ANNALS OF WAR - OVERWHELMING FORCE

What Happened In The Final Days Of The Gulf War?

II -- THE CAUSEWAY

IMMINENT ATTACK

While other American soldiers and their commanders stopped and cheered the
ceasefire, McCaffrey quietly continued to move his combat forces. On the
morning of the ceasefire, February 28th, they were approximately
twenty-five miles west of the Lake Hammar causeway; by the eve of the
Battle of Rumaila, two days later, he had expanded his area of operations.
The 24th Division was now within striking distance of a seventeen-mile
access road connecting the highway to the causeway, one of the few known
pathways out of the marshes and desert in southern Iraq. "I knew I did not
want to go into Basra and fight in Basra," McCaffrey explained to Army
investigators six months after the war, "but I was prepared to continue the
attack to the east." His plan was to be ready, as any prudent commander
would be, to lead an invasion into Baghdad, should one be ordered. "Was I
eager to go north toward Baghdad?" McCaffrey asked the investigators
rhetorically."Personally, I think it would have been militarily an easy
option."

With the ceasefire, the rules of engagement were revised by XVIII Corps
headquarters. Rather than aggressively seek out and destroy the enemy
forces, the commanders were to protect their troops and hold their
positions. McCaffrey was no longer authorized to initiate offensive
military actions on his own; he had to get prior approval from the Corps
commander, General Luck. He could still wage war, but only if he was faced
with "imminent attack." The new rules also stated, "If an enemy vehicle
approaches with its turret turned opposite the direction of travel, the
enemy vehicle will be considered indicating a non-hostile intent. "The
rules went on to say, "If these conditions are not present, the vehicle
will be considered having a hostile intent. In either case, all attempts
will be made to allow the occupants of the vehicle to surrender before U.S.
Forces will take hostile measures." The unilateral ceasefire gave all Iraqi
combat units, including the most elite tank brigades, the right to
unencumbered retreat, provided they moved with cannons reversed.

The Iraqi withdrawal through the Euphrates Valley had been carefully
choreographed by the Third Army headquarters. The goal was to speed up the
exit of the Iraqis from Kuwait, and on March 1st thousands of soldiers --
in tanks, trucks, and stolen cars -- continued their retreat toward
Baghdad, streaming northwest day and night toward the Lake Hammar causeway.

McCaffrey had moved his forces toward the access road without informing all
the senior officers who needed to know -- inside his own division
operations center, at XVIII Corps, and at Third Army headquarters.
Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Lamar, McCaffrey's operations officer, told Army
investigators in the summer of 1991 that he did not know at the time that
John Le Moyne's 1st Brigade, which included the most forward units, had
moved to the north and east. Frank H. Akers, a young colonel who was the
operations officer at XVIII Corps headquarters, also told me that he did
not know that McCaffrey had moved two brigades forward after the ceasefire.
Neither did Lieutenant General John Yeosock, commander of the Third Army.
The retreating Iraqis, who had been assured of safe passage, were now in
harm's way -- and so were McCaffrey's soldiers.

McCaffrey's forces were at risk, Akers told me, because division commanders
invariably need "higher headquarters to have an accurate read of their
location in case they have to call in support." Careful reporting, Akers
added, avoids friendly-fire incidents and enables help to reach a unit in
trouble more quickly.

General McCaffrey, in a letter to The New Yorker, firmly denied that his
division had ever purposely failed to inform the appropriate commands of
the troop deployments prior to the March 2nd engagement. In a separate
letter he noted, "It is simply not credible that a division in combat,
employing artillery and air power, and widely equipped with GPS, could or
would falsify unit locations."

However, General Yeosock told me, "Too many people have the imaginary
notion that we can track everything from space." What was important, he
said, was that the operations officers at the Third Army "get a lot of
confirmatory information from the people on the ground. At the end of the
day, it's what comes in through the human channels."

Shortly after dawn on March 2nd, a unit reported to McCaffrey's command
post that it was being fired upon by the retreating Iraqis and that it had
returned fire in self-defense. These were the opening shots of the Battle
of Rumaila.

Over the past nine years, McCaffrey has consistently defended his March 2nd
offensive by emphasizing, as he did in his letters, that his actions were
designed to protect American soldiers -- and were thus fully compliant with
the revised rules of engagement. "My troops on the ground were under
attack," McCaffrey wrote. "My sole focus was the safety of my soldiers."

The early-morning; Iraqi attack that McCaffrey and others speak of was said
to be targeted on units in Charles Ware's 2-7 Battalion that were at the
forward edge of the American advance. The 2-7 Scouts were attacked by
R.P.G.s, Sagger missiles, and "direct fire from T-72 tanks," McCaffrey
wrote. The rocketing continued later that morning, as one Sagger missile
was fired at the American positions and others were prepared for launch. A
muzzle flash was observed, McCaffrey wrote, and an artillery cannon under
tow was moved off the road, disconnected, and pointed at the division. (The
Army inquiry into Rumaila concluded that two weapons were fired, but did
not report any injuries or damage.)

"In sum," McCaffrey wrote, "we acted appropriately at the time the Rumaila
battle occurred. My troops routed a large enemy force that not only
threatened my soldiers but also opened fire on . . . our position."

"They came rolling in there," John Le Moyne told an Army oral historian a
few days after the March 2nd engagement, "and I'll be damned if they didn't
start shooting at us." In a separate interview, his operations officer,
Major Benjamin Freakley, told an Army oral historian that the first reports
of enemy contact -- the firing of an R.P.G. -- came from Charlie Company in
Ware's battalion. Moments later, Charlie Company again received fire --
this time, Sagger missiles from Iraqi B.M.P.s (Russian-built armored
vehicles known to the soldiers as Bimps). The Americans immediately
counterattacked, Freakley said, and destroyed six Iraqi B.M.P.s and four
T-72 tanks. Meanwhile, a group of helicopters that had been scrambled to
reconnoitre the situation told of seeing "hundreds" of Iraqi vehicles
moving to the north. McCaffrey"realized this force could move to the west
now that they knew we were here" -- and threaten his forces. "So we decided
to go ahead and fight them, since they had engaged us first."

Freakley was saying, in essence, that McCaffrey chose to turn all his guns
on the Iraqis because of the possibility that the defeated Army might
decide to stop its withdrawal and, in a move that amounted to suicide,
attack the far superior American forces. If Freakley's recollection is
right, McCaffrey waited half an hour or so to gather his forces and create
an attack plan. The precise length of McCaffrey's delay could not be
conclusively fixed from the available documents. The division log entries
suggest that the delay between the two attacks was less than forty minutes.
But in his sworn testimony Patrick Lamar, the division operations officer,
told Army investigators that there "was a period of about two hours between
the time the firing first was reported before any action was ever taken."
All the authorities agree, however, on one essential point -- there were no
further confirmed reports of Iraqi shootings between the first and second
attacks.

John Le Moyne told me that"there was absolutely no doubt in my mind" that
the resumption of firing was justified. He said he now believes that the
Iraqis had not planned their early-morning attack. "After ten years, I
think they just didn't have the discipline and training." He theorized,
"The first guy who fired was part of a guard post. He woke up, saw American
combat vehicles, and said, 'Oh, shit! Oh, dear,' reacted out of panic, and
fired."

The authorized history of the 24th Division in the Gulf War, written by
Major Jason Kamiya, a division operations officer, closely echoes the Le
Moyne and Freakley accounts.

THESE GUYS ARE GOING HOME

Interviews for this article, and the 24th Division's daily log for March
2nd, fail to support many aspects of the official account. The Iraqis were
driving anything that moved, and by early morning on March 2nd hundreds of
retreating trucks, tanks, and other vehicles had come into radar view of
the 1st Brigade. At 4:45 A.M., reports came from Sergeant Larimore's G.S.R.
unit and from Lieutenant Grisillo's 3-7 Scouts, and as they became
increasingly vivid they got everyone's attention.

James Manchester, in the 2-7 Scout platoon commanded by Lieutenant Allen,
did not see any Iraqi firing, any Iraqi prisoners, or any Iraqi panic that
morning. His platoon had been travelling in front of the main attack force,
as usual, and he was cheerfully watching the Iraqis retreat in an orderly
fashion along the road leading to the Lake Hammar causeway. He and his
fellow-Scouts had been told "to make sure that these guys are retreating."
He recalled, "I remember thinking, It's over, it's over. These guys are
going home. It was just a line of vehicles on the road."

John Brasfield also remembers that morning. He had been troubled by his own
brigade's continuing movement to the east, toward Basra. "On the day of the
ceasefire, we got an order to move out," Brasfield recalled. "I'm a 'Why?'
guy, and I asked Allen why. I didn't want to die after the ceasefire. He
said, 'This is what we're instructed to do.' "

Early on the morning of March 2nd, Brasfield continued, his platoon had
moved east, with no Iraqi opposition. Some soldiers who were farther east
reported that an Iraqi tank "came up on them, but it never fired. We sat
there all morning watching movement on the road about six kilometres away."
A steady stream of retreating tanks moved along the road. "There's no
hostile action toward us, but they don't see us," Brasfield said. Edward
Walker also recalled the tableau as non-threatening. "Many of the Iraqi
tanks were on flatbed trucks and had their turrets tucked backward" -- that
is, their cannons were facing away from the American combat forces.

When word of the Iraqi column first reached Le Moyne's 1st Brigade command
post, his intelligence officer, Captain Linda Suttlehan, informed him that
"the only unit it could belong to was the Hammurabi Republican Guard tank
division, one of the most battle-hardened units in the Iraqi Army, which
was scrambling to get back, intact, to Baghdad. There was a growing sense
of excitement both in the brigade and in the division headquarters,
Suttlehan recalled. Some of the senior officers "wanted action," and said
as much.

A far less threatening observation was officially reported sometime around
6 or 7 A.M. by the 1st Brigade to the 24th Division tactical-operations
center. Item 47 in the division log for March 2nd noted, "Col Le Moyne is
observing vehicles, which consist of 200 trucks (flatbeds with some
mil[itary] vans)." A tank or any other vehicle riding on a flatbed posed no
threat, as every armored officer knew. However, that reassuring report was
contradicted by Le Moyne in the very next log item, which said that Le
Moyne "reports that vehicles' report is 'erroneous and bullshit.' " Le
Moyne then ordered an attack-helicopter reinforcement for his brigade -- a
major escalation.

The radio suddenly came to life, James Manchester recalled. He listened as
Captain Richard B. Averna, the commander of Ware's Charlie Company, told
Ware that the retreating Iraqis were preparing to fire antitank missiles at
the American forces. Manchester said his platoon was astonished at the
message. "We are sitting right on top of these people," he told me,
referring to the Iraqis, "and there are no vehicles pulled off." Captain
Averna, he said, was behind him and could not see the line of vehicles.

Brasfield recalled a different but equally overwrought report. "One of the
companies sees one or two dismounts" -- Iraqi soldiers who have climbed off
a tank or armored vehicle -- "with an R.P.G. pointed in its direction. They
ask permission to engage, and finally get it. There's some boom, boom, boom
-- a very short engagement. This was early, before the big battle."
Brasfield said he was later told, "Somebody panicked and thought they saw
something they didn't see." Another factor in the Scout platoon's
skepticism over the report, Brasfield said, was a lack of confidence in
Ware's leadership.

Sergeant Stuart Hirstein, of the 124th Military Intelligence Battalion, was
clearing an Iraqi bunker with a company in the 2-7 Battalion when his unit
monitored the early reports about Iraqi fire. One of the combat companies
in Ware's battalion had issued an urgent call for help, asking every
available unit to come to its rescue: it was taking fire from oncoming
Iraqi tanks. Hirstein and his team rushed to the site in their armored
vehicles. When they arrived, he said, there was no attack and no imminent
threat from the retreating Iraqi tanks. "Some of the tanks were in travel
formation, and their guns were not in any engaged position."The Iraqi crew
members "were sitting on the outside of their vehicles, catching rays," he
said. "Nobody was on the machine guns." And yet the Americans "wanted to
fire them up." At that point, he added, their commanders said no.

There was a barrage of messages. "The radio was blasting," Linda Suttlehan
told me. One message stood out: a Scout claimed that an Iraqi R.P.G. had
been fired at him. Other soldiers reported that an Iraqi tank had fired at
their positions. "We plotted grids, but the timing didn't make sense,"
Suttlehan said. "The timing was too close. Was it one or two different
tanks? Or was it the same guy shooting?" In any case, Suttlehan recalled,
"I needed to know which way the tubes are pointing" -- the cannons on the
Iraqi tanks. "Are they in front or back?" After some time had passed, she
said, she and the other analysts were "still trying to figure it out."

There was similar confusion in the 124th Military Intelligence Battalion.
Major James P. Kump, the 124th's senior intelligence officer forward in the
field during the attack, had been monitoring what he assumed was a routine
retreat early that morning when the fighting started. Kump, who spent
twenty-two years on active duty and is now retired, told me, "I thought, I
can't believe what I'm hearing! There's nothing going on. These guys are
retreating. "The skies above the battlefield were crammed with
state-of-the-art intelligence devices, Kump said, and much of the
intelligence was being passed to his Humvee. "I had links to several
intelligence systems -- more than I can talk about. And I'd have known if
troops were moving toward us." Kump went on, "I knew of no justification
for the counterattack. I always felt it was a violation of the ceasefire.
From an integrity standpoint, I was very troubled." Before all previous
operations, he said, planners at division headquarters had routinely sought
his intelligence assessments. This time, he said, "no one asked me for an
assessment."

COMMAND DECISION

McCaffrey's official headquarters was the division's mobile tactical
command post, but he directed the war from what is known as an assault
command post, a unit of four tanks and three or so tracked vehicles which
stays in the front lines with the advancing troops. At intervals, the
vehicles would stop together, and McCaffrey's staff would pull out canvas
extensions to provide shade, and set up cots for quick naps. Fresh coffee
was brewed, and the area neatly served as a mobile headquarters where
McCaffrey could get up-to-date briefings and hold small staff meetings.

The men in the assault command post worked intimately with McCaffrey and
were the most knowledgeable about what was going on. They included Captain
Michael Bell, Captain Michael Bell, an armor officer who was McCaffrey's
personal aide -- the man who arranged his schedule, screened his
appointments, and monitored his telephone. Bell, a West Point graduate, was
married to a fellow West Point graduate, whose father was a two-star
general on active duty at the Pentagon. Bell considered it his
responsibility to let his boss know what he thought, in essence confronting
McCaffrey with observations he sometimes did not want to hear. Whatever the
cause, Bell fell out of favor. "One day, he was the greatest thing since
sliced bread," Patrick Lamar, the division's operations officer, said. And
then, he said, "Bell got blitzed."

Lamar ran the assault command post, and thus was responsible, in war, for
relaying McCaffrey's orders to the field units. The son of an abandoned
Second World War French war bride, he had worked his way through Kent State
University, and to an Army commission, on an R.O.T.C. scholarship.

According to Lamar, the interval after the first skirmishing by Ware's
battalion provoked a debate inside McCaffrey's assault command post. "There
was no incoming," Lamar told me. "I know that for a fact." He described the
battle as "a giant hoax. The Iraqis were doing absolutely nothing. I told
McCaffrey I was having trouble confirming the incoming." It didn't matter,
Lamar added. McCaffrey wanted to attack.

Colonel Townsend, the division artillery commander, remains skeptical today
of some of the early-morning radio discussions between McCaffrey and Le
Moyne. "There was not point-blank fire," Townsend told me. "The excitement
on the command net was not there."Townsend thought that at least one
antitank round had been fired. but there was also "some indication" in the
radio traffic that "something wasn't right."

"There was a lot of confusion," Captain Jim Morris, a West Point graduate
who worked in the command post, told me, and also "some huddling" among
Lamar, McCaffrey, and General Terry Scott, the deputy division commander.
"I remember Lamar outside, smoking a cigarette and shaking his head." Major
Thomas Matyok, another junior officer in the command post, had the
impression, as he told me, that there was not "a lot of enthusiasm" on
Lamar's part for a renewed attack on the Iraqi forces. He added that he and
Captain Morris had a running joke about the lack of Iraqi aggression: Iraq
was a surprisingly patriotic country "because everybody was always waving
their national flag-all white."

As one officer recalled the discussion, "General Scott was all for the
attack" -- even to the point of suggesting ways to provoke an Iraqi
retaliation. "He was asking a lot of questions about 'Can we get the Scout
[helicopter] out and kick some dirt up and see what happens?"' Log Item 53,
filed shortly after 7:30 A.M., states that Scott "requests PSYOPS Helicopter."

"Scott was sitting there saying, 'Let's go get these guys,'" Lamar told me.
Lamar said his own view was "We didn't need to kill more people -- we'd
proved our point." But, he said, "McCaffrey had to have his armor battle."
Scott, when he was asked about his actions that morning, told me he was
"emphatic that the enemy had to start it. Eventually, we became convinced
that it was a real, no-shit attack by the Iraqis."

In the course of the discussions, Lamar reminded McCaffrey of XVIII Corps's
newly revised rules of engagement, and urged him to obtain higher
authority. At that point, McCaffrey made a telephone call to General Luck,
or so Lamar assumed, at XVIII Corps headquarters. (Luck later told me that
he did not provide any guidance to McCaffrey, or have any conversation with
him, immediately before the March 2nd counterattack.) And then, Lamar said,
the discussion was over.

After the phone call, McCaffrey in effect pushed Lamar aside and assumed
operational command of the division himself. "He just took me out of the
picture," Lamar said.

McCaffrey abruptly left the meeting and moved his command post, without
Lamar, to Colonel Ware's battalion. "He left the operations center in the
cold," Lamar said. "Nobody knew what the hell was going on." (The division
log suggested that the time of the shift in command post was 8:27 A.M.)

"I'll kill somebody if I have to," Lamar told me. "But if you're going to
violate a truce you'd better have permission to do so. McCaffrey put people
at risk at the peace table." Lamar was referring to General Schwarzkopf's
formal ceasefire talks with the Iraqi leadership, scheduled to begin the
next morning.

Captain Bell, who had been present during the discussions before the
counterattack, came to believe that McCaffrey's decision to move his
brigades to the east of the original ceasefire line was designed to provoke
the Iraqis. Referring to the deployment in force, he said, "The entire
regiment moves forward. He's pulled the whole division in line. You have an
army that comes forward in the dark after a ceasefire in a confined
battlefield, and of course somebody's going to shoot at you." There is a
serious distinction, nonetheless, Bell added, between a round or two fired
in panic or self-defense and McCaffrey's insistence that the Iraqis were
"attacking us." That "is pure fabrication," he said.

[Posted in the following parts:
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