into the Storm (1997) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  CHAPTER ONE - The Day Before

  CHAPTER TWO - Duty

  CHAPTER THREE - Cambodia

  CHAPTER FOUR - Valley Forge

  CHAPTER FIVE - The Rebirth of the Army

  CHAPTER SIX - Maneuver Warfare

  CHAPTER SEVEN - March to the Sound of the Guns

  CHAPTER EIGHT - Preparing for War

  CHAPTER NINE - Coiled Spring

  CHAPTER TEN - Turn East

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - Attack East

  CHAPTER TWELVE - Night Combat

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Knockout

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Cease-Fire

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Duty in Iraq

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - TRADOC and the Future of Land Warfare

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - "Once More . . ."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Reflections

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography and References

  Index

  PRAISE FOR

  Into the Storm

  "There will be some--in the future when our army again goes to war--who will take this work to the battlefield as a reminder of how great commanders accomplished the mission." --Armor

  "Two areas of this book merit special attention and should be mandatory reading for all military officers. Clancy's narrative of the army in transition and his chapter on maneuver warfare are superb. . . . What the reader gains from [Franks's] candid admissions is a deep appreciation of the mind of a commander charged with employing 146,000 soldiers and 50,000 vehicles across 120 miles of enemy territory in the face of determined resistance." --Army Magazine

  "Franks manages to tell a good story, offer insights into leadership and set the record straight." --Scripps Howard News Services

  NOVELS BY TOM CLANCY

  The Hunt for Red October

  Red Storm Rising

  Patriot Games

  The Cardinal of the Kremlin

  Clear and Present Danger

  The Sum of All Fears

  Without Remorse

  Debt of Honor

  Executive Orders

  Rainbow Six

  The Bear and the Dragon

  Red Rabbit

  The Teeth of the Tiger

  SSN: Strategies of Submarine Warfare

  NONFICTION

  Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship

  Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment

  Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

  Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit

  Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

  Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

  Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces

  Into the Storm: A Study in Command

  (written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  Every Man a Tiger

  (written with General Charles Horner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

  (written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  Battle Ready

  (written with General Tony Zinni, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  CREATED BY TOM CLANCY

  Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell

  Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda

  Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Checkmate

  CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND STEVE PIECZENIK

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Mirror Image

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Games of State

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Acts of War

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Balance of Power

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: State of Siege

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Divide and Conquer

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Line of Control

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Mission of Honor

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Sea of Fire

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Call to Treason

  Tom Clancy's Op-Center: War of Eagles

  Tom Clancy's Net Force

  Tom Clancy's Net Force: Hidden Agendas

  Tom Clancy's Net Force: Night Moves

  Tom Clancy's Net Force: Breaking Point

  Tom Clancy's Net Force: Point of Impact

  Tom Clancy's Net Force: CyberNation

  Tom Clancy's Net Force: State of War

  Tom Clancy's Net Force: Changing of the Guard

  Tom Clancy's Net Force: Springboard

  Tom Clancy's Net Force: The Archimedes Effect

  CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND MARTIN GREENBERG

  Tom Clancy's Power Plays: Politika

  Tom Clancy's Power Plays: ruthless.com

  Tom Clancy's Power Plays: Shadow Watch

  Tom Clancy's Power Plays: Bio-Strike

  Tom Clancy's Power Plays: Cold War

  Tom Clancy's Power Plays: Cutting Edge

  Tom Clancy's Power Plays: Zero Hour

  Tom Clancy's Power Plays: Wild Card

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  Copyright (c) 1997, 2004 by C. P. Commanders, Inc.

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  eISBN : 978-1-429-58336-7

  Clancy, Tom, date.

  Into the storm : a study in command / Tom Clancy, with Fred Franks, Jr.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-429-58336-7

  1. Franks, Fred. 2. Persian Gulf War, 1991--United States. 3. Persian Gulf War,

  1991--Biography. I. Franks, Fred. II. Title.

  DS79.724.U6F-38068 CIP

  956.7044'2--dc21

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  This book is dedicated to:

  THE VETERANS OF

  THE DESERT STORM VII CORPS JAYHAWKS


  AND THEIR FAMILIES.

  THE BLACKHORSE TROOPERS

  OF THE IITH ACR.

  THE MEN AND WOMEN OF AMERICA'S ARMY,

  WHO DO THEIR DUTY EVERY DAY,

  WHO BEAR THE WOUNDS OF WARS PAST,

  AND WHO DIED IN SERVICE TO OUR COUNTRY.

  INTRODUCTION

  The Quiet Lion

  HEROES rarely look the part. The first holder of the Medal of Honor I met looked more like a retired accountant than John Wayne, and when I introduced General Fred Franks to a physician friend, the latter remarked that he was a dead ringer for the professor of pediatrics at Cornell University Medical School. And that's really the basis on which we first met. In 1991, I knew a young lad named Kyle who was afflicted with a rare and deadly form of cancer. A friend of mine, Major General Bill Stofft, was heading over to the Persian Gulf after the conclusion of hostilities. There was a senior officer over there, I'd heard, who'd lost a leg in Vietnam. My little buddy had just endured the surgical removal of his leg, and I asked Bill if he might approach this officer and ask him to write a brief letter of encouragement to Kyle, then at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The officer, I learned from General Stofft, was Fred Franks, then a lieutenant general, and commander of VII Corps. Bill delivered the request, and Lieutenant General Franks responded at once, calling it a privilege. He wrote a warm letter to my friend, and copied it to me with a cover note thanking me for making him aware of my friend and his affliction. That, really, is the bond between us.

  Soon thereafter, Fred received another star and a new post as commanding general of the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) at Fort Monroe in the Virginia Tidewater, a plum job whose mission it is to look into the future and prepare for it, and it was there that we met for the first time. The first order of business was to thank him for his gracious solicitude to my little friend. He waved it off, thanking me again for the opportunity to look after a child, and really that's most of what I needed to learn about this gentleman.

  Fred is a man of modest size and words--on the rare occasions when he swears, even that is quiet. There's an engaging shyness to this general officer. Don't be fooled. He's one of the undramatic people who gets the job done and moves on without fanfare to the next mission, leaving accomplishment in his wake.

  Soldiers are not what we most often see portrayed on the screen. The best of them, the ones who ascend to generals' stars, are thoughtful students of their profession, scholarly commentators on history, and gifted observers of human psychology. The profession of arms is every bit as broad and deep as medicine or law. Like physicians, officers must know their subject in every detail, for they deal in the currency of life and death, and some mistakes can never be corrected. Like attorneys, they must plan everything in exquisite detail, because in some arenas you have but one chance to get it right.

  The sheer intellectual complexity of command is something few have discussed with anything approaching accuracy. In preparing to move his VII Corps across the desert, Fred first of all had to consider the major pieces: U.S. 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions, the renowned 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized), the 1st Cavalry Division, U.K. 1st Armored Division, U.S. 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and three separate artillery brigades. Those units alone account for nearly 100,000 soldiers, each of whom was assigned to a vehicle. Toss in the "loggies," the logistical troops whose unsung but vital job was to keep the "shooters" equipped with everything from diesel fuel to computer chips.

  Okay, now imagine that you have to plan the rush hour for a city of, oh, say, 1 million, deciding how each worker gets home; that you have to account for every single one of them, from point of origin to destination, and that everyone has to arrive home at exactly the right time.

  Oh, that's not all: Fred had to plan seven different options for his move. So you also must allow for seven different combinations of closed streets, road work, and broken bridges, while still allowing every commuter to make it home at the proper time.

  By the way, if you mess this little job up, human lives will be lost.

  Sounds easy? We haven't even gotten to the really hard part yet. People will be trying to kill the commuters--organized, trained people, with weapons--and you also must minimize that little hazard.

  And yet, in a way, this was the easy part. Just to get to that point Fred Franks and his colleagues--men like Creighton Abrams, Ed Burba, Bill DePuy, Colin Powell, Butch Saint, Norm Schwarzkopf, Pete Taylor, Carl Vuono, and so many others--had to fix an Army that in their younger days as lieutenants and captains had been broken by poor political leadership and public antipathy. Fred lost part of a leg in Vietnam. His colleagues were all hurt in one way or another, and the Army nearly lost its soul, while America lost her confidence as a nation. As a major with 1.5 legs, lying in a bed in Valley Forge, he had to conquer pain and heartache, to wonder if he had a career before him at all, and to wonder also if his country gave a damn about him and his fellow amputees.

  Remember just how dark those days were? The Army was on its back, its NCO corps bled nearly to death in Vietnam, drugs were rampant throughout the institution, and morale was so low that on more than one post, officers entered barracks only with an armed escort.

  Fred was one of the men who had to make good all that others had conspired to destroy. Like the Army of the 1970s, he had to learn to walk all over again. As he had to repair the wounds in his heart, so the Army had to restore its confidence. All these things did happen, however, because Fred and men like him never lost faith in their country or their own ideals.

  How great was their task? Looking back from today's perspective, it is more frightening, perhaps, than it was at the time, but the magnitude of the accomplishment can be measured simply: America won the Cold War because she and her allies were too strong to lose. That happened only because Fred Franks and his wounded but proud band of brothers made her so, and that only after healing themselves. I started meeting these men in 1988, and that's when the idea for this book really began. The public image of the Army is most often that of the cinema, and that is generally an infantry squad, because a movie can show only so much. By the same token, the heaviest firepower the Army has--tanks and artillery, which do most of the killing on the modern battlefield--has been largely ignored. And so the image we have of the military is not so much false as limited. That's a lesson I learned at Fort Irwin, California, on a cold January morning. Having had the taste, I had to learn more, and I was fortunate in finding a superb collection of teachers.

  Any army is a vast community of people more than a collection of their awesome tools. It may seem grotesque to call war-fighting an art, but warfighting is more than anything else the leadership of people, and handling people is the most demanding of human arts, all the more so when the currency is life and death. More than that, in a nation's military, you find the nation itself, all of its qualities, whether good or bad, distilled to an odd sort of purity. Our Army has traveled in a single lifetime down a strange and crooked road, from the triumph of World War II through the embarrassment of Korea, through peacekeeping and holding the line in Europe, through tragedy and waste in Vietnam, through near total collapse thereafter, through a long and wrenching process of reconstitution, then again to dominance on the sands of Iraq and Kuwait.

  It's a story I could hardly tell by myself, and it's a story for more than one book. From Fred Franks I learned the story of the United States Army, so grievously wounded in Vietnam. Though the viewpoints and perspectives are mine, much of the story is his, and in certain chapters I have felt it only fitting that he tell it in his own words. Other aspects of America's recovery and dominance will come from others in future books, and I hope the reader will come to grasp just how much was done, and how much is owed. There were plenty of infantry squads, and tank crews, and cannoneers, and loggies, all wearing their nation's colors. All of them were trained, supported, and led by the professionals who kept the faith.

  And so the man and the army that a
dvanced across sand and rock were ready for their task, their memories of Vietnam never far from their minds, and the lessons of that experience in their hands. The army America deployed to the Persian Gulf might well have been the finest in all of history, equipped with the best weapons, trained in the most realistic fashion, and led by men who'd learned the hard way why you have to get it done right the first time. We all saw the results on TV.

  It's been my honor to get to know this man. A man of iron and letters--he's taught poetry at the university level--Fred Franks symbolizes our army as well as any man could.

  --TOM CLANCY

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Day Before

  23 FEBRUARY 1991 2100

  VII CORPS MAIN COMMAND POST

  AFTER the evening briefing and a brief talk to his staff and the liaison officers from subordinate units, Fred Franks went back to his sleeping shelter.

  In his talk, Franks was emotional about the soldiers and hard-nosed about the task ahead. The staff was quiet and serious. Most listened quietly, and there was a lot of eye contact. When he finished, they all hollered a big "JAYHAWK"--VII Corps's nickname--and that was it. He left the tent.