Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

Thanks.
Oh, the end won't be for a while and with it the story will have a full ending.
I have writing plans for 2019 which include a collab on a 2010 Russia-NATO war (details redacted for now) and then after that Monica's War is on the cards: a '98/99 Iraq War, Gore v Saddam.



Thank you. Colorado and the snow tomorrow.

   James

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December 1984: Colorado

Where the winter weather was at its worst was where the most of the month’s fighting in North America took place. During the snow, the freezing temperatures and the short amount of daylight hours, up in Colorado through the edges of the Rocky Mountains, serious engagements of a significant importance to the whole war carried on.

Denver had become a city of great significance with the ongoing siege around it which held throughout December. The American fight to keep it free from occupation and the Soviet wish to take it – thus striking what was certain to be a moral blow to American morale – became a struggle of wills between nations. It was more that just a fight for those involved but a big propaganda issue. None of this had been planned yet that was what it had become. Inside Denver, American forces, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division along with a large militia contingent, fought to hold on for themselves and for their country. The Nicaraguans who formed the inner perimeter around them made several serious efforts to overcome those defenders. Twice they came strongly in major offensives against the city, focusing upon Stapleton Airport. They were turned back each time, the first time easier than the second. The airport was the target of countless attacks from afar with air strikes taking place yet in the main artillery, rockets and missiles had it zeroed in. The tower was down and the terminals were burnt out; the runways and taxiways blasted each time then given hasty repairs. The damage done should have forced its closure. It was the city’s airhead to the outside world though. The damage each time was patched up as best as possible and aircraft kept coming in. It took a special kind of pilot to not just fly into Stapleton but to also fly out again. US Air Force C-130 Hercules waited for the right weather – ‘right’ as in terms of terrible and thus to hide them – to come in with steep approaches either silently or making a show of dropping infrared flares to distract missiles targeting them. They then had to get back out again without being shot down too. On the ground, the C-130s were involved in fast turnarounds as they were often targeted there as well. In came supplies and sometimes personnel and out went casualties and evacuees. Many aircraft didn’t make it. Weather conditions or enemy action got them: there were wrecks near to and far from Stapleton. Those fighting for the city’s edges, to keep the Nicaraguans at bay, were outnumbered inside as well as on the outside. There were many, many civilians who hadn’t got away from Denver before the siege began. These were those who lived here yet also refugees who’d come from further afield. Food, medicines and even shelter was in short supply. Casualties from the fighting came when they were caught up in it including several times were Nicaraguan or Soviet raiding parties, small teams of men dismounted who’d sneaked inside, launched attacks from within the perimeter. Almost all of the civilians wanted out; a few wished to stay but they were in the minority. By the end of the month, there were nearly half a million of them all trapped inside. The US Air Force couldn’t lift them out yet were taking children and casualties… some of whom didn’t make it too. For everyone else who wanted to go, if they could make it themselves – and the US Army could only partially assist in this – then there remained that escape route away to the west. The Nicaraguans held a tight corridor to the north, the east and the south of the city yet the mountains to the west weren’t held by them. It was dangerous to go over the Rockies though.

Denver sat right below the Rockies, in the shadow of those mountains and the ongoing fighting up there. The Soviet presence though the high ground only increased through December in spite of all the bad weather. There was a wider strategic aim for the presence of first Spetsnaz units and then later Soviet Airborne troops yet as Denver became so important, a lot of what they were doing played into the siege of that city and the escape of so many of the people from there as the Soviets sought to tighten the siege and see the city fall. The Americans weren’t leaving them all alone up there. They had Green Berets in the Rockies, national guardsmen from the 19th Special Forces Group (based pre-war through many states) recently joined by reservists from the 11th Special Forces Group, a US Army Reserve unit. Detachments were from each were all over the Rockies and not just concentrated in the area immediately west of Denver. Here the fight became rather intensive. The Soviets were focused on cutting the ground routes which ran through the mountains down towards the city and further afield as well. Ambushes and raids took place rather than any stand-up fight before the 76th Guards Airborne Division put company-sized units into the mountains by helicopter insertion to join them. The reinforcement brought bigger operations yet also more American attention. The transport helicopters which came up faced missile attack with several brought down complete with cargoes of troops. The Americans were bringing in their own reinforcements, heavy ground units. Before these arrived late in the month, the Green Berets remained busy getting ready for them and taking on the Soviets. Protecting fleeing refugees coming from out of Denver was something they were little able to help with. They couldn’t for their numbers were few and they had more-important tasks to achieve. This caused anguish and upset elsewhere yet they had to remain focused on their mission of engaging enemy forces where found and keeping the fight going for this territory rather than ceding it to the Soviets. More militia, armed American civilians either in the semi-organised Patriot groups or independent clusters, were fighting here. Some intervened in aiding the flight of refugees while others either stayed or were unaware of the scale of what was going on. The majority of guerrillas through the mountains spent most of their time just staying alive rather than fighting. Yet a few others fought on, actively going out and seeking to fight in places. They conducted their own raids and ambushes, rescued or caught downed pilots when they could and generally fought a guerrilla campaign. There were things done by elements of the militia which were outside the rules of law. Prisoners, if taken alive, were rarely kept alive for long. There were instances where these guerrillas mistreated their fellow Americans who crossed their paths too: these were rare but did happen. The KGB had some people up here as well, men who were ordered here and certainly wouldn’t have volunteered for the mission they were given! That mission was to try to make contact with guerrillas in places and seek out a long-term arrangement with them. It sounded insane and when the first reports came back to the Americans that the Soviets were trying this, there was initial disbelief. It was happening though and nuggets of intelligence to confirm this came. A suggestion was made to President Glenn from the head of the new & still-organising National Intelligence & Security Service (NISS) and it was one given presidential approval. Both the GRU and the Soviet Army would be let known just what the KGB were up to here. So the KGB wanted to give guerrillas guns and ammunition, even intelligence, to make them fight their own people as separatists or terrorists? Okay… but whom else would they fight too with those too, eh? The ingredients to make an explosive meal were chucked into the bowl. When the weather warmed up eventually, hopefully by that point this meal would be ready for the KGB to eat. The Director of NISS was hoping to give the KGB a bad case of the runs, added too by lead poisoning of the gut as well.

A major command reorganisation took place at the beginning of the month when it came to American forces in Colorado (plus down into the Texan Panhandle too) to add to changes made at the end of November. Rockies Command – an army group headquarters – was activated along with a subordinate First United States Army; the Seventeenth Air Force was already in-place. The long-standing issue of the fight for the Rocky Mountains being a sideshow for Texas Command when it really wasn’t was aimed to be solved with this allowing for a better regional focus as opposed to a previous stretching of subordinate resources from the Gulf Coast all the way to the Utah state-line. Below the First US Army, where before there was only the US XVIII Corps with five combat divisions plus attachments stretched from Amarillo to Denver, there was now the new US XI Corps as well. In addition, Canadian forces in Colorado were meant to be joined by more coming down from the Pacific Coast – with a British brigade included – to form a Canadian corps command before the New Year. This lower-level change was again made to better coordinate the fight. The XVIII Corps would remain in command of those American troops fighting at the very top of Texas leaving the XI Corps and the Canadians in support to fight in Colorado. With the Canadians and their British allies – the Redcoats were marching in! – arriving, these consisted of the only substantial reinforcements for the Americans in battle through Colorado though. There were some smaller units coming from the West Coast but what was really needed were more men to fight outside of Denver itself. The 4th Infantry Division and the 174th Infantry Brigade (the old Berlin Brigade) were fought out. They couldn’t budge the Soviets from their Twenty–Second Army – roughly the same size of the US XI Corps – and Nicaraguans with their First Army (another corps-size force) from where they were. The occupiers were unable to advance either, just as worn down after so much combat had been seen in November. The frontlines remained generally static. There were outbreaks of fierce fighting where hundreds would die all for no appreciable gain. Morale among those fighting plummeted. Officers pushed them onwards and orders came from above for this and that to be done yet everyone was dead tired. Slogging through the snow and out in the cold away from any shelter was just what no one wanted to do. Even among the 76th Guards Division, the elite Soviet Airborne, there was little great drive among these men when they were sent away from the fighting southeast of Denver where they were holding back the Canadians – giving over their ground to an independent brigade – to go off into the mountains. They were comfortable where they were. Field court martials to make examples of some and general punishment for many took place. Munity wasn’t near but there were many grumbles and bad attitudes. This was only worse among the 120th Guards Motorised Rifle Division, another supposedly elite unit yet one which the US Army Berlin Brigade had smashed up, and then the Nicaraguans too. No one wanted to be here and if they had to be, they didn’t want to go off to fight when so many saw it all as being for nothing.

The cupboard for American reinforcements was practically bare. Troops were needed for Colorado, to move through the Rockies coming towards Denver from the west, and so Western Command had been instructed to cut loose its pair of armored cavalry regiments which had been in Los Angeles and then gone deeper into Southern California. Attached directly to the First US Army were the 116th & 163rd Regiments. These were national guardsmen based out of Idaho and Montana respectively. They’d been sent to Colorado before, back in late September. There had come an urgent order to sent them to Los Angeles – which they’d failed to reach to save it yet afterwards took part in its liberation – before they could see action against Cuban and Nicaraguan paratroopers south of Colorado Springs. Now, they’d been ordered back here again. Some very choice words had been used by many men within including the commanding officer of the latter regiment at the f***ing stupidity of all of this. Montana to Colorado to California and then back again to Colorado! What the hell! The orders were followed though. The two regiments went via Nevada, across Utah and into Colorado. Traveling though the Rockies, among the snow and over dangerous ground – the snow and the enemy –, the progress once in Colorado wasn’t that great. The national guardsmen in their M-60 tanks and M-113 armoured personnel carriers engaged Spetsnaz and Soviet Airborne, occasionally seeing accidental exchanges of fire with militia units too who mistook them for the enemy… or just fired at anyone in uniform they saw. Montana’s 163rd Regiment went along the course of Interstate-70, a long-winding road which civilians on foot were trying to follow in the other direction. There were cut passes through the mountains and tunnels underneath them. The whole area was infested with the enemy. It was hard going, slow and costly in terms of men. By Christmas, they had reached Silverthorne; New Year saw them reach Georgetown, still a long way from Denver. The 116th Regiment from Idaho fought to the south and followed the route of Highway-285 though not tied directly to that road. They reached as far as the Ute Pass and the town of Divide (a thoroughly deserted place) by the end of the month, tired and worn out as well. Neither regiment had got down off the mountains to the lower ground below. Many enemy had been fought yet many more had got away.

Engagements occurred all over the place with small fights rather than the whole of each regiment seeing action. In one of the many which the 163rd Regiment fought in, right before the New Year and up on the edges of the Arapaho National Forest, a platoon from B Squadron 1-163 CAV got into a terrible fight where they unexpectedly met Soviet armour instead of their commandos or paratroopers. Several companies of tanks had been detached from the 120th Guards Division to support the fight in the mountains when the Americans introduced their own. This meant a difficult journey for those sent into the Rockies. These Soviets detached for the fight travelled from the occupied Boulder on the lower ground and through the Roosevelt National Forest before going even deeper into the wilderness. A platoon of Soviet tanks, three T-72s, got lost and didn’t meet with the Soviet Airborne they were supposed to link up with. Instead, they and what began as three M-60s clashed, fighting at distance in a sudden and confusing fight. The Americans were soon down to just one tank, the Soviets two. There were shots exchanged between the two T-72s where one used its machine gun to fire on the other to apparently clear off people on foot around them. The American tank crew, lost like their opponents, engaged the firing second tank: it was afterwards one vs. one yet the national guardsmen couldn’t see the Soviets. However, all of a sudden they observed as purple smoke coming from the open turret hatch of the last T-72. The target was marked for them! They opened fire and hit the T-72, emerging the victors of a brutal fight which had come out of nowhere. The Americans moved on, not sure of what exactly had gone on there yet glad to have escaped alive. Only much time later would they learn the truth about a downed US Air Force aviator, a band of teenagers who shouldn’t have been running around with guns in the mountains and how that F-15 pilot by the name of Tanner had tried to save them before giving his own life for the 1-163 CAV. That was in the future though, some time off and when the war was over. Before then, the fighting continued through Colorado and the Rockies.

Good update as always James.

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December 1984: Texas Panhandle

The command change with the First US Army being established and the splitting in two of the XVIII Corps to create the new XI Corps up in Colorado benefitted those down in Texas well. The XVIII Corps had lost half its strength yet for those fighting in the Texas Panhandle, this meant that the fight that they had they could focus on far better than beforehand: what was going on up in Colorado – oh so far away – was now the worry of those there. Keeping the very top of Texas out of enemy hands, denying them the opportunity they sought to extend themselves further and out into the Great Plains behind, was going to be easier now that the XVIII Corps just had this mission on their hands. Command & communications, artillery & engineering support and logistics were all simplified with a smaller area of operations that was now covered by the 1st Infantry & 101st Air Assault Infantry Divisions plus the 56th Cavalry Brigade of orphaned Texan national guardsmen. They held their ground through December when the weather was bad though not truly awful like it was elsewhere. Nicaraguans forces to the west of them couldn’t properly get fully out of New Mexico to get anywhere near to Amarillo while more of them away to the south may have taken Lubbock last month yet could get no further north than Plainview. A long stretch of ground spread up to where the corps boundary with the XI Corps was – going across where the Oklahoma Panhandle was; tank country in fact – remained unthreatened though it was watched and guarded in case the Nicaraguans, or more probably the Soviets with tanks, get into position to take advantage. The Canadians up there were stretched thin down through eastern Colorado yet the link was there and held secure. Come better weather in the New Year, once Spring started, the XVIII Corps with hopefully many reinforcements, was hoping to strike out in an offensive rather than defend and lose ground like before. The Americans were looking forward to that fight yet would get another one before that, far sooner.

Nicaraguan forces here in Texas were suffering during the lull in major fighting. There was still sporadic activity with deaths and injuries occurring yet the progress of the Nicaraguan Second Army had come to a stop. They couldn’t go any further than they had. It wasn’t just that the Americans had stopped them. Their advances had been halted by supply issues in the rear. They were second from the bottom of priorities (only ahead of the Guatemalans effectively stranded in Arizona) when it came to support given to them of ammunition, fuel, food, medicines and everything else. That was all desperately needed elsewhere. Some supplies still came through but none of any significance. The fighting men and the majority of the officers below general officer rank weren’t supposed to be aware of the issue. Naturally, they were. How could they not understand that near nothing was coming forward? The men were a long way from home. These Nicaraguans – and Hondurans serving for another country against their will – hadn’t chosen to be in their country’s army, let alone be sent to America to fight in a war like this. It was one full of misery, pain, hunger and fear. They were homesick. They were hurting physically and emotionally. They were hungry and when they did get fed, it made them ill. They were under the constant threat of death from either enemy action or for ill-defined acts of cowardice &/or treason. The previous battles which they had fought had been wonders undertaken by their army, real successes on the battlefield where they engaged and stood their own against the armies of the United States. Much of that success came due to actions taken on flanks by others and generous air support yet they had still achieved all that they had when fighting. No one cared about those any more though. The men didn’t see themselves as part of a victorious army. Skirmishing, patrols and shelling took place along the frontlines throughout the month and the Americans bombed them when they could. Guerrilla issues in this part of Texas, the open wind-swept country, was limited yet when it occurred, the Nicaraguans suffered under those too. The dead were buried here in Texas, not back home by their families. They had it lucky. The injured really suffered. Medical care was… ill-human. The field hospitals were butcher’s dens where amputations of limbs was done for cases where they shouldn’t have been: it saved on time and long-term care to just remove an arm or leg. Blood transfusions and burns treatments brought infections and painful deaths which just went on and on. Back last month, when the Americans had used chemical weapons, so many of the survivors of those attacks hadn’t seen any medical attention at all. They’d been left to die when so many could have been saved because there were countless casualties. Some lucky ones had been shot and put out of their misery by comrades yet the majority had screamed, sobbed and begged for a death which took a long time to come. All of this had continually brought about discipline problems within the ranks of these forced conscripts. Bad morale suffered elsewhere was nothing in comparison to the state of the Nicaraguan Second Army. December saw desertion rates hit a high and there were incidents of men shooting sergeants and officers. Others stole from the stores, taking what little there was and not caring about anyone else, or deliberately attacked their fellow soldiers with their rifles during disagreements. Nicaraguan political security units – Cuban trained personnel – were unable to handle this. The Cubans were first asked to send men but Soviet KGB detachments arrived instead. Ultimately, they played a central role in what became the Hereford Mutiny, one which broke a whole combat division just before Christmas.


Hereford was a Texan town on the road between Clovis over in New Mexico and Amarillo up ahead. It was around here – the fighting men spread out on a wide frontage to the northeast but with support troops near the long-destroyed town – that the Nicaraguans had their 6th Rifle Division. This was a lower-grade unit, part of the second wave of Nicaraguan troops sent to America; not the worst of units (those were still in Mexico) but not long-serving and better-equipped like others. One cold morning, an Antonov-12 transport aircraft in Cuban military markings flew very low over their positions and from it fell bundles of paper which floated downwards towards the Nicaraguans aided by an extremely favourable wind to reach them. The aircraft had been Cuban until the war’s second day back in September when it had landed in Florida and its aircrew defected though only after they’d airdropped men over the Florida Keys. No longer flown by those men, the US Air Force had it in service in a joint programme started by the DIA known as Operation Catfish with a special operations mission. It had several times flown elsewhere in Texas through the eastern occupied parts inserting Green Berets from low-altitude drops but this had moved to leaflets runs in what had been now deemed Operation Ranch Hand after the Soviets had got clued-in with those airdrops of commandos. Flying over the Nicaraguans, the leaflets were dropped and the aircraft got away clean. Information from those deserters who’d fled to XVIII Corps lines earlier in the month had spoken of the conditions and the Americans had seen an opportunity.

The paper had print on both sides. The front was full of propaganda: nothing dramatic nor going to be really effective either. On the back was a ‘safe passage pass’ which promised the bearer ‘comfort to sit out the war’ should they desert and use it to get away from their army. Thousands of these fell among the Nicaraguans. Some men grabbed theirs and read what it said, maybe thinking of trying to run to see that promised comfort. Officers within the 6th Rifle Division were thinking of using the leaflets for another kind of comfort. The chronic shortages for the Nicaraguans included toilet paper: here was plenty of that. It was needed too due to the bad food. The leaflets were collected up to be used for a purpose that the Americans hadn’t foreseen and one which would actually see Ranch Hand a failure. The mission would succeed though due to a fortunate (for the United States) turn of events.

The Soviets in the rear found out about the collection of the leaflets and saw one. They witnessed these being handed out to the men. The reason was explained for this. The senior KGB man in Hereford would have none of that, he believed he was being lied to. The shootings started, first with senior Nicaraguan officers. Then anyone found with one of the leaflets in their possession was to be shot too. This was remarkably unfair and the men singled out for execution for being in possession of what was toilet paper, not American propaganda, were seen to be shot by their witnessing comrades. One man was defended by his friends and a KGB man was shot. The KGB shot back. The Nicaraguans returned fire and there were more of them. The Soviets were surrounded by a mob; Nicaraguan officers seemingly disappeared. Soon enough, every one of the KGB men – the senior man a lieutenant-colonel – was dead, their corpses mistreated too. Things got fast out of hand beyond the initial kill crazy action taken against the KGB. Nicaraguan officers were killed by their men if they were unable to get away from Hereford. The mob spread out, armed and reaching the rear of the frontlines which faced ahead. A mutiny started as the rifle regiments saw order collapse with speed among them. No longer were they fighting the Americans ahead. They wanted to fight all the way back to their homes, taking anyone who stood in their way during that.

It was a long way back to Nicaragua. The mob of armed men didn’t even start moving for they were too busy seeking out more officers to kill and also attacking heavy equipment and even their field fortifications. They smashed and burnt what was in front of them, taking out their anger because despite killing their officers they still had no food, they were still cold and they well all full of pain. For almost twenty-four hours, the mob controlled Hereford. Then the KGB showed up, this time in number. A barrage unit of heavily-armed men arrived after the wider area had been sealed off. These men were outnumbered overall yet they came with armoured vehicles and heavy weapons. A Soviet Army artillery battalion a dozen miles off with big guns, tasked in support of the Nicaraguans, were given the order to shell Hereford. They weren’t told why, they knew nothing of the ongoing mutiny. 152mm & 203mm high-explosive shells blasted the Nicaraguans for some time while the KGB machine gunned anyone who fled south and west. Finally, satisfied that the Nicaraguans were done for, the KGB moved in. Quicker than they thought they could, they took control. The more numerous Nicaraguans had little ammunition and a complete lack of organisation. The KGB took them apart, breaking them into smaller chunks. Men surrendered, others fought on. In the end, be it that day or in later days, they’d all be killed. Some more shelling was needed in-places during the fight but it was soon enough over. The firing squads would be busy for some time.


Soviet efforts to conceal the Hereford Mutiny were good. They put a lid on the news well yet, as was always the case, word leaked out initially. What came out wasn’t always the truth. The news going backwards being stomped on to stop it was what travelled into occupied territory. Other news went into American-held Texas. The deserters who ran during the rule of the mob and then more who fled during the KGB attack all told of what happened. The Americans themselves witnessed the artillery barrage and then in later days reconnaissance efforts caught sight of the firing squads & mass graves. Eight thousand Nicaraguans were believed dead and a whole division knocked out of the war for good. This also left a massive gap in enemy lines. Another opportunity had cropped up. It was one taken by the 56th Brigade. These Texans, once part of the lost 49th Armored Division, were sent forward. Their mission was limited due to their own supply limits and also the support that the XVIII Corps could give them. These restrictions affected what they did yet didn’t deny them a fantastic victory. The Texans bypassed empty enemy positions outside Hereford and didn’t follow the road running southwest towards New Mexico but south instead deeper into Texas. They went towards the town of Dimmitt and then down to a crossroads at Sunnyside. Here they fought the flank units of the Nicaraguan 4th Motorised Rifle Division, a formation based around Plainview who’d been given orders to extend their frontage to cover Hereford. They hadn’t been told why – the 6th Rifle Division wasn’t mentioned – and were underway when the Americans reached them. The Texans won their fight, nearly defeating a whole regiment before the Nicaraguans were able to pull back into secure positions. The attack and the Texans sitting in Sunnyside afterwards split the Nicaraguan Second Army in two, their 2nd Motorised Rifle Division was away to the north with Americans in between them.

While the 56th Brigade had worn itself out when Sunnyside was a big fight, they’d opened up the front completely. The Nicaraguans had reacted only to hold on and not counterattack. The XVIII Corps started marshalling what few available assets it had, what it could spare from holding the lines and what they could support in battle. A pause of a week to ten days was needed and the weather wouldn’t be good come the first week of January, but a major attack despite all handicaps was being put together. The opportunity was too good to pass up and Soviet activity in response to what the Texans had done, let alone any Nicaraguan reaction, was minimal. A big battle was coming up as eyes were cast further forward more than just Plainview ahead.

Looks like the Soviets shot themselves in the foot there.

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December 1984: Oklahoma

The 103rd Guards Airborne Division had an illustrious history. It was a Rifle division in the latter stages of the Second World War and successfully fought to capture Vienna from the Nazis. As part of the post-war Soviet Airborne, it had taken part in Operation Danube in 1968 to eliminate Czechoslovak resistance and then gone into Iran as the first wave of assault forces eleven years later of the joint invasion of both Afghanistan and Iran. For operations in the United States, the 103rd Guards Division had been the first on the ground in Texas where it had secured the airheads in & around Corpus Christi to open the way in for the Soviet Army. America had then become a graveyard for the paratroopers though. One regiment was lost on the Gulf Coast of Texas long before Houston was secured and for no gain at all; the later assault by the rest of the 103rd Guards Division to seize Houston’s airports as part of the destruction of US Marine Reservists hadn’t removed the stain of the earlier defeat around Lavaca Bay. A further defeat had come last month where most of one of the pair of surviving regiments had been defeated at Lawton here in Oklahoma. The Guards title had been stripped from the division with orders on that coming from Moscow despite protests from many. This was important, the title meant something, and the punishment for failure was extended to all of the serving men with that stripping of their valued designation. What was left of what was now the plain 103rd Division had held onto their airhead around Altus AFB when Pennsylvania national guardsmen had failed to dislodge them from what they’d taken. They held onto Altus through most of December. The main frontlines were back to the south on the Red River which ran between Oklahoma and Texas leaving those paratroopers here on their own far out in front. They controlled the captured airbase and the surrounding town though moving any further, taking any more ground to link up with the Soviet Army forces on the other side of the river, was impossible. The 103rd Division was told to hold on where they were pending later reinforcement, a time for that unspecified. They were to hold Altus open for air operations to keep them in the fight via supply runs and also allow for combat operations from arriving attack-fighters – a squadron of Su-17s had been planned to be sent – to take place as well. The American’s actions made fulfilling those tasks impossible.

The 28th Infantry Division had seen one of its brigades get its behind whipped late last month when the first attempt had been made to retake Altus. The US II Corps, the national guardsmen’s parent command, wanted it taken less the Soviets there expand themselves either now or in the future further outwards. That would threaten their entire position on the Red River. The paratroopers inside Altus were to be overcome, even if it took the whole of the 28th Infantry to do so! Two of the division’s brigades, not all three, were used to squeeze and retake Altus. It took time because the approach was methodical and the 28th Infantry wasn’t able to use plentiful stocks of ammunition like would be needed to make it go quicker. Still, once underway, the task of beating the Soviets at their besieged airhead inside Oklahoma was one which the men from Pennsylvania set to achieve. They did what the Nicaraguans around Denver had failed to do there and shut off outside support for those trapped inside the pocket of resistance. Altus’ runways were shut when big artillery shells were fired at great distance when a couple of batteries of self-propelled M-107 guns were escorted by tanks to get close enough to bring their targets fully in range. The guns battered them with contact high-explosive fuses used alongside airburst shells as well to scatter shrapnel. There were also mobile SAM-launchers firing HAWK missiles which were escorted elsewhere outside the Soviet airhead and targeted approaching Soviet transports. Those big targets had to slow down to come in to land and it was then that they were engaged. The stocks of 175mm shells and SAMs were limited: the Americans could only hope that the Soviets didn’t realise how low their stocks were and shut down flight operations first. Thankfully, this worked out. A week of major losses with incoming transports as well as specially-trained airfield engineers saw the 103rd Division told that no longer would aircraft land inside their held perimeter. Drops of supplies would occur from high-flying aircraft using special parachutes to do this.

Infantry supported by armoured vehicles and also tanks moved around the edges of Altus, taking lumps out of the Soviets. Sometimes the men from Pennsylvania got unstuck. They could run into ambushes, coming off with many casualties. These eased up as time went on. The Soviets inside started to run through the last of their ammunition. The airdrops of supplies got fewer and fewer and as the perimeter shrunk, more of the parachute-retarded containers landed outside. ‘Waste not want not’ became the mantra of the supply officers with the 28th Infantry. Everything that was in those captured containers was taken back to the divisional base. It may not be useful now, they might never have a need for it, but someone would. Using Soviet ammunition themselves to solve their own issues sounded great in practice yet it wasn’t feasible when it came to rifle magazines, belts of machine gun bullets and mortar shells which didn’t exactly fit their weapons. As said, someone else at another time would find all that useful, not the 28th Infantry as it kept on plugging away at pushing the Soviets backed deeper inside their occupied area. It all took time yet soon enough they were in sight of the airbase to the east of Altus. The town itself – a ruin if there ever was one – was left alone over to the west with the focus on retaking this facility. American intercepts caught excerpts of radio transmissions coming out. Decoding teams believed that the commanding general inside was informing his superiors of his situation and saying he could no longer hold. What came back were orders to stand and fight to the last man if necessary: no mention came now of reinforcement. On the back of these intercepts, II Corps put in a request up the chain of command on behalf of the 28th Infantry for a series of airstrikes to help bring about the end of this fight. The Soviets were out of SAMs and anti-aircraft artillery shells. The Twelfth Air Force had many other tasks yet eventually they released some aircraft. Forward controllers on the ground guided the attacks in, hitting what was necessary. Without air defences, the 103rd Division suffered gravely. Each bomb-run was followed up afterwards by more nibbling away at their perimeter.

Christmas Eve for those in Altus under the assault was bad with intensive American attacks though on Christmas Day those eased off somewhat. December twenty-sixth saw renewed American action. This was the last full day of the Soviet Airborne being able to hold on. The next morning, there was contact made in person when the division’s acting commander – his general had been killed the day before in a bomb-run – went forward himself under a white flag and met with his opposite number from the 28th Infantry. A ceasefire was requested, pending a full surrender where the paratroopers would be able to ‘retain their honour’. The temptation to tell the 103rd Division’s colonel where his men could stick their honour after all that had been done to civilians and military prisoners inside the perimeter was there but the American general had his orders to avoid a final, bloody fight if the Soviets presented themselves. Before giving a response to what the Soviets wanted, he asked about the KGB inside the perimeter: where were they and what did they think about the surrender? Killed in the fighting or by their own hands, the Soviet colonel said with a straight face. That was a lie: the last of them had been shot that morning on charges of mutiny and fermenting rebellion. All that was a matter for others. The 28th Infantry’s general accepted the Soviet’s offer. A ceasefire occurred and then several hours later, a full surrender took place. Three and a half thousand Soviet paratroopers, two thirds of them carrying wounds, marched out and into captivity while national guardsmen moved in. Radios, documents and some vital equipment had been destroyed by the Soviets before the Americans could get a-hold of them but there was no trouble from the defeated enemy. The KGB men who’d taken their own lives were found… they’d apparently shot themselves with their hands bound behind their backs and hoods secured over their heads. None of the Pennsylvanian national guardsmen had ever seen anything like that before and all who witnessed such a sight would have stories to tell for many years.

The loss of Altus and the 103rd Division wasn’t a fatal blow for the Soviets. The assault into Oklahoma last month had been meant to seize airheads Altus and Lawton in coordination with a crossing of the Red River. The latter had failed when the II Corps, aided by the US VII Corps over in Texas, had forestalled the Soviet Twenty–Eighth Army; Lawton’s initial seizure had seen a strong American counterattack to retake the airport there. The men had Altus had received all of those messages to hold on yet no one was going to come to their aid even if they’d made it into the New Year. Once there, they were left to their doom. They’d been dismissed as failures and left in-place so as to keep American attention on them. Now that they were finished, this did free up the national guardsmen who’d overcome them yet that was expected. The Soviets correctly knew that straight after Altus was retaken, the Americans weren’t about to drive south and begin liberating what parts of Texas were under occupation. Things would be different come 1985 though: that was something that the two opposing sides knew very well. Until then, the frontlines on the Red River stayed where they were. Occasional heavy exchanges of fire took place and raids were conducted going both north and south too. Still, the Red River defined the frontlines in Oklahoma. There were Soviet troops still on the northern side, cluster around their salient north of Burkburnett, but they were dug into defensive positions and unable to either be dislodged or move. Casualties mounted but the stoppage of big offensive moves continued.