British. And it was this point that General Marchenko pressed home to his political officers in charge of morale. Oh, certainly the NATO forces had run maneuvers in the Arctic, but that was a stop-and-start affair compared to the Russian soldiers, who’d been raised to it and who, like those from Khabarovsk, knew what it was to go fishing in the ice-covered lakes, not for sport but for survival. It was this edge, Kiril Marchenko confidently assured the STAVKA, that would finally tell in the Soviets’ favor.
Marchenko also brought them good news about the last-minute Allied airlift out of Heidelberg. Here, Hungarian divisions had outflanked NATO’s Southern Command’s Wermacht divisions with such unexpected speed, it was reported that paper shredders had overheated and caught fire in the haste that verged on panic during the Allied withdrawal. That the Hungarians had achieved such a success was no surprise to Marchenko and other Soviets old enough to remember the Hungarians’ tenaciousness in battle, but it was around Heidelberg that one of the most pervasive Allied illusions was shattered. Namely, it was the belief that because Hungarians hated Russians, they would either turn against Marshal Kirov’s forces or surrender in droves to the Allies. And yet any cold, objective analysis of the prewar situation would have shown what would happen with Russia literally behind them, virtually holding Hungary as hostage. In an otherwise complex world, the answer was as simple as it was brutal: If the Warsaw Pact did not win, the Russians would raze eastern Europe in their retreat. The Russians’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Up against the eccentric but brilliant American General Freeman, Marshal Kirov and his sector commanders were determined to avoid North Korea’s fate, when General Kim’s rapid advance down the peninsula outstripped his supply line, which in turn had made Freeman’s attack on Pyongyang so effective. Indeed, Kirov was convinced that it was precisely this kind of SPETS-like interdiction that had been the intent of the American airborne drops behind his lines. The shock exhibited by some of the captured American paratroopers, the marshal’s intelligence units had told him, seemed to indicate otherwise — that the American airborne had simply been blown off course.
“Yes,” commented the marshal sarcastically, “just like our SPETS units behind NATO lines. Blown off course and in American uniforms!” This got a belly laugh from the cluster of officers pressing in around Kirov, determined to be in the newsreel the Ministry of Propaganda was taking. It was a decisive moment in history — the impending and massive defeat of the American and British armies a certainty, something that one could look back on with one’s grandchildren.
“And this time,” the marshal announced, “we won’t be as stupid as Hitler.” Everyone laughed knowingly, including a young colonel of artillery who really wasn’t sure what the marshal meant. The colonel looked about for someone lower in rank. He saw a major on the marshal’s staff, standing away from the map table, hurriedly signing for receipt of motorcycle-borne field reports. For a headquarters, it struck the colonel as being as hectic as usual — an outsider would think it chaotic — but it was relatively quiet, given the slight radio traffic, all the important orders concerning the imminent attack on the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket being issued and received, at the marshal’s express order, by motorcycle companies. It struck the colonel as terribly old-fashioned. The colonel waited until the cameraman had finished at the map table, then walked over to the major.
“What does the marshal mean about Hitler?”
Normally the major would have deferred to the colonel, but a headquarters major in effect outranked a field colonel.
“You should recall your antifascist history, Colonel,” the major told him. “In 1939 Hitler pushed the British and the French right to the sea. At Dunkirk. They were trapped. Hitler could have—” The major glanced quickly at a requisition handed to him, scribbled his signature, and continued, “Hitler could have driven them into the sea — annihilated them. But he didn’t.”
“Why not?”
The major shrugged. “The fat man, Goering, wanted glory and persuaded Hitler to let the Luftwaffe bomb the Anglo-French into submission. Air force types always think bombing will do it — like the American LeMay in Vietnam, eh? Anyway, while Hitler halted his armor to let the Luftwaffe have its day, a British armada — everything from destroyers to sailboats — plucked the British and French off the beaches and took them back to England. The marshal won’t halt our armor, Colonel — or our artillery. You’ll be going all the way to Ostend. It’s the nearest port for NATO withdrawal. So you’d better get lots of sleep. Once the offensive begins, there’ll be no stopping.”
In Munster Town Hall, its walls already scarred and pockmarked by the big long-range Russian guns, Freeman walked past the ruins of what had been the foyer down into the basement headquarters of the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket, which had once been used to store the city records. With the cacophony of noise, a babble of radio traffic, of motorcycle messengers for the lines that had been cut and for the areas that had been jammed by the enemy, the scene was faintly reminiscent of the blue-versus-red games fought in the hot, stuffy headquarter tents of Fort Hood in Texas.
But there was something new, something he had never experienced before: the smell — not of men and women perspiring in high summer heat or overheated winter quarters, but the vinegary stench of impending defeat, heavy in the air. People were moving so fast that he could see panic was gripping many, only a few officers aware of his presence, perfunctorily saluting. His eyes took in the situation from one glance at the situation board, a long, snaking line of red pins marking the ever-expanding easternmost front of the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket running north to south, the diagonal crisscrosses of Soviet armor creating a sharklike mouth, its jaws either side of the 250,000 men from the British Army of the Rhine, Bundeswehr, and what was left of the U.S. X Corps trapped inside, the Rhine behind them.
“It’s snowing heavily twenty miles east of us,” said a British brigadier, his face drained, eyes red with fatigue. “Might slow them down a bit, I should think.”
“Who’s commanding their northern sector?” asked Freeman. “Yesov?”
“Believe so, General,” answered the brigadier.
“Believe so or know so?” said Freeman sharply, taking off his gloves and helmet, dropping them in the nearest “IN” tray without once taking his eyes from the map of northern Germany, seeing the northernmost point of the 240-square-mile pocket, still held by the Allies, barely five miles away.
“Yesov,” confirmed the brigadier.
“Marchenko’s stable,” said Freeman, taking out his reading glasses, using the metal case to tap the area sixteen miles northeast of Bielefeld. “What we have to do is kick their asses back here beyond Oeynhausen — across the Weser.”
“May I ask what with, General?” said the brigadier pointedly, fatigue overriding caution.
“With determination, General,” Freeman told the brigadier, “and tanks.”
The brigadier was too tired to bristle at the inference, restricting his utterance to a description of what he called a “devil” of a logistical problem. SPETS commandos had apparently been reported in the area, and the two major fuel depots for the pocket had been blown.
“You mean we’re outta gas?” Freeman said, turning on him.
The brigadier called over his supply officer. “You have the figures on that petrol, Smythe?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the British major. “We’ve enough petrol for our most advanced tanks to run four or five miles out from the perimeter.”
The brigadier looked down at the major’s notes. “You said we had more than that.”
“You’ve lost the depot at Ahlen,” said Freeman, without taking his eyes from the board. “You also have fewer tanks than you had yesterday. Nine hundred approximately.”
The brigadier said nothing, feeling he had been set up by the American to reveal the deficiency of his own intelligence reports. Still, the brigadier was relieved that Freeman was, as the Americans would say, “on the ball.”
