Free Sword Point by Harold Coyle

awake as they waited for something to happen. They were beginning their second day in Egypt and had not fully recovered from the effects of jet lag. On top of that, they were having difficulty acclimating to the desert heat. Evans was glad that they had the time in Egypt to do so. Not that it was by choice. The 17th
    Airborne Division had to deploy to forward staging areas before they jumped into Iran. It was not possible to stage and deploy from the States directly into Iran the size force required for the operation.
    Because of this, any hope for surprise was lost. No doubt there were scores of Shiite Muslims watching the coming and going of the transport aircraft, counting the units and probably even monitoring their radio nets as the 17th Airborne did some last-minute unit training.
    The training exercise had come as a shock to many in the company. They had expected to simply lie around and rest in preparation for the big jump.
    Instead, less than three hours after landing, Evans had his platoons lined up with full combat gear and moving across the desert on foot.
    While they were there Evans wanted to take every opportunity available to train and prepare. As he continued to watch the 2nd Platoon, he was glad they were doing so. The platoon leader of that unit was actually far better than his current performance would indicate. Second Lieutenant Hal Cerro had been with the unit for over six months and had participated in several major exercises. None of them, however, had been in the desert.

    The desert is a harsh environment that has its own rules. People brought up in a sophisticated society in a temperate climate are unprepared for the sheer nothingness of the desert. Simple survival is a challenge. Maintaining unit cohesion and combat effectiveness and conducting active military operations in the desert border on the impossible.
    Logistics, or supply operations, is indicative of the nature of the problem. Each man requires each day slightly over two gallons of water which weighs almost twenty pounds. Add to this six pounds of food, and, because the force is engaged in combat, ammunition to the tune of an average of twenty to forty pounds per man. This total of forty-six to sixty-six pounds does not include the weight of fuel required to haul the supplies to the soldier, the weight of repair parts required to maintain the trucks, planes and ships hauling the supplies or the supplies consumed by the people hauling the supplies while they are doing the hauling. When all of this is tallied up, it is quite possible to reach a requirement demanding the movement and consumption of two hundred pounds of supplies per soldier in the combat area per day. When all is considered, getting the combat soldier to the theater of operations is the easy part; keeping him there and keeping him functional are where the real problem lies.
    For Captain Evans, the immediate problem was how to get his people over the severe case of the dumbs that they had suddenly come down with. The 2nd
    Platoon had finally begun to move onto the rocky knoll it was supposed to have taken two hours ago. But rather than deploying for an attack, they advanced in two loose columns up the face of the knoll. What was even more disturbing was the fact that Evans could see the trailing squad coming up behind the 2nd Platoon. It was apparent that no one in the 2nd Platoon was paying attention to the rear. The defending platoon simply waited. They were going to let the 2nd Platoon get to within two hundred meters before they fired. Even this infuriated Evans. In the desert, you always take advantage of long-range engagements whenever possible.
    The defending platoon was pissing away a one-hundred- to two-hundred-meter advantage.
    With blank ammunition quietly supplied to the 17th Airborne Division from
    Israel, the defending platoon opened fire on the 2nd Platoon. The initial reaction of the attackers was one of surprise and sudden paralysis.
    Dumbstruck, the men