This caused great confusion as unit commanders and supply officers sorted through the holding areas in an effort to put their units together. Beyond the initial marshaling areas, a staging area for each unit had been designated. It was the task of the battalion commanders and their staffs to find the vehicles they needed, gather up drivers needed to move them to staging areas, and assemble their units. There full crews married up the vehicles, and the process of forming platoons, then companies and finally battalions was begun. This assembling of the equipment and personnel and formation of units, however, did not complete the preparations. The combat units still had to draw supplies, fuel and ammunition, commodities that were on other ships and that had to be retrieved and issued by supply units, once they had assembled and formed.
Major Scott Dixon sat in the driver's seat of a hummer that Sergeant Nesbitt had procured earlier for him and watched the comings and goings along the dock areas. It was the scene at Beaumont, Texas, all over again, only in reverse. How much easier it would have been had the battalions been loaded as entire units. So simple. Then it occurred to him that he had not seen the S.S. Cape Fear, the ship that the equipment of the 3rd of the 4th had originally been loaded onto. For a second, his curiosity was piqued. He wondered whether the Cape Fear and its crew of obnoxious seamen had made it. The thought soon passed.
He had a hell of a headache and was not about to wander up and down the docks looking for a ship that might not even be there. Besides, whether it was there or not made no difference. The unit had already secured enough tanks and Bradleys to reach full TOE strength.
Perhaps, someday, if he survived this campaign, he would look it up in a history book and see whatever became of the Cape Fear.
Since his arrival in the country, Lieutenant General Weir had been greeted with one shock after another. He had come ahead to study the situation and prepare himself and his staff for when the 10th Corps headquarters was activated and assumed operational control of its subordinate units. His arrival, however, could not have come at a worse time. He was able to observe the collapse of the 13th Corps's defensive perimeter firsthand. A current situation update given to him before leaving Washington had not prepared him for what he found and in no way matched reality as viewed from Bandar Abbas.
Tactically, the situation was, at best, desperate. The corps had been deployed almost haphazardly as its subordinate units arrived in the country. The 52nd Infantry, Division (Mechanized) had only its two active-duty brigades. That division, last to arrive, was deployed in the west, sent there because the main Soviet threat had appeared to be coming from that direction. It was now obvious that that threat had been a grand deception to draw the 13th Corps's attention away from the true main effort. Unfortunately, the 52nd Division was now too heavily committed and was unable to break contact without endangering the entire defensive perimeter.
The 17th Airborne Division, first in, was deployed in the east. After it had secured the initial airhead and pushed it out as far as Tarom, the follow-on division, the 12th Division, had leapfrogged over it and assumed responsibility for the center. The 17th Airborne had reassembled, rested and then redeployed two brigades with the mission of linking up with the 6th Marine Division operating out of Chah Bahar, but could maintain only very tenuous contact because of the vast distances between the two units.
The third brigade of the 17th had been held in reserve by 13th Corps at Saadatabad, ready to respond to a penetration at any point or deal with Iranian guerrillas. The penetration that came on 28 June had been against the 12th Division.
Two Soviet divisions, one motorized rifle and one tank, reinforced with additional assets from — the 28th Combined Arms Army, formed the main effort that hit at Rafsanjan. A motorized rifle division moving through the Zagros Mountains had been responsible for conducting deception operations and supporting attacks against the 52nd Infantry Division.
While the 52nd was able to hold its own, trading ground for time, the 12th had, after two days of combat, ceased to exist as a combat-effective division. Of nine infantry battalions assigned to the division, four had been overrun on the first day of the attack and had not been heard of since. Two had been cut off and encircled. Two of the remaining three battalions had been mauled as they attempted to fight a delaying action at Pariz on the road that led from Rafsanjan to Bandar Abbas. An assault at Kerman had crippled the division's combat-aviation brigade, destroying many of its helicopters and most of the maintenance and support units required to maintain them. While the rest of the division base, consisting of the headquarters, supply and maintenance units and engineer and air-defense units, remained relatively intact, the combat elements were gone.
The Air Force was committing everything it had in an effort to sever the Soviet advance from its lines of communication. Strikes against the Soviets' supply lines and identified supply dumps were run round the clock.
The Soviets, however, anticipating such an effort, had reduced the number of ground-combat units committed to the bare minimum and used all the air-defense units from uncommitted units to cover their lines of communication. The smaller number of units required fewer supplies, and the roads needed to move those supplies along were better protected. As a result, the efforts of the Air Force had yielded few tangible results in comparison to a high cost — in lost aircraft and pilots.
On the ground, the corps reserve had been committed, but in a piecemeal fashion. Since it was clear that the paratroopers would not be able to stop the advancing Soviet columns, company-sized units were being inserted by helicopter along the Soviets' main axis of advance, to conduct anti armor ambushes, a form of delaying action. The idea was to establish a roadblock with mines and craters under cover of darkness. When the Soviets hit the barrier, they were attacked with antitank guided missiles launched from covered and concealed positions. The company was then evacuated by helicopter before the Soviets were able to turn on the ambushers in force.
Done properly, it was an effective method of delaying an enemy. But it only delayed them. To stop and defeat the Soviets, heavy forces-tanks and Bradleys-were needed. That was where the 25th Armored Division, and particularly the 2nd Brigade, came in.
What disturbed Weir more than the tactical situation, grim as it was, was the state of despair that permeated the corps staff. The commander of the 13th Corps, once a boastful and somewhat arrogant man, always in charge, had said barely two words throughout the entire evening update briefing.
When Weir asked him directly what his intentions were concerning the employment of the 25th Armored Division, he had looked at Weir rather absentmindedly and said, "I'm not sure. We're going to have to study that some," then turned and walked away to his office. There was the smell of defeat in the air throughout the headquarters of the 13th Corps. Because of this, Weir fought orders that temporarily attached the 25th Armored Division to that corps.
Weir contacted the Commander in Chief of CENT COM, demanding that the 10th Corps be activated immediately. The CINC listened to Weir's recommendations but decided that it was unwise to change commanders and headquarters in the middle of the battle. The CINC wanted the situation to stabilize before he commit ted the 10th Corps so that he could use it to conduct a counteroffensive. To commit the entire corps to the defense would mean pissing away his only viable offensive ground-maneuver force. Weir countered that unless the 10th Corps was committed, there would be no ground left to conduct the counteroffensive over. While the CINC was willing to let some of the 10th Corps units join the battle in progress in order to stabilize the situation, he didn't want to lose them all in defensive operations. The bulk of the 10th Corps, in the meantime, would stay out of the battle and assemble in the rear.