Franks: This was a force designed, trained and equipped to defeat the best the Soviets had in Central Europe. It was a powerful maneuvre force, mounted maneuvre force, five armored divisions, 146,000 American and British soldiers, superbly trained, motivated, tough, well led, and a force that could take the fight to the Iraqis day and night, in sandstorms and in the rain, 24 hour capability on the ground and in the air, a considerable combat capability.

Q: You did all that superbly well, but if you hadn't done it ..

Franks: Actually if we hadn't done it, if we'd have committed ourselves piecemeal, if we'd have gotten lack of coherence, you're talking 20,000 plus vehicles in the Corps, if we had done it in a way that would have caused units to attack the Iraqis piecemeal, certainly the probability of casualties would have gone up.

Q: What was the nightmare scenario, why didn't it happen?

Franks: The thing we were most concerned about was getting stalled in the breach and then getting hit by enemy artillery fire that could have included chemicals if the Iraqis had chosen to use a chemical, and to take casualties from artillery, from chemical and also from getting stalled in the breach and getting hung up on mines, so we didn't let that happen, we prepared an exact replica of the Iraqi defensive position and the Big Red One rehearsed it time and time and time again, so that every soldier knew their particular duty, knew their assignment and knew their mission. We also rehearsed the first British armored division passing through the US 1st Infantry Division, so it was thoroughness, it was preparation, it was synchronisation of all of the capabilities available to the Corps - air, attack helicopters, artillery, and seeing to it that we did not put ourselves at that kind of disadvantage and so we worked hard at it, we worked hard at it, that's why I wanted to tell General Tom R...... early on that, okay Tom, you've got the mission, that would allow him the time to talk it over and to rehearse it and to go over it and make very thorough battle plans. We said in the intent of the Corps that the breach operation would be very detailed planning and very detailed in its preparation and a very closely synchronised, co-ordinated operation, and once that was completed then the rest of the operation would be much more free-falling and much more adept and be force oriented, but the breach had to be very carefully rehearsed and orchestrated in order to accomplish the mission at least cost to the attacking force.

Q: Could you describe the February 8th briefing with Dick Cheney, what was the message you wanted to get across to them?

Franks: The message that I wanted to get across at the 8th of February briefing to both Secretary of Defence, Dick Cheney, and General Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that VII Corps was prepared to fight, VII Corps would accomplish its mission with the plan that I was about to brief. I also wanted to be candid and say this was the 8th of February, all our forces had still not completely closed into the theatre, I wanted to be candid and up front and say there were a few concerns that we still had, but that they were all soluble within the theatre and that the Corps was committed to fight. I also wanted to communicate the message that the support and continuing support of the American people back home, which we felt there in the theatre of operations, that was coming through in cards and letters and the news that we did get, that that was very important, that that was combat power, that that mattered to our soldiers on the battlefield, so those were the messages I wanted to get across, the bottom line being the Corps was ready to fight and the Corps would accomplish its mission.

Q: Cal Waller afterwards grabbed you in the corridor, can you tell me that story?

Franks: We took a break afterwards and Cal thought I had used more than the time that had been allotted to me, I guess I did run over time a little bit but I was talking about a five-division operation here, I was talking about the main attack, and I felt as if this needed to be communicated very clearly, that we would accomplish the mission at least cost, how we envisioned the plan unfolding, and so I felt that those points needed to be made.

Q: Schwarzkopf believed that VII Corps kept treating the Iraqis like they were Soviet army, what do you say to that?

Franks: We treated the Iraqi forces as the Iraqi forces. There was no particular comparison with potential opposing forces in Central Europe with the Soviet forces, we knew they were well equipped, we knew they had recently fought and we also knew that they were essentially two different forces, their front line infantry and their mounted forces, so I don't believe for a minute that we overestimated the capabilities of the Iraqi forces - we didn't want to underestimate them either and certainly numbers do count, there were 11 plus divisions squared up in our zone of attack. To begin our attack, 4 attacking 11, and so our goal was to make sure that the fewer who were massed at places where our speed and our combat power and our training of our soldiers would be to best advantage against those numbers.

Q: But the idea you could have a mad cavalry charge going up to Baghdad, that just wasn't on.....

Franks: No. First of all in the VII Corps sector we were in a very tight restricted piece of real estate for a five division Corps and so it required some intense co-ordination and synchronisation and co-ordination of the forces, you're talking about tank cannons that fire a projectile at a mile a second at ranges in excess of 2500 metres, 3,000 metres, and whatever they hit at that range they're going to destroy in a flat piece of terrain, so you're talking about maneuvering five divisions in a relatively confined piece of real estate that isn't rolling but is flat and where the possibilities of units running into each other, of fratricide, is very probable if you don't maintain a coherent direction of attack, so we knew thatin our enveloping force I had two Army divisions on a 40-kilometre front. One of the divisions was on a 15-kilometre front, he was in a column of brigades, if you stretch a US armor division in a column of brigades on a 15-kilometre front, it'll stretch for about 120 kilometres, there is a lot of vehicles, a lot of moving parts. So based on the mission we had and the numbers of Iraqi units in our sector, we felt as if our attack needed to be massed and in coherent combat formations rather than in pursuit or exploitation, which we certainly were not in, at least for the first two days of the war.

Q: When you got this news there was going to be a ground war... the head of this great force, what did you as a person feel?

Franks: It came over the telephone, I think I was in my .. I had a trailer built up on a back of a truck is really what I was living in there at the time, at the Corps main C.T., and I remember talking on the phone and I got the word that, yes, the attack would .. G-Day would be the 24th of February, now originally we were going to attack at G plus one, that's essentially on the 25th, and I thought to myself, this is it now, all questions are removed, we're going to get .. we're going to attack on the 24th and I said to myself then, we've got to use the time we've got remaining to ensure we've done everything we need to do to give our soldiers the best possible advantage to accomplish the mission at least cost to them. I said to myself .. first I wanted to get the word out to my subordinate commanders and so I did, then what I wanted to do since there weren't many more preparations I could do as the Corps commander, what I wanted to do was go out and visit some of the units and I particularly wanted to visit the units who were going to conduct the breach, so I went to visit General Bert Maggert, then Colonel Bert Maggert, 1st Brigade of the Big Red One, to talk to him, his soldiers, talk to his subordinate commanders, and I came away from there sensing an air of confidence, not over confidence, certainly a sense of awareness of the toughness of the mission they were about to go on, but a sense of confidence in their own capabilities, in the plan, in their knowledge of the plan, that they had rehearsed it, so they were confident, they were ready to go, and I came away from that feeling as if the Corps was ready to attack, and what I had told the Secretary of Defence certainly was confirmed for me by those soldiers that afternoon in that visit.

Q: You knew all about combat, what did you feel as you were talking to Bert Maggert's guys there, looking around all those young faces?

Franks: Well I had seen battle, of course, in Vietnam, many of us had, I had been wounded in Vietnam twice, so what I wanted to do was to make sure we had done everything in terms of preparation, in terms of seeing to it that the soldiers understood the mission, they were well trained, to give them the best possible chance to accomplish the mission at least cost, get them at the right place at the right time in the right combination and they'd do the rest, I was confident in that, they were confident in themselves, but as I looked around .. and I had visited hospitals before the ground attack started, we had had some casualties in the 1st Cavalry Division in their great actions in the R.... pocket, so I was well aware that it was the young soldiers in the front line vehicles, the Bradleys and the tanks and the Challengers and the Warriors in the case of the British who would be at the tip of the spear and so I wanted to go out and talk to them, see how they felt, they felt confident, I visited the 1st Armored Division, one of the platoons called themselves the Raiders, they wanted to get a picture taken, this was the day before the attack, I still have it .. I told them good luck, I knew what they were about to go through, I maybe knew better than some of them. I told 'em good luck, shook their hands, you know, pat on the back, just wanted to talk to them soldier to soldier, see how they felt. I happened to run into that platoon on the way home, I'd wished 'em good luck, the 1st Battalion of the 7th Infantry, they were originally part of the 3rd Infantry Division but fighting with the 1st Armoured Division - I saw them on the way home, the day before they went home and went back, I said how did you do, they said, hey sir, we did great, we accomplished our mission and there was not a single soldier killed or wounded in our platoon.

Q: The air war had been going on for over a month, did it give you what you wanted?

Franks: Yes, what the air war did for our scheme of maneuvre, it essentially froze the Iraqis in the configuration they were in at the start of the air war, now they could move around and make some minor adjustments but in terms of extending the barrier further to the west, in terms of repositioning large units, they couldn't do that, so essentially they were fixed in position so the scheme of manoeuvre . that I had issued to the Corps in early January at a war game we had in King Khalid military city, essentially was a scheme of manoeuvre that would work, because the Iraqis were essentially fixed in position. Now we had some disagreements in the air as to the air that was made available in the VII Corps sector, what targets they would attack. Now we had some intense discussions over those targets, which ones would be attacked in what priority and that's just in the nature of air/ground operations, sometimes I got what I wanted, sometimes I didn't.

Q: The strategic guys who played an important part in this, they were into bombing residential palaces and buildings in Baghdad. Meanwhile you're worried about artillery pieces that are going to land chemical weapons on a lot of young soldiers, did the Air Force understand that?

Franks: My goal was to see to it that the air that was flown in the VII Corps assigned sector was flown against targets whose priority would contribute to the success of our scheme of manoeuvre to accomplish our mission, in other words I was given a mission by the theatre commander to destroy the Republican Guards forces command forces in our sector - we knew how to do that. Air was in support of that, so whatever numbers of air would be flown in our sector, I wanted to be the commander who would determine the priority of what they would attack. Now whether it was two sorties or attacks or a hundred, that wasn't my decision, that's the theatre commander's decision, but if the two flew then I wanted them to fly against the target priorities that would contribute to the success of the ground manoeuvre, so my priorities were first artillery within range of the breach, back to the success of the breach operation, and because the Iraqis had chemically .. chemical capable artillery systems. Secondly I wanted to go after their .. essentially their command control of the Iraqi VII Corps which was in front of us, so they couldn't notify the Republican Guards the speed and direction of the main attack, this fist that was coming after them. And third, I wanted to go after the tactical reserve, I didn't want the 1st British Armored Division to get stuck in the breach by an Iraqi tactical reserve that was right up against where they were breaking out of the breach, so there was a brigade sitting right there of tactical reserves so I remember pounding the map, saying make this brigade go away, some of the staff picked up on it as the 'go away brigade', but essentially that was to emphasise that that brigade was prioritised .. a priority of attack, so those were our priorities. Now sometimes we got that and sometimes we didn't.