Free Generation Kill by Evan Wright Page A

o'clock on the night of March 20, the Marines in First Recon are ordered into their vehicles, to load their rifles and drop belts of ammo into the feed trays of their machine guns and to prepare to move out. At this time, more than 25,000 Marines, 20,000 British troops and 30,000 U.S. Army soldiers in the northern Kuwait desert are all doing the same. The 242-kilometer-long Iraqi border with Kuwait is fortified with fences, minefields and seven-meter-high earthen berms. On the other side there are some 50,000 Iraqi troops equipped with more than 1,000 tanks and other types of armor.
    The booming we've heard since the morning has been the American bombardment of Iraqi positions near the border. According to officers I've spoken to, Marine intelligence personnel hacked into the computer of the Iraqi general in command of forces there, and Maj. Gen. Mattis has been personally e-mailing him, urging him to surrender. But the Iraqis have not. They have spent the day firing artillery intermittently and ineffectively toward American units in the desert. Earlier in the morning, Iraqi soldiers were observed out in the open by the border, laying more mines.
    In a couple of hours, Marine and Army engineers in armored units are going to race up to the border, supported by heavy American artillery, rocket and aerial bombardment, and blow breaches through the berms. The U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division will push north to a broad su- perhighway that goes for nearly 600 kilometers all the way to Baghdad, then travel on it largely unopposed until coming to within about 150 kilometers of the capital.
    The Marines and British forces will be in a race the moment they blast through the berms. Their objectives are to reach and secure the oil facilities and ports around Rumaylah, Basra and Um Qasr some seventy kilometers to the east of the border crossing. The American fear is that the Iraqis will begin blowing up these oil and port facilities, causing an environmental disaster. Coalition forces hope to secure them within the first forty-eight hours of the invasion.
    First Recon will enter the breach at the border following mechanized Marine elements. But while they cut to the east toward Basra, First Recon will race ninety kilometers north, on its own, to secure a bridge over the Euphrates. The biggest concern for First Recon after crossing the border is that the battalion will be operating solo. Unlike the Army and other Marine units that include thousands of troops, armored vehicles and heavy artillery guns all moving together, First Recon's 374 Marines in Humvees and trucks will move alone on a trek through open desert believed to contain tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers. While most enemy forces are expected to scatter, even a few rogue Iraqi tanks with crews willing to fight could wreak havoc on First Recon.
    The point of Mattis's plan to send First Recon ahead of his main battle forces is that this battalion will be among the fastest on the battlefield. As beat-up as First Recon's Humvees are, they are quicker than tanks and, due to their small numbers, they can outmaneuver large concentrations of enemy forces. According to the doctrine of maneuver warfare, their relative speed, not their meager firepower, is their primary weapon. True to his radio call sign, "Chaos," Mattis will use First Recon as his main agent for causing disorder on the battlefield by sending the Recon Marines into places where no one is expecting them. At this time in the invasion, none of the enlisted men in First Recon fully understand that this is the plan. They think they are embarking on a fairly conventional recon mission to seize a remote bridge on the Euphrates. Many believe they will have no role in the invasion following this mission.
    At about eight-thirty on the night of the twentieth, engineers in Marine Regimental Combat Team Five (one of the three regimental forces, each composed of about 6,000 troops, that belong to the First Division) begin blasting