lent a hand with shifting the generator, but the interference might not have gone down well with Hyde. He suspected that inside the British NCO there still lingered a residue of resentment at serving under an American officer, at having lost the independence he’d enjoyed as leader of a crack British anti-tank team.
There were times when Revell wished he was just a sergeant, with nothing more than his squad and himself to worry about. It’d be good just to get on with the fighting, to go out and do the damned job and to hell with the political consequences. While the Russians fought without constraints, his every action was hedged about by the need to avoid civilian casualties, or damage to property, or offence to other NATO partners. Rules, regulations guidelines ... a Communist officer had none of those, he’d have an objective and perhaps a deadline and the fear of the consequences of failure ...Revell could still hate the savagery with which the Soviet forces obtained their victories, while ‘envying the freedom of action they were given to gain them. But it was a strange sort of freedom the Russian commanders enjoyed. Ten, twenty thousand civilian casualties didn’t matter to a Warsaw Pact general as he drove his regiments towards their goal, but if he delayed by so much as an hour, then even if his primary objective was still achieved his removal was certain. A Russian’s freedom was the freedom to butcher, to slaughter, but never to deviate from his observance of the strict orders he’d been given. It was that inflexibility that had cost the Communists outright victory at the start of the war, when none of their army commanders had dared even to attempt to plug the gaping holes in their advance caused by widespread mutinies among the East German and Polish units.
The NATO Staffs had rightly diagnosed that inflexible command structure as a weakness in the enemy, but had never got round to recognising as deadly a failing in their own strategy. When faced with an opponent prepared to resort to every dirty trick, to employ the full range of horrific modern weapons of mass destruction, half-measures to contain them could only resort in half-victories, or more usually half-defeats.
That Lance missile, standing out in the snow waiting for him to transmit the coded command to commence its near instantaneous firing sequence and launch, was a good example of NATO’s, or rather the West’s mentality. Four separately targeted warheads nestled within the sharp nose of the missile. Their fuses precisely pre-set, they would detonate above a Swedish Air Force base, a vital hydroelectric power station, a coastal patrol craft complex and a garrison town. Spectacular though their kiloton warheads would be, that would be the limit of their effectiveness.
It was a half-measure. If the Swedish parliament was as nervous as the Western analysts believed, and if it was still in permanent session at that time, it was possible it might over-react, declare on the NATO side before all the facts were gathered and the discovery made that in reality no damage had been suffered. But it was more likely to do what it had been doing for two years, dither and talk and let the moment pass in frightened and confused indecision. Then the West’s only hope would be that a local commander with a few coast defence missiles under his control might not wait for orders, might retaliate instantly to what he saw as a Russian bombardment preceding an assault. What a way to fight a damned war...!
York and Cline were preoccupied with their respective electronic equipment. Outside, Revell could hear Hyde exhorting the men to greater effort. The generator being bumped against the wall and the shout of someone whose fingers were between the two. From upstairs came the rare loud groan of one of their causalities. Andrea was up there ... he should go and see how the injured were faring, he hadn’t checked on them for several hours . . .
‘Go down and get
There were times when Revell wished he was just a sergeant, with nothing more than his squad and himself to worry about. It’d be good just to get on with the fighting, to go out and do the damned job and to hell with the political consequences. While the Russians fought without constraints, his every action was hedged about by the need to avoid civilian casualties, or damage to property, or offence to other NATO partners. Rules, regulations guidelines ... a Communist officer had none of those, he’d have an objective and perhaps a deadline and the fear of the consequences of failure ...Revell could still hate the savagery with which the Soviet forces obtained their victories, while ‘envying the freedom of action they were given to gain them. But it was a strange sort of freedom the Russian commanders enjoyed. Ten, twenty thousand civilian casualties didn’t matter to a Warsaw Pact general as he drove his regiments towards their goal, but if he delayed by so much as an hour, then even if his primary objective was still achieved his removal was certain. A Russian’s freedom was the freedom to butcher, to slaughter, but never to deviate from his observance of the strict orders he’d been given. It was that inflexibility that had cost the Communists outright victory at the start of the war, when none of their army commanders had dared even to attempt to plug the gaping holes in their advance caused by widespread mutinies among the East German and Polish units.
The NATO Staffs had rightly diagnosed that inflexible command structure as a weakness in the enemy, but had never got round to recognising as deadly a failing in their own strategy. When faced with an opponent prepared to resort to every dirty trick, to employ the full range of horrific modern weapons of mass destruction, half-measures to contain them could only resort in half-victories, or more usually half-defeats.
That Lance missile, standing out in the snow waiting for him to transmit the coded command to commence its near instantaneous firing sequence and launch, was a good example of NATO’s, or rather the West’s mentality. Four separately targeted warheads nestled within the sharp nose of the missile. Their fuses precisely pre-set, they would detonate above a Swedish Air Force base, a vital hydroelectric power station, a coastal patrol craft complex and a garrison town. Spectacular though their kiloton warheads would be, that would be the limit of their effectiveness.
It was a half-measure. If the Swedish parliament was as nervous as the Western analysts believed, and if it was still in permanent session at that time, it was possible it might over-react, declare on the NATO side before all the facts were gathered and the discovery made that in reality no damage had been suffered. But it was more likely to do what it had been doing for two years, dither and talk and let the moment pass in frightened and confused indecision. Then the West’s only hope would be that a local commander with a few coast defence missiles under his control might not wait for orders, might retaliate instantly to what he saw as a Russian bombardment preceding an assault. What a way to fight a damned war...!
York and Cline were preoccupied with their respective electronic equipment. Outside, Revell could hear Hyde exhorting the men to greater effort. The generator being bumped against the wall and the shout of someone whose fingers were between the two. From upstairs came the rare loud groan of one of their causalities. Andrea was up there ... he should go and see how the injured were faring, he hadn’t checked on them for several hours . . .
‘Go down and get
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