The Third World War: The Untold Story

There was also a small camp of Western prisoners of war at the Centre. They were available for questioning. A special sub-unit of the GRU Soviet military intelligence ensured that prisoners answered questions willingly and correctly.

The two Senior Lieutenants crawled over and under and through every piece of equipment they could find at the Centre, testing the feel of it all. They inspected the West German Leopard II tank and the Marder infantry combat vehicle. Good machines but very complicated. How could such equipment be maintained in the field if crucial repair facilities and supply bases in West Germany were lost? The US Abrams M-l tank wasn’t bad either, a low-lying predatory machine, but the main armament wasn’t really powerful enough and it had a disproportionately gas-guzzling engine. They were both impressed by the Chieftain and even more by the Challenger, fighting machines to be reckoned with — almost impenetrable armour, super-powerful armament and a dependable engine. The Leopard II was good and so of course was the Abrams. The Challenger was better. A few more thousand of these in Europe and the attack would soon get bogged down.

The GRU officers were happy to give the necessary explanations. The British Army had the best tanks though too few of them, and the best trained soldiers, but it was short on automatic anti-aircraft guns. The British were practically defenceless against Soviet helicopters. The German Bundeswehr was both determined and disciplined with first-rate professional training. The East Germans mostly fought against the Americans.

Nekrassov asked how the Belgian and Dutch units had been performing in battle. He knew about the British.

“Not bad at all,” he was told. “Their supply system is first class. Their equipment is not bad either. There are few of them, of course, but they are very good in defence. One great weakness is that soldiers query their orders. There is no death sentence for disobeying an order.”

Nekrassov shook his head in disbelief and the two moved on.

They then came to the captive officers, caged like wild animals. The GRU interpreter playfully twirled a thick rubber truncheon in his hand — an instrument which served as a dictionary might, to facilitate the interpreter’s job.

“Ask him,” Nekrassov indicated an American major sitting in the cage, “ask him why some of their vehicles have a big red cross painted on a white background instead of the actual camouflage markings. It’s stupid — just makes it easier for us to pick them out and destroy them. Why do they do it?”

Evidently other Soviet officers had asked the same question. Without referring to the prisoner the interpreter explained to Nekrassov.

“Vehicles with a red cross are ambulances,” he said. “They think we should not fire on them. They say there’s an international agreement to that effect.”

“If there were such an agreement we’d surely have been informed.”

“Of course.’’ The interpreter shrugged his shoulders. ”It would be in some manual. But I’ve never myself come across a reference to such an agreement anywhere. None of our books or newspapers mentions it.”

“There’s certainly nothing about it in the Field Service Regulations.” Nekrassov shrugged his shoulders in turn.

“Then ask if it’s true,” said Makarov to the interpreter, “that women serve on equal terms with men in their army?”

The interpreter, again without bothering to translate the question, answered for what was obviously the hundredth time: “They do.”

Nekrassov was perplexed. “That’s ridiculous! Women are not men. For one thing they need proper food and rest. They won’t get that in the army.”

“What sort of rations do the prisoners get?” asked Makarov. He addressed the question directly to the interpreter, who simply affected not to hear.

Nekrassov had never in his whole life talked to a foreigner from the capitalist West. He wanted to ask something the interpreter would not know already, just to hear an answer from this gaunt-looking American major in the tattered uniform.

“Ask him if it’s true that in America anyone can write what he likes in a newspaper, even something against the President.”

“That’s irrelevant,” said the interpreter abruptly.

Nekrassov knew he’d gone a bit too far and allowed his friend Dimitri to hurry him off so that they could lose themselves in the crowd of Soviet officers glued in fascination to a Canadian armoured personnel carrier. One question too many and you’d end up in a cage yourself. “

At the further end of the Central Region in the south an Allied Army group had been set up under French command (the Southern, or SOUTHAG, balancing up the Northern and Central), with responsibility south of a line through Karlsruhe (exclusive) and Nuremberg, north of which CENTAG with four corps under command (I BE, III GE, V and VII US) seemed, though not over-optimistic, reasonably hopeful of holding the position east of Frankfurt.