I sent the redlined plan off to the Brigade S-3. Then I wrote it up his way. Hell, he wasn't going to know if I did it that way or not. I was seven thousand miles away and it wasn't like the fucking IG was going to drop by.
Two days later I got an action plan from the BC. Less redlining. Still stupid.
Off to Brigade S-3.
Got back the original plan. Approved. By the Brigade commander.
Good thing, too, because we were about done.
Talked to the S-3 later. Apparently it had gone like this.
Battalion commander gets the plan. Throws a shit fit. Chews me out. Starts charges.
Brigade commander, a few days later, calls him up and asks what's happening with Bravo Company.
Battalion commander sucks ass. All good. No issues.
No issues? Evac?
Minor issue.
Security situation?
No problems.
Any Go-To-Hell-Plan?
No need. "Secure and maintain."
Get Go-To-Hell-Plan. SF battalion. Bad shit. My boys. Send me copy. Out.
I get GTH redlined. Send back corrected plan. Copy to Brigade. BC sends to Brigade.
Brigade commander. Don't like. (He'd seen my original and the redlined one.) Like it this (my) way.
Battalion commander sends up next plan.
What is it about "do it this way" you cannot understand? Original plan approved.
I now had legal authority to blow the place the fuck up if I had to.
Which was good. Because we had to implement our "Go-To-Hell-Plan" sooner than I'd thought.
Chapter Six
Actioning by Transformational Defenestration of Obstructors
What is it about Mondays?
Okay, so you had a good weekend and maybe you had a bit too much to drink. You don't want to go back to work. Mondays suck.
But that wasn't the case with Iran. We were working every day, more or less. Oh, there was a rotating "down-time" schedule but with increasing probes the guys weren't getting much rest.
So what is it with Mondays?
Guess you figured it was a Monday when the shit started to hit the fan.
Actually, we got some wind of it early. Scatter of more refugees. Then the food detail got told there was a new problem.
Remember the Shia Liberation Front? Seems they'd maintained communication with fellow travellers. Said fellow travellers, the "Husayn Ali Martyrdom Brigade" (HAMB) had managed to avoid enough martyrdom to consolidate their hold in Awhaz and were now looking to establish "true shariah" in a wider region. Which really threw a monkey wrench into the whole Abadan area.
Okay, background:
Who or what the fuck is "Husayn Ali"?
Husayn ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib was a grandson of Mohammed by one of his numerous wives. (Mohammed's wives that is.) Husayn is one of the guys who's a founder of Shia. Remember the whole thing about Shia and Sunni? Most Moslems are Sunni. Iranians and a cluster in southern Iraq and down into Saudi Arabia are Shia. I won't get into details about the Umaayids and shit. He revolted in favor of "true Islam" and got his head cut off. Just know he's one of the Shia's big "martyrs." Got killed near Al-Najaf where there's a big temple in his honor and, I shit you not, every year guys gather there and whip themselves with flails. I've seen weirder shit, but not much.
But the Husayn Ali Martyrdom Brigade wasn't just religious wackoes. It had been formed around the family of an Iranian colonel up around Ahwaz. Was he a religious wacko? Sort of.
Okay, one of the "lessons" we learned in Iraq was "don't completely dismantle the standing government and military." We shut down the Iraqi Army in Iraq and then tried to rebuild it "right." The problem being, that when soldiers are out of work they'll work for anybody. And a lot of the guys we were fighting, at first, were former soldiers all the way up to senior officers.
So when we went into Iran, we kept the Army together as much as possible. Oh, some of the units like the Revolutionary Guard and stuff were stood down and mostly rounded up for questioning, etc. But we didn't stand down the whole Army.
Well, the mullahs had wanted to keep the Army under their thumb as much as possible. So a bunch of senior commands were held by "fellow travellers," guys who thought the way the Mad Mullahs in charge thought or were family. (Which amounted to the same thing.)
Farid Jahari was one of the guys who wasn't rounded up for questioning. Oh, later, I found out he had been tagged as hard-core Islamic, but he was making all the right noises and following the New Way so nobody fucked with him. Despite "credible" reports that he had maintained contact with the RIFs and might be supporting them.
Whether he'd been playing both sides against the middle or what, when the shit went down, he managed to hold together a "coalition" in Ahwaz. It had taken him several months to consolidate his power and get things functioning. Now it was time for the next step.
Shooters he now had aplenty. What he didn't have was equipment.
And guess where the biggest store of equipment around was?
The "probe" with the truck was probably his idea. And they'd apparently been watching how we were guarding things.
The first inkling we had that things were going to be going astray was increased traffic on the Ahwaz Road. (Highway 9 for people who care.) Vehicles were headed into Abadan. And then the flow of refugees picked up as street fighting broke out.
The good colonel had the cachet of being military. The Warriors and the SLF, now a branch of HAMB, called a truce. Together with some "special warriors" from HAMB they took down the Mahdi Army in about two days' fighting.
Didn't hurt that they took out the command structure, first. They called for peace talks to "begin the reunification of our peoples." Not all the senior people from the Mahdi Army turned up, but enough that it mattered. They weren't trusting, mind you, but they also weren't expecting a big truck bomb.
We heard that on Monday. Big ass explosion down in Abadan kind of near the docks as far as we could tell.
Took the Warriors, SLF and HAMB about three days to clear out the Mahdis. Some of the refugees we got were "dependents" of the Mahdis. That's where we got the story. (Also a couple more workers. The Mahdis had clearly been picking and choosing carefully. Woof!)
(Wife Edit: It's amazing what you've left out over the years. I thought I knew all your stories.)
Fuck.
Anyway, we really knew shit was bad mid-week when two T-62s and some trucks came rolling down from the direction of Ahwaz.
Found out, later, that was the sign Herr Colonel had come down to show the flag. Until Abadan was "secured" he'd stayed up in Ahwaz. Now it was time to spread the joy.
So we got another delegation.
This time it was a civilian truck but the guy who got out of it was in uniform. Pretty correct. Unlike the first joker he seemed to fit it and it wasn't exactly loaded with medals.
I got called out.
"General Farid Jahari, Commander of the Faithful, Sword of The Prophet, Warrior of Islam . . ." etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, "sends you his greetings. In his beneficience and munificence, his overriding goodness that extends beyond the ability of mortal men . . ."
We had three days to pull out. We could take anything we could carry. We had to leave all the rest and open the gates.
Took, like, fifteen minutes for the guy to get to the point. I said: "Ain't happenin'."