that so large an organization could react that quickly --- and in the middle of the night, after four days of battle. Even if everyone in the corps had been listening to the same radio, they would have had trouble executing on such short notice.
As far as I could see, there was nothing more I could do. I was tired, frustrated, and extremely disappointed that we had not been given the time to finish. I felt like the manager of a ball club that had won the World Series in five games, instead of four. We were proud as hell of what we had done but I wanted that sweep.
Yet, for all that I still determined that the frustrations would not cast a shadow over the heroic and skillful execution of VII Corps's soldiers and leaders, and for that reason, I said little more about the missed opportunity to bring our mission to its final conclusion. Nor should it cast a shadow today --- six years after Desert Storm --- over the strategic significance of the victory in the Gulf and the opportunities it has opened for greater peace in the region.
Nevertheless, from the perspective of strategic, operational, and tactical linkage, there are lessons to learn for the future. If students of military history and operations want to learn the major lesson the Gulf War teaches, they should look at the war's end state.
It was a significant challenge, no doubt about it, to orchestrate the end of a campaign of lightning swiftness that had been conducted by a thirty-five-nation coalition in a region of the world with many opportunities and pitfalls. Nonetheless, it seemed that we gave a lot more thought (at least in the theater) to how to get in and get started than how to conclude it. The intellectual focus seemed to be in inverse proportion. The closer we got to the end the less we focused.
At the end of my briefing on 9 February, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney asked me, "How will it all end?" The perfect question at the right time --- and a question every Secretary of Defense should ask anytime our military is about to be committed to battle. He should keep asking until it is over. Though I gave Secretary Cheney an answer that reflected my sense of how I expected it to end for VII Corps and Third Army, I'm not aware of anyone at any time giving him a picture of the expected end state for the entire theater.
Here, to the best of my knowledge, is the story of how the decision was made that brought us to the actual end state on the battlefield:
In the evening of 27 February, following General Schwarzkopf's "mother of all briefings?" General Colin Powell called Schwarzkopf to tell him that the President was thinking of ending the war within a matter of hours, but would defer that decision to the theater commander. General Powell added that he shared the President's view. As far as he could personally tell, it was all over. Yet he too wanted to hear that confirmed by the theater commander.
General Schwarzkopf replied that he would poll his commanders before giving a final judgment.
That poll never got to the tactical battlefield.
In the call back to Powell, General Schwarzkopf confirmed that it was time to end the fighting. After that theater judgment, the Joint Chiefs agreed unanimously that the war had achieved its goals and should stop.
The order went to Third Army, and from Third Army to us.
Could we have gone on? Absolutely. Would that have made good tactical sense? From where I was standing, absolutely. Would another twelve hours have destroyed more of Saddam's army? Absolutely (though not much in our sector).
But wars are not fought to make tactical sense. They are fought to gain strategic objectives. When those who are looking at the entire strategic situation, both present and future, say we are at the end, then for the soldiers on the battlefield, that's the end. Sometimes strategic goals have immediate results, such as the liberation of Kuwait. Others take longer to manifest themselves, and are obtained by taking advantage of the new opportunities that arise from the way the tactical outcomes were gained. Now, six years after our victory in Desert Storm, those results are still being played out, and I believe they are mostly positive.
I was not thinking about any of that on the morning of 28 February. I simply trusted those who were snaking the strategic decisions. That was the difference between the end of this war and of the one in Vietnam. From President Bush to the soldiers in our tanks, it was a matter of trust reunited.
Our VII Corps tactical victories had not taken eighty-nine hours. They had taken almost twenty years.
Excerpted from INTO THE STORM © Copyright 2002 by Tom Clancy. Reprinted with permission by Berkley Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
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