Grunts (51 page)

Packed with data and statistics, the report merely stated something that common sense should have made clear: air power was highly important but, by its very nature as a standoff weapon, air power was limited in its effect in achieving strategic goals, even in a war that conformed perfectly to American strengths. Combined arms was the key to success. Everyone was needed. Everyone contributed something valuable, especially the underappreciated ground units. In fact, ground forces inflicted the majority of the damage on Saddam Hussein’s army, accounting for 79 percent of the tanks destroyed, 57 percent of the armored personnel carriers destroyed, and more than three-quarters of the artillery pieces eliminated by the coalition.

The truth was that, even with all the firepower of modern ground and air weapons, infantry soldiers played a significant role in the Gulf War. Every single one of these men was a volunteer. As an unhappy coda to the unpopular Vietnam War, Congress abolished the draft in 1973. From then on, the military would be stocked with people who chose to sign up. In fact, infantry soldiers volunteered twice, once for the Army and once for the infantry. In most cases, they had to actively try to get into the infantry, and then maintain high physical fitness and training standards to stay there.

In the 1980s, Congress and President Ronald Reagan made a point of compensating servicemen and servicewomen well, enticing them with such benefits as money for college, health, and family care. The result of all this was an educated, motivated, well-trained combat force. By 1991, 98 percent of soldiers had a high school diploma, three-quarters scored in the highest mental category on classification tests, and 41 percent were enrolled in the Army College Fund. More than one in four were African-American.

As always, infantrymen were in the minority. Indeed, the Army had more than 115 military occupation specialties (MOS), of which infantry jobs comprised only a few. Every soldier was trained as a rifleman, but few actually served in that capacity. The Marines had a higher percentage of manpower devoted to the infantry, but riflemen were still the minority. These late-twentieth-century grunts were armed with a new assemblage of weapons, including new-generation M16A2 rifles, M249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAWs), and a variety of handheld and vehicle-mounted antitank missiles. They were outfitted with coal scuttle Kevlar helmets and sturdy battle dress utilities (BDUs).

In the Army, the infantry branch was divided into two major areas (some would argue two distinct cultures). Mechanized infantry formations were built around the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Army’s newest armored innovation. To the average person, the Bradley looked like a tank. It was tracked and heavily armored. It had a turret, with a 25-millimeter main gun. It was equipped with a side saddle box that could fire TOW missiles (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) to kill tanks. The thirty-three-ton Bradley was a formidable beast, but it was not a tank. It was an infantry carrier. Crewed by a driver, a gunner, and a commander, who themselves were infantrymen, the Bradley carried several more infantry soldiers in its crowded rear compartment. The Bradley provided these grunts—generally called “dismounts” in the mech world—with transportation and considerable fire support. Once outside the Bradley, their job was to fight as machine gunners and riflemen, the traditional role of the grunts. The Army MOS for mechanized riflemen was 11M, eventually spawning the nickname “Eleven Mikes.” Similar to armor, the mech infantry world was about fire support, vehicle formations, gunnery, and cooperation.

Light infantry comprised the other half of the infantry branch. These were the traditional ground pounders who carried heavy rucksacks, usually walked wherever they went (at best they might have access to Humvees, the successor to the jeep), and fought as regular infantry. Some of them were paratroopers. Others were air assault specialists who rode helicopters into battle. They were the descendants of General Kinnard’s 1st Cavalry Division troopers. Others served in straight leg infantry outfits like the 7th and 25th Infantry Divisions. The elite among them were Army Rangers. The MOS for light infantry riflemen was 11B, generally known as Eleven Bravo. Most of them were trained to manipulate a variety of small arms and antitank weapons. Theirs was a life of privation and deprivation, with long marches, patrols, small-unit live fire training events and the like. Light infantry units emphasized physical conditioning, discipline, camaraderie, teamwork, and patrolling. They were the purest of the pure, the last riflemen in a world full of wonder-weapons. Yet they and their mechanized brothers were among the central characters in the Desert Storm video game.
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Crammed in a Bradley and Acting Like Tankers

In a Bradley, everyone was usually uncomfortable. The driver was perched on a small seat, crammed into a narrow rectangle in the front left of the vehicle. In this cramped compartment, mobility was only a dream. Ventilation consisted mostly of an open hatch, although as he drove he usually had to keep the hatch shut. Mostly he just sweltered and focused on maneuvering the vehicle. A couple feet above and behind the driver, the gunner sat scrunched in the left hatch of the turret, with his thermal sights directly to the front of him. He could stand on his little seat, exposing about half of his torso, or he could sit down, button up his hatch, and squeeze himself into the turret’s confined space. Immediately left of the gunner was the TOW box, arguably the most vital piece of equipment on the vehicle since it served as a launcher for the missiles that allowed Bradleys to destroy enemy tanks. To the gunner’s right, the commander had about the same amount of limited space. Directly to his front was a coaxial 7.62-millimeter machine gun. When the vehicle was running, dust, dirt, and exhaust fumes blew into the faces of the gunner and commander alike. The three crewmen wore special radio-equipped helmets, rather like tankers.

The dismounts wore Kevlar helmets, BDUs, chemical overgarments known as MOPP (Mission Oriented Protective Posture) suits, and boots. They secured their M16s and machine guns and kept them pointed downward, at the ready. Jammed in the back of the Bradley, theirs was a life of cramped misery. During Desert Storm, a typical Bradley carried anywhere from four to six such infantrymen. In some vehicles they sat on hard metal seats; others perched on benches. Sometimes, in an effort to create more space, they removed the seats altogether and sat packed together on the floor. The unluckiest soldier (usually the junior guy) sat in the most confined area, right behind the driver in a spot known cheerfully as the hellhole. Personal space, as Americans generally think of it, did not exist in this enclosed world. The men sat draped against, sometimes even over, one another. Any movement affected the others. Few of these grunts were diminutive. One rifleman even remembered a squad mate who somehow wedged his six-foot-six frame into the unit’s Bradley. The men had no windows. The only route of egress was through the rear ramp.

The Bradleys were crammed with an amazing amount of stuff: ammunition, cardboard TOW tubes, MREs (meals ready to eat), tools, water bottles, canteens, wrappers, books, magazines, and other assorted personal items. The Bradley’s engine noise made conversation difficult. When the gunner shot the 25-millimeter gun, the whole vehicle shook. The noise of it all could be deafening. The stench of sweat, pungent feet, and gaseous emissions—of the human variety—mixed with engine fumes, weaponry, and metal to produce an unforgettable odor. Colonel Bolger wrote of the typical Eleven Mike: “He rides for hours and hours—often for days—in the back of a dimly lit metal box with five or more of his closest friends crammed into a space about equal to the back end of an average American family’s minivan. As for heating, it exists . . . with two options: red hot and broken. If you want air-conditioning, take up a different line of work. The suspension system does what it can, but forget about a smooth ride. The track pitches and shimmies, jumps up and plops down. The men in the aft end hang on for dear life.” The grunts sardonically referred to their Bradleys as “sardine cans” and “death boxes.”
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By the late afternoon of February 26, 1991, the troopers of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment had endured these conditions for more than two days. These soldiers, like Kinnard’s people in Vietnam, called themselves cavalry (even referring to each company as a “troop”), but, in effect, they were mechanized infantrymen. In fact, during Desert Storm, commanders took the venerable idea of combined arms to a new level. They cross-attached infantry, armor, and artillery units into task forces and protected them with forward-deployed helicopter squadrons. Forward air controllers added to the party with a dizzying array of close air support planes, such as F-16 Fighting Falcons and A-10 Warthogs. Each troop in the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment consisted of thirteen Bradleys and nine M1 Abrams tanks, the veritable kings of the desert battlefield. The Abrams was, by that time, the most formidable tank in the world, with the best protective armor, the best suspension, the most effective flame suppression system, and the deadliest main gun in existence.

On that February afternoon, the lead vehicles of the 2nd Armored Cav were pushing east through the featureless desert, looking to cut off Saddam’s line of retreat. Two days of ground war had beaten his forward-deployed units to a pulp. Many in those units had surrendered in droves to the 2nd Armored Cav and the other divisions that comprised Lieutenant General Fred Franks’s VII Corps. Saddam had ordered his conquering legions out of Kuwait, and his elite units, most notably the Tawalkana Mechanized Division, were charged with the mission of holding off the advancing Americans long enough for the remnants of the Iraqi Army to escape. The Tawalkana soldiers were members of Saddam’s vaunted Republican Guard. Most were from the Sunni tribes that provided a foundation of support for Saddam’s Baathist regime. Unlike many of their Iraqi countrymen, they were determined to stand and fight.

At 1600 the lead tanks and Bradleys of the 2nd Armored Cav crested a slight rise in the desert and came upon a carefully prepared defensive position with tanks, infantry, personnel carriers, artillery pieces, and antiaircraft guns. Many of the enemy weapons were dug into cleverly concealed revetments. Most of the dismounted soldiers were in bunkers. The Americans were actually outnumbered, right in the middle of the Tawalkana’s most powerful units. Both sides were surprised to see each other.

Visibility was severely hampered by a raging sandstorm. Clouds of grainy orange and beige sand swirled randomly in whooshes. The two sides were separated by about fifteen hundred meters. Even with thermal sights and laser range finders, the American crewmen only caught glimpses of their prey. Iraqi artillery exploded overhead, forcing the Americans to slam their hatches shut.

Captain H. R. McMaster, whose Eagle Troop was in the middle of the American line of vehicles, ordered an immediate attack. He sensed that he was in a tight spot, almost within a U-shaped enemy ambush position, and his instinct was to be aggressive, to unleash the full killing power of his troop and all its supporting firepower before the enemy could adjust to the American presence. He had placed the troop’s nine tanks, including his own, in the middle of his wedge formation. His Bradleys were on the flanks. At McMaster’s command, his gunner, Staff Sergeant Craig Koch, and his loader, Specialist Jeffrey Taylor, fired two 120-millimeter main-gun rounds in less than ten seconds, destroying a pair of Soviet-made T72 tanks. “Two enemy tank rounds impacted next to my tank,” McMaster recalled. Koch fired at another T72. “The enemy tank’s turret separated from its hull in a hail of sparks. It burst into flames as the round penetrated the fuel and ammunition compartments.” The heat was so intense that Captain McMaster could feel hot wind blowing into his face.

What did all this really mean for the Iraqi crewmen? In a word, catastrophe. They died horrible deaths, burned to a crisp, thrown from their vehicles, shredded by the shrapnel of the American shells and their own as well. Some died of blunt trauma, their heads exploding into little more than shards. One crewman, burning from head to toe, managed to exit his tank, only to go down in a hail of machine-gun bullets. The American Bradley and Abrams crewmen knew they had to work together quickly, almost perfectly, to avoid the same fate themselves. There was always a chance that, at any moment, an enemy shell or missile could tear through their own vehicle. The danger was especially real for the Bradleys since their armor was not as thick as that of the tanks.

In mere seconds, the encounter turned into a full-blown desert brawl with both sides firing everything at their disposal. The unit radios were clogged with excited voices as commanders and crewmen alike called out targets, bellowed orders, and relayed information. “All of the Troops’ tanks and scouts [infantry Bradleys] were now in the action,” one of McMaster’s platoon leaders later said. “Enemy tanks and BMPs [armored personnel infantry carriers] erupted into innumerable fireballs.” A dizzying array of Iraqi military hardware went up in flames as depleted uranium, 120-millimeter Abrams rounds, and TOW missiles struck them. “Enemy tank turrets were hurled skyward,” one soldier later said. “The fireballs . . . hurled debris one hundred feet into the air. Secondary explosions destroyed the vehicles beyond recognition.”