March 10, 1997
The Headquarters and the 157th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) of the US 43rd Infantry Division (US Army Reserve) arrives in Europe.
Unofficially,
The Freedom ship Puerto Rico Freedom is delivered in Galveston, Texas.
A group of eight 1950s-era destroyers and fifiteen trawlers sortie from Petropavlovsk into the North Pacific, scattering after storming past the American SSN guarding the harbor exit, the USS Pasadena, which sinks one of the trawlers in the mass of ships rushing past.
Equipment and vehicles of the 2nd Brigade, 9th Infantry Division (Light Motorized) arrive at the port of Seattle, Washington to load for Saudi Arabia.
The East German 9th Panzer Division is re-named the 29th Panzer Division.
A Soviet submarine attacks the Marshall Islands-flag container ship Merkur Rivera in the North Atlantic. The ship is left listing and dead in the water, but the arrival of a British Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft forces the attacker to slink away before it can finish off the hapless freighter.
The Soviet Sierra II-class SSN K-336 sinks the American nuclear missile submarine USS Maine off Kings Bay, Georgia. Under command of Captain First Rank Sergei Babenko, the K-336 escapes, sinking the USCG cutter Valiant during the escape. The attack on an American "boomer" raises alarms throughout the chain of command, afraid that it is the opening move of a general campaign to neutralize America's most secure second strike capability.
3rd Brigade, 24th ID is deployed in defensive positions along the coast of the Persian Gulf to protect the region from possible Soviet spoiling attacks on CENTCOM's staging areas in Eastern Saudi Arabia as additional units flow into the theatre.
The Soviet Ministry of Agriculture authorizes the release of one quarter of land farmed by collective and state farms from central control to individual farmers. While not publicized, the move transforms Soviet agriculture, more than compensating for the loss of production from the callup of tens of thousands of young, strong healthy young men for military service.
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I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...
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