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Most of Iraq's front-line troops hunkered down behind minefields and barbed wire along the 138-mile Saudi-Kuwait border, awaiting what Baghdad obviously expected to be the main allied thrust. Coalition troops did in fact initially concentrate in front of them. But in the last 16 days before the attack, more than 150,000 American, British and French troops moved to the west, as far as 300 miles inland from the gulf, setting up bases across the border from an area of southern Iraq that was mostly empty desert. Part of that allied force was to drive straight to the Euphrates River, cutting off retreat routes for the Iraqi forces in Kuwait; another part was to turn east and hit Republican Guard divisions along the Kuwait-Iraq border, taking them by surprise on their right flank.
The battle plan did call as well, however, for narrowly focused thrusts through the main Iraqi defensive works. Concerned that his troops would get caught in breaches and slaughtered by massed Iraqi artillery firing poison-gas shells, Schwarzkopf ordered a shift in the bombing campaign during the last week to concentrate heavily on knocking out the frontline big guns. The planes succeeded spectacularly, destroying so much Iraqi artillery that its fire was never either as heavy or as accurate as had been feared. Also in the last week, special-operations commandos expanded their activities deep in Iraqi territory. Many additional units landed by helicopter, checking out the lay of the land and fixing Iraqi troop, tank and artillery positions so they could guide both air strikes and, later, advancing ground units.
Schwarzkopf had initially got Washington's agreement to Feb. 21 as the day to begin the ground assault. But some subordinates thought they needed two more days to get ready. So he and George Bush fixed 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 23 -- noon in Washington -- as zero hour, and Bush made that the expiration time of a final ultimatum to Saddam. As the deadline approached, tanks equipped with bulldozer blades cut wide openings through the sand berms Saddam's soldiers had erected as a defensive wall along the border, and tanks and troops began pushing through on probing attacks; some were across hours before the deadline.
During the night, B-52s pounded Iraqi positions and helicopter gunships swept the defense lines, firing rockets at tanks and artillery pieces and machine-gunning soldiers in the trenches. Allied artillery opened an intense bombardment from howitzers and multiple-launch rocket systems that released thousands of shrapnel-like bomblets over the trenches. Everything was ready for the ground troops to begin moving in the last hours of darkness, taking advantage of the allies' superior night-vision equipment.
SUNDAY: THROUGH THE BREACH
Between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., allied forces jumped off at selected points all along the 300-mile line. Though Hollywood has long pictured the desert as a place of eternal burning sunshine and total aridity, the attack began in a lashing rain that turned the sand into muddy goo. The first troops through were wearing bulky chemical-protective garb, in keeping with the allied conviction that Saddam would use poison gas right from the beginning. In fact, the Iraqis never fired their chemical weapons.