system. With the sun to his back and their field of fire clear, he keyed the platoon radio net and yelled, 'Fire!'
The tracked vehicles charging from the east began to fire. In bewilderment and horror the Soviets at the SA-8 battery and Sulvina saw half a dozen fuel trucks explode. The crews of the BMPs must be insane-they were actually firing on their own trucks. Even when one of the officers from the SA-8 battery, using his sight, yelled that they were Bradleys, Sulvina still could not move. His commander shared his disbelief, turning to Sulvina and yelling, 'How can this be? Where did they come from?'
The truck drivers either panicked, stopping their trucks and bailing out, or turned away from the attacking Bradleys in an effort to escape.
There was no escape however, as the Bradleys raced forward and began to fire up the fuel trucks with their machine guns as well as the 25mm.
cannon. Capell turned the killing over to his gunner. Still standing upright in his open hatch, he scanned the area, keeping track of his platoon and searching for targets. Once the fuel trucks were disposed of, he intended to turn on the antiaircraft battery. Until then, he called for the battalion mortar platoon to fire on them.
The reality of the situation finally hit home when large caliber mortar rounds began to impact on the SA-8 battery. Crewmen, scurrying about in an effort to prepare their vehicles for movement, were cut down or ripped apart by the mortar shells. Sulvina turned away and raced for the command post. As he drew near, he yelled to several drivers to crank up the commander's and his armored vehicles. He ran into the command center, pushing back young staff officers who were trying to go out to see what was happening.
Once inside, he yelled, 'Ground attack. Grab critical items only and get to your vehicles. Rally at the 127th division's command post. Move.'
Not waiting for a response, he grabbed his map, a briefcase with orders and papers, and ran out to his waiting vehicle. The commander's BTR was already moving off to the west. Sulvina waited only a few seconds in his own BTR for several staff officers to pile in before he ordered his driver to follow the commander's carrier.
The movement of two BTRs and several trucks heading west caught Capell's attention. He watched for a moment, then realized that he was probably looking at a command post of some sort. What a chance. What a fabulous chance. But there was nothing he could do. His platoon had driven among the burning trucks in pursuit of the survivors, and the smoke and confusion now frustrated his efforts to regain control. He called desperately over the radio for all tracks to rally on him and ordered his driver to stop.
Once stationary, he told his gunner to fire TOWS at the escaping BTRs before they disappeared. Capell watched as the TOW launcher slowly rose into the firing position, then locked. He looked back, to see that the first BTR had already disappeared. He ordered the gunner to aim at the second BTR. The gunner did so, but called out that he did not have a ready-to-fire light. Capell dropped down and looked. The safety was still on. He yelled to the gunner to switch his safety off.
When the gunner complied, the ready-to-fire light came on. Capell yelled 'Fire!' and stuck his head up to watch the flight of the missile. The missile launched. It popped out of the tube and went several meters before its, rocket motor kicked in and it began to pursue the second BTR, now cresting the rise. Seconds, mere seconds, meant success or failure, life or death.
For Colonel Sulvina, acting chief of staff of the 28th Combined Arms Army, the issue was decided in his favor, this time.
An enemy that had come out of nowhere was suddenly everywhere. Wild reports from combat support and service unit personnel flooded a communications net that was rapidly collapsing as relay sites were overrun or moved. Rear-area personnel, unused to the proper reporting procedures and to being exposed to danger, added to the confusion rather than clarifying the situation. Some support-unit commanders requested permission to move. Others simply moved without informing anyone and clogged the limited road network. Panic became the order of the day.
Once at the headquarters of the 127th Motorized Rifle Division, the commander of the 28th Combined Arms Army ordered the commander of that division to move his entire unit north. They were to find, pin and encircle the enemy forces now rampaging throughout the army's rear. The division commander said nothing at first. In his bewilderment, he turned to his staff, but got only looks of amazement or blank stares in return. The army commander, still hyper from his brush with death and faced with the prospect of losing his army to an unknown enemy, became enraged when his order was not immediately acted on. He jumped in front of the division commander and yelled, 'Did you not hear me? I ordered you to attack. I expect you to attack-now!'
The division commander began to sweat. The condition of his commander and the serious situation overwhelmed him. He fumbled for words.
'Comrade General, we, we.. ' The word 'cannot' came hard to him. One did not tell one's commander that one could not do something. There must be reasons for not doing things-unfavorable conditions, enemy activity, failure of a support element to be in place, and so on. Reasons.
For an awkward moment there was silence as the division commander faced his superior. Sulvina stepped in and broke the silence. 'Comrade General, the 127th Division cannot attack. They have no fuel.' The army commander turned to him. Sulvina continued, 'We diverted all they had to the 33rd Tank Division.' The army commander's expression turned from anger to shock as it began to dawn upon him that all was lost.
Seeing that his commander's mind was foundering under the weight of the disaster and grasping for a solution, Sulvina offered him the only practical one. 'We must order the 33rd Tank Division to disengage and move north against the enemy in our rear. The 67th Motorized Rifle Division must also withdraw and assume a defensive posture facing south.'
Automatically the army commander refused to break off the attack or withdraw the 67th MRD. He insisted that they must continue the attack or at least hold what they had. Patiently, Sulvina explained that even if the Americans were cleared from the rear areas in the next twenty-four hours, the army would expend in that effort whatever supplies it had left. A continuation of the offensive was out of the question. 'As we speak, Comrade General, the Americans are destroying our support elements and supply dumps. We cannot, I repeat, cannot hope to reach the Strait of Hormuz and be able to stay there in our present state. It is time to save the army.'
For a moment, there was silence. Then the army commander, a tired and defeated man, gave in. He ordered Sulvina to issue the necessary orders and seek permission from Front Headquarters to withdraw. As the army commander sat down, Sulvina looked about him at the spartan headquarters of the 127th MRD. To himself he mumbled, That, Comrade General, will be a feat.
The Soviet 68th Tank Regiment rumbled north at break neck speed. The poor condition of the trail that the tanks followed battered their already exhausted crews about. One of the gunners once compared the sensation of being inside a T-80 tank to that of being in a tin can being rolled down a rocky hillside. The driver, down low and covered with dust and dirt thrown up by the tank less than fifty meters to his front, drove mostly by instinct. The same dust that covered him hid the tank in front of him from view. The tank commander, perched higher above the ground, could see more, but also ate dust and dirt. In addition, while the driver sat and had the controls to hang on to, the tank commander had to grab whatever he could and do his best to sway the right way as the tank bucked and bumped down the road. When he erred in his judgment, his kidneys were bashed against the steel lip of the hatch opening.
Inside, the gunner was protected from dust being thrown in his face but from little else. The air he breathed hung heavy with dust that came down through the open hatch. It mingled with the smell of hot oil and grease. There was no air circulation. The sun, pounding down on the steel, pushed temperatures well beyond 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Every stitch of the gunner's black uniform was soaked with sweat. With nothing else to do, the gunner hung on to anything that was fixed to the turret wall and, like the commander, swayed with the motion of the tank.
Major Vorishnov missed his BTR. The T-80 tank was small, cramped and impossible to work from. When the order came down that the regiment was going to move north and execute a movement to contact, to find and destroy the American forces, confusion reigned. A short preparatory bombardment to kick off the attack south had already begun. Requests to confirm the orders or repeat them were met with shrill blasts from harried commanders or staff officers. Apparently something had gone terribly wrong. Neither Vorishnov's battalion commander nor he knew for sure, but their guess was that a large enemy force was in the army's rear. Vorishnov's effort to gain additional information or formulate any type of plan was frustrated by the speed of the move and the necessity of
