Soldiers and Marines Saga, page 56
Why the need to take East Berlin? In order to prevent or delay, the Warsaw Pact units deployed in and around Berlin from attacking the NATO counter-invaders coming from the coast and the forest fortress.
Six junior officers and three squads of German army engineers, all experts in blowing up buildings and walls and things like that, were the only other troops who arrived with General Tomas. They were initially led to believe they were there to blow up buildings to block Berlin’s streets in the event of an East German or Russian attack. It wasn’t until the night of the counter-invasion that their Leutnant discovered the real reason he and his men are there—to blast open the Berlin wall at various points so NATO armor and troops can pour through and move into East Berlin.
General Tomas launched his attack right after midnight at 0017, the same time the paratroopers began dropping on the Warsaw Pact airfields. His British Centurions, American Pattons, and French AMX30s and armored cars dash through checkpoints and gaps in the wall from wherever they had been initially positioned. The gaps had been blow seconds earlier and, in at least two instances, have to be quickly blown again before Wolfi’s troops and tanks could enter East Berlin.
Wolfi left only the thinnest NATO defensive forces around the rest of the walled-in western perimeter of the city. They consisted of the hurriedly trained non-combat troops—the clerks, cooks, drivers and MPs who had been deployed earlier into their defensive positions as soon as the war started. Their only weapons were hand held anti-tank missiles, recoilless rifles, and lots of automatic and semi-automatic infantry weapons. West Berlin’s armor and combat troops are elsewhere—pouring into East Berlin.
Surprise was total. The attackers pouring out of West Berlin might have been stopped cold if had they been expected and confronted with anti-tank missiles and automatic weapons. But they weren’t. For the most part they just quickly rolled right through the checkpoints and newly blown gaps in the wall and into the empty streets and parks of East Berlin. The unsuspecting East German and Russian garrisons did not get out of their beds and bars in time to stop them.
They can’t be attacking us because we’re protected by the wall we erected and they have nothing to gain by attacking. We’re all just waiting here until we see who wins the war.
A major reason the attack was successful is that it started so suddenly and, once it started, moved so quickly. There was no noise at all until Wolfi’s tanks started their engines and moved forward to attack. Indeed the officers in charge of the various attacking troops weren’t even informed that they will be leading a prong of a multi-pronged assault into East Berlin, or their routes and objectives, until Wolfie and his aides handed them their orders a few minutes before the attack is to start.
Until the very last moment, the troops and junior officers in the Berlin Garrison thought the order to get into their tanks and vehicles and start their engines and turn on their radios right after midnight at exactly 0017, and not one second before, is just one more of the many practice alerts that have occurred constantly at different times every day since the war started. They are alert and carefully look at their watches as they wait for 0017.
Why are Wolfi’s troops so alert and careful? Because in all the practice alerts since the war started, anyone who started an engine or turned on his radio more than thirty seconds early or thirty seconds late was instantly reduced in rank because he “is not ready to defend his position in a timely manner.” There were a number of demotions and their recipients’ misfortunes were widely known in the barracks and bars of West Berlin.
As planned and repeatedly rehearsed, the American, French, and British troops of the West Berlin garrison all turned on their engines and radios at almost the same instant. And that was the same instant the newly arrived engineers blew the first wall in various places. They then immediately follow their officers as they raced from wherever they have been defensively positioned and charged through their assigned wall breaches and checkpoints at the highest possible speed they can manage.
It also helped that all non-official communications with the eastern sector of the city, including the phone system, were shut down when the war started and the troops had for days been absolutely forbidden to transmit using their vehicles’ radios. Even when they did the East Germans and Russians on the other side of the wall didn’t understand what was about to happen.
In fact, the Berlin Wall is really two walls with an empty “death zone” between them that is mined with anti-personnel mines and overseen by East German soldiers in periodic guard towers. So the first thing the engineers do after blowing the first wall is jump on armored personnel carriers and ride across the open area to blow the second wall. They didn’t have to worry about the guards in the guard towers—they were pulverized by a hail of small arms fire as soon as the first explosion wen off.
The NATO infantry, both double timing on foot and riding in trucks and armored personnel carriers, followed the tanks and armored cars through the checkpoints in urban East Berlin and through the wall into the southern section that lies between the wall and the Spree River where East Germany’s Schoenfeld Airfield is located. They are can run on the ground because it has been scraped of mines, at least supposedly, because the APCs carrying the engineers dragged steel mats behind them as they carried the engineers and their explosives to the second wall.
The initial NATO casualties were minimal. The only significant fighting occurred at one of the checkpoints when a British company of Centurion tanks and its supporting infantry ran into a handful Russians who were both awake and ready to fight. The intense firefight lasted less than five minutes with heavy casualties on both sides. Then the British rolled on.
****** Number Eight Company
At 2120, soon after it was totally dark, the one hundred and ten men of Number Eight Company of Germany’s Twenty-second Parachute Regiment filed out of the hangar and walked up the lowered cargo ramp of a waiting Luftwaffe Transall turboprop, a German-built cargo and transport plane somewhat similar to the American C-130. The plan is for the plane to take off just after 2200, stooge around over West Germany for a while, and then cross the border and drop Number Eight Company on the East German airfield at Magdeburg just after midnight at exactly 0017.
The men don’t know it yet, and those that fall never will, but they are part of a massive counter-invasion that will kick off in a couple of hours with a NATO assault on East Berlin, armor landings all along the East German coast, and airborne drops on almost all of the Warsaw Pact airfields..
Every man in Number Eight Company was heavily loaded with weapons and ammunition. And every man, including all the officers, is also responsible for additionally hooking up and launching the chute of a separate bale of supplies which contains additional ammunition, medical supplies, and the food and water they will need for a week of intense fighting. Each of the men is responsible for pulling his additional bale of supplies out of the plane as he jumps.
******
Radar suppression has been extreme for the last twenty-four hours, both at the Warsaw Pact airfields and throughout the Magdeburg area where the Warsaw Pact headquarters is located. American “Wild Weasels” operating out of Spangdahlem in West Germany and all their NATO counterparts have spent the last twenty-four hours hammering the Warsaw Pact radar stations with everything they can throw at them. As a result, the Warsaw Pact radars that have not yet been destroyed are increasingly not being turned on by their operators in order to save themselves.
Transall 9832 with Number Eight Company aboard made a great huge circle deep over the Czech Republic and approached the Magdeburg airfield low and from the east just as it would if it was coming from Russia. It was on exactly the same flight path it would take if it was a real Russian plane coming in to land at Magdeburg.
At about 0007 in the morning when it is still ten minutes out and about thirty kilometers east of the field, the Transall began squawking as an Anatov An-12, a Russian-made military cargo plane that closely resembles the German Transall and American C-130.
The airfield’s tower and radar operators could hear a Russian voice on the tower frequency requesting landing instructions in Russian. Everything sounded normal.
“Magdeburg Tower, this is Anatov 309 at five hundred inbound for a straight-in approach to runway 32…. Magdeburg Tower do you read us? … Magdeburg Tower are you receiving?.... Do you read us?.... Repeat, this is Anatov 309 inbound at five hundred for a straight-in to 32…. Over … Magdeburg, this is Anatov 309 for landing instructions …. Magdeburg Tower, we’ll go around but we must land soon…..”
What the listening tower and radar operators did not know is that the voice is coming out of a little tape machine held up to the planes radio by the Transall’s co-pilot. What neither the plane’s crew nor the East Germans in the tower and the surrounding missile batteries also didn’t know is that the same basic message, recorded from an actual earlier landing effort by a Russian plane to contact an East German tower, is being repeated at almost the same moment on the tower frequencies of fifty-seven other Warsaw Pact airfields.
The detachment’s long-time signal corps expert, initially Major Geither and then subsequently Lieutenant Colonel Geither, and now Brigadier General Geither, provided all the tapes and tape recorders. There is a separate recording and tape recorder for each of the Warsaw Pact airfields; and taped to the tape recorders are the frequencies on which they are to be played, the detailed flight path to be followed, and the distance from the field at which to start transmitting.
To add an appearance of even more reality, a pair of West German Eurofighter Typhoons is rushing to the scene in what will appear to the West German radar operators to be an effort to kill the alleged An-12. The West German pilots don’t know it’s a fake. Before they get close enough to fire they will be directed to break off and head west to attack Russian armor in the battle zone.
“My God,” the Transall pilot suddenly worries as he lines up on what appears to be Magdeburg’s main runway, “I hope those fighter bastards don’t think we really are a Russian.”
The Transall was over the darkened runway at two hundred meters, and beginning to climb to execute what the tape recorder claimed to be a “missed approach,” when the men of Number Eight Company, with the straps of their supply packs gripped tightly in their hands, poured out of its lowered rear cargo ramp. Rolf Mainer and Hans Sandor were among the first to jump.
****** Oberleutnant Harry Hakken
Oberleutnant Harry Hakken and the men of his team spent all the rest day and most of the evening preparing to move out. Everything they have worked on for days was repeated and checked out once again, and then again. They were more than ready when the order was finally given to “prepare to mount up.”
The excited men feverishly began pulling down the camouflage nets hanging on the sides of the sheds, stowing last minute items, and getting ready to start Leopards and Milch Cows that haven’t been started for days. There was a lot of last minute hurrying to the latrines.
“Schnell, Schnell” and other shouted orders were heard constantly as the men rushed to get into their Leopards and Milch Cows. They have been told they will begin moving as soon after it becomes dark and the men are so excited and anxious that many are literally trembling in anticipation. ‘Finally’ is the thought on everyone’s mind. Every one of their Leopard tanks and Milch Cows was loaded and manned long before their scheduled departure time.
Then they waited for what seems like hours. Suddenly, with a sudden burst of shouting and arm waving by an officer running through the chicken sheds, the order was finally given to “start engines.”
In every chicken shed some of the tanks and vehicles will not start after sitting so long without being run. But that was anticipated. Men poured off the Milch Cows and out of the tanks to hook up jumper cables and connect them.
Soon they were all started and, as the forest began to darken under the cloudy skies, all the men were once again aboard their Leopards and Milch Cows and ready to proceed. Until they’re clear of the forest a little before midnight most of them will travel with their lights dimmed and shielded so they cannot be seen from overhead; then they’ll turn on their headlights and act “normal” as they move throughout East Germany.
When the signal “vorwarts” finally came over the radio, a few lead tanks with their lights on literally jumped forward and began to move out of their sheds to lead the different columns on various routes through the trees and out of the forest. The other tanks and Milch Cows followed close behind without using their lights.
Each of the lead tanks followed a string of reflective ribbon and the lantern lights of officers and non-coms walking through the trees ahead of them. In effect, the lead tanks use their bulldozer blades to literally make an instant dirt road by pushing over and plowing aside the half grown trees in front of them. And that immediately causes an unanticipated problem and resulted in their time schedule beginning to slip.
Until they reached the regular roads the treads of the tanks mowing down the trees were throwing up so much dirt and stones that the drivers of the Milch Cows behind them instinctively hung back to avoid having their windshields broken or covered with mud. That quickly changed once they got clear of the trees. In less than an hour and a half, all of the columns except one were clear of the forest and traveling on regular West German roads and highways. It was almost midnight.
Almost immediately teams began leaving their columns and branching out on to other roads to start their own “death and destruction” cavalry raids through the Ivans’ rear as they travelled towards their ultimate destinations.
Each team coming out of the “forest redoubt” would follow a carefully designed route through the West German countryside on both sides of the border with the objective of destroying any enemy forces and civilian transports it comes across. It will only stop several days later when it has either been destroyed or reaches a good fighting position in the general area it is tasked to occupy and defend.
And each team is well-equipped to do the job, particularly at night. The Leopards’ low light night driving system and thermal imaging sights make them potent night-fighters. Moreover, the teams have been told, and believe because it’s logical, that the enemy’s rear is primarily filled with clerks and headquarters camps and supplies—easy pickings for the Leopard-led teams charged with ridding their homeland of its invaders.
Harry Hakken and the other officers are confident because they believe they are leading their men into a target rich environment filled with rear echelon troops who are neither expecting the onslaught nor organized to fight off. And they and all their men are both excited and worried as the radio message ordering them to move forward almost certainly sends them into their first combat experience where some of them will undoubtedly die or be terribly injured.
Their reaction is mixed. For most it is ‘Oh my dear god what will happen to me?” For a few it is “How exciting. This is wonderful.”
Oberleutnant Hakken’s Number 87 team was the first team in the line of the twenty-six Leopard-led teams in Column Five. It is moving south on a paved road on the West German side of the border between East and West Germany. Hakken is actually the leader of only five teams; the twenty-one other teams in the column will peel off along the way to take other roads and routes to other targets. Hakken’s destination is the East German airfield at Chemnitz, near the Czech border.
Why is Hakken leading the column? There are only a few officers with the men in the forest redoubt because the teams are to operate independently in a number of widely separated places. Accordingly, most of the senior officers and NCOs of the battalions which provided them were left behind and used to quickly reconstitute their battalions with new tanks delivered directly from the Porsche factory or from Israel. Reservists and Israeli volunteers will take the place of those now rushing through the night in the Warsaw Pact rear.
Oberleutnant Harry Hakken and his platoon sergeant, Otto Franz, are assigned to this particular column because all five of their platoon’s tanks are assigned to Hakken and headed to the important Warsaw Pact airfield at Chemnitz. His team is leading the column because it was long ago decided that each column will need an officer to lead it out of the forest—in case a decision has to be quickly made to take another route. Most of the other teams are commanded by a feldwebel or oberfeldwebel because they have lesser assignments requiring fewer teams.
In fact, there are only two officers in Harry’s column: Harry and an obsequious junior Leutnant recently graduated from the officer and panzer schools who is to spend almost three days leading two teams to an airfield deep in the Czech Republic.
Harry, as the column’s senior officer, is both proud and anxious about being given the lead and being in charge of the column—even though his command is only temporary and will dwindle in size as more and more teams peel away to move through the countryside and tear up the enemy rear.
Until the column actually got the order to move, Harry had been desperately worried about getting lost and leading everyone to the wrong place. His anxiety rose even more when he tried to ride on his team’s tank so he could watch its driver try to follow the waving flashlight and push over the half grown trees.
The falling trees quickly resulted in the tank’s commander, Feldwebel Rust, a good man Harry always treats with appropriate respect, ducking down in the turret and Harry jumping off, and then nearly getting hit by trees being pushed further to the side by the following tanks. He lands, falls over a downed tree when he jumps, and barely gets to his feet, when his Milch Cow stops in response to his desperate shout. Mein Gott. That was close.
Harry’s Milch Cow rushed to take the lead once his team’s tank clears the forest and reaches the road. Forty minutes later he saw dimmed lights twinkling ahead on both sides of the road. That’s when he pulled over, as his orders specified, so his team’s Leopard and its huge plow can once again lead the way.
