The BMP-2 on the right caught sight of the helicopter. It was a tiny German PAH-1, armed with six HOT missiles. The woodpecker on BMP 416 began hammering away at the chopper, but it scooted out of range to the safety of the town. If the situation wasn't bad enough, Chazov spotted some German infantry sneaking out of the town toward the Soviet lines. The Germans had the luxury of modern chemical suits. They were charcoal coated, with permeable surfaces that permitted sweat to evaporate. It was no picnic to run with heavy weapons in such a suit, but it was a lot more practical than the Soviet rubber suits.
Chazov decided it was pointless to keep his vehicles here. There was no evidence that the rest of the regiment was continuing the attack. His BMPs were waiting like sitting ducks for more helicopter attacks. Those damn PAH-ls could wipe out his company without even needing to reload. And the German infantry were probably tank-hunter teams, armed with Panzerfaust antitank rockets.
Ignoring his previous orders, Chazov signaled to his troops to begin a staggered pullback to the woods they had occupied the night before. The company was useless as a combat force. It was down to seven BMPs and less than fifty men. The vehicles were too badly contaminated to permit normal combat operations. The troops were too frightened and exhausted to fight.
Sergeant Dobrovolskiy's BMP led the way and continued on to regimental HQ to check on the matter of decontamination equipment. The company waited in the woods for nearly an hour before Dobrovolskiy returned, bringing back three decontamination kits. One kit contained soap and bleach to clean up the troops. In peacetime practice, personnel cleanup had always been done in a prepared facility, with showers. Here, there wasn't enough water or equipment. It all had to be done laboriously by hand. At least once out of the vehicles, it was a bit easier to cool down.
Chazov still found it very difficult to control the men. Ignoring the usual precautions, some of the soldiers simply removed their OP-1 suits without rinsing first. It was dangerous, although by then most of the nerve agent had evaporated. Everything was done in such a hurry that it wasn't clear which suits had been cleaned and which ones had not. There were two canisters of a special caustic agent to wash down the BMPs. But to wash out the insides, it would be necessary to get back into the suits, which were now in heaps scattered along the edge of the forest floor. No one dared touch them for fear they were still coated with nerve agent. Chazov, Dobrovolskiy, and Khalkin had taken the trouble to scrub their suits before removing them. So the three men were given their suits and assigned the laborious task of cleaning out the insides of the BMPs. They managed to clean two of them before water and caustic agent ran out. The rest of the troops were sent to dig in and prepare defensive positions at the edge of the woods. He hoped that the woods hadn't been hit by chemicals. If the Germans decided to use chemicals again, they were done for.
This fictional account of the attack on Geiselhoring highlights the temptations for the Soviets to use chemical weapons, as well as the enormous risks. This scenario shows the most likely conditions for the use of chemical weapons. The tempo of a vital operation has been thrown off by determined resistance. Conventional means to smash the resistance in built-up areas has proven to be a failure. Something out of the ordinary seems necessary. Chemical weapons are seen as a panacea in such a situation. They hold the allure of providing the shock needed to break a stalemate.
The first use of chemical weapons could be expected to have enormous psychological impact on unprepared defenders. Soldiers who have proven very resistant to conventional weapons might break and run when the added horror of chemical weapons is unleashed on them. It is not inconceivable that this could have a decisive effect on the outcome of a war. Such an expectation would be the main reason for employing chemical weapons.
Other factors support such a decision. Soviet troops train regularly with chemical weapons and simulated chemical weapons. Soviet military leaders might expect that their troops would perform well in chemical warfare conditions since they are familiar with it, better than NATO troops would perform under these conditions. Soviet officers could harbor the illusion that they have a decided edge on the chemical battlefield. The Soviet Army has substantial stockpiles of a wide variety of chemical weapons, allowing the front commander to choose chemicals tailored to a particular task. But the main attraction is the surprise effect.
As the scenario of the attack on Geiselhoring suggests, many of these expectations may prove to be dead wrong. Indeed, the use of chemical weapons could prove to be a major mistake for an attacking force. The use of chemical weapons forces both sides to engage in time-consuming and complicated chemical protective measures. Troops have to be adequately supplied with chemical suits, decontamination equipment, and additional medical support. Tasks that normally take thirty minutes would take hours in a contaminated environment. Chemical contamination is a glue that slows down the tempo of operations. If it does not have an immediate and decisive effect on its first use, then it backfires on the attacker. The Soviets as the aggressor would be far more dependent on the speed and tempo of operations than NATO would be as the defender. These points are worth examining in detail.
The Soviet Army, like most modern armies, has been interested in chemical warfare since World War I. The Tsarist army suffered monstrous casualties in World War I, largely because it was technically unprepared.
In the wake of these horrors, the new Red Army of the 1920s made a determined effort to prepare for the use of chemical weapons. It has maintained this interest through the present.
Although chemical weapons did not have a decisive impact on the Western Front in World War I, they proved more effective in the East. Russian troops were so ill prepared that gas attacks by the Germans were far more successful than comparable attacks against French or British troops. The Russians suffered at least 50,000 dead and more than a half million injured from German gas attacks in World War I. Chemical weapons had not changed greatly by the time of World War II. The main types of chemicals were blister agents like mustard gas, which burn out the inside of the lung and can cause severe skin burns and blinding. Neither the Allied nor Axis forces used chemical weapons during World War II.
Blister agents were not suitable for the more mobile style of war waged in Europe. In addition, both sides were deterred from using chemicals since both were well stocked with such agents. The trigger for their use in World War I had been the expectation that they would be a major surprise and have a decisive effect. In World War II, surprise could not be expected, greatly diminishing the incentive for first use.
Although World War II did not see the use of chemical weapons, it did see the development of several revolutionary new chemical agents. The most lethal of these were the new nerve gases. Blister agents like mustard gas require heavy contact to have any effect. Simple precautions like a gas mask and adequate clothing can prevent most detrimental effects. But nerve gases can attack through the skin as well as the respiratory system. A gas mask alone is inadequate. Full body protection is needed, with no skin exposed to the air. The amounts of agent needed to kill are far smaller, only seventy to one hundred milligrams — a small drop of liquid. It took decades to develop medical treatment for these agents and to devise protective equipment. Without these, nerve gas would be as dangerous to the side that used it as to its opponents. By the 1960s, chemical protective suits and medical treatments were available.