The defending platoon was pissing away a one-hundred- to two-hundred-meter advantage.
With blank ammunition quietly supplied to the 17th Airborne Division from Israel, the defending platoon opened fire on the 2nd Platoon. The initial reaction of the attackers was one of surprise and sudden paralysis.
Dumbstruck, the men simply stood where they were or fired from the hip or the shoulder. This was too much for Evans. Jumping up, he yelled for a cease-fire above the din of small-arms fire. The men, sensing their commander's anger, stopped firing almost instantaneously. For a moment there was a hushed stillness as all held their positions and waited for further orders.
"Platoon leaders, form on me, now!"
In the darkness, two second lieutenants scrambled to find the source of the enraged voice, daring not to ask where it came from for fear of adding to its anger. They knew that their commander was, to say the least, less than pleased. To Lieutenant Cerro, it was like going to his father after he had been caught doing something wrong. Cerro could feel his stomach muscles tightening up. He knew that Captain Evans couldn't whip him as his dad had done. But that didn't lessen the effect of the brutal tongue-lashing he was about to endure.
His performance and that of his platoon since they had landed in Egypt had been less than satisfactory. It was almost as if during the flight to Egypt the men had forgotten everything they had ever been taught.
The men were apprehensive about going into combat. In a platoon of thirty-eight men there was not a single combat veteran. There was no one to whom they could turn for guidance or reassurance. While the first sergeant had been in Vietnam, and both the CO and the first sergeant had been in Grenada, they were aloof from the men in the 2nd Platoon, not by intention but by necessity. The platoon therefore found itself facing the dark mysteries of combat for the first time with no idea of what it was really going to be like.
Rationalizing why the platoon was doing poorly was one thing. Doing something about it was another. One thing was for sure. If they didn't do any better in their first battle than they had just done on the aborted attack on the knoll, there would be no second battle for the 2nd Platoon.
Captain Evans belabored that point as he drove home each error they had committed that night. While his men formed up and prepared for the fifteen-kilometer foot march back to their laager area, Lieutenant Cerro racked his tired brain for a method of getting his men over their fear of the unknown and ready for combat. He decided that the solution would come to him as soon as he had mastered his own fears.
Despite the fact that Tabriz had been "officially secured" on 31 May, there was still sporadic gunfire throughout the city as snipers took pot shots at small groups of Soviet soldiers, even in daylight. At night the Soviets didn't move unless they were in an armored vehicle.
The curfew, which ran from one hour before sunset to one hour after sunrise, simply stated that anyone seen on the streets at night would be shot. Nervous soldiers enforced this rule with a vengeance, often with deadly results for their comrades, since they fired at anything that moved, including friendly patrols.
As Colonel Pyotr Sulvina entered the headquarters of the 28th Combined Arms Army, he studied the two guards at the entrance. They were young men, neither one older than nineteen. They crouched behind their sandbag emplacement until Sulvina was too close to ignore. Both popped up and saluted, returning to their crouched position behind the sandbags as soon as Sulvina returned their salute. Their uniforms were dirty. Their faces were haggard from a combination of fear, anxiety and lack of sleep. With dark circles around their eyes and two days of stubbly beard on their chins, they looked more like the defeated than the victor.
Inside, posters that called for sacrifices in the name of Allah still hung on the walls. Sulvina couldn't read all the messages, but found it amusing that posters calling for death to the godless Americans were almost as numerous as those aimed against the Iraqis.
None mentioned the Soviet Union. Fools, Sulvina thought. They feared the snake that was never there and didn't see the bear.
His thoughts were interrupted by a warm greeting from the army's chief of staff, Colonel Ivan Ovcharov. There were a few moments of small talk, the chief of staff asking how the weather was in Moscow and Baku as he walked Sulvina to his office, where they could get down to business. Once the door was closed, Ovcharov's jovial face turned cold. "Well, what is the verdict?" he asked.
Sulvina removed his hat and placed it and his briefcase on a chair. He then walked over to the window, considering his answer.
"It is not a good idea to stand before an open window like that, Comrade.
The army commander has already lost an aide in this building doing the same thing."
Sulvina looked at the chief of staff with raised eyebrows as he slowly backed away. "Are they still that active?"
The chief of staff looked at him quizzically. "Still? After last night, there is every indication that it is getting worse. We have already commenced reprisals. It will be several days, however, before that has any effect."
Reprisals, Sulvina thought. What a useful term for making the practice of shooting civilians in retaliation for the shooting of Soviet soldiers seem justifiable. Perhaps it is necessary. War has its own rules.
"So, are you going to tell me the results of your trip to see our intrepid General Staff officers at STAVKA and Front Headquarters, or must I guess?"
"I am afraid, Colonel, you already know the results. All plans remain the same, and the forces committed will not be reinforced. Our losses do not yet justify that. Nor do we have authorization for the use of chemical weapons yet."
The chief of staff considered for a moment. "Yes, I expected no less.
And STAVKA's appraisal is correct, we have not been handled too roughly. We have succeeded everywhere we have gone. But it is taking us too long.
Do you realize that it has become a common practice now to stop at every roadblock and conduct a deliberate attack against it with artillery and tanks? Do you know why? It is because we no longer have any recon units able, or willing, to go forward without an artillery preparation being fired on the high ground overlooking the roadblock.
It is saving us men but consuming tremendous amounts of ammunition and, more important, time. We no sooner clear one roadblock than a few kilometers down the road there is another. Even when we place airborne or air assault forces behind the Iranians, they still build their roadblocks-"
The chief was angry and frustrated. Sulvina was one of the few officers in the army he could trust, which was why he had been selected to go to Front Headquarters to report on the army's situation and why the chief could talk freely to him. One had to be careful what one said. No doubt one or more of the 28th Combined Arms Army's staff officers was KGB, which was probably how STAVKA had found out about the army's slow progress.
"What about ammunition? We are now using three times the amount of ammunition that had been projected. Are we going to get any relief in that area?"