Greetings

[Porpoise]

I don't know what makes Spike think WW3 is about to start. Something will probably happen but WW3? Never. On to Part 5. Also, if you're following this I renamed General Knudsen to General Holst.

The history books will tell you that western sanctions damaged the Soviet economy, causing a schism within the senior leadership of the Kremlin, followed by a coup by the hardline faction who immediately began preparing to invade Western Europe. An Aeroflot airliner was shot down by Soviet agents to provide a pretext for invasion. It worked, too. The airliner was carrying an important member of the Gorbachev cabinet. The papers were full of accusations that the CIA had organised the stinger missile used to shoot the airliner down. Americans were not terribly popular in the days leading up to the war.
This all happened very fast, in the space of a couple of days. Our war game scenarios typically began with a build up of tensions over a few weeks or even months, followed by the red forces invading under the cover of exercises. So although NATO had raised the alert level, the invasion itself still came as an unexpected shock. In my opinion, one of the reasons we were taken by surprise by the Soviet invasion was that the bad guys had unsportingly failed to warn us of their intentions by not conducting manoeuvres beforehand. We discovered their divisions were on the move just hours before the attack began. Only the Russian units with the latest equipment had been mobilised. Satellites and local intelligence agents confirmed that East German, Polish and other Warsaw Pact army units were still in their garrisons and hadn't received any special resupply containing live ammunition. Moscow didn't trust Warsaw or East Berlin with enough live ammunition sufficient to fuel a rebellion, nor did they inform their client states of their plans to drive tanks across the Rhine. It's been said the Russians are masters of deception and they certainly deceived the hell out of me and so the days leading up to the invasion hold no particular significance to my memory. When consulting my diary for those days leading up to the war I find cryptic notes about leases, bank details, reminders about dry cleaning and all the other dreary minutiae of modern existence but not a single reflection on the upcoming conflagration.
The departure of Colonel Hagen had left a lot more administrative work for his deputy, which was me. Our main job in Operations seemed to be to act as the clearing house for messages, messages which had no clear recipient, or about which no one seemed to know what to do. The rule seemed to be; when in doubt give it to Operations. I spent most of my day arguing with different sections and different offices about why a particular task was not an operational responsibility with mixed success because almost task is operational at some point or other, else nothing would get done. A lot of my job seemed to be mediating arguments between headquarters over who would be responsible for what. Every commander wanted more and more responsibility, meaning more assets, more troops and a bigger budget. Over a couple of beers McHenry told me it had to do with which commander had the most troops under their command and who had the biggest staff, which meant bigger bragging rights come evaluation time and a better chance of promotion. So it was basically a military dick measuring contest and there were plenty of military dicks wandering about in those days holding tape measures.
I formed the opinion that Hagen had been in the habit of accepting any job, no matter how relevant, in order to appear more effective and efficient than everyone else and prove he had the biggest dick of all. The Deputy Chief of Staff, Jorgensen, was also in the habit of delegating most of his decisions to Hagen, which would then be returned back up the chain to be signed off, probably without being read. While Hagen's absence had been temporary his aide had allowed the paperwork to accumulate, but now that his leave had been extended the work had been shuffled over to my desk. It was nothing that could not have been handled at a higher level and in most cases had nothing to do with military operations. One typical request was for a response plan for evacuating dairy cows from Denmark, which I quickly returned unread to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture with the comment that it was not in our purview. If the Russians ever attacked the fate of the local dairy industry would be the last of my concerns.
I wish I could tell you more about Jorgensen but I don't remember much about him. While he was rarely in the office I would still get reams of memos, requests and other paperwork which kept me flat out. After a while I began to suspect these things were actually being written by Jorgensen's aide out of a dislike for me. Jorgensen's aide was a tall Belgian Captain with strange pale blue eyes whose name I've forgotten and who walked with a distinct slouch. The whole time I worked at Kolsas he never spoke to me or allowed himself to be in a situation where he had to speak to me and once or twice I was sure I saw him duck inside an office when he saw me coming rather than pass me in a corridor. McHenry told me I was being paranoid, but I spotted the aide through my office window late one afternoon scratching my rental car. I immediately went to his desk, snatched his coffee cup and took it to the bathroom with me, relieving myself in it before rinsing it out and replacing it. The aide never suspected a thing and while the piles of useless missives continued I felt I had gained the upper hand by my stealthy micturation.
On the plus side Hagen had collected and trained a first class team of operations officers. Responsible for plans was a Danish Major named Olsen, a quiet man with glasses who looked like a university professor and who rarely spoke but was usually deep in thought. If anyone asked him a question he would pause for a moment before answering, carefully weighing his response. My immediate subordinate was another Dane, Lieutenant Thomsen, who looked about seventeen years old, including a wispy moustache, a stray pimple or two and a huge adams apple that bobbed mesmerically when he spoke. Responsible for communications was Captain Berger, a daunting West German officer and former Sergeant Major, with a bulky, angular build like an oversized wax figure left too close to the heat. Berger also took it upon himself to look after young Thomsen, taking over some of the mentoring role that ordinarily would have been up to me. Berger and Thomsen together took care of our ageing operations database, a creaking old Honeywell computer. The hardware was on its last legs but the software and data it contained was almost impossible to replace. All of the officers in the operations section were smart, hard working, well trained and dedicated. However, when it came to our intelligence officer, Vos, Hagen had really outdone himself.
Major Vos was the most beautiful woman I had ever met. She was blond with blue eyes and cheekbones as high as a basketball player's jockstrap. If I had to be critical it was that her teeth were a little too large. She told me she had been teased about her teeth at school and nicknamed 'paard tanden' which means 'horse teeth'. Only in the Netherlands would a woman like Vos have been made to feel inadequate about her looks. She tried to hide her self-consciousness by licking her lips frequently, which only drew extra attention. It was no coincidence that Vos had featured in a recruitment advertisement for the Royal Netherlands Army, and she blushed when she told me it was an advertisement for the Dutch cavalry. She was a brilliant intelligence officer with an intuitive intellect and a staggering memory for detail. She was also the main reason behind McHenry's frequent, unnecessary and increasingly irritating visits to our shop. Before the wars end I would have to post a guard outside our office door, ostensibly to boost security, but in actuality to prevent McHenry from harassing her and us.
The days leading up to the war have all merged into one long, dreary day of desk-jobbery. Reports of Soviet military vehicles moving toward the border sparked a blaze of activity at Kolsas in the form of messages, memos and meetings trying to figure out what it meant. It proved to be a false alarm. The day before the invasion we received similar reports from sources across the border. Suspecting another false alarm General Holst had sent most of the operations team home, with instructions for the duty officer to recall us if the situation changed. I never got the recall notice because the Soviet Air Force very soon removed all doubt anyone had about Soviet intentions.