Chieftains

Harvey Kossof had been killed in the tank sheds, rolled along the wall by the hull of an XM1 only five weeks ago. Kossof had never even seen the war! He was just signalling a tank into the service bay and didn't leave himself enough room. He'd screamed until they gave him a heavy shot of morphine, and then died. Now he was a name, just like all the others. They promised you a stone in Arlington; the only bit of land most of the guys ever managed to own.

Podini was snoring, his thin face buried in the crook of one arm, his helmet cradled protectively like a kid's teddy bear in the other. Podini had a fiancée; Italian, very respectable. Her father ran a pizza bar in Jersey City, decorated with Chianti and Frascati bottles, so Podini said. He would marry her when he was Stateside again; a hundred guests, all in tuxedos or dark wedding suits. Then he'd quit the army, start work in his father-in-law's pizza bar, and get fat. If Browning ever dropped in there, Podini would beam a welcome. 'Hi, well I'm damned, Will, Jeez, great to see you. Heh, Momma, see who's here…you remember Will! Best table, Will…it's on the house, vino, anything. How are you? You look great! Remember how it was; you, me, Mike and Gins. Jeez, those were the days! How about that?'

The days? It was one of those days, today. They'd all forget how bad it had been…one day.

TEN

'This is London. Seventeen hundred hours Greenwich Mean Time. BBC World Service. Here is the news, read by Hugh Dermot.' The newscaster's voice was grave. 'A state of war now exists between Great Britain and the Soviet Union.'

'Switch that fucking tranny off, Corporal.' The staff sergeant's temper was barely under control. Not a minute previously he had been requested to organize coffee for the C-in-C and his staff; as it wasn't his job and he was already busy, he was feeling as though he had been demoted to a mess orderly.

'It's the BBC, Staff…first news we've managed to get.' The corporal was speaking over the newscaster and the men standing nearby leant closer to catch Dermot's voice.

'…Soviet troops, backed by mechanized infantry from the Warsaw Pact countries and with heavy air support, simultaneously invaded the territorial sovereignty of West Germany, Turkey and Austria at dawn today.'

The staff sergeant wanted to hear it himself. 'Okay, two minutes then.' There was a gangly private standing beside a filing cabinet, he made the mistake of catching the staff sergeant's eyes. 'You, Roberts, go and get a can of coffee from the cooks. And about two dozen cups…get 'em up to the boss, fast…get a move on, lad.'

Someone said:'Shhh…' and the staff sergeant glowered, angrily.

'…our ultimatum, delivered to the Soviet Foreign Minister by the British Ambassador in Moscow, gave the Soviet government until noon to indicate it would order the immediate cessation of hostilities, failing which Her Majesty's Government, in conjunction with its NATO allies, would consider a state of war to exist between the invading members of the Soviet bloc, and the Western Alliance.

'This assurance was not forthcoming. Consequently, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada and our European allies are now at war.

'First reports of the Soviet attack were received in London shortly before 04.00 hours this morning. Soviet artillery launched a heavy barrage along an entire front from Lübeck in the north, to the Austrian border; shortly afterwards, armour of the Russian Second Guards Tank Army invaded West German territory to the east of the city of Lübeck, and Soviet airborne troops were landed in the Fulva valley.