Fight To The Finish - World War Three, Round Two

[James G]

PART THREE


Nineteen – White Flag

March 6th 1990
The Moerdijkspoorbrug (Moerdijk Rail Bridge), Zuid-Holland, the Netherlands

General Lebed went out onto the railway bridge just as it started to get light. He followed the two sergeants and the captain, all veteran Soviet Airborne Troops men like himself, each who’d been here on this structure last night while he had been back inside Dordrecht. The sun would soon be coming up on this bitterly cold morning but already there was just enough light for Lebed to see where he placed his hands and his feet as he crossed over the damaged and unusable (for its purpose anyway) Moerdijkspoorbrug. The waters of the Hollands Diep were below and there were large parts of the bridge heavily damaged but Lebed moved onwards unafraid. He followed exactly the instructions of the party of junior men with him in moving forwards and that kept him safe from the danger that there was.

Walking southwards between the tracks, Lebed remained amazed at how this bridge was still standing. Like the road bridge which ran across from Dordrecht south to Moerdijk, the rail bridge had been hit by aircraft-delivered bombs – Soviet aircraft had struck first then later those flown by NATO pilots – but hadn’t collapsed into the water below like that other bridge. No trains could cross and the damage made sure that armoured vehicles couldn’t be driven across either but it was still suitable to be crossed on foot, just about. At the Soviet held end there had been many anti-personnel mines emplaced and he was sure that NATO had done the same on the southern end too. Those mines on the north side had been removed though so he and the three others could pass through and the way ahead scouted for any more obstructions.

Lebed walked onwards now in the cold across the bridge to meet with and talk to the enemy under the protection of a white flag.


From the other end, next to Moerdijk, Major-General Michael Rose made his own way across the Moerdijkspoorbrug.

The commander of the British Army’s 2nd Infantry Division was escorted by three other officers: a French colonel along with a British lieutenant-colonel and a sergeant. The Frenchman and the British sergeant had been on the bridge overnight with more Frenchmen as they had scouted a safe route forwards and also kept a watchful eye on the activities of the Soviets at the other end of what was effectively no-man’s land. Rose and the other British officer followed their lead and avoided the damaged sections of the bridge and well as keeping hold of when necessary the safety rope strung over two exposed portions of the structure. Never a fearful man, Rose still refused to look down at the icy water below him when crossing those most dangerous sections for he knew that it would make him uncomfortable. He knew that he needed to keep his wits about him and project the image of perfect calm this morning.

After all, he was about to try to convince a strong enemy force to surrender against their will and wouldn’t want to show any emotion that might be misconstrued as fear or lacking in confidence in the ability of himself or his own men. He’d done the same thing eight years ago in the Falklands though knew that this time was to be rather different.


Lebed had his men stop near roughly the center of the bridge. He told the two sergeants to drop back just out of ear-shot and to find some cover where if necessary they could shoot from should the need come to that. They were to keep the barrels of their paratrooper assault rifles down though and not to fire them unless the other side did so first or unless he ordered them to: Lebed had said all this before they set off across the bridge for this rendezvous but repeated it again now. To the captain, he told him to stay at his side at all times and to use his eyes as well as his ears. Lebed didn’t just want a translator with him, the Tula Division’s best surviving English speaker, but someone who would remember everything when they returned back to Dordrecht.

That was important, Lebed reminded the man, before telling him to put down the flag.

With those orders given, and with his hand atop his empty pistol holster around his waist – he’d left the weapon behind to show a lack of fear –, Lebed waited for the approaching British officers he could see getting closer and closer to reach him. As agreed, there were four of them. He could make out one of them with a rifle and he assumed that the other three would have pistols. He saw that the man he assumed was the general was the one at the rear and without a combat helmet but there was another man too in a beret when he had believed that only their commander would be unencumbered with such protection. He recalled how it specifically stated in the arrangements made that both generals would make themselves visible to the other – to show a (small) measure of trust – by not wearing a helmet nor a bullet-proof vest. That had been done, but looking at the British he saw that they were playing games with him and weren’t sticking to the terms of the agreement for the meeting. They were trying to confuse a sniper who might have them in focus and showing that they had no trust in him to keep his word.

That was how they were going to play this…


Rose had specifically had to fight for permission to be on the Moerdijkspoorbrug this morning to meet with the Soviets. His corps commander hadn’t wanted him to go. It could easily have been a trap, the commander of the Allied II Corps had said, to kill you or kidnap you. Rose led one of the major combat formations of the battered but still combat effective NATO forces in the southern Netherlands and couldn’t afford to be lost. He had led his men out of the defeat suffered in West Germany just before the ceasefire – where the entire 15th Infantry Brigade had been lost – and then conducted a fighting withdrawal all the way back to the North Sea afterwards when his light infantry division, dismounted & motorised men, had fought Soviet armour. His reputation, his name-recognition would make his death a gain for the enemy or a kidnap could become a propaganda coup.

Thankfully, from up above, word had come down that the Soviet proposal to meet outside Dordrecht should be answered with an affirmative and the condition of the commanding general of the troops opposing them honored. Rose had been sent here to talk with the Soviets about getting their paratroopers here to surrender themselves rather than discuss the terms of a local ceasefire as they had asked for. He was told to exploit everything known about the local circumstances with the 106th Guards Airborne Division (106 GAD) as well as the external pressures of the relationship between Soviet Airborne Troops and the KGB during the war inside the Netherlands. His experience would come into play, he was told, and so too would the fact that by attending his word could be shown to be something to be trusted.

As instructed, Rose wore no helmet but what Colonel Rémy Gausserès wore atop his own head hadn’t been something which he had concerned himself with. It hadn’t been important.


Lebed waited until the British were a few feet away before he held up his hand and told the captain to inform them to come no further and they would talk at his distance. He then had his translator ask the British why they were late. He had said to meet on the hour and they were late.

The reply came back though the British interpreter – a tough-looking artilleryman who wore what Lebed was sure were the markings on his uniform of a colour sergeant – that the British general was unaware that he was late. An apology was offered for the lack of accurate timekeeping.

The British weren’t late at all, they were early in fact.

When asked what he wanted to discuss, Lebed had the reply given that as stated beforehand during the exchange of messages on the radio yesterday he wanted to discuss a local ceasefire in the immediate area. Soviet howitzers and long-range mortars would no longer fire across the Hollands Diep down towards Moerdijk. In exchange, he wanted NATO to cease shelling Dordrecht. In addition, Lebed said that he wanted no more raiding parties to be landed upon the neighboring, larger island of Hoeksche Waard (also here in the Rhine Estuary) where his men were. When the British stopped doing the latter, he would withdraw what men he had from there too.

What was the British response to that, he had his translator demand, and could they be trusted to keep their word?


The intelligence file which Rose had read on Lebed was rather thin. What little was known about his military career with the Soviet Airborne Troops had been in that covering his time spent in Afghanistan in action as well as commanding the 106 GAD for the past couple of years. Moreover, he was known to have done some military service at the Kremlin attached to a ceremonial unit undertaking – unspecified – duties with the State Funeral Department: there were a few pre-war pictures of him just in sight when dignitaries were buried there. During the war, he had led the 106 GAD through various engagements where he was known for commanding from the front and demanding that if he would do something then his men could too. Through more intelligence it was known that there had been serious disputes between the KGB and the Soviet Airborne Troops throughout the war everywhere in combat zones, the Netherlands included. The KGB had shot many senior officers for all sort of reasons and there had been ‘accidents’ befallen the new political commissars: Lebed’s division had lost at least one, maybe even two to random bullets. Lebed was regarded as being brave and having an independent streak along with a temper known to have earned him the ire of many in the KGB; especially due to his protestations when junior officers of his had been shot.

What Lebed was wasn’t Brigadier-General Menéndez. That was what was important. This wasn’t a man who could so easily be talked around, a calm and frightened man such as the commander of the garrison on the occupied Falklands whom Rose had convinced to give in back in 1982. This was someone highly-strung instead and also a real soldier who seen war beforehand too. Yet, at the same time, as with Menéndez, Rose had hoped that Lebed wasn’t willing to see the slaughter of his men for no good cause.

How Lebed was now behaving worried Rose for a moment before he told himself to keep his own emotions under control. Lebed’s whole attitude was wrong. He had lied about Rose being late and then issued a demand inadequately dressed up as a tempting offer. The Soviet shelling was weak, infrequent and ineffective… and would very soon stop when they run out of ammunition. As to the fighting on Hoeksche Waard, Rose had sent men there to take control of that island and start to surround the 106 GAD in Dordrecht: he wasn’t about to stop the fighting which had taken place there.

This was all an illusion though. Lebed wouldn’t have asked for this meeting, nor risked his life with the KGB as he certainly was, just to make such a weak demand. Rose was sure that the general before him was putting on an act and the true reason for the meeting would be revealed.


The British told Lebed’s translator that they would keep their word on any agreement made. The offer of a ceasefire was declined though. With full respect offered, Lebed was told, the British were asking him to surrender instead. He was told that his men were trapped without resupply and were in no longer any position to hold on for any conceivable amount of time. Lebed’s men had fought well and with honour; they hadn’t mistreated civilians nor prisoners. It was time for the Tula Division to give in. Lebed would be treated well and so too would his men.

It was hard to keep a straight face with such comments were given to him by the captain back in Russian from English. Lebed considered showing that he found what they said incredulous or maybe showing anger. He kept his cool though, inwardly admiring the attempt – even though it would fail – to try to flatter and make promises to him which the British wouldn’t be able to keep… they wouldn’t treat his men well after discoveries were made of mass graves behind the frontlines nor talked to trapped Dutch civilians in Dordrecht. His men had done what the KGB had said because they had no other choice but that wouldn’t matter to them, would it?

None of that mattered though: what they said wasn’t part of his script that he was to follow.

He had his translator tell them what he wanted in addition to the local ceasefire. Send us medical supplies, the British were told, and food too. In return we’ll send back wounded Dutch civilians. When those exchanges are made, then we’ll discuss giving back injured NATO POWs in return for more medicines and more food. Once the ceasefire takes place, we’ll meet again to get that all arranged. Take this all back to your superiors and get me something in writing. I don’t trust your word – you were late and have tried to trick us with your identity during the approach – so I want something assured from your commander. Go now, and we’ll meet tomorrow morning or the morning afterwards. In the meantime, we’ll stop firing on each other.

Once his translator was finished telling the British that, Lebed had nothing more to say to them.


Lt.-Colonel Robert Brims, the commanding officer with the 3rd battalion of the Light Infantry, muttered expletives in response when what Lebed’s man had to say was translated by Sergeant Bell, the Russian speaker with the Royal Artillery. Rose felt the same but gave no verbal nor visible response. He was stunned into silence at what had been demanded or him and the insults to his honour delivered. Lebed was hot-tempered, but this had all been unexpected.

None of what had been asked for was going to be given. Rose wouldn’t oversee the gifting of medicines nor food to the Soviets and nor would his superiors. That just wasn’t going to happen. Moreover, he was certain that Lebed had to know that too: it was inconceivable that he would think he could get his own way.

Staring across at him, Rose tried again to read Lebed.

There was nothing to betray the thinking of the man behind the return stare though. He observed the open pistol holster and the two men with short-barreled AK-74s; soldiers with rifles when they were meeting under a white flag. Lebed’s grubby uniform and freshly-shaven face were taken notice of, so too his scuffed combat boots. It was cold up here on the bridge yet Lebed wore no overcoat to protect himself from that and his gloves didn’t look particularly warm. Everything Rose had believed before was now shown to be false. He told himself that he should have listened to the cautioning voice in his mind that had warned him of the wrongness of this whole situation when the initial exchanges of positions were made.

This was no man ready to surrender his position, his men nor himself. And so this meeting was a waste of time.


One of the sergeants covered the rear and so Lebed followed the other and the captain back to the northern side of the bridge. They retraced their steps to the safety of the land at the end and then Lebed marched across to the observation post set up near the entrance onto the Moerdijkspoorbrug.

Newly-promoted General-Lieutenant Lebedev from the KGB was waiting for him there.

Lebed was asked if he had said all that he was meant to and what the response had been. Lebedev then turned on the three others who’d also gone to meet with the British and – in front of Lebed! – asked if everything their general had told him was true. Satisfied with the responses, the Chekist informed Lebed that there was nothing to fear for his family nor the families of his men back home. They had all done well and there was faith in the loyalty of the Tula Division and all those who served within. What had happened before was forgotten with, all that mattered now was that everyone serving here on behalf of the Soviet people remembered what their duty was… and that if they didn’t their punishment wouldn’t just be inflicted upon them but their loved ones too.

The pistol which he had left behind was picked up by Lebed and placed back in its holster with the flap then closed. Lebed pushed the image of his wife and his children out of his mind. That was whom Lebedev had wanted him to think about and he had done so, but now he turned his mind to other matters following his protection of them by doing as he was told.

After steeling himself to carry on dealing civilly with this man whom he wanted to murder, he asked Lebedev what was next.

Time, the Chekist said. Lebed was told that time would be gained from what had just happened and events elsewhere. NATO would be caught up in discussions and disagreements over what was said on the Moerdijkspoorbrug. And it was time that was needed here with Soviet forces still trapped in the Netherlands under attack from all sides and above with no help coming anytime soon… or maybe not at all.


Rose’s divisional headquarters was down near Breda. It was from there where the 2nd Infantry Division’s 1st and 49th Brigades with their fighting elements were commanded from and once off the bridge he would travel there. More troops were soon to arrive in the Netherlands to boost the numbers of his gallant but weary men and Rose would be putting them to work. Those retired soldiers had formed ‘general service reserve’ infantry companies and been retrained over the past few weeks so they could be ready to fight here in against the Soviets on a modern battlefield. They would see action because Rose was certain that all hopes with Lebed and the 106 GAD had been false with no comprise going to come once he reported back on what had been said.

He talked with Gausserès as they walked before then.

The Frenchman was the commander of the 2e Régiment étranger de parachutistes (2e REP), a Foreign Legion unit of special forces very similar to the SAS which Rose had himself commanded. Gausserès had many of his men in the Netherlands, as well as elsewhere, and those here were with the Allied II Corps alongside other Frenchmen fighting as part of the NATO force. Rose and Gausserès discussed their opinions on Lebed and what he said as they walked back and then turned to the another subject as well: the recently-revealed joint British & French pledge to the Netherlands and Belgium on the eve of the aborted West German ceasefire.

Like his French counterpart was, Rose shocked at the leaked news that when the West Germans had lost their political will to fight, London and Paris had sent personal guarantees to Den Helder (where the Dutch government was) and Brussels. Neither latter country would be allowed to fall no matter what, the former countries had said, and everything that could be done for them would be – even if that meant acting outside NATO. Inside West Germany there were large British and French military forces fighting there but there were more back in the Netherlands too. Britain had historic reasons for defending the Low Countries and making sure hostile foreign control didn’t occur over them, Rose explained, and there was the issue with Soviet nuclear forces being based in them in the modern era. Gausserès spoke of how if the Low Countries had fallen, France could have been threatened with invasion from the north. With Soviet forces cut off and being pounded as they were, there had come comment from elsewhere in NATO that attention should be paid to the frontlines in West Germany more than in the Netherlands. London and Paris had refused to bow to that pressure and remained committed to eliminating Soviet forces in the Rhine Estuary.

Rose stated that his men were going to fight and die retaking Dordrecht eventually for a political point… and the orders to do that were, of course, to be followed to when issued.





March 6th 1990
Above the North Atlantic

It had been a rather crazy last twelve hours for General Schwarzkopf. He’d spent the time aboard aircraft and also in hastily-convened meetings in underground command centers but he was now off to war, for real this time. There would be no more talks with politicians and other senior military men on the wrong side of the North Atlantic. Instead, he was being flown over the ocean aboard an aircraft especially tasked for his transportation and command use. Within a few more hours, once on the ground in Belgium, Schwarzkopf would be assuming the duties of Supreme Allied Command Europe (SACEUR). He kept telling himself that, thinking silently on the awesome responsibility given to him and reminding himself that he was not off to Europe to fail.

The EC-135 aircraft in USAF colours flew westwards at top speed, aided by a favourable tail wind and mentally willed on by its number one passenger this morning.


Schwarzkopf had been returning to his CENTCOM headquarters at MacDill AFB late yesterday after making a courtesy call across to SOUTHCOM’s operation center and General Thurman there. ‘Mad Max’ was in the final stages of getting ready to begin the first of the big ground assaults to retake the Florida Keys and about to give the Cubans on the ground there some of the hell which he had given to those who called Havana home. A not so little dose of shock and awe was being prepared to be unleashed ahead of a major assault to retake captured US territory and some of those last minute moves were being made by previously-assigned CENTCOM assets including staff officers Schwarzkopf hadn’t wanted to lose. There hadn’t been jealousy from Schwarzkopf, but instead a keen eagerness to see Mad Max do what he planned and if there had been anything more that Schwarzkopf could do to assist in that he had been ready to act… through gritted teeth though seeing as he himself was an observer, not a participant.

Into MacDill had come an urgent call from Colin Powell in contact from Raven Rock which Schwarzkopf had taken instructing him to hand over his duties to his chief-of-staff (CENTCOM’s deputy was still in Bahrain) and come up to where Defence Department operations were being run from with immediate effect, no delays accepted. Doing as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had ordered, Schwarzkopf had commandeered the first available, fastest aircraft then at MacDill: a non-medical configured C-9A Nightingale. He’d been flown up to Andrews AFB then taken a helicopter ride aboard a US Marines executive transport out to Raven Rock. Once there, Schwarzkopf was informed that there was information coming from Europe that SACEUR was missing and feared dead. He was given a quick briefing by Powell on what little was known because if General Galvin was dead, or even badly hurt, then Schwarzkopf would be taking over. It was all very fast and of course Schwarzkopf had questions, but he had remembered his duty. Powell sent aides to brief Schwarzkopf on the strategic and operational situation in Europe so he could be brought up to speed before later informing him that Galvin was confirmed to have been killed by enemy action. In a meeting afterwards before Defence Secretary Cheney, with President Bush and General Scowcroft in on the teleconference from the White House, Schwarzkopf was then told the details about how a surviving member of the aircrew aboard the escorting Canadian Kiowa helicopter that had been shot down alongside Galvin’s Blackhawk had been located right at the crash site of the two aircraft in the Arnsberg Forest. USAF para-rescue troopers had been all over the wreckage of both aircraft and tried to revive SACEUR, but there was no hope: his body had been flown out of there afterwards. Eight others had died alongside Galvin – with just one survivor, that ‘lucky’ and apologetic Canadian without a scratch on him – yet his death was what the focus was upon.

Naturally, Schwarzkopf had no objections which he voiced to his appointment. There were encouraging words from those within the National Command Authority with Powell reminding him that he needed to get across to Europe as soon as possible. There would be no long period of command transition for Schwarzkopf as would be the case in a similar peacetime situation: the new SACEUR needed to get across the North Atlantic at once. There would have to be more briefings which Schwarzkopf would have to have though so he could be fully prepared so he could fulfill his new position effectively. Officials from the Defence Department, the State Department, the CIA, the DIA, the NSC and the NSA all wanted to talk with him.

Powell had let out a near unconscious chuckle when Schwarzkopf had told such people that they should get ready to take a long flight with him because he’d talk with them when in the sky.


Four identical EC-135Hs were assigned to European Command on the SILK PURSE mission. This was a joint strategic tasking for command of nuclear weapons in Europe in the form of an airborne command post. Such was the priority tasking of those aircraft though they were also outfitted for control of military operations of a non-nuclear nature across the theater of operations in Europe. They had departed from their home-base in Britain just before the war started to move to locations in the Azores and Sicily. Galvin had kept them on alert with battle-staffs aboard and there had been some use in coordinating REFORGER flights into Europe as well as Allied Forces Southern Europe operations across the Mediterranean. It was Powell who had sent one of them from Lajes Field to Andrews when the first bad news about Galvin had arrived knowing that should Schwarzkopf be needed to take over in Europe he would be pressed for time and so an airborne command post during his transition would be needed. Afterwards, when waiting for confirmation from Europe on Galvin’s fate, and worrying what to do if Galvin’s couldn’t be found as quickly as he eventually was, Powell had been told by one of Cheney’s aides that should Schwarzkopf need to get to Europe fast there was always Concorde: those British and French supersonic airliners had been making shuttle runs across the Atlantic on MEDIVAC & staff officer transport flights and there was an Air France one available.

Schwarzkopf had never flown on Concorde – and would like to one day, but not today – but was glad that Powell had sent the EC-135. There was conference space available for all of the meetings which he had to have to get fully up to date on everything that was going on in Europe as well as very secure communications links. He took advantage of the latter as the aircraft flew onwards.


The British Army officer General John Akehurst was Acting SACEUR until Schwarzkopf arrived in Europe. One of two prewar deputies to Galvin, Akehurst had ended up as the sole second-in-command following the unfortunate circumstances of his then-equal General Eberhard Eimler from the Luftwaffe: Eimler had been forced to quit when the ceasefire West German government demanded he pass on orders to their military to stop fighting and he had done so against Galvin’s orders due to his belief in his own moral obligation to his nation. Eimler had afterwards been killed in Flensburg following his arrival there when sent by the Aachen Government to talk to the Flensburg Government. Since then Akehurst had been doing the job alone and it was he who had reported up the NATO chain-of-command that Galvin’s helicopter had gone down and he was following standing orders to step up until SACEUR could be located.

Schwarzkopf spoke to the man over the satellite link-up and was filled in with the necessary details of ongoing operations and given a brief summary of the state of available forces for SACEUR’s command. There would be further briefings and a face-to-face meeting when in Belgium, but Schwarzkopf quickly found that all he had heard about Akehurst being professional and on top of his game was true. He recalled what Cheney had told him about making sure that the needs of allies were met when he officially arrived to take command too. While CENTCOM had been theoretically a multi-national military organisation, European Command really was. There were barely any West Germans left within the command structure but many Canadians and Europeans.

Two US Navy officers and a French Navy man had joined the flight before it departed from Andrews, hastily dispatched from Atlantic Command’s headquarters staff in Virginia. They were sent to bring Schwarzkopf up to date on naval operations over the North Atlantic and with that done Schwarzkopf spoke to Admiral Frank Keslo, SACLANT. The US Navy officer led the major combatant command that was Atlantic Command and was to be a vital partner in the war which Schwarzkopf was taking control of. Keslo had a lot to say with much information delivered, but Schwarzkopf focused on the key points from SACLANT. The Soviet Navy surface fleet in the Atlantic and the a-joining seas of Europe was no threat nor were their naval aviation forces nor naval infantry anymore. There remained some Soviet submarines at sea to pose a danger as well as the infrequent flight of long-range Soviet Air Force aircraft over the North Atlantic, astride SACEUR’s lines of communications to North America, but the overall threat was greatly diminished. SACLANT would make sure that the ships and aircraft heading across the ocean both ways made it and SACEUR would have only minimal issues imposed by enemy action.

An incoming call to the aircraft came from the Deputy National Security Adviser. Robert Gates spoke to Schwarzkopf and said that he regretted missing the chance to speak with him before the EC-135 left Andrews. The globetrotting Gates had been returning from a tour of Central American capitals, Mexico City included, and hadn’t reached Schwarzkopf in time. Gates asked whether Schwarzkopf had spoken to the NSC man that was aboard and there came a confirmation of that: the official from the National Security Council had briefed him alongside a leading State Department figure on the political-military situation in Europe. Schwarzkopf told Gates that he was aware that the NATO meeting in Luxembourg was about to approve – after much diplomatic arm-twisting – ground operations to take place on the other side of the Iron Curtain inside East Germany and Czechoslovakia, it was just a matter of formality now. Many of the Europeans would still be sensitive about that decision, Gates reminded him, but their national governments had all agreed on the matter. If Schwarzkopf found difficulty lower down the chain-of-command he was to go through official NATO channels to iron those out and keep everyone happy.


When they got closer to Europe in a few more hours, Schwarzkopf had been informed that a flight of RAF Tornado interceptors would come out over the North Atlantic and provide an escort for the final leg of the journey. On hearing that news, he had been very happy indeed. The circumstances of Galvin’s demise bothered him and he told himself that there would be no putting of his person in unnecessary danger like his predecessor. The role of SACEUR was far too important. Of course, he wasn’t going to hide and show weakness – Schwarzkopf wasn’t a white flag type of man – but there would be limits on how far forward near the frontlines he would go once in Europe… wide limits!

Finished with his briefings and distant communications connections for the time being, Schwarzkopf ran through a mental checklist he had compiled on the helicopter flight from Raven Rock to Andrews with the knowledge that he was to be the new SACEUR.

First off, he wanted to see done to the Soviets and Warsaw Pact forces what he had observed the Israelis do to the Iraqis and Syrians. The enemy here was to be devastated with all available fire power put to use. Schwarzkopf wanted them hit from the ground and from above all of them time with all weapons short of those of a nuclear and biological nature. With his supply lines open, only the interference of enemy defences and the weather could stop the attacks he wanted to see. Fire power would win this war. For more than a month this had been done to counter Soviet numerical superiority and it was to continue under his command. To hit them again and again, especially when they were unable to fight back effectively, would break the Soviets. Their political will might hold, but Schwarzkopf reckoned that the morale of officers and men wouldn’t. He’d seen it in the Middle East recently and elsewhere in his career in the past. He recalled now just before he left Florida how Mad Max’s command staff had been talking about a massive bunker busting bomb which the USAF was putting together. They were using old howitzer shells for penetration and were testing an experimental weapon to use over Cuba: Schwarzkopf wanted those bombs put to use in Europe along with the more liberal use of fuel-air and chemical weapons. Napalm was another weapon that had been underused against the Soviets due to weather effects, but the meteorological briefing he had had said there was a clear and dry spell coming. Smashing the enemy apart was what Schwarzkopf wanted done and no ‘fair fights’ were going to be had.

Next was to make sure that the two big ground offensives underway in West Germany were completed as soon as possible. From what Akehurst told him, CENTAG had shut their pincers behind several Soviet field armies and were tightening their grip on those trapped while expanding to the IGB. Northwards of them, the US Third Army and the British-Belgian force were over the Weser and moving east: he would do all he could to not just speed that up to reach the East German frontier but to envelope a mass of Soviet forces with armoured pincers rather than driving them all back to the IGB. Combined with massed firepower, that was how the war on the ground to liberate West Germany was going to be won. The fighting in the Netherlands, even the combat in the Alps to the south, were to be secondary to those other engagements.

Following those on his list was the issue when it came to ‘the bridges’. Schwarzkopf had been told that they were up and also that they were down. He’d seen the satellite pictures of the fixed river crossings linking East Germany with Poland knocked down or with massive holes blasted in them and then been told by the CIA that they had a gold-plated source telling them it was all a trick. As soon as possible, Schwarzkopf was going to resolve this issue. If the bridges were down then that was good news. If they weren’t… then that meant more than the Soviets winning an intelligence coup on that matter but instead that East Germany would be full of Soviet troops fresh from their homeland all hidden and thus dug-in. The argument about the bridges needed to be addressed and a final answer given!

Lastly, at the explicit insistence of Cheney, there was the matter of public relations. Schwarzkopf had served as a young officer in Vietnam and knew full well how it was public opinion, not military defeats, which lost the United States the war there. In recent years, he’d been deputy commander of Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada. There was little domestic opposition at home to the ongoing war, but there was some and recent spikes in negativity had come from casualty figures leaked by the helpful media. Working from experiences around Grenada and also staff planning for the possibility that had come late last year of an intervention in Panama (before Eastern Europe erupted in rebellions), Schwarzkopf had been told that the media needed to be brought on side so that the course of the war was done fatal damage back in the United States. He knew that it was more than polling numbers and political futures: it was about morale of fighting men being kept up following news from home. There had been too little involvement of the media in the war where only statements were given to them from SACEUR’s staff. Cheney wanted press conferences done and the embedding of certain, trusted journalists within senior command staffs: they would be vetted and kept under control. Whatever his personal feelings, the decision had been made above him too that this was what needed doing when he was SACEUR.


Europe’s shores came closer.

A few of those on Schwarzkopf’s aircraft took the chance for a nap, some others had a snack. He himself read through some documents and focused upon those who would be working for him. There was his headquarters staff and then all the different levels of command down beneath him with commanders from various nationalities and wearing uniforms from different branches. As to several US Army men in senior positions, Schwarzkopf noted that they were what many called ‘German officers’. These were United States military personnel who’d spent the majority of their careers within peacetime West Germany.

Schwarzkopf wasn’t one of them.

He was an infantry officer rather than an armour man and had spent most of his US Army career elsewhere in the world. There had been a few tours of duty in West Germany but they had been infrequent and short. From instances in the past and what he’d already heard on the grapevine, there would be some comment, even bad feeling, when he arrived in Europe. There certainly wouldn’t be any overt opposition – God help anyone that foolish! – yet he was aware that there would be whispers. Schwarzkopf would do his duty and remember his position as well as making sure that anyone with something to say about his appointment would get the opportunity to do so… and then they’d see the consequences of that afterwards.





March 6th 1990
Boca Chica Key, the Florida Keys, Florida, the United States

The Green Berets were ordered into cover and told to turn their heads away from looking at the Cuban-held NAS Key West. Moreover, they were ordered to close their eyes, put fingers in their ears and open their mouths. One of the special forces soldiers quipped that he should have brought his suntan lotion, that with a factor of two million plus!, because it sounded like someone was about to use a nuclear weapon. One of his comrades gave him a jab in the ribs to shut him up while a major told him that wasn’t the case at all.

Instead, the US Air Force was about cut some daises.


The first MC-130H Combat Talon came in very low over the water and from out of the eastern sky with the sun rising behind the aircraft. The anti-air threat was reported to be minimal but the aircrew aboard took no chances. They raced in fast and by coming from out of the sun there would be almost no visual warning of their approach. Jamming pods for active electronic interference had been fitted and were being used while the defensive systems officer had a finger above the button to deploy both infrared flares & chaff to defeat any incoming missiles.

The rear-loading ramp was lowered just in time and those in the rear cargo cabin moved quick to unload the carried payload. From out of the back of the MC-130 fell a massive bomb using a special system to drop it carefully and (hopefully) on target. Afterwards, the aircrew took evasive action in response to the anticipated blast effects: they climbed and turned away to escape what was coming.

Slowed briefly by a small parachute, the bomb weighing an immense 12600lb fell towards the ground. This was a BLU-82 Commando Vault, affectionately known by the moniker ‘Daisy Cutter’. It had been decorated with messages for the Cubans in the form of crude remarks and also a big, happy smiley face. A long rod was positioned pointing downwards from the main body of the bomb with the fuse connected to allow for an above-ground explosion. No one targeted by it saw it coming and if anyone had, there wouldn’t have been any time to do anything about it.

Just above NAS Key West, atop improvised obstructions placed over the runways and taxiways along with anti-personnel mines scattered, and among defending troops dug-in not deep enough, the Daisy Cutter exploded.

The blast was just as what could be expected from such a terrible weapon.


The Green Berets were reminded to stay down and under cover after the explosion. They were bashed around about by the shockwave and a little bit stunned by the pure power of the detonation of the Daisy Cutter yet in a hell of a better state that the Cubans near to them who hadn’t been prepared for the incoming bomb. Officers and sergeants told them to stay where they were because there was a follow attack coming in the next few minutes.

Nearby, unaware that there were American special forces sheltering in any cover available, Cuban troops lay dead, wounded or wandering about helpless. Others came to aid their fellow soldiers while wondering just what had happened.

Then the second MC-130 arrived and dropped another Daisy Cutter, with the aim being to target those who had exposed themselves following the blast of the first. Another fantastic explosion took place just above the ground while the Green Berets who were so close but safe were the only ones unaffected.


There came orders afterwards for the Green Berets to go into action. These were regulars and national guardsmen who had been inserted all through yesterday onto Boca Chica Key using small boats to land on the island next to Key West itself. They had brought weapons and radios with them along with what could be best described as a mean attitude. None of the Cubans were walking around carrying a white flag but rather automatic rifles and radios.

Gunfire soon rang out.

Many Cubans remained deafened and blinded by the twin bomb blasts and had no idea who was firing and from where. A few did manage to try to fire back, but it was those that the Green Berets turned their sniper fire upon. Officers spotted were targeted as well by well-placed shots to put down leaders. There was no shooting at several medical personnel who were seen trying to help the countless wounded: the Green Berets had no motivation to act in such a manner as the Cubans had done, no matter what their personal feelings on gained a measure of (misplaced) revenge. Instead, these were professionals who were busy opening the way for the incoming helicopters.


From launch sites away to the northeast, on various small isles under guard near to Boca Chica Key, came those helicopters. There were Chinooks, Blackhawks and Hueys laden with troops along with Cobra gunships for fire support. Other Green Berets not engaged in sniping at any sigh of effective resistance guided the helicopters bringing in soldiers to where they were to start depositing those men while some of the Cobras were directed to open fire with their cannons and rockets against distant locations where Cubans unaffected by the Daisy Cutters were spotted with heavy weapons.

The men who came out of the troop transports were from the 2d Brigade of the 7th Infantry (Light) Division. They were combat soldiers from the 3/17 INF first, light infantry specialists eager for several weeks now to see action yet trained hard while waiting ready for this fight. There was some opposition that came their way, but with support from the Green Berets and the state of the defenders overall, they quickly secured their first objectives. A couple of helicopters had been hit from stray rounds when the men came out of them but otherwise they were undamaged. The above-ground bursts of the Daisy Cutters had meant that the runaways weren’t cratered by the explosive force which could usually be attributed to blasts of such magnitude; those helicopters flew back out to assist in bringing in more men who were serving with the 2/27 INF & the 4/17 INF.


The second stage of Golden Talon was underway now. NAS Key West had already suffered major damage and more was expected to come from the fighting to retake it, yet there was nothing that could be done about that. The important thing was to defeat the Cubans on Boca Chica Key and continue the close containment of Key West where – once Boca Chica Key was retaken – the last of the Cubans on US soil were to be found. Those were the mission orders and they were being followed by the men engaged in seizing this military base from an already beaten enemy who were quickly found to be not up to the job of stopping them.

The Cubans had been abandoned here by their own side and left without resupply for several weeks. They had no air defences, limited heavy weapons & the ammunition for those and no hope.

Key West was next.





March 6th 1990
The Vogelsberg, Hessen, West Germany

It had been the French which had physically driven the 7th Tank Division to retreat into the Vogelsberg. The East German Army combat division had been forced back along the Ohm & Felda River Valleys in the face of the massive French armoured assaulted in a terrible retreat where rather a lot of the division had been destroyed during the process. In addition, there had come the repeated air attacks from above cutting off avenues of escape to the east rather than the direction of retreat south taken.

Nonetheless, it had been orders coming to the divisional command from above, from the command staff of the Soviet Thirteenth Combined Arms Army, which had ordered the stand to be made within the shadows of the mountains above. It was those Soviets who had given the instructions that there was to be no further retreat; they had stated that the East Germans weren’t to seek any further escape and were to fight it out with the French who had followed them instead of continuing to try to fall back further.

Those officers serving with the unofficially named ‘Dresden Division’ who were aware of what the orders had been almost to a man had decided that this had been deliberate. The Soviets had decided that East Germans were to stay behind and be sacrificed for enemy attention while they pulled their own countrymen out of the closing trap between the French and the Americans coming up from the south. It was clear that this had happened and, naturally, the bad feeling about it was widespread.

Yet, at the same time, those were the still orders which were to be obeyed. The overwhelming majority of the officers and men with the Dresden Division were doing just that regardless of how they felt about their mistreatment by their supposed allies because they all knew and feared the consequences of not doing so. One officer in particular took the task of following those orders to the extreme… but eventually he’d go too far.


The Oberstleutnant (lieutenant-colonel) was assigned to the Dresden Division’s headquarters staff. He was an officer with the Politischen Hauptverwaltung (PHV): the Political Administration, which was an important component of the military of East Germany. His task was to ensure the political loyalty of the Dresden Division to his country and the cause which it served. The duties which came with the role meant removing and arresting those who showed disloyalty – in any form – and also supervising the propaganda effort within the division to keep the morale of all who served within at a suitably high level. Other PHV officers of lesser rank served under the Oberstleutnant and there had previously been Soviet liaison officers too from the KGB’s Third Chief Directorate to work with him: men who’d departed overnight. Throughout the war, the Oberstleutnant had proved himself to all those who had observed him that his commitment was to this war as well as his nation.

No one had doubted where his loyalties laid.

Watching the Dresden Division die its final death this afternoon, caught up in a maelstrom of violence inflicted by the enemy and trapped against terrain impossible to fall back further into, the Oberstleutnant still didn’t waver. Men were dying all around him under relentless artillery barrages, air attacks and careful assaults made by West German units just as committed as he was. The Oberstleutnant issued orders through short-range radio communications and runners (NATO electronic jamming was intense) that the fighting was to continue and the Dresden Division was to hold its position. When outright objections came, he immediately instructed that those who weren’t committed to the fight to be shot. Moreover, he personally executed the divisional chief-of-staff when he spoke in coded terms about yielding to the enemy because the men were dying for no reason.

Half of the division hadn’t made it back here from the previous positions near Homberg right before the French had struck. The ammunition was fast running out and the enemy was surrounding them with tanks and terrain. There was no longer an effective artillery force and the air defence assets had been smashed to pieces. The medical units were overwhelmed with casualties and there was no communication with higher headquarters.

None of this mattered to the Oberstleutnant. He had been instructed to make sure that the Dresden Division obeyed their orders to stand fast and engage the enemy until the very end and he made sure that that was achieved.

The divisional commander reported that the attacking West Germans were using Leopard-2 main battle tanks and those were eliminating the T-55s fielded by his men with ease; the Oberstleutnant responded with the official line that the West German Army was no more since the ceasefire and it would be older French AMX-30s in opposition, which could be defeated by the Dresden Division as long at the commitment to the cause was maintained down from the officers to the men. When one of the regimental commanders reported that low-level air attacks by enemy helicopters were slaughtering his men because he was out of surface-to-air missiles, the Oberstleutnant told him to have his men fire their rifles into the sky as they were trained to. Another report came in to the command staff whose loyalty he maintained that the infantry with the Dresden Division were dying because their chemical warfare suits weren’t protecting them from the latest enemy gas attack; the Oberstleutnant replied that such a claim was false as the equipment was the very best and up to the task.

Messages went out from the Oberstleutnant to be issued down the chain-of-command that the lack of fighting spirit was unworthy of the soldiers of East Germany. He had those sent out from the headquarters post by the divisional commander down to the man’s subordinates, to be passed onto the men afterwards. Furthermore, there was a reminder that the fates of the families of those who might consider betraying their country by a lack of commitment were in the hands of those who were back home.

That last message sent out was the equivalent of the Oberstleutnant signing his own death warrant. Eventually, when having had enough of listening to the mad ravings of a political toadie who was willing to oversee the murder of the remaining men of Dresden Division, and threaten the lives of their wives and children, an unmarried and orphaned Hauptmann (captain) with the divisional staff took out his pistol and shot the PHV man with a single bullet to the temple.

No one on the command staff had any immediate objection.


With the imposing Bildsteinskopf Mountain behind him, that Hauptmann was the one to meet with the West Germans an hour later. Back at the command post, the senior officers from the commanding Oberst (colonel) down were still conspiring in a cover-up, but the Hauptmann refused to have a hand in that and had told them all that he would gladly suffer a firing squad if it came to that: before then he was off to bring an end to the hopeless ongoing butchery taking place.

He took an improvised white flag with him.

The West Germans, he found, did have Leopard-2 tanks. They were an organised unit, one that hadn’t broken before nor during the ceasefire last month. They sent out an Oberstleutnant of their own with that man being a real soldier not a fanatical lunatic. The Hauptmann was treated with the correct level of respect and there was even a compliment given as to the fighting ability of his fellow soldiers in such a hopeless situation as they had been in where they had continued to fight. The Hauptmann found that all a bit overdone yet got past that and did what he met with the West German to do.

Soon enough an agreement was fleshed out between the two soldiers and afterwards the Dresden Division would stand down and yield to the enemy. Meanwhile, the body of the PHV Oberstleutnant was to find itself dumped in an unmarked grave after the apparent ‘accident’ he had had when cleaning his own pistol by looking down the barrel and testing the strength of the trigger…

…such things can happen.





March 6th 1990
Above Sankt Johann im Pongau, Salzburgerland, Austria

The Spanish had their paratroopers nearby in control of Bischofshofen while the 173d Airborne Brigade with the US Army had air assault and airmobile troops at St. Johann. Both towns lay in the Salzach Valley, to the south of Hungarian-occupied Salzburg, and along the route of the withdrawal which the Hungarian First Army was taking. Following the road which ran alongside the upper reaches of the Salzach River was the only option available to the retreating Hungarians who were assailed all throughout their pulling back eastwards: this left them on a collision course with the waiting airborne forces fighting as part of a seven nation army here inside Austria.

Major David Petraeus, still with vivid memories of his recent short experiences in Yugoslavia, had arrived in St. Johann this evening to link-up with the headquarters staff on the ground in Austria after a flight across from Italy. He went through the Spanish airhead at Bischofshofen and made the short journey down to where the 173d Brigade had set up a command post outside of the town. The two regular US Army battalions were already in-place setting up ambush positions to block the Hungarian line of retreat. Petraeus was told upon his arrival though that he was to go with the Army National Guard mountain warfare trained soldiers up high though, with their battalion command, rather than stay with brigade. The brigade commander wanted Petraeus with those national guardsmen to assist in their upcoming battle.

So, Petraeus was now looking down upon the valley which lay below him. He was surrounded by the men of the 3/172 INF and witnessing the Hungarians starting to come into contact with the other men down below. There was no firing coming from the soldiers up here with him though as there was a necessary pause to be taken, yet it would only be a short one before the small part he would play in this gigantic ambush would start.


Along the western side of the Salzach valley, just outside of St. Johann itself, the 3/172 INF was positioned. There was a bend in the river where it meandered as it ran northwards in the direction of Salzburg though the road went in a straighter line. Where the American troops were located was on the slopes leading down from the Kitzbuheler Alps behind them. They had taken up firing positions where they would fire upon the enemy below yet stay out of the range of the weapons being put to use by Austrian troops on the eastern side of the river. Those men, fighting for their home country against a foreign invader, where brave and determined… as well as eager to kill anyone who got in their way without regard to the consequences of that.

There was an Austrian solider, a reserve officer who spoke good English, with the 3/172 INF attached as a liaison and he was enthusiastic to see the fighting begin as well as honest when it came to what would happen when his countrymen got into the fight. Petraeus had to admit that if he was in the same position as the Austrian then his feelings on the matter would be just the same. Austria had suffered so much in this war – one which it had wanted no part in – and the people of this small, neutral nation had faced much injustice and terror inflicted upon them. To hit back at the enemy with all that they had was what they wanted, to avenge the death and destruction caused by those who were so unwelcome within Austria. Those men on the other side of the valley, the Austrian liaison officer explained, hadn’t wanted to wait to spring the ambush planned by their country’s allies here and would rather have started tearing lumps out of the Hungarians at the earliest possible moment. Of course, once it was explained to them that the trap being set would draw so many of the enemy into a kill zone which they couldn’t escape from and where they wouldn’t be able to fight back effectively, the Austrians came around to such reasoning very easily as they could understand that the more they could kill in one place in a short space of time the easier the whole liberation of the rest of their country would be.

Regardless, there was still a healthy distance maintained away from the Austrians. Neither the liaison officer with Petraeus nor the commander of the men across the valley could give firm, cast iron promises that fire discipline wouldn’t be maintained and no one wanted to see casualties inflicted upon allies by friendly fire.

When Petraeus had been quickly informed of the overall plan here he had been impressed at the thought that had gone into this ambush. The Hungarians had started falling back from western Austria almost a week ago and heading back east away from Innsbruck following their initial invasion route. They couldn’t go north nor south as they went across the Alps with the West Germans and Italians (respectively on each flank) engaging them there and a mixed Austrian-French-Portuguese pushed them back. Intercepted communications coming to the Hungarians from their Soviet overlords who commanded the Alpine Front told them to withdraw back down the Salzach Valley towards Salzburg and hold in that general area until the what was said to be the ‘current unfortunate strategic situation’ in the country could be reversed. The Soviets had referred to the immense Italian counteroffensive back over the Alps, Petraeus had been told, which had come over the Alps out of northeastern Italy against the Soviet Eighth Tank Army. More Soviet troops, those with their Fourteenth Guards Combined Arms Army, had been pulled southwards from their positions fighting the West Germans north of Salzburg along the Austrian – West German border. The Alpine Front was shortening its lines and pulling its available combat strength together rather than allowing it to be as spread out as it was. As part of that there had come the Hungarian retreat, during which they had been attacked from the air and on the ground from special forces and guerillas in addition to the conventional attacks on the ground: some had referred to the road being followed as a ‘Highway of Death’ due to the destruction inflicted upon the Hungarians using it. Now finally, rather than letting the Hungarians fall back as far as Salzburg where they could establish a defensive position there, even one which could eventually be cut off, the plan was to surround them in the countryside away from the city where civilian casualties would be far lower. There would additionally be a gap torn in the defensive lines which the Soviets who led the Alpine Front hoped to have created.

The part in this which the 3/172 INF as a component of the 173d Brigade was to play was to attack the Hungarians when they were below them and pushing back the rest of the brigade. Where the men with the 3/325 INF and 1/509 INF were positioned outside St. Johann they were tasked to conduct a fighting withdrawal regardless of the ability of the Hungarians to do that. It wouldn’t be an easy task to pull back in the middle of combat and there was also the issue that the fighting strength of the Hungarians wasn’t going to justify a retreat in usual circumstances. Yet the Hungarians needed to be sucked into a trap so when those two battalions of American light troops linked up with the Spanish north of the town – with the Hungarians inside and south of it – there were enough of them inside the trap to be eliminated by the combined force of Allied troops present. The 3/172 INF and the Austrians would be firing on the flanks and a stop-line eventually held once the Hungarians had run out of steam: once halted they wouldn’t be able to move and could be wiped out.

Intelligence conducted in many forms – aerial, on the ground, from signals intercepts and prisoner/defector questioning – estimated that only a third of the initial strength of the First Hungarian Army was left after their invasion across Austria and subsequent retreat. Of that greatly reduced number, Petraeus was told that the ambush around St. Johann was meant to destroy about half of that remaining total as not all of the Hungarians could be physically sucked into the trap nor were there enough Allied troops present to take on the whole remaining field army. It would be a challenge to pull this all off, but one which his superiors believed could be achieved with such a weakened enemy and an attacking force carefully positioned like it was.


With a battalion headquarters in peacetime at Jericho in Vermont, the 3/172 INF was listed as a prewar component of the Vermont Army National Guard. However, there were men within the battalion from several states in New England: national guardsmen from Maine, New Hampshire and New York joined those from Vermont. These were all volunteers trained to the highest standard in mountain warfare: the only formation in the whole Army National Guard to be. It could have been argued that the regular 3/325 INF didn’t have the same level of training even when stationed in Italy and expected to fight in the Alpine passes on the Austrian frontier. Yet, that formation had seen action already doing just that and the 3/172 INF was still green. For nearly two weeks they had been waiting in Italy getting ready to go into battle with talk at one point that they might be sent to Yugoslavia when there had been diplomatic moves to try to convince that country to enter the war and have the 173d Brigade on its soil. The Yugoslavia plan had been thrown out of the window when Belgrade Airport had been atomized and so the national guardsmen were now in Austria among the Alps, a harsh and unforgiving terrain especially in winter, but where they were trained to fight within.

Petraeus watched as a proud observer as the 3/172 INF did what was expected of them. Upon receipt of the order from the brigade headquarters to open fire upon the Hungarians, the battalion commander had his men do just that. The battalion mortars open up first and then the men who’d dropped down further from the slopes to attack with man-portable anti-armour missiles. Those latter efforts were defended by riflemen and other riflemen fought off a short series of hasty Hungarian counterattacks where the mistake was made that it was Austrian partisans firing upon Hungarian armoured vehicles. The Austrians across on the other side of the valley, their ranks added to be actual partisans, made their own attacks while there had already been fighting on the outskirts of St. Johann for half an hour before the flank attacks started.

There had been brief talk within the 173d Brigade’s staff which Petraeus had heard in the short time he was there that the Hungarians might give in when they first came into contact from three sides. There was no sign of any white flag being waved and no radio communications calling for a ceasefire at the moment. That would change though, he believed, once they realized just how much trouble they were in and how big the trap was.

Oh… and maybe after the promised heavy air support in the form of those B-52s showed up too. The Hungarians had little air defence left and the BUFFs were meant to be coming in very low with full bomb-bays when they arrived. Afterwards, he reckoned that the Hungarians might want to give in, not before.

Petraeus was far enough away from the trigger-happy Austrians and also knew that it was a good idea to be up high where he was, not down below, when those bombers arrived. He still had the memory of the ground shaking as it had done when in Belgrade.

[James G]

Twenty – Maskirovka

March 7th 1990
Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, the Soviet Union

The rebellion in Georgia was over with.

It had been defeated in an orgy of violence, the same circumstances which it had grown from. Those who wished to see an independent nation here in the Caucasus, to begin the process of breaking up the Soviet Union, were dead or wished that they were due to the punishment that they were now suffering.

However, there were many more who had lost their lives too and they hadn’t deserved their fate.


General-Major Viktor Fyodorovich Karpukhin, commander of the KGB’s Spetsgruppa A – better known as the ‘Alfa Group’ –, wouldn’t shed a tear for those killed despite the knowledge that what had happened was wrong. It was too hardened to the loss of life by now. So many had died elsewhere and there would be many more deaths to come in further places. He didn’t know those who were killed either: he was just told the numbers making them just statistics to him by this point. Everyday there were repeated deaths when rebellions such as the one tried here in Tbilisi failed due to the efforts of his men and others.

It was a continuing process. There were those who decided that they would defy central authority from Moscow and they managed to convince others that their cause was right. Soon enough, they would attract the attention of either assassins sent by General-Lieutenant Anatoly Vasilyevich Trofimov – the new head of the KGB who specialised in crushing internal dissent through ‘active measures’ – or Karpukhin’s Alfa Group would be dispatched with all the firepower that they could bring to bear.

Vilnius in the Lithuanian SSR, the northern parts of the Tajik SSR, Novosibirsk in western Siberia, Kirovohrad & then Krivoy Rog in the Ukrainian SSR, Kursk in the Russian SSR and throughout the Caucasus region Dagestan, Chechnya, Ossetia, Ingushetia, the Azerbaijan SSR, the Armenian SSR and now the Georgian SSR.

Those were the sites of the rebellions where the Alfa Group had been sent. Trofimov had dispatched his own men to those before the armed assaults which Karpukhin had commanded when the less dramatic efforts to put them down had failed. He was told that other attempts with lone gunmen, poison and forced disappearances had worked in locations where the Alfa Group hadn’t been tasked to bloodily secure.

While the Alfa Group was an elite unit, the KGB’s own Spetsnaz, their numbers weren’t overwhelming and nor were the men invulnerable. Karpukhin’s force had taken their own losses and suffered tactical reverses several times. They had won every engagement that had fought, but the cost had been large. Each time they were sent into action, their commander was informed of the losses taken to his men and then the number of others killed. It was against their own countrymen whom the Alfa Group was sent as well, which had an overall demoralizing effect not just upon them but him too. There was no glory in what he was doing as Soviet citizens, many of them misguided after being led astray, were being killed by the bullets, knives and explosives of his men.


Tbilisi was just the latest example where a rebellion had been tried at the same time as the nation was engaged in a full-scale war and attempts at succession had to be stopped.

Its leader was one Eduard Shevardnadze, until mid-January the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union. He had been dismissed by Kryuchkov rather than purged like others following Gorbachev’s death and returned to the land of his birth. It had been in the Georgian SSR where Shevardnadze had built his career before coming to Moscow and it was back there that he had gone in a supposed quiet self-imposed exile. Such a foolish notion – one which Karpukhin couldn’t believe that Kryuchkov had fallen for! – had been shown for what it was as Shevardnadze built a power base. The Georgian SSR had been a tinderbox since events here last April and there was a mood for a revolt present: there just hadn’t been anyone to lead it. Shevardnadze had suddenly decided that he was a Georgian nationalist and started the process of trying to take the Georgian SSR out of the Soviet Union. He claimed that he hadn’t been and was only keeping the tensions calm, but those lies had been shown for what they were.

Karpukhin had been told that there was evidence that he was using his previous contacts with the West so there could come support for his attempted succession. At times such as these, that couldn’t be allowed to occur. An assassin sent by Trofimov had failed yet the Alfa Group didn’t.

Troops from the Soviet Army based in the Trans-Caucasus Military District were inside the Armenian SSR on the border with Turkey; they couldn’t invade due to the security situation across the wider region. More troops which were usually barracked across neighboring North Caucasus Military District were in Europe. Karpukhin was glad that they hadn’t been involved in fighting the rebellion for they had shown that they couldn’t be trusted against civilians… well, Soviet civilians anyway. It had been armed men from the Interior Ministry, specialist MVD units, which had led the way for the Alfa Group by moving first against the center of Tbilisi where Shevardnadze and foreign agents were plotting and scheming. They had armed revolutionaries with them who had fought back against the MVD.

With that distraction complete, the Alfa Group had been deployed. Nerve gas had been used first to incapacitate those who stood in the way and then helicopters had dropped Karpukhin’s assault team from hovering helicopters. It was a well-practiced routine and unstoppable. Then the killing had begun. Shots were fired at everyone inside the operational area. It was the only way to make sure that the rebellion would be put down; if someone managed to get away and tell stories because one of Karpukhin’s men failed to kill them then the aftereffects would be disastrous. One shot to the forehead, another one to the chest: that was the way it was done. The MVD would come in afterwards and get rid of the bodies. Shevardnadze himself had been killed like the others with him but his body wasn’t for a watery grave when dropped over the Black Sea like the others. Trofimov had wanted the man’s remains for his own purposes.

Outside the kill zone where the Alfa Group had exclusive operational control, others were left paralyzed by the nerve gas or wounded by the bullets fired by the MVD.


Karpukhin wandered outside of the actual kill zone. He wore a full chemical warfare suit because he wanted full protection against the lingering effects of the gas used to achieve the mission undertaken here with the full success that it had. Only three of his seventy assault troops had been shot by their enemy with only one man killed.

There had been four hundred plus armed men here…

Another counter-succession mission had been achieved with the news already sent back to Trofimov so he could pass that on to Kryuchkov. Karpukhin wondered whether this time there would afterwards be an announcement made that an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ had taken place within the Soviet Union as had occurred on occasion beforehand or instead if there would be no news of the events that had begun just before dawn this morning. He was aware that Kryuchkov – ruling wholly alone with no pretense of anything else – was aiming to project the image that the Soviet Union was united internally while engaged in a world war yet at the same time was a realist who knew that word would eventually leak of the bloodshed in Tbilisi and so might try to muddle the waters on that matter.

Maskirovka was being utilized all of the time inside the Soviet Union and externally on a political scale in addition to what Karpukhin had been told were the immense military deceptions being undertaken as well. He knew the reason why: the image that the Soviet Union was divided and engaged in widespread civil strife would be fatal for the war effort. The consequences of the country’s enemies not just understanding this, but trying to take advantage of it as they had with the people they had sent to aid Shevardnadze, were too much for him to think about without a shudder going through him.

Control had to be maintained, the lies needed to be kept being told. Otherwise, there might be a day where he along with many others might be receiving a shot to the head and another to the chest before possibly having his body dumped at sea from a helicopter for the fish to feed upon.

Karpukhin was momentarily concerned at such an image that popped into his mind as he heard several helicopters above him who were at the moment doing just that to the remains of those foolish enough to stand in the way of the Alfa Group.





March 7th 1990
The North Sea coast off Jutland, Denmark

NATO could play that game called Maskirovka too.


There was no intention for an amphibious assault to be conducted along the North Sea shoreline of Jutland. The costs of doing so were judged to be far too great if such an operation was tried, yet, more-importantly, there was no real need to do so. The US Marines held onto the very top of Soviet-occupied Jutland denying the enemy control of that vital piece of real estate while away to the east there were Danish forces dug-in who the Soviets didn’t have the means to dislodge. There was also the ongoing NATO offensive on land across the North German Plain whose left flank element was aiming to eventually reach the Lower Elbe in the Hamburg area somewhere south of that city… maybe later get as far as the Baltic shore if possible. If ground forces couldn’t isolate and then cut off the Soviet Eleventh Guards Combined Arms Army (which incorporated what remained of the 38th Airborne Corps) then air power should do the job. In all of that failed, there was an expectation that the enemy might cut their losses and leave the occupying forces here all alone when they withdrew elsewhere. Other factors such as geography and the strength of the Soviets on the Jutland Peninsula were important too. There was a lone brigade of Royal Marines available to conduct an amphibious assault, a force though battle-hardened from combat in the war first week up in Norway, still understrength from that initial fighting. There was plenty of sealift to transport them into battle but no substantial follow-up force to land behind them and fight a mobile battle with the Soviets who would outnumber then greatly in fighting men yet immensely in armour. The NATO plan was instead to pound the Eleventh Guards Army from the air and the sea along with attacking the other combat forces that the Soviets had on the Jutland Peninsula or supporting operations using the region.

To do this, they engaged in plenty of deception. Trickery was used, with decoys being employed too. The aim was for the Soviets to fight to defend themselves from an expected amphibious assault and expose themselves to attack whilst doing so. There was plenty of success met, but a few marked failures as well where not everything went according to plan.


Today, NATO forces operating off the western coast of Jutland were ‘ghosting’.

The skies were alive with electronic activity as multiple specialist air and sea platforms conducted jamming (selective and general) of radio communications and radar detection. This was being done for a specific reason: so that false targets could be created for the enemy to attack. The enemy were to be confused and made to dance to the tune that NATO wanted them to. Combat assets were to be hopefully exposed and to be sent against non-existent NATO aircraft and ships. This certainly wasn’t something easy to do. The Soviets had some very good equipment and trained technicians to defeat such attempts – and conduct punishment strikes against those trying to fool them too – and had done so beforehand when previous efforts had been made. A lot more thought had gone into the ghosting operations underway today though with new techniques tried following a rethink of what the ultimate aim was rather than just trying to shoot down a few aircraft or blow up a couple of missile sites.

NATO was trying to get into the heads of their opponents so that fear and mistrust in not just their own equipment would take place, but instead the Soviets in this region tasked with air and sea defence would believe that they themselves were incapable of doing what they were tasked to no matter how much they tried.

Flights of aircraft and flotillas of ships were shown to the enemy through their own radar equipment. From off in a distance, NATO electronic warfare teams created a wholly false series of attack scenarios inbound at various points staggered over a period of several hours. The Soviets were only given glimpses of these supposed attacking forces, not the whole picture for the certainty was that that wouldn’t fool them.

Aircraft and missiles came racing out of the Jutland Peninsula… to hit nothing but thin air.

MiG interceptors flown by both Poles and Soviets thundered across the skies guided by ground controllers and launched air-to-air missiles at targets which they themselves had on their radar screens. Those targets jinxed around like real opposing fighters would and the fired missiles couldn’t achieve lock-on with them; orders came from the ground to fire again even when the pilots reported that they were seriously struggling to gain any sort of visual identification upon whom they were firing upon. Ground controllers told the pilots that their opponents were hiding in clouds and they needed to follow their orders… or else. After second, even third waves of missiles being fired against targets that couldn’t be hit, permission finally came in several cases where the offshore aerial engagements were taking place for visual sightings to be made.

There were no enemy fighters present and many MiGs were very far out over the water, split up and dragged apart without realizing that that was the intention. They needed to refuel and rearm and so were ordered back to their scattered dispersal sites all across the Jutland Peninsula. The usual routing wasn’t taken to through off anyone following them to try to locate their pit-stop as the need was judged to be urgent by their ground controllers to get them back on the ground ready to go up again. NATO reconnaissance assets watched with interest seeing the safe travel lanes through air defences and the exact locations of the current dispersal sites in use. When the real air attacks came later this evening, when there would be real NATO aircraft in the sky rather than ghosts, all of this gained information would be put to use.

Coastal defence missile troops serving under the Soviet Navy were deployed on the Jutland Peninsula. Down from the Latvian SSR, had come the 844th Independent Coastal Missile Regiment with its own and attached (from the 27th Regiment out of the Kaliningrad Oblast) anti-ship missile units. These were mobile weapons with trucks and trailers carrying the missile-launchers, reloads, radars, command-&-communications and technical support. The majority of the 844th Regiment’s combat strength was its batteries of Redut and Rubezh missiles: codenamed by NATO as the SSC-1 Sepal and SSC-3 Styx respectively. These were large, powerful weapons with their own radar seekers fitted to give final guidance to each missile following initial land-based detection, tracking and targeting. In addition, the 844th Regiment had received a newer system in the past week after the realization came that NATO sea control over the Baltic Exits was complete and opened up the possibility of their warships heading eastwards close to the Soviet mainland. A first line of defence was added to the already substantial rear defences and there was a detachment of the Granat (SSC-4 Slingshot) cruise missiles present. This weapon was outlawed by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by the Soviet Union with the Slingshots – then armed with thermonuclear warheads for coastal defence – removed from active service. Very, very few, had been destroyed before Kryuchkov’s coup yet those now deployed again into combat units such as those with the 844th Regiment were armed with a conventional warhead. The US Navy had come under attack from Slingshots off the coast of the Crimea and were certain there were some deployed in the Kola Peninsula too. Moreover, recent intelligence said that these missiles could be found on the Jutland Peninsula alongside the older Sepals and Styxs.

When the ghost targets of ships resembling in one instance today an amphibious task group heading in the direction of Esbjerg and then later the Royal Navy carrier group built around HMS Invincible further off in the distance, the Soviets fired their anti-ship missiles. From multiple launch sites off went Sepals and Styxs racing away and thundering out to see in several swarms aiming for that supposed amphibious group with landing ships full of troops and warships ready to fire their guns in support. There were no targets for those missiles though and they eventually ran out of fuel and splashed into the sea. Against what the Soviets hoped was the Invincible – they knew that the US Navy’s carrier USS Saratoga would never come so close – more of those anti-ship missiles raced out over the water to find nothing to strike. Of the Slingshots there were no firings though, frustrating the mission planners.

The launch sites were pinpointed following the ripple firings of missiles yet NATO was aware that those were one-time-only locations: the 844th Regiment was all about ‘shoot-&-scoot’ before an air or missile attack could be sent their way. What the attention was on was monitoring the exact frequencies used by the Soviets as well as tracking their reaction times to when threats were shown to them. Getting them to use up their stocks of missiles was nonetheless important as well in addition to having them doubt what their detection and tracking systems showed them on radar screens. Because there had been no Slingshot launches, NATO planners went back to thinking about what they were going to do different next time though. Getting the Soviets to waste their limited stocks of those missiles, and to doubt the ability of a new system, was key to eliminating what was regarded as a serious danger and more tricks would have to be used to have those missiles sent into the sky and tearing out to see chasing after ghosts.


Playing the maskirovka game was hazardous though, just as real warfare was.

NATO intelligence assets were scattered throughout occupied territory including on the Jutland Peninsula. There were NATO professional special forces who had either undertaken the stay-behind role when Soviet tanks had raced past them or they had been inserted into enemy-held territory afterwards. There were a few NATO troops – Danes, West Germans and even US Marines – who’d been cut off and left behind during retreats made yet were left with a radio and the sense to stay hidden while reporting on the enemy. In addition, the Danes had a quasi-civilian stay-behind network in-place across the occupied region with some of those involved having the mission of intelligence-reporting only rather than sniping or placing bombs.

It was this whole network, all reporting up through various chains of commands until eventually their information came to those who needed it, who were providing great resistance to the ongoing maskirovka which NATO was undertaking here in defiance of the Soviets who thought they were the only ones capable. The network needed support in-places with assistance sent to them at times. These men on the ground reported in enemy movements unseen by NATO satellite surveillance or what could be gained by using stand-off eavesdropping aircraft. They watched air-strips being built and missiles being deployed. From them came the reports that tanks were on the move so that the Saratoga could send her aircraft or others would be deployed from Zealand. A lot was asked for by the men on the ground and while not much of that could be supplied to them, some was in the form of small amounts of equipment & supplies as well as lone or pairs of men sent as reinforcements following deaths incurred. Each time this was done the risk was great, but the information which came out was worth it.

This afternoon, a Royal Navy Sea King HU5 was dropping explosives to a small party of Danish commandoes north of Randers, not that far from the forward positions of the US Marines. The Danes were to use them to defend their observation posts as mines to stop a sneak attack against them. The helicopter wasn’t even meant to land, just hover and the caches of explosives would be carefully passed to the men on the ground. Unfortunately, the Danes were under observation following their betrayal and a specialist counter-commando team of Soviet GRU Spetsnaz were watching. The prize of a British helicopter plus crew along with their prey was enough to justify a sudden attack being made: the Sea King was brought down with a man-portable SAM and the Danes overwhelmed. Moreover, the Soviets would now have some prisoners to interrogate as only the Spetsnaz knew how.

Later in the day, the Soviets showed again that while on the back foot, they still could undertake offensive operations as well. A pair of MiG-25 Foxbat interceptors, flying from their temporary base on the Polish coast, made a successful engagement using air-to-air missiles fired from distance through the darkening skies as the evening came in against a US Navy aircraft operating above the Kattegat. They hit an EP-3E Aires aircraft engaged in the electronic warfare mission with its own active systems interfering with missile-detection, even so the Aires would have struggled to escape. Regardless, the aircrew had been too focused on their own mission and had put too much stock in behind over ‘friendly’ territory as missiles with home-on-jam capability struck their aircraft. Their mistake cost them their lives and robbed NATO of an important warfighting asset.

Engaging in maskirovka remained dangerous.





March 7th 1990
Magdeburg, East Germany

On the way up to Magdeburg, Colonel Kirichenko had stated that it was the KGB who was fighting the war against the Soviet-led forces in Europe and winning success after success over the Western-TVD. Marshal Gromov had hushed his closest aide less such a remark be overheard. The Ukrainian Soviet Army officer had continued though, giving his reasons for such a view.

The KGB was responsible for denying Marshal Gromov information that he needed to the detriment of his ability to counter NATO. Chekist’ were arresting and shooting countless officers for no reason at all apart from they had said something that the KGB didn’t like. Actions taken against civilians not just in occupied West German territory but back across here in East Germany by the KGB were making the job of fighting the war even more difficult than it already was. It was too the KGB which had started this war, not NATO, and so every Soviet and Warsaw Pact solider killed lost their life as a direct result of what the Chekists had done.

Marshal Gromov had considered turning to physical violence in the end so as to save the life of the man he had shared a helicopter ride with. Thankfully, Colonel Kirichenko had finally stopped his angry tirade and there was also the issue of the noise aboard the helicopter making sure that any recording device or someone listening wouldn’t have been able to hear what was said. It had been a stupid thing for his aide to do. The KGB had already shot many men for a lot less… and Colonel Kirichenko knew that too.


There was a secret NATO directive banning air attacks against certain physical structures in all but the most extreme circumstances. The KGB had informed Marshal Gromov that schools, hospitals and places of worship were off limits to their bombs with approval only open to striking them from the very top of the command chain, maybe even with approval from their diplomats on their Military Council too. The directive had been seen by KGB operatives and confirmed by agents in-place within the West. There had been an ‘incident’ at Leipzig early in the war where bombs had fallen upon a hospital after they missed their target of a bridge over the White Elster River which had been played up for all that it was worth with much propaganda used. Since then, with their air attacks NATO had been extremely careful not to hit such places, especially within East German and Czechoslovak towns and cities. Schools might be closed and hospitals used for the war effort – churches and synagogues remained empty – but NATO wouldn’t bomb them.

Many schools across East Germany were now being used for military purposes where command centers and detention facilities were being used. There were few visible radio antenna and other clear signs of what was going on in them, but Marshal Gromov was sure that NATO knew what was going on: how their own moral objections were being used against them. He believed that eventually that policy would change once they realized the scale of what was going on with the mass use of such places for headquarters but until then he would still make use of schools such as the one near the center of Magdeburg which he had come to today. He remained on the move usually, commanding the Western-TVD with difficulty whilst doing so but avoiding the death-traps which were bunkers still, yet occasionally the situation demanded that he come to a fixed location.

Especially when summoned by the KGB as he had been this evening.


After going through endless security checks, treating him like a common criminal rather than a general commanding an army of more than a million men combined, Marshal Gromov was finally given a short and terse briefing which he could easily have been given in the field. The trip here took up valuable time and exposed him to great danger, but the Chekists had been able to show him that they were in charge…

…which he realized was their aim.

The briefing covered the news that two days his opposite number, NATO’s European supreme commander, had been killed when his helicopter had gone down somewhere not far from the frontlines. The KGB said that the official line was that the helicopter had been shot down by a Soviet fighter aircraft yet they summarized that a secret intelligence operation conducted by one NATO nation against the rest could have easily been the cause of the death of General Galvin. There was infighting among the capitalists, the Chekists assured him, and they were bound to turn on each other eventually. Moreover, no operation to kill the NATO commander was authorized that they knew about from a military or intelligence angle conducted under KGB or Western-TVD auspices. NATO killing their own senior commanders was a sure sign of imminent defeat.

Yes, they actually told Marshal Gromov that and expected him to believe it.

Replacing General Galvin was another American, an apparent buffoon named Schwarzkopf. This Schwarzkopf character, the KGB informed him, was overpromoted and disliked by his new subordinates. He was also expected to cause offense to his allies and soon there would come the withdrawal from the field of the forces of several NATO nations because of him. Again, the appointment of this general who had been given command in Europe because there was no one else willing to take the role meant that Soviet victory was soon at hand when NATO collapsed.

Again, there was utmost seriousness from the Chekists with this confident assurance.

There had been a media event which Schwarzkopf had conducted yesterday after taking charge. The KGB had received a videotape recording of that and started to summarize it for Marshal Gromov. He asked them if he could view the recording himself or have his intelligence staff have a look. There might be useful information within it that could be put to use to aid their own operational maskirovka efforts or to detect a NATO attempt to deceive them. No, came the immediate response. He was to receive a verbal summary from the KGB and the Chekists would tell him who on his staff he could share that information with and who he couldn’t.

Marshal Gromov was left dumbstruck at this behavior yet was distracted by the nagging voice in the back of his mind that told him that Colonel Kirichenko was correct in what he had said about the KGB clearly working to defeat them far more than NATO could ever hope to!


After leaving the KGB facility, Marshal Gromov met with his aide outside who walked with him to his staff car. A short journey to the waiting helicopter awaited him: there was no aviation facility here for the KGB were wary of attracting unwanted NATO attention despite that directive which they were so sure meant they wouldn’t be bombed short of a nuclear exchange. The vehicle would be bugged and the driver and sergeant inside the staff car certainly ‘co-opted’ by the KGB to report what they might hear. Therefore, until they got back to the helicopter and out of Magdeburg, Marshal Gromov would say nothing to Colonel Kirichenko on what he had just been told by the Chekists.

He shook his head at the stupidity of the KGB and muttered silent curses at them. He didn’t believe that NATO infighting had taken the life of his previous counterpart and was sure that their depiction of the new man in-charge was wrong. Everything that he had seen didn’t point to NATO about to fall either: he’d heard the same thing back in mid-February when the war had supposedly been won then following the collapse of the then West German government. That was when Soviet forces were marching on the Rhine and conquering all before them.

Now, with his oversight, it was Soviet forces in retreat and falling back abandoning not just territory but their own troops too. Marshal Gromov’s orders from Rodionov the Slaughterman, relayed through Generals Varennikov and Kalinin, were to cease active efforts to hold onto occupied territory apart from that held in Denmark, the very north of West Germany around Hamburg & through Schleswig-Holstein, southern parts of West Germany across the Bavarian Forest on the border of Czechoslovakia and as much of Austria as could be done. The main focus was to be upon defending the Inner-German Border from NATO getting their armies inside East Germany before they could drive on Berlin, then Warsaw… before afterwards marching on Minsk and Moscow. What that meant for those troops left across in West Germany – Soviet, East German, Polish and Czechoslovak – was that they were to be sacrificed to give time for the defences behind them to be readied. It had been done before with those left behind in the Netherlands on a grander scale and was now to be done across West Germany. The majority of the more capable troops were either defeated or already surrounded in NATO encirclements; what had made it back into East Germany were to join those in-place there ready to fight a defensive battle.

There were many, many troops inside East Germany: far more than NATO believed were present. Marshal Gromov, who expected every day that the bullet for him would come because he had failed to do what had been expected despite all of the odds, was to stop a second Barbarossa with another maskirovka. If that didn’t work, he anticipated that only nuclear weapons would achieve the aim, a usage which would in his considered opinion result in the loss of Minsk and Moscow in far more bloodier fashion than NATO tanks.

Yet, that was his personal view, and one which he wasn’t going to share.





March 7th 1990
RAF Laarbruch, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany

Air Vice Marshal Andrew ‘Sandy’ Wilson had come up to RAF Laarbruch from Geilenkirchen Airbase to hear for himself what the two RAF junior officer’s whose report working its way up through the Second Allied Tactical Air Force (2 ATAF) chain of command had to say. No. 15 Squadron was based at the nearby facility further north in the Rhineland and Sandy Wilson could have ordered them to come down to him but he knew that they would have further duties to attend to. He took a short trip there himself, aiming to just listen to them himself, look into their eyes too, because if what they had reported was true the result would be earthshattering.

Tornado GR1 strike-bombers were flown by 15 Squadron. They were operating from their pre-war base, a fortified encampment not that far from the frontlines of the Dutch Pocket yet a greater distance away from those moving eastwards on the other side of West Germany. Further RAF units, along with those of several further formations assigned to the 2 ATAF from other NATO nations, were flying from Laarbruch too with temporary extensions made into the woodland adjacent to the airbase. Nearby villages, including a couple just over the West German-Netherlands border, had been abandoned not due to the construction work to add aircraft shelters and lengthen the runaway but due to enemy attempts to destroy Laarbruch with rockets and missiles. Several of those attacks had included chemical weapons being used in addition to high-explosive warheads. There were now American Patriot SAM systems emplaced to try to stop the incoming projectiles but there was still a very high threat level here, commando attacks included. Sandy Wilson’s superior would not be happy at all with him exposing himself to the unnecessary danger as he was a valued member of the senior command staff responsible for long-range strike duties. Yet, he felt that his duty was to listen to the men himself rather than just rely on a written report.

If they were wrong, they were going to face difficulties and it would be best to try to nip that in the bud as early as possible. However, if the two of them were correct in what they had seen…

Called away from a mandatory rest period between combat flights, Flight Lieutenants John Nichol and John Peters reported to him along with Squadron Leader Paul ‘Pablo’ Mason. The latter was quite a character, someone whom Sandy Wilson had come to know briefly during this war already as a brave and excellent combat pilot but too a leader of men: he had taken charge of 15 Squadron in the past week when the wing commander (squadron leaders commanded flight’s as part of a squadron rather than as their rank would suggest) had been shot down and was still missing in action. In the report contained what Nichol and Peters claimed that they had witnessed he had added his own remarks commenting them and expressing his trust in their word. Mason would be for the chopping block too if what the other two said was exaggerated or worse.

Sandy Wilson told Nichol and Peters to tell him about the bridges at Kostrzyn nad Odra.


Peters had been piloting the Tornado and Nichol had been acting as navigator/bombardier. They and two more 15 Squadron aircrew in another Tornado had made an attack under 2 ATAF auspices early this morning against that Polish town just on the other side of the East German-Polish frontier. It was a major communications centre for road and rail links as well as river traffic. The Warta River reached the Oder there with canals adding to the water traffic. Previous air missions by Tornados and F-111s had dropped the strategic bridges over the Oder which provided a connection for westbound vehicles and trains heading across Poland towards Berlin. Those air attacks early in the war against Kostrzyn were being followed up by later ones such as theirs to hit the transportation links which remained after the bridges over the Oder had been brought down by laser-guided bombs. The communications links from both Poland and East Germany still converged upon Kostrzyn and the Soviets were known to be sending vehicles, trains and barges there to make use of them with intelligence pointing to pontoon bridges being put in place to allow for freight to cross the river. Hitting the many targets in the area was a priority mission because even while the pontoon bridges would be nowhere near as effective as the fixed crossings brought down they could still move men and material. The area was well defended yet full of enemy forces and supplies on the move. Carrying cluster bombs, Nichol’s and Peters’ Tornado and the other one were to scatter them all over the area, focusing upon Kostrzyn especially because a few hours beforehand a cruise missile strike was meant to have targeted the pontoon bridges and there would be a build-up of military traffic delayed in the town waiting to go west and unable to.

The Tornados had come in low, very low. They had relied on speed and flown through the pre-dawn darkness using terrain-following radar and night vison goggles during the approach. They had reached the outskirts of Kostrzyn moments after daybreak when there was just a little light on the horizon and came in from behind the town from the Polish side to the east rather than the north, south or west where the air defences were known to be orientated. Regardless, the ground defences came alive with shells and missiles shot upwards at the pair of aircraft. Peters said that only afterwards did he realized now that the previous safe transit lane for Warsaw Pact aircraft which he had thought that they had been using had been elsewhere and the intelligence on that faulty; Nichol agreed and stated that he had the navigation logs to prove that they had been on the correct course.

In spite of the reaction from their air defences, they undertook their attack without hesitation.

Kostrzyn was full of targets. Nichol told Sandy Wilson with glee how he had dropped the BL755s carried along the railway yard exactly where he was meant to. Peters confirmed the drop point stating that there were trains there with armoured vehicles being carried as freight: the submunitions were armour-penetrating. The other Tornado with them had been right behind ready to do the same thing with the aim of causing immense destruction to the efforts to unload those trains and presumably send the vehicles over the pontoon bridges which lay ahead. Before the second Tornado could release its own cluster bombs, some of the anti-aircraft fire had been better directed than the rest. Clark and Hicks were taken under effective fire by what Nichols said were 23mm guns. There was a sudden blast very close with Peters feeling the effect of that through his throttle: he believed that the premature denotation of several BL755s or the fuel tank in Clark’s and Hicks’ aircraft had caused that. Either way, the second Tornado was gone in a mid-air explosion and Peters changed course just a little to get out of the way of more shells highlighted for his attention by tracer rounds.

For just a few more seconds than planned, instead of heading north Peters had the Tornado pointing west. It was then which he had seen what he called the ‘real bridges’ and the ‘fake bridges’. Nichol saw them too when his pilot brought his attention to them in an excitable manner full of expletives.

Their statements on these ‘real bridges’ and ‘fake bridges’ were going to get the two of them in disciplinary trouble if they were wrong. That would be unfair, Sandy Wilson knew, but it would happen. Too many people were invested in the assurance that the fixed crossings over the Oder were down, just like those over other major bridges above rivers along the East German-Polish border and throughout East Germany. Aircrews had lost their lives taking down heavily-defended targets, many being killed like the other two 15 Squadron aircrew had been with when flying alongside Nichol and Peters. Commanders and intelligence staffs all the way up the chain of command through NATO were certain that they were down and strategic intelligence summaries were given on that supposed fact that NATO air power had done its job there. These two men were claiming that what they saw with their own eyes for just a few seconds, when under enemy fire and therefore more than a little distracted, disproved all of that. Moreover, their assertion would also say that the Soviets had achieved a fantastic maskirovka and gotten away with it for more than a month in the face of all of NATO’s intelligence-gathering where the most sophisticated and newest reconnaissance technology had been pointed at those bridges.

Sandy Wilson had seen the photographs and radar images of the bridges targeted to cut off East Germany from reinforcement. From satellites and high-flying aircraft, NATO had looked down upon Kostrzyn and other places and seen bridges either brought down whole or in part. Along with those images had been the statements made by intelligence staffs that the defending forces still there afterwards were to defend the pontoon bridges which made use of the transport connections that converged on the sites of the destroyed bridges. In addition, where Soviet jamming was encountered in the electromagnetic field against radar mapping and with the use of lasers directed against aircraft with cameras, the same intelligence officers claimed that was so that NATO wouldn’t be able to get an accurate count on how much traffic was using the pontoon bridges.

Nichol and Peters told him that the bridges with holes they had seen blasted into them were not real: they had been wooden and plastic with what looked like radar reflectors (to attract attention) and odd tarpaulin covers (possibly for infrared spoofing?) atop them. These fake bridges were right alongside the real bridges, the latter having more camouflage upon them hiding them from vision from above but not sideways on like they had seen them. And the real bridges had no sections brought down into the river or giant holes ripped into them.

It was the two bridges over the Oder which they were taking about, one each for road and rail traffic linking Kostrzyn with the East German village of Kietz. On the map which Mason had of the area, they pointed those out along with the other bridges nearby too. Due to the local geography there were several there crossing multiple waterways. Three more bridges went over the Warta and just across inside East Germany there were another two on the edge of Kietz across a small canal. Seven major bridges in total were located within a very small area and all were supposedly confirmed to have been knocked permanently out of action in earlier air attacks. Nichol and Peters only saw two with their own eyes while dodging enemy fire but they were adamant that they were in use and next to them were very clever fakes which they had only been able to see for what they were because they were looking at them from the side rather than above. Mason stated that he had been on a mission against Kostrzyn last week – the place had been targeted several times after the initial strikes earlier in the war – but only been above and also under extraordinary defensive fire; he also told Sandy Wilson that he didn’t doubt Nichol and Peters for a moment in what they had witnessed.

There was also the gun camera footage.

An anti-aircraft shell, one of thousands sent skywards, had detonated close to the Tornado flown by Nichol and Peters: a proximity fuse had set it off. The damage to their aircraft from the near miss had barely been noticed at the time but had caused damage to the reconnaissance equipment carried. There was a mangled cassette tape which had left Laarbruch several hours ago on its way to a special laboratory in Belgium where recovery efforts would be made to see the images contained from rapid flash photography as Peters had activated the system during the attack against the rail yard. Mason said that when those images were seen, the words of his subordinates would be proved to be true. Those bridges were up and NATO had been fooled, he said, and 15 Squadron would prove it. Furthermore, they would be glad to go back there and knock down not fakes but the real things instead.

Nichol and Peters added to this by telling Sandy Wilson that they personally believed that Kostrzyn wasn’t the only place. They’d met similar defensive fire over crossing sites of the Oder northeast of Berlin and reckoned that there had been immense deception efforts undertaken at those places as well.


Leaving Laarbruch, Sandy Wilson was convinced by what he heard.

Those two RAF officers weren’t the type to exaggerate or lie. They had seen what they had seen. Their explanation was just their view as aircrew rather than trained intelligence specialists – no doubt they had been helped to reach that by Mason – but it was all very believable. It just rang true to him. The Soviets had done stuff like this before elsewhere during the war. They were very good at deception and would get away with it for some time before being discovered… even then there was the opinion voiced by some that those ‘discoveries’ in other cases were lies to hide bigger lies.

That aside, he went back to Geilenkirchen ready to see his superior before the report from 15 Squadron reached him. Sandy Wilson would present the report himself as he reckoned that because it would conflict with the official view that careers had been banked upon there would be deliberate delays within the staff of the 2 ATAF. He would affirm that he believed the two aircrew weren’t trying to deceive anyone and their story was convincing. At the same time though, further action would need to be taken in response in a measured manner because these were only eyewitness reports. That damaged gun camera footage needed recovering but other actions needed to be taken as well. He was aware that the new SACEUR had passed on approval for special operations to insert ground forces inside East Germany to take place. He was going to tell 2 ATAF’s commander that he recommended that a request be made for one of those take place if not at Kostrzyn then somewhere else along the Oder.

This intelligence needed to be confirmed, it couldn’t be ignored just because a lot of people wouldn’t like the outcome.

[James G]

Twenty–One – Far From Home

March 8th 1990
The Celtic Sea, between the British Isles and France

HMS Boxer remained assigned to the trans-Atlantic convoy duty providing an escort for flotillas of civilian shipping crossing the North Atlantic. Commander Tim Laurence and his Royal Navy warship had made the crossing several times now, heading east and west. Container ships, general-cargo merchantmen and tankers went from North America to Europe and back again. Getting the empty ships safety back across the ocean so that they could reload in the United States and Canada was just as important as bringing them and their cargoes safety to Europe. On the return journey, such as the latest one which the Boxer was soon to take, the voyage across was usually shorter in timescale with the majority of the ships being un-laden with freight (only a very few carried goods).

Going either way, eastwards or westwards, the trip was dangerous. Soviet Naval Aviation was finished as a long-range force for either missile strike or reconnaissance, but there were still Soviet submarines active in the North Atlantic even after all this time. The US Navy was sitting parked off their bases in the Barents Sea and the Black Sea, with the Baltic Exits closed by mines too, yet there remained a few submarines known to be at sea. These vessels had sunk civilian ships and warships escorting them alike. What submarines remained were known to be lurking waiting for a target to come near them due to their long-range communications with home being cut and thus no longer directly able to be sent after a convoy. Regardless, they were still out there on the sea lanes between the Old World and the New World.

After being part of the escort force for the last incoming convoy to Europe, Commander Laurence had taken the Boxer into Plymouth rather than the harbours across northern France where the war supplies had gone to. At Devonport naval base, the Boxer had been refueled, rearmed and had some crew changes made. He had attended a short series of briefings upon the operational and strategic situation in the North Atlantic which had included a statement to the fact that there were less than half a dozen Soviet submarines left active in the North Atlantic ready to pounce upon the vital lines of communication. Each of these was meant to be either a nuclear-powered hunter/killer (SSN) with torpedoes or a nuclear-powered missile submarine (SSGN) with an arsenal of anti-ship cruise missiles carried. The last known suspected areas of their operation were plotted and estimates made upon their intentions, capabilities and remaining weapons loads. Other Royal Navy and NATO anti-submarine assets were hunting those submarines to have them sunk like all of the rest – or maybe convinced to give in like the one which Boxer had encountered last month off Canada – so Commander Laurence would stay away from those battles. The next North America bound convoy was to be routed away from those and the Boxer was to remain focused on watching out for other submarines which reconnaissance efforts, no matter how extensive, might have missed. If the enemy was detected coming for the convoy, or even just nearby but without realizing that there was a NATO convoy, then they were to be attacked by the Boxer.

At the same time though, Commander Laurence was told that he wasn’t to go seeking trouble as his task was to protect those ships.


It was just starting to get light this morning here in the Celtic Sea.

The French coast was to the southeast, Cornwall to the east and the shores of the Irish Republic away to the north. There were ships from many distant ports situated along both sides of the English Channel (Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St.-Malo, Roscoff and Brest in France as well as the Hampshire ports in Britain) in addition to a few Bay of Biscay anchorages (Lorient, St.-Nazaire and La Rochelle) all coming towards a rendezvous point in the Celtic Sea with vessels on the surface and aircraft above in the skies escorting them to where they would link up with the Boxer and other large warships. Before that meeting took place, Commander Laurence was engaged in sanitizing the area.

The waters below the choppy surface here at the edge of the North Atlantic were being thoroughly searched for any signs of the enemy. There could easily have been a submarine down below, silently lying in wait for the convoy to arrive. If there was one there, the job of the Boxer was to find it and destroy it. Using sonobuoys launched from the frigate & her helicopter, searches made using sonar & hydrophones and radar sweeps of the surface looking for the raising of periscopes or antenna, the hunt was on. Commander Laurence and his crew aboard the Boxer were looking for a Soviet submarine far from home yet out here to send ships and men to a watery grave.

Whilst doing so, there came a Mayday call made over an open radio channel from an aircraft declaring an emergency: it was a French Navy Atlantique-2 maritime patrol aircraft stating that with no other option available a water-landing needed to be made.


The Boxer was here to search for any submarines lying in ambush. A whole mass of civilian shipping, ready to make the voyage across to the United States in an escorted convoy, was very soon to arrive. There had been much searching done and no sign of the enemy yet that had not been completely finished by the time the French aircraft made her radio call. Commander Laurence wanted to aid the aircrew of that aircraft but at the same time had his own mission to think about, the protection of those ships from attack had priority over the lives of the Frenchmen in the Atlantique-2. It wasn’t a choice which he had to make, just a fact: the aircrew came second to the civilian shipping which needed protecting.

First on radar and then with lookouts posted, the falling aircraft was tracked as it came down. The Mayday call had mentioned a complete loss of onboard electrical power and therefore the inability of the aircraft to make it to land. The Atlantique-2 was a submarine hunter coming back home from a long overwater flight above the ocean, doing what the Boxer was doing and searching for Soviet submarines preparing to ambush the forming convoy. It now came out of the western sky, below the clouds, and in the general direction of the Boxer.

One of the pair of Lynx HAS3 multirole helicopters assigned to the Boxer was away to the south conducting sonar sweeps and the other was in the hangar. Commander Laurence would have liked to have ordered either the first helicopter back or the second to get immediately airborne out of humanitarian concern for the aircrew on the incoming aircraft yet couldn’t do so. Neither could he suddenly turn his ship in the direction of where the Atlantique-2 gliding in was going to reach the water. The helicopters and the frigate were both involved in anti-submarine work or (in the case of the second Lynx) getting ready to do so. To turn away from that duty would potentially mean that a submarine might be missed and manage to attack the convoy.


As the aircraft came closer all eyes were on it.

The projected impact point with the water was ten miles away and behind the Boxer. It flew past Commander Laurence’s ship losing height all the way. He was told by his navigation officer that there were two crews aboard the aircraft: those flying and a relief crew as the Atlantique-2 had been on a very long flight far out over the North Atlantic with a stop made on the Azores Islands. Twenty-four men would be aboard and all of whom were looking doomed. They would have been trying to return to Brittany, maybe Cornwall, before their inflight problem occurred. These were men who had been searching for more submarines that may be active out ahead, those waiting for the convoy and the Boxer. Other aircraft like the French one coming in had gone down over the ocean during this war. Commander Laurence personally knew of two more crashes when out over the North Atlantic involving anti-submarine / maritime patrol aircraft (a US Navy P-3 Orion flying from Iceland and a RAF Nimrod MR2 out of Scotland) that had gone down and he was sure that there had been many more too. Mechanical failures were occurring frequently in high-tempo operations with all sorts of aircraft involved in this war as routine maintenance was rushed and tired aircrews made mistakes. It wasn’t too common, but still happened.

Once the aircraft was past the Boxer, still in the air but getting lower, Commander Laurence had it monitored still. He wondered over what was going through the minds of those aboard. They would all be certain that the chances of them surviving a ditching in the water would be minimal, near non-existent. He was sure that they would all hope to have a chance and that maybe they would get lucky and live. The pilot and co-pilot would be trying to judge the waves and aim to do the spectacular by riding one when touching down.

Even if they were the very best pilots though, it would be almost impossible.

He pondered over whether what the Frenchmen thought of him, his ship and his crew. Commander Laurence had had a message sent to the Atlantique-2 wishing them good luck but saying that no help could be given because the Boxer had a mission to fulfil. There had come a terse reply in response acknowledging the message. He was sure that they would have raged at his refusal to try to save them even while silently admitting that even if he tried then he couldn’t really do anything to help.

Thinking upon this as he was, Commander Laurence didn’t respond for a few moments when his first officer tried to bring to his attention what HMS Chiddingfold was doing. When told, he was amazed, a little angry… and somewhat touched too. The little minehunter, out here like he was getting ready for the arrival of the convoy with the Chiddingfold looking for floating mines, had abandoned that task and was aiming to be almost exactly where the aircraft was about to hit the water. That small vessel, built with glass-reinforced plastic and therefore meant to be unattractive to mines, was racing at full power to go help the Frenchmen who any moment now would be in need. The Chiddingfold had left behind her duty for another, the former her official task and the latter an unauthorized act of humanity. Her captain was doing what he couldn’t do, all in the name of trying to help others.

On the radar screen, Commander Laurence watched as the symbols denoting the Atlantique-2 and the Chiddingfold merged just short of a dozen miles off. The aircraft had hit the water next to where the minehunter had positioned herself. Meanwhile, the Boxer was far off and not involved in that. Nothing else could be done by Commander Laurence: he just couldn’t intervene. The minehunter’s captain was risking everything, would know full well he was too, but still he did just that.

But the Boxer stayed out of it. The convoys and their safety were more important and nothing could change that in Commander Laurence’s view.





March 8th 1990
Chatham (Kent) & Hull (East Yorks) in Great Britain, and Calais in northern France

Diary of Tim ‘Timmy’ Proctor, aged 9 from London and evacuated with family to Kent

I will be ten years old in one hole month from today. I have been banned from seeing the calendar by Mummy and am not allowed to look at it because I was counting down the days gone since I have seen Daddy last but Grandpa told me this morning that today is the eighth of March and so on April the eighth I will be ten years old.

That is a long time too wait for my birthday. Grandma said that it could have been worse and when I asked her why she said that if it was Christmass when we had come to stay with them then maybe Father Christmas might not know where i am living and so i would not be able to get any presents. I told her that father Christmass is not real and everyone knows that. She gave one of those Grandma smiles that she always does and tried to ruffle my hair as grown ups do when they think they are being funny.

I do not miss going to School. I did count last week-end how long it has been since i last had to go to School and since we came to kent to stay with Grandpa and Grandma it had been four weeks so that must meen that it is now that five weeks since school closed down. I asked Mummy if other children left their homes and London to go to stay with their Grandma and Grandpa because of the war but she cried afterwards and so i went outside to play.

I saw an Aeroplane today. It had two wings and a tail and was really really really low.

Daddy is a soldier not a Aeroplane pilot. He went away a long time a go to fight in the war in Germany that is a place far from home. I miss him and hope he comes back soon when the war is over and there is no more fighting and killing and so Daddy can come back. Mummy will not cry then any more when we go back home to London.

Grandpa said that he never fought in any war but he did a thing called national serviceman. He said it is like School but also like war but not fighting. I didn’t understand him and wanted to ask but Mummy came and so i stopped asking him what he meant.

Tomorrow is when Grandpa is taking me to go fishing. Grandma says that there is not enough of the rations that we are getting and for Grandpa to catch a fish. I will help him catch a fish, a big fish. I will ask him then what a national service man is and ask him when Daddy might come home too. Maybe he will get a hoilday from the war like half term or teacher training days.

Tomorrow i will ask him and away from Mummy so she will not hear and cry again.


Dairy of Sarah Watson, aged 17 living in wartime Hull

Dear Diary,

I officially hate Sophie.

We are no longer friends any more!!!

I can’t believe that I was ever friends with her and will never talk to her again. She is selfish and stupid and I hate her.

I’ll tell you what happened today. We went into town because Sophie said that there was an event going on there. We had to walk and it rained a bit but Sophie kept on saying that it was better than sitting at home doing nothing all day everyday like I have been doing. I asked her what it was about and she lied telling me that she didn’t know but there might be boys there. When I said that I didn’t want to meet any more boys because I had Alex she gave one of her sneers, her horrible sneers. She used to say that she didn’t hate Alex and I was so stupid that I kept telling myself that it wasn’t true but today I saw that it was true.

They were already singing when we got there.

No War, No More. We Don’t Want Your F-ing War. Over and over again they sang it. You wouldn’t believe the collections of odd-balls and freaks present there. There were other, normal people like me but there were all of those weird people with their stupid-coloured hair – like Sophie has her hair – and their banners.

The banners were about the Campaign for nuclear Disarmament and stopping Cruise & Polaris and ending the War.

I didn’t want to stay. I told Sophie that I didn’t want to join the protest and we should go back home. But she didn’t want to listen and said that we should stay and join in. Sophie said that I was against the war, wasn’t I? So I should join in. I didn’t sing their song and didn’t want to swear like they did as if it made them all something like, oh big and clever.

Sophie dragged me over to these hippie people. They didn’t look like Hull people. They were talking about unilateral multi-national disarmament and nuclear winter and genocide of the proletariatians with Sophie listening like they made sense. One of the hippies gave me a cigarette and he smiled at me. Yikes! He was dirty with greasy hair! He kept on saying that the war was all for capitalists and when the bombs came we would all die for Thatcher and Bush. Then he was talking about evil Americans and nasty Israelis. Filthy Jews and their colonialismist, he added.

And Sophie said nothing especially when she is always talking about not being racist. Sophie knows my great-aunt, who I never met but that doesn’t matter, was Jewish.

Sophie really upset me when she agreed with what some woman speaker was saying when shouting through a sort of megaphone. She said that all of the soldiers off fighting the war were murderers and killing for the profits of the bankers.

My Dad is a bank manager. And my Alex is in the Navy.

Alex made me a tape before he left and I remember everything about our last kiss. Then he went off to sea far from home to keep us all safe. He didn’t want to fight in the war and he isn’t going to kill any one unless they are trying to kill him. These people who Sophie was talking with and nodding at every word were calling him a murderer.

When I told her how I felt, she laughed at me and went off with those people to smoke their cigarettes and that other stuff that they were smoking too. I walked home alone trying not to cry.

I’m glad that I left when I did. When I got home, Dad told me that he’d heard that the police broke the protest up and people would have got arrested.

Good.


Diary of Angus Fergusson, aged 20 from Glasgow who is volunteering near Calais

Day #16

Someone soon will have to do something about the refugees coming here. They will have to be turned back before they get this far. The Calais camp is full and there is no more room. The French say that they can’t help those already here let alone any more and Mum says that our group and the other volunteers are overwhelmed. There is a meeting tonight which she is going to later with the other representatives to discuss what to do.

I hope they get something sorted out.

We are no longer seeing many Dutch or Belgian families turning up but rather instead plenty of West Germans are arriving. They all want to go across to Britain, to get off the Continent. When I was talking to Emily – Emily! – she said that she had heard that the frontlines had moved very far back closer to where the middle of the two Germanies are. Still the West German families come though.

They can’t get on the boats that come and go from here every day back to Dover and Folkestone. The soldiers won’t let them on no matter what and so they are forced to stay in France with Calais not housing any refugees following some unexplainable diktat. They are told to go home, back to where they have fled from but they want to go across to Britain.

Personally, if I was back home, I know Glasgow would welcome them. Mum said that there were many churches and neighbourhood groups there which would open the doors for them. These families, all of the children especially, won’t be living in tents.

We and all the other volunteers are living in tents too… Emily’s tent is over in the women’s section. Anyway, we are showing them that we are putting up with what they are. We cook food outdoors like them and wash our clothes in the open as well. Helping these poor people means putting up tents for them, getting food and warm clothes for them and doing everything possible. Mum helps out with some of the women who have come here and have had bad experiences with Russian soldiers while Emily and I are looking after children when needed in big groups. She speaks some French with the Belgians talking their sort of French. Neither of us knows German, which would really help, but there is Eric from that Church group in Manchester that is here too and he knows a little German.

Every time Eric talks to Emily I get mad because I know what he wants. When that tent fell down on him, the one he had pushed me out of the way to help Emily build for one of the new families, I laughed. Mum was mad, saying that wasn’t the Christian thing to do, and she was right of course.

Some of the refugee children thought it was funny though: language is pushed aside sometimes with humour.

It is raining again and the mud is everywhere. Surely now, the French, even our own government back home, must realize that something has to be done. The people here all far from home need to be looked after and others stopped from coming here.

This really can’t go on and I hope the meeting which Mum is at tonight will decide on what course of action to take to bring about change. Otherwise I don’t know how this will all get better.





March 8th 1990
Above Cuba and the Florida Keys

Naming the bomb ‘Castro Castrator’ had upset too many people’s sensibilities. The temporary official designation of ‘Experimental Earth Penetrating Explosive Bomb’ (EEPExB) really didn’t catch on even with staff officers who had misplaced their sense of humour.

‘Deep Throat’ was another name being used and used with more regularity than the mouthful – to excuse the pun – which was EEPExB.


The Deep Throat was built due to a critical operational need for an earth penetrating bomb to effectively destroy hardened bunkers. The US Air Force already had such weapons which were meant to do this job yet their usage during the war had come with varying degrees of success. Temporary structures when hit by laser-guided GBU-27 Paveways with BLU-109 add-ons had been blasted to smithereens across mainland Europe and also in Korea too. Permanent structures constructed to the most exacting of standards had generally stood up to those attacks though with damage done but bunkers still standing and those inside left alive.

The aim of hitting the bunkers used by enemy commanders was to kill those inside. That was why attacks were made against them with the resulting danger to aircrews that came with hitting well-defended targets.

When the war with Cuba had erupted, the same problems had been met. The Cubans had permanent bunkers fortified underground where their military and political leadership fought to defend their nation from. Again, so-called bunker-busters were used against them with little success gained. The US Air Force could identify and hit their targets with accuracy, but they couldn’t destroy them and kill their occupants.

Pressed by political pressure from the Defence Secretary, the Joint Chiefs of Staff pressed (it rolled downhill) the US Air Force to do reverse this situation. A new bomb was needed and needed soon too. It had to be able to smash through hardened structures and explode deep inside bunkers in all of the theaters of war where the United States was engaged. An ‘off-the-shelf’ requirement was in-place so that existing technology could be used and the bomb was to be built by the US Air Force rather than an outside contractor. There would be civilian involvement, but the need to have a bomb ready to go with absolute haste cut out the usual procurement procedures.

At Watervliet Arsenal in New York in Building #110, the Big Gun Shop, the Deep Throat was developed with military personnel and civilian contractors involved. Barrels from old 8-inch howitzers were the base of the bomb and what it was built around along with a lot of fire-power and a simple but effective guidance package. The hardened steel of the gun barrel would smash through hardened bunkers. The explosives would detonate inside the target to great effect. The guidance system would accurately deliver the bomb to the target using already in-service equipment.

Two test drops were conducted in Nevada. Cheney personally requested the second on at the Tonopah Range when worried at the assurance he had received that with just one test the bomb would be deployed worldwide against targets of such significance to the war. Mock-up bunkers buried earth and concrete were smashed apart with impressive results. Naturally, some noses were put out of joint at the speed of everything – the Depp Throat went from conception to the final test drop in less than three weeks – and the hurried development but the need for the bomb was very real and those at the top demanded that it go into service.

When in Florida still heading up CENTCOM, General Schwarzkopf had watched a videotape at SOUTHCOM headquarters of the Deep Throat tests from Nevada. He had wanted the bomb to be first deployed in Europe immediately upon taking up the role of SACEUR but to no avail. General Thurman as SOUTHCOM commander had already lobbied for the first deployment of the Deep Throat over Cuba with the winning support of General Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. There was a worry too about an immediate live combat use in Europe going wrong and the technology falling into the hands of the Soviets: no one was concerned about the Cubans doing that.

Watervliet Arsenal could only build a few bombs at a time until a proper construction line was set up elsewhere but some of the Deep Throats would be sent to Europe after being given a baptism of fire in Cuba where I could be made sure that they actually did go BANG when they were meant to.


A pair of FB-111s each carried a bomb this evening with another two FB-111s carrying PAVE TACK laser-designators and anti-radar missiles. These were aircraft and aircrews which had conducted the hurried drop tests in Nevada and were now assigned to SOUTHCOM. The skies ahead of them were protected by F-15Cs armed with air-to-air missiles and an F-4G on a Wild Weasel mission. Everything about the bomb run was done to ensure that it would succeed…

…including attacking in daylight hours when the Cubans were known to be certain that the Americans would usually only bomb that at night.

None of Cuba’s few remaining active fighters were spotted but a Guideline SAM battery previously undetected was alert and opened fire. Jamming and an anti-radar missile fired back at the launch site defeated the inbound trio of SAMs and the bomb run continued with the first pair of FB-111s raced towards their target.

The first Deep Throat was soon released and the huge, heavy weapon flew towards a particular bunker identified from air and signals intelligence.

Fidel Castro was in that command bunker near Guantanamo Bay just as American intelligence said that he would be. The Deep Throat, guided-in by laser, smashed into the earth above, down through the steel-strengthened concrete and exploded inside. There was no need for the second bomb and that would return undeployed to Florida because the effects of the explosion were clear to see: the bunker was gone and so too were those inside.

Mission: success.



Another special operation was taking place nearby above the Florida Keys, over Key West.

Cuban troops on the island were wholly surrounded now and completely cut off. They were far from home and unsupported. US special forces teams had infiltrated the edges of the island and ambushed some of them to add already to the losses taken when civilians had attacked them. The Cubans were known to be on their last legs with the expectation that if attacked hard enough, with enough precision to really hurt them, they would be beaten easily with minimal American losses. Yet the senior officers there were still responding to orders from home to hold out even with NAS Key West on Boca Chica Key recently retaken. Other intelligence pointed to the junior officers and the enlisted conscripts as being on the verge of a possible munity if the circumstances were right for that.

The latter was quickly realized as something not to be desired.

The Americans didn’t want to see the Cubans in Key West revolt en mass and start killing their officers. If DGI men were killed, then that would save the hangman a job yet a violent munity wasn’t wanted. If those left in charge were killed, then who would a negotiation for a surrender be made with? If the senior officers were all slaughtered in a bloodlust, then the killing would surely spread to civilians before liberating troops could arrive, wouldn’t it? Images of human shields in front of crazed Cuban soldiers or a mass burning of the city by men on the rampage gravely worried SOUTHCOM staff in Florida and politicians at the White House, Raven Rock and Mount Weather too. This was regarded as a serious possibility and no one wanted to see that occur.

What was wanted was to get the Cubans to give in peacefully as the first priority and if that couldn’t be achieved then for the liberation of the island, the final stage of Operation Burning Phoenix, to be quick and achieve success with little loss of innocent life.


The barrage of propaganda directed at Key West starting today was aiming to achieve that first goal.

Aircraft circled around the island broadcasting message in Spanish. The senior officers were spoken at over their own supposedly-secure radio channels and asked to open talks on a negotiated and fair surrender. The Americans had spent long and hard thinking on their message with regards to that though they weren’t exactly being honest in what they were saying to the Cubans which they hoped would be listening to them.

The promise of good treatment to all and no investigations of conduct were made. The Cubans were told that they would be sent home after the war, even to a neutral country such as Costa Rica if circumstances back in Cuba didn’t allow that. Food and medical care would be given to all those who surrendered in addition to being allowed to conduct family back home or, if they had any, other relatives in Cuba. They would be treated with full honours as a combat force who hadn’t been beaten in battle but graciously accepted adverse tactical circumstances. US Marines were getting ready to assault the island soon enough and bloodshed should be avoided

This is what the Americans said that they were promising to the Cubans on Key West.

They would fight for the island if they had to, knowing what the cost would be in terms of civilians if not their own soldiers – US Army regulars and national guardsmen, not US Marines –, but would see if their deceit worked first. It was only words after all.





March 8th 1990
Villach, Carinthia, Austria

There was a common misconception that the US Marine Corps (USMC) could only operate in the coastal littoral. They were naval infantry, highly-trained in amphibious assaults against an enemy-held shoreline. More than that though, the US Marines were trained to operate further from the sea too though, much further inland and long away from the water which they had come from. The misconception was from many: civilians and military forces of friend and foe alike.

As a whole, the US Marines were a near-complete fighting force comparable to the combined militaries of many countries. They had their own combat troops, armour, artillery and engineers as a land army would. For air support there were strike-fighters, attack aircraft, armed & transport helicopters and support aircraft that included airborne tankers & transports. The US Marines had the on-call service of their own navy in the form of the amphibious assault and support ships manned by the US Navy as well as extensive naval gunfire support; their aircraft and helicopters could fly from those ships or from land. The creed of ‘every man a rifleman’ was well-ingrained throughout the ranks and the officers. There was a glorious history which came with the US Marines as well as influential advocacy from American politicians and heartfelt support from ordinary Americans at home.

During the war so far, US Marines had been active in many theatres of the conflict. There had been action seen on the Korean Peninsula and then across in Europe the US Marines had seen fighting on the Norwegian coast, in the Turkish Straits and in the Baltic Exits. There had been very few reverses suffered (reservists who fought in Schleswig-Holstein had taken some loses before a hasty withdrawal) and instead almost everywhere they had seen success. Some voices spoke in hushed tones that there was too much confidence being shown and if they weren’t careful, US Marines deployed somewhere were going to suffer a whole world of hurt due to hubris. That view was certainly not widely shared though: the US Marines believed that they could take on any enemy they were sent against with either the outcome being either a victory or a wise withdrawal if the circumstances weren’t right.

Time would tell of course.


The I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) was now fully across the border from Italy and deployed inside southern Austria. After the long journey from the Middle East – before that from California to the Persian Gulf on the very eve of war – the command and its assigned assets were starting to see combat against enemy forces near the Yugoslavian frontier. They had gone into action first thing this morning alongside the Italians on their flank and engaged elements of the Soviet Eighth Tank Army who were conducting a fighting withdrawal back to the east. As expected, the fighting was tough and the enemy certainly not a walkover. The terrain, even the weather, favoured the US Marines: they would have had trouble engaging the Soviets on flat, open ground instead of the Alps and the light snow as well as the freezing cold temperatures only encouraged them to get on with it.

The I MEF was built around two main combat elements: the 1st Marine Division and the 3rd Marine Air Wing. Combat and support aircraft along with many helicopters formed the latter and generally consisted of California-based units. The ships which the aircraft could fly from were far away now but established and temporary air-strips across northeastern Italy and into Austria were where they were now based. There Harriers & Hornets, Sea Cobras and Sea Knights & Sea Stallions. Air defence missile teams, which the US Marines had many of, were also attached in a combat support role with the 3rd Marine Air Wing to protect aircraft when on the ground but also the fighting men with the 1st Marine Division. Two thirds of the division were home-based in California with a Pacific focus but who had gone to the Persian Gulf and sat out the first part of the war there while conflict raged elsewhere around the globe; the other third – built around the 6th Marine Expeditionary Brigade from out of North Carolina – had been in action since the first days of the war. These US Marines had fought alongside the Turks in engaging Soviet naval infantry and airmobile troops who had tried to seize control of the Dardanelles and the northern shores of the Sea of Marmara. It had been one hell of a fight there with the US Marines benefitting greatly from local geography that cut off their enemy as well as all of their on-call fire support: Barbaros and Gelibolu were one day certain to be talked of like Khe Sanh and Okinawa if not for their body counts then the ferocity of the fighting. Two more organised brigades – the 5th and 7th – were with the 1st Marine Division and there was also many divisional-level combat and combat-support assets. Furthermore, in recent days, follow the assembly period in Italy and then the transit through friendly lines into Austria, there had come some reinforcements from home. Reactivated units from those in cadre status had come here with manpower from recently-retired US Marines who weren’t in the organised USMC Reserve back home and whom had undergone refresher training before deployment.

To Villach in southern Austria was where the I MEF had gone with the task of operating as a corps-level command (even though only one division strong at the minute; other NATO troops would be assigned later) with the aim of driving the Soviets back towards Klagenfurt as an immediate goal… the Hungarian border was somewhere being thought about too despite the distance.

Villach was in Italian hands when the US Marines arrived and nearly wholly destroyed. It had been burnt down and blown up by either Austrian collaborators (so said the Austrian military) or the retreating Soviets (according to the Italians). There had been pitched battles fought outside by Italians and Soviet forces were control of the communications links which converged around Villach and inside by Austrians against Austrians. The US Marines were briefed before and during their arrival that the political situation inside the whole of Austria, not just Villach, was complicated by civilian strife due to a very surprising level of Austrian collaboration which had taken place during the invasion of the country. It wasn’t communist guerillas as might have been expected but rather more complicated than that with rival anti-government armed groups fighting among themselves and with KGB connivance against the Austrian government and NATO.

As said, Villach was in friendly hands when the I MEF arrived and the enemy was gone. They remained outside the city away to the north and the east though, where the US Marines were to engage them. Both Austrian and Italian liaison officers were attached but this was a fight solely for the US Marines. No complaints were made, the I MEF had all that it needed to get on with the mission of liberating the area of Austria they were assigned to while eliminating the enemy wherever he could be found.


Task Force Tarawa was commanded by Colonel Jim Jones.

The US Marines officer hadn’t made it back home to his Pentagon duty following his ‘adventure’ in Yugoslavia at the end of February. The journey from Belgrade with the diplomatic party including Richard Armitage and Major Petraeus had not been something which he had ever wished to repeat with Yugoslavia being a dangerous place for them following the attack against Belgrade’s airport and the subsequent hostile attitude to Americans after that. The journey had involved moving by road to Sarajevo, a flight to Mostar, another road trip down on Kardeljevo (AKA Ploce) on the coast, a ferry journey along the Adriatic shore to Split before finally getting aboard a flight out of Yugoslavia across to Italy. KGB agents, either out to kill or kidnap them, had been avoided but only just. Jones hadn’t enjoyed the experience while Armitage had: the former US Navy man turned politician had clearly had the time of his life, especially when on that coastal ferry as he said the danger reminded him of his time in Vietnam.

Afterwards, Jones had remained in Italy when the I MEF arrived and continued with his mission before the Yugoslavia trip in ensuring that the transfer from the Middle East was as smooth as it could be with all of the logistical difficulties involved. There had come delay after delay with his own return back to the United States and like those others in Italy he had stayed far from home for a much longer period than he planned. Each of the brigades now assigned to the 1st Marine Division had their own command staff from the regimental staffs from where they drew most of their men from (the number designations were the same: 5th Brigade from the 5th Marine Regiment etc.). Those brigades were to each operate in Austria as a ‘marine air-ground task force’ as per US Marine doctrine with combat, combat support and service support assets together in them rather than the brigades with the divisional ORBAT. However, four task forces were wanted to engage the Soviets as the 1st Marine Division struck out from Villach. Jones was requested by Lt.-General Walter Boomer, the commander of I MEF, to come with his command up into Austria and command Task Force Tarawa.

Task Force’s Guadalcanal, Tripoli and Saipan were larger than Jones’ Tarawa. They were moving eastwards from Villach chasing the retreating enemy towards Lake Worther and into the valley of the Drava River as that major waterway headed downstream. Jones was to take his men north out of Villach though. US Marines with Task Force Tarawa was to fight against cut-off enemy forces up in the mountains which were hold-up there between the operational boundaries of the I MEF and the Italian V Corps.

There were Soviets and probably Hungarians who were up in the high ground along with friendly and hostile Austrians too. Previously, avalanches had occurred due to deliberate explosions to impede movements and kill those in their way. There had been air attacks where the Soviets had scattered mines to at one point stop Italian tanks on the advance; the Italians had bombed the high ground too and when falling into the snow there were reports that many bombs didn’t explode. Sniping had been expected and shelling as well from many mortars. Few civilians were expected to be still in-place but there could be some there. The enemy encountered was anticipated to obey instructions from high above to fight where they were pending an apparent later relief to reach them… so they had been told anyway. As much local liaison as possible with Austrians present was to be conducted and Jones was eager to avoid what had happened in the Oswaldiberg road tunnel where a breakdown in communication between allies had seen Italian troops buried beneath a mountain following an explosion targeted against Soviets by eager, vengeful locals.

Task Force Tarawa included many elements. There were towed howitzers from an artillery battalion, Sea Cobra gunships, Sea Knight transport helicopters and many combat engineers. A company of tanks was assigned, so too a company of LAV-25s as armoured fighting vehicles. As his infantry component, Jones had two battalions under command: 1/7 MARINES and 1/8 MARINES. The former was led by Lt.-Colonel James Mattis and had yet to see action; Lt.-Colonel Michael Hagee had led the latter against Soviet naval infantry parachuted into action at Gelibolu with a resulting hard-fought victory attained there.

These two men, whom Jones had only spent a brief time getting to know following the short period between his assignment to lead Task Force Tarawa and it going into action today, were doing the bulk of the combat leadership in the ongoing battles taking place north of Villach were all what was expected in terms of enemy and situation was encountered. Jones remained at his command post in supervision and organizing the fire support and local liaison. Night had fallen and his US Marines had advanced pretty far forward yet all of the objectives had yet to be taken.

Combat would continue into the night with US Marines fighting and dying in what a few of them were heard to call ‘Adolf-land’ rather than ‘Austria’.

[James G]

Twenty–Two – Judgement Call

March 9th 1990
Markersdorf, near Görlitz, Saxony, East Germany

There was only supposed to be one special operation underway in the Görlitz area. Major McChrystal had been involved in the planning for Operation Shadow Snatch as a raid against a KGB facility outside of the border town on the Polish frontier and led that mission. Prisoners and documents were to be seized by a Green Beret team assigned assistance from Rangers and any NATO or civilian captives brought out. The strike team was planned to be in and out long before it got light after their overnight raid with a captured airstrip used for evacuation with those parachuted in flown out aboard specialised aircraft that landed to retrieve them and all that they had with them.

Then, at seemingly the very last minute, McChrystal had been told that a second operation in the same region was to take place alongside Shadow Snatch with the addition that no evacuation could take place until who were taking part in the other mission were at the extraction site.

Of course he had been furious. General Garrison had been sympathetic but told him that those were the orders which came right from the very top – SACEUR – and they had to be followed. The men taking part in the second mission, the name of which McChrystal didn’t know along with a lot else as part of operational security, were coming out with video tapes from hand-held camcorders of somewhere they had been observing. They had parachuted into Görlitz during the early hours of yesterday and done what they had before effectively hijacking a lift-out with what they had in evidence of something that McChrystal wasn’t told about.

He suspected that it was the bridges over the Neisse, those damn bridges.

Shadow Snatch and the men involved in it were all to be put at risk because they would have to wait for those other men to arrive at the evacuation site. The whole mission was very dangerous indeed with ground operations this far deep inside East Germany and then the need to capture and hold an air-strip (only when getting there could they be sure that it was abandoned as believed). Therefore, he didn’t believe the risk of the link-up with men outside of the chain of command was worth it. He had worried that they might be late or being pursued by the enemy. Or, his men could be involved in an unexpected firefight at the air-strip and need to get away yet would have to wait around for the others when under fire and putting their whole extraction at risk. It hadn’t been up to him though and he had to, as Garrison had instructed, ‘suck it up’.


The KGB center was located in Markersdorf, a village outside of Görlitz. There was a set of buildings used by the ruling East German SED regime in peacetime for adult further education with political indoctrination being preeminent there. The East Germans had been browbeaten into leaving so that the KGB could make use of what they had hoped was an anonymous location for their own purposes. The CIA had become aware of the facility’s new tenants and believed that captives were being held there for questioning on what they knew on American and NATO nuclear operational procedures. There was intelligence that captured military personnel who had been involved in lower-levels at other portions of their military careers with nuclear-capable units were being ruthlessly questioned at Markersdorf. There were also reportedly civilians there too, West German and maybe Dutch and Danish politicians, who were held by the KGB and these were said to be held for later uses by the KGB. Shadow Snatch was to see if they could get any prisoners out but more so grab some of their own and also paperwork from the site. Of the latter, the KGB was well-known to keep reams of it with them at their other interrogation sites which NATO had seen (abandoned locations in recaptured parts of West Germany) so the special operations men sent to Markersdorf had brought mail bags with them in addition to hoods and handcuffs for captives.

McChrystal had been among the first men on the ground. A former Green Beret and Ranger himself, along with stints commanding infantry and military intelligence units, he had no intention of hiding from any danger. Garrison had instructed him not to get captured – the irony! – and also cut him out of other intelligence in the lead up to Shadow Snatch so if the worst happened he would have limited immediate value to interrogators. He himself had worried about getting hurt when the drop occurred with unexpected cross winds affecting the men like him parachuting to the ground just after midnight and many not landing where they were meant to. Thankfully, he and almost all of those taking part were okay upon landing though there were some casualties with men getting hurt on the way in.

After landing, the assault had quickly begun against the KGB center. The reconnaissance had been done to locate where guards could be found and the security reaction force was located: those were hit first with sniper fire and a couple of well-placed Dragon rockets. Then the Green Berets went into the complex to hunt down all resistance. McChrystal stayed back from that kill zone and let those who were trained for it do their work. He waited with the military intelligence specialists and the commander of the detachment of Rangers who provided over-watch for the assault. Once resistance was ended at Markersdorf, the majority of the Rangers redeployed towards the air-strip leaving just a few of their number behind.

By that point, the real work at the KGB center was underway. Documents were found along with both audio and video recording of interrogations. What KGB personnel who had surrendered were sorted into those being taken out and those who were to be left behind… many of the latter expressed what the Green Berets told McChrystal was a hesitancy to be tied up and have to explain to their superiors afterwards how they had given in when attacked. McChrystal didn’t feel sorry for them all, especially not once he saw for himself the NATO captives and the conditions which they were held in.

There weren’t that many of them: eighteen live prisoners were found. The men located were all in a bad state. McChrystal saw the signs of physical torture himself that the Green Berets had spoken of and then watched as one of the KGB men had his face slammed into a wall repeatedly. He was just as tempted as the sergeant he watched to do or order the same thing done, even worse, to other captives. Those captives were needed though… plus it was the wrong thing to do. He had that stopped – the Green Beret sergeant apologized for the captive ‘slipping’ – and what help given to getting the NATO prisoners able to get up and out of here brought in. Some immediate medical care was given but more was certainly needed to aid those who had been mistreated in the most horrible ways.

He was also told about the shallow grave found outside one of the buildings. There had clearly been many more prisoners held here by the KGB than just the eighteen being rescued with those either being moved on elsewhere or buried here. Seeing that, he again fought the urge to have the KGB captives given some harsh punishment, even summary justice. That wasn’t the mission though: getting out of here with those rescued prisoners, documents & other intelligence and the captives was the mission.

KGB trucks were ‘liberated’ and used for transport. It was three miles to the air-strip, which could be made on foot if needed, but it was easier to use these vehicles to get there. Keys were found in the trucks which had fuel in their tanks and the Green Berets set about loading their cargoes onto them. McChrystal kept an eye on that while at the same time making sure that KGB men being left behind were secured a safe distance back from the main buildings of the KGB center. Explosives were then laid in those with booby-traps set to catch a reaction force – how the Green Berets had fun – but there were also back-up timing devices added. The mission orders were for the facility to be destroyed but not to attract more attention than necessary until long after daybreak, when those involved in Shadow Snatch were airborne and heading back west.


The Rangers had met with a force of armed East Germans when moving to the air-strip. Someone at the KGB center had raised the alarm without being detected and there was a local security force of KdA (Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklass: Combat Groups of the Working Class) which attempted to answer that. Those paramilitaries paid the ultimate price for moving so fast and bunching up when doing so. Their trucks were blown up and light machine guns racked the lines of men who tried to pour out of the ruined vehicles. It was a massacre. These civilian soldiers, armed and in uniform so legitimate targets, didn’t stand a chance against the Rangers.

At the air-strip, there thankfully was no more of the enemy. It was from the ground just as seen from the air and the Rangers went to work setting up a perimeter and having men try to remove any obstruction on the lone improvised runaway. The worry was of foreign object damage (FOD), something which could be sucked into an aircraft engine. It was extremely dark though and the moonlight expected not present as the weather reports had been wrong about the wind first and the clouds afterwards. The Rangers did all they could and hoped for the best when the first aircraft came in.

That was an OV-10D Bronco in US Air Force colours. The aircrew brought their propeller-driven observation and light-attack aircraft in using their mounted infrared night-vision system and made a successful touchdown. They detached their auxiliary fuel tanks upon landing and checked-in with the Rangers commander to make sure that the radio connection between them worked here as it had back west. They them quickly made sure that their aircraft was out of the way for the next one coming in behind them, a much larger aircraft in the form of a MC-130E Combat Talon. This landing was a little more complicated: there was just enough length of the runaway, not a smooth surface either, for this transport aircraft. The aircrew of the MC-130E had to make a perfect landing with little margin for error.

McChrystal arrived just after the second aircraft had landed. The trucks were directed to near the MC-130E but he saw immediately that there was a problem. Forward momentum upon landing had made the aircraft slightly overshoot the runaway, not by much but enough that there was a problem. He quickly had some of the Green Berets help the Rangers and the loadmaster from the aircraft try to sort out the issue. Manpower, brute strength was needed in assistance. In addition, he had the OV-10D get airborne. That smaller aircraft was here to provide air cover and now was the time for that. It was small and could fly low and slow speeds; the aircraft had weapons mounted as well. Then he was on the radio to find out the progress of the Frenchmen.


Radio communication with the French commandoes had been established when those on the Shadow Snatch mission had hit the ground. That was an hour and a half before the air-strip was reached with everyone and everything that McChrystal planned to bring back out of East Germany apart from them. There was a pair of two-man teams, each pair had been at a different location east of Markersdorf… where McChrystal knew when planning for the mission to raid the KGB center there were two major fixed crossings over the Neisse located. He had been told back then that the highway and rail bridges, either side of Görlitz, had been brought down by targeted air attacks. It was clear that the Frenchmen had gone to check that out with their own eyes, up close and personal. During that first communication, one man from each pair had told him over the radio that they were not that far away from the extraction site and were undetected by the enemy.

McChrystal spoke to them again now.

Team #1 stated that they were ten minutes out and checked that the Rangers were expecting them to come in from the direction which they were. Team #2 didn’t respond to the radio call.

After he was finished swearing profusely, McChrystal contacted the OV-10D. They were circling at a holding point away to the southwest – to be over the air-strip wouldn’t be the best of ideas – and he had them directed to the planned approach route that the Frenchmen with Team #2 were meant to take. They were to use their infrared system to look for them or if there was an unexpected activity. In the early hours of the morning, there would hardly be many people walking through the fields to the southeast where he sent the aircraft apart from either the Frenchmen or the enemy.

By now, the MC-130E was back on the runaway. There had been damage done with the overshoot of the runaway but the aircraft was flyable. The pilot told McChrystal that he had made a mistake, just a small one, yet if he ever came back here again then the next time he would do a better job. McChrystal allowed himself a smile at that humour shown but that faded within moments when the loadmaster told him that there was a problem: weight restrictions.

There was too much in terms of weight to be loaded. All of the men to go aboard the lone aircraft – Green Berets & Rangers, rescued prisoners & KGB captives and the incoming Frenchmen – could be accommodated but not all of that intelligence material which was wanted to be taken aboard. McChrystal asked how documents could weigh so much? The loadmaster pointed out that it wasn’t just paperwork, even though there was a lot of that, but all of the audio and video tapes that had been brought to the air-strip actually weighed quite a lot. The pilot explained that the weight restrictions were magnified more than usual due to the quality (or lack of) of the runaway. Taking all of the intelligence material back was of great importance though and McChrystal had known that there was a lot of it when plenty had been thrown onto the back of those captured trucks. He wasn’t going to leave that behind though: he chose to leave people rather than what could be very valuable intelligence for the war effort.

There were ten prisoners and McChrystal had the senior Green Beret present chose six (the number the loadmaster gave) to be left behind. He knew that the captain he spoke to could have difficulties deciding which half a dozen KGB to leave behind but it had to be done. A judgement call had to be made on that and he left that in the hands of the captain under his command.


The OV-10D then got in touch.

They had a visual on the missing Frenchmen. Team #2 was under fire several miles away. They were being engaged by enemy forces of unknown identity but with numbers exceeding two, maybe three dozen. One of the Frenchmen looked deceased from what the aircrew could see from above and the other was soon to join him. McChrystal asked if they could intervene from above: the answer came back as a negative. There were machine guns mounted and a rocket pod too, but what could be done to help that one man down where he was with such an overwhelming number of enemy.

Again, McChrystal had to make a judgement call.

There was a chance, a tiny chance but one nonetheless that a miracle would occur and the lone Frenchman would fight off his assailants and get back here without any survivors hot on his tail. Whatever he had seen on the Neisse and if he had managed to bring evidence of that with him would mean success of his mission there. Yet, there was the second team of Frenchmen already back here who had too been to the Neisse to look at a bridge even if they weren’t saying when asked that that was what they had been doing.

The lives of all of those here at the air-strip were in McChrystal’s hands. At any moment, an attack could come. The MC-130E could be hit or the runaway blocked. With that, no one was getting out of here. In such a scenario, he would try to lead everyone back to the west but that would have very little chance of success. It was a very long way to friendly lines, back over in West Germany, and the Green Berets and Rangers maybe could make it that far. Could the MC-130E aircrew do the same and the rescued captives too? What about the intelligence gathered from the KGB center and what the Frenchmen with Team #1 had?

He gave the order for the evacuation to begin. Everyone was to get aboard the aircraft and those prisoners who weren’t coming moved out of the way: he told the Green Beret captain that he didn’t want to find out later that someone had decided to give them summary justice in the form of a bullet to the head no matter how tempting that would be. As to the missing man, McChrystal told the OV-10D aircrew to stay nearby. If they could see a chance, they were to engage the enemy there without harming that man on the ground. He was rebuked over the radio by the aircraft pilot stating that was he being ordered to open fire and endanger the Frenchman down there because he wouldn’t do that. McChrystal told him no, that wasn’t the case, but to do what could be done and then fly back west too.

McChrystal decided at once that he wouldn’t later do anything about such comments from that airman: he understood the situation which the US Air Force pilot was in, one he wouldn’t want to face.


Soon enough, the MC-130E left the air-strip near Görlitz. F-16s had blasted a path through Soviet fighters which the aircraft was to follow above the Ore Mountains that formed the East German-Czechoslovak frontier and the transport was to race to follow that gap torn open; the lower and slower OV-10D would follow the same route.

Aboard were rescued NATO prisoners and KGB captives, those who had saved them and two French commandos bringing back proof of what a pair of RAF airmen had said they had seen only the other day. NATO high command would be more interested in that than the success of the raid against the KGB center at Markersdorf despite all the excellent intelligence gained.

Because, again, bridges which were meant to be down were in fact still standing and operational. East Germany would therefore be full of far more of the enemy than first thought.





March 9th 1990
Husterhoeh Kaserne, Pirmasens, Rhineland-Palatinate, West Germany

The POMCUS site at Husterhoeh Kaserne had been targeted by Soviet chemical weapons moments after the war started. Incoming missiles had exploded in the sky dispersing VX nerve gas with the aim of killing those below and making the war storage site unusable for the removal of its contents. The targeting had been off though and the weather not cooperative: the nerve gas didn’t fall upon the POMCUS site but rather instead the town of Pirmasens. A thermonuclear weapon, long planned by the Soviets to destroy Husterhoeh, would have destroyed the target where the chemical weapons failed.

When that attack had taken place, the Kaserne was already almost empty anyway. The US Army’s 59th Ordnance Brigade based below-ground on-site in peacetime had already dispersed when REFORGER was declared two days before the Soviet failed attack. Moreover, from the above-ground vehicle and equipment parks the incoming 194th Armored and 197th Mechanized Infantry Brigades had already cycled through with the two free-standing combat formations long departed. Soviet chemical warfare strikes elsewhere against POMCUS sites across other parts of West Germany and the Low Countries had more success than the failure at Husterhoeh yet, at the same time, the attempt to stop REFORGER in its tracks hadn’t worked and many other locations escaped direct effects of those nerve gases like Husterhoeh did.

The underground caves where ‘special’ munitions had been stored, maintained and protected by the 59th Ordnance Brigade weren’t empty for long. Immediately preceding the short ceasefire, headquarters elements of SACEUR’s staff had moved into the area. They had remained there following the resumption of the fighting and the change in leadership at the very top.


General Schwarzkopf found Husterhoeh to his liking. He was more comfortable in one fixed location than spending time always on the move in a travelling convoy as his predecessor had done. Security at his command center near the West German-French border was tight and it would take a nuclear blast to kill him here. The communications, briefing and planning facilities were state-of-the-art after they had been set up and he liked the geography of being as centralized as he was at Husterhoeh.

It was mid-morning now and Schwarzkopf had just finished a teleconference with Raven Rock and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was soon to have another with SACLANT concerning their naval operations up in the Barents Sea and the liaison with SACEUR-commanded forces in northern Norway. Meanwhile though, he went to see his planning and operations staff to see what they had managed to come up with when it came to dealing with the issue that he had told General Powell and the others on the Joint Chiefs he was to immediately address: the Soviet Maskirovka with bridges in East Germany.

The final confirmation had only come a few hours ago concerning the enemy deception undertaken. Schwarzkopf had already come around to the idea that NATO had been taken in by a very clever move on the part of the enemy before word came from a French special forces team that everything a couple of RAF pilots had said was true. His mind had been made up that if the communications links between East Germany and the rest of Eastern Europe remained open as they weren’t supposed to be then the first priority would be to finally destroy them. Recriminations were certainly going to come for the intelligence failure of epic proportions, but before that those road and rail bridges were going to be knocked down. Air mission planners had already been briefed to start preparing options to return to the crossing sites over the Oder and Neisse Rivers on the border with Poland first and that the demand would be to prove that they hit the bridges. In addition, special forces teams were going to be deployed to those locations to check that the bombs and missiles did what they were supposed to at those locations so no matter what trickery the Soviets tried with decoys, trust-worthy eyes would be on the attacked targets.

Powell had told him that the bridges were to be brought down and Schwarzkopf had assured him that he was going to do everything he could to see that done and done fast. The two of them had discussed the matter that if the intelligence on the bridges had been wrong then that meant that the estimations on the numbers of enemy troops inside East Germany were wrong too. Intelligence from the CIA and a source now named ROCKFALL (it had been RAINCOAT, REDBEARD and REUNITE beforehand) had been proved correct on the deception when it came to the Soviets being able to bring troops into East Germany and the belief was now that the numbers spoken of would be correct too. From military districts across the whole of the western and southwestern parts of the Soviet Union, troops had been sent to Europe. Most were Category C and D units, lower-grade reservists with old equipment, though there were maybe a few Category B units too: those Category A units were all used up in previous engagements. Despite the quality, quantity was an issue instead here with the high numbers of men that had flooded in from the Soviet homeland.

Inside East Germany, those Soviet Army units were to be alongside men wearing other uniforms. There were some Soviet Border Troops present, but also those from their Warsaw Pact allies. The East Germans had mobilised an immense proportion of their population for the defence of their nation and they had been joined by many Poles coming across too. These were in the main paramilitary units following the loss of the professional troops from both nations in battles inside West Germany. On their own, these were low-grade units but, likewise with the Soviets, there would be a lot of them present.

Before those men were engaged, they could have to be reached by the crossing of the Inner-German Border and that was still something in the distance for many NATO troops fighting inside West Germany still.


After looking at the maps where his planning staff had marked bridge locations on the far side of East Germany, Schwarzkopf went to the maps of West Germany that showed the dispositions of NATO forces on the ground there. As SACEUR he commanded the war spread across the entire continent, though the ground & air war in West Germany was always the key element of that war. Flank action in Denmark and Austria was important, so too combat against the enemy further distant at the top of Norway and down in the Black Sea, but West Germany was preeminent because that was where the bulk of the opposing armies and air forces remained arrayed against each other and locked in combat with one another.

CENTAG – which Schwarzkopf preferred to refer to as the US Seventh Army with its French and West German components alongside so many American troops – had completed their Operation Storm Chaser. General Galvin’s brilliant maneuver operation to destroy an immensely strong Soviet force through Hessen and into Northern Bavaria had achieved all that it had set out to. The IGB was in sight in several places with what few enemy forces had managed to escape encirclement like the rest fighting a slow withdrawal back to East Germany. At the moment, the effort was on crushing the surrounded enemy caught in the traps less they somehow manage to be rescued or even break out rather than reaching the IGB.

Soon enough though, movement up to the border would occur in strength.

On the North German Plain, NATO was still advancing. Things were going much slower there though. There had been some daring advances forward in a few places but overall Schwarzkopf was not happy with the sluggish rates of advance. From their Weser crossing points, both NORTHAG and the US Third Army hadn’t got as far forward as he would have liked to see. The enemy was retreating in reasonably good order to make sure that they weren’t outflanked from the south. The geography would make that difficult plus the US Seventh Army wasn’t in a position to do so, but Schwarzkopf was unhappy that with the enemy thinking that way – a worried mindset was on display – there was no movement to take advantage of that. The Briton General Inge was working well with his counterpart General Yeosock as their two commands advanced side-by-side eastwards.

Schwarzkopf wanted to see more done.

His senior planners were called over and he told them the broad-strokes of what he wanted to see done. They were instructed to work with NORTHAG (British and Belgian troops) and the US Third Army in setting up an operation on the North German Plain where the latter would charge forward and change their direction of advance southeast rather than directly east. Hannover itself should be avoided rather than fought over and Schwarzkopf wanted to see the Soviets squeezed between Inge’s forces as the anvil and those of Yeosock as the hammer. The details would be worked out by those lower down the chain of command and especially the staff of NORTHAG and the US Third Army, but the overall concept was to stop those retreating Soviet and Polish forces on the western side of the IGB from managing to get back to the eastern side to join those there.

There was a stand-up, short briefing which Schwarzkopf had following this concerning the ongoing efforts which he had started right after being appointed as SACEUR to see further troop commitment to the fighting from certain allies. Galvin had started to question just before his untimely demise the failure of a few countries to put in maximum effort and Schwarzkopf was aiming to bring a conclusion to that. As the military commander involved in what was in many ways a political matter, SACEUR’s influence was limited in what could be done but the politicians were generally on-side.

At the moment this concerned Norway and Portugal. Norway had been near-completely liberated of all enemy-held territory with the frontlines up in the very north of their country driven back to almost the Soviet border and those coastal locations taken early in the war wholly cleared out. When it came to the ports and airports all around the Narvik and Tromso areas, it had been non-Norwegian NATO troops that had done the bulk of the fighting to eliminate the enemy and free civilians caught up in the enemy’s air and amphibious assaults to take key points. When those victorious troops had been afterwards redeployed, Norwegian troops had moved in to secure the retaken ground and guard prisoners taken. Those men needed to stay where they were as maintaining control of northern Norway was very important, but the Norwegians still had many more unused troops in the south of their country: they were in-place to guard the country against no viable threat. Schwarzkopf wanted to see at least some of those men, second-line troops as they were but still well-armed, brought down to the Baltic Exits and to be deployed where the US Marines with the II MEF were at the very top of the Jutland Peninsula. The request had been already made and denied by the Norwegians who were worried about a second Soviet invasion… from available forces which the enemy didn’t have. As to the Portuguese, they had troops in Austria deployed in Tyrol, the western part of the nation. Some of those had seen action but the majority hadn’t and been deployed on security duties keeping the trans-Alps supply links running north south between Wet Germany and Italy open. This was an important task and the Portuguese there had done their bit for the war effort. However, there was less than a brigade deployed, a mixed force of paratroopers and some infantry. Even after a month of war and with mobilization back in Portugal of many tens of thousands of men, the Portuguese were refusing to send any more than they had overseas. They hadn’t met their peacetime stated plans to deploy all that they said they would: a mixed infantry / light armour brigade, another of paratroopers and a marine infantry regiment. Portuguese politicians had said that they were keeping their troops at home for unspecified reasons but instead had sent more naval and air assets than planned far from home to support the war effort; Portuguese military facilities including those in the Atlantic islands of the Azores and Madeira were open to NATO use.

Schwarzkopf wanted those extra Portuguese troops in Austria as much as he wanted the Norwegians to send men to the Baltic Exits. He wanted to see the two countries maintain their pledged commitments to the war effort with men on the ground like other nations were doing. He had been told the reason why the Norwegians had previously refused to do so and not told why the Portuguese weren’t moving men, but neither mattered in the grand scheme of things. What he was told now about the efforts being made in NATO talks on that matter showed some progress, but not that much.

He didn’t plan on letting the matter drop.


Schwarzkopf spoke with SACLANT and his staff concerning the Barents Sea and fighting a second naval battle there against the Soviet Navy hiding across in the Kara Sea before returning to Central European matters afterwards in another high-level meeting here at Husterhoeh. This concerned what was to occur once the rest of West Germany was liberated and the later invasion of East Germany commenced.

The exact military details of the invasion (yet unnamed) would depend upon how the situation on the ground at the time though the outlines of that were already something which SACEUR’s staff had in mind. The Polish frontier was the ultimate aim of the offensive eastwards with West Berlin to be liberated on the way. East Berlin was to be taken too, the center of East Germany’s military regime. What was expected was a massive fight with the enemy’s main forces throughout the country where their defences would be overrun or pushed back. Experience from how they fought before would be used against them, especially how their best – if only real – defence was to counterattack. Schwarzkopf knew how the Soviets and their allies wouldn’t dare deviate from their doctrine, their precious ‘norms’ when it came to conventional combat on the battlefield. He wanted to see assaults made by NATO ground forces where attacks were made with impunity and an invasion made to make the best use of the enemy’s weaknesses.

Away from the battlefield, there was already official guidance that Schwarzkopf had achieved on the matter of the planned invasion of East Germany.

NATO would go into East Germany as conquerors, not liberators. The difference would be on how the battles at the frontlines and behind was to be fought. Paramilitary units were to be expected to be engaged on the battlefield and would be treated as POWs. Chemical weapons would be employed. Cities and towns were to be surrounded if resistance was met rather than attempted to be directly taken in what would be painful urban fighting. Many engineers were going to be brought forward to clear mines and obstacles expected to be encountered and cross over waterways. There would too be many military police units for prisoner guarding and rear-area security; infantry units would be specially tasked ready to assist to incidents rather than brought in as an afterthought.

The situation behind the frontlines was anticipated to be difficult. Schwarzkopf was told to expect the worst. Resistance in the form of terrorism and guerilla warfare was to be readied for. Civilian hostages may be taken by enemy troops and there might be false surrenders. The population might believe enemy lies about so-called NATO atrocities; they might sabotage supply links or conduct non-violent resistance. At the same time, there might be the opposite in the form of political organisation or civilian revolt against the East German regime. Some of those might be Soviet fronts, others very real but later infiltrated by enemy agents. Many times a judgement call might have to be made what could turn out to be wrong afterwards so plans would have to be made to deal with things that would go wrong; military officers were to be supported by civilian intelligence staffs getting ready to follow behind the invading troops.

Schwarzkopf knew that there were skeptics: those who believed that some of the preparations being made were over the top. East Germany would erupt in a pro-NATO uprising, they said. Such beliefs were shared quite widely among civilians but NATO military figures as well: this came from surrenders made by East Germans in battle. Maybe they were correct, yet they could very well be wrong too. The best thing to do was to be ready for the very worst to happen and if everything went fantastic then that was all good.

At the end of going over all of this with his staff, making sure that problems propping up during the preparation stage were not just being dealt with but learnt from where possible, Schwarzkopf spoke to his staff about something else on his mind when looking at the maps. He let them all know that he wanted the issue of the Dutch Pocket dealt with as soon as possible. The remaining occupied parts of the Netherlands, greatly shrunken, needed to be liberated. It would free up many troops for the invasion of East Germany as well as aiding widespread morale. He let everyone know that he was getting very impatient with the one-step-at-a-time approach there and was going to address that soon enough personally if those lower down refused to speed up things when he had already sent instructions to that.





March 9th 1990
Uckerfelde, near Prenzlau, Brandenburg, East Germany

Serzant Mikheil Saakashvili hadn’t wanted to undertake compulsory military service; there really wasn’t anyone in the Soviet Union who had that desire. For him it was only meant to be a year before he would return to university, not the usual two years like others.

That twelve-month period had ended at the end of January.

Regulations, terms of service which he wasn’t aware of the specifics of, made him a reservist for another three years of service with the Border Troops without recourse at the end of his conscription. It had been decreed that immediately upon the end of his initial enlistment he was at once on reserve service and he had only been told about that upon the last day of his conscription. He wasn’t alone in this change in circumstance but was still rather put out at it all. Furthermore, when that notice came that he was to remain in uniform with the Border Troops he had believed that he would stay in the Ukrainian SSR at the customs checkpoint at Boryspil Airport outside of Kiev far from his native Georgian SSR. Service there wasn’t an easy duty but it was better elsewhere from what he had heard.

Now, Saakashvili was in East Germany manning a series of roadblocks.

He could only assume that his service record had been looked at and his ‘experience’ had made his suitable for this role in the eyes of someone in an office far away. His family connections which had got him a short term within the Border Troops at such a post as Kiev’s airport had come because of the political background of the family name: the Border Troops were under KGB supervision and so not just anyone was taken. That clearly meant too that he was considered trustworthy and deemed the right candidate for a posting here and given the responsibility that he had.

He didn’t want any responsibility. He didn’t want to still be in uniform. He didn’t want to be here in East Germany.

None of these were things that he could change though.


The checkpoints which Saakashvili were assigned to several in the immediate area around Uckerfelde and the roads here. The main highway itself which ran from Szczecin across in Poland over the Oder and down to Berlin wasn’t obstructed here with a blockade but rather access to it and off it. Military convoys went along the highway bypassing the village of Uckerfelde but other traffic would attempt to go on to or come off the highway here as well as travel along the roads which converged upon the area including the underpass beneath the highway. Guarding this whole area were many men assigned wearing several different uniforms. He was in charge of a small detachment of Border Troops here, all supposedly trained in searching for hidden contraband, who were spread out across the checkpoints, rotating from one to another. There were East German paramilitary policemen in larger numbers present and civilian militia too.

And there was the KGB officer in command.

Saakashvili kept his thoughts on the injustice done to him to himself. He did his duties and didn’t voice his feelings on the matter. He just shut up and did exactly what he was told at all times. He had personally witnessed, along with hearing second-hand, what had happened to others elsewhere who had chosen not to: they’d been shot because this was wartime and dissent wasn’t allowed. Saakashvili believed that there was a trail of bodies all the way back to the Soviet Union spread across Eastern Europe of military personnel who had questioned or refused orders during their deployment to East Germany. Here there had been more deaths too: men shot without pretense of any sort of proper justice and then buried on German soil.

His duty here was to make sure that all vehicles stopped at the blockades on the road were searched properly. There were seven men with him, all whom worked in customs posts back in the Soviet Union. When the East Germans stopped a vehicle and asked for identification and movement orders from all of those travelling inside – without exception –, Saakashvili and the Border Troops would descend upon the stooped vehicle. They looked for people who had hidden themselves within cargoes carried or within the vehicle itself. In addition, the vehicles and any cargo would be searched for prohibited items: a very long list indeed.

As he knew from his service back at Boryspil, people thought that they would be very smart indeed when it came to outwitting customs. Training and experience of those designed to stop smuggling countered that though. Subversive literature, alcohol, cash & jewelry and weapons could only be hidden in a certain number of places. With people, locations within vehicles where they could try to remain unseen were even fewer. Saakashvili and those serving under him found illegally-held items and deserters in many vehicles which went through the roadblock. The reasons why prohibited items were being carried or deserters were running didn’t matter. The East Germans would detain goods and people and the KGB captain would come over and make a judgement call upon what was to be done with them.

It wasn’t up to Saakashvili to make the decisions which the Chekist did. He just had his people find what wasn’t meant to be in the vehicles and left the end result up to his superior. The Chekist generally left his men alone as long as they did their tasks: the usual regular political indoctrination which would come with service back home was absent here in East Germany. Any seizure which seemed to please the KGB man would usually bring a reward too, unless the Chekist was in a very bad mood.

Saakashvili and the other Border Troops men had been allowed to dispose of some of the seized alcohol as they saw fit… as long as they could do their duties again when back on duty afterwards and not too drunk.


A rifle was carried by Saakashvili, an AK-74 which remained unfired during his time near Uckerfelde. The East Germans had shot at a few men who had run from stopped vehicles before they could be found and the KGB captain had executed located deserters who were officers whereas others of enlisted rank were sent elsewhere for penal unit service. During the journey here, when the troop convoy Saakashvili had come across Poland in, there had been a hold up for an unknown reason and when beside the road he had been ordered at one point to fire his rifle up in the sky by a scared officer in reaction to the sound of an aircraft above. Hundreds of men had done the same, sending countless bullets skywards to no effect which Saakashvili knew about. Later, when coming across the Oder over a bridge concealed under some rather strange-looking camouflage, there had been orders that if needed such shooting of rifles into the sky would occur again in the face of an air attack there. There hadn’t been the need to do that, which he was thankful for: standing on a bridge shooting his rifle at an aircraft trying to bomb them didn’t sound to Saakashvili to be something that stood any chance of success.

Near the roadblocks, there were fighting positions which the East German militia had dug into the countryside. Those were to be where Saakashvili was to head to if given the order to do so. He had no idea how far away the frontlines were and assumed that they were far away in West Germany, not on this side of East Germany certainly. He therefore didn’t expect that such an order would come any time soon, if at all. The trenches and anti-tank ditches didn’t look like much to him and he certainly didn’t think that if there was a need for him to enter them to fight an enemy they would offer any real protection.

All across East Germany, there were defensive positions built already or under construction. Manpower did most of the work but many convoys stopped and searched by Saakashvili contained heavier equipment to create more. He’d seen many cargoes of mines, barbed wire and prefabricated obstacles. There were convoys of armed men too, East Germans forming their militia always on the move. He wondered where the East Germans had got so many fighting men and who was working in the factories if they were all in those uniforms and carrying many times what appeared to be antiquated weaponry.

Of course, his place wasn’t to ask. The Chekist made decisions and knew all the answers.

Saakashvili just searched vehicles and hoped he would never have to enter any fighting positions because with all of these armed men moving and so many defences being set up here, on this side of East Germany, he had to (silently) wonder just what was being expected.





March 9th 1990
The Iranian-Iraqi Border

Should Iranian diplomats be forced to explain the actions of their nation to representatives of others due to pressure exerted by allies, the official line from the Iranian Foreign Ministry was to be that Iran was engaged in ‘border correction’ and ‘a righting of historic wrongs’ along the frontier with Iraq. There was no desire for Iran to explain its action, yet there had come some forethought as to what would be said if necessary.

The Islamic Republic of Iran didn’t want to be in a position to explain itself and hoped that allies – of which there weren’t that many – would mind their own business. Iranian soldiers advancing across into Iraq would do the talking in the place of diplomats.


From the Shinak Pass up in the north all along the border down to the Shatt-el-Arab Waterway on the shores of the Persian Gulf, Iranian troops moved forward. In the south, they went into Iranian sovereign soil which was still occupied by Iraq following the end of the active stage of the Iran-Iraq War which had come to a conclusion back in 1988. There was no peace treaty, diplomatic relations were still severed and POWs were still held following the long conflict that had resulted in a stalemate. A million lives, military and civilian, had been lost in that eight-year long war that hadn’t been finished, just halted for a while.

Now, Iran aimed to finish it for good.

Iran’s attack all along the frontier was more than just a mass infantry attack as had been in the main the case during the earlier conflict. For weeks this had been planned and so there was plenty of armour and artillery in support of the attacking infantry. In the skies above, Iran’s air force was in action too with a focus on tactical air support to overcome Iraqi defences along the border and pin down Iraqi troops positioned back from the frontier.

All down the border area, mainly on the Iraqi side of where the internationally-recognised border lay, brutal fighting took place. Rayat, Mawat, Penjwin, Halabja, Khanaqin, Mandali, Badrah, Shaikh Ahmad, Kuwait (an Iraqi town, not the nearby country) and Shaykh Faris were border towns which the Iranians attacked towards with each having road connections to the Iraqi interior behind them. Down near the Shatt-el-Arab, the Iranians crashed into Iraqi held territory inside what was rightfully Iran. During the earlier war, Iranians hadn’t used chemical weapons while the Iraqis had: this time it was different with small-scale uses being made in select places where it was believed that blister and poisoning agents – not modern nerve gases – would help them get past their enemy.

Behind the frontlines, Iranian special forces groups were active. Iraqi dissents and turned POWs were active not too far from the border and in an area where only until a month ago they would have had no success and their presence given away the Iranian surprise attack. The collapse in Iraqi internal security following the death of Saddam though meant that the Iraqis were off their guard and when hostile activity had been detected before the Iranian attack it wasn’t taken for what it was. These behind-the-lines attacks which the special forces made – none of which were Iranians but expendable Iraqis – caused more chaos then physical damage but they were almost everywhere apart from up in the very north in Kurdish areas.

Iraqi border defences fell apart very quickly. The attack came from nowhere and the violence unleashed in terms of the fire support and determination of the attackers allowed for the Iranians to get moving deep into enemy territory. Three main pushes were made among the border-wide assaults with the focus for Iran on seeing them achieved with an ultimate aim of being more than border corrections. Khanaqin on the road to Baghdad was taken and the Iranians kept on moving southwest towards the Iraqi capital; as part of this offensive towards Baghdad supporting drives to take both Mandali and Badrah also succeeded so a massive forward frontage with the attack could be maintained. From Kuwait and Shaykh Faris the Iranians moved towards Al Amara on the Tigris: the intention was to get to that city, over the Tigris at crossing points there and into southern Iraq between the Tigris and the Euphrates there. Finally, the third offensive had Basra as an ultimate objective, far back inside Iraq and over the Shatt-el-Arab Waterway once occupied Iranian land was retaken.

As said, this was no border correction. This was no raid or partial invasion for diplomatic purposes to force Iraqi concessions. Iran was instead out to conqueror Iraq starting with its capital and heavily-populated regions first.


Since the defeat suffered at the hands of the Israeli Army across in western Jordan, followed by the subsequent assassination of Saddam, Iraq had been in turmoil.

Qusay Hussein had been trying to retake a country that had fallen into rebellion since his father’s murder. That had involved a reign of terror that he unleashed to kill all those who decided that Saddam’s death meant that they might to lead. Qusay had them killed, their followers slaughtered and anyone who he believed was supporting them too in terms of friends, family and acquaintances. Sunni, Shia, Kurd and Christian died: it didn’t matter to Qusay who his enemies were and their background, just that they were opposing him. His desire was to reestablish the rule his father had had before the war with himself now in charge and then go after those who had struck at Iraq from outside allowing those inside to do so. He wanted to hit back later against Israel, Jordan, Syria and the Gulf Arab Monarchies for all that they had done. He understood that the destruction caused to the Iraqi military when fighting in Jordan had been extremely serious and that revenge against outsiders would take some time to achieve, but he believed that he had plenty of time to do that.

He was a young man with many years ahead of him to put right the wrongs done. Meanwhile, he was dealing with domestic opponents and had no qualms to kill and kill again.

Military and intelligence figures had been among those who he had fought against inside Iraq since Saddam’s death. They had failed to defeat the enemy in battle abroad and failed to detect the planned murder of his father and brother. When a few remaining of their number, those who he needed for now to assist him in killing his domestic enemies, had mentioned worrying news from Iran he had taken no notice. The war with Iran had finished years ago and Iran wouldn’t dare attack Iraq at this time. If they did try, the Iraqi Army on the border was in-place and untouched by the inglorious defeat suffered across in Jordan.

To say that Qusay was utterly thunderstruck by the news when it reached him that Iran was invading would be a vast understatement. He just hadn’t seen it coming, he couldn’t have conceived that it would occur. But it had.


The shock of the Iranian invasion was more widespread than just in Iraq.

Israeli intelligence had got wind that something was up in Iran with troop movements and a collapse of their small, but effective intelligence network there. A study conducted by Mossad had pointed to the strategic situation with regards to Iran and Iraq: the Iraqi Republican Guards had been massacred in Jordan, the Iraqi Air Force consisted of still-smoking holes in the desert of crashed aircraft, the Iraqi missile force was used up and there was internal chaos in the country with deaths & defections. The message had been passed up the chain of command from lower-ranking figures that if Iran ever wanted to take Iraq then the time would be now. Saddam had held Iraq together and with him gone Iraq was a tinderbox that had already exploded.

The after-effects of the war which Israel had just fought were still taking place though. Israel had taken civilian and military casualties and tensions were running high with immediate neighbours: Syria, Jordan and Egypt. The ceasefire with the first might fall apart, Jordan might suffer domestic unrest following the invasion and there had already been internal troubles within the latter nation. Iranian intervention in Iraq would be grave for Israel’s national security in the long-run but at the moment the attention was on preparing for more fighting closer to home if it came to that. When politicians were made aware that there were some worrying signs from Iran, backed up by only partial intelligence, their thinking was that Iran wasn’t going to side with the Soviets this late in the war by attacking Iraq. That was how many saw it: Iran attacking Iraq would be Iran acting for the Soviets. Others said that made no sense – Iraq was a Soviet, not American ally – but the situation was seen in black-and-white as good guys via bad guys; Iran wasn’t allied with the West. Yes, there were sensible voices that were furious at such narrow thinking where the motivations of one country weren’t seen as they were for themselves rather than as part of a global alignment. Yet, it did occur.

The Americans were told the same thing by Mossad and had some worrying signals intelligence concerning a possible Iranian move against Iraq. There was nothing concrete to go on and the same thinking in Tel Aviv bled across to the United States. It was simple: Iran seizing Iraq would be an act against the United States, therefore one to aid the Soviets. No one sensible would align themselves with the Soviets at the moment and there would be sensible people in Iran who would understand that. Further than this, the Americans knew that they had withdrawn the overwhelming majority of their own forces from the Middle East, those which might have stopped the Iranians from doing what they were. They didn’t want to conceive that that Iranians might invade Iraq and that they would be unable to stop them. In addition, seeing as the United States, not the Israelis as many believed, had killed Saddam adding to the inability of Iraq to hold together and thus defend itself in this situation, therefore in affect creating the whole problem, saying that Iran was now about to take Iraq because of American actions wasn’t going to be a popular narrative. Examples of this stupidity and cowardice had occurred worldwide throughout history in similar circumstances and it was repeated here.

Not everyone wanted to bury their head in the sand and put their fingers in their ears. The threat to Iraq from Iran was seen by many for what it was and word did go up high through the Bush Administration eventually even with passive interference from those who objected to the worrying outcome. However, the President and the National Security Council was focused on the war with the Soviets on the battlefield and the ever-present danger of the conventional fighting going nuclear. It was at the back of the agenda, far down the line of matters of importance and discussions kept getting put off as a judgement call was made on what was of a priority and what wasn’t. Iran’s threat to Iraq wasn’t discussed at the highest level before the invasion began and so when it occurred there was widespread surprise… with a few who had been aware ducking down to avoid the fallout from the ‘intelligence failure’ which they had played a part in.

The invasion was a disaster for the Gulf Arab Monarchies, a nightmare come true. They had supported Iraq all through its war with Iran to stop Iran from one day taking control of Iraq. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman were no friends of Saddam but the Iranians were regarded as more of a threat than Iraq had ever been to them. Like they were doing now with Pakistan in Afghanistan, the Gulf Arab Monarchies had financially supported Iraq to let others do their fighting for them. Their armies and air forces were paper tigers: behind the bombast, the rulers of these nations knew that. They had modern equipment, lots of it, but relied on Westerners to more than just man those but maintain them too. The majority of the contractors had gone home though, to the United States and Europe and Australia.

The Gulf Arab Monarchies were left as worried, as frightened by the Iranian invasion as Qusay Hussein was. Iran had long said how they wished to liberate the peoples in their country and Islamic holy sites too. Iran also knew all about the support given to Iraq between 1980 and 1988. Iran was on the march and after Iraq the nations south were certain, so the autocratic rulers of the Gulf Arab Monarchies believed, they were next.

[James G]

Twenty–Three – Spies

March 10th 1990
East Hunsbury, Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, Great Britain

They were looking for James Thorn.

And John Thompson.

And Joseph Thatch.

And Jake Thomas.

‘Jimmy’, the Security Service – better known as ‘MI-5’ – was a man with many identities. They were calling him this name in shorthand and between themselves for ease of communication. Trying to keep track of all of the names that the man they were hunting was difficult, and there was the belief too that he probably had more than just those four.

There was additionally a true name for Jimmy as well, one he had been given when born thirty-five to forty years ago back home in Russia.


Stella Rimington had come up to Northampton to supervise the capture of Jimmy.

For more than a month, he had been eluding the efforts by MI-5 and dedicated police officers with Special Branch to detain him. Jimmy was a ghost at times but on other occasions seemingly brazenly ran rings around the hunt for him. Too much credit was being given to the ability of the man to disappear by many of his pursuers and at times it appeared that those who were meant to be running him to ground admired his daring escapees. No longer was this the case: Rimington had been sent up from MI-5’s wartime operations centre at Finchley (outside of the heart of London) to make sure that this man was caught. Once he was in custody there would be an extensive interrogation done, yet, of great importance, the bombings and other violence he was causing would cease.

The Director-General himself, a busy man under enormous political pressure and with countless responsibilities, had made it clear to Rimington that if she wished to continue her rapid career rise then this Jimmy was to be caught… of killed, if that was necessary. Either way, an end to his adventures was to happen and happen fast too.

*

Jimmy was believed to be the last high-level KGB operative left active on the run within Britain. Others had been captured or were dead. Those other specialist deep-cover agents who had been in Britain for several years illegally and passing themselves off as someone whom they were not, all Soviet nationals not British traitors, and who had struck against the country had been stopped in the end. They had done a lot of damage since the eve of war but eventually their luck had run out. Their handiwork was not so much their own personal actions – they didn’t plant bombs or shoot people – but what they convinced others to do for them.

It had been acts of political terror which they had had unleashed. Those working to injure Britain whilst it was engaged in war had struck against civilian targets nationwide. Other MI-5 officers, often working with British Armed Forces special forces detachments, had gone after GRU men who had themselves attacked military targets but the ones such as Jimmy used proxies to do their dirty work and went after ‘soft targets’ rather than those well-defended.

It had been called the Grey Terror during the period of February 2nd to the early hours of February 4th. Right before open warfare commenced, there had been acts of terrorism that served Soviet interests but were technically deniable operations where attribution couldn’t be proved to have been the work of the Soviets. Afterwards, once the war started, more of the same occurred though without too much care to try and blame others for what had been done. So many attacks had come with alarming frequency and with such deadly effects.

Bombs had gone off in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh with civilians using public transport the targets of those. Politicians had been shot at and killed. Outbreaks of arson occurred for many nights with public buildings alight from end-to-end. Electricity, gas and water works installations had been struck at; so too television and radio stations. During those first few days, the nation had been undergoing Transition to War (TtW) with immense domestic upheaval already taking place and a not-cooperative populous present: they had generally been targeted by their fellow countrymen sent against them under KGB direction.


Personally, Jimmy was believed by MI-5 to be responsible for at least two dozen attacks that had taken place since the first days of February.

Paddy Ashdown, the leader of the Liberal Democrats – Britain’s third political party –, had been shot dead along with his wife. The former Royal Marines and Special Boat Service officer, who had between his military and political careers been a spook with MI-6 (the Secret Intelligence Service, MI-5’s foreign-orientated counterpart), had been about to join the National Government. His assassination wasn’t the most fatal of blows to the country, but it great political significance nonetheless. He had been unprotected and murdered in public by a man with an automatic rifle that hadn’t just killed his wife as well as him but a pair of innocent bystanders too.

The Woolwich Ferry, a public transport link in South-East London, had been bombed. One of the boats had been the scene of an explosion deep inside the hull. It had sunk into the deadly waters of the Thames with countless lives lost for no gain apart from to cause fear.

Mortars had been fired at Gatwick Airport right when it was being closed to civilians in preparation for a wartime role as a transport and refueling hub. Alone, the explosive projectiles didn’t cause too much damage, but there was a stampede inside the terminal building – far away from the runaway area where the mortars detonated – which killed and wounded many people who feared that full-scale war had come to the airport.

The Metropolitan Police headquarters had been sprayed with gunfire with the attack taking place at the entrance to the building inside London. At nearly the same time, the Commissioner Peter Imbert, whilst on the move to the force’s wartime auxiliary command centre at Hendon had barely survived an assassination attempt at a false roadblock: those who tried to kill him had posed as policemen themselves stopping traffic but his alert driver had seen them for what they weren’t and got the vehicle and his passenger out of the way of an improvised explosive device similar to a military-grade satchel charge which was deployed by the imposers.

These were attacks made during the Grey Terror; those which if the international crisis had suddenly been resolved, they could be denied to be the work of the Soviet Union. Afterwards, less care was using in hiding who supplied the guns and bombs which the people Jimmy put to work used. They struck at more civilian and political targets nationwide though with a constantly lowering chance of success each time. Domestic security increased and the TtW restrictions really bit into the effort. Jimmy’s agents, disaffected and murderous British nationals, kept trying to do his bidding but ran into increased personal security for important figures, armed men guarding fixed targets and the inability to cover any distance themselves in terms of travel: petrol rationing, the cancellations of trains and security forces everywhere on transport links made that impossible.


Being able to move around and not getting shot himself were problems that didn’t affect Jimmy. He had access to multiple identities which allowed him to get past security checks on people and movement. There was also a band of followers with him – Britons, not fellow KGB officers – who protected his person.

Those known identities he was using were of an MI-5 officer, a Special Branch policeman, a military officer and a Ministry of Defence official. They were well-crafted and gave him free movement until they were discovered for what they were. TtW meant that ordinary people couldn’t travel around the country at the moment or get access to certain secure places. Each identity had been finally discovered for what it was by now, but he was believed to have more.

His followers were an odd collection. There were several women and only one or two men. A couple were former policewomen, one might have been once with MI-5 (the inquiry on how that occurred was something causing waves back at Finchley). There was certainly a retired military officer with him too, an identity confirmed. These followers got Jimmy into places where his own wiles couldn’t and also aided in his escapes from those hunting him for so long. Whereas the agents he put to work with guns and bombs were caught and no knew little of him personally, those followers travelling with Jimmy would certainly know more. They hadn’t been manipulated into striking against Britain for whatever cause Jimmy had sold them but instead were surely as dedicated as him to doing the country damage… for an end which they probably didn’t realize wasn’t the same as his KGB masters had told Jimmy to tell them.

*

Northampton was a major town in the east of England. The peacetime population had changed with TtW and war itself. Like the cities and large towns across Britain, people had fled from Northampton before the war had commenced fearing nuclear apocalypse would find them in Northampton. Others had come to the town, with the belief that Birmingham, Coventry, Oxford, Peterborough and Cambridge – larger cities and towns – would be atomized by nuclear warheads and they would be safe in Northampton.

These internal refugees who had come to Northampton joined a frightened civilian population inside the town who discovered that leaving once war had started was nearly impossible with the roads and train-lines closed. Rationing had come into effect and there was a nighttime blackout. The television and radio was under Government control. There was a partial nighttime curfew in-place, especially around the town center. Schools were closed and there were no public events taking place. The town hadn’t been attacked by enemy action – military targets elsewhere in Eastern England had though – but there had been vicious rumours that it had been which had caused much distress. There were few fire engines (most had gone out into the countryside in readiness for a nuclear attack) and the attempts by the authorities to have the hospital emptied was impossible. Hardly anyone was working despite Government messages in censored newspapers and on the radio for everyone to attend their places of work.

The police had been reinforced by special constables but the numbers of both had been thinned by military reservists serving within each and having left to go off to war. They couldn’t stop outbreaks of violence and criminal acts were rife. Other cities and towns had it worse than Northampton, so said the Northamptonshire authorities when the local council asked for assistance, and the town would have to make do. There was to be no military support given to aid the police: there was a fear that it would get out of hand, plus there were no troops to send either.

Such was the sorry state of Northampton after five weeks of war, and it was true that there were many places in Britain in a worse state with major civilian disturbances underway in those which made those which flared up at times in Northampton look almost harmless.


Now, Northampton was full of spies.

Rimington and others sent directly by Finchley joined with those who had trailed Jimmy here using a trail of breadcrumbs. Much work had been down to track him here before she arrived, and now her utter determination was to stop him from leaving. He, and his band of followers too, were to be caught: dead or alive, as the saying went.

The life of an MI-5 officer was never glamourous. It wasn’t about cocktail parties, gun battles with international assassins and everyone outwitting the next one with the most complicated of schemes. Some of those who had been chasing Jimmy might have believed that and Rimington knew that when the war ended, when chaos finished and calm returned, many of them would no longer work for MI-5. She wanted her career to carry on though and had a near-lifetime of professional intelligence work experience to guide her in hunting down Jimmy.

Northampton was closed off. Access out was now fully shut off to anyone, no matter what. No one, no matter what their urgent excuse or identity, was leaving here. Not without the personal approval of her and her top trio of MI-5 officers. The message had been sent to the roadblocks manned by policemen and roving patrols of Home Service Force volunteers outside the town (the latter brought in at the very last minute after a difficult process to get their presence because of needs elsewhere) that no one was to get past them at all. The tricks that Jimmy had used before weren’t going to work in escaping from here.

Rimington’s plan was simple: she would flush him out. Searches by the police would be made of houses and all buildings. The police and local volunteers (organised by the authorities before her arrival for other, less-dangerous tasks) would start going though the town building by building. Questions would be put to civilians asking them about outsiders. As much fuss as necessary to do this searching would be made. Unless Rimington’s people were very, very lucky Jimmy wouldn’t be found by such means: he wouldn’t be discovered cowering in a basement or up in a loft. He would run, like he had run before. Staying on the move and bluffing their way past checkpoints was how Jimmy and his band of followers had evaded capture beforehand. This time it was to be different though because no one was going to let them get out of Northampton. Rimington had the town closed off and was certain that as soon as Jimmy started moving then he would be caught out in the open. Casualties might come from a gunfight, but Jimmy’s luck was about to run out here.

The searching was starting now in East Hunsbury, a suburban area southwest of the town center. It was flooded with policemen and Rimington’s people. It would go on as long as it took to get Jimmy to fear discovery and run with an attempt to get free of the hunt again. The daring of the man, his belief that he could evade capture at all costs and cause trouble elsewhere for Britain, was what would be his downfall…

…or, that wouldn’t be the case and all of this massive undertaking, this immense drain on manpower and the other consequences for Northampton, would be for nothing. If Jimmy wasn’t here, or if he managed to so-unpredictably hold his nerve, then Northampton would be the ruin for Rimington rather than him. So much was at stake for her personally in this hunt, hence why she was on the ground and leading from the front.

If a mistake was to be made it would be fatal, but she was sure that she had covered all of her bases and made sure that this was the end of the road for Jimmy. She looked forward to supervising his interrogation too, or maybe reporting back to Finchley that he was dead and vengeance for the terror he had unleashed so far wide and for so long had come. Either way, Rimington would be at the heart of all of that.

The search of Northampton was now underway.





March 10th 1990
Arnhem, Gelderland, the Netherlands

Polkovnik Putin had come back to Arnhem overnight. He returned to the KGB center located in the city, beneath a hospital building in the basement complex where NATO was certain not to bomb, to report back to his superiors. He only had bad news to bring them, but was sure that nothing more than that was expected. The whole Dutch Pocket, the encirclement of Soviet forces within the central Netherlands, was soon to fall regardless and what he had to say wouldn’t change that nor bring any cheer.

The official line remained that everyone was to hold out pending a counteroffensive which would bring relief. That message was still being continued to be broadcast across the whole occupied area. Soviet Army soldiers and officers were being told that. The same was being relayed to KGB officers such as Putin.

That was a lie though, not just a miscalculation or a false hope. No help was coming and everyone in Soviet uniform here – plus a very few others serving in the forces of other Warsaw Pact nations – was either going to end up dead or prisoner when NATO finally got around to finishing them off completely. All those trapped within the Netherlands were surrounded on land on three sides and by a hostile sea on the fourth. The skies above were full of attacking aircraft. Enemy special forces raids and the increasing deadly attacks by Dutch guerillas were occurring with great frequency now. The encircling NATO troops had made their stunning attack in the north, eliminating the majority of the Third Shock Army and retaking about a third of occupied territory held by Soviet forces beforehand, and were on the cusp of attacking elsewhere too. Apart from small arms, there was no more ammunition. The only fuel for tanks and armoured vehicles left was what could be drained from the tanks of abandoned civilian automobiles (accidents had happened many times with this) while food and medical supplies were only available from civilian sources too: all taken without regard to the needs of the people.

Depression had hit many of his comrades. Putin could see it in the faces of many that they knew their fate was not to be to their liking and overheard others whisper prophecies of personal doom away from the approaching general catastrophe that would come when the Dutch Pocket fell.

He wore a smile though because he had found a way to avoid such a fate that seemingly everyone else feared.


A week ago when Putin had been lying on the ground facing death, as the Dutch and West German forces in the northwestern Netherlands so long written off gave lie to such a notion and started attacking the Third Shock Army, an idea had come to him. He had feared capture and considered how he could pretend he was someone else. To have the identity of someone else had been what he had decided that he would try to do when facing detention by the enemy. His thinking was to take the papers of a military policeman with the Commandant’s Service and pass himself off as such a man when in the hands of the enemy.

Thankfully, that situation had been averted at the time when the enemy tanks moved on after striking where they did and he had emerged alive, unhurt and not a prisoner when for a few terrifying moments he had feared that all was lost. The hasty plan he had concocted then had grown in his mind afterwards, helped by external events such as the relentless NATO attacks and also one of those whispered conversations which he had overheard: two other KGB comrades had spoken to each other that they had heard that senior KGB personnel within the Dutch Pocket – those of general officer rank – already had false identities prepared in case they were captured. Putin had asked himself why if that was the case – and he believed that it was, his superiors were the sort to look out for themselves – then it shouldn’t have been more widespread across the KGB. He and everyone else in NATO hands faced execution for the crimes of others wearing the same uniform as them or, if they were ‘lucky’, brutal interrogation to uncover all that they knew followed by many years of detention somewhere unpleasant. However, his superiors were arranging things so that when they fell into enemy hands they would only be treated as ordinary prisoners of war: eventually their freedom would come.

Putin had decided that he would join them. He had been looking for an opportunity to gain a new identity which he could use when the end came here in the Netherlands. He didn’t plan to abandon his post and his responsibilities until the very last moment, when all hope was lost, but when he did his intention was to survive. Even afterward, he wouldn’t turn on his country but instead aid his nation and the KGB: he couldn’t reveal anything in torture if not captured as a KGB colonel and interrogated as such.

The identity which he would use when he eventually fell into NATO captivity, sometime within a week if the whole situation here continued to fall apart as it was, would be that of a military police lieutenant, but with the East German Kommandantendienst (KD) rather than the Soviet Commandant’s Service.


Putin had been sent overnight down to Loenen, a village south of Apeldoorn. On the edge of the village, inside woodland part of a missile battery had assumed a supposedly hidden firing position. There, he had taken the identity papers and uniform insignia of a KD officer whose body he had come across. The East German had been shot by NATO commandos but Putin had been the first to discover his remains when sent there to take charge of the search for information on how the raid had managed to taken place. After taking what he had, he had rolled the body hopefully further out of sight than it had already been before directing the attention of subordinates under him in other directions to look anywhere but where the corpse of the man he had taken what he needed from lay. He was confident that for a while that body would lay undiscovered for anybody else; Putin had convinced himself that afterwards no one would realize that it was him who had had removed what had been.

What had the East German been doing at Loenen when killed?

He had been guarding a ballistic missile dispersal site hidden there.

Back in 1987 when the INF Treaty was agreed with the West, the then leader of Putin’s country had decided that there would be an elimination from service of many strategic weapons systems including more than originally planned for when the terms of that international treaty had first been discussed. One such system was the OTR-23 Oka: known to NATO as the SS-23 Spider. This was a theatre ballistic missile system with mobile launchers for the most advanced missiles carrying thermonuclear warheads. The Oka was subsequently removed from Soviet military service… and many of them transferred at once to the theoretically independent control of several Warsaw Pact nations. The markings and insignia on the launch and support vehicles (the Oka was fully mobile for ease of rapid redeployment) was that of those nations including East Germany with some members of the operating team from non-Soviet countries. Overall though, there were still large numbers of Soviets with the Okas, especially with the more complicated targeting systems. The warheads for the missiles were wholly under Soviet control too. Independent Warsaw Pact control was a legal fiction used to get around the apparent removal from active service of a complicated and expensive but very able weapons system.

Okas had been brought into the Netherlands by an East German military unit two-thirds manned by Soviet personnel. The missile battery was spread across the occupied parts of the country joined by other nuclear weapons, all of the latter under complete Soviet control and the former near-effectively so too. Technically, the missile battery including the detachment hidden beneath natural cover outside Loenen was an East German unit though and there were still a few East Germans present with it when NATO special forces had attacked late yesterday.

Like everyone else, the KD officer had been killed by the attacking NATO strike team. There was a Spetsnaz officer with Putin when he visited the scene of that attack and he spoke of why this was the case based on his experience elsewhere and observations on-site. Before the attack, Dutch civilians – from elsewhere, not the tiny Loenen – had been wandering in the countryside after leaving towns and cities held by occupying forces and some of them had come across the hidden missile site: those men and women, unfortunate people, had been executed as spies by the security detachment. When NATO had attacked, the special forces unit would have killed many Soviets and East Germans present in battle but some would have survived… until NATO commandos saw the bodies of executed civilians. Then they would have afterwards killed all those who had survived their initial attack in retaliation. Maybe they had conducted semi-official field court martials or failing that lost their discipline. Either way, all Soviets and East Germans here who had been alive before the discovery of the bodies of civilians had been shot afterwards.

The detachment of the Oka battery here was destroyed in the attack. The launch vehicle and the reload vehicle had been shot-up first and then blown up with explosive charges. Both of the missiles were obliterated, each of which had much of the east of Britain in range. Security vehicles and a communications relay vehicle – the rest of the battery was elsewhere with separate overall command in a further location – were blown to smithereens as well. As to the two thermonuclear warheads that should have been with the remains of the Oka detachment, they had been taken away from the scene of the attack. When he had questioned the Spetsnaz man on this, Putin was told that NATO helicopters that retrieved the commandos would have taken them out too before the mass of demolitions occurred here to destroy anything else of value. Where would they have been taken, he had asked too, because surely they were dangerous, yes?

Shrugging his shoulders, the special forces man with Putin had said that he assumed they must have gone to a ship rather than being kept on land after being taken. If stored somewhere in the NATO rear areas, should they detonate by accident then that might be a trigger for a nuclear conflict.


Putin, here in Arnhem, had delivered his report on what was known about the commando attack. He had discovered afterwards that it wasn’t the first nor even the second such attack in recent days but instead the third such NATO strike against Soviet nuclear weapons capabilities using special forces here. Each time they had destroyed all equipment found and removed warheads too. Air attacks had been less successful for them, but their commandos had done the job.

He had told his superior what he knew from how the attack had commenced and its outcomes and left it at that. Putin had wanted to ask about how this was being achieved: were NATO using spies or other means to find those weapons? His mind had turned over motives too, particularly if NATO worried that such weapons might be use to avert a forced surrender here. Instead, he was dismissed for the time being as there were other matters that needed addressing by those of senior rank above him.

Left alone for the time being, Putin went looking for a place to hide what he had taken from Loenen. He wanted to put the official documentation and uniform insignia (he’d have to sew them on to another uniform… and get another uniform too) somewhere safe but close too. When the end came here, when the Soviet position finally collapsed, then he would need what he had taken off the unfortunate East German. He spoke the language to an excellent standard, with a Leipzig dialect, and had passed for a German many times beforehand. He would pretend to be such again, this time in the hands of enemy captors.

It would be the only way to survive.





March 10th 1990
The shores of Lake Ossiacher, Carinthia, Austria

The enemy was to be fought where found and destroyed in-place. US Marines with Task Force Tarawa were tasked to locate, fix and engage Soviet and Hungarian troops that had been cut off and left behind here in southern Austria. They were not to push them back and allow for a retreat but rather to fight them or accept a surrender. There was to be no investing of enemy positions either where a siege might be laid, that was not why they were here.

Colonel Jones had made sure that his subordinates understood this completely when they moved out of Villach and into combat in the Austrian Alps.


Lt.-Colonel Hagee had taken 1/8 MARINES north up into the Treffen Valley with his combat-experienced unit advancing through villages between the mountains either side. There had at once came contact reports from the battalion headquarters where Hagee’s staff had informed those serving Jones’ task force headquarters that Hungarian troops had been located. Within small villages such as Niederdorf, Tobring and Treffen, the Hungarians had been attacked by Marine Riflemen supported by light armour and heavy guns. Hagee’s message had stated that Hungarians were supply, maintenance and transport soldiers: none were infantry units. They had been cut off for a while after the Italians had first moved through the area and followed their last orders to hold and wait for relief to arrive at some point. When the 1/8 MARINES had come at them, they were folding with ease and large surrenders were taking place. The men were cold and hungry. Hagee had his men engaging a very few hold-outs, but more of his men were busy securing prisoners. There were civilians who had been located in the villages too; men, women and children not overtly mistreated by the Hungarians but still not in a good way due to the effects of the war.

Jones was asked by Hagee himself for extra military policemen as well as aid for the civilians in the form of emergency medical care and a delivery of basic food supplies. The MPs – US Marines – were to be sent at once and Jones had his travelling staff get in touch with the Austrians who were waiting with already-loaded trucks ready to go up behind 1/8 MARINES to get rolling now. Hagee was told not to stop moving forward, even with a small advance guard, at this time despite the difficulties encountered. He replied with an affirmative and got back to it, signing off with a remark that he soon aimed to reach the larger Winklern.

Lt.-Colonel Mattis and 1/7 MARINES hadn’t seen combat before like their sister battalion had done in the Turkish Straits and had instead spent the war travelling halfway around the world. Jones found the battalion commander a capable man, someone eager too for what he called ‘getting on with the fight’. Moving along the northern shores of Lake Ossiacher was a more-important task that pushing up the small Treffen Valley and aerial reconnaissance conducted had identified strong Soviet forces there which blocked a major road running east. Mattis had requested that instead of being sent north as Jones had first wanted, the 1/7 MARINES go eastwards. It would be a baptism of fire for his untested men, but Mattis had said that they could handle the mission. Jones had faith in the Marine Riflemen from California and acceded to Mattis’ request, though assigned more fire support than initially planned and had his mobile command column travelling behind as well.

Immediately after leaving the battalion start-lines, 1/7 MARINES had been in combat…

…and would at once show that any fears about them had been far misplaced.


AH-1J Sea Cobra gunships with HMLA-367 using rockets and a battery from the 3/11 MARINES (1st Marine Division artillery) with M-198 howitzers firing 155mm shells gave support as Mattis’ men struck the first line of resistance. Carried forward by AAVP-7 amphibious infantry vehicles to those start-lines, but leaving them behind due to the very high risk of those taking enemy fire, one rifle company of dismounted Marine Riflemen attacked the village of Annenheim. From there came wild defensive fire with machine guns, light mortars and many automatic rifles. This at once drew more artillery support targeted precisely by spotters at the frontlines who had been waiting for the enemy to be exposed. Then came the set-piece infantry attack by the 1/7 MARINES.

Fire and maneuver.

Keep your shots on target and don’t waste ammunition.

Attract the enemy’s attention and make a move on him.

Watch out for your buddies.

Make the enemy see this his opponents are US Marines: then he’ll know he’s fighting the very best.

The Soviets in Annenheim didn’t hold out for very long before being overwhelmed. Their firing positions inside houses – from windows and doorways – were fixed and they wouldn’t withdraw. Many died, more were wounded and there were some who surrendered. The men with 1/7 MARINES looked for officers and NCOs to separate from the few POWs taken, maybe even ask them questions. Medical attention was called for wounded enemy who – after being searched for any hidden weapons, of course – would be treated alongside Marine Riflemen. Several vehicles were seen exciting the village before it was won and they had been fired upon by an on-call Sea Cobra waiting for such a thing to occur.

The next two rifle companies came forward in more AAVP-7s afterwards, this time with a platoon of M-60A1 tanks from the 3d Marine Tank Battalion with them. Annenheim had been just an outpost; Sattendorf up ahead was the main line of resistance where Mattis sent his men towards next to see if the Soviets there were more capable then their men at their outpost in trying to stop US Marines.


Jones received the reports of the fighting at Annenheim and was pleased that Task Force Tarawa as a whole was completing its assigned mission to protect the flank of the II MEF and secure the connections with the Italians there on the left by getting rid of the enemy in between. Everything was going just as he hoped to see with no one letting him or themselves down.

Above the road which ran along Lake Ossiacher, there were the mountains which loomed there. 1/8 MARINES was moving to the west of them and 1/7 MARINES was to the south. Jones had his men starting to envelope them by doing so, cutting off an easy escape for the enemy which would be up there too. There would be lesser numbers of Soviets and Hungarians in the mountains, but in stronger defensive positions. Air support had already blasted some of them but there would be many more dug-in and so needing to be dug-out by the Marine Riflemen under Hagee and Mattis.

It was a daunting task with the difficult terrain but Jones knew that it could be done. First there needed to be the fighting on lower ground though. He continued to receive reports that Hagee’s men had reached Winklern and Mattis’ were engaging the enemy at Sattendorf. He checked on the attacks being made by AV-8B Harriers with VMA-513 and was assured that they had bombed and strafed the enemy being where 1/7 MARINES were: there would be no escape for the enemy from there. The temptation to get directly involved in overseeing the fighting taking place with the 1/7 MARINES especially was there but Jones sensibly avoided that. Mattis and his company commanders were on-scene and had access to the battlefield view better than he did. From what he could hear on the radio, the job was being done there better than he could from here back in the rear.

He had the urge, he knew, because he had been frustrated when back in Villach before moving Task Force Tarawa out at being unable to anything there either.

Back in that ruined Austrian town, unsettling events had been taking place with regards to civilians and Austrian guerillas. There had been accusations flying around that certain people were traitors and spies for the Soviets left behind: those people had been dealt with harshly there while US Marines had looked on. Summary executions had occurred without regard to any form of due process given. Jones’ orders from above, which he passed down the chain of command, were for his men to not get involved in internal Austrian matters. They had reestablished control and martial law was in effect. The Austrians should have known who was guilty of aiding the enemy and who wasn’t. Hagee had come to him with the message that many of his men had been unhappy with what they had seen and been itching to get involved in stopping some acts of injustice which they believed they were seeing. Meanwhile, Mattis had the opinion that those who had not only betrayed their country but had been taking advantage of the situation for their own gain – personal enrichment, taking advantage of women etc. – had it coming once they foreigner invaders they had backed had lost.

Jones had made sure that his men had stayed out of it all because those were his orders and been glad to eventually get away and into combat. Villach wasn’t somewhere he wished to return to any time soon. He also hoped that there wouldn’t be similar scenes to be witnessed in smaller locations elsewhere… but couldn’t be sure.





March 10th 1990
The Barents Sea and the Kara Sea

Carrier Strike Group Two had been busy blasting the Soviet homeland with bombs and missiles. Operating from within the Barents Sea at first northwest of the Kola Peninsula and then moving eastwards, aircraft from the two carriers as well as cruise missiles carried by multiple warships had hit countless enemy military targets. Those locations struck at along the coast, and also considerable distance beyond the shoreline too, had been hit and hit again until they were knocked out. Naval bases, airfields, radar & missile sites, command centers and shipyards had been what Carrier Strike Group Two had been ordered by SACLANT to eliminate.

There had been much success but that, as expected, had come at a heavy cost.

Aircraft from the USS America and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower had been shot down due to enemy action and a few more had been lost in accidents that came with high-tempo operations. There had been several attacks launched against the carrier group by the Soviets aiming to repeat their earlier success against Carrier Strike Group One (destroying the USS Theodore Roosevelt and several escorts) and while those had ultimately failed casualties had been inflicted with a number of ships sunk or suffering major damage. There had been no repeat of the stunning victory achieved in taking out the Roosevelt, but that hadn’t been down to a lack of trying on the part of the Soviets.

Carrier Strike Group Two was here in these waters off the shores of the Soviet Union to not just do immense damage to the enemy but also to have what fire power the enemy had focused upon them too rather than any further moves made out into the North Atlantic. That was a cold, hard truth of the deployment up here even with it being secondary to hitting the enemy within their homeland.

Destroying targets on land and engaging Soviet air and submarine attacks was one part of the mission and this had been done well. There was more to be done though. Across in the Kara Sea, on the other side of the archipelago which was Novaya Zemlya (it wasn’t an island as many might believe), there was still a large collection of Soviet military strength above and beneath the waves there. The enemy’s at-sea combat forces had been all but wiped out in the Barents Sea – further west in the approaches to the North Atlantic too – yet what remained had retreated to the Kara Sea.

Atop of the waves were Soviet warships. Beneath were strategic missile submarines.

It was called a ‘bastion defence’. The Kara Sea position where the Soviets had their submarines armed with thermonuclear-armed missiles in deep water defended by warships above them was repeated in the Pacific theatre with that of the Sea of Okhotsk. There were other, lone submarines deep under the Arctic but the majority of submarines with missiles aimed at population centers in North America, Western Europe and possibly China or the Middle East too were in those pair of defended positions either side of the Soviet Union. The submarines had put to sea right before the war had started or in the first few days of conflict and stayed where they were. They had onboard supplies and mission-specific orders to stay where they were and do nothing unless particular orders came. Afterwards, warships had joined them and, if it hadn’t been for NATO and Allied (mainly American) efforts, many aircraft would be supporting them as well as the warships.

Carrier Strike Group Two had orders now to cease their land attacks because as much damage as possible had been done and instead to go after the warships floating in the Kara Sea; the US Seventh Fleet in the Pacific was going to go after the Sea of Okhotsk bastion as well. No advance was to be made directly into the Kara Sea but instead attacks were to be made from outside. It was a difficult task, not impossible, but hard nonetheless. Still, that was what SACLANT passed on as orders for the flotilla of US Navy vessels in the Barents Sea to do, especially since reinforcements had arrived. There had been the addition of cruisers, destroyers, frigates and submarines coming from patrol duties in the North Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea all brought forward now with those waters almost clear of the enemy and what remained deemed to be a something that could be handled by NATO warfighting assets in those locations. More warships and submarines had come from the US Navy’s ‘Reserve Fleet’ of mothballed vessels.

Furthermore, USS Coral Sea had also arrived to join Carrier Striking Group Two.

The aged carrier, known as the ‘Ageless Warrior’ hadn’t been in active US Navy service when the war started. She had been at Norfolk since late last year with the plan being to decommission her early-to-mid 1990. A study had been conducted in January as tensions rose with the Soviets about recalling the Coral Sea to duty and that found it could be easily done, though might take a little time especially since a full crew would be needed when there were manpower commitments elsewhere. As REFORGER started and the world went to war, that paper study had become a reality and the Coral Sea was back in service. An air wing for the carrier had at first been meant to have been made up of reserve units and it was thought that a medium-threat environment would be where the carrier would have to operate because the very best US Navy aircraft wouldn’t be available: this would have meant freeing up another carrier for service in a high-threat environment. However, the loss of the shiny-new USS Abraham Lincoln within sight of Norfolk (Naval Criminal Investigative Service operatives and the CIA had identified certain GRU spies who had assisted in the effort to kill that carrier by broadcasting messages about her departure), with only a few aircraft aboard at the time, had meant that the Coral Sea – once worked-up – could have a full air wing and see proper service.

Three carriers were with Carrier Strike Group Two now following the arrival of the Coral Sea. There were forty plus warships with them, a dozen support ships and nine submarines. Their mission was to sink as many of the enemy’s warships across in the Kara Sea without going into those waters through dangerous routes of approach and into waters where their very presence might have the most fatal of consequences: ‘forcing’ those Soviet submarines to launch their missiles.


The air and missile strikes got going after it got dark for the evening.

F-14 Tomcats and E-2 Hawkeyes were in the skies first for interceptor and airborne radar duties. EA-3Bs and EA-6B Prowlers on electronic warfare missions left the carriers too. Then there came the airborne tankers: old KA-3Bs and newer KA-6Ds. Next was the strike force consisting of A-6 Intruders, A-7 Corsairs and FA-18 Hornets. There were land-based aircraft in the skies already, coming from Norwegian airbases, and on long overwater flights with P-3 Orions and the EP-3 Aires variants for electronic warfare.

The aircraft which flew first towards Novaya Zemlya were not all together in one big formation tight in the sky. Instead, there were groups of them scattered across the sky, even ones alone. There were missions for them to be performed out ahead scouting the way, as part of the main strike forces, operating on the flanks, in the rear and staying behind to keep watch. Command staffs working aboard the carriers and in several larger aircraft kept control of their movements and made sure that all aviators stuck to their assigned flight plans to that the operation would go as it was meant to. Behind them, more aircraft stayed with the carriers too: further Tomcats, Hawkeyes and the S-3 Vikings on anti-submarine patrols. The air threat from the south – the Kola Peninsula and the White Sea shores – had long been neutralized and there were suspected to be very few Soviet submarines left active in the Barents Sea, but that didn’t mean that Carrier Strike Group Two could let its guard down. Those aircraft were up protecting them and the flotilla of ships were conducting defensive measures ahead of any incoming attack while the massive air strike was taking place away to the east.

Cruise missiles were in the sky too, ahead of the aircraft. These were Tomahawks with high-explosive & submunitions-dispensing warheads that had been fired from warships and submarines and started crashing into targets across Novaya Zemlya. Rogachevo Airbase had already been visited by US Navy SEALs (active on Soviet soil in the face the fears of some people but given the go-ahead from the highest levels after Soviet Spetsnaz had done what they had on the US mainland) where Sukhoi-27P Flankers in-place had been attacked. Those were the Flankers which had earlier survived the attention of Carrier Strike Group Two and what few were on the ground in shelters were blown up in addition to aircrews being targeted in their quarters. The SEAL mission at Rogachevo had been brutal and would go down in legend, especially since it was so successful. The incoming Tomahawks blew holes in the runaway and scattered mines but the Flankers had been nowhere anyway.

Once the strike packages were across Novaya Zemlya – avoiding SAM sites being jammed, hit by anti-radar missiles or already destroyed in earlier actions – they went after the Soviet Navy. Radar images gained by satellites had pointed to where they could be found by terms of general areas, but it was up to the aircraft in the skies to find them to directly attack them. The Orions heled with their own radars and the electronic warfare aircraft coming forward weren’t just here to deal with SAMs and jam enemy communications but also track the enemy by using the Soviet’s own signals to locate them.

The big ships of the Soviet Navy’s Northern Fleet, its most-capable multi-mission platforms, had been sunk very early in the war in the Battle of the Lofoten Islands by Carrier Strike Group One. The Roosevelt, the Wisconsin and other US Navy warships, along with the addition of NATO air & submarine support, had done so well there. The carriers Baku and Kiev – tiny vessels in comparison to what the US Navy fielded as carriers but still the ‘big ships’ of the Soviet Navy – had been eliminated as a threat alongside the battle-cruiser Kirov. Several Kresta-class cruisers (missile platforms) and large destroyers also mounting impressive arsenals of missiles had been sunk afterwards by Carrier Strike Group One and NATO submarines before Carrier Strike Group Two arrived in the Barents Sea to find that the remaining medium and large warships of the Northern Fleet had fled under orders to the Kara Sea. There were more cruisers and destroyers there, older and modern warships all with many weapons carried.

The US Navy aircraft which came into the skies above the Kara Sea found several of them to attack.


The Slava-class missile-cruiser Marshal Ustinov had been very lucky in getting away from the massacre that had been the Battle of the Lofoten Islands. A Royal Navy submarine had been sunk during her escape though damage had been taken from a missile hit conducted by one of Roosevelt’s aircraft as she ran east in early February. When in the Kara Sea her duty was to protect the submarines underneath and this was done because the cruiser was a floating missile platform with modern SAMs, anti-ship missiles and up-to-date combat systems. Carrier Strike Group Two had marked the Marshal Ustinov for destruction no matter what though.

Her radars were jammed for a distance and multiple attacks came towards her. There were long-distance missile shots with air-launched Harpoons and anti-radar HARMs. A flight of Corsairs came in low with bombs off the cruiser’s starboard bow and from the port rear quarter came more Corsairs. Anti-missile guns were fired using infrared systems because of all of the targeted missile-jamming and the efforts to shoot at the incoming aircraft depleted those of going after the missiles that would kill her. One Corsair was downed, another two shot up but that was it. The supposedly powerful Slava-class vessel had been outfought through technology and a little bit of cunning rather than brute force and incoming missiles slammed home. The Corsairs returned afterwards, lob-tossing bombs towards the big warship. This was not the battle for which the Marshal Ustinov had been built to fight nor was here to do.

The cruiser, displacing upwards of twelve thousand tons, was to be lost due to fires igniting her missile magazines and blowing her into hundreds of pieces in a satisfying explosion which many US Navy aviators in the nearby skies were able to see.

Larger in size than the Marshal Ustinov were the aged cruisers Marshal Nevskiy and Murmansk. These were armed with guns rather than missiles & guns as more modern vessels were and the Sverdlov-class vessels had been in reserve and ready for full decommissioning before the war started. They had been sent directly to the Kara Sea and stayed there throughout the conflict with the Soviets realizing that it would be nothing short of suicide to send them into battle off Norway or even in the Barents Sea.

These big ships were just big targets for the aircraft in the sky, especially because they had little in the way of air defences. Again, missiles hit them first before in came aircraft carrying bombs low and with aviators needing to show some skill in attacking moving targets from where there still was some defensive fire. The Murmansk was hit first, then the Marshal Nevskiy. The latter was left burning from bow to stern but the former seemed to absorb the many hits of inbound weapons very well. More aircraft were called in afterwards, making a follow-up attack against the Murmansk. Finally, she was engulfed in fire and then there was a huge blast.

The pair of Sverdlov-class cruisers joined the Slava-class warship in being wholly destroyed.

There were destroyers along with the cruisers that the aircraft from Carrier Strike Group Two went after. Four of them were found and each attacked until they were on fire along their length, blown up or observed capsizing. Aircraft whizzed in from all directions dropping bombs after missiles had done their work to maintain the barrage directed against them. There were SAMs launched and a lot of anti-aircraft fire from guns. US Navy aircraft were hit with some damaged and others shot down. There was no fighter opposition though, which allowed the battle to be as one-sided as it ended up and the Soviet warships being all alone. There were a few more destroyers which Carrier Strike Group Two would have liked to engage, those well-armed, but they couldn’t be found. There were time and fuel constraints to be considered… plus the knowledge that they could come back again soon and hunt for those escapees then.

Kalinin, sister ship to the earlier sunken Kirov, was one of those which escaped air attack.


Aircraft soon started flying back west. The carriers which they called home were coming towards them to shorten flight time and rescue helicopters were already up to try to save aircrews that would have to ditch. Carrier Strike Group Two would have to count the cost of losses taken, but in comparison to those inflicted upon the enemy those were minimal.

The overall operational value of attacking the enemy warships on the surface of the Kara Sea was great. So too, as far as the US Navy was concerned, was getting a large measure of revenge for the Roosevelt and all those who had been lost with her on February 22nd. In waters such as these, that revenge really was to be a dish best served cold.

[James G]

Twenty–Four – Sacrifice

March 11th 1990
Key West, the Florida Keys, Florida, the United States

Dick Armitage asked the three Cuban Army majors where the rest of the DGI men could be found: there were only fourteen who’d been handed over as prisoners and there were too the bodies of another twelve. Where were the others who had been on Key West?

They each gave him a shrug of their shoulders before one whispered something to the other two in Spanish. That first Cuban officer of the trio who had surrendered Key West late yesterday then spoke in broken English to Armitage and told him that there had been a boat in which twelve to fifteen more DGI officers had climbed into during the chaos of infighting here before the surrender. That boat, Armitage was told, had set off in the direction of Cuba and attempted to follow the course of other tiny vessels, even rafts, carrying men who refused to accept defeat here. The other pair of majors nodded in agreement with what the first had said.

Armitage didn’t believe that for a second. The Cubans were lying to him. The missing DGI personnel were clearly hiding among those who had surrendered.

The whole circumstances of the ‘munity’ here were not believable to him at all with these mid-ranking officers apparently deciding to kill their senior officers and declare they were surrendering just didn’t seem right. The DGI were supposed to have been taken by surprise alongside the colonels and commanding general above the three majors. He couldn’t see that as happening, he didn’t believe that that had been the sequence of events here before American forces arrived to retake the island without bloodshed.

He had the suspicion that something far more underhand had taken place. The DGI had made an agreement with the majors to fake the circumstances of the surrender. Afterwards, their men had hid themselves among the hundreds of other Cubans here all now being taken into American military custody and being readied to be flown out of the Florida Keys. What had been promised to the trio of Cuban Army officers, or whether it had been the case of them being forced into doing what they had, didn’t matter for now. Armitage knew that that would come out in time. What he was concerned about instead was not letting those war criminals get away with what they had.

There weren’t just the corpses of DGI and Cuban Army men here on Key West, but bodies of civilians too. American citizens. Men, women and children. Innocents murdered by foreign invaders of American sovereign soil.

Those who did this had the mistaken belief that they would escape the wrath of the United States; Armitage would be foremost in assuring that justice would come their way.


The surrender of Key West had become official at midnight.

SOUTHCOM had responded to radio messages coming from Key West that there was a wish to accede to the terms of surrender offered over those broadcasts made with an affirmative sent to the Cubans. The Cubans were told to lay down their arms and to not oppose Americans landings by sea and air that would be soon coming their way. Those had started almost at once with landing craft and helicopters bringing in Green Berets first then combat engineers, military police & intelligence personnel and infantrymen who quickly followed them. The Cuban command post was secured along with those found there as a priority but there was a rush as well to take control of American prisoners being held and all weapons & ammunition. Those Green Berets on the ground first quickly realized that there was a humanitarian crisis present with regard to American civilians being without food and denied medical care and they made calls for relief to be sent ahead of more troops: the Cubans weren’t that many in number and those which were here were showing no signs of resistance at all to the liberation. That aid was quickly dispatched though American troops continued to flood into Key West alongside pre-packaged food supplies and medics who’d been on stand-by.

As to Armitage, he had been at Mount Weather meeting with Secretary of State Dole last night when the first news came (before the midnight surrender) that the Cubans were making radio contact. His return from the Balkans early in the month had left him without an official task but Dole had asked to see him under a presidential directive to oversee the course of events with regards to Cuba from a political angle; everything previously that the Bush Administration had been dealing with was related to military and intelligence matters. Dole herself was focused mainly on recent events in Iraq with the Iranians on the march and the United States being wholly unable to do anything about that that but President Bush wanted someone from the political sphere involved in what was going on with Cuba: she’d been tasked to find someone suitable for that role. Armitage had been in the midst of talking with Dole about what exactly he was to do in Florida when she received word from Secretary of Defence Cheney’s people at Raven Rock that the Cubans were giving in. At once, Armitage was instructed to go down to Key West and be on the ground there right behind the liberating troops.

A US Air Force C-20A Gulfstream-III had flown Armitage to Homestead AFB, where SOUTHCOM had its forward headquarters. During the flight down to southern Florida, he had spoken to General Thurman and been told there wasn’t going to be a series of protracted talks with the Cubans on Key West. Instead, the Cubans were told that their radio surrender had been accepted and they were to stay in-place pending the arrival of American troops: there would be no in-person talks concerning exact details of the surrender. That had been quite a surprise, but more had come when he had reached Homestead. Dozens of helicopters were assembling there and men were being loaded onto them ready to go into action. Armitage had asked whether a nighttime landing was to take place, was no one waiting until first light?

One of General Thurman’s senior people, after confirming that the troops were moving in without delay, had then briefed Armitage on what the terms of the surrender were with the Cubans. They had responded to the broadcasts made previously from special operations aircraft on Commando Solo missions promising the Cubans good treatment and a surrender with honour… in addition to no retaliation being made for any war crimes committed. Before Armitage had been able to start ranting and raving as he was about to – he had felt his self-control fall suddenly away – there had come the follow-up remark that, of course, such terms had never been planned to be kept. It had all been a lie and the Cubans had fell for it. His response to that had been to ask who authorized such action; the Defence Secretary came the reply.

Armitage had wanted to speak to General Thurman after hearing that and had planned to tell him that this was not the right way of doing things. There was no knowing how far those broadcasts had been heard away from Key West. When it was later revealed that those had been lies – news like that would always get out, no matter what attempts were made to keep it quiet – that would jeopardize future attempts to bring about surrenders where bloodshed could be avoided by negotiation. He anticipated a return comment that the sacrifice of America’s word on this matter would avoid a fight for Key West among American civilians there but still wished to have that out with him because it was a stupid thing to have done. SOUTHCOM’s commander was busy though, engaged in talking with the Joint Chiefs to let them know exactly what was occurring.

Instead of waiting, Armitage had decided to go down to Key West to meet with the senior Cubans there. He planned to later come back to the issue that had upset him when at Homestead though… not just here by when he got back up north too.


A total of seven hundred and twenty-nine Cubans, including almost two hundred of whom were classed as seriously wounded, surrendered on Key West.

The three majors had told the US Army officers who arrived to take their surrender in an official capacity that there had been fourteen hundred men assigned to take Key West when the invasion commenced three weeks ago. Another five hundred had gone to Boca Chica Key and two hundred more had been involved in seizing Marathon. With regards to Key West, Armitage had done the math in an instant: half of the Cubans were dead. There were those who hadn’t made it to Key West when dropped into the sea by mistake or their aircraft shot down before they could parachute out. More had been killed in fighting for the outlying isles around Key West first against US Armed Forces personnel based there and then afterwards when those were retaken by Green Berets.

Civilians inside Key West had killed two hundred plus more Cubans.

Those Cuban prisoners were all being gathered now at the airport in the southeastern corner of Key West. Engineers were fast working to clear obstructions and mines from the airport to allow aircraft to come into land and to take them out. It was daylight now and that effort had increased in tempo with the hope that very soon the Cubans would be gone from the island for good.

Armitage walked among the groups of prisoners here. They were out in the open, split up into groups of fifty for enlisted men and far smaller numbers for officers. He wandered around and looked down at the men sitting on the ground under the guns of patrolling American soldiers. A few looked back up at him but most remained with downcast gazes. Among them were those who had killed civilians across Key West. There would be those who had done so according to orders and those who had murdered of their own free will. He was certain that among them too would be men who gave the orders and had afterwards disguised themselves no longer as DGI men.

They would be found though. Armitage would make sure of it.

That would occur when back at Homestead and would be one of many matters which he would address once back there. Key West had been liberated without the civilian population caught up in that: that was welcome news, an excellent turn of events. The circumstances surrounding that though were not pleasing at all to him.





March 11th 1990
Dordrecht, Zuid-Holland, the Netherlands

The British had waited five days before seeing that they had been tricked.

General Lebed didn’t know if such a length of time had been enough for the Chekist who’d threatened the lives of his family and those of his senior staff. Lebedev had departed, possibly back to Arnhem, after the false proposals given to them seeking terms for a ceasefire had been opened with the British. He had spoken of gaining time by presenting them with impossible conditions and that had appeared to work: Lebed had been informed afterwards that NATO senior commanders and politicians had been tying themselves in knots in an attempt to comprise with themselves before returning with a counter offer. That was the ultimate goal of what Lebedev had him do on that bridge at the beginning of the week.

Now though, the effective ceasefire which had come with the discussions about having a ceasefire had come to an end. British troops had started attacking the Tula Division overnight and were on the advance. Lebed led his Airborne Troops in the fight to defend Dordrecht from them.

The Tula Division’s deputy communications officer asked what was a ‘Green Howard’. When queried by others present in the divisional command post on what he meant, the response came that it was the Green Howards whom the 137th Regiment was engaged in combat with across the wetlands of the de Biesbosch. An hour or so ago, he had asked what was the meaning of the ‘Black Watch’ when it came to another British Army unit, those who’d been fighting against Lebed’s 51st Regiment across to the west. Lebed shot his chief-of-staff a look – the look – and the colonel went over to talk to the captain about the expected standards within the command post. Since the Chekists had arrested and shot many officers within the Tula Division, especially among the command staff which had started the war under Lebed’s command, new men had come in: the captain was from the outside. He was here because there was no one else and far too talkative, too keen to show that he wanted to expand his knowledge. Under normal circumstances, Lebed would welcome such a man – with limits, naturally – but the Tula Division was at war and he didn’t need that going on now.

Lebed’s men were being killed defending the outlying regions of Dordrecht, either side of the occupied city. The British 2nd Infantry Division was moving forward to the west and the east; Dordrecht itself was being attacked with selective artillery strikes rather than set-piece assaults. The British had come over the water with massive amounts of fire support backing them up. They were clearly aiming to surround the Tula Division’s main base of operations where Lebed had his command post, what was left of his divisional supporting assets and the 331st Regiment. The terrain either side was nowhere near as obstructive to military operations as the city was and Lebed’s men were scattered wide rather than concentrated as in Dordrecht.

They were winning too, either pushing his men on the flanks back in hasty retreats or killing them in-place. At this time, it mattered not what their small unit designations were.


General Rose was glad that he had finally been given permission to attack. The Soviets would have used the time that they had to dig-in and get ready for his assault and he was certain that many of the men under his command killed and wounded since he had begun the final assault on Dordrecht had been lost due to that delay imposed from above. He had never believed that the Soviets were serious, not since hearing their terms and seeing their attitude, but those above him had been taken in by it. Their patience had eventually run out – all the way up to General Schwarzkopf he had been told – and so his instructions were to no longer play the enemy’s game.

He was happy with that decision… though still angry at all the time wasted.

Finishing off the Dordrecht position and eliminating the 106th Guards Airborne Division was a two-stage operation. First, he sent his men forward on the flanks with multiple attacks against their defences either side. During the lull in fighting imposed, he had his men along with those French commandos present scout the enemy thoroughly. When he had unleashed the attack during the night his soldiers had known where to find the enemy and where they were weakest too. Artillery and air support joined in, aiming for the enemy’s fire support: their BMDs and towed howitzers all left immobile without fuel and also with little ammunition supplies too. Once the flanking moves had been done, which Rose expected to see achieved by tonight, he would then finish the operation starting tomorrow (his men would need a rest) to move in on Dordrecht. Everything which could be done to reduce his own casualties was to be done, but he still expected that many would occur. There was no choice though: the Soviets here were never going to offer a true surrender and orders from above were for the whole of the so-called Dutch Pocket to be destroyed, not just here.

At his own command post, Rose listened to incoming reports made to him via his headquarters staff rather that unit commanders in the field. Battalion and brigade commanders were busy in a tough, bloody fight and he let them get on with that. At any moment he was ready to jump in should the situation warrant it, but all that he heard showed that the battles were being fought as planned.

Two brigades were under command for this attack, the 39th and 49th Infantry Brigades, with the newly stood-up 32nd Light Brigade kept back in reserve. Those involved in the current fighting were nothing like their peacetime incarnations… and not very similar to how both formations had started the war either. Their subordinate battalions were a mix of regular and reserve men who’d almost all to a man seen action across the western edge of the North German Plain and then here in the Netherlands as well. Losses when the light infantry units had been met with a mechanised opponent had been as heavy as expected and replacements had flooded in to quickly gain veteran status themselves.

Rose had been with those men all the way. He’d faced death several times and made lucky escapes, unlike many of his men. First the 15th Infantry Brigade, then the 24th Airmobile Brigade had been lost in combat: both had been assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division at the start of the war with the 49th Brigade. Soldiers on and behind the frontlines had died with the enemy at times seeming to be all-conquering. Again and again he had led his command in a retreat, all the way from the Weser to the Rhine Estuary. As a whole, the division had never broke in all that time and there were many serving under him who were proud of that distinction, but with all of the losses inflicted to the division Rose couldn’t take much comfort from that.

There had come no rest for Rose’s men though he expected that after this battle there would have to. This fight here really was going to take its toll, especially when he finally assaulted Dordrecht to blast out the enemy from that city and there would come when doing that a sacrifice of the 32nd Brigade.


West of Dordrecht on Hoeksche Waard, Soviet and British infantry clashed throughout the day on that low-lying island across flat farmland and though villages. The 51st Guards Regiment couldn’t stop the 49th Brigade from driving them north towards the Oude Maas and the Dordtse Kil in the east. Against those two stretches of waterway the Soviet paratroopers were pushed up to with the impossible feat of getting over each and escaping their opponents too much to achieve. Inland, though larger villages of Maasdam and Puttershoek, and at ‘s-Gravendeel within sight of Dordrecht, the 51st Regiment fought to the end. Their BMDs hadn’t survived attacks to knock them out and deny them as mobile pillboxes and there was no overhead coverage from aircraft which made their presence felt. Away dream of trying to escape maybe away to the west, out of the way of the British, was denied to the Soviets with a pair of Belgian regiments (the 11th & 13th, reserve formations) also on Hoeksche Waard: the 2nd Infantry Division wasn’t alone in attacking.

The 137th Guards Regiment died a slow and painful death too. The fight for the de Biesbosch (a nature reserve) was a distraction for a major northwards advance by the 39th Brigade aiming for the waterway that was the Boven Merwede. The village of Hank was initially where a stand was made, but when that fell the British kept on moving. They suffered some losses in the scattered minefields yet kept on moving forward and going up against and through every attempt that the Soviets made to stop them. The pace of the advance was sped up when the Soviet regimental command post was hit by shelling denying central control. Moreover, Soviet paratroopers here started to surrender – in squads and remains of platoons only – rather than fight to the very end. The British eventually reached their ultimate aim of the river ahead and were able to fully envelope Dordrecht on this flank too.

The rest of the Allied II Corps, and the whole of the NORWESTAG, was attacking. Throughout the Netherlands, where the Soviets were surrounded right in the middle along the waterways running towards the North Sea, they were engaged. Some Belgian, Dutch and West German troops fought to liberate the Netherlands, but the larger numbers of attacking NATO forces came from British and French units. Commandos were active throughout the enemy rear and the skies were full of attacking aircraft. Intelligence had come from external sources that the delays imposed for the past week, Dordrecht foremost among them, had been a KGB ploy to buy times for their own ends. NATO politicians had argued about the whole situation as they preferred to see the enemy surrender rather than have to be dug out with the death and destruction which would come, but still that time hadn’t been wasted either with special operations undertaken to eliminate several key nuclear-capable enemy units within the Dutch Pocket as well.

Finally, the occupied parts of the Netherlands were to be liberated without any more delays.


Inside Dordrecht, Lebed could do nothing as his outlying forces were beaten and crushed. The 51st and 137th Regiments ceased to exist by the day’s end. Tiny detachments of both were holding on in very isolated spots by sunset but by the time night had fully fallen they were eventually overrun.

He still had one regiment left inside the city but there was little hope in him that against a final assault they could hold out. Still, he wouldn’t surrender. He recalled Lebedev’s threats that that man’s fellow Chekists back home would take their vengeance upon the loved ones of him and his senior subordinate officers if that occurred.

So when the British finally came, he’d made them fight a bloody battle for Dordrecht and the defeat of the Tula Division no matter how ultimately fruitless that was.


Rose went up to the Moerdijkspoorbrug at Moerdijk again by the end of the day.

Straight ahead of him and filling the image presented to him in his binoculars was Dordrecht. He had some of his staff with him informing their commander of the progress of the attacks either side of the city, plus casualty numbers too. The former was good news, the latter was tragic. If there weren’t so many civilians inside the city still he would have blasted Dordrecht to pieces and argued with his orders about the need to take it relatively intact and therefore engage the enemy inside man-to-man. Alas…

The 32nd Brigade would be going forward tomorrow. He’d sent them over the water here and forward following the course set by the road and railway line. Those men serving in a mixture of General Service Reserve units, all old soldiers with much experience yet not in this war so far, would march up and into the city. It would be a horrible fight, a ‘meat-grinder’. One which was necessary though, or so the politicians said.

He didn’t want tomorrow to come.





March 11th 1990
Zeven, Lower Saxony, West Germany

The Battle of Zeven was rated afterwards by many as a disaster where the United States Army suffered a serious defeat in an avoidable ambush. Others argued that such a judgement was harsh and while a tactical setback had been incurred, afterwards there came follow-up action which saw a stunning victory being won on the Lüneburg Heath with great operational & strategic benefits coming from that.

Either way, more than two thousand American servicemen lost their lives during the two-day fight for control of the town of Zeven and the communications links around it in the surrounding German countryside. The remains of those men were left behind when American tanks rolled away to the southeast following their deaths, heading across the Lüneburg Heath and in the direction of the Inner-German Border.

Brigadier-General Wesley Clark very nearly became one of those casualties.


The 177th Armored Brigade, fresh from successful operations away to the north, had been the lead unit chosen to seize Zeven and open the way for the US II Corps to exploit the opening in enemy lines which would come from its capture. Clark brought his brigade in from the northwest while the national guardsmen made their approach from the west. Throughout yesterday afternoon and into the evening, the 177th Brigade had smashed through opposing Polish armour outside the town. There had been a major fight at the Seedorf Barracks – a pre-war Dutch military encampment – and across farmland between there and the edges of Zeven. The Polish had been outfought and eliminated as a fighting force. Clark and his men had used all of their training and experience to smash apart a tank regiment using old equipment (T-55s) and not allow the enemy to do anything but be killed. His own casualties had been light and the 177th Brigade had emerged victorious from their initial fight.

Overnight, the 28th Infantry Division had gone into battle to clear Zeven of East German occupation forces and those national guardsmen from Pennsylvania had seemed to have achieved that goal. Clark had observed two of the three assigned brigades of infantry move through the town and engage dug-in enemy forces. Tankers from Vermont added to the 28th Division had remained outside and established blocking positions overnight with the aim that once the morning came they would join the 177th Brigade in moving forward on a wide frontage. There were still many more enemy forces out in the open, coming up from the Lüneburg Heath overnight and under attack by NATO air power.

At dawn this morning, inside the supposedly-secure Zeven, both the 2d and 56th Infantry Brigades had come under sustained attack from a different enemy than the one which they had fought the night before. Soviet special forces units were suddenly active everywhere inside Zeven. They used snipers, small explosive devices and nerve gases deployed by light mortars to kill as many national guardsmen as possible. Confusion reigned initially with claims that the enemy was defeated after a few engagements but then and again they popped up again and killed more men of the 28th Division. The presence of civilians inside the town limited American options where firepower could have been used to smash apart an enemy hiding in buildings. A decision came to abandon Zeven itself on a temporary basis in the face of an ambush well set and being executed with deadly effect.

Unfortunately, the commander of the US II Corps countermanded that not long after the pull-out started. His corps – to which both the 177th Brigade, the 28th Division and two more national guard divisions were part of – was to use Zeven as a supply centre for its drive across the nearby Lüneburg Heath when heading towards the East German frontier. Two more corps commands, the US I & III Cops, were to his right and heading in the same direction as the whole of the US Third Army was meant to be making a major offensive down behind what enemy forces remained fighting the British and Belgians further south. Being squeezed by the enemy on their own flank would not just interfere with the US II Corps mission but affect the two other corps’ as well. The US II Corps was a new, wartime formation with criticism already made from above as to its capability as a command of mixed and ill-tested components who should be in the rear or at a less exposed position rather than as part of a major offensive: the corps commander had no intention of feeding that criticism especially since he was told that maybe a few hundred men on foot with no heavy weapons would deny Zeven to him. Road and railway lines, even in the shape which they were in, converged upon the town and allowing the enemy to hold there wouldn’t do.

Clark had no influence in the decisions made high above him though upon hearing of those he did disagree with that. Zeven was a situation not fully understood and he didn’t believe that Soviets had fully revealed themselves yet. He also heard on the radio that the 28th Division’s commander was threatened with dismissal by the corps commander, over an open radio channel no less, when he objected to orders to go back into the town. Nothing Clark could do or say mattered though. Instead, he made sure that the 177th Brigade remained following orders and started pushing eastwards away from the town ready to engage the enemy when met again. The 86th Armored Brigade was alongside Clark’s brigade with those men from Vermont glad not to be in the fight for Zeven.

Then the Soviets showed up, in tanks and armoured infantry vehicles this time.

Everything happened very fast with warnings from air support and forward scouts giving very little time and underreporting the strength of the enemy. Thankfully, the 177th Brigade staff was on top of their game and his subordinates below with his assigned combat units did what they were meant to. Later, tactical intelligence would show that a pair of Soviet tank divisions – ‘Category D’ units – had been involved in the Battle of Zeven: six hundred plus tanks coming forward with speed favoured over deception once they were out in the open. However, only one of those divisions came towards the 86th & 177th Brigades in a frontal attack. Clark worked with his counterpart from Vermont in having the enemy engaged in a battle of manoeuvre and bringing in external fire support. Everything was done as it was meant to with American forces charging into the oncoming enemy in places but elsewhere waiting and hitting the Soviets in their flanks when they didn’t fully understand their tactical environment. A series of running battles commenced where the enemy was hit with all available weapons and their pretty formations disrupted. T-62s and BMP-1s were met and those died fiery deaths like the Polish T-55s because they were outgunned at ranges they couldn’t match. There wasn’t a chapter in their war doctrine books which covered an opponent not doing as you expect and giving a little shock and awe. Over the course of an hour, the two American brigades utterly, completely and thoroughly destroyed a full Soviet division. It was a massacre…

…but another massacre took place behind in Zeven too.

That second tank division, a very long way from mobilisation centres in the Ural Mountains, crashed into the 28th Division around Zeven itself. Soviet armour poured into the town hot on the heels of a mass of incoming artillery that included many chemical shells. National guardsmen already in chemical warfare gear suffered few losses from those weapons but died under the high-explosive artillery rounds and then the guns of tanks and infantry carriers. Soviet riflemen were fast out of their vehicles and all over the pair of 28th Division brigades who’d only just returned to the town. American armour wasn’t present: the 86th Brigade was a way to the east with their up-armoured M-48s and the divisional cavalry squadron was with them too. Up through the command structure, there was too much hesitation and not enough understanding of just how many of the enemy there were: it wasn’t understood that a full division had arrived in Zeven. The 2d Brigade took the worst of the enemy assault and would afterwards be temporarily written off due to casualties taken – dead and wounded – but the 56th Brigade took their own losses as well.

It wasn’t all a win for the Soviets though. Their two-division attack was meant to eliminate American troops advancing east from Zeven and smash the supply base inside the town that intelligence said had already been set up. The first objective was a failure and so too was the second as they fought against combat soldiers not logistics units. That second tank division couldn’t extradite itself out of Zeven either, not forward or backwards due to the fighting they encountered there. The tanks shouldn’t have gone inside and they didn’t have flank defences set up in time.

Under US II Corps orders, Clark brought the 177th Brigade back to Zeven. He was ordered to not go into the town and fight inside urban terrain but rather hit the enemy outside of it and push what couldn’t be smashed outside inwards. The 177th Brigade fought their third battle in two days, this final one on limited ammunition supplies. The drumming into the men when it came to using ammunition wisely had been successful and Clark’s men also had the aid of air support which showed up in the form of British Harriers first and then Canadian Hornets. Soviet air defences were non-existent: it was discovered that there were no missile reloads for all of their tracked SAM vehicles past their first firings of those stored in launchers. Some of the British Harriers returned later and free of the air threat to them, Clark’s air liaison officers had them assist in destroying the enemy where fought in direct support of the attacks made on the ground by the 177th Brigade.

Clark himself nearly joined the casualty list. There was a break-out made from Zeven by those Soviet special forces, their Spetsnaz who had been so instrumental in causing the chaotic fight which was the Battle of Zeven. His command group was attacked when on the move by men firing hand-held weapons in the form of RPG-27s and RPO-A Shmels. These were the latest, most advanced Soviet weaponry. The M-577 tracked command vehicle in which he rode only took a glancing blow by an incoming projectile but other vehicles were hit and burnt, especially those struck by the Shmels with their thermobaric warheads. The Spetsnaz were engaged by the security detachment and Clark had the surviving vehicles drive on and away fast. He came very close to death though when far back from the frontlines. Many of his well-trained and capable staff lost their lives too, adding to the losses incurred in Zeven by their fellow Americans.


It was evening now and above northern West Germany dark clouds of smoke from fires burning seemingly continent-wide blocked out any moonlight. Zeven itself was lit up by fires and the regular blasts of explosions inside it: French Mirages were making attack runs against Soviet forces inside after the last American forces had pulled out.

Clark had come to the 28th Division’s command post after being summoned by the US II Corps’ chief-of-staff who was present. The divisional commander and both his S-2 and S-3 – intelligence and operations officers – had all been relieved of duty with the 28th Division’s deputy commander being appointed to command what was left of the formation. He had just been informed that the 177th Brigade was to be assigned to the division.

The United States Army was, typical of all large organisations, something that contained bad apples. There were those who made mistakes and they could be forgiven, but more than that there were overpromoted arrogant fools serving within too. In most cases, they were kept away from positions of responsibility where lives were at stake and finished their careers without doing anyone any harm. In wartime though, those people could and did make decisions that would kill their fellow countrymen. Clark was convinced that the three men relieved of their posts weren’t bad apples: those were men further up the chain-of-command who not just had sent the 28th Division back into Zeven but failed to concentrate on keeping an eye out for the enemy away from the town who might have become aware of confusion in the American ranks. That general and his two colonels had been the sacrifice for what was really a fault of those up in the US II Corps staff.

How had two tank divisions managed to come tearing across the German countryside in daylight and only been spotted at the very last minute?

How had both formations with thousands of vehicles and many thousands more men been unobserved waiting for so long before American forces came anywhere near Zeven and the edge of the Lüneburg Heath?

He raged silently though, keeping his thoughts to himself for the time being. There would be a time and a place to express them and through proper means. Now, in the heat of emotion was not it. In addition, those trio of officers relieved from their duties would certainly not take their treatment lightly. Their fellow Pennsylvanians – the 2d and 56th Brigades were exclusively manned by men from the Second State – had died in Zeven and they, plus Pennsylvania, would take it personally. Federalised as it was, the 28th Division was a Pennsylvania formation. There would be an almighty political mess that would come out of the Battle of Zeven, Clark was sure.

The US II Corps’ chief-of-staff spoke to Clark and the other officers gathered at the 28th Division’s command post. The division was for the time being to remain where it was with flank guards out and to address the situation inside Zeven with trapped enemy forces there. Meanwhile, the rest of the corps would be advancing forward. Two Soviet tank divisions had been thrown at the very edge of the US Third Army’s offensive and failed to get into the rear nor put a halt to the corps attack down onto the Lüneburg Heath; it wasn’t like the enemy had formations of such size to throw away and their gamble at Zeven had failed them. Clark nodded, knowing that the man was right and as a result of the fighting and killing here there would be victory elsewhere, but he couldn’t get as excited as the general from the US II Corps command staff.

Not when a hell of a lot of American soldiers lay dead here, many of whom had suffered horribly before their demise. Before him stood a general – certainly not a West Pointer! – who looked like he was waiting for some sort of a round of applause at what he had just said, as if he had played a hand in that.

Clark managed to contain the urge to throw up in disgust.





March 11th 1990
The Bavarian Forest, Bavaria, West Germany

When NATO invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, they would not come as liberators.

No, instead they would enslave both the Czech and Slovak people. Urban workers and those who laboured in the countryside would lose their freedoms; it would be the same with children and the elderly. Everything of value would be plundered and those who resisted would certainly be executed. Foreigners would be appointed as dictatorial overlords to strip away everything that made Czechoslovakia the free and progressive state which it was. Women would be raped, children would be forced to join NATO armies, the aged would be forced into physical labour and the pride of the Czechoslovak man would be broken.

West Germans – Germans… yes, Germans! – would be part of the invading armies and they would finish what they started fifty years ago. The Americans and the French would let those Germans do as they wanted in slaughtering as many Czechoslovaks as they could as long as they were able to loot the country of everything of value: that was why they were fighting against the Socialist nations.

Only by standing together side-by-side along with their faithful Soviet allies could this be stopped. Czechoslovakia only had one loyal, faithful friend and that was the Soviet Union. By fighting alongside them across the border inside Bavaria, Czechoslovakia’s brave soldiers could save their country and the vulnerable behind the frontlines back home. There was no other way; petty political disputes meant nothing when the Germans were poised to return like it was the late Thirties again.

Czechoslovak propaganda fed to those at the frontlines across in the Bavarian Forest didn’t have to be the most eloquent nor accurate, just frequent and enough to evoke fear of what was coming.


The United Forces Central Front commanded all Warsaw Pact forces inside eastern Bavaria and those on the other side of the border into Czechoslovakia too back to a great depth. The Bavarian Forest lay to the west of the legal frontier, the Bohemian Forest was on the eastern side. The whole area was militarised to a large degree before the war had started and that had only increased since hostilities had opened. Soviet and Czechoslovak forces had poured forwards and pushed back opposing West German and French troops with the initial advances getting rather far forward. There had come retreats afterwards, on the flanks, but the Bavarian Forest was still in Warsaw Pact hands.

Four field armies were under the command of the Central Front. There was the Czechoslovak First Army in the north and the Czechoslovak Fourth Army in the south. Between them, also occupying West German territory, were the Soviet First Guards Army (home-based in the Kiev Military District) and the Soviet Thirty–Eighth Army (the headquarters from the Carpathian Military District and the troops based in Czechoslovakia pre-war). Each combat formation held men who were all now veterans of the fighting inside Bavaria who had seen victories and defeats but whose morale still was holding up rather well. In addition to them, over the last two weeks, significant numbers of Czechoslovak reservists had linked up with each: those who were assigned to the pair of Soviet armies at once realised that they would have had an easier time had they been with their fellow countrymen.

The Czechoslovak First Army had recently been driven from the Bamberg-Bayreuth area by the combined efforts French and the Americans but had pulled back only as far as the Pegnitz River. Nurnberg had always been beyond their reach, even in the heady days of mid-February when West German political collapse had come: in Bavaria there hadn’t come large-scale NATO withdrawals as there had been elsewhere. A significant portion of occupied territory was held by the Czechoslovaks here and they were in a position to defend it. Behind them lay their own country, Plzen and Prague would be next for NATO armies to reach if they were pushed out of Bavaria here.

Regensburg and towns along the Danube River had recently been evacuated by the two Soviet field armies and so left in ruins. A large region of central-eastern Bavaria that the First Guards and Thirty–Eighth Armys had been ordered to withdraw from had been left devastated to deny anything of value to the French who’d tried to follow the Soviet retreat. They fell back to the slopes of the Bavarian Forest with shorter frontlines and fewer geographical features that NATO would use against them when moving forward.

Between Regensburg and the Austrian border at Passau, the Czechoslovak Fourth Army was in-place along the Danube. Early in the war these Czechoslovaks had been marching on Munich, added by advances made by Soviet troops under control of the Southern Front through Austria. The West Germans who they had fought them had made the advance hard work and eventually checked it despite themselves having to cover a far larger frontage. It was actually a humiliating series of defeats which the Fourth Army had ended up taking and only through enemy inability to chase them had a retreat to the Danube been viable when the Soviets to their north withdrew. The Bavarian Forest where they were now positioned was a good defensive position though the Czechoslovak border wasn’t really that far behind.

Each of these formations was composed mainly of mechanised units. There were tanks, armoured infantry vehicles and self-propelled artillery. Men and equipment were missing everywhere with corpses and burning ruins left across Bavaria but there were no major combat units at below half-strength currently being fielded. Fuel was a major issue, ammunition not so much. Commanders had been replaced recently with defeatists and traitors given field court martials for their failures to win the war in Bavaria.

Those Czechoslovak forces from the rear which came forward to defend the nation from invasion, who came with the mass of incoming propaganda, were vastly different.


In peacetime, the Czechoslovak Army had eight standing combat divisions along with two organised reserve divisions. All of those had been committed to the fight in Bavaria eventually. That pair of reserve formations had at one point been in Austria crushing the last Austrian opposition in Vienna who had held out there for a long time, before afterwards coming back under Central Front control and each being wholly destroyed in two separate battles at Lichtenfels and Landshut with the Americans and West Germans respectively. Several more divisions were stood-up during the war based on long-term plans by the Czechoslovak Army but the Soviets instructed those to be broken down into regimental units and sent to bolster partially destroyed formations elsewhere. There were no more reserves left in Czechoslovakia soon enough, men and equipment.

Then came the orders from Moscow – bypassing the military chain-of-command and instead from government-to-government – that the People’s Militias (LM) were to go to the frontlines. Eighty thousand men of the LM were to be mobilised from across Czechoslovakia, take their arms with them and be transported over the border into the Bavarian Forest.

The LM was very similar to the KdA in East Germany: men from factories and other industries. Their weapons were kept in their workplaces, their training was markedly limited and they were little more than a static home guard force. There had been sporadic use of them supporting the police and security services during the unrest late last year and since the war had started they had been put to use in places enforcing night-time curfews, manning roadblocks and acting too as air raid wardens in urban areas. They were not soldiers at all. Naturally, the Czechoslovaks had protested. They made the valid argument that these men were needed where they were to keep the country working and for part-time security duty too. The morale of such men was worried about, especially when they were away from their homes as they weren’t expecting to ever be. Their weapons consisted of mainly pistols and sub-machine guns: there were a very few heavier man-portable weapons and no armoured transport. They could be massacred in a real fight, especially on foreign soil. Maybe half could be deployed forward, into the Bohemian Forest too so they were still inside Czechoslovakia. Without them Czechoslovakia faced great danger on the home front.

The orders were not changed and dire warnings came from Moscow about any further objections being made or any attempt to delay the deployment of the LM. Other Czechoslovak workers would have to take up the slack in the factories and assisting the protection of the country. Those men were needed behind the frontlines in the Bavarian Forest to protect the communications links and stop NATO airborne/airmobile operations. That was where the paramilitaries would be sent and they would be expected to fight for their country, and the Socialist cause too, there.


Those LM men who had been arriving in the Bavarian Forest for the past few days really didn’t want to be in a war. They knew their limitations and also had no desire to be a sacrifice for the Soviets. These were generally politically-aware men who were members of the working class back home across Czechoslovakia. They were not the sons of high officials of the ruling regime or given special privileges with service in the LM. They wore the uniform to defend their nation, their homes and their families. Many had sons or brothers in the Czechoslovak Army who were real soldiers who had been conscripted as they themselves had years beforehand. The LM paramilitaries sent to the Bavarian Forest had light weapons and were given dangerous duties.

Roadblocks? Observation posts? Guard duty?

No, that wasn’t what they quickly discovered that the Soviets here (even in the two Czechoslovak armies, the Soviets gave the orders) wanted them to do. They were to dig trenches, fell tress, lay mines and such like. Their weapons were taken off them – for safe-keeping, apparently – and they worked with their hands in back-breaking work. At first this seemed better than fighting on the frontlines but when the accidents happened and the Soviets shot those who complained problems came. The LM weren’t treated as well as regular Czechoslovak soldiers were being because no one was concerned about keeping their morale up. That propaganda had no effect upon them. This wasn’t an equal fight which they were taking part in. The Soviets were treating them like dirt and showed nothing but contempt for them when they complained of the hazardous work with inadequate tools.

Many men groaned and looked for opportunities to do something, anything to alleviate their fates where they believed that they would die here: Soviet or maybe NATO hands, it didn’t matter. Others didn’t wait for the perfect opportunity to come. Small acts of violence took place. They were committed by lone Czechoslovaks or tiny groups. Soviets were physically assaulted or killed. It was very low-key and happened in isolated spots over a wide area among a large group of men.

But it was happening. The LM was starting to revolt. Two days ago it had started, getting worse yesterday and continuing today. The Soviets reacted fast to counter it on-scene and also to stop news spreading: the former easier to do than the latter. Word was going to get out and exaggerations were going to come with that.

The docile Czechoslovakians, who had in the build-up to the war been far less willing to resist their Soviet overlords than the Poles, Hungarians or East Germans had done, were doing just that.

[James G]

Twenty–Five – Confusion

March 12th 1990
Near Letzingen, Saxony-Anhalt, East Germany

Flight Lieutenants Nichol and Peters both came down in farmland outside of Letzingen. The moment each hit the ground, they followed their training and rolled up their parachutes before looking for some cover. It was going to be getting light very soon and they were out in the open. Nichol spotted some trees behind them and they ran towards them; Peters voiced concern that there might be an enemy position there but he still followed his bombardier in racing that way. To be spotted when out in the open would mean certain death while there was only a possibility that they might find East Germans or Soviets in that little patch of trees which they ran too.

There were no enemy troops there.

Peters got fast to work finding a hiding spot for their parachutes and ejection seats in the bare undergrowth. Nichol warned him to make sure that it was all secure not just from observation but also from a gust of wind blowing it away. He then started checking his survival equipment and took out the radio beacon. Nichol tested that it worked and found that there was a signal ready to be broadcast. Peters came over with his pistol in one hand and his own beacon in the other.

The pair of them had little idea of exactly where they were but were certain of three things when it came to their location. The small town right ahead of them was just visible as dawn had broken by now and if there weren’t enemy troops here then there would be some in there. Whatever its name was, that didn’t matter: they were hardly going to go inside to find out. As to what mattered, what they knew, firstly, they were a considerable distance away from Magdeburg – to the northwest of that city, at least twenty miles – where their Tornado had been shot at and fatally wounded when above the city. Secondly, they were on the ground inside East Germany and pretty damn far away from friendly lines. Lastly, of greater significance, they had ejected from their doomed aircraft over an area designated for rescue for downed aircrew. Their Tornado was never going to make it back home after the explosion right behind it of a SAM but Peters had managed to get them here before they had abandoned it to leave the Tornado to crash into the ground hopefully very far away.

Nichol activated his beacon first, then Peters did the same five minutes later. They were broadcasting their position now in anticipation that in conjunction with their Mayday message, someone was going to come and get them as promised. Their pistols were kept in-hand and eyes remained open as they waited for that rescue to come their way.


The bombing mission over Magdeburg had been going excellent before disaster struck in the form of that incoming missile.

Alongside three other RAF Tornados, Nichol’s & Peters’ had made a low-level bomb run against the railway yards in the southern part of the city. They had come in damn fast and dropped their cluster bombs all across the designated drop zone where freight trains were expected to be laden with military wares. There had been SAMs in the sky and anti-aircraft guns firing but the Tornados had got in and underneath that defensive fire on the part of the enemy. Electronic warfare had been employed in the form of direct jamming & spoofing of radars and more jamming had been attempted against infrared systems while the terrain had been made use of too to make targeting the RAF strike-bombers almost impossible for the enemy to get a fix on if they managed to overcome the electronic warfare, let alone get a clear shot at them.

The immediate flightpath after dropping their bombs was always going to be difficult though. There was only so much that NATO air planners knew about the enemy air defences around Magdeburg due to a variety of factors including enemy deception efforts and their constant repositioning of weaponry. Once the hostile radars had been jammed and the first bombs dropped, the enemy defences were going to come truly alive too. Any hesitation – maybe the aircraft in the sky had been Warsaw Pact flown? – would be gone, there would be no confusion that the enemy was above.

Two Tornados had been hit by the enemy, the one flown by Nichol and Peters was just one. There had been an almighty explosion just ahead of them – which of their fellow RAF men who would certainly have been killed in that they didn’t know – as SAMs had appeared all around them. The warning systems had said that they were SA-13 Gopher SAMs inbound, infrared-guided missiles which were lethal and clearly the effort to stop that method of attack had failed. There had been no time for Nichol and Peters to do anything to avoid the one fixated on them before there was a fantastic explosion in their Tornados wake.

Dodging the fire of anti-aircraft guns, the enemy below was using a lot of tracers, the two of them had watched and listened as aircraft system warning lights and sirens went off. Both engines were alight with the automatic fire-suppression systems not coming on as they were meant to. There were mechanical issues with hydraulics systems too. Peters could still fly the aircraft in terms of pitch and yaw but there was no power coming from the engines making the Tornado a glider that wouldn’t get them that far. He took them over Magdeburg and towards the northwest where pre-flight briefings had said that if anyone had to eject over enemy territory, that was this morning’s place to do so (rescue areas changed all the time for the obvious reason when dealing with a hostile opponent in his own territory). Nichol had made the Mayday call over the secure channel which was meant to be used, keeping that short and as informative as possible.

The ejection was an unpleasant experience, terrifying in fact. Both men had no choice but to do it for there was a fear that the fuel carried aboard the Tornado would explode and kill them. They each tensed up, said a short prayer and pulled the handles. Off came the canopy above and rockets blasted them clear of their doomed aircraft. The world had spun all around them. The G-forces had been immense. Cold air hit them and there was pitch black darkness. When the parachutes deployed, that came with a horrible gut-wrenching jolt. Then, after all of that violence with the ejection, there came the peaceful descent to the ground below. Worries had filled both men about men on the ground shooting at them as they came down or armed enemy opening fire upon reaching the ground. They had worried about being hurt or killed when landing as they couldn’t see anything apart from a black landscape rushing up towards them.

Ejection from a high-speed combat aircraft was not meant to be a nice experience though.


There were multiple air strikes going on around Magdeburg before and after dawn. 2 ATAF had thrown more aircraft than just the four RAF Tornados against dozens of targets assigned to be bombed. There were NATO fighters in the sky too, providing close-in protection when Tornados, F-16s and Mirages had been on strike missions. Casualties had been expected and planned for despite the forlorn hope that they would occur and every aircraft with each man sent east would return against all the odds. There would be enemy fighters in the sky and air defences on the ground which would take their toll.

While still a considerable distance back from the frontlines on the North German Plain – which got closer to the Inner-German Border every day –, Magdeburg wasn’t that far away. NATO combat search-and-rescue (CSAR) helicopters could pick up downed aircrew if they managed to nurse their aircraft a certain distance westwards. There was a corridor laid out where CSAR helicopters could fly into, that rested between Magdeburg and the Elbe and the IGB. Away to the east of the river was too far while on the West German side of the IGB would mean being too close to Warsaw Pact combat forces on and behind the frontlines: in the case of the latter the air defences would be too dense for helicopters to operate in. The aircrews were told to reach the designated areas and if a helicopter could get to them it would. If not, they were to move to other pre-selected areas and wait for darkness to fall again when repeat efforts would be made. Not everyone who got shot down could or would be rescued, but it would be tried.

Nichol and Peters were exactly in one of those areas where they were meant to be.


A Jolly Green Giant came and rescued them.

After a brief radio call at the very last moment, the HH-3E flown by the US Air Force Reserve’s 71st Air Rescue Squadron came to save Nichol and Peters. The helicopter dropped out of the low clouds above and landed damn close to them. They approached the helicopter as trained, in a non-hostile manner less a gunner aboard take them for the enemy and open fire with one of the trio of M-60 machine guns mounted. A codeword was exchanged and they climbed aboard.

Straight back up the helicopter went and it darted off back to the north. There was a fellow rescue already aboard, an American aviator. He was hurt and being worked on by a Para-Jumper. Nichol heard him call out after another man, his co-pilot. There were no other rescued airmen aboard though apart from himself and Peters.

Wherever the missing American was, he wasn’t aboard this helicopter and was back there somewhere…





March 12th 1990
Cotorro, outside Havana, Cuba

Fidel was dead. The norteamericanos had killed him three nights ago. There had been a delay in confirming his actual demise – the bomb used had made an almighty mess of his command bunker – but his brother had known all along that the leader of the Cuban people was gone. Now he truly was Jefe Castro, leader of not just the Cuban military but the whole of Cuba too.

He just needed to remind everyone else of that in the confusion which had reigned in some quarters in recent days.


The Cuban Communist Party headquarters in Havana had been flattened in one of the first American air attacks: a ‘regime target’ foremost among many. Even if it hadn’t been bombed, Jefe Castro wouldn’t have had this meeting there. The security situation inside the capital would have made that dangerous let alone the threat of more American bombs. From San Miguel where it had first begun, the threat to law-and-order had got worse and more widespread as time had gone on. Havana wasn’t wholly out of control nor where those engaged in riots and criminality necessarily in rebellion against the government (looting was their major concern) but for the time being it was judged best that he and other members of the ruling regime avoid gathering there.

It was to Cotorro, outside of Havana, where Jefe Castro met with the surviving senior members of the Cuban government and the Communist Party. He addressed them in his usual quiet, humble manner and spoke with regret over the death of Fidel. Furthermore, he moved to outline the current situation in the country as it was with the nation under nightly attack by American bombers, civilian disturbances seemingly everywhere and the imminent threat of either nuclear holocaust or Imperialist invasion. Cuban troops in the Florida Keys were no longer fighting, he added, and there were no longer any capable air or naval defences left active; Cuba’s only strong ally was half a world away and incapable of providing anything in terms of assistance to change the military situation which the nation was in.

Jefe Castro asked them to look around at who was missing among them. Some had been killed by American bombs, others arrested for treason. A few more were missing due to other reasons: presumed to have either defected or fled.

The US-based propaganda platform Radio Marti (the broadcast tower at Marathon had been blown up when Cuban commandos landed there but replaced with other antenna array elsewhere) was broadcasting the news towards the Cuban people that Key West had fallen and that Fidel was dead. Pre-war jamming of the airwaves was no longer possible because so many jamming sites had been bombed and so many Cubans would have heard those broadcasts. On top of that, TV Marti was up and running also as the Americans had started that earlier than planned: their footage of Cuban soldiers from the Florida Keys taking about why they had surrendered and also images of bombs falling on Fidel’s bunker (true or not, in each case) might not have been seen by as many Cubans but was more damaging.

The Cuban people had been told by the Americans that Fidel was dead.

Those who didn’t hear or see the propaganda broadcasts would have heard by now from others. Everyone in Cuba would be talking about it. Jefe Castro said that many men in uniform standing ready to repel an invasion would know already and the rest would soon. Where was the majority of the army too? Down near Guantanamo Bay, dug-in and ready to fight what Fidel had called ‘the mother of all battles’. Mariel Bay, to the west of Havana, appeared to be where the Americans would land though. Their warships had shelled both the submarine base and the civilian harbour there late yesterday; there had been commando frogmen fought and engaged there too, no doubt scouting for an invasion but whom had evaded Cuban efforts to capture them for interrogation.

Despite everything, Jefe Castro told them Cuba would fight on. He didn’t ask for their approval of his assumption of powers from Fidel but rather told them that he was now the President of the Council of State, President of the Council of Ministers, First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party and Commander-in-Chief of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces: his brother’s former position. Acting in such capacity as Fidel’s heir as he legally was, he would continue the war to defend Cuba from the Americans and their upcoming invasion.

Cuba would not be conquered by the norteamericanos, not while there was breath in his lungs: any confusion there was misplaced He became more animated than he was usually known for being, talking louder than he had done at the beginning of the meeting and standing up while speaking too. All eyes were on him as he marched back and forth in his uniform invoking somewhat, maybe only a little, images of his brother.

Those before him were told to restore order in Cuba. The civil strife must stop. The desertions and defections must stop. Mumblings about a different succession must stop. Infighting among politicians, generals and intelligence chiefs must stop. Efforts elsewhere away from Havana by counterrevolutionaries must stop. While they did that, he would concentrate on defending the nation. It was what Fidel wanted and what the Cuban people demanded.


After the meeting ended, and when Jefe Castro was left alone, he raked his mind for a way to get Cuba out of this war… one which didn’t involve norteamericanos soldiers marching through the Plaza de la Revolución as they would be with anyone else but him in charge.

Raul didn’t consider this hubris at all. He knew what he was doing. Anyone but him would doom the Cuban people, and the Cuban Revolution too, to oblivion.





March 12th 1990
Geisa, Thüringen, East Germany

The Screaming Eagles now occupied enemy territory. This was no raid into Geisa, the 101st Air Assault Infantry Division soldiers were here to stay because they had fought for and won this little town just inside East Germany.

Major-General Peay came up here this evening to see what the 3d Battalion of the 187th Infantry Regiment (3–187 INF) had taken from the enemy. His corps commander would be furious with him going so far forward and Peay knew that he’d have to return to the divisional command post soon enough. Brigadier-General Shelton was a good man but wouldn’t tell an outright lie to Lt.-General Luck should the US XVIII Airborne Corps make an enquiry as to his whereabouts; since the 82nd Airborne Division’s commander had got his helicopter shot at the other day and was lucky enough to escape unharmed, Luck was keeping a tight rein on his combat subordinates especially with regards to them going forward.

Peay had wanted to see just what had been taken with his own eyes.


Rather than take a helicopter in here, Peay’s small convoy of armed and armoured HMMWVs swept into Giesa following the road which came across from Rasdorf. That smaller town was across in West Germany with the border trace which was the Inner-German Border running roughly between the two of them. The well-known (in US Army circles anyway) Observation Post Alpha manned by Cav’ soldiers on watch duty back in peacetime was located along the way though there had been no sign of it nor any of the other pre-war military sights either side of the IGB too. Before Peay’s 3d Brigade had taken the border area this morning the East Germans had been busy eliminating signs of a division of Germany.

They should have spent longer getting ready for the Screaming Eagles…

Both 1–187 INF and 2–187 INF had fought west of the IGB as they took Rasdorf and Grüsselbach from the East Germans there too. Both West German towns and the one inside East Germany were set among lower ground beneath the hills at the very northern reaches of the Rhön Mountains. Rear-area troops had been guarding them: border guards and paramilitaries. There were no professional soldiers within the region, neither East Germans nor Soviets alike. Further to the east, deeper inside East Germany, the enemy could be found with armour and mechanised infantry forces with heavier US Army units – the 3rd Armored Division with the US V Corps – active in crossing the border just to the south of where the Screaming Eagles were. Everywhere in this immediate region the East Germans had put up a furious fight but been defeated. Their fixed defences had been weak and the men didn’t have enough heavy weapons. They hadn’t fought tactically, making use of the terrain or what capabilities they might have had, but instead tried to engage the men under Peay’s command from where they had stood. That, of course, had been a fatal mistake.

Geisa was divided in two by the Ulster River, which really wasn’t much of a water barrier. Both sides had been cleared of the enemy by the 3–187 INF in a fight that had taken them not as long as it could have done and with less casualties than expected. The town was not so urbanized with small buildings in-place of large ones and there had been room to maneuver for the soldiers on foot. When the enemy was encountered, he was pinned down fast though at the same time that lack of desire shown by the East Germans to move from one building to another was still present. They therefore died where they stood.

Peay went to the battalion command post for the 3–187 INF and met with the lieutenant-colonel in command. He was given a short briefing on the fight here and met with some of the Rakkasans who’d won Geisa: the name ‘Rakkasans’ came from occupation duty in Japan post surrender at the end of World War Two. Then he was told about the civilians who’d been killed during and after the fighting.


East Germans in the form of the young, the elderly and women hadn’t been lost their lives in crossfire nor when houses and shops had been demolished by what little heavy weaponry was used in the fight for Geisa. Instead, they’d died when caught in a minefield.

The whole area was covered in mines laid by the East Germans. During the approach that the Rakkasans had made before battle commenced, many of those had been detected laid through the nearby countryside. There were anti-tank mines aplenty but even more anti-personnel mines too. The concealment of them had been rather clever in several places where professionals with experience had done the work though in many other locations they were scattered in a haphazard fashion.

The Rakkasans had avoided the mines when attacking but the civilians which had quickly streamed out of Geisa hadn’t. Why those people had left the town when it was believed to be official Warsaw Pact policy to keep civilians in-place as human shields wasn’t known. Regardless, they had come out of the town and moved north, east and south: anywhere but west from where the fighting was coming from. Everything with their movement out of Geisa showed no organisation to it, just confusion. Soon enough, those civilians had run into the mines. The standard contact anti-personnel mines had been deadly enough yet there were also OZM bounding mines laid too which the civilians set off. The latter were better known as ‘bouncing betty’s’. When activated, the warhead leapt half a meter or so into the air before detonation. Shrapnel and preformed steel fragments shot in every direction from the above-ground explosion.

More confusion came with the blasts as civilians ran in every possible direction from each explosion… therefore setting off more explosions. Bodies of the dead and the mortally wounded to whom help couldn’t come lay all around Geisa, in particular on the eastern side of the river.


Peay contacted the colonel commanding the 3d Brigade. The brigade headquarters was back in Rasdorf though getting ready to move forward across the IGB. The Screaming Eagles commander asked how long it would take to get the rest of the Rakkasans up to Geisa, especially the brigade supporting assets. He was told that that was underway already with the 1–187 INF to be set first followed by combat support assets (a company of HMMWVs mounting TOW missiles, the battalion of heavy guns assigned and combat engineers) and then the 2–187 INF afterwards. Further brigade assets of a non-combat nature would move afterwards.

Early in his military career, Peay had been an artillery officer before progression higher to infantry command positions. East of Geisa there was high ground where enemy troops who hadn’t been fought in the town were located, especially on a hill visible first on the maps he saw and then with his own eyes through binoculars. He wanted that hill and those on it blasted. Eighteen M-102 howitzers firing 105mm shells were with the 3–320 FA and those guns would do the job. If they didn’t, then he’d call in the division’s armed helicopters afterwards. He was sure that the colonel on his way knew how to do his job but Peay would hurry him along. Once the East Germans on that hill were neutralized through firepower, the Rakkasans could move out of here and push deeper into East Germany; the rest of the Screaming Eagles were ready to follow them.

In doing so, when moving out of Geisa, Peay would have some medics sent with engineers to help any of those civilians out there caught in the minefields who could be helped. By the time that occurred, he didn’t expect there to be many left alive but there might be a few. He couldn’t standby and do nothing, not if he ever wanted to look at himself in the mirror ever again. The mission came first, taking the fight to the enemy in his own homeland, but there was room for some humanity too.


END OF PART THREE

[James G]

PART FOUR


Twenty–Six – Reinforcements

March 13th 1990
Manteuffel Kaserne, Bad Kissingen, Bavaria, West Germany

The men of the infantry battle-group formed around the 1ere Bataillon Les Fusiliers du St.-Laurent (1ere FSL) didn’t parade for Brigadier-General Roméo Dallaire here at this American military base in Bavaria. He had made sure before his arrival that there would be no formalities such as that when there were far more pressing matters at hand. These Canadian reservists of the Militia which came from several units across Quebec would soon be going into combat and preparing for that was what was necessary. Others might have disagreed and spoke of traditions needing to be kept, but Dallaire believed that enough of that would have been done when the 1ere FSL was back in Canada.

The battalion had taken more than five weeks to get here after all…


Dallaire met with the battalion commander as well as his deputy. He gave them an informal briefing on what role the 1ere FSL would perform within the command to which they were now attached: the 5th Mechanised Brigade–Group under his leadership. The two officers listed as he spoke in French to them (the 1ere FSL was a Francophone unit like most of the 5th Brigade) when it came to the overall mission, how he wished for their men to be employed in battle and the circumstances of the enemy & terrain.

Part of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division under the command of the US VII Corps, the 5th Brigade was currently engaged in combat operations just to the north along the frontier with East Germany. Through villages, towns and the Bavarian countryside, fighting was taking place to clear away enemy forces holding onto occupied West German territory. American troops with their 29th Infantry Division – national guardsmen – were also involved in this VII Corps effort to physically root out dug-in defenders wearing East German uniforms. The mission was to clear the way for an upcoming offensive by the rest of the VII Corps – a trio of US Army regular heavy divisions – that would at some point soon be striking north into Thüringen where stronger Soviet forces would be found ready waiting to fight a mobile battle where heavy armour would clash.

The enemy was stubborn in places and would fight to almost the last man; at other locations, they would surrender when conventional military sense showed that they had been defeated. Canadian and American firepower was being used to blast the enemy where found with artillery and air support playing its part. Still, casualties would come for the 1ere FSL as had been the case with the rest of the 5th Brigade here and in other battles throughout Bavaria that Dallaire’s command had taken part in over the past several weeks. The enemy was making use of minefields, their own artillery and occasional air support too. Chemical weapons were another factor to be considered too when it came to the fighting. There was no chance of any glory to be gained for anyone as the fighting truly would be brutal.

Dallaire asked about the morale of the Militia who had come across from Canada. Moreover, he enquired after the training that had been undertaken back home before the deployment of the battalion. When the answers came, he listened intently to how both were portrayed by the pair of officers.

The men were more than willing to fight for Canada, came the immediate response. There had been no problems with the Militia being sent overseas as had been the case in previous wars, not from the men who manned the 1ere FSL anyway. Politicians might have argued and there were also issues with the disruption to pre-war plans for the Militia (which were for the vast majority to stay at home on ‘national defence missions’) but individual and unit morale was high. Canada was at war and these men brought here understood the need for that. As to training, the battalion had been through an extended series of exercises at CFB Gagetown before being flown across to Europe. Platoons and companies of those mixed Militia formations who were Quebec-based in peacetime and formed into the battalion-sized battle-group had all been put through thorough training there in New Brunswick. They were as ready as they could be for combat on the German battlefield.

Satisfied with what he heard, Dallaire told his two new subordinates what was to be expected next. The brigade deputy chief-of-staff was on-site here already and would make the arrangements for the 1ere FSL to move up to the frontlines. This would follow the link-up with equipment ongoing here at the moment and then there would come the addition of communications officers to the battalion staff.

Much later today, the 1ere FSL would be going into battle and Dallaire had spent much time and effort making sure that his reinforcements were ready for that.


Manteuffel Kaserne was a US Army facility. The vast majority of the troops from here had been out in the field when the war had started and Soviet missiles with chemical warheads had hit the base… and parts of Bad Kissingen too. A few men had remained behind at the garrison and been killed by those gases which had been dispersed in the air. The non-persistent agents had dissipated some time ago now. The Canadian Army was now making use of the Kaserne. It was a rear-area facility being used as a supply depot and today for the addition of reinforcements to the 5th Brigade. Dallaire’s command certainly needed those.

Up until only last year, the official mission of the 5th Brigade for a European deployment in wartime had been to go to Norway. As part of the Canadian Air-Sea Transportable (CAST) Brigade concept, once mobilization occurred, there would be a movement by aircraft and ships to northern Norway where the brigade would act in defence of that fellow NATO country. When tested in 1986 during Exercise Brave Lion, the whole concept of CAST had been shown to be fatally flawed. The mobilization had taken too long and been fraught with logistical nightmares, which had included Soviet passive interference inside Canada by the ‘innocent’ actions of Soviet-flagged ships at deployment ports. Along with worries that the 5th Brigade wouldn’t make it to Norway either in time or without taking losses on the way, or both, had come concerns over the logistics of operating one brigade there and another in southern West Germany. It was in the latter country where the 4th Mechanised Brigade–Group was based alongside Canadian combat aircraft as Canada’s forward deployment to NATO.

The CAST mission had been dropped and the 5th Brigade was assigned to a mission in Bavaria in wartime along with the 4th Brigade. The headquarters for the 1st Canadian Infantry Division were activated and divisional-level combat support and service support assets assigned. The new plan for where Canada’s troops would fight in Europe in wartime was to be in southern West Germany where there would be a concentration of not just fire power but a shortening of logistics lines too: a sound military concept. When Canada mobilised (on February 2nd, two days before war commenced), Dallaire was instructed to take the 5th Brigade to Bavaria. It hadn’t been an easy process with many difficulties exposed during transportation yet success had come in getting his command across the North Atlantic and into West Germany with only a very few losses on the day. Previous concerns over Norway had been shown to be true with Soviet airborne and amphibious landings made in the north of that country before US Marines and British & European NATO rapid reaction troops had beaten them in combat: that had all occurred long before the timescale for the abandoned CAST mission would have been completed had that policy been stuck to.

Here in Bavaria, the 5th Brigade had fought many fierce battles across northern Bavaria. The enemy effort coming down from Thüringen had been a flanking effort, a sideshow for the Soviets, but not one for Dallaire’s command and the rest of Canadian troops who engaged them. It had been an ordeal indeed. Canadian troops hadn’t seen combat since Korea in the early Fifties and that had showed. Their opponents had been merciless in attacking and attacking again. They threw everything that they had in their advances and even during tactical retreats they were a fearsome enemy. Canadian military shortcomings, in particular in terms of a lack of heavy armour and inadequate ammunition stocks for sustained fighting, had been shown for what they were. Dallaire alongside his peers and senior officers had all been aware that if the Soviets had made their main avenue of attack through the portion of the frontlines which the Canadians held, rather than leaving it to East German and second-line Soviet forces short on numbers, then there could easily have been a wholescale defeat incurred. The 1st Canadian Infantry Division could have ceased to exist and the troops assigned massacred.

Being Quebec-based, the 5th Brigade had a large number of Francophone units assigned to it. There were two infantry battalions from the Royal 22e Régiment (2e & 3e R22R) under command along with light armour serving in the 12e Régiment blindé du Canada (12e RBC) and artillery from the 5e Régiment d'artillerie légère du Canada (5e RALC): there was in addition an Anglophone battalion of infantry from the Royal Canadian Regiment (2 RCR). Dallaire and most of his men were bilingual so the language issue wasn’t much of a problem in the combat which they found themselves in: the equipment fielded was though. With Cougar eight-wheeled armoured vehicles with 76mm cannons for fire support, Lynx tracked armoured scout vehicles with machine guns and Grizzly wheeled personnel carriers also armed only with machine guns, the 5th Brigade had been outgunned on the battlefield in mobile engagements. The weaponry of the dismountable infantry and the self-propelled howitzers serving with the 5e RALC had saved the day on many occasions when the brigade was faced with an enemy in better-armed and more heavily-armoured vehicles, coming at a heavy cost to them though. Dallaire had been forced too many times to retreat from defendable positions due to the inability of his command to fight on level terms with the enemy and the 5th Brigade had several times needed urgent assistance from either the 4th Brigade or the Americans with their armed helicopters to extradite itself from fatal situations.

So many men under Dallaire’s command had lost their lives throughout Bavaria. Reinforcements to replace them had first come in the form of men from the Supplementary Reserve: individual retired soldiers sent to the 5th Brigade. Those men had taken the place of those killed and wounded though the overall issues had remained the same with a lack of striking power and protection for when his men were in battle, especially during mobile engagements with the enemy. His divisional commander had understood why this was happening but could do little to help in the short-term though had, of course, been in contact with National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa. They were dealing with problems caused with other Canadian troops assigned to the fight in the Baltic Exits – so much for the concentration of Canadian forces all in one geographical area! – and armaments shortages because official Canadian defence policy pre-war had been to have sufficient war stocks for seven days of fighting… the war had now been going on for thirty-eight days now.

However, thankfully there were still some politicians and generals back home who were in possession of some sense and were aware that many of the casualties taken had been inflicted through avoidable means. Measures were taken to supply more armoured vehicles (West German stocks from units disestablished midway through the war and capable of being used by Canadian forces) and send more men to the 1st Canadian Infantry Division. The Militia, mobilised like the rest of Canada’s armed forces, was given training before large elements were sent to Europe with organised regiments in peacetime only holding a quarter of their allotted totals merged into operational battalions. The 1ere FSL was one of those; another seven were added to the 1st Canadian Infantry Division effectively doubling its fighting strength (five formed into a whole brigade).

Furthermore, Dallaire was assigned as well the Royal Canadian Dragoons (RCD). This armoured unit consisted of regulars and reservists (not Militia) and was equipped with tanks from CFB Petawawa and the training base at CFB Gagetown. Initially assigned to divisional headquarters troops, it swapped places with the 12e RBC giving the 5th Brigade armoured strength. Lt.-Colonel Rick Hiller, in command of the RCD, had trained his men well and they had already shown their capabilities in battle. All of these reinforcements were greatly needed not just by Dallaire but by the whole Canadian fighting force in Bavaria.


Dallaire left the Kaserne and headed back to his brigade command post.

He was reasonably happy with what he had found with the 1ere FSL and their level of readiness to join with the rest of the 5th Brigade. Time would tell of course, but he saw no real reason to worry. Those men had been through live fire and chemical weapons training. They had been armed and equipped for the fighting which they would see, that being small-scale combat across multiple locations against dug-in defenders. Dallaire wasn’t planning to send them, nor the rest of his command, up against frontline enemy units in a battle of maneuver unless absolutely necessary: the Americans would be doing that when they advanced northwards into East Germany soon enough.

Before then though, during the preparation period for that upcoming major offensive, there was still fighting to be done in liberating occupied West German territory where the enemy was to be found. There were East Germans north and northeast of Bad Kissingen that the 4th Brigade had to fight first.

Those men were no walk-over.





March 13th 1990
The Pechora Sea, off the Soviet Arctic coast

The Soviet Navy’s battlecruiser Kalinin linked up with her two escorts after the bigger warship finished its transit through the Kara Strait. Waiting for the arrival of the battlecruiser were a pair of destroyers: the Admiral Levchenko and the Rastoropny. The reinforcements to the fighting strength offered by the Kalinin were necessary for her upcoming operation as both had offensive and defensive capabilities to add to her own. Following the rendezvous, the trio of warships started crossing the Pechora Sea. They were heading westwards through the narrow confines of these waters and towards the Barents Sea…

…where the US Navy could be found.


The Pechora Sea was a desolate outlying region of the Arctic Ocean. Bitterly cold wind, freezing temperatures, rough seas and floating ice made it an unpleasant stretch of water to cross. It was shallow in many places with there being very few easily-navigable routes across it for large warships with a deep draught. The Kara Sea was behind, back through the Kara Strait and behind Novaya Zemlya. Far ahead was the Barents Sea and to the west lay access to the White Sea. On the shores to the south lay the barren wasteland while northwards was the Arctic Ocean proper. The Pechora Sea was not only any trade routes and considered by the Soviet Navy to be secure, sovereign national waters international treaties notwithstanding just like the Kara Sea and the White Sea too. Of course, the Barents Sea was supposed to be just the same.

The crews of the three warships were almost to a man inside each this lunchtime as the journey west took place. Few were unlucky enough to be outside in the cold and the wind. The Admiral Levchenko had one of her helicopters flying on anti-submarine patrol which meant that there were sailors needed to brave the weather aboard the destroyer and go outside. Both the Kalinin and the Rastoropny had all men inside in the warmth: in the modern age of radar there was no need for lookouts in a crows-nest or such like.

Discipline each warship was good enough to keep the men in line while their morale was pretty good too. The conscript sailors, volunteer NCOs and professional officers had all been at sea for some time with little or no news coming from home. Access to outside information for all but those at the very top of the command chain was restricted and everyone was told what they needed to know: they were defending their country against foreign aggression. Neither captain from the two destroyers knew much of recent enemy activity in the Kara Sea while their counterpart aboard the Kalinin hadn’t been told of recent American naval air activity over the entrance to the White Sea from where those escorts had come from. The commanding admiral, who was leading the task force built around the Kalinin, knew of all of this along with other details of military engagements across the wider region though even he wasn’t fully in the loop: he had no idea that the Kalinin had been brought out of the Kara Sea after all of the strategic missile-armed submarines below the surface there had headed further away to the north and the east out of danger when many of the surface ships above them had been sunk.

The Soviet belief of keeping information on a need-to-know basis was strong because it had to be. If word got out at the scale of the defeats suffered recently where the Soviet Navy couldn’t defend its northern coastline, then there was a certainty that a defeatist mentality would set in with all of the negative consequences which came from that sure to follow.

Now complete, the orders for the mini task force were to engage the Americans who were moving eastwards through the Barents Sea on a course taking them towards where they could gain access to the White Sea. This was a carrier group with two, maybe three aircraft carriers as well as many warships armed with long-range missiles. Intelligence summaries on strength and objectives of the Americans believed that the carriers themselves wouldn’t enter the White Sea but that their battleship – if it was still operational? – and other warships would go down there under air cover coming from the carriers which remained behind. With almost all military targets on the Kola Peninsula of a naval or air significance wiped out apart from the anchorages at Nerpichya and Yagelnaya which were home to those strategic missile submarines, the Americans were going to make the next range of their attacks down there. Inside the White Sea there were several Soviet Navy vessels incapable of fighting afloat while the shoreline was dotted with military bases and shipyards, especially around Archangelsk and Severodvinsk.

The mission plan was for the Rastoropny, a Project-956 guided-missile destroyer (better known by its NATO designation of ‘Sovremennyy-class’), to go forward into battle first along with helicopters on scouting missions. The edge of the American’s defensive screen was to be found and engaged with anti-ship missiles fired from the Rastoropny. Information would be sent back to the Kalinin, which would then open fire with its larger arsenal and more potent anti-ship missiles afterwards. The Admiral Levchenko (a Project-1155 anti-submarine destroyer, NATO: ‘Udaloy-class’) was to protect the battlecruiser from submarine attack; for air defence the Kalinin was deemed able to defend herself.

This plan to inflict massive, fatal losses on the US Navy had been drawn up by the Northern Fleet operations staff, who had retreated from Severomorsk down to Severodvinsk after countless air and missile attacks upon the Kola Fjord area. There was no external air support assigned and no submarine assistance either. The twenty long-range missiles from just the Kalinin were meant to do repeat the success that more missiles from three submarines had done previously. What maskirovka efforts would be undertaken would have to come from the trio of warships and their helicopters, again there would be no external support in the electronic warfare field. This wasn’t an intentional undertaking to weaken the planned attack nor make the small task force go on a suicide mission, it was just a case that there was nothing else that could be done. The Americans had been so effective fighting against the Northern Fleet and there were no other assets available. At a time like this, after such a great length of time fighting against such a strong opponent who wouldn’t cooperate with Soviet plans to destroy them but had done that to the Northern Fleet instead, there was no other choice but to send the Kalinin and the two warships which had been given as reinforcements into such a battle.

Aboard the battlecruiser, the admiral commanding was well aware that his chances of success weren’t that great. He believed that a good shot could be made of it though, once the Rastoropny detected the enemy and the Kalinin opened fire. He intended to evade afterwards rather than wait around for the inevitable American counterstrike.

Unfortunately, neither him nor those who sailed with him in the Kalinin would get the chance to see if that was to be the case either way.


The Royal Norwegian Navy’s submarine HNMS Svenner lay right ahead of the oncoming Soviet warships. Aboard the small German-build vessel, sonar operators listened to the churn of the propellers in the water and the enemy warships had already been identified. The captain had consulted with his first officer and both had agreed that there was a fantastic opportunity open to them to attack first-calls Soviet warships here and cause a great deal of destruction. The enemy was heading westwards, maybe towards where the Americans were operating with their Carrier Strike Group Two but at the same time possibly to undertake further attacks upon Norway again as had been the case earlier in the war.

The Svenner had missed previous engagements which had taken place with Soviet surface ships attacking northern Norway and spent most of the war far to the south in waters off Bergen and Stavanger. There had been a sense of disappointment aboard for many that they hadn’t seen any of the fighting. Moreover, that foreigners – allies, but still not Norwegians – had defended their nation whereas they hadn’t. Some more sensible folk aboard had combatted such thinking when expressed by stating that the Svenner had performed an admirable task in securing the sea routes into Norway allowing the country to keep fighting; Norway’s allies had shared the burden of collective defence. Furthermore, it was remarked too that an eagerness to get into a fight was quite foolish and there was a time and a place for reckless bravado, not here.

The captain and the first officer fell into the first category when it came to their opinion on the war which the Svenner had fought so far. The moment the Soviets were spotted coming their way, the intention was to attack as soon as possible. They were far from home and in arguably enemy waters with a trio of powerful warships coming towards them but were sure that once they got their torpedoes off they would do immense damage and in the chaos which would follow the Svenner could escape afterwards.

Six torpedoes were launched in quick succession from the Norwegian submarine, one after another, and straight towards the Soviet warships in a flank attack from their starboard side. These were modified Mk.37s, American-built torpedoes designed for submarine-on-submarine engagements. They had a small-ish warhead but were autonomous once fired and focused on a target: the latter important with the Svenner engaging the targets which she did: warships which could defend themselves against an attacking submarine.

Each torpedo rapidly gained full speed, twenty-six knots, and their onboard sonar systems acquired the targets. Guidance wires trailing back to the Svenner were cut as the submarine started to evade. There was already the sounds of sonobuoys being dropped into the water above – from an orbiting helicopter it was thought – and torpedoes would soon follow them. The Soviets were also expected to be quick to fire anti-submarine missiles carrying deployable torpedoes too. The Svenner started to run though unable to dive deep in these shallow waters.

Those aboard the submarine silently prayed that they would make it…


The Admiral Levchenko was hit first. One, then a second Mk.37 smashed into the destroyer on its starboard side with one impact amidships and the second in the bow area. The blasts below the waterline were powerful even with the small torpedo warheads and water was at once taken aboard. There was other damage done too from the force of the impacts, but it was seawater coming aboard which was the major concern. Damage control parties moved to save the destroyer and they would be successful in doing so as the men involved were well-trained and, more-importantly, the initial damage was never going to be fatal enough.

The Admiral Levchenko would survive the torpedo attack, but that wasn’t to be the case with the Kalinin.

Coming in towards the starboard side of the battlecruiser, the Mk.37s each raced towards the big target which their computer brains were focused upon. Decoys in the water were recognised for what they were and were ignored when there was such a worthy target already identified. The warship started to turn, heeling over sharply to starboard. Had the torpedoes had human rather than computer brains, this would have been understood for what it was: the Kalinin was being positioned to present a smaller target head-on by a captain or bridge crew reacting fast to the sudden attack. But that didn’t matter. The four torpedoes reacted as machines and corrected their angle of attack without the need to know why the target was doing what it was. They were damn fast and then made contact, almost exactly where they were meant to strike, which was low along one side of the battlecruiser.

The explosions of the Mk.37s rocked the Kalinin. The admiral and captain both had been away from the control room – from where the ship was fought, deep inside the lower superstructure – when the first warnings of incoming torpedoes came but reached there just as the impacts occurred. Both men wondered what was going on with the battlecruiser turning and increasing speed right before impact and why they hadn’t heard the alarms sounding for watertight doors to be shut and damage control parties to get ready.

They both found out that their subordinates were waiting for them to give the order.

Seawater poured inwards through the holes blasted in the sides of the Kalinin. More came in straight after the torpedo impacts as the warship hadn’t been level. Sailors across the vessel lay dead or wounded: no one had called out an alert for men to brace for impact. Fatal damage had been taken and the effects of this couldn’t be overcome. More and more compartments filled with water and the ship started a heavy list to starboard. There were ominous noises of creaking, even screeches, heard: the keel was under immense pressure. Several mid-ranking officers, fearful that the Kalinin was doomed, asked for permission to abandon ship. That was refused by the admiral without consulting the captain who knew this warship better than his afloat superior.

Dead in the water after flooding reached the engine room, the Kalinin listed further and further over to one side. Plenty of water came aboard the more she tilted over, adding to that tilt in an endless cycle. Wind and increasingly rough seas hampered the effort to pump out seawater. Soon, the listing reached ten degrees. Then fifteen degrees. The Kalinin was top heavy already and the sea conditions didn’t help. A list of twenty degrees was reached… then twenty-five degrees. Arguments between the admiral on one side with the captain and chief engineering officer on the other took place over simple mathematics: only at an angle of forty-five degrees would the Kalinin tip over said the admiral. The other two men were natural sailors (their superior was a desk man) and told him that it didn’t work like that with these rough seas and the fact that the battlecruiser was top heavy so her centre of gravity was high. There came a message from the captain of the undamaged Rastoropny asking just when he was to start getting boats into the water to save what men could be saved. The admiral sent a terse message back telling him to wait for orders.

Thirty degrees of list were reached… and that fast increased as arguments continued aboard.

And then the Kalinin went over on her side.

With that, the arguments aboard ceased and nature took its course. Almost everyone aboard was about to die a horrible death, drowned or crushed to death inside the Kalinin or in the case of those who managed to be thrown clear who would freeze to death in the Arctic waters before rescue could come their way. With the demise of the battlecruiser, the effective end of the Northern Fleet came about. The Americans would be almost unimpeded from doing as they wished off the Soviet coastline.





March 13th 1990
Husterhoeh Kaserne, Pirmasens, Rhineland-Palatinate, West Germany

General Schwarzkopf had his general staff intelligence briefing set for one in the afternoon every day unless exceptional circumstances called for a delay. Other commanders would prefer a morning or evening briefing but they were dealing with a smaller battlefield to cover as well as less strategic implications. Meeting just after lunch, many matters could be dealt with all at once and Schwarzkopf believed that events could be influenced better for the upcoming night, and following day too, when all information had been digested after an afternoon briefing. Furthermore, the timing also meant the earlier events in the morning could be seen for how they were progressing after a period of time.

It was just his way. One o’clock was a good time to meet and have a wide-ranging summary given to him on everything that he needed to be made aware of so that his decisions could then have the impact which he wished.


Ambassador William Taft IV – the great-grandson of the twenty-seventh president – attended today’s briefing and he sat with Schwarzkopf once everything got started. The US Ambassador to NATO had been instrumental in assisting SACEUR through the intricacies of dealing with European governments during his short time here as supreme commander here. The role of SACEUR was more than just a military post: diplomacy was just as important in such an alliance as NATO was. The two of them had just had a private lunch meeting where the legal issues concerning how NATO force would treat East German civilians when the invasion commenced of that country had been discussed. Taft had previously served as Deputy Secretary of Defence for five years in the Reagan Administration as well a short spell as Acting Secretary of Defence for three months at the beginning of the Bush Administration before Cheney was confirmed for that role. His government, diplomatic and legal skills were greatly valued by Schwarzkopf.

The ongoing fighting in West Germany was always left to the end of the daily briefing. Schwarzkopf requested that as that was expected to take up the most time he wanted it addressed at the end. Moreover, everything else going on the European theater of operations generally revolved around the front across Central Europe whether directly or indirectly too. So, the briefing began with ‘the peripheries’: a term which SACEUR liked.

Bulgaria was covered first with attention drawn to how far the Turkish First Army had managed to reach inside that country. Burgas was in their hands and they were continuing to move up along the Black Sea shoreline in the general direction of distant Varna. There was an inland move too, heading west away from the coast towards Sliven. Turkish aircraft had been busy bombing the bridges over the Danube cutting links with Romania when possible. The Bulgarians were only slowing the Turks down, but they couldn’t stop them. Admiral Howe – commanding NATO forces in South Europe – had already informed the Turks that there was a strategic danger in going too far inside Bulgaria and Varna was as far north as he would allow them to advance. The Soviets had already used nuclear weapons in Bulgaria, to attack and threaten their Bulgarian ‘allies’, and could very well do so again if they saw the Danube threatened with being crossed and an advance on the Soviet homeland commencing.

Nearby, over in the Black Sea, the US Navy carrier group (CTF-60), which was under ultimate SACEUR command was changing its area of offensive operations again. Crimea had been attacked first when the Forrestal and the Kennedy had entered the Black sea before they moved to striking in the Odessa area. Now, aircraft from both carriers were flying missions over the Sea of Azov as they hunted for Soviet warships and submarines which had retreated there rather than make a death-ride one last time out into the Black Sea proper to be sunk there. The Soviets were still trying to strike back at CTF-60 every chance they got with casualties inflicted, but the two carriers were still active and causing daily chaos. Their movement there into the Black Sea had been authorized long before Schwarzkopf had been appointed SACEUR. If he had had the post then, he would have refused permission for that due to the risks involved. He would have been wrong though. Every day that CTF-60 was there caused Soviet forces to be held back in the nearby regions to try to stop their air attacks. Several US Navy aircraft had struck a distance inland too: their bomb runs had hit rail links across the southern part of the Soviet Union which were being used to move troops and equipment to Central Europe.

The situation with Greece and its army on the Bulgarian border, not going over it like the Turks had done, was mentioned. Schwarzkopf groaned and Taft shook his head. The Greeks were not ever going to get going moving forward. They had first refused to do so when the North Atlantic Council had decided that an invasion of Bulgaria would take place before apparently conceding to that demand… in exchange for a lot of ammunition, fuel and food supplies. Then they had to rearrange their troops ahead of access routes over the mountainous border and conduct massive artillery bombardments before they could move.

Schwarzkopf knew that they were never going to invade Bulgaria. There were many factors at play, politics and the fear that the Greeks had of being targeted in a Soviet nuclear strike. Those were legitimate concerns, SACEUR knew, but they had made the agreement with their alliance partners to support the Turkish invasion to the east of them and also held the rest of NATO to ransom for military wares. He was beyond annoyance, anger and anything else emotional when it came to the Greek Army. Apathy was what he was now feeling on that matter.

Portugal was now sending more men to the fighting. President Bush had personally had to twist the arm of the Portuguese – metaphorically, of course – but they had given in. Schwarzkopf had won that victory and was pleased that reinforcements for the fighting in Austria were on their way there. It would take some time and the numbers involved weren’t a great deal, but it was important to have those men get to Austria eventually. Like the Greeks, the Portuguese had legitimate national concerns but, again, they were a part of NATO and their fighting men were needed. Their marines, elite troops who could naturally do far more than amphibious invasions, would soon enough end up with the South–Western Army Group (SOUWESTAG) in western Austria.

When it came to the rest of Austria, SOUWESTAG was still active finishing clearing up pockets of resistance to the west while SOUEASTAG (South–Eastern Army Group) remained moving eastwards. Vienna and the Hungarian border were far away but progress was being made. The Italians, supported by the US Marines with the I MEF on one flank and a joint Spanish-US force on the other, were edging forward through harsh terrain and a stubborn opponent.

The briefer, a damn excellent staff officer wearing a Belgian uniform, moved onto Norway. The situation at the very top of Norway, where the very last reaches of that country remained in enemy hands remained the same. Norwegian and some British troops – the latter a small brigade – had the occupying Soviets pushed back over the Tana River right into the eastern edges of Finnmark. No further invasion was coming west, not from there or the Soviet Sixth Army which sat on the shores of the Kola Peninsula waiting for an amphibious invasion which was never going to come. The Norwegians were still concerned about a second invasion attempt, but it was impossible. The terrain, the weather and the cutting of transport routes made a second invasion impossible by land as a first one had been. In such a scenario, Soviet forces would have zero air and naval support to do that again: February 4th was a very long time ago now.

Staying with Norway, the briefing turned to further reinforcements from NATO nations which Schwarzkopf had been so keen on getting. Overnight, Norwegian troops from the south of their country had started to move across the Skagerrak into the northern tip of Jutland. Taft had been instrumental in achieving that and SACEUR whispered his thanks to the man at getting as personally involved as he had in the issue, and getting it done with ultimate haste once he started too. There were Canadian troops there along with most of the US Marines commitment to the II MEF: the British-led Anglo-Dutch marine brigade and another brigade of US Marine reservists which consisted of the rest of that was waiting in southern Norway for them. Two complete Norwegian brigades were moving and the pair brigades of US Marines would soon start being pulled out. Once that was achieved, a major landing operation was to take place elsewhere in the Baltic Exits. That was looking like several days away but there were efforts underway to speed it up.

Schwarzkopf knew just where he wanted the II MEF to land too…

The Battle of the Netherlands remained ongoing, though was in the final stages now. Schwarzkopf, with his hands in his lap, tightened his fists together just at the mention of NORWESTAG and their fighting strength there. A large number of British, French, West German, Dutch and Belgian troops remained committed there. In another decision made before his appointment as SACEUR, though through no fault of the deceased General Galvin, more troops than were needed to contain the cut-off pocket of Soviet forces there were in the Netherlands. Politics had played the central role in that with the activation of the provisions of the Treaty of Brussels making Britain and France play a key role in the defence of the Low Countries. That was an agreement signed in 1948 though not legally superseded by NATO: Taft had explained this to him last week.

The Soviets could have been left isolated and starved into submission, but promises made by the British and the French to the Dutch and the Belgians were enacted. The territory taken was to be recaptured and civilians inside liberated… even if they were killed in the attempt. It was a matter of honour for London and Paris that they upheld their commitments, apparently. So many men who Schwarzkopf would have wanted to have used to liberate northern parts of West Germany, including West Germans which had at one point been cut-off inside the Netherlands themselves, were used to crush an already defeated enemy. SACEUR’s briefer was now covering the last of the ongoing fighting there and the news of that continued to be unfortunate to hear. What was happening there was more upsetting to Schwarzkopf than the mission which he had to put up with happening on his watch.

There had been three Soviet field armies and independent multiple detachments including two airborne divisions inside the Netherlands when they were isolated by Operation Eagle Fire back across in West Germany. Their supply links were cut so they ran out of everything, including the true necessities like fuel, ammunition and food. They were bombed from the air and shelled the sea. NATO special forces and Dutch guerillas attacked them from the get go. But they held on then and were still doing now. NORWESTAG had eventually moved to crush them and struck from all directions. The Soviets had been broken into dozens of pieces. Still they fought on, even with bare hands in place of rifle ammunition in many places, or so Schwarzkopf was told anyway. There were reports coming out of there now about false surrenders to lure NATO troops into traps. Civilian hostages were taken and used as human shields. Organised, wholescale arson was taken place to burn territory lost to advancing NATO forces. The KGB seemed to have gone underground too; earlier they were reported to have threatened the lives of family members back home of senior Soviet Army commanders to stop them from surrendering.

Military casualties among NATO forces fighting, civilian casualties caught in the crossfire and vengeful physical destruction was one thing: the Soviets were also shooting NATO prisoners too. Schwarzkopf knew that he could shout or stew silently all he wanted. Nothing he could do about that would change what was happening there because the Soviets were out of control and conducting what was looking like a fight to the finish there, the very end.

There was something else too: he had feared for a while that similar scenes would be repeated, on a far bigger scale, inside East Germany when the invasion of that country started by NATO forces. This ongoing series of disturbing news from the Netherlands was not a good sign at all that his worries about what would occur inside East Germany were misplaced. No, not at all.


The briefer prepared to turn the meeting to Germany, East and West. SACEUR watched as maps were changed and new charts were put up. One of his aides seated behind him quietly asked if he wanted anything. A drink of water maybe, or further information on any subject previously discussed. Impatiently, Schwarzkopf shooed him away. SACEUR’s chief-of-staff noticed this and made animated gestures for the break in the briefing to be ended soonest.

Schwarzkopf noted that drama occurring, but remained silent and stared ahead.

Across in East Germany, intelligence was now identifying many of the Soviet forces brought into the country since the beginning of the month. They had flooded in, a massive reinforcement which in terms of numbers almost mocked the forces SACEUR was able to get his hands on. From mobilization bases across western Russia, the Caucasus and through to the Urals there were dozens of combat divisions in-place now inside East Germany. Other reservists from the Baltics, Belorussia and the Ukraine were already there ahead of them. The bombings of the transport links over the bridges linking Poland to East Germany had delayed that a great deal, but it had occurred. Even now that NATO had stopped being deceived about those bridges and had hit them, causing great damage, the Soviets still brought over men, equipment and supplies: that took place at a slower rate but hadn’t been stopped. Field armies were springing up to control the divisions with two, maybe three fronts established and possibly another to follow. There were those combat divisions but also everything else needed for the Soviets to fight: artillery, rockets, air defence, engineers, chemical warfare troops, transportation units and so on. The vast majority of the fielded equipment was older than what the Soviets had used inside West Germany yet there was a lot of it… just like there were a lot of fighting men too. This situation was all repeated, though on a smaller scale in Czechoslovakia and Hungary as well.

Furthermore, behind those troops coming from the western parts of the Soviet Union there were reported to be more that strategic intelligence assets had taken note of. These were coming from western Siberia and Central Asia too. Schwarzkopf had to bite his tongue so not to snap at the briefer by asking would he be saying next week that troops from the Russian Far East were coming towards Europe as well. The fault didn’t lie here though in these ongoing, never-ending surprises when it came to Soviet reinforcement.

Just like his predecessor, SACEUR knew that the blame lay further afield with national intelligence agencies – not just those of his own country, but he regarded the CIA and the NSA as being atop of that list – not cooperating with each other to confirm what they had and also not passing the information down to him. He understood that they needed to protect their assets, their spies and the capabilities of their satellites & radio intercept equipment. He would personally make sure none of that was comprised. But that didn’t matter! Again and again, intelligence wasn’t being shared. Powell and Scowcroft back home, when Schwarzkopf had complained in the most forceful terms, had promised to do what they could. Robert Gates had returned to Europe again to try and address the issue. The problem wasn’t here though.

SACEUR had his special forces teams on intelligence-gathering missions all across East Germany and down into western parts of Czechoslovakia. Those men worked with NATO-commanded reconnaissance aircraft and tactically-focused interception equipment and were doing a good job. The men sent forward were having their troubles among a hostile population and KGB-led efforts to hunt them down. Casualties had come and some teams had to be pulled out of danger fast. Overall, a lot of information was coming in and Schwarzkopf rated it highly. He had a new commander in charge of those operations too, the Briton who had achieved much in the Netherlands leading the commando raids against Soviet tactical nuclear weapons there. ‘Frenchie’, Schwarzkopf had called him in jest: Lt.-General Peter de la Billière. He wasn’t a boastful man nor walked with a swagger as others in his profession did. SACEUR liked him because he had got the job done and didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. Taft had remarked when de la Billière was given the role that it made good politics to appoint a non-American. Schwarzkopf had agreed with that for while the diplomacy of fighting as part of a coalition such as NATO irked him many times, he knew how important that was. Regardless, he had appointed de la Billière for his skills before only afterwards thinking about the politics.

The briefing turned to this side of the Inner-German Border, a frontier penetrated by NATO troops only in a few places (the Warsaw Pact still held plenty of territory on the West German side) but no longer a barrier which SACEUR’s men couldn’t cross.

On the North German Plain, the US Third Army – NOREASTAG officially – and the British-Belgian-French NORTHAG were closing in on that border. On the right with NORTHAG (the French III Corps moving northwards and changing command responsibility from the US Seventh Army / CENTAG), moving slow and sure had been the way of things to push the Soviets back towards the general Hannover-Hildesheim-Brunswick-Salzgitter and keep them all together. The US Third Army had broken free on the left, just as Schwarzkopf had wanted, and gone tearing down across the Lüneburg Heath. The Aller River had been reached and was being crossed at General Yeosock took his men southeast: they were going to reach the border with East Germany right behind the Soviets that NORTHAG had the forward attention of. Cut them off this side of the border before they could withdraw, had been SACEUR’s order issued four days ago and that was looking sure to work now. The men on the ground had done all the fighting and his command staff had made sure that all the pieces were in-place to achieve that, but it was SACEUR’s handiwork.

In the midst of that, there had come some problems though. There had been personality clashes unbecoming of those senior officers involved within the US II Corps, a pure US Army National Guard command. Since his appointment, Schwarzkopf had been hearing of issues where national guardsmen clashed with regular officers. Who was right and who was wrong was important overall when it came to instances of combat, but later reactions caused SACEUR headaches. The national guardsmen were needed and were sometimes treated unfairly, but they did like to complain, especially when they were in the right too. In this particular incident, concerning the 28th Infantry Division and a town called Zeven, Schwarzkopf had heard all of the details and decided to intervene rather than leave it to his subordinates through the Commander of Allied Ground Forces Central Europe down to the US Third Army commander. The US II Corps commander was relieved of command and replaced by Lt.-General Shalikashvili; the divisional commander in question was reinstated. At times, elsewhere, there was some sluggishness shown by certain national guardsmen yet that was the same with regular units too.

‘Blame the part-timers just because we can’ was an attitude Schwarzkopf didn’t want to see. It was unprofessional for one and, more-importantly, cost lives as well!

With CENTAG, their mainly American forces – there were a few West German and Canadian forces attached – had generally reached the border with East Germany through Hessen and Bavaria. Enemy forces had been cut off and were being crushed on the western side of the frontier. At the moment there was small-scale, though truly brutal fighting going on to clear the way ready for an invasion that CENTAG would make. Heavy forces would undertake that, though only when the time was right.

As SACEUR’s briefer described where that fighting was taking place and who was involved, he himself recalled some further issues which had caused him frustration. The US III Corps up with the US Third Army as well as CENTAG’s US V & VII Corps were all currently resting the majority of their troops for that effort. Joining them were select elements of the French II & III Corps as well plus the entire Allied I Airborne Corps (the West German 1st Fallschirmjager Division with West German and British paratroopers alongside the US Army’s 10th Infantry Division) also being rested. That resting didn’t involve the men lounging around drinking beer, chasing women or playing baseball. No, instead, these troops were all being prepared for the fighting which they would take place in spearheading the invasion into East Germany. Replacements of men and equipment were arriving and being fully integrated into these attacking forces. The majority of these rested troops were Americans, but there were many other nationalities also being held back from the current frontlines.

There was no favoritism which Schwarzkopf was showing! When the invasion got going, those currently on the frontlines would get a break to rest and refit themselves.


The briefer had moved on and was covering ongoing air operations conducted by the Warsaw Pact and how they were being countered. SACEUR returned his attention to that. He and those others here needed to soak all of this up. An orders and operations briefing would be taking place this evening.

A major focus of that would be further instructions for Schwarzkopf’s forces to finish getting ready to take part in what was provisionally being called Operation Millhouse.

That planned offensive into East Germany would, of course, getter a better name rather than a random code-name. But for now, for security reasons, such was what the invasion was being called and all of the information with regard to it was a supposed to be extremely secret.





March 13th 1990
Chkalovsky Airbase, Moscow Oblast, Russian SSR, the Soviet Union

Marshal Gromov had come to Moscow to meet with the Defence Minister and the General Staff.

He had been summoned here, told that his presence was requested without delay. So, he had come. What else could he have done? Could he have said ‘no’ to such a demand?

*

The meeting had taken place deep below ground at a subterranean facility to where he had never been before. It had been about twenty minute drive from the airport, though where exactly the facility which he didn’t know the name of nor any history of was all unknown to him. He had arrived in Moscow in the early hours and it had been dark then. Upon leaving, snow remained covering much of Moscow’s outer areas after an extremely cold winter and he hadn’t been managed to locate a general area no more than he had been southwest of the city itself. There had been other distractions in the staff car which he had travelled in with a flurry of messages awaiting him that had took up his attention.

To not know where he had been had been rather concerning.

Deep down into a bunker he had been taken and far inside the thoroughly modern facility. He had passed by command centers and communications rooms. There were only men in military uniforms present: the absence of a visible sign of the KGB had been something welcome. His ultimate destination had been a small conference room where waiting for him had been the Defence Minister (in his Soviet Army uniform, not civilian clothes), the Chief of the General Staff and the commanders of the Ground Forces and the Air Force. Several aides were in attendance too, along with a young and attractive secretary wearing a Navy uniform but here to take shorthand minutes, nothing more.

Rodionov the Slaughterman – the sobriquet came from his murderous actions in the Caucasus over the depths of winter following Gorbachev’s assassination – had opened the meeting by commenting upon the haste which Gromov had reached Moscow: that apparent good cheer had put Gromov even more on guard than he already had been. General Igor Nikolayevich Rodionov (he hadn’t taken a promotion since his appointment so was outranked by the General Staff and Gromov) was someone whose hands were stained with the innocent blood of thousands and now he was the Defence Minister of the Soviet Union, Kryuchkov’s fearsome pet. Following on from that came another comment asking Gromov’s opinion of the facility which he was in and a question about why he himself was no longer using command bunkers of any sort throughout East Germany. Gromov had given a hasty response on how he was looking forward to a tour of the Moscow facility and when it came to his own refusal to go underground beneath East Germany he had told them the cold, hard truth: NATO bombs had nearly killed him several times as well as taking the lives of so many other Soviet marshals and generals.

Gromov had slept bad on the plane which had flown him from East Germany non-stop to Moscow. He had awoken covered in sweat and momently confused as to where he was, there had been turbulence at the time too making that whole experience very uncomfortable. Yet, he had had plenty of time since then knowing who he was going to meet with not to think before he spoke. Those who had summoned him to Moscow were not expecting for him to make statements that might suggest that thinks were going bad in the war in Europe, even though they were. Such was what he had told himself after he had made that comment about NATO being able to kill so many senior people as they had done.

Yet, nothing in retaliation had been said to that to suggest that he had spoken out of turn as he had feared. Marshal’s Valentin Ivanovich Varennikov and Nikolai Vasilyevich Kalinin – the Chief of the General Staff and the Ground Forces Commander – had then instructed him to tell them of his plan for defending East Germany against the oncoming NATO armies poised to invade. He had been given time to drawn up a defensive plan, they had told him, and assistance in the form of reconnaissance and ‘special intelligence’ so he must have a plan formulated ready to explain to them.

Gromov had told them he was going to make the invading armies of the West bleed.


Throughout the war, NATO had shown how casualty adverse they were. This came from the greater value that they put on the lives of their soldiers. It was almost as if they believed that in war men shouldn’t die. Time and time again, this had been shown to be the case.

Gromov had pointed to how during the first week and a half of the war, before the short ceasefire and previous to his appointment, NATO’s initial counterattacks made to try to stop Warsaw Pact advances on the North German Plain and towards Frankfurt through the Kinzig Valley had been halted by NATO themselves early on. Their armoured forces and following infantry had run into literal walls of fire-power unleashed against them where they took immense manpower loses. Following on from that, the West German Army was broken through the crippling number of deaths incurred trying to stop the occupation of their country, which had been a major factor in getting the West Germans to initially throw in the towel. Moreover, once the war had restarted, NATO forces had withdrawn every time a major Warsaw Pact attack came their way where they were losing large numbers of men. They would fall back rather than make a stand so as to not have large casualties inflicted upon them when refusing to withdraw.

Kalinin had asked how, if that was the case, were NATO forces now on the borders of East Germany with most of West Germany now retaken by their armies? They must have lost men doing so, surely? Ah, Gromov, had retorted, once their technological might had come into play along with a healthy dose of cunning shown in their enveloping counteroffensives, they made sure that they lowered their casualties by sweeping round Warsaw Pact defensive lines to create pockets of resistance: those were then eliminated by fire-power rather than direct infantry attacks where large numbers of casualties would have come.

Gromov had told them that that wasn’t going to be the case in the defence he planned for East Germany. Everywhere there would be Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops who were to remain in place with their flanks covered at all times. Those troops which he had been sent to defend the country with were going to fight from fixed positions and would be protected everywhere by masses of artillery, rockets and minefields. His issued orders for the preparation to meet the oncoming invasion focused upon this method of defence.

NATO’s armies were going to have to come right at his forces and into the waiting weapons pointed at them. They would have no room to maneuver or conduct their flank attacks. In doing so, they would be bleed and forced to withdraw: when withdrawing they would be hit by repeated and relentless chemical weapons strikes from munition stockpiles built-up ready for use. Afterwards, if they could, they would look for a different avenue of approach only to find that there would be none. Gromov had selected only a few forces for counterattacks and he intended to execute them tactically. If he unleashed his mass armoured forces and brought them out of the cover of interlocking lines of defence, then NATO air power could be all over them… before their own masses of tanks rushed forwards through gaps and started to create huge pockets of resistance.

He had been up on his feet and at the map of East Germany pinned to one of the walls of the conference room down deep in the bunker. He pointed out the terrain features on the border between the two Germany’s and had showed where his defensive forces were massed along the main lines of resistance forward and then the second, third and fourth lines too. Those followed high ground, rivers and marshes. In such places, NATO’s armies would have to approach slowly and there they would be bleed by Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops that wouldn’t withdraw no matter what and would be covered by heavy weaponry to inflict those losses to the men wearing the uniforms of the West.

Furthermore, Gromov had asked those who were listening to him to look where the main roads where in East Germany, those built by the Nazis which connected the country to West Germany. There weren’t exactly many of those but where they were located was important: they would be the main invasion routes which NATO would plan to use following their efforts to get through the defences which Gromov would have in their way. Their tanks, their armoured vehicles and their infantry could move cross-country and along smaller roads in East Germany just as Warsaw Pact forces had done in West Germany. Yet, NATO would be planning to secure those to use as their main supply routes to keep their invasion going. Gromov planned to stop them from getting far into East Germany so they would never get the chance to make use of those roads. If something went wrong though – Gromov had said that he had to plan for the worst just in case – then the course of those roads would be very important. Along them NATO would want to run all of their trucks carrying ammunition, fuel and other war supplies. Everything would be thrown at those roads to deny NATO the ability to use them for their main supply routes and with their use denied any NATO breakout which might occur would be doomed.

According to what the KGB had been able to discover with their intelligence efforts, NATO’s supreme commander – Gromov’s counterpart, this Schwarzkopf character – had his staff working on a plan named ‘Wheelhouse’. Hardly the strategic genius as some in the West had boasted of him, Schwarzkopf was following a simple envelopment plan. East Germany was going to be cut off from Poland by a major amphibious landing in Pomeranian Bay just east of Rugen Island in the Oder Estuary and then a huge airborne/airmobile operation across the Ore Mountains on the Czechoslovakia border with an aim to get to the Neisse River. Their thinking was that there would be few troops in the rear, especially in those areas, and they would then close connections with Poland that way allowing them to deal with what was in East Germany all by itself. Wheelhouse then called for three massive ground thrusts following the course of the main roads through East Germany: Schwarzkopf was obsessed with securing those main supply routes.

The first was the road from the frontier at Marienborn which ran west to the Elbe north of Magdeburg (avoiding the city) and then towards West Berlin passing just south of both Brandenburg and Potsdam on the way. The next one came across from Hessen near Bad Hersfeld and ran across Thüringen avoiding the formidable terrain of the Thüringenwald where Gromov had so many of his men arrayed: it could be followed towards Leipzig, the Elbe and Berlin afterwards. Lastly, there was a third main road though one which the Nazis had never wholly completed in finishing where it would run into West Germany itself. Regardless, this last road started near Plauen close enough to the border and ran up through Saxony towards Karl-Marx-Stadt and then Dresden; NATO would want to link up with their air-dropped forces on the other side of Dresden by coming this way.

This would be NATO’s strategy for their invasion. They would try to cut off East Germany from the rear before attacking Soviet forces in defensive positions across difficult terrain from a distance with their air power. Meanwhile, their armies would be focused on securing access to those roads so they could be used as main supply routes for the invasion forces which followed corridors of advance tied to them.

At the end of his presentation, Varennikov had asked Gromov if he believed that he could do all of this? Could he make NATO bleed so that their strategy wouldn’t work for them? Were all of the massive reinforcements which Gromov had asked for, in effect a whole new army after most of what was sent into west Germany had been lost there, going to stop East Germany from being conquered? Was he confident that this grand strategic plan would really work?

Rodionov the Slaughterman had said to Gromov that if he failed to stop NATO’s armies and they took East Germany, the Soviet Union was not prepared to see Poland invaded next. To allow that to happen would mean that the Motherland would certainly be next: the West wouldn’t stop once they started driving eastwards. He told Gromov that he wasn’t to fail in defending East Germany. If he did, there would be no other choice but to resort to nuclear weapons to stop NATO from coming over the Oder and marching on Moscow.

As with everything about the whole meeting, Gromov had known how deadly serious such statements, made openly by the Defence Minister, were.

*

Gromov had flown to Moscow on an Ilyushin-80 command-&-control aircraft, a version of the Il-86 airliner. It was the first time which he had flown on the aircraft which was exclusively for his use in his command position. During the flight from East Germany, he had been able to keep abreast of ongoing developments there.

That was before he fell asleep, of course.

He went back aboard the aircraft now. It had remained here waiting for him with his staff while he was with the Defence Minister and the General Staff. There would be work to do, he knew as he returned, but he didn’t mind the thought of that for it would allow a distraction to his concerns over what he had said when questioned by Varennikov. He had told the Chief of the General Staff that he could do all that he had said he could when it came to stopping East Germany for being conquered.

Gromov’s staff brought him up to speed on the fighting along the Aller River in northern West Germany and how the Americans had got over that water barrier. They were tearing south now, aiming to get behind Soviet troops about to be caught in a massive pocket stretching from Hannover to Brunswick. Those were men whom Gromov had left behind fighting inside West Germany while behind them the defences of East Germany were readied.

American armoured reconnaissance units – their vaulted Cav’ – had reached the edges of Wolfsburg as part of that effort where they were guarding their flank. Soon enough, probably by the end of tomorrow, they’d get as far as the Helmstedt-Marienborn border crossing site.


The engines started and the aircraft started to taxi. He was the passenger who the Il-80 had been waiting for and so once he was onboard there were few delays. Gromov was needed back in East Germany and he was to be taken there. As this process started of flying him back got underway, Gromov’s attention turned back to that meeting he had left and things he didn’t say.

He hadn’t mentioned to the Defence Minister and the two marshals about the KGB and all of the problems they remained causing. Once again, he had failed to speak up. Whether that would have made any difference he didn’t know, yet he had said nothing as to what they were doing. He had been too involved in what he was saying, he had gotten carried away. His plans to defeat NATO using the defensive plan he had devised had been all that he had wanted to talk about.

Gromov hadn’t spoken up when he should have.

[James G]

Twenty–Seven – Settling Scores

March 14th 1990
The edges of the Hildesheimerwald, Lower Saxony, West Germany

The Hildesheimerwald was a dense forest which lay outside of the city of Hildesheim behind. It ran in a semi-circular fashion providing an arch-shaped defensive line from the west to the south from where an approach to take Hildesheim could be stopped. The woodland was dense and there were a multitude of hills. Through the forest ran a new railway line where there were a trio of tunnels which could be made use of for a determined stand as well. Where there were two passes across the middle, they too could be covered by defensive fire and moving through them an attacker could be assailed from all around. The streams and small rivers provided further places from where a fight could be made as they would slow an attacker trying to cross them.

Brigadier Farrar-Hockley had been able to see all of this from the maps viewed before the advance begun from Gronau and it was very clear that the same thinking had been done by the Soviets too. They had established a defensive line inside the forest and made use of the natural and manmade geography there. In addition, their recent military preparations had added to the already good site for a stand-up battle to be made when they felled trees, dug anti-tank trenches and laid plenty of minefields. They would have looked at all possible vulnerabilities for the defence from the position of the attacker – coming out to the countryside to the west and the south – and made corrections to their plans.

In their shoes, he would have done the same thing. The Hildesheimerwald was a good position to stop an advance being made upon Hildesheim and from there, the defenders could make sure that if they were eventually pushed out of the forest, behind them they would leave countless numbers of dead attackers inside.

Thankfully, Farrar-Hockley hadn’t been ordered by his divisional commander to seize the Hildesheimerwald and eliminate the enemy inside. The 19th Infantry Brigade could easily have been defeated in battle or effectively destroyed as a fighting force with high casualties in doing that. No, instead, his orders were different. Push the enemy inside there he was told and bunch them all up nice and tight ready for air power to come into play to blast them and their defensive works to smithereens.

Since starting his attack last night, Farrar-Hockley had been having his men do just that.


The British Army had a substantial portion of older military equipment that had been replaced by something newer in storage as a war emergency. The MOD was relentless in trying to sell as much of it off as possible not just for the cash value but so that Britain’s allies could be supported. Still, there was plenty of it at locations across Britain and also throughout West Germany as well. There were armoured and un-armoured vehicles, artillery and personal weapons. There were stocks of ammunition as well as engineering and construction equipment. Since the beginning of hostilities, the storage sites had been carefully raided for everything they contained. A couple in West Germany had been hit by enemy attacks though the majority of these, especially those back in Britain, had been left alone because the Soviets had plenty more targets of what they regarded as greater value to strike at with aircraft, missiles or commandos.

Overall, these stores of unused equipment – plus the munitions to use with what of it was combat-orientated – were small in comparison to what other countries kept as a war reserve: it wasn’t just the MOD trying to offload what was kept but the British Army too deciding that certain pieces of equipment kept were no longer usable. In addition, some of what had in recent years been removed from the storage sites had been judged as not suitable on the modern battlefield and might pose a hazard to those making use of such items rather than an armed opponent.

The stored Centurion tanks – the nearly six hundred of these at various locations – hadn’t been eliminated from emergency stores to be sold or scraped. They were kept just in case there was ever a need for them because while dated and replaced first with Chieftains and the Challengers in British Army service they were still fearsome weapons of war. The stocks represented enough to complete the table-of-equipment (TOE) for ten armoured regiments, the British Army equivalent of a tank battalion in other NATO armies and actually almost twice as many tanks as would be seen in a Soviet formation of equal size. Each Centurion came with a 105mm rifled main gun and a secondary machine gun. Infrared systems, basic but operational, were fitted and they had radio equipment too, even if that was dated.

Finding the men to not just man them in combat should they ever be needed was always going to be a challenge, so too keeping them functioning if they went to war with those who knew how to maintain them. Both the Royal Engineers and the Royal Marines operated some Centurions (the latter service a bare handful) for engineering and beach-recovery tasks though aiding the maintenance knowledge issue with manpower was one thing. To man them, reservists consisting of former crewmen who had operated them back when in uniform many years beforehand would be needed: men whose skill sets would have gone stale over the years.

Yet, once war had come, the Centurions had been taken out of storage like so much other older equipment and men assigned to them over a period of time. With the men, there were enough found by this stage of the war to operate a total of four regiments of these tanks with regards to tank crewmen and those who would need to keep them in the field. Ammunition was provided, so too additional equipment for each of the regiments. They had been formed up in Britain and in Belgium (where the ones taken from the West German sites had moved to) and the four regiments deployed to different combat formations of the British Army spread as it was from the Rhine Estuary in the Netherlands to the North German Plain.

One of those regiments of Centurions, the 8th Royal Tank Regiment (8 RTR), had been assigned to Farrar-Hockley’s 19th Brigade. They were certainly needed. The lone squadron (a company-sized sub-unit of a regiment) of fourteen Chieftains from the Royal Hussars which had been under command at the start of the war had eventually, through combat losses, been reduced to an understrength troop (platoon) of just three. Those survivors were eventually reassigned elsewhere within Farrar-Hockley’s higher command as other Chieftain regiments had taken losses being made by shattered units merged and more Chieftains that like the Centurions had come from storage sites. Tanks were needed to be fielded by the 19th Brigade due to the enemy which they faced with their own and the mission of forward advance, even on the flanks, which Farrar-Hockley was assigned. His infantry units had been badly mauled during the war with one of the four battalions he had with him at the start wholly destroyed and the other trio lacking in any more armour than what few Fox wheeled armoured cars were left. The 8 RTR joined with the first battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment (1 R ANGLIAN) – the third battalion being eliminated in combat –, the first battalion of the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment (1 KORBR) and the TA-manned fourth battalion of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment (4 QLR) in forming his combat strength pushing forward as West German territory was retaken.


This morning, as light filled the sky and Farrar-Hockley’s men were tired after fighting all night but still with more of it to come, those Centurions were showing their worth on the edges of the Hildesheimerwald. Infantry followed the tanks, some in Saxons but many on foot, as they blasted outwards defensive positions through the fields outside of the forest and forced the enemy to withdraw in there… if they could that was.

Man-portable anti-tank missiles flew from the enemy and a couple of the Centurions were hit: some survived while others didn’t. There were anti-tank ditches that needed to be crossed and minefields were ran into. The 8 RTR didn’t have an easy time, but neither were the infantry with them who were under fire. The Royal Artillery provided coverage and there were also air support used with a couple of Lynx attack helicopters flying around. It really wasn’t an easy fight. Hundreds of men died, British and Soviet, while many more were wounded.

The Soviets pulled back though. They could stop the tanks unleashed against them, nor the determined infantry attacks which came as well. These were outlying positions whose purpose was to bloody an attack against the Hildesheimerwald before it could get underway and so they were allowed to pull back and inside the forest if they could get that far. Farrar-Hockley didn’t let the Soviets run unmolested though. Those who were observed pulling back were engaged where possible. He had been told that a whole squadron of American B-52s were meant to make a series of low-level bombing runs with conventional high-explosive, cluster and chemical bombs against the forest and those inside would be killed. The bombers wouldn’t get everyone though and as long as he didn’t take unnecessary casualties from his continued efforts to attack the enemy outside of the forest then he had that continue.

Towards the end of the fighting, when finally the majority of the Soviets were either dead, prisoner or had managed to escape, he received a message from the battalion headquarters of the 4 QLR. They had made a gruesome discovery and he went forward himself to see for himself what they had found. He was careful because the enemy were firing from out of the forest, but reached the little village of Sibbesse alive.

What was there would sicken a man like him who thought he had already seen all of the horrors which this war had to offer.


The 4 QLR – men from across Lancashire towns such as Blackburn, Blackpool, Bolton, Burnley, Preston and Wigan but also rural areas – had taken Sibbesse after the briefest of fights with the retreating Soviets. The battalion had been active in nearby villages too and in those the enemy had made more of an effort, but here they had fled when the British soldiers arrived alongside tanks. The Soviets had run northwards, following the railway line, with many dying in the attempt to do so when artillery fell upon them. Some had made it into the forest, but not many.

Farrar-Hockley hoped that if any of those had been the ones responsible for the mass grave found in a field outside the village then they would have been killed in their attempt to escape.

There had to be a hundred bodies in an open grave which the attempt to fill with earth atop of them had been halted by the Soviet retreat. The corpses were all of men in West German uniform: those of the Bundeswehr and the Landwehr from what his aide-de-camp who had come with him to Sibbesse could tell. They were blindfolded, had their hands bound behind their backs and all looked to have been shot in the forehead. They hadn’t been killed here for there wasn’t the blood nor the signs of firing squads but rather tire-tracks from missing trucks and shovels for digging.

Farrar-Hockley looked down at the bodies and wondered why this had all happened. He could only speculate that there was a chance that these men might have been prisoners taken when the West Germans partially collapsed last month and a lot of West German soldiers ended up in the hands of the enemy. He had heard the intelligence reports of how men had been ordered to surrender while others had tried to declare neutrality from the war yet soon found themselves in Soviet captivity. The KGB had been shooting commissioned officers and NCOs afterwards, he had been further told with them settling scores for their political and historical reasons, and Hildesheim had been one of the locations where many West German military prisoners had been held.

Perhaps these were some of those men?

He didn’t know whether that was the case and there was no way of finding out at the minute. He still had a brigade to command and a fight to finish here. He issued orders for the Redcaps to be called and would send word up the chain-of-command to the 4th Armoured Division staff. There’d be an investigation and maybe some intelligence of value could be gained. Of course, though, those men in the field dumped in that hole would still be dead though.

This was something which he had thought about since that ceasefire in February when the British Army had pulled back like it did in response to their flanks being broken open. That massive retreat where the jaws of defeat had been avoided before they had snapped shut on him and those who wore the same uniform as him had left behind men like those whose bodies he had come to look at in Sibbesse. He’d lost men under his direct command, men he knew and those he didn’t, throughout the war in combat.

This was something different though, something horrible. How he would like to settle some scores of his own with those responsible for this. Yet, at the same time, he knew that the chances of that, being personally involved, might as well have been nil. All he could do was command his brigade in the battles to rid West Germany of its occupiers and save other innocent lives in the attempt.

Such was his hope anyway.





March 14th 1990
The Middle East

The Second Iran-Iraq War was now six days old.

The Iranians remained advancing forward, taking enormous amounts of territory and moving from victory to victory on the battlefield. As to the embattled Iraqis, they were defeated almost everywhere they tried to stop the invasion of their country.

In the south of Iraq, the Iranians were conducting a massive envelopment of opposing Iraqi forces gathered in the Shatt-el-Arab Waterway, Basra and Al-Faw Peninsula area. Their attack came from the northeast and turned in a southern direction. The Shatt-el-Arab had been crossed north of Basra by elite Iranian armoured units supported by tremendous tactical air support while the city itself avoided for the time being. Basra would be assaulted and conquered when the time was right. Before then, the Iranians were busy cutting it off along with as many Iraqi forces pushed up against the Iraq-Iran border near to the shores of the Persian Gulf.

West of Basra, the town of Az Zubayr fell to the Iranians before they continued to pour south and charged towards the Kuwaiti frontier across the open desert. The highway down to Safwan was followed, so too the course of the canal which led more Iranian tanks as far as Umm Qasr. There, at that port city, the Iranians faced their toughest fight of the day where Iraqi Navy personnel put up strong resistance. They were overcome eventually, joining the dead and prisoners of the Iraqi Army across the entire region. Into the marshland on Al Faw the Iranians moved lastly, with a far slower rate of advance but they still continued to move forward. Their attacks were relentless and the Iraqis just couldn’t stop them.

Basra was left wholly surrounded by the Iranians reaching the sea at Umm Qasr. Iraq’s second city joined those smaller cities up in the Tigris valley, Al Amara and Al Kut, where other Iranian forces who hadn’t moved as far forward but still had won many victories had those cut-off from the outside too.

Across southern Iraq, today was the day where the Iraqi Army ceased to exist as an effective standing military force. In almost every engagement with the Iranians, the Iraqis just collapsed. Once contact was made with the invading forces, they gave way. Men dropped their weapons and ran. Commanders surrendered or abandoned their posts. Some units went wholescale over to the Iranian side, though ‘temporary’ disarmament came with that. In previous fighting on the Iranian border, the Iraqis had held together and while being pushed back had retreated in some order. Today though, they just fell apart. Certain Iranian units had to halt to deal with the chaos of the collapse with so many armed men all around them needing controlling. Others though, especially Iranian tanks and helicopters carrying commandos, were issued firm instructions to go around the defeated Iraqis and take as much territory as possible. Reaching the Kuwaiti border was important and so too the Persian Gulf behind Basra. Furthermore, the Iranians were able to reach the Euphrates valley from behind other Iraqi forces throughout the country who had yet to fall apart in chaos.


The reasons behind the spectacular Iranian successes on the battlefield were multiple and generally external. The Iranian Army won its victories due to many outside factors far beyond where they fought against the Iraqis in southern Iraq and elsewhere through the country too.

Late yesterday, a truck-bomb had devastated the Iraqi Ministry of Defence building inside Baghdad. An Iraqi national had been driving the vehicle which smashed into the vehicle on the ground-level before exploding within, yet the whole thing – the planning, the bombers recruitment, the building of the bomb and the missing security forces who should have stopped the vehicle – was undertaken by Iran. They’d done this before elsewhere, such as in Beirut in 1983 against the Americans and the French. The Iraqi military was always in chaos following the defeats in Jordan first by the Israelis then the vengeful Jordanians. Saddam’s assassination was followed by Qusay Hussein’s purge, which included many senior-ranking Iraqi military personnel. Then the Iranian invasion had come.

When the Iraqi MOD was destroyed as it was, killing hundreds inside, this brought about the aim which the Iranians wanted. Command-and-control was centralized to a manic degree and Qusay’s newly-appointed defence minister plus service chiefs were at the targeted building when it was bombed. The Iranians knew that they were there attending a high-level briefing and preparing to issue new orders to Iraqi troops in the south and that was when they sent their volunteer on a suicide mission. Once the attack took place, the effects lower down the chain-of-command in such a centralized structure as was the Iraqi military were just as the Iranians wanted.

The Iranians were seeing continued success in their invasion due to events previous to it. The Second Iran-Iraq War took place only because Iran believed that it could win a renewed conflict with Iraq. Settling scores with Iraq was one thing, but more important was the opportunity that had come their way and one which was very unlikely to come again in the future.

Iraq’s war with Israel had been a disaster for Saddam’s regime. The defeat which they suffered was overwhelming and more damage had come to the foreign relations of the country. Jordan was supposed to be Iraq’s ally before all of a sudden it was invaded in a surprise attack. The claims that Iraqi forces had been invited in to the country to take part in an Arab war against Israeli – which Iraq was to, naturally, lead – were laughable to all those who heard them. Everyone turned against them, all of their allies apart from the distant and unhelpful Soviets who were recognised as being the ones pulling Iraq’s strings. The Iraqi Republican Guard as well as the better elements of the regular Iraqi Army had been massacred in that war. The Iraqi Air Force was shot out of the sky in a humiliating fashion and the Iraqi missile force was left impotent afterwards with munitions spent and the expected Soviet resupply not occurring.

Saddam’s assassination (Israel was still regarded as the culprit for that with those actually guilty at Langley not minding that in light of the unexpected turn of events afterwards) followed by his younger son’s bloodletting was another factor which left Iraq so very weak and open to Iranian designs upon the country. Senior Iraqi politicians, generals and security personnel were killed while others fled abroad in a series of defections. Qusay saw rivals and traitors everywhere and had them murdered. As far as Iraqis and outsiders were concerned, Qusay was not the man his father was. Saddam was the president of Iraq – no matter how dubious that claim was – and Qusay was not the country’s legitimate ruler. He had no authority to lead Iraq. He was seen as a weakling too, with only murder and mayhem on his mind.

Rebellions had sprung up all over Iraq. These occurred in the north and in the south and before the Iranians struck. Once the invasion commenced, the Iranians generally let those carry on without trying to influence them as they had their own business to attend to. Afterwards, in the ‘new Iraq’ there would be time to address them but for the time being they were helping to bring Iraq to its knees.

*

Outside of Iraq, other nations watched as Iran took over the country with worsening dread as the news got worse each passing day. After today’s events, there would certainly be no improvement in the concerns for their interests, even future survival.

The Peninsula Shield Force (PSF) was now deployed inside Kuwait. This combined military command, bloated with high-grade officers wearing fancy uniforms yet having no military skills of note, came from the six Gulf Arab Monarchies. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE each had troops gathered between the border crossings coming down from Basra and Kuwait City. Under Kuwaiti leadership due to its presence on their soil, it was an effective force only on paper. The equivalent of three combat divisions were there with plenty of infantry, tanks and artillery – much of that very-modern, Western-built equipment – yet it wasn’t a fearsome foe for the Iranians to the north of them should the PSF see action against them. Western and Pakistani contractors and official advisers were all missing after being recalled home due to the ongoing fighting in Europe and Afghanistan which had started early last month. Military intelligence professionals, communication specialists and technicians to maintain all of the hardware were what were needed but they weren’t in Kuwait with the PSF.

Those problems notwithstanding, there still was some potential in the PSF. The Omani units were well-trained and the Kuwaitis would fight to defend their national territory: yet those armies from the other nations were a hallow shell. It was a lack of internal cooperation between the various national units plus a spirit of independent thinking as well as jealousies between various nationalities which made the PSF as weak as it was. Certain officers, just a few, understood this and were trying to work out all of the problems within. They were slowly convincing their superiors that things needed to change should the PSF see battle if it wanted to win a fight in Kuwait if the Iranians moved southwards.


Then there were the Americans.

CENTCOM’s available operation combat forces were now the elements of the US Navy which were in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The US Marines had long departed for Austria, the US Army had never showed up and the US Air Force had redeployed what few aircraft had been sent to Saudi Arabia in February later to South Korea. CENTCOM had its commander and many senior staff transferred out too. There were two battalions from the US Army’s 5th Special Forces Group still in the region but those Green Berets would struggle to fight the Iranians on the battlefield. No, it was the US Navy which was what the Americans had left as a military force in the Middle East to try to deter Iranian moves past Iraq and threaten the flow of oil which was keeping the war against the Soviets going.

There had been clashes with the Iranians in the Persian Gulf since the mid-Eighties. Iran’s naval capabilities hadn’t recovered from each time the US Navy engaged them. The Americans were still present too, with the Enterprise carrier battle group and the New Jersey surface action group. USS Enterprise was down in the Arabian Sea with its aircraft capable of flying a considerable distance using support from Omani and Saudi airbases for refuelling. As to the USS New Jersey, the battleship was inside the Persian Gulf along with many smaller warships. From out of the Gulf Arab Monarchies came tankers chartered by the United States and other nations of the Allies who were using their cargoes to keep the war going against the Soviets. That oil was the lifeblood of the war effort against the Soviets and the US Navy was here to protect it, and therefore, by extension, the countries from where it came.

Fighting a war not just against the Soviets and their Eastern European puppets, but also too the North Koreans plus the Cubans, the United States did not want to go to war with Iran at the moment. It couldn’t be done, four major wars all at once would be too much. Yet, at the same time, this was not a time for weakness where the United States could have its strategic interests imperiled by Iranian aggression in the region.

Since the Iranians had invaded Iraq, the US Navy had been conducting an intimidation of the Iranian military. Some voices back home called it dangerous, others urged for more to be done. What there was left of the Iranian Navy after US Navy attacks in earlier years was subject to mock attacks and warning shots fired in the most aggressive fashion. Aircraft from the Enterprise surrounded Iranian aircraft in the air over the Persian Gulf and threatened them. The New Jersey steamed towards Bandar Lengeh one afternoon where Iranian ships were and the next night was active off Bushehr. Each time the battleship conducted firing practice of her guns: all three trios of sixteen-inch guns opening fire in further intimidation efforts.


Today that imitation turned to bloodshed.

Two Iranian F-14s raced southwards over the Gulf of Oman and towards the Arabian Sea. Possibly they were on a reconnaissance mission, maybe they were trying some intimidation of their own. Their long overwater flight was watched all the way by an E-2C Hawkeye from the Enterprise and soon a pair of F-14s in US Navy colours was close by. The two sets of near identical aircraft weren’t close enough for the aircrews to see each other apart from on radar. Their altitudes were different and there were clouds which the Americans were in.

Radio messages over open frequencies were sent to the Iranians in English first and then Persian as they came closer and closer to the Enterprise. Those were ignored each time they were made, with the tone of them getting stronger. The Iranians had a general idea of where the carrier group was due to a message from a civilian vessel that like they had ignored the Americans demands for the area to be cleared. The F-14s in Iranian service weren’t meant to be able to conduct anti-shipping strikes but their course towards the Americans gave the impression that they might be on an attack run of some sort. They could have had anti-ship missiles, it was possible…

…or so the admiral commanding the carrier group decided.

At a distance of one hundred miles a final message was sent to the Iranians telling them to turn back. This was ignored like the others had been and the F-14s continued to close-in upon the Enterprise. The carrier and her battle group were active within what the US Navy regarded as a war zone and the nuclear weapons which were in the magazines of several warships and well as the carrier itself made the carrier group operate differently as to how might otherwise have been the case. The Enterprise was operating at effective DEFCOM ONE due to her strategic mission should the war with the Soviets go nuclear and the Iranians were regarded as hostile even if they weren’t acting directly for Soviet interests.

The other pair of F-14s, those flown by US Navy pilots with VF-213, opened fire with Sparrow missiles. From above and behind the Americans attacked with four air-to-air missiles.

Both Iranian aircraft went down.

These were the latest instances of combat in the quasi-war with Iran that the United States had long been fighting, though one which the hope was that it wouldn’t erupt into a full-scale war.





March 14th 1990
Raven Rock facility, the Blue Ridge Mountains, Pennsylvania, the United States

Like everyone else, Dick Armitage was waiting for the appointed time to come. There were six more minutes to go now. Six minutes to wait until the thermonuclear detonations would occur across Cuba signaling the response of the United States to the supposed peace offer made from Havana.

Here at the alternate Pentagon underground in Pennsylvania, there was a gathering of politicians, intelligence officials and senior military officers. The attack underway against Cuba – the missiles were in the air already – was being commanded and coordinated from Raven Rock. The Defence Secretary’s staff and the Joint Chiefs were working with Strategic Air Command and the US Navy in the combined effort to make sure everything went as planned. Many people were busy while others waited impatiently like he did. There were those talking quietly with each other in small groups and others all by themselves. Radio channels and satellite feeds were being monitored. Discussions upon the immediate and long-term effects of the strike underway were being talked about. There were a few people getting ready to cheer when the first detonations occurred while at the same time others were preparing their excuses should anything go wrong.

Armitage was in one of the large conference rooms where the senior people, the big shots, him included, were gathered. Cheney was here, currently speaking with Wolfowitz and the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Also in attendance was the new Deputy Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld and he had just had a friendly, getting-to-know-you conversation and Armitage had wondered why he was such a figure of hate among many within the Bush Administration. He knew that there was some tension between Bush and Rumsfeld going back to their time together in the Ford Administration yet Rumsfeld was popular with Cheney… someone whom Armitage knew from full experience wasn’t easy to always get along with. Either way, Rumsfeld was now in this post replacing Atwood at the behest of Cheney and Bush must have signed off on that.

The current attack underway was Rumsfeld’s brainchild. Two days into the role as Cheney’s second and he was showing why he had been brought in midway through the war. Armitage was pleased with what was about to happen and regarded it as the right thing to do. Cuba was about to be struck with weapons of mass destruction with the aim not being to kill large numbers of civilians but to knock the country out of its war against the United States. The method of the attack, the manner in which it was being delivered against certain targets, had been formulated by Rumsfeld. When the desired end results came, which Armitage firmly believed that they would, Bush would naturally take all of the credit publicly, maybe Cheney a little too. Nonetheless, those in the know would understand that Rumsfeld was behind what should to be a war-winning move to get the Cubans to finally give in.

The final minutes passed with Armitage thinking about these matters before the time reached 19:00 eastern standard time, 00:00 GMT.

Those detonations then took place, all nine of them, down in Cuba. For a few moments, everyone here held their breath before the confirmations starting coming in with near-instant effect: each blast had occurred where and when they were meant to. Raúl Castro was receiving a response to what he had tried to demand of the United States at his allotted time for a reply to be made back through the Swiss Embassy in Washington.

It certainly wouldn’t be the answer he was expecting; Armitage was sure of that.


Exactly twenty-four hours ago, yesterday evening, Cuba had used the Swiss as a conduit to deliver a message to the United States. Their previous attempts to go through first Panama and then Costa Rica hadn’t been successful so finally the Swiss had been tried and success came. Fidel’s little brother said that his intention was to withdraw Cuban troops from The Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and the Turks & Caicos Islands. All American POWs taken, plus a very few number of American civilians in Cuban custody too, would be returned with immediate effect. In exchange, Raúl wanted a ceasefire to take place with no more military action committed by both sides against the other.

There had been no mention of Guantanamo Bay in Raúl’s offer which had come too with that demand that a response to be given within twenty-four hours.

Within the US Government, the peace offering was immediately rejected. There was no consideration of making a counter-offer either. The instant response among all of those who were party to what Raúl had communicated was utter rejection. There had been outrage at what the Cubans were attempting to see as the result of their war, the one that they had started. No compromise was going to be made with the Cubans after what they had done. The United States would set the terms of a peace and would enforce them too. Anything else was unacceptable.

This position of the Bush Administration had come about not in a moment of anger, such as when what Raúl said was passed on, but with weeks of utter rage since Cuba had attacked the United States. The island nation had launched an unprovoked war of aggression against America. Cuba was fighting alongside the Soviets, the East Germans and the North Koreans. They took sovereign soil of the United States and killed civilians during their attacks. Furthermore, during their occupation of parts of the Florida Keys there had been an official policy of killing civilians there as well. With all of this, the combined actions that even if they had been independent the results would have been the same, there was to be no negotiation with either Fidel or Raúl… or anyone else in Cuba. The United States would decide the outcome of the war and it would be beneficial to America too.

To give the Cubans anything short of a crushing defeat where it was clear to everyone that the United States had won the war against Cuba was regarded as having the possibility of bringing down the Bush Administration. Congressmen and Senators had been vilifying Cuba and were circling like sharks ready to pounce at the hint of any compromise. Bush would be impeached, he and those around him were aware, even in the midst of a world war, should he allow that to occur. There hadn’t been any intention of the president to do such a thing anyway. He and his top advisers, plus the senior people in government, were all against that. Weakness wasn’t something that could be shown in addressing matters with Cuba considering how much Cuba had already gotten away with in its war against the United States. The rest of the world would be watching, the Soviets especially, and Cuba would have to be made an example of. This was a third world nation on America’s doorstep who had attacked and invaded out of the blue. There just couldn’t be any outcome in which doubt was left in anyone’s mind that Cuba could get out of the situation which they had put themselves in without paying a terrible price for doing so.


Armitage was well aware that from the moment news broke that Cuba had struck as it did on February 17th, there had been the mood to hit back with a nuclear attack to resolve the issue. At once, the widely-expressed opinion was that Cuba should be attacked in such a fashion because those would win the war against the Castros. Cuba didn’t have nuclear weapons of its own and couldn’t retaliate. Several political figures demanded genocidal action against Cuba even, far short of a more tactical use wanted by many others.

The United States had its hands tied somewhat though. Cuba’s occupation of Key West meant that they had tens of thousands of civilian hostages and the belief was that in reply, a true massacre would be made there. Armitage had agreed with this when others didn’t. Yet, what mattered on this point was that the president was of that view too. There was also the presence of Soviet forces in Cuba. Their exact numbers and deployed locations weren’t known and the fear was that killing them in a nuclear attack would bring about a counter-strike from the Soviets… leading to a full-scale worldwide nuclear holocaust as the ante was upped between firing and retaliation each time.

Politically on a domestic front, Bush was called a ‘wimp’ by opponents for not striking at Cuba with nuclear weapons and instead following a rather disjointed, slow series of military action against Cuba. The Florida Keys were slowly retaken with ad hoc military forces used. Bush Administration efforts to explain that the geography of the islands, the presence of civilians and the fact that the US military was deployed worldwide ahead of the Cuban attack were little listened to. Armitage had seen the opinion polling done where Bush’s personal ratings for how the war was being conducted slid downwards while support for the war remained extremely high. Public opinion mattered with the country at war, no matter what pessimists said. When it came to Cuba, polling showed that when asked the American people regarded that country almost alongside the Soviet Union in terms of who the United States should focus their main efforts upon fighting: as a side note, East Germany was rated third and North Korea next. There were unconfirmed reports made in the American media that Cuba had executed shot-down US pilots over Cuba for bombing what they regarded as civilian targets… these were followed by the reports from Key West that ordinary Americans had been shot there too for resistance to the occupiers. Meanwhile, the calls for nuclear attacks to be made were opposed by voices fearing a massacre of innocent Cubans – these didn’t always come from Cuban-Americans either – and those too who feared worldwide nuclear conflict.

Cuba’s attack against the United States had come after the North Koreans had been attacked with nuclear weapons. North Korean armoured spearheads and the infantry with them had been slaughtered when caught in a series of traps where they were held up, bunched together and in terrain where the wider effects of the blasts there would be very limited. Cuba was somewhat prepared for a similar attack against them with their army not concentrated out in the open where they would be susceptible to attack. American POWs where at selected military sites across Cuba and their presence at those advertised so they would be human shields against an attack. They apparently believed that this plan was fool proof and this, probably plus the fear that the Americans had of nuclear conflict with the Soviets, had kept them safe from a strategic attack. They hadn’t understood that American civilians in Key West, plus a lack of knowledge on where the Soviets were in Cuba, had averted that, not their own cunning.


When in Belgrade, Armitage and those with him then on that ill-fated mission to Yugoslavia, had been warned at the last minute of the incoming Soviet nuclear attack there. At the time, the belief was that the city was being targeted, not the airport as was the case. Regardless, the intelligence which gave warning of that came from a CIA source known to Armitage at that time as Rainbow. When back in America and working as the point man for the president down in Florida with SOUTHCOM as the war was fought with Cuba, Armitage was aware of two further intelligence sources that the CIA had by the codenames given to them: Ranch-hand and Reindeer. The former had said that Cuban commandos were planning to attack an airbase in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula used by the US Air Force for strikes against Cuba (the raid was foiled) and the latter had stated that Soviet troops in Cuba had moved to Mariel to defend against an amphibious landing there.

Rainbow. Ranch-hand. Reindeer.

Armitage had worked with the CIA in Vietnam when he was with the US Navy there. He was never a CIA officer or agent, despite the rumours saying he was. First in military service and then in his various political appointments – Armitage had never run for or been elected to public office – he had had many dealings with the CIA. The significance of those codenames were someone at Langley playing a complicated intelligence game. Was it one source or multiple sources? Was their intelligence coming from someone or several people or even from no one but instead communications intercepts? There could be a double bluff being played, even a triple bluff. Either way though, it didn’t matter. Rainbow, Ranch-hand and Reindeer as well as probably more codenames all meant the same thing: reliable and correct strategic intelligence which the United States made use of in the military and intelligence fields.

Confirmation had come that the Soviets, a full brigade of them with armour and tactical missiles which could be armed with nuclear warheads, were at Mariel. The port city west of Havana was attacked by the US Navy with guns and Tomahawks right before that was confirmed and post-strike reconnaissance spotted the Soviets there.

The Americans knew where the Soviets were and they had liberated Key West as well. The two foremost barriers to a nuclear attack on Cuba had been removed with both.


Both Britain and France were consulted before the nuclear strike against Cuba. Prime Minister Thatcher and President Mitterrand were informed with Bush himself making contact with each.

This was done due to the ongoing dispute between allies as to where the fault lay for what had occurred in mid-February when the West Germans had fallen apart as they did. It was agreed that Soviet actions as they broke large parts of the West German Army combined with their intelligence coup in causing the collapse of the Kohl Government were the greatest factors in that. Yet, the American nuclear strike on the Korean Peninsula had occurred only days before that. The belief in Europe that the West Germans saw the coming of a nuclear strike on their territory as committed by their allies – the Americans doing so without telling them – as inevitable was still there.

Armitage believed that that argument would go on for years. He personally was of the opinion that it had been a major factor as the West Germans had feared that and so had left the war on the back of that and other events. If the North Koreans hadn’t been attacked as they were, then there wouldn’t have been that fear with the West Germans, which had tipped them over the edge. Others within the Bush Administration agreed, many more didn’t. Either way, this time word had been sent to allies. Britain and France were told as nuclear powers and very-important allies. Further nations, those with NATO and the Allies, were to be told about the attack on Cuba immediately afterwards.

The overwhelming majority of senior figures in the Bush Administration were supportive of the nuclear attack on Cuba. Cheney, Secretary of State Dole and the Cabinet all agreed that it would end the war with Cuba plus benefit the overall war effort politically at home and abroad. The military and the intelligence services agreed too. Vice President Webb didn’t. He told Bush that he would support him publicly and remained loyal, but he was still opposed to it. Nuclear weapons were being used again, and he warned that it was now becoming a regular act to solve military issues when they were really a geo-political weapon.

Webb’s thoughts on this were closely-held but word did get out about them from the mouths of others. Scowcroft remarked to Bush that he hoped that the Soviets didn’t get wind of them for their propaganda would have something true to reveal rather than the usual lies. Dole, on her way to China at the time for her secret meeting in Beijing, spoke to Bush and told the president that he would be savaged politically for appointing Webb (to fill the deceased Quayle’s shoes) when rumours reached Congress that he was opposed to the attack upon Cuba. Bush himself, took the difference of opinion much better. He saw Webb’s council as something he needed and saw nothing wrong with moral dissent on a matter such as nuclear weapons, especially since he believed Webb’s sincerity in keeping it to himself even if the news eventually leaked from others. Armitage heard about the Vice President’s dissent on the grapevine and he knew he was one of so many to do so.

Time would tell if Webb was right in his opinion…

Panama and General Noriega was another matter up for discussion at the highest levels where the attack on Cuba was concerned.

Armitage’s brief was Cuba and making sure that SOUTHCOM’s operations were within the political guidelines set by the president yet he was aware of ongoing tensions between Panama and the United States. Raúl Castro had approached Noriega to act as an intermediary with America: he had duly obliged. The attempt had been rebuffed though, with extreme prejudice. Noriega had been told to mind his own business and that those engaged in working with the Cuban regime in any manner would be regarded as an enemy of the United States. That was actually contradicted by how what the Swiss had to say was listened to, yet, at the same time, Switzerland was doing what they did for what were seen as noble interests whereas Noriega certainly wasn’t.

Down in the Canal Zone, there were American troops with the US Army’s 193d Infantry Brigade (two light infantry battalions joined by another one of national guardsmen from Puerto Rico) who were facing attempts by the Panamanian military to intimidate them. Exercises had been run to defend against a ‘foreign invasion’, but Panamanian troops had been active near to US military bases and looked at times like they were preparing to attack them instead. Several Cuban intelligence officials had fled their country during the war – for reasons that the Americans were unsure of – and gone to Panama. They had been welcomed there by Noriega.

All of this came on top of the hostility between Noriega and the Bush Administration. He was a bloody dictator, a drug-runner and a murderer. To Armitage and others, what had happened following the brutal crackdown in East Germany late last year which set off the chain of events that led to this war with the Soviets, the Cubans and others had saved Panama from war with the United States. There was still unfinished business there and many people believed in settling scores with Noriega, especially in light of recent Cuba-related events.

Furthermore, Armitage had been informed that Panama was being watched as a location which Raúl might – only might – flee to if forced out of Cuba. Should he try, there would be an effort to stop him. If he got to Panama, he would be removed from there. If Noriega tried to stop such a hypothetical situation, he would risk getting the same treatment as Fidel did.


Rumsfeld was recognised as the architect of the nuclear attack on Cuba because of his overall combination of various previous ideas into a comprehensive plan of attack. There was a desire which he expressed to Cheney first then Bush when the Secretary of Defence set up a meeting between the two of them right before his appointment to break the will of Raúl to carry on the fight. Cuba was already in trouble with this war with Fidel dead, the real possibility of a coup against Raúl once others in Cuba working with the Soviets got wind of him trying to talk with the United States and all of the war damage done.

Shock and awe would be undertaken. Rumsfeld had spoken of giving them a massive amount of hurt all at once in many places, just as what they had done to the United States in fact, but naturally doing more damage than the Cubans had achieved.

The nuclear blasts were key to this, the central plank of that wide-ranging attack. USS Briscoe, a Spruance-class destroyer, fired eight RGM-109A Tomahawk cruise missiles at Cuba. They exploded above their targets at 19:00 EST. Each had a W80 warhead with a variable yield. The eight explosions, of a force between 30 and 75 kilotons (the size varied between targets), occurred over southern Cuba. Those detonations took place away from populated areas in the Cuban countryside. Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo were unaffected by the blasts and so too was the occupied Guantanamo Bay naval base. Instead it was Cuban troops dug-in who the missiles exploded above. The blasts were targeted where there was a concentration of men even if they had overhead shelter. Ground-bursts would have been better and more destructive, yet the fallout would have been rather more considerable that those which occurred in the air. Tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were expected to be killed or injured and the Cuban Army down in the south would be rendered combat ineffective for some time even if not directly destroyed.

Shock and awe #1.

The ninth blast occurred over the sea off Havana. A low-flying B-1B Lancer strategic bomber fired a single AGM-86B cruise missile from back over the Gulf of Mexico which then detonated with its W80 warhead fifteen miles off Cuba’s capital city to the northeast. The 150 kiloton blast lit up the dark sky before the heat and the wind then swept over Havana… plus Mariel too. With this weapon, the targeting of it had been subject to several changes due to many arguments. The distance between its detonation and Havana, whether it was used very high above Havana or directly against the city had all been the subject of that heated debate. Everyone had had an opinion on whether to blast Havana or try to scare those in the city and the Cuban government to death. In the end, the massive air burst over the sea at night time took place.

Shock and awe #2.


With the confirmation here at Raven Rock that each blast had occurred, there was some celebration from certain people. Armitage did find it unseemly after the deaths those blasts in southern Cuba would have caused but knew that people were letting off steam. There had been plenty of tension beforehand and that was now released.

He went over to Wolfowitz and spoke to him about whether the next stage of the operation to bring Cuban resistance to an end was ready. He confirmed that that was the case: the US Marines were about to land in The Bahamas. There were Cuban troops on Paradise Island (the resort near to Nassau had been looted by them when discipline broke down) plus on Andros Island too. US Marine reservists in brigade strength were undertaking that with air and naval support. They were going in tonight and the media operation to cover that, which Cuba would be able to monitor, was ready.

Shock and awe #3.

Furthermore, the armada of bombers of conventional bomb runs were already airborne. All across Cuba they were to strike tonight, from east to west. B-52s, some of them which had been in storage in Arizona pre-war, were to make their attacks. Communications and power supplies were their targets instead of the usual military ones where they had struck in lesser numbers beforehand.

Shock and awe #4.

Then there were the US Navy SEALs and US Army Green Beret reservists who were to land upon the Isle of Pines in a series of major raids undertaken. Multiple small operations were to commence hitting military posts and security infrastructure around the prisons there. The local Cuban Communist Party office was to be assaulted as well, aiming for a propaganda blow. American troops would be on Cuban soil fighting there even if only for a short time.

Shock and awe #5.

Armitage hoped that Rumsfeld’s plan would work. So too did most of the Bush Administration. If it didn’t, what was next? More nuclear strikes? An invasion?





March 14th 1990
Arnhem, Gelderland, the Netherlands

NATO forces were closing in on Arnhem from three sides: the north, the east and the south. Their tanks were rolling forward followed by infantry with them. Aircraft were above the Dutch city and their artillery shells were falling in selective places. Inside Arnhem, Dutch guerillas – organised and un-organised – were active everywhere with shootings, stabbings and small explosions being conducted by them. Darkness had fallen with the night due to be bloody and it clear that by the morning the city would be taken… or razed to the ground in the attempt.

At the hospital where KGB headquarters was, the chaos outside was replaced by calm. There was no gunfire here and NATO aircraft hadn’t bombed the civilian facility being made use of as it was. The incinerator in the basement was busy as papers, files and documents were fed into it in an organised fashion. The last of the Dutch collaborators – never that many overall when it came to numbers and useless in terms of real assistance – had been taken away to be killed elsewhere so therefore the whole process of burning everything incriminating was being done by Soviet personnel. Radio equipment and the bulky computers had been smashed apart then placed inside medical x-ray machines before they were to be later burnt too. Selected officers went from room to room throughout the areas used by the KGB with burn-bags to clear anything left. Everything was being done to leave nothing of value here for the enemy in terms of intelligence.

Polkovnik Putin had expected to be aiding this, but, alas, he was not. Instead, he had been instructed to report immediately to General-Lieutenant Lebedev, the commander of KGB forces cut off in the Netherlands.


“Have yourself a seat, Vladimir Vladimirovich.”

“Do you mind if I stand, General?” Inside Lebedev’s improvised office, there was only one chair within view apart from what the senior KGB man in the Netherlands was in and Putin wouldn’t sit in the one which he had been pointed towards.

“You do not want to be by the window, I see. Are you worried about snipers?”

“Yes, sir.”

Upon Putin’s reply, Lebedev gave a chuckle before responding. “They said you were clever and with a keen eye on how to stay alive.”

“I do my duty, General.”

“You’ve been loyal, Vladimir Vladimirovich: extremely loyal. Not once have you deviated from any mission assigned to you nor raised any complaint when given an order.” Lebedev was full of open praise. “Others have run and abandoned their posts. One of those was your friend, Podpolkovnik Ivanov. There have been more too. When they have been caught while deserting, they have been shot.”

“Loyalty is all we have.”

Putin’s immediate response fell out of his mouth and covered what he was thinking about his friend Seryozha being so foolish and also his own plans to escape when the end came here. He was sure, he was certain that no one knew his scheme to get away. He hadn’t told anyone about the identity which he had hidden to use in place of that of his own as a KGB officer nor too his repeated recent failures to find a uniform to go with that. He should have realised that there weren’t exactly many East German military policemen in the Netherlands who he could disguise himself as!

“The Dutch are settling scores here already and when NATO takes Arnhem, they will do the same too. We, men such as us, will either be shot in the street by the Dutch or end up as prisoners of American intelligence. We’ll be tortured for everything we know and forced to betray the Rodina.

I for one have no intention of allowing that to happen.”

Unsure of what to say, Putin chose to keep his mouth shut and nod. It seemed the best thing when listening to such a speech.

“Is your wife back in Leningrad? Did she and your young daughters leave Dresden back in February?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“They are safe then.” Lebedev sounded genuinely relieved. “Would you wish to see them again, Vladimir Vladimirovich?”

“I would, yes.”

“Come with us, Polkovnik. We need a loyal man. A man who has done his duty and it is loyal which will be needed.”

A little bit shocked, Putin again gave an immediate response without thinking what he was to say before he opened his mouth: “Excuse me, General, but how will we get away from here? NATO is everywhere! There is no way out by land, by air or by sea. I can’t see how we will get away!”

Lebedev smiled: “Have faith in those who know no loyalty.”


Not long afterwards, Putin joined Lebedev and several other KGB men – eleven more of them – in an outbuilding in the hospital grounds. There was another colonel like him with the rest being generals. A uniform, identity papers and a weapon were all issued to him by a man not wearing a KGB nor Soviet Army uniform.

It was a West German military officer handing out these items to make Putin and the other KGB men Bundeswehr enlisted men: Landwehr combat engineers to be precise.

Like the others, Putin started disguising himself as someone he clearly wasn’t. Around him everyone was speaking German, including Lebedev. The Bundeswehr officer started telling them the story which they were all sticking to. He would do the talking, but they should all be aware of what to say and what not to say as well. They were sergeants, corporals and privates: he was their officer who they should look to. When he gave a command, they were to follow his lead for there would be many people watching them, especially when they went through the fast-approaching frontlines.

Lebedev spoke afterwards. Everyone was to follow the West German, he told them, here and elsewhere. This man would escort them out of danger and would safeguard their lives on the first stage of a very difficult journey. It was made very clear that if Putin and everyone else wanted to see their families and the Rodina again, then this was the only way it would work.

The trucks turned up next and Putin begun the first stage of a long, complicated journey to safety.

[James G]

Twenty–Eight – Last-Minute Preparations

March 15th 1990
The skies above Central Europe

Major Rhonda Cornum, US Army, heard the call over the intercom that one of the casualties to be picked up was a Soviet soldier. She was in the back of the Black Hawk with a fellow flight surgeon, a pair of medics and the loadmaster. The pilot up front serving as aircraft commander asked for acknowledgement from all six fellow soldiers aboard (the co-pilot was the final sixth) that they understood that one of the pair of men being given a CASEVAC was a prisoner of war and care should be taken when dealing with him.

Cornum sent her acknowledgement along with the others.

The battalion aid station for the 1/502 INF was up ahead and the Black Hawk flew low and fast across Hessen and then above the IGB towards there. Cornum and her fellow surgeon were working with the medics fast preparing for the incoming casualties which would be taken aboard once they got there. Before being warned that one of them was a POW, with the other being a 101st Air Assault Infantry Division trooper, the word had come that they were burns victims wanting specialist treatment to a degree more than could be provided on the battlefield. How the men had been wounded and how both had ended up at the field hospital mattered not.

What was important was getting the pair of them treated the moment they got on the helicopter before they would later be handed over to one of the XVIII Airborne Corps better-prepared medical sites in the rear. Their stories, their nationalities didn’t figure into that…

…apart from that fact that one was an enemy soldier.

Cornum was on auto-pilot as the last-minute preparations were done so everything for burns victims was ready. The casualties would be expected to be pre-flighted already though that too was prepared for just in case. Burns blankets were pulled from storage by Cornum as she overheard the co-pilot talking over the intercom as he spotted the battalion aid station. When finished getting everything ready of her own and then starting to check on the medics preparations too, Cornum caught sight of the loadmaster – a true expert at never letting the twists and turns of the helicopter catch him off balance: she and everyone else in the back were rank amateurs compared to him – checking his pistol.

This was a CASEVAC flight and all during the previous night and through the early hours of this morning, Cornum and the others aboard had been evacuating the seriously wounded from aid stations up and down the frontlines just inside East Germany where the Screaming Eagles were fighting. Men had been flown out with haste with many lives saved during so, though a couple unfortunately lost too. It was dangerous work with enemy air and missile activity; as well as what appeared to be everyone on the ground, friendly or not, deciding to take a shot at them just in case they were with the other side. The loadmaster hadn’t brought his pistol out of his holster until now.

The reason for it was the pilot’s call saying that one of the wounded was a Soviet soldier. Badly-hurt POWs had been flown out on other flights which Cornum had been aboard during this war and she had seen this happen beforehand. Official orders were that anyone who came aboard the CASEVAC flight was to be given every bit of care as possible. Civilians were sometimes taken aboard: rare but it had happened. There had been flights which she’d been on where enemy soldiers had been evacuated from the frontlines and that was where the pistols always came out from the loadmaster each and every time. Early in the war, there had been a couple of incidents where POWs aboard US Army helicopters receiving urgent military care had acted as the enemy soldiers which they were despite their wounds. The exact details with those weren’t widely shared yet POWs would still be given care and flown out, but loadmasters aboard (from what she had been able to gather by reading between the lines) had been told to be prepared to deal with them as a hostile enemy if that was the case.

Cornum was serving within the US Army and had volunteered for this dangerous duty. She didn’t want to see anyone killed even though men were dying by the thousands, tens of thousands even, daily. Everyone to whom she gave medical care was a patient, no matter what uniform was worn. Yet, she wasn’t offended by the loadmaster with his pistol. It was just a precaution in case something really went wrong. She had wondered many times what the pilot would like to but wouldn’t say about the thought of gun-play in his aircraft: it wouldn’t be polite!

As to the pilot, he was back on the intercom now telling them that they were landing. Cornum braced herself not just for touchdown (the Black Hawk always landed harshly on these missions) but for the horrors which would come aboard, such was the case always with burn victims.

Then they were down and her work begun.


Captain Scott Speicher, US Navy, acknowledged the radio call from the Hawkeye and then went into a sharp dive. His wingman followed him as their pair of FA-18C Hornets flying with VFA-81 from the USS Saratoga headed for the target ahead and below. The combat controller aboard the AWACS aircraft far behind had reported that there was a missile corvette on the waters of the Mecklenburg Bay and they were clear to engage.

Speicher hadn’t needed telling twice.

He activated his own radar as he continued his dive and the APG-65 system got a quick track on the target down there. The Hawkeye had told him that it was Nanuckha-class warship with guns and anti-ship missiles as its main weapon. A navalised variant of the Gecko SAM-launcher would also be present. Speicher’s radar warning receiver went off and he was alerted to the Geckos presence: a dangerous defensive system yet one which could be beaten.

The air-search and SAM-acquisition radars didn’t have the range to yet see the pair of Hornets coming towards them. If Speicher and his wingman remained this altitude on their current course then that would change, but both aircraft continued to drop lower and lower down on a flightpath bringing them in underneath that coverage. Moreover, Speicher had his jamming pod active now and directed electromagnetic waves to mess with the Gecko system were being sent towards the target.

There came caution from the Hawkeye that there were MiGs off in the distance though those were a considerable distance back over land and Speicher heard Tomcats from VF-103 on MiG-CAP quickly being assigned to engage them. He concentrated on his approach and begun his attack checklist. These included all last-minute preparations for an attack against a naval target: one which could fire back too! His Harpoons were ready and so too were his chaff/flare dispensers. There was nothing that wasn’t suitably ready for the attack to commence and the Hawkeye had cleared him and his wingman to make sure that it wasn’t friendlies they were about to strike at.

There was an amphibious task group nearby full of Jarheads… oh and the USS Iowa with her battle group as well.

It was Speicher’s turn to shoot this time. Not half an hour ago his wingman had put a Harpoon into a minesweeper/minehunter/minelayer – exact class of warship unknown but certainly hostile – and Speicher had covered him when doing so. Now the roles were reversed with his wingman watching his six as made the attack. There could easily be low-flying enemy fighters which had somehow avoided the radar coverage of the Hawkeye. That had been done elsewhere during naval air operations from the Saratoga over the Danish Archipelago and if that happened again, Speicher had faith in his wingman. He had to, he had no other choice.

Otherwise it was a long swim back to the carrier.

Once the correct altitude and distance to the target was reached, Speicher released the two Harpoons. One then the other were fired and they shot off towards the corvette ahead.

He smiled, knowing he was about to ruin someone’s morning. There was also the knowledge that whatever hostile intentions that enemy warship had of interfering with the US Marines when they landed sometime after daybreak, wherever that was (Speicher hadn’t been told for reasons of operational security) were now over. This was turning out to be a good morning indeed!


Captain Susan Desjardins, US Air Force, kept the big aircraft which she piloted nice and steady as the first of the four F-16s started draining the fuel which the KC-10A Extender gave up freely after the measured last-minute preparations to do so had paid off as well as they had. Behind her aircraft, the other Belgian strike-fighters were patiently waiting for their turn to link up to the drogue-&-hose system after their flight leader. All five aircraft were heading north at the minute, allowing for a favourable tailwind rather than flying into the wind or facing crosswinds. She’d heard aerial-refuelling called having sex while in the sky – the slotting carefully home and the transfer of fluids were the punchline of far too many jokes – but it was a little bit more complicated than that…and far more dangerous too!

The fuel transfer was overseen by other crew members aboard her aircraft. Desjardins and her co-pilot concentrated upon flying their aircraft in such a manner as to not interfere with that. Linking up the fuel line, the transfer of the fuel and the disengagement before it was all done again with the next aircraft was damn difficult to achieve. The Extender needed to be as passive as possible with the receiving aircraft doing all the work. Therefore, Desjardins just kept everything nice and calm with her aircraft while this went on. The physical implications from a mid-air collision was one thing: worse would be an explosion of all of the fuel which her Extender was carrying ready to transfer to more aircraft than just these four.

Listening on the intercom, her fuel-line operator spoke to the Belgians in English. NATO standard procedures were being followed and what conversation which there was was precise and very much to the point. The Belgians understood the risk too of not paying attention and she heard the first pilot give a ‘thank-you’ then an acknowledgement that he was breaking away ready to allow his wingman to come into place afterwards. Below was the western side of the North German Plain and the F-16s would after their refuelling break away eastwards across it heading into battle with topped-up fuel tanks. Desjardins could see none of that below nor any of the sky more than complete darkness above. She fought boredom and relied on her training as this occurred. There would soon be another refuelling at another point, back away to the south and once the Belgians were done here there would be fellow US Air Force aviators waiting for her to arrive too: more F-16s she’d been told.

Home-base for Desjardins and the 2d Air Refuelling squadron with the 2d Bomb Wing which she was flying with was back in Louisiana at Barksdale AFB. Currently, she was flying her aircraft from their war station at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire where the 2d Bomb Wing had its B-52s as well. She wasn’t sure where the Stratofortress’ were tonight but assumed that they were somewhere off to the east. Other Extenders would be refuelling them, freeing up her and her aircraft for this NATO mission. The Extender was an aerial tanker which, unlike the KC-135 Stratotankers which formed the majority of the US Air Force’s tanker fleet, could refuel many aircraft of several different nationalities plus also US Navy and US Marines aircraft. The drogue-&-hose system was used for that while there was also a flying boom (Stratotankers only had those) fitted too making the Extender a multifunction refuelling platform.

Desjardin’s war had been much the same as it was this morning: tanking multiple aircraft allowing them to carry heavy war-loads when they went out on attack missions and also giving them extra range for outward and return flights. She hadn’t seen an enemy aircraft all war and Fairford had only been attacked once – by missiles – when she wasn’t there. She could only thank her lucky stars that this was her war. Others aboard her aircraft might have said that they wanted the glory of combat yet she doubted that. Either way, despite being in the rear like she and her aircraft was, Desjardins knew that she was playing a vital role in the war: aircraft which she refueled effectively had the capability as if they were several more in number by being refueled in mid-air as they were. This truly was something of great significance and what she was sure was a war-winner. After all, how many tankers did the Soviets have and did they use their tactically, refuelling allied aircraft too?

Nope, that wasn’t the case.

The second Belgian aircraft made the connection with hers and Desjardin told herself to return to one hundred per cent concentration rather than letting her mind drift. She had to get on with the job at hand, keeping this big aircraft nice and steady.


Lance Corporal Anthony Swofford, US Marines, closed his eyes as one of his fellow Marines started to sing. The corporal was belting out a heavy metal rock song which Swofford knew and didn’t like. He would have liked to have put his fingers in his ears, or, even better, yelled at the man to shut up. He really would have had to yell too for the noise of the helicopter which the two of them and others were in was damn loud!

The CH-53E Super Stallion wasn’t built for comfort during flight though, it was built to transport Marines.

Swofford and fifty-plus of his fellow Marines were crammed inside the helicopter as it flew across the southern reaches of Austria heading for the Yugoslav border. There were more Super Stallions too nearby, all carrying fighting men with the 2/7 MARINES like he was. This one had men assigned to the Surveillance & Target Acquisition Platoon attached to the battalion headquarters company. There were scout/snipers, portable radar operators and radiomen all aboard: Swofford was in the first category, which he was rather proud to be.

They were still ten minutes out from the first drop point where half of the platoon would deploy to and therefore another fifteen from where he and everyone else was to be unloaded from the Super Stallion. 2/7 MARINES as a whole, he’d been told, was deploying to the Austrian-Yugoslav border with the reconnaissance platoon going ahead of the main body of Marines. The mission was to watch the border line from above and behind at first and then provide cover for the rest of the battalion as they established themselves in the area of operations designated for the deployment. In a rather informal briefing, Swofford had been told that 2/7 MARINES would be on the border securing the very edge of the I MEF’s flank due to Soviet forces making use of the porous frontier with Yugoslavia to escape from encirclement inside Austria as they were getting the backsides handed to them. No one had said why the case was that the border with an armed, neutral nation was open to be exploited like the enemy as he was told it was though he had been told something about a nuclear attack by the Soviets inside Yugoslavia last month making the Yugoslavs ‘amenable’ to Soviet ‘penetrations’.

There were diplomatic moves at play and grand things where the fate of nations was at stake. Swofford was just a Marine though, down at the bottom of the food-chain. What mattered was his orders to cover his brother Marines and engage the enemy where found… not on the other side of the border though, so the firm orders ran.

He would obey his orders too for being here in Adolf-land – everyone was calling Austria that, even the NCOs – sure beat the first weeks of his war getting burnt under the sun in the Middle East. The I MEF had set off for war there, not found one for them and the redeployed to Europe. Swofford had heard that there was now a war there now which the Marines might have been involved in, but it was too late now: Europe was where they were now and the Soviets, rather than Iraqis or the Iranians or anyone else there, were who they were here to fight as the very last-minute preparations for him to do so were undertaken by this flight.

But not Yugoslavs, apparently.

The crew chief was calling out that they were about to touch down and was opening up the rear door. Swofford turned his head to see the pitch-black darkness and felt the rush of cold air on his face before turning away. Other Marines were getting ready though this wasn’t his stop. The singing corporal had shut up now and Swofford’s face lit up when he saw that he was getting off the helicopter here.

Seeing that cheered him up no end!


Warrant Officer Michael Durant, US Army Special Forces, brought his helicopter’s mini-guns on the Soviets firing up at him and the MH-6H Little Bird which he flew. Both of those were mounted externally on the weapons pylons and the six-barreled 7.62mm machine guns unleashed a flurry of rounds into the tree-line. Burst after burst he gave the enemy, killing them or at least pinning them down. Within an instant, no more of their fire was directed at him nor the Rangers which he had just dropped off. He didn’t have the ammunition to keep up the firing for no more than a few seconds and nor did he want to keep hovering in one place either.

He pulled the stick back and yanked the helicopter up before making a sharp turn towards starboard. He could only hope that no one on the ground there was in any fit state to fire upon his helicopter’s exposed belly when doing so. He had done all that he could in giving the Rangers a fighting chance after the ambush it seemed which they had landed in the midst off. Now, Durant raced towards the rally point nearby.

His world was black and green. The bulky night-vision goggles were a pain to wear but they gave him what everyone else didn’t have: sight. He avoided more trees and saw a big hill which loomed ahead. The pre-mission brief on the target area where he and other 160th Aviation Group (Airborne) aircrews taking the Rangers towards had told of these terrain dangers but that was never the same as seeing them himself. The communications tower which the Soviets had set up here at their signals base was down and no longer a threat to his aircraft yet he still avoided where it had stood as that was the flight-plan he was to follow to keep him out of the way of other aircraft. More Little Birds and special operations configured Black Hawks were all over this area and a mid-air collision was not something that he wanted: he’d joined his fellow aviators in trying to talk out how to avoid those dangers during last-minute preparations for their flight here.

As he kept on flying above the Thüringenwald racing for the rally point where he and the other helicopters were to hold before the extraction of the Rangers on their raiding mission, Durant encountered no more of the enemy. There were other helicopters with heavier weapons loads ready to take them on and he did hear the radio call of ‘Tunguska’ made. He knew what a Tunguska was, a mobile anti-air platform with guns and SAMs. It was one of the most-deadly tactical air defence vehicles which the Soviets had…

…and not something mentioned on the mission brief.

Someone had messed up. The intelligence had been faulty and the enemy had a truly capable air defence here, even if it was only one vehicle. The dedicated attack Little Birds – the AH-6s – had 30mm chain guns and Hydra-70 rockets with them and Durant didn’t know if those would be enough. The Rangers had brought along a few anti-tank missile-launchers and those could take out a Tunguska (he hoped) but he didn’t know how that fight would go. There was no call of a fellow 160th Group helicopter badly hit or downed so he could only assume that the Tunguska had been avoided somehow.

At the rally point, Durant found the other helicopters. He joined them in hovering low amongst several tree clearings. His eyes were everywhere outside looking for threats in the surreal sight he was given through his goggles. Now he was to wait. He would have to remain here until he and the others were called back when the Rangers wanted their extraction. They might have wounded with them, possibly prisoners too: they were raiding a high-value target. There could be fighting for him again there or even far away on the flight back south. Either way, Durant told himself that he was ready for that.

He had to be.


Captain Cesar Rodriguez, call-sign ‘Rico’, US Air Force, watched the feed from the Sentry AWACS aircraft as the engaged targets disappeared from the radar screen. His own radar was off and his target acquisition and guidance had all been done by the fighter controllers aboard that aircraft far off in the distance. The call came confirming that he had two more kills to add to his previous total of twelve: Rico was almost a triple ace!

This was how it was done with the F-15C Eagle, AIM-7 Sparrow and E-3 Sentry combination. This was how eleven of the fourteen confirmed (plus two probables) kills he had had come from. It was the same with the rest of the 58th Tactical Fighter Squadron, certainly with other squadrons with the 33d Tactical Fighter Wing too. The Soviets had no counter for this. Rico hadn’t seen his enemy tonight as they were off in the distance beyond visual range and wouldn’t have had a clue what was happening when his missiles slammed into them. It was like a video game, though one which had been going on for six weeks now… where engagements like this had been the same every time without the Soviets adapting at all in what they did.

Rico’s wingman and the two others on this flight which he was leading all got kills too. The Sentry declared that they were Floggers, MiG-23s. Six of them had gone down out there over Saxony-Anhalt in East Germany. They’d come forward dumb and blind but in the direction of the last-minute preparations for the strike being undertaken by shiny-new F-15E Strike Eagles near Stendal. Those strike-fighters could defend themselves (plus they had Phantoms on Wild Weasel and Falcons on Iron Hand missions with them) if they had to yet had a bomb run to make and their fighter cover which was Rico and those with him had protected them from afar. The Strike Eagles would have had to break off their ground attacks and dump their bombs to get into a fight with the Floggers.

There had been no need with the F-15Cs ready as Rico had had them though.

Over the radio link between the flight, cheers erupted. Rico let emotions be released for a few seconds then told them to cut out the chatter. The call came next from the Sentry giving him a new heading and he turned that way with the others following him. Back at their base in the Rhineland they could celebrate, but not now.

A new holding position was soon established where once again the F-15Cs started tracing lazy circles in the dark sky waiting for the next call to come. Rico and the other fighter pilots still had many more missiles carried and there were several different strike missions who they were giving distant support to without any need to get up close and personal with the enemy.

That could easily be done and had been done before. Rico had mixed it up with the enemy in dogfights both sides of the IGB. Those came with danger where in dogfights the Soviets showed what they were capable of especially as in visual range fights they did show that they could learn. Furthermore, SAMs would come up from the ground, dozens at a time, taking out any aircraft they could no matter what the nationality.

Therefore, he preferred this method of fighting though. He found it a challenge to his flight skills whereas others would disagree. Waiting patiently for the enemy to be foolish and put themselves at risk rather than blundering forward was what modern air combat was all about. The technology did a lot of the work, which was why NATO was winning the air war (he knew that, he was sure of that) but it was also a matter of training and discipline. When unleashed, Rico and the others were best prepared to win every engagement like this while the enemy had no idea of who or what they were up against.

This was his war, others had theirs.


Captain Marie Rossi, US Army, got airborne the moment when given permission. She reacted within an instant to the command from ground control to get up and in the skies. There was no need for anyone to tell her twice, not when the improvised helicopter strip she had just dropped reinforcements into came under mortar fire like it did.

Her UH-60A Black Hawk took off rather ungracefully but with little weight it was fast out of the firing line. Rossi was on the radio at once to the two other Black Hawks who’d come with her here to where elements of the 9th Motorized Infantry Division were fighting in the Fulda Valley, west of the IGB. She was in command of not just her aircraft but a whole platoon within Company A, 1/58 AVN and had taken part of that platoon here under orders to drop off the infantrymen fighting to liberate some of the last bits of enemy-held territory here in this part of West Germany. Both other aircraft commanders reported that they were out of the firing line like she was and were following her southwards.

At the moment, Rossi would have given anything to wipe the sweat she felt on her forehead. Her flight helmet – plus the need to keep control of her helicopter rather than kill herself and everyone else aboard! – stopped her from doing that. She felt it rolling downwards and winced as it slid down through her eyebrow and into her eye.

Following this all together unpleasant experience atop the first one back at that heli-strip, Rossi allowed herself a deep breath. She silently told herself that that had been a close one and not something she wanted to see anytime again soon. The mortar attack had come from nowhere and she’d seen a Huey hit by those inbound projectiles. All her self-control had been brought to bear in not lifting off at once without clearance. There had been other helicopters apart from hers and the two more under command plus men such as those and others being dropped off to think about who also needed to be out of the way.

That was behind her now as she flew away following the safe transit lane back to the 18th Aviation Brigade airfield. Rossi used her navigation radar to keep her bearings plus her co-pilot was at her side for assistance in this. In darkness even at altitude this really wasn’t easy and any carelessness would mean the end for her and those with her.

Her thoughts did wander though. She did think of those men she’d just dropped off. The 9th Division was having one hell of a fight trying to finish off a determined pocket of trapped enemy behind the frontlines pushed up to the IGB. She’d seen the faces of those soldiers back when down south during last-minute preparations for the flight up to the battle which they went into. Some had been confident, some quiet and some even scared. They’d known they were going into battle whereas she actually hadn’t. When she got back to base to get more men or maybe supplies (Black Hawks such as hers carried both on the current war assignment) she’d get a short break between flights.

Those guys wouldn’t. They’d be up there where she’d just left them in what must have been one hell of a fight with an enemy not giving in and even managing the counterattack like they had done!


Major Harold Coyle, US Army, asked when they were expecting to land in Münster. The Pan Am stewardess told him that it should be in less than half an hour. He thanked her before asking her how long she had been on these Trans-Atlantic flights.

Since REFORGER started, she told him, when overwhelming numbers of cabin crew with her airline volunteered to stay with their aircraft when they came under service of the Civil Air Reserve Fleet. She’d been back-and-forth from the United States to Europe countless times and in actual fact her duties hadn’t changed: passengers still had questions!

Sensing her good nature but also tiredness after a long flight, Coyle let her walk away from him and down the aisle past others on this Boeing-747 like him in peace. She’d told him what he wanted to know and his attempt at conversation had only been for politeness sake. He sat back in his airline seat, up here in business-class, and closed his eyes. It wasn’t sleep he was after because he had already slept on the plan, and badly too, not long after takeoff. Instead, he took a few moments to himself of no longer staring at the headrests of the seats in front of him where they were more men such as himself or over to his left across the aisle where there were further men on their way to Europe. Most of the aircraft was full and he was just one among many.

Coyle’s thoughts turned to what was ahead.

It was war which he was flying towards, the fighting in Europe that had been going on since the beginning of last month. Leavenworth and his teaching assignment there – plus his little bit of fame about the kind of war which he was heading towards because he’d wrote a book how that might have gone – was behind him. Like the stewardess, Coyle had volunteered to come here. Offered a choice between taking up a post with a newly-forming stateside unit of draftees in the New Army or going to Europe, Coyle had chosen that latter. There were replacement officers for dead and injured men wanted in many positions. As a long-serving armor officer and well-respected, Coyle had only afterwards found out that he’d been in high demand for a certain new requirement put forth by SACEUR for US Army men: professionals wanted to assist Army National Guard units. He’d been told that the 1/156 ARM, from Louisiana, wanted a battalion XO and it was him. Coyle would be working for someone whom he was told was Lt.-Ralph Stapleton and who’d lost several executive officers.

He could only imagine that while in public those national guardsmen would be pleasant to him, in private they would be fuming. He could understand that. He would be an outsider brought in to their unit. They would know it would make sense but would say it that he wasn’t one of them. That would only be natural and he might do the same in their shoes. Yet that was where Coyle was going. The 1/156 ARM was apparently temporarily pulled off the line following the result of heavy fighting on the Lüneburg Heath where their parent units – 256th Infantry Brigade, 30th Infantry Division and US II Corps – had been knocked around a bit in battle. Later today, he’d show up and, after some last-minute preparations, they’d go back into action again.

Here on this flight there were others who just like him who were doing the same with combat and non-combat units all throughout Europe. Very soon, upon landing, it would be off to that fight they’d all been going.





March 15th 1990
The East German Baltic coast & Mecklenburg Bay

For the past several weeks, NATO had been looking to introduce their amphibious assault forces into the western parts of the Baltic. A variety of operations for the marines fielded by several nations gathered ready for action had been looked at. These were men who’d seen action in Norway very early in the war. They were well-equipped and well-trained. American, British and Dutch marines, along with a small number of Frenchmen who’d joined them, had been forced by external circumstances to be unable to conduct an offensive until today. The US Marines with the 2nd Marine Division had been held up holding the frontlines in the very northern tip of Jutland, an act undertaken in an emergency that had been ongoing for far longer than anticipated. The 2nd Marine Division formed more than half of the US II Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF), the American-led corps-sized combat command, and without them there had been no employment of the rest of the II MEF.

However, while the US Marines were skirmishing with Soviet troops for control of the ground both sides of the shallow Limfjord between mainland Jutland and North Jutlantic Island, plans had been being made. Allied Forces Baltic Approaches was the higher command for the II MEF and orders for them had come from above first by General Galvin and then his successor General Schwarzkopf for an amphibious operation to be readied to go once the 2nd Marine Division was relieved of its then-current tasking. The British had been pressing too for the commitment of the II MEF rather than having their Royal Marines wait around like they had been for so long when there was clearly a need for them to see action somewhere in the Baltic with the aim being that this would bring relief elsewhere for NATO’s war efforts. Similarly, the senior officers with the US Marines at the tip of Jutland regarded their men as being wasted fighting the holding action that they were when it appeared that the Soviet Eleventh Guards Army wasn’t serious in completing their early effort to fully take Jutland: intelligence had been passed to them showing that orders from the Warsaw Pact high command were for the II MEF to be forestalled from a major amphibious operation by keeping as many of that force engaged where it was.

In addition to the 2nd Marine Division with its pair of combat brigades, the II MEF consisted of the British 3rd Commando Brigade (with a battalion of Dutch marines alongside three British units as well as French naval commandos), the US Marines’ 2d Reserve Brigade (who’d earlier had a torrid time down in the West Germany near the Danish border requiring a hasty evacuation) and an immense combat-support and service support component too. There was a full air wing of combat aircraft and armed helicopters. Heavy artillery was aplenty and so too armour and landing craft which doubled as armoured transports. Significant sea- & air-lift for the II MEF was ready in the form of assets on standby. The combat strength of the command plus all the supplies marshalled would allow it to more than just conduct an amphibious landing: it could fight its way inland and hold its own against an enemy force. This was why the II MEF had been assembled, before a large part of it had been effectively kidnapped for fighting on the shores of the Skagerrak.

During that wait for it to be free to conduct an operation, where such a mission was to take place had been the subject of much discussion. A decision was made early on to use the II MEF in the Baltic, not on the North Sea side of Jutland, and to land within the enemy rear. What was wanted was a location where a safe landing could take place and from there afterwards there was room to maneuver so that the II MEF could do strategic damage to the enemy over a sustained period of time. To just hold a piece of coastal real estate, even a valuable one, and be penned-in by the Soviets soon after landing wasn’t what was wanted. Instead, panic should be spread among the enemy’s commanders, so the orders from high above came, allowing the II MEF’s advances on land to influence events elsewhere. If this couldn’t be achieved, then the II MEF could be better used fed into the already active frontlines rather than undertake an amphibious landing – where losses would come no matter what to not just them but transport and fire support assets – that wouldn’t influence the war effort. The I MEF (the 1st Marine Division plus attachments) down in Austria was already showing how successful they could be in doing that after they made an administrative landing in the rear and then moved up to the frontlines.

SACEUR, the last one and the current one both, had many times been prepared to see that happen if there wasn’t somewhere that the II MEF could be deployed to where the cost which would come with a major landing in the enemy’s rear wouldn’t pay off several times afterwards.

Because of these decisions made higher up, ideas for landings to be made down the eastern side of Jutland by the II MEF had been rejected. There had been a notion to assist the Danes who were clinging onto the coastline in places by landing near them and letting them break out. Not enough enemy forces could be caught in enemy trap nor would the frontlines really be opened up if that happened though. Others eyes looked further south, down along the West German coast all the way from Eckernforde to Kiel and beyond. Again, the same issues with not achieving anything strategically by that caused rejection. Ambitious eyes were cast much further east and into East Germany along their Baltic coast. A red line had been drawn following the thirteenth parallel east with naval activity on the other side of that line judged ‘highly dangerous’; the waters to the west of that were decreed to be ‘contested’. Rugen Island and the Pomeranian Bay were thus too far for the II MEF to go with the danger of losing men and ships in great numbers on the way and leaving the II MEF cut-off deep in the enemy’s rear. The coast of Mecklenburg Bay was then settled on: far enough forward to do major damage to the enemy if all plans for post-landing exploitation paid off but not too far forward to leave those sent exposed and liable to being defeated in detail. A landing was rejected for the Lubeck area first then Wismar and Rostock too. The port facilities around each were heavily defended and while it wasn’t as if there was anything like a WW2-era Baltic Wall near to those areas, they were still well-defended. Taking control of them and the communications networks around them (Lubeck was right next to the IGB with Wismar and Rostock away to the east of there and all along one highway) would allow access into northern East Germany with assistance for the II MEF to come from air power based very nearby on Danish islands south of Zealand. Nearby too were NATO controlled waters giving quick access for ships bringing in all of the marines plus all that equipment which they would need to fight with.

After pushing aside ideas to go directly for the ports and the towns around them, it was decided that instead of a costly frontal attack against each a landing nearby before quickly taking one – then, later, all of them – from land was much preferred. Intelligence information and then on-the-ground reconnaissance quickly found an ideal location where the II MEF could land and get ashore fast through light defences to establish themselves within East Germany ready to meet the demands from higher up that would bring strategic goals. The long-term plan was to open up the enemy flank here on a large scale when the Allied I Airborne Corps would follow the II MEF; there was a chance too that either Canadian troops from Aalborg or Danes from Zealand (maybe both) could enter the fighting afterwards as long as the II MEF achieved what was wanted in terms of strategic rather than tactical goals.

The beaches at Boltenhagen and the military training site at nearby Tarnewitz were chosen for this morning’s landings, located between Lubeck and Wismar.


Naval special forces were on the ground first long before daybreak.

French naval commandos (Fusiliers-Marins) with Commando Hubert and Commando Jaubert – company-sized units – were on the westward flank with these men who in the war’s first week had put their deadly skills to use in the Norwegian Lofoten Islands and then later fought in the Dutch Frisian Islands. They came ashore by tiny rubber boats and secured any available high ground which they could find past the Baltic shoreline. Their task was to guard against an enemy approach and radios were meant to be their most vital weapon. They disagreed with that though and engaged in combat with an East German KdA guard unit when they stumbled upon them – knives were the French weapon of choice – and also attacked an anti-aircraft gun position that the pre-mission brief hadn’t covered.

Force Recon Marines in the centre and the Special Boat Service (SBS) in the east landed where the amphibious assaults were coming in. The Americans and British were operating in a small area overall and there was supposed to be set areas of operations due to worries over friendly fire with small groups of men on edge clashing. Rather than engaging in shooting each other, or even finding any enemy to silence from broadcasting a warning as was their mission, they clashed in another manner. A party of SBS men – who’d recently been busy in the Pomeranian Bay on strategic deception tasks as part of last-minute preparations for Operation Eastern Storm – came upon some Force Recon Marines. Carefully, one of their number surprised one of the Americans by getting behind him and telling him quietly that they had a brew on and asking would he fancy a cuppa? It was a stupid thing to do and it nearly got the Briton killed. There was little else for the special forces men at Boltenhagen and Tarnewitz to do whilst they waited for everyone else to arrive though. There was no enemy in sight and they had located no mines or physical impediments to the incoming landing craft and transport helicopters. The SBS were also frustrated at looking for an anti-aircraft unit which appeared to have up and left sometime during the night (the one which the French came across). All of the hyped-up tension and readiness for this mission was wasted when there was nothing to do apart from set radio beacons and point guns at shadows in the darkness. Some men – of both nationalities – complained that their talents had been wasted yet others disagreed: if there was no enemy to be fought it meant that the mission was a success overall in allowing for the II MEF landing to take place.


At the first sign of daybreak, the main part of Operation Sea Devil commenced.

Aircraft filled the sky with fighters and attack aircraft flying from the USS Saratoga (which had moved cautiously down into the Kattegat but only for this morning) and several small air-strips which were located on Langeland and Lolland: those on the Danish islands were refuelling and rearming stops. The US Navy had its aircraft among those in the sky and so too did the US Marines. There were Hornets, Intruders and Harriers aiming to strike far inland or near the beaches if it came to that. There were a very few RAF Harriers deployed to assist the Royal Marines too and flying from one of those Danish air-strips.

USS Iowa had raced down into Mecklenburg Bay and Tomahawks were fired away from her, again sent far inland. The battleship’s sixteen-inch guns were ready for action: all that was needed for them was someone to fire against. Damage from last April’s peacetime explosion meant that she had six of her guns available rather than the standard nine, but that didn’t limit her capability ready to do immense damage to an opponent, any opponent once the order came.

The amphibious ships were behind the battleship, surrounded by other warships there to defend them from air, surface and submarine threat. The British had HMS Fearless present along with other amphibious warfare ships, but the amphibious transport force was nearly all American with dozens of US Navy vessels in this force. Largest among these were the assault landing platforms USS Wasp, USS Saipan, USS Nassau, USS Guadalcanal and USS Guam. Saipan and Nassau had spent much of the war in the Mediterranean as they had supported US Marines in the Turkish Straits and then later assisted in the lifting of I MEF equipment from Port Said to the Italian Adriatic ports in the Gulf of Venice. They and other amphibious ships had then made a speed run to Gibraltar, up to the North Sea and then now down into Mecklenburg Bay. Wasp, Guadalcanal and Guam had been active assisting in the liberation of parts of northern Norway early in the war and then afterwards left waiting in southern Norwegian fjords. All the amphibious ships weren’t staying here for long this morning though. They were launching landing craft and transport helicopters full of marines from three countries, plus having Harriers and attack Cobras flying from their flight-decks in the case of the larger vessels, before planning to soon turn back northwards as they had come rather close to the East German coast.

The landing craft and the transport helicopters were fast to deliver their cargoes of men, weapons and equipment. Runs were made from ship-to-shore several times with deposits made on the beaches and at the military site where the British were but also inland too. Marines were everywhere quickly enough with the fighting men being tough and ready for a battle yet also needing tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery to support them. At the coastal landing sites, there remained an absence of a fight with an enemy not present but there started to come engagements inland. Anti-aircraft units, radar sites and KdA positions were encountered. The little town of Klutz near the coast was taken without a fight but at Grevesmuhlen inland through which the main road ran the first major fight was undertaken. 2/4 MARINES were involved in that as they were pushed that far ahead within two hours of landing. M-60 tanks and LAV-25 armoured vehicles were alongside the AAVP-7s which took the US Marines to that town, all part of a planned expansion of the outer areas of control towards the highway between Lubeck and Wismar: a highway which was desired to be reached so the attack on Wismar from land could be got on with.

Grevesmuhlen was going to be a very tough fight indeed when Soviet troops were encountered there after only East Germans had been come up against first. Where the 2/4 MARINES had their fight would be also at that point the furthest, deepest inside East Germany that any NATO troops had reached. Going in through an undefended coast will do that though.


The II MEF taking part in Sea Devil had a plan of action for their whole mission that included contingencies up and to an evacuation, if needed. There was only good progress shown early on though. The landings had been unopposed on the ground because the right area had been chosen to do this. Enemy combat troops weren’t in the wider area and those who chose to fight, first at Grevesmuhlen then elsewhere afterwards, were rear-area soldiers and militia. Any mobile coastal missile batteries were far away in Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland. There were no strategic tank reserves poised to attack a beachhead taken by the II MEF due to the war needs elsewhere with East Germany about to be invaded from the west.

Getting on with their mission as the day went on, the II MEF was to go for Wismar as their objective. The British and Dutch were to be along the coast and nearby just inland with the 2nd Marine Division even deeper inside East Germany wheeling around the outside to come at Wismar following the highway. The Marine Reservists had the role of guarding the flanks yet also taking advantage of any opportunity to take any strategic points too. The city of Schwerin lay to the south, but for now that was not the objective. Going south would come much later.

Over the beaches and into Tarnewitz came more than just combat forces. Engineers flooded in to complete many tasks including setting up air-strips for helicopters and Harriers. Air defences were quickly established as well, plus plenty of communications sites. Then there was all of the supplies and the transport to move that. The II MEF needed to get all of this ashore now. Waiting for Wismar to be taken would be foolish, especially as the port could hardly be expected to be taken initially intact.

The II MEF were here to stay and needed to have everything they needed to make Sea Devil the success which was hoped for it.


Out in Mecklenburg Bay, Iowa got a fire mission inland and was soon busy on that task. The battleship fired her guns at distant targets inside East Germany with extreme prejudice with fire correction coming from US Marines on the ground and confirmed by a Pioneer spotting drone flown from the vessel.

Elsewhere in this part of the Baltic just south of Denmark, other vessels didn’t have such a successful morning. Casualties came as ships were sunk or damaged. This was expected yet naturally unwelcome. There had been a naval campaign previous to today but in the wider area and one which was aimed to not alert the enemy as to what was coming their way. Judgement calls had been made on how strongly to operate here beforehand less the game be given away. It was known that once Sea Devil was underway, this would mean losses taken but there had been no other choice when it came to either allowing the II MEF to get ashore surprising the enemy or thoroughly defeating all opponents beforehand and making the coast full of defending troops ready to meet what was coming their way.

The Iowa was at the centre of a surface action group (SAG) where there were cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes and missile boats from several nations present. These were to guard the amphibious ships on the way in and out as well as establishing a continuing presence to protect the II MEF’s supply links. Air cover came from the distant Saratoga, airfields across Denmark and the soon-to-be-established ones on the East German coast. There were submarines below the water and mine warfare vessels atop. Enemy action against them came soon enough, once the Warsaw Pact understood that what was going on along the coast was more than a raid so that meant there would be contacts to be engaged offshore.

So begun the Battle of the Mecklenburg Bay with aircraft, missiles, warships, submarines and mines each playing a part in this. The Iowa SAG and aircraft on air support tasks were right in the firing line of the enemy but fought back giving just as good as they got.





March 15th 1990
Moerdijk, Zuid-Holland, the Netherlands

The Battle of Dordrecht had ended this morning when the last resistance was crushed.

General Rose’s 2nd Infantry Division had won that battle yet the cost was frightening… just as he had feared that it would be before the final round of fighting there commenced. British soldiers had paid the price of victory for the Dutch city with their blood and their lives. They had died alongside Soviet paratroopers and Dutch civilians caught up in the crossfire. Much of Dordrecht had been destroyed, especially at the very end when parts of the city had been blown up in a coordinated series of demolitions. Mass graves were being dug while field hospitals were overflowing with the wounded. Then there were the prisoners of war too: including the Soviet commander who claimed that none of what had occurred was his fault.

The commander of the 106th Guards Airborne Division, who Rose had met beforehand on the Moerdijkspoorbrug during those unfaithful negotiations more than a week ago, had been captured. He and many of his command staff were in custody after their basement bunker had been overrun by TA men with the Royal Regiment of Wales. Grenades had been thrown by the soldiers before they had rushed in afterwards to find some of their enemy dead and the rest either wounded or stunned. Lebed had been recognised as a prize catch by a sergeant from Aberystwyth by his shoulder boards who’d hit him with the butt of his rifle (one, two, maybe half a dozen times) when he went for his pistol and then dragged him out to wild, celebratory cheers from his platoon.

Such was the story that the Welshmen had anyway: Rose was willing to accept it.

Those prisoners who could walk had been marched here this evening. Engineers were all over Dordrecht trying to get rid of unexploded munitions while Rose’s soldiers were collecting discarded weapons from dead or surrendered men. There were some armed Dutchmen active in the city with vengeance on their mind and those guerilla fighters had a mind to kill anyone in a Soviet uniform; soon enough organised Dutch troops would be arriving to take control of their fellow citizens. Because of the clear-up and the security situation, Rose had brought those prisoners across to here. They had marched down the route taken by his men during their final attacks and then come over the pontoon bridges run down to Moerdijk. In a different situation Lebed, maybe another officer or two, would have been afforded transport in a staff car or a truck. Not this time though: Rose had made Lebed walk like his men did.

Lebed was with Rose now as the two of them waited an officer from the Allied II Corps staff to turn up to talk to Lebed. A translator was present and Lebed had spoken at length through him to Rose… or tried to anyway. Once Rose had been told once that Lebed and his paratroopers were the good guys and it was the KGB who did everything else, he didn’t want to hear that excuse again. The typical Soviet whataboutism was used by Lebed as he preempted allegations against the conduct of his men – contradicting the claim that his Airborne Troops were angels who respected the rules of law etc. etc. etc. – by stating that NATO forces had done terrible things elsewhere in this war. Furthermore, Lebed had repeated several times through the translator who he badgered to keep translating into English what he was saying that there should be no claim made in NATO propaganda that he and the Tula Division had surrendered at Dordrecht.

The KGB would kill their families if they heard that.

Rose could have walked away or even asked the young Russian-speaking lieutenant wearing a Royal Signals Corps uniform to go. He didn’t have to wait with Lebed for the last half an hour before the helicopter from Breda (where the Allied II Corps headquarters was) to arrive. He should have been dealing with his division at this time following its victory that had come at such a cost. Yet he waited because he wanted to be with his opponent in the Battle of Dordrecht for just a short period of time. He didn’t respond to what Lebed said and stayed silent as he studied him. Some of what the man was saying was undoubtedly true though there would be lies too. Which was which would be up to others to decide and this man’s fate would be determined elsewhere by others. Nothing Rose decided on the matter had any relevance when it came to the shooting or partisans & guerillas here in the Netherlands but also back in West Germany by Lebed’s men, the impressment of civilian labour conducted under the example of shooting those who refused nor the destruction of civilian buildings inside Dordrecht by use of explosives when there were still people in them. Whether Lebed knew where the KGB who had ordered all of this done otherwise his men would be shot before they disappeared was not his concern either. Furthermore, it wasn’t up to him to decide what was said officially by national governments nor the apparently famous press conferences being conducted daily by NATO’s commander.

The helicopter was coming in, a French Alouette carrying a fellow British officer of Rose’s serving on the corps intelligence staff. He didn’t know whether Lebed would be taken out straight away or spoken to first here before being removed from Moerdijk. Rose hoped that it was the former rather than the latter.

He also considered whether it all would have just been easier if more grenades had been thrown into that command bunker or if the Welsh sergeant there who favoured using his rifle butt as an improvised club had hit his prisoner harder before he was technically a prisoner.


The British Army officer who came out of the helicopter introduced himself in Russian to Lebed. He noticed how the brigadier who then gave him some water and politely requested that they had a talk walked as if he was wounded in a way which Lebed couldn’t see. He had rather prominent bags under his eyes for a man in his mid-forties but Lebed paid attention more to how pale he looked rather than that. There were decorations on his field uniform including one which thought might have identified him as a paratrooper. Suspecting that something was up, though being unable to put his finger on it, with this man coming to see him like he was, Lebed at once told the brigadier that he wasn’t going to be their Vlasov.

There came instant, heartfelt laughter from the brigadier as if Lebed had said the most stupid thing possible.

Lebed was led to a tracked command vehicle and the brigadier had him take a seat. British soldiers all around gave him filthy looks as if they wished to kill him with their bare hands, as General Rose had done, but Lebed held his head high and met their gazes as he was determined not to show weakness. He watched the brigadier sit on a fold-down bench attached to the side of the vehicle next to him and was intrigued at the scene.

This man was in pain.

Lebed asked him what was wrong with him. Had he been hurt in combat or was it something else? It wasn’t compassion that caused him to enquire but curiosity. Of course, the moment after speaking he regretted it: he shouldn’t be talking with the enemy like this.

The brigadier told him that he had been shot almost three weeks ago when in West Germany. A traitor had fired at other NATO officers had he had been caught up in that. A bullet had struck him in the abdomen and he’d lost a lot of blood. There was talk of a Yankee doctor who the brigadier said saved his life and called his wound a ‘through-and-through’ that hadn’t hit any organs nor caused any internal damage. There was mention made too of another Yankee, an American Army officer, who had claimed to have saved his life rather than the nearby surgeon who’d stopped the blood-flow. Afterwards, the brigadier had been evacuated back to England to a hospital where he’d fought every day there to return to the war. Now he was on light duties, working in intelligence where he had started his career, rather than leading combat troops into battle as he had done earlier in the war.

The story sounded true to Lebed. There was an offer to show Lebed the wound at the front and at the back on the brigadier if he wanted: he turned that down. He was asked if he was hurt himself because, the brigadier said, by the look of the growing swelling on his face and the side of his head, he appeared to be.

Had he seen a doctor? Did he want to see one? There were civilian doctors who were volunteering with the Red Cross back at Breda where they were soon to go and, if Lebed wanted, he would see one of them – would he like that to be arranged?

Lebed looked right at the brigadier and told him slowly and firmly that he was no Vlasov. In addition, he was never going to do what they wanted no matter what tale of shared woes or bribery they offered him. He wouldn’t betray the Rodina, not now nor in the future. He hadn’t surrendered to them nor willingly been taken prisoner. Lebed said that he would like to join his fellow Soviet Army officers in a prisoner-of-war camp if there was no intention of shooting him. There was no reason to shoot him either, for his men hadn’t willfully committed any of the so-called war crimes that NATO said were war crimes anyway: the Chekists were the ones guilty of those by giving the orders under the punishment of death of family members back home for refusing.

He wasn’t going to talk and he wanted the British brigadier to understand that.


Brigadier Jackson led his prisoner to the helicopter. A pair of Redcaps who had come with him were close-by and then got aboard too. When everyone was secured inside, Jackson waited for lift-off. That didn’t happen though and after giving them a moment in case there was a need for last-minute preparations for the flight, he asked the pilot through the intercom why that was the case.

The response came that there was a wait for clearance. It sounded odd to Jackson because Moerdijk was hardly a major air-head. Nonetheless, he said no more. Soon enough they would be up and on their way back to Breda.

He glanced across at his prisoner, General-Major Alexander Ivanovich Lebed. He stared defiantly back and wasn’t the same man as he had first been when he enquired as he did after Jackson’s health back in the rear of that command vehicle. One of the military policemen had secured his hands and both of them certainly were ready to react should he do something foolish. Jackson didn’t think Lebed would, but he had to admit that it was at least possible for this was a well-experienced soldier he was with.

Lebed was thirty-nine years old and had been a soldier for twenty-one of those. From what NATO intelligence knew, he had been a fast-rising young officer within the Soviet Airborne Troops: there was a long posting as an instructor at a paratrooper officer school which he had undertaken. Lebed had been to Afghanistan and fought there before afterwards going to Frunze and the military academy. During that latter period, there had been appointments he had undertaken in prestigious ceremonial roles up in Moscow when the Soviet Union’s old guard politicians died off: that had got him noticed. NATO knew of him taking the 106th Division down to the Caucasus in recent years where there had been many incidents where Soviet Army troops had fired on dissents, including just before the war where Rodionov the Slaughterman had got his sobriquet. KGB and MVD troops had later taken on those duties with Lebed taking his division to Poland right before the war started. Everywhere before Dordrecht that Lebed’s division had fought he had lead them to victory… until they were trapped in the Dutch pocket and ground down until finally defeated. He had family back home in the Soviet Union, his ‘Rodina’, in addition to a brother also in the Airborne Troops who was believed to have been shot by the KGB earlier in the war with Lebed having no knowledge of that… yet.

There was no intention of using Lebed as a Vlasov like he had repeatedly said he wouldn’t be. NATO wasn’t looking to raise a Russian Liberation Army in any form and even if they did, Lebed wouldn’t be the sort to lead any such creation. Jackson had been expecting Lebed to say many things, some he did, others he didn’t, but not that. When he had laughed, he had meant it for the idea had been wholly amusing. Who would arm and supply such a rebel force? Who could trust any group of men like that? Which politician would want to give the approval for a creation that everyone – despite denials – would see as a modern-day equivalent to what the Nazis did with Vlasov in WW2?

No, Jackson wanted Lebed to talk about the KGB. Where were they now, was to be what he aimed to find out when he spoke with Lebed again. If Lebed didn’t know, then he would ask where they were last seen. Jackson would ask for names, ranks and everything Lebed knew about what they had been doing in the Netherlands: especially what they had done with many (though not all) NATO prisoners that they had been responsible for. There were missing British soldiers as well as those of other nationalities who weren’t transferred out before Soviet forces in the Netherlands were trapped but there was no sign at all of at the moment anywhere in the liberated or very few unliberated areas left. That was what Jackson, assisted by others back in Breda, wanted Lebed to talk about.

He had told Lebed that he was an intelligence officer and hoped that he would be thinking that if it wasn’t a Vlasov Jackson wanted, then it would be information instead.

Lowering a hand to his side and touching his uniform where underneath his wound was, Jackson thought for a moment about February 24th when he’d been shot in Norden. There was still pain there, despite his denials to all who would listen. He’d told them back home that he was fine and when posted here in the Low Countries he’d said the same: there was no pain and he was ready to serve again. It had taken a lot of convincing on his part plus that of senior men who he had good relationships pre-war with to allow him to come back to active service, though they wouldn’t give him a combat posting again. He was still classed as injured and if Britain hadn’t been in dire straits with manpower issues then there was no way that he would be here: many rules had been broken to get him here. He recalled as if it was only minutes ago those West German officers – blackmailed by the Stasi apparently, with threats to their children who were held hostage – shooting at Norden during that commanders conference after he and everyone else had arrived from Norway into Ostfriesland. There was a US Army brigadier-general by the name of Clark who’d dived atop him and tried to stop the bleeding (basking in the ‘heroism’ of doing so afterwards) before Jackson’s life had been saved by a reservist US Navy surgeon there with the US Marines officers.

The serious wounds that everyone had agreed he had taken while being amazed at his recovery had led him back to what Jackson had done when a young officer: serving with the Intelligence Corps again. He knew it was vital work and what he hoped to get from Lebed would be important though, of course, he would have preferred a combat command again. He’d served for many years to rise up to his current rank and been on the staff command courses to do so. But that bullet that like magic had missed everything of importance inside him had put a stop to that for this war at least. It was unfair, but just the way things turned out.

A call from the pilot saying that they were finally lifting off now, breaking Jackson’s reflections. He felt them starting to get airborne and was about to tell Lebed that there would be some food waiting for him when they got to Breda. Jackson was interrupted before he started to speak though by one of the Redcaps with an excitable shout: “Holy fuck, did you see that flash?”

Jackson wasn’t sure if his eyes had caught something or not. The Redcap was pointing out of the cabin window to the east, over there in the darkness and looking terrified. Then the pilot announced that he was putting the helicopter back down right now!

What was going on?





March 15th 1990
Deest, outside Nijmegen, Gelderland, the Netherlands

The village of Deest lay along the southern shore of the Waal eight miles to the west of Nijmegen. It had been under Soviet occupation for twenty days now since Soviet forces had rolled through the Rhine Estuary and raced towards the North Sea. Those who lived in the village who hadn’t managed to get away before the Soviet arrived at once truly regretted that they hadn’t.

A furious battle had raged near the village earlier in the day between Soviet and French armour with the latter being forced to complete a tactical withdrawal after coming across such strong, unexpected opposition. The Soviets weren’t expected to have any fuel, let alone ammunition for their tanks, but they had and so the French with only armoured cars to support their infantry had pulled back in response. NATO tactical intelligence had at once focused upon Deest as an answer was sought as to why the defence had been what it was: there was also interest paid in what exactly was going on in Deest as well.

Being an outlet of the Rhine, the Waal was fast-flowing. It was a heavily-used waterway for shipping in peacetime as well as full of pollutants from industrial and urban sources downstream. The Waal wasn’t a deep river overall through there were a few places where there was some greater depth than most: at Deest there was some of that deep water. Soviet geographic survey engineers, specialists in their field, had previously confirmed what was discovered on charts in the public record showing the depth and the ground beneath the river being suitable to be evacuated even further down using only a small amount of explosives. Those specialists in one engineering field had afterwards been replaced in Deest by amphibious engineers who’d been given a rather easy task of lowering down demolition charges and blowing open the riverbed. The blasts had occurred and the hole opened up had filled with water. The KGB colonel who’d set all of this work in progress had then supervised the arrival of trucks laden with cargoes unloaded under the cover of darkness by a detachment of minelaying engineers after the amphibious engineers had been next to be given orders to transfer elsewhere. Down into the river, deep into the hole, the minelaying engineers lowered a whole load of weaponry which continued to arrive through today.

No one spoke of what the weapons being placed here in such a manner exactly were. The KGB colonel had discouraged the curious by shooting those who had questions which they voiced. Despite efforts to physically disguise the fact that they were actually weapons going down into the hole, all of those involved in the burying of them under the river knew that they were hiding ammunition. The effort involved here and the actions of the Chekist gave an understanding that what was being dropped down into the Waal – with the intention it appeared to deposit earth and rocks back down atop of the hole below – were ‘special weapons’ of some sort. Whispered comments were made along with knowing winks by the third group of engineers here. However, what they didn’t have an inkling towards was the fate of the engineers doing other tasks who’d been here before them: men who’d been shot by the KGB elsewhere by executioners who had no idea why they were killing those who they were.

Yes, someone really had put a lot of thought into trying to make sure that very, very few people would know about this hole beneath a river in the central Netherlands into which ‘special weapons’ were going.

Into the Waal went nuclear warheads. From out of the bodies of missiles and rockets assigned to Soviet Army units which had brought with them into the Netherlands tactical thermonuclear weapons came: just the warheads rather than the whole weapon. Some units had faced attacks with NATO aircraft and the cargoes which they sent to Deest were damaged, but into the hole under the river they went. There were bombs meant to be dropped from combat aircraft which were also brought to Deest and they came whole: down into the Waal they went as well. Artillery shells which were just enlarged nuclear warheads arrived at Deest and down they went. Soviet forces which had come this far west when the war was all about advances deep into Western Europe had brought with them these weapons as per requirements from high command for them to be used in a tactical manner on the battlefield or even as forward-based assets in a semi-strategic strike beyond the battlefield. NATO attacks on them, deliberate or unintentional, had seen damage done to some yet none had prematurely exploded. A few nuclear warheads which should have made it too Deest weren’t here though after NATO commandos had seized them during their selective but infrequent raids against nuclear-armed missile detachments.

In addition, down into that underwater hole went other special weapons too: dispensing pods (complete with contents) for secretive biological weapons that the Soviets did not want the West to get their hands on for the fear that if other examples were used at a later date elsewhere a counter could already have been developed. Like the thermonuclear warheads, these too had been brought this far forward, unused in the war and now there was no possible way of getting them out of the rapidly-diminishing pocket very far from the main frontlines which ran down the IGB through Germany.

Those biological agents aside, the Soviets were burying these special weapons for they didn’t want to see them end up in enemy hands. Letting NATO intelligence have a look at them was one thing they had no intention of allowing to happen, but there was something else too. The Soviets didn’t want to have their nuclear warheads end up in the hands of the West where one day they might be used against them. The United States and others might have tens of thousands of their own that they could use against the Soviet Union in a nuclear exchange, but for some of those to be possibly Soviet-built was just something which they didn’t want to see happening. At first glance, maybe this might seem rather pointless because that would involve their usage in a nuclear genocide where to many it might not matter where the weapons came from, but it did matter. Those weapons weren’t going to end up being allowed to be held by NATO and that was just the way it was.

One more nuclear warhead was brought to Deest and this one was not to go into the hole under the river. The KGB colonel had been told to leave this one to the end with instructions to come as to what was happening with it. It was a different munition from all of the others. This one had no speedometers within its armament package making sure it wouldn’t explode until travelling at a certain speed (done with those in missiles or rockets to stop accidental explosion) nor was it shaped like the other weapons with aerodynamics employed in the design. This warhead was in a large satchel designed to be worn by a commando on his back when parachuted from an aircraft or swimming from a submersible. It was waterproofed to stop damage done to its electronics even in corrosive seawater. The satchel was heavy and bulky and the KGB colonel had some of his trusted men at Deest rotating a personal guard on the weapon even when he needed them to attend to other duties.

This was a weapon designed for sabotage to be covertly inserted before being used. The warhead was small with only a minimal yield. However, it was just as deadly as any other thermonuclear weapon here… but the only one with long-distance radio-command detonation.


At 20:25:12 local time, beside the Waal at Deest, that warhead was detonated.

A ground burst occurred with a force of four kilotons. There was first the signature double flash of the detonation and then the fireball with a radius of ‘only’ one hundred and forty meters. The pulse of thermal radiation came afterwards, shooting out in every direction away from Deest. Following that was the blast effect with the wave of destruction this caused from the overpressure of the blast. Radiation and fallout would come afterwards, the latter plentiful because this was a ground-burst.

Water within the Waal was vaporized at the moment of impact and more was pushed back away from Deest, overflowing river banks to the east and west. The weight of more water coming down the Rhine and through the Waal heading for the North Sea pushed more of the river forward quickly afterwards though and this ran into the crater caused by the blast. Above, a mushroom cloud had started to form and that rose above the Netherlands. Under the river, beneath the rock-bed of the river and mud which wasn’t atomized and had fallen inwards into the hole evacuated under the Waal following the nuclear detonation above, was a stockpile of Soviet nuclear and biological weapons which no one was going near for a very long time.

Deest was flattened.

The village was just gone. Yet, very little damage was done elsewhere nearby in Druten, Dodewaard, Winssen and Afferden: small neighbouring villages which were left standing despite being so close to the nuclear explosion. Across the nearby cities of Nijmegen (eight miles away) and Arnhem (twelve miles), as well as Utrecht further away (twenty-seven miles), it was almost as if the blast at Deest hadn't happened. That certainly wouldn't have been the case had it been bigger or taken place at an altitude greater than sea-level.

Death and injuries occurred over a considerable, but again somewhat limited, area. Anyone in or near Deest was vaporized and didn’t feel a thing. Those close by had a second or two of overwhelming pain before their lives were extinguished. The blast-wave killed far more than the fireball did. Others would start dying very soon enough though after the immense levels of radiation that their bodies were exposed to. A lot of people – Soviet soldiers, NATO troops and Dutch civilians – were injured and would succumb to them; others would survive but would never be the same again. Flash-blindness would be a major issue. Not looking straight in the direction of Deest at the time the explosion begun didn’t save the sight of so many over a huge area as the human eye is drawn to movement and there came the second flash afterwards.

The KGB colonel had moments beforehand been on a secure radio channel to his superior, a general whom he believed was still in Arnhem. He had reported that all the other nuclear weapons were down in the underwater hole along with the biological agents. Only the last weapon which he had been told to leave out was left and he was engaged in last-minute preparations to do just that. Once he received permission to drop that in, he would get rid of the minelaying engineers and bring in the next group of engineers to fill in the hole with rocks and earth. That general – elsewhere with others of the same rank plus two colonels – had told him to wait and had asked where the satchel bomb was exactly. When told, he had promised to get back to the trusted man at Deest with further instructions within a few moments.

Then there had come the radio signal sent causing the devastating blast.

The KGB colonel and his men were killed outright along with the engineers on-site. Everyone else who had known about what was happening at Deest was already dead. Soviet troops nearby who’d fought that battle had no idea what they had been defending.

Weapons of mass destruction had been used again in this war, this time to hide more nuclear weapons. It was an act authorized at the highest level for more than just that purpose. Political aims of the Soviet Union’s leader were the primary reason above burying Soviet weaponry… and also the side-effect of allowing a group of KGB personnel on the run to have a fantastic distraction to allow them to escape.

There was nothing like a nuclear blast and a mushroom cloud to do that.

[James G]

Twenty–Nine – Operation Eastern Storm

March 16th 1990
East Germany and West Germany

Operation Eastern Storm could have been delayed if certain figures back in the United States had had their way.

The nuclear detonation inside the Netherlands had been tiny and extremely localised over a relatively thinly populated area. It had taken place in the midst of the fighting there though not on the frontlines: back inside the last of Soviet-held territory. Intelligence gathered beforehand and interpreted afterwards of the explosion at Deest was decided that a probable accidental explosion of enemy nuclear weapons being stored there for possible destruction (in a non-nuclear manner) or being hidden. There was an outside chance that the blast had been deliberate, so the analysis ran, and if that was the case it would have been to destroy those weapons less they fall into NATO hands.

This was all troubling news, but it came atop of other troubling events before and elsewhere and still the invasion of East Germany and western Czechoslovakia was due to take place today. However, following on from the blast at Deest, an hour and a half later there had come statements released publicly from Kryuchkov in Moscow using several foreign media outlets of which the results were a hesitation to launch Eastern Storm in the face of the threat contained.

Kryuchkov firmly stated in clear terms that a second Barbarossa undertaken against his country would result in a nuclear response. The how’s and the where’s of that were not given nor the sequence of events that would lead to it. Barbarossa #2 would mean nuclear warfare though.

The media across Western Europe and Canada were censored under tight control and news of what was said in Moscow didn’t reach the people there beyond those at the top of national governments. In the United States, self-censorship had been the way of things since the war begun: there had been errors and unprofessionalism in a few cases but generally the media had behaved itself. Extracts of what Kryuchkov threatened were given to the American people, though only several hours afterwards alongside comments from President Bush to go with them. There was a danger of word getting out about the Soviet leader’s attempt at intimidation – including false details – if those in the United States were told nothing, so the judgement ran; the Europeans believed that they could handle any leaks on their end.

Put together, the explosion in the Netherlands and the Soviet threats were seen by many as one in the same thing. Kryuchkov had ordered a nuclear detonation in Western Europe, given the Allies time to take stock of that and to cease their immediate panic, before he then delivered his warning about the consequences of an invasion of Eastern Europe which would lead to a later follow-up crossing of the Soviet frontier by NATO’s armies. Other voices declared that the events were coincidental and, in addition, Kryuchkov was warning of an invasion of the Soviet Union with his threats of nuclear war: NATO intended to take East Germany – West Berlin included – and at least Bohemia, maybe Monrovia in Czechoslovakia. Poland and the Slovak SSR of Czechoslovakia were to be left alone with NATO forces left hundreds of miles back from the Soviet Union. This information had been relayed through third-party intelligence contacts to the Soviets too: it had to be understood there and Kryuchkov was just reminding the Allies of this with his statements.

As can be imagined, furious arguments erupted through the highest-levels in North America and Western Europe as to which understanding of events was correct.

Yet… the decision to go ahead was still given. There were many people involved in making sure that Eastern Storm commenced today: politicians, intelligence officials and military personnel. One in the latter category at Husterhoeh Kaserne in the Saarland was among those, though SACEUR was not the leader of the chorus which won over with the argument.


From his command centre, General Schwarzkopf commanded Eastern Storm in the way which he believed that a commander should: being focused on the big picture but interfering directly at lower levels when it was necessary if the whole operation was threatened. His staff was overworked, he knew, as they tried to keep him abreast of everything though not drowning him in too much information. He’d seen many of those on his command staff leave here since he had taken over as SACEUR with them not being able to keep up with the pace: decisions made by him or them. Being posted to his headquarters wasn’t for everyone and for those who were given the opportunity (their career would be enhanced by it), he demanded that they give it their best or put their dubious talents to work elsewhere.

An hour ago, Eastern Storm had started.

NATO forces had started moving east in a full-scale attack all across the front. Aircraft filled the skies and troops on the ground went into the attack. Screening forces at the front who’d opened the way and prepared the ground in the past few days moved aside to let the multitude of forward advances to begin. Problems had sprung up at once, but there were no serious issues yet. He expected them to occur and would address them as they arose. This was war and nothing was ever going to go perfect, but he still expected that everyone involved should give it their best for others elsewhere relied upon them. The enemy was a dangerous opponent yet by this point in the war, Schwarzkopf was convinced that they had no more tricks up their sleeve that he nor his subordinates down the chain-of-command wouldn’t have seen before and therefore knew how to counter.

The hesitations which had occurred overnight in the hours before Eastern Storm had started had infuriated Schwarzkopf. He was made aware of the nuclear explosion in the Netherlands and the threats made by Kryuchkov. SACEUR regarded the blast at Deest to have been deliberate to destroy stocks of nuclear weapons about to be captured based on a previous near-miss where the Soviets had been about to do that when General Galvin was in this role during Operation Eagle Fire. Elements of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment had overrun a stockpile gathered together in western Lower Saxony in late February all set for what appeared to have been a controlled detonation then. There had been an unresolved argument over if the Soviets were going to blow that stockpile up with a nuclear warhead or conventional explosives then: either way, the Brave Rifles had snatched those weapons first in the face of strong resistance from KGB men who had made a suicidal stand when failing to stop that. He regarded what had happened at Deest as being just the same again, only this time the KGB managing to set off a detonation first. As to what Kryuchkov had to say, Schwarzkopf believed that his comments had been too vague to have the Allies call of Eastern Storm based upon them.

Now these had been his beliefs, backed up by intelligence information which he had seen as SACEUR. He could have been wrong, he was willing to accept that. When Powell had been in contact, Schwarzkopf had admitted that to him along with the comment that maybe others had access to better information than him. However, he couldn’t delay launching Eastern Storm as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had told him was an idea being discussed. The operation was either a go or it would have to be cancelled: a delay (for an unspecified time too!) couldn’t happen.

Why was this the case?

The attacking forces massed to launch the invasion eastwards weren’t doing so on their own. Eastern Storm wasn’t happening in a vacuum, free of external considerations. A delay would mean that the enemy would get a let-up from the pre-invasion air and special forces attacks underway and be able to recover. They would also look at where those had taken place and compare that with where Schwarzkopf’s strike forces were positioned behind the frontlines. The Soviets would see where his main attacks were to come, plus where they weren’t about to as well. Eastern Storm would be ruined, when launched after a delay it wouldn’t work.

Give the operation a green light or cancel it, he had told Powell, because a delay will cause a disaster to occur and maybe lose the war.

Donald Rumsfeld – the new Deputy to Cheney who was in what was really a manager’s job rather than the one for a strategist as Rumsfeld was – had been in contact after Schwarzkopf had spoken to Powell. The President, Cheney, Scowcroft and others were on the line, Rumsfeld had said. He’d been asked to explain what he meant in greater detail and he had: SACEUR had also told them of the cost in lives which would come from a delay. Someone had put the trans-Atlantic phone connection on mute for a few moments where Schwarzkopf presumed that a short debate had occurred, before Bush himself had come on the line telling him to go with the operation. SACEUR had affirmed his president’s order before speaking again with Rumsfeld who told him that he was sending Schwarzkopf a further two national guard divisions from home: the 26th & 38th Infantry Divisions. Both of them, not with their pre-war organisation, had been undergoing training since mobilization and Rumsfeld believed they were certainly ready for a European deployment after such a long period. Other national guard units – ground and air – had been in combat in Europe and Korea since almost the beginning and those men kept back were ready to move overseas now.

After telling Rumsfeld that he would use the reinforcements well, the connection with home was cut. SACEUR had returned to his duties, passing down the go orders throughout Europe, though with two things on his mind about that conversation: firstly, where had Vice President Webb and Secretary of State Dole been when such a decision had been made, and also just how much influence did Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defence himself back in mid-Seventies) already have back home for it had appeared that in some way that the decision to go ahead had been his?

The success of Eastern Storm relied on getting NATO ground forces into East Germany – and too towards the Czechoslovakia frontier down in the south – fast enough in strength through prepared corridors. The enemy could be found back away from the border, ready and waiting. SACEUR’s plan was to have his marshalled troops, those who’d been kept back from the fighting at the frontlines for the past several days, push far forward and right up against them there inside enemy-held territory. He wanted thrusts made eastwards where the enemy’s conserved strength could be encountered when it was still concentrated rather than after it had been deployed piecemeal into counterattacks against his forces should he have made a general attack with frontlines moving steadily forward. That was what the enemy knew how to do and what they were ready to do with their massing of armour and men. Once they were dealt with, messing up the enemy’s plans, his armoured spearheads would then go racing forward.

The eggshell approach: crack the edges with violence and get at what was inside with a relish.

Five main forward thrusts were to be made with three supporting ones. Getting all of the preparations together had involved immense work, which included hiding the intentions from the enemy by not staging close to the frontlines and area of attack. Logistics had to be arranged to keep the advance going past the initial battles otherwise it would soon falter. There was fire support with artillery and air attacks. Rear-area units would have to move forward afterwards. Eastern Storm was a massive, complicated undertaking to say the least.

Schwarzkopf had a newly-assigned briefer. This one was a US Marine: Major John Kelly. He was someone whom SACEUR found likable. Kelly had a confident self-assurance around superior officers yet no self-importance. He was honest and plain-speaking. He’d been an enlisted man, rising to a sergeant, before going to college and returning to the US Marines as an officer. Kelly had been at a staff posting back home when the war begun and first assigned with the II MEF command staff before his recent appointment here replacing someone else who couldn’t handle the pace which Schwarzkopf demanded on his staff. Kelly gave Schwarzkopf a short brief on how Eastern Storm was going. SACEUR was believed that he was well-aware of what was going on but to hear it was needed for he might have overlooked something.

Kelly begun with one of the supporting drive, the attack furthest north. The US I Corps under the US Third Army was pushing through enemy-occupied West Germany south of Hamburg aiming for the lower reaches Elbe outside of that city. The IGB was ahead of them, further afield was the US Marines which Kelly had left behind to come here. At the moment this was a supporting drive though if everything worked out later, it would become another main attack when Schwarzkopf would add the Allied I Airborne Corps – maybe even NATO troops from the Netherlands if the fighting there ever ceased! – to that before cutting off Soviet forces to the north and having them all operate along the northern coast of East Germany.

The first of the main avenues of attack came from the US III Corps (also with the US Third Army). They were moving off the Lüneburg Heath and into East Germany through the Helmstedt area. US II Corps, battered and bruised as those national guardsmen were there, were giving a supporting attack on their left flank and were also entering Saxony-Anhalt beside them. The aim here was to have the US III Corps drive to the Elbe north of Magdeburg: this would have them pushing right on Berlin ahead of everyone else. The border as crossed and they were racing forward aiming to hit a Soviet field army of reservists back behind the IGB before it would redeploy into many counterattacks.

The French III Corps under NORTHAG had bypassed Soviet forces in the greater Kassel area back in West Germany and hit the enemy on the Werra River to get into Thüringen. This was another main attack with Nordhausen being the goal for now. Kelly spoke of some strong resistance on the Werra, but the French had overcome that with only little delay and were moving forward aiming to get at the enemy waiting ahead of them where they planned to take them apart.

Elsewhere in Thüringen, US Seventh Army units undertook two more main attacks as well as one supporting attack. The latter was undertaken by elements of the US XVIII Airborne Corps keeping up their attacks east of Hunfeld in the area around the Ulster River near the IGB. Either side of them, the US V & VII Corps were pushing forward. The US V Corps was advancing to the northeast of Bad Hersfeld and going over the IGB where the northern slopes of the Thüringenwald lay. There was a highway there which they should follow that would allow entry to East Germany behind the Thüringenwald. This had been Patton’s route in 1945, right before the end of World War Two, one which had taken him to Torgau eventually: SACEUR had the US V Corps starting to ape that attack. Lt.-General Fred Franks led the US VII Corps and had been a pain in Schwarzkopf’s behind in the past few days with the slowness of his preparations. He had his defenders including his own immediate superior, though he had aggravated SACEUR no end. A complicated task of going through the Thüringenwald with a feint to the left and a main advance to the right had been issued to him. Kelly told Schwarzkopf that that seemed to be working, on schedule too. Franks hadn’t failed him, he’d got over his case of the slows.

Down in eastern Bavaria and pushing for the border, the French II & I Corps were making the final main attack eastwards with the West Germans south of them assisting them on their flank with a supportive attack. The Bavarian Forest was hard terrain to advance through, with the enemy having strong forces at the frontlines too. However, behind them the position was weak with trouble in their rear… if what NATO intelligence said was true. The French were being held up at the front, Kelly reported, but the West Germans were ahead of schedule already.

At the end of the briefing, Schwarzkopf was pleased. Success was showing already. Eastern Storm was only a few hours old and there was much fighting to do for the next two, maybe even three weeks. He was confident though that it was going to work.

*

Across the Thüringenwald, NATO air power rained down death and destruction from above. Aircraft were active above the forested series of ridges dropping bombs and firing missiles. Attack helicopters were present as well making their own attacks in addition to dropping off and collection special forces. Explosions and gunfire rocked the ground but also the skies too. The Soviet and East German forces on the ground fought back against the air attacks where they could while otherwise hunkering down hoping that anyone else apart them wouldn’t be struck.

The Soviet Fifty-Eighth Combined Arms Army suffered heavily under the barrage of air attacks. This field army had arrived in East Germany last week after travelling a considerable distance up from the North Caucasus Military District in the southern parts of the Soviet Union. The headquarters itself was formed from individual small corps command active pre-war now fused together at this stage of the war. There were what NATO could call Category C & D troops present within, formed into three combat divisions and army-level attachments. Some of these men were regulars assigned to lower-grade formations and doing their military service as young men, more had been mobilised at the beginning of the war and had spent time afterwards on the Black Sea coast defending the Soviet shores against an attack which had never come (couldn’t have come in fact) before linking up with a second round of mobilised men for the deployment here to East Germany.

Those who served within the Fifty-Eighth Army were therefore a mix of conscripts and former soldiers who had many years ago finished their military service. The former were doing their two years of hell as current conscripts while the others had done already undergone that before in past years before returning back home. Most of the reservists now had families of their own being men in their mid-twenties and early thirties, the younger ones planned to soon have some. They came from across the North Caucasus with different official and unofficial (in terms of Soviet national recognition) ethnicities present. Since being in uniform before or after the war started, they had had the welcome that could only come from the Soviet Army: harsh discipline and strenuous indoctrination. Some of those who should have been here weren’t where they hadn’t answered the call. The Soviet authorities had caught up with many and planned to find the rest too. Their punishment would be a bullet.

Underneath the barrage of bombs, missiles and guns, the Fifty-Eighth Army sheltered as best as possible. Bunkers and shelters had been built by the men with East German ‘volunteer labour’ assisting them. They were hit despite the efforts made to hide them and if that failed keep them safe. NATO had watched them digging-in and threw attacks at those positions where the Fifty-Eighth Army was staged back from the frontlines as it was. At the army headquarters, the commander and his staff narrowly escaped death when their bunker was only just missed by a falling high-explosive bomb but then came the nerve gas unleashed by a second bomb. Those at command post already had their chemical warfare gear on yet the gas got some of their number and truly horrible deaths took place. Elsewhere, more gas followed conventional explosives across the Thüringenwald and the same happened there: the chemical warfare suits issued weren’t up to the job.

The discipline enforced among these men had come alongside that indoctrination where they were drowned in heavy propaganda. Everyone was expected to do their duty in obeying their officers and fighting for their country. They were told that the Soviet Union faced invasion from Neo-Nazis and they were here in Europe to stop that happening. In battle they would be victorious. Their old weaponry was still strong and they themselves were tough veterans of military service. Chemical warfare suits had been issued with rifles and every man retrained in how to wear them properly so they would protect those inside.

That wasn’t the case for so many of those who died when meant to be protected from the gases.

The divisions of the Fifty-Eighth Army were the 14th Tank, 19th Motorised Rifle and the 113th Motorised Rifle Divisions. The first was home-based in Novocherkassk and was a Cat. C unit, the second was also a Cat. C formation based in North Ossetia and the last was a Cat. D division with mobilization stations in Krasnodar. Those in the Cat. C’s consisted of twenty-five per cent of regulars and seventy-five per cent of younger reservists; the Cat. D unit was wholly reservists. They fielded generally older combat equipment yet there some modernish weapons of war as well. None of it was rubbish that should have been thrown away. The support equipment was off a lesser quality though. Radios, electronic warfare equipment and NBC warfare gear was very old and (as with the latter) quite often useless. What fuel and supplies had been issued were terrible and certainly not what should have been provided for the role which the Fifty-Eighth Army was to perform. It was all that there was though and would have to do.


General-Major Lev Yakovlevich Rokhlin was inside his command vehicle, with the over-pressure systems active, under the air barrage. His tracked vehicle was partially buried in an earthen shelter and this was there to help protect against explosions from conventional weapons. He could only hope that the NBC systems were keeping out the nerve gases which he had been alerted to.

Outside, spread down the Gera River valley south of Arnstedt, was Rokhlin’s command: the 19th Motorised Rifle Division (19 MRD). The Thüringenwald loomed above, just to the south of where the 19 MRD and explosions struck up there were there were other men not his. Orders from above had him keep his men down here on the northern side and out of the firing line of conventional bombs. The gas being dropped up there was flowing downwards though, pushed by the wind. How dense it was and whether it would find its way to where his men were sheltering like he was he didn’t yet know. It wasn’t like it could be seen and the detection equipment was poor. Only over the radio had he learnt about the gas and his reaction had at once be to protect his men. They were spread out over a wide area just in case NATO used tactical nuclear weapons before their invasion came and so he would only hope the word was passed on over radio channels full of jamming where communications over distance would be made harder.

The positioning of Rokhlin and his division here in the rear had been deliberate as the 19 MRD was regarded as the strongest of the three within the Fifty-Eighth Army. His orders had been to prepare to counterattack when the time came, either going east or west away from here because NATO forces were expected to go around the Thüringenwald as well as through it. The 14 TD and the 113 MRD was in the forests to stop a forward attack while he would counterattack that or a flanking move. He knew little of the expected opposition apart from they were meant to be Americans. The army commander didn’t like him solely because he was Jewish and so had told him very little. That wasn’t even something that the man had hidden either. Naturally, he’d been furious but there was nothing that could be done. Ordinary soldiers with Jewish heritage in the Soviet Army had to put up with a lot worse than he did: that was the only consolation he knew he could take from that. He would still do his duty regardless.

It was only three weeks since he had taken over command of the 19 MRD and in that time he had done everything that he could to get it ready for war. The division had been in the Georgia SSR at the time waiting for an apparent Turkish-American amphibious operation. He had come from command of the 75 MRD – another Cat. C cadre division such as the 19 MRD – when the KGB had detained his predecessor and left his old command in the hands of his deputy down on the Soviet-Iranian border. Instructions had come to move to East Germany afterwards and that had been a long, tedious journey full of delays. The rail system throughout the Ukrainian SSR and Poland was under massive stress with supplies given priority over troops at many times. The KGB had removed officers under his command without recourse for imagined crimes made by overheard comments during that transit. He had been unable to do anything to stop that: many of those who were arrested to presumably be shot were good officers. Others took their place and Rokhlin had to put up with them plus the new political commissars too, men with more power than any political officer whom he’d ever known had.

Rokhlin feared for his men when they would meet combat. They would be facing an enemy which, despite all the propaganda saying it wasn’t, was winning. He had no idea if all that he and his men thought that they knew about fighting in modern war would be enough to the task set for them in stopping the beginnings of a second Barbarossa. He had been promised that new officers would be joining his command staff and those would be veterans of earlier combat in this war. They were meant to bring with them knowledge of changes in tactics as well as having information on how the Americans fought. This meant that everything he and his officers currently were trained for would need to be changed.

Rokhlin hadn’t been told when they would arrive… and he didn’t know if they would.

Before any of that mattered though, before the 19 MRD could see action, they had to survive the gas coming down from above first though.

*

The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was in a terrible state.

East Germany’s armed forces, the National People’s Army, had been shattered by the war. They had been engaged right from the start at the frontlines of the fight. East German regular ground, air and naval forces had gone into battle with the fighting in West Germany and the Baltic Exits. Reservists had been recalled to service in a hasty mobilization on the eve of the fighting and been quickly committed too. The fighting hadn’t been abroad though for the NVA: NATO had struck at East Germany immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities. Those attacks had been against military and civilian targets with NVA forces trying to defend their nation as well.

As directed from Moscow and with Friedrich Dickel not being able to oppose such decrees, East Germany was wholly committed to the war. The conflict with NATO took precedence over everything else: there was nothing being held back. The whole nation was militarized as it was and with the war every aspect of the East German state gave their assistance to the war. The NVA as a whole was split up everywhere with East Germans fighting alongside Soviets and Poles rather than together. They were spread out and answered not to their own national superiors but rather foreigners through the Warsaw Pact command structure.

Everywhere the NVA fought, it took a battering.

NATO forces didn’t particularly single out the East Germans to make them suffer the losses which they did, it was just the fact that the East Germans were right in the firing line. They fought back bravely and tried their best to do as ordered and play their part in the war but in doing so they took many casualties in terms of men and equipment. Morale suffered harshly and the NVA was only kept together by extraordinary efforts to enforce discipline. The Soviets were making an effort to keep morale up with their men by only shooting officers en mass and going after enlisted personnel for punishment should they truly deserve it. This wasn’t the case with the East Germans. Any breach of discipline was punished with extreme measures. The Stasi was quickly overwhelmed when it came to shooting their own countrymen and had to rely heavily on security elements of the NVA to do their dirty work when initially the hope hadn’t been to do that. Political officers throughout the East German military with the PHV and regulators with the KD – the Political Headquarters and the Military Police – which were meant to be tasked for ensured political loyalty and operational security were fast dragged into this. The same occurred back home where the militarized civilian police, the VPB, was made use of to keep the NVA from falling apart. There was only so much that the men could take and far too many of them cracked under pressure.

NATO killed plenty of NVA men, but the East Germans were shooting many of their own too.

That total commitment that the NVA was instructed to give to the war meant just that. The regulars and reserves were all involved in the fighting alongside the Grenztruppen (Border Troops), all of the rear-area military/civilian elements of the country, militia forces with the KdA, the national paramilitary police of the VPB and even the communist youth with the FDJ. The term ‘total war’ was being used in Germany once again, especially when it came to the NVA. Everything else with the nation shut down with such a wholescale commitment of manpower (women were heavily represented in the numbers too, especially across East Germany rather than abroad) so that the whole country was truly focused upon the war.

It was among the additions to the combat strength of the NVA that a higher percentage of losses were taken in comparison to those assigned pre-war. A lot of that was down to where they were sent by their Soviet overlords but also because they weren’t trained nor equipped to fight the war which they were sent to. Regardless of the losses taken, those deployments of NVA supporting units continued, particularly after so many of the regular units were destroyed early in the war.

East German forces in the Kassel Salient, inside West Germany, were representative of those and about to take part in a sideshow to Operation Eastern Storm.


Oberstleutnant (Lt.-Colonel) Sven Hüber crouched down beneath the window as the West Germans rained machine gunfire at the building. They poured bullets towards the already shattered windows and the doorways. The warehouse in which he was inside was struck by thousands of rounds that were driven at him and the rest of the East Germans inside.

He couldn’t stop shaking.

Hüber had put his rifle down and had his head in the crook of his armpit. He heard the screams of men wounded and slammed a hand over his exposed ear to shut them out. His eyes were already closed as tight as he could make them.

This was hell and he was in the middle of it.

He wanted the gunfire to stop. He wanted the screaming to cease. He didn’t want the West German militia to assault the building afterwards as he knew they would, probably using flamethrowers too as Hüber knew they had done elsewhere since before dawn this morning. All across Kassel the West Germans had struck, straight at the heart of the city as they set about liberating it. There would be thousands dead already with many more wounded: he didn’t want to join them.

He stayed where he was, out of the firing line up on the second floor in the offices which were part of the warehouse. Whatever had been here before the war was all gone, ‘liberated’ for the Socialist cause, and now it was just soldiers here. The warehouse was designated as a strongpoint behind the frontlines with barricades and firing positions set up. Hüber was here as the political officer for the men assigned: rifleman from a Landstreitkrafte training unit and snipers from the Grenztruppen. A PHV man himself, he had been with the Grenztruppen in East Germany’s capital on Berlin Wall duty before the war and then received his customary medal the same as everyone else when he played his part in the capture of West Berlin. He had anticipated that he would afterwards spend the rest of his war there in the now-united city… anywhere but here in West Germany and caught up behind the frontlines.

The duty which Hüber was assigned to was to keep control of these men and many others along the series of strongpoints. He had been caught here though when the attack had started and left unable to move when artillery opened up at distance blasting Kassel’s outer defences.

Now, it was here that he was to die.

He heard shouting coming from one of the Landstreitkrafte men that the West Germans were making their final assault. They were attacking from three sides and had their flamethrowers active. What were they to do, the sergeant shouted, stand and fight or retreat?

Hüber pretended that he didn’t hear the man.

He just cowered where he was waiting for the end to come.

When it did, he didn’t know anything about it. That soldier who hadn’t received an answer to his urgent enquiry snapped. He had stood over him and shot Hüber straight in the head without any fuss: not for being a coward, but for all of those men killed before by Hüber, the PHV, the KD and the Stasi. Afterwards, he and the others would make an attempt to surrender and would pay no attention to the corpse of their political officer who didn’t have the heart, the courage to even try to fight against the overwhelming odds which they and every other NVA man in Kassel had attempted to at first.

*

It would be a vast understatement to say that the logistics network for the NATO forces fighting across Europe was complicated and extensive. The whole system of keeping the forces at the front supplied with everything that they needed was an undertaking of unprecedented scale. The territory covered was one thing, another was the multitude of nationalities involved in keeping it working. Everything was all interconnected and there was pressure exerted everywhere from enemy – and friendly – sources. The war couldn’t be fought if the whole network didn’t function though, so keeping it going was given full attention.

Fuel, ammunition, food, water, medical supplies, spare parts and everything else needed to be moved forward to those who needed them. The wounded, prisoners and a lot else needed to be returned. The transport network consisted of trucks, lorries, aircraft, helicopters and even river barges in places. Tens upon tens of thousands of military personnel were involved in this and they were supported by larger numbers of civilians too.

War damage hampered the movements back-and-forth so too did enemy action in the form of air & missile strikes plus isolated commando attacks whose numbers had worn off considerably since the beginning of the war yet still took place. Problems with civilian interference, generally passive in nature, occurred at times to slow things down and there were often accidents too where the overworked members of the logistics forces slipped up with their tiredness.

The logistics network was involved in supporting the movement of combat forces too in the form of external assistance. Those self-deployed throughout the rear-areas up towards the frontlines with their own transportation, military police and communications units working with those from the wider supply network. There were quite often disagreements between commanders with the logistics network and those combat units moving towards as to whom had priority over a road; other times there would be an effort to effectively steal supplies being moved about and sent to others so the combat unit could use them when they saw action.

West German rear-area forces had been at the forefront of providing logistical services early in the war, stretching back into nearby countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands too. Most of them had either been killed during the first round of fighting or later surrendered, deserted and abandoned their posts when the West German will to fight crumbled as it had done in mid-February. Those who had given up had trickled back at first, later flooded back in fact, when West Germany was politically reorganized and they had seen the error of their ways when faced with the Soviets destroying Flensburg as they had with that nuclear attack. The damage had been done though. The West Germans had been of vital importance and NATO command had to upgrade the numbers of logistics units from other countries afterwards.

Most of the chaos from that had now been overcome though where the logistics network was active in places where the West Germans would have been expected to play a larger role, those units were overworked and under strain: even those which had been planned to be sent to Europe regardless.


Specialist Melissa Rathbun-Nealy, a native of Michigan aged twenty, was one of those involved in the logistics network. The US Army soldier served with the 233d Transportation (Heavy Truck) Company, 70th Ordnance Battalion, 507th Corps Support Group assigned to the US III Corps. She and her unit were based in Texas at Fort Bliss and had arrived in Europe as part of REFORGER six days into the war. Her whole time here had been an ordeal. She had done her best, given it all, but was tired beyond words. She knew that everyone was worn out, up to and including those fighting on the frontlines. It was just something that had to be put up with when there was a job to do.

Being tired was just the same as the casual sexism dressed up as banter and the chemical warfare suit to be worn at all times: part of being in the US Army in the midst of a war that couldn’t be changed.

Rathbun-Nealy was tasked as a truck driver. She was trained to drive several vehicles and her current tasking was as a driver for a M-907 HEMTT eight-wheeled heavy cargo vehicle. She hadn’t driven the vehicle up and down the rear-areas behind the frontlines all during her time in Europe staying generally within the US III Corps and US Third Army area rather than going far afield towards the air and sea ports further back. Others moved equipment to be carried on her truck from those points to the corps’ rear supply dumps and she transported it forward. She had a co-driver with her and the two of them took turns at the wheel with the other keeping their eyes open looking outside. Journeys carrying cargo forward and returning back to get some more were often in convoys though there were always lone journeys made too. She and her co-driver carried with them their rifles, which they were trained to use, yet there hadn’t come a time when they were needed yet.

She hoped that there never would be.

Naturally, she feared death and injury like anyone else, but she also feared capture. Rathbun-Nealy had heard the stories, those stories about what happened to female captives. Those were told thirdhand and were often exaggerated, but there was a truth to them. Sexual harassment in the US Army was terrible and ongoing no matter what, in war or peace, but what the Soviets would do to a woman captive was certainly going to be worse. She had her rifle and hoped not to need it… yet would if she had to, without hesitation.

Her truck was moving down Autobahn-7 at the moment, approaching the crossings over the Aller River. She had come from the US Third Army supply dump at Walsrode onto Autobahn-27 first; after going over the Aller on this highway it would be east rather than southwards for Rathbun-Nealy along the Bundesstrasse-214 in the direction of Celle. Bremerhaven had been partially opened up to shipping, she’d heard, after a long time being held by the enemy and damage done there. That seaport was now allowing shorter supply lines for the US Army in northern West Germany after previous supply links ran all the way back to Belgium and northern France due to the fighting in the Netherlands knocking those there out of action. After Celle, her co-driver would take them towards the immediate rear of the US III Corps – between Wolfsburg and Helmstedt – as the troops there moved into East Germany today. That had started already with the offensive that was Operation Eastern Storm though she would be far back from that.

There were a dozen trucks in the convoy with a HMMWV armed with a machine gun out front and another behind. Her truck was carrying two tank engines, heavy loads indeed. With her other trucks had heavy and bulky loads too. They moved slowly down the highway and through recently-liberated territory retaken from the Soviets. War damage was everywhere. Her co-driver scanned the sides of the roads looking for any approaching trouble while she focused ahead. Driving a truck like this wasn’t an easy task. It was a big beast with a heavy load and staying in convoy wasn’t simple. The pontoon bridges over the Aller which had been captured from the Soviets were ahead, coming up now and everyone started slowing down.

Her cargo and that carried by everyone else was on its way to those who needed it at the frontlines in a ceaseless procession where what the American military did best – logistics – was being done to keep that fighting ongoing.

*

NATO was operating combined combat air commands for their air power deployed across Europe. Allied Forces Northern Europe had the First Allied Tactical Air Forces (1 ATAF) under command for operations over Norway and the Baltic Exits which was supported by naval aviation. At the other end of continent, Allied Forces Southern Europe had under control three more: 5 ATAF for operations above Austria and northern Italy, 6 ATAF in Turkey and 7 ATAF in Greece.

A further trio were with Allied Forces Central Europe. 2 ATAF covered operations above northern parts of West Germany, 4 ATAF in the south of that country while 3 ATAF was tasked with a more strategic role than the other two focused upon long-range missions.

The majority of these were based upon pre-war plans for open warfare with staffs waiting and all that was needed was a change from peacetime designations to their wartime names. 1 ATAF and 3 ATAF had been formed up early in the war not following those but had quickly fitted into the existing arrangements.

With each of them there was a multi-national character. Various national air forces added air and ground units to each one with the mix being stronger in some more than others. For example, 6 ATAF was nearly exclusively Turkish with small American reinforcements while 7 ATAF was almost all Greek with small American and Portuguese attachments. On the other hand, 2 ATAF and 4 ATAF were a wide mix of formations attached to them from several NATO nations on both sides of the Atlantic.

Throughout the war, there had been both permanent and temporary transfers between the air commands: most of the latter took place in the air where aircraft assigned to one flew a mission for the other. The lack of strict geographic boundaries for operations helped make this possible and stop friendly-fire incidents (most of the time, not always unfortunately) and at the same time command-&-control was strong. The NATO numbered air forces were working together and liaison officers were posted as widespread as possible.

That cooperation was especially seen within those under Allied Air Forces Central Europe. Tactical and strategic air missions merged in character and the same air space was often shared. 2 ATAF was formed from RAF Germany and the US 17th Air Force was the basis upon which 4 ATAF converted to its wartime role; 3 ATAF was the UK-based US 3d Air Force. Those headquarters led wartime missions throughout both Germanies and either side: to the west over Britain and to the east as far as Poland. Long-range strike aircraft took part in tactical missions at times while tactical-focused aircraft were sent far ahead when necessary if they had the range. On the ground, airbases were home to many units and while meant to be used for just one of the numbered air forces’ assets, those assigned to others would fly from them oftentimes.

These three air forces – with aircraft from the United States, Canada, Britain, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain among them – were in action as part of Operation Eastern Storm today.


The F-16C Fighting Falcons wearing the markings of the 62d Tactical Fighter Training Squadron with the 56th Tactical Training Wing part of the USAF flew low over Hessen and raced towards the IGB and East Germany beyond. The flight of four strike-fighters were all on a 4 ATAF mission with the intention of attacking ground targets across in Thüringen: enemy artillery and rocket positions.

Acting as the pilot for one of them was not an American as were in the other three but a Dutchman by the name of Major Dick Berlijn.

Berlijn was a Royal Netherlands Air Force combat pilot now attached to the 62d Squadron. He would have liked to have been with a Dutch unit, naturally, though flying with the unit which he was now was a valuable wartime role. The Americans had pilots of their own – maybe not as good as him, in his humble opinion! – but there were others like him from European nations assigned flying aircraft such as this. Berlijn’s own service flew F-16s, those built in the Netherlands under license, though those didn’t have the full capabilities that the ones which the 62d Squadron had: especially the ability to fire beyond visual range air-to-air missiles. Sidewinders were carried by F-16s which he had piloted before in peacetime, now in wartime he was flying an aircraft armed with Sparrows. Those less-knowledgeable on the subject had asked earlier in the war why the Netherlands and other European NATO countries which flew the F-16 (Belgium, Denmark, Norway) couldn’t just be issued with weapons such as the Sparrows to give them an edge in aerial combat which had cost them so dear beforehand. The software could be fitted with enough effort, it was said, and the missiles supplied from what many were sure were unheralded stocks of Sparrows. None of that turned out to be the case however. It wasn’t an easy thing to do to have Sparrows fitted to F-16s not designed for them (Europe’s air forces flew older F-16A models) and would mean removing combat aircraft from service back to the United States as there was so much defence industry infrastructure war damage done in Western Europe. Those stocks weren’t unlimited and the Americans were willing to share, but share in a way they saw as fair and which would bring a result on the battlefield. There was also the issue of training: again, time consuming.

Berlijn had been across the Atlantic getting a crash-course – excuse the pun – in the Sparrow. Now he was back in Europe, first with an American unit and at a later time (yet unspecified) to return to a Dutch unit.

For the bomb-run today against a series of hidden targets picked up by reconnaissance that were part of the Soviet’s defences of East Germany, two Sparrows were carried alongside a pair of Sidewinders and a heavy load of Rockeye cluster bombs. The large war-load with air-to-air missiles was extensive for opposition was expected in the sky which could get past the F-15 Eagles back across in West Germany on MiG-CAP. Berlijn had been trained plenty in his short time in the United States on how to use the Sparrow (the Sidewinder was well-known to him) though he hoped that he wouldn’t have to use it today. The mission was to bomb the artillery that had been spotted by special forces on the ground using the anti-armour capabilities of the Rockeyes: the artillery was self-propelled and built atop armoured vehicles. Should it come to an airborne fight before the bomb-run was made, those cluster bombs would have to be jettisoned.

He and the other three pilots entered the skies over East Germany, still flying low and moving fast, laden with weapons as they were, all ready for any fight which would come their way. The flying weather was good and known enemy ground defences ahead were to be avoided. In an aircraft such as this and carrying what he was, including the electronic warfare pods developed from previous encounters with enemy SAMs and radars, Berlijn didn’t fear any combat which would come his way.

*

The Soviets had been hit with a series of NATO major offensives beforehand. Counterattacks, especially the desperate ones which they had faced early in the war, had been fought off but when Eagle Fire and Storm Chaser had happened to them they had taken fearful defeats as a result of those big operations. With those two, their forward forces of battle-hardened, veteran troops in elite units had been cut off by NATO – mainly American – forces which had broken through on the flanks and gone charging forward blasting all who stood in their way.

Each of those had been an utter disaster for Soviet war aims where they lost large swaths of captured territory alongside the troops which ended up being cut off and then slowly destroyed. The political costs had been huge from them. No matter how many times the Soviet Union could claim that they were winning the war, one forced upon them and they were acting in self-defence too following an attack by the West, those losses gave lie to that.

Before Operation Eastern Storm commenced, the Soviets had known what was coming their way. All of the signs had been there telling them that a massive, multiple-axis offensive aiming to conquer East Germany as well as significant parts of Czechoslovakia was on the cards.

They watched the withdrawal of heavy NATO combat units from the fighting on the ground and the replacement by lighter units which skirmished with them for several days.

They understood why the targeted air and commando raids were taking place as they were to open the way for an incoming offensive.

They interpreted the electronic and radio signals, encoded as they were, as giving further proof to this when such things had been done before.

They had their intelligence sources and reconnaissance assets telling them that the offensive was soon to start with the objectives being Berlin, Prague and the Polish border.

And… try as they might there was nothing that could be done to stop this occurring.

Therefore, rather than stop it, the Soviets tried to prepare for it. The commander of the Western-TVD had recently told his country’s military leaders that he intended to do that. He would rely on the strategic intelligence which he had and all of the tactical reconnaissance gained.

There was a belief that Eastern Storm could be defeated on an operational, rather than tactical, level by the high command. The quality of the forces available to do this was far from what was needed, but the enemy could be beaten by not allowing NATO to do what it wanted and achieve its goals.


Colonel Kirichenko had been sent by Marshal Gromov to the headquarters of the North German Front to be his eyes and ears there. He was to report back everything ongoing here… with full knowledge of those whose headquarters he was in.

That headquarters was a mobile command column, a small one too without unnecessary baggage attached. Lessons had been learnt from how NATO tracked other command columns in the past to attack them by getting a line of their movements through the excessive number of vehicles, antenna array and overblown security. The ‘battalions for protection and guarantee’ assigned had been stripped of much of their number which accompanied front and field army headquarters. Kirichenko had been informed that that information had come from an intelligence agent within NATO and also from the interrogations (unpleasant but necessary) of captured NATO commandos who’d gone after them elsewhere before.

The headquarters was currently near the town of Burg in Saxony-Anhalt, located east of the Elbe… NATO was aiming to come right this way when they went for Berlin.

Kirichenko was doing as he was told and paying full attention to all that was going on here. The front commander and his staff were busy with the fighting going on and he let them do that yet was within their presence. Some glances were cast in his direction, hostile and seeking approval, but he ignored all of that. His interest was on whether the strategy for stopping the NATO invasion from working was being followed, nothing more.

The North German Front had its area of operations from the Elbe south of Hamburg, down the IGB, looping around the Helmstedt Bowl, stretching into West Germany westwards to Hannover forming a salient and down to the Harz Mountains. NATO were attacking almost everywhere along the frontlines and into the immediate rear behind them too. Kirichenko could see that the staff here had correctly identified the main effort – not such a hard task though – as coming over from Helmstedt. The flank attacks towards Altmark on the northern side and the moves forwards inside occupied West Germany were just distractions: following the highway west that would take the Americans to the Elbe was what everything was about.

The Forty-First Army, mobilised reservists from the Kiev Military District, were taking the brunt of the main attack. They were doing as ordered and conducting a fighting withdrawal back from the frontlines. In doing so they were being battered from above especially with the good weather today allowing NATO air power to do their worst. Reports came in that fuel-air explosives were being used in abundance along with napalm and nerve gases. These deadly weapons were being put to full affect.

As they took those awful casualties, the Forty-First Army was fighting back even with withdrawing. They had managed to make sure that the Americans weren’t able to run riot with their ground units as they did in their air. No breakouts had occurred and any idea that the Americans had entertained about doing so had been shown to them to be foolish. They had been hurt in moving forward and that should continue.

Kirichenko was able to see that the orders had been obeyed. The North German Front headquarters had kept the Second Guards Army back and out of the way. Tonight, when darkness came and the expected bad weather returned, both field armies would be in-place ready to box the Americans in and make them bleed far more than they already had.

He set about reporting back to Marshal Gromov that the plan was working… for now anyway.

*

NATO had been dropping bombs on East Germany since the first night of the war, back early last month. They had worked their way down a long list of existing fixed targets which they had wanted to smash should open warfare come as it had done. Those were hit until they were destroyed, confirmed as being too, before new targets were get the same treatment. Mobile targets were also hit inside East Germany by NATO bombs, though those had to be located first. F-111s and Tornados (F-117s made less-frequent appearances) paid nightly visits delivering their war-loads in the face of opposition in the air and from the ground.

Underneath those aircraft, East Germany was blasted over and over again.

Military targets were top of the NATO list slated for destruction but so too were those of a civilian nature which NATO decreed were being used for military purposes. They had no intention of bombing houses, schools and hospitals: instead they went after airports & seaports, power generation & distribution facilities and telecommunications links. In addition, the transport network below their aircraft which were dropping bombs – internal and external connecting the country with the outside – was blasted apart too. Striking at bridges where those went over rivers and canals was seen as the best way to stop them being used by vehicles and trains crossing them. Where the bridges came down, the aim was also to disrupt river and canal traffic with those attacks too. Bridges were just one element of the attack upon the transportation network inside East Germany to hamper movement. NATO went after supporting parts of that too from railway switching & points facilities to harbours on internal waterways. At crossroads where highways and main roads met, if there wasn’t a bridge that could be knocked down to rain rubble across the area, cluster bombs would be used to spread submunitions set for timer delay. The planning for this had been done over many years and once given the opportunity to strike, NATO did just that. They wanted the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies to have immense difficulty moving men, equipment and supplies about through East Germany. The attacks were often two-fold too: after the bombing caused initial destruction, there would be a backlog of enemy forces created by that first attack that would be hit with a follow-up strike.

The Soviets put a lot of effort into their maskirovka when it came to East Germany and they were successful with their deception at making NATO think that they had destroyed many more targets than they had. The bridges over the big rivers were just the most extreme example: they had smaller efforts elsewhere to show NATO what it wanted to see with their bombs apparently getting through. The deception didn’t always work though and nor was it everywhere. The bombers above knocked out more and more of their assigned targets, including those in the transportation network. To be not able to move men, equipment and supplies around through East Germany would mean the end of the war for the Soviets. They needed to be able to transport what they wanted to when and where. Losses were expected, but the movements needed to take place. Active and passive defences against air attacks were used with successes and failures yet, as said, no matter what they had to be able to move across the nation what they needed to.

NATO was still smashing about the transportation links shown on their maps before and after Operation Eastern Storm got underway: the Soviets were constructing improvised links not on anyone’s maps with the aim to use them undetected during that invasion of East Germany to defeat it.


Serzant Saakashvili stood back from the gravel track that served as a new road and watched as the convoy of tanks and armoured vehicles followed it down to the pontoon bridges over the Trebel River. The farmland either side of the road that hadn’t been here a week ago was cut through by the column of military vehicles making for the bridges that had been put up earlier today. Down onto those crossings over the Trebel the vehicles went and over the river as they continued heading westwards.

His duty was now that of being a glorified sentry. No longer was he outside Prenzlau but instead further west near another East German town which had had never heard of before: this one being Demmin. A regiment of the Soviet Army, reservists like him, had been stationed nearby waiting for an enemy landing along the Baltic shore. Saakashvili had been told no more than that about them and only overheard a comment made from his officer about there being a landing that they were off to oppose. It wasn’t as if he had seen a map of East Germany nor knew where he was any more than being told names of towns. The coast was to the north though and the enemy either west or northwest. His orders were to maintain the guard around these bridges over a crossing point constructed seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There was an anti-aircraft battery for defence against air threats: Saakashvili and others were to protect the crossing on the ground from saboteurs.

It was the East German workers who had built the road this side of the river, assisted the Soviet Army engineers in putting in the pontoon bridges and built the road the other side of the waterway, that were regarded as possibly being the saboteurs that Saakashvili had been told to guard against.

Germans.

When the last of the vehicles moved past where he had been standing, he walked out on the road for a movement and looked down. The passage of the tanks especially had done a great deal of damage to the surface. More gravel would soon have to come, he was sure. The volunteer East Germans, those men and women with their local Party organisation here assisting the war effort, would have to be brought back up here to do that. When that was to be the case and how much work was to be done were decisions to be made far above him.

He would join the rest of his men and others in watching over them as they did that. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with this road and the bridges in view: just a very small part of what he understood was a massive network for transportation which had been thrown up across East Germany far back from the frontlines. What the locals might do to cause damage and impede the movements down and across them, he didn’t know.

Yet keeping that from happening was what he had been ordered to do and so he would. He had seen with his own eyes many examples of those who didn’t follow their orders.

*

For special operations being conducted inside occupied parts of West Germany and eastwards through into East Germany, the operational theater for those had been divided in (roughly) half. Following the NORTHAG / CENTAG boundary inside West Germany as far east as Kassel and then going across the IGB in a straight line to Cottbus near the Polish border, this line was drawn as a requirement to stop the scope of special operations from getting out of control when it came to supervision. The northern and southern theatres each had their own command staff and combat assets assigned. It was a flexible boundary when needed and special forces teams plus the support network for them could move between both yet that was far rarer than was the case with conventional air power and the numbered NATO tactical air forces.

The missions undertaken by NATO special forces covered everything that could be expected to be done in a full-scale war. Commandos conducted raids against high-value targets, they set up observation posts, they attacked supply lines, they guided-in bombs, they extracted selected prisoners for intelligence information, they free POWs being held and so on. Those took places both sides of the border which ran through Germany and into Czechoslovakia too.

It was dangerous, costly soldiering. The enemy was a fierce opponent who treated captured special forces rather terrible. On the ground, the local population in enemy territory could be expected to be hostile and even those inside West Germany on the wrong side of the frontlines there were dangers from collaborators (active and passive collaboration: the latter including informing on those assisting NATO soldiers was rather frequent).

Added to this were other unseen dangers too in the form of those which came when the activities of special forces and non-military intelligence agencies were brought together. There was a demand for NATO special forces to assist such organisations in achieving their war aims. They wanted the special forces teams on-strength to do countless tasks where they gave off an indifference at many times to the lives that would cost nor the military feasibility of doing so. NATO military officers pushed back against this resulting in underhand deals being made outside the scope of the battlefield by those in the shadows. Special forces teams often ended up being sent on a mission not knowing what agenda they were actually serving: when they found out, they were often rather mad and threatened consequences.

These things shouldn’t have happened, but they did.


Lt.-General Peter de la Billière – DLB – had one of these matters where agendas clashed and deals were cut brought to his attention this afternoon when he really had more important things to be doing.

A week ago, Nicholas Langman from MI-6 had asked for a special forces team from the northern special operations command which DLB headed to extract an agent of his from behind enemy lines along with a defector which the agent would have with him. Langman was assigned to work with DLB (interfere in his duties would be a better description of what he was doing) and told him that the mission was of great importance where he needed his man and the reported Soviet GRU officer brought out. Special forces men would have to go and get them from a defended area too, it wasn’t a simple pick-up mission. DLB had declined the request on the grounds that the mission was too risky with enemy activity and his need to have men sent forward ahead for when Operation Eastern Storm commenced rather than on a sideshow. Not an hour after his refusal, DLB was informed that RETROGRADE intelligence was showing that there was a Soviet electronic warfare presence in the Harz Mountains with one of their mobile platforms for their Tuman stations. The former was the latest name for that CIA-gained intelligence of impeccable caliber while the latter was something new that the Soviets were deploying to interfere with NATO reconnaissance efforts on the electromagnetic scale and were being sought anywhere the mobile stations might be found for immediate destruction.

Where MI-6 had wanted to extract those two men and where the CIA had (apparently) said the Tuman system was active hiding in difficult-to-search terrain were in the same small area! DLB had been furious with the lies being told and tried to put a stop to the deception. Those above him had given the go-ahead though for the supposed hunt for the trucks and trailers home to complex electronic equipment but what he knew was really a distraction for some other form of extraction which MI-6 had arranged.

An eight-man patrol, Bravo Three Two, of special forces had gone into the area a day later. It was a British-led team with 22 SAS’ B Squadron providing most of the firepower: the other two men consisted of an Australian with the SAS before the war started on an official exchange and a Norwegian commando who had recently been attached from the Marinejegerkommandoen bringing with him plenty of experience rather than just making up for manpower losses to the SAS. Contact had very quickly been lost with the team deployed just inside East Germany across the IGB and they were not at an emergency extraction point when a check was made on that. Three days later, one of the men was pulled out by a CSAR helicopter picking up a downed US Air Force pilot. He was a New Zealand born (but a British national) SAS reservist who’d joined Brave Three Two at the last moment; he told of the radios not working and an ambush being made where he believed everyone to be dead. DLB had been upset at the loss of the seven other men as he feared they had been wasted. The talk of the communications failure and then a disturbing connection between the rescued man and MI-6 had concerned him more… plus a rumour that the agent and defector that Langman had wanted had somehow got through the frontlines elsewhere. His mind was on important duties where hundreds of operations were either underway or being planned and the many men from multiple countries under his command were risking their lives daily… yet he hadn’t been happy with the whole situation.

Last night, two more men from Bravo Three Two had turned up. The patrol commander and another veteran SAS man who both had plenty of wartime experience on operations since the conflict begun had reached the frontlines near Bockenem – back inside West Germany after a long walk and near the operational boundary between the British I Corps and the Belgian I Corps. Major-General Michael Walker, chief-of-staff with the former, had heard their tale and made very sure that it was at once brought to the attention of DLB.

Sergeant Mitchell and Corporal Armstrong were claiming that Lance Corporal Tomlinson left them high-and-dry in the middle of a fire-fight. He was in charge of communications and had claimed that the radios had been sabotaged. The enemy had appeared straight afterwards and then the reservist lance corporal, who was an outsider far more than the Australian and the Norwegian with the rest of the team could ever be, had ran. Four more SAS men were killed and the Norwegian commando had last been seen making a desperate one-man stand.

DLB had just listened to their story after they had come to see him alongside Walker and also Colonel Delves who commanded 22 SAS. The two senior officers were convinced of the validity of the story told by the pair of experienced NCOs and were demanding that something be done. Langman was a man who upset many: Walker and Delves in the past. Tomlinson was an outsider who, from what DLB had been told, wasn’t someone who was a team player and shouldn’t have been sent out with the professionals which he had been when he really wasn’t: he’d been in uniform as a part-timer for six months as the Territorial Army SAS took civilians rather than career soldiers like the regular SAS did. There was going to be a lot more to this story than he had been told and Tomlinson would certainly say something different to what Mitchell and Armstrong did.

It was all a mess.

However… this was something for someone else to deal with at another time. DLB had a job to do and while this whole issue was worrying, there was a war going on. Tomlinson had been hurt before getting that lucky (or was it?) rescue so there would be those who defended him as strong as the support which Mitchell and Armstrong would get. DLB couldn’t get involved. This was something that military intelligence or counter-intelligence, probably the MOD too, needed to deal with.

Unsatisfactorily, he had to pass the issue on and get back to his duties: there were many of his men out there at the minute in the war. Still, he didn’t think that this would be the last he would ever hear of this matter. Men were dead after all and there were claims that how they had lost their lives had been due to a high-level betrayal.

*

Not all of the West German Army, the Heer, had fallen apart last month like the will of the then government. In the north of the country, Heer troops there had fought on near the Danish border until they had been left devastated by that Soviet nuclear attack on Flensburg. More had withdrawn with the Dutch into the northern part of the Netherlands and others had fallen back with the British from the pre-ceasefire Hannover Salient to the western side of the Weser. There were additionally some scattered smaller forces which had remained with the French and the Americans under CENTAG and been prepared to carry on the fight with them. Both corps commands and many divisional commands had collapsed in the chaos of conflicting political instructions and enemy subversion throughout the north and central parts of West Germany though, crippling the ability of the Heer to defend their country there alongside their allies.

Down in Bavaria, it had been a different story. The West German II Corps, reinforced with Territoralheer units, hadn’t fallen apart and continued to fight, even during the short ceasefire. Their commander hadn’t recognised the constitutional authority of what had become the Aachen Government and once the Munich Government was formed, the Heer in southern West Germany immediately declared for them. There were comments by many that the politicians in Munich were puppets of the French and this notion gained some traction among detractors with the West German II Corps fighting under the French First Army. The politics might have been complicated, but with regards to the military situation, the higher command for the West Germans fighting in Bavaria wasn’t: the French had their army in southern West Germany and the headquarters was whom NATO assigned them too… before the ceasefire as well.

With its reservists added, the West German II Corps had three full combat divisions under command (each with three brigades) and four independent brigades too. By this point in the war all were well-experienced and they hadn’t had a rest since the beginning of February. Their operational area was on the flank of the French First Army, up against the Austrian border. Soviet forces had penetrated deep into Bavaria and it was they who they fought against as their opponents had moved down from Czechoslovakia. The Inn River and afterwards the Salzach River, where the lower reaches of them formed the Austrian frontier, soon became an active area of conflict for the Heer too when the Soviets reached deep inside Austria. A further river, the bigger Danube as it ran through eastern Bavaria, was where the West German II Corps saw most of their fighting for control of the approaches to it but the whole situation with the enemy trying to outflank them by coming up through Austria gave the West Germans a difficult fight. They could only defend with the forces that they had at their disposal, sometimes managing small counterattacks. A counteroffensive, even when NATO had been on the attack elsewhere, had been out of the question while they had to cover an area as large as they did.

Recent NATO advances inside Austria where an attack northwards had come to cut-off and surround Salzburg while smashing into the Soviet Fourteenth Guards Army had changed the situation on the West German’s flank. American troops acting alongside their allies with the Spanish I Corps changed the whole strategic situation for the Heer in Bavaria, giving them the opportunity to take advantage of instructions which came down from the French First Army for them to conduct a supporting attack as part of Operation Eastern Storm.

The French expected that the West Germans would recapture some territory and tie-up enemy reserves: they didn’t anticipate the Heer would break open the front and find the way open to the Czechoslovak border!


Oberst Wolfgang Schneiderham, acting commander of the 4th Panzergrenadier Division (formerly serving as it’s chief-of-staff before the recent combat death of the commanding general), lead his division in a three-pronged attack up into the Bavarian Forest near to the Czechoslovak border this evening. Earlier in the day, Schneiderham had fought his division to break out of its defensive positions in the Danube Valley and through the Czechoslovak forward positions. He committed all of his command to the fight now to charge north and east because in those earlier engagements he had found the frontlines brittle: what reserves that the Czechoslovak Fourth Army had must have been sent elsewhere, probably north to assist the Soviets in trying to stop the French offensive. He was given permission from his corps commander to keep going forward, recapturing West German territory long held by the enemy, and get as far into their rear as possible. The 10th Panzer Division was on his flank to the left conducting their own attack and were reporting similar success.

Keep going, Schneiderham had been told, and that he did.

His command column, small and well-defended, followed the course of the advances being made by his division. Schneiderham kept his column and as many divisional assets as possible off the main road, Bundestrasse-12, for now fearing enemy air attention and other larger roads were avoided as much as possible. The Heer moved cross-country in the attack with the intention that supply columns would later be on roads, though only once the frontlines had been pushed forward.

The Danube was back to the southwest behind the trio of attacks being made by the 4th Panzergrenadier Division as the push was made on Freyung, Waldkircken and Hauzenberg: West German towns near to where the frontiers of West German, Austria and Czechoslovakia converged upon each other. This region had been held by the Czechoslovaks for some time and though those towns and the countless villages their occupation had had a firm hold here. That wasn’t the case anymore. Leopard tanks – both versions: Leo-1s and Leo-2s – raced across fields and along forest tracks escorted by Luchs scout cars and Jaguar anti-tank destroyers. There were Marders and M-113s laden with infantry which followed them as they came up across opposition which didn’t stand a chance. Czechoslovak rear-area units were encountered first with air defence sites and field tank/armoured vehicle repair set-ups. There were supply dumps and communications centers which the West Germans run into as well. Two Czechoslovak combat divisions had been at the front, hit hard and shattered by the corps assault, with the rest of the main fighting strength of the field army in this region deployed elsewhere. Behind them, what Schneiderham had his men tear apart was their service support network.

It wasn’t an easy fight and the enemy, even here in the rear, was no walkover. The Czechoslovak fought with men firing their rifles for the first time in this war yet they were up against West German veterans who had immense firepower at their disposal. The Heer couldn’t be stopped.

Schneiderham soon started receiving reports that occupation units, Soviet and Czechoslovakian units, were encountered behind the service support forces of the Fourth Army. These men had been terrorizing the locals and were given short shrift by his men unless they immediately and unconditionally surrendered as well as looking as harmless as possible: he didn’t raise any complaint to those who were shot after resisting. His own issue was not having his men slow down. There came some news too about Czechoslovak militia folding at once when they were met by his tanks and reports that in places they had been rebelling against their Soviet overlords. He sent that news up the chain-of-command and had some of his intelligence people get the details, but his main concern was to keep advancing!

The 12th Panzer Brigade reached Freyung by sundown and Schneiderham ordered them not to stop after securing that crossroads and a lot more Czechoslovak militia there. He told the brigade commander to race for a village called Marchhauser. An hour later, Leopard-2s crushed what little opposition they found there and went over the border. Their rear area was still active with bypassed enemy forces, some willing to surrender and others not, but Schneiderham had his men inside Czechoslovakia. His corps commander was a bit thunderstruck at the news of such success and started thinking of further options for expansion through the night and into tomorrow using further corps assets. Schneiderham was disappointed to be told to bring the region under his control between the spearheads of his attacking brigades. Yet, he was congratulated too at doing so much so quickly. No one had expected this but the achievement was fantastic news for a supposed supporting attack.

The French had apparently had nowhere near the same results with their main attack and Schneiderham understood why: the troops who fought them should have been fighting his division.

*

For many years, the Soviets had feared that the Polish might one day revolt against their distant control and break away from the Warsaw Pact. Should they do so, in peacetime or during wartime, Soviet control over Eastern Europe would be practically impossible. The political effects would be immense, but so would physical control over the rest of the Warsaw Pact though communications links with them be cut if the Poles ever did such a thing. The Soviets could use ships and aircraft to keep their connections with East Germany and there were rail links (weak ones) with Czechoslovakia should the worst happen and Poland be lost. Yet, Poland was key to controlling Eastern Europe and if the country broke free then disaster would entail.

When the East Germans started to move against their protesters last years – agent provocateurs from the West who led traitors – and those protesters rebelled, there had been very real fears that the tense political situation in Poland which had been ongoing since 1981 was about to explode. President Jaruzelski had let the Solidarity opposition take some of the reins of power with a nod from Gorbachev but had gone too far from a Soviet point of view. In November 1989, a month after the troubles had started in East Germany, Jaruzelski had been deposed by Kiszczak and Siwicki with KGB active assistance: the then Soviet leader had been dismayed at what he had seen as a wholly Polish action. After those changes at the top, and especially since Gorbachev’s assassination preceding the war, there had been every effort made by the Soviets to not let the Poles leave their orbit. Across Poland, those who the Polish security forces couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with and the KGB regarded as a threat to Soviet continued dominance of the country were taken away: the KGB then shot them in lonely locations back in the Soviet Union after being kidnapped.

There had been no trial nor even the pretense of criminal charges for those who the KGB wanted rid of. They were shot out of hand and their bodies dumped in hidden mass graves.

The rest of Poland was treated to extensive Soviet propaganda before and after hostilities commenced. Polish-Soviet friendship and shared responsibilities as socialist nations were key themes, but so too was the threat to Poland which came from Germany. Neither West Germany or even East Germany were the terms used, but instead just Germany. The Polish people and their nation were in grave danger from their historical enemies – no, no, not the Russians! – but the Germans. This was internal propaganda and had been used in similar form in Czechoslovakia too, again there the threat was Germany. It wasn’t designed for outsiders to understand because it was directed against the Poles by the KGB to maintain control over the Polish people and also their military forces too.

In the days before Operation Eastern Storm got underway, that propaganda had been increased in frequency especially when it came to Polish military personnel.


South of Wismar, a US Marines operated AV-8B Harrier II shot down a Polish Air Force Sukhoi-22M4 Fitter K attack-fighter. A lone Sidewinder was used, coming up from above and behind the Polish aircraft and blasted apart it’s tail area as well as doing major damage elsewhere on the aircraft. The Fitter pilot was seen to eject and the Harrier pilot reported that along with his kill report.

Kapitan Andrzej Andrezejewski landed minutes later on the ground in East Germany. His landing wasn’t comfortable and he was left bruised and shaken by that. He was already upset at the injustice undertaken, furious that he had been shot down by ground defences which had to be German. There had been no other aircraft anywhere near him and the missile had come from underneath: those who were meant to be on his own side, even if they were Germans, had nearly killed him. He was no longer able to carry out his mission either.

With his pistol out, Andrezejewski looked around in the darkness. He had got airborne before it had been dark and known where he was before being shot out of the sky but now he had no idea at all where he had landed. He hoped he was behind friendly lines though couldn’t be sure. That was why he had the pistol ready. From the field where he had touched down, Andrezejewski first went to the nearby tree-line. He approached carefully, keeping his head down. His eyes and ears were both wide open as he searched for any danger. In the skies, he knew that he was in control yet everything was different down here.

As he reached the trees, he suddenly stopped when he heard something that he couldn’t explain…

There were men all around him. They had their rifles pointed at him. Someone called out something to him in Russian asking who he was. Andrezejewski knew Russian as all Polish – and Warsaw Pact – aircrew did and responded to their question by giving them his name, rank and unit. He expected them to lower their guns and he could tell them how the damn Germans had shot him down before he could reach Wismar.

That didn’t happen: the rifles stayed pointing at him.

The speaker ahead told him that he was a prisoner of the US Marines. He had five seconds to drop his pistol or he was a dead man.

Andrezejewski swore and swore again. He swore at the Germans who had shot him down. He swore at the Americans who were fighting for the Germans. He swore and swore again.

Then he dropped his pistol.

*

Should the US Army have had to fight the Soviets in a ground war in Europe ten years beforehand, Soviet tanks would be in Pas-de-Calais or Normandy by now… or, quite possibly, tens of thousands of nuclear warheads would have detonated all across the Northern Hemisphere when tactical exchanges fast turned to a full exchange where cities instead of armies were targeted. The Soviet Army had changed since the beginning of the last decade in its doctrine and technologies, yet their adaptations of how they planned to and then subsequently fought were miniscule and haphazard in comparison to the transformation of the US Army.

The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), a term coined by one of the Soviet’s best military thinkers, had occurred and with it there came a whole new way where wars would be fought across all battlefields: in the air, at sea and on land. Technology drove that revolution and the costs were crippling in financial terms for the Soviets. At the same time, the increased military spending to fully grasp RMA was made available to the United States Armed Forces. The US Army was able to start putting the ideas into practice as they invested in equipment and manpower to go along with the doctrinal transformation in how they would fight the Soviets as they planned for a war that wasn’t wanted, but one which they were determined to win on a possible battlefield.

AirLand Battle it was called: full spectrum warfare on the non-nuclear battlefield where the US Army would call the shots and determine the course of the fighting, not the enemy. Frontlines would be fluid, not static lines of trenches supported by armoured forces ready to move here and there to cover threats to certain sectors in a reactive manner. When the enemy advanced, the US Army would choose where to fight them on the battlefield and smash into them with hit-and-run tactics at times whereas elsewhere smash through into their rears and get at their logistics network. The enemy’s plans would be disrupted, with extreme violence applied, and they would blunder about trying to correct what had gone wrong rather than focusing on their objectives. The US Army would take advantage of their own better equipment not just in terms of raw combat power but electronic and communications systems. Then there was the air power. US Army armed helicopters, their Snakes, would be fully in the fight; US Air Force attack and strike aircraft would work to influence the battlefield at the front and in the rear. Forward air controllers and targeting teams would bring the air power into play. Everyone needed to work together, that was key, and with that there was no opponent, not even the mighty Soviet Army, that couldn’t be beaten.

The training which came with all of this was vital to make the theories work in wartime. Staff exercises were one thing, more important was getting the officers and men who would actually fight this battle to understand how it was done. In Western European training areas, the US Army practiced across the terrain which they would fight on. Elsewhere, back in the United States, the exercise area of Fort Irwin in California was witness to repeated attempts to practice how to fight this war. There were problems encountered, as always was the case with something new, and those were added to the knowledge that on the battlefield in a real war things might go astray, but the US Army kept at it. This was how they planned to fight the next war which they were involved in: this was the future.

Furthermore, as the RMA was a concept that the Soviets had effectively created to understand the changes which were made in how modern wars were to take place where technology was central to that, the US Army had expected that the Soviets would change how they did things too. Red Teams, opposition thinkers, came up with counters to the AirLand Battle and these ideas contrasted what the Soviets were known to have as their own military doctrine. This idea made perfect sense and the Soviets were known to have their creative thinkers who could adapt how they would fight as well.

It had come as quite a surprise when generally the Soviets didn’t do anything really imaginative on the battlefield when the war started in Europe. There were a few surprises, but a scant few. The US Army didn’t complain and got busy implementing their own new warfighting techniques where after the initial mass enemy push was finally stopped they pushed back against their enemy. The AirLand Battle was validated and shown to be a war winner. The Soviets were tough and their numbers could be daunting yet once the US Army got its forces in-place and made full use of their technological superiority, they beat the Soviet Army again and again.

Nonetheless, right up to the last moments before Operation Eastern Storm commenced, there was still an expectation that the Soviets would have to make changes to how they fought. They’d lost the best bits of their army doing things the old way and surely had to change things up. Complacency hadn’t been allowed to set in by those at the top and the US Army believed that it was ready for anything that the Soviets would try on the battlefield.


The 177th Armored Brigade – semi-attached to the 28th Infantry Division in a command relationship no one liked – was fighting the Battle of Wittingen tonight. Brigadier-General Clark had his training unit from California pushing against the Soviets deployed around the town and on the edges of the IGB. Altmark was just on the other side of the frontier and that region of Saxony-Anhalt was where Clark’s command and the rest of the US II Corps was meant to be advancing into as part of a supporting attack for the neighbouring US III Corps. However, the enemy which they were fighting all around Wittingen was proving remarkably uncooperative to those plans to drive over the border and deep inside East Germany.

The Battle of Wittingen was a mess. Clark couldn’t get through or past the enemy forces deployed seemingly everywhere. They were dug-in at every possible location and had to be blasted out of them. They wouldn’t fall back in retreat nor would they move against his brigade in a counterattack which he was prepared to smash apart the moment it got underway. The result was a slow-moving advance where the 177th Brigade, plus the 2nd Pennsylvania ARNG Infantry Brigade alongside him, took plenty of losses. The contact reports which came to Clark’s headquarters were coming in from everywhere all over the wide region this side of the IGB. Firefights were happening in countless locations and his whole brigade was sucked into a fight which it didn’t expect. All memories of success early in the day where the Elbe-Seitenkanal had been crossed and that waterway providing no real barrier were gone. The enemy was no longer falling back or exposed out in the open, they were holding firm and protected.

Dug-in defenders had been encountered before and the best way to deal with them was to blast them apart while maneuvering around them if they couldn’t be ignored due to width and density. Clark followed his training, and his instinct, and hit them with everything possible. He had two battalions of heavy guns – still with him from his initial deployment despite efforts to take one away for use elsewhere – and ordered an immense barrage to be unleashed against them. He had his artillery observation teams call-in the correct targets and shelled some of the field fortifications. Others were hit with tanks moving in fast against them with their barrels depressed and firing a mix of high-explosive shells and anti-personnel rounds: canister rounds were also used. Air power came into play with Cobra gunships and several flights of A-10s, with the latter using their fearsome 30mm chain guns. Nerve gas rounds were fired from mortars with air dispersion targeted above trenches with the aim to have the gas settle down low where men in ineffective chemical warfare suits would suffer from the effects. He had his electronic warfare teams double down on their hunt for the enemy’s command-and-control with the aim being that once the firepower was unleashed new orders would be requested by the units under attack and both ends of radio connections targeted for destruction. Clark kept his infantry back, not wanting to see them suffer the losses which would come in a tough fight going up against enemy trenches, minefields, foxholes and machine gun pits when fire power would do the work.

Fighting in the darkness and from afar, the 177th Brigade unleashed hell upon their opponents. They had an enemy that wasn’t willing to move and so died where it stood. The Soviets remained stubborn though and even under all of the explosives and gas there were still some who held out. They fired upon his tanks and at aircraft above from what few fixed positions remained. Clark got impatient and had some of his armoured engineering vehicles sent forward well-protected by tanks alongside them. M-9 earthmovers and M-728 engineering vehicles with dozer blades and demolition guns (165mm, short-barrel) tore into the last of the enemy and collapsed their defences around them: Soviet troops were buried alive in their trenches or had their firing positions exploded all around them. Anti-tank ditches were soon crossed after efforts to do so were no longer under fire from missilemen hankered down and the 177th Brigade was able to maneuver through what remained of the Soviet rear.

It had been one hell of a fight. Clark reported success afterwards and Pennsylvania national guardsmen moved against Wittingen to take the town and the crossroads. He received orders to push over the IGB and he did so. Why the Soviets had chosen to stand and fight, losing their men whilst they did so, he didn’t know. He speculated that maybe his intelligence reports that these were Soviet infantry forces who had been fought were incorrect and instead Warsaw Pact men had been engaged: the Soviets hadn’t fought in such a manner before apart from what he’d heard about the last stand made in the Netherlands. Where had been their tanks and infantry vehicles mounting weapons? Where was the massed artillery? Why didn’t they try to counterattack in a mobile fashion instead of trying to stop him by holding onto open ground? He hadn’t known the Soviets do this before on the German battlefield so he wanted to confirm that it was them, not East Germans or Poles, that he had just thought.

Another thought came to him: had those he had been fighting been buying time?

If so, what for reason?

Clark didn’t know the answers to these questions which he had. Senior officers above him surely would know, of that he was sure. And, soon enough, he’d been told what was going on. Before then, and all that mattered for now, was that he had led his men to a great victory, one to be certainly remembered.

*

Communications were central to the defence of East Germany and Czechoslovakia against Operation Eastern Storm.

The top-down command structure demanded the orders flow one way and information the other way. This all needed to be done securely and in a timely fashion. Those in command needed to tell those at the front what to do after the latter reported what was going on where they were located, and also external sources of intelligence showed what the enemy NATO forces were doing. This was the Soviet way of warfare when it came to fighting the battle which they wanted to fight. Initiative at the lower level was forbidden and even those higher up followed established doctrine rather than come up with anything creative. Everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing and didn’t deviate from the plan. To do so would cause more than just chaos on the battlefield to be exploited by the enemy but would also be politically unacceptable.

The communications connected everybody together in a regimented structure. Who could access the communications was rigidly enforced with control of information tight: again not just a military necessity but also a political factor. Encoding was used and different channels were used at varying times. There were physical links with cables run in the rear areas far behind the frontlines as well as antenna array struck seemingly everywhere: to assist in communications security and to limit interference from enemy action, repeater stations were everywhere to make sure that messages got through. Runners at the tactical level and officers dispatched with sealed packages higher up were used frequently as well. Discipline was enforced to make sure that communications were used by those who were meant to access them and that what was said was properly encoded and too the correct recipient: those who floundered these rules, or even made simple mistakes, faced firing squads as the Soviets understood that NATO would be trying to listen in and take intelligence information from anything they could.

Problems with the Soviet’s communications came from different sources. There was an immense backlog always running with messages waiting to be sent and others to be decoded. NATO air and commando strikes upon the communications network hurt, more so did the failure to stop intensive attacks against it using jamming on a technological level that the Soviets couldn’t match. Soviet communications felt the strain and the pressure bit often with devastating effects…

…especially today during Operation Eastern Storm.


Marshal Gromov had needed one more day, just one more. Not everything had been ready, to be honest it might have never been, but he had still needed one more day to have all of his preparations made ready to fight off NATO’s invasion. Not all of his troops were in-place and nor was all of the massed artillery (pieces long in storage and while old, very effective) deployed alongside ammunition stocks. There was still much work to be done by engineers in laying further minefields and creating obstructions. Air defence units hadn’t been moved enough to new locations where the plan was to use their positioning to surprise attacking aircraft.
NATO was determining the course of events though, not him. They chose when to attack and had done so starting early today.
That attack had followed the general pattern which had been anticipated by Gromov’s intelligence staff. Their main axis’ of attack were towards what they would use for their main supply routes when their plans called for them to be deep inside East Germany. A fourth attack, undertaken by the French in the centre had been a surprise, but the trio of ones conducted by the Americans hadn’t been. There was some difference with what was expected when it came to what the US VII Corps would do when entering Thüringen but the feint by them pretending to head in one direction and clearly planning to go the other way had been seen for what it was. The US Marines had landed a day early, not where expected, but the airborne troops assigned to NATO’s invasion force had yet to be seen: all indications from air and commando attacks anticipated that they would still land in Saxony between Dresden and the Polish border. Furthermore, the French were pushing their forces towards the Czech frontier out of Bavaria – that would have the goal of eventually getting to Plzen.

Gromov was sticking to his plan though. He had told them in Moscow of his schemes to defeat NATO and was sticking to that. Some of the intelligence had been faulty but generally it had been reliable. His forces were positioned ready to defeat the invasion at the borders and that was what was to be done. Anything else just wouldn’t work.

If it didn’t, he had been told what would be the result of Soviet control over East Germany being lost.

From his mobile headquarters located near Finsterwalde, was brought up to speed on incoming news since his last briefing. Every hour his maps were updated and new information which his senior staff decided that he needed to know was given to him. Those forces of his who were near to where NATO had attacked had spent the day being engaged by the invaders and had taken great losses. They had done what had been asked of them though: withdrawing back from the frontlines a short distance until the fixed defences behind were reached and from there stands were made. Gromov was having more forces sent to join them now. All through the night reinforcements would pour forwards to join those already engaged. NATO would attack again and eventually have to cease them when faced with their own losses. They would afterwards try to attack elsewhere as a distraction and find that that wouldn’t work either. The main entry routes in East Germany were those which they needed to take and Gromov wasn’t about to be distracted. In addition, it wasn’t as if other areas of the frontlines were weak and there were massive gaps ready to be opened up ready for NATO to pour through. He had been issued with all of these troops, reservists coming from far afield, and he was putting them all to use.

When he was given his latest briefing, at eleven o’clock, he noticed that some of the information hadn’t been updated. There were parts of the front where no news had come for some time. What was going on, he asked. Gromov was informed that communications difficulties were occurring getting full information on certain parts of where the fighting was. Alarmed when seemingly not everyone on his staff was, he started questioning the ability of his staff to do their job. He let out a lot of anger because he was tired and frustrated. Afterwards he demanded an explanation as to why he hadn’t been informed of these issues earlier. He feared that NATO was making a major attack somewhere unexpected and cutting off communications from that or those areas.

That wasn’t the case. It was explained to Gromov that what was missing was certain details not an overall picture. Not all information was flowing and priority was given to what was important. There was nothing unexpected more than it was already known had occurred happening at the moment. Communications difficulties had been experienced all war and the command staff was on top of that. He didn’t like the answer given nor the unsettling assurances that came. This couldn’t carry on, he told his staff. Whatever it took, information had to be brought to him and orders needed to go down the chain-of-command. Giving priority to select places on the belief that NATO wouldn’t attack in others had to stop before it cost them – him in fact – dear.

Do whatever it takes to keep the communications open and orders flowing he told them!

Following the briefing, Gromov checked personally on the collection of Airborne Troops gathered outside of Dresden ready to combat that NATO airdrop he was sure was coming to cut off East Germany by striking in the rear. The remains of three airborne divisions (the 7th, 98th and 103rd Guards Divisions) were assembled ready to hit the landing sites the minute they were identified. On the same theme, he also moved to make sure that more Airborne Troops were ready near Berlin as well: he had two full divisions kept ready there (the recently arrived 104th Guards out of the Caucasus and the 44th Training) as per Marshal Varennikov’s instructions less NATO send their paratroopers there as part of the initial invasion. The KGB had had it in for the Airborne Troops since the start of the war because it considered their privileged status and esprit de corps a challenge. Gromov hadn’t been able to protect them from arrests of officers but the Chief of the General Staff had recently been doing that for reasons unknown.

With news of those deployments satisfying, Gromov then set about contacting Varennikov back in Moscow. He was confident in his secure communications with the head of Stavka and was sure that on his end they were not being intercepted.

What he didn’t know was that they were not secure on the other end.

[James G]

Thirty – Debates & Shootouts

March 17th 1990
Beneath Whitehall, London, Great Britain

London had been directly attacked by Soviet missiles in the early hours of the morning. Thankfully, there had been conventional warheads used on the cruise missiles which had come smashing into the capital and making the first overt attack on London since the beginning of the war. News had come that Paris had been hit too and there was a report which came from the Americans that a missile-carrying submarine had been sunk a hundred miles or so off their coastline where it had been in a position to fire cruise missiles at Washington though maybe elsewhere too.

The three capital cities of the leading NATO nations, the West’s nuclear-armed powers and therefore the strongest members of the Allied coalition, had been targeted by the Soviets where beforehand they had been purposefully left alone. Neither chemical, biological nor thermonuclear agents had been used: just high-explosives. Regardless, the city strikes were a strategic attack. Retaliation was being planned, using the same method of attack, against Leningrad and possibly Minsk and Kiev too. There were voices calling for an attack against Moscow instead which had been rejected due to the belief that such a strike could easily bring a massive Soviet overreaction: some called that decision cowardice, others said it was common sense.

Where London had been struck, the cruise missiles had been fired from an aircraft above the Baltic Sea and had made a long flight towards Britain. Two appeared to have failed to make it all the way and gone down over the Baltic and North Seas and the Royal Navy had hit another one when the destroyer HMS Gloucester filled the skies with Sea Dart SAMs and their proximity fuses did enough damage to bring that missile down. Seven more missiles came towards London with one hitting Shooters Hill in South-East London (a major physical landmark) striking residential buildings and another blasting apart a section of the Embankment beside the River Thames in Central London: both missed their targets at the very last minute. The extensive railway junction at Clapham Junction in South London, the BBC Television Centre at White City in West London, the VIP-focused airbase also in West London at RAF Northolt, the Ford motor-works at Dagenham in East London and the Bank of England building in the very heart of the City of London were each struck by one of the remaining missiles. Massive explosions occurred with the successful and failed strikes and there were casualties. Those were less than a hundred though with the night-time impacts killing and wounded the very unlucky who were at those places in the dead of night, many of which were no longer being used for their peacetime purposes.

Clearly, the attacks – mirrored by the targeting in Paris and possibly by what the Soviets had planned to do in Washington and/or New York – were a political statement. They wanted to gain some sort of propaganda value by what they did. That came on the back of that small nuclear detonation across on the Continent the other night and then the threats made from Moscow warning of nuclear war if the Soviet Union was invaded. A couple of hours later, Soviet bombers (Backfires and Blinders) made attack runs at high-speed dropping bombs over Brussels, Oslo and Munich. Those were less targeted than the cruise missiles and several aircraft were brought down before they hit their targets with more successfully engaged trying to return home. Those cities had been hit before whereas the capitals of Britain, France and the United States had been left unmolested by bombs, missiles and even Spetsnaz: they had been struck at by domestic terrorists and elsewhere in the countries conventional weapons had been used too.

What last night had been about was to make a point politically to frighten those nations at war with the Soviet Union as to what would eventually happen if the war continued.

Arguably, that might be working among some at the highest levels of the National Government in Britain. Yet, at the same time, the attitude remained among the rest that this was a war to be fought until the end, a fight to the finish, and there could be no caving in now or even allowing a lack of resolve to occur.

A series of debates occurred on this matter, and others, this morning beneath London.


The National Government had never been a happy state of affairs for those within the ruling group who led Britain during the war. There had been disagreements, arguments, bad feelings and disunity since the start. The Conservatives hadn’t been happy with Labour, Liberal Democrat and Ulster Unionist politicians joining. Those MPs from the opposition parties hadn’t been satisfied with how they were treated by the government yet also had issues between themselves and their MPs outside of the National Government as well. Several members left the National Government while others wanted to be part of the War Cabinet that the Prime Minister had formed. There were issues that some members believed that the National Government should be addressing as part of the uneasy coalition while the feeling among others was that far too much involvement in affairs not directed related to the war had come from those not in the peacetime administration.

It had been almost seven weeks since the National Government had been formed – Thatcher invited senior opposition MPs in before the war started – and it had been a tumultuous time for all involved. There had been full-scale war on the Continent as well as in the skies and seas around Britain where the country had come under direct attack. NATO had nearly fallen apart when the West Germans lost the will to fight as they did in mid-February. Nuclear weapons were being used sporadically by both the Soviets and the Americans in isolated global spots though also on the Continent too. Britain’s military loses had been substantial and unsustainable after so much fighting. At home, the war itself and the wartime restrictions which came with Transition to War (TtW) had caused chaos socially and economically. Outrages had occurred in Ulster, especially in the first week of the war, where a near-genocide had only just been averted. The country had burnt through emergency financial reserves and had to resort to printing money (the implications of that wouldn’t be good in the long-term) to stop economic collapse.

This all came alongside the threat of nuclear warfare on a greater scale that the very limited uses seen so far occurring where Britain was certain to be laid to waste in that nightmare scenario.

The coming Monday, in two day’s time, Parliament was to meet and so the National Government aimed to discuss the state of affairs before that where the planned private debates between them would lead to a united front to be presented to their fellow parliamentarians as well as the wider public when repeated to them in censored form. That intention to get somewhere, to have something done was forestalled.

As had been the case beforehand when the wider National Government met rather than the more exclusive War Cabinet, furious rows erupted. Shouting ensued and nothing got done. One side didn’t agree with what the other had done or wanted to do. Personality clashes drove this but so did ideology and tribalism.


Tom King, Secretary of State for Defence, had begun by giving a briefing on current events with the war. The overnight missile strike on London was covered first and he answered questions about the damage done before there came accusational comments concerning the ‘failure’ to stop those inbound missiles. What if they had been nuclear-armed? He did his best and explained how the attack had failed to do any major damage to the city and pointed out the failure rate of the missiles: five of the ten had struck targets in London. He carried on, without addressing the nuclear issue, and moved to events in Germany with Operation Eastern Storm underway. British aircraft were involved in the invasion of East Germany and so too were special forces units. However, British troops were fighting back inside West Germany to squeeze Soviet forces now nearly pocketed in a large concentration as well as being in the Netherlands freed now of their task eliminating the earlier pocket created there. He was asked why British troops weren’t pouring into East Germany, leaving behind the ‘easier’ task of crushing the Hannover Salient? It wasn’t an easy task he responded and it was very important to eliminate the Soviets there as well as freeing West German civilians. Another comment came regarding how British troops shouldn’t go into East Germany less they be targeted by nuclear weapons when that came and should stay ‘safe’ in the rear.

Everything with that statement which came from one of the opposition MPs in the National Government at once brought forth disputes that rumbled onwards for some time afterwards. Thatcher, Neil Kinnock (the Labour leader) and Bob Maclennan (acting leader of the Liberal Democrats following Ashdown’s murder) all intervened to try to stop that argument but it carried on. Some members raised valid points yet others had nothing by negativity and pettiness to add to a full-blown, multi-sided argument. King managed to move on, telling his audience that Royal Marines were already inside East Germany with the Americans on the Baltic coast and the Paras were to join them inside that country being invaded with a big airborne operation commenced. Furthermore, there were moves underway by NORTHAG’s commander, the British Army officer General Sir Inge, to have light British forces from the Netherlands brought into West Germany to replace those heavier ones fighting for the Hannover Salient allowing the British I Corps to move into East Germany behind the Americans. West Berlin and the occupied British Sector was where they were eventually to go. There was to be no holding them back. Again, there were efforts to sidetrack him, especially when it came to the long stretch of fighting which had occurred in the Netherlands, but he finally finished his briefing.

Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd was next. He spoke of the Soviet threat made and how that was interpreted as a warning against an invasion of the Soviet Union through its maritime regions in the Arctic and the Far East but also through Poland. Unofficial contacts had let the Soviets know that NATO had no intention of doing anything like that. This position was quickly questioned as to who had agreed to this, whether it was a good idea and also if it had worked. Gordon Brown, Kinnock’s shadow defence secretary who had joined his party leader on the exclusive War Cabinet (Maclennan and Jim Molyneaux were present at those meetings too but not Gerald Kauffman who had been Labour’s shadow foreign secretary had resigned after the American use of nuclear weapons in South Korea), admitted that there could never be anything sure with whether the message had got through as the means put into play to establish contact had been ‘troublesome’. There were questions asked as to how that was done. Hurd and others wouldn’t let that question be answered.

The nuclear blast in the Netherlands that other night had afterwards seen Britain ready on a diplomatic level to hand-hold the Dutch government again as had been done before. This time though there had been no need: the Dutch were far from happy about the explosion inside their country but there had been no outbreak of panic as had been seen before when they nearly left NATO following what happened with the West Germans. A couple of unfortunate comments came regarding the will of the Dutch, from a leading Conservative figure but of more strength was the heated discussions about what had occurred with the commitment gave to the Netherlands last month when NATO itself was left on shaky ground. Hurd explained about the Treaty of Brussels made after WW2 and King interjected with the statement that if the worst had happened and the Netherlands had fallen to the Soviets, Britain would have been in dire straits with enemy air and naval forces having bases just across the North Sea. It was still something not liked by several attendees because the decision was made by the War Cabinet, coordinating with the French, and also outside of NATO. The why was generally understood, but the how upset many.

There were further remarks from Hurd about wider events with Britain’s diplomatic affairs. Argentina had been given a reminder by the Americans at London’s behest to not even dare think about going anywhere near the Falklands while Britain was fighting alongside the United States as it was. Libya had made moves to make a possible attack against Chad with the world distracted and Britain had joined with France in warning the madman in Tripoli that Chad had joined the Allies by declaring war on the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact. In the Middle East, Iran’s invasion of Iraq had the Gulf Arab Monarchies still in a panic. Britain had joined the Americans in offering political and diplomatic support to them.

When the briefing turned to Northern Ireland, the embattled Peter Brooke hadn’t been fooled by how the meeting had quietened down before he spoke. He knew that there were those getting their comments ready and they were fast to speak up as soon as he started talking about the situation on the ground. There were comments about the killings and the arson which had sparked off the beginnings of ethnic cleansing before the British Army had to intervene decisively when the troops there were delayed in redeploying to the Continent. The UDR came in for criticism again even after Brooke told of how that paramilitary unit had been brought under control. Some attendees at the National Government meeting made remarks about what should have been done with the IRA: hanging them as traitors was suggested. But so too were unionist terrorists criticized and their supporters within the authorities.

Cue a lot of shouting matches over who was right, who was wrong and what needed to be done.

When that infighting died down, surprisingly calmness came when David Waddington, the Home Secretary, covered domestic affairs in Britain. He spoke of the easing of further restrictions of TtW provisions and how those had been going. The threat of nuclear war loomed large still and the country had to be prepared for that. Enemy attacks, last night notwithstanding, had eased off and Soviet Spetsnaz plus domestic terrorists had been crushed. Keeping Britain fed was being done successfully and the opening of primary schools for young children in rural and suburban areas was soon to start. There remained problems though. Crime, especially violent crime, was at epidemic proportions. Courts were running twenty-four hours a day, prisons were full and several cities were still plagued by outbreaks of violence. What was often seen was when certain TtW restrictions were lifted, a lot of steam was blown off before things calmed down. Britain hadn’t seen any outbreaks of unexplained contagious diseases like had been witnessed in South Korea, Japan and Pakistan. Soviet biological weapons were suspected in those cases and if that occurred in Britain there would be many deaths no matter how many preparations were made with the National Health Service. Roy Hattersley had been working with Waddington and the shadow home secretary explained that the challenges were huge to keep Britain in one shape: there was still much to do.

Following this, John Major and John Smith had their (metaphorical) shootout.

The former was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the latter Labour’s shadow chancellor. Major was seen by many as Thatcher’s quiet assassin in his dealings with the opposition in the National Government to her government’s policies. He had earned the ire of many with his actions and the things that he would say. Several weeks ago, he had clashed with Kinnock over threats from the Labour leader – given the sinecure role of First Secretary of State – to resign following the firm resolve position of Britain that the war with the Soviets was one to be fought to the end and there would be no more temporary ceasefires. Major he told Kinnock to go if he must but be aware that the winners always wrote the history. Kinnock had backed down… been seen to back down too. When Major spoke this morning about the economy and tried to put a brave face on it, Smith took him to task. He was given free rein by other non-Conservative members of the National Government to do so while Major had been prepared and had his colleagues stay silent.

The two of them exchanged verbal blows where Smith bested Major in their debate. There were some watching on who believed that this political point-scoring shouldn’t be happening with everything else going on elsewhere but they still watched the engagement between two very bitter opponents. Maclennan was heard to make a whispered comment to Brown about how he thought that they two of them could have been friends if things had been different because they were so alike: determined, often mis-underestimated and convinced of the rightness of their position.


After all of this, the bitter and heated atmosphere between what was meant to be the leaders of a united nation engaged in a war for its national survival came to an end.

On Monday, this was all going to Parliament. There the arguments would be far worse and even more bitter. If partisanship and personal animosity which was on show here beneath Whitehall was the same there, it was a very good idea that that session would be closed to outsiders.





March 17th 1990
The North Korean–Chinese Border

In October 1950, China intervened in the First Korean War, lengthening that conflict in terms of time and the number of casualties.

Just short of forty years later, in March 1990, China intervened in the Second Korean War with the aim of shortening the time length of the current conflict and the number of casualties.

The two wars, the First and the Second, were different in many ways – and conversely the same in many others – but when it came to the Chinese intervention, there was a marked change in how their entry into the conflict came about. This time, their entry was welcomed and arranged not by the Soviets and the North Koreans but by the Americans.


At dawn on the morning of the 17th, China struck against North Korea. It was a stab in the back no matter how it was dressed up in terms of propaganda and diplomacy. The North Koreas didn’t expect it and neither had their Soviet backers. No warning had been issued to those on the North Korean–Chinese border of what was coming and they only had their standing orders as to defend the sovereignty of their nation.

North Korea fought the invasion right at the very start yet those on the border were in the way of an immense juggernaut coming their way.

*

United States Secretary of State Elizabeth Dole had spent four days in China previous to the Chinese making their move against North Korea. It had been a testing time for her. The Chinese had challenged her as to her position speaking for the United States being new in her job, having extremely limited foreign policy experience beforehand and also being a woman. Meeting with the real powerbrokers and getting them to agree to something had been hard work.

Before Dole had come, China had sent out the diplomatic feelers to the United States that it was interested in seeing an end to the conflict on the Korean Peninsula, which lay right on its border. China could only foresee a widening of the war, their unofficial contacts had said, and wanted to forestall. If China were to intervene, what would the United States give in exchange if that intervention was not to be against American interests and resulted in an end to the Second Korean war enforced by Chinese manpower?

To bring to an end the war there was a major foreign goal of the Bush Administration. It was an unwanted conflict and one which brought fears of a spread further than it already had. Memories of 1950 had been fresh and there had been a worry that China would move in to support the North Koreans at the behest of or in spite of what the Soviets had wanted. China’s not-so-coded statements that they were waiting to be asked to help end the conflict in addition for something in return had found willing ears.

The Chinese had mobilised their armed forces (just as so many neutral countries had done) when the Third World War erupted early last month. Their position had been to call for peace, especially in Asia. The Chinese had however engaged in aerial and naval clashes with both Taiwan and Vietnam – two more neutral nations – since the war had commenced. They had transferred a substantial number of arms and ammunition to Pakistan at the same time to allow Pakistan to keep fighting against the Soviet-supported Afghan regime. When it came to the Chinese position to the Soviets, long-standing open hostility remained. China had its army, air force and strategic missile forces ready to fight the Soviet Union. They looked at the mobilised Soviet ground forces surrounding them on an arc from the west to the north and to the northeast. They knew that there were short-, medium- and long-range missile pointed at them from the Soviets: aimed at Chinese population centers as well as military bases.

The United States was busy fighting the Soviets, their Warsaw Pact allies and the Cubans elsewhere while in Asia they had their troops and aircraft in the divided Koreas. There was too a major US Navy presence in the region focused on supporting their war against North Korea as well as attacking the Soviet Union directly. Official American policy regarding China was influenced by the events of last June at Tiananmen Square… which, of course, never happened and even if anything did, it wasn’t the business of outsiders. For a long time before that, China had been an unofficial partner of the United States in combatting the dominance of world affairs attempted by the Soviet Union. As part of that, there had been intelligence sharing between the two nations at a strategic level when it came to the Soviets which had been cut short after Tiananmen.

In her dealings with the Chinese, where everything was done by her and her team of State Department advisers to make sure that there were no debates on other matters not pertaining to the current situation, Dole asked for a reset in relations. Things would go back to how they were before between the United States and China. This starting point was not one that her Chinese hosts were willing to agree on. They spoke in ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ when it came to an intervention in the Second Korean War, but should that occur then China wanted much more that what there was in the past. No demands were issued, there were just suggestions.

When the Third World War was concluded, China wanted trade agreements with the United States. There were some grand ideas that the Chinese had, ones which could be thrashed out with specialist trade negotiators at a later date. The broad-strokes would be Chinese manufacturing access to the American domestic market as well as elsewhere in Asia with United States support for that. Military technological transfers were to take place as well with China paying a reduced price for what the United States would provide to allow them improve the capacity of their armed forces: for defensive purposes only, naturally. One of Dole’s team brought up the issue of Taiwan and gently mentioned how domestic politics in the United States often favoured Taiwan creating a situation where despite the Bush Administration’s wishes, the transfer of military technology to China might be difficult. In response, Dole received comments from the Chinese that after the war finished, not just on the Korean Peninsula but elsewhere, those politicians would come to their senses after all that China was willing to do now and afterwards to assist the United States in the war…

Furthermore, when it came to the divided Koreas, China wished to see them reunified. The Korean people should be one, Dole was told, just like the Chinese people should be one too. A United Korea would be a free and independent nation with the regime in Seoul deciding the destiny of the Korean Peninsula. The military of the United States both sides of the previous DMZ, as well as any Chinese forces which might enter North Korea, would leave the country after the war. The reunified country would be free to do as it wished in international affairs and sign military agreements as it desired, even with China, as long as the whole country was free of a foreign military presence. Even if the South Koreans – cough, excuse me – the United Koreans wanted the United States or even any Chinese military forces to leave, an agreement which the Chinese hoped could be reached between Dole and Chinese representatives would see that wish not fulfilled.

Trade deals and a Korean Peninsula free of external military forces post conflict was what China wanted to have assurances on as the price of their intervention.


When Dole had finally got what the Chinese wanted out of them, even with their hypothetical scenario, she reported back to her President. There was a teleconference arranged with experts on China (those with security clearance) first to get an understanding of what China said it wanted, what it did actually want and what they would also want long-term. There was then another teleconference that Dole was involved in – with less people on the other end who didn’t have the military security clearance for that one – to discuss the ongoing military situation on the ground and the expectations for how that would go without Chinese intervention.

It was agreed that China was thinking long-term. They wanted to expand themselves economically and rid themselves of military threats in a manner which wouldn’t see a nuclear apocalypse inflicted on the Chinese people. Helping to aid North Korea being defeated would see China allied with the United States against the Soviets. China would no longer be regarded as weak when standing alongside the Americans and any Soviet designs upon attacking China would be brushed aside. China would also be in a position as an effective ally of the United States to help the Soviets consider that the war was lost as they were being surrounded on all sides: the Chinese were offering to bring an end to the war with the Soviet Union that the United States was involved in by being seen as on the same side. Their trade deals and military technology transfers would mean that they would grow in strength years down the road. No longer would they be opposed by regional powers, or their ‘rebellious province’ (Taiwan), and Asia would eventually be open to Chinese expansion: whether that be by diplomatic, economic or even military means. The China advisers were split on their opinions on whether all of this would work at once in ending the Second Korean War and pushing the Soviets towards an eventual acceptance of defeat. They also couldn’t agree on whether it was in the long-term interests of the United States in allowing China to expand as it was going to be in a position to.

The military brief given covered the fighting ongoing inside North Korea. The southwestern corner of the country around the Kaesong area was under occupation by a joint American–South Korean–Australian force; Japanese and New Zealand forces were not involved. A guerilla war was underway after conventional fighting had ceased when the North Koreans had retreated back north and west and the Allied force hadn’t followed them. Organised enemy activity consisted of shootings and bombings on a vicious scale. North Korean special forces, backed by indoctrinated civilian paramilitaries who defied all expectations in not wanting to ‘be freed’, were killing and wounding Allied troops every day. They slipped past the perimeters driven out and struck inside. Also targeted was anyone at a local level who wanted to work with the Allies. Outside of the small occupation zone, around Sariwon and Haeju, North Korean forces were refitting and slowly being reinforced even while under constant air attack. The Second Korean War was nowhere near ready to be solved on a military level unless a full-scale invasion up to Pyongyang, even to the Chinese border, was undertaken. The military commitment to do that was too much at the current time and there had been plans underway instead to again use nuclear weapons against the North Koreans outside of the occupied area before they struck first.

Dole told those back in the United States that a nuclear attack on the North Koreans – a second one – would upset the Chinese no end and her feeling was that such an action might turn their view the other way: they might come to the aid of the North Koreans, acting independent of the Soviets, but fighting the United States. A repeat of 1950 could occur.

From Cairo, where the Vice President was busy building another alliance to bring another neutral nation into the war to solve a conflict in that region for the benefit of the United States, Jim Webb offered his support of that position of Dole’s and recommended that China be allowed to intervene in the Second Korean War to support the Allies. He was out of the loop and didn’t have access to all of the information yet his surprising influence on this debate as to what course of action to take swayed a couple of those back home, people who were willing to see China do what it must and wanted someone to voice it.

A set of proposals was agreed for Dole’s follow-up with the Chinese. China would get what it wanted in the long-term and to sweeten the deal, strategic intelligence on the Soviets where it concerned military forces lined-up on their border would be shared with them. There would too be the offer made of civilian DIA and NSA people to at once go to China and advise them from a ground level on how to defend themselves should the Soviets not be intimidated by China and the United States working together.

Inside North Korea, there would be an agreement to separate areas of military action so that no unfortunate clashes between co-belligerents took place. At sea to the west of the Korean Peninsula, the separation would be agreed along internationally-recognised geographic coordinate lines rather than any territorial claims. The thirty-eighth parallel north would be followed until it met the one hundredth and twenty-fourth parallel east: in the seas west of Korea, Chinese and Allied forces would stay out of each other’s way on both sides of the Yellow Sea while the Korea Bay off North Korea was free for exclusive Chinese military use. On land, where the thirty-ninth parallel north ran through southern parts of North Korea, that would too be the dividing line for military operations so that no accidental clashes happened. It would too later serve as a dividing line between occupation zones during the planned, short-term occupation of the country ready for a United Korea.

Pyongyang happily sat along that line… while four fifths of North Korea would be above it along with most of the country’s population too.


When Dole took this back to the Chinese, they agreed with only minor issues raised such as that there be no Japanese forces which would enter North Korea and that any of their own naval activities along North Korea’s eastern coast – in the Sea of Japan – would be limited to local, coastal operations to limit misunderstandings with the Japanese. They spoke too of how North Korea was to be pacified of resistance and a joint commission for conducting war crimes enquires as to what the North Koreans had been doing.

A signed agreement was undertaken and China was to enter the war to fight against the North Koreans and end the conflict there.

As to a timescale, the Chinese had said ‘soon’ to Dole, maybe ‘within a day or two’. Dole left China on her way to a trip across to Seoul first, Tokyo afterwards, late on March 16th. Only hours later, at dawn the next morning, long before the United States thought possible, the Chinese struck on the Yalu River and elsewhere in North Korea too.

*

To make the plan for their intervention work, the Chinese didn’t just intend to use military means to defeat the North Koreans.

The North Koreans loved their tunnels. They built military bunkers on an industrial scale, digging deep underneath their mountainous country. The effort was continuous and had been stepped up with the ongoing war. They went further down in response to American air attacks in their country and elsewhere.

Pyongyang was one of the most tunneled-beneath cities in the world. The digging which had gone on, especially since the beginning of the war, worried some of the engineers about the danger of destabilizing what was above on the surface: the recent work hadn’t been surveyed correctly and the drives to get down and deeper were hurried. Those engineers meet an unfortunate fate in a society run by a homicidal maniac who wasn’t interested in hearing opinions which he didn’t like.


Kim Il-sung was moving positions twice, sometimes more each day. He was always on the move as he went from one bunker to another. Spies and traitors were shot all of the time, those being North Koreans who paid attention to his movements… or reported bad news from the frontlines. He had slipped over the edge into paranoia and had gone quite mad. He would give military briefings of how he foresaw the eventual victorious battles first for Seoul and the Pusan being won. Conversely, Kim Il-sung would talk too of a retreat to the mountains in the north of his country where a guerilla war would be fought successfully supplied by air-drops from China and the Soviet Union. He was dangerous to be around for all those who were forced into his presence as he blamed how the war had gone on anyone who came within sight at times.

An hour before dawn, with no notion of the incoming Chinese attack, Kim Il-sung was holding a meeting on the course of the war. Due to his ongoing medical issues, his doctors (fearful of their own lives) had been pumping his full of drugs: he had been taking more too allowing him to stay awake for extraordinary lengths of time. The meeting concerned the preparations for a grand counteroffensive aiming for Kaesong to be retaken by the North Korean Army. Kim Il-sung wanted to go over all of the details to a minute degree and if he found anything wrong (in his considered opinion) then orders would be issued for the deaths of those who had failed to do their duty.

Just as the meeting started, a shootout commenced.

Four of the bodyguards personally assigned to Kim Il-sung – four trusted men – opened fire on him with their pistols, pistols which they had used beforehand to shoot others on his orders. He was struck multiple times and so too were others with him from the military and security establishments: his son and designated heir Kim Jong-il was shot but not killed. Those bodyguards, acting on orders which came from a high-level security official responding to what he was told from his Chinese backers, were very soon killed themselves at the end of the bloody shootout.

North Korea was left without a leadership.

*

The Chinese intervention was planned out a little too perfectly. It was destined never to go exactly as planned because it was rather complicated. The killing of Kim Il-sung, along with the planned similar fate of his son, was a key part of the plan where afterwards the architect of that on the ground in North Korea would order an immediate stand-down of military forces along the North Korean–Chinese border. Unfortunately, their contact at the heart of the Kim Regime who believed that he would be the country’s new leader was too busy trying to have Kim Jong-il finished off following the bunker shootout to ensure that his orders reached the border troops. Debates raged between him and co-conspirators – who didn’t know the whole plan – as to how to achieve giving the coup de grace to the younger Kim. Soon enough the Chinese were moving with the doors not opened for them. Yet, they still wouldn’t face coordinated resistance in the form of orders coming from Pyongyang.

The Shenyang Military District (SMD) was transformed into the Yalu Front for the intervention in the Korean Peninsula. This was more than just a re-designation in name though. Since February, the SMD had become rather bloated with additions made of ground and air forces from other military districts as the command faced the Soviets across a wide portion of the northeastern border. As the SMD overall became the Yalu Front, detachments stationed closed to the Soviet border along with some further back became the Amur Front (both named after major rivers along China’s borders with North Korea and the Soviet Union respectively).

Five Chinese field armies moved at against North Korea either at once or as a follow up. The Yalu Front deployed two of them straight into action: the 39th and 50th Group Armys. The former moved on the Chinese right (nearer to the shores of the Korea Bay) and the latter was on their left, covering a bigger geographic area as it attacked.

Taking the shortest land route to Pyongyang, two divisions of the 39th Army went over the border from their staging bases around Dandong into North Korea aiming to follow the course of the highway and railway that would take them towards the North Korean capital. They ran into strong and determined, but brittle defenders along the frontier where the North Koreans took no notice of the propaganda directed at them via loudspeaker, radio and hastily-printed leaflets calling for their surrender. The Chinese were soon free of the border and on their way, but they had taken unexpected heavy losses. The rest of the 39th Army went for Kanggye, a major communications centre across the Yalu. They were aiming to get to that city and have access to internal roads and railways in the interior of North Korea. Another field army would follow them the next day, taking over the advance with more mechanised forces and sweep south into the central regions of North Korea to eventually envelop North Korean resistance against the coastal drive. A paratroop drop outside Kanggye with a regiment of well-trained men went off well for the Chinese and those forward men held the way open to the city waiting on the men coming by land from the border to get to them… otherwise they were going to be in a lot of trouble deep inside North Korea with resistance all around them ready to eliminate them.

The 50th Army had a larger task: take the north of the country and get to the Sea of Japan all the while avoiding the North Korean–Soviet border. Pushes were made against border defenders and success attained in almost all places but losses were taken in those offensives. The Chinese were moving, though slower than planned and with a great distance to go.

A third field army went into action too: the 40th Group Army operating from the Liaotung Peninsula. Ships carrying amphibious-trained Chinese soldiers – not really comparable to American or British marines – went across the Korea Bay from Dalian and Lushun (better known to those in the West as Luda and Port Arthur) to Nampo. That North Korean port was the gateway to Pyongyang as far as the Chinese were concerned, far more than their invasion coming down from the Yalu. Commandos from special submersibles were in action before the transport ships arrived, trying to secure entrance to the harbour through the entrances in the outer seawalls. There were missile batteries inland that the Chinese went after too. The commandos achieved some success but failed in others. The port couldn’t be secured and the North Koreans put up a firm resistance. The harbour was needed to start bringing in the army in a collection of ships stretching back to the Liaotung Peninsula: the attack to open the way had to succeed.

Nampo couldn’t be taken by the assault though and the Chinese commando were wiped out by continued North Korea efforts to kill every single last one of them. The 40th Army had lost the element of surprise and now the Chinese would have to decide what to do next. As to the ships laden with men, a US Navy submarine USS Honolulu, which was following orders to withdraw southwards back into the agreed area of the Yellow Sea rather than being in the Korea Bay, raised her periscope and activated her cameras as the ragtag flotilla was spotted. It was certainly a sight to be seen and certainly not how to do an amphibious invasion!


From the Yalu Front headquarters, news of success and failures – gained at a price – went back up the chain-of-command to China’s leaders. North Korea was on the way to being crushed, the messages went, even if they had fought hard at the border and a reverse had been suffered at Nampo. American and Soviet satellites watched and listened high above. There was surprise on both sides (the timing for the Americans, the whole act for the Soviets) and debates begun on how to react to what was observed.

Meanwhile, China’s soldiers kept marching onwards.





March 17th 1990
POW Camp #164-C-03, the Pripet Marshes, Belorussian SSR, the Soviet Union

There’d been an unexplained fire in the night and one of the overcrowded huts had burnt to the ground. The door had been bolted shut but men had broken that down in their desperation to get out. Several of the prisoners had been shot by the guards yet many more had managed to escape the flames.

Seventeen POWs were dead (from the fire and the rifle-shots) and another five missing with their fates presumed to be the same with bodies unrecovered yet: they were probably beneath the collapsed structure.

British Army Captain Crispin Blunt, a prisoner of the Soviet military, volunteered to bury the dead before he and everyone else was instructed to.


No tools had been given and Blunt was down on his knees digging into the soggy ground with his hands. All around him, fellow POWs were doing the same. The guards, those who disgraced the term ‘soldiers’, watched with rifles pointed at him and the others. He kept his head down and his gaze averted: it wasn’t cowardice, but survival. These men couldn’t be fought for they had weapons and the absolute willingness to use them. He and the NATO junior officers with him held here had nothing that they could use to fight them and, even if they won that uneven battle, there was nothing that they could do afterwards but be shot when more Soviets arrived.

He dug and around him those others here all dug too. They could bury their comrades here, giving them a decent burial far away from home. The shovels which they used to dig drainage ditches when the Soviets wanted them to work weren’t allowed to be used for this.

First Lieutenant Mike Pompeo, the American Cav’ officer beside Blunt, did the same. At other times, the two of them might have spoken together in whispers. They might have shared a joke. Blunt could have been teaching Pompeo more British Army lingo. Pompeo could have been enlightening Blunt on his time at West Point. There was no dark humour or private jokes today to fight off despair. Not today though, not as they dug graves for fellow prisoners like them who otherwise might be dumped in a ditch by the guards who didn’t give a damn.

More and more of the earth was moved to the side. Everyone was going fast but steady. Hands and knees and backs hurt among all of them. It had been the same last time they had to bury fellow POWs, men shot by guards, and would be the next time too. Bury your dead, the guards had said, because we won’t.

Blunt tried to put his mind elsewhere as the pains troubled him. He didn’t imagine being back in the war at the frontlines as he had been before capture or think of another time on active service. He thought of home and family instead.

Pompeo coughed beside him. Once, then a second time, then a third. Blunt almost winced hearing it after his idle thoughts came back to the present. His friend was ill. He had a lung infection and it needed treatment. One of the Dutchmen who had medical training and also a fellow US Army man of Pompeo’s had said that it was easily treatable… if there had been anyway of treating that infection with medicines. None of that was going to happen here though as the guards cared for numbers on their counts, dead or alive, and nothing more. Blunt had seen many men die while prisoner, here and during the long journey across the width of Europe, to what should have been treatable wounds and illnesses.

He didn’t know how long his friend would last before they were burying him here too. The maggots in their food, the lice in their clothes and the harsh weather here was killing them all, slowly but surely.

Other men had taken their own lives when they couldn’t take it any more.

Slowly, the hole got bigger. There were more than ninety men all digging, even those who were ill. The earth came away under their hands and the sloping sides were built. A Belgian, someone who Blunt rose his gaze to meet with fury, dropped down into the hole and stood up. The depth was above his shoulders. They were down past five feet. There was more to dig though to get the bodies deep into the earth.

The Belgian climbed out and again Blunt focused on him. That man was a killer. He and a second Belgian had killed a third Belgian officer held here as a POW a few nights ago. They had said that he was an informer, working with the guards and sometimes with the KGB when they came here. The man had been suffocated in the night in more ‘mysterious circumstances’. Blunt knew that the murdered man’s countrymen had done that. Whether their victim was innocent or guilty it mattered not: they shouldn’t have killed him. The debates among everyone at the camp as to whether to punish those two men for what they had done were still raging.

Blunt had helped bury that man too.


Whilst he dug, Blunt’s mind wandered again.

He recalled his capture, a month ago tomorrow if the Irish lef-tenant who’d been captured serving with the Royal Artillery he’d spoke with yesterday was correct. Today was St. Patrick’s Day, which meant nothing to Blunt but a lot to men like that artillery officer also held here.

Fighting with his unit, the 13th/18th Royal Hussars, Blunt had been under 5th Infantry Division control as part of the divisional reconnaissance screen when the Soviets poured across the Ems River and towards the West German–Dutch border. They’d been everywhere with their tanks shooting up the Scorpion tracked vehicles he commanded. His men had died all around him and they had been surrounded. Blunt had faced no choice following being encircled and the enemy all over his shrinking command but to surrender to try and save his men’s lives so that they wouldn’t die for nothing. He had attempted to do that with some honour but witnessed many of his men being shot after surrendering by Soviet soldiers in a bloodlust: their officers had looked on for a while before finally intervening to stop that when a Soviet military police unit arrived.

Blunt had been taken to the West German town of Nordhorn along with those of his men who survived and other prisoners taken: Dutchmen, Belgians and West Germans alongside British soldiers. With his eyes and his ears, he had caught glimpses of Soviet troops running riot before again their officers had brought them under control. They had raped and killed and destroyed all that they wanted when they were allowed to let off steam. Looting hadn’t occurred nor arson as he might have expected, instead there came the bloodlust and frustration released. For him there had been a brutal initial interrogation by Soviet military intelligence people who had battered him about and demanded answers to their questions. They wanted radio codes, the locations of headquarters, commander’s names and such like. Every delay, every lie, every comment he made about not having that knowledge had brought with it terrible pain to him. He had been about to break before they’d brought in one of his men, a young trooper aged nineteen who was beaten and scared and had soiled himself, and shot him right in front of Blunt. Whatever they had wanted to know afterwards he had told them.

On that first night in captivity, officers and enlisted men had been separated. The KGB men had then come and taken away many people who they had an interest in. Those who served in the Royal Signals Corps and the Intelligence Corps of the British Army might have removed their badges and got rid of other forms of identification, but the KGB found them out through the questioning of others and took them first. Other officers were taken, seemingly at random. They took Blunt eventually. He was beaten and threatened with being shot. They asked him a barrage of questions, working down a list that didn’t seem specific to him nor any nationality. He was asked about everything: his military career, his role in the war, his family, his friends, his politics, his upbringing and his personal life. Hesitation were met with physical violence, so too was anything he said might be of doubt to them. He was given a typed letter in English, a piece of paper and a pencil: copy what was written, he was told, and sign it in your own name.

The spelling and grammar was terrible. Blunt had copied it down in his own hand and signed it. He had kept telling himself that he was doing wrong yet the choice was death for him or maybe for more of his captured men. So he had written lies about his country and why the war was being fought. Speaking to others afterwards, British and NATO prisoners, they had written just the same letter as he had.

The next day had come the long trip across Europe.

They had travelled by truck, by rail and by foot. West Germany had been passed through, then East Germany, Poland and finally into the Soviet Union. Other POWs had joined them – Pompeo had linked-up somewhere in Poland – while there were more who had been taken away. Their trip had taken them through towns at time where crowds had come out to hurt abuse at them for the cameras. The guards had changed and their conditions worsened. Some men had tried to escape. Blunt had wanted to join them but hadn’t. Knowledge of where he was and without nothing to help him survive – food, water, warm clothes, a weapon or anything else- he knew he wouldn’t have lasted. Talking with other POWs, there had been a collective decision to help those survive who were weak and needed the assistance of those who could provide it. That came with emotional help as well as shared rations (as terrible as they were) and the warmth of their bodies when struggling against the cold.

The POWs Blunt was with on the way here and once he arrived came from all over. They were all junior officers below the rank of major. They came from NATO armies and sometimes air forces, though with the latter ground personnel rather than aircrews. Britons, Canadian, Americans, Danes, Dutchmen, Belgians, Frenchmen, Italians and Spaniards were taken on the long journey into the Soviet homeland: there were pointedly no West Germans and Blunt had noticed too that he had seen no Austrians either. All had gone through what he had and had handled it to a different degree. They were all weak from lack of food and with illnesses affecting many. The guards would shoot any form of resistance. Another of the Americans, who spoke some Russian and had managed to keep that hidden, said that the guards didn’t speak that language. They came from one of the ethnic groups in the Caucasus, he had said. Blunt knew them no more than inhuman bastards. Maybe they had their own stories at forced conscription and mistreatment… yet they had no souls.

There was no humanity in them when they had watched men die without lifting a finger to help. The Geneva Convention on prisoners and access to the Red Cross were not what the guards were interested in: just having the men do as they were told.

As to where they were, where the camp was, one of the Danes had said that they were in the Ukrainian SSR. The Pripet Marshes was their current location and somewhere north or northwest of Kiev. He said he knew his geography and this was the Ukraine. When that news had spread, one of the Canadians had added a warning that the area where the Dane said they were being held was near Chernobyl! Blunt didn’t know the truth of that and wasn’t sure if it mattered.


The hole got deeper and the Belgian got back down into it. It was no deep enough.

Pompeo stopping moving earth with his hands beside him and Blunt did the same. Everyone knew what was coming next: the bodies would need to now go in here and the earth pushed back atop them. The burnt bodies would have to be touched by him and the others. Blunt would help do that as he knew that while everyone was capable of digging, mentally not everyone was strong enough to bury the dead men.

He would step up and do it.

His humanity would allow him to bury his comrades but he would also do it because he wanted to be buried himself when the conditions of the camp finally took him too. He would provide the inspiration for others. He didn’t see this as selfish, just necessary.

Blunt knew that he was never going to leave here, no matter what, and this was where he would be buried along with everyone else.





March 17th 1990
Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba

Jefe Raúl Castro had moved further away from Havana.

The security situation inside the Cuban capital was getting worse with every passing hour. Civil disturbances had spread throughout most off Havana with those in uniform deserting and joining the rioters, criminals and even the counter-revolutionaries which were springing up everywhere. The norteamericanos had their bombers active as well with B-52s still dropping bombs on anything they wished to.

There was the worry too that the next nuclear attack might not be offshore but rather against Havana directly. If asked a month ago, Jefe Castro would have said that that was impossible and they would never do that. That was not a view he held any more, not after recent events.

There had been more nuclear strikes made against Cuba.

The explosion out over the sea within sight of Havana and those focused on the army down in the southeast near Guantanamo Bay had been followed by further actions of the same nature. The airbase at San Antonio de los Baños had been hit and so too another at San Julián. Military garrisons near to the cities of Santa Clara and Cienfuegos had been struck at as well though with small weapons so that there was no wider damage. There had been further blasts under the waters of the Caribbean also down near Guantanamo Bay: those presumably targeted against where what remained of the Cuban Navy’s submarine force had been detected by the norteamericanos.

The military was holding together, Jefe Castro had been assured, with the Revolutionary Armed Forces staying loyal in spite of everything. It was paramilitary units and civilian police forces where the desertion had come from and they had gone over in many places into rebellion joining the rabble. He had ordered troops to crush them, fearful of what might happen otherwise and no longer having any faith in the loyalty of the DGI.

Cuba was coming apart. The war with the United States was the overall reason though the death of his brother Fidel, which everyone seemed to be aware of now, was the spark which had made so many forget their loyalty. There was no interest being shown in avenging his death at the hands of the hated norteamericanos but instead with Fidel dead large elements of the Cuban people no longer wanted to remain loyal.

Debates had raged among many of the party officials still at their posts as to what to do. Jefe Castro had little interest in them though, he had more faith in the men with guns who he commanded and were keeping their discipline. If he lost their support, it would be a different matter… of course, that was if he was alive for long afterwards.


He wanted out of the war against the norteamericanos. Contact had been made with them through the Swiss setting out discussion points for a ceasefire agreement. They had responded with their nuclear attack, a demand sent back through the Swiss for unconditional surrender, and then more nuclear strikes. They didn’t want to trade prisoners nor look towards a future for Guantanamo Bay that understood decades old Cuban legitimate grievances. No, instead they attacked Cuba with their dreaded nuclear weapons again and again.

Jefe Castro had been given a transcript of a statement which their president had made where he demanded the surrender of Cuba on the terms of the United States. There was a historical term for that: diktat. With the statement made from Bush there had come some analysis that trusted academics with the military staff had given – men who knew the United States politically – who stated that this was a sign of the rage of the norteamericanos towards Cuba. They hadn’t made, wouldn’t make such demands of the Soviets or the North Koreans, but believed that they were in the right when it came to Cuba as the country which Jefe Castro led deserved such treatment. The comment from their president where he said that he was restraining himself for the sake of humanity with regards to trying to avoid civilian casualties in Cuba added to that… yet the nuclear blasts were still occurring.

Such an addition aside, there was still a belief by Jefe Castro, and others too, that they would destroy Havana. They wanted revenge for Key West and Havana would certainly be their target soon enough.

How could the norteamericanos be reasoned with when they made such a demand that Cuba just give up and accept whatever the United States wished to do with Cuba afterwards? It was crazy. It was insanity. Yet that was what was being done.

Contact had been made with the Soviets using a complicated series of transmitters sending messages which passed though Nicaragua, Vietnam and India before going onwards to Kryuchkov in Moscow… or wherever his bunker was. Jefe Castro had asked for help from them so that Cuba would not be wiped out as a nation. What he received back was a short statement reminding Cuba that betrayals would be punished and that Cuba had to fight for herself at this time. The message had contained none of the usual political language: just like a recent speech made by Kryuchkov which Jefe Castro had read the transcript of there was no mention of communism nor socialism either.

Cuba was alone dealing with a merciless enemy intent on the wholescale destruction of the regime which Jefe Castro led.

He knew full well what would happen should he be foolish to surrender to them. Personally, his fate would be a noose after a kangaroo court where the norteamericanos would impose their own form of justice. The same fate would be shared by military officers nationwide, men who were loyal to him. To Cuba would return those exiles. They would bring with them their so-called democracy. True democracy in Cuba, as it was now, would be crushed underfoot and the people of the island nation exploited. Military bases for the norteamericanos would spring up and the Cuban people would never be free as they were now… well, sort of.

There were still those Soviets at Mariel. Their brigade was deployed around the port city, dug-in ready to repel an invasion. Suspected traitors from the DGI who had been doing their bidding had joined them, Jefe Castro had been informed, and they were all waiting to act. He had no intention of surrendering to the demands made by the norteamericanos when they were what they were but if he did, those men there at Mariel would certainly put a stop to that.

They wouldn’t give him a televised trial where lies would be told and an organised hanging. There would be a shootout and the end result would be his body being dumped in a shallow grave.


Jefe Castro had fully supported the decision to go to war when that was made last month. He had been intimately involved in the planning. The Soviets had asked for Cuban assistance in defeating the United States when the norteamericanos were on the ropes as they had been. Cuba’s attack, which he had considered justified, had been meant to finish them off and right all the wrongs which Cuba had long suffered at the hands of those who looked upon the country as somewhere to exploit.

Now, he wanted an end to it.

The circumstances made that impossible though. The norteamericanos wouldn’t negotiate. There were those here in Cuba, foreigners and some of his countrymen alike, who wouldn’t let that happen. The Soviets would punish Cuba for dropping out of the war as Jefe Castro wanted to.

He had no idea what was to be done to end all of this.





March 17th 1990
Husterhoeh Kaserne, Pirmasens, Rhineland-Palatinate, West Germany

There had been a French Army officer, a military intelligence colonel, who had been passing information through a complicated series of transfers by electronic means to a contact who in turn had been in contact with the Soviets. General Schwarzkopf had been made aware of the man a week ago and wanted to have him dealt with then. His temper had been held in check though by his counter-intelligence staff, and the cunning of the colonel’s fellow Frenchmen who weren’t disloyal, so that the activities of the traitor could be used for the benefit of NATO. He had been fed disinformation concerning Eastern Storm and the effects of that on the enemy’s preparations for attacks which didn’t come were observed. There had been many debates on whether to keep the colonel where he was, being fed more damaging lies to pass on, but his own activities – trying to get near to Schwarzkopf, checking his service pistol far too often – had put an end to those discussions. Even though it gave his bodyguards (Green Berets) palpitations, Schwarzkopf had been there to see the man arrested and him being taken away to the tender mercies of the French intelligence services.

SACEUR was pretty sure that after that event this morning, the colonel was undergoing a severe case of regret at everything he had done. Maybe he had a sob story to tell, maybe he was just a traitorous bastard: either way, he was in a whole world of trouble.

After that dramatic event, Schwarzkopf’s mood had been lightened when his chief-of-staff told him two NATO staffers serving on SACEUR’s staff had made a wager on when the Soviet Fifty–First Army would arrive in East Germany. There were others who hadn’t been amused, but Schwarzkopf had allowed himself a smile at such a concept. The Fifty–First Army was based on Sakhalin Island in the Soviet Far East and a very long way away… yet so had been many of the troops which the Soviets had pushed into East Germany before Eastern Storm commenced. He’d enquired on whether there was a book running and whether it was open to him as SACEUR; was there a points spread too with regards to date and to how much of the Fifty–First Army arrived? His chief-of-staff had been a little bit dumbstruck at the questions and stumbled over a response. Schwarzkopf had left it at that.

The joking had been one way to control his rage at the continued feeding into battle of Soviet reserve forces when there repeatedly had come assurances that no more could or would make it to the frontlines.


SACEUR had just finished a conversation with General Powell.

The connection using satellite communications which Schwarzkopf had been told repeatedly that were wholly secure had allowed him to speak with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) back at Raven Rock tonight. He had asked Powell about the continued Soviet reinforcement and, while not mentioning where he had been prompted to ask about the Fifty–First Army from, enquired after Soviet forces in their eastern military districts. Powell had been absolutely steadfast in his personal guarantee that that wouldn’t be happening. What was in the Trans-Baikal and Far Eastern Military Districts (when combined, a larger force than the peacetime US Army) was staying there now: he told Schwarzkopf that the Chinese had entered North Korea and so the Soviet Army was staying where it was because the Chinese were now a co-belligerent of the United States and the Allies.

There had been a long conversation with others connected to the call from here with SACEUR’s staff and there working under Powell. Multiple issues were addressed and Schwarzkopf had two of his aides talking fast notes as he and the CJCS had had a lot to discuss.

Top of the agenda had been how the invasions of both East Germany and Czechoslovakia were going. Schwarzkopf had been able to inform Powell that defeat hadn’t been met after the first two days… but neither had any major success. He had pushed his forces forward and they had run into resistance where that was expected to be: almost everywhere. The Soviets had been stubborn and after initial pullbacks from forward positions, their armies weren’t moving. NATO forces were engaged in a generally static battle of the frontiers where they were having to fight their way through Soviet troops who stood and died where they were. Tactical intelligence had flowed into SACEUR’s headquarters of firm orders to not retreat being obeyed. This had brought about massive casualties: friendlies and hostiles. NATO medical personnel were overwhelmed, especially since enemy injured were being treated west of the frontlines following them falling into NATO hands.

Powell’s staff at Raven Rock had had some questions which Schwarzkopf had let his own staff answer. Those concerned the fighting near Helmstedt and on the edge of Saxony-Anhalt where the US Third Army was stalled more than any other major subordinate command under SACEUR. He had listened as it was explained that the overall aim had been to get the Soviets attention with the Third Army’s direct attack. Ahead of them on their projected line of advance was Magdeburg and the Elbe first, followed by Potsdam outside of Berlin. The intention of Schwarzkopf was to bring the majority of his troops in from the southwest and so the strike from the west was to have the Soviets looking at the Third Army. Enemy forces were known to be numerous and dug-in there. NATO aircraft had bombed, shelled and gassed them first and then the Third Army under General Yeosock had attacked them. Schwarzkopf had spoken up saying that his intention now was to have reinforcements brought up to that fight. NATO light forces fast coming out of the Netherlands were redeploying to handle the Soviets still west of the IGB and replacing British and West German forces from there: most of the British I Corps with one West German and two British heavy divisions were soon to arrive and make an effort to break through the Soviet lines by hitting them in the flank. When he had mentioned the non-US NATO effort in that fight, a question had come about the airborne drop meant to take place tonight north of Magdeburg and behind enemy lines. The plan was for the Allied I Airborne Corps (the West German–British 1st Fallschirmjager Division with its paratroopers, the US 10th Light Infantry Division with its airmobile forces and the Belgian Para–Commando Regiment) to land near Stendal and also at Mahlwinkel airbase. Was that airbase designed as a tactical aviation site for the Soviet Air Force capable of being a big enough airhead? SACEUR’s staff had let those back home know that the enemy had done much work to expand Mahlwinkel and another airfield closer to Stendal too, plus the drop wasn’t that far in the enemy rear to need a massive site to operate large aircraft from. There’d been a query added on about the 82nd Airborne Division and when they were to be deployed. Schwarzkopf had been pleased that the Soviets had taken the disinformation sent through that French traitor about plans for an operation with the ‘All American Division’ near Dresden or even against West Berlin; for now though, he was holding his paratroopers back ready to drop them where they could be best used when the Soviet defences on the borders were broken open.

Talks had moved onto the US Seventh Army and the French First Army as they fought battles like the US Third Army was. With the former CENTAG command, the US VII Corps had broken though the frontlines several times already and into Thüringen… each time to get no more than a few miles deep before finding how far back the enemy was dug-in. The gaps torn open weren’t wide enough and were mobbed with defending fire-power. General Saint was having to keep light forces which had previously been screening the way ahead of Eastern Storm commencing in the battle when they needed to rest after long, hard fighting without a break. The French, driving for the Czechoslovak frontier, had had similar problems. They did have a West German corps under command though and they had found a gap that they had managed to expand. The Czechoslovak frontier had been reached and crossed, right at the very edge of the operation boundaries not just with the French First Army but between Allied Land Forces Central Europe and Allied Land Forces Southern Europe: that latter dividing line of operational areas was on the Austrian frontier. The French had commanded the West Germans to go north afterwards, moving up behind the Czechoslovaks facing them rather than striking deep and alone into either Czechoslovakia or Austria. Schwarzkopf had explained that this hadn’t been done for selfish French interests so that the West Germans wouldn’t get all of the glory, but due to operational need.

There was also the issue of sending West German forces alone deep into Czechoslovakia where historic feelings, whipped up recently by the Soviets, remained strong. SACEUR pointed to the conversation he had had with the French First Army deputy commander, Général de corps d'armée Michel Roquejoffre, where it was he – Schwarzkopf – had ordered that West German movement north rather than east, not any French idea at not letting anyone else take any ‘glory’.

Powell had asked how long could the Soviets keep up their strong border defences? He wanted to know too how long NATO could keep up taking the casualties that came with the fighting too? A breakthrough needed to be made to get troops on their way forward to Berlin and Prague. There were political factors and economic factors at play. There were too concerns over the longer the war went on the concern that the closer it came to full-scale, rather than sporadic, nuclear warfare breaking out.

As expected, the debates to get to answers to those questions were lengthy and unsatisfactory.


Just as Schwarzkopf had done, Powell had served as a young officer in Vietnam.

The CJCS had throughout the war, starting before Schwarzkopf had taken over and General Galvin had been acting as SACEUR, working to stop politicians back in the United States micro-managing the conduct of the war. It had been done in Vietnam and was regarded by many in American military service as being a major factor (one of many, admittedly) in the defeat suffered there. Powell wasn’t alone in doing that and there were politicians too who understood how damaging that could be if allowed to be done.

Successes in that effort came and so too did setbacks.

The CJCS informed SACEUR how the commander of Strategic Air Command (SAC) had been making protestations concerning how many of his aircraft on temporary assignment to European missions had been lost. B-52s, with valuable aircrews, were being lost at an average rate of two a night due to a variety of causes. These SAC aircraft were dual tasked for strategic nuclear warfare missions as well as those of a tactical nature over Europe. Powell had told Schwarzkopf that a higher rate of losses was occurring with those B-52s moved from SAC operational control to both SOUTHCOM in the Caribbean over Cuba and against North Korea with PACCOM. Overall, compared to the losses sustained to tactical air power with the US Air Force and the US Navy, the numbers were near miniscule! SAC was furious with every loss and were trying to put the pressure on for a reduction in B-52 missions and keep what they had left in terms of airframes and aircrews – including those taken from storage for the former and reservists for the latter – ready to take part in nuclear warfare missions should the war turn that way. Powell would keep SAC off Schwarzkopf’s back and also make sure that the politicians understood the need for the heavy bombers to keep making their attack runs with their massive bomb loads over Europe, Cuba and North Korea.

Related to the subject of air power, CJCS also had been dealing with complaints from certain allies about friendly fire incidents made to the Bush Administration when their troops were bombed by American aircraft… or believed that had been the case. Those accidents happened and also did European NATO aircraft striking American troops as well. Everything that could be done short of the troops and aircraft going back to barracks was being done, but it was always going to happen. Powell had his people working on keeping things under control where diplomat’s complaints to politicians weren’t able to come back down the chain of command to take up Schwarzkopf’s time. There was also the issue, Powell clued SACEUR into, with the Soviets propaganda within NATO ranks making the most of those accidents, even creating them, to divide allies.

Powell had reported to Schwarzkopf that he had overseen efforts to make sure that those two incoming national guard divisions being fast moved across to Europe would be deployed where and when needed as decided by SACEUR. There would be no political interference in that, no matter what some with big mouths and larger egos might say. The troops were federalized and under SACEUR command. Problems encountered before on similar matters with national guard ground and air forces were not going to be repeated again.

It had come to the attention of Cheney and his deputy Rumsfeld that civilian journalists, American and foreign, were gaining more access than they had done so before. They were everywhere and their activities were getting out of control. Powell let Schwarzkopf know that the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defence were both displeased with what was going on. Efforts at censorship on what journalists could print and broadcast were very successful due to media cooperation at high levels – Schwarzkopf was playing his part in that with daily briefings –, but ‘in the field’ journalists were running wild. SACEUR had mentioned how he had been trying to address this problem but the media could be very imaginative in getting around movement restrictions, especially when dealing with different nationalities. The media war was very important and Schwarzkopf had many of his Civil Affairs people in many uniforms trying to deal with them but there were always going to be slip-ups. The politicians were concerned more about the domestic effects even with those restrictions in the United States self-imposed by the media, CJCS had explained, when they should have been more worried as he and SACEUR were when it came to information not broadcast getting into the hands of enemy intelligence gathering operatives. The things that many journalists found out and had no use for was of great value in the wrong hands who would find a use for it.

Schwarzkopf was told that there needed to be better controls on the media and their access or the politicians really would interfere in a manner that wouldn’t do any good for anyone.

Politician interference was already underway though and what Powell couldn’t control came in other forms. He and SACEUR had spoken about a strike mission ordered by the National Security Council at the behest of the president with his assets tasked for that. An air strike using laser-guided bombs delivered by F-117s was to take place later tonight against Leningrad. The two aircraft would fly from Orland in Norway and above Sweden to their targets and then back again: Swedish air space sovereignty notwithstanding. This was being done in response to those attacks made last night against London and Paris and the aborted attack on the American East Coast. With the latter, it had been decided that New York rather than Washington had been the planned target of those missiles with (presumably) conventional warheads and the nuclear-retaliation doctrine was being followed in regard to how New York equal Leningrad whereas Washington equals Moscow. With what details Powell had informed him about the submarine sunk before it could launch, Schwarzkopf didn’t know whether it had been planning to hit either city and for him that didn’t matter. What he had expressed to the CJCS was the use of those aircraft on such a high-risk mission as decreed by those not in uniform. The Soviets had gotten a couple of F-117s, especially those that had gone really far deep into the enemy rear. The speculation was that a backscatter radar was active somewhere inside the Soviet heartland and those stealth aircraft could be detected by it. The whole mission was to be conducted outside of SACEUR’s control despite those being his assets and in his operational area: their base in Norway and the flights over Sweden & the Baltic. Defence Department people and SAC from Offutt AFB in Nebraska were in-charge of the operation hitting what were meant to be ‘regime targets’ in Leningrad though Powell had said that it wasn’t being done stupidly and the US Air Force wasn’t going to see aircraft and pilots thrown away.

As unhappy as Schwarzkopf had been with the Leningrad air strike, he was more angry at the order that had come down again from Raven Rock for the USS Iowa – complete with a small escort force – to be sent eastwards tonight further across the Baltic. The battleship had been supporting the US Marines as they moved on Wismar, now the Iowa was to conduct a raid along the coastline far away from that fight. The mission was to run along the East German coastline hitting targets with guns and missiles from the battleship plus escorts all the way past Rugen Island and down to the Polish coast at Świnoujście. There would then be a return before dawn tomorrow made at speed. Again, this was an asset of SACEUR’s engaged in vital missions supporting the II MEF being taken off him to strike for a political reason: hitting Poland’s shores was regarded as having a strategic impact. Powell had told Schwarzkopf that it could have been worse had the Deputy Secretary of Defence had his way: there had been designs upon sending the Iowa on a longer trip as far as Gdansk and even Kaliningrad! To do that would have exposed the battleship to even greater dangers as such a trip would have meant operating in daylight at the edge of air cover in waters where the enemy still had naval and naval air strength available plus extensive minefields were known to have been sown. Scowcroft had talked to the president – before Powell could – warning of the casualties that would come if the battleship was lost while in such dangerous waters and getting into a shootout with the Soviets when so far away.

There were eighteen hundred men aboard and the possible loss of them, plus the propaganda value for the Soviets should they get the Iowa, had cancelled the dangerous plan to go as far as some wanted. Still, SACEUR wasn’t pleased with what the Iowa was sent to do tonight.


Schwarzkopf was at still thinking of all of these matters, plus more of his command responsibilities, for several hours after the call with Powell. There was fighting down the length of Europe that was all taking place under his command and with that came everything to keep those men and women fighting with the support network behind them.

He was kept busy while dealing with issues away from the F-117s going for Leningrad and the raiding mission being undertaken by the Iowa, but they weren’t far from his mind.

[James G]

Thirty–One – Hunters

March 18th 1990
The Baltic Sea

Bandit Two One and Bandit Two Two overflew the Baltic on a southwestern heading. The pair of F-117A Night Hawks were separated by a distance of more than sixty miles and were each flying alone as they flew different courses, altitudes and airspeeds. There was radio silence from both and active electronic systems were switched off. The lone pilot in each was listening to the radio should they be contacted while also monitoring threat receivers and the infrared feed which was used to see in the dark through the early hours of this morning.

From out of the skies above the Latvian SSR Bandit Two One had just come, leaving Soviet airspace behind with the Courland Peninsula in the rear and the southern reaches of the Swedish-owned Gotland Island up ahead. Bandit Two Two was to the north after having come away from the Soviet Union off the coast of the Estonian SSR and now heading in the direction of the Swedish mainland. Each was flying high and fast, above the clouds and in the thin and cold air racing away from the chaos which they had left behind them.

The two stealth strike aircraft had completed an attack run over Leningrad and then made their escape by not turning northwards as the mission planners believed that the Soviets might have expected, but by going southwards first of all – still over Soviet airspace – before heading for the Baltic and what lay beyond to the west. The pilots were on edge and alert for anything that might come their way. The whole mission was high-risk with danger at every moment on approach, during the bomb run and on the way out. They had avoided enemy attempts to acquire and track them for targeting by either SAMs or interceptors. Now out over the Baltic, the threat to them had yet to recede until they had at least reached Sweden where if the Swedes did manage to detect them, they would ask questions before shooting… hopefully.

Both US Air Force men piloting the F-117s, very experienced men, mentally willed their aircraft onwards and away from dangers that even which they couldn’t see, they knew were there.


When over Leningrad, after an approach coming up over the Gulf of Finland and skirting the Estonian coast, the F-117s had targeted the city directly. They had brought with them bombs that had been decorated with greetings from ground crews back at their temporary base at Orland. Those weapons had been Paveway laser-guided bombs – 1000lb and 2000lb variants – which had then fallen from internal bomb bays when over the targets.

The Admiralty and Baltic Shipyards at Leningrad (sites with great historical significance but also modern-day usage) had had bombs fall upon them and so too had the headquarters buildings of the KGB and the Communist Party inside the heart of Leningrad. Multiple bombs had been dropped upon each with both aircraft hitting every target: the mission planners really wanted to get the desired results and the built-in targeting redundancy was done to assure that all were hit. Ground-based radars had been sweeping the sky upon the approach of the F-117s with the Soviets knowing aircraft were incoming but not being able to get a track on them. There had been speculative launches of SAMs and a lot of anti-aircraft fire, all of which was alarming but hadn’t come near the aircraft themselves.

Afterwards the escape had started and the radars of Soviet interceptors had been detected as they had swept the sky looking for the aircraft heading out. Each F-117 had gone low and followed a pre-programmed course using terrain-matching technology to avoid what was down low. It had cost them fuel and been risky – there was always going to be something, probably man-made rather than natural, which might be in the way – yet it had allowed the escape to be made. It could only be assumed that the enemy would be watching the northern skies rather than those to the south as there was no way that the pilots could know this. They had hoped that that was the case though and everything had seemed that way with those fighters high above them and soon left behind far away.

The aircraft were being chased though by hunters not about to give up.


MiG-31 Foxhound interceptors from the airbase at Gromovo-Sakkola located on the Karelian Isthmus had air defence duty over Leningrad and the wider region. The 180th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment (180 GvIAP) in PVO service had deployed detachments to several sites away from their home base though keeping a presence there too. There were thirty interceptors assigned with several down for maintenance at any given time. Others were on airborne alert or on strip-alert where their task was to defend the second city of the Soviet Union from enemy air attack. The Foxhounds – an excellent name for a hunter – came with a heavy weapons load of air-to-air missiles, a rather modern & especially powerful radar and also secure communications with ground facilities. On the last point, this was regarded as most important to the PVO, the Soviet Air Defence Forces. Their interceptors weren’t designed for dogfighting or for the Foxhounds to go after targets on their own (which they could) but rather as flying missile stations for ground control. Radar sites linked through a centralized command would locate and track a target where battle controllers operating in bunkers would guide the interceptors to a launch point and order them to open fire when and with what weapons it was desired. This was how the PVO operated… and also why what aircraft had been sent to the skies over Central Europe – interceptor variants of the MiG-23 and brand-new Sukhoi-27s – to aid the air war there had taken terrible loses when engaging NATO tactical air forces who knew exactly how to fight against such a command system not allowing for flexibility.

Yet, for the Leningrad air defence mission that the 180 GvIAP had been left behind to maintain, it was regarded as the correct way to conduct the air war they were to fight should the need come. The regiment had yet to see any action but had been patrolling every day and night waiting for NATO aircraft or even low-flying cruise missiles to show up. The commander and his subordinates believed that they were ready for an attack. Such a notion was shattered when Leningrad came under attack by aircraft that radars could only get glimpses of; determination came afterwards to avenge that attack and not let those enemy aircraft get away.

Just as the US Air Force thought would happen, Foxhounds went north and west of Leningrad afterwards as their ground controllers believed the attackers would flee that way. Orders were for enemy bombers to be attacked no matter where they were, even in Finnish airspace. Should the Finns put up their own fighters, the Soviets wouldn’t directly attack them unless fired upon first but there was to be no regard for Finnish sovereignty of its skies if NATO aircraft were in them. A pair of Foxhounds detached to a forward operational field in the Estonian SSR were fast off the ground and airborne with orders to stay over the southern skies though: just in case the enemy tried escaping that way. It turned out to be a wise decision for the 180 GvIAP when information was forwarded from Yastreb.

Yastreb was the codename for a backscatter radar system operating from the Volga River area near Kazan, far back inside the depths of the Soviet Union. It was watching the skies over the horizon and the information processed on radar returns was never firm. However, the radar could detect aircraft at great distance and while focused upon the nuclear attack threat there was also the capability to detect stealth aircraft. No track was gained upon the pair of F-117s and only fleeting glances were attained of what might have been unidentified aircraft heading west over the Baltic, but that was enough.

The pair of Foxhounds out of the Estonian SSR were sent racing after Bandit Two Two.


The pilot aboard the F-117 being chased became aware of the signature transmissions of a N007 radar that was known to be fitted to Soviet Foxhounds. Warning systems went off and he increased speed and well as going into the clouds below: he was sure that the enemy radar wouldn’t pick him up but the Soviet interceptor would have an infrared system that might. Repeatedly, the radar warning receiver went off but there was no fix acquired by what the pilot realized were two Foxhounds trying everything that they could to get him as their prey. He carried on heading for Sweden, certain that the Soviets wouldn’t chase him there and if they did the Swedes would be focused upon them rather than him.

As to the hunters, the pilots were just as frustrated as the ground controllers directing them were. The target was not cooperating and getting away. With no radar fix, infrared systems had been activated but even then acquiring the enemy aircraft wasn’t being achieved. They were getting closer though as the Foxhound had a massive speed advantage over the F-117 and as the distance closed efforts intensified including active intimidation.

Bandit Two Two came under fire from air-to-air missiles launched in the general direction of the aircraft. Those whizzed across the sky, lighting up warning systems, but didn’t get a fix to close in. The pilot fought to remain calm and not do anything to make the enemy’s job of killing him easier. He kept on going, getting closer and closer to what he regarded as safety.

His luck ran out though.

Both Foxhounds fired R-73 missiles at the unidentified aircraft rather than R-40s as before. The former (NATO: AA-11 Archer) were infrared-guided rather than radar-guided as the latter were (the R-40 was codenamed the AA-6 Acrid). The heat signature of the F-117 was extremely low and impossible to locate by heat-seeking missiles when Bandit Two Two had been above the clouds. The aircraft had come down into warmer clouds though and the combat computers aboard the Foxhounds was able to split the difference to locate the target: firing of three R-73s by each interceptor helped too as so many filled the sky.

The F-117 wasn’t directly impacted by the missiles but one of the half dozen exploded in the aircraft’s wake. Massive, fatal damage was done at once to the aircraft and there was an onboard engine fire. The pilot hoped to make it to Sweden where he would eject above that neutral nation – a neutrality which was questionable – and let his aircraft crash there. He was too far away though and not going to make it. The F-117 would go down over the waters of the Baltic.

And so would he.


Bandit Two Two was lost while Bandit Two One avoided enemy air attention.

They had completed their mission though, putting bombs into Leningrad. That had been done in response to the attacks committed the night before against London and Paris – and the aborted attack against the US East Coast, DC or NYC – yet also for another reason as well.

It had been shown, even with the loss of one aircraft on the way home, that Soviet air defences over the most vital bits of their homeland just like those over the exposed regions too, were open to NATO air attack.

*

USS Iowa was steaming northwards now and in the direction of Bornholm. Before that enemy-occupied Danish island was reached, the battleship and her escorts for the raiding mission just completed would turn westwards and towards the Oresund. Reaching the waters southeast of Zealand would mean being back in (relative) safety rather than in the exposed waters currently being crossed at flank speed. The urgent priority was to get out of the Pomeranian Bay and towards the Baltic Exits as there were hunters active seeking to sink the Iowa and the ships with her.

Zig-zagging and with electronic jamming systems active, the four warships all went across the rough waters of the Baltic which were being whipped up in an ongoing storm. There were waves breaking over the bows of each vessel and rain lashed down on them from above. Radar and sonar performance was terrible at the moment yet that would be the same for those coming after the US Navy flotilla leaving the shores of East Germany and Poland behind them.

The missile-destroyer USS Preble was out in front, leading the flotilla with the Iowa behind her. Off to starboard was the missile-cruiser USS Normandy while in the rear was the anti-submarine destroyer USS O’Bannon. All of these vessels had been in combat for some time now as World War Three had been ongoing for more than six weeks though none gone right into the face of danger almost willingly as had been done tonight. They had departed Mecklenburg Bay yesterday evening and sailed eastwards drawing attention to themselves by attacking multiple targets on land as they had done so. Speed, jamming and rapid variations in heading had been made, as well as the cover of the storm above used, yet it had been a voyage full of danger for the waters which they had come into hadn’t been so thoroughly ridden of enemy presence as those to the west had been. Their escape from retaliation was now underway because the enemy would come after them for all that they had done when operating along the hostile coastline to the south.

Engage known targets on land, the mission orders had been, and any naval & naval air targets of opportunity on the way. Those instructions had been followed exactly.


Warnemünde had been hit first. The seaport outside Rostock, where access to the city behind was located, had been attacked when the Iowa had opened fire whilst on the move. Since her peacetime accident last year, only two of her three turrets with six guns instead of nine were operational. Regardless, the fire from the sixteen-inch guns with high-explosive shells used had been devastating. A small RQ-2 Pioneer drone flying from the Iowa had provided targeting support for the attack to smash Warnemünde’s harbour facilities and any ships nearby.

Next up, further eastwards, Tomahawks with runaway-cratering sub-munition warheads had been sent against the Soviet airbase at Damgarten. The facility had been hit previously by conventional air power before and after the US II MEF landed near Wismar. The Soviets had been busy repairing damage inflicted and aircraft were still being flown from there. The attack by Iowa’s cruise missiles wouldn’t knock out flight operations from Damgarten for good, just for a while.

A trio of anti-ship missiles from a mobile launcher somewhere inland had come flying out to sea in the general direction of the US Navy warships but their guidance had been terrible. Normandy, with her arsenal of SAMs, had been ready to launch at them yet they came nowhere near hitting any target. There was a coastal patrol boat encountered hugging the shore before the next target was reached and the Preble fired a pair of Harpoons at that contact. Radio intercepts copied a message broadcast by the patrol boat before it was destroyed – contents in code – and so it was known that the word was out. Still, the flotilla had carried on.

This was war and danger came in war.

Stralsund was targeted afterwards. The East German town sat on the coast between Pomerania and Rugen Island. There was a shipyard there where Soviet, East German and Polish warships had been using for combat repairs: the sheltered waters nearby were also used as a staging post for enemy warships. Preble made an attack firing her 5-inch main gun at Stralsund while O’Bannon then used her Harpoons to strike at several small warships spotted on radar racing out of there including a missile-corvette that was certain to be well-armed and gunning for the Iowa if it had been given the chance.

Around the top of Rugen the flotilla had gone afterwards with the Iowa shooting shells towards coastal radar sites detected by their emissions. With another Pioneer up – the drones were small and, if necessary, expendable when recovery operations were difficult – a missile site was observed. A SAM came up and towards the drone above and made a successful interception. Normandy opened fire with her two guns as the flotilla moved onwards though that missile battery was believed to have moved fast after firing upon the drone.

Along the eastern side of Rugen there were plenty of targets for Iowa and those with her: Sassnitz, Mukran and Prora. The seaport at Sassnitz was blasted by gunfire and so too was the rail-ferry terminal at Mukran. Like Damgarten, both had been hit before by air power as they were harbours supporting the Soviet logistics effort. Much damage had already been done before the sixteen-inch shells arrived and only added to that. Preble had a nearby target to those ports when she shelled East German military barracks at Prora. This Nazi-era site was empty of the men who were garrisoned here in peacetime but the orders had come for the attack to take place for apparent propaganda value that no one aboard understood.

On the way down to Usedom Island, there was a submarine scare when a possible contact was gained and then lost by the O’Bannon. One of her helicopters was up on ASW duties in the bad weather and that effected the ability to get a firm fix. Sonobuoys were dropped and both the SH-60B Seahawk as well as the destroyer were ready to open fire, yet there was nothing to shoot at. Shells were afterwards fired by the Normandy at both Greifswalder Oie Island and Ruden Island, small uninhabited isles in peacetime where the Warsaw Pact had deployed radars, before another main attack commenced.

Peenemünde airbase at the northern tip of Usedom was shelled with Iowa firing her six guns all across the extensive site, catching several aircraft on the ground including a pair of Polish MiG-21 Fishbed attack-fighters about to lift-off and armed with anti-ship missiles. One aircraft was observed on radar coming out of Peenemünde ahead of the shells smashing in and the Preble fired a SM-2 SAM towards it. The missile missed and two more were sent aloft but by then the aircraft had dropped down to the surface: it was a flying boat, a Soviet Beriev-12 Mail. Not willing to be beaten, the Preble’s captain ordered shells from his destroyer’s gun to engage the target yet to no avail as the flying boat couldn’t be spotted.

Cruise missiles from both the Iowa and the Normandy were launched following the Peenemünde shelling down towards Świnoujście, just inside Poland. The flotilla then went down along the shoreline of Usedom towards that Polish port town. Radar sites were detected searching the seas and while jamming was done to negate them, shells were fired by the warships when on the move at a few of them.

The final target for the raiding mission was Świnoujście. Świnoujście was the seaport for the city of Szczecin, down inland upstream of the Oder River. Shelling was undertaken by the Iowa, blasting away at distance first and then getting closer to drop more high-explosives inland. It didn’t last long yet a lot of fire-power had been unleashed by the sixteen-inch guns as well as the Tomahawks which had come first. Harbour facilities already damaged from NATO air strikes were smashed apart and so too was the railway terminal. There was a worry about the minefields sewn by the Soviets when they were expecting an amphibious invasion which they had been believed was coming and risks were taken far greater that some of the Iowa’s captain’s subordinates would have liked yet those were luckily avoided.

Following that last mission, the flotilla had turned northwards.


The enemy was certain to react to the activity off the Baltic coast. It had been anticipated that they would soon go after the Iowa and those with her. Such was why speed was employed with strikes being made on the move and the vessels zig-zagging as they did. There was also the departure from the combat zone going north instead of straight back west.

Still, that reaction would come when the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies realized what they could achieve if they managed to get a US Navy battleship.

With the flotilla had come the Normandy instead of the usual cruiser assigned: USS Wainwright. The latter was an older cruiser with guns and missiles that had stayed off Wismar because her air defence capacity was limited. The former was a brand-new vessel only commissioned in December and not in full service when the war had started. There had been work done twenty-four hours a day at first Bath Ironworks in Maine and then at Norfolk naval base in Virginia to get the missile-cruiser ready, especially her SAM battery with all of the missiles for taking on aircraft and air-launched missiles before a trip to Europe. Her older sister-ship USS Thomas S. Gates had been with the Normandy protecting the carrier Saratoga since the arrival in the waters of the Baltic Exits of the carrier group: the Gates had stayed behind while the Normandy had come to defend the Iowa. The Preble and the O’Bannon were well-armed themselves yet all, including the cruiser, were regarded as expandable when it came to making sure that the battleship wasn’t sunk and her large crew taken with her to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

There had been a submarine that the O’Bannon had partially detected and then lost during the raiding mission. The submarine hadn’t been able to maintain contact with what was then thought to be just a lone US Navy warship and had failed to follow the flotilla southwards. It had gone eastwards instead and was searching for the lost warship contact when towards where the submarine was came the flotilla thundering along at full speed. The Project-633 submarine (NATO designation Romeo) was old with outdated technology but still with a powerful armament. The American ships were heard on their approach and the Romeo moved into position ready to strike.

The US Navy heard the Soviet submarine just as it heard them: the old Romeo made a lot of noise. The O’Bannon opened fire ASROC rockets that deployed torpedoes when they hit the water and thus allowed a long-distance attack to be made. Two Mk.46 torpedoes went for the Soviet submarine before there could come a chance for the Romeo to open fire. There came impacts, explosions and the absolute destruction of the submarine.

Very little time came for celebration though because an incoming air attack was next detected. A flight of four inbound aircraft racing low over the water came up behind the flotilla and were only detected when at a distance of forty miles. Normandy was quickly at work and SM-2 missiles were in the sky but by then the aircraft had fired their own missiles and were turning away. The attack had been undertaken by Soviet Naval Aviation Sukhoi-17M3 Fitters based in peacetime in Kaliningrad and now in East Germany on coastal defence missions. They had launched Kh-31A and -31P sea-skimming missiles after flying through terrible weather and making use of the American’s own jamming to locate them and hide from detection.

The Kh-31 series missile was something that NATO only had some idea about. They believed it was an aerial variant of the SS-N-22 Sunburn anti-ship missile fired from warships; there was no NATO codename yet either. The Kh-31 in its two variants was derived from the P-270 (the Sunburn) but not the same. What jamming techniques to interfere with guidance based upon previous engagements and captured examples weren’t going to work against those fired by the Fitters. Those aircraft had got very close and low as well and weren’t firing big cruise missiles from high and far off where the US Navy knew how to defeat those types of attacks.

In the few minutes that the Americans had, they reached fast. Anti-missile guns were readied after medium-range SAMs were fired and those multiple-barrelled guns would be joined by short-range SAMs in last-ditch defences. Aboard ships warnings were broadcasts and damage control parties started moving ready to react to impacts made. There had been sixteen missiles carried by the Soviet aircraft and thirteen made successful attack runs. SM-2s only got two of them, a poor missile-on-missile show, before Sea Sparrow missiles from the O’Bannon got another one. These were small missiles coming in just above the waves and moving all over the place. They weren’t easy to get at and did a lot of damage when the remaining ten made the final run against the warships on the surface of the Baltic.

Two of those missiles, the -31P variant, were anti-radar tasked and they came in first. Both exploded just above the O’Bannon and targeted the radars of the destroyer. Another three missiles – the -31As – raced for the hull of the destroyer and were faced by intensive gunfire from the Phalanx anti-missile guns. Another one was downed but the other two hit home. Impacts occurred all along the port side with holes ripped open and internal explosions at once starting massive internal fires.

Five more Soviet missiles went for the Iowa. The Preble was being brought about to try to get in the way of the missiles but was far too late to do that. The battleship wasn’t defenseless and fired all four of her Phalanx guns as those unleashed waves of 20mm shells. Two of the inbounds were taken out and the other three hit. One of the latter was an anti-radar variant and exploded high while the two others went low. The explosions were large and loud, yet once the smoke cleared the damage done wasn’t that bad. The -31A missiles had a 200lb warhead and were driven against the Iowa by a ramjet for the last portion of their flight. Yet they weren’t armour-piercing.

The Iowa survived, not so the burning O’Bannon that was left behind when the battleship and he two other warships sailed onwards and running from any more hunters that might come after them. Alas, there were no more this morning after them in the darkness and they could have stayed to assist those aboard the wounded destroyer…

…but that was unknown and so the O’Bannon had to be left to fend for herself.





March 18th 1990
Arnhem, Gelderland, the Netherlands

The nuclear explosion the other night at Deest had been regarded as the final act of Soviet resistance in the Netherlands. Their cut-off troops had been surrendering beforehand as the end had come with the (now-confirmed) deliberate blast. There had come some low-level fighting afterwards, but none of that had been organised.

The Dutch Pocket had collapsed not with a whimper but with a bang, yet it had still collapsed regardless.

Chaos had been unleashed due to the cessation of enemy activity and the thermonuclear detonation. With what happened at Deest, the small explosion had been blown all out of proportion as rumours engulfed the Netherlands of what had happened there. When it came to the Soviets giving in – as well as a small number of other Warsaw pact troops too – their surrenders came at a price where further bloodshed was unleashed. There was retaliation and retribution as soldiers turned on officers, officers turned on officers and civilians turned on anyone in uniform… including at times NATO troops moving in to round up the POWs. There were weapons everywhere as many Soviets discarded them. Others though kept theirs and tried to make a run for it with the inevitable consequences of a final, fatal fast-stand.

Those NATO forces who moved forward go gather up prisoners and weapons found themselves nearly overwhelmed with the work they had to do. Many had been immediately ordered to start redeploying to West Germany when they were needed to stay behind with those who weren’t going off to join Operation Eastern Storm to assist in sorting out the chaos. Those being sent away included many military police and engineers trained in dealing with unexploded ordnance. Commanders made furious complaints up the chain-of-command that the redeployment so soon after the surrender was madness and it could take several days, even a week to deal with the chaos, but to no avail. The orders to withdraw almost all of the British, French and West German forces out of the Netherlands leaving the Dutch and Belgians behind stood as breaking into East Germany properly was determined to be far more important.

Away from the need to secure prisoners and weapons as well as stopping the violence, those troops who remained behind were forced to take on more duties too. Civilians not busy trying to kill Soviet military personnel in addition to their fellow countrymen and women who they regarded as collaborating with the occupiers were facing a humanitarian crisis. So many of them had left their homes. Others were malnourished or suffering from illnesses and wounds. There was emotional trauma among many, especially women who’d suffered incidents of sexual violence and children who had witnessed their parents killed. The NATO soldiers had to keep a track too of the fallout from the Deest explosion as a priority despite that being rather small: orders from above wanted far too much information and wanted it right now! Military medical units were quickly swarmed attending to NATO, Soviet and civilian casualties from the last of the fighting who needed help. Engineers were tasked to start work on repairs on the transport infrastructure which ran through the central part of the Netherlands where the end had come because the Port of Rotterdam was eventually going to be opened up again to support the fighting off to the east.

Then there were the war crimes investigations which were meant to take place. Military and intelligence personnel were inside the Netherlands and ready to get on with their work. They needed security when moving to various sites and access to prisoners taken who were in the custody of many combat units all over the place. There was already evidence of NATO POWs being mistreated and executed and they were looking for perpetrators and corpses. Alongside this came the mission by a mixed-NATO, ad hoc team of hunters consisting of soldiers and spooks looking for the missing senior KGB people who hadn’t fallen into custody.


Arnhem had been the centre of KGB activity inside the Netherlands. Across the city, there had been many KGB sites identified during and after the fighting. Several had been bombed by NATO aircraft when the conflict was still underway and others hit by special forces attacks. Others though had remained off-limits, including the city’s main hospital which the KGB had taken over for their own activities while also making sure that NATO observation could see civilians were being treated there by Dutch civilian medical personnel: the only place inside the Soviet-held areas during the occupation where that had been allowed to occur in the open.

Key people from the team assigned to hunt down important KGB who had yet to be rounded up had come to the hospital ground this morning. They wanted to do more than they were able to, search the place from top-to-bottom and then have fingerprints taken as well from every surface where the KGB had been inside the offices and basement areas yet that was impossible. However, they were present to watch as civilians from the city and the wider region flocked to the hospital for treatment. Those in need were everywhere within the hospital grounds along with those attending to them.

Such a presence greatly limited what the hunters could find out here but they still tried. For the military and intelligence people with what was known as the Arnhem Team the hunt for the KGB was being done for more than political purposes or even what information could be rung out of them: it was personal after so many colleagues from armies and intelligence agencies had met gruesome fates at the hands of the KGB alongside so many others.


With the Arnhem Team was Captain Alex Younger, a British Army officer in the uniform of the Scots Guards. He was in the car-park at the minute and walking among abandoned civilian vehicles that all had the caps to their fuel tanks open and (presumably) empty of contents. Some vehicles had been broken into but most left alone apart from their fuel taken out in an organised effort. When the Soviets had run out of military supplies, Younger had been told, they had taken to stealing fuel from any civilian source possible. With his left hand, he held his right forearm as he walked even though he had been told not to. The day before the war begun last month, as British mobilization was underway with earnest, Younger had been involved in a slip-&-fall when at Calvary Barracks near Hounslow: he had been with the second battalion of the Scots Guards which was deploying to Central London for security duties. He had fractured his right radius, a painful wound that had kept him from duty for some time. Elements of his battalion had been sent to war and then the remaining men eventually went too after leaving London while he had been left behind rated as incapable of combat duty with his minor wound. There had come a posting to an intelligence role within the British-led Allied II Corps eventually yet one which had kept him away from the fighting. When in the Netherlands, preceding the final surrender there had been high-value prisoners taken who Younger had dealt with: Soviet Army and GRU officers working in intelligence and signals. He had assisted specialist interrogators in talking to them and trying to find out what secrets they knew. It had been trying work with a lot of hostility both ways. Younger had tried to do his best yet had struggled with the language difficulties and the knowledge that the Soviets had been killing men who wore the same uniform as him after their surrender while he was offering cups of tea and a giving understanding smiles as the prisoners told of their woes: not the lives they had taken, including those of his countrymen who’d surrendered. For the future, Younger was certain that his work in the Netherlands might help his career more so that being involved in direct combat but at the moment he was only concerned with getting on with his unpleasant tasks of speaking with those he had a great dislike for while pretending that he didn’t.

MI-6 officer John Scarlett was in the hospital morgue area underground. The basement areas were extensive and the morgue was only one part of that. It was here though that something had been found that had perked his interest when brought to his attention. There had been a military identification found sealed inside a polythene bag when pushed beside one of the freezers for body storage: it was that of an East German military policeman. Scarlett could only speculate, but he believed that it had been put here on purpose as someone had wanted to hide it ready to be used at a later date. With that identity being protected from moisture as it had been by a sealed bag, rather than just on its own, it hadn’t been discarded. Who would want such a thing, he silently asked himself, and where was that person now? Again, only speculating, he believed that it might have been put here by one of the KGB people missing from Arnhem. The top-level people had all disappeared completely with those shot-callers in-charge of supervising the Soviet military forces in the Netherlands, making decisions on NATO POWs and organizing first the recruitment then the elimination of Dutch collaborators all having vanished as if they had never been here. KGB, what KGB? No one knew of the KGB and they can’t have existed, surely? Where they had gone was top of the agenda for the Arnhem Team and while he and others were here this morning searching for clues. Naturally, they would talk to people rather than hope to rely upon lucky finds, but Scarlett still regarded this discovery as important. To him, it was a clue that – as expected – the top KGB had been preparing to use the identity of others to escape discovery upon captivity. Perhaps NATO already had them in custody? Or maybe this approach had been abandoned and they had found another way out of the justice which NATO wished to give them… after a long ‘friendly chat’ about anything and everything they knew.

The war had been hard on the Dutch military. Major Peter van Uhm had seen for himself how the Royal Netherlands Army had been unable to stop the Soviet onslaught unleashed upon them during the conflict, especially during the early stages. The headquarters staff of the 1st Infantry Division, which in peacetime he had been assigned to, had been targeted by Soviet nerve gases when the Netherlands was blasted by chemical warheads as part of the wars opening shots to stop the Dutch mobilising as well as American REFORGER efforts inside the country as well. Caught in the midst of mobilization, van Uhm’s fellow officers had been massacred when a missile had exploded at their peacetime base. He personally had had a lucky escape and been afterwards reassigned to assist with the staff of the 4th Infantry Division – part of which was in West Germany before the war – while the 1st Infantry Division tried to reorganize itself before going into battle. He had seen the fighting on the Lüneburg Heath and the long retreat back west where most of the 4th Infantry Division had been lost in battle when caught on the wrong side of the Weser Estuary just before the ceasefire. An escape had come for van Uhm who had known all too well what would happen in enemy custody to those such as him. Following that, he had been assigned to the Dutch I Corps staff when the fighting had come to the northern Netherlands. The Soviet Third Shock Army had eventually been overcome following the cutting off of them and everyone else and van Uhm had been assigned to work with prisoner intelligence. He had taken pleasure in the work as justice had been done with the Netherlands freed and those responsible for the occupation terrors held ready to be later dealt with by judicial punishment. Now he was with the Arnhem Team and looking for more of those who had been instrumental in what had happened to the army in which he served plus his country too.

The Militaire Inlichtongendienst (MID: Dutch military intelligence) had one of their experienced field officers with the Arnhem Team in the form of Major Bert Dedden. Dedden had been involved in POW intelligence throughout the war, focusing upon GRU men. Most of them were humiliated, broken and cowed by their treatment at the hands of the KGB who had so thoroughly subsumed them before the war following Kryuchkov’s coup d’état. They didn’t know that much when it came to useful tactical and operational intelligence that would be useful in the short-term when it came to the battles fought as the frontlines came to the Netherlands and then Dedden’s homeland was the scene of the horrific fighting that occurred. However, their knowledge upon KGB procedures as well as many of the personalities. He had spoken too with others in the GRU who had had the opposite approach: open hostility to him and his country as part of NATO. There had come moments of personal danger when a GRU Spetsnaz man in captivity – a rare catch – had turned upon Dedden with a furious rage and also a Soviet bombing raid was made against the MID facility located in Leeuwarden with something that wasn’t a coincidence at all. He had carried on though, doing what was asked for him and seeing success. Now with the Arnhem Team, Dedden was in the hospital grounds, outside in the rain where there were some trees as part of the hospital landscaping. Among them was disturbed ground that Soviet Army POWs was digging into. The prisoners had been offered extra rations to dig where a GRU captive had said that bodies were buried, those of mid-level KGB men. During the final stages of the Soviet occupation there had come an odd series of murders of such people and word of that had got out despite the best efforts to keep it quiet. Dedden was overseeing this uncovering of the bodies meant to be in the ground to try and find out if there were any clues to be found as to why this had happened. What had the KGB been trying to hide?

Général de brigade Bernard Janvier from the French Army was the senior military officer assigned to Arnhem Team. He was currently engaged in trying to sort out arranging for more combat strength to be made available for when the hospital here was left behind and clues which were hopefully found here were followed up elsewhere. He wanted to make sure that when the missing KGB personnel were chased afterwards, the few military men currently present – most of whom were staff officers – had support in the form of elite infantry. The DGSE had its own special forces in the form of the 11e Régiment Parachutiste de Choc (11e RPCh) and it was for the French national intelligence service who he was under the command of as they were taking responsibility for Team Arnhem and other KGB hunts in the Netherlands. He wanted a company of their men or at least a couple of platoons for away from here at this hospital it would be very dangerous. Janvier was on the radio back to Eindhoven where everything was coordinated from making the case for that. It was proving difficult to secure the support of those men because, as it was explained to him, nothing had been found yet and those commandos were needed for other tasks. In turn, Janvier told his superior that when a lead came, he would want to go after the KGB at once and not let them get any further away than possible. He pointed out at the evidence as presented by Deest. Information had recently come that that explosion had been deliberate – there were radio intercepts – and this was enough proof for him that the KGB was damn dangerous and determined to get away. Where they were he didn’t yet know, but when they were located he wanted to make sure nothing like that could occur again. Instead of the special forces, Janvier was offered men from the 108th Reserve Brigade: light infantrymen from the Reserve. These were men who had fought at Nijmegen and held the frontlines on the River Waal who had done a difficult job and done it well; other French troops from the 9th Marine Infantry Division (with another brigade of reservists attached) had fought at Rotterdam but were now going to West Germany. Janvier told his superior that he wanted commandos though, not those men and, finally, there came a conditional assurance of that due to what Janvier knew was the worry about another Deest occurring.

In Arnhem was a DGSE intelligence officer here rather than in distant Eindhoven: Gérard Royal, a man with a sister in politics and his own career in clandestine operations for France abroad (see Rainbow Warrior). He had been involved in debriefing captured enemy personnel throughout the war first in West Germany and now in the Netherlands. This was something that he knew he was good at and it came naturally to him to promise prisoners whatever they wanted with absolute sincerity expressed to them… and no intention of honouring them. He’d come to the hospital with the others and stood beside Janvier while he was on the radio but his mind was elsewhere at the moment. Royal was recalling recent prisoner interrogations where low-level KGB officers discovered pretending to be ordinary soldiers – very poor attempts had been made and several had been turned in by the Soviet Army – had been spoken to about the final days here before organised resistance ceased. Arkady Olegovich had been ordered to kill his commanding major but didn’t carry that out: he had told Royal who had gave him the order and when for a promise that he would be allowed to visit the bordellos of Amsterdam. Roman Ivanovich had told of the radio calls with the senior man at Deest that he had overheard right before the nuclear explosion there: in exchange, he had been promised by Royal a new life in the West and that his family would be gotten out of the Soviet Union to join him. Semyon Semyonovich had told about a West German military officer held prisoner by the KGB in an isolated cell and not beaten, tortured or interrogated: Royal had passed that on to one of the Americans here who was looking for the location now while telling his own prisoner that he could have his freedom just as he wanted. Royal had wanted to go and join the search of outbuildings on the hospital grounds for that site but had been told to wait and stay with Janvier for now. The French Army officer was a testing man to work for and allowed Britons, Dutchmen and Americans to do the job that any Frenchman could do! However, he heard what the soldier beside him was saying and would be happy to see the arrival of the 11e RPCh to deal with the missing KGB when they were found.

Captain John Mulholland Jr., US Army Special Forces, discovered the cell which the French had said was here. The term ‘cell’ was rather an exaggeration and would be better called ‘secured accommodation’. Anyway, it was where someone had been held for a while here in Arnhem hidden from view and kept alone. The KGB had other facilities where they had kept people and those were away from here and very different to this internal room inside a building associated with the hospital’s on-site emergency power generation. There had been a simple lock on the door and inside a mattress (complete with sheets), a lamp and a chemical toilet: basic and hardly comfortable but not a typical KGB cell. Someone had been here for a while and was now gone. The French had said it was a West German and Mulholland hadn’t been sure of that until one of his men – there were four Green Berets including him with the Arnhem Team – found something on the floor underneath the portable toilet. There were etching made on the concrete: a name, a series of numbers and a town in West Germany that he had heard of before. He took down everything in a notepad and had his man with the polaroid camera take pictures of that plus the whole of the cell including the outside. Once done inside, Mulholland brought his men out of there and made a radio call ready for the spooks to come and have a look. He knew that he had stumbled upon something of significance yet should they desire too, the intelligence people would tell him what it all meant. Whilst outside, he noted both the British soldier with the busted arm and the Dutch intelligence major. The former was wondering around as if deep in contemplation while the latter was watching those prisoners dig up the grounds. This multi-national grouping, led by eager Frenchmen, was an odd bunch to work with!

Bruce Riedel was a long-serving CIA officer. He was an intelligence analyst and adviser, not a field agent. Riedel’s specialty was the Middle East and South Asia yet he was in Arnhem today at the hospital with the others gathered here to look for clues as to where the KGB had disappeared to. For most of the war he had been in Langley before being sent to Malta a week ago following the discovery that KGB and Soviet diplomatic personnel who had left countries across North Africa and the Middle East had been gathering there after leaving those countries hostile to the Soviet Union and being concentrated in the small, anonymous nation awaiting some sort of rescue. Riedel had thought the whole assignment overblown and when there had advised a team of CIA field agents on the anti-surveillance measures which the Soviets would be taking there in Malta… those men knew already what he had told them. Following that, there had come reassignment to Europe, the Netherlands in particular, as the CIA was apparently short of manpower for the mission of finding the missing top-level KGB people. Putting aside his own feelings on why he was in Arnhem, Riedel put his skills to work when it came to making sure that those with him understood the mindset of the people which they were looking for. He had tracked KGB activities in peacetime across the Middle East where they made use of others to provide them with everything they needed when they were on the move in a clandestine manner to undertaken deniable activities. The KGB could slow considerable skill in planning but were still amateurs at staying unnoticed. His briefing to the others with the Arnhem Team told them that they would catch the KGB by their arrogance as they may plan to have others help them but would quickly lose patience and act themselves. He was going through witness statements given by Dutch civilian doctors about what the KGB had been doing here – and wondering why those doctors hadn’t been shot – when the Frenchman Royal and the Green Beret Mulholland came to see him with the tale of someone called Semyon Semyonovich who’d seen a West German who’d been etching something on a floor. It was very interesting indeed and he was quick to see what had been discovered: a name, a time/date and a place, what hunters of men would be very grateful to have to locate their prey.





March 18th 1990
Near the Elbe-Lubeck Canal, Schleswig-Holstein, West Germany

Podpolkovnik (Lt.-Colonel) Valery Vasilevich Gerasimov, commanding the 106th Tank Regiment, had been given simple orders: stop the Americans from advancing northwards and reaching the Baltic shore. They were coming north from their Lower Elbe crossing points and following the course of the Elbe-Lubeck Canal. Stop them, he’d been instructed, from skirting the frontiers between East and West Germany to link up with their marines holding onto the coast.

Whatever it took, the Americans were to be stopped. Gerasimov tried to obey those orders, he really did.


As part of the 107th Motorised Rifle Division (107 MRD), Gerasimov’s command was like his higher formation a Cadre Low Strength organisation: what NATO would deem a Category C (minus) unit. He and other regular officers were assigned to the 107 MRD alongside a large number of senior enlisted personnel to maintain the equipment and keep the division ready for wartime service. When mobilization had come, reservists linked up with the 107 MRD as well as his tank regiment. That had been a slow process and there had been many men who hadn’t shown up. Regardless, the 107 MRD had afterwards undergone extensive training in the Lithuanian SSR where it was based. That process had taken several long weeks where many shortcomings were shown in men, material and organisation. Go to Germany anyway, the order had come down from the headquarters staff of the Baltic Military District, and fight to defend the Rodina there on foreign soil before Barbarossa #2 comes and the fight will be inside Soviet territory.

A reserve unit Gerasimov’s regiment might have been, but it still had relatively modern equipment. Ninety-two T-72A tanks were on strength along with other armoured vehicles such as more than a dozen BMP-2 armoured infantry vehicles and several dozen more combat support vehicles… well, that had been the official tally on paper. Eighty-seven tanks had left the Lithuanian SSR to come to Germany and only eighty-one had made it by the time his regiment and the rest of the division was positioned with the Twenty–First Combined Arms Army between the IGB and Hamburg. The political commissars from the KGB had ranted and raved about the missing tanks and other equipment left behind back at the garrison near Vilnius and those lost when attacks by NATO aircraft in Poland had destroyed a few of them when aboard freight trains. Personally, Gerasimov had regarded the loss rate as low compared to other numbers he had heard, but the Chekists – how he missed his old, dim-witted Zampolit! – had refused to understand. The divisional transport officer had been shot for something not his fault.

Since being in-place just across the frontier inside West Germany as part of what he was told was the strategic reserve, Gerasimov hadn’t seen any action until today. His tanks had been ordered to remain hidden wherever cover was available and he had had the men dig shelters for them. His orders had been to have his regiment ready to move south and support the 153 MRD – a fully-mobilization division with very old equipment – on the Elbe River should the need arise. There had been aircraft above and news of an amphibious landing somewhere back in East Germany on the Baltic coast which another division (the 26 GMRD, a Cat. C– unit like his parent division) had been tasked to deal with, but Gerasimov and his tanks had stayed where they were. Yesterday, the Americans had reportedly come over the Elbe and taken the northern bank of the river between somewhere called Geesthacht and another town named Lauenburg yet where those places were he didn’t know for even as a podpolkovnik in a combat unit access to a map showing those towns was denied to him. He had been told that was where they were, down on the river, and if the Americans had managed to break through the 153 MRD then he would be issued maps of the areas where he was to fight them.

The Americans had broken out of their bridgeheads over the river and Gerasimov had been told to engage them…

…but no maps had been sent to him.

Two East German border guards from their Grenztruppen had been dispatched to him instead. Neither was a soldier by any standard and Gerasimov had nothing but contempt for them. The pair of junior officers were attached to his command to provide navigation as they supposedly knew the area and its local geography. Gerasimov discovered that the two of them had very little knowledge of the area as, naturally, they had spent their pre-war military service on the other side of the IGB back in East Germany and since the war had started they had been in Hamburg assisting with trying to maintain order them among a hostile West German population in that city.

Instead of those useless men, he’d have to rely upon the skills of his scouts, his compass and his training: not a good overall combination when combined with the information on the enemy given to him too. That had said no more than he’d be facing ‘Yankee reservists’. Such was the battle which Gerasimov took his regiment into this evening.


Emerging from the hidden position to take part in what was meant to be a localised counterattack where he wasn’t to strike out far ahead (pre-war doctrine to strike deep and hard had been abandoned), Gerasimov at once found that his regiment was engaged in battle. There were hunters in the sky above in the form of NATO aircraft. Missiles rained down first followed by attack-fighters coming down low and firing their guns. Divisional air defence assets in the form of self-propelled SAM launchers and anti-aircraft guns were already engaged in the battle further forward and so Gerasimov had no more than his tank’s own anti-aircraft guns as well as a few men with his support vehicles riding atop of them with shoulder-mounted missiles. During the movement to contact, three tanks and three other armoured vehicles were taken out by enemy air power with no losses sustained to those aircraft.

Gerasimov knew that the Americans would be getting word of what was coming their way too.

Using the reconnaissance troops in their BRM-1 tracked vehicles along with a few of his best tank crews riding in their T-72s, Gerasimov took his regiment south and towards the enemy. Division came on the radio and asked for his position using coded map locations on maps which he didn’t have. There was a heated debate between him and the 107 MRD’s operations officer over whether Gerasimov had been sent maps or not: the Chekist assigned to Gerasimov’s regiment had to get involved to convince the divisional headquarters that there were no maps. A flurry of messages went back-and-forth over where Gerasimov’s regiment was and whether it was approaching where the Americans were known to be or moving away from the battle. Without coded map coordinates and the fact that Gerasimov was moving cross-country rather than following roads through towns as per his orders, there was a great deal of confusion. His regimental intelligence officer expressed worry over the Americans intercepting the transmissions and being able to track them before battle was met due to the length of the messages and the terrain details given when everyone was trying to work out the exact location.

Gerasimov told the kapitan that he doubted the Americans would be able to make sense of it!

Immediately after that comment, which the intelligence officer didn’t seem to understand the irony of it, there came contact reports. Gerasimov’s scouts had found the enemy… or been found by them first.

From unobserved positions and at great distance, the Americans had opened fire upon his scouts. The BRM-1s and the T-72s took fire which they wouldn’t return. Where that first instance of combat had taken place was argued about at first as there were different notions as to the location. One of Gerasimov’s battalion commanders solved that issue though by reporting that he visually observed turrets of several T-72s flying high into the sky when the tanks were blown up. He took his battalion straight into the fight aiming to catch the Americans unawares and defeat them out in the open.

Within a minute or so, Gerasimov lost a full battalion of tanks.

Through panicked and incomplete radio reports, Gerasimov was able to work out that the battalion had run into an ambush where the Americans had been on three sides. They had good firing positions and surprised his men before shooting at ease. Some T-72s fired back and might have made hits back, but that was doubtful. It was a slaughter, just as the Americans seemed to have planned it. Gerasimov ordered the second and third battalions not to move forward to try and avenge the losses. He argued with the Chekist over that at first yet finally the KGB man came around when he realized the hopelessness of going forward into the battle when it was already lost. He came to that wise decision when he realized that the Americans were already moving forward towards the command column with which he and Gerasimov were part of and had to agree with Gerasimov that it was time for a tactical retreat.

Cowardice can take many forms.

Gerasimov pulled the rest of his regiment back towards a small area of woodland which they had just come through and waited for the enemy to come out into the open. Artillery started falling soon afterwards and chemical alarms went off. He had his tanks sealed up with overpressure systems on. Sat in the tank commander’s position of his own T-72AK (the command version of the tank) he listened on the radio as reports came from several subunits that where certain tanks hadn’t been sealed correctly in time, gas killed the crews inside in horrible deaths. Through the sighting system he tried to watch the open fields beyond for the Americans but saw no sign of them. They knew where he was, but he had no idea where to find them.

He tried to contact division to ask for orders. He had already retreated without permission and was dreading telling his commander that – let alone the divisional commissar finding out. Yet, Gerasimov had had no choice. There was jamming on the airwaves. He couldn’t report his situation and find out what he should do when faced with something he wasn’t trained how to deal with. The jamming was there though and he couldn’t get through. Whilst he kept trying, he was also looking for the Americans with the hope that maybe they had gone away and wouldn’t show up to engage his regiment again.

Soon enough, the Americans did show themselves.

From both the left and right flanks, Gerasimov’s tanks came under attack.

American tanks entered the woods and engaged his command. It happened all of a sudden and in the chaos of confusion, the 106th Tank Regiment fought a losing battle. There were explosions everywhere and an enemy who was relentless. T-72s blew up in fiery explosions. There was a possibility that some American tanks were hit by return fire but Gerasimov couldn’t be sure if that occurred and if it did whether those were kills achieved. His command column was engaged as the Chekist disobeyed him and ordered the vehicles to break free of the woods and make a run for it. Gerasimov heard the deaths of them called over the radio but was far too busy. He had his gunner trying to shoot at targets and his driver heading forwards to close-up with the Americans. Everything was happening so fast and his command was being slaughtered all around him. Gerasimov set out to lead by example and take on the enemy. He saw something, had his gunner fire upon what he hoped was an American tank and moved to find another target.

There was a flash though, blinding white light. Gerasimov felt instant pain everywhere over his body as if…

The death of the regiment which he had commanded came moments after his. Gerasimov’s remains were not a pleasant sight for those who later came across his knocked out, smoldering tank.


Meanwhile, the American national guardsmen serving in the US I Corps continued moving northwards. The 107 MRD and its tank regiment had made a stand and been defeated, just like the 153 MRD near the river. They were moving towards the Baltic and didn’t expect anything to be able to stop them.





March 18th 1990
Aalborg, Nordjylland (North Jutland), Denmark

Major-General Lewis MacKenzie came across and into Aalborg proper, just over the Limfjorden from Nørresundby on the northern side of the internal waterway which cut across the top of Jutland. Norwegian troops had surprised everyone, including himself, in taking the city in a night attack that finished early this morning with their victory here. East German forces had been defeated in-place and the Danish city liberated. There was still an ongoing security situation with snipers active in certain places and MacKenzie remained with his military police protection officers from the Canadian Forces at all times. He wanted to have a look at the battlefield but they wouldn’t let him go very far away from the harbour area. MacKenzie understood their concern and knew that he shouldn’t have been here until Aalborg was fully secured but curiosity had gotten the better of him.

Also, he had wanted to find out how the Norwegians had done what was said they couldn’t.

Both brigade commanders were out ahead with their units and currently tied up leading their men from the front to push the East Germans even further south. MacKenzie spoke with the chief-of-staff of the 3rd Brigade and the deputy operations officer of the 1st Brigade. They spoke of how the East Germans here were part of their 8th Motorised Rifle Division – known as the ‘Schwerin Division’ – and had been holding the line for a while. They had thought they had an easy task and the shallow waters of the Limfjorden would protect them from no more than raids coming from the north. Their positions in and around the city had protected the Schwerin Division from air strikes and commando/guerilla attacks. The Norwegians had hit them with a full-scale infantry attack backed up by artillery and light armour. The Schwerin Division had guns and tanks of its own as part of its order-of-battle but the former were supporting the Soviets with the rest of the Eleventh Guards Army facing Danish outposts along the eastern shore of Jutland while there was no fuel for the latter. Where the East Germans had their T-55 tanks used as immobile pillboxes, Norwegian infantry had got up close and hit them with anti-tank missiles fired by men at short-range. Danish guerillas alongside special forces with both the Danish Jaegerkorpset (Hunters Corps) and the Norwegian Forsvarents Spesialkommando (FSK – Armed Forces Special Command) had guided in the missilemen to hit those tanks. The East German divisional command post had been struck too in a bloody attack.

Norwegian troops had then poured over the water en mass in small boats and entered Aalborg. These were reservists who had spent most of the war on static guard duty throughout southern Norway and missed the fight for the Arctic regions of their nation. There had been resistance from the Norwegian government to send them overseas. Not much had been expected of them in battle yet MacKenzie had ordered them to attack at Aalborg and tie down enemy troops with that. Now both brigades would have a battle honour and a lot of bragging to do as they carried on advancing with their tracked armoured vehicles and towed guns racing to catch up and support them.

MacKenzie was out of Aalborg soon enough and the last of the rear-area fighting to pacify resistance in the city carried on where those East Germans left behind – lone men or groups of two or three, nothing more – were slowly but surely overcome. He went back over the Limfjorden by helicopter and overflew the Limfjordsbroen bridge, a structure brought down weeks ago, heading back to Nørresundby.


The Canadian 1st Mechanised Brigade–Group was in Nørresundby and waiting to follow the Norwegians. MacKenzie had ordered them here in the early hours when it became apparent that the Norwegians had won a great victory and was sending them to follow the victors of the Battle of Aalborg. He had brought them across from the west and to Aalborg where engineers were busy put up pontoon bridges to allow them to cross.

All of this, the Norwegian attack and the Canadian follow-up, was being done by MacKenzie because he had his own orders as commander of the Allied III Corps (what had before been the LANDJUT Corps when he was first assigned as deputy commander before remaining as acting commander for some time now) to move southwards. Those were recent instructions which had come down through his immediate superior with the Baltic Army Group from higher up with Commander Allied Forces Northern Europe (AFNE), the British Army four-star officer General Patrick Palmer. Palmer commanded all NATO forces from the Arctic to the Baltic and had few available to him overall. There remained ongoing, low-level fighting at the very top of Norway while Danish troops on Zealand hadn’t done any more than stay where they were after their brutal fight to keep that island and the Danish capital of Zealand in the war’s first week. What forces were on Jutland – those at the top and spread through isolated spots along the eastern coastline – had initially been ordered to maintain what had become a massive POW camp throughout Jutland where not just a four-division Soviet-led field army was located but a whole range of supporting forces too. Sixty, maybe seventy thousand men were caught inside with NATO controlling the seas on three sides and the Soviets maintaining a tenuous land connection to the south. Allied III Corps had lost its US Marines who had gone off to their amphibious assault on the East German coast – helpfully making enemy links with Jutland weaker – and the intention was to keep the situation as it was. Any offensive to liberate Jutland as well as Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg to the south had been ruled as too costly and an unnecessary distraction when Eastern Storm was of great importance.

Such a state of affairs where the Soviets were allowed to continue occupying a large area of NATO territory had ended up upsetting far too many people the longer it went on for. Horror stories came to both the Danes and the West Germans about the occupation. The Soviets were using Jutland as an air corridor for long-range strikes including the recent attack upon London. The enemy was regarded as weak and incapable of fighting back, especially if it could be induced to withdraw and be caught out in the open. The NATO navies operating in the Baltic Exits were fed up with launches of anti-ship missiles coming out of Jutland towards their ships and SAMs flying up at their aircraft overflying the region to help the US II MEF near Wismar. All of these factors, especially the political ones, had come forth and brought Palmer to request from SACEUR that an attack be made with MacKenzie’s corps. Schwarzkopf had said yes, from what he had heard, though with the condition that no forces assigned to getting into East Germany as part of Eastern Storm be distracted from that mission. MacKenzie had been told that AFNE had asked for the assistance of the newly-arriving 38th Infantry Division fresh from the United States with them brought into the then-planned fight for Jutland. SACEUR had said no, they were going to the North German Plain along with the 26th Infantry Division (the 116th Cavalry Brigade also coming to Europe was going to the fight in Austria), but if AFNE wanted to bring more troops out of southern Norway where the Norwegians had left four brigades or Danish troops across from Zealand then that was allowable: just not anyone not within Palmer’s operational command area who was tasked to invade East Germany.

The Norwegian 4th Brigade was currently being transported across the Skagerrak using amphibious ships which had landed marines near Wismar and those Norwegians were again un-blooded reservists though did have their own heavier armour and self-propelled guns on strength. MacKenzie had been planning to wait for them to arrive yet had changed his mind following positive scouting reports and attacked at Aalborg first.

With his Canadian and Norwegian troops, supported by an understrength mixed brigade of West Germans (still beat-up after withdrawing all the way from the Danish-West German frontier a month ago) which he’d bring into play afterwards as flank guards, MacKenzie aimed to move the Allied III Corps southwards. He would have plenty of air and naval support but it still would be a hard task. The East Germans at Aalborg had rolled over easy after being caught unawares. The Soviets behind them wouldn’t be the same enemy. MacKenzie knew all about the fuel and ammunition problems that the Eleventh Guards Army had yet they would still be a fearsome foe. Slow and steady he would move, carefully forwards and avoiding any unnecessary fights. Baltic Army Group would assist with Danish troops on the coast yet it was still going to be difficult.

There would be other factors to assist him though. The whole of Jutland and down to Schleswig-Holstein was alive with guerillas. Hunters of men were active everywhere in the enemy rear. They were unorganized in certain places and formed into proper units elsewhere: the Danish Home Guard had been hurt bad but was still capable of fighting. There were professional commandos active too and MacKenzie had that air and naval support to help him. Hamburg would be too far away and there was a chance even then that men with the Allied Forces Central Europe would get there. Palmer had told MacKenzie that there were airfields he would like to see recaptured: Karup Airbase especially, maybe even Vandel Airbase and the nearby Billund Airport where Legoland was.

Those were far away though now in the direction where MacKenzie was sending his men towards.

[James G]

Thirty–Two – Breakthrough

March 19th 1990
The IGB frontier area between Hessen (West Germany) and Thüringen (East Germany)

Hell.

That was what the fighting near to the border between the two Germanies could be best described as.

Before Eastern Storm had officially started, the ‘skirmishing’, as it had been deemed by those higher up in command chain, had been deadly to those involved. It had only gotten worse since then as the two opposing sides, defenders and attackers, had properly clashed with heavier forces joining lighter units. Death and injuries among those involved came at every moment. There was fighting twenty-four hours a day without any break. The weather was cold, wet and windy and the smoke from what seemed like a million fires blocked out most natural light. The blasts from explosions were deafening and continuous. Men wearing overawing chemical warfare suits struggled through the mud, trying to avoid being shot or blown up, to get at their enemy. Tanks and armoured vehicles tried to move forward and were either caught up in that mud or hit by enemy fire. On and on the fighting went as one side tried to move forward and the other attempted to stop them. Officers kept ordering more men into the fight and no break was given to them. The screams of the wounded came and so too did the call cries of maddened men pushing themselves and others forward to get at those on the other side who they were here to fight.

It went on and on. Both sides tried to break the other and achieve a victory. Some of those involved gave up because they couldn’t take it anymore. There were more than a few suicides – battle casualties on official lists – during the fighting. Other men were shot by their sergeants and officers in extra-judicial killings. There were a few more who ceased fighting and walked away, earning themselves an afterwards unfortunate fate. Most carried on though, fighting and dying when engaging their enemy. The term ‘slugfest’ was used by one commander when reporting up the chain-of-command; ‘meatgrinder’ said another over the radio.

Someone else called it ‘premeditated murder’.


On the NATO side, attacking from Hessen into Thüringen, were two multi-divisional corps commands. The French III Corps (under NORTHAG command) was on the left and on the right was the US V Corps which reported to the US Seventh Army. They had nine combat divisions between them – the French were soon to receive a fifth from the previous fighting in the Netherlands – as well as a whole host of supporting assets. Each command was aiming to push through the enemy border defences and get inside East Germany to start moving eastwards. The French were fighting south of the Harz Mountains with an immediate objective east of the IGB being to reach Nordhausen: that town was a significant distance off but seen as being the key to winning the border fight when taken due to the road and rail links which converged upon it. The Americans were trying to move east following the course of the Autobahn which linked the two Germanies after it went through the Herleshausen-Wartha border crossing: east of the Fulda Gap region. They wanted to follow the course of that highway with their advance and used it for a main supply road too with Eisenach as their immediate objective but the Americans cast their eyes beyond that as well.

Defending the border was the Polish Second Army (facing the French) and the Soviet Tenth Army (who the Americans were engaging). The Poles had seen much action during the war and were a badly beaten-up yet still combat capable force. Their four divisions were all Polish with a lot but not all of their combat support units being Polish too: the Soviets had many artillery, air defence and engineering units assigned as well as security units. As to the Tenth Army, these were reservists far from their homes spread across the western part of the Russian SSR: three divisions based at Kalinin (also known as Tver), Bryansk and Kursk in peacetime. The Poles and the Soviets were dug-in and fighting a generally static battle with only localised counterattacks authorised. No retreats were allowed and the men were to fight where they stood.

The two sides fought among a battlefield of bullets, artillery shells, rockets and mines. Villages, small towns, roads, fields and woodland was where they engaged each other. Trenches, foxholes, firing bunkers and anti-tank ditches littered the area. Any civilians were long gone or lay dead among the earlier stages of the fighting. Homes were destroyed and no one was going to live here for a long time afterwards with the physical destruction done by explosions and the remains of chemical weapons seeming into the ground… along with unrecovered bodies too.

The French and American commanders were both under heavy pressure from above to make a breakthrough and get moving forward though not at the cost of the destruction of their commands: this was almost impossible to do but what standing orders said. When it came to the Poles and the Soviets, the field army commanders were repeatedly told to hold no matter what. Whatever it took, they were to stop NATO forces from getting through their positions and into the rear: they couldn’t withdraw and so lost units where those stood. It had become a battle of wills where many involved, those at the top of staff positions and not caught up in the hell at and near the frontlines, were waiting for something to happen to cause either a fracture of the frontlines where NATO could advance or a cessation of attacks leaving Warsaw Pact troops victorious in defence. How that would come was assumed by many to be an external event away from the battlefield directly with ‘special weapons’ used possibly or a flanking manoeuver made elsewhere.

In defiance of those expectations, it was on the battlefield where the breakthrough came this morning as localised events allowed for NATO to manage to crack the frontlines.


The French managed to get moving first, overcoming Polish opposition with a massed tank attack and having their infantry support those tanks properly to keep missile-fire off the AMX-30s which moved forward allowing the tanks to batter their way through the frontlines. French armoured engineers were everywhere, blowing up minefields and obstructions and throwing crossings over wide anti-tank ditches. The Polish fought as best they could but their men were tired and weary: they had given it all they could but eventually broke. The French 10th Armored Division got to Worbis and its smashed airfield not long before the 6th Light Armored Division took Hellingstadt. Along the valley which the roads and railway line towards Nordhausen the French carried on advancing with the 2nd Armored Division taking the lead soon enough when in the Polish rear areas. There were still engagements fought everywhere as the Poles refused to be beaten but they certainly were when French tanks entered the immediate area around that town and had got behind the combat units of the Polish Second Army. The small city of Halle, sitting on the Elbe, was off in the distance. Orders came for the French III Corps to start moving that way yet only once they had cleared paths through the broken defences to bring forward their logistics units. They had made their breakthrough but it was going to take them all day, maybe into tonight, to win an overall victory here.

Not to be outdone, the Americans got their breakthrough too. The US V Corps’ commander Lt.-General Joulwan had been getting grief coming down from SACEUR through the chain-of-command and had explained how the 32d Infantry Brigade and 42nd Infantry Division – national guard formations – had been bled near white. West German units formed into the 14th Panzer Division (a post-ceasefire unit of mixed pre-war formations) had been similarly gutted of its fighting strength. The fighting had been along the Werra and Ulster Rivers with SACEUR’s complaints being that the Soviet units there were operating WW2-era equipment and were old men; Joulwan had replied that the artillery and multi-barrelled rocket launchers, plus tens of thousands of mines (spread by artillery and aircraft) had caused far more problems than IS-3 and T-34 tanks along with soldiers in their thirties, even early forties. Joulwan had been focused less on getting forward with a frontal attack through Herleshausen-Wartha along the Autobahn and instead on the flank by breaking defences on the Werra near Treffurst and Creuzburg. This morning he changed tack after being emboldened by reports coming from the frontline that the 196 MRD at the border crossing was running out of everything – ammunition and willpower especially – and ready to be broken. The 4th & 8th Mechanized Infantry Divisions got through the opposing enemy division with the second US Army formation moving south towards the historic Wartburg Castle as well. Eisenach fell to the Americans and instead of slowing down to deal with what was in the rear, the US V Corps kept on advancing. The national guardsmen and West Germans were called into that fight, even in their weakened state. Joulwan still had his 3rd Armored Division, plus the separate 194th Armored Brigade and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, all ready to throw into the advance as well. News of success in getting through the border defences went up the chain-of-command and a move further east on Gotha was ordered as well as clearing the rear for supply units to come. A corridor was to be opened behind yet at the same times eyes were cast at what was up ahead… the US Seventh Army still had the 82nd Airborne Division ready to go.


The troops which the French, the Americans and the West Germans came across behind the frontlines were a hybrid mix of Warsaw Pact forces. There were Soviets, Poles and East Germans. Men from each nationality wore uniforms of many different services, including security units. There were surrenders, holdouts and infighting which took place as NATO troops moved against them to secure the rear areas and allow for unimpeded supply traffic. Pockets of resistance were taken on and crushed while those who wished to give in were quickly gathered up: all of those military police units kept ready were put to use. Engineers moved fast to start clearing obstacles and detonate mines.

Medical units flooded in and found chaos awaiting them east of the IGB just as it had been to the west. There were men with combat injuries yet others with diseases found: enemy soldiers with typhoid fever were prominent. Typhoid fever was a bacterial fever caused by contamination of food and water by fecal matter and there were thousands infected with it; Soviet troops in Afghanistan during the war there were known to have been affected by that, along with other diseases caused by poor sanitation, but no one had expected to see it here in Central Europe. Men with severe causes of influenza were also discovered and the medics fast discovered that the particular strain was unknown: with immediate effect men were removed from Soviet facilities (which were carefully burnt down) and sent west for immediate evaluation whilst being in quarantine. There was a fear of some sort of biological outbreak and the move west of those men, many in bad ways, would soon cause political ripples.

Other NATO troops secured weapons and carried on engaging those of the enemy bypassed. In certain instances where the French, Americans and West Germans fought they found their opponents ready to give in, others refused so though. The pockets were slowly crushed through as the gaps in enemy lines defending the entrances to East Germany were widened. NATO was inside East Germany here and weren’t about to be pushed back out after all that they had been through getting in.


In response to the breakthroughs made, an order came from the South German Front – to which the Polish Second and Soviet Tenth Armys reported to – which instructed the Soviet Twentieth Guards Army to move forward. This field army was a survivor of the initial fighting back in February and contained troops assigned pre-war to the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany… there weren’t many of those left alive or not in NATO captivity. The Twentieth Guards Army was far from an effective force for anything more than localised counterattacks and that was what it was ordered to do. From out of hidden locations spread south from Halle along the Salle Valley they were to move forward and engage NATO forces. There were pre-scouted routes cross-country with traffic controllers send fast ahead of the tanks and armoured vehicles carrying regular troops which the Soviets had faith in the ability of to do what they hadn’t done before when in battle during the invasion of West Germany: overcome NATO.

However, the Twentieth Guards Army was positioned ready to respond to one major NATO breakthrough, not two of them. Specifically, when Marshal Gromov had been planning to defend East Germany he had foreseen the move of the US V Corps long before it occurred and only afterwards moved the Poles to face the unexpected French attack. The Poles had done better (until this morning) than expected but there was still a plan from high up to move one of the field armies kept even further back under the Reserve Front rather than the two forward army groups – the North & South German Fronts – forward to be in-place ready to meet a French breakthrough. Near-simultaneously, both the French and the Americans got through the border defences and the incoming Soviet Ninth Army (reservists from western Siberia) was nowhere near the battle area.

NATO knew all about the Twentieth Guards Army. They had special forces on the ground, aircraft with radar-imaging and satellite photographs. The exact strength and positioning of every unit wasn’t known, but they knew the field army was where it was and were certain of its mission. There was confidence even before this morning that it could be defeated in battle as it was anticipated that the Soviets would wait too late to move it and NATO forces would engage the Soviets in a battle of maneuver rather than with the Twentieth Guards Army holding a fixed series of defences. Either way, the Soviets were seen moving this morning and coming out into the open. They didn’t follow the roads and traversed the countryside heading for the Unstrut River (which course as it meandered across the East German countryside would mean two crossings rather than one for the Soviets to have to make) where there would be hidden crossings points. NATO saw it was seeming to split into two parts, aiming to engage both the French III Corps and the US V Corps simultaneously.

This had been something waited for.

Air tasking orders went out to be acted upon within the next couple of hours. NATO aircraft from both 2 ATAF and 4 ATAF were given a priority mission: attack enemy armour out in the open between the Saale and the Unstrut. This had been done before when several weeks ago the Soviet Sixth Guards Tank Army had been attacked on the fly when it moved across the North German Plain. That series of attacks had been more of an emergency situation with little planning: hitting the Twentieth Guards Army was pre-planned.

Hundreds of aircraft with aircrews from many NATO nations were soon involved. There were dedicated attack-fighters designed for engaging enemy armour. Strike aircraft joined in too. Bombs and missiles rained down from aircraft above while others came in low firing cannons. Some were downed by missiles and guns, but the Twentieth Guards Army only got a few as the air defence network wasn’t properly organised: getting the field army moving had been the priority over setting up radar stations and firing points which overlapped.

The air attacks slaughtered the Twentieth Guards Army and brought it to a bloody halt. It was not going to interfere with NATO troops which had completed their breakthrough into East Germany.





March 19th 1990
Hamburg–Mitte, Hamburg, West Germany

Hamburg had fallen to occupation last month on the 12th: two days before the ceasefire. East German reservists with the 20 MRD – three of the four assigned regiments to that National Volksarmee formation – had moved in after the West German Territoralheer defenders had listened to the city’s political leadership and surrendered Hamburg. The city had been bombarded by artillery and loudspeakers. The former had sent high-explosive shells which had hit residential areas while the latter had delivered threats of more to come unless Hamburg gave in. At that time, the NATO–Warsaw Pact frontlines were far away to the west approaching Bremen and also to the north near the Danish border: no relief for the besieged defenders was to come. Close to three quarters of a million citizens of Hamburg had already fled west – a massive undertaking which saw a humanitarian disaster involved in that – yet other West Germans from outside of the city itself had come into Hamburg right before it fell aiming to find safety there or by passing through it.

Two million civilians, many internal West German refugees, had been inside Hamburg at the end of active hostilities and fell into hostile hands.

When the East German reservists had moved into Hamburg, they had been closely followed by ready units of both the Stasi and the KGB. These men had a job to do to ‘pacify’ the city and also transform Hamburg into a future vision of it as part of a ‘new Germany’. Thousands of West Germans ended up getting shot in organised killings of anyone who would, could or might oppose the new order. To the north of the city, the bodies of those killed without mercy were dumped in mass graves dug with their own hands. Across Hamburg the period of time immediately after the surrender, through the short ceasefire with NATO and straight afterwards when the war continued and Warsaw Pact forces were still advancing westwards, Hamburg was treated to a wave of careful physical destruction and social reorganization. What were deemed symbols of the old regime were destroyed, anything of value removed elsewhere and the people in Stasi and KGB hands found out what occupation meant for them.

There was some unorganised resistance to the occupiers… and a lot more organised resistance too.

Civilians resisted as best they could with their fists or improvised weapons: they found out what that brought them as when two of the regiments from the 20 MRD had peeled away to move west those regular troops had been replaced inside Hamburg by a regiment of Grenztruppen with recent experience of occupation. The East German border guards were ready and able to deal with those civilians and didn’t need the assistance of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment coming up from West Berlin to aid them. Yet, the armed Stasi troops were pushed into those instances where there was rioting and dealt with those involved more harshly than the Grenztruppen did. More bodies for further shallow graves were created.

West Germany was part of the Gladio network and there were men and women ready to act as partisans all across the country in the face of an invasion for many years. The East–West crisis had come suddenly and so many people had believed that war would be averted at the last minute. That wasn’t the case with many of those waiting to strike against the invader in the stay-behind role though. These men had arms caches, communications and networking links. Patriots they believed they were, Neo-Nazi criminals said others. The Stasi knew more about the West German Gladio network than the CIA… quite a feat since the CIA had created it in the first place. Regardless, when the invasion came the now-partisans went underground and tried to avoid enemy attention at first to let the frontlines past them by. Some were caught by Stasi detachments early on but most weren’t. They moved away from their homes and either into the countryside or into the cities which fell to occupation. From those places they fought against foreign soldiers on their land. Reconnaissance and intelligence was meant to be their mission, but there were Soviet, East German, Polish and Czechoslovak soldiers inside their country. The stay-behind units in West Germany fought back. They used rifles and bombs and knives to kill the enemy wherever they found him. Some collaborators were killed too, though not as many as the plans were for the stay-behind network to eliminate.

In Hamburg, the partisans were soon active and did a lot of damage. Their attacks took more West German lives than those of the occupier though. For every sentry they sneaked up upon and slit the throat of, for every enemy officer they took a shot at and for every bomb they planted where the enemy could be found either sleeping or resting, civilian hostages held by the Stasi and the KGB were killed. Ten-for-one was the standing order: one of the occupiers killed equals ten hostages shot. There was work done to have the civilian population turn upon the partisans who moved from building-to-building, from cellar-to-cellar and from sewer-to-sewer with rewards being offered for their capture… this also worked with long-term political goals to have the people turn against each other and trust no one. However, the partisans remained active even if their numbers were lowered with each passing day. Many of them were from outside of Hamburg but had come here to kill the occupier and that was what they did.

While that resistance was dealt with and the occupiers were also busy making Hamburg a socialist city on the Berlin model, there had been other work done. When the tide of the war turned and NATO troops started moving back across West Germany in an eastwards direction, it was realized that Hamburg was threatened. Marshal Gromov had written the city off as he didn’t believe that any fight for the city would be worth it. An engagement might take many NATO lives and hold them up, but only if they moved to recapture it. The geography wasn’t right though for Hamburg to be part of the invasion of East Germany where making use of it by NATO would work. That military decision was one thing, politics were another. The East Germans and the KGB had argued that Hamburg should be defended strongly and held on to no matter what. The symbolism of holding the city was worth it as far as they were concerned. Both had different reasons but had combined their arguments made through political channels to have Hamburg defended. NATO would make a move eventually, it was said, and when they did they would do so carefully to try to avoid the loss of life that would occur inside. The KGB had the East Germans bring in another half million civilians from outside into the city and then made sure that NATO became aware of the large numbers of people there, those who were suffering under the occupation too and therefore would need rescue.

Inside Hamburg, as part of the efforts to fortify the city, the nightmare continued for the civilians caught up. The occupiers worked them hard – men, women, elder children, the sick, the infirm and the lazy: everyone – to assist in building defensive works. When not laboring with their bare hands in terrible conditions, they were persecuted in all sorts of ways by a cruel occupier. Early collaborators didn’t last very long when the Stasi and the KGB fast lost patience with them. The extreme food rationing and the forced shared-housing caused problems and there were outbreaks of diseases which fast occurred. Any complaints were met with a bullet as the occupiers kept shooting those who showed any sign of resistance.

Outside the city, the occupiers first started work to assemble defences for the southern approaches on the western side of the Elbe. They brought down buildings and laid extensive minefields. The suburbs there were heavily ‘landscaped’ to slow down an attacker using armour or on foot to try and move forward. There were more explosives laid ready to go to not just bring down bridges over the Elbe into Hamburg proper but to flood riverside areas as well. The Soviet 138th Tank Regiment, a non-division formation, with its T-62 tanks joined the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment which had motorised infantry units in sitting ready to repulse an attack. That left the Grenztruppen forces inside Hamburg along with security agents and they were joined by East German KdA units with the paramilitary men coming all the way up from Saxony to occupied West Germany. There were air defence units, engineers and supply troops also inside Hamburg. The coastal approaches – Hamburg was a major international port despite being upriver – were watched by missile units and there had been mining done while behind them stood the regiment of mechanised infantry reservists from the 20 MRD: the rest of that division had long ago been lost in the long retreat across the North German Plain.

For any NATO attack, even supported by a civilian uprising which wasn’t on the cards, Hamburg would be impossible to take without a lot of blood being spilt. NATO troops had yesterday crossed the Elbe further downstream but turned towards the Baltic and East Germany rather than towards Hamburg. There was some shifting of defending forces as one of the battalions of T-62s crewed by Soviet tankers who had seen action earlier in the war in Schleswig-Holstein and then Denmark afterwards. Yet, still, Hamburg would have to be taken by a pitched battle that would cost lives if NATO wanted to recapture it.

Just before the city was physically cut off by the US I Corps advancing northwards to sever its defenders from their connections with East Germany, there had come the arrival of some extra men too to make sure that didn’t happen. A battalion-group of Spetsnaz had arrived in Hamburg.


Polkovnik (Colonel) Vladimir Vasilievich Kvachkov was the commanding officer the 15th Spetsnaz Brigade, an elite unit of commandos which had been gutted during the ongoing war in engagements fought across West Germany. Again and again, the brigade had gone into battle and achieved a lot of successes. Those had come at the cost of lives lost though and the brigade was at less than a third strength after more than six weeks of fighting. What remained had been withdrawn into the rear and given the task of going to Hamburg to assist in the defence of the occupied city. Kvachkov had seen none of that fighting personally and hadn’t been involved in the decision to send him and his men to Hamburg. His mission orders had upset him when he had received them as it had appeared that whoever had wrote them had no idea of what his men were when it came to their fighting capabilities. A static, fixed defence of an urban area soon to be cut off and reporting to an East German general was far from his ideal posting.

Kvachkov was a man who obeyed orders though.

He had four hundred men and once in Hamburg they had been deployed to shore-up the defences by adding to them not so much with their person but by their training and imagination. Improvements were made after the Spetsnaz had a look at the ground. There were to be more snipers deployed (shoot at combat medics if possible and with others shoot to wound) and more booby-traps including those which would make use of flame-throwers and chemicals. Buildings should be wired with demolition charges to not just come down, but come down atop of attacking enemy troops. When the NATO attack came, civilians should be pushed into their line of fire: women and children would be best. There were two flak towers in Hamburg, Nazi-era relics: they were perfect for missilemen to shoot at helicopters which would be present with a NATO assault. The whole port area was a perfect place for a defence against an enemy attack to seize it and there was work to do there to make sure that its defence could be successful.

Kvachkov himself was placed in charge of the ‘special defences’ of the city, as the work he had his men doing was called, and came into contact with the KGB polkovnik who was in command of internal security – Soviet and East German – throughout Hamburg. This afternoon, with the enemy still showing no sign of attacking Hamburg but everyone getting ready for that, Kvachkov and the Chekist were meeting inside a school building in the middle of the city. The KGB had their headquarters here with the confidence that no NATO air attack would come.


Yuri had the headmaster’s office for his own use. He had been in Hamburg since the beginning and related to Kvachkov tales of how the occupation had gone. He spoke of the ridding of subversives right at the beginning, especially those politicians who had surrendered the city. West Germans who proclaimed they were socialists had been put in-place afterwards when there had been an effort to pretend that there was some form of democratic control. The West Germans, even the ones used as collaborators, had too much of an idea as to what democracy was though and had proven useless in the end. The East Germans had eventually brought their own people in: there was no more of that here, nor, thankfully, back in Russia anymore either.

Food supplies, banks and telecommunications had been first to be occupied inside Hamburg. There had been a move to secure the city’s red-light district too. Yuri told of how the prostitutes had been troublesome and they hadn’t understood that they were working for the cause of liberation when on their backs. With a smile he told of how East German official morality had condemned them but his actions had kept them where they were because Soviet troops were given free passes to visit them along with chits for extra rations that the women could use. They had gone on strike in the end, fed up with the violence, so Yuri had had some of them shot in front of the others before the rest got on with their Socialist duty afterwards.

Kvachkov listened to the Chekist as he spoke of how he despised Germans, all Germans. He spoke too of the Rodina when he did used the term Rossiya instead of the Soviet Union. The KGB was the sworn enemy of the GRU, the latter which Kvachkov served. Personally though, he never had much of a problem with the Chekists. They were bastards and their chairman had apparently taken a swipe at the top leadership of the GRU right before the war started. However, they were making sure that the supposed democratic reforms which had taken hold in Rossiya – no, sorry: the Soviet Union – came to an end with Gorbachev. He saw Germans as the enemy really, as they always were.

Yuri explained about the security situation and how he was celebrating today as he had achieved a breakthrough, a major breakthrough in a long-running hunt for a certain group of partisans active in Hamburg. The West Germans were reported to be hiding near the city’s airport. The Chekist said nothing of where he got his information, naturally, but was gleeful when it came to talking of spies. Kvachkov had already worked out that being friendly with this man would secure his own future and offered the use of his men to take down those partisans. Yuri agreed at once, saying he had been planning to rely upon the paramilitary soldiers with the Felix Dzerzhinsky Regiment but would want Spetsnaz instead. He started to move on to explaining how the East Germans were desperate to get their regiment back into their country, even if that was impossible now, to defend their nation. There came an interruption though.

A Grenztruppen soldier entered Yuri’s office at his beckoning. Kvachkov at once was on guard. There was something off with the man. He didn’t like him, didn’t trust him. Speaking in Russian, the East German said he had a message for Yuri yet that was encoded. The Chekist shouted at the man that he needed a version already decoded… and where was his usual man too.

Then the East German pulled his pistol and shot Yuri right in his face.

Kvachkov jumped up from his chair and reached for his own pistol. Yuri was screaming and Kvachkov understood that he was hurt but his focus was on the East German who had bolted for the door. He got off one shot before that slammed shut. Yuri was on the floor and in the way so by the time Kvachkov got there he discovered that it was locked from the outside somehow. He screamed for help, calling out that there was an armed traitor.

Then he saw the grenade on the floor.

Kvachkov shouted again, this time a curse in Russian: mat’ zasranets!

There came a flash next, instant pain and then darkness.

Gladio had struck again, this time with a lot of success.





March 19th 1990
The White House, Washington D.C., the United States

Dick Armitage had work to be done down in southern Florida with the Cuban POWs in captivity there. Yet, he had been told that President Bush wanted to see him. It was not possible – even if he had wanted to, which he didn’t – for Armitage to refuse such a request from his president. He had taken a flight up to Andrews AFB and then come across to the White House. There was the same draconian security screening to go through as had been in-place since the war begun even with Armitage arriving in a White House Military Office vehicle driven by US Army personnel and with a Secret Service man at his side.

The US Marines on the outer perimeter and the heavily-armed Secret Service personnel inside remained taking no chances at all.

Armitage consoled himself with the thankfulness that at least they weren’t doing a full body cavity search… not yet anyway.

Robert Gates and John Sununu were in the meeting which Armitage had with Bush. The president wanted to be brought up to speed on events down in Florida with a focus on the political angle. He told Armitage that he had seen reports from the military and the intelligence services, but he wanted to hear what Armitage had to say about it all.


Discoveries had been made of some of the Cuban DGI people who tried to pass themselves off a Cuban military personnel. Their fellow countrymen had turned them in after the threats made before the surrender at Key West had lost their potency when everyone was in American captivity. Armitage had spoken with several of the DGI officers and found none of them to be of any great use overall. They had spoken of whom they had received orders from and what those orders had contained. The defence given was that someone senior, always someone higher up than them, had given the orders and they had done as told. The shooting of unarmed American civilians had been instructed to occur for even the most minor acts of resistance and that order had been followed.

The military intelligence staff down at the holding facilities in Cuba had asked the prisoners if they had ever heard of the term ‘command responsibility’ or their military studies had covered the Nurnberg Tribunals. Shrugs of shoulders had come followed by repeated claims that they were following orders. Those being held, the ones Armitage spoke to Bush about, were captains and majors. Those above them still remained missing with the continuing story that they had fled by boat right before the surrender.

Gates asked about the possibility of that: had there been a boat which the senior people could have left on?

That wasn’t possible, Armitage explained. The US Navy had had ships in the nearby waters in the days leading up to the end at Key West and the US Air Force had an AWACS aircraft in the sky. The radars attached to the warships and the aircraft had seen no sign of a boat. There had been some people on rafts, but no boat. No one actually saw those missing men getting on a boat either, everyone who had this supposed knowledge heard it from someone else.

A submarine, Gates asked, or maybe a light aircraft?

Armitage told him that that hadn’t happened. What was believed had occurred was that the DGI people in-charge had been shot by their own side right before the surrender. Those doing the shooting were told to do it and followed those orders without questioning the why. That truth was slowing being wrung out of those who didn’t want to own up and kept up the ‘I was only following orders’ routine.

Sununu started to express some doubt on this but Gates cut the president’s chief-of-staff off telling him that that had happened with the eventual collapse of pocketed resistance in the Netherlands. The Deputy National Security Adviser spoke too of the DGI colonel which had been captured in Costa Rica: the man had fled Cuba in an aircraft and landed in Costa Rica hoping to disappear – he had some US currency on him too – but the CIA had snatched him. He spoke of outside interference within the DGI from the KGB who had a lot of people under their thumb. The thinking on that was that the KGB had actually ordered the war crimes to be committed in Key West by the DGI to infuriate the United States and keep their ire during the conflict and in a post-war world upon Cuba.

To Armitage, this made sense and he told Bush that he would conditionally support that idea for now. From what had been managed to find out about the missing DGI men who hadn’t been captured in Key West, they were those with suspected ties to the Soviets. Their bodies, he believed, were among the Cuban dead now removed from the Florida Keys and who had been buried already on the Florida mainland. Sununu asked about that graveyard: where was it and what was the local reaction down in Florida? Armitage filled him in on the details of where the site was and told him that the news wasn’t yet widely known in Florida but it would eventually become an issue politically.

Bush asked about those who had committed war crimes; not just the spooks but ordinary Cuban soldiers too. What was happening with them?

They would be tried in military courts already established down in Florida. Things were moving fast. Witness statements had been taken from American and Cuban sources alike. There had been confessions and denials of the allegations against a number of people. They would get a military trial, even those in DGI uniform, and a sentence. Should those who were convicted of capital offenses as per the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) be sentenced to the death penalty, that would be put on hold for now. They weren’t going to be executed while Cuba held American POWs in great numbers down on their country. Armitage spoke of the recent comments which came from the new Deputy Secretary of Defence when it came to how the DGI people should be denied POW status and interrogated with ‘harsher’ measures than already employed for more information than they had given. The US Armed Forces personnel down in Florida were still as mad as hell at the Cubans yet even they weren’t ready to see anything like that happen when it was thought about past initial reactions. Those prisoners were captured in uniform and military courts would suffice for them; no one was in the mood for any form of torture (psychical or mental) to be undertaken. If it happened elsewhere, between spooks fighting spooks on foreign soil, that was all well and good, but these prisoners were POWs in military custody and the UCJM would do the job of punishing those who were guilty.

No objection came from those here at the White House.

Armitage was asked for his opinion on the continuing resistance from Cuba even after the nuclear attacks and the now strangling blockade around the island. Did he have any idea from his dealing with prisoners down in Florida as to why that was still occurring? The Cubans had to know that they were beaten, yes? The president asked these questions of him even though Armitage knew that he had an extensive brain trust with more information on the situation than he had. It was a question from his president though, whose pleasure he served at the behest of, and so he tried to give the best possible answer that he could while making sure that he added a qualifier that he didn’t have full knowledge of the situation: ‘cover your ass’ it was called in Washington.

The Cubans were still holding out, Armitage stated, because they still refused to understand the situation they were in. Raúl Castro wasn’t getting the full truth given to him by those in the military and intelligence services. He was therefore under the belief, from what Armitage could see as an outsider, that Cuba could still escape out of the war which it had started and had gone bad very soon afterwards. How Cuba could be induced to leave the war, Armitage didn’t know. He told Bush that this was just his opinion but he hoped his president would consider it when authorising more nuclear attacks upon Cuba which, unfortunately, were getting nowhere with ending the conflict.

Possibly… something different should be tried to end the war with Cuba.

A suggestion Armitage gave when asked was that maybe a lie should be told to the younger Castro just like the ones told to those at Key West to achieve a breakthrough with the deadlock. Promise him a fair, reasonable deal, Armitage said, and renege on it as soon as the fighting is done with.

*

A couple of hours later, Condi Rice arrived at the White House too. She had come from Mount Weather and a meeting with the Secretary of State: Elizabeth Dole flew by helicopter to see Bush from Mount Weather following that while Rice travelled by a slower land route.

The first meeting where the top levels of the State Department had decamped to in northern Virginia (Rice had been taken there and back and no idea of the exact location nor the name of the facility) had been a surprise for her; even more of a shock had been the summons to come to the White House afterwards. She had believed that she was on the outs with the president following the rejection of her earlier advice not to invade East Germany. He had listened to other advisers instead on that matter. From what Rice had been able to gather from reading between the lines when with Dole, despite some very recent tactical success, the invasion of East Germany was generally stalled at or near the borders. Bush had therefore called her – plus others, certainly – back again.

She went through the same screening as Armitage had done and then into a meeting with the president, the Secretary of State, National Security Adviser Scowcroft, Gates, Sununu and Director of Central Intelligence Webster.


Once that meeting started, Webster asked Rice for her opinion on the document which she had read over earlier concerning the internal workings of the ‘Soviet military-industrial complex’. It had been something which Dole had shown to her – under CIA authorisation, naturally – and not been the longest read. The document had appeared authentic and she told Webster that she didn’t doubt its veracity. When it came to the problem which the author had described of how Soviet civilian factories had part of their industrial capability sitting idle but ready to start producing military wares in wartime that had been corroborated beforehand by other means. The author described how this was a waste and damaged the Soviet peacetime economy: again, she had agreed with that. Clearly, now things were different and Rice started to explain what was understood with those factories now supposed to producing tanks, guns and bullets but having the reported problems which they were when the overnight instructions to do so had come early last month.

Gates changed the direction of the conversation though, asking about what she could understand about the author from what was written.

Caught off guard, Rice was a bit perplexed by how to answer that one. Her hesitation was clearly evident and Bush – back to his old, friendly self – clarified that: did he sound like a traitor to his nation?

No, he certainly didn’t. Not from that document she had read. Rice was unequivocal in that. The author gave the impression that his interest was in the Soviet Union and its people. She could only go on what she had read, Rice explained, but he hadn’t come across as a traitor. A patriot he might be and he could have decided to betray his country for what he might have seen as the greater good, but that wasn’t evident just on that document about how in peacetime the Soviets had been forestalling economical potential by having a national economy (supposedly) ready to suddenly switch to wartime production with all of the problems which that could – and had – entailed.

There were nods and smiles around the room among those present: she wasn’t sure what that all meant.

Some sort of breakthrough with an intelligence matter?

That document when read back in the government mountain facility had been given to her to study when there and taken away afterwards. Here in the White House here today, Rice was handed something similar. One of Webster’s aides was called in and handed a thick manila envelope to him which was in turn passed to Rice. She opened it up and found that a newspaper was inside. It was all in Russian with Cyrillic script employed. There were black-and-white pictures. It was dated a week ago. It was entitled ‘Rossiya’, not a name of a Soviet newspaper which she had heard of before.

Scowcroft asked her if she recognised the man whose image was on page two, just inside. Rice at once gave an affirmative answer: she did recognise Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.

Webster summarised the newspaper for her and everyone else. It was part of something new going on inside Russian parts of the Soviet Union where ‘Rossiya’ was being talked of in official quarters and given as part of a major propaganda effort towards the people. They were asked to support the war to defend Russia, not the Soviet Union. Communism in officialdom was being downplayed and instead this neo-nationalism was being seen. In other parts of the country, among the Soviet military deployed abroad and when dealing with allies/puppets, Rossiya wasn’t being seen as being pushed at all and everything was the same as before. Domestically though, this new nationalism was showing up everywhere.

Rice was asked whether that was Yeltsin in the picture, the same man who had come on a visit last year to the United States including a memorable trip to Texas. It appeared to be him, she replied, unless it was a faked photograph. She read out the picture caption and showed how it linked to the story alongside the photograph: there was the well-known and rather popular Soviet politician meeting with wounded veterans of the fighting recuperating back in Rossiya and he was giving them medals. It was quite something. This man, a supposed rebel against the regime before Gorbachev’s assassination, was a popular figure domestically within Russian parts of the Soviet Union. Nothing had been heard of him since the New Year but all of a sudden here he was handing out medals to wounded veterans.

Bush asked her what she made of it all; Rice told him that she would need more information after first studying this whole newspaper and working with others who shared her knowledge of the internal workings of the Soviet Union to give a full, accurate understanding. However, on the face of it, what she could say now was that someone inside the Soviet Union – cough, cough: Rossiya – was playing a complicated political game here with the sudden appearance of Yeltsin and this whole new nationalism.

Gates pointed out what was on page three for her to think about as well. She looked at the main article there and saw that it was an announcement that the chairman of the Ukrainian branch of the KGB (there was one for each republic) had been arrested and stripped of his rank. The charge was corruption and the accusation here against General-Colonel Nikolai Mikhailovich Golushko was enough, she told those with her, to bring an end to him even if the whole thing was not reliable.

There was a working group being put together under State Department supervision, Dole told Rice, and she was wanted to head it. Full-time and with controlled access to information – such as this from the source REALTOR – academics such as her would be assigned to looking into this and advising the president and his top people on how to handle it all. She was going to say yes anyway before Bush asked her to take the position as a ‘personal favour’ to him.

Rice considered herself patriotic and wanted to aid her country… but she also wanted to get to the bottom of all of this and find out the truth behind what was going on across in the nation which hers was at war with.





March 19th 1990
Near Finsterwalde, Brandenburg, East Germany

Located in woodland under extensive camouflage netting and surrounded by a small but extremely well-armed security detachment, Marshal Gromov’s command column had just completed its latest move from one position to another. The collection of wheeled and tracked vehicles had moved only a couple of miles north from the last position yet any NATO intelligence-gathering as to the last location was now out-of-date. Some said that the constant movements six times a day were overblown, yet since Marshal Gromov had started avoiding bunkers and cut down his headquarters to the bare minimum along with the transfer from one site to another, no enemy attack had come. All the signals interception in the world, all of their radar satellites tracking movements and all of their spies active throughout East Germany weren’t going to allow the Americans to locate the Commander of the Western-TVD and kill him.

Unless they used a nuclear weapon…

Once they came to a stop and the command post was up and running (a well-oiled machine), Marshal Gromov met with his chief operations officer. He was given the confirmation which he expected to come from the man of the bad news from the Saale Valley: the US VIII Corps had only been feinting in that direction with a possible line of advance to the west just like they had done away to the east to in the direction of Plauen. Instead, they were coming in the middle of those two pretend drives and charging straight along the Nazi-era highway coming north from Bavaria. The Hirschberg-Rudolphstein border crossing point was behind them and they were driving deep into Thüringen following what would later become their main supply route. This attack had split the Soviet Fifty-Eighth (to the west) and Fifth Guards (to the east) Armys apart successfully after leading both on a merry dance for four days chasing their tanks and infantry all over the border area.

NATO had yet another breakthrough made and one which was to continue to be expanded upon during the night.

Almost the whole of the front had been broken open now with holes torn in the defences and NATO forces pushing through the gaps made. Those Soviet, East German, Polish and Czechoslovak troops who had been forward deployed were either dead, in captivity or being surrounded. Those tucked up right behind them were either engaged in battles that they couldn’t win or been unable to get to the front by enemy activity.

NATO was inside East Germany and Czechoslovakia. They were now starting to see success coming. Orders which had come from Gromov down through his subordinate commands to stop them had failed to bring the invasion to a halt on the borders. NATO had had its men bled, just as Gromov had planned to do, but they had soaked up those losses. Now that they were inside they were moving around to try to avoid getting caught in any more costly fights too where they would have to go up against fixed defences.

Gromov’s chief-of-staff brought out the map, the big one covering the Central Europe. There was a plastic overlay on it with markings made denoting major combat formations known and suspected (the latter some of those of NATO, naturally). The operations officer worked with the chief-of-staff to update that latest piece of information from down in Thüringen along with information received right before the change in location about what the American marines were doing along the Baltic coast. As he watched them work quickly and with professionalism, Gromov was proud of his staff. They really knew their business and these were good men.

It was a damn shame that they were having to show failed defensive efforts being made by Warsaw Pact forces rather than the progresses of advances as had been the case last month.

Gromov examined the map when they were done. He took it all in, ready to have to explain everything to Rodionov the Slaughterman, Varennikov and Kalinin. The questions which those back in Moscow would ask would demand concise answers and all he would be able to give them was bad news.


In the north, along the Baltic coastline, the US Marines – along with British and possibly Dutch marines present too – had taken Wismar during the day. The port facilities were wrecked and the offshore waters mined, but already there would be work underway to start clearing Wismar for NATO use as a supply point inside East Germany. Those marines would clearly be moving further east soon enough with Rostock next for what would certainly be a combined amphibious/airmobile/land operation to seize it and the military facilities all around.

What the Americans called their Third Army – ‘NOREASTAG’ according to NATO – had used their three corps commands to get into East Germany in multiple places. One was approaching Schwerin – near to where their marines were – after smashing the Soviet Twenty–First Army and then pushing back the neighbouring Eighth Army; in doing so they had cut off Schleswig-Holstein and Warsaw Pact forces now trapped there as well as in Jutland and Hamburg too. Another corps had entered Altmark and had a bloody fight to get through the Soviet Second Guards Army but was now pushing east with the aim to reach the Elbe. The third corps that the Americans had there was fighting to overcome the last resistance from the Soviet Forty–First Army east of the Helmstedt border crossing and getting ready to pour down towards the Elbe north of Magdeburg too.

There was a multi-national NATO airborne corps either reporting to the US Third Army or the British-led NORTHAG. That formation of two plus divisions was in the American’s area of operations spread south and east of Stendal and holding onto the banks of the Elbe. That river – plus air power – protected them from the Soviet Thirty–Third Army on the opposing banks being able to get at them. Gromov had had the North German Front place the Thirty–Third Army in hidden positions just out of enemy tactical air range between the Elbe and the River Havel with camouflaged river crossings ready to allow them to push forward. NATO had spotted that move and dropped their paratroopers between his northern reserve field army and the defending troops on the border.

Either inside the Netherlands near the Dutch border with West Germany or already moving through northern West Germany there was a mixed corps of Dutch and West German forces which had fought in the Battle for the Netherlands. They had finished rounding up prisoners – General-Colonel Dubynin, commander of the once mighty Netherlands Front, among them – and were coming east. Those troops were heading east to take part in the invasion of East Germany or maybe towards Hamburg: the information on destination couldn’t be sure.

Next in-line alongside the Third Army, NORTHAG was beside the Americans. There were British troops close by who were now striking south of the Helmstedt Bowl and in the direction of Magdeburg. Meanwhile, more British troops out of the Netherlands had taken over the role of surrounding the Soviet Seventh Tank Army still on West German soil in the shrinking Hannover Salient; Belgian troops were pushing against them and part of the Soviet Twenty–Fourth Army which had moved into the Harz Mountains area from the south. The French had a corps command which was also part of NORTHAG: they had taken Nordhausen late today and crushed the Polish Second Army.

The American Seventh Army (CENTAG) was inside East Germany as well. Their supporting air power had eliminated the forward movement of the Soviet Twentieth Guards Army which had been kept as the South German Front’s main reserve and allowed the Americans to push a corps command deep into Thüringen towards Eisenach. That town was heavily-defended and a fortress: the Americans seemed committed at the minute to blasting it apart from afar rather than going in as the highway that they were to use as their main supply route went around Eisenach not through it. There were those advancing Americans with their VII Corps coming up from the south also with the Seventh Army and still, after all of this time where Gromov had been waiting, the paratroopers with the Americans had yet to make an appearance either in Thüringen or further afield as his intelligence said they would.

Down in Bavaria, the French First Army was now at the Czechoslovak frontier and had crossed it in some places. Those West Germans who had entered in the very south and moved northwards on the eastern side of the frontier and smashed open the defences from behind. The French were sure to enter the Bohemian Forest first thing tomorrow in a multi-corps attack with defending forces from what were only on paper four Soviet and Czechoslovak field armies not going to be able to stop them.

Gromov had five field armies uncommitted: three in East Germany and two in Czechoslovakia. They were under his subordinate command of the Reserve Front. NATO air power had barely touched them and their forward progress was meant to follow off-road routes. The plan was to slam them forward into the areas where the main roads into East Germany ran once NATO had started moving their supply columns down them behind their lead troops. The maneuver was sure to catch the invader off-balance as they would be expecting Gromov to commit his last reserves (excluding those Airborne Troops he had firm instructions to hold back) to stop their advance guard units in head-on clashes east of the Elbe before Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden and Prague. Those cities were defended by Warsaw Pact militia backed up by special forces units though making them potential bloodbaths.

Gromov wanted instead to thoroughly mess with the NATO invasion by hitting them where they didn’t expect it. Air power would no doubt interfere, but with five attacks which came from various directions, he remained confident that despite the terrible defeats suffered on the border – even if they were eventually expected to occur – NATO could be stopped.


Through the secure communications link-up with Moscow, Gromov spoke with the Defence Minister, the Chief of the General Staff and the commander of the Ground Forces back in the Rodina. The call was made using multiple links which Gromov had been told again and again were wholly safe from interception. Fibre-optic cables – Western technology ‘liberated’ for the Soviet cause – connected him with Moscow and there were no radio signals to be intercepted and decoded.

He feared the KGB listening-in more than the West hearing what he had to say.

Gromov gave them the briefing on the ongoing military situation. He told of how the invading forces had overcome the losses inflicted upon them on the border – the result of which destroyed at least twenty combat divisions as well – and were inside both East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Efforts to launch immediate counterattacks to halt the breakthroughs made had failed before they could get going due to NATO not cooperating with defensive plans. Regardless, starting tomorrow, Gromov would be pushing forward those formations with the Reserve Front and following the agreed-upon plan as to how to achieve a defeat of NATO’s invasions.

He was issued with firm instructions not to do so.


END OF PART FOUR

[James G]

PART FIVE


Thirty–Three – Prisoners

March 20th 1990
The edges of the Altmark, Saxony-Anhalt, East Germany

The Altmark sits in East Germany north of Magdeburg with the Elbe to the north and the east and across to the west lays the Lüneburg Heath in West Germany. It is flat and generally open terrain with patches of woodland here and there among the heathlands. There is much farming country while the towns are few and far between: Stendal the biggest among them. Roads and railway lines cross it along with several narrow rivers which feed into the fast-flowing Elbe and eventually the North Sea next to Hamburg.

Along the southern portion, the Altmark is separated from Magdeburg by the narrow Ohre River and the East German section of the cross-country Mittellandkanal. It was in this area, beside the twin waterways and also near to the Elbe too, where British and NATO troops fighting with the Allied I Airborne Corps were engaging the enemy in the early hours of this morning. The first light of dawn wasn’t due for another hour or so but there was no time to sleep when everyone really should have been considering how tired they were. East German militia with the KdA were providing the bulk of the resistance and dying in a fruitless attempt to stop those invaders of their country. Some Grenztruppen joined them – men from training units – and there were also many Soviet Army rear area soldiers who’d fallen back from their previous positions inside the Altmark when first paratroopers then airmobile troops had come out of the sky yesterday. In addition, more Soviet troops, reservists far from home serving with combat units expected to stand up to the very best NATO had available were also in the fight.

The defenders had standing orders to not fall back any further and stop the enemy from getting over the water barriers and marching down on Magdeburg. The attackers were instructed to advance in that general direction, but also to the southeast as well: they weren’t planning on going after that East German city but rather opening the gates further for the right-wing of the US Third Army as it moved deeper into enemy territory with envious eyes cast upon Berlin far off in the distance.


The Allied I Airborne Corps had started the war as the Allied Mobile Force and fought in Norway in the first week and a half of the conflict. It had later become the Allied I Corps when it had arrived in West Germany via Ostfriesland; at Norden there had come that shooting incident where traitors had gunned down the corps commander, one of the divisional commanders and several other senior people including a British brigadier. Those personnel losses had slowed down the initial movement to contact where the plan was for the corps to fight in the northwestern part of West Germany near to the Dutch border, yet there had finally been action seen when in the Weser Estuary securing crossing sites there and the storming of Bremerhaven plus Nordholz and Cuxhaven north of that port city. A new name change came with the re-designation as the Allied I Airborne Corps and they had been pulled from the frontlines due to make-up of the corps as a light force which would take furious losses when going up against enemy armour in direct combat. An operation against Hamburg had been considered for the corps or even a drop into East Germany near to where the US Marines had landed on the Baltic coast. Indecision on the latter especially had come and eventually it was decided that the corps would assist in Eastern Storm. Once the gates into East Germany had been smashed into and the enemy attention where NATO wanted it to be, the corps was only then sent into action again in a major operation where they could make a flanking attack.

Major-General Richard Swinburn of the British Army (who had previously been serving on the General Staff back in the UK) had been assigned to command the corps in the place of the slain West German Generalmajor Carstens. The American officer Major-General Boylan continued to lead the US 10th Light Infantry Division while replacing Generalmajor Bernhardt who’d also been killed at Norden alongside Carstens was Brigadegeneral Stöckmann commanding the 1st Fallschirmjager Division; a further command change from the initial line-up at the top was the Briton Brigadier Pike now leading the multi-national ACE Brigade–Group under Stöckmann replacing Mike Jackson. The US Army’s 177th Armored Brigade which had come to West Germany with the corps was now permanently reassigned and the Belgian Para–Commando Regiment had taken the American’s place. There were additional non-combat attachments made, especially in terms of fire support. The men were all combat-experienced from fighting in Norway and through the coastal regions of West Germany; losses had come and been hard, but the corps hadn’t been crippled by them.

The assault into Altmark had been made just ahead of the US II Corps coming up behind them over the IGB: there had been discussions higher up about calling the mission off but it was recognised that it would still achieve the overall objective. That objective had been to land between forward-deployed and reserve field armies attached to the Soviet’s North German Front. The former would be surrounded from behind and the latter cut off from being able to move forward. The Elbe had provided a natural barrier to that task: if not the Allied I Airborne Corps could easily have been slaughtered under the treads of tanks rather quickly otherwise. Speed was needed when underway and also cunning to make sure that the Allied I Airborne Corps weren’t soon prisoners not of the enemy but also geography too.

Mahlwinkel Airbase had been the site of the first battle where Fallschirmjager had taken it before Belgian paratroopers then went into the smaller Stendal Airbase afterwards. The West Germans and Belgians had opened the way for the majority of the rest of the corps to come in through those airheads, the Americans and the ACE Brigade–Group in particular. British Paras with the 5th Airborne Brigade had conducted further parachute assaults though, these taking place along the western side of the Elbe between Altmark and Havelland where the Soviet Thirty–Third Army was. The British left behind their Gurkhas, their airmobile infantry from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and their airmobile light armour to reach them later through Stendal but a battalion of West German Gebirgsjager who’d fought with the ACE Brigade–Group in Norway came with them. The mountain troops were employed due to their large anti-armour capability in the form of ‘liberated’ man-portable Soviet missile-launchers from Norway. The rest of the British troops were fast to reach the Paras, especially the Scimitar and Scorpion vehicles but before then the West Germans had helped stop Soviet tanks coming across into Altmark and interfering with the operation: the known crossing points over the Elbe had been the graveyard of T-62s with the 60 TD when the Gebirgsjager and NATO attack-fighters had done their work.

Fighting as it was along the Mittellandkanal-Ohre and the Elbe to the southeast, the Allied I Airborne Corps was now positioned with the Americans on the right and the European-NATO troops to the left. The British, fighting along the Elbe again, further downstream than before, were over that river and engaged in furious fighting with more elements of the Soviet Thirty–Third Army trying to skirt around them if they couldn’t go through them.


Major Andrew Sealous had led his company of airmobile infantry throughout the war with the initial fight in Norway and then later at Cuxhaven. The first battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (1 RRF) had been the ‘Spearhead Battalion’ stationed at Dover when mobilization had come; there had come a trip by air to Norway right away to join the Paras who’d also gone there. Bardufoss Airbase had been a tough fight when securing it from external attack against Soviet Airborne Troops and then Cuxhaven had been another bloody battle. The current combat he and his men were engaged in was just as deadly.

His battalion commander had said that Sealous’ men were fighting the 58 TD, a Category D unit home-based in the eastern part of the Ukrainian SSR. Sealous felt as though he and his men had travelled back in time when they came up against T-34 tanks and open-top armoured personnel carriers in the form of BTR-152s. The Soviet infantry were all approaching middle-age who hadn’t aged well and forgotten much of their training when first in military service ten to fifteen years ago. Their combat tactics were terrible and straight out of the manual. Yes, they had bravery, but that couldn’t make up for their failings.

Sealous and his men were fighting this morning between the villages of Derben and Neuderben. A road and a railway line ran between the two of them with the Elbe to the west and a small canal in the east. His company was to push south on Neuderben while the two other rifle companies were moving east across heathland. The enemy had been caught out in the open and attacked by American A-10 attack-fighters who’d made mincemeat of their armour. There were prisoners to be taken and anyone who wanted to make a fight of it dealt with. Man-portable MILAN missile-launchers, 51mm & 81mm mortars and heavy machine guns were carried by Sealous’ men along with their rifles. He had some very good scouts out front and also flank guards too.

At Neuderben, the heavy weapons were needed.

There were shots which came out of the village and targets identified for return fire. The darkness was broken by fires burning from the village – cause unknown – with the resulting smoke being blown away east rather than towards Sealous’ men. His platoon commanders followed their training and organised the men for an attack on the village to pin down the enemy’s bases of fire and hit them from the side to get in among them. MILANs smashed into a few houses and also a BTR-152 spotted with what appeared to be a multiple-barrelled anti-aircraft gun that the Soviets were using for anti-personnel fire. Stragglers had been captured on the road down to Neuderben and they had given up easy but those in the village didn’t even when hit with such firepower. Sealous ordered in his infantry. They would make a careful attack, watching their flanks and backs at all time, a lesson painfully learnt beforehand, and find out how many more of the enemy wanted to become prisoners or who wanted to die for Mother Russia this morning.

It was going to be a brutal fight but one where he intended to make sure his own losses were minimal.


There were no sergeants in the Household Cavalry: the rank didn’t exist. Corporal of Horse Mick Flynn (sometimes known by the moniker ‘Bullet Magnet’) preformed the role of a sergeant with what he regarded as a far better title of rank. He was currently inside a Scorpion light tank, seated in the vehicle commander’s position, as the tracked vehicle moved cross-country near the village of Schönhausen: the Blues & Royals were on the attack.

He’d been told by his Troop Leader that the tail-end of a Soviet division heading south could be found within his gunsights when near Schönhausen and that was true indeed. Tanks and other armoured vehicles – which he could have dealt with using the Scorpion – were out of range as the enemy defences on the Elbe riverbank had held out for far too long. Gurkhas had finally won their fight though and got over the river: Flynn and others had then followed, aiming to play catch-up with the enemy.

Using the infrared system, Flynn fast came across a convoy of trucks moving across a field… or trying too anyway. Someone had ordered them off the road and into the mud. He knew that if he wasn’t fast enough, a pilot above would swoop down and attack first. He wasn’t about to have his opportunity to take on the enemy taken away from him. The Scorpion’s 76mm cannon was an overkill on trucks but the GPMG coaxial machine gun would do just fine. He shouted for the gunner to open fire on the trucks.

7.62mm bullets poured out of the machine gun. The gunner kept his fire steady as Flynn had the diver bring them around to the side while the two following Scorpions joined in. The rate of fire from three machine guns was fantastic and so was the spread of destruction brought about by the spacing of the vehicles. The truck cabs were aimed for all along the stuck convoy rather than the big but worthless main body of each vehicle. Knocking them out and killing crews was the objective… after all, there might be something in these trucks for the Gurkhas following behind Flynn to liberate.

There was a little bit of return fire, but no more than some AK-47 bullets. Flynn kept an eye out for RPG projectiles just as his Troop Leader had remined everyone to do. An assault rifle couldn’t kill a Scorpion, but an RPG sure could.

Instructions soon came to cease fire. Enough bullets had been used up and the stocks were hardly unlimited. Flynn reckoned that his gunner had hit half a dozen, maybe eight trucks with sustained fire into their cabs. If they weren’t going anywhere before, they certainly weren’t now. The Gurkhas were very soon to be here, the Troop Leader said, and would soon be here to take prisoners and find out what the trucks carried. However, there was no time for Flynn and the others to wait around.

They needed to keep moving south, playing catch-up. Enemy command-and-control and artillery units were what was to be hunted and they could be found by moving south as they attacked the enemy tank division from behind.


Nicholas Owen, a television correspondent with Britain’s ITN news broadcaster, had been told that the village of Tangerhütte was ‘secure’. He, his cameraman and his producer had come here from Stendal and out of that town to see the ‘liberated’ East German people here. That had been late last night and with an escort party assigned to protect him but also make sure that the correct line was followed when what could be broadcast and what couldn’t.

NATO’s propaganda effort had recently moved into showing how the war was being fought not just to defend Western Europe but to liberate Eastern Europe too.

Well… so much for that idea of Tangerhütte being secure and safe to film interviews with East Germans in. Gunfire from snipers had killed two members of the Royal Military Police he was with and wounded a Para sergeant also in escort. Petrol bombs had been thrown and an RPG had blown up a Land Rover. Owen’s cameraman had caught plenty of the action but also been hit with a ricochet too. They were all still stuck in the village until the situation was brought under control, something which Owen had been told several times was minutes away from happening yet that timescale had kept slipping. The British Army was telling him nothing, eager to put a brave face on it, but they had been caught unprepared for the violence. Whether it was local militia or enemy soldiers in action against the British Army here he didn’t know: all he could understand was that for the time being he was trapped until the enemy could be killed or taken prisoner.

His cameraman had been bandaged up by a busy medic and the three of them had then been pushed inside a shopfront. The windows had been shot out a while ago and someone had been looting here. He stayed with his two fellow journalists towards the back and sitting on the floor waiting for the gunfire and explosions to stop. Naturally, he was frightened but there was nothing he could do but wait and hope not to be shot.

Owen’s mind drifted for a few moments. He recalled comments made yesterday from some of the Paras he’d spoken with when they had unleashed some of their infamous humor on him as a civilian, a journalist nonetheless. He’d been on the Continent for several weeks and spoken with many soldiers so knew what to expect, even from the Paras who liked to shock the media. They’d told him their names for the bodies of enemy soldiers who’d met gruesome fates in particular instances of combat.

Rice Krispies: those burnt alive in napalm attacks and left blackened all over their distorted corpses.

Henry Hoovers: those who had been hit by vacuum-type fuel-air bombs and had their lungs hanging out of their mouths.

Lumpy Pancakes: those run over by tanks or other armoured vehicles with certain body parts flattened and others not.

He’d also learnt what a ‘pet-food brawl’ was too. Owen had thought it was a metaphor but that wasn’t the case: the Paras had told him that they’d witnessed starving enemy prisoners fighting en mass over tins of pet food. Whether that was true or…

Owen’s memories were rudely interrupted by another blast. The building around him shook and he flinched but it didn’t come crumbling down atop of him. He and his colleagues stayed low and out of the way as fighting continued in Tangerhütte.


Lance Corporal Trevor Rees, serving with 2 PARA, watched as several Soviet soldiers they’d been chasing threw themselves into the Elbe to get away. He saw their shadows disappear after hearing the splashes and there might have come some screams too.

That was no river to go swimming in…

His sergeant called him and the others back from the riverbank. Rees and his buddies returned to a barrage of questions about why they had broken away from the rest of the squad. He told his sergeant about the Soviets who’d dropped their rifles and run so chase had been given. The lef-tenant had said to take prisoners when the option came.

As sergeants were good at, Rees’ shouted at him that he was to be listened to when it came to what to do when fighting the enemy. Ruperts should be respected but they were thinking of the big picture, as a sergeant is job was to keep Paras alive and not dead beside a river when an enemy soldier even without a rifle was still dangerous.

Rees and his buddies all shouted in unison agreement with their sergeant’s infinite wisdom. He then ordered them back with the squad.

They were pulled back towards the village of Ringfurth and Rees and the other Paras were called upon to attack a series of trenches constructed right on the outskirts. Those had already been hit with mortars and grenades were dropped in first before the Paras moved through them. East German militia had built them and Rees joined many of the others in voicing frustration at the effort. Their sergeant kept telling them to shut up and he was having the same difficulties as them as moving through the badly-constructed maze of mud but orders were orders.

The trenches had to be searched for anyone inside hiding ready to strike at the Paras afterwards when their back was turned.

There were no bodies down here killed by the grenades as the village and its defences had been abandoned. The East German militia had pulled out for reasons unknown and Soviet supply soldiers had been the only ones nearby. None of the enemy was located despite Rees and the others having a thorough look. They had been very careful and covered each other when down in the mud with men up top as well. Some men had called out that it was a waste of time but Rees had got on with it.

He was a soldier, he was given orders and he followed those. This morning it was to search abandoned trenches. Tomorrow it might be attack more filled with the enemy. There’d been enough of the latter done when in Norway and encountering Soviet Naval Infantry who’d dug through the snow with theirs.

Rees knew what he preferred: empty trenches left behind by frightened militia over those defended by tough (but now dead or prisoner) enemy marines. That was common sense, surely.


Brigadier Hugh Pike left the 1st Fallschirmjager Division’s command post in Angern and went straight to his own brigade headquarters near to that village. The ACE Brigade–Group was now not to go south to assist the West Germans down near Rogätz and Wolmirstedt but across to the Elbe in the east. In certain places, not everywhere, parts of the 5th Airborne Brigade were in trouble with tougher fights than expected. They were attacking forward into the enemy on the eastern side of the river but there was fighting in their immediate rears this side of the river to the west. He imagined that his counterpart commanding the 5th Brigade wouldn’t have liked to have requested assistance from divisional headquarters and the situation would have had to be dangerous for that to happen; Brigadegeneral Dieter Stöckmann had played down the issue somewhat, but Pike was told to take two of his four combat battalions from out of the divisional reserve and into combat on the wrong side of the Elbe.

Since Pike had taken over when Brigadier Jackson had been shot (but thankfully lived), to replace the Belgians who’d gone back to this higher command, the addition to the ACE Brigade–Group had come of a battalion of US Army light infantry cast aside by ‘Custer Clark’: the nickname given by many senior people within the Allied I Airborne Corps to the departed Brigadier Wesley Clark. Custer Clark had never wanted the 4/31 INF who’d come from the US Army’s artillery school in Oklahoma as they weren’t mechanised like the rest of his infantry. While not a fully-trained infantry unit before, they had become when with the ACE Brigade–Group and shown their worth at Bremerhaven. Pike valued them along with the rest of his combat units: the Canadian Airborne Regiment’s airmobile infantry battalion, Italian Susa Battalion of Alpine-trained troops and the Luxemburg 1st Infantry Battalion.

The Canadians and Italians were to be left behind near Angern while Pike sent the Luxembourgish men off to Tangerhütte to help out there. He himself set about getting ready to accompany the Americans up to Buch, Jerchel and Grieben. Stöckmann’s operations officer had explained how 1 PARA was fighting over the Elbe against Soviet troops trying to move south through their ambushes near to Jerichow but their rear areas here in Altmark were in chaos as enemy units had come out of cover. They were attacking liberated territory and this was to be stopped at once. NATO troops were supposed to be doing that to the other side, not having that done to them!

Get some prisoners to talk to about how this was organised, he had been told, if possible… but mainly just engage and defeat any Soviet or East German forces you can find.

Pike was to follow those orders and led the men under his command off to eth fight. Maybe the battalion commander would be a little bit unnerved with his brigade commander present, but Pike didn’t plan to interfere unless that was really needed. He just wanted to see the Americans get the job done here and support the Paras at the front.

He was one himself, even when rising in rank like he was.

Once a Para, always a Para.





March 20th 1990
Saarlouis, Saarland, West Germany

The only information that Arnhem Team had was the location of Saarlouis and today at 17:00 hours. There was nothing more than that to be physically gleamed from the cell back in the Netherlands where the West German officer had been held. It was presumed that he had left a clue to find those who had taken him prisoner for someone out to stop them – and, by extension, rescue him – with the information scratched on the floor.

Nothing had been firm though, it was all conjecture.

Several military and intelligence figures above the senior members of the Arnhem Team had doubted the veracity of the information. Moreover, it had been said that even if the whole thing held water, if the missing KGB officers were going to be in Saarlouis when that information said they would be, what then? Saarlouis was a medium-sized town and a current military transit point near to the French border. It was not going to be easy to locate the KGB there even with a time and date: they had already shown remarkable aptitude in getting away from the cordon thrown around the last resistance in the Netherlands and if they managed to reach the Saarland then they were remaining good at disguising themselves. The question was asked when deployment orders were requested for a NATO force to be waiting in Saarlouis to meet them as to how they were supposed to be found there. Another question had been to enquire what the Arnhem Team would do if they missed the KGB and they had nothing else to go on afterwards.

There was no indication of how the KGB was to reach Saarlouis after coming all the way down from the Netherlands and where they would go to afterwards. Nothing was known too on why they would be in Saarlouis and how many of them would there be present. Maybe they were travelling in one group, maybe in several groups.

The Arnhem Team had been unable to provide any answers to these questions. Frustratingly, those were recognised by those with the group of hunters as perfectly valid points to be raised as well. They had no idea of what they were going to come up against. Doubt was raised over whether the timing meant that the prisoner was meant to be there with some of the missing KGB personnel to meet someone else or whether everyone was meant to be in the town at the same time. Questions just kept on leading to more questions with no answers forthcoming.

Regardless, there were those who wished to see the top-level KGB people who had fled from the Netherlands caught. They were believed responsible for shocking crimes against civilians and captured NATO military personnel. Strong suspicion was upon them as well for the thermonuclear blast at Deest. They would no doubt have information pertaining to other KGB activities during eth war as many had been part of the occupation of large parts of West Germany before the tide of the war had been reversed. There was pressure exerted from the French too as they were concerned that the KGB was heading in the direction of their country and were worried about what they might be planning to do inside France. The DGSE was supervising both the intelligence and military sides of the Arnhem Team – plus providing most of the manpower – and so they got their way: the Arnhem Team had been sent to Saarlouis.


Saarlouis was a major road and rail crossroads near to the French border. Through the West German town, NATO military equipment and supplies was flowing continuously from across France and Spain as well as from the Atlantic ports. Civilian aid convoys also moved through Saarlouis as well due to the Saarland being home to many West German internal refugees who had been denied entry into France earlier in the war (causing a lot of bad feeling at the time) and who had yet to return home even if most of their country’s previously occupied territory having recently been liberated.

The Arnhem Team discovered that the task in Saarlouis was beyond them. They couldn’t watch all entry points into the town without providing an overt presence that would be easily detectable when the KGB tried to come anywhere near Saarlouis. Each and every vehicle and train moving in and out of the town couldn’t be searched. Liaison with local French and West German military police and internal security troops was undertaken, but those men were under a great deal of strain as it was trying to keep convoys moving. The Arnhem Team didn’t want to frighten off the KGB but wanted to catch them too.

For the military personnel with the Arnhem Team, those such as Captain Younger and Major van Uhm, they were left with little to do but watch and observe. Général Janvier and Captain Mulholland in charge of the detachments of the 11e RPCh and Green Berets had their men spread out and waiting but still had could do nothing until the KGB showed up. Time ticked away as the morning got longer and they knew that five o’clock would come around eventually. When it came to the spooks, Scarlett, Major Dedden, Royal and Riedel had all felt the pressure from above to snatch the KGB and not only get a measure of justice against them but also have them wrung for any and all information within their heads.

The waiting went on and on all throughout the day…

…but the missing KGB hadn’t ever been coming to Saarlouis.

It had been to the nearby Saarbrücken Airport instead and at five o’clock this morning: twelve hours before the supposed appointed time and in the wrong place. The hunters in the Arnhem Team had missed their prey.





March 20th 1990
Zürich International Airport, Canton of Zürich, Switzerland

The aircraft which was to depart from Zürich Airport just after midday was a privately-owned Dassault Aviation Falcon-20 business jet. It was registered to a holding company in Lichtenstein and often used by an Austrian international trading corporation for flights made across Europe and beyond. Since the beginning of the war, with Austria invaded, the Falcon-20 had been loaned to service the needs of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in supporting their efforts across Western Europe. The founder of the corporation which owned the aircraft had provided a crew and paid for the fuel & maintenance costs while he himself had stayed at a home he had in Malta. Doctors, aid workers and evacuees had been flown around Europe on the aircraft. Other wealthy private figures and several international corporations had been doing similar things throughout the conflict where needy civilians were helped in any way possible by private means.

There hadn’t been anything done with the aircraft to arouse suspicion and it had come through Zürich Airport several times before today.

An hour ago, the Falcon-20 had flown in from Saarbrücken Airport. The Swiss authorities weren’t paranoid but with all of their neighbours at war (apart from tiny Lichtenstein) they were naturally interested in who was coming into their country and who wasn’t. Customs officers escorted by a trio of Swiss Air Force guards boarded the aircraft while it was refuelled and checked the identity documents of those aboard. The flight crew had gotten off the aircraft to be replaced by a different pair while there had been in the customs post next to the terminal a representative of the Austrian corporation as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Rather than assisting the UNHCR today, the Falcon-20 was flying in support of the IAEA. They had had a team in the Netherlands trying to work with the military authorities to investigate the blast at Deest and the same team was now being flown to Yugoslavia: the task in the latter country was to monitor radiation from the blasts at Belgrade Airport last month. There was authorization in the name of Hans Blix himself – the head of the IAEA – while the flight had been approved by the West Germans, the French, the Italians (the Falcon-20 had come through French airspace and was to fly over Italy next) and the Yugoslavians. The identities of the thirteen passengers aboard was confirmed and the civilians were all who they were supposed to be.

There was no reason for the Swiss to be suspicious of the aircraft nor those aboard.


Following refuelling and final clearance, the aircraft was given permission to depart from Zürich Airport and head for Zagreb; Belgrade was, naturally, not a destination where it could fly to.

Aboard the Falcon-20, Polkovnik Putin and the others had no idea how complicated the arrangements had been to get them away to safety. Even Lebedev didn’t understand the wheels which had been greased where international organisations still operating during the Third World War had been so thoroughly penetrated and used as they had been to get the KGB who were being hunted away from danger.

Furthermore, none had considered that their superiors could have easier had them shot rather than risk the escape made where if anything had gone wrong they could have ended up as prisoners of NATO intelligence agencies. They, and others from elsewhere too, were being brought home not out of loyalty either, but because they were needed for a great task.





March 20th 1990
Zagreb International Airport, SR Croatia, Yugoslavia

Every field officer with the Italian SISMI assigned to currently operate inside Yugoslavia knew full well that they were risking their lives when doing so. The situation inside the country remained extremely dangerous as the KGB was active across Yugoslavia. Some found a few moments of reflection to contemplate how ironic it was that the Soviets had launched an unprovoked nuclear attack against Yugoslavia before only then they had found themselves having the country as an ally. Most of those active agents were too busy trying to remain undetected and not be taken prisoner nor shot though to consider the bigger picture.

Yugoslavia was currently being watched extremely closely by the SISMI – Italy’s external intelligence agency – as there was a very real fear that while the main bulk of the Italian Army was fighting inside Austria, Soviet forces could attack the country via Yugoslavia. There were troops and aircraft held back just in case, while the Adriatic Sea was full of Italian warships, but the Italians wanted a first line of defence with spies on the ground inside Yugoslavia. Their agents were working with local recruits to keep tabs on what was going on. There had been some internal strife inside Slovenia which the Italians had become aware of and were looking further into to find out just what had happened there as Slovenia shared a land border with Italy: if a civil war was coming to Yugoslavia starting in Slovenia then Italy wanted to know about that with plenty of forewarning just as much as whether the Soviets were about to strike at their country from the flank while all attention was upon the ongoing fighting in Austria.

Croatia neighbored Slovenia and there was a large airport at Zagreb where many flights from inside Yugoslavia and beyond came and went from. A SISMI field officer, aided by locals who he was rather wary of, especially as time went on and Yugoslavia got closer and closer to the Soviet Union, had the mission of trying to keep watch of the comings and goings from the airport. With almost all of Yugoslavia’s neighbours being at war, there should have been fewer flights then usual by that hadn’t been the case. He had photographed many aircraft and people who had come off them with pictures sent back to Italy. Yet many other aircraft and their passengers had escaped his attention due to the danger he faced being near the airport and also the many nighttime flights.


The agent was here this afternoon though when the Falcon-20 came in to land.

He snapped images of the aircraft tail number and those Yugoslavs who approached it once it had finished taxiing to the flight ramp… one of whom he knew for certain was not a Yugoslavian military officer despite the uniform he wore. When the passengers and then the aircrew came off the aircraft, he photographed them too. Several of the passengers were at once seen with the KGB man from the field office they maintained in Zagreb: a place where the SISMI officer had a local watcher snapping pictures of infrequently.

The Italian didn’t know what exactly was going on but he kept taking his pictures, changing camera rolls while doing so. These images would all end up back in Italy in a few days and his superiors there would understand the meaning behind this rendezvous in Zagreb, of that he was sure.





March 20th 1990
Near Nohra, Thüringen, East Germany

The had come very little resistance from defenders assigned to the town of Nohra and it had fallen to the Screaming Eagles an hour ago. What gunfire from KdA militia had been limited and there had been no sign of a serious ambush laid. 2/502 INF had been sent in by their parent brigade commander and the battalion had secured it quickly.

General Peay wished that that had been the case elsewhere that the 101st Air Assault Infantry Division had been operating all through today.

All across the centre of the Thüringian Basin where his division was operating since its arrival behind the frontlines this morning, there had come the expected massive resistance from the towns nearby. The locals here weren’t ready to be ‘liberated from oppression’ and they were serving within their militia with guns at the ready. There had been much forced impressment initially but there had still been many volunteers. The militia had been mobilised to protect urban areas and were supported in places by paramilitary police and border guard troops. Orders from the US XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters said that unless any town in the operational area was on the verge of falling they were to be left alone: they should be checked out first though. Peay had no problem with that order and had been wary about Nohra yet the on-scene commander had said that it was ready to be seized and Peay had trusted his word on the matter.

There were other towns being left alone though: Erfurt and Weimar foremost among them. Their defenders didn’t just have assault rifles on-hand but sniper rifles and man-portable rocket-launchers as well. There were minefields laid and buildings wired for demolition. Avenues of fire from above had been plotted and traps prepared. Peay had seen the intelligence summaries on the defences and not been keen on going into them when he was first told that the Screaming Eagles were to follow the 82nd Airborne Division in a drop behind enemy lines: thankfully, neither had his superiors been either despite some political wishes from higher up.

The deathtraps which were those towns were able to be left alone unless opportunity came to take them with little bloodshed because the highway which ran across the Thüringian Basin avoided them. It was the east-west running major road which the Screaming Eagles had come here to seize for later use by the US Seventh Army as first their invasion corridor deeper into East Germany and then later their main supply route. That future main supply route went right across the geographical depression behind the Thüringenwald with that series of forested ridges and dug-in defenders now surrounded and cut-off. Peay’s corps commander and General Saint above him wanted the highway taken and not to see massive casualties inflicted upon the Screaming Eagles taken in urban fighting: again, he had no issue with those instructions.

All around the highway itself there had been enemy encountered by the Screaming Eagles. Peay had moved his division eastwards through the day from their landing sites south of Erfurt where the 82nd Airborne Division was and followed the course of the roadway coming across opposition all the way. This was the rear area of the Soviet South German Front and while their field armies at the frontline had been battered by the US V & VII Corps coming through them also into the wide and open Thüringian Basin, the Screaming Eagles had been attacking them from behind. Their logistics units, transportation assets, heavy artillery & air defence sites and security forces had been taken apart by the Screaming Eagles. These men had expected air attacks and were ready to fall back into the defended towns, but Peay’s men had come to ruin their day.

Soviet and East German armed men out in the open were attacked wherever the American airmobile infantry could get at them. Peay had some of his helicopters already active from improvised sites and was aiming to have more flying soon enough. His men also moved around in HMMWVs as well. There was still a lot of movement undertaken by his men on foot though and that limited mobility somewhat. Still, the Screaming Eagles were all over the enemy rear areas and striking hard against their opponents as Peay kept his division moving eastwards along the course of the highway. Kill and capture, had been the order Peay had passed down to his brigade commanders, so that those enemy couldn’t fall back into the towns where they could later launch raids from against the highway when US Army supply convoys would run down them. The towns would be surrounded afterwards by follow-up troops and brought under siege but for now defeating everyone out in the open was the goal.

Due to the latter part of that ‘kill and capture’ order, Peay had come up to near to Nohra this evening.


The small town hadn’t been defended it appeared because the East Germans had concentrated on making sure that nearby Weimar was a fortress ready to slay attackers. Artillery fire had come from out of Weimar towards Nohra not long after it had fallen and the 2/502 INF had fallen back a short distance away along with captives taken. One of them had been brought to the battalion command post and it was his presence now in the custody of his soldiers which Peay had taken a flying visit in his helicopter up here to hear for himself.

The Soviet Army colonel was a transportation officer. He had been taken by Peay’s men when wounded and turned into a military intelligence officer assigned to the 2/502 INF by his own men captured alongside him who had been eager to please their new captors. The colonel himself had plenty of experience of captives: he’d been in charge of moving them.

American soldiers taken as prisoners in combat on the edges of Thüringen in recent days had been transferred back through the Thüringian Basin in protected convoys heading for destinations further east. This major knew all about those prisoners and so the military intelligence officer who had spoken to him first, and then more with the 2d ‘Strike’ Brigade, had questioned him. There had been no need for violence or any coercive measures as after being given up by his own side, the colonel had been eager to turn on his own superiors too. He’d given names, locations, dates and transfer details. Furthermore, the prisoner had stated that he had previously been assigned to Berlin right at the beginning of the war before the ceasefire and involved in moving captives taken from the fighting there.

Three battalions of the 502d Infantry Regiment were with Peay’s second combat brigade and another three battalions of the same regiment had formed the main strength of the US Army Berlin. Naturally, there had been interest in what he knew of what had happened in Berlin from the 2/502 INF and the battalion commander had instructed the military intelligence officers dealing with the man as he fast spilled his guts to ask what he knew of missing American soldiers from Berlin.

Peay was now listening through a Russian-speaking translator as the prisoner spoke of how captives were treated and what he knew of numbers and movements. He spoke of the usual shooting of the wounded when units surrendered as Soviet troops let out their bloodlust before their officers finally brought the men under control. Officers, NCOs and enlisted men had all been separated. KGB and GRU people would move in and take certain people at once, more would be removed later. Any women captives would each and every time be given away like toys to nearby soldiers to use for their own pleasure and many of them didn’t survive their ordeals either: the colonel explained he was a married man with daughters of his own but he hadn’t been able to stop that happening on the occasions he witnessed it. Robbed of personal possessions and quite often beaten too for no apparent reason, prisoners were then pushed into trucks, locked inside and driven off. There had been processing sites where intelligence activities took place among captives and then they were again loaded into trucks for onwards journey to transit points across the far side of East Germany.

The colonel knew no more as to where those prisoners went afterwards.

Peay listened as the colonel explained that none of this was his fault. He was just obeying orders and to refuse would have meant his own death. He had done no more than oversee the movements of trucks heading east. When a NATO air attack had come and several trucks had been bombed, with prisoners locked in the rear of the vehicles, he had afterwards tried to help the wounded prisoners. He personally, the colonel kept saying, had done nothing wrong. He read off a mental list of names he said he had memorized of higher level Soviet Army, KGB and GRU personnel who had abused prisoners and who knew more than him.

At the end, the colonel asked when he was going to talk to ‘the spies’ and wanted to know about his ‘new life in the West’.

Finished listening, Peay successfully fought the urge to confront the man physically. Many – probably most – of his men would have liked to have a few minutes of alone time with him. This was someone who had been witness to horrible fates which had come to their own fellow soldiers. All of those in the Screaming Eagles had heard about what had happened to prisoners from the stories about those liberated after a few days of captivity though they knew nothing about those held longer than that who’d been past the ‘processing’ the colonel spoke of and transferred further east.

He was a prize for intelligence officers higher up than those with the Screaming Eagles and Peay walked away to make sure that his corps commander’s staff was aware that they had a valuable prisoner with them. With that done, he made sure that the commanding officer of the 2/502 INF would pass on his praise to the men underneath him involved in capturing and first understanding what the colonel was as an intelligence prize: they could have shot him on sight after all as they might have done with some others.

Then it was back to his division that Peay went. The words from the captive colonel had left a foul taste in his mouth and he wanted to be nowhere near the man. There were plenty of other Soviets whom his men were engaging in battle and he’d rather make sure that they had everything they needed to do that instead of listening to a self-serving turncoat even if that prisoner knew a lot. The Screaming Eales still had a mission here: securing and holding this captured territory waiting for the rest of the Seventh Army to turn up and keep heading eastwards where those NATO prisoners lay… the highway kept on going towards Karl-Marx-Stadt, Dresden and then the Polish border.