'The final point, and perhaps the most important to us, is the fact that the Soviets have taken no other actions anywhere else in the world to increase their state of readiness. An intelligence summary released to 10th Corps earlier this morning from the DIA concluded that it appears to be the
Soviets' intent to keep the conflict localized to Iran. In fact, Soviet ambassadors in all NATO countries had scheduled appointments with the heads of those countries within an hour of the invasion to present the Soviets' position and explanation.'
At this point, the brigade commander interrupted. 'It's going to take one hell of a line of BS to turn this stunt into a lily-white crusade to save humanity.' For the first time there was laughter in the room.
Turning to Lieutenant Matthews, he asked, 'Amanda, do you have anything else?'
For a moment, Lieutenant Matthews was in shock. This was the first time since she had come to the brigade that the brigade commander had called her by her first name. She simply replied, 'No, sir.'
'That was a good briefing, thank you.'
As she went to take her seat, the XO gave her a nod of approval. She was part of the team.
The captain finished making the rounds of the positions occupied by his paratroopers. All was in order. Brought in by helicopter in the predawn darkness, the airborne company had had no problem overwhelming the Iranians who were supposed to man the positions now filled by his men. Four months of training, rehearsals and preparation for this single operation had paid off.
At the cost of one man wounded and a sprained ankle sustained during the debarkation from the helicopters, the airborne company had taken out forty-five Iranians. There were, of course, no prisoners. The plan did not allow for the holding of prisoners.
Standing on the edge of a cliff, the captain looked down at the unending column of tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks of the 28th Combined Arms Army passing below him. With the seizure of the Daradiz Pass, no defenses or major obstacles stood between the 28th CAA and Marand. The 28th would easily make its initial objective on schedule.
All was in order. Carefully, the captain limped back from the edge.
With nothing more to do for a while, he finally had time to find a nice comfortable spot where he could sit down and tend to his sprained ankle.
Chapter 2
It is well that war is so terrible or we should grow too fond of it.
Company A of the 2nd Battalion, 517th Airborne Regiment, was used to waiting. It wasn't unusual to get rigged for a jump, move out onto the ready line and then wind up waiting for hours as an unexpected weather front or increase in winds caused a delay. The men were no strangers to the Green Ramp either. At times it seemed to them that every time some head of state in an obscure country sneezed, the 17th Airborne Division was put on alert.
And, of course, there were always the readiness tests, called at all hours of the day to gauge the response of the unit on strip alert. The 1983 invasion of Grenada had done much to add meaning to the endless drills, alerts and training exercises. But that had been a small affair by any standards and, to a unit in the U.S. Army, a long time ago. There were few men in the 2nd of the 517th who wore a division patch on both sleeves.
Captain John Evans, the new commander of A Company, was one of them. At the time of the Grenada invasion he had been a second lieutenant who had just made his cherry jump, a first jump with one's unit. Not having had the experience of numerous alerts and readiness tests that never went anywhere and tended to dull rather than sharpen the reactions of some, Evans had tackled the alert for the Grenada operation with enthusiasm and vigor. His performance at Bragg and on the island had earned him a name as a hard charger and an energetic young officer. As a result, he had found it easy to stay in the 517th, moving from one position to another until he made it to the most coveted position for a company-grade officer in the division, command of an airborne infantry company.
Evans had come down off brigade staff to assume command of Company A less than two months ago. Thus far he had been unimpressed with the company.
While there was more than enough effort and enthusiasm on the part of the leadership and the soldiers, the unit lacked a sense of orientation and an ability to really understand what was important.
For example, when the unit assembled at the Green Ramp for pre combat inspections, Evans had found that the men were hopelessly overburdened with useless equipment and far too much ammunition. Had they jumped with everything that they had when they initially fell out, the company would never have made it off the drop zone. It reminded Evans of the Grenada operation, when people had taken all of their military equipment with them, only to discard it once they reached the island and found they didn't need it. Today, together with his first sergeant, a veteran of eighteen years in and out of airborne units, he had inspected every man's load and equipment. Anything that was considered to be of no value was discarded into a pile at the end of the company line. When they were finished, the pile was higher than Evans. The inspection had taken the entire morning, but the results were worth the effort. The men in the company looked right to him.
Now all that was left to do was wait. A briefing given by the battalion commander had been the least informative briefing Evans had ever attended.
They were told that the current alert was in response to the Soviet invasion of Iran. But that was about all. Several contingencies had been discussed, but none in detail and none that the battalion commander felt confident the unit would execute. Despite this lack of information, the brigade had been alerted for immediate deployment, with a warning order that they might have to make a combat jump somewhere. No doubt, Evans thought, the people in Washington were thrashing about trying to decide what the division was to do. Until a decision was made, the 17th Airborne Division was going to be held in a ready-to-go posture.
As he sat on the concrete, resting against his gear with sweat rolling down his face, Evans looked at his men baking in the hot May sun. You can bet, he told himself, the Soviets aren't sitting around in Iran with nothing to do.
It had been almost an hour since the last Iranian attack. Junior Lieutenant
Nikolai llvanich carefully raised his head over the edge of the parapet of the shallow trench his unit occupied. He took great care while he did this.
Less than two hours before, his company commander had been killed doing the same thing. The deputy company commander had said that it had been a lucky shot. But as far as Ilvanich was concerned, dead was dead, regardless of what luck had to do with it.
In the darkness he could see only shadows and faint images in the no-man's-land between his position and the ditch that the Iranians had come from. The barbed wire that had been strung up by Ilvanich's men in the center of the no-man's-land had been breached in several places during the four Iranian attacks so far. Those attacks had not been easy or cheap.
Iranian bodies lay draped across the wire where it was still attached to the posts. In the gaps where the Iranians had succeeded in breaching the wire, a confused pile of corpses and limbs had accumulated. Every now and then a soft moan would rise from the pile, indicating that some of the attackers had only been wounded.
Slowly Ilvanich slipped back down into the trench, coming to rest on the ground and facing toward the rear with his back against the trench wall. He looked at his watch. There were only twenty or so minutes to go before sunrise. He was sure that if they could hang on until the sun came up, they would be able to hold. Ilvanich and his men, what was left of them, were exhausted and drained. The stress and exertion of the last twelve hours had pushed them all to the brink of collapse.
They had parachuted into Tabriz two days before and seized the airport without much effort. The first twenty
