18 Kilometers northeast of Bakhtara
March 7, 1936
Field Marshal Vacietis walked with his subordinates along the top of one of the trenches that had so recently been fought over. Though the first assault toward Hamadan had ended in victory, it took longer and was costlier than he had expected; it was only at 0500 on the 30th that the Persians broke from their last line of trenches. Vacietis did the calculations quickly in his head, that was thirty-nine hours of straight battle for three trench lines that guarded only the approaches to Hamadan. He gingerly stepped over a corpse; the grave-digging parties had apparently missed one or two, here or there. Nearing the remains of a Persian bunker, Vacietis halted to examine it. It had been made of logs and well camouflaged; Vacietis did not doubt that it was simple bad luck that a heavy shell had scored a direct hit on its front where there was a space in the logs for a machine gun or perhaps even direct-fire light artillery piece. Vacietis shook his head, the explosion of the shell must have killed everyone inside.
Closing his eyes, Vacietis flashed back to the fighting in Kazan against the Whites. There and then he had stood with 180 other Latvians, supported by two artillery pieces and two armored cars against the Czechoslovak Corps, as commander of the entire Soviet eastern front, it had been August 1918. They had been surrounded and the fighting was bitter; the pillbox in front of him had been replicated one, two, even three dozen times over. He had escaped with two thirds of his force and fled to the Kazan Kremlin, but the garrison had deserted to the Whites. In the end, he was one of six survivors. Kazan had been recaptured in early September by different Latvian units, and had immediately been hailed as the first major Soviet victory. The regiment that had stood with him there, and fought nearly to extinction—the 5th Latvian Rifles—received the greatest distinction the military could bestow upon them. They received the Flag of Honor.
And yet now, Vacietis seemed to be challenged by Persians. They were not driven by ideology or even really by any real overwhelming sense of loyalty to their king. They simply fought; and they seemed to be fairly good at it. The Persians had retired to the higher crags of the Zagros Mountains and remained there to be winkled out, still with their admittedly fairly impressive artillery and apparently with a fair supply of ammunition. Nevertheless, the strategic situation had changed somewhat since February 30th when they had finally been broken out of their first defensive depths. Now, they were effectively encircled, though the situation seemed to be a sort of crisis point.
Abadan had fallen to Vacietis' spearhead division. Petrushevskij's cavalry had occupied Esfahan and were racing toward Babolsar. On the other side of the coin, the infantry divisions that were following in Petrushevskij's wake had been routed out of Teheran by a determined Persian cavalry assault and were falling back in disarray toward Rasht. The fall of Teheran promised many things: supplies to the beleaugered Persians in Hamadan, a new battle for Teheran, a delayed victory and possibly a demotion for Vacietis. He unconsciously growled, he had only just
been promoted to Field Marshal two months ago and had only recently gotten used to it! Not to mention, a potential, if improbably, disaster loomed—the Persians in Hamadan were, while fighting a rearguard action in the mountain passes, attempting to march north and occupy Rasht to effectively destroy two divisions, two corps, of Vacietis' Persian Front. He simply could not let such a thing happen.
The second phase of the continued assault on Hamadan.
Vacietis couldn't help but think that Stalin had simply wanted him out of the Frunze Academy. There, at least, he had some influence on Soviet military theory and practice. Out commanding a Front, and one on the unglamorous southern flanks of the Soviet Union, felt like a demotion to him despite the advancement to Field Marshal. His rank was higher, his position felt lower but his objectives were apparently vital to the Union's future prosecution of war. He wondered if Stalin's political sense had failed him before deciding that it had not; Vacietis was too old a Bolshevik. He did not have the heart to consciously betray what he had been instrumental in creating, even if the betrayal was merely intentional inefficiency. He would swallow the perceived insult and do his duty.
Vacietis sighed and began walking away from the shattered bunker. He could hear the artillery rumbling as his three corps—divisions, rather—began the preparatory bombardment of the Persian positions. He hoped that the Persians would be less obstinate this time around. He wanted victory, and he wanted it quickly. Not to mention, Voroshilov had already begun bothering him on the invasion of Iraq, assuring him that Persia would allow his Front to cross the border on a broad offensive which would easily knock Iraq down in a handful of weeks. Thus, the pressure was on him. Persia has to fall quickly, which meant that Persian forces around Hamadan had to be destroyed even quicker so that he could go about toppling Iraq's regime.
The whistle of shells overhead almost made him duck, but he knew he had to set an example for his subordinates. As he walked back to his command post with his staff following him, the shells pounded Persian positions in the mountain passes. He shook his head again, wondering how long it would be until the stubborn Persians break. In their mountains, they were quite competent fighters. He knew that STAVKA had ordained that the Persian units not be handled too roughly, but Vacietis knew that this one division had to be destroyed lest it endanger his timetable. Reaching his command post, Vacietis turned back and, looking through his binoculars, stared toward the mountains where his infantry was already moving forward against the Persian outpost positions. They looked just like indistinct pawns rushing forward.
