Home > Gulf War Diary > "D-Day, H-Hour"
The Iraqis never did attack, and the weather cleared up. It ended up being another "boy who cried wolf" story. But our tactical posture was nonetheless improved, and we continued to improve our position. 0800 hours, 16 January 1991, local (Corresponding to midnight, 15 January 1991 EST) marked the passing of the UN deadline. The question then became, "What were we going to do about it?" I got my answer that morning, when LTC Knight called the BCs up for a meeting. Appearing almost sad and regretful, LTC Knight informed us that the bombing campaign would start "in the next four days." I went back to my battery, went from section to section, let them now what was going on, and gave them my "Patton" speech.
At 0230 hours, 17 January 1991, I was awakened by one of my soldiers yelling "REDCON 1". I went to my vehicle, got on the radio, and called the TOC to see what was going on. The shift NCO told me to come up to the TOC for a meeting. At the TOC, LTC Knight informed us that the Air Campaign had begun, that we would move north of Hafar Al Batin to set up a defensive battle position. Our mission would be to defend Hafar Al Batin and cover VII Corps' deployment from the port to their TAAs. The realization that we were now in a shooting war caused my gut to tighten up. I returned to my battery and briefed my people. My people seemed frightened, but they packed up their gear and got ready to move out.
The adrenaline of the moment helped us to be ready to move in record time. Once ready, we sat in our vehicles and waited for the word to move out. At this time, RED AIR and SCUD alerts started coming across CF2 with regularity. The reports were erroneous, but we did not know that at the time, so people started getting just plain scared. "What in the hell did we get ourselves into," I thought. With not much else to do, we tuned into AFN. We heard the president's speech, and GEN Schwarzkopf's speech. Sitting in my vehicle and worrying about combat made me sick to my stomach, so I willed myself to clear my head of all worries and focus on performing my job. We had been directed to start taking PB tablets (a nerve agent antidote; we were directed to take one tablet every eight hours), so I got out of my vehicle and walked around making sure my soldiers were taking them. Unfortunately, we found out real soon that an immediate and undesirable side effect of PB tablets was that they tended to cause a temporary loss of bowel control.
0630, 17 January 1991: We got in the Brigade wedge formation, moved east along the Tapline road just past Qaysumah, and then crossed the Tapline road and proceeded north-northwest to our battle position. However, an Egyptian unit on the north side of the Tapline Road got spooked and started shooting at the lead brigade element with small arms fire. We withdrew south of the Tapline road, and waited for the civil affairs people to clear it up with the Egyptians. We waited for several hours, during which time we heard glowing initial reports on AFN about how the bombing was going. We saw numerous air sorties going back and forth between Saudi Arabia and Iraq, all ours. There was absolutely no evidence of "RED AIR," something that made us feel much better. Finally, the word came down to go back to BP Duke, so we turned around and headed back. Then they countermanded that order, and we turned around again and executed our mission as planned.
1500 hours, 17 January 1991: My battery was the lead element in the battalion
convoy. As we waited to cross the Tapline road, we saw massive traffic heading
west, mostly HETs, VII Corps units, and British troops. Then I saw a HET convoy
carrying 24th Infantry Division tanks. At first, I thought "what the hell
are 24 ID units doing this far west? Then it occurred to me that USCENTCOM must
be planning an envelopment, the so-called "Hail Mary Pass."
"Good plan," I thought. Finally, after about 45 minutes of waiting,
the MPs manning a traffic control point stopped traffic, and allowed us to
cross. We headed north, passed a wide berth around the Egyptians, headed
north-west, passed in front of Qaysumah and Hafar Al Batin, crossed the Ruqi
Road, and, at nightfall, occupied a battle position just north of Hafar Al
Batin.
