July 28th, 1946
First Lieutenant Arthur Smyth
936th Field Artillery Battalion
Personal observations of a forward observer:
From my observation post I could almost see the whole attack unfolding. It was a strangely beautiful sight from 4,000 feet up perched nice and safe, far from the action. My BC scope was my weapon. It was to a Forward Observer, what an M-1 was to an infantryman.
In the days leading up to the attack there had been many probes by the Red Army’s reconnaissance forces. All had been given bloody noses and sent scurrying back to their holes. There was a close call at Vielha, when a Soviet OMSBON unit showed up a full four days before we thought possible and caught the local forces with their pants down. Somehow a battalion-sized unit had gotten to Vielha undetected and gave us quite a scare. Luckily they were far ahead of their support and supply units, and after a six-hour firefight, they were surrounded, and had no choice but to surrender. They were a tough bunch of yahoos. Pretty much fought to the last man.
I heard that a few more meeting actions occurred with the Reds being turned back. Then, they tried to bum rush us. I guess they were counting on sheer numbers and shock value. It’s pretty hard to continuously charge uphill, but they gave it their best shot. They died bravely… but they died. It was pretty much a slaughter after the initial contact.
I mean, we had pre-registered the artillery, minefields had been emplaced, tank traps had been dug, interlocking fields of fire had been calculated; our artillery was placed on the high ground, trenches dug. Everything that could be done by desperate men, in desperate times, we did. I’m frankly surprised that we didn’t have some boiling oil ready. Jeez, it was still a close call until the flyboys finally showed up. Man, have we been missing them. I usually can’t stand seeing them in the officer’s club, but I would have kissed ’em this time. Those Red bastards might have just overwhelmed us in a few key passes, if the Army and Navy flyboys hadn’t done their thing.
They got this new thing call napalm. Wicked stuff made out of gasoline they say. Somehow it sticks to you, and burns like a son-of-a-gun. I guess you die pretty horribly. Amazing what man can invent to kill another man.
The F4U’s, P-47’s and even some P-38’s did the trick on their most advanced units, and it was over in less than twenty minutes, from start to finish. Strafing and bombing, ‘til there was nothing left to kill. Hell, the arty barely got started and it was all over. I guess it was a peek at what was to come. Those Reds are some fighters and man, can they die hard. I hope I never meet one face-to-face. That’s why I have my scope and binoculars, so I can get them before they get too close.
We still don’t have the kind of coordination we need between the flyboys, and us ground pounders. One artillery barrage messed up a flight of P-47’s that dove down to attack just as the shells were reaching the end of their trajectory arc. I’m pretty sure that three of the planes went down. That’s not good for morale, but neither was the bombing of the 101st Airborne’s headquarters. What those flyboys were thinking is beyond me. Why would there be an enemy command post so far behind our own lines? Once the first guy started, they all joined in. It was a mess. That unit is one piece of bad luck.
The Reds pulled in their heads for a few days and are getting coiled like a spring. We can hear them bringing up their air units and heavy artillery. It was going to get hot and very ugly, sometime soon. They got those friggin’ rockets. ‘Stalin’s Organs’, they call ’em. More bark than bite, I hope.
They say it’s going to be a war of attrition, and we don’t have any reserves. We’ve only got fifteen full-strength divisions against over forty-five of theirs, and they are getting stronger every day. We aren’t. I don’t know where all those new units are going that we keep hearing about, but they sure aren’t showing up here. That’s going to be edited out, I’m sure.
They should come again tomorrow or the day after and this time they will have their own air forces, and those damn Sturmoviks, or whatever they call ’em. Those things are flying tanks. Very hard to shoot down, and they pack a mean wallop. It won’t be like that first attack at all. This time, things will be very even. I hope we have some kind of bucket-brigade waiting to plug the gaps that are sure to appear. Yeah, this could get real ugly, real fast.
“Request #10 “Fox-Oboe-Baker, number one fire mission! Azimuth 3200, from check point #210, right 300, add 500, enemy tanks in the open, will adjust.”
That’s how you do it. That’s how you rain death and destruction upon your fellow man.
It comes in a variety of sizes from mortars, to 155-mm guns. I even got to assist the Navy, in ‘Operation Louisville Slugger.’ Those sixteen-inchers were truly something to behold. You didn’t even have to get close. I doubt the Reds will go anywhere near our left and right flanks. Not with those old battlewagons still moving about.
“We finally have to use our supplies Niki. That’s good, but it means that we have to wait to attack again. Those who have died, will not have died in vain. They have helped us to locate several weak points in their line. The trouble is the minute we gain a local victory, they just fall back to the next prepared defenses on the next mountain. This will not be easy. This is not what we were led to believe would happen. Whatever happened to the notion that the Yanks are running away and leaving their things behind for us to take? No, this is not very encouraging, at all. You do know that what I just said will not leave this room, don’t you, Niki?”
“Oh yes, comrade… I understand.”[28]
Chapter Eighteen:
Best-Laid Plans
Gorky Park
Moscow, The U.S.S.R.
July 28th, 1946
“The NVKD has done it again. The NATO planners are going to attempt a so-called ‘carpet-bombing’ operation near Toulouse. We know the date and the location of the strike. The only question that remains is will they be able to get units in place in time. We still only have sixty operational jet interceptors, and only a few hundred air-to-sky rockets. Air Marshal Novikov has anticipated this next move, and much of the equipment is already in Western Europe near Paris.”
“I suggest that we do not use the Pe-9’s for this operation. The fake Tu-2’s should be enough along with the sky-to-sky rockets, to give them a scare. Marshal Novikov was smart to move the equipment. After what happened in Leningrad, I don’t believe the U.S. will be sending many raids deep into the Motherland.”
27
Joint Chiefs of Staff Report Oct. 1945.
“The report estimated that the Soviet Union had the military capacity of overrunning Western Europe including Scandinavia and excluding Britain at any time between 1945 and 1948.”
American War Plans 1945-1950 by Steven T. Ross Page 3
“Because of American and British demobilization and the chaotic conditions prevailing in Europe, The Soviets, even after completing their mobilization, could easily overrun the area, and by generating additional forces could also conquer Turkey and Iran.”
History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Volume 1 1945-47 by James F. Schnabel pp. 14-15
“In effect the intelligence staff believed that Soviet and satellite armies could with relative ease overrun Europe and the Middle East at any time during the next several years.”
American War Plans 1945-1950 by Steven T. Ross Page 7
“On April 11, the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that in case of war the Russians could conquer the Mid-East and Western Europe. The Americans would have no strategic option but to retreat from the continent and assist the British in defending their homeland.”
JCS 1641/5 April 11th, 1945
“The committee was comprised of representatives of the CIA and the intelligence sections of the Department of State, Army, Navy and the Air Force. The committee’s assessments, and the debates which they generated, became the basis of a new batch of contingency plans, turned out in 1948 at a frenetic pace (see glossary).
The committee delivered its first report on March 30, 1948. It concluded that the Soviets had the military capacity to overrun Western Europe and “the Near East to Cairo within a short period of time”.
Fighting World War Three From the Middle East by Michael J. Cohen pp 7
28
Post War by Tony Judt. A History of Europe since 1945. Wonderfully informative.
When Hitler died 10% of the Germany’s railroads where operational. By June, 1946 93% where operational. 800 bridges had been rebuilt.
American surveyors found that the bombing campaign had virtually no impact on production equipment. In West Germany only 6.5% of its machine tool equipment was lost due to war damage, only 20% of the German industrial plants had been destroyed by May, 1945. 66% of all industry in the heaviest bomb areas like the Ruhr remained intact. The USSR, France, Germany, Italy all emerged from the war with more machine tools than they started the war with. In the Czech lands industry and agriculture thrived under the Germans and emerged unscratched. Slovakia and Hungary saw their industrial situation improve.
Quote: the Soviet armies had recovered to the point where, in 1945, they constituted the greatest military force Europe had ever seen: in Hungary and Romania alone they maintained, through 1946, a military presence of some 1,600,000 men. Stalin had direct or (in the case of Yugoslavia) indirect control of a huge swathe of eastern and central Europe. His armies had only narrowly been blocked, by the rapid advance of the British under Montgomery, from moving forward through north Germany as far as the Danish border. As Western generals well knew, there was absolutely nothing to stop the Army advancing to the Atlantic if Stalin ordered it. To be sure, the Americans and the British had a clear advantage in strategic bombing capacity, and America had the atomic bomb, as Stalin knew even before Truman told him so at Potsdam in July 1945. There is no doubt that Stalin wanted a Soviet atomic bomb—it is one of the reasons why he insisted on Soviet control of those parts of eastern Germany and especially, Czechoslovakia where there were uranium deposits; within a few years 200,000 east Europeans would be working in these mines as part of the Soviet atomic programme.