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The 1st Infantry Division and the US Army Transformed
Road to Victory in Desert Storm 1970-1991
By Gregory Fontenot University of Missouri Press
Copyright © 2017 The Curators of the University of Missouri
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8262-7376-5
CHAPTER 1
COMING HOME
Your Army is on its ass.
— Major General Donn Starry to General Creighton W. Abrams
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 1970, dawned clear and cool, promising a glorious spring day. By midmorning the sun shone against a cloudless blue sky. Some six thousand soldiers stood on the tarmac of Marshall Army Air Field at Fort Riley, Kansas, to participate in a historic moment. In formation, facing north, the troops could see bleachers filled with eight thousand spectators. On a rise behind the spectators stood the native limestone buildings of the nineteenth-century cavalry post. Most of soldiers on the tarmac formed under the colors of the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized). Divided vertically with blue and red, the 24 ID's colors featured a taro leaf. Once known as the Hawaiian Division, it fought across the Pacific Ocean during World War II and the Korean War. More recently, it had returned from service in Germany. The commanding general, MG Robert R. Linville, presided over inactivating the 24 ID and renaming it the 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized). At the conclusion of this ceremony the soldiers on the field would belong to the 1st Infantry Division and the 24 ID would cease to exist. The 24 ID's soldiers stood with the colors of her brigades and battalions in a manner similar to the legions of Rome. Adjacent to the 24th stood a smaller formation of soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division, also known as the Big Red One for the red numeral 1 on their olive drab shoulder patches. These soldiers, led by BG John Q. Henion, had just returned from Vietnam and stood with colors "cased."
Henion assumed command of the Division in Vietnam in March 1970 as an interim commander. He led a guard of honor that would return the Division's colors home after five years of combat. The 347 soldiers represented every unit in the Division. They formed to return home on March 25, 1970, and conducted two departure ceremonies. They left Vietnam on April 5, 1970, and landed at Forbes Air Force Base, Topeka, Kansas, on April 6, 1970.
With nearly perfect symmetry, the ceremony occurred exactly five years and one day since the Army had ordered a brigade of the 1st Division to Vietnam on April 14, 1965. The 2nd (Dagger) Brigade left San Francisco by sea on June 25, 1965. (The remaining two brigades, the division artillery and supporting units, followed in August and September.) In the intervening five years the Division served with distinction. Division units earned two Presidential Unit Citations and six Valorous Unit Awards. Fourteen units earned the Meritorious Unit Award, and nine of them received it twice. Twelve soldiers attained the nation's highest award, the Congressional Medal of Honor. The Republic of Vietnam cited several for gallantry.
In the weeks before the ceremony, the commanders and staff in Vietnam worked to help soldiers at Fort Riley embrace their new identity. They sent gifts of unit patches, crests, and artifacts relating to the 1st Division. Everyone understood this transition was important. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who spoke on behalf of President Richard Nixon, made it clear: "The return of the First Infantry Division from Vietnam to Fort Riley will be followed in the months immediately ahead by the redeployment [returning home] of additional thousands of American troops as our Vietnamization program marches forward." The ceremony demonstrated that President Nixon fully intended to end US participation in the war. Although the ceremony had clear political implications, it was important on its own merits to those who served, including LTG Jonathan O. Seaman, who had taken the Division to Vietnam in 1965. LTG Seaman attended, as did a number of other general officers. It was important to the thousands of spectators including government officials from Kansas. The governor and the state's congressional delegation attended, including the junior senator, Robert J. "Bob" Dole.
This is a narrative of the 1st Division's transition from a draftee light infantry division fighting insurgents and North Vietnamese regulars to a mechanized heavy division of the late Cold War. When the Division deployed to Vietnam, it left its two tank battalions and its armored personnel carriers behind and reverted exclusively to light infantry. In place of the two tank battalions, it received the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 2nd Infantry from the 5th Infantry Division. In Vietnam, nine infantry battalions comprised its maneuver force. They relied primarily on helicopters for mobility, but fought dismounted. LTG Seaman argued successfully for the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry (1-4 CAV) to retain its armored vehicles. The 1-4 CAV and a tank company attached from the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor (2-34 AR) provided tactical mobility and mobile firepower. The story reflects both the post-Vietnam doldrums and the renaissance in the Army that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. This first chapter assesses the state of the US Army in the early 1970s and the reforms that produced a unit fundamentally different from the one that fought in Vietnam.
In the two decades that followed Laird's welcome home, the Army transitioned to an all-volunteer force, revising and revitalizing tactical and operational doctrine and the way it proposed to fight. To enable units to fight the Active Defense and AirLand Battle (the latter a complex operational doctrine that stressed attacking an enemy throughout its depth), the Army took advantage of new weapons and supporting systems. To prepare units to use those weapons, in accordance with new operational concepts, the Army revolutionized training. Live and constructive simulations replicated high-intensity combat against a well-equipped, well-trained, and well-led enemy. While it is true that this transformation stemmed in part from external stimulus, it is also true that the US Army took the need to change to heart. This chapter and the next follow the transformation of the 1st Division.
The Life of Riley
The Division that deployed to Desert Storm in 1990 bore little resemblance to the one that returned home from Vietnam in 1970. Even as the US Army drew down, the Soviet Union's combat capability continued to grow. The Army returned from Vietnam with a host of problems quite apart from money. Reductions in force (RIFs) ravaged units. The drawdown affected all ranks. When the draftees went, so too did many officers who had hoped to make a career. The RIFs got mostly "chaff," but also some of the "wheat." Further, much of the Army's equipment was obsolescent, if not obsolete, yet there was little money for acquisition. Tactical thinking about conventional war in Europe ossified while the force focused on fighting in Vietnam.
Bedraggled, underfunded, and reeling from social upheaval, the Army struggled in the early 1970s; within and without, it suffered criticism that often proved bitter. Richard A. Gabriel and Paul L. Savage, both Army officers and academics, wrote a scathing criticism of the Army, claiming "disintegration of unit cohesion had proceeded to such an extent that by 1972 accommodation with the North Vietnamese was the only realistic alternative to risking a military debacle in the field." Their criticism was harsh and overdrawn, but nonetheless it was seconded by others. Briefing the results of a study on professionalism in the officer corps, LTC Walter F. Ulmer Jr. provided an equally critical assessment from within. In a briefing with senior officers he reported that "a scenario that was repeatedly described to us during our interviews for this study includes an ambitious transitory commander, marginally skilled in the complexities of his duties, engulfed in producing statistical results, fearful of personal failure, too busy to talk with or listen to subordinates, and determined to submit acceptably optimistic reports which reflect faultless completion of a variety of tasks at the expense of the sweat and frustrations of his subordinates."
The critiques and questions ranged from how the Army could have commissioned the officer who perpetrated the My Lai Massacre to institutional racism. Simultaneously, the Soviet Union seemed ascendant. While the United States was embroiled in Vietnam, the Soviets modernized their enormous Army. The initial success of the Soviet Union's Arab clients in the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel suggested hitherto unappreciated capability of Soviet weapons and tactics; the US Army's equipment, tactics, and soldiers, by contrast, seemed inadequate.
Then CPT Bob Killebrew attended the ceremony in 1970 as Linville's aide-de-camp; that summer he would take command of a rifle company. Looking back on that time, Killebrew remarks that "people forget how unbearably screwed up the Army was in 1971, 1972, and 1973"; Racial unrest, drug abuse, and indiscipline plagued the Army and the Division. But Killebrew's description applied beyond 1973: the Army struggled through much of the 1970s and 1980s. The Hollow Army, as GEN Edward C. Meyer, chief of staff for 1979–83, termed it, had much to overcome.
After Laird concluded his remarks, the soldiers who began the morning as part of the 24th Infantry Division now passed in review as the 1st Infantry Division and resumed their mission as part of a "dual-based" formation. Under this concept the 1st and 2nd Brigades and most of the support units served at Fort Riley. The 3rd Brigade and a bit more than one-third of the supporting structure served with VII Corps in southern Bavaria. Meeting commitments in Vietnam, NATO, and the Republic of Korea while paying for President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society initiatives alongside opposition to the war in Vietnam inevitably led to budget reductions. In 1970 the US Congress reduced the Army budget by 10 percent, reflecting these pressures and the logical consequence of drawing down in Vietnam. The United States could not afford to maintain the number of units it had stationed in Germany. Dual basing enabled the 1st Division to be assigned against the General Defense Plan (GDP) for Europe at reduced cost. It was a practical solution if the Division could return to Germany quickly. When the United States announced its intention to draw down troop strength in Europe, it promised to "[k]eep available substantial reinforcements to supplement a European mobilization." With that proviso, several units returned to the United States in 1968.
To enable rapid return, the Army positioned equipment in Europe sufficient for several US-based divisions, including the 1 ID, which would then deploy only their troops and light equipment. This led to an elaborate system of storage facilities that maintained equipment for use by units arriving from the United States. With perfect, if awkward, precision, the Army called it Prepositioning of Materiel Configured in Unit Sets, and further obfuscated the idea by referring to it as POMCUS. NATO and the United States agreed to exercise the Return of Forces to Germany annually; reduced to the acronym REFORGER, this overarching enterprise became crucial to the Division's training regimen and culture.
The 24th Infantry Division participated in the first REFORGER in January 1969; GEN Lyman L. Lemnitzer, Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, claimed the exercise demonstrated the utility of dual-based forces. Less than five months after the ceremony in April, the 1st Division went to Germany for REFORGER II. There it exercised against simulated enemy Orange forces portrayed by the European-based 3rd Infantry Division. In response to an attack by Orange, the Division crossed the Main River and counterattacked to restore the border between the hostile Orange country and the friendly Blue country. The exercise ended on October 23, 1969, when the Division seized Objective Junction City, named for the garrison town adjacent to Fort Riley. The troops then road-marched to Grafenwohr Training Area in southeast Bavaria, where they test-fired all the major weapons drawn from storage. Afterward, they prepared equipment for storage, returned it, and flew home.
The Army and Air Force provided the bulk of the American resources to REFORGER. Other NATO units and the German Territorial Army played important roles. These exercises rehearsed plans ranging from port operations to rear-area security. NATO executed REFORGER twenty-five times in twenty-four years. In 1973 the Division deployed to Germany twice: the first exercise began in January and the second in October. The program enabled and drove training during the lean budget years of the 1970s and early 1980s. It also drove a boom-and-bust cycle in operations. In the months before an exercise, the Army brought the Division up to strength. Money afforded preparation and training that led to a peak during the exercise. On returning home, the Division drew down as the Army reassigned soldiers to higher-priority units.
This cycle caused enormous turbulence at Fort Riley. CPT Killebrew, commander B Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry (1-2 IN) through two exercises, recalls that his company "would expand (getting ready to go) and contract (on return) like an accordion." An "endless stream of guys coming back from Vietnam" joined his unit, adding to the turbulence. These veterans, mostly draftees with little time remaining on their two-year service obligation, arrived and served three or four months, then got out. Generally they had no experience with mechanized infantry, so serving at Fort Riley came as shock.
Nevertheless, deployments to Germany brought more advantages than disadvantages. REFORGER shifted dollars to the Division and provided focus. Maneuvering in Germany enabled units to train for their wartime mission, which required thinking through the not inconsequential matters of getting to Germany, drawing equipment rapidly, and getting into position. The benefit is clear from the Army historical summary for 1970, which notes, "Only in exercise REFORGER II was it possible for a full division to maneuver in the field." Deploying to Germany on REFORGER served an essential purpose in the national strategy.
The Army took REFORGER seriously and undertook "Intensified personnel management actions ... to prepare REFORGER units ... for their annual exercises." But the exercise was not merely about getting to Germany. The Division exercised its role in the GDP. In Kevlar Legions, BG John S. Brown asserts GDP "was not just stacks of papers locked in the safes of obscure staff officers. They were organizing principles for a way of life." The tens of thousands of soldiers who served became oriented to the problem of getting to Europe and getting forward to fight. Planning and exercising emergency deployment became part of the Division's culture.
The scale and scope of the exercise varied, and in some years more troops deployed than in others. Of the 1986 deployment a Division spokesman said that it amounted to, very simply, "its [REFORGER] 20,000 troops and 30,000 tons of equipment being transported from three seaports and 19 airfields." Some ten thousand US Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers assigned to ninety-four different units participated that year. These units ranged from small detachments to the 32nd Separate Infantry Brigade from the Wisconsin Army National Guard. REFORGER demonstrated serious commitment.
Some observers dismissed REFORGER as a movement exercise, but it was far more than that. For a number of years it provided the only venue for large formation training. When the weather permitted, the exercise included off-road, cross-country maneuvers. Umpires, using algorithms and judgment, facilitated the outcome of mock battles. These battles proved of little use in training crews and squads, but provided realistic command and control experience from platoon to corps. LTC Bill Orlov, a Vietnam veteran of the Division, soldiered at Fort Riley from 1975 to 1979; during REFORGER 1979 he commanded an infantry battalion. Of the exercise he remembers, "It was absolutely great ... you got to soldier, hardly constrained. You got to practice your trade." LTC Orlov was right when the weather cooperated; but if it did not, the Army abandoned the field training exercise component to avoid excessive maneuver damage. CPT Killebrew experienced open maneuver in REFORGER III, but remembers that, the year before, "we mostly drove down the German highways in column." COL Bill Mullen, who did three exercises, believes they had "great value for logistics and coordination. In terms of maneuver it wasn't particularly valuable." On his third exercise he commanded a brigade in an "Ice REFORGER." Despite the ice, the Division drew its equipment and moved by rail and convoy to assembly areas within five kilometers of the border with Czechoslovakia. That year the field exercise included only command posts; the troops languished in the snow until they could convoy to Grafenwohr.
The speed with which units arrived, drew equipment, and moved to the field was crucial and measured. Standards were exacting. MAJ Stan Cherrie, a tank battalion executive officer, believes he learned valuable lessons in complex logistics of deploying large formations under emergency conditions. Everything was evaluated and timed. "There was a stopwatch on everything that you did." In 1978 Cherrie's battalion loaded ammunition under observation and, of course, it was timed. Speed was essential to execute the defense plan. First Lieutenant Gary Evans, supply officer of the 4th Combat Equipment Company, Europe, noted his company had to "have a mech[anized] infantry battalion on the road in six hours." Units drew gear and moved regardless of conditions. Occasionally the Army added conditions to meet particular objectives. In 1988 the 1-34 AR drew its equipment in full chemical protective gear.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The 1st Infantry Division and the US Army Transformed by Gregory Fontenot. Copyright © 2017 The Curators of the University of Missouri. Excerpted by permission of University of Missouri Press.
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