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afternoon of the twenty-ninth after a trek of over three hundred kilometers through the desert. An attempt of the recon battalion, reinforced only by the advance guard, to rush the town and seize the airfield had been repulsed by Islamic Guards dug in along the approaches. Attempts to find a weak point north of the town had also failed. It was therefore decided to wait until the lead motorized rifle regiment and division artillery closed up before trying again. In the meantime, the recon battalion was to bypass the town to the west and check out an unguarded route that had been found the night before. If the route was clear, the recon battalion was to use it to lead a motorized rifle battalion past the town. Once south of the town, the rifle battalion would support the main attack by hitting the Iranians from the rear.
    As the officers of the recon company received last minute instructions, the crews of the BRDM armored cars and BMP reconnaissance vehicles began to crank up their engines and check their weapons. Sand, heat and lack of water were greater problems than the officers and men in the recon battalion had expected. The division had deployed from a garrison in
    Poltava in the Ukraine to the desert and then into the attack with little time for acclimation. Neither had they received any special instructions on desert warfare or how to deal with the conditions they would find. It was therefore natural that the men would continue to operate as they had been trained while in the Ukraine. The result was a high number of maintenance failures and weapons stoppages. The light coat of oil that had protected their machine guns from the spring rains in the Ukraine attracted sand that jammed them in the desert. During their first serious run-in with an
    Iranian roadblock on the second day of the invasion, Lieutenant Kurpov’s platoon was embarrassed when only one machine gun in the entire platoon fired. In a panic the platoon pulled back into a wadi, where in record time the crews broke down their weapons and cleaned them. Since that time, the men faithfully checked their weapons and kept them clean and free of oil.
    Kurpov watched impassively as the other scout-car platoon moved out of their laager and headed west. Behind them went two BMPs. Kurpov’s platoon would follow at a distance, ready to lead the rifle battalion through or swing farther west if the route taken by the lead platoon was blocked. This suited Kurpov fine. He had grown tired of being in the lead, always out front, always the first to find the enemy or be found by him. On two separate occasions his BRDM had barely survived a direct hit by rocket-propelled antitank grenades. It would be a welcome relief to follow someone for a change. A bright three-quarter moon made it easy to track the progress of the lead scout-car platoon. Kurpov felt as though the whole world were staring down on them as they swung west onto a narrow dirt track.
    Through his vision blocks he monitored the progress of his other vehicles and the rifle battalion’s advance guard behind them. It was following far too close. If the Iranians hit them, the rifle battalion would have little room to maneuver or back out. They were becoming sloppy, too lax.
    The BMPs, now about one thousand meters to his front, turned slightly to the left and continued forward into the shadows of the surrounding hills.
    Ahead of them the BRDMs had already entered the dark void and were out of sight. Despite the cool of the night, Kurpov could feel the sweat roll down his spine. This was no good, far too easy. It was inconceivable that such a route would be left open.
    A flash, a streak of flame and the detonation of an antitank missile on a
    BMP raped the stillness of the night and heralded a rush of pandemonium and violence. Contact. Green and red tracer rounds crisscrossed as Iranians engaged the lead scout-car platoon and were in turn engaged by the BRDMs and the remaining BMP . The reports coming from the