VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)

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01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 299 Viking Hammer (and the Ugly Baby) The next day, March 23, Turkey granted overflight rights, and the rest of the task force flew directly from Romania into northern Iraq. Cleveland had succeeded in getting his men into Iraq, but that was only the first hurdle. His 5,200-man task force had to take on thirteen divisions of the Iraqi army—more than 100,000 soldiers—along a 350kilometer front. The Special Forces had never before attempted anything like this by themselves. It was a testament to both CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks’ willingness to entrust missions to special operations forces, and the fact that the general was pretty much out of options. The 4th Infantry Division had turned around in the Mediterranean and was steaming toward Kuwait, but it would be weeks before the unit landed, unloaded, and drove into Iraq. At a minimum, Cleveland’s task force had to pin down the Iraqi forces in the northern half of the country to prevent them from attacking the U.S. forces to the south or going to Baghdad’s defense. If possible, the task force would overrun and destroy the Iraqi forces and secure the country’s third- and fourth-largest cities—Mosul and Kirkuk—and its second-largest oilfields. The thirteen divisions included two Republican Guard divisions, two mechanized divisions, one armored division, eight infantry divisions, plus the Fedayeen Saddam militia. On the face of it, the odds were ludicrous—but Cleveland was undaunted. The task force would aim to seize every inch of territory that it could. His staff came up with a plucky motto for Task Force Viking: Concede Nothing. Cleveland had no tanks or armored divisions of his own, and air support would be limited. The bulk of the bombers would be aiding the ground assault moving from Kuwait toward Baghdad and the Scud hunters in the west. Because Turkey had opted out, no fighter jets would be available from the bases there. The task force did include special operations airmen and a few of their fearsome AC–130 Spectre gunships, as well as intelligence, signals, and support staff. For the fight on the ground, Cleveland had three Special Forces battalions—about fifty ODAs—and the valiant but lightly armed Kurdish militias. It would be the mother of all unconventional warfare campaigns. The task force was small for the job but large for a colonel. A general 299
01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 300 300 M asters of C haos would normally command a force of the size that the sandy-haired colonel was leading. In another historic first, a Special Forces colonel was given tactical control of conventional brigades—a precedent that would surely reverberate through the halls of the infantry schools. In Vietnam, Special Forces had occasionally taken command of smaller battalion-size elements of regular army troops. Cleveland would direct the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the two colonels who commanded them once they all arrived in the country. Those units were to help secure the oilfields, Kirkuk, and Mosul. Cleveland jokingly called Task Force Viking a “kluge,” which sent his staff members scrambling for a dictionary. The third one they consulted defined it as a cobbled-together collection of unrelated objects, but the staff still wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Cleveland divided the territory and put each half under the command of his two subordinates, 10th Group’s 2nd and 3rd battalion commanders, Lt. Col. Bob Waltemeyer and Lt. Col. Ken Tovo. The battalion and company commanders would need maximum autonomy and agility in this dispersed battlefield, and, in any case, it was Cleveland’s style to give subordinates room to operate. He was a West Point grad and the son of an NCO, and he knew the value of both perspectives. Moreover, he trusted these two men implicitly. An outsider probably would not realize how close the three were, given the Special Forces’ penchant for understatement and reticence. Cleveland was particularly low key, except when it came to the Red Sox. Waltemeyer was volatile, quick and sharp, and stood out in a crowd with his smooth-shaven head. Tovo, with his Italian dark-eyed and dark-haired looks, could pass for a Kurd at a distance after he grew a mustache. “I like to think they know what makes me tick,” Cleveland said. Since 1997, the two men had served as his company commanders, his executive officer, and under him in the Balkans. There, Tovo had learned how to interpret the tone of Cleveland’s voice and even his silences. In wartime, such intuition can make all the difference when communications are long-distance, via written sitreps (situation reports) or nighttime radio calls.
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VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)

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