Marine Corps evolves into sophisticated, fluid fighting force

Forty Miles From Baghdad-As they approach the outskirts of Saddam Hussein's capital city, U.S. marines are making history. By marching almost 300 miles into Iraq, the Marine Corps-which, after all, is a sea service whose normal assignments include taking islands, seaports, and coastal cities-has made the deepest land penetration ever by its air-ground team of planes, helicopters, troops, and tanks.

In the days leading up to April 4, the Marines' 1st Division had surrounded and crushed one of the four Republican Guard divisions defending Baghdad, and marines were massing toward a confrontation with an already-weakened Al Nida Division.

Evidence of the Corps's success was visible on both sides of Route 6 as this correspondent traveled northwest along the Tigris River on April 3 to a spot just 40 miles short of Baghdad. Earlier that day, a Marine attack force had blown through the remaining defenders in the Republican Guard's Baghdad Division. Burning vehicles and abandoned weapons were strewn on both sides of the highway, but there was a noticeable absence of bodies. Marines said this meant that the guardsmen had simply fled their posts and were not even in fighting positions when they were attacked.

But the most amazing sight was the groups of Iraqis waving and smiling at the column of marines as it passed by. Men, women, and children along this road were all smiles and thumbs-up signals; they even mingled with marines in the little shopping centers dotted along the way. The overwhelming feeling imparted by all of these Iraqis was one of relief, and of great expectations that their life under whatever new regime replaces the current one will be much better than life under Saddam.

When the Marine convoy stopped, as it often did on a road crowded with trucks, tanks, and other machines pushing northward, the Iraqis on the roadside seemed even more outgoing and friendly toward the marines who had stopped in their neighborhoods.

The sight was similar to the way the streets of Panama brightened into smiles after another American invasion-the one that took Manuel Noriega out of that Central American country in 1989. Although Saddam has not left his country, the impression from the Iraqi people here, at least along this roadside, was that they regarded his departure as inevitable, and welcome.

How the Corps has arrived at this point says a lot about the evolution of this service, and of its almost Darwinian adaptability to changing circumstances. In the current conflict, Marine officers on the ground talk comfortably of their antecedents at Inchon, in Korea, and of a whole line of Marine and other military leaders who kept pushing for the Corps to change. And they emphasize that in this battle, the key to success has been applying the lessons of the past-fast maneuvering and daring tactics, good logistics, strong air power, and the ability to keep an eye on the main objective.

Indeed, the series of high-speed maneuvers of the past week could prove to be as dramatic as those used during the Inchon landing in the Korean War, yet without that invasion's downsides: The Marine riflemen trying to attack North Korean forces from the enemy's rear did not have enough allied artillery and planes supporting them. In Iraq, marines racing north to encircle the Baghdad Division near the town of Kut didn't have to walk-everyone is in a wheeled vehicle of some kind-and everyone had plenty of cover from Marine artillery and fighter-bombers, which also protected supply lines and helped isolate the Republican Guard divisions.

The key to the Marines' progress this past week was that they discovered a big gap between the Baghdad and Al Nida Divisions south of the capital city long before Iraqi commanders did. Iraqi officers tried to plug the gap by bringing in troops from the north. But they were too late. The Marines, with their speed and maneuverability, beat them to the gap and crossed the Saddam Canal and the Tigris River in the process. This enabled the Marines to box in the Baghdad Division from positions north and south of it.

In contrast, the Republican Guard divisions have been slow to move and more vulnerable to attack. Their lines of communication, including the one for supplies, have no air protection. And so far, Iraqi artillery has proved to be no match for its U.S. counterparts. U.S. artillery radar is so sensitive that it can see a shell as it leaves an Iraqi cannon. American gunners, knowing the gun's exact location, can shell it within seconds.

Col. Michael P. Marletto, commander of the 11th Artillery Regiment, which closely trails the lst Marine Division troops leading the push north to Baghdad, told National Journal that Marine counterbattery fire has been so effective that not one enemy shell has fallen on marines in the first two weeks of the war.

Surrounding the enemy and cutting off his lifelines to the outside world is a military tactic dating back to biblical times. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf's "left hook" in Desert Storm was such a tactic. The Romans surrounded the Jews in what is now Masada, Israel, and cut off their water. The Jews jumped off a cliff to their deaths rather than surrender. The Marines are now surrounding their assigned Iraqi enemies and cutting off what is invariably described in the war zone as LOC-lines of communication. These lines include food, water, and connectivity with the leadership, including Saddam. "They have to fight with what they've got," said an intelligence officer. "They can't reinforce. We've cut their LOCs. The air war has done a terrific job."

Will the Republican Guardsmen display a Masada complex, forcing the United States to bomb and shell them to smithereens, or will they surrender? Will Tikrit, the town north of Baghdad that is the birthplace of Saddam and of Saladin, the great 12th-century Muslim leader, be the Iraqi ruler's Masada? Will outside parties persuade Saddam to surrender to avoid what now looks to be imminent slaughter? These are the questions on the minds of Marine commanders as they prepare to carry out the attack on Baghdad.

Water Crossings

The Marines know water. Their extensive experience making water crossings and amphibious landings helped enable the 1st Marine Division this week to outflank its enemy in the fertile floodplain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers-an area crisscrossed by canals and streams. It was no coincidence that in the Marine convoys, long lines of Marine trucks were carrying temporary bridges and motor skiffs.

The Marine attack plan featured several high-speed outflanking maneuvers, which required bridging the Tigris at several spots. Those temporary Marine bridges made it impossible for Iraqi defenders to bottle up the American invaders at any one location.

The ease with which marines are crossing Iraq's waterways was demonstrated on April 2. Early that morning, the Marine Regimental Combat Teams blasted away a company of Republican Guardsmen defending the Saddam Canal on Route 27 a few miles east of Route 1, the main north-south thruway in Iraq. Marine officers said that the Iraqis put up a fierce but brief fight. The Marines suffered no casualties, they said, but killed several Iraqis dug in at the canal crossing and captured 40 others.

The Iraqi defenders apparently made no serious effort to blow up the canal bridge. It was so intact that M-1 tanks crossed it easily. Marine engineers quickly added other spans across the canal, which is about twice the width of Washington's C&O Canal, with the bridging floats they were hauling north.

On April 3, some of that bridging equipment was heading south instead of north. At a convoy stop, one marine was asked why he was going away from Baghdad. "There were more bridges than were needed," he answered. "So we're going to the rear, and maybe home. I'm a reservist."

A Marine MEF

Another foundation of Marine success so far in Iraq has been the Corps's restructuring in the past decade into several Marine Expeditionary Forces, or MEFs. The lst Marine Division, the 1st Force Service Support Group, and the 3rd Marine Air Wing, the latter based on Navy aircraft carriers and amphibious carriers floating in the Persian Gulf, make up the 1st MEF, which usually consists of about 40,000 warriors, although size can vary.

Marletto is among the commanders who say that the ongoing offensive in Iraq marks the MEF's coming of age. There were elements of the change during the first Gulf War, but not even the concept of a single, can-do-everything force had yet come into full flower. "Post-Desert Storm, there has been a focus on the Marine Expeditionary Force as a true war fighter in orchestrating the deep fight, resourcing the close fight, and conducting the rear fight-the logistics of pushing the stuff forward," Marletto said. "This is the first true execution of that doctrine."

Marletto credited retired Gen. Walter Boomer, commander of Marines during Desert Storm, for fine-tuning the Marine Expeditionary Force concept and imposing it on the Corps. And Marine Col. Robert Dobson, now retired, was an unsung hero in making the transition. While at Marine Corps University at Quantico, Dobson codified and published the doctrine in what became known as the "Big Nine Box of Books," Marletto said.

But any student of the American military who drives up Iraq's north-south highways these days can see that the roots of the MEF-and of other highly mobile and deployable forces like it, including some of the Army's-go back further in time. The miles of tanks, troop carriers, and spare parts didn't have to come from America, for example. Instead, they had been floating permanently on station in the Indian Ocean, in huge cargo vessels called prepositioning ships. The nearness of these floating warehouses to this troublesome part of the world made it faster, cheaper, and easier for the military to get the heavy machines of war into the fight than flying or shipping the equipment 7,500 miles from the East Coast of the United States to Kuwait would have been.

Marine Corps Revolutionaries

To see the endless convoys of marines and materiel that have been moving north on Iraq's Routes 1 and 6 in recent days is also to see the results of decades of lobbying, cajoling, and shouting by a series of Marine commandants and revolutionaries who brought the Marine Corps to where it is today. As often as not, these leaders were vilified for what they were trying to do. But without their determination, the 1st Marine Division could not be employing the fast-maneuver warfare it is relying on to win this war, according to Marine officers who study the tactics being used in this dry land. Some of the key leaders:

• Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, who pushed for improvements in knitting together the electronic command-and-control networks that enable commanders to tell who is doing what where.
• Commandant Lou Wilson, who insisted that the Marines learn how to use artillery and other combat-support elements, to make their units more lethal and their riflemen safer.
• Commandant Robert Barrow, who made the Corps heavier and more armored, so it could stand up better against enemy tanks.
• Commandant Al Gray, who was adamant that the Marines not become too reliant on heavy armor, so they could still be light, fast, and good at surprising the enemy in small-unit maneuvers. The fast armored vehicles that the Corps is using in Iraq to scout out the enemy and carry troops to the battle are part of his legacy.
• The late Air Force Col. John R. Boyd, who influenced Gray and other Marine officers as he lectured on the advantages of achieving surprise with fast maneuvering.
• Col. Michael Wyly, who championed the German schwerpunkt ("hard-point") doctrine of keeping the tactics focused on the main objective, no matter how the enemy tries to distract you from it.

Gossip Road

Iraq's Route 1, and what is happening on either side of it, is a microcosm of how strange this second Gulf War, and first major pre-emptive American war, can be. This road may attain the kind of historic significance achieved by another Route 1, connecting North and South Vietnam-known during that war as "the Street Without Joy" because of all the violence that took place on and around it. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks, and artillery batteries run up and down Iraq's Route 1 day and night, supplying the Marines Corps and the Army in their drives toward Baghdad.

Because today's Marine Corps is so heavy and so high-tech, units need constant delivery of parts and fuel from ports in Kuwait, to say nothing of the transportation requirements of moving troops and weapons from place to place. So there are frequent traffic jams on Route 1. Sometimes the gridlock lasts for hours. These forced stops have become a time for officers and soldiers to leave their vehicles and trade rumors about the war they are in but do not know much about except for the sliver of it they see. Heated debates break out in huddles of marines on the highway, especially if one person reports that some commentator in Washington has labeled the war plan flawed or the progress northward too slow.

"What are they talking about?" asked an officer when told of the complaints about the prosecution of the war. "Look how far we've come already. And we're not destroying anything. This war isn't anything like the last one."

Some reporters, frustrated by the lack of firsthand information given out by lst Marine Division headquarters here, have come to use the traffic jams as their opportunity to find out from various units how their part of the war is going. The interviews, however, must end abruptly whenever traffic moves on.

Many Marine units set up their command posts along the highway, and it's hard sometimes to spot the officers among the enlisted marines. Colonels sleep on the bare ground outside their command tents, or in Humvees or trucks, just like the troops. "That's the colonel there," an aide told a reporter looking for Marletto on a recent night. He was inside the lump of green sleeping bag that lay alongside his Humvee. Sleep is a scarce commodity for those planning, leading, and fighting this war, so they lie down where and when they can.

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, for journalists and senior officers alike, there are no neat, Pentagon-style offices with secretaries and junior officers acting as gatekeepers in the waiting rooms. There is only the long, clogged, and dusty Route 1.