A few things I remember from that era:
- Before Desert Storm was launched, the media did repeated stories on how the cunning Saddam had set up 'kill zones'. Essentially, his trenches and obstacles were meant to funnel our forces into spots where he had concentrated fire, and he would do a great amount of destruction.
- The media also had stories about the huge bed capacity on our hospital ships in the Gulf...implying we expected huge casualties.
- I also remember stories of stables of junior officers being placed in Saudi, ready to backfill positions of dead Platoon Leaders.
- We were also under the impression that Saddam had trenches filled with oil, and he planned to set them on fire.
- And of course, there was the threat of chemical weapons. The guys I talked to had worn their chemical gear almost constantly for months, and were very much on edge. One night, their alarm had gone off...either a false alarm, or something was wafting around out there in the desert. They had to go through the procedure of having the lowest ranking man take off his mask...like a canary in a coal mine...to see if he started having symptoms.
- There were lots of stories of fights and very aggressive impromptu football games. There was a lot of tension...they kept hearing how big, powerful, and combat experienced the Iraqi army was...that Saddam had used lots of gas against the Iranians...that Saddam had incredible artillery capabilities...he had his kill zones, etc. The were on edge, to say the least.
Now we rehearsed to some extent this breaching method, at Fort Riley, even after the Gulf war. This was nothing I had ever been trained in or heard of before. I would tie a rope to my tank, with the other end tied to a grappling hook...we would go full throttle towards the concertina wire, I would swing the hook around like a rodeo cowboy...the driver would hit the brakes, and I would throw the hook at the row of concertina wire. Then we would back up and drag the wire away. Next the plow tanks would go through. Now we didn't have any trenches in training..the plow tanks went through because wire is usually accompanied by mines. In our doctrine, we would never put wire or mines out, unless we could 'cover' them with fire. This means we expect any obstacle to be accompanied with lots and lots of killing fire. So even in training, getting through these obstacles was a panicked event...often our trainers would throw tear gas at us during this, to force us to button up.
The equipment listed in this story is very slow. If the engineers were part of the breech, that was very gutsy. The dozers really aren't 'armored' much more than a civilian model...meaning the cab is fairly exposed. And that unit also used the ACE, which was an aluminum dozer. They are all very slow, and it would have been quite the event to use dozers against infantry. The tanks with plows are also slow - at least slower than their tank counterparts. They also caused the tank to burn fuel faster...and in general, every tanker I ever knew who had a plow on his tank did not like having it. And it was evident in training that any damage whatsoever to the plow generally made it nearly impossible to remove. So the plow tank commanders also felt very vulnerable.
My gunner had been part of the breeching operation. His tank was one of those that flooded through the breech, after the plows opened it up. He did report to me multiple Iraqis waving surrender flags, in the heat of the fighting. He even believes he accidentally shot a soldier who was trying to surrender. He was a 'loader' then...and during this operation, a loader's job was to stay up top, manning a 240 machine gun...and absolutely protect the tank from any infantry, whatsoever. My gunner also reported that when they stopped the next morning, for fuel, he saw evidence of the carnage in his tracks. He reported blood, tissue, crushed bone, etc, were in the tracks of his tank.
Many of the guys I spoke to also reported on the poor conditions of the Iraqi soldiers in those trenches. They were essentially imprisoned there...half starved...with no will to fight. The preceding air war had taken its toll, and they were more or less stranded in their desert trenches. If we had waited longer to launch, many would have starved to death.
Most of us see a very sanitized version of the 1st Gulf War, and remember the precision bombing, etc. But there was a very brutal (if brief) ground campaign. The guys I talked to were not monsters. They were young people, trying to make a future for themselves by joining the military, and thrust into this incredible situation. The mantra of that time looked back to Viet Nam...and it was Never Again. Never again would we use half measures and not the full force and power of our military in war. You can discern that philosophy in some of the quotes from the story. From the top down, our military was determined to throw every bit of its strength at the Iraqis, without mercy, to keep those hospital ships empty.
That's exactly what happened....and it gave is a false sense of invincibility a decade later.
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