No one knows who started it first, but a kind of dirty little secret started to become evident among the frontline soldiers. Caravans of water supplies on both sides seemed to live a charmed life. All of a sudden over the last couple of weeks, for whatever reason both sides stopped targeting each other’s water supply deliveries.
It seems that despite the brutalities that each side rendered onto each other; it was somehow mutually decided that thirst was not going to be one of them. A line had been drawn in the dirt, and it became sacrosanct that no one would die for lack of water. That of all the different hideous ways each side could devise to kill each other, thirst would not be one of them.
Fierce hand-to-hand combat was normal with units often dying to the last man. Men still tore at each other’s faces in brutal fighting, where your hands turned into claws, raking at your enemy’s eyes and nose. The fighting was still as intense as ever; yet somehow the water supplies managed to get through unharmed as if by magic.
There was an unsubstantiated rumor of a Russian soldier being publicly executed by his own comrades, in full sight of an opposing Spanish platoon. His crime was shooting a donkey that was carrying water to the Spanish position. According to the rumor, the Red Army troops made it abundantly clear what his crime was and the Spanish officer acknowledged their act of contrition.
There were many volunteers for the water supply caravans.
“Gentlemen, please quiet down. The purpose for this meeting today is to conclude a final decision on our recommendations to the President as to our strategic options for defeating the Soviet army, and securing the unconditional surrender of the U.S.S.R. and its satellite states.”
“Colonel Armistead, please go over the situation as it currently stands.”
“Thank you General Eisenhower; Gentleman the bad news first; the Soviets have total control of Germany, Denmark, the Low Countries, almost all of France, as well as a foothold in Spain. They are moving on Greece with little to no opposition, as we speak. In addition, Italy has withdrawn from NATO and is allowing Soviet forces to enter its territory. The Italian Navy is scheduled to fall under Soviet control shortly. Finland is reeling from a Soviet attack, with Norway and Sweden trying to assist their neighbor.”
“In the European Theater of Operations, the Soviets are currently fielding two-hundred forty-four of their own divisions augmented by an additional eighty-three divisions, all levied from their so-called ‘allies’. Their air support consists of well over fourteen-thousand frontline combat aircraft.”
“In the Far East, the Soviets have maintained eighty fully-equipped divisions in Mongolia and Manchuria since September, 1945, on the highest combat-readiness status. With such a powerful and mobile striking force they can march anywhere they want on the Asian mainland at any given time. Up till now they are dormant; their forces remain on patrol in the areas they now control, but are not making any overt moves toward our forces, or our allies’ forces in Asia. We don’t know why, but are grateful that they are.”
“On the Pyrenees Line, they’re making slow and steady progress. We estimate that at their current rate of advance they will be out of the mountains in less than sixty days, and into the Ebro River valley. The only thing that works in our favor is that Spain is a naturally-defensible area, with many mountain ranges throughout the peninsula.”
“Their armor is superior to ours at the moment. This is not much of a factor in the mountains, but if they break out into tank country it will not be pretty.”
“On the Pyrenees Line, our forces are as follows: we have eleven full-strength fully-equipped divisions. Our forces are able to defend themselves and even have the ability to counterattack. Our allies are fielding seventeen full divisions between them. Most of these are the newly-minted Spanish divisions augmented by a French division, a Low Countries division, four British divisions and a joint British Empire division made up of Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians. The British are benching their Indian forces in Europe; they’ve deemed them too unreliable to fight in Spain. There are even two divisions of German troops on the line culled from POW’s held in the United States and Great Britain, under overall NATO command. They are calling themselves Der Frei Deutsches Bundesheer, or ‘The Free German Federal Army.’”
“The U.S. forces have been blocking the traditional invasion routes and large mountain passes. Our allies are filling in between these positions. The Soviet advances have been at the expense of the new Spanish divisions, for the most part. In order to avoid being flanked we have had to slowly perform retrograde movements.”[33]
“As you may know, additional U.S. ground divisions and other forces are being formed and should be ready for action by the spring.”
“We have one division that is proceeding down the Italian boot to Sicily. They will be reinforced and are expected to hold the island with the help of the Navy.”
“Our Far East forces consist of one division in Korea and three in Japan. The Brits have two divisions scattered throughout India and the Dutch East Indies. In addition, we have a division in Egypt to reinforce the four British divisions already in the area.”
“Unlike the war with Germany and Japan, we do not enjoy total air superiority. There is not even parity with the Soviets, as they hold a numerical advantage in aircraft of five to one, but once production ramps back up we expect to achieve parity, if not by numbers but by virtue of quality, superior training, and the advanced design of our aircraft. Both sides enjoy local successes but we are unable to penetrate their air-defense system, on regular basis without taking unacceptable casualties. Similarly they have not had much success in reaching our supply lines, or major troop concentrations. Basically, the air war is a draw.”
“This presents us with grave problems. As you know we enjoyed almost total air-superiority over Germany and Japan before we commenced any kind of offensive action. That allowed us to handle the enemy’s experienced ground forces. Rarely did a German Tiger ever get to the frontline, much less do much damage when we had Jugs and Lightnings roaming over the battleground at will.”
“If we do not gain air-superiority in the short term, we will have to find a new way to defeat the Red Army.”
“Unlike the Germans or the Japanese, the Soviets seem to have learned from history. We have it on good authority that they will not soon run out of trained pilots like our former Axis enemies had. They have a robust training program and apparently no lack of fuel to train them. In addition, they have made great strides in upgrading their aircrafts’ performance at altitude.”
“The bottom line is that we cannot count on defeating their air forces; at least in the foreseeable future, and we cannot attack their infrastructure with impunity without suffering unacceptable casualties.”
“Major Tillman will you please bring us up to speedff as to what forces we expect to have available in the spring?”
“Of course General, we are on target to have sixty fully-mechanized Army and Marine Divisions capable of amphibious assault ready to be deployed by early spring. Our Navy friends assure us that they will be able to land twenty-five divisions a month, anywhere in the world, by May, 1947 along with accompanying air-support, shore bombardment and temporary port facilities, fully capable of supplying said twenty-five divisions for up to a month.”
“By the end of spring we project that our force levels will be up to our peak war-strength of ninety divisions.”
“Thank you, Major. It should be obvious that we have left out of this briefing our strategic air assets. We are on a need-to-know basis on this subject. It has been determined in circles higher than ours that this gathering does not have a need-to-know. I know that probably sticks in your craw, but tough shit! That’s the way it is, and the way it will be for the foreseeable future. Believe me I’m as insulted as much as you are, but the top brass has their reasons, and that’s good enough for my pay grade.”
33
Study the Soviet Operation August Storm to get an idea of what the Soviet Red Army was capable of in May 1946. Leavenworth Paper No. 7, “August Storm: The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945,” LTC David M. Glantz.