The Third World War - The Untold Story

by Sir John Hackett

  On the morning of 4 August 1985, there were many in European cities who had heard (with quite a few old enough to remember) how it had been when people were told in September 1939 in much the same way, if without TV, that we had again a world war on our hands. People in the United Kingdom, for example, had then slung on their mandatory gas masks and taken up their tin hats, if their duties required it, in the full belief that the end was very near. In 1985 those with access to a fall-out shelter tended to make for it, or at least to see that it was in order and well stocked, while those without wondered rather glumly whether it had been wholly wise to disregard advice about survival under nuclear attack. In the cities of Europe in both wars the worst was expected at once. In neither did it happen - not immediately anyway.

  Some of the towns and cities in Western Europe had not long to wait for the thunderous, irregular, ear-splitting crash of Soviet bombardment from the air, and the agonizing uncertainty over who was still alive at home, or even where home was in the street now turned to rubble. The places first attacked were those of importance in the movement of NATO troop reinforcements to the European mainland. Channel ports in Britain, and in Belgium and the Netherlands, though not yet in France, received early and violent attention on the very first day from long-range missiles launched from Soviet aircraft. Coastal airfields, especially those handling military transports, and the air traffic control centre at West Drayton near London were among early targets struck. The United Kingdom Air Defence (UKAD) Command, with its complex of warning systems, interceptor aircraft squadrons and gun and missile defences, was fully extended practically from the start. It was almost overwhelmed at first by the volume of attack upon defences that had never yet been brought to the test in this new type of war, in which computer response and missiles had replaced the searchlight and visually-aimed guns of earlier days.

  Operations in the north, up as far as the Arctic Circle, opened at once on account of their relevance to trans-Atlantic reinforcement. Attacks on Atlantic ports soon followed, swift moments of appalling noise, leaving, in a silence broken only by the crackling sound of gathering fire, the twisted steel of harbour installations with little houses near the docks reduced to burning shells. As the Soviets gained airfields to the west, it was felt upon the French side too, with Brest and the Channel ports joining Glasgow, Bantry, Bristol and Cardiff on the list of towns hit.

  It had taken the Soviets almost a full day to realize that, against their hopes and expectations, they had a belligerent opponent in the French Republic. Moscow had firmly believed that the French, pursuing as always the national self-interest with a single-mindedness unequalled anywhere, would find it more prudent to keep out. Yet for all the obstacles set in the way of Western defensive co-operation by de Gaulle’s withdrawal from NATO, and for all the reliance the Soviet Union had placed upon some years of left-wing government in France, the French Republic abided most faithfully by its obligations under the Atlantic Treaty.

  In spite of assurances broadcast worldwide from Moscow that France would remain immune from attack if it remained neutral, and that the punitive and prophylactic operation undertaken by the USSR against NATO would in that event go no further than the Rhine, II French Corps in Germany had already been quietly placed by the French Government under the full command of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) on the night of 3/4 August. Three further divisions and an army headquarters soon followed, with the French Tactical Air Force also placed under command for the support of French ground forces. French ports, railways, military installations and, above all, airfields and airspace were put at the disposal of the Western allies. The bombing by Soviet aircraft of Boulogne, Calais, Dieppe and then Brest, and of other ports and a number of airfields followed very soon afterwards.

  The great weight of the Soviet ground and air attack was to be concentrated on the Central Region of Allied Command Europe (ACE), within which SACEUR, an American, was responsible for operations from the northern tip of Norway to the southeast corner of Turkey, and from the Caucasus in the East to the Pillars of Hercules at the gates of the Mediterranean in the West. The Central Region, under its German Commander-in-Chief (CINCENT), stretched from the southern edge of Schleswig-Holstein down to Switzerland, with Allied Forces Northern Europe (AFNORTH) on its left flank under a British general, and Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) under an American admiral on its right. Behind ACE lay the area of responsibility of the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT), an American admiral operating from Norfolk in Virginia, while in between there was the newly-created Joint Allied Command Western Approaches (JACWA).

  Gotterddmmerung was to be staged in Germany. But wars are made by people; it is a truism hardly worth repeating that without people there would be no wars. What is more, it is people who fight and die in them, who injure and destroy other people in them, who suffer from them, and yet who seem to be so far unable to prevent their occurrence as to provoke quite intelligent men and women to the infantile conclusion that if only you could take away all the weapons no fighting would be possible. Because reflection upon people, and above all upon the people who get themselves caught up in wars, must lie at the heart and centre of all reflection upon war and peace, we turn now from contemplation of the scene upon which this stupendous tragedy was about to be played to make the acquaintance of one minor actor in it, someone whose whole life up to its very end had become totally dominated by it, whose conscious being was to be completely absorbed in it, whose capabilities and energy were to be applied exclusively to the discharge of his own part in it, and who was to have no influence whatsoever on its outcome.

  Chapter 2: Andrei Nekrassov

  Andrei Nekrassov was born on 13 August 1961 in Rostov on Don into a military family. His father had been an officer in the Red Army but ill health had compelled his retirement from military service and he now lived, a widower, quietly at home in Rostov. Andrei’s mother had died in his youth and his father had never married again. From childhood both Andrei and his elder brother had dreamed of becoming officers too. In 1976 the elder brother entered the Ryazan Air Force Academy and four years later became a paratroop officer in 105 Guards Airborne Division, quite soon to find himself in Afghanistan.

  When in 1978 Andrei left school, where he had shown some promise in mathematics but an even greater inclination to literary and philosophic studies, he too entered a military academy, the Armed Forces Command Academy in Omsk.

  He was not by nature a convivial or even a gregarious young man. He was in fact a little shy and did not make friends easily. Happily, he found a contemporary in his own intake to the Academy who was of much the same disposition as himself, and between this young man, Dimitri Vassilievitch Makarov, the only child of a history lecturer in the Lomonossov University in Moscow, and Andrei Nekrassov there developed, in its quiet way, a deep and enduring friendship.

  It was just before he left the Academy in Omsk, after four years, that Andrei learned of the death of his brother in Afghanistan, in an action, of which he had no details, against the Mujaheddin. He grieved for the loss of his brother but he was particularly sad for his father, whom he now so rarely saw. In a family with no mother, the three of them, the father and two sons, had been very close. His father would feel still lonelier now.

  On graduating from the Academy in 1982 Andrei was promoted to the rank of officer and posted by the Ministry of Defence to the Southern Group of Forces in Hungary, where he was given command of a platoon in the motor rifle regiment of 5 Tank Division. Soviet forces abroad were normally in Category One, at operational strength, including the officers. Young officers beginning their service abroad did so at the lowest level. Most of Andrei’s fellow cadets who had received postings within the Soviet Union were given command, not of platoons but of companies, immediately after graduating from the Academy. By sheer good luck Dimitri too had been sent to 5 Tank Division and was commanding a platoon in another company of the same motor rifle regiment.

  In 1984 Ne
krassov was transferred to the Belorussian Military District, where he took over a motor rifle company in 197 Motor Rifle Division of 28 Army. All divisions in 28 Army belonged to the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, although in peacetime they were largely stationed in Belorussia. Together with its normal combat training, 28 Army was in constant practice for a swift move into East Germany, where, even in peacetime, its mobilization stores and much of its heavy equipment were located.

  In Hungary Andrei Nekrassov had had a platoon of thirty-two men. In Belorussia he was given command of a company comprising three platoons, but with no more than thirty men in all. Like most other such companies, his was thinly manned, with only a cadre of indispensable specialists: junior commanders, drivers of BMP infantry combat vehicles, and heavy weapons operators. The ‘cannon fodder’ - submachine gunners, machine-gunners, grenade throwers and the like - joined the company only on mobilization. The standard of training of these reservist soldiers was abysmally low but no one seemed to mind. After all, there was an almost inexhaustible supply of them.

  In June 1985 extensive training exercises began in Belorussia. Under the guise of these, as became clear later, the Red Army was partially mobilized and divisions were reinforced to their regular strength. The reservists came from Moslem republics - Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kirghiz. After two months of refresher weapon training (the men had by now almost forgotten how to handle weapons), sub-units had been formed. Even when this training programme had long been completed, no order to release the reservists came through. On the contrary, the instructions were to continue with the training.

  No. R341266 Senior Lieutenant Nekrassov, 001, was beginning to get worried. As one of the regiment’s best officers he had been put forward as a candidate for the Frunze Military Academy. For junior officers the Military Academy meant escape from the stifling monotony of service in the lower ranks to more interesting and creative military work on the staff. Nekrassov had already passed the preliminary medical board and had been recommended by superior reporting officers, including his divisional commander. He had received a summons to sit the Academy entrance examinations and was required to be in Moscow on 10 August. But the training of reservists dragged on. Nekrassov feared that, if he missed these entrance examinations, perhaps next year some other officers in the regiment might have better luck and he would be left out, or next year something might go wrong in the company and once again he would have another year to wait. If this went on, he might never get into the Academy at all. It was important for him to know. Nekrassov, who was approaching his twenty-fourth birthday, wanted to get on with it. There were only two weeks left before the examinations but he had still not received confirmation of permission to attend, and there was no sign of an end to the exercises. The only consolation was that in the division there were many other officers who had applied for military academies, and they too remained in uncertainty.

  One of these, it so happened, was none other than his old friend Dimitri Vassilievitch Makarov, who had just turned up in another motor rifle regiment of the same division.

  On 26 July intensive training had begun on the loading and unloading of heavy equipment for movement by rail. Next day the divisional headquarters and the headquarters of the regiments were reported, as the two friends heard, to be working out the problems of concealed advances over long distances. Soon afterwards 197 Division did a night march of 200 kilometres and by morning had taken cover in a large area of thick forest. The officers knew that their division was already in Polish territory. The troops did not. Soldiers were not allowed to carry maps, nor were they shown how to read them. Herein lay, Nekrassov had been taught, an advantage of the system: Soviet forces had to be prepared to fight anywhere without argument and did not need to know where they were. In the clearings in the dense forest, camouflaged shelters for thousands of vehicles had already been prepared in advance. This, if surprising, was convenient.

  The following night, in good summer weather, the division made another move westwards and by morning had again taken cover in the woods, in positions that had again clearly been occupied by some other division before them.

  Nekrassov had already become aware that many other divisions in addition to his own were involved in what was clearly a very large troop movement. Exercises? Of course. But one thing was unusual. There was a completely unprecedented intensity of ideological work. Political commissars of every rank were conducting hundreds of individual and group discussions about the bestial face of capitalism and its blood-sucking nature, about unemployment, inflation and aggressive capitalist intentions. This went on, of course, during any training exercise, but not with such high intensity. There was something even more unusual. During training, the tanks, artillery, mortars, BMP, and other fighting equipment normally had only drill rounds and blanks. The division was now issued with live ammunition.

  On the evening of 1 August, once the ammunition had been stowed and all vehicles had been replenished and checked, officers of the General Staff carried out an inspection. Shortcomings were pointed out which had to be put right within the next few days, but on the whole the inspecting officers were satisfied.

  At 2300 hours on the night of 3/4 August the division was put on full alert. It was again a warm summer night. Battalions and companies stood-to in the forest clearings. Something important was clearly afoot. A message was then read out from the Government of the Soviet Union. NATO forces, it said, had treacherously attacked forces of socialist countries with no prior warning. All ranks, the message ended, soldiers, sergeants, warrant officers, officers and generals must now do their duty to the end, to crush this imperialist aggression by destroying the wild beast in its den. Only thus could the peoples of the world be kept free from capitalist enslavement. The soldiers enthusiastically shouted ‘Hurrah!’ as was expected of them. Nekrassov looked at the greyish-green crowds of men and wondered how long this rush of enthusiasm could last. There were deficiencies in the training of Soviet forces which would come to light in the very first battle. The poor co-operation between the various arms of the forces, for example, would become obvious. The majority of the infantry, in spite of all the training they had been doing, were still little more than a herd. The level of training of young officers was also clearly inadequate.

  Nekrassov did find some comfort in reflecting on the wisdom, intuition and foresight of the Soviet High Command. Our enemies have only just begun the war, he thought, but already our troops have been mobilized and we are in position. We have received our reservists and drawn our ammunition and have moved forward to our forming-up points. How did our leaders manage to calculate and anticipate the enemy’s perfidious intentions so exactly as to be able to deploy our own forces on the very day before the enemy attack? There was food for thought here.

  It was still dark when Nekrassov pushed his way out of the lean-to roughly fashioned from the branches of young fir trees in which he had spent the last few hours of the night. The summer weather had broken and turned cold. Wrapped in his greatcoat he had not felt it, and was grateful that there had been no rain, but he had slept little.

  There was much to think about. The 197 Motor Rifle Division was now dispersed north-west of Kassel and would move forward this morning into the battle. That thought lay like a grey leaden weight in the back of his mind and he tried to keep it there. Though baptized already in battle under bombardment from the air, he had never been in action against an enemy on the ground before but he was confident that he would know how to handle his company. What concerned him now was to get it on the move in the best possible shape. There would be no other chance today to put things right before it would find itself engaged against enemy he had been told would be British. As he moved round with the Sergeant Major, a portly Ukrainian called Astap Beda, who had just come up to report, Nekrassov looked with more than usual care at what was being done.

  The motor rifle company commanded by Nekrassov was, when complete, 105 men strong, mounted in the ten infantry combat vehicles (
BMP) in which they would ride into action. He could just distinguish the outlines of the vehicles, now dispersed 30 metres apart round the edges of a woodland clearing, as the first light of an August day crept out of a clouded sky. There was activity all about him, for they would soon be moving off. Men tried not to hear the mutter of gunfire from the west as they checked the stowage of equipment on their vehicles, grateful that at least they had not yet been ordered into their grossly inconvenient chemical warfare clothing.

  Each BMP carried four Malyutka M anti-tank rockets, an automatic 73 mm gun, two PKTM machine-guns of 7.62 mm calibre, a Strela 2-M anti-aircraft rocket launcher (similar to the American Redeye), an RPG-16 anti-tank grenade launcher, ten Mukha single-shot disposable grenade launchers, which you shot off and then threw away, a sniper’s rifle, and five Kalashnikov automatic rifles. It was a complicated little army that Senior Lieutenant Nekrassov had to handle, but he had fired every weapon in it and done his best to practise the men - no easy task since they spoke half a dozen different languages, of all of which he was ignorant, and almost none spoke Russian.

  Key personnel were usually Russian, or if not were at least proficient in the language. The driver of Nekrassov’s own BMP, a silent, watchful man by the name of Boris Ivanienko, came from Poltava. You could never know, of course, who was an informer and who was not and Nekrassov would hardly have confided in his driver in any case, but the Senior Lieutenant had come to have some confidence in this quiet and competent man, who so often seemed to know what was wanted of him even before he was told. It would be good to have someone like that close at hand in the battle.