Home > Gulf War Diary > The Line in the Sand
In late October 1990, after having established our life support area in AA
Horse, we settled into a routine of training for war while at the same time
keeping a watchful eye north for any possible Iraqi military activity. At the
time, we had no idea how the crisis would play out; for the indefinite future,
we were still focused on stopping a possible Iraqi attack of Saudi Arabia.
Since we had plenty of time on our hands, we started an intensive training
cycle to prepare ourselves for whatever lay ahead. This had the added benefit
of keeping soldiers busy; morale was already beginning to sag after only a few
weeks in the desert, and training gave soldiers something substantive to do.
The mission of the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) during the early
stages of Operation Desert Shield was to defend Saudi Arabia against Iraqi
attack. 18th Airborne Corps (from Fort Bragg, North Carolina), USCENTCOM's
major U.S. Army subordinate command, had the mission to defend in depth to
prevent Iraqi seizure of Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. Initially, the 18th
Airborne Corps consisted of 4 divisions: the 101st Airborne Division (Air
Assault) from Fort Campbell, KY, which was the corps covering force along the
Tapline road; the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) from Fort Stewart,
Georgia, the main defensive force, to our front; the 82nd Airborne Division
from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to our right flank, protecting port facilities
and oil fields; and my division, the First Cavalry Division from Fort Hood, TX,
the corps counterattack force. With that mission, it was clear that the 1st
Cav's operations would be would be oriented toward the offensive. My unit, 3-82
FA, was the Direct Support Field Artillery Battalion for the 1st Cav's 2nd
Brigade, nicknamed the Blackjack Brigade.
Before I describe our tactical operations and training, I must first give a
brief description of the role of the Field Artillery. We shoot what is called
indirect fire. In other words, our howitzers have no direct line of sight with
the target. We shoot over terrain and obstacles at targets we cannot see from
the guns. A forward observer sends the target location in Universal Transverse
Mercator (UTM) grid coordinates to the fire direction center (FDC), which,
based on its knowledge of the firing battery location, computes the direction
and the range to the target. Based on the ballistic trajectory of round, the
FDC derives tube elevation, charge, and fuze setting from the range to the
target. The FDC then sends this data, known as "fire commands," to
the howitzers. Fire commands are composed of ammunition type,
"deflection" (direction), elevation, charge, and fuze setting. The
howitzer crews then orient their tubes on this data, load the howitzers, and
fire on command. To be accurate, the field artillery must meet certain
requirements: accurate target location, accurate location of the guns,
meteorological data (to compensate for the effect of the weather on the
projectiles while in flight), and knowledge of ammunition characteristics (such
as projectile weight, propellant temperature, and muzzle velocity). Therefore,
the Field Artillery must be able to "shoot, move, and communicate" to
provide effective artillery support. Normally, it takes a battery about 8-15
minutes to get ready to fire from the march.
We encountered special tactical problems in the Saudi desert which impacted on
our tactical operations and training. Arguably the most significant problem was
land navigation. Navigating in the desert, with its lack of easily identifiable
terrain features on the ground, is never an easy proposition. Throw a lack of
high quality maps into the equation, and you have a real problem getting from
point A to point B. The Army gave us navigation aids to mitigate our map
reading problems somewhat. Unfortunately, these navigation aids were in short
supply. These navigation aids included LORAN receivers, GPS receivers, and of
course, our PADS (Position and azimuth determining system).
Another problem we had was that our wheeled vehicles (minus the HEMMT) had
greatly restricted mobility in the Saudi desert. Moreover, fine desert sand got
into vehicle lubricants (road wheels, fan towers, turret hydraulic systems) and
tore up parts, which caused significant vehicle maintenance problems. This was
compounded by a theater wide shortage of spare parts. Most of the sea and
airlift at this stage of the deployment was devoted to getting soldiers and
ammunition in country, which contributed greatly to the repair parts shortage.
Our training plan was designed to hone basic artillery skills in building block fashion, while at the same time training to overcome desert-specific problems, and maintaining equipment; the bottom-line rule was to maintain 90% Operational Readiness rate at all costs. If more than 10 percent of our vehicles broke, we stopped training and focused on fixing vehicles. Since we had just come off of a red cycle when alerted, we were not ready for war. Thank God for the focused, concentrated time we had to train during Desert Shield. If the Iraqis had crossed the border in October or November 1990, we would have been in big trouble. We used to make jokes about the "Dhahran perimeter," reminiscent of the Pusan perimeter during the early stages of the Korean war. The highlights of our training plan included:
- Artillery Training Plan: Crew drill within the perimeter; and platoon and battery training within our "maneuver box."
- Maintenance training.
- Survey training and navigation training (hasty survey techniques, LORAN and GPS navigation).
- Wheeled vehicle driver's training (how to drive in the Saudi sand).
- Sustainment training on critical survivability tasks such as NBC (Nuclear-Biological-Chemical defense skills) and first aid.
- Special emphasis on night training; night navigation was particularly tough. With our night vision technology (NVGs, thermal sights, etc.), we felt we could win a night war against the less sophisticated Iraqis.
Uncertainty was psychological warfare. After one month in the desert, morale was
already beginning to sag, because nobody could tell us how long we would be
there and what we would do (we learned not to underestimate the importance of
predictability). What kept a lot of soldiers going was the possibility of a six
month rotation with other units. That was certainly not definite, though.
Little did we know at the end of October 1990 that the equation was about to
change significantly.
On November 4, 1990, Secretary of State Baker visited us. We had a Division
formation near "Pegasus TOC," the First Cavalry Division main
tactical operations center. All battery leadership, plus about 15 soldiers from
each battery, attended. Baker gave a speech, sounding very morose and somewhat
downhearted. He thanked us for our sacrifices, and said we were the best. In
other words, he gave the typical VIP speech. Afterwards, he trouped the line. I
do not think he was too happy with the reception he got from some of the testy
soldiers he encountered.
On November 8, 1990 came the announcement of the second wave of deployments.
Many soldiers were stunned. Those were the troops who were supposed to rotate
with us. Now we knew our choice was one of two things: stay here for a long,
long, time, or dig those guys out of Kuwait in a brutal war. A hell of a
choice! Morale became even lower, and since morale of my troops was my
responsibility, I knew that I faced a tough leadership challenge.
We solved the problem (sort of) by picking up the training pace. The benefits of
hard training extended beyond the obvious gain of becoming more proficient: it
also gave the soldiers something to do, and kept them from moping around and
worrying about their lot in life. Specifically, we conducted a live fire
exercise at Ali range from November 17-19, 1990. Ali range was the 18th
Airborne Corps range 30 miles east of AA Horse. It was a good training exercise
in two ways: first, things start to come together in a training and teamwork
sense, and, secondly, morale picked up again.
Peter Jennings and Roone Arledge visited us several
days before Thanksgiving. Jennings had been in Baghdad interviewing Saddam
Hussein, and decided to swing by Saudi Arabia to visit a few U.S. Army tactical
units and shoot some footage for the evening news. Jennings was somewhat aloof,
formal, and stuffy. Roone Arledge, on the other hand, was extremely outgoing
and friendly, walking around, shaking hands, and chatting with soldiers. He
looked to me like somebody running for political office. Nevertheless, their
visit gave our morale a real shot in the arm; soldiers on deployment look
forward to visits like that because its something new, something fresh, and it
breaks up the harsh, dull routine. Contrary to popular belief, soldiers
generally enjoy meeting the press. It's usually the chain of command that
doesn't relish it; journalists are pros at getting people to open up and talk,
and, once a soldier gets "on a roll", its possible that classified
and/or sensitive information might leak out and end up on the front page of the Washington
Post. In any event, we gave Jennings a Desert Shield "I was
there" T-shirt and a desert camouflage uniform shirt with Jennings name
tag sewn on (I had a soldier named Jennings who donated the name tag, I donated
the shirt, and one of my lieutenants sewed the name tag on.).
Morale took a nose dive on Thanksgiving Day, 1990: this is a phenomenon I call
"Holiday Blues". Soldiers on deployment always become depressed
during the holidays, probably because the holidays cause soldiers to think
about and miss their family and loved ones even more than they usually do. The
Army's solution is to throw food at the problem. It is a tradition in the U.S.
Army to get "real" food out to soldiers in the field during major
holidays at all costs. In our case, they flew in a fresh turkey dinner, and the
cooks spent 12 full hours preparing it in their MKTs (Mobile Kitchen Trailer).
I was duly impressed at the trouble the Army went through to take care of us.
When the end of the month approached, morale was at an all time low. All we
could do was continue to train, wonder what would happen, and hope and pray for
the best, but expect the worst. It has been said that an active imagination is
a soldier's worst enemy: when you don't know what's going to happen to you, you
start imagining the worst, and that simply feeds your fear.
