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There is a crossroads near Safwan in southeastern Iraq. Nearby,
there is a small hill and an airstrip. After the Gulf War, Safwan
became a gathering point for refugees fleeing the Iraqi Army as it
reestablished control of Basrah. Prior to that, the airstrip was
the site of the dictation of armistice terms to that army by the
victorious coalition's military high command. Still earlier, at the
end of the coalition attack, the absence of American forces on the
airstrip and at the road junction was the source of the most
serious command crisis of the U.S. expeditionary forces. Its
resolution put at risk American soldiers and threatened the
reputations of the very commanders who had just conducted the
greatest offensive of concentrated armored forces in the history of
the United States Army. In many ways, events at Safwan in late
February and early March are emblematic of the Gulf War. It is to
explain how U.S. forces arrived at Safwan, what they did and did
not do there, and what this all meant, that this book is written.
The Gulf War was an undoubted success. It was also a war of clear,
sharp contrasts. Saddam Hussein's rape of Kuwait was an obvious
wrong that begged for setting right. Saddam's stranglehold on much
of the world's proven oil reserves presented a clear and present
danger to Western interests, and his wanton attack on Kuwait posed
a clear threat to his Arab brothers. Moreover, Saddam's own
ineptness in dealing with the crisis ensured the unity of the
global community against him unless the diplomatic effort to
resolve the situation was seriously mishandled. It was altogether a
war of the old comfortable sort-good against evil, a wrong to be
righted-a crusade. It was for all that a difficult strategic and
operational challenge for the American armed forces, which at first
found themselves badly out of position. Though freed of the Soviet
threat, U.S. forces were still deployed along the inter-German
border and, half a world away, in the continental United States.
Saddam was able to snap up Kuwait before Western military forces
could intervene. In early August 1990, there was much to be done
and precious little time in which to do it. It was a long road to
the greatly unbalanced victory on the last day of February in 1991.
The purpose of this book is to provide an account, from the point
of view of the U.S. Army forces employed, of the 1990-91 Persian
Gulf War, from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to the withdrawal of
coalition forces from southeastern Iraq. Like all contemporary
history, this is written in one respect to provide work for
revisionists. That is to say, it is written from the evidence at
hand and from the author's observations as the Third Army
historian. This book's focus is on the Army's part in this war,
particularly the activities of the Headquarters, Third Army, and
the Army Forces Central Command (ARCENT). It looks especially at
the activities of the VII Corps, which executed ARCENT's main
effort in the theater ground force schwerpunkt-General
Schwarzkopf's "Great Wheel." The book is titled "Lucky War" after
the affectation of Third Army, whose telephone switch, as far back
as General George Patton's World War II headquarters, has been
named "Lucky." In the same fashion, the Third Army's tactical
operations center in Desert Storm was referred to as "Lucky TOC."
Its forward command post was "Lucky Wheels," and so on. "Lucky" is
a talisman to Third Army as, incidentally, are "Jay Hawk" to VII
Corps, and "Danger" to the 1st Infantry Division. It is for that
reason alone that "Lucky" is incorporated in the title.
William E. DePuy was likely the most important figure in the
recovery of the United States Army from its collapse after the
defeat in Vietnam. That is a rather large claim, and it suggests a
precedence over a number of other distinguished officers, both his
contemporaries and successors. But it is a claim that can be
justified by the test of the "null hypothesis: " Could the Army
that conducted the Gulf War be imagined without the actions of
General DePuy and those he instructed and inspired? Clearly, it
could not. There are a few officers of the period about whom one
can make the same claim. To judge properly the accomplishments of
General DePuy and his talented subordinates at the US Army Training
and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), one must understand the sense of
crises and defeat that pervaded the Army in the 1970s. By 1973, the
United States had lost the war in Vietnam. Only the most optimistic
or naive observer held out hope that the Geneva Accords would
provide security for the Republic of South Vietnam. The US Army was
in a shambles, with discipline destroyed and the chain of command
almost nonexistent. The "All Volunteer Army" was borne on a wave of
permissiveness that compounded the problems of restoring
discipline. Moreover, the army was ten years behind its most likely
enemy in equipment development, and it had no warfighting doctrine
worthy of the same. With the able assistance of the commander of
the Armor Center, General Donn Starry, General DePuy wrenched the
Army from self-pity and recrimination about its defeat in Vietnam
into a bruising doctrinal debate that focused the Army's
intellectual energies on mechanized warfare against a first-class
opponent. Critics might argue correctly that that the result was
incomplete, but they out not to underestimate how far the Army had
to come just to begin the discussion. General DePuy also changed
the way Army battalions prepared for war. He made the US Army a
doctrinal force for the first time in history. Ably seconded by
General Paul Gorman, DePuy led the Army into the age of the Army
Training and Evaluation Program (ARTEP). The intellectual and
training initiatives were joined then, with a third concern of
General DePuy's TRADOC: the development of a set of equipment
requirements, with a concentration of effort on a limited number,
ultimately called the "Big Five." The result was the suite of
weapons that overmatched the Iraqis in Operation Desert Storm -
Apache attack helicopters, M1 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles,
Patriot air defense missiles, and Black Hawk assault helicopters.
General DePuy championed the recruitment of a high-quality
soldiery, an effort beyond his own significant responsibilities
but, even so, one he never ceased to support and forward.
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