I really enjoyed this book. Colonel MacGregor does a great job of keeping the story fast-paced and exciting. I served in the Gulf War as the Assistant S-2 or Intelligence Officer for the 4th Squadron, 7th Cavalry, the Division Cavalry Squadron for the 3rd Armored Division. I'd like to comment on some of the points of his thesis and also indicate a few errors he made during the final part of the book.
I believe Colonel MacGregor is correct in describing the General officers who planned and executed Desert Storm as somewhat conservative. They were all molded by their experience in the Vietnam War, where lack of commitment and poor planning and leadership contributed to the defeat there. I was at several briefings where General Franks reiterated "We'll get this one right. We'll throw everything we have at them." Franks and his subordinates were infected with the idea of not making any mistakes that could lose the war.
This mindset helped perpetuate the idea that the Republican Guard divisions were a combination of the Waffen SS, the Third Shock Army and Darth Vader's Storm troopers all in one. The Guard was the best Iraq had and they did fight hard, but they were no match for the US Army in Desert Storm. During the Vietnam War, the US Army frequently under-estimated the fighting prowess of the Viet Cong and the NVA. Therefore, the leadership in Desert Storm decided that they would never do this again, even if it meant inflating the fighting prowess of the enemy.
After Khafji, the US Army felt that the Iraqi Regular Army could not coordinate fires and maneuver correctly and efficiently. They were no match for a small contingent of Marines backed up by superior US air power. But, senior leadership still felt that the Guard was different. They weren't the Iraqi Regular Army and therefore Khafji should have no bearing on the way VII Corps conducted its operations.
Colonel MacGregor was somewhat harsh in his remarks about General Franks. He believed he was a nice man, who wasn't aggressive enough to really take the fight to the Republican Guard. MacGregor is in the corner with the late General Schwarzkopf on this one. I think Franks was conservative, but his intelligence picture differed from Schwarzkopf's. Schwarzkopf was getting information that ALL of the Guard was bugging out of the Kuwait Theater of Operations. The Adnan and Hammurabi Divisions were. The Al-Medina and the Tawakalna weren't. The Guard Special Forces brigade and the Nebuchadnezzar were still north of Highway 8. The Guard was in fact setting up a defense in depth to block VII Corps. Still, Franks should have moved faster. VII Corps moved through Iraq at tortoise like speed.
VII Corps was also too focused on getting through the breach. On its right flank, the 1st ID and the 1st AD were bottle-necked. The 1st Cav division sat in the Corps reserve doing nothing. Franks should have moved the 1st Cav immediately to sweep much farther north on his left flank to move parallel with the 24th Mech to cut off any Guard units trying to escape.
Franks should have pushed his units northeast by the afternoon on 27 Feb instead of moving mainly southeast. With the 1st Cav moving hard on the left flank, the 1st AD, 3rd AD and the 2 ACR back out front, the Adnan and Hammurabi Divisions would have been destroyed. 1st ID could have still cut off the Al-Jahrah Highway, blocking any further withdrawal from Kuwait.
There were some errors in the last part of the book. Colonel MacGregor describes the 3rd Armored Division as being "hours" behind 2nd ACR. Third Armored Division was not behind 2nd ACR on 26 Feb 1991. After Fragplan 7 was executed the VII Corps was almost on line in the shape of an oblique angle conducting a movement to contact against the Guard. Eagle Troop made contact with the Tawakalna at 1618 hours. My unit, 4-7 CAV made contact with the Tawakalna between 1630 and 1645. We were on Cougar Squadron's left flank, hugging the division boundary and about kilometer away from Joe Sartiano's Ghost Troop. 4-7 CAV was in contact with the enemy for 90 minutes until we conducted a battle hand-off with 4-34 Armor "Centurion." MacGregor refers to this unit erroneously as 2-66 Armor.
I do believe it was 4-34 Armor and not G Troop, 2/2 ACR that was responsible for the deaths of Sergeants Gentry and Kutz. Also, MacGregor has the reader believe that 3rd Armored Division didn't get into the battle until well into the night around 2100. This is completely wrong. 4-7 CAV was the first to make contact as I stated between 1630 and 1645. The rest of the division was in the fight by 1800 and continued to fight the Guard all night. Also, I might be mistaken, but I think 1st ID conducted the passage of lines with 1st ID sooner than he states that evening. I watched a lot of fighting to my right or in the 2/2ACR sector. I don't know if it was them or 1st ID.
Colonel MacGregor also makes it look like the 2nd ACR basically destroyed the Tawakalna and everyone else just cleaned up for them. In fact, 2/2 ACR fought one battalion from the 9th Brigade/Tawakalna, and a part of a battalion from the 18th Brigade/Tawakalna. There were 12 battalions from the Tawakalna out there that night, along with units from the Al-Medina, the Iraqi 10th, and 12th Armored Divisions and the 50th Armored Brigade. Second ACR did not win this fight alone. They did a heck of a job. But, so did 1st ID and 3rd AD and 1st AD that night.
Cougar Squadron's contact and 4-7 CAV's were really the beginning of a 12 hour, 50 mile long fight between VII Corps and the Republican Guard.
In the final analysis, the author is correct. A combination of General Franks' overly-conservative attack plan and decision making by Schwarzkopf, Powell and President Bush let the Adnan, Nebuchadnezzar, 2 brigades from the Hammurabi and the Guard SF Brigade live to fight another day. Schwarzkopf's statements that the gates were closed were simply incorrect. 4-7 CAV was just south of Basrah, along Highway 8 during the uprising. We witnessed the same things 2ACR did. The Republican Guard that had escaped was now butchering the rebels, after the US told them to rise up against Saddam. The whole thing can only be described as a crying shame.
If anyone wants to know what it was like to serve in an armored cavalry unit in Desert Storm read this book. If you want to learn how bravely the US Army fought in the Gulf War read this book. Desert Storm was not a video game war. It was not a cakewalk.
As Stephen Ambrose remarked after the conflict was over. "The US Army that fought in Desert Storm was the finest army the US has ever fielded since Lee's Army of Northern Virginia."
GARRYOWEN!
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True War Story by true Warrior. No kidding...
