Unable to control himself, Dixon withdrew within himself. He did so in part in an effort to protect his subordinates from being the objects of an undeserved eruption of rage. He also realized that he needed to sort himself and his feelings out before he returned home. His last days in Iran were spent in almost total isolation as his attempts to muster enthusiasm about going home were met instead with fear and apprehension for the future. Finally, on the last night in country, the last piece fell into place.
In the quiet darkness of his tent, it all came back. The images of war, dormant and all but forgotten for six months, burst forth. In his mind's eye Dixon began to relive the final battle. The dream crept over him like diesel-and-artillery-generated smoke. For a moment there was nothing; he could see nothing in the white, manmade fog. He could hear, however, what he could not see. Above the idling engine of his own tank, Dixon could hear the squeaking of tracks on drive sprockets and the straining of engines as other armored vehicles moved about in close proximity. The noises they made ebbed and flowed like waves on a shore. Some of the sounds were familiar, like the whine of a Bradley fighting vehicle making a sharp turn. Others were not, since they came from Soviet armored vehicles.
The crack of a tank cannon firing, followed by the screeching of metal ripping metal not more than a hundred meters from where he sat, finally convinced Dixon he had to move. Sitting there waiting to be found was worse than blundering about in the smoke. Barking out a short order, he instructed the driver to move out. The M-1 tank lurched forward, rolling in the direction of what Dixon thought was the east. Since leaving his initial position and submerging himself and his tank in the manmade smoke, he had lost his orientation and what little command and control of the battalion he had had when he gave the order to counterattack.
As his tank rolled forward, an object moving out of the smoke to his flank caught Dixon's attention. Instinctively he turned — and froze in horror. Less than twenty meters away, the muzzle of a Soviet 125mm tank cannon emerged from the smoke. Transfixed, Dixon watched as its gaping maw slowly turned toward him. Panic, helplessness, and unbridled fear seized him. The Soviet tank cannon grew nearer and larger. He was going to die, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
He closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds, then opened them again. It was gone. The Soviet tank and its main gun were gone. So was the smoke and the tank he was riding. Instead of on a battlefield, he found himself in a dark tent, in bed, and alive. The nightmares had begun. And they were destined to continue, a constant reminder that he, a commander who had so freely committed his men to battle, was alive while many of those who had so willingly followed him were not. The question of whether he had been right or wrong never figured into the equation. All attempts to rationalize that what he had done had been right failed to bring even a modicum of relief to his troubled mind. Unable to come to grips with himself, Dixon couldn't make the transition from war to peace.
Dixon hadn't been the only casualty of the war in his family. His wife, Fay, with little warning and no preparation, had suddenly found herself facing the prospect of losing her husband. Plans built on the promise of twenty years in the Army followed by retirement on half-pay, a home in the country, and a second career were in jeopardy. For the first time in her life, Fay Dixon was helpless, unable to do anything to save their once precious vision of a happy future. At first Fay banded together with other wives of the Task Force's officers and NCOs in an effort to present at least the appearance of normalcy. That pretense, however, came to an abrupt halt shortly after the first battle.
Military sedans, each bearing an officer, a chaplain, and, whenever possible, the wife of the senior officer in the unit, began to make their rounds, delivering the dreaded message: "I regret to inform you that your husband was killed in action." In short order, the appearance of any type of military vehicle in the military housing area where Fay lived brought fear to the wives. Soon, the moving vans appeared, removing the shattered remains of broken families while the military sedans weaved in between them, carrying the dreaded message to more wives and families.
Dixon's reunion with his family was a cold event, almost totally bereft of emotion. For Dixon, the war continued. He had lost all confidence in himself and his abilities as a soldier and destroyed forever any illusions Fay had about the future.
So Dixon's almost aimless wanderings throughout the Pentagon that morning were symbolic of his passage through the last two years. Though eventually he would get someplace, it didn't matter to him. Until such time as he was able to pull himself together, to bury his ghosts and to breathe life into a marriage that was on a holding pattern, Dixon was content to pass the time doing what he was told, within the secure bosom of the same Army that once had been home to the same men who now peopled his nightmares.
Bob Mennzinger brought his car to a stop across the street from the duplex where his old-time friend Jerry Eller lived. The duplex was modest in appearance, a simple one-story brick home that looked, and was in fact, exactly like the others that surrounded it. It was, as Jerry once said, "a place to hang your hat between flights." Looking about, Mennzinger didn't see the Army sedan that was supposed to meet him. He mumbled a curse under his breath while he considered his next move. The first thing that came to mind was swinging around the block to his own quarters and changing out of his flight suit into a clean set of BDUs. While he was doing so, he could call the unit adjutant and find out where the notification team was. The thought that they might show up while he was gone was overridden by his desire to postpone what he had to do for as long as possible.
Though Jerry Eller no longer belonged to his unit, Mennzinger felt a sense of obligation to be with Betty in her time of need. Snatched up by the Department of the Army four months early and reassigned to a special general-support aviation detachment in the Middle East, Jerry Eller had seemed to drop off the face of the earth. As it was an unaccompanied tour, better known as a hardship tour, his wife and their six-month-old son had been given the option of remaining in quarters or moving back to his or her hometown. Betty Eller had decided to remain at Campbell, living in her own home rather than moving in with her mother and risk suffering round-the-clock advice on how to raise her son. As the unit commander and a personal friend of Jerry's, Mennzinger made sure that Betty felt like part of the unit family. He had told Jerry before he departed that he would do whatever was necessary to make the separation easy for Betty. But the news that Jerry had been killed in a helicopter crash in Egypt — how could he make that easy?
He was about to pull away when Betty, her baby riding on her hip, emerged from the side door of the house and headed for the car parked in the driveway. Mennzinger watched for a moment, pondering his next move. As Betty opened the car door, he threw his car door open and called out to get her attention. "Betty!"