The Iraqi forces are, as Desert Storm commander Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf put it last week, “on the verge of collapse.” Only Saddam Hussein seems not to know this. It’s hard to be in contact with reality from the bottom of a bunker. Particularly when you have a habit of being wrong. He was wrong to take on an eight-year fight with Iran, and wrong to think the United States was a paper tiger that would prove unwilling to fight over his invasion of Kuwait. Finally, he is wrong about the outcome of this war. Pfc. Scott Rogers, a paratrooper here, got it right when he said, “He hasn’t done anything but strike out. Now he is standing at the plate without a bat and doesn’t know it.” If the historical ratio of casualties to bomb tonnage holds true, I would not be surprised to learn that 50,000 Iraqis have been killed and more than 200,000 wounded after 37 days of the gulf war.
Still, political considerations seem to dictate that this will be a massive duel in the sun. If so, George Bush’s “new world order” will be built on the graves of many young Iraqis and Americans who want mainly to go home. I suspect Schwarzkopf has resisted a premature ground-attack decision. But in the end he is a soldier and has followed the orders of his commander in chief. His plan will be carefully orchestrated to keep friendly-fire casualties to a minimum. Schwarzkopf is not one for bloody charges up Hamburger Hill. In fact, he is probably too caring to be considered the perfect general.
If all goes according to plan, the Iraqi Army in Kuwait could be bagged up within a week. But the operation may be slowed by smoke from oil fires or by a turn in the weather. And it certainly won’t be bloodless. There are hundreds of thousands of mines buried in the sand, many of them chemical. There will be Iraqi diehards, like the Japanese at Iwo Jima. Iraqi artillery and chemical weapons will cause casualties. Finally, the U.S. Army is green, unprepared for combat that will kill many of their own soldiers through friendly fire.
For myself, this is my final war. I was pleased to spend my last days before ground action in the company of the same guys I closed out the Vietnam War with: the men of the Green Berets. They were on a secret mission out in the middle of no man’s land. Their leader, an old friend from ‘Nam, swore me not to mention places and to disguise names so he wouldn’t get nailed by the military bureaucrats who have prevented reporters from saying what is happening in the trenches.
Pound for pound, there are no better soldiers than the Green Berets. The new breed of Berets is smarter and better than we were in Vietnam. All had three to four years of college under their pistol belts. Few of the younger ones were staying in the Army, but all were gung-ho about their mission, their country and their teammates. The lifers were quiet regulars who hated Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo and any comparison to “a muscle bound freak who has done us a lot of damage,” as the team’s sergeant quietly put it.
Fragments of shells and battlefield rubble were everywhere in their camp, and, like most battlefields, there were abandoned cats all over the place. At night the team probed the enemy lines. They located the enemy, called in artillery and air fire, “bringing havoc from the sky,” as one sergeant explained it. Occasionally they got shot at. And like all good soldiers they bitched: about the REMFs (Rear Echelon Mother F—–s) in Riyadh having the latest equipment while they were at the end of the supply line running on empty and the “Riyadh Rangers” making a big deal about a few harmless Scud attacks. And not getting the news. Said Sergeant Moe: “We’re a few hundred yards from Iraqi positions and we get our war news from the BBC. Armed Forces Radio doesn’t reach the front. Like everything else, it’s only for the REMFs.”
I asked a Beret we’ll call Mark why his team sergeant was so tough. He said, “Sergeant Mike brought 10 guys out here and plans to take 10 guys back. His motto: fail to prepare; prepare to fail.” Their main bitch was as old as war itself: no beer, no women. Team medic Scotty said, “This is the healthiest Army in history. My liver is as pure as fresh snow.” The old Special Forces humor was there, too. In a play on a line from the Vietnam movie “Apocalypse Now,” Sergeant John said: “The only thing I love more than the sound of bombs in the morning is the smell of napalm.”
They are extraordinary soldiers who viewed the war as “Soldier Super Bowl: The Ultimate Test,” in the words of one sergeant. There was more talent in this team than in any championship football squad, and a lot more danger, too. These guys didn’t know if they would even get to the shower at the end of the game.
The high-tech stuff that this new generation of Green Berets has is spellbinding: a laser gun to spot targets, vision devices that turn night into day, listening gadgets that read the enemy’s every radio transmission. Yet my romantic heart found it comforting that America’s best still cook their meals, heat their coffee and shave in their aluminum canteen cups, and the big silver spoon and bottle of Tabasco sauce still stick out of their pockets like a badge of honor - just like my guys did on Team 50 in Cao Lanh, South Vietnam, 20 years ago. And everyone still steals everyone else’s cup. Like friendly-fire casualties, some things never change. Nor do the men I ended my last war with. Sgt. Barry Sadler described them in his 1966 record “The Ballad of the Green Berets”: “Men who mean just what they say - the brave men of the Green Beret.”
