The idea of killing one's wounded appalled Duncan. Animals, we're dealing with animals, he thought.
As the Americans marched Ilvanich off, he looked at Lvov, now being treated by an American medic. He shook his head. Lenin was right, he told himself.
There is no God.
Chapter 21
Look at the infantryman's eyes and you can tell how much war he has seen.
The men began to stir and pick themselves up from the floor of the trench.
Already they could feel the rumbling of the ground caused by the advancing enemy tanks. Had their ears not been ringing as a result of a fifteen-minute artillery barrage, they would have heard the tanks as well. Even as he shook off the dirt and the dust, Captain Neboatov called repeatedly to his outposts for reports, but got only static in return. Sensing that any further attempt was futile, he let the hand mike drop. The first enemy tank was yet to crest the hill before them, but Neboatov knew what the outcome would be. As the senior surviving officer and the acting battalion commander, he had little more than a company's worth of men and BMP fighting vehicles to hold a front that required a battalion by doctrine.
Psychologically, neither he nor his men were ready for the onslaught.
For the first time since entering Iran, Neboatov's regiment was on the defense.
A war, Neboatov knew, is not won by defending. But defend they had to.
Stubborn resistance by the Americans, punctuated by numerous counterattacks, failure of the attack by Soviet second-echelon divisions and an inability to clear the American Air Force from the skies had crippled the 17th Combined Arms Army, robbing it of its offensive capability. With great reluctance, the commander of the 17th CAA had ordered the remnants of the army's first-echelon divisions to assume a defensive posture while a frantic effort was made to gather up enough forces to continue the offensive. Neboatov's unit was part of that defense.
Neboatov had deployed his "battalion," the remnant of the 1st Battalion of the 381st Motorized Rifle Regiment, on the reverse slope of a ridge.
By doing so, he reduced his fields of fire but prevented the enemy from hitting his positions directly. In addition, the enemy vehicles could be dealt with a few at a time as they crested the ridge. That was what Neboatov had planned and expected.
The appearance of British Challenger tanks, however, was unexpected.
Having trained themselves so long for a confrontation with Americans and expecting to see the familiar form of the M-1 tank pop over the ridge, Neboatov and his men were momentarily transfixed as the first tanks of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment crested the hill, oriented themselves on the scene that greeted them on the far slope and began to charge forward. As a result, it was the British, not 381st MRR, that fired first. The impact of a high-explosive round on the BMP to Neboatov's rear sent him sprawling back onto the floor of the trench. He lay there for a moment, stunned.
Collecting his thoughts, he listened to the changing noise of battle.
Tanks fired their main guns, and the chatter of machine guns and the pop of antitank guided missiles joined the cacophony. The earth about him shook.
Neboatov rolled over and looked up as a Challenger, racing for the Soviet rear, rolled over his trench. He was showered with chunks of dirt and dust torn from the lip of the trench. When the tank was gone, Neboatov, still on his hands and knees, spat the dirt from his mouth and wiped his eyes with one hand.
Hesitantly, he got up and peered over the front edge of the trench.
Enemy infantry had already dismounted, deployed, and were entering the trenches to his left. Smallarms fire and grenades could be heard close to where he was. Added to this was a noise that sounded like a wounded cat crying out in pain. Neboatov had read that Scottish troops always played their bagpipes when going into battle, but until that moment he had never believed anyone would do so on a twentieth-century battlefield. The strange, piercing music that cut through the other sounds seemed, to Neboatov, to be a death knell. The end was near.
In less than two minutes the battle had degenerated into hand-to-hand combat. Enemy tanks had bypassed him, destroying what was left of his BMPs.
Whatever chance he had had of stopping the enemy was gone. As he watched, no longer able to influence the battle, Neboatov's emotions swung from despair to rage. With nothing else to do, he picked up his rifle, kicked the two soldiers lying at his feet on the floor of the trench and ordered them to follow. It would be a small and short counterattack. But at least they would try. That was all they could do. Try.
From the brigade commander's vehicle, Major Jones watched the 7th Royal Tank Regiment and the battalion of Scottish infantry roll through the Soviet positions and continue north. Though he still wished he were with the lead elements of the regiment, at least he had the rare satisfaction of seeing that all his efforts had finally borne fruit.
Normally the staff officers, working well to the rear, in small groups under less than optimum conditions, never saw the end product of their work. They merely went from one task to the next, sometimes not fully understanding the full purpose of their labors.
Jones, using his role as a liaison officer to his advantage, made sure that he spent as much time with the 33rd Armored Regiment as was prudent. Today was one of those days when he had to be there. Nothing, nothing the corps staff or the Soviets could do, would have kept him away. History was being made that day, history that he was now part of. As he watched the battle and listened to its noise and to the reports coming in from the unit commanders, he thought of his father.
For the first time in his life he felt that he was finally his father's equal, that he had earned his way in the Army, the regiment and his family.
Lieutenant General Weir paced his office like a caged lion. Despite his best efforts, he could not contain his nervousness. Everything was going so well, it was unreal. The Soviet offensive, so long anticipated, had come and failed. The speed at which events were unfolding was far greater than anyone had expected or could have hoped for. The 25th Armored Division had absorbed the brunt of the Soviets' main effort, consisting of four Soviet divisions, while the 55th Mech Infantry Division had parried a supporting attack by one Soviet motorized rifle division. Though brutalized by two days of battle, the 25th Armored had held and given better than it had received. As a result of those efforts, the 16th Armored Division, reinforced by the 33rd Armored Brigade, and held back from the initial battles, had commenced the Allied counteroffensive. The 55th Infantry Division, suffering little during the defensive battles, had joined that offensive at dawn.
Initial reports from both units were encouraging. The Soviet security zone and main defensive belts had been breached. All depended now on the outcome of a series of tank battles, then under way, between the attacking Allied forces and the Soviet reserves. If the outcome was favorable, the Soviets would have nothing left in Kerman Province capable of stopping the Allies.
Weir's main problems were the timing of follow-on operations and logistics.