The colonel was pleased with his work so far. The army was rolling. Already he had more than two divisions on the road. They were self-contained fighting units with their own tanks and artillery and some of his best fighting men. They would give an excellent account of themselves under fire.
Other units were gathering and would be moving soon. All must be on the way before noon tomorrow. His spotter aircraft had reported that the Syrian border where they would attack was nearly free of any units in strength. A company of infantry and two tanks were in one location, and ten miles away, another company of infantry and one tank had been spotted.
The plan called for a five-mile-wide offensive, driving the attack forward with tanks and airpower. They would send 200 planes on a preemptive strike against the three major Syrian airfields, with the hope of knocking down more than half of the Syrian airpower on the first day. That attack also would come at dawn on A day, or Attack day.
Colonel Hamdoon couldn’t sleep. After a half hour of trying in the soft bed of the motor home, he got up, put on his boots, and had his driver take him home. He lived on the outskirts of the town in a reserved section for military officers only. The sergeant driver parked in front of the house and Hamdoon went in, woke up his wife, and told her just enough to make her anxious.
He had often compared Arab women with those from the West. Some aspects of Western women he liked, but they were too loud, too demanding, and too disrespectful of their husbands. Not so an Arab woman. She knew her place and was content to live under those ancient traditions.
“You will be gone many weeks?” his wife asked.
“We do not know. It is a secret, and you must not tell anyone. It is a big maneuver on the desert to the west.”
“Then I must please you.” She took off her nightdress the way he liked, which drove him wild with desire. Four times they made love, and he went into the small kitchen naked and cooked a big breakfast, then returned to her once more and left her panting on the bed, naked, and beckoning to him for one more lovemaking.
“You think I am a horse, woman, and out to stud? You have exhausted me. Not even a naked belly dancer could excite me. Now I must go and make war.”
He kissed the foreheads of his two sons, six and eight, patted his one girl, who was ten, where she slept, and went out to the car. The sergeant driver must have seen the lights in the house. He was ready with the back door of the sedan open.
Back at the motor home, Lieutenant Salman was in the middle of an exchange on the phone.
“Just a moment. Colonel Hamdoon is here. He will tell you.” The lieutenant held his hand over the phone. “This idiot wants to know when his army unit will be returning because he has a horse show he must attend.”
Colonel Hamdoon took the phone. “What is your name, rank, and unit?” He waited for the reply. “Captain, your job is to work with your infantrymen, not worry about your stupid horses. This is a joint military exercise with the armor and air force. We are not sure when it will end, but your horse show will not be a factor. When is your unit set to leave?”
He listened. “In four hours. So, don’t you have many other tasks to perform rather than worrying about your horses? I’d advise you to do your job, Captain. I have your name and unit. I’ll check on you later.”
Lieutenant Salman grinned as the colonel hung up the phone. “I tried to tell him that, but he kept reminding me he was a captain and I only a lowly lieutenant.”
“You did well. Any problems in my absence?”
“One convoy of trucks with food and ammunition is stalled forty miles outside of town. One truck is holding up the convoy.”
“Contact the radio and tell them to instruct the convoy commander to push the stalled truck off the roadway, leave it, and continue his trip and to make up the time he has lost. He must reach his designated area on time.”
“Yes sir.”
“Anything else?”
“Two company commanders can’t be located. They were on leave in the mountains.”
“Promote the next officer in line as company commander and get them moving on time, or tail feathers will burn.”
An hour before dawn, Saddam Hussein walked into the motor home, and the sergeant shrilled for attention. Lieutenant Salman and Colonel Hamdoon came to attention.
“Gentlemen, at ease. I won’t distract you long from your work. My reports show many units racing toward the border. We have released an announcement about the maneuvers being held and that no one needs to worry.”
He stepped in front of Lieutenant Salman. “Lieutenant, you are hereby promoted to captain. Here are your bars. Wear them proudly.” He moved to the colonel. “Old friend Jarash, comrade of many struggles, you are now to be known as Brigadier General Hamdoon.” He pinned gold stars on the new general’s collars and saluted him smartly. He turned to go, and the sergeant called for attention again. Then the tall man with the heavy black mustache and black hair walked out of the trailer and stepped back inside his armored limousine.
The sudden promotions took a moment to register, then the sergeant led a great cheer and the captain joined in. After a few cheers, General Hamdoon shook hands with both men.
“Now, I believe it’s time to get back to work.”
Just at dawn, the sergeant returned with food and cooked breakfast for the three of them.
The phone rang less often now. General Hamdoon decided that he and the driver would leave the GHQ at noon and drive to the assembly point some twenty miles from the border. He would keep in contact with Captain Salman by radio on the hour. Otherwise, the captain would solve the problems getting the last units out of their barracks and on the road from several different towns.
He sent the sergeant out after more food from the supply rooms at the army base. They wanted field food that would last: canned food and loaves of bread, other canned and dried meat and fish. They stored it in the motor home. They refilled the water tank with potable water, and then they were ready.
The roads west were packed with army units. Usually, both sides of the road were taken over by trucks and tanks moving west. Roads were good and handled the traffic well as far as Ar-Ramadi on the Euphrates River. From there the track led almost due west and almost at once into the areas of wadi and desert. For a time, the trucks followed one of the oil pipelines that in better times had transported oil through Syria to ports on the Mediterranean.
This same route had been used several times for maneuvers. In places, road building crews had filled in wadis for easier crossings. Trucks began to fail and pull out of the way. Men and matériel were overloaded into other trucks and the movement continued.
After six hours, they crossed the Wadi Hawran. The direction turned slightly to the southwest now as they were still well north of the desert community of Ar-Rutbah.
Soon units pulled to the side and found their location. Many of the support elements were farther from the border. Some of the infantry and tanker units moved closer, but none within twenty miles of the border with Syria.
When General Hamdoon reached his assigned location a little under twenty miles from the Syrian border, he had the driver bring his motor home next to a pair of tanks and what looked like two companies of infantry. His rig came to a stop, and he got out and stretched his legs in the desert heat. The air-conditioning in the motor home had made the drive less taxing than on the other men.
He soon made radio contact with one of the military aircraft flying over the area and asked the pilot about any buildup on the Syrian side. The aircraft, while staying on the Iraqi side of the border, could see thirty miles into Syria, and the copilot reported that they could make out no buildup or any movement of large numbers of troops or mechanized units toward the border.
The general nodded and went back to his small desk. He sipped at a cold orange juice from the refrigerator and invited the captain and sergeant to participate.
They would sleep now and be up as soon as it was midnight. From then on, there would be much to d
o.
Captain Hadr saw the motor home pull in beside his tank and frowned. It must be some high-ranking officer to rate such glorious transportation. He had sweat 250 miles in his tank since yesterday early in the afternoon. He was exhausted, dirty, and hungry.
Captain Hadr was not at all amused by this call to arms for a mere exercise, a maneuver. He was one of the tanker reservists called up to take a tank into the battle line. Twice before, he had done the same thing, killing a week of time on each occasion. During both exercises, his small business had lost money. He figured that his partner had profited during his absence by pocketing what otherwise would have been company money.
Now another of these sudden calls to arms. When he saw someone come out of the motor home, he snorted. A damn general, no less. He would expect to be protected. Once they started their fake charge toward the Syrian border, he would be rid of the general. Since everyone knew that generals never came within twenty miles of any fighting.
Captain Hadr had left his wife and three small boys back in Ba’qubah, north of Baghdad, with the promise that he would be back within a week. He had pleaded with his brother-in-law to take care of their small accounting business while he was gone. The man was ten years older than Captain Hadr, which meant he had ten years’ more experience in cheating his partner. Sometimes Captain Hadr hated the army. He knew it was necessary, but why such a large one?
Some said there were 440,000 Syrians under arms. Active military, not counting reserves. That was well over 2 percent of the entire population. He had heard that many of the Western nations had less than one-half of 1 percent of their population in the military.
He shrugged at last and ate his evening meal of dried fruit and water. He soon would run out of both. He had learned not to rely on the food supply from the Iraqi Tank Corps. He went back inside his tank and looked at the maps.
Orders were to move forward toward the border three hours before daylight. He was the third man in line in his sixteen-tank company. They would go single file for the first eighteen miles, then spread out in the spearhead tank attack that they had practiced so often but never actually used in battle. Captain Hadr was just as happy he had never had to fire a shot in anger. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to shoot and kill another human being, another Arab, another Moslem.
His tank was one of the older Soviet models they had bought early on and now were having trouble finding parts for. It was the T-55. Only the active-duty tankers had the Soviet-built T-62 models that were larger and heavier, with better armor and more firepower. But he’d take what he had. He had mastered the smaller tank and would put it through its paces for the inspectors and judges on tomorrow’s dry run at the Syrian border. He wondered how many Syrian tanks would be on the line just across the border tomorrow at daylight to play the little game with them.
It was all a game, and he would glad when it was over and he was back in his own little home and working in his business.
Captain Hadr read his orders again. They said he would wait with his company here twenty miles from the border until three hours before dawn, then move forward to a point a half mile from the border, as determined by his company commander. Then, with first light, he and his company would get in an arrowhead attack formation and would lead the charge through the border and into Syria for twenty miles, where they would pause to let their ammunition and food supplies catch up with them. Then they would charge ahead another twenty miles.
There was no sign that the orders would be countermanded when they were within a hundred yards of the boundary. He doubted if anyone could tell exactly where the border was here in the desert, anyway. It was one scrub bush after another, and no line in the sand to show the border.
On a hunch, he left his tank and walked fifty meters over to his company commander’s tank. It was one of the bigger Soviet T-62s. He was Captain Kayf, and in the regular army. He greeted Hadr and offered him a piece of bread and cheese.
They ate in silence a time, then Hadr shook his head. “Our orders, Captain, they don’t give the break-off point. Isn’t there a chance that we will make a mistake and slide over the border into Syria?”
“No mistake,” Captain Kayf said. “I received the word about an hour ago. Tomorrow morning, we go into Syria with our guns blazing. We are invading Syria and hoping we can punch a corridor all the way to Damascus and capture it. It’s war, Hadr. Tomorrow morning, we fire the opening shots in war with Syria.”
“Captain, it can’t be. Surely it’s only a trick to make us think this exercise is really important when in reality it’s only maneuvers for training.”
Captain Kayf shook his head. “No, Hadr. I have had word from The general of the division. We are going in. Did you notice the unusual number of support trucks loaded to their axles with ammunition and supplies? They are here and will be right behind us as we crash over the border tomorrow at dawn. We expect no opposition for the first twenty miles or more. We might not fire a shot for those first twenty miles. We are at war, Hadr. I wasn’t supposed to tell the tank commanders until morning, but I couldn’t hold it back. This could be my one chance to make major. I must do my best for President Hussein.”
“How can this be? I’m only a reservist. I train on weekends and in the summer. My commission is only temporary. How can this be a shooting war? I have my business to go back to, and my wife and three sons.”
“With all of that at stake, my friend Captain Hadr, I suggest you follow orders carefully and shoot your cannon with great accuracy. Then you’ll have the best chance to live through this six- or seven-day war before we capture Syria and make it one of our provinces.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“You better believe it, Captain. Right now you have less than three hours to sleep before we fire up our engines and move out toward Syria.”
“Who can sleep? There are a dozen things to check on the tank. What about the fuel? What about that tread that was slightly loose? How can I get everything done in time?”
“All the tanks have been fueled to capacity, remember? Just after we arrived. Your load of ammunition was checked and double-checked. Your men are sleeping and will be ready. Go back to your machine and take a nap. It will serve you well when we break across the Syrian line.”
Captain Hadr stood there, looking at his immediate superior. He started to salute, then shook his head. “Captain, just suppose that one of your tank commanders decided that he didn’t want to get into a real war and said he wouldn’t take his tank across the line into Syria. What would happen then?”
Captain Kayf smiled in the darkness. In a moment, he had drawn the .45-caliber pistol from his holster and leveled it at Hadr. “Then Captain, I would simply shoot that commander dead, promote one of my other men to take over his tank, and our attack would continue. Does that answer your hypothetical question?”
Hadr shrugged. “Yes sir. It does.” He paused, thinking about his wife and boys back home. “I guess I should get an hour or so of sleep. I’ll probably need it in the next two or three days.”
He turned and walked into the night.
Captain Kayf kept his pistol trained on the man’s back until he could no longer see him. Then he returned the .45 to his holster. When the attack began tomorrow morning and all of his men were told that it was not a drill but that they were going to war with Syria, he was sure that he would have one man quit and try to back out. He would be shot, of course.
Yes, there would be one reservist officer turn coward. It would not be Captain Hadr, the company commander was positive of that. He turned back to his own tank and looked over his list of items to have done before dawn. He was almost finished.
With a vague, hostile feeling, he thought of the moment when they would break across the Syrian border. It would be a thrill, the high of his lifetime. Even now he wondered just what it would feel like. How thrilling and wonderful would it be? He could only imagine it now. In four or five hours, he would feel it with heat-pounding reality.
>
21
Three Miles from the Border
In Western Iraq
Sergeant Hillah made sure his squad of infantrymen was down and sleeping. They had been ferried by truck, then walked, then taken by truck again, as transportation became available. The whole battalion had walked the last four miles forward. Now they lay less than three hundred yards from what their captain said was Syria’s eastern border.
Sergeant Hillah didn’t understand. None of their war games in the past had brought them this close to the border with Syria. Once they had stopped two miles out and saw that there were more than a thousand men facing them just across the border with tanks and armored personnel carriers and heavy machine guns set up every fifty yards. They had turned and marched away.
Now they were lying in wait, within a fast sprint of the border, and they all had live ammunition. It was dark tonight, so dark he could barely see the end man of his squad. The company captain told them there would be a meeting of all NCOs at midnight. It was ten minutes until that time.
He left his squad and walked quickly to the spot designated as the company HQ. It was a slight depression in the ground at the edge of a wadi. The other noncommissioned officers were gathering. They whispered, but no one knew any more than Sergeant Hillah did. Their captain came right on time and motioned the eighteen men around him. He spoke low, but it was so quiet that they all could hear him.
“Men, this is not a drill. When daylight comes, we will attack across the Syrian border with the objective of taking Damascus before sunset tomorrow.”
“We’re at war with Syria?” someone asked.
“As of this morning, we will be. We will be following sixteen tanks that come through this sector. They will arrive here at three A.M., be briefed, and strung out in their battle formation. When the time comes to advance, we’ll be going behind the tanks as far as we can keep up with them.
“After that, we’ll mop up any of the enemy left over. We expect little resistance for the first fifty miles. Other troops will be in vehicles and will follow the tanks closely, dropping off strike teams to take care of civilians or dig out scattered groups of Syrian border guard troops that may be in the area. We expect few.
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