Franks: I instructed the pilots to see as much of the destruction parallel to Highway 8 that we could see on the way to Safwan, so what we saw north of Kuwait City, we saw the destruction there of mainly civilian vehicles that the Iraqis were attempting to escape with, buses, trucks, cars, in addition to some combat vehicles, an enormous destruction scene there, burning vehicles. North of that then it was mainly military vehicles, mainly military vehicles, military vehicles hit by air, also destroyed by the attack of the coalition forces, then north of that the 1st UK Armoured Division who had successfully attacked all the way east, got Highway 8, and also the lst US Infantry Division. There were smoking, burning tanks, other types of vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery pieces, damaged and bombed out buildings, vehicles at all sorts of angles destroyed, the Highway 8 was not even .. you could not even drive down Highway 8 for the vehicles destroyed on Highway 8, so there was a tremendous amount of armoured vehicle destruction visible from the air, even with the oil fires burning and all the smoke burning, and I wanted .. General Schwarzkopf had not been able to see that as I had seen that for almost four days on a continuing basis out on the battlefield so I wanted him to see what the coalition forces, ground, air and sea had done to achieve a great victory in the Kuwaiti theatre of operations, so I didn't want to occupy him with a lot of small talk and told him such and instructed the pilots to fly so that he could see all of this, so we didn't .. we didn't talk a lot, I didn't initiate a lot of conversation, he remarked about the damage, he remarked about what a terrible decision it was for the Iraqis to set fire to all the oil fields, all of the oil, .. the tremendous waste, tremendous damage that that would do to the environment and how completely .. how difficult that was to understand how the Iraqis could do that.

Q: And then what did General Schwarzkopf remark?

Franks: Then General Schwarzkopf remarked, as we were flying along, he said hey Fred, just as we planned it, just as we planned it, which to me was just as he had envisioned this whole thing unfolding back at that early briefing in early November and this was the culmination of that operation, as we could witness on the ground.

Q: What do you remember of the Iraqi officers arriving and the look on their faces, what was said at the ceasefire?

Franks: We had arranged a show of force there, we picked up the Iraqis in US vehicles, drove them down a line of combat vehicles that were lined up along the route. I recall the Iraqis being very stone-faced, not much emotion, a lack of emotion in their faces, pretty much agreeing to everything that was said, not having a whole lot to I think they could .. perhaps there was some surprise on their part as to the amount of destruction that they could even see there in the vicinity of Safwan as to their army in the field.

Q: The Iraqis were stony-faced but I remember you saying to me that there was one time when they showed some emotion... What happened when they discovered there was 60,000 Iraqi prisoners? Franks: I think there was genuine surprise on their part as to the number of Iraqi prisoners that the coalition forces held, that probably surprised them more than anything during the discussions there, that plus the combat power available to the coalition forces and plus the destruction that they could see even there around Safwan that had happened to their army in the field.

Q: Was there ever a day you didn't think about Vietnam when you were out there?

Franks: No .. constantly in my mind. Memories of Vietnam are very sharp, clear to me, I mean with every other step I take I'm reminded of Vietnam and I remember the great soldiers that I was privileged to serve with there, those that I was in the hospital with at Valley Forge General Hospital, I remember those whose names are on the Vietnam memorial here in Washington .. no, never .. never far from my mind and especially during the Gulf War, we didn't say it to each other but I think we all felt that we're going to do it right this time.

Q: Did you feel when you'd won this great victory that you'd re-established the American military in the eyes of the American public?

Franks: I felt that what our soldiers had done certainly was proof of the sustained commitment to excellence that we had seen done in the US military following the Vietnam war, the training in leader development, in equipment, training at our national training centre, that it was a vindication of the wisdom of those decisions and that sustainment to tough, hard, realistic training and that was evident on the battlefield.

Q: You've got a photograph there I want to ask you about, how many of those guys helping you in that picture, and I think you know the picture very well, how many of them came back?

Franks: All except one.

Q: And when you were in the hospital, there were people around you who were pretending they'd been in car crashes and things.

Franks: Well, what happened of course for the Vietnam era, generation, was that for a while .. we couldn't separate the war from the warriors and so the soldiers - and the members of the other services - but soldiers in our case, got caught up in a lot of the anti-war business that was going on in the United States at the time and so there was not a sense of thanks, you went and did what your country asked you to do, and even if one questions the wisdom of the commitment, nonetheless young American men and women went and did what their country asked them to do, at great personal sacrifice, families, friends, and at great personal risk, pain, soldiers I was with in the hospital got so tired of going on convalescent leave back to their home town or out of the hospital and having to explain that they were wounded in Vietnam and people saying to them, oh what a shame, all that for nothing, that they stopped talking about it, they made up stories about they were hurt in a paint factory explosion or an automobile accident so they wouldn't have to talk about service in Vietnam. All of those memories were sharp and clear to me, as they were to many others during the Gulf War.

Q: Did you ever think you'd be able to achieve such a big victory with so few casualties?

Franks: I felt confident in our soldiers .. the soldier who said, don't worry, General, we trust you. They were tough British and American soldiers, I had seen .. I had been out and around them, I felt certainly it was within our grasp to achieve a great victory at least cost, and I felt as if I and the leaders, and we had a great team, division commanders, if we could get the soldiers to the right place at the right time in the right combination, then they would take it from there.

Q: And what do you say to the revisionists now,that if only these soldiers, these 146,000 guys, had moved a bit faster, been a bit more aggressive, we'd have got the Republican Guard?

Franks: I said to the soldiers then that a lot would be written and said and shown about what happened or didn't happen over here, but their willingness to take the fight to the enemy day and night, in sand storms and in the rain, with a sense of toughness and courage, will be forever etched in the desert sands of Iraq and Kuwait - what happened happened and the facts are the facts and so I'm enormously proud of the soldiers and leaders of 7 Corps, US and British, who fought side by side and achieved a great victory.