The Third World War: The Untold Story

Each BMP carried four Malyutka M anti-tank rockets, an automatic 73 mm gun, two PKTM machine-guns of 7.62 mm calibre, a Strela 2-M anti-aircraft rocket launcher (similar to the American Redeye), an RPG-16 anti-tank grenade launcher, ten Mukha single-shot disposable grenade launchers, which you shot off and then threw away, a sniper’s rifle, and five Kalashnikov automatic rifles. It was a complicated little army that Senior Lieutenant Nekrassov had to handle, but he had fired every weapon in it and done his best to practise the men — no easy task since they spoke half a dozen different languages, of all of which he was ignorant, and almost none spoke Russian.

Key personnel were usually Russian, or if not were at least proficient in the language. The driver of Nekrassov’s own BMP, a silent, watchful man by the name of Boris Ivanienko, came from Poltava. You could never know, of course, who was an informer and who was not and Nekrassov would hardly have confided in his driver in any case, but the Senior Lieutenant had come to have some confidence in this quiet and competent man, who so often seemed to know what was wanted of him even before he was told. It would be good to have someone like that close at hand in the battle.

Another member of the company whom Nekrassov had got to know quite well was a funny little rifleman, from Kazan on the Volga, called Yuri Youssupof, who was also carried in the company commander’s BMP. Nekrassov had said a kind word to this man soon after his arrival as a reservist, something which so startled a simple and lonely youth very far from home, completely baffled by what went on around him, that he attached himself to Nekrassov from then on in an almost dog-like devotion. Junior officers in the Red Army had no personal servants but it was customary for one of the rank and file to be made available for small services to an officer, to enable him to get on with his job without minor distraction. In No. 3 Company Yuri thus became the Senior Lieutenant’s personal orderly, trying to see that he got something to eat and somewhere to sleep, longing in his simple way to be able to do more for one of the very few people, since he was torn from his family and friends, who had treated him as a human being.

At this time Nekrassov’s company, to which six new men had come yesterday, was still eight under its authorized personnel strength. Three such companies, together with a battery of 82 mm automatic mortars with a maximum rate of fire of 120 rounds per minute,[3] at either low or high trajectories, made up the motor rifle battalion. Three of these battalions, plus a battalion of tanks, an artillery battalion, and six other separate companies — reconnaissance, air defence, multiple rocket launcher, communications, engineers, and transport — formed the regiment. The other two of the three infantry regiments in 197 Motor Rifle Division were organized on the same lines but, instead of BMP, which were fighting vehicles, were equipped with armoured transporters (BTR), thus making up in the whole division one heavy and two light regiments of motorized infantry. In addition, the division contained one tank regiment, one self-propelled artillery regiment (now incorporating a battalion of BM-27 multi-barrelled rocket launchers), an anti-aircraft rocket regiment and several other battalion commands, a reconnaissance unit, a communications unit, a rocket (FROG 7) unit, an anti-tank unit (IT-5), engineers, chemical defence, transport, repair and medical. There would also be two or three KGB battalions attached to the division.

The 197 Motor Rifle Division was due on the morning of 7 August to relieve 13 Guards Motor Rifle Division, which now for three days had been making slow progress against I British Corps.

Even before it had crossed the boundary between the two Germanies to move up into the battle in the Federal Republic, 197 Motor Rifle Division, whilst still 50 kilometres to the rear in the second echelon, had come under heavy NATO air attack, with quite considerable losses. Personnel casualties were, as usual, recorded with neither promptness nor exactitude. The breakfast ration brought up for No. 3 Company, Senior Lieutenant Nekrassov’s, which had lost more men than most from air attack, was therefore issued as for a company up to strength.

The Sergeant Major poured out double the prescribed summer ration of 100 grams of vodka for Nekrassov and gave him two biscuits instead of the regulation one.

‘A little more vodka, perhaps, Comrade Senior Lieutenant?’ A solicitous fellow, the Sergeant Major.

‘No, to hell with that. We’ll drink it this evening if we’re alive.’

‘Exactly,’ agreed the Sergeant Major, tipping his own double ration down a well-trained throat. He would have liked more, but did not care to take it without the officer’s permission.

‘How are the men?’

‘Hungry, Comrade Senior Lieutenant. And pretty savage about it.’