The good captain, p.31
The Good Captain, page 31
As Beverly settled us in on Colonel’s Row, I began my initial assessment of the unit. The outgoing commander had led Dragon Brigade to Afghanistan, where it had served as headquarters commandant for the corps commander. The brigade had done well but had functioned essentially as a small headquarters support element, with few troops under its command. In garrison, Dragon Brigade had often been a repository for castoffs from other units, and in general its personnel lacked the quality found in the other brigades located at Bragg. Adding to the gloomy prognosis, the unit was far understrength. There was one bright spot however: the Brigade Command Sergeant Major, CSM Abdo Zacheus. Universally known as “Z,” Zacheus had previously served as sergeant major of an artillery battalion in the 82nd Airborne, was Ranger and master parachutist qualified, and had fought in the Gulf War and in Afghanistan. A Puerto Rican, quiet and self-effacing with strong nerves, he would emerge as the backbone of the brigade in the stern test we would soon face.
Early on I met with General Vines. Since our last encounter he had battled a life-threatening illness, an experience which had visibly aged him. Though physically less robust, Vines still vibrated with innate common sense and good humor. We quickly re-established rapport and I left confident in his support and care for my unit and for me personally. A subordinate can’t ask for more.
The first order of business was to start building the team. In the first few weeks I made mental notes of key officers and NCOs I’d trust to go to war with or wouldn’t. As most of our home station units (mostly tenant units grouped under the brigade for command and control) were not slated to deploy with us, I soon learned that the brigade executive officer, a bright signal officer named Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Ellis, would stay behind to lead and support them. For now, we did not have a specific mission. More importantly, I needed a deputy, an executive officer, and an operations officer, in addition to a whole slew of more junior staff officers and NCOs. In garrison, Dragon Brigade had a far smaller staff than a normal combat brigade. We would have to double in size to be ready.
The corps commander obliged us by tasking his units for augmentation personnel, and in this way, we built up the intelligence, operations, logistics, engineer, and signal staffs as well as the administrative echelon required. Many of our “fillers” were reservists with unique backgrounds. The new brigade S2 intelligence chief, for example, was an attorney in civilian life. Over the next 90 days the staff began to fill out as new people arrived almost daily.
Early on I was thrilled to learn that Major Hugh Shoults, my S3 Air 10 years before in Vicenza, was now serving at Fort Bragg. With a little string pulling I was able to have him assigned as the new Brigade S3. As brigade executive officer, I hired a West Point classmate and now a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. He had been gravely wounded the year before in Iraq but reported himself fully recovered and ready for duty. Though we had not seen each other in many years, he appeared in my office one day and asked for the job. Now all I needed was a deputy brigade commander.
As there was no Regular Army colonel available, I consulted a long-time mentor, Ladd Pattillo, a retired Army Reserve colonel, to help in my search for a quality officer. A former assistant attorney general in Texas and a successful businessman, Ladd was 10 years older than me and politically well connected with the Texas contingent in President George W. Bush’s White House. To my surprise, Ladd volunteered for the job himself.
At first, I didn’t know what to think. Ladd had always been far senior to me. Though an infantry officer and master parachutist in his youth, he had not served with troops for many years, and had never deployed. How on earth could we recall a retired reserve officer, place him on active duty, have him assigned to the brigade, and deploy him to a combat zone? It seemed impossible. Even if we could, could he stand the pace? Nearing 60, was he up to the job in a combat zone? An added concern was the fact that his son David was a lieutenant, fighting with the 101st Airborne Division in Tikrit. That was asking a lot of his wife, a retired Air Force reserve colonel in her own right. For guidance, I consulted now-retired Brigadier General Mick Zais, my old sponsor from cadet days, who knew Ladd well. His son Bradley was a young trooper in the 101st serving up north in Iraq.
Zais came right to the point. “Look, Ladd is not the guy to lead a brigade movement to contact, but you know that. You will need him for many other things, not least to help you with the many general officers, contractors, Iraqi counterparts, visiting congressional delegations and God knows what else. And he will help round off some of your hard edges. He will be loyal, smart, and capable. I’d take him in a minute if I were you.” A few days later I called Ladd to say that I’d be glad to have him, if his wife agreed, but that I had little confidence I could pull it off. “You leave that to me,” he chuckled. His political connections apparently cut through the red tape, and I had a deputy commander. It was a choice I’d never regret.
As the brigade staff began to take shape, I faced another major challenge. Dragon Brigade had traditionally run the Corps Rear Command Post, essentially a logistics and administrative headquarters far from the front, and word soon reached us that we would likely draw that mission this time around as well, probably from Kuwait. This would not do. Over the next few weeks Major Shoults and I drew up a detailed proposal that would place the brigade in charge of all base security and base operations for the Victory Base Complex (VBC) in Baghdad, the sprawling collection of 10 base camps that surrounded Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) and home to the four-star Multinational Force-Iraq and three-star Multinational Corps-Iraq staffs, as well as dozens of tenant units. (Our own XVIII Airborne Corps under General Vines would soon rotate in to replace III Corps.)
Our proposal was in fact ridiculously ambitious, and I had no reason to think Vines would approve. But I hoped that he might take an interest in some parts of it—the base security mission appealed to me in particular—and that we might accordingly be allowed to join the Corps in the fight inside Iraq. Shoults gave a masterful presentation, replete with charts and graphics, and to our amazement General Vines quickly agreed. The concept of a single “belly button”—a single commander he knew and trusted to free him and the Corps staff from the details of defending and running the huge complex—appealed to him. Shocked, Shoults and I walked out of the headquarters, worried that we had bitten off more than we could chew.
In brief, the general concept was as follows. For base operations, an Army Reserve garrison command under a full colonel would be task organized under us, with lieutenant colonel or major “mayors” who would fall in on each of the 10 base camps, each with a small staff. They would oversee troop billeting, real estate management, mess halls, power and water, construction and road maintenance, and the hundreds of smaller details involved in installation management. To secure the huge perimeter (some 45km in circumference, in all about 200 square kilometers), three battalions would be placed under our operational control: a combat engineer battalion from the Texas Army National Guard, an infantry battalion from the Hawaii Guard, and a field artillery battalion from the Louisiana Guard. All would function essentially as infantry for the deployment.
The brigade staff itself would operate the Base Defense Operations Center or BDOC, tied into these units and to all tenant units at VBC. In addition to manning perimeter defenses, our units would run interior and exterior patrols on a continuous basis and maintain QRFs, able to respond to attacks or penetrations on short notice. Fortunately, VBC was surrounded by a 12-foot-high concrete wall from the Saddam era, equipped with more than 150 towers for observation. Six entry control points provided the only ways in or out. The largest, ECP1, was located on the famous Route IRISH leading into BIAP. Some 800m deep with three successive layers or belts of access control, it was the crown jewel and the biggest target.
A special concern was the XVIII Airborne Corps Special Troops Battalion, part of the brigade and tasked to look after the Corps staff as “headquarters commandant.” Downrange, the STB would also be responsible for the care and feeding of the four-star Multinational Force–Iraq (MNF-I) headquarters, as well. Both were located in the huge Al Faw palace at Camp Victory. The idea was for the Force to handle the politico-military, high-level business while the Corps handled the actual fighting. Together these staffs comprised more than 2,000 soldiers, mostly officers and NCOs, including more than 30 generals. This was a tall order, especially considering the small size of the STB staff. The unit was commanded by an imposing officer, Lieutenant Colonel Timotheus Graham, a combat veteran of the Panama invasion and a Ranger and master jumper. Graham was flinty and reserved, traits that would both help and hurt on the deployment, but he was competent, hardworking, and willing. His would be a very tough task.
During our mission analysis, I decided that one additional, non-standard staff section would be required, a “Force Protection” cell charged to continuously monitor all aspects of this important function. Much went into this that overlapped the operations, intelligence, engineer, and other functions. Reaching into the past, I located Bob Quinnett, the ex-SEAL who had been my lieutenant 20 years before. Quinnett was now teaching in inner-city Chicago but retained a reserve commission as a lieutenant colonel. Though it had been years since we spoke, Bob accepted my offer immediately. His shop would grow to include a major, a captain, a warrant officer, and a master sergeant and would prove essential to our mission success.
There was one additional dimension to our mission that I hadn’t counted on. Virtually all Army forces (except for special operations forces) would be task organized under General Vines and the Corps. Many separate units required a colonel-level commander to process their awards, administer military justice, approve their leaves and so on. These units would be placed under my administrative control (called ADCON in Army doctrine), not for operational employment but for administration only. Some of these units, such as the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) or Psychological Operations battalions, supported the entire theater and only their headquarters were located at VBC. In time, Dragon Brigade’s task organization would grow to include nine battalions, nine separate companies or detachments and the Garrison Command, all under my operational (OPCON) or administrative control. Eventually more than 6,500 soldiers would fall under the brigade, making us by far the largest Army brigade in Iraq. But all this still lay in the future.
As an experienced commander I knew that we would have to refine this concept based on conditions on the ground, but events were to show that our planning had been sound and with few modifications we were able to execute the original plan throughout the deployment. For now, we focused on reception and integration of our new soldiers and mission preparation and training. There was much to do and not much time to do it. Equipment had to be containerized and shipped by sea and air, soldiers readied for a year-long deployment, and staffs trained and rehearsed for combat operations. Through the fall of 2004 we worked tirelessly to get ready. Just before Christmas we put our soldiers on leave and prepared to deploy just after the New Year.
By now, the war was not going well. The initial invasion had faced stiffer resistance than expected, but Baghdad fell in relatively short order in 2003. Rumsfeld’s original intent had been to transition quickly to some form of Iraqi control, but that policy had faltered under the mismanagement of the Coalition Provisional Authority (under Ambassador Paul Bremer) and the irreconcilable differences of Iraq’s warring ethnic groups, now unleashed through the disintegration of the Iraqi state. Rumsfeld had made fundamental mistakes by discouraging preparations for post-war lawlessness, opposing a four-star headquarters to oversee the occupation, and halting the flow of additional ground forces once victory over the Iraqi military was assured. A virulent Sunni opposition flared up in Anbar province, just west of Baghdad, amplified by a dangerous and brutal al Qaeda offshoot led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist. On the Shia side, different factions jockeyed for dominance, some supported by Iran. Internal Iraqi politics was a mess, national reconciliation was failing, and U.S. and coalition casualties were mounting. Though we did not officially admit it, a powerful insurgency had taken root in Iraq. Every movement in the capital and throughout most of Iraq was a combat operation. Mentally, I prepared to lose soldiers and take losses. At best, this would be a long, hard year. At worst, we might lose the war.
Christmas came and went and soon enough I found myself at the departure airfield. Beverly and the kids accompanied me to the hangar, smiling bravely but sad and worried inside. I thought back to how I felt each time my father deployed to Vietnam. There are really no words to describe that empty feeling. In a real sense, you are leaving for the unknown. In the back of your mind you fear failure, death or injury, defeat, and the prospect of endless days away from your family and loved ones. You are surrounded at that moment by hundreds of soldiers and family members going through the same thing. There are many tears and few smiles. You feel the heavy burden of command, but also pride, and determination, and confidence, in your troops and in yourself. I had spent 30 years preparing for this moment. Commanding troops in combat was the whole point of my professional life. In a real way I felt torn. But as the plane neared the theater of operations a transition took hold. For the next 365 days, Baghdad would be my new home. By the time I landed, my head was on right.
As the brigade flowed into theater the first task was to settle in and establish a battle rhythm. A complication was that we fell in on a very different system. Under III Corps, the VBC footprint and perimeter was not organized under a unified command. Instead, different units “owned” different parts of the whole. Dragon Brigade, for the rest of the deployment referred to as “Task Force Dragon,” occupied a small compound previously used by Saddam’s internal guard force at Camp Victory. A small National Guard Rear Area Operations Center or RAOC, located at Camp Liberty, adjacent to Camp Victory and home to the Multinational Division-Baghdad (or MND-B), operated the BDOC, but it had no operational control of assigned force protection units. Instead, it functioned essentially as a monitoring and reporting headquarters.
This was a faulty arrangement, and a terrible suicide attack near Mosul the month before proved the point. There, a suicide bomber had entered the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Marez and killed 18 Americans. At Marez, the BDOC was responsible for base security, but had no control over any units based there. As a consequence, onerous or annoying force protection policies were routinely ignored. I did not want to repeat the mistake.
During the transition I visited the BDOC, a small affair in a cramped room, and was horrified to see officers tracking units and significant activities (SIGACTs) literally on yellow post-it notes stuck to a wall map. Drawing on the resources of the Corps Rear CP, we had deployed with a full suite of computers, flat screens, tentage and associated equipment. Within a week we had established a fully modern command post, automated and linked to both Division and Corps with secure voice and data communications. Soon we moved the BDOC into a hardened building in our compound with a reinforced concrete ceiling, proof against mortar rounds. Over the next few months, we increased our capabilities with some of the most advanced technology available to the U.S. Army. Overhead, a large, tethered dirigible, called an “aerostat,” mounted a variety of cameras and sensors that could see miles in every direction, day and night. Along the perimeter, we mounted motion sensors, television cameras and night vision systems feeding into the BDOC. There, the on-duty battle captain could monitor 24 different views simultaneously or reduce them to a single view on a huge, wall-sized screen. Never in my Army career had I enjoyed such situational awareness.
As for communications, the BDOC was equipped with line-of-sight secure FM communications as well as satellite comms, but much of our work was done on CPOF, short for “Command Post of the Future.” CPOF was a system that allowed us to talk securely direct to higher, adjacent and subordinate units and to pass photos, imagery and maps instantaneously. All of VBC’s many tenant units were hooked in. We were, in a sense, like a Borg collective—totally wired in and aware. Whether voice-to-voice or in real-time chat rooms, we could operate at top speed with full cognition.
Early in the deployment we organized the staff into day and night shifts of 12 hours each. Earlier in my career I had experimented with different approaches, including three eight-hour shifts or changing up daytime and nighttime assignments periodically. I had learned that shifts develop strong sub-cultures of their own, as well as gaining rapid expertise through repetition with the same staff members. These soldiers worked seven days a week, 12 hours on and 12 off, and were not rotated for the entire year. (All soldiers were however given a two week “mid-tour” leave back in the States.) Shift changes took place at midnight when enemy activity was most likely to be nil. To ensure no loss of situational awareness, the outgoing battle captain held a formal shift change brief. Every hour, each of our 40 tenants was required to acknowledge a secure comms check, which was recorded in the operations log. The battle captain was assisted by a battle sergeant and three radio operators, in addition to intelligence, operations and signal sections manned continuously with an officer and several enlisted. In addition to the command group (myself, the CSM, the DCO, and the XO), the Brigade S3 operations officer, his operations sergeant major and a single assistant S3 captain did not pull shifts. Lieutenant Colonel Quinnett’s Force Protection Cell, which ranged far and wide across the giant footprint, was also not limited to shift work. Our days typically lasted 18 or more hours. The only break was Sundays, when we did not hold internal staff meetings or other avoidable activities; Sunday was a “light” day for church and rest, when the enemy or higher headquarters did not intervene.
