When the main body came up to and crossed the line of departure, Dixon was at ease. With sixty-one tons of tank wrapped around him, and a 105mm gun, he felt invincible. He stood on the commander's platform, his upper torso out of the tank, hands grasping the cupola, body swaying with the motion of the tank. The M-2.50caliber machine gun was turned out to the right in order to give him an unobstructed view.
He was standing far too high in the hatch, but didn't care. He needed to see what was going on. As he explained to his assistant on many occasions, "Ya gotta see what's happening in order to exercise command and control."
The regular crew of the tank was good but a real diverse lot. "From where he stood, Dixon could see the back of the gunner, a Sergeant Maxfield.
Maxfield had his eye glued to the gunner's primary sight, scanning his assigned sector. With six years on active duty, he was due for promotion to staff sergeant and a tank of his own. The loader, a Specialist Four Wilard, was up in his hatch and facing to the rear, covering his assigned sector.
A farm boy from Idaho, Wilard was far too tall for tanks. When he stood erect on the turret floor, his whole head stuck out of the loader's hatch.
During the road march he had a hell of a time staying alert. Only when Dixon told him that they were approaching the line of departure did Wilard's vigilance increase.
The driver was a Private First Class Casper, a young black kid from New York City. Dixon, born and raised in Virginia, had a hell of a time understanding him when he talked. But the man could drive, and that, Dixon decided, was all that mattered.
As they moved forward, Dixon listened to the radio and watched the high ground to the north and the south. So far, they had hit nothing, not even a screen line. That the Soviets' flank was so open seemed incredible. The battalion commander and Dixon had cautioned the company commanders to watch out for Soviet fire sacks. Whole battalions, blundering forward blind and unwary, could be swallowed up in a matter of minutes by a wellplanned and — executed Soviet defense.
The terrain that 3rd of the 4th Armor was now moving into was made for such a defense. Dixon prayed that the deception being run by the 17th Airborne was working. If not, this would be the shortest counteroffensive in history.
The young engineer captain from Virginia stood on the edge of the antitank ditch and watched his last operational D-7 bulldozer as it scraped another two inches of dirt from the bottom. Two other dozers, broken down and idle due to a lack of spare parts, were being loaded onto flatbed trucks. Behind him a crew of engineers were placing round wooden blocks on the north lip of the antitank ditch, in the same pattern used in laying a surface mine field.
The engineers, along with hundreds of other engineers, had been busy all night creating defensive positions and obstacles that would never be used.
The men, used to hard work and doing things that ranged from not so smart to downright dumb, could not understand what in hell they were doing. First the captain told them that the Russians were charging down the road at full speed and the world was coming to an end; every man, he said, needed to do his job or the foothold held by the 13th Corps would fail.
Then he turned around and ordered them to plant a dummy mine field and dig ditches where there were no units. As hard as he tried, the captain could not make his men understand the importance of what they were doing.
Watching his men, he decided that it didn't really matter what they thought. They had done the best they could, given the time and resources available. The Russians would either believe them or not. It was no longer in their hands.
The situation that the 28th Combined Arms Army faced was deplorable and at the same time pregnant with possibilities. The lack of fuel had brought the attack by both divisions to a screeching halt. Only enough fuel for the recon elements had been scraped up. Most of that had been obtained by siphoning fuel from vehicles belonging to the army's second-echelon division. On orders from Colonel Sulvina, in the name of the army commander, the recon continued to push forward, maintaining contact, gathering information and searching out American weak points.
In all three tasks, they were successful. The information they provided confirmed the intelligence officer's projection.
Light-infantry forces, in conjunction with massive close air support, were conducting a delaying action south toward Saadatabad. Agents and an occasional recon flight indicated a great deal of activity south of Saadatabad by engineer units.
Fuel, so simple a commodity, normally so plentiful, had become the key to success or failure. How ironic, Sulvina had thought. Here we are in the middle of a region that contains most of the world's oil reserves, and we run out of fuel. History, no doubt, will laugh if we fail here. No one, however, was laughing that morning in the 28th CAA.
Everyone's full attention and energies were 266 geared to obtaining the fuel and pushing it forward.
The Red Air Force, depleted by the previous day's efforts, was being pressed by Front Headquarters to clear the skies and provide cover to transport aircraft flying fuel to makeshift airstrips or dropping it by parachute. Helicopters, loaded to maximum capacity, carried fuel drums right up to the front-line units. Despite continuous interference by and heavy losses to American fighters, fuel was being delivered. Anything that could carry fuel was being used.
Not all units were being resupplied. Priority went to the lead divisions.
On the basis of the intelligence picture being painted for him by the army's second officer, the army commander was gambling that two divisions would be sufficient to blow through the Americans' final positions and reach the Strait of Hormuz. All other units had to manage with what they had. As a result of such draconian measures, fuel was beginning to reach the forward combat elements in sufficient quantities. By 0900 the lead regiments would be refueled and ready to move. The logistics officer promised that both first-echelon divisions would be refueled and on the move by noon, provided no calamity befell the army. To ensure synchronization of effort and to leave some time for errors, orders had gone out to the lead divisions to reinitiate the attack commencing at 1000 hours with those units that were then refueled. Saadatabad was designated as the army's intermediate objective, with the final objective of the day being Qotbabad. Plans for a joint airborne and ground attack against Bandar Abbas on the eleventh of July were being worked out.
Both the commander of the 28th CAA and Sulvina were exhausted. Neither had slept for more than an hour since the beginning of the attack, on the eighth. Satisfied that all was being done and that the situation would soon be in hand, they walked out of the command post for a break.
Endless hours in an operations center with staff officers rushing about, radios blaring, phones ringing, and half a dozen conversations being conducted at the same time can best be likened to living in a pressure cooker. Stress and lack of sleep destroy a person's ability to think clearly or work effectively. An occasional break, just a simple walk outside, is required every so often in order to maintain sanity and effectiveness. Outside, the two officers stood fifty meters from the command post, not far from anSA-8 surface-to-air antiaircraft-missile battery. Neither said anything. They smoked their cigarettes and let their minds go blank as they watched a convoy of fuel trucks move south along the highway. Both knew that was a good sign.