Ask Not Of Your Country (Timeline 10/27/62 - USA Book 4)

by James Philip

  The wave of bombings had caught them all by surprise but his ‘shoot on suspicion’ directive had reduced First Army’s casualty rate from its peak of around a hundred a day around the time of the Joliet bombings, to single figures in just a couple of days. The trouble was it was only a matter of time before people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time got killed; but he would worry about that some other day.

  Right now he was trying to fight a war.

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff waited while the one hundred and fifty men in the briefing hall settled. After the disastrous compromising of SAC’s chain of command in December LeMay and the other Chiefs had exhaustively dissected the failed system of checks and balances, tightened up and modified key components of the operational ‘fail safe command protocols’ employed by US Forces everywhere in the global ‘combat sphere’.

  Some commanders had caviled at the introduction of procedures specifically designed to make sure that the US military never again committed ‘mistakes’ such as those which had resulted in the bombing of Malta by the 100th Bomb Group, and the targeting of British warships in international waters by A-4 Skyhawks of the Spanish-based 219th Strike Squadron. Inevitably, the worst effect of those ‘blue on blue’ actions had been the most insidious; now any war order issued to anybody in the Air Force was likely to be viewed with extreme suspicion and if not questioned, then automatically passed up the chain of command for final ‘clarification’. ‘Local’ or even ‘regional’ discretion in the future use of US military force had been dramatically curtailed, and operation flexibility and adaptability severely curtailed. General officers in the field and admirals at sea were now bound by the absolute letter of their orders.

  The politicians had ignored LeMay’s and the other Chiefs pleas and tied up American soldiers, sailors and air men in a veritable straightjacket because that was what happened when you were terrified of a second, catastrophic breakdown in the chain of command. The result of course was predictable; an officer could now, very easily, find himself being court-martialled, drummed out of the service and conceivably, thrown in prison for the sin of using what, formerly, the entire officer corps would have regarded as exercising native ‘common sense’ in a combat situation.

  Henceforward, until or unless sanity prevailed the US military would operate under a regime in which everything was so precisely locked down – in positively anal detail and at inordinate length – that every situation was pre-ordained. A man’s orders would specify in the most unambiguous language when or not to open fire. Broadly speaking the operation conditions under which an officer could give the order to ‘open fire’ were few but nonetheless set in stone, in effect pre-ordained; whereas, in most other scenarios it was expressly forbidden to ‘engage the enemy’.

  Under the new regime, Admiral Clarey, for the crime of ordering his ships to steam at flank speed towards the sound of the guns to defend Malta back in April would probably have been cashiered on grounds of reckless negligence. In similar circumstances now he would have been required to have obtained a pre-engagement authority from the Secretary of the Navy before issuing such orders to the fleet.

  In other words the one operation which had done something – not a lot, but something – to restore the morale and enhance the reputation of the US Navy would probably never have happened, and Malta might have been occupied by the Russians, under Secretary of Defense McNamara’s recently issued ‘Securing the Chain of Command and Integrating Command Decisions Directive’.

  Westy Westmoreland, McNamara’s Military Assistant, had sought out LeMay and discussed resigning his commission; LeMay had told him to ‘stick it out’. God alone knew what kind of yes man dolt or political soldier the bespectacled former President of the Ford Motor Company would bring in to replace Westmoreland if he moved on. Westy’s position might be invidious but many had been the times lately when the Chiefs of Staff and murmured silent prayers of gratitude to some Higher Power that there was at least one good man close to McNamara in the Philadelphia Pentagon.

  Westmoreland had repeatedly told his political boss and others in the Administration, that the new protocols were a recipe for disaster. Yes, the nuclear protocols had been marginally improved by the changes; but in every other area of the nation’s armory it hamstrung decision making, built in structural inflexibility and severely limited tactical responsiveness in practically any likely battlefield scenario on land, at sea or in the air.

  LeMay had decided he would deal with what was in front of him.

  If that got him sacked well, that was too bad.

  Once the situation in Wisconsin was ‘under control’ – any outcome which kept the contagion contained east of the Mississippi was probably the best that could be hoped for in the coming months – LeMay planned to tour overseas commands to convey his personal interpretation of the strictures of the Securing the Chain of Command and Integrating Command Decisions Directive to the men on the front line in the Far East, and in command of the Navy’s distant fleets in the Mediterranean and the Pacific. Hopefully, in the meantime he could get Rear Admiral Bringle’s – the commanding officer of Carrier Division Seven – orders ‘clarified’ before something went wrong in the Persian Gulf.

  The Chief of Naval Operations had been lobbying for such a ‘clarification’ ever since he got back home from India.

  The President had assigned a political-military mission to the Kitty Hawk Battle Group and that was just plain dumb. The Navy had protested, so had LeMay – until he was blue in the face – but the President had spoken.

  But for the latest crisis on the First Army Front in the Midwest – the battle for Madison was developing into a nightmarish re-run of the fight for Bastogne in 1944 – the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would have been the guest of the Kitty Hawk’s wardroom today or tomorrow. As it was the first scheduled stop on LeMay’s upcoming ‘World Tour’ was scheduled to be Malta, where the Sixth Fleet was keeping the peace with the British, just like old times.

  The Malta ‘stop’ had been put back a fortnight. After Malta he planned to fly straight on to the Persian Gulf to ‘confer’ with Bringle. Assuming nothing went even more disastrously wrong in Wisconsin he hoped to be able to visit Malta around the 11th or 12th of next month, and to sit down with Bringle a couple of days after that.

  This week the priority was shoring up the home front; the FUBAR in the Persian Gulf would have to wait a few more days!

  LeMay had come to Nebraska and South Dakota to ‘cut through the shit’ threatening to completely tie the hands of his men. His staff had attempted to apply the new protocols – which had been hurriedly ‘gamed’ but introduced with trialing of any kind - to the drafting of the orders to the 100th and the 5136th Bombardment Wings and immediately discovered that in a battlefield situation the new system was unworkable. SAC did not have days and weeks to prepare the orders for what needed to be done today, tomorrow and thereafter on a dynamically developing battlefield.

  Congressmen, Senators and all the President’s men wanted LeMay to tell them that everything would go as plan; that nobody would screw up, that only the ‘right’ targets would be hit and the ‘bad’ guys killed. The command protocols he was being asked – well, ordered – to implement did hardly anything to ensure the integrity of the chain of command, mostly they were just about covering the Administration’s collective fat ass!

  If the politicians wanted guarantees about combat they were living in Wonderland, and while Curtis LeMay remained the professional head of the US Military he would lead it from the front. That was why today his boys needed to hear their orders in plain language from the man at the top.

  “The fighting 5136th has been transferred to Ellsworth to take part in Operation Rolling Thunder,” LeMay boomed confidently. “I’ll level with you. The situation in Chicago and much of Wisconsin is bad; out of control. First Army is holding the line in South Chicago. 32nd Infantry Division is holding Madison. But that’s it. There’s nothing between the ene
my and the Mississippi crossings.”

  The veteran bomber commander let this sink in.

  The men in the hall would have been fed a diet of ‘strategic retreat’, of ‘dynamic tactical readjustments to the line’, basically given the impression that whatever the rumors to the contrary, the situation east of the Mississippi was in some way ‘under control’.

  “Things are looking bad. Madison is the Alamo. Bastogne all over again and we will not let it fall!”

  Operation Rolling Thunder was the air component of the revised and expanded Operation Rectify plan: First Army would hold the front in the south, Madison would remain as a thorn across the enemy’s lines of communication blocking a vital road hub, all other available ground forces not already engaged would fortify and garrison the Mississippi crossings into Minnesota and Iowa, and the Air Force would systematically lay waste to the state of Wisconsin. Every road, bridge, town, village and farmstead, every reservoir, every pumping station, power station, fuel depot, individual gas stations, every piece of infrastructure above ground would be wiped off the face of the earth.

  The great river barrier of the Mississippi in the west would halt the enemy advance; behind the rebels would be nothing but scorched earth. Thereafter, the rebels penned within the boundaries of northern Illinois and the state of Wisconsin, would be bombed and starved into submission. Not to be left out on Lake Michigan the Navy would obliterate anything that moved within fifteen miles of the coast.

  The B-52s of the 5136th Bombardment Group had been transferred to Ellsworth because its four-and-a-half mile long runway would enable each aircraft to take off with over thirty tons of bombs in their cavernous bomb bays. Offutt AFB’s runway was a little shorter; but then the aircraft of the 100th ‘the Bloody Hundredth’ Bomb Group were to be employed, in the main, dropping big, bunker busting and precision munitions. Its mission was to methodically eradicate all the threads that held modern civilization together by the precision bombing of targets. The 5136th’s job was going to be to carpet bomb and lay waste huge tracts of ground around roads and in towns, to spread incendiaries to fire forests and fields, to rain anti-personnel cluster bombs into the wrecked towns. There would be nowhere in Wisconsin for the rebels to shelter or hide and then sooner or later, the icy blast of the Midwestern winter would crush the insurgency.

  If swathes of the Midwest had to be turned into charnel houses, dreadful bone fields then that was what was going to happen. SAC’s B-52s would do the heavy lifting, squadrons of roaming A-1 Skyraiders, A-4 Skyhawks, and National Guard F-100 Super Sabres would ‘fill in the gaps’. Once Operation Rolling Thunder got started Air Cavalry would drop into the countryside east of the Mississippi to mount hit and run raids on enemy strong points and to sow terror and confusion in rear areas. Already Navy ships were maneuvering into position in Lake Michigan to shine invisible electronic navigation and targeting beacons across the ‘war zone’, and elite Army Ranger and Marine Corps special units were on the ground scouting.

  In the early hours of the morning all Hell was going to break out over Wisconsin, kicking off with the saturation bombing on the positions of the enemy forces besieging Madison.

  “What I am about to say comes straight from the President,” LeMay declaimed loudly, knowing that the statement cut a lot less ice now than it would have done even two or three months ago. Many of the men under his command felt bad, a little ashamed about the way the US was standing back in the Middle East and the South Atlantic. They had taken enormous pride in the US Navy’s decisive intervention in the Mediterranean in April; afterwards they had been confused, and later vaguely uneasy, now they were borderline guilty that the British had been left to stand against renewed Soviet aggression in Iran and Iraq, alone.

  What had we been fighting for back in 1918 and 1945?

  The Brits had fought with us in Korea...

  “The Commander-in-Chief has supported the recommendation of the Chiefs of Staff to adopt a strategy designed not to contain but to smash the rebellion in the Midwest. Crushing the rebellion and restoring the Federal writ to all states of the Union is the primary objective of the all the forces available to the United States. Those responsible for the atrocities which have occurred in Chicago and Wisconsin are deemed traitors, enemies of the state, criminals. Traitors and criminals, gentlemen. Be in no doubt that a state of war now exists between the United States and the traitors in our midst. The rebellion must be eradicated.”

  The 5136th had been based at Barksdale in Louisiana for over a year and the wives and children of its men were safely distant from the war their husbands and fathers were about to fight.

  “The enemy possesses few air defense weapons. We face an enemy with no aircraft. We own the skies and we will use our absolute air superiority to harry and to destroy the enemy.” He paused while his gaze roamed the hall. “This will be hard for you. No man joins the service to make war on his brother. But I know you will stand to your duty. Your country has never needed you more. America is nothing if it is not united. Without the union we are physically and morally the poorer, and immeasurably weaker. We are all sworn to preserve the Union, to salute the flag and to obey the orders of our Commander-in-Chief!”

  Not for the first time LeMay found himself wondering if his Commander-in-Chief deserved the loyalty of such fine men as these in the hall.

  “That is all!” He growled. “Hail to the Chief!”

  Chapter 40

  Sunday 28th June 1964

  The Redoubt, Madison, Wisconsin

  Near the end of the bombing at least two B-52s had overshot their aiming points and obliterated several hundred yards of the 32nd Infantry’s eastern perimeter beyond the Yahara River line.

  During the attack the men high in the dome gallery of the State Capitol Building had felt like they were inside some infernal inner circle of Hades; the ground had rocked and trembled, the deafening drumbeat of one and two thousand pound bombs and the continual flash of multiple detonations around all points of the compass had shocked and awed the exhausted men manning the M2 50-caliber machine guns commanding the approaches to the Redoubt.

  Major Norman Schwarzkopf had sent half his men, four platoons and two machine gun squads, each with three M2s - to bolster the ad hoc force plugging the line east of the Yahara. Messages were beginning to come back from the bombed earthworks and gun positions. Nothing was left; most of the men in those trenches were just...gone. Over two hundred and fifty men no longer existed, a dozen or so lucky survivors had been pulled alive – mostly half-dead – from the wreckage, otherwise it was simply a matter of trawling through body parts, and attempting to salvage weapons.

  Had the enemy not been pulverized, literally swept from the fact of the land for a mile or more on every flank, the ‘blue on blue’ disaster might have seen the city fall in hours. However, that morning the enemy was in no state to do anything except reel back in horror and presumably...terror.

  As down broke the distant, rumbling thunder of more B-52 strikes reverberated across the devastated Wisconsin countryside from the north and the south. The great bombers had struck at a little before midnight; turned around for the sixty to ninety minute ‘hop’ back to their bases in South Dakota and Nebraska, loaded up again with fresh bomb loads and – as each aircraft was declared fit for operations – returned to the skies over Wisconsin to strike again. In World War II the old timers had called it ‘shuttle bombing’; but that had been with B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators carrying two to three ton bomb loads at between two and three hundred miles an hour, not B-52s loaded with thirty tons of ordnance flying at over five hundred miles an hour.

  Rolling Thunder summed it up nicely, Schwarzkopf reflected as he trained his glasses on the northern horizon, straining to pick up the flash of bombs striking ground somewhere along Highway 94.

  The country around Madison was turning into a moonscape, another night like last night and that moonscape would extend miles and miles in every direction. Dust and smoke hung in t
he atmosphere like a death pall limiting sight to one, perhaps, two miles to the east and south of the city.

  Schwarzkopf had heard the tales of high altitude B-25 Superfortress strikes halting ‘unstoppable’ North Korean and Chinese advances in minutes, and understood in some peripheral, purely theoretical sense what a might happen when a Bombardment Wing of B-52s dropped hundreds of tons of conventional munitions on an enemy. However, he had never contemplated such total, complete, annihilating devastation. Overnight, the 5136th and the 100th Bomb Groups had lifted, at least for the next few days, the siege of Madison. The Wisconsin state capital had become an island of life, survival, defiance in a sea of death and destruction that stretched miles and miles out across the once fertile, idyllic surrounding Midwest.

  Of Sun Prairie where Company ‘A’ had held out for two days before the insurgents outflanked it in overwhelming force, nothing remained. It was as if the township had never existed, reduced to a muddy crater field.

  The radio had been crackling behind him as Schwarzkopf studied the scene in the brightening morning light.

  “Sorry, sir,” a corpsman prefaced. “Top Dog respectfully requests your attendance in the situation room, sir.”

  Okay…

  Getting down to ground level was going to hurt.

  Not as much as climbing up to the dome; but it was still going to hurt.

  The other man, the Red Cross armband around his right bicep grubby and flecked with blood like the battledress tunic beneath was holding out a pill in the palm of his right hand.

  “You ought to take this, sir.”

  Schwarzkopf’s right thigh – already throbbing painfully - was aflame just with the prospect of negotiating those steps down to ground level. He swallowed the pill, washed it down with a mouthful of metallic, brackish water from his canteen.