Photo of Kuwait-Basra
Highway by the author.
AND THEN,
all of a sudden, it was G Day. At 0100 hours GMT on 24
February 1991 it all started – the biggest land
operation since the Normandy landings in 1944, so we
were told. As is well recorded elsewhere, the Coalition
attack on Iraq was phased, with different elements
attacking at different times to catch the enemy unawares
and deceive him as to where the main effort lay.
At H Hour, 0400 hours local time, the American XVIII
Corps and the French 6 Armoured Division, on the
Coalition’s western flank, were first off the mark into
Iraq and made remarkably quick progress. In the eastern
part of the theatre, the US Marines attacked north into
Kuwait and towards Kuwait City, and immediately had the
strange and unforeseen experience of being hampered by
crowds of surrendering Iraqi soldiers as soon as they
breached the border berm. After about six hours they
were some thirty kilometres into Kuwait and it appeared
there was nothing left to stop them.
Even at this early stage in proceedings we began to
wonder if it might be all over much faster than we had
originally thought. We were really rather busy for the
whole shift for once – briefing JHQ on developments as
best we could as communications with the Division were
poor – and looking to see if we could bring the schedule
forward if the enemy was truly routed.
Our Chief of Staff (COS), Col Ian Talbot, was buzzing
around the HQ like a bluebottle on amphetamines and
quickly became labelled as “the rogue Patriot” for his
behaviour, reminiscent of a missile which had lost its
guidance. The pace was indeed frenetic, but soon settled
down as we became used to working in a climate of
constant change and imperfect knowledge. As the end of
the first day of ground action arrived 1 (UK) Division
was all set to go, just waiting for the US 1st Infantry
Division – the Big Red One – to secure the breach in the
border berm and minefields.
General Sir Peter de la Billiere (our boss) got a
briefing every morning, and the night shift presented it
at 0800 hours so the day shift could be brought up to
speed at the same time before taking over. I often
marked up the main briefing map at about 0630 in
preparation, and it was not unusual for the General to
appear at that early hour from his nearby bunk, still in
dressing gown and slippers with a mug of tea in his
hand, to get an early informal update on what had
happened overnight.
Such was the uncertainty and difficulty in getting
accurate information from the boys in the desert that he
sometimes left these early morning sessions none the
wiser, for I recall that I often had to reply “I don’t
know” to his questions. I’m sure he realised the
difficulties we faced and was always understanding of
our lack of detailed knowledge. We were usually a little
bit better informed by the proper briefing at 0800, but
even then we never really got any information on the
fortunes of our Arab allies apart from BBC and CNN news
reports.
These formal briefings always followed the same format.
The RAF watchkeepers spoke first with a weather forecast
for the next 24 hours followed by a review of air
operations over the last 24 hours. We were on next, with
me briefing on the flow of Coalition operations in
general then Richard Aubrey-Fletcher on the progress of
1 (UK) Armoured Division in detail. The Navy came next,
and then a host of others on supply, medical, prisoners
of war, etc. It usually lasted about an hour and was
videotaped throughout. I was struck once again by the
similarity of the proceedings to a typical Staff College
exercise at Camberley, and it was sometimes hard not to
regard the assembled audience as the Directing Staff
from that institution who had come to assess and grade
the performance. I rather enjoyed these briefings by the
end, for I quickly realised that, whilst I actually knew
very little of what was happening across the theatre of
operations, most of the audience knew considerably less
and accordingly my confidence grew daily.
The ground campaign made dramatic advances over the next
few days, and I won’t bore you with the detail of unit
movements and clashes which have been well documented
elsewhere. It was breath-taking in its scale and yet the
enemy was failing to respond. Perhaps, rather like us,
they were almost mesmerised by the drama as it unfolded
and were somehow rendered unable to do anything about
it, or perhaps it was the Coalition’s mastery of the
skies which kept the bulk of the Iraqi forces stationary
and concealed as best they could manage.
Even at this early stage we became critical of our own
success, and much ado began to be made of our Division’s
relative immobility to date, having not yet moved
through the breach which was to be delivered by the
Americans. This theme was to resurface on a number of
occasions later and I had to agree at the time that
compared to our US allies we sometimes appeared
pedestrian and lacklustre in our Division’s manoeuvres.
But in this particular case it was solely because the US
“Big Red One” Division took rather longer than
anticipated to move itself through the breach it had
created in the border defences – such as they were. I
fielded a number of agitated phone calls from JHQ in the
UK from people who rather irritatedly asked “what was
wrong with our Division”, and did my best to explain.
Such was the speed of progress overall, however, that Op
Trebor, the HQBFME draft plan to move elements of our HQ
to Kuwait itself as soon as was feasible, were soon
being dusted off. We realised that we might in fact be
back in Kuwait well before we had imagined. I must admit
it was hard at this point to understand exactly what was
going on in the desert. Our communications were
temperamental, we were living in a luxurious hotel and
driving to work like civilians, and we were in no real
danger. For us the whole affair was always in danger of
degenerating into a gigantic board game.
On 26 February the boys for the Kuwait operation were
chosen, that is those who were to set up HQBFME
(Forward) in the old Embassy building in Kuwait City,
and with a mixture of disappointment and relief I wasn’t
one of them. When this op had been first mooted I had
been warned off as a likely participant, and no sooner
had I heard than I was being measured up for body armour,
which I was cheerily assured I would definitely need.
The plan had been that we chosen few were to land on the
roof of the embassy building in the second helicopter,
the first having carried in our special forces who would
secure the landing site. We were also told that that the
site was likely to be “hot”, i.e. still in the middle of
an ongoing firefight, and I had all sorts of visions of
being machine gunned on arrival or shot down by some
overzealous Coalition soldier as we flew in. So I wasn’t
too disappointed not to be going! As it happened, the
Iraqis had fled by the time our chaps got there and
there was, thank goodness, no bloodshed.
By the morning of 27 February all Iraqi troops were in
the process of attempting to get out of Kuwait, except
for some units of the Republican Guard. All the routes
out of Kuwait, however, were cut by the Coalition air
assets, and the end result was a huge pile up of
vehicles. The Iraqis were jammed on four lane highways
with nowhere to go and the skies were full of every
aircraft the Coalition could get into the air to destroy
them.
The end result was illustrated dramatically by the
television pictures of the Kuwait to Basra highway – the
“Highway of Death” which I flew over at low level a few
days later – displayed on screens all round the world.
We heard through our liaison officers that some of the
US pilots were sickened by the one-sided destruction
that was now going on, and not for the first time the
morality of such an unequal contest was called into
question.
At the morning briefing General Sir Peter said he
thought it would all be over in 24 – 96 hours, which
filled us all with relief. The HQ “stepped up” to Kuwait
as planned in Op Trebor swung into operation, but it was
carried out so secretly that nobody knew what was going
on and it became a bit of a farce. In the end everybody
was let in on the secret and things progressed smoothly
thereafter.
To come in Part 27: getting the boys and girls back home
again. |