Franks: I wanted the priority of air to go after artillery in range of the breach, second to go after the command control of the Iraqi VII Corps which was directly in front of us, to prevent them from telling the Republican Guards the direction and the speed of our attack, and then third I wanted the air to go after the tactical reserve positioned close to the exit to the breach so they would not interfere initially with the 1st British Armoured Division. I had some amount of difficulty getting those priorities struck because of other theatre priorities in terms of number of air available to the Corps and then even which wasn't my decision, but even that air that was made available in the Corps sector, to get it to attack in accordance with those priorities, sometimes other priorities would override those particular priorities. In the end we got it all done, now we got a lot of it done through the use of our own MLRS rocket system and the use of unmanned aerial vehicle to locate the targets and then fire MLRS, the bomblets, after Iraqi artillery.

Q: So you never managed to get air to hit artillery in the way you wanted?

Franks: No, we went after Iraqi artillery mainly with artillery raids by the Corps.

Q: That must have been pretty frustrating.

Franks: Well, there was some intense discussions about priorities of air and the targetry and correlation between targets requested to be hit and those that were actually hit, so that's in the nature of things in a theatre of operation.

Q: You've got a whole bunch of troops who are going to die if they have chemical weapons landed on them and there's long range artillery sitting nearby and you're telling me you can't get the Air Force to hit them...

Franks: Of all the things that got me heated up prior to the attack or the ground campaign, as a matter of fact I went down to Riyadh in person to talk about it, was my lack of success in getting the air that was forming in the VII Corps sector to attack artillery within range of the breach, because we were concerned about artillery as artillery and also chemical capable artillery firing into the Big Red One as they conducted the breach .. so I appealed to the Third Army commander, the G-3, General Steve ......., who carried, you know, that argument in the targeting council that went on and then finally appealed to General Cal Waller who finally General Schwarzkopf put General Waller in charge of essentially target prioritisation and when Cal got into it then the correlation between the priorities of targets that I had requested in VII Corps and what actually got much better.

Q: What were you saying to Cal Waller?

Franks: What I said to Cal Waller was, Cal, how much air flies and attacks targets in the VII Corps zone is not my decision, that's a theatre decision, but what does fly in there needs to attack targets in the priority that I as the ground commander set in order to support the ground scheme of maneuvre to accomplish a mission that I've been given by the C-in-C.

Q: What were you saying to Cal Waller about artillery?

Franks: I was saying to Cal Waller, Cal, the air has got to go after artillery, especially artillery in range of the breach, this will assure success of the breach and if the Iraqis choose to use chemicals it'll also prevent the Iraqis from firing chemicals on to our troops in the breach, Cal understood that and so did John Yeosock and so between the two of them and especially after Cal Waller was given the mission to see to it that the correlation between the ground commander targets request and what was flown was better, it got better.

Q: So after Cal Waller intervened, all the artillery was bombed by the Air Force?

Franks: No, that's not true either, no, because there were other priorities for air in the theatre, they were going after Scuds and other strategic targets and that was not my decision so that was certainly none of my concern, but what I wanted to do was destroy the artillery in range of the breach, that was our top priority, so because of disagreements over priorities of air and then the lack of air to go after those targets, we began a series of artillery raids using all the artillery in the Corps in combination with our own targeting apparatus in the corps, unmanned aerial vehicles and also other platforms that could detect these targets, to go after these artillery in range of the breach, and so I wanted to .. first of all I wanted every unit in the Corps to have some combat action prior to the attack and so we used artillery raids to go after the artillery, the Iraqi artillery.

Q: You did it yourself in the end.

Franks: Yes, it was a team effort, it was a team effort, but what I couldn't get the air to go after we went after with our own capabilities.

Q: The day the war started, you spoke about going to see the troops .. you were asked if you could go earlier and you flew up to see Tom R......., what did you say to him?

Franks: I got a call about 9.30 in the morning of the first day, the 24th of February, from General John Yeosock saying could we attack early and I didn't know the reasons why, all I knew was could we attack early and John told me that the answer he got from 18th Corps was with two hours notice they could go. I said that sounds okay with me, let me go check with my subordinate commanders but that's .. it's a go with VII Corps, so then I left the corps tactical C.P. which is a small collection of vehicles and flew on up to visit General Tom R...... and talked to Tom and he said yes, he was ready to go right at that moment, he and the 2nd Cavalry, but it required some considerable adjustment, we had a two hour artillery preparation plan for the breach, we reduced that to half an hour, it required considerable adjustment on the part of General Rupert Smith and the 1st British Armored Division, who had to move from there 80 kilometres or so, they were south of the breach, they had to move early, so considerable adjustment on their part, and then to get the word out to all the troops. But Tom told me he was ready to go, as a matter of fact he probably would have requested to go early even if we had not gotten the call, since he had done some initial probes in the Iraqi security zone and was encouraged by the initial success that he was having and so he was going to ask to push forward at least through the security zone on that first day, as had Colonel Don Holder who was commanding the 2nd Cavalry.

Q: There's a picture of the two of you looking at some maps, Tom R....... and yourself, just before the breach--what was the last thing you said to him as you headed off?

Franks: Well, what I said to Tom was, good luck, you've got a tough mission but you're up to it, the division's well trained, you've rehearsed it, good luck, but also you're not done when you're finished with the breach, be prepared for future missions because I'm not going to leave you behind, because I knew I needed three divisions in this fist and I didn't know where I was going to get the third division from. At that point I didn't know whether I would be given command of the 1st Cavalry Division, who at that time were CENTCOM reserve, so I told Tom, good luck, you know what to do, go for it and to .. well, I'm not going to leave you behind, be prepared for a follow-on mission, because I wanted him thinking ahead, you always try to think 24, 48, 72 hours ahead.

Q: Where were you when the breaching operation took place?

Franks: I went out to visit Tom late that afternoon, heard the operation going on, firing going on, went out and met with him and General Rupert Smith, the 1st British Armored Division commander, right out there in the middle of the breach.

Q: Describe what was going on around you, what was the scene?

Franks: Well, the scene was of a lot of vehicles moving, of completing the lanes so to speak, you could hear artillery, you'd got aircraft flying, you could hear the sharp crack of tank cannons and the pop of 25-millimetre Bradley cannons, so a lot of fighting still going on but there was also the prisoners who had been captured by the Big Red One, and a sense of early success .. a feeling of success and confidence on the part of the Big Red One.

Q: When did you first realise that it was beginning to work?

Franks: The first indication I had was when the artillery was able to take what was going to be a two hour preparation and position themselves to fire a 30-minute prep. and for that to go off like clockwork and to have then followed up by the co-ordinated attack of two brigades of the Big Red One who attacked at 1500 on Sunday afternoon as opposed to first light the following morning. I said to myself, if the Corps is able to adjust that quickly, then we're going to build on success here and then I got some of the radio reports that the breach was going well.



Q: Do you remember any particular conversation or report from Bert Maggert or Tom R...... that made you think we're okay - once the fighting had started?

Franks: No, I had gotten radio reports, I was monitoring that at the corps tactical C.P., then I got in a helicopter and went on out to the breach and talked to Tom and I could see it in his face and I could see the sense of confidence in the Big Red One that what they had done to this point had been very successful, they were very confident, they were very pleased that the plan had gone very well, so I could sense it, I could feel it, I could see it, I could see it in their conversations and I also could talking to the 2nd Cavalry and also the 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions, they were moving well, so the whole thing was beginning on a .. on a note of great success and the Corps was gaining confidence rapidly and quickly.

Q: All the time you've been talking about speed, why didn't you pause the guys in the breach that night?

Franks: We had a decision to make, because we attacked early, what we were going to do the first night. I was thinking 48 hours ahead, I wanted to be in a posture that when we hit the Republican Guards, that we would hit 'em with a fist massed from an unexpected direction at full speed, and so what I needed to do was get the Corps in a posture that would allow that to happen over the next 48 hours. In addition to that I wanted to talk to both commanders involved, General Tom R...... commanding the Big Red One and Colonel Don Holder who was commanding the 2nd Cavalry out in front of the two armored divisions. I asked both of them, Colonel Holder was concerned about getting too far out in front of the two armoured divisions and attacking the Republican Guards piecemeal, as was I. And General R...... was concerned about being able to complete the breach during the hours of darkness with the thoroughness required to allow rapid passage of the 1st UK Armored Division and also to allow passage of the logistics vehicles that we needed to position on the other side of the breach in order to support the enveloping two armoured divisions, 1st and 3rd Armoured Divisions, so I determined from the sensing of the commanders, from the need to synchronise the British passing through and attacking and destroying the tactical reserve, which could have gotten into the logistics tail of the attacking armoured divisions, and the need to be at full speed when we hit the Republican Guards - taking all those things into consideration, I told the units to conduct local reconnaissance, continue the artillery fights, continue to pressure up and to resume full scale operations at first light the next morning.

Q: Because otherwise there was going to be a horrible night-time traffic jam with the possibility of friendly fire incidents....

Franks: Correct. It seemed to me the it was more of a gamble to continue the breach that evening. Now I briefed my immediate commander in Third Army, I told him what we were doing, and he said okay and I presume he had told General Schwarzkopf and that everybody at Central Command knew what we were doing.

Q: If they'd continued that night, what could have happened?

Franks: Well, . there was a lot of possibilities of things, you could have had difficulties in navigation which could have led you to some fratricide incidents, you could have had Iraqi stay behind units that could have gotten in behind .. it's easy enough to by-pass dug-in infantry during the day, it's of course much easier at night when you can't see them, they can come up and shoulder fired anti-tank weapons can get .. interfere with following logistics vehicles and we figured we needed all 24 lanes cleared, so if for example you had two or three or four or five lanes that would have damaged vehicles in them, burning vehicles, our own, in those, that would in a sense lengthen the time it would take the 1st British armored division to pass through.

Q: More haste, less speed.

Franks: So speed was necessary to get them through to attack the tactical reserve, so the tactical reserve of the Iraqis could not interfere with the enveloping force, so it was all tied together, it was all tied together, so it seemed to us .. there's an old German saying that says, 'go slow now and go fast later' and so the scheme of maneuver based on my own assessment and my discussions with the tactical commanders, I informed my headquarters that it would be actually faster, we would conduct the mission faster if we did not continue during hours of darkness but we continued it at first light, in fact the 1st British Amoured Division began passing through....

Q: And Schwarzkopf, as you have heard, was absolutely furious about the slowness of the Corps advance......

Franks: I had heard later, about the next day, through my chief of staff, that was there was some concern about the pace of the Corps operation and I had talked this over then with General Yeosock and he understood, I talked to him on almost on a continuing basis about the pace of the Corps, what we were doing, the manever of the Corps, and assumed that all of that was well known. So it was hard for me to understand why there was a lack of understanding about what the Corps was up to, especially correlating it to the intelligence we had about what the Republican Guards were doing at that point in time.

Q: But Schwarzkopf throwing the tantrum, is that the way he should do business?

Franks: Well, I think every commander does things their own way, I felt as the commander of the main attack, if there was some problem with either direction or the pace of the attack, then someone would tell me that and I got no such communication during the four days of the ground war. As a matter of fact, I talked to General Schwarzkopf on Tuesday, the 26th, and told him that we had made our right turn, that was a call we made in the Corps, and that we were about to conduct .. it turns out a four-division night attack against the Republican Guards. He seemed pleased with that, he told us to press the attack, he gave me a piece of intelligence about the H....... division had been seen loading on to hit vehicles so he said he wanted us to continue to press the attack and I told him that we would. I also told him I was not happy with a mission I had gotten to attack, the 1st British Armored Division south and clear essentially Wadi al Batin, which we had gone around to avoid, and eventually we did not do that.

Q: But Schwarzkopf was going around saying that you and the VII Corps, these 146,000 men you had, were stuck into European mode, it was NATO, they didn't have any fire, any dash. What do you say to that? ..

Franks: The pace of the attack depends on first of all the scale of the map you're looking at, as to time and distance. The movement of actually four divisions at that point in time, since the 1st Cavalry Division did not .. was not part of the Corps, we were moving and attacking continually, from the time we got the word on 1500 on Sunday afternoon, either ground or air, until cessation of offensive operations at 8 o'clock on Thursday morning. Now .. I did halt the large unit movement the evening of the 24th and we've discussed that ..

Q: I'll come on to that later.

Franks: Correct, we've discussed it. But the pace of the Corps attack and synchronising and co-ordinating large unit movement on flat terrain in very confined maneuver space and turning a Corps, two Armoured Divisions, 90 degrees and attacking 90 degrees to the east while on the move, with no pause, and doing essentially a four-division night attack, I was enormously proud of the soldiers and the leaders of VII Corps then and I'm even more proud of them now, I think it was an enormously powerful achievement by the soldiers and leaders of the VII Corps British and American soldiers.

Q: If you could have been transported that morning to that room and sat next to General Schwarzkopf, what would you have said to him?

Franks: What I was trying to do was to describe what I was seeing, the battle as I was seeing it, on the ground, up front, with my own commanders, seeing with my own eyes, ....having been in battle before in Vietnam, sensing the battle, sensing the pressure, seeing what the soldiers and the leaders were doing, going around visiting commanders, I would have .. and I tried on a continuing basis with General Yeosock, who was back in Riyadh, to describe the situation as I was seeing it and the pace of operations, and I felt the pace was swift, that the soldiers were moving, the soldiers units were changing, in major formations going from a column of brigades to brigades, making a night passage of lines, a division through a cavalry regiment, under fire, very difficult operations - all of this was done with enemy resistance, we had 11 plus divisions in the Corps sector of operations, there were some gaps in where enemy forces were but most of our units were in contact almost on a continuing basis, there were a lot of prisoners, contacts, units that were by-passed, there was a considerable amount of Iraqi forces, so I felt .. I was proud of the pace of the Corps and of the soldiers and their willingness and drive and toughness to take the fight to the enemy, day and night, sandstorms and in the rain, and I think that'll be forever etched in the desert sands of Iraq and Kuwait.

Q: It's one thing to sit in a war room in Riyadh, it's another to be in a tank.

Franks: You get different perspectives, looking at different scale maps, you get perhaps an incomplete view of the battlefield, you get different perspectives, I had a perspective and I was conducting the pace and the synchronisation of the combat power of VII Corps in accordance with the mission that I was given. T accomplish that mission at least cost to the soldiers, and if that pace needed to be increased and I felt as if one of my commanders would call me and tell me that and none of them did.

Q: What was the significance of 73 Easting?

Franks: 73 Easting was really the first large scale fight that we got in, .....the breach of course was a separate operation, the 1st British Armored Division, as soon as they broke out of the breach, began a series of tough fights against the Iraqi reserve. The 73 Eastingwas the first indication we had of the Republican Guard's positioning and the role that they would fight, and so it was significant in setting up the battle that followed.