Greetings

[Porpoise]

That was a frank and disturbing revelation from Spike. To help everyone get over the trauma here is part 7, or day 1 of World War 3.

Day 1

"Ladies and Gentlemen," Fuchs, looking as solemn as an undertaker, began, "around oh-two-hundred zulu, aircraft of the Soviet Air Force struck strategic sites throughout Western Europe. Simultaneously, ground units of the Group of Soviet Forces Germany crossed the border into the Federal Republic of Germany. A political ultimatum demanding an immediate withdrawal has been sent to the Soviet government and until that demand has been met NATO is in a state of war with the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies."

The hall was deathly silent while that news sunk in, broken by the sound of hurried footsteps, phones and printers ferrying communication to and from the bunker. The Deputy Commander continued with administrative details including establishing the chain of command. As Fuchs announced my exalted state as chief operations officer, an unknown US Army Major filling a Norwegian Colonel's position, there was a ripple of mutters from the assembled. Heat rose from my collar as felt two dozen pairs of eyes burning into the back of my head.

Fuchs handed over the briefing to the chief intelligence officer. The J2, Colonel Quinn, US Air Force had a clean-shaven, baby face and told us in his dispassionate, businesslike manner what he knew of the overall situation. Quinn was short and to the point. Russian forces had attacked across Western Europe, crossing the West German border at several points. The location of the Soviet Baltic and Northern Fleets were unknown and a number of key western installations had been damaged by bombing and cruise missile raids overnight. There were a couple of bright spots, Berlin was untouched and Soviet marines were still in their barracks across the Baltic in Kaliningrad. Quinn was interrupted by the Air Deputy, a Royal Air Force Marshal.
"I thought you said the location of the Baltic Fleet was unknown," the Marshal said.
"That's correct," Quinn confirmed which checking his notes, "the latest satellite pass over the bases at Kronstadt and Baltiysk revealed empty docks."
"So the Soviet amphibious fleet has put to sea, but all their marines are still in the barracks. That makes no sense. Why put to sea at all?"
"Safest place for them," countered Quinn, "if they are in port they are sitting ducks for our bombers."
The Air Deputy was unmoved by the response but it seemed a reasonable enough argument at the time and I had enough problems of my own not to disagree.

Admiral Fuchs was interrupted by an aide and hurriedly rushed out of the room after exchanging looks with the Air and Sea Deputies, who gathered their staff around them and followed him. Their departure seemed to signal the end of the briefing which broke up into functional knots. I joined the group with the Land Deputy, Generalmajor Holst, who had been concerned a few days earlier that I wasn't up to the task of filling Oberst Hagen's size 11 ski-boots. Holst was ordinarily immaculate in his personal appearance but that morning I couldn't help noticing he had missed a button on his shirt and part of his combover was sticking up at a crazy angle.

Generalmajor Holst addressed the operations group and began issuing orders. He needed us to retrieve and assess our available contingency plans and begin advising him what options we had. He wanted to know what offensive operations we could conduct immediately to take the fight back to the Soviets. Even though I was officially in command of the operations planning team he refused to address me directly, preferring to divide his attention to Major Olsen and the other members of my team. After issuing his instructions he turned on his heel and left.

Information started filtering in about what was happening outside our mountain hideout. It was likely that Hamburg would fall within hours. When that happened Denmark would be isolated from Germany and would fall soon afterwards. Berlin was cut off, but otherwise untouched. Ramstein airbase had been hit hard and was knocked out. Russian troops had crossed the border and NATO forces were busy mobilising and counter-attacking where they could. All along the Iron Curtain there seemed to be fighting, except here in Norway. Apart from air raids overnight, no Warsaw Pact troops had set foot on Norwegian soil in the far north, which was very quiet. The situation at sea was a different story. Warships were manoeuvring in the Baltic and the North Sea but the locations of the major Russian warships, including the large amphibious landing ships, were unknown. The air above was hotly contested. The air defense network seemed to be the Pact's main target. Allied bases had been hit but dozens of enemy aircraft had also been knocked out of the sky before reaching their targets. Counterstrikes by NATO aircraft had suffered similar losses. The air space was a dangerous place to be.

Throughout that first day we pulled plans, maps, orders of battle, logistics schedules, readiness reports and other information out of the database. We sorted it, ordered it, updated it, discarded some and began preparing a presentation for briefing the senior leadership team that afternoon. We discovered that a lot of the plans were wildly out of date and hadn't been reviewed in years. The intelligence we did have was of doubtful accuracy. Even the readiness reports were questionable. The only information we felt confident about were maps. It was clear we would need to begin developing courses of action from scratch and I felt increasingly anxious about delivering my first briefing.