“As you can see, units of the US 4th Corps and Canadian 5th Infantry Division have now begun leaving the forming up points outside the city ports and begun the drive towards Germany after delays in offloading due to air attacks, and in some cases sabotage of dockside facilities.” The view changed to show a map of the parallel routes the Corps would take across the Continent and into Germany on the same autobahns the Soviets were trying so hard to reach.
“4th Corps is leading as the Canadians are top heavy with leg infantry in trucks, but those are being dropped off along the way to secure bridges and key points against further Soviet airborne drops which would cut the service support routes.”
“Again.” The President grumbled.
“Precisely, Mr President” Henry said in agreement.
“The Canadians have four such battalions in two brigades who will retain a small degree of artillery support but the remainder of their two brigades’ artillery units, an armoured regiment and the two mechanised battalions, will proceed as part of the 4 Corps reserve.”
“What of their logistics and support units, General.” The President interrupted. “I do not see any of those?” his hand waved at the clusters of military symbols on the map.
“Rail priority has been given to ammunition and stores for units already at the front, and in particular the division straddling the autobahns to the channel ports, Mr President. The combat units are travelling by road and every MP, and every civilian cop we can muster is employed in keeping them moving and keeping refugees clear.”
Henry paused to briefly underline the situation.
“This is a race we are engaged in, and if we win it the reds will still be engaged in fighting other NATO units when they arrive and 4th Corps can immediately launch a counter attack. If we lose then the Corps will take a defensive stance and we will again be reacting to the enemy instead of taking the fight to them.”
The picture on the screen altered as Henry brought up the image of the German battlefield, focusing initially on the units either side of the Saale and Elbe rivers. The symbols depicting the types and size of units, lined on both banks, coloured blue for NATO units and red for the Red Army, but there were far more red symbols stacked behind each other to the east than there were blue ones on the west.
Two red coloured parachute symbols still remained in place on the western banks, despite NATO’s best efforts to dislodge, and then annihilate them.
“Mister President, just before dawn this morning the Red Army began a massive rocket and artillery bombardment of NATO lines from north of Haldensleben, down to the southern suburbs of Magdeburg.”
He stepped closer to the screen, his back to the wall and gesturing with his right hand without looking, without needing to look as he had memorised each screen of the briefing.
“The units being targeted are the US 5th and 12th Mechanised Brigades, the British 1st Armoured Brigade and the German 5th Panzer Grenadier and 4th Panzer Regiments.” Henry paused to look the men and women present.
“SACEUR informs me that by midnight tonight at the latest, those units will have ceased to be combat effective and the Red Army will in all probability begin an assault river crossing against minimal ground opposition.”
Grave looks were exchanged around the conference table, it was not unexpected news but that did not make it any easier of hear.
“General?”
Henry looked to his President, who had lowered his head to peer at him over the rim of his glasses.
“Yes, Mister President?”
“You have been to that sector have you not?”
Henry nodded in affirmation. “Yes sir, it was my first stop after meeting with General Allain.”
“Is there anything that could have been done, or was there anything left undone…anything you feel may have prevented this from happening?”
General Shaw had been to all the sectors, not just that one. He had met with the commanders of the units mentioned and also been to the positions to see for himself the state of the defences, the level of training evident amongst the troops, and of course to judge the morale of the men and women in the fighting positions. Henry had squatted in the bottoms of trenches and shivered with the cold along with humble riflemen, speaking in English with British, Dutch and their own troops, in passable bier hall German to Panzer Grenadiers and schoolboy French to Belgian infantrymen and French Foreign Legionnaires.
It hadn’t been his brief to crawl through a frozen wasteland at night, to spend three hours just a rifle shot from a fortified pile of rubble that had once been a factory, but he saw it as his duty as a commander of troops to share some of the hazards faced by the men and women he had been ordered to send into harm’s way. The troops in that foxhole hadn’t known who he was until the next day, hours after he had departed for another sector of the line. For an hour he had listened to the sounds of a wounded man, a Soviet paratrooper, crying for his mother in those ruins on the perimeter of one of the Red Army footholds on the west bank of the Saale.
In all it had reinforced something he and a good friend had discussed and agreed upon many years before, and that was that the only person to have the moral right to send men and women to war was someone who had themselves been in harm’s way in the armed service of their country. If that simple fact became a matter of law then there would be far more talking around tables and fewer body bags, but that discussion had taken place in disreputable bar cum brothel in Southeast Asia, where even the flies had sense to swerve to avoid the bar girls. They had been young lieutenants then, and he at the end of a three-month attachment to his friends unit to see why Britain was winning its jungle war when at the same time America was losing hers.
Over many bottles of Tiger and in increasing degrees of intoxication the two men had written a new constitution on the backs of beer mats, built around the foundation of his friends somewhat slurred words
“You shouldn’t be in a position to start a fight unless you’ve been in one yourself…no high office without first joining the brown adrenaline club.”
A campaign slogan for their bid for world power had read ‘Vote for me, I’ve not only shit myself in battle…but look here I’ve even got the soiled shorts to prove it!’
Henry had left the next day to return to Saigon with a hell of a hangover and little recollection of the previous night’s events, his friend however had a better memory and over the years whenever they had bumped into one another and shared a drink or six he would speak whimsically of one day making ‘The Beer Mat Constitution’ into a reality, and had even worked out how it could be achieved.
When at last the wounded soldiers cries had faded and gone forever it had given Henry a greater determination, the co-author of the beer mat constitution may be dead at the bottom of the Irish Sea, but the idea was very much alive.
“Mister President, those men and women are outnumbered fifty to one, they have fought and held this long despite the inadequate equipment and war stocks their governments provided them to do the job, and the fact that they are about to be over run, and where the blame lies for that, is no fault of theirs.”
A pin could have been heard dropping in the seconds that followed, and Terry Jones was not alone in realising a line had just been crossed. The President had been questioning whether there was fault in the ability of the men and women in uniform at the battlefront, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had laid the blame squarely at the door of government.