Greetings

[Porpoise]

Part 8

The appointed hour came and we filed into the briefing room to deliver our results. I've never been as scared as before that first briefing, not even when I manned a barricade as Russian Commandos tried to infiltrate Kolsas a week later, nor years later when the the aircraft I was travelling on was hit and crash landed in the Ukraine and I spent an chilly night in a drainage ditch with a Russian tank parked on top of me. The main reason I felt so nervous was that I had nothing but bad news to deliver, which I knew would reflect badly on me and confirm their suspicions that I was not up to the task thrust upon me by circumstance. Nevertheless, I had to tell the assembled top brass straight.

A German Navy Captain from the Naval Operations team gave his briefing, listing a number of current operations and options for future offensives. The Soviets were weak in the North Sea but strong in the Baltic, especially in coastal areas. Although only Russian ground forces were active, East German and Polish naval units were as active as their Soviet navy counterparts. Nato naval operations were closely tied to that of the northern air forces, which was the cue for a Danish air force Colonel to begin his briefing, detailing a number of sorties already conducted along with plans to disperse aircraft, requisition civilian air assets, arranging air defence sectors and corridors. The air plans were clearly well prepared, they had plenty of resources and could reorganise to a war footing quickly. Next came my turn to take the podium.

"Gentlemen," I said, and they were all men in that room, even if they weren't all gentlemen, "from a land forces perspective, we have few options for offensive operations, and we will have to be very cautious about the operations we do conduct."
Compared to the upbeat presentations of the sea and air operations officers, it was not a crowd pleasing opening.
"We have no units available in Norway to conduct offensive operations for at least 48 hours. The exception is in the far north where we are heavily outnumbered and our lines of communication severely stretched. On the plus side, those Soviet forces facing us in the north appear to be adopting a purely defensive posture. This is just as well as the Norwegian government is still debating whether to mobilise the army reserves."
That summed Norway pretty succinctly. The standing army was mostly deployed in the far north and the call up for the reserves still had not been issued. They wouldn't be issued until the following afternoon. I moved ahead with my slides.
"The threat against Denmark is more imminent, but Danish parliament is similarly debating whether peace negotiations will halt the Soviet invasion. Again, offensive operations would be risky in the extreme. The most we can do is slow the Soviet advance long enough for the Danish army to fully mobilise, which will take a minimum of a week, three weeks at the most. The 6th Panzergrenadier Division is preparing to withdraw behind the Kiel Canal with several Soviet divisions hot on its heels and that is the only force available at the moment to prevent Denmark being cut off from the continent."
"You've forgotten the Jutland Division," a voice called from the floor. Interjections were considered a no-no during the briefing and questions were usually held until the end. I looked up from my notes to see who was heckling me. It was my boss, Generalmajor Holst.
"I'm aware of the Jutland Division, which may be ready to move once the Danish governent decides to activate it," I heard a snort from Holst, "but the forces we are facing are overwhelming. Denmark can probably hold out for a week at most."
Even though Holst folded his arms and scowled at me, I could see nods around the room.
"So what do you recommend," asked Holst in a tone I interpreted as mocking.
"A week is just long enough for us to reinforce southern Norway, which will then face the mass of troops which had just overrun Denmark. We should accept the inevitability of the fall of Denmark and begin concentrating on the defence of Norway."

When I was finished I sat back down to listen to the other briefers and was stunned by what I heard. The first stage to mobilization was to raise alert levels and transfer control of the military forces from national to NATO command, which we called 'chopping'. However, this transfer wasn't happening at anything like the scope or pace that we needed to mount an adequate defense. The Soviets had cleverly managed to split NATO by being very selective in who they attacked, how, when and where. NATO-controlled assets, like HQs and communication stations, had been activated but any units belonging to individual nations had to wait until the respective national political leaders had approved the transfer, and the response was mixed. France, Italy and Canada had yet to chop their forces, while most other countries had only partially chopped theirs. We were facing the prospect of fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.

Kolsas was a joint headquarters and although we were technically in charge of the whole show in the north we were still under the control of ACE, Allied Command Europe, based in Belgium. Subordinate to us were BALTAP, commanding the Baltic Approaches, SONOR South Noway and NON, North Norway. In theory everyone in NATO could point to a clear chain of command from themselves all the way up to SACEUR, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. It was very simple on paper but very different in practice. For example, the commander of NON was also the commander of all Norwegian military forces and subordinate not only to CINCNORTH, but also the Norwegian Defence Minister. In theory every commander was part of NATO, but in reality, the military forces of each country were torn between national and international loyalties. Only the UK, Germany and the USA had gone to a general alert level and transferred control to the unified NATO command, recalling all servicemen and women and implementing emergency reaction plans. Even Norway, the country I was standing in, where the command center for all Allied Forces in Northern Europe was situated, had yet to call up its reserve forces.

In our war games we had practised a steady escalation of tensions giving plenty of time and notice of intentions before all-out conflict. For the real thing there was only the slightest inkling from our intelligence sources that the GSFG were up to anything unusual prior to the invasion.The attack had begun so swiftly that most politicians and senior military leadership were unaware of the seriousness of the situation. In some cases the national command authorities were compromised by communist agents. The most immediate strategic concern expressed at the briefing was the whereabouts of the Soviet Baltic fleet, loose somewhere in the Baltic. At least the Soviet marines were still safely tucked up in bed in Lithuania.