Once at the headquarters of the 127th Motorized Rifle Division, the commander of the 28th Combined Arms Army ordered the commander of that division to move his entire unit north. They were to find, pin and encircle the enemy forces now rampaging throughout the army's rear. The division commander said nothing at first. In his bewilderment, he turned to his staff, but got only looks of amazement or blank stares in return. The army commander, still hyper from his brush with death and faced with the prospect of losing his army to an unknown enemy, became enraged when his order was not immediately acted on. He jumped in front of the division commander and yelled, "Did you not hear me? I ordered you to attack. I expect you to attack-now!"
The division commander began to sweat. The condition of his commander and the serious situation overwhelmed him. He fumbled for words.
"Comrade General, we, we.. " The word "cannot" came hard to him. One did not tell one's commander that one could not do something. There must be reasons for not doing things-unfavorable conditions, enemy activity, failure of a support element to be in place, and so on. Reasons.
For an awkward moment there was silence as the division commander faced his superior. Sulvina stepped in and broke the silence. "Comrade General, the 127th Division cannot attack. They have no fuel." The army commander turned to him. Sulvina continued, "We diverted all they had to the 33rd Tank Division." The army commander's expression turned from anger to shock as it began to dawn upon him that all was lost.
Seeing that his commander's mind was foundering under the weight of the disaster and grasping for a solution, Sulvina offered him the only practical one. "We must order the 33rd Tank Division to disengage and move north against the enemy in our rear. The 67th Motorized Rifle Division must also withdraw and assume a defensive posture facing south."
Automatically the army commander refused to break off the attack or withdraw the 67th MRD. He insisted that they must continue the attack or at least hold what they had. Patiently, Sulvina explained that even if the Americans were cleared from the rear areas in the next twenty-four hours, the army would expend in that effort whatever supplies it had left. A continuation of the offensive was out of the question. "As we speak, Comrade General, the Americans are destroying our support elements and supply dumps. We cannot, I repeat, cannot hope to reach the Strait of Hormuz and be able to stay there in our present state. It is time to save the army."
For a moment, there was silence. Then the army commander, a tired and defeated man, gave in. He ordered Sulvina to issue the necessary orders and seek permission from Front Headquarters to withdraw. As the army commander sat down, Sulvina looked about him at the spartan headquarters of the 127th MRD. To himself he mumbled, That, Comrade General, will be a feat.
The Soviet 68th Tank Regiment rumbled north at break neck speed. The poor condition of the trail that the tanks followed battered their already exhausted crews about. One of the gunners once compared the sensation of being inside a T-80 tank to that of being in a tin can being rolled down a rocky hillside. The driver, down low and covered with dust and dirt thrown up by the tank less than fifty meters to his front, drove mostly by instinct. The same dust that covered him hid the tank in front of him from view. The tank commander, perched higher above the ground, could see more, but also ate dust and dirt. In addition, while the driver sat and had the controls to hang on to, the tank commander had to grab whatever he could and do his best to sway the right way as the tank bucked and bumped down the road. When he erred in his judgment, his kidneys were bashed against the steel lip of the hatch opening.
Inside, the gunner was protected from dust being thrown in his face but from little else. The air he breathed hung heavy with dust that came down through the open hatch. It mingled with the smell of hot oil and grease. There was no air circulation. The sun, pounding down on the steel, pushed temperatures well beyond 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Every stitch of the gunner's black uniform was soaked with sweat. With nothing else to do, the gunner hung on to anything that was fixed to the turret wall and, like the commander, swayed with the motion of the tank.
Major Vorishnov missed his BTR. The T-80 tank was small, cramped and impossible to work from. When the order came down that the regiment was going to move north and execute a movement to contact, to find and destroy the American forces, confusion reigned. A short preparatory bombardment to kick off the attack south had already begun. Requests to confirm the orders or repeat them were met with shrill blasts from harried commanders or staff officers. Apparently something had gone terribly wrong. Neither Vorishnov's battalion commander nor he knew for sure, but their guess was that a large enemy force was in the army's rear. Vorishnov's effort to gain additional information or formulate any type of plan was frustrated by the speed of the move and the necessity of riding a tank. The T-80 he had did not have the proper radio nets, nor could he work effectively or think. As they raced north, all Vorishnov could do was hang on and hope to save his kidneys.
Turning a unit around and attacking in the opposite direction is a feat few commanders master. A combat unit is followed by a tail that drags behind it like a ball and chain. Immediately behind and mixed in with the combat units are combat-support units. These include the engineers and the air defenders. They maneuver at a set distance behind the lead combat elements, ready to rush forward, in the case of engineers, or to support by fire, in the case of the air defenders. Behind them are the artillery units.
Battalions and batteries of artillery leapfrog forward at a set distance in order to provide continuous fire support to the ground-maneuver units. In the case of a regiment making the main attack, the number of artillery battalions following and supporting is often greater than the number of maneuver battalions being supported.
Behind them are the combat service support elements: medical teams and aid stations, supply units, maintenance units, transportation units, signal units, military police units and so on.
On top of all these units are the headquarters of the regiment, the division, the division artillery, the combat service support units.
Finally, there are Army assets such as FROG rocket units, attack-helicopter units, Army-level air-defense units and such.
All those units are stacked up behind the maneuver battalions in a set order. All compete for use of the same roads, require enough space to operate properly in and must be supplied from the same supply route.
Simply giving the order "Turn around, attack to the other way" does not work.
While a company can do so with relative ease and a battalion with minimal coordination, turning a regiment or a division requires monumental efforts and coordination. As the Soviet 33rd Tank Division rushed north, staff officers at every level and in every unit scrambled to make sense out of the chaos. Planning and coordination that required a day, at best, had to be accomplished in hours. With little direction or information from the army staff, subordinate staffs made do with what little information they had. The situation would no doubt clarify itself once contact was established with the enemy.
Outside a tumbledown building that had once served as a garage, the brigade command group caught up with the command group of the 3rd of the 4th Armor.
The impromptu meeting, called by the brigade commander, was for the purpose of getting an update on the unit and issuing new orders. While the tanks and the M-113 armored personnel carriers sat outside forming a small protective perimeter, the commanders and their key staff officers met in an open garage bay. Even in the shade of the building, the heat was oppressive. Men long overdue for sleep and given a break from the threat of sudden death or mutilation said little as they gathered. Some fell asleep waiting for the meeting to start.