Sword Point (32 page)

Hormuz, seize Bandar Abbas and complete their mission. If, however, anything went wrong, there was little hope for success. All the divisions in the 28th Combined Arms Army were wearing thin. Not only were supplies problem, but equipment and personnel were also at a critical level.

The 17th Combined Arms Army and the 9th Tank Army, whose assigned mission was to push through the 28th when the 28th could no longer advance, were no longer following. Instead, their divisions were diverted to other tasks.

The puppet government that had been set up to run the Soviet Republic of

Azerbaijan was unable to control the Turkic tribes and required two full divisions to maintain order in Tabriz and other towns. Another division was tied down in Tehran chasing the shadows of Iranian rebels.

The majority of the 17th
CAA
was stretched between Tehran and Kerman, fighting remnants of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard and pro-U.S. Iranian groups being supplied by air. In short, there was no one except the well-worn 28th
CAA
left to finish the mission.

For better than an hour Sulvina and his commander discussed the situation and their options. In the end, at Sulvina’s urging, the commander gave him permission to draft and transmit a message to the Front Commander recommending that the 28th
CAA
be authorized to employ chemical weapons.

Sulvina, upon leaving his commander returned to his small work area, where he pulled a prepared message from his field desk. He called the duty officer over, handed him the original copy of the message and instructed him to have it transmitted to

Front Headquarters immediately. He then called in the assistant operations officer, the intelligence officer, the chemical officer and the artillery officer. He told them to prepare a list of targets that were vulnerable to chemical attack and present it to him for his review and approval by 0600 hours that morning.

After checking the situation reports and the most current intelligence one more time, Sulvina was satisfied that all was in order. With nothing more to do, he left word to wake him in four hours and then went to get some sleep. The next forty-eight hours were going to be critical and hard. The first thing in the morning he would begin to plan the next battle, the one that would take the 28th
CAA
to the Persian Gulf.

Fifteen Kilometers North of ia bad 0425 Hours, 8 July (0055 Hours, 8

July,
GMT
)

The reduction in the level of activity hadn’t been noticeable at first.

In fact, it wasn’t until shortly before 0400 hours that Capell realized that the Soviets were withdrawing and that the number of reports had been declining for the past hour. Even then he didn’t attach any special meaning to that fact. His mind, like everyone else’s, was running at half speed from stress, fatigue and lack of sleep. The reduction in action was greeted with relief and not questioned or considered suspect. Only the assistant intelligence officer at brigade, Lieutenant Matthews, saw the pattern.

Together with the report from airborne surveillance radars, she made the correct assessment. The patrols and the probing were over. The Soviets were about to attack.

The warning to prepare for a major Soviet attack going down to the battalions coincided with reports coming up from the scouts of the 2nd

Brigade that the movement of large numbers of tracked vehicles could be heard. In the sector of the 3rd of the 4th Armor, tank crewmen and infantry squads scrambled onto their vehicles. Without waiting for or needing permission to move, company commanders rolled their platoons from their hiding positions into fighting positions. Members of the command group, woken with great difficulty, listened intently while they dressed to an update of the current situation given by the intelligence and operations officers who had been on duty during the night. Outside, their armored vehicles were being cranked up.

Within minutes the entire battalion was in motion, winding itself up for the impending battle.

The Soviet artillery bombardment came just before the first rays of light began to herald the new dawn. For most men in the armored battalion the artillery barrage was nothing more than a curiosity.

Soviet intelligence and artillery officers, confused by the battalion’s dispersed nature, and the seemingly random digging by engineers, erred in their targeting. Few units were hit as the Soviet artillery fell on positions where vehicles used to be. While not all companies and platoons were equally lucky, the effect of the bombardment was, on the whole, negligible. Even the Soviet smoke rounds were of little use, as the gunners in Capell’s Bradleys and

M-Is switched their thermal sights on and continued to scan for signs of the enemy’s advance.

In the gray morning twilight, the scout section of the battalion’s western flank caught the first glimpse of the advancing Soviet columns at a range of eight kilometers. A quick spot report was followed by a call for artillery fire. Within minutes, U.S. artillery rounds were thundering north. The grim task of killing was well under way.

Dixon’s Bradley pulled up into its position as the scouts completed sending in their first series of corrections to the artillery. By that time the

Soviet columns were within five kilometers and beginning to deploy into platoon columns. Initial reports showed that they were headed for the western flank of the battalion’s sector, where Dixon was situated.

That suited him fine. The battalion, with two tank and two mechanized companies, had deployed in positions that looked like a huge horseshoe on the map. One tank pure company, Alpha Company, was deployed across the valley floor behind an antitank ditch and a mine field. A pure-mech company, Charlie Company, was deployed on the high ground to one flank, with a tank-heavy company team, Team Bravo, on the other.

The fourth company team, Team Delta, had given one tank platoon to the scouts. The other two platoons, both mech, were in positions behind the tank company in the center, which allowed them to fire their
TOW

missiles over the tanks.

If the Soviets continued to drive up along the western flank through the wadis there, they would have to contend with Charlie Company’s dismounted infantry and face closein combat with the Bradleys’ 25mm chain gun. If they went in the center, everyone would be able to fire on them. If the Soviets skirted the east, the tanks of both Team Bravo and Alpha Company would be able to deal with them, while Charlie Company’s Bradleys on the west flank would have good
TOW
shots from across the valley.

Once the Soviets were committed, the battalion commander would have the artillery fire two scatter able mine fields, one in front of and one on top of the Soviets’ column. While there was no doubt that the Soviets knew where the antitank ditch and mine field were, there was no way they could predict where and when the scatter able mines would go. If they were fired in conjunction with normal indirect artillery and mortar fire, direct fire from the tanks and the Bradleys and, if available, close air support from

A-10s, the cumulative effect would be devastating.

Relentlessly the Soviets came on. Capell’s scouts maintained a steady flow of reports on the Soviets’ progress and actions. By the time the Soviet lead battalion deployed into lines with one company forward and others following the first, it had lost over ten vehicles to artillery and was having difficulty maintaining alignment. Capell’s scout platoon and the tank platoon with them withdrew to either side of the advancing battalion without firing. Their primary mission, screening and reporting while the rest of the battalion deployed, had been accomplished. They would remain on the flanks and continue to report as Soviet follow-on battalions came into the fight.

Only when absolutely necessary would the scouts engage.

This bothered Capell. From the eastern flank he watched the Soviets moving south. His Bradley was hidden with only the turret exposed aboveground. His gunner, with the
TOW
launcher up and locked, was slowly tracking one of the

Soviet tanks. It was a T-80 traveling by itself behind the first line of tanks and BRT-60 armored personnel carriers. It had to be the tank-company commander. For the next few seconds Capell debated whether he should ignore the order not to engage. It won’t make a difference, he told himself. Who the hell’s going to know?

A report from one of his section leaders broke his train of thought.

The second-echelon battalion was in sight, five kilometers behind the trail element of the first Soviet battalion. The report broke Capell’s fixation on the T-80 they had been tracking and forced him to go back to his assigned tasks: observe and report.

The Soviets continued forward. Their orientation remained focused on the far-western side of the battalion sector. They were obviously headed there in an effort to skirt the antitank ditch and mine field.

Dixon could now see the Soviet companies, all fully deployed and following one behind the other, rushing toward his position. The Soviet tanks had cut on their smoke generators, creating clouds of white smoke that obscured everything behind them to the naked eye.

Thermal sights, however, cut through the diesel smoke. In another minute the lead elements would begin to encounter the broken-ground and wadi system where the dismounted infantry and the Bradleys waited. Artillery continued to fall about the Bradleys in spurts, taking its toll.

With nothing to do but wait until contact was made, Dixon began to notice small, obscure details. One of the T-80s in the lead was holding back and swerving from side to side. The tank commander, no doubt, was nervous and did not relish being with the lead element. For 232 the first time, Dixon realized how nervous he was.

He could sympathize with that tank commander. How much easier it was to be sitting in the defense than running out across the open, knowing that everyone with an antitank missile was tracking you. Dixon looked down into his own turret. His gunner was calmly tracking a Soviet tank. Their
TOW
launcher was up and the ready-to-fire indicator was illuminated. All the gunner needed was one word.

The commander of Charlie Company gave that word as the lead Soviet tanks tripped across an imaginary line on the ground and entered Charlie

Company’s kill zone. Dixon watched as four Bradleys let fly their
TOW

missiles. The nervous T-80 was quickly alerted to the oncoming danger.

He fired smoke grenades and stopped moving, in an effort to screen himself.

The
TOW
that was targeted for him found its mark, however. The
TOW

gunner merely kept his thermal sight on the center mass where the T-80

had been and let the missile fly into the screen of smoke. A ball of flame followed by a rush of black smoke pushed the white smoke aside.

The T-80 was dead.

Not all the T-80s died from their first hits. Reactive armor, explosives in small metal boxes arrayed in front of the turrets of the T-80s, detonated with thunderous explosions and in some cases prevented the TOWS’ warheads from penetrating the tanks’ main armor. Dixon was amazed that crews were able to survive such a cataclysmic explosion.

Some did, rolling on, trailing a thin veil of smoke from smoldering scraps and hot steel. These successes were normally short-lived, however, as other TOWs marked the same tank and bored through. In less than a minute, all four lead tanks were burning or stopped: With the tanks gone, the Soviet BTRs came rolling out from under the smokescreen generated by the tanks. Their alignment was gone as they drove past burning tanks or zigzagged in an effort to confuse the Bradleys’
TOW
antitank guided missiles. But the Bradley gunners were not confused by the evasive maneuvers, and the BTRs, not protected by reactive armor, were easy prey: most of the
TOW
missiles found their mark and took their toll.

Despite the demise of the lead company, the next Soviet motorized rifle company rolled forward, past the foundering lead company. The second company had only two tanks in the lead and five BTRs. Artillery had already made its inroads. The folly of the Soviet deployment in column manifested itself as the second and third companies were, in their turn, smashed by

Charlie Company. Rather than hit in mass, the Soviets had presented themselves a little at a time. It reminded Dixon of watching a butcher feed meat into a grinder. Though each motorized rifle company drew closer to

Charlie Company in its turn and was finally able to return fire, this gained it nothing but a quicker death as the 25mm chain guns came into play.

For a moment, there was a pause. The firing died down but did not completely stop. A few of the BTRs had made it into the wadis and their infantry had dismounted. A fight, pitting Soviet infantrymen supported by their
BTR
armored personnel carriers against Charlie Company’s infantrymen and their Bradleys, now developed in the broken ground and wadis along the western flank of the American battalion’s sector. Charlie Company had more than enough people and firepower to decide the issue if the Soviets were not reinforced. Dixon listened to the reports from the scouts as the second

Soviet motorized rifle battalion entered the sector of the 3rd of the 4th

Armor.

The Soviet second-echelon battalion apparently did not know that the first battalion had gained a foothold in the wadis. Instead of rushing forward and adding its weight to that fight, it rolled down along the eastern flank. The only reasonable explanation was that the regimental commander, surprised at the strength encountered in the west, had decided to try the left, hoping to find it lightly defended. Since the eastern side of the 3rd of the 4th Armor’s sector was more open, the Soviets were able to deploy two companies forward, with the second company close enough to the first to support it by fire. The same openness also allowed the 3rd of the 4th to 235 mass the firepower of the remaining company and two teams, with telling effect. Once the Soviets were committed,