The Red Effect (Cold War)

by Black, Harvey

  “Yes, they will. There will be two Foden fuel tankers to meet you there. Twenty-four thousand litres will be more than enough to top up your tanks along with the rest of your packet. They will also refuel the rest of the squadron on arrival.”

  “Who will be our RGJ contact on arrival, sir?” Asked Wesley-Jones. “And do we deploy immediately?”

  “Lieutenant Stewart will meet you on your arrival. It is still to be confirmed, but he may be bringing one or two Milan firing posts with him. We will also be joined by some engineers, along with arty and air-observers at some stage, so keep your eyes peeled for them. The engineers will be laying bar mines on the approaches to Gronau, your final deployment area, so we will be expected to provide them with some cover.”

  “Understood. We’d better be going, sir, if we are to remain on schedule.”

  “Good point, Lieutenant. Get your troop moving.”

  “Shun,” called Andrews again.

  “Stand easy. And good luck. I’ll see you down south in the morning.”

  The OC left and the troop dispersed to their respective armoured vehicles. Within minutes, the three drivers were revving the engines of their tanks, and they lumbered out of the sheds, one by one, and turned and moved down the central aisle to give the next one the room to swivel around on its tracks. Now lined up on the road leading out of the camp, a FV434, an armoured repair vehicle, last in line, a long wheel-based Land Rover upfront. Inbetween, Two-One-Bravo the lead tank, Two-Two-Bravo the last Chieftain in the line-up, with Corporal Simpson and Two-Three-Bravo in the middle.

  Wesley-Jones gave Mackey the signal and the Chieftain started forward, the steady squeal of the tracks joined by noise from the remaining tanks as the packet started to move forward, rattling over the toughened concrete surface. The Land Rover drove down the centre corridor between the sheds, out through the barracks and onto the main road, the tanks pulling out onto the road behind it, the troop commander and Mackey peering ahead looking for the single convoy light reflecting off the white diff cover of the Land Rover as it led the way.

  Wesley-Jones looked behind, checking the rest of his packet were keeping pace, as they slowly gathered speed, the lead vehicle taking them up to a steady thirty-kilometres an hour. This was going to be a tough journey for the tank commander and driver. It was hard enough concentrating on distance driving during daylight hours but, at night-time with only convoy lights to guide them and no escort, it was extremely stressful. Fortunately, German roads were generally pretty straight, with few climbs, as opposed to the winding country roads back in Britain. The packet made its way south, rattling along route three, passed the Naturpark Sudheide on their left, and through the village of Celle. Here, they were held up by RMPs for five minutes as priority traffic crossed their path. The entire British Army was on the move, heading to their wartime dispositions, ready to repel any potential invader. The military police controlling the flow of traffic released them and they continued their journey south, then south-west, then south again, moving onto an autobahn where they upped their speed to thirty-five kilometres per hour.

  The Chieftain suddenly ground to a halt, its back end up in the air and the front dipping down. Wesley-Jones was flung forward, the air forced from his lungs as the rim of the hatch dug into his chest. He heard shouts and curses below as Ellis and Patsy were thrown about.

  “What the fuck, Mackey?”

  “Sorry, sir, didn’t see the Land Rover had stopped.”

  He peered ahead and could see red-filtered torches moving around. Before he could react, the tank lurched forward again, and he could see darkened vehicles on the roadside – a random checkpoint, no doubt.

  “OK, Mackey?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He suspected that Mackey had become mesmerised by the constant need to stare into the night, tracking the vehicle and the road ahead, and had lost concentration. He was as much to blame, if not more. He had an equal responsibility to keep watch on the road ahead. No, he thought, he had the greater responsibility. He was in command.

  “You’re doing a great job, Mackey. Thirty minutes and we’ll take a ten-minute break.”

  “I’m fine, sir.”

  “I’d rather get there ten minutes late with an intact Chieftain than have it wrecked.” Wesley-Jones laughed. They left the route 37 autobahn and turned onto route 7, through the small forest of Altener Wald. Their speed crept back up to a steady twenty-five. On the opposite carriageway heading north, he could hear, above the sound of his own small convoy, the rumble of tank tracks and the steady drone of high-powered engines as a squadron of Leopard I and IIs rattled by in the opposite direction, heading north. Probably a tank company from a unit belonging to 1 German Corps, heading north to their own wartime locations. They turned off the autobahn onto the B443 where their speed dropped back to thirty-five to thirty-kilometres an hour. Crossing over route 37 again, they headed south-west then south.

  “You OK, Mackey?”

  “Yes, sir. No need to stop. Wide awake now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “OK. We could do with keeping on the move. You’ll be excluded from the sentry rota, and you can catch up on some sleep when we get there.”

  “OK, sir.”

  “Corporal Patterson. Patsy!”

  Patsy climbed up through his hatch. “Sorry, sir, nodded off.”

  “That’s OK. Can you crack that flask and pass everyone a brew.”

  “Sure, sir.”

  “Ellis awake?”

  “No, sir. Can’t you hear him snoring from here?”

  The lieutenant laughed. “Leave him be then. He can take the first stag when we park up.”

  Patsy dropped back down into the fighting compartment to sort out drinks. They were well south of Hanover now and, apart from a few stops, had made good progress. They were roughly one-hundred kilometers from the barracks and, at 0530 in the morning, found themselves in the small village of Eime, three and a half kilometres west of Gronau and the River Leine. The River Leine, Blue Rabbit, was the stop line for the 1st and 3rd Armoured Divisions, 4th Armoured Division already moving into position further east, acting as the covering force to allow these two key forces to dig in. The troop had been allocated a lager at a farm on the outskirts of Eime, along Elzer Weg.

  They backed the three tanks into large barns that had been made available by the farmer, the 434 under a cam-net outside and the Land Rover snug against one of the farm building walls. The German family were out almost immediately they had finished parking up, providing bratwursts and brotchen, with lots of senf, a favoured German mustard, for the weary troops and even a bottle of Alt beer each. Lieutenant Wesley-Jones immediately got to work preparing a message for his squadron commander who was probably not more than half an hour behind them. He had met with the RGJ Lieutenant. They were cammed up in a small copse close by. The rest of the troop, apart from those posted on sentry duty, were, once they had scoffed the food and drink provided by their hosts, destined to hit the sack and catch up on some sleep.

  He pulled the A-5-sized pad out of its wallet, tore off one of the double-sided sheets and placed it in his BATCO wallet. The side he was going to use would be valid for the next eighteen hours. The BATCO (Battlefield Code) cipher sheet was composed of a plaintext character set consisting of twelve symbols, the digits 0 to 9, a decimal point and a change character denoted as ‘CH’. The cipher table was a matrix of nineteen columns and twenty-six rows. The columns were divided into two groups. The seven columns on the left were numbered from 2 to 7. The column under each of the digits had listed a randomly scrambled alphabet. The thirteen right-hand columns were numbered 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, CH and ‘.’. He wrote down the outline of the message in his notebook first. He selected one of the first seven columns using the key digit, searching for the row in which the key letter occurred. He continued tracing his finger over the pad until the message was complete. He read the message. Two-Zero from Two-One-B
ravo. Infantry attached. In location Grid 494707. Await your arrival. Message ends. Satisfied, he transmitted the encoded numbers, put the BATCO wallet away, grabbed his SMG and went in search of Sergeant Andrews to check on their security for what was left of the morning. He anticipated that they wouldn’t be here for long as they needed to move into their main positions. The engineers would probably be in the process of digging their tank berms and preparing positions for infantry units. It was going to be a long twenty-four hours, he thought to himself as he clambered out of the turret.

  Chapter 22

  LINDENWALD, EAST GERMANY. 10TH GUARDS TANK DIVISION/3 SHOCK ARMY. 4 JULY 1984.

  THE RED EFFECT −23 HOURS.

  The assembly area for the 62nd Tank Regiment, of the 10th Guards Tank Division, was a hive of activity. Colonel Oleg Pushkin, commander of the 62nd, and Lieutenant Colonel Trusov, commander of the 2nd Battalion, stood watching as a regiment of BM-27s growled past, each eight-wheel drive, Zil 135 chassis mounted with a multi-barrelled rocket launcher. They crawled past one by one, the large wheels grinding over the specially prepared route. Otherwise, by the time the eighteenth one had passed, the twenty-ton monsters would have made the track impassable for anything other than tracked vehicles. They were from the Group of Soviet Forces Germany’s Missile Brigade, belonging to 34th Artillery Division. This was an indication of the importance of the role to be played by 3rd Shock Army, in particular 10th Guards Tank Division. Colonel Pushkin’s 62nd Tank Regiment, along with 248th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment, were to be the spearhead in the attack on the NATO forces that would be stacked up against them on the other side of the Inner German Border, less than seventy kilometres away.

  “I wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of that lot, sir.” Trusov pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his tunic. It was light enough now that they could smoke, not that they had anticipated any NATO overflights. That would have been an act of war, and the Western governments hadn’t got the guts to start anything, according to their divisional commander, General Kasapev. “Sir?”

  Pushkin took a cigarette from the proffered pack of plain cigarettes. “Still smoking these foul things, Pavel?”

  “You complain about them, but I’ve never see you refuse one,” Trusov shouted back above the noise of the engines as one of the BM-27 drivers put on the power to negotiate a particularly deep rut.

  “It’s not often you give anything away.”

  The last of the self-propelled multiple-rocket launcher systems, mounted on a chassis similar to that used to carry the FROG-7 missile, drove by. With two engines, one driving the right-hand set of wheels and one the left, they could power the vehicle to an impressive speed of sixty-kilometres per hour.

  “Now, now, sir.”

  “But you’re right.”

  “About what?”

  “About being on the receiving end of that lot. It would certainly ruin your day.”

  “A step up from the BM-21s.”

  “Significantly.” Pushkin held up his hand and ticked off his fingers. “Sixteen 220mm rocket launchers on each platform. What’s that? Eighteen vehicles making it 288 rockets?”

  “Sounds about right, Comrade Colonel. So they’ll be bombarding the NATO covering force ahead of us, or beyond?”

  “Ahead of us. That’s what has been agreed. We will have some major support.”

  Trusov pulled out a map and indicated that they should cross the track to where a small bivouac had been assembled and a table and a couple of chairs placed inside, for the use of the battalion commander.

  “Can I go over a couple of things with you, sir?”

  “Something bothering you, Pavel?”

  “Just want to make sure my battalion doesn’t let the regiment and division down.”

  “Head like a sieve, Pavel.” The colonel laughed. “Come on then.”

  They made their way across the now deeply rutted track that ran through the trees and headed for 2nd Battalion’s temporary HQ. Trusov held the camouflage netting up to allow his commander to duck underneath and enter the small two-by-two metre covered space. It was open at two sides, allowing enough light to enter and enabling them to see the detail on the map Trusov had laid out on the table. He withdrew his pistol and a spare magazine, using them as paperweights to keep the map flat.

  Trusov leant over the table. “Right sir, Helmstedt. The division has a sector twenty kilometres wide. With Helmstedt north of the centre, that means a front from south of Grasleben in the north to south of Schoningen. We don’t normally have such a narrow front.”

  Pushkin tapped the map. “As a result of us being able to bring our second strategic echelon up to strength, we are in a position to reduce our divisional fronts for the offensive. But our breakthrough sector has to be less than five if we are to concentrate our forces and punch through.” He looked up at his battalion commander. “3rd Shock Army is the first and second echelon of the first strategic echelon. It is 3 Shock that is going punch through their lines. Our Northern Army boundary ties in with 2 Guards Tank Army and our southern boundary with 1 Guards Tank Army. The objective is to push two divisions of the first operational echelon forward, ours and the 7th. Our first echelon regiments, us and the 248th GMRR, will be the first to attack the NATO covering force.” He pointed to the villages of Supplingenburg and Supplingen. “We have to try and bypass these, push north-west and strike north of Konigslutter. I intend to deploy the 1st Battalion from line of march and cover the flanks while you, Pavel,” he patted his junior’s shoulder, “have to punch right through the middle of the two villages. Don’t stop. You have to smash through and secure the point north of Konigslutter. Keep going if you can but, if you get bogged down, I will release Aleksey’s Motor Rifle Battalion. I shall keep the 3rd Tank Battalion in reserve.”

  “You make it sound easy, Comrade Colonel.”

  Pushkin slumped down in the canvas backed chair, and pulled off his black beret and placed it on the collapsible square table. “Are you scared, Pavel?”

  Trusov looked at his commander, black chest hair just poking above the front of his collar and tie, the same colour as his one piece tank coverall. He responded. “I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t.”

  “Good.” Pushkin pulled out a flask containing some vodka from his own personal stocks, took a pull on the drink and then passed it to his junior. “Not as good as yours, but it still has bite.”

  Trusov took the proffered container and pulled a face as he too partook of a drink. “So too has antifreeze.”

  “We shouldn’t necessarily be scared, Pavel, but we should be very wary. We are up against the British, and they don’t give in easily.” The colonel swallowed another tipple and offered it to Trusov again who declined. “Ten years ago, or even five, I wouldn’t have felt confident about going up against NATO.” He leant forward. “But now, Pavel, we have the equipment that can finally match theirs, and in much bigger quantities. You saw those BM-27s. There’s a lot more where they came from. They’re going to be well and truly pounded before we even start to attack.”

  Trusov sat down on the seat opposite and swept his hand over the map. “With the 2nd Guards Army using the A2 autobahn as their southern boundary, and 1st Guards to our south, the enemy won’t know which way to turn.”

  “Exactly. You concentrate on Konigslutter, leave the forest of Der Elm and north of Schoningen to the 248th. 7GTD will be pushing from Schoningen up through Schoppenstedt to come in from behind.”

  “My battalion will do their bit, Comrade Colonel.”

  “I know, Pavel, that’s why I’ve chosen you for the toughest job. Right, we move out in sixteen hours, so I want to do some last-minute checks with your fellow officers. Then I will get our final briefing from the general. Let them know that I will be holding a final briefing at 1800 before we move out.”

  “Understood, Comrade Colonel.”

  Pushkin stood up, as did Trusov, replaced his beret, returned his junior officer’s salute and left the tent.

/>   NORTH-WEST OF GOMMERN, EAST GERMANY. 12TH GUARDS TANK DIVISION/3 SHOCK ARMY. 4 JULY 1984.

  THE RED EFFECT −23 HOURS.

  The Divisional Commander of the 12th Guards Tank Division hit the wooden table three times with a half empty vodka bottle.

  “We go to war soon,” bellowed ‘The Bear’. “To be selected as the army’s operacyjna grupa manewrowa is a great honour placed on us by our commander and our motherland.”

  He looked around at his full headquarters: over twenty officers crammed into the smoke-filled marquee erected by his signals battalion headquarters. The fug increased as he lit up yet another of his foul-smelling Belomorkanal cigarettes. The full complement of the division’s officers present were sitting around a mixture of temporary tables, communications equipment lined up on the one side, maps of the West pinned to some of the other sides. The commanders of the main teeth arms were present: the 48th, 332nd and 353rd Guards Tank Regiments, 200th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment, and the 18th Independent Guards Reconnaissance Battalion. There were also men from the signals battalion, self-propelled artillery regiment, surface-to-air missile battalion, guards engineer battalion, supply, repair, medical and the chemical defence company. The senior officers were also in attendance: the Chief of Staff, Pyotr Usatov, the two Deputy Commanders responsible for ‘Technical’ and the ‘Rear’, the Political Officer and Deputy Commander of the Division, Colonel Arkaldy Yolkin, and the Chief of Rocket Troops. The Commander of the Tank Division, Major General Oleg Turbin was a hard taskmaster, and he pushed his officers and men relentlessly to make his division one of the best in the Soviet Army.

  The stocky general pointed at Colonel Yuri Kharzin, Commander of the 48th Guards Tank Regiment. “We march out to our new assembly area on the night of the fifth, tucking in behind the 7th and the 10th as they assault NATO’s lines. I want your unit to move out first, Yuri. If we are to exploit any breakthroughs, we must be close enough to press forward. Your regiment will move out at dusk today, putting you in a position to take over an assembly area west of the Elbe. The rest of the division will follow you during the night of the fifth.”