Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment

  The assault and rescue by Allied personnel of the hostages at Entebbe Airport, Uganda. While the French special-forces personnel rescue the hostages at the old terminal building, M-8 armored-gun systems and HMMWVs with N-LOS missiles attack the airport security forces.They then stop an attack by an enemy brigade to prevent the evacuation effort.

  JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD., BY LAURA ALPHER

  June 24, 1999, 0130 Hours

  Sergeant Abu-Bakr Elmahdi cursed in colorful Arabic, Dinka, and English, as the greenish image in his night-vision goggles faded, flickered, and went black. You could walk into any sporting goods store in Europe and pick up a set of the bulky but reliable ex-Soviet goggles for a hundred U.S. dollars. The second-generation image-intensifiers amplified any available light, so that you could make out a man-sized target at a hundred meters by starlight on the blackest night. The Russian engineers had used standard Japanese Ni-Cad camcorder batteries, knowing that the invincible armies of Socialism could procure them anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, a supply clerk back in Khartoum had slyly substituted old, worn-out batteries for the new ones that came with the brigade’s equipment. He had sold them in the bazaar for a month’s salary apiece. It was outright theft, and it would cost him a hand when it was discovered. But meanwhile, Sergeant Elmahdi and the other sentries along the Entebbe Airport perimeter had only the light of a quarter moon to patrol by.

  June 24, 1999, 0200 Hours

  Nicole had not been so afraid since the nuns had caught Jean-Jacques hiding in the closet of her dorm room. She never heard from him after that, and only later had learned that his parents had banished him to some military school in the south of France. She smiled thinly as she wondered which of them had suffered more for their sinful behavior. This was worse, though. The Ugandans had herded all of the hostages into the departure lounge of the decrepit old terminal, which still showed bullet scars from the 1976 Israeli rescue mission. There will be no rescue this time, she thought bitterly. The world does not care about a handful of idealistic medical fools who could not turn away from the horror and suffering here. Mercifully, the water taps and the toilets still worked. And twice a day their captors brought baskets of bananas and tubs of cornmeal mush to feed the hostages. But all of their medical supplies and equipment had been looted or destroyed. Some of the male doctors and lab technicians had been badly beaten, though the women had not been molested—yet. Nicole struggled to maintain her composure, to set a good example for the younger girls. Silently and calmly, she recited the Rosary, just as the Sisters had taught her, so many years ago:Holy Mary, Mother of God,

  pray for us sinners,

  now, and at the hour of our death.

  Amen.

  June 24, 1999, 0225 Hours

  Smitty eased the HMMWV up just below the crest of a low hill. Paco checked the GPS receiver and confirmed they were in the right place. Off to the south, the vast expanse of Lake Victoria reflected the moonlight, but the town of Entebbe and the airport were blacked out. The airport’s diesel generators had been shut down to conserve fuel and deny IR-homing missiles an easy target. Paco thumbed a button and the HMMWV’s multi-sensor unit extended on its articulated arm to peer over the top of the hill. He slowly panned the thermal viewer across the airport perimeter. “Bunker ... three tanks ... two APCs ... bunker ... some kind of SAM launcher ... six trucks ... another bunker,” he said, carefully enumerating the possible targets, zooming up the magnification to confirm a few doubtful items. Paco looked over at the glowing amber symbols on the IVIS display. Captain Martin, in his command HMMWV two miles back, had sketched out a rough diagram of the airport and designated targets for each unit of the heavy weapon platoon. The 120mm mortars would take out the trucks and lay down smoke. Martin’s own HMMWV would take out the airport tower with two N-LOS rounds, to make certain that the commanding four-story building was thoroughly demolished. Smitty and Paco would fire their first N-LOS missile at the second bunker. At the bottom of the screen the captain had written “TOT 2330 Zulu” and underlined it with three bold strokes. All the platoon’s weapons were to strike their targets simultaneously at 2330 hours (11:30 PM Greenwich Mean Time, 2:30 AM local time). According to the digital clock on the HMMWV’s dashboard, that would be in five minutes. At this range the missile’s time of flight would be—Smitty punched a few buttons on the armament control panel—thirty six seconds.

  June 24, 1999, 0230 Hours

  Ekwanza and Hubutse had drawn patrol duty tonight. The Sudanese lieutenant had screamed at them in broken Swahili, telling them that the countryside was full of American and French spies, and if they let one slip through, they would both die horribly. With its lights off, the Land Rover was to slowly circle the outer perimeter road. Ekwanza had an RPG-7, and Hubutse carried an AKM assault rifle. There was a box of grenades, some signal flares, and a light machine gun in the back of the Rover. They were to be especially vigilant along the lake shore, where the Americans would undoubtedly try to infiltrate Navy SEALs. The lieutenant had been on the cleanup detail a year ago, after the SEALs had paid a nocturnal visit to Port Sudan. He still had nightmares about dark forms rising out of the water...

  The gunner of the M8 Buford saw the Rover come around the corner a second or two before Ekwanza and Hubutse saw the AGS looming out of the darkness. Ekwanza was trying to aim his RPG when a 105mm high-explosive (HEAT) round passed through the dead center of the grille and struck the engine block. Land Rovers have a legendary reputation for toughness and reliability in East Africa, but were never meant for that kind of abuse.

  “The quarterback is toast!” said the gunner over the intercom exultantly.

  “Calm down! Next time use the machine gun on soft targets,” the tank commander said. “We’ve only got twenty rounds of that stuff left now.”

  The explosion alerted the entire Entebbe garrison. Colonel Alakbar jerked out of bed and knew in an instant what was happening. “The Americans are attacking! Kill all the prisoners at once!” he screamed. The executive officer of the brigade on duty at the command bunker that night was alert and efficient. He was on the field telephone immediately to relay the colonel’s order to the company of the 6th Islamic Legion guarding the prisoners. But before he could get the words out, Smitty and Paco’s first N-LOS missile came through the sandbagged door of the bunker and detonated against the back wall. The bunker, the colonel, the brigade exec, three sleepy corporals, the field telephone, and the footlocker containing next week’s payroll all ceased to exist within a few milliseconds.

  June 24, 1999, 0231 Hours

  Paco’s steady hand guided the second N-LOS missile to a direct hit on a battalion ammo bunker. The secondary explosion was heard in Kampala, twenty-two miles away. “He shoots, he scores!” said Smitty gleefully.

  Nicole and all the other hostages woke up when the ammunition bunker exploded 300 yards away.

  Though their 150 Sudanese guards had grown up in a traditional warrior society, where killing was part of being a man, and had been brutalized by years of guerrilla warfare in the southern Sudan, where atrocities against civilians had become a routine part of a day’s work, they were not evil men. Without orders, they felt uneasy about killing the infidel white doctors. Many of them had an uncle, a cousin, a son, or a grandfather whose life had been saved by people like these. Still, they knew they would probably be ordered to kill the prisoners eventually. If so, it was Allah’s will. But without orders, they hesitated. The delay would be fatal for them.

  That short hesitation was all the French paras and commandos needed. The heavy weapons of the Eagle Troop had cleared a path for them right up to the old terminal. Their thin-skinned armored cars and personnel carriers converged on the building at high speed from several directions, in a shower of smoke canisters to confuse the defenders and prevent them from getting clear shots. Every man had the new-generation thermal viewer goggles, to see through the smoke and darkness. The hostage-rescue team had brought bullhorns, and over the din of battle they told th
e hostages to stay down and not move, in French, English, and Arabic. With automatic weapons at point-blank range, it was over quickly. Only a few of the hostages were grazed by stray rounds. No prisoners were taken, and the paras methodically inspected and videotaped with a small camcorder every Sudanese body, putting one round through the head of any that still lived. This done, they turned their attention back to the hostages.

  June 24, 1999, 0245 Hours

  The Ugandan infantry brigade in the town of Entebbe included a mixed rabble of urban street gangs, guerrilla fighters from the northern tribes, and fanatical Libyan and Sudanese “volunteers.” As stragglers from the rout at the airport staggered into his forward outposts, the colonel in charge organized a hasty counterattack to retake the terminal complex. His battery of 122mm field guns knocked out two HMMWVs and an AGS, before the guns were silenced by counter-battery fire from American 120mm mortars and 2.75”/70mm rockets fired by an OH-58D flying top cover over the evacuation. The infantry, charging on foot across open ground, were mown down by interlocking fields of fire from the .50-caliber machine guns of the HMMWVs.

  June 24, 1999, 0300 Hours

  Now came the hard part. The extraction. Most of the 2nd Cavalry HMMWVs could each carry four extra passengers. The handful of VAB 6x6 armored carriers the French had brought could carry about twelve. Calmly, efficiently, and with a gentleness that was surprising in such a tough-looking warrior, Lieutenant Colonel O’Connor supervised the evacuation of the distraught hostages, making sure each vehicle was properly loaded and that they did not bunch up to create a traffic jam in the rubble-strewn parking lot. As soon as the last enemy snipers had been eliminated from the airport and its surrounding area, he called in his fifteen UH-60L Blackhawk helicopters, which had been waiting back at the landing zone. They evacuated the wounded first, then started shuttling a dozen freed hostages each on the short hop back to the transports.

  June 24, 1999, 0330 Hours

  A sixteen-man detachment of the 2nd Cav’s medical troop had rigged a tiny but well-equipped field hospital in the cavernous interior of one C-17. The freed hostages were haggard, malnourished, and dazed by their sudden rescue, but they were also dedicated professionals. As soon as they arrived, many of the doctors and nurses begged to be allowed to scrub up and help attend to the wounded. The caregivers soon outnumbered the casualties.

  Flying high above Lake Victoria, two EH-60 “Quick Fix” Electronic Warfare helicopters from the 4th Air Cavalry Squadron Headquarters and Heaquarters Troop could detect and monitor most of the radio traffic in Uganda that night. The transmitter of Radio Entebbe had been knocked out by a single N-LOS missile, but the enemy brigade in the town still had at least three shortwave sets that had not yet attempted to broadcast a warning to Amin’s forces in Kampala. When they tried, they would be located within seconds, jammed immediately, and taken out by precise missile fire soon after. A Swahili instructor hastily assigned from the U.S. Army Language School in Monterey, California, sat at one of the consoles in the crowded cabin, impersonating the disc jockey of Radio Entebbe’s late-night program of East African popular music. No one listening would think that anything was amiss in Entebbe. In fact, he mused to himself, his quick run over to the Tower Records in town for a selection of CDs before he had boarded the transport meant that he had the best music collection in this part of Africa. He hoped the locals would appreciate it.

  June 24, 1999, 0400 Hours

  The pullout had been planned as carefully as the breakin. As soon as the hostages were rescued, the French would race back to the landing zone, emplane, and depart for Djibouti. The light cavalry troops would form a rear guard, falling back from one low ridge to another, while the 4th Air Cavalry Squadron’s helicopters covered the withdrawal. Everyone and everything had to be out of Ugandan airspace before the sun rose over Lake Victoria. Damaged vehicles would be blown up in place; there was simply no time to recover them. But, like the Legionnaire code of old, everyone would go home.

  June 24, 1999, 0410 Hours

  When he was awakened by the unforgettable sound of MiG-29s exploding, Halim rolled off his cot, pulled on his coveralls, and ran outside to the helicopter. They had practiced this many times. The lazy Africans might be caught napping, but the Libyan volunteers of the Islamic Jihad Air Unit were determined not to die uselessly on the ground. His pilot, Omar, was already in the pilot seat, starting the engines. As the big five-bladed rotor spun up, Halim jumped into the gunner’s seat, strapped himself in, put on the night-vision goggles, and armed the cannon and missile launchers. The big Mi-24 pulled away from the blazing and exploding inferno of Jinja airfield, evaded the fire of the circling AC-130U gunships, and sped toward Entebbe. It would arrive too late.

  June 24, 1999, 0415 Hours

  Field Marshal and President for Life Al Hajj Idi Amin Dada was wakened by a trembling orderly. The old man had grown increasingly cranky in his seventies, and his six-foot-four-inch frame was still powerful enough to inflict serious injury on a careless underling. “Excellency, we have word that the French and Americans have attacked Entebbe!” the orderly shouted.

  “Bring the Mercedes around, and summon General Bashir, we must counterattack immediately!” he roared with the booming parade-ground assurance that had once made him the best regimental sergeant major in the King’s African Rifles.

  Within the hour, the Presidential Guard Brigade was rolling down the Kampala-Entebbe highway, with a battalion of Libyan T72-M tanks in the lead. General Bashir, the Sudanese chief of staff, who was the actual commander, rode an MTLB command track just behind the tanks. The armored presidential limousine, with an escort of spit-and-polish motorcycle riders, brought up the rear of the long column.

  June 24, 1999, 0445 Hours

  Colonel O‘Connor expected that the enemy would dispatch a relief column from Kampala before morning, despite the radio blackout and deception plan. He had positioned a platoon of Bufords in a good ambush location, with a few helicopters on call to support them with Hellfire missiles. The first salvo of missiles took out the lead tanks, to block the road, and also took out General Bashir’s command track, which deprived the brigade of effective leadership. Most of the tanks were knocked out before they could return fire, but the Ugandan veterans of the 2nd Mechanized Battalion, following a few hundred yards behind, piled out of their Chinese APCs and dispersed into the fields along the roadside to bring their hand-held anti-tank weapons to bear on the flank of the ambush force. They knocked out one Buford, but were routed by coaxial machine-gun fire and some .50-cal bursts from the OH-58Ds. Some soldiers kept running until they reached the Sudanese border. A few diehards were cut down as they made a last stand around the presidential limo. O’Connor landed on the road in his HQ Blackhawk, which had finished evacuating the medical team from Entebbe. He yanked open the door of the limo, and was startled for a moment as recognition took hold in his mind. Then, the professionalism of almost two decades in the Army took hold as he grabbed Amin and dragged him out of the car. Almost as if he did this every day of his life, he said, “You are under arrest in the name of the United Nations for crimes against humanity. You have the right to remain silent....”

  The victors and their captive boarded the Blackhawk for the long trip back to Dover, Delaware, and eventually, a jail cell in the new UN maximum-security prison complex outside Geneva.

  June 24, 1999, 0500 Hours

  General du Brigade Jean-Jacques Beaufre personally supervised the loading of the transports that would carry the rescued medical team to the safety of a French air base in Djibouti. He wanted to make sure that his guests were comfortable; and though his rough paras were generally rude to civilians, tonight he would not tolerate that. Then he noticed one of the doctors who was changing the dressing on the head wound of one of the American tankers. The years had etched a few lines in her face and there were strands of gray in her dark hair, but the eyes were unforgettable. She looked up and noticed his insignia of rank. “Jean-Jacques, I see you did well
in military school,” Nicole said as she smiled.

  Tommorrow’s Troopers

  Why cavalry? In every age the answer has been and will be the same: Commanders need mobile warriors who can scout, screen, engage, and pursue their foes. Whether they ride horses, motor vehicles, flying machines, or devices we cannot yet imagine, as long as there is conflict, there will be a need for cavalry.

  Who are the cavalry? Men and women who are drawn to the profession of arms, and who seek out membership in a small, proud, cohesive community of soldiers. The U.S. Army’s cavalry is a community that draws strength from tradition, but seems to welcome the best people, innovative ideas, and new technologies from every other combat branch—Infantry, Armor, Aviation, or Artillery. Everyone who has ever seen a classic John Ford Western movie knows who the cavalry are. They are the ones who hold the line on the lawless frontier. They are the soldiers who come to the rescue. Even though some threats have disappeared in the last few years, we still live in a world where there is no shortage of lawless frontiers and people to be rescued.

  Professional soldiers and self-appointed experts are always debating what kind of Army we should build. They’re always asking questions like: What is the right mix of “light” forces for rapid deployment to low- intensity conflict vs. “heavy” forces like General Franks’ VII Corps, which smashed Saddam’s Republican Guard? Such questions have been debated for years, and they will continue to preoccupy those who search for (or dream of finding) solutions to the problems of force structure and balance.