Greetings

[Porpoise]

Still no one to say "you're wrong! Texas A&M marching band doesn't have a brass section!" Which either means no one is reading this or I'm doing something right. Either way, here's part 4.

This probably comes as a surprise to you reading this after then event, but we really had no idea that any of this was about to happen. Of course now, having read the history books from both sides we can clearly understand the events, personalities and causes, but at that time we were almost completely in the dark. Lots have been written about intelligence failures in the lead up to the war, there were senate hearings asking how the CIA could have been so in the dark about enemy intentions, and while McHenry and I discussed that the Soviets were up to something, the Soviets were always up to something. Talking about what the Soviets were up to was what we in NATO regularly did, it was almost a joke because someone, usually some green intelligence officer, said the Soviets were about to invade and of course they never did. Why would we think otherwise this time? In the opinions of most intelligent, informed people, the Communists had as much to lose by starting World War 3 as we did. What we in the west didn't know was that this time they had nothing left to lose. UN sanctions were biting hard into the Soviet economy. We knew they were hurting, but no worse than during Afghanistan. The only hint we had was Moscow making noise about an Aeroflot jet shot down over Berlin two days before hostilities commenced. It hadn't come from Gorbachev; he'd made no public announcement that day or any other until after the ceasefire. Of course, now we know why he disappeared, but at the time we had no clue.
So although tensions were heightened, we still had lives to get on with. I had an orientation to attend, where some admin puke explained where the toilets were and what the arrangements were for child care. I was also busy trying to find decent nearby accommodation, which actually wasn't difficult except I encountered a string of nosey potential landlords, so in the meantime I was staying at a cheap hotel. I met my boss, Colonel Hagen, on his way to a cross country ski competition in the mountains somewhere. Hagen had been an Olympic cross country skier and the senior command was happy to encourage his continued involvement in the sport. When we met he'd clenched my fist and fixed me with the piercing look of a raven before striding out the door. That was actually the last time I saw him.
The next day I got a phone call at 3 in the morning at home. The corporal on the phone wouldn't tell me anything other than that I was urgently required at the RHQ. I raced there in my rented Golf not knowing what to expect and was met in the operations room by McHenry and the Land Deputy, whom I hadn't met before, General Knudsen, a Dane. The Land Deputy was number three in the chain of command and responsible for all matters concerning the ground forces in the northern NATO region.
"We've got some bad news", said Knudsen. My mind jumped to all sorts of horrible conclusions. Was my daughter ok? Did my dad have another heart attack? Had my fudging on the travel expenses been discovered?
It turned out that Colonel Hagen had been badly injured on his skiing trip and tumbled halfway down a mountain.
"Oh", I said, and I had to stop myself breathing an audible sigh of relief.
Hagen would be in hospital for months with multiple fractures. On his first day of his cross country skiing trip he had been involved in a traffic accident. He never even got to strap on his skis, or skates, or whatever. It's not that my relief was caused by callousness, or I like to think it wasn't. Obviously it's not nice to for anyone to be laid up in hospital for weeks, but this was a man I'd never met and who, frankly, scared me. The only consequence, or so I thought, was that I would be the acting J3 until a replacement could be flown in. As I looked around at the sleepy clerks and junior staff officers at their consoles and desks, I failed to register the importance of this turn of events. Officially General Jorgensen, the Chief of Staff of Operations, who was conspicuous by his absence, was responsible for planning and executing the strategy and orders of the commander, General Mason-Clarke, but in practice the actual work was to be done by the J3. Ordinarily that would be Hagen but with him in hospital with a broken pelvis the responsibility fell to me.
I'd been in the army over ten years, working my way up from commanding an artillery battery, then as the artillery liaison officer in a brigade staff to being an instructor at the Army Logistics College. I'd attended staff college at Fort Leavenworth and worked with a number of very experienced and brilliant operations officers in between, but for the first time the practical responsibility for operations fell solely to me. After the meeting it struck me how busy I was going to be, and I'm not afraid to confess it scared me, because I'm damn lazy and a lot less intelligent than I'm prepared to admit. I consoled myself by thinking I'd only be extra busy for a few days before a new boss arrived to shoulder the responsibility.
Those few days ended up dragging out to weeks. McHenry told me years later that while I was driving over to the base Knudsen had grilled him on how capable I was, or otherwise. He refused to tell me what answers he gave.