Battlefield Korea

Tough Decisions

General Cotton sat down at the briefing table, feeling angry and defeated. He lost some of his professional restraint and yelled at his senior staff, “What the hell happened with our offensive?!”

They had spent the better part of ten days moving troops and aircraft from across Europe to engineer a breakthrough and push the Russians back across the Dnieper River. Instead, the effort ended in abysmal failure and substantial casualties.

A French general spoke up first. “We were beaten, General. They laid a trap for our forces, and we fell for it,” he explained in a defeated voice.

General Major (GM) Ulrich Laubenthal, the senior Bundeswehr officer at NATO, cleared his throat and before loudly lashing out at his fellow generals and colonels. “Enough of this defeatist talk! We lost a battle, not the war!”

Laubenthal scowled at the other officers who had hung their heads low when the French general gave his prognosis of the battle. “We rushed our attack before we were ready; we should have waited until we had air superiority and additional armor units. There are two American armor brigades en-route to Ukraine that should have been part of the attack. We have to slow the war down while we regroup and consolidate our forces to launch a proper attack,” he said passionately.

Brigadier Barney Wall, the senior British officer added, “The 16 Air Assault Brigade should arrive in Ukraine tomorrow. That will add 8,000 additional troops. The rest of the British 1^st Armor should also finish arriving tomorrow as well. If we add in the two American brigades and the additional Belgium and Dutch units, that should bring our forces back up to around 103,000 troops.” He spoke with a level of confidence that another offense could begin shortly.

General Cotton let them continue to discuss and argue amongst themselves for a few minutes longer before asking more questions. Looking at the French general who had spoken up first, he asked, “What were our final casualties, General?”

The French general pulled a couple of pieces of paper out of his folder. “Our casualties were high. We lost 3,456 killed in action and nearly three times that number wounded. Another 850 soldiers had been captured during one of the Russian counterattacks. In terms of equipment, we lost 235 tanks and another 700 infantry fighting vehicles. A total of 47 fighter aircraft were shot down and another 51 sustained some sort of damage,” he said as he finished reading off his list.

General Cotton just nodded, he knew the casualties were high but hearing them out loud like this seemed to make it seem worse. “NATO is averaging close to eight aircraft losses a day,” he calculated to himself. “We are still shooting down more Russian aircraft per day than we are losing, but the Russians can absorb those losses and we cannot.”

Looking to his air marshal, Cotton directed, “We need to keep going after their SAMs. We have to bring their numbers down if our air forces are going to be able to support future offensives. We cannot continue to sustain these kinds of aircraft losses or our ground forces will soon have to fight without air support.”

The SACEUR was frustrated. It seemed like he kept having the same conversation with the French and British generals, with little progress to show for it. “Most of these Europeans have not had to fight a serious war since World War II, and it’s showing,” he thought in exasperation. “Their lack of equipment and training is becoming more apparent the longer the war drags on… even with additional men and equipment, we may not be able to achieve more than a short-burst attack.”

Sighing, General Cotton announced, “I’ve received word from the US European Command that most of Three Corps has officially arrived and formed up in Germany. They will begin to move as a unit towards Poland tonight, and should start to arrive tomorrow.”

“Three Corps brings with them 49,000 soldiers from the 1^st Infantry Division, 1^st Cavalry Division, 1^st Armored Division and the 4^th Infantry Division. The Pentagon also said that they just reactivated V Corps, which will make up the second major wave of US Forces to arrive in Europe. Unfortunately, they will not arrive until sometime in early November,” General Cotton said, letting the other members know that the US was committing a significant number of soldiers to the defense of Europe.

General Cotton looked at his French and German counterparts. “We are going to need your nations to release additional forces to NATO. After this last offensive failure, we are going to hold our current positions and wait until additional European and US Forces arrive before we consider another offensive. As it stands, we are now entering early October. We are going to start moving into the winter months in Eastern Europe, which everyone knows is a tough time to fight. I want to gather our strength now, so we can launch a massive offensive operation in early November. If things work out, we may be able to liberate Ukraine before the end of the year and bring this war to an end on our terms,” Cotton announced.

The two men nodded. No one wanted to fight a winter war with Russia.

While the group continued to discuss the military situation, an aide walked up to General Cotton and handed him a note. He quickly read the paper and raised an eyebrow, not sure what to make of it. Everyone at the table stopped talking and looked at him, hoping he might let them in on what new development must have transpired.

General Cotton cleared his throat. “I just received word from our political counterparts; the Russian government has asked for a ceasefire to discuss terms to end the war. Thoughts on this latest development?”