| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq-Jordan |
| The making of a combat general, Part 1 of 3 |
| 2004-03-09 |
| By Rick Atkinson, Washington Post. Original article published Sunday. EFL. Hat tip: Brothers Judd Old saying: Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics. After taking command of the 101st during the summer of 2002, [Major General David H.] Petraeus had been preoccupied with 1003 Victor, code name for the U.S. military’s secret plan for conquering Iraq. But because of the political and diplomatic byplay in Washington over the winter, the 101st did not receive a formal deployment order until Feb. 6, 2003. The commander’s immediate challenge was not the conquest of Baghdad, but rather how to get 5,000 vehicles, 1,500 shipping containers, 17,000 soldiers and more than 200 helicopters to Kuwait by mid-March, in time for any attack on Iraq. Deployment occurred in three immensely complex phases: from Fort Campbell to Jacksonville, Fla.; Jacksonville to Kuwait City; and Kuwait City to a battle assembly area. Army logisticians called the phases fort to port, then port to port, then port to foxhole. In one conversation in early March, as the 101st began to flood into Kuwait, Petraeus had rattled through the events of the past few weeks. To haul equipment from Fort Campbell to Jacksonville required 1,400 rail cars. The CSX rail-freight company had promised four 30-car trains each day, but as the deployment began, only three a day, on average, had arrived. "I had a conference call with the president of CSX at 11 one night," Petraeus said. "He was on the phone with some of his executives and I was trying to explain to him why it was absolutely critical that we get to the port as quickly as possible. The ships were going to be there on certain dates. There was no margin for error. As I was telling him this, he interrupted me, twice." "Did you lose your temper?" I asked. "No, but I told him he was contributing to the diminished combat effectiveness of my division. There was a long silence on the other end. He fixed it." (A spokesman for CSX noted last week that the company ultimately moved 1,900 rail cars out of Fort Campbell during a two-week period in February 2003, and was applauded by Army officials for "timely assistance.") One challenge led to others. Several hundred stevedores hired in Jacksonville insisted on long lunch breaks and hourly pauses. The military, never tolerant of goldbricking, fired them and used soldiers and nonunion supervisors to load the ships. When Washington delayed the deployment order, which among other things provided the authorization needed to pay for moving the division, Petraeus concocted an elaborate training exercise that happened to take 112 helicopters to Jacksonville; mechanics there removed the rotor blades and shrink-wrapped the fuselages in protective plastic for eventual loading onto the ships. "As an infantryman, I used to be no more interested in logistics than what you could stuff in a rucksack," he told me. "Now I know that, although the tactics aren’t easy, they’re relatively simple when compared to the logistics." . . . "Everyone has the full range of emotions," he once noted. "It’s just a question of how fast you get there." He was cautious and private, and his formal statements to reporters or television cameras had a stilted, calculated tone. Off-stage, he could be tart, funny and occasionally cynical, suggesting at one point that the expatriate Iraqi resistance in London was "trying to fax Saddam to death." Occasionally he ruminated on how to strike the balance between oversight and meddling. "You think you’re being inspirational," he mused after we visited his 3rd Brigade as it coiled near the border on March 21, "but most of the time you’re just getting in their way." Clearly he retained a visceral awareness that 17,000 lives were in his hands, and that no occasion could be more solemn or profound for a commander than ordering young soldiers into harm’s way. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 After getting shot in the chest on the firing range.... "Petraeus recuperated at the Fort Campbell hospital," Keane continued, "and he was driving the hospital commander crazy, trying to convince the doctors to discharge him. He said, 'I am not the norm. I'm ready to get out of here and I'm ready to prove it to you.' He had them pull the tubes out of his arm. Then he hopped out of bed and did 50 push-ups. They let him go home." Tough as nails... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-3-9 6:52:57 PM |