The Third World War: August 1985

CHAPTER 11: Over the Edge

By 2 August 1985 the four corps composing the Central Army Group in the Central Region of Allied Command Europe were already in their forward position in the CENTAG sector. This ran from near Kassel in the north, at the junction with I Belgian Corps on the right of the Northern Army Group, to the Austrian frontier south of Munchen.

The four corps of the Central Army Group lay from north to south as follows: III German, V US, VII US, II German.

II French Corps, stationed with some supporting army troops in south-west Germany, was still not under command to Allied Command Europe. It was not even certain how the French government, given its pronounced left-wing orientation in the recent past, would, in the event of hostilities with the Warsaw Pact, regard its obligations under the Atlantic Treaty. Relations between the French General Staff in Germany and CENTAG, however, were close and cordial, and communication between the two, though discreet, was fairly free.

At the end of July the personnel of an armoured division, the first of the divisions earmarked for USAREUR, had been flown in from the United States. By nightfall on 2 August it had almost completed the drawing of its prepositioned combat equipment, including more than 300 XM-1 tanks. Some of its units, at least, had fired-in their guns at Grafenwohr before dispersal in the area north-west of Wurzburg, under command to V US Corps.

It was V US Corps’ sector, running north and south through Fulda, which was considered critical in CENTAG. The Demarcation Line with the East bulges out here in a bold westward curve towards the bend in the Rhine near Frankfurt-am-Main, at its closest no further from Frankfurt than 100 kilometres, with only another forty kilometres to the Rhine. Furthermore, in the hill country of the Thuringer Wald there is an important gap around Fulda itself, with the terrain becoming ever more readily negotiable as it opens down into the Rhine-Main plain. The distances are all short here. There is not much ground to trade for time and little opportunity for mobile operations.

The area forward of the Fulda valley favoured the defence, offering ample choice of good positions for tanks and ATGW, with considerable depth to their fields of fire. Unfortunately the distance from the Fulda valley to the frontier is no more than fifteen kilometres.

Behind the Fulda valley to the west is the high mass of the Vogelsberg, to the north the wooded country along the autobahn through Bad Hersfeld to Kassel, to the south the inhospitable terrain of the Hohe Rhon. As a good example of the course of events in a critical sector we shall be giving considerable attention to the action of V US Corps. Its commander’s mission was simple: to keep the Soviet forces east of the Frankfurt plain and as close to the border as possible.

Lieutenant General Harold J. Selby, Commanding General of V US Corps, was an old hand. Just too young for service in the Second World War, he had got into the Korean campaign right at the end. Later on he had seen plenty of service in armoured cavalry in Vietnam. His total of seven years’ service in Germany had included, besides a tour on the operations staff in HQ AFCENT, command of a regiment and of a division before he was given the command of V Corps in 1983.

Each of his two original US divisions had been increased in strength to 15,000 men with over 300 tanks each and nearly 500 ATGW. In addition to the armoured cavalry regiment deployed along the border in the corps sector there was a further squadron of armoured cavalry in each division. Besides the self-propelled 155 mm and 8-in divisional artillery, each division also had an additional artillery group and nearly fifty anti-tank helicopters. His third division, newly arrived in Germany but containing many officers and men with previous experience in the theatre, was at lower strength and had not yet shaken down, but it was by no means without promise.

The two forward divisions knew their areas well. Each was so disposed as to take care of one of the two most likely axes of attack — to the north of the Vogelsberg through Bad Hersfeld and Alsfeld into the plain north of Frankfurt, and south of the Vogelsberg through Fulda and down the Kinzig river valley through Hanau towards Frankfurt. The corps commander expected action on both axes but was convinced that one or the other would be chosen for the main effort. He knew that his overriding task was to establish the direction of the main thrust before the smaller force opposing it was overwhelmed.

Intelligence here was critical. Since his arrival in the corps the Commander had made a minutely detailed study of the terrain and planned a very thorough intelligence operation covering every approach. What he could not cover with his own sensors he asked to have covered for him by CENTAG. To help him find out what he wanted he relied on the reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence resources available at every level of responsibility, from intelligent young men with binoculars and a radio in a hole on a hill far forward to the input from highly sophisticated satellite systems in space. The Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) had been designed to handle a vast volume of intelligence material coming in from sources as varied as satellite systems, reconnaissance vehicles, both manned and unmanned, ELINT (electronic intelligence), SIGINT (signal intelligence) and battlefield surveillance of all kinds, and to funnel it all into processing centres for analysis, correlation, assessment and distribution. The corps commander, however, was too old a hand to place exclusive reliance on processes not within his total control and on systems vulnerable to counter-measures. His principal instrument for the assessment of the enemy’s intentions was to be the strong engagement he intended to fight in the covering force area up against the border, forward of the Hanau and Fulda rivers. His final judgment, which, like all fighting soldiers, he knew must in the last resort be purely intuitive, whatever aids he had, would depend on his interpretation of that action.

The armoured cavalry regiment on the border was a powerful brigade-sized armoured force in its own right, basically of light tanks, now reinforced by a medium tank battalion and a mechanized infantry battalion, together with self-propelled artillery and attack helicopters. Commanders in the covering force had been ordered to destroy leading elements in engagements which should either be opened at extreme range or be held down to very short-range ambush; to force the enemy to commit strong reserves and deploy his artillery; and to give no ground at all except to avoid the imminent certainty of encirclement and total destruction. Small armoured task forces had reconnoitred and in many cases prepared some hundreds of excellent battle positions before the battle began. The Commander was entirely convinced that in the action of the covering forces lay the whole key to success in his main battle. If this action was conducted as he intended, it would in his view both identify the main thrust and give him a little time to organize his response to it. At the same time it would slow down the Soviet surge just enough to cast doubt on the invincibility of the total armoured offensive. This, he thought, could pay a big dividend.

The course of events was to suggest that he was right.

The G3 (General Staff — Operations) Duty Officer in Headquarters, Northern Army Group, still in its peacetime location at Rheindahlen in northern Germany, finished entering in his log the routine call at the half hour to AFCENT, while his two juniors in other corners of the map room were already putting together material for the next, and turned again to the letter to his wife. It was just after three o’clock on the morning of the first Sunday in August 1985. The night had been warm and thundery; a brief rainstorm about midnight had done little to freshen it.

There had not been much to report to AFCENT. Most of what was important had gone earlier in the night — reports on the army group’s state of readiness, the dispositions at last light of its five component corps,[2] tank and gun states, arrival of reserve units and of reinforcement personnel, the intelligence SITREP, and so on.

The general alert ordered in Allied Command Europe on the news of the airborne invasion of Yugoslavia and the follow-up by two Soviet motor-rifle divisions out of Hungary, resulting in an almost immediate clash with US marines, had done curiously little to change things in the Central Region. Events had been moving towards a general alert for some days, though the weight of evidence suggested that an attack by the Pact in the Central Region, if it ever came off, would be most unlikely before the beginning of September and scarcely possible much before mid-August.

A good deal of intelligence material had been coming into the Ops room during the night from the ‘I’ staff of the British Army of the Rhine (whose C-in-C was also Commander Northern Army Group) but not a lot of it was new. Reports continued, of a sort that had now grown familiar, of preparations in clandestine cells (of which some hundreds were known to exist) for strikes at military and civil communication centres and at other key points throughout the Federal Republic, and for the giving of help to Soviet parachutists coming in on Rhine and Weser bridges. There was the usual wild disagreement on target date and wide discrepancy in detail.

What had not been in doubt for several weeks now, even since before the Yugoslav crisis, was that if the ‘exercises’ of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, now in progress on a scale far larger than any yet seen, were not in fact a full mobilization for war they were a very passable substitute for it. There had been the usual notification through the head of the Soviet Military Mission to C-in-C BAOR (NORTHAG, as a NATO command, was not recognized by the Russians) of the intention to hold manoeuvres, and of the area in the GDR that would be closed, but the areas were of quite unusual size and the exercises were to be of exceptional duration. It was explained by the Soviet Mission that these were ‘readiness exercises’, normal, but gone through only at long intervals.

The crisis in Yugoslavia and the Soviet intervention there, though neither could be described as entirely unexpected, now threw a clearer light on events. To bring the whole Warsaw Pact gently and unobtrusively, as far as this was possible, to a war footing before an initiative in Yugoslavia (now seen to have been planned some time before) made very good sense. The response of the West to a Soviet attempt to force a disintegrating Yugoslavia back into the system might not be easy to predict, but it was unlikely to be accepted as tamely as the subjugation of Czechoslovakia seventeen years before. Of all the possible reactions, an invasion of the Warsaw Pact by NATO could hardly be seen as likely, however useful the possibility of it might be to the USSR for propaganda purposes. It would be important, all the same, for the forces of the Pact to be fully prepared, whether for defensive action against a Western attack or for the more likely contingency of a pre-emptive offensive.

It was in June that the rumours reaching Western intelligence of increasing activity among undercover left-wing groups in the FRG began to receive some confirmation from more trustworthy sources. It was clear that plans existed for sabotage on a considerable scale, and even for operations that made little sense unless they were to be supported by military action from the other side.

In early July the evidence began to harden. An action date some time in mid-September was being indicated. But though it was still doubtful whether much could be achieved by sabotage cells acting on their own, there was still no firm indication that a major initiative by Soviet armed forces was intended, the ‘readiness exercise’ notwithstanding.

The Federal Republic of Germany was not unnaturally the first major Allied power to take the aggregate of these reports really seriously, considered in the context not only of current military activity in the Warsaw Pact but also of the confused and threatening situation in Yugoslavia. The United States began to do so at about the same time, and so did Belgium.

The United Kingdom was rather harder to persuade. There had been no alert for several years — not, in fact, since Tito’s departure from the scene — and the British did not entirely believe what they were being told, largely because they did not want to. The false detente had had its effect. Enough had recently been done within the Alliance, it was generally thought, to prevent the Russians trying anything on. Whatever modification there had been of recent years in British public opinion, the habit of self-deception, persistent for so many years in Britain, was clearly hard to shake off.

The Dutch were even more reluctant to believe anything so uncomfortable. The Norwegians and Danes flatly rejected the evidence, while the French, still members of the Atlantic Alliance though not, of course, of NATO and now under a government of the Popular Front, kept their own counsel.

Troop movement by the GSFG (Group of Soviet Forces in Germany) into the designated manoeuvre area began in a spell of good summer weather in the first week of July. Information coming out of East Germany to the West was, as usual, plentiful, and it soon became apparent that these exercises were going to be conducted on a very massive scale indeed — much larger, even, than had been expected. The Red Army and Air Force certainly seemed to be playing it, as the saying goes, for real. Ammunition, fuel and warlike stores were being moved up in actual tonnages. At the same time, in the Soviet Union itself, the arrangements for recall of reservists seemed to be getting a complete work-out and the men were joining their units. The same thing appeared to be happening in all the Warsaw Pact countries.

It was the New York Times that first aroused really widespread misgiving in the West by reporting that what was going on in the Warsaw Pact looked mighty like a mobilization. Two days later the Frankfurter Allgemeine came out bluntly with the statement that that was just what it was. On the same day a journalist regarded by some as the bane of Whitehall and by others as its only hope, a man called Jardine Snatcher, told the world under banner headlines that he was defying D-notices to let it be known that the British Chiefs of Staff had exercised their constitutional right of access to the Prime Minister in order to call on Mrs Plumber in No. 10 Downing Street and tell her precisely that.

Meanwhile, outside Europe, disquieting developments, referred to elsewhere in this book, were causing increasing concern throughout the Western world — above all, not unnaturally, in Washington.

Relations between the United States and the communist bloc in the Caribbean were more than usually strained and getting worse. Events in Southern Africa and the Middle East seemed to be moving towards not one crisis but several. In all three areas Soviet activity was open, marked and increasing. One-third of the Soviet submarine fleet was known to be at sea. Units of it, with support vessels, had been reported not only off Cuba and Jamaica but also at Alexandria and in North African waters, as well as off Malta and in the Arabian Gulf. Units of the Black Sea Fleet were known to have been moving in some numbers through the Straits into the Mediterranean. What was no less significant was that Soviet combat aircraft were widely deployed in the Caribbean, as also in Libya, Malta, East Africa and Syria, while there was much movement of transport aircraft.

In the USSR the harvest was expected to be even more disastrous than those of the previous two years and critical foodstuffs were known to be scarce. The measures which, in the recent past, had produced waves of unrest in Poland and Romania and even in parts of the Soviet Union itself-in the Ukraine, for example, and in Georgia — were likely to be repeated. Yugoslavia, meanwhile, was on the brink of civil war.

Kremlin-watchers were pointing out the propitious opportunities for Soviet exploitation that were opening up in many different places at once. They were also adding gloomily that if ever there was a time when the Soviet Union needed foreign adventure as a distraction from domestic discontent this was probably it. Of the two prime potential adversaries, moreover, China was not yet ready for a major military enterprise and NATO, though something had been done in the past few years to remedy some of its better known defects, had still not recovered from more than a decade of neglect. Kremlin-watchers had said all that, of course, before. One thing at least was clear: time was not on the side of the Soviet Union.

Looking back on events, it became clear to Western observers later that, with the less noticeable preliminaries embarked on a good deal earlier, full mobilization in the Warsaw Pact had begun on or about 14 July. Though no public announcement had been made in Moscow the indicators were enough for the Secretary of State to advise President Thompson on 18 July that Soviet mobilization must now be accepted as a fact. The same advice was given to heads of government in all member states of the Alliance at about the same time. In the three major partner countries in NATO, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany, defence chiefs urged mobilization at once. Only in the Federal Republic was there immediate agreement.

The President of the United States, terribly aware of his unique responsibilities, was reluctant to raise the temperature. He got through on the hot-line to the head of government in the USSR (with some delay — it was several hours before the Soviet President could be brought to the instrument) to make emphatic remonstrance and to urge the cancellation of all further warlike preparations. Surprise was expressed in response to such concern. What was happening in the GDR was only an exercise, of which appropriate notice had been given. Practice mobilizations — carried out only rarely because of the cost — were indispensable to the efficiency of armed forces. When this one was over it would not need to be repeated for a long time. It was hoped that the President of the United States would not encourage panic reaction. The best service to the cause of world peace would be to quieten the manic howls of fascist revanchists in West Germany. These were increasing daily and causing growing concern in the USSR.

Under mounting pressure from the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and with clear indications that public opinion was moving strongly in favour of mobilization, the President gave the order on 21 July. The Federal Republic had begun its own mobilization the day before. The United Kingdom did not follow until the 23rd, and even then with some reluctance. It was not at first clear whether the trade unions — no longer the dominant force in the governance of Britain they had been in the seventies, but still powerful — would co-operate. There was the expected chorus of left-wing disapproval; a good deal of hard bargaining and wheedling was needed before the go-ahead could be given. Even then only a modified form of mobilization was ordered in the first instance. Parliament, hastily recalled from recess, quickly passed a short enabling Act to make possible certain preparations (such as the embodiment of voluntary reserves) constitutionally dependent on full mobilization. The reserves began to be called up.

Following an emergency meeting of the NATO Council, mobilization in every other member state of the organization was ordered at about the same time. It had long been a structural flaw in NATO, becoming increasingly apparent in the seventies, that there was no general agreement on the timing of response to alert measures by individual governments. Each retained a high, if varying, degree of discretion. It was fortunate that there was now too little cause for doubt to permit procrastination.

The position of France was uncertain. Though still a signatory to the North Atlantic Treaty she had not been for some twenty years a member of the military organization. Her Popular Front government was unlikely to welcome the possibility of hostilities with the Soviet Union. SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) tried in vain to discover what orders would be given, in the event of hostilities, to II French Corps in south-west Germany. At least, with reservists being recalled in France, deficiencies in personnel and equipment were being made good here, as they were elsewhere, while the relations between the French command and staff in Germany on the one hand and CENTAG on the other continued to be close. Elsewhere, Switzerland, Sweden and Austria were also recalling reservists and bringing their forces to a higher state of readiness.

Almost as difficult for the Americans and British, and for the Canadians too, as the decision to mobilize was the question of whether to order the repatriation of dependants of service personnel in Germany, and other civilian nationals, and, if this was to be done, when to do it. This had always been seen as a critical indicator of whether hostilities were expected. London and Washington both gave forty-eight hours’ notice of evacuation on 23 July. Movement of civilian nationals began on the 25th — in part directly by air to their home countries, in part by road, in the first instance to staging areas, in Holland for the British and in Belgium for the Americans and Canadians. Evacuation was everywhere complete by the 30th.

Meanwhile, throughout the whole European theatre NATO formations were on the move to their operational positions. The headquarters at their different levels — of CENTAG with its American commander at Heidelberg, of NORTHAG under British command at Rheindahlen, of AFCENT with its German commanding general at Brunssum in Holland, and of SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe), with its American Supreme Commander (SACEUR) and his British and German deputies, itself at Mons in Belgium — were all due to move to war locations, with staggered timings, in the next few days. Advance parties had manned these locations already and tested communications.

Main headquarters were still in their peacetime locations only because of the exceptionally heavy administrative load in the build-up period. This was a great burden on communications and staff alike, and was best handled through permanent signal channels, with normal staff accommodation and office facilities. There was still thought to be time, if not a great deal. D-day, if the Russians really meant business, was not expected before the second half of August at the earliest.

The Allied air forces were, of course, able to respond quickly by the very nature of their medium. The increasing period of tension and general mobilization had given ample time for the Central Region air forces to assume a full war posture. They had had years of experience under the stringent conditions of SACEUR’s periodic tactical evaluation tests. These tests, called at no notice in peacetime, required the bases to go to a full war footing as if under threat of conventional and chemical attack. The time taken to raise the whole force to a full combat state was monitored and evaluated by an independent team of inspectors. What they had to do now was therefore well rehearsed and would be carried out to a less demanding timescale. From their war headquarters the commanders of 2 and 4 Allied Tactical Air Forces had been monitoring, with not a little satisfaction, the progress as the bases told-in their generation rate of combat-ready aircraft and the tote boards on the walls steadily filled.

By midnight 3 August 90 per cent of the aircraft of Allied Air Forces Central Europe were serviceable, armed, and protected in hardened shelters. During the last week reactivated UK bases and US airfields in 4 ATAF had been receiving a continuous stream of reinforcement aircraft which had been flown across the Atlantic, usually refuelling in the air. So far, very good; but General Donkin, the Commander Allied Air Forces Central Europe, had much to ponder.

He was well satisfied with the success of the aircraft generation and the reinforcements — but then he had expected all that to go well because it had so often been rehearsed in peacetime exercises and training. His mind was now turned to the adverse factor which had always existed in the military balance: namely that when at full war strength the numerical advantage still favoured the Warsaw Pact in the ratio of approximately 2:1. Tactical surprise had been sacrificed by the Warsaw Pact it was true, but they would nevertheless enjoy the initiative in calling the first shots. Furthermore, SACEUR had ordained that 20 per cent of the nuclear-capable aircraft must be held back and preserved for the time when nuclear strike operations might be necessary. The Air Commander was sanguine about the superiority of his airmen, aircraft and weapons. He knew they would give the highest account of themselves if called to battle. But the uncertain factor, and the critical one, was what the losses would be and whether there would be the numbers left after several days’ fighting to hold the line until the ground forces were reinforced and able to take on the full brunt of the land battle.

Out of the window of the Joint Headquarters building housing HQ NORTHAG and HQ 2 ATAF, which also held HQ BAOR and HQ RAF Germany, both soon to run down and become base organizations, the Duty Officer looked down into the brightly lit forecourt. Blackouts, such an important feature of the Second World War in the defence of large and important targets, had little significance in an age of precision-guided weapons.

Long lines of vehicles stood partially loaded in readiness for the move to the operational location the following night. The Duty Officer watched a Dutch sentry moving slowly down one of the lines. His hair was rather long, the Duty Officer observed, even for a Dutch soldier.

It was only a month or two ago that a parade had been held here to celebrate the thirtieth year of use of these admirably designed buildings, built, like the agreeably laid-out cantonment around them, out of Occupation Costs not long after the Second World War. The comfortable married quarter in which the Duty Officer was now living by himself stood among trees already well grown.

He had sent off the rest of the family’s belongings the day before, to where his wife was staying in her mother’s house in Surrey. They would be thinking about the eldest girl’s eighth birthday, only a week away, for which, as a special treat, she was to be taken to London to see The Mousetrap. He had been taken to see it on his own eighth birthday. Later on in the day he would be sleeping in the strangely empty married quarter for the last time, before moving out to join up with the headquarters in its operational location. He knew those caves only too well from exercises and had always disliked them.

He picked up his pen to go on with his letter, first filling in the date he had left out before. It was 4 August. There were signs in the sky of a new day.

The telephone rang.

He answered it and heard the familiar voice of the British Liaison Officer at I German Corps.

It was urgent and agitated.

‘Parachutists!’ it said, ‘Russian parachutists on…’

The voice abruptly died.

Several direct-line telephones were jangling in the Ops room at once. He heard shouts in the building. There were shots outside, the noise of helicopter rotors, a violent explosion.

He threw the switch of the alarm system and unhooked the direct line to AFCENT and in that moment looked up.

A Russian soldier was standing in the doorway.

The Duty Officer was getting to his feet and reaching for the pistol lying by the gas respirator on the table before him when the Russian shot him dead.[3]