by James Philip
He carried on studying the big map table, reading and re-reading the symbols that denoted units and their rates of movement, current status and fighting strength, appraising and re-appraising the balance and the actual striking power of each formation of his two armies.
The spearhead of 10th Guards Tank Division had halted in Diwaniyah, two hundred kilometres south of Baghdad last night. Its men were exhausted and it had out run its supporting mechanised infantry. Major General Vladimir Andreyevich Puchkov had been beside himself with impotent rage to discover the local Iraqi militia, prior to running away, had opened the outlet valves on the town’s small central oil storage bunkers and mined the approaches to the site.
An armoured personnel carrier – an eight-wheel BTR-60 - had run over a mine and the resulting explosion had ignited the whole depot and a large part of the town.
With elements of five Brigades of 3rd Caucasian Tank Army stretched out along the roads between Baghdad and Diwaniyah in absolutely no kind of battle order, calling a short ‘stop’ to the headlong advance made eminently good military sense; but still it chafed abominably. That was the ‘tanker’ in Babadzhanian’s soul. You drove forward until you could go no further and then you fought on, because anything that was not ‘movement’ was unacceptable. The trouble was he had no choice but to accept a lot of unacceptable things these days.
Every transport aircraft that flew into the hastily repaired and reopened air bases around Baghdad discharged more ‘replacements’ and ‘reinforcements’ to fill the gaps in the ranks. Thus far in Operation Nakazyvat Army Group South had suffered some two thousand three hundred dead – over half in bombing raids – and another seven thousand injured or seriously wounded. That was nothing when compared with the Red Army’s butcher’s bill in any of the big battles of the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis. The trouble was that there were, on most days, around fifteen to twenty thousand men listed as ‘sick or unfit for duty’, desertions were listed in hundreds, and at least a thousand men had just gone missing. Not missing in action, just missing. They had gone for a walk, to have a piss or a crap, and they had never come back. That was how the locals played guerrilla warfare; no pitched battles, hardly any real ambushes, not even a lot of mines by the roadside or booby-traps set in abandoned vehicles or houses; they just waited for their moment and they snatched the unwary. Days later mutilated bodies with no dog tags, clothes, or anything to identify them would turn up. It was hardly surprising his boys were starting to shoot anybody who looked at them the wrong way!
Babadzhanian knew the attrition would only get worse the longer the campaign went on. Until his tanks were parked on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and he had neutralised the British garrison at Abadan he could not spare the troops necessary to police any of the ground his Armies had conquered. He was so short of men; the whole Red Army was so short of trained infantrymen that ninety percent of the ‘replacements’ he was being sent were men drafted straight from penal battalions. Some of them had had a week or so of basic training, but hardly any of them knew which end of their rifles the fucking bullets came out of!
Nevertheless, his T-62s had cut south towards Basra like a red hot axe through butter. The drive to the south had been unopposed, mocking the caution with which he had mandated that both his Armies progress within the confines of the flood plains of the Euphrates and the Tigris, so as to be capable of supporting each other in extremis, as they gathered themselves for the assault on Basra.
It had only been in the last forty-eight hours that he had recognised that Iraqi resistance was so feeble that 3rd Caucasus Tank Army alone was perfectly capable of taking Basra ‘on the run’, before rushing down into the Faw Peninsula to complete the conquest of western Iraq. Planning for both his tank armies to converge on Basra had been a reasonable, conservative schema right up until the moment events on the ground had convinced him that the Iraqis were every bit as beaten, demoralised and comprehensively routed as they seemed to be.
Given the reality of the battlefield it would be profligate, both in terms of time and resources, to ‘waste’ both his Armies on Basra and consequently he had decided to drastically alter his battle plan.
The revised ‘grand scheme’ for the conquest of Iraq and south western Iran, swallowing up, rather than simply ‘investing’ the prize of Abadan Island had crystallized in Babadzhanian’s mind between the fever dreams. The enemy was too weak to mount any kind of major counter attack above Basra that might justify both his tank armies operating ‘shoulder to shoulder’, able to instantly support the other in a crisis. The Iraqi Army – that part of it which had not already laid down its arms – was in headlong flight from his advancing T-62s. As for the Iranians in and around Abadan, they seemed to be too busy fighting some kind of pointless civil war to worry about Army Group South’s approach.
This was the moment, the moment of decision.
He had determined to throw caution to the winds; to strike with every available man, tank and aircraft directly at the critical strategic objectives laid down in the preparatory briefing paper he had submitted to the Collective Leadership a year ago which had ultimately resulted in Operation Nakazyvat.
Puchkov would continue in command of the spearhead of 3rd Caucasian Tank Army charged with driving all the way to the south of the Faw Peninsula past Basra; thereupon to seize the port of Umm Qasr and to threaten the northern border of the oil-rich Emirate of Kuwait.
Meanwhile, Kurochnik’s tanks at the head of 2nd Siberian Mechanised Army would abandon the original line of advance down the right hand, western bank of the Tigris River when it reached Amarah; and instead swing left and ‘charge’ straight down the left hand, eastern bank of the river towards Khorramshahr and Abadan.
On the face of it Babadzhanian’s two armies would be operating too far apart – not to mention separated by the Tigris, one of the great rivers of the world - to be in a position to offer mutual battlefield, or logistical support if either ran into trouble.
It was the sort of scenario which would have had war gamers scratching their heads in bewilderment. What happened if either the western drive on Basra and the Faw Peninsula of the eastern advance down the far bank of the Tigris ran into significant opposition?
It was a fair question; but not one that Babadzhanian judged relevant. Now was the time to execute all out Blitzkrieg tactics. There were no significant enemy forces positioned between the altered lines of advance of his advancing armies. The British had a garrison at Abadan and spies reported a small build up of tanks south of the Kuwaiti border; the British also had ships in the Persian Gulf, but not enough aircraft to seriously challenge the local air superiority achieved by the Red Air Force as far south as Hillah and Kut. With every advance of his T-62s new forward operating bases were opened for the MiG-21s and the dozens of S-75 surface-to-air missile batteries rushed south from the Motherland – where they had previously been standing idle, useless ever since the end of the Cuban Missiles War - which had already driven the RAF out of the sky over central Iraq. And what use were ships on the sea? It did not matter how many ships the British had because not one of them was worth as much as a single T-62 in a land battle!
Nevertheless, he confidently expected several of the more obsessively cautious members of the General Staff of the Red Army back in Chelyabinsk to wet their pants when they discovered what he had done!
Babadzhanian sighed as he ruminated upon the giant composite map of southern Iraq. He would act now and tell the fools back home later.
First, it was necessary to effect a minor but significant reallocation of fighting power between his two armies.
“3rd Caucasian Tank Army will surrender 2nd Guards Tank Division to 2nd Siberian Mechanized Army. To rebalance matters 8th Guards Mechanised Brigade will be re-assigned to 3rd Caucasian Tank Army as soon as it completes refitting in the Baghdad area.”
2nd Guards Tank Division was laagered south of Baghdad. Several of its units having been detached to assist the suppression o
f the Kurdish northern cities; the Division was at approximately sixty percent strength with one hundred and forty operational T-62s.
8th Guards Mechanized Brigade had been badly mauled in air raids and was still equipped with older T-54 and T-55 main battle tanks.
Second, it was necessary to articulate the revised priorities in such a way that his key commanders, specifically his two trusted ‘hard chargers’, Puchkov and Kurochnik would henceforward operate with an unambiguous understanding of what he expected of them.
“With immediate effect 3rd Caucasian Tank Army’s objectives are redefined to be: one, proceed south at all speed to invest and capture Basra via Samawah; two, to invest the Faw Peninsula and seize the port of Umm Qasr at the earliest date. Secondary objectives: one, to support operations on the eastern bank of the Arvand River opposite Basra and against Abadan Island as required; two, to fortify the western bank of the Shatt al-Arab at its southernmost point, and to fortify the port of Umm Qasr.”
Pens scratched. The mood around the Army Group Commander was calmly grave.
“With immediate effect 2nd Siberian Mechanized Army’s objectives are redefined as following: one, to disregard all previous orders in respect of a line of advance south from Kut to Basra via Nasiriyah, and all references in former orders relating to operating in such a manner to always be in a position as to offer mutual support to 3rd Caucasian Tank Army’s advance; two, the Army is to proceed with all due haste to Amarah, there to advance south down the line of the eastern bank of the Tigris River to Al Qurnah; three, at Al Qurnah the Army will re-group to advance on and take by force majeure the town of Khorramshahr preparatory to assaulting Abadan Island. The jumping off line for this operation will be on the eastern bank of the Arvand River five miles south of Basra. Further to the above, it is my intention that 2nd Siberian mechanised Army be in position to begin the assault on Abadan no later than 1st of July.”
Babadzhanian felt the wide-open eyes of his staff boring into his back.
Nobody in the Red Army ripped up orders which had had to be sanctioned and authorised by the Politburo; because if things turned out badly losing the battle was likely to be only the beginning of one’s troubles.
Everybody around him was holding his breath.
He fixed the Red Air Force liaison officer in his sights.
“Red Air Force,” Babadzhanian sniffed, hoping he would finish dictating his orders before he fainted and had to be carried back to his sick cot in the next room. “The Red Air Force’s priority is to give all necessary support to both lines of advance until 2nd Siberian Mechanised Army is in position to commence offensive operations against the Khorramshahr-Abadan sector. The Red Air Force and the Officer Commanding 2nd Siberian will summit a fully worked up joint land-air attack plan for this operation not later than forty-eight hours prior to the planned H-Hour.”
Babadzhanian looked around.
“Any questions?”
Chapter 26
Friday 19th June 1964
Leningradsky Prospekt Hotel, Chelyabinsk, Soviet Union
Fifty-nine year old Llewellyn E. ‘Tommy’ Thompson, Jr. was that most unlikely of Americans; a man who had, if not fallen in love with, then always missed Russia when he was elsewhere.
Born in Las Animas, Colorado the son of a rancher, he had studied economics at his native state’s University in Boulder and entered the US Diplomatic Service via a Foreign Service Tutoring Group while working in the Georgetown office of Price-Waterhouse in Washington DC. His first overseas posting was to distant Ceylon in 1929, where he was a Vice Consol. In 1933 he was sent to Geneva, becoming Consul in 1937 and later served as US representative at the International Labour Office. After a coming back to America in 1940 his next appointment was as a Second Secretary to the Embassy in Moscow. Becoming a fluent Russian speaker he had remained in Russia until 1944. His service had included the period in 1941when German tanks approached so close to Moscow that all diplomatic missions had been evacuated to Kuybyshev, not returning to the capital until the dark tide of Nazi aggression had receded far to the west. His reward for his stint in Russia was a two year spell in London between 1944 and 1946, and an extended period in Washington DC where he had met and married his wife, the artist Jane Goelet in 1948.
Now President Kennedy’s Special Emissary looked out of his second floor – somewhat starkly furnished and decorated - apartment in the virtually deserted hotel on the avenue for which the building was named. He did not see the bleak sameness of the urban architecture or the drab clothes of the men and women on the street below; he saw the trees in full leaf, the blue grey twisting chord of the Miass River in the near distance and felt the weight of history on his shoulders.
It was good to be back; good to discover that there were still places that remained unbombed in this extraordinary country which his compatriots at home so often completely misunderstood. He missed his wife’s presence, her patience and wit would have gone down well with his hosts once they had got to know her; but this first trip was too dangerous, a voyage of discovery best sailed single-handed, or in his case, with a small coterie of State Department volunteers. It was not that he mistrusted anything that Valerian Alexandrovich Zorin had told him, simply the innate prudence of a man who had already been around the ‘diplomatic block’ several times.
He and Zorin had met frequently over the years.
Thompson had been present at practically every major US-Soviet diplomatic encounter since the Second World War starting with the Potsdam Conference on July 1945. He had served in Austria as Occupation Commissioner and then as Ambassador in Rome, where he had brokered a settlement between Italy and Yugoslavia over Trieste, and had been a key player in the treaty negotiations which concluded with Austrian independence in 1955. Notwithstanding that he had been an ambassadorial appointee under Democrat President Harry S. Truman; Eisenhower had asked him to return to Moscow in 1957, where he was instrumental in persuading Nikita Khrushchev to visit America in 1959. In fact during his spell in Moscow he and his wife had become very friendly with the Khrushchevs, frequently staying at the Soviet leader’s home.
President Kennedy had sought Thompson’s advice over the Berlin crisis of 1961, and again in October 1962 after his tour of duty in Moscow had ended. Thompson often he wondered how things might have turned out if he had still been in Moscow, in a position to exploit his friendship with Khrushchev at the height of the Cuban Missiles disaster. However, he had been in Washington, not Moscow...
Thompson tried very hard not to think those thoughts.
Everybody carried their own personal parcel of guilt for what had happened on the day of the October War and in that respect he was no different to any of the other peripheral players in that tragedy.
Thompson viewed the cavalcade of big, blocky black limousines approaching the hotel from the east. Apparently, at night the whole leadership cadre of the USSR went underground in the huge pre-war bunkers in the countryside around Sverdlovsk, some one hundred and thirty miles to the north, or into the so-called ‘Kursk Bunker’ complex located east of Chelyabinsk. At first he had assumed his hosts were afraid of Curtis LeMay’s missiles and bombers; but he had discovered this nocturnal exodus from the cities was a more recent thing, prompted by the British bombing campaign in Iraq where the RAF had repeatedly demonstrated the capability to target troop concentrations, road junctions and bridges with very large bombs. Given that this was a part of Russian over which the Russians had engaged and successfully shot down ultra-high flying U-2 spy planes, this paranoia seemed a little overblown. However, even to a Russophile like Thompson, there were many facets to the Russian character which would inevitably remain hidden forever.
The US Special Emissary gathered his wits and swallowed his misgivings.
His companion was watching him closely, reading his thoughts.
Former Soviet Representative to the United Nations, and the man who had been chairing the Security Council on the fateful day Adlai Stevenson, his US counterpart
had confronted the USSR before the court of World opinion about the Soviet medium range ballistic missiles on the island of Cuba touched Thompson’s arm.
“Millions of our people died in the war,” he remarked, almost idly. “And yet we always worry about our scruples.”
“The British were our allies,” the American retorted gently, wearily.
“And our friends too in the Great Patriotic War.” Zorin shrugged, feeling old and worn. “But now history is against them. That is the way of things. When we throw them out of Iran they will take somebody else’s oil. As will your country when circumstances, and history, demand it. Better we settle our differences before, rather than after the next war.”
Thompson shivered inwardly.
After the next war, if there was a next war - God help us – there might be not be anybody left to talk to when the smoke cleared.
The US Special Emissary to the Soviet Union turned away from the window and surveyed the room. He had anticipated being whisked off to a dacha in the country, not thinking that the Troika would pay a call on him in his hotel suite. It made a kind of sense in one way; his small delegation and a battalion of KGB security men currently occupied the top two floors – the second and third – of the Leningradsky Prospekt Hotel, and the only other guests seemed to be military or party officials, so security was hardly any kind of issue. However, in another way it was odd, very un-Soviet. In the old days his hosts would have made a big fuss about holding a meeting like today’s in a sumptuous, or overblown setting, some great hall or theatre, or in the heart of a sprawling, hugely intimidating Red Army base. Somehow, an ugly 1950s hotel with fading Intourist message boards and damp patches on the corridor walls, hardly seemed in keeping with the occasion. As always the trouble was figuring out exactly what kind of message the Soviets were trying to send him.