Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 3, 1991 TAG: 9103030302
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Military might in array
Before dawn, America's warriors were on the move, swift and mighty, in ships, planes, helicopters, armored vehicles and on foot.
Sunday, Feb. 24, was G-Day for half a million American troops across the Arabian sands and the Persian Gulf seas, the biggest ground offensive since Vietnam and their first desert campaign since World War II.
Diplomacy had failed. The Soviet Union had tried to produce a withdrawal plan acceptable to both sides. President Bush said the last-ditch diplomacy gave Saddam "one last chance" to get out and set an ultimatum of 4 a.m. Sunday (8 p.m. Saturday EST). Saddam didn't move.
In a speech broadcast to the nation after the deadline had passed, Bush said the ground assault had begun to drive the half-million Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
Rains that had fallen as the Desert Storm war machine swiftly moved north from Saudi Arabia gave way to sunny skies. Around the Iraqis, over them, through them, the machine rolled.
From a dozen strike zones, an armada of more than 300 helicopters swooped into Iraq under cover of night - Chinooks, Blackhawks, Hueys, Cobras and Apaches. Their cargo was 2,000 paratroopers, Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division.
In the gulf, a dozen ships steamed north to join forward elements of a 17,000-man U.S. Marine amphibious landing force. The Marines rushed tank-fighting vehicles to their buddies on the ground, but stayed in reserve themselves.
Columns of tanks rolled across a 300-mile front from the Persian Gulf deep into Iraq, stirring huge clouds of dust on the desert floor, shielded overhead by U.S. Air Force F-16A fighter-bombers.
U.S. Marines punched into Kuwait City from the eastern end of the offensive, driving through Iraqi defensive barriers filled with mines, mauling an Iraqi division.
Paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division dropped into the outskirts of the city 50 miles north of the Saudi-Kuwaiti border.
As night fell, burning oil wells in northern Kuwait added their ribbon-like strips to a black cloud that stretched 100 miles into Iraq.
At 11:26 p.m., the first American casualties of the ground offensive were brought to Navy Fleet Hospital 5.
The full array of America's military might was once again at war.
- GEORGE ESPER
Tricking the enemy
WITH THE SEVENTH CORPS IN IRAQ - It's not easy to hide 145,000 soldiers and 75,000 vehicles in the vast Arabian desert.
But the commanders of the U.S. Army's VII Corps, assigned the central task of destroying the Republican Guard, credit such a massive deception with the decisive 100-hour victory.
"They had a good plan and they stuck with it," said Sgt. Maj. Robert E. Wilson, 48, of El Paso, Texas, ranking non-commissioned officer of the corps. "It's when you try to shoot from the hip that everyone gets in trouble."
It was a huge operation involving five divisions, most of which had not left their German garrisons since World War II.
"We haven't done something like this for a very long time," said Lt. Gen. Frederick Franks Jr., who directed it.
His thousands of pieces of heavy weaponry went right to the deserts south of Kuwait when they arrived in December. They stayed there until 10 days before the ground offensive, then swung far west in the largest movement of ground troops since World War II.
The Iraqis were fooled into thinking the main thrust would come up the Wadi al-Batin, a dry valley that forms Kuwait's western border with Iraq and extends south into Saudi Arabia.
To complete the tease, the 1st Cavalry Division was put at the Wadi and began a series of daily attacks that lasted until the main assault started 60 miles west on Feb. 24.
On the first day, the Marines and Arab forces attacked in the east near Kuwait and the XVIII Airborne Corps moved in the west.
The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, the corps' scouts, went into Iraq. The lack of resistance prompted the commanders to move the whole corps in at midafternoon Sunday rather than dawn Monday.
U.S. combat engineers cut more than 70 holes in the sand wall protecting the border. M1-A1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles poured through, followed by endless, snaking lines of supply trucks.
They routed all Iraqi forces until late Monday, then had their first battles with the Republican Guard 60 miles north of the frontier.
By Tuesday, the XVIII Corps had cut all routes north to Baghdad and the Air Force had left no bridges over the Euphrates.
> - NEIL MacFARQUHAR
An airborne surprise
WITH THE XVIII AIRBORNE CORPS - Lt. Gen. Gary E. Luck tilted back the desk chair at his desert headquarters and said, with just a touch of a grin: "I'm going to sneak around behind 'em and surprise the hell out of them."
And that is just what the commanding general of the XVIII Airborne Corps did in steamrolling over the Iraqis.
The conversation took place shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 23, Bush's deadline for Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait.
Eight hours later, at 4 a.m. Sunday, the ground war began in Kuwait and southern Iraq.
The fighting was preceded by perhaps one of the largest and fastest military movements since Gen. George S. Patton rushed to the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.
Over 16 days, the corps moved 24,000 vehicles, 120,000 men and all their equipment 600 miles from the coast inland over an extremely limited road network.
What's more, by all evidence, the Iraqis didn't know it. "I still don't think they know we're here," Luck said in the chat before the battle.
His mission was to sweep northeast to the Euphrates River, then turn directly east, like a spear between the Kuwait-Iraq border and Basra, southern Iraq's largest city.
Some elements of the XVIII Corps would continue north of Basra to cut off retreat and destroy fleeing Iraqi units on the main road to Baghdad.
The northeastward flanking movement of the XVIII Corps, combined with the push from the south by other major elements of the allied army, completely blocked escape for the Iraqis and put them in a killing box.
Luck said: "The plan was perfect. Our execution was perfect. We just outfoxed him."
- JEFFREY ULBRICH
The liberators
WITH THE U.S. MARINES IN KUWAIT CITY - The 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions swept across the desert from the Saudi frontier in less than 60 hours, and drove through the Kuwaiti capital in a triumphal convoy.
Hundreds of Iraqi tanks and other military vehicles were destroyed, vast stores of equipment seized and more than 30,000 Iraqi soldiers were captured. The Marines said their casualties were five dead and 45 wounded.
The advance culminated with a trip through Kuwait City by the Marine commander, Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer. Thousands of Kuwaitis cheered, fired rifles into the air and shouted, "Thank you, USA!"
Boomer stood atop an armored car festooned with the American and Kuwaiti flags as his six-vehicle convoy inched through carnival-like celebrations.
"We'll never see anything like this in our lifetime," said the general, whose two divisions had thrown a ring of steel around Kuwait by Tuesday night. "Makes you appreciate freedom, doesn't it?"
Boomer's Marines seized the airport and launched a small, remote-controlled plane that photographed Iraqis scattering in all directions under intense bombardments.
Airport buildings had been looted, but the Marines managed to find several easy chairs, including a poor imitation of a French antique, which they brought to their own temporary command post.
At times during the advance, the Marines reached speeds of 17 mph in their amphibious assault vehicles. At other times they were slowed, not by opposition, but by throngs of surrendering Iraqis, thick fog and pitch darkness at night caused by clouds blackened with smoke from burning oil wells.
At one point, unwilling to be slowed, the Marines began letting prisoners go. They gave the surprised Iraqis food, water and letters saying they had been processed, and told them to walk toward rear positions to be picked up later.
- DENIS D. GRAY
Outmaneuvering the Iraqis
WITH THE THIRD ARMORED DIVISION IN NORTHERN KUWAIT - It was a chilling view.
Looking south from the abandoned tank pits and bunkers built for Iraq's Republican Guard, it appeared any attacking force would face huge casualties in carefully prepared killing fields.
"Some of it was pretty sophisticated stuff," said Col. Bill Nash, commander of the 3rd Armored Division's 1st Brigade, which captured the position shortly before the cease-fire Thursday. "They had reverse slopes to hide tanks and interlocking fields of fire."
Unfortunately for the Iraqis, their enemy didn't oblige them. Instead of attacking from southern Kuwait, U.S. forces swung in a wide arc across a desolate section of desert to trap them from the rear.
"You could see a lot of holes in the rear of Iraqi tanks," Nash said after viewing the battlefield.
In war, the basic objective of maneuver is to bring your forces to the side or rear of an enemy, where he is weakest, where he has to move to bring his fire to bear.
The U.S. manuever was a classic example of this military axiom. When the Republican Guard units were surprised by U.S. armor at the beginning of the week, they put up a feeble fight.
Enemy artillery was unable to adjust to the fast-moving U.S. armored vehicles. Hundreds of Iraqi soldiers fled their vehicles and fortifications.
Where Iraqis did turn to fight, they were smothered by a combined barrage of artillery, rockets and tactical air support. Several platoons of Republican Guard tanks that stood their ground in an initial contact were crushed by long-range fire.
When U.S. forces came through the area the next day, they found a terrible carnage. Half an armored personnel carrier was stuck face down in the sand, a smouldering body nearby.
In addition to the classic manuevering and ground fire, there was the importance of air power. A tour of Iraqi fortifications found dozens of armored vehicles and bunkers smashed and burned. Bunkers in the sand had collapsed.
In some areas, the ground was littered every few hundred yards with the remnants of cluster munitions.
Many captured Iraqis captured said they had not been fed in days, and had not heard from commanders in weeks.
- FRED BAYLES
A decoy in action
WITH THE 1ST CAVALRY IN SOUTHEASTERN IRAQ - The 1st Cavalry Division knifed into central Iraq after spending more than a week as a decoy, a red herring meant to fool Saddam into thinking it would lead the land assault from a different location.
It had been just south of Iraq's southeast corner, along a dry desert gulch called the Wadi al-Batin that runs along the Iraq-Kuwait border.
For days, troops poured artillery into the area and sent scout patrols to give the impression the allies were clearing an invasion path.
Senior military officials said Iraq began reinforcing its troops there, apparently moving units in from farther west - where in fact the real invasion was planned.
"I think it was a total success," said Capt. David Francavilla, 32, of Colorado Springs, Colo. "If the enemy thought anything was coming at all, they thought it was coming up the Wadi al-Batin."
By Wednesday, the day before Bush called the cease-fire, the 1st Cavalry was within about 45 miles of the Soviet-built T-72 tanks of the Hammurabi, an armored division of the Republican Guard.
Officers told soldiers the guard units were cornered, desperate, deadly, maybe willing to make a last stand and probably equipped with chemical weapons.
The two bridges leading northeast to Basra were gone, Kuwait was lost and an array of allied armor was coming to fight them.
Francavilla, commander of a company in the 1st Calvary's 1st Battalion-5th Calvary Regiment, took part in a reconaissance mission and feints behind Iraqi lines that were meant to deceive the enemy.
One patrol, on Feb. 20, frightened and demoralized many 1st Calvary troops. Two companies came under heavy artillery and mortar fire. Three men were killed and seven wounded behind Iraqi lines.
In the following days, soldiers talked about the encounter. It was the first time they had lost friends in combat.
When the land war began Sunday, the 1st Cavalry made one more feint up the Wadi al-Batin, its deepest yet into what were thought to be heavy concentrations of Iraqi forces. Several companies of M1-A1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles plunged about 12 miles into Iraq, but encountered only sporadic machine-gun and distant artillery fire.
Some Iraqi soldiers ran up and ignited trenches filled with oil to create obstacles and smoke screens, but scores of others surrendered.
The 1st Cavalry then regrouped, moved west and punched into central Iraq.
As various elements came together for the drive north, at one point the entire 2nd Brigade was speeding across the flat desert, a vast arena filled with hundreds of tanks, trucks, mobile missile launchers and other rolling weaponry.
On Wednesday evening, as the convoy prepared to cross the Iraq-Kuwait border, word spread that Saddam had ordered a withdrawal from Kuwait.
- MARK FRITZ
Behind enemy lines
WITH THE 101st AIRBORNE DIVISION IN IRAQ - While the rout was under way in Kuwait, infantrymen of the Screaming Eagles were within 100 miles from Baghdad after an unprecedented assault deep into Iraqi territory.
More than 8,000 infantrymen were airlifted into Iraq over 72 hours of continuous operations.
They encountered little resistance and cut off Highway 8, a major route to Kuwait. They blew craters in the roadway, burned off its surface in places and burned at least 17 Iraqi trucks, leaving them to block the road.
The lightning strike began early Monday, when hundreds of helicopters moved the troops in what the division said was the largest airborne assault in history.
Within three hours, Blackhawk, Cobra and Chinook helicopters carried more than 3,000 soldiers into Iraq.
The next day, scores of helicopters began what officers said was the longest air assault ever, dropping carrying three battalions of infantrymen about 130 miles into Iraq. On Wednesday, thousands more men joined them.
Most of the fighting occurred on Highway 8, a two-lane road that parallels the Euphrates River and splits Iraq in two. Burned-out shells of civilian and military vehicles dotted the pavement.
The success of their operation stunned the American troops.
"I still can't believe we got this far this fast," said Lt. Col. Hank Kennison, 42, a battalion commander from Lubbock, Texas.
His soldiers were the first to hit the ground Tuesday near the Euphrates. Hundreds of his men sneaked up on several buildings and occupied them. Posters of Saddam adorned the walls of one.
On Monday, the 101st had established a forward base 50 miles inside Iraq that served as a giant fuel and ammunition dump for the assault farther north. In two days, more than 1 million gallons of fuel were flown to the area.
At times, weather delayed the operation. Winds of more than 50 miles an hour tossed up a wall of sand along the Euphrates, cutting the battalions off from the forward base for more than 10 hours.
In some places, soldiers landed in mud flats and sank to their ankles.
Capt. Paul Floyd, 31, of Knoxville, Tenn., said American troops had given water to some Iraqi civilians, but they refused food and medical assistance.
On several occasions when American soldiers ran into civilians, Floyd said, the Iraqis screamed: "Don't eat us, please!"
"Once they realized that we weren't planning to eat them," the captain said, "things settled down."
- JOHN POMFRET
by CNB