The Kremlin: July 3, 1988
The KGB briefing to the Politburo finally had the answer to the mystery of Red Lightning. The briefer was interrupted by the Party First Secretary as the opening Vu-Graph went up. “I understand the Americans are using more advanced full-color slides. Why is the KGB behind the Americans? We must address this Slide Gap at our next meeting, comrades. Proceed, Comrade Briefer.”14
For once the geriatric ward that doubled as the Politburo listened attentively. Hearing aids were set at max so as not to miss a word. “In summation, comrades, we believe the American government is attempting to control the alcoholic beverage market in order to increase state revenues to relieve their public deficit.”
The conclusion generated a good deal of smug satisfaction. Ancient Gregorii “Gulag” Grishin, spoke for the group: “This only shows the backwardness of the entire capitalist system. It is incredible that they have only just discovered what an invaluable source of state revenue this can be. Under socialism, we have known this from the beginning!”15
Svechin General Staff Academy: December 2, 2007
“The origin of the war that began on the morning of May 15, 1989 is not germane to this lecture. Suffice it to say, that strategic deception had been successfully employed by the Soviet High Command. NATO had mobilized but far too late. By that morning in May, the only American reinforcements that had reached Europe and deployed were National Guard rocket launcher battalions. The General Staff considered that as proof of the collapse of the Reforger reinforcement plan.”
Just inside West Germany: May 15, 1989
Major Yuri Vinnogradov was having a very bad night as the T-80 tanks of his battalion exploded one by one. His recollection of the regimental intelligence officer’s briefing was becoming increasingly hostile. Major Andrei Golitsyn was all polish and effect, so elegantly nonchalant that he almost purred his Moscow accent.
“Your mission is very simple, Major. You just take your battalion from A to B and brush off the trash in your path. That consists of barely a platoon, I expect, of the American 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, a notorious collection of cutthroats and assassins with no fighting value to speak of. Of course, you must not let the exaggerations of our fraternal Vietnamese allies concern you. Well, they call themselves, of all things ‘The Black Horse.’ Really, Major, you DO have the easy job, and certainly all the glory in all this; you should see what we on the staff must go through.”
Regrettably, Vinnogradov thought, the Black Horse troops in his path had not heard Golitsyn’s briefing. After two hours of combat, the advance march security detachment had already been wiped out twice; the third replacement unit was not going to last much longer, and regiment was screaming about keeping to the timetable in the plan. While it was not much comfort to Vinnogradov, he knew that his battalion and even the regiment could be wiped out by the American cavalry unit in front of him, but the enemy would be overrun sooner or later by the locust-like echelons stacked up all the way to the Soviet border. That was allowed for in the plan.
A fireball lit up the head of the column. Vinnogradov was not thinking happy thoughts as he yelled into the radio to douse the woodline to the left with fire. “Another tank gone,” he said to himself. “I had 31 this morning; now I’m down to 15, no 14, counting the steel pyre up ahead. What was the name of that American cavalry in this sector? The Black Horse, that was it.” He promised himself the first thing he was going to do if he made it through this night was to punch Golitsyn in the mouth.
The last tank hit had been Pol’shin’s, the second company commander to buy it. The tank had been struck at the curve in the road that blocked the whole column; the fire that was roasting poor Timofey Pol’shin and his crew had illuminated other vehicles struggling to pass the wreck on the narrow, hilly shoulder of the road. They too died under the marksmanship of the Black Horse. One of those hit in due course was Yuri Vinnogradov’s own tank. As he leapt from the exploding vehicle, he saw in the firelight piles of cardboard cases and the gleam of glass along the road and under the trees.
By dawn new battalions were clogging the roads trying to pass through the wreckage of the first echelon’s lead elements like Vinnogradov’s. All along the front, NATO screening forces had done their best to keep the Soviet torrent confined to a manageable depth. They had been successful. In the British sector, the bloodied Soviet advance elements reported over and over again strange bugle calls and shouts of “Tally Ho!”
With the morning’s light what Vinnogradov had seen only in the reflection of a burning tank, the back-up Soviet columns could see in the plain light of day. Lining the roads were tens of thousands of cases of bottles of all shapes and sizes. The tops of the cases had been opened to reveal their contents. Millions of bottles were strewn in heaps throughout the well-cropped grass that bordered the German roads and along the myriad logging trails through the forests.
Gradually, across the whole front, from Austria to the Baltic, these displays were gaining the fixed attention of the tens of thousands of vehicle crewmen passing by. If it took longer than expected for someone actually to examine the curiosity, it was not because of iron discipline. It was simple incredulity. Men who should have been examining the terrain ahead or spotting for enemy aircraft found their attention focused along the road as certain brain synapses were activated that transmitted the sensation of great thirst.
Svechin General Staff Academy: December 2, 2007
“Yes, gentlemen, unbeknownst to the KGB and the GRU, the Allies had already executed the first and passive phase of Red Lightning. Although the successful Maskirovka measures of the Soviet Armed Forces had succeeded in delaying NATO’s full mobilization until it would have been too late, it was soon enough to put Red Lightning into effect. Upon warning, the Allies relocated the liquor stocks of Western Europe to a ten kilometer belt along the inter-German border.”
American Sector, Bavaria: May 16, 1989
A scholarly post-war study among veterans of both sides determined that the time elapsing between sighting the booze and physical examination by the first member of each unit never exceeded 7 minutes and 35 seconds. The average time, however, was much closer to a flat 3 minutes. Once the cry went up, entire columns of armored vehicles emptied of their crewmen. It was never revealed, though, that the bulk of the data was found in the meticulously detailed ledger of a betting pool maintained by a member of the Black Horse. They were given the drama of real events by Czech intercepts of the actual betting pool reporting over the air.16
“Booze Bet One, this is Red Claw Four. I have a positive sighting at 0615, a motorized rifle battalion backed-up on the road at KL 763432. Some little guy jumped out of the hatch of his BMP and grabbed a bottle. Thirty seconds later the whole battalion un-asses. Man, this is the first a.m. happy hour I’ve ever seen.”
“Booze Bet One, this is Blue Hammer Three. Got one for ya at KM 759466 at 0621. This ZSU-23-4 battery just drives off the road into the woods. I thought they were going to set up, but they just circled the biggest pile of the stuff they saw. Then they all jumped out at once.”
“Booze Bet One, this is Gold Arrow Six. I gotta have the winner of the special event category. Time 0711 at the road junction in KL 743453. A tank company and an artillery battery show up at the same time by the same booze pile. Two officers jump out and start waving their arms at each other. Then, so help me, one hauls off and pops the other. And everybody joined in. I haven’t seen anything like this since those guys from the 101st tried to take Kelley’s new black beret. I think the Red Legs down there might win this one.”17
Labeling the bottles in Russian had been a good idea because it had made for an instantaneous, reflex action by the Russians which cut down the chance of second thoughts while trying to remember secondary school English.
VODKA
100 Proof
GIFT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
The contents of this bottle have been certified fit for human consumption by the Surgeon General of the
United States.
The gift of the contents of this bottle does not constitute any violation of the Geneva Convention, the Laws of War, or of any Treaty or Protocol dealing with the ban of Chemical Weapons.
The United States is not liable for any damages resulting from the use of this gift, or for any disciplinary action taken by second party armed forces as a result of its use.
Product of Blue Grass Distilleries
Lexington, Kentucky
The legal warnings may have been the pride and joy of the Army lawyers, but they were incomprehensible to the Soviet soldier. Not that the Russian was bad, rather Soviet legal tradition simply did not breed the Philadelphia lawyer mentality expressed here. Being sued was not a big problem in the Soviet Union; being hauled off to the gulag was.
Svechin General Staff Academy: December 2, 2007
Now Chonkin roused himself.
“In this supreme crisis, the leadership style of the Russian officer asserted itself. The selfless and heroic efforts of thousands of officers wearing the Soviet uniform nearly defeated the American plan. Countless stories exist of officers setting a courageous example to their men in the face of this unbearable provocation. However, it was the iron habit of drunkenness, forced upon our people by the Soviet system, that proved the stronger force, one immune to higher moral values.”
Westphalia, West Germany: May 17, 1989
Guards Colonel Vladimir Lushin leaped out of his command car, roaring like the god of war he was. The column had been halted, and he wanted to know why. A young lieutenant stood, legs apart, in front of a pile of crates and bottles, his AK-74 still smoking. Two dead soldiers lay in front of the lieutenant. “Comrade colonel,” he reported, “These men violated Soviet discipline and were swilling this vodka. They refused to stop. It could have destroyed discipline in the entire unit. I shot them.”
“Very good, lieutenant!” He paused long enough to see that the lieutenant had not shot up all the cases as well. “Have a squad load up the remaining cases into my vehicle. We must examine this filthy capitalist trick more closely to see what poisons or mind-altering drugs the enemy has filled them with.” As the colonel drove away, the lieutenant gave him his best salute, elated at having done his duty so well. The hand that quivered along the lip of his helmet went limp and fell to his side as he watched the colonel waving a newly opened bottle from the hatch as his command car turned around the bend.
Here and there a “real” communist, usually a junior officer but rarely a political officer, tried to stem the breakdown.
“Comrade Warrant Officer Bulyagin, what are you doing? Stop this at once! How can you, a Party member, act so unlike a communist?” Junior Lieutenant Aleksander “By the Plan” Yegorov stood his ground in front of the warrant officer, pistol drawn, ready to impose the ultimate sanction of Soviet military justice in the field. The older man looked up from the pile of crates he was loading into his BMP and defiantly broke the neck off the bottle against the steel armored door. The sharp smell of the vodka filled the air between them. Bulyagin decided it was time to explain the facts of life.
“Listen, Sasha,” he said, using the diminutive of the lad’s name. He was not a bad officer; he took better care of his men than most, so Bulyagin thought he was worth the trouble. “My card says I’m a Party member, but God knows I’m not a communist, and it’s about time you knew the difference.”18
Soviet Headquarters, Zossen, East Germany: May 18, 1989
When thousands of vehicles in the first echelon had been loaded to the limit with bottles, the men bravely attempted to consume what was left strewn about. Thousands of liters of alcohol entered the bloodstream of the fighting elements of three Soviet fronts.
It did not take the headquarters of the 25 first echelon divisions long to notice a growing sluggishness in the movement of their regiments as well as a definite frivolity and slurred speech in their radio transmissions. Needless to say, COMSEC (communications security) went right to hell. It was Christmas for NATO signals intercept units. Stern inquiries from Soviet higher headquarters only increased the apprehension; frantic visits by commanders and staff followed. It is recorded that the commanders of the 57th and 207th Guards Motorized Rifle Divisions and the 6th Guards Tank Division all died for the Motherland at this time.
Late in the day the extent and nature of the situation began to filter up through Army and Front headquarters. Lieutenant-Colonel Chonkin was present as a General Staff observer at the main Soviet headquarters at Zossen outside Berlin when the situation finally began to clarify. He immediately requisitioned a secure telephone line back to his office in Moscow.
“Vasili, find every copy of that probability study and burn it! What’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. We’re supposed to be 60 kilometers inside West Germany by now, and the furthest we’ve gone anywhere is 15. The first echelon divisions have been stopped dead. Stopped dead drunk is more precise. Instead of massing their divisions along the border, they’ve massed vodka. I tell you, Vasili, it must be that Red Lightning business. Who would ever have thought the Americans could have… No, I have not been near the front!”
Svechin General Staff Academy: December 2, 2007
“Exhaustive planning and wargaming by the Americans had predicted this crisis of the Soviet offensive quite accurately. They were fully prepared to take deadly advantage of the disaster overtaking the Soviet first echelon armies.”
NATO Headquarters, Brussels: May 19, 1989
“What the hell?” Iron Mike kept muttering to himself as his increasingly euphoric staff put together from intelligence reports the stark picture of the collapse of the Soviet offensive. He had expected little from Red Lightning, at most some confusion in the Soviet advance, but this?
Whatever else you could say about Iron Mike, he was not slow on the uptake. He could see that the Soviet second echelon armies were going to be crashing into that mess along the border soon. His most pressing problem now was logistics. All the war plans had worked on the assumption that NATO forces would have to back-pedal west and thus fall back upon their supplies. Such was the nature of his call to his chief of logistics, General Sir Nigel Smith-Wilson.19
“Bunny!” he yelled over the phone. “What are you doing now?”
Smith-Wilson flinched. Bunny was his school nickname and a privileged one among a few friends. He hated this Yankee informality. Damn whoever had betrayed him to the crass American. Still, he managed a cool tone and answered: “Why, sir, we are displacing west and are even ahead of schedule.”
“Put that on hold! Be prepared to support a static defense all along the front for an indefinite period.”
Bunny clutched at his dignity. Every professional logistician lived in terror that the operations types would do something like this. “But, sir, you just can’t turn this sort of thing around at a moment’s notice. Why, the planning time alone…”
“General Smith-Wilson, I don’t want excuses. I want to see a CAN DO attitude.”
Smith-Wilson later pouted to his sympathetic staff: “And if I hear another American say CAN DO, I shall throw up.” It was only just beginning to dawn on him exactly how things had changed as he discovered he had over 250,000 Soviet prisoners dropped into his officious care. And the war was not even a week old.
To Smith-Wilson, they were not really people, just so many rations, so many guards, so many camps to set up. If he could have seen…
Trudging west, the column of Soviet prisoners had to get off the road to let the French truck convoy continue east. Warrant Officer Bulyagin put his arm around the dejected shoulders of young Yegorov. “Sasha, perk up! The world is turning over. Just think of the possibilities. You did tear up that Party card, didn’t you?”20
Further to the south in another column, the German reservist guards had to break up a rather one-sided fight between two Soviet officers. A smoke-blackened tank major had to have his fingers pried off the throat of a thoroughly thrashed staff officer.
Svechin General S
taff Academy: December 2, 2007
“The crucial phase of the battle now arrived with the Soviet second echelon armies. The Allies had exhausted their prepositioned stocks of alcohol. Now would be the time to see if their alcoholic munitions could create a similar effect on a forewarned enemy.”
The Front: May 20, 1989
The passive phase of Red Lightning was over. Prepositioning booze along the enemy’s path of advance was not feasible now that the war had become fluid. Iron Mike ordered the execution of the active phase. This phase was essentially a joint operation between US National Guard multiple rocket launcher units and NATO tactical fighter-bombers.
The MRL battalions were issued their tightly controlled munitions once they had arrived in Germany—KICAS-AMs (Kinetic Controlled Air Scatterable Alcoholic Munitions). Maximum reliability was expected from the Mormon and Deep South Baptist Guardsmen. It was hoped they would not be sampling their own ordnance. At the same time, the NATO fighter-bomber squadrons were issued the air munitions variant of the KICAS-AM. It was from this acronym for the special munition that the soldier’s term for the war was born—Operation Kickass.
Priority targets for the KICAS-AMs would be in the path of attacking Soviet units. Each exploding rocket would scatter hundreds of florescent orange round plastic miniatures, each with its own little parachute. The targets for fighter-bombers would be assembly areas, river-crossing sites, and headquarters. For headquarters targets a special subcategory of the KICAS-AM was developed, the DEBOCALL or Delayed Effect Bomb Cluster, Alcoholic, Leadership, because its content was the exquisite Stolychnaya vodka that most Russians never saw because supplies were reserved for the élite or for export. It was felt that the special target population in headquarters with its more “refined tastes” required a special munition.21
Cold War Hot: Alternate Decisions of the Cold War Page 32