Panic ensues and shell shocked Soviet troops and armor are caught in the open, as they try to run for cover. But there is no cover, not for miles. The miles of open ground offering no cover leaves thousands of the finest fighting men on earth with nowhere to escape. They stagger over terrain chosen by their tank commanders. Chosen for its lack of obstacles. Chosen for its lack of cover.
Their fate is sealed. All they can do is to await their appointment with death and dismemberment. They have no prepared bunkers, no trenches, no fox holes, not even a decent-sized boulder to hide behind. They are literally, just waiting to become smoking piles of charred flesh. Flesh that once was alive and loved.
Outranged and blinded, the Soviet artillery parks are blown to piles of smoking debris. Many of the hapless artillerymen did not even know what hit them, other than the sound like that of a freight train flying through the air straight at them; high-explosive shells, seemingly coming from out of nowhere; ending their lives so very far from home.
The area immediately outside the outskirts of LeHavre, has been instantly turned into an image of World War One’s ‘no-man’s land.’ Giant craters, filled with smoking and burning flesh, fuel and steel, strewn all across the landscape for miles, and still the salvos continue. It was an inexhaustible rain of death and destruction, on anything, or anyone, caught in the maelstrom of screaming steel and explosives; each shell exploding with unimaginable force and destruction, leaving in their wake a massive crater full of death.
The noise is indescribable. It is beyond comprehension. Never has such a concentrated and mobile force of human destruction rained down death upon other human beings with such uncanny accuracy. Never have twenty-two modern battleships been joined together, in such a chorus of unimaginable destruction.
This nakedly brutish display of firepower makes carpet-bombing look like child’s play. The shelling is done with pinpoint accuracy, and it is constant at over 450 one-ton shells being fired per minute, at its peak. The salvos continue, until there is nothing to target. Everything larger than a rat is dead, or dying. It is horrific, even to those who have perpetuated the slaughter. Even to those who hate the enemy, with a white-hot passion. Only an atomic bomb can compare, in its magnitude of sheer destruction.
The salvos fall for only thirty-six minutes, but that’s all the time that was needed. In those thirty-six minutes, 739 Soviet heavy tanks were obliterated, 232,624 men are dead, wounded or missing (with fair amount of certainty that most of the missing will never be found, their bodies having been vaporized in the barrage) and 3,542 guns, rocket launchers and mortars are destroyed; all precious resources that the Soviets cannot replace easily, especially such a dramatic loss in manpower.
Field Headquarters of the Soviet Northern Group of Forces
Office of Marshal Sokolovsky
June 20th, 1946
10:34 hours
“This is a catastrophe! This is a calamity! How could this have happened? Who is responsible? Where was the air force? Get Novikov on the phone… no wait! What can I do… what can I do? How could this operation have gone so wrong? We have to think of something! We have to find a way to appease Comrade Stalin! Andrey do something! Think of something; or it’s both of our heads!
“Well maybe we could appease the Kremlin by giving them a quick victory… say Denmark? We weren’t supposed to attack until after France was defeated but…”
“That’s it! Order Bagramyan and his ten fastest divisions to take Copenhagen, and shut off the Baltic to the English pigs. Yes, that will soften the blow. Get General Bagramyan on the line… NOW!”
“General Bagramyan, you are ordered to take ten of our fastest and most powerful divisions and capture Copenhagen! Yes, Denmark! I want Copenhagen taken and the Baltic Sea closed to the capitalist navies in FIVE DAYS! I’ll send you everything you need… Don’t worry about politics Bagramyan, just get moving and ATTACK! Let nothing stand in your way. This is a direct order!”
“But Comrade General, we cannot attack a sovereign nation until we are ordered too.”
“I have learned over my long career, that it is better to accomplish a difficult task first, and then ask for forgiveness later, especially after a great victory.”
“In the meantime, keep this news from reaching the Kremlin. Hopefully, the capitalists will want to wait a few days, before announcing what they have done. All those tanks and artillery pieces, and all those men, lost! What did this Andrey? Is this their atomic bomb at work?”
“No Marshal, we have ample evidence that it was a massive naval bombardment. From the testimony of the survivors, and evidence from unexploded ordinance suggests that it was done by naval gunfire.”
“Ships; this was all done by SHIPS? Why they were not discovered and sunk? Where were our planes? WHERE WERE OUR PLANES?”
Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
The Pentagon,
Outside Washington, D.C.
June 21st, 1946
0810 hours
“Well Admiral; that certainly floored ’em! How many Reds did you figure we killed?”
“Over 200,000 men killed, with over 700 tanks destroyed, if we can trust our intelligence assessments.”
“Quite an operation… congratulations!”
“Well, thank you, but as you know it’s just a drop in the bucket. It gives the public a much needed victory. I hope they got it on film.”
“Yeah, too bad we just don’t…”
“Attention!”
“At ease, gentleman…”
“Welcome Mr. President.”
“Thank you General. Now, explain it to me again, really slowly. Why aren’t we attacking after such a smashing victory?”
“Sir, as you may recall, we had only twenty-two seriously understrength divisions in Western Europe. After the May attacks, we were effectively down to eleven, and again these were about half-strength at most, even being reconstituted with the stragglers from the destroyed units. Our air forces on the continent were largely destroyed on the ground. All our supplies in Europe have been largely overrun, and are being turned against us by the Reds. Our only untouched military force is the Navy. Unlike at Pearl Harbor, the Navy is highly mobile, able to be used for offensive operations and is not just running for its life, or trying to stay alive.”
“Our other military branches are just not able to respond quite yet. It’s only been fifty days, since May 2nd. We’re lucky that we have any forces left at all that can try and at least slow down the Reds. My God sir, we just reinstated the draft barely two weeks ago! We just don’t have the bodies yet, much less the ability to match up supplies and transport to those bodies.”
“Yes, we could feed them into the meat-grinder of Western Europe, brigade by brigade, but you know as well as I do that is not the plan. We have to form a strong and cohesive defensive line. That’s where all the new units are going; somewhere they will make an impact; somewhere they can be trained and equipped yet still be on the European mainland, so we don’t have to pull another D-Day.”
“Those new brigades are digging in now and setting up defensive positions in depth. We are only talking about three divisions’ worth of raw troops. Our veterans have yet to heed the call, but I’m certain they will soon. If we can only hold on until then, we should be alright.”