The Third World War (17 page)

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-tine 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 the 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 motors, 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.*

It has been possible to put together the account here given of the personal experience of the G3 Duly Officer, who was one of the earlier fatal casualties of the fighting in Germany, on the basis of evidence of others present in the Ops room at the time. and the preservation of the officer’s letter to his wife. This story is told by one of the present writers, who was a close friend.

The structure and strength of the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as they stood against those of the Warsaw Pact in the summer of 1985, must now be examined.

Attempts on the part of the Atlantic Council to prescribe to Allied governments, in the early days of the Alliance, what force goals they should meet had long been abandoned. Member states had always, in fact, put up no more than what they thought they could afford, usually claiming in self-justification that nothing more was necessary.

In actual structure
NATO
was still in 1985 much as it had been for the past twenty years. Except for some adjustment in the matter of naval and tactical air command (to which detailed reference is made in Appendix 3 on pp. 146-8 respectively) there had been little change.

At the head of the Alliance of the fifteen signatory states stood the North Atlantic Council, meeting at ministerial level in normal times at least twice a year but with permanent representatives at ambassador level meeting constantly. The senior military authority in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the peacetime military structure which was such an important and unusual feature of the Alliance, was the Military Committee, composed of an independent chairman and a Chief of Staff of each Allied country except France, which had withdrawn from it in 1966, Iceland, which had no forces, and Luxembourg, which was represented by Belgium. The Military Committee was in permanent session with its own military staff. There were two Supreme Allied Commanders,
SACEUR
for Europe and
SACLANT
for the Atlantic, both American, and the Cs-in-C of the Joint Allied Command Western Approaches (
JACWA
) who were British. Under
SACEUR
were three regional commands; the northern,
AFNORTH
, with a British Commander-in-Chief; the central,
AFCENT
, under a French C-in-C until France’s withdrawal from the integrated military organization in 1966 and thereafter under a German; and the southern,
AFSOUTH
, under an American admiral.