Soldiers and Marines Saga, page 53
When I finally got back to headquarters, tired and irritable and still wearing my trusty MAT-49 slung over my shoulder, Klausen greeted me at the door in German with a sympathetic smile and a nod down the dingy hallway towards a ground floor apartment we have begun using as a secondary conference room.
“You have some visitors, from the American naval establishment I believe. Their uniforms are beautiful. John Peavy is with them.”
Otto’s sense of humor is improving but Pug and I had just visited units that suffered thousands of German and Marine casualties in the past forty-eight hours and mine was totally shot.
I responded in German. “Thanks for the warning. Anything important I need to know in the next ten minutes?”
“No, Herr Generaldoktor. Everything is in order. I will have a briefing ready in ten minutes.”
“Have at least some of it conducted in German and the rest in French,” I suggested. Then I stomped off down the hall to greet the waiting navy. Otto was right. Their white dress uniforms are gorgeous.
“My name’s Roberts. What can I do for you gentlemen?” I asked as I walked into the little conference room needing a shave with my trusty MAT-49 still over my shoulder and wearing my muddy boots and dirty battledress.
“Uh, General Roberts,.. ah… May I present Admiral Tucker and the senior members of his staff. He was.. is.. ah, anxious to visit with you. So I thought I’d come along and introduce you. We used the taxi service, of course.” John obviously brought him here so I could decide what to do with him.
“Admiral?” I nodded at the admiral.
“General, I am Admiral Tucker and these are some of the senior members of my staff.” He extends his hand and I shook it.
“Gentlemen,” I nodded towards the others. Then I said not another word. Just waited.
“Ah, General, the Chief of Naval Operations has sent me to take charge of American Naval Aviation.” I still said nothing.
“Ah, here in Germany, I mean.”
I spoke after an overly long pause.
“That’s kind of you Admiral, but NATO’s naval headquarters is in Belgium and, to the best of my knowledge, NATO does not have a separate billet for American Naval Aviation because until a few hours ago we didn’t have any carriers in the war zone except of course, those of Britain, France, and Australia.”
After a pause, I continued. “Um. I believe the British carrier Hermes and the French carrier Foch are presently loading in Israel and the French carrier Clemenceau is en route from Korea. All of them, I believe, are carrying helicopters, missiles, and equipment for the Marines. Is that not so, John?”
“Ah, yes General. That is correct.”
“I was referring to the Navy and Marine planes that have been flying in from our carriers since yesterday afternoon,” explained Tucker.
“Oh those planes. Yes, we certainly need them, particularly those that are capable of supporting the Marines and the other NATO ground forces. I’m sure we’ll all be interested to hear your plan to organize and support their operations. In the meantime they’ll have to be attached to our Marine and Air Force squadrons in order to draw supplies and have access to ground crews.”
At that point I turned around and start to head off to the latrine to take a dump. Then I remembered something and turned back for a moment.
“Oh, by the way, Admiral, there is a command briefing coming up in a couple of minutes that Admiral Peavy will be attending. You and your staff are invited to attend.”
While contemplating the state of the world sitting on the can, it suddenly dawned on me that the only way Admiral Tucker could have arrived with such a large entourage is if he had use of a plane that should have been delivering troops and supplies. So I shouted for Tony Moretti, my orderly, as I pulled more paper off the paper roll,
“Tony”. … “Yo boss.” … “Tony,” I shouted at the closed door, “ask General Hart if General Macefield or General Forstmann are in the building, will ya?”
******
The briefing was conducted entirely in German and French until Jim Macefield arrived midway through it. The briefer, a German general staff lieutenant colonel, instantly switched from German to perfect English in mid-sentence. That was impressive.
According to the German colonel, the Warsaw Pact forces continue to be contained everywhere except on the northern front where the Warsaw Pact ground forces appear to be making a breakthrough towards the northwest. Something Otto Klausen and I know more about than the briefer because we‘d just returned from visiting MacKenzie and Schiller.
The colonel showed no emotion as he somberly went on to note that reports are beginning to come in which suggest some of the Warsaw Pact units previously held in reserve in the north are on the move, undoubtedly to act as an Operational Maneuver Group. The planning staff, he reports, is virtually certain they will be used to exploit the breakthrough and is preparing recommendations for our response.
The next briefer, an American major with a heavy southern accent, presented data showing how the plane, armor, and naval casualties and inventories have changed in the past twenty-four hours. If the data are correct, both our casualties and our inventories are growing and the inventory balances of men and equipment are continuing to swing in NATO’s favor.
The inventory balances are important. They mean Ivanov’s replacement will be under pressure to quickly move troops away from the East German coast and use them to exploit his “breakthrough” before he runs out of men and equipment and fuel.
The only surprise came at the end of the briefing when a French-speaking briefer asked in French if there are any questions. One of the newly arrived naval officers, a captain, asked in fluent French if any word had been received as to how the carriers from the Pacific and Atlantic fleets will be deployed now that they have discharged their planes.
Good point. Score one for the navy sending someone who can speak a relevant foreign language.
The briefer at that time, a French colonel, did not know but he did volunteer that a few hours earlier the Enterprise was diverted to the Israel a few hours ago to pick up helicopters and armor for NATO’s ground forces.
Damn right it was diverted from heading back to the States and safety. Israel is closer. It will return with Israeli helicopters on its flight deck and whatever tanks and other armor-related equipment and supplies it can cram into its lower decks.
Even more important, and something my staff apparently doesn’t yet know and maybe never will, some of the Israeli-made equipment will be accompanied by Israeli volunteers to help operate them and instruct our men how to use it.
I turned around in my chair and pointedly spoke to the Navy officers sitting in the row of chairs behind me.
“That information is code-word classified to protect the Enterprise. It is not to be discussed verbally at NATO’s naval headquarters in Brussels nor is it ever to be discussed or transmitted on any phones or communications equipment located in that headquarters, not even in coded transmissions—because Brussels, including its offices and its communications equipment is extensively compromised by enemy intelligence. I emphasized the ‘extensively compromised.’ Please remember that at all times.”
And the warning wasn’t just for Admiral Tucker and his newly arrived naval officers. It was a reminder for everyone else in the room as well.
******
After the briefing I took Peavy and Macefield aside and asked them if they wanted me to assign Tucker and his people to them or to Brussels. After a bit of discussion we decided it might be useful to have Tucker and a few of the naval air people he brought with him stay with Macefield. Who knows, maybe the Navy’s carrier oriented brass have decided to join the war and he can contribute something.
“Another thing, Jim. Admiral Tucker arrived at Peavy’s headquarters with an entourage of staff officers, shoe shiners, and photographers. Find out where their plane landed and who authorized them to be on the plane instead of troops and supplies and why?”
Then I went on.
“Either way I want that plane and all the people on it immediately pressed into service and used in the war effort. Strip the seats out, put German insignia on it, and assign its flight crew to wherever you need more bodies. And I want every member of Tucker’s entourage assigned to where they are needed most. Any of Tucker's people you two don’t need are to be sent to Pug. He can use them in the Korean Division. If any of them hesitates about being reassigned or sent into combat, conduct a general court martial on the spot and do whatever needs to be done to encourage the others.”
“So far as I’m concerned,” I said. “Tucker and his people and his plane arrived as general replacements and are to be used to make good our combat losses. I don’t care what their ranks are.” Then I stomped off feeling a lot better.
Chapter Fourteen
Brigadier Joseph Morris, a likeable Brit, and the senior staff duty officer tonight, shook my shoulder to wake me a few minutes after three in the morning. He reported that, according to the latest NSA intercepts that just came in, the East German and Russian units that have been located along the northern coast of East Germany are now moving west to be part of the Warsaw Pact’s operational maneuver group that will try to exploit the breakthrough.
I thanked Brigadier Morris for the information and told him to let me know if anything changes about the usage of the northern bridges. He woke me up again a half hour later to report that the infrared scans from our satellites show dramatically increased traffic going over the Elbe and Weser bridges we’d inadvertently left up in the northern East Germany.
He was shocked when I smiled but he tried not to show it. Guess the secret’s safe.
And, yes, according to the 0600 briefers, the Russians and East Germans are moving troops from East Germany’s northern coast to exploit their “breakthrough.” Our staff, who to a man see the Warsaw Pact breakthrough as a disaster, were absolutely befuddled by the high fives and big smiles Klausen, Pug, and I gave each other when a German colonel somberly announced that an East German and Russian offensive appears to have broken through our northern front lines in the area of Hildesheim.
Our unexpected reaction and Macefield’s and Peavy’s big smiles, after Klausen, Pug, and I huddle with them privately two hours later, caused each of the headquarters’ staff to start wondering what he or she had missed. Now let’s hope their counterparts on the Warsaw Pact staff are equally ignorant of what we plan to do.
A few minutes later, the briefing was interrupted with a flash intelligence update. Satellite photos confirm the Warsaw Pact’s reserves and operational maneuver group are moving over the Weser and Elbe bridges that we failed to destroy and are about to launch a major new offensive to exploit the breakthrough.
My mind is made up. Sometime this morning, we will send the ferries north to their jumping off point near Hamburg. They will sail from there and the counter-invasion will start as soon as I decide enough of the Warsaw Pact’s troops and armor are on the west side of the Weser, perhaps as early as tonight.
So far the Kiel Canal has remained open and the three day weather forecast looks good, meaning rainy and overcast. That’s important. If the canal remains open the eight West German ocean-going ferries we were able to “borrow” from their civilian owners will only have to spend one day on the North and Baltic Seas instead of the two or more days required to go around Jutland.
That the ferries will not have to spend extra days at sea is of vital importance both to their safety and to the timing of the other parts of counter-invasion. If the canal remains open we will begin the counter invasion as early as tomorrow night.
All the other parts of the counter-invasion, the paratroopers landing on the airfield and the breakout from the forest redoubt, are ready. They will go the moment I get the word that the ferries have reached East Germany and are beginning to land their troops and armor.
******
Otto, Pug, and I spent the entire next day at headquarters getting minute by minute updates as the intelligence and contact reports came in and periodically talking to Dieter Doppelfeld and, with Dieter on the line, to Hans Reuter, the German Brigadier who will command the seaborne invasion force and Karl Mauer in the forest redoubt. There were also a number of calls to Dave Shelton about the readiness of paratroopers, and to Wolfie Tomas in Berlin.
As you might imagine, we are particularly interested in the reports on the status of the Kiel Canal and the current location of the Warsaw Pact units that had been in the northern coastal region of East Germany.
While waiting for updates, we systematically called every corps, division, and Marine brigade commander to get their unit’s current status. Macefield and Peavy are doing the same from their air and naval headquarters.
Peavy assured me that he and the senior German admiral on his staff have each once again contacted the German Coast Guard to make sure that everyone understands that civilian ferries are now to be allowed into the Kiel Canal so we can begin evacuating civilians from Hamburg.
For better or worse, the cat is out of the bag—everyone in the command group at my headquarters now knows that something big is underway and is under the strictest of orders not to even hint or speculate as to what it might be. And Peavy is under strict orders not to let Tucker get wind of what is about to happen and to keep checking to confirm the Kiel Canal is open to civilian ferries.
At about 1520, right after the latest briefing concluded, I privately asked each of my deputies to give me their best advice as whether or not I should order the ferries to begin sailing towards Hamburg and on through the canal. They gave me their opinions and at 1534 I made the decision.
“Commence Operation Rosebud effective immediately.”
Last week the President approved, sort of because I didn’t tell him the details, the concept of such an operation. He responded to my offhand comment about launching a counterattack by agreeing it might be a good thing “if I found it desirable to do so.” In other words, it’s on my head if the counterattack fails. That’s as it should be.
******
At 1542 the first two of the eight heavily loaded civilian ferries, the Nordland and the Anna Stollman because they are among the biggest and fastest and must go the greatest distance, raised their anchors and head for the Kiel Canal. Their heretofore terminally bored panzer troops are undoubtedly now tremendously excited and anxious. Wait till they find out where they are going what they are about to do.
Hopefully the Nordland and Stollman and the other six ferries that will soon follow them will appear to be of dubious military value and not worth the risk of attacking, merely unescorted civilian ferries en route to Frankfurt to begin evacuating civilians. In fact, they are being escorted by a couple of American attack subs as they move through the North Sea to the entrance of the canal and will pick up three West German subs and a Norwegian as escorts when they exit the canal sometime in the early morning darkness to begin their run up the East German coast to Stralsund.
All six of the other armor-carrying ferries will raise their anchors and follow the first two according to a precise schedule determined by its highest possible speed and the distance each must go. Each will be escorted by at least one West German or American attack sub to the North Sea entrance to the canal and then met and escorted by one or more of our subs in the Baltic as it exits the canal and moves up the coast to its destination in East Germany.
If all goes according to plan, all the ferries will reach their destinations and begin unloading in the darkness just before ten o’clock tomorrow night.
God willing and the creeks don’t rise.
I’m optimistic. We’ve had our attack subs cleaning Warsaw Pact ships and subs out of the waters off the East German coast ever since the war began; so I’m not so much worried about the ferries’ initial sorties being intercepted by enemy ships and subs as I am about enemy aircraft.
The Warsaw Pact subs and surface ships will come later, if they come at all, when Shelepin realizes what we are doing and we try to reinforce our initial invasion force. Then they are almost certain to sortie all their available ships and subs. According to the latest satellite photos there are a lot of them tied up at the big Russian naval base at Kalingrad.
******
Not everything is grand strategy and efforts to outsmart the Warsaw Pact. Real people are fighting and they are doing so night and day. Two of them are Karl Wettering and Jacob Jahn, the airborne engineers who jumped into Russia with the late and unlamented Feldwebel Schulter.
Operating from their relocated camp deep in the Siberian forest almost a day’s walk from the railroad, Wettering and Jahn don’t know it, and probably never will unless they survive the war, but they are the NATO unit closest to the Chinese and Korean borders more than a two thousand kilometers further east. There are no teams east of them to stop trains and repair crews from reaching the culvert they have blown and then, after repairing it, moving on to attempt to repair the two bridges they’d blown earlier. It also means they are the team closest to the Russian army and air force units along the Chinese and Korean borders.
It took Karl and Jacob almost the entire day to reach the culvert they’d destroyed earlier. In addition to their personal assault rifles and ammunition, they are heavily laden with a BMG sniper rifle and twenty rounds of 50 caliber armor piercing ammunition, an old WWII bazooka and three shells, and twenty kilograms of plastic explosives in a canvas back pack.
They were less than half way there and already more than a little tired from carrying the heavy loads. That’s when they decided that on the way back they will hide whatever they don’t use close to the tracks so they won’t have to carry it back and forth the next time they raid the Russians.
About three hours before sundown they finally reached a tree-covered hill overlooking the tracks about a mile away. Through the spotter’s scope and the scope of the sniper rifle they could see a work crew leaning on their shovels and watching a small coal burning locomotive belching rings of black smoke as it slowly moved down the left hand side of the two track rail bed.
