The vision periscopes for the drivers’ position in the Abrams are about the size of a mail slot. Hedenskog could see little outside his rolling carapace. You’re the first to make contact with the enemy, and chances are you’re going to be the first to die.” “As armored cavalry, we’re the first tanks going in. As Soviet-built Iraqi T-72 tanks opened fire at the onslaught of American armor, Hedenskog thought these might be his last moments. Herbert Raymond (“H.R.”) McMaster (now a lieutenant general at the Army Capabilities Integration Center in Fort Eustis, Va.), gave orders for the entire troop to follow. From the turret behind his reclined seat, troop Commander Capt. The day of the battle, Hedenskog held course and drove toward a formation of dug-in Iraqi tanks. The night before, he and his fellow tankers wrote their “last letters” home. His elite Republican Guard soldiers had years of experience in desert warfare against Iran.įor the green Americans like Hedenskog - who grew up in Meeker but enlisted in the army shortly after high school to escape the small-town scene - the odds seemed slim. Saddam fielded the fourth largest army of the time, armed with the latest in Soviet-manufactured weaponry. Most military analysts were predicting 20 percent casualties assaulting Saddam Hussein’s forces in and around Kuwait. to step off a landing craft onto the beach at D-Day. Hedenskog’s role was comparable to the first World War II G.I. He simply knew he was the first man in the first tank and therefore, the first target. We re-wrote the manual.”Īt the time, a young Hedenskog knew none of this. Army staff colleges, West Point Military Academy, armor training schools, and military academies around the world.Īs Hedenskog puts it, “there will probably never be another full tank battle like that again. Because of that, it is studied today at U.S. This means 73 Easting might have been the last great tank battle in history. Insurgencies, like those in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, have become the norm. Since Desert Storm, few nations have had the military capability to go head-to-head with the United States in modern conventional combat. The Battle of 73 Easting was a kill-or-be-killed slugfest of armor that historians consider the most intense battle of the first Gulf War. The battle was named for a simple line on a map that gave reference to the otherwise featureless desert of southern Iraq. It was the third day of the ground war, and the armored clash between Saddam Hussein’s Tawakalna Republican Guard Division and the 2nd ACR would be called the Battle of 73 Easting. It took him years to realize that he and his comrades had made history that day. Today, the 45-year-old has the strong frame of a former football player and the straightforward manner of someone who once had to armor himself for the worst. “Basically, wherever my tank was, that was the front line of the troop.” As the troop commander’s tank driver, Hedenskog knew their M1A1 Abrams - codenamed Eagle 66 – would lead the attack. Turrets were thrown into the air so high I lost sight of them.”ĭeep in the armored bow of his tank, several feet in front of the rest of the crew, Hedenskog was literally the tip of General Norman Schwarzkopf’s armored spear stabbing into Iraq. Full bodies were thrown from the turrets. “When we hit them, the ammo in the T-72s would explode. No books, no movies, nothing can prepare you for how tanks kill people,” said Hedenskog, now a Firestone resident. “We were told to prepare ourselves mentally with every conceivable scenario we could imagine, but it was beyond anything you can conceive.
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