The Third World War: August 1985

It was thus decreed by chance that one of the first encounters between Soviet and US forces in the Third World War took place under the eye of a television camera. With his portable and lightweight electronic equipment, Salvadori was present at the first contact, when Soviet forces thrusting into Slovenia came face to face with American marines on the outskirts of Kostanjevica, between Ljubljana and Zagreb. Three Soviet tanks, moving forward in the confident belief that no US forces had yet reached the area, were surprised by a unit of US marines whose armament included Milan anti-tank weapons. All three tanks were very quickly put out of action by first-shot strikes, and a company of Soviet infantry on a hillside beyond the town was swiftly recalled to redeploy in a stronger position immediately to the rear. At the same time Soviet strike aircraft carried out a rocket attack on the Americans, causing some very ugly casualties.

Much of this Salvadori, a daring and intelligent cameraman, recorded on tape. It was action material of extraordinary drama. The high quality of the ENG pictures gave a sense of reality and vividness greater than any in film pictures of Americans in action in the now distant Vietnam War. The destruction of the Soviet tanks, one of which blew up within a 100 metres of the cameraman’s position; the shocked, drawn faces of Russian prisoners being escorted to the rear; and the spectacle of the Soviet infantry suddenly withdrawing, so that the whole of the small hillside seemed to move, conveyed in sharp, almost exultant terms the information that the Red Army was far from being invulnerable. The trained military eye might have noted that the Soviet infantry, in their sudden rearward move, were providing a model of how to carry out the very difficult operation of a withdrawal in contact, under fire. A military observer would certainly have recognized that three tanks do not constitute a significant force. But this small action, if only because it was small and readily grasped, came over as a clear US victory. Only the pictures of the mutilated victims of the rocket attack, one screaming in agony, were a reminder of the cost.

Salvadori was not only a skilled cameraman. He had had long experience of outwitting officialdom. He quickly made his way to Ljubljana, without disclosing the contents of his recording, and managed to get a lift on an aircraft back to Italy. There, through his agency, the material was transmitted by satellite throughout the world. It was in the hands of the American networks before the White House or the Pentagon were even aware of its existence. The networks, moreover, knew that the material had already been circulated widely, not least to the Iron Curtain countries, who had helped themselves unhesitatingly to the satellite transmissions of the agency. So into the homes of the American public went, unplanned, uncensored, almost unedited — except for one peculiarly hideous shot of a marine whose face had been blown away — these scenes of the first clash between the Russians and the Americans.

With acute anxiety the United States authorities awaited the reaction of their own people. To their relief, and also to their surprise — as indeed to that of most commentators in the press — the result was not one of dismay or fear, but of anger and pride. There was anger at the sufferings inflicted by the bombing, seen so close upon the screen, but there was also an upsurge of pride at this spectacle of Soviet troops being held in check and even withdrawing. In an instant, without formal declarations of war, the American public felt themselves to be at war, and some fundamental instinct for survival welded them together. The battle of Kostanjevica was a minute operation in the huge waves of fighting which were to follow; Salvadori’s pictures were to be outdone by miles of more dramatic, more terrible coverage. But few recordings of this first television war were to have such an influence. There could be no doubt now, not only in the minds of the American public, but in the world at large, that the Soviet Union and the United States were involved in a shooting war. And the first recorded glimpse of it had been a glimpse of Soviet troops on the run. -