In the gathering light, Ilvanich saw two BMD infantry fighting vehicles charge from the direction of the runway toward the head of the Iranian penetration. With guns blazing, the BMDs cut down the lead rank. The Iranians who were on either side of the line of fire moved away from the BMDs and sought cover. Without firing, they allowed the two BMDs to pass.
Suddenly Ilvanich realized what the Iranians were up to. They were going to allow the BMDs to go by, then hit them in the rear. Before he could act, the Iranians began to close on the BMDs from behind. In groups of twos and threes they rushed forward, some with mines, others with explosive charges.
Those with the mines were going to shove them under the tracks of the advancing BMDs to immobilize them. Once the vehicles were stopped, the Iranians with the charges would be able to set their charges and blow the BMDs up. With the BMDs destroyed, there would be nothing immediately available to plug the gap. The Iranians with the mines had to be stopped.
Looking back to the front, Ilvanich could see no letup in the Iranians' attacks on his positions. They were still slowly gaining ground. If he switched a machine gun from the front to assist the BMDs, the horde he faced would surge forward and overwhelm his position. By the same token, if the Iranians destroyed the BMDs, eventually they would surround the platoon's position and wipe it out. Without another thought, Ilvanich ordered the machine gun to switch positions to face the rear and engage the Iranians attacking the BMDs. Four riflemen were ordered to cover the machine gun's former zone to the front.
The machine gun was immediately effective. The fire from the rear caused some of the Iranians approaching the BMDs to stop and go to ground. In addition, the crews of the BMDs, alerted by ricocheting rounds from
Ilvanich's machine gun that hit their vehicles, realized they were in trouble and began to turn on their Iranian attackers. For the BMD farthest from llvanich's position, this realization came too late. With a thunderous explosion, it was flipped up and over onto its top as it ran over a mine. The remaining BMD continued to fight for its life.
A scream from the squad sergeant to Ilvanich was cut short by a gurgling sound. Ilvanich turned back toward his platoon's front to see the squad sergeant sink to the bottom of the trench, clutching his bloody face in his hands. A dozen Iranians stood at the lip of the trench, ready to jump in.
Ilvanich ordered the machine gun back to the front. The Iranians were in the trench, however, before it could be brought to bear.
In a blur of actions, the fight degenerated into a hand to-hand brawl.
Ilvanich shoved his pistol into the face of the nearest Iranian and fired twice. Without pausing, he turned on a second Iranian just as the Iranian ran a bayonet into the stomach of one of Ilvanich's men.
Two rounds finished the Iranian and emptied Ilvanich's pistol. Not taking the time to reload, Ilvanich threw down the pistol and grabbed an AK assault rifle. In a single upward swing, he fired a burst into a group of three Iranians rushing at him and managed to kill two and wound the third.
Now only he and two other Russians were still standing. All the Iranians who had entered the trench were down, mixed in with his own dead and wounded. Ilvanich looked over the top of the trench, only to see another wave of Iranians approaching. "Get the machine gun!" The three Russians searched but could not find the machine gun, now hidden somewhere on the floor of the trench under bodies.
The Iranians were within twenty meters of the trench. There was no time to find the machine gun. Ilvanich yelled to his remaining men, "Forget the machine gun! Shoot the bastards with your rifles!" He turned to get to the front wall, but discovered that his legs were wedged in the tangle of bodies cluttering the trench floor. Unable to move, Ilvanich realized he was going to die.
At that instant there came the sharp crack of a BMD's cannon and the chatter of a machine gun from the rear. Ilvanich looked in the direction of the noise and saw the surviving BMD moving up to his position, firing as it came. He watched the last of the Iranians stop, waver, then withdraw.
As the sun began to crest the horizon, Ilvanich freed his legs and staggered over to the side of the trench. Panting, he leaned against the dirt wall for support and surveyed the scene before him. There was no distinguishing the body of friend or foe. In the confined trench before him were twenty bodies, twisted and interwoven into a grotesque quilt work of death. They had held. But it had cost them.
Junior Lieutenant Ilvanich bent over and began to vomit.
The rail loading of the brigade's equipment at Ford Hood and the offloading in Beaumont were going surprisingly well. Annual trips to the National
Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, ensured that there were always an adequate number of officers and soldiers in the units who had the skills and experience required for the tasks of planning, organizing and carrying out the movement of the unit by rail.
The 2nd Brigade, 25th Armored Division, had been tagged as the first unit to move by virtue of the fact that it had been in the final stages of preparation for movement to the National Training Center and was to have begun the actual move as soon as the three-day weekend was over.
The Soviet invasion of Iran had changed the goal. Rather than going to California to face a U.S. Army unit trained and organized as a Soviet motorized rifle regiment, the 2nd Brigade was en route to meet the real thing.
While the XO of 3rd Battalion, 4th Armor, remained at Fort Hood to handle last-minute details at that end, Major Dixon moved to Beaumont to orchestrate the transfer of the unit's equipment from rail to naval trans ports and tend to the billeting and messing of the men moving the equipment. The battalion commander had to stay loose, ready to go where he was required the most.
Much of his time was consumed by meetings, planning sessions and briefings. At first he would religiously rush back to his staff and provide them with all the information that he had just been given. He stopped this practice, however, when it became apparent that plans and information provided by the division, which changed at every meeting, were only causing confusion within the battalion staff. He therefore decided to wait until a final plan was developed before issuing any type of order. Until then, only that information that was required to prepare and deploy the force was provided.
Upon arrival at Beaumont, it became readily apparent that neither the port nor the Navy was ready to receive the 3rd of the 4th. If there was a plan for loading the lead elements from the 25th Armored Division onto the transports, it wasn't evident on the dock next to the S.S. Cape Fear.
The Cape Fear was part of the Ready Reserve Fleet. Civilian owned and operated, the Cape Fear, like other ships in the RRF, conducted normal commercial operations until activated for use as a military transport during war or emergencies. At the time of activation, ships of the RRF were required to report within a specified number of days, anywhere from five to fifteen, to designated ports, where they fell under the control of the Military Sealift Command. While the Navy routinely conducted readiness tests to determine whether ships could respond. The size and frequencies of the tests had always been limited. The speed with which the current crisis developed, and the size of the force requiring movement and the force designated for deployment, were placing on the transport system a demand that had been discussed but never practiced.
As a result, there was a three-way debate on how to run operations.
The Army, which owned the equipment being moved, had its ideas on how, when and what to load. There was the desire to keep unit integrity and place a balanced mix of equipment on all ships in the event that the Soviets intercepted the convoy and attacked it. It would do no good to arrive in the Persian Gulf with all the trucks of the division if the transports with the tanks on it sank.